|
Quotes of the Day:
“Can the American way of war adapt so as to be effective against irregular enemies?”
- Colin Gray, 2006
“Your role as a leader is to bring out the best in others, even when they know more than you.”
- Dr. Wanda Wallace
“I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself.
- Simone De Beauvoir
1. Pentagon Sees Giant Cargo Cranes as Possible Chinese Spying Tools
2. Food and Soldiers: China’s Strategic Weaknesses
3. China expands defense budget 7.2%, marking slight increase
4. Global diplomacy breaks the hard nexus between war and famine
5. Two Ukrainian pilots are in the U.S. for training assessment on attack aircraft, including F-16s
6. Kellogg: End Ukraine War Quickly to Finally Focus on CCP Threat
7. College Should Be More Like Prison
8. Zelensky calls fight for east ‘painful’ as options dwindle in Bakhmut
9. Sketching Out the Rules for Offensive Cyber Operations
10. The Disturbing Groupthink Over the War in Ukraine
11. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 5, 2023
12. A man, a medal and what it takes to lead
13. A long-overdue Medal of Honor for a hero of the Vietnam War.
14. US to send bridge-launching vehicles for tank deployments to Ukraine in new $400M aid package
15. Special Operations News Update - March 6, 2023 | SOF News
16. Beijing takes conciliatory tone on Taiwan with call to ‘advance’ exchanges
17. Interpreting China’s unambitious growth target
18. USS George Washington destined for Japan to replace USS Ronald Reagan, report says
19. Russia’s Halfway to Hell Strategy
20. How China Is Attempting to Control the ‘Information Pipes’
21. Finnish Army’s winter uniforms make US Army digs look like trash bags
1. Pentagon Sees Giant Cargo Cranes as Possible Chinese Spying Tools
Gives new meaning to dual use technology. Cranes?
Excerpt:
“Cranes can be the new Huawei,” Mr. Evanina said, referring to the Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co., whose equipment U.S. officials have effectively banned after warning that it could be used to spy on Americans. “It’s the perfect combination of legitimate business that can also masquerade as clandestine intelligence collection.” Huawei has said its products aren’t a national-security risk.
Pentagon Sees Giant Cargo Cranes as Possible Chinese Spying Tools
Equipment at U.S. ports could pose risk of surveillance or sabotage, officials say; China says concerns are ‘paranoia-driven’
https://www.wsj.com/articles/pentagon-sees-giant-cargo-cranes-as-possible-chinese-spying-tools-887c4ade
By Aruna ViswanathaFollow
, Gordon LuboldFollow
and Kate O’KeeffeFollow
Updated March 5, 2023 11:30 am ET
WASHINGTON—U.S. officials are growing concerned that giant Chinese-made cranes operating at American ports across the country, including at several used by the military, could give Beijing a possible spying tool hiding in plain sight.
Some national-security and Pentagon officials have compared ship-to-shore cranes made by the China-based manufacturer, ZPMC, to a Trojan horse. While comparably well-made and inexpensive, they contain sophisticated sensors that can register and track the provenance and destination of containers, prompting concerns that China could capture information about materiel being shipped in or out of the country to support U.S. military operations around the world.
The cranes could also provide remote access for someone looking to disrupt the flow of goods, said Bill Evanina, a former top U.S. counterintelligence official.
“Cranes can be the new Huawei,” Mr. Evanina said, referring to the Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co., whose equipment U.S. officials have effectively banned after warning that it could be used to spy on Americans. “It’s the perfect combination of legitimate business that can also masquerade as clandestine intelligence collection.” Huawei has said its products aren’t a national-security risk.
A representative of the Chinese Embassy in Washington called the U.S. concerns about the cranes a “paranoia-driven” attempt to obstruct trade and economic cooperation with China. “Playing the ‘China card’ and floating the ‘China threat’ theory is irresponsible and will harm the interests of the U.S. itself,” it said.
Representatives of ZPMC, whose full name is Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Co., didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The recent tension over high-altitude balloons as an alleged means of Chinese surveillance has cast a spotlight on the changing nature of espionage and how nations keep tabs on each other, beyond the more conventional intelligence-gathering tools of spies and satellites.
In recent years, U.S. national-security officials have pointed to a range of equipment manufactured in China that could facilitate either surveillance or disruptions in the U.S., including baggage-screening systems and electrical transformers, as well as broader concerns about China’s growing control of ports around the world through strategic investments. China makes almost all of the world’s new shipping containers and controls a shipping-data service.
A ZPMC facility for manufacturing heavy equipment in Shanghai.
PHOTO: SHEN CHUNCHEN/VCG/GETTY IMAGES
In that context, the giant ship-to-shore cranes have drawn new attention. The $850 billion defense policy bill lawmakers passed in December requires the Transportation Department’s maritime administrator, in consultation with the defense secretary and others, to produce an unclassified study by the end of this year on whether foreign-manufactured cranes pose cybersecurity or national-security threats at American ports.
National-security officials haven’t detailed any instances of cranes being used to nefarious ends. In the case of the high-altitude balloon shot down in February, U.S. authorities said the vehicle was made by a manufacturer with a direct relationship with the Chinese military and carried antennas and sensors for collecting intelligence and communications. Western law-enforcement authorities have identified the threat posed by Chinese espionage, including the theft of technology, as a priority.
ZPMC cranes entered the U.S. market around two decades ago, offering what industry executives described as good-quality cranes that were significantly cheaper than Western suppliers. In recent years, ZPMC has grown into a major player in the global automated-ports industry, working with Microsoft Corp. and others to connect equipment and analyze data in real time.
“We used to sell equipment, but now we are selling systems,” said Hailiang Song, ZPMC’s then-chairman, in a 2017 video on Microsoft’s website. In the video, then-President Qingfeng Huang added: “Through our main office in Shanghai, you can monitor all the cranes” to help troubleshoot. Microsoft didn’t respond to a request for comment.
ZPMC executives were often celebrated around the U.S., where no comparable cranes are manufactured. During a visit to the Charleston, S.C., port in 2018, Mr. Huang presented a model of a crane to a local middle school.
Hailiang Song, former chairman of ZPMC, has said the company is a seller of systems as much as of equipment.
PHOTO: YUAN CHEN/VCG/GETTY IMAGES
Today, ZPMC says it controls around 70% of the global market for cranes and has sold its equipment in more than 100 countries. A U.S. official said the company makes nearly 80% of the ship-to-shore cranes in use at U.S. ports.
The huge cranes are generally delivered to U.S. ports fully assembled on ships and are operated through Chinese-made software. In some cases, U.S. officials said, they are supported by Chinese nationals working on two-year U.S. visas, factors they described as potential avenues through which intelligence could be collected.
The Defense Intelligence Agency conducted a classified assessment in 2021 and found that Beijing could potentially throttle port traffic or gather intelligence on military equipment being shipped. U.S. officials didn’t say whether they had found any specific instances of ZPMC cranes being used for espionage.
“DIA’s analytic efforts assist the U.S. military in anticipating and mitigating threats to global mobility, which relies in part on commercial transportation and shipping,” DIA spokesman Lt. Col. Dean Carter said.
In the past two years, ports in Virginia, South Carolina and Maryland that are at times used by nearby U.S. military bases acquired new cranes from ZPMC, prompting concern within the U.S. national-security community and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to people familiar with the concerns.
In 2021, FBI agents searched a cargo ship delivering ZPMC cranes to the Baltimore port and found intelligence-gathering equipment on board, some of the people said. The Wall Street Journal couldn’t determine what action, if any, was taken as a result.
The Port of Baltimore, where intelligence-gathering equipment was found in a search of a ship delivering ZPMC cranes.
PHOTO: EVELYN HOCKSTEIN/REUTERS
By one estimate, 80% of ship-to-shore cranes in use at U.S. ports are made by ZPMC.
PHOTO: DAMIAN DOVARGANES/ASSOCIATED PRESS
William Doyle, executive director of the Maryland Port Administration, said the Baltimore port had purchased four cranes from ZPMC and hasn’t found any issues while assembling and testing them, and is continually scanning the networks for security. A spokesman for the port of Norfolk, Va., said the facility has deployed ZPMC cranes for two decades and uses its own employees to operate and maintain them. A spokeswoman for the Charleston port declined to provide comment.
ZPMC is a subsidiary of China Communications Construction Co., a leading contractor for Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road initiative to develop infrastructure and trade links across Asia, Africa and beyond. In 2020, U.S. authorities limited five CCCC units’ access to U.S. technology, citing its role in Beijing’s military-civil fusion program, among other factors.
“It wouldn’t be hard for an attacker to disable one sensor on a crane and prevent the crane from moving,” said Chris Wolski, who formerly ran cybersecurity for the port of Houston. “These systems aren’t designed for security, they are designed for operations.”
Some industry executives said while they didn’t think the cranes had access to sensitive data that wasn’t otherwise accessible, some ports have turned to software provided by Swiss company ABB Ltd. to operate ZPMC cranes. Other ports, including Savannah, Ga., the East Coast’s second-biggest cargo port, use cranes of Finnish provider Konecranes, which usually cost around a third more than their Chinese rivals, industry experts said.
Rep. Carlos Giménez (R., Fla.) introduced legislation last year to ban future U.S. purchases of Chinese cranes and encourage other manufacturers. The congressman, a former mayor of Miami Dade County, whose port has some ZPMC-manufactured cranes, said he proposed the legislation when he became aware that the software on ZPMC cranes could be used for nefarious purposes.
Rep. Carlos Giménez proposed legislation last year to ban future U.S. purchases of Chinese cranes.
PHOTO: BILL CLARK/CQ ROLL CALL/ZUMA PRESS
“The physical and logistical technology infrastructure at ports is a critical area of vulnerability,” Mike Wessel, a member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a congressionally-convened commission known for its hawkish perspective on China, said in a statement. The commission was briefed on the cranes-security issue last year by defense officials, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Wessel declined to acknowledge the briefing or comment on any specifics discussed there.
Early in the Trump administration, officials in the National Security Council’s strategic planning office came to consider cranes as a unique point of interest, said Sean Plankey, a former cybersecurity official who was involved in those discussions. “Where would someone attack first and how would they do it?” he asked, characterizing the discussion. He said the officials determined that if Beijing’s military could access the cranes, they could potentially shut down U.S. ports without drawing on their navy.
A National Maritime Cybersecurity Plan, released in December 2020, found that no single U.S. agency had responsibility for maritime network security, leaving port directors without enforceable standards on cybersecurity and generally free to buy equipment from any vendor.
Write to Aruna Viswanatha at aruna.viswanatha@wsj.com, Gordon Lubold at gordon.lubold@wsj.com and Kate O’Keeffe at kathryn.okeeffe@wsj.com
Appeared in the March 6, 2023, print edition as 'U.S. Fears Cranes From China Pose Potential Spy Risk'.
2. Food and Soldiers: China’s Strategic Weaknesses
From the Epoch Times.
Excerpts:
Luttwak asked a simple question: “Can the People’s Republic of China as it now exists, actually wage a war … a small war … such as, for example, a war to take Taiwan?”
Using the metaphor of sustainability, Luttwak argued that the CCP would be in trouble if it fought a war against Taiwan today, especially if the war continues for more than several months. His analysis was not based on standard military comparisons of the two countries’ military order of battle, based on weapon systems and numbers of soldiers.
Instead, Luttwak focused on two key Chinese strategic weaknesses regarding sustainability: food supplies and dead soldiers.
Food and Soldiers: China’s Strategic Weaknesses
Renowned geostrategist Edward Luttwak pinpoints Beijing's Achilles' heel
theepochtimes.com · by Guermantes Lailari · March 3, 2023
Commentary
On Dec. 7, 2022, Dr. Edward Luttwak, a strategy consultant to the U.S. government, gave the keynote speech at Japan’s National Institute of Defense Studies (NIDS) International Symposium on Security Affairs. The speech was entitled “Can China Fight a War?”
Most news outlets did not cover the NIDS conference and almost none of them mentioned Luttwak’s speech. News sources missed an opportunity to highlight some of China’s most important strategic weaknesses. These should be ferociously pursued if the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) orders the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to conduct a military operation against Taiwan.
Can China Wage a War?
Dr. Luttwak noted at the beginning of his speech that he cannot answer the question: “Would the Chinese government actually initiate war operations; would it go to war against Taiwan?” He noted that leaders of countries (such as Putin in the Ukraine or Bush in Iraq in 2003), “are quite capable of starting wars they cannot possibly win. That is true of Russians and Americans, and it’s even more true of China.”
Luttwak asked a simple question: “Can the People’s Republic of China as it now exists, actually wage a war … a small war … such as, for example, a war to take Taiwan?”
Using the metaphor of sustainability, Luttwak argued that the CCP would be in trouble if it fought a war against Taiwan today, especially if the war continues for more than several months. His analysis was not based on standard military comparisons of the two countries’ military order of battle, based on weapon systems and numbers of soldiers.
Instead, Luttwak focused on two key Chinese strategic weaknesses regarding sustainability: food supplies and dead soldiers.
Looking at Russia
Luttwak contrasted Russia and China. First of all, does Russia have a sustainable war?
According to Luttwak, “Russia does not import food. Russia may import some special pâté de foie gras from Paris, but the food the Russians make is the food they eat.”
Second, Russia does not import energy; Russia exports energy.
Third, Russia has the most valuable commodity in wartime: some families have extra sons.
The Importance of Food
In contrast, Luttwak noted that China annually imports several million tons of food. For example, in 2022, China imported more than 85 percent of its soybeans (95 million tons) mainly from the United States, Brazil, and Argentina.
China imports human food and animal feed, Luttwak said, including “ninety-five million tons of soybeans, plus approximately 20–30,000 tons of maize, wheat, sorghum, millet, and these other things to feed to animals.” In addition to meat, he added, “there are of course dairy imports, a lot of dairy imports.”
Consequently, “China is a protein-eating country and the protein is important. Now, whatever else may happen, the moment a fight of any kind starts, even a small war, G7 type sanctions start,” meaning that China will be cut off from imports such as soybeans from the United States and Canada.
Workers stand near a crane unloading sacks of imported soybeans from Russia at Heihe port in Heilongjiang Province, China, on Oct. 10, 2018. (Stringer/Reuters)
He argued that once a war starts, “within about three months, they’ll have to kill … most of the pigs and the chicken, the mutton, the beef.”
He further claimed that during Mao’s rule over China, people survived because they ate more simply. They did not have much meat and certainly no yogurt. “China used to be self-sufficient. In other words, it used to be the way Russia is now for food. And now, it is completely different.”
Luttwak noted that the Chinese leadership failed to ensure that China would continue expanding local sources of food. Despite recent laws preventing the conversion of agricultural land to housing or industry, China has continued to lose its agricultural land, primarily due to land erosion, industrialization, and urbanization.
However, Luttwak noted that Russia has been in a war since February of 2022, and “still people in Russia … eat the same food they ate six months ago, a year ago.”
Energy
Some analysts might predict that China would be challenged to procure energy resources during wartime. However, although China imports a great deal of petroleum and liquified natural gas, Luttwak said, those imports “are not so important strategically as food is.”
Luttwak added that “China has a large domestic production of petroleum and gas.” In wartime, he argued, China would be able to divert energy resources used for the export trade to support its population. “And, in wartime, it is quite easy to ration some energy use.”
Dead Soldiers: The Past Can Inform the Future
Luttwak noted that the very lowest estimate of Russians killed in Ukraine as of December 2022 was 25,000. (While many estimates put the number at well over 100,000.) He said the Russians “can lose 25,000 soldiers in several months and it makes no difference …. Nobody is blocking the streets in Moscow in protest. It can continue like this for a long time.”
He then compared the USSR’s 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and the PLA’s possible invasion of Taiwan.
According to Luttwak, when the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, it was “able to put in 400,000 troops in the first 24 hours. And within 48 hours 800,000 troops.”
However, when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, it made the big mistake of only using 135,000 troops to invade a country that is 4.5 times larger than Czechoslovakia (603,700 square kilometers versus 127,900 square kilometers) and four times more populous. (In 1968, Czechoslovakia’s population was ten million; in 2022, Ukraine’s population was around 41 million.) In Luttwak’s view, Russia should have planned to deploy four times the number of troops that the USSR sent into Czechoslovakia, or approximately 3,200,000.
Using similar population ratios, the PLA would need to deploy a minimum of 1,600,000 soldiers within 48 hours of an invasion, since Taiwan’s population is about half of Ukraine’s population. The CCP would struggle with an inadequate number of ground forces, in the same way that Russia is struggling in Ukraine.
Post-Heroic Warfare
Luttwak stated that “if you want to fight the war, you need to have a supply of expendable soldiers, sailors, airmen …. You cannot start the war if you’re not willing to tolerate casualties. Many years ago [1995], I published a theory called post-heroic warfare …. And my argument was terribly simple, really simple. The wars of history were fought by spare male children.”
According to Luttwak’s theory of post-heroic warfare, “the acceptance of casualties has gone down everywhere. Let’s say … [on] June 6, 1944, on Omaha beach, there was a mistake … 2,200 Americans died in one morning … but the war continued.”
Vietnam veterans gather at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, on April 8, 1995. (Joyce Naltchayan/AFP/Getty Images)
In “Vietnam, the United States lost 50,000 over 10 years … and that was considered very traumatic …. And, of course, since that time, society has changed further. American families are smaller … So, tolerance for casualties has gone down a lot. Now it doesn’t mean, of course, that if you go into a place like Iraq or Afghanistan and you lose a few thousand, that’s okay. But what you can’t do is to lose 10,000 dead before breakfast and continue normally. That is the post-heroic change.”
The following statistics for Afghanistan and Iraq support Luttwak’s argument. Almost 2,500 U.S. soldiers died in Afghanistan during the twenty-year war (2001–2020) and 4,400 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq during the seven-year war (2003–2010). Additionally, over 3,800 U.S. contractors were killed in Afghanistan and almost 3,600 in Iraq during the same respective time periods.
China’s Lack of Sons
Luttwak cited statistics in what he calls “a post-heroic China.” In 1980, the CCP instituted its “one-child policy,” which lasted until 2016. Most Chinese families today have only one child. Although that is supposed to change under new policies encouraging larger families, those policies will not have an impact for decades.
In a model where families are very small, “there are no spare male children, then families and society and the culture and the government all have to reduce casualties.”
Luttwak told a story about the clash between Chinese and Indian troops in the Galwan River Valley of Ladakh in 2020. Approximately 20 Indian soldiers were killed, and shortly after the fighting the dead were given military funerals, including a brigadier general.
The CCP, however, announced its killed-in-action eight months after the fighting. The CCP acknowledged four soldiers had been killed: one officer and three enlisted. What happened during those seven months is the interesting part of the story.
The PLA officer’s wife, a local music teacher, was promoted to a position as a music professor at a major conservatory.
The three enlisted soldiers were also each given special propaganda value. One soldier who looked very young was made into a local hero. Another PLA soldier was made into the “good guy” who was reported to have said, “I will give my life to defend the motherland—every inch of the motherland; I’m here to defend every inch.” Of course, Ladakh was never part of China—an inconvenient truth.
The CCP presented the third enlisted soldier as “very traditional.” In a letter that he supposedly wrote before he died, he said, “Dear Mom and Dad, I’m very sorry that I will not be there for you when you need me, but if there is an afterlife … then I hope to be there with you.’” Luttwak noted the illogic of a reference to the afterlife by communist atheists.
In short, the Chinese “were concerned about the public reaction. This entire operation was to reduce the emotional impact of saying that four people died.”
Intolerance for Casualties
Luttwak argued that if the CCP took eight months to work out the details for four soldiers, how will it deal with the death of several thousand, or perhaps several tens of thousands? He estimated that 25,000–40,000 PLA soldiers would die in the first week of a conflict with Taiwan. Many would die on ships or airplanes trying to land in Taiwan. These PLA casualties would be caused by Taiwan’s anti-ship systems and U.S. and allied submarines.
Luttwak concluded that although China would be unable to win a war in the near to mid-term timeframe, it might, nonetheless, start such a war. “I am not at all confident that the fact that China cannot fight a war, means that they will not try to fight a war.”
However, he predicted that “if China starts a war, it will have to stop quite quickly.”
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
theepochtimes.com · by Guermantes Lailari · March 3, 2023
3. China expands defense budget 7.2%, marking slight increase
For comparison:
Military Expenditures: How Do the Top-Spending Nations Compare?
January 03, 2023
The U.S. had by far the largest military budget at $767.8 billion in 2021, but China's outlay was also quite large at $270 billion.
https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2023/jan/military-expenditures-how-top-spending-nations-compare#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20had%20by%20far,billion%20to%20India's%20%2473.6%20billion.
China expands defense budget 7.2%, marking slight increase
AP · March 5, 2023
China on Sunday announced a 7.2% increase in its defense budget for the coming year, up slightly from last year’s 7.1% rate of increase.
That marks the eighth consecutive year of single-digit percentage point increases in what is now the world’s second-largest military budget. The 2023 figure was given as 1.55 trillion yuan ($224 billion), roughly double the figure from 2013.
Along with the world’s biggest standing army, China has the world’s largest navy and recently launched its third aircraft carrier. According to the U.S., it also has the largest aviation force in the Indo-Pacific, with more than half of its fighter planes consisting of fourth or fifth generation models.
China also boasts a massive stockpile of missiles, along with stealth aircraft, bombers capable of delivering nuclear weapons, advanced surface ships and nuclear powered submarines.
The 2 million-member People’s Liberation Army is the military wing of the ruling Communist Party, commanded by a party commission led by president and party leader Xi Jinping.
ADVERTISEMENT
In his report Sunday to the annual session of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, Premier Li Keqiang said that over the past year, “We remained committed to the Party’s absolute leadership over the people’s armed forces.”
China: Defense boost to meet 'complex security challenges'
New leaders, economy to dominate China's legislative session
US approves selling Taiwan munitions worth $619 million
Taiwan says 25 Chinese planes, 3 ships sent toward island
“The people’s armed forces intensified efforts to enhance their political loyalty, to strengthen themselves through reform, scientific and technological advances, and personnel training, and to practice law-based governance,” Li said.
Li touched on what he called a number of “major achievements” in national defense and military development that have made the PLA a “more modernized and capable fighting force.”
He offered no details but cited the armed forces’ contributions to border defense, maritime rights protection, counterterrorism and stability maintenance, disaster rescue and relief, the escorting of merchant ships and China’s draconian “zero-COVID” strategy that entailed lockdowns, quarantines and other coercive measures.
“We should consolidate and enhance integration of national strategies and strategic capabilities and step up capacity building in science, technology and industries related to national defense.” That includes promoting “mutual support between civilian sectors and the military,” he said.
ADVERTISEMENT
China spent 1.7% of GDP on its military in 2021, according to the World Bank, while the U.S., with its massive overseas obligations, spent a relatively high 3.5%.
Although no longer increasing at the double-digit annual percentage rates of past decades, China’s defense spending has remained relatively high despite skyrocketing levels of government debt and an economy that grew last year at its second-lowest level in at least four decades.
Li set a growth target of “around 5%” in his address, as he announced plans for a consumer-led revival of the economy still struggling to shake off the effects of “zero-COVID.”
While the government says most of the spending increases will go toward improving welfare for troops, the PLA has greatly expanded its overseas presence in recent years.
ADVERTISEMENT
China has already established one foreign military base in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti and is refurbishing Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base that could give it at least a semi-permanent presence on the Gulf of Thailand facing the disputed South China Sea.
The modernization effort has prompted concerns among the U.S. and its allies, particularly over Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy that China claims as its territory to be brought under its control by force if necessary.
That has prompted a steady flow of weapons sales to the island from the U.S., including ground systems, air defense missiles and F-16 fighters. Taiwan itself recently extended mandatory military service from four months to one year and has been revitalizing its own defense industries, including building submarines for the first time.
In his remarks on Taiwan, Li said the government had followed the party’s “overall policy for the new era on resolving the Taiwan question and resolutely fought against separatism and countered interference.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Along with Taiwan, tensions have been rising with the U.S. over China’s militarization of islands in the South China Sea, which it claims virtually in its entirety, and most recently, the shooting down of a suspected Chinese spy balloon over the U.S. east coast.
The huge capacity of China’s defense industry and Russia’s massive expenditures of artillery shells and other materiel in its war on Ukraine have raised concerns in the U.S. and elsewhere that Beijing may provide Moscow with military assistance.
AP · March 5, 2023
4. Global diplomacy breaks the hard nexus between war and famine
(As an aside, no mention of north Korea's problems since it was not directly impacted by Putin's war in Ukraine - but imagine what would happen to the Korean people in the north if there was a war on the peninsula?)
Excerpts:
Twelve months ago, it looked entirely possible that the world would see widespread famine to rival those of the mid-20th century, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine knocked one of the world’s largest grain exporters out of the picture. Food prices reacted to the shock quickly, putting further pressure on the livelihoods of poor households in low– and middle–income countries that had already had to endure great hardship during the COVID-19 pandemic.
With turbulence in the fertiliser market, there was a perfect storm — Russia was the world’s biggest supplier of nitrogenous, potassium and phosphorus fertilisers. Not only this, but the skyrocketing cost of gas meant that other fertiliser producers in Europe and elsewhere could no longer afford to keep their factories running. Prices for most fertilisers had risen precipitously even prior to the outbreak of war and have come down considerably since they peaked last year, but they still remain considerably higher than they were before 2020.
Though the worst of the predictions did not come to pass, world hunger increased dramatically in 2022. This year, the number of people in a state of food insecurity will be more than double the number in early 2020, and nearly one million people worldwide are living in famine conditions.
Global diplomacy breaks the hard nexus between war and famine
6 March 2023
Author: Editorial Board, ANU
https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2023/03/06/global-diplomacy-breaks-the-hard-nexus-between-war-and-famine/?utm_title=Global%20diplomacy%20breaks%20the%20hard%20nexus%20between%20war%20and%20famine
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Bengal Famine in India and the less well-known Henan Famine in China, which together killed around 3 million people in Asia’s two most populous countries.
Historical memory in India will not easily forget the callousness of Winston Churchill, who declined to intervene in what was then British India to save lives so as not to divert resources from prosecuting the Second World War. It’s a sobering reminder that a geopolitical breakdown doesn’t just lead to appalling violence — it often means a disruption to global markets that can have deadly consequences for the world’s poorest.
Twelve months ago, it looked entirely possible that the world would see widespread famine to rival those of the mid-20th century, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine knocked one of the world’s largest grain exporters out of the picture. Food prices reacted to the shock quickly, putting further pressure on the livelihoods of poor households in low– and middle–income countries that had already had to endure great hardship during the COVID-19 pandemic.
With turbulence in the fertiliser market, there was a perfect storm — Russia was the world’s biggest supplier of nitrogenous, potassium and phosphorus fertilisers. Not only this, but the skyrocketing cost of gas meant that other fertiliser producers in Europe and elsewhere could no longer afford to keep their factories running. Prices for most fertilisers had risen precipitously even prior to the outbreak of war and have come down considerably since they peaked last year, but they still remain considerably higher than they were before 2020.
Though the worst of the predictions did not come to pass, world hunger increased dramatically in 2022. This year, the number of people in a state of food insecurity will be more than double the number in early 2020, and nearly one million people worldwide are living in famine conditions.
This is undeniably a tragedy, but it could have been much worse. This is in part luck — record wheat crops in Australia, for example, have helped plug the hole left by diminished Ukrainian and Russian exports — but it was also partly due to skilled diplomatic work to ensure that markets were kept open. Thanks to the Black Sea Grain Initiative, negotiated by the United Nations and Turkey, tens of millions of tons of grain have been exported that otherwise might have rotted in Ukrainian ports.
Food crises are made worse by panic, as those who can, hoard, and those who cannot, go without. Without global food reserves, that’s a natural reaction to perceptions of food shortage. They are also aggravated by incomplete or inaccurate information, which again leads to unnecessary panic and stockpiling. Here there is no substitute for global cooperation — much as in a bank run, each individual country has an incentive to build its own reserves if it thinks there will not be enough grain to go around and in so doing, makes the shortage a self-fulfilling prophecy.
As Peter Timmer points out in this week’s lead article, Indonesia has become deft at global food politics, stemming from the experience of the 2008 food price crisis. It was fortunate that Indonesia held the G20 presidency last year, allowing it to craft a leader’s declaration that put food security front and centre. Though protectionist measures implemented in response to the food crisis — not least Indonesia’s short-lived ban on crude palm oil exports — had the potential to make matters worse, in general markets have remained open.
This is not to say that the crisis has passed. Fertiliser prices may have come down, but price shocks tend to take a year or so to filter through to food prices. The war in Ukraine is intensifying again and, as we saw in October last year when the Russian fleet was attacked by drones in Sevastopol, Moscow might once again try to upend world food markets by abandoning its commitment to allowing Black Sea grain shipping lanes to remain open. Climate change is already making harvest failures more pronounced and a bad series of harvests could once again wreak havoc.
As Timmer argues, it is important to get institutions to work to ensure that if there are unexpected spikes in world food prices, global responses can be coordinated and efficient. Above all, existing systems of information-sharing need to be strengthened to encourage countries to provide timely and complete data: ‘When domestic grain stock is considered a state secret — as with China — or a matter of national food security — as with India — there are no mechanisms to enforce cooperation.’
As the world’s economic steering committee, the G20 is the natural forum for discussions on strengthening global food security and as 2023 G20 chair, India is in a position and has the incentive, given its own precarious food security circumstance, to continue Indonesia’s good work. ‘As ASEAN’s experience since 2008 shows,’ Timmer reminds us, ‘such forums can help countries avoid panic in the face of turbulent world grain markets.’
The EAF Editorial Board is located in the Crawford School of Public Policy, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University.
5. Two Ukrainian pilots are in the U.S. for training assessment on attack aircraft, including F-16s
Two Ukrainian pilots are in the U.S. for training assessment on attack aircraft, including F-16s
NBC News · by Courtney Kube and Carol E. Lee
March 4, 2023, 9:52 PM UTC
Two Ukrainian pilots are in the U.S. undergoing an assessment to determine how long it could take to train them to fly attack aircraft, including F-16 fighter jets, according to two congressional officials and a senior U.S. official.
The Ukrainians’ skills are being evaluated on simulators at a U.S. military base in Tucson, Arizona, the officials said, and they may soon be joined by more of their fellow pilots.
U.S. authorities have approved bringing up to 10 more Ukrainian pilots to the U.S. for further assessment as early as this month, the officials said.
Their arrival marks the first time Ukrainian pilots have traveled to the U.S. to have their skills evaluated by American military trainers. Officials said the effort has twin goals: to improve the pilots’ skills and to evaluate how long a proper training program could take.
“The program is about assessing their abilities as pilots so we can better advise them on how to use capabilities they have and we have given them,” an administration official said.
Two administration officials stressed that it wasn’t a training program and said that the Ukrainians would not be flying any aircraft during their time here.
These officials said the pilots would be using a simulator that can mimic flying various types of aircraft, and they emphasized that there had been no updates on the U.S. decision to provide F-16s to Ukraine beyond what the Pentagon’s top policy official said to Congress last week.
The official, Colin Kahl, told the House Armed Services Committee that the U.S. had not made the decision to provide F-16s and neither had U.S. allies and partners.
He also said the U.S. had “not started training on F-16s” and that the delivery time line for F-16s is “essentially the same” as the training time line, about 18 months.
“So you don’t actually save yourself time by starting the training early in our assessment,” said Kahl, who is the under secretary of defense for policy. “And since we haven’t made the decision to provide F-16s and neither have our allies and partners, it doesn’t make sense to start to train them on a system they may never get.”
Other U.S. defense officials have said the training could be shortened to six to nine months, depending on the pilots previous training and knowledge of fighter aircraft.
Ukrainian officials have told the U.S. and other allies that they had fewer than 20 pilots ready to travel to the U.S. to train on F-16s but haf about 30 who could be trained soon, according to American and Western officials.
Asked about the assessment of two Ukrainian pilots, a defense official described it as “familiarization event.”
“It is a routine activity as part of our military-to-military dialogue with Ukraine,” the official said.
“The ‘familiarization event’ is essentially a discussion between the Air Force personnel and an observation of how the U.S. Air Force operates. This event allows us to better help Ukrainian pilots become more effective pilots and better advise them on how to develop their own capabilities.”
The defense official added that there were no immediate plans to increase the number of pilots beyond the two currently in Tucson but said “we’re not closing the door on future opportunities.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly asked the U.S. for F-16s, but President Joe Biden has resisted the requests so far. In an interview with ABC News last month, Biden said Ukraine did not need F-16s at this time, basing that assessment on the U.S. military’s advice.
“I’m ruling it out for now,” Biden said when asked if he would ever send F-16s to Ukraine.
Ukrainian citizens and supporters attend a demonstration of solidarity with Ukraine in Krakow, Poland, on Feb. 24.Beata Zawrzel / NurPhoto via AP file
Biden also told reporters last week that he had discussed F-16s with Zelenskyy during his visit to Kyiv on Feb. 20 but would not disclose the details of that discussion.
In his appearance before the House Armed Services Committee, Kahl said that Ukrainian officials had asked the U.S. for as many as 128 aircraft — a mix of F-15s, F-16s and F-18s.
Kahl said the U.S. Air Force estimated that Ukraine would ultimately need between 50 and 80 F-16s to replace its current air force. If the U.S. provides newly built aircraft, it would take three to six years to deliver them to Ukraine, with a slightly shorter time line of 18 to 24 months if the U.S. sent refurbished older model F-16s.
The cost to send the F-16s would be as much as $11 billion, depending on the model and number delivered.
“That would consume a huge portion of the remaining security assistance that we have for this fiscal year,” Kahl said.
On Sunday, Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, said U.S. military officials told him they supported providing F-16s to Ukraine.
“I was at the Munich Security Conference, met with a lot of the high-ranking military officials, including our supreme allied commander,” McCaul said on ABC News' "This Week."
Feb. 27, 202316:48
“They’re all in favor of us putting not only F-16s in but longer-range artillery, to take out the Iranian drones in Crimea.”
But with the long timeline for delivery and training of F-16s, the huge price tag and the large Russian air force already gathering aircraft across the border from Ukraine, some US military leaders recommend focusing on weapons and equipment that Ukraine could use immediately, such as air defense systems.
“Even in our most earnest effort it will take months to get Ukrainians flying F-16s. They are beating the Russian air force with air defenses, why would we change tactics now?” a U.S. defense official said.
The Russian air force had roughly 500 aircraft, the official said, which dwarfs the Ukrainian force.
“It’s just not the way to fight the Russian air force,” the official added. “Even if we spend all the money and send every aircraft we can, it’s just a drop in the bucket compared to the Russian air force.”
Courtney Kube
Courtney Kube is a correspondent covering national security and the military for the NBC News Investigative Unit.
Carol E. Lee
Carol E. Lee is an NBC News correspondent.
NBC News · by Courtney Kube and Carol E. Lee
6. Kellogg: End Ukraine War Quickly to Finally Focus on CCP Threat
Excerpts:
“I would give Putin a choice. If I was the president, I’d say you should pick up the phone, which President Biden has not done. You pick up the phone and call Putin and say, ‘You got an option … You’re going to lose your army in Ukraine or you’re going to take it home,'” Kellogg said.
“There’s nothing wrong with taking a strategic adversary, like the Russians off the stage, because then, for the first time in 21 years, we can focus on the predominant threat facing the United States. And that’s China.”
Referencing the advice he’s given to President Donald Trump, Kellogg said “the best thing you can have in the military is fight one enemy at a time. Never fight two.”
Kellogg emphasized that the United States should do everything it can in Ukraine to provide assistance in standing up against the Russian army and negotiating with Russia’s leadership.
“When I was over in Ukraine and spent over two weeks there with them, Ukrainians don’t want any Americans. They don’t want anybody there. They want the equipment to fight the Russians. And they’ve got the Russians on the back heels” Kellogg said. “And I think that’s good, because I think we’ve taken a strategic adversary off the stage.”
Kellogg: End Ukraine War Quickly to Finally Focus on CCP Threat
theepochtimes.com · by Savannah Pointer · March 4, 2023
The United States should work to quickly to end the Russia-Ukraine war so it can finally focus on its main global threat, the Chinese Communist Party, according to Keith Kellogg, the former national security advisor to the vice president of the United States.
In an on-stage interview at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on March 4, Kellogg told Jan Jekielek, senior editor at The Epoch Times and host of American Thought Leaders, that the war in Ukraine can’t be drawn out much longer before it becomes an endless conflict that “you’ll never be able to put it back in the box.”
“I would give Putin a choice. If I was the president, I’d say you should pick up the phone, which President Biden has not done. You pick up the phone and call Putin and say, ‘You got an option … You’re going to lose your army in Ukraine or you’re going to take it home,'” Kellogg said.
“There’s nothing wrong with taking a strategic adversary, like the Russians off the stage, because then, for the first time in 21 years, we can focus on the predominant threat facing the United States. And that’s China.”
Referencing the advice he’s given to President Donald Trump, Kellogg said “the best thing you can have in the military is fight one enemy at a time. Never fight two.”
Kellogg emphasized that the United States should do everything it can in Ukraine to provide assistance in standing up against the Russian army and negotiating with Russia’s leadership.
“When I was over in Ukraine and spent over two weeks there with them, Ukrainians don’t want any Americans. They don’t want anybody there. They want the equipment to fight the Russians. And they’ve got the Russians on the back heels” Kellogg said. “And I think that’s good, because I think we’ve taken a strategic adversary off the stage.”
Jekielek point to China’s engagement in unconventional warfare, including psychological and financial warfare. He questioned Kellogg as to whether the U.S. military is moving fast enough to understand that a war is being fought without shots being fired.
Kellogg stressed that everyone has to understand that “risk is a province of war.”
According to the general, the current administration doesn’t seem inclined to take on risk, and this could be a problem in supporting those who stand up to our enemies abroad.
The general said that he is most concerned with the President Joe Biden’s “lack of presidential decision-making … The concern I’ve got is they don’t have the adults in the room.”
Kellogg said that no one should count out or bet against the American military despite his awareness that the military might have some “issues,” including the possibility that it is detrimentally woke.
He emphasized that the military’s job is to fight and deter enemies, and he’s not sure that is the current focus of the military.
Regarding China, Kellogg thinks the threat from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is huge for America. He cited China’s leader Xi Jinping’s comments about the East and West being “irreconcilable.” China is trying to have complete influence over the area and has been very aggressive in acquiring it, Kellogg added.
Kellogg said that under Trump, the United States looked at “decoupling” as a way of moving away from having so many businesses in China. He noted that the $350 billion trade deficit between the United States and China means America has, in reality, funded China’s government and military.
“We need to decouple and move away from that,” Kellogg said.
In recent weeks, the Biden administration has warned China against supplying military aid to Russia for the Ukraine war. The leaders of China and Russia plan to meet in the coming months, suggesting the two nations may be drawing even closer as a result of Russia’s increased isolation from the Western world triggered by its invasion of Ukraine.
theepochtimes.com · by Savannah Pointer · March 4, 2023
7. College Should Be More Like Prison
I wish this would shame some college students (and professors and university administrators).
Excerpts:
My hours at the prison are rich in such moments. In many ways, it is the Platonic ideal of teaching, what teaching once was. No faculty meetings, no soul-deadening committee work, no bloated and overbearing administration. No electronics, no students whining about grades. Quite a few of our students are serving life sentences and will never be able to make use of their hard-won college credits. No student debt, no ideological intolerance, no religious tests—whoops, I mean mandatory “diversity” statements. And in our courteous, laughter-filled classroom there is none of the “toxic environment” that my friends in the academy complain about, and that I experienced during my own college teaching career.
If prison inmates, many of whom have committed violent crimes, can pay close attention for a couple of hours, put aside their political and personal differences, support one another’s academic efforts, write eloquent essays without the aid of technology and get through a school year without cheating, is it too much to ask university students to do the same? Or ask professors to try to create an atmosphere where these habits can prevail? Perhaps prison education can serve as a model of how to return to true learning and intellectual exchange.
College Should Be More Like Prison
The inmates I teach are serious, disciplined, hard-working students, eager to engage with ideas.
By Brooke Allen
March 5, 2023 11:56 am ET
https://www.wsj.com/articles/college-should-be-more-like-prison-attention-spans-liberal-education-great-books-philosophy-diversity-statements-administration-60881077?mod=opinion_lead_pos5
Many of us who care deeply about education in the humanities can only feel despair at the state of our institutions of “higher” learning. Enrollment in these subjects is plummeting, and students who take literature and history classes often come in with rudimentary ideas about the disciplines. Interviewed in a recent New Yorker article, Prof. James Shapiro of Columbia said teaching “Middlemarch” to today’s college students is like landing a 747 on a rural airstrip. Technology such as messaging apps, digital crib sheets and ChatGPT, which will write essays on demand, has created a culture of casual cheating.
Never have I been more grateful to teach where I do: at a men’s maximum-security prison. My students there, enrolled in a for-credit college program, provide a sharp contrast with contemporary undergraduates. These men are highly motivated and hard-working. They tend to read each assignment two or three times before coming to class and take notes as well. Some of them have been incarcerated for 20 or 30 years and have been reading books all that time. They would hold their own in any graduate seminar. That they have had rough experiences out in the real world means they are less liable to fall prey to facile ideologies. A large proportion of them are black and Latino, and while they may not like David Hume’s or Thomas Jefferson’s ideas on race, they want to read those authors anyway. They want, in short, to be a part of the centuries-long conversation that makes up our civilization. The classes are often the most interesting part of these men’s prison lives. In some cases, they are the only interesting part.
Best of all from my selfish point of view as an educator, these students have no access to cellphones or the internet. Cyber-cheating, even assuming they wanted to indulge in it, is impossible. But more important, they have retained their attention spans, while those of modern college students have been destroyed by their dependence on smartphones. My friends who teach at Harvard tell me administrators have advised them to change topics or activities several times in each class meeting because the students simply can’t focus for that long.
My students at the prison sit through a 2½-hour class without any loss of focus. They don’t yawn or take bathroom breaks. I have taught classes on the Enlightenment, the Renaissance, Romanticism, George Orwell, South Asian fiction. We’ve done seminars on Adam Smith and Alexis de Tocqueville. Together we have read Montaigne, Rousseau, Keats, Erasmus, Locke, Montesquieu, Wollstonecraft, Byron, Goethe, Petrarch, Rabelais, Saadat Hasan Manto, Rohinton Mistry. The students write essays in longhand; during the pandemic I taught a correspondence class via snail mail. Some of them do read “Middlemarch,” and their teacher finds the experience far more gratifying than trying to land a 747 on a rural airstrip. We encourage them to treat different societies in history as experiments in time travel, where they try to understand the mores of particular eras as though from the inside. They are very open to that approach, unlike university students, who tend see the past only as one long undifferentiated era of grievous unenlightenment: not just one damn thing after another, but one damn oppressive thing after another.
Like students at elite institutions, most of my incarcerated scholars are politically liberal. Unlike them, many are religious, and that proves surprisingly enriching in studying these authors, who would have been amazed to know they would one day be read by classrooms full of atheists. One of my more devout students, a Protestant who converted to Islam, was so distressed by Voltaire’s disrespect for established creeds that he had to be comforted by other class members. They informed him that he was exactly the sort of person Voltaire was aiming his polemic at, and therefore he could understand the force of it in a way his irreligious peers couldn’t.
My hours at the prison are rich in such moments. In many ways, it is the Platonic ideal of teaching, what teaching once was. No faculty meetings, no soul-deadening committee work, no bloated and overbearing administration. No electronics, no students whining about grades. Quite a few of our students are serving life sentences and will never be able to make use of their hard-won college credits. No student debt, no ideological intolerance, no religious tests—whoops, I mean mandatory “diversity” statements. And in our courteous, laughter-filled classroom there is none of the “toxic environment” that my friends in the academy complain about, and that I experienced during my own college teaching career.
If prison inmates, many of whom have committed violent crimes, can pay close attention for a couple of hours, put aside their political and personal differences, support one another’s academic efforts, write eloquent essays without the aid of technology and get through a school year without cheating, is it too much to ask university students to do the same? Or ask professors to try to create an atmosphere where these habits can prevail? Perhaps prison education can serve as a model of how to return to true learning and intellectual exchange.
Ms. Allen reviews books and film for the Hudson Review, the New Criterion and other publications.
WSJ Opinion: Hits and Misses of the Week
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE
Journal Editorial Report: The week's best and worst from Collin Levy, Bill McGurn, Allysia Finley and Kyle Peterson. Images: Reuters/Shutterstock/AP Composite: Mark Kelly
Appeared in the March 6, 2023, print edition as 'College Should Be More Like Prison'.
8. Zelensky calls fight for east ‘painful’ as options dwindle in Bakhmut
Zelensky calls fight for east ‘painful’ as options dwindle in Bakhmut
By Missy Ryan
Updated March 5, 2023 at 10:22 a.m. EST|Published March 5, 2023 at 7:44 a.m. EST
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/03/05/bakhmut-ukraine-russia-war-donetsk/
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian forces clung to their positions in Bakhmut on Sunday, fiercely resisting a Russian push to encircle the city in the eastern Donetsk region and prolonging a fight that has become a symbol of Ukraine’s battlefield defiance.
Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for the latest updates on Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials have described their grip on Bakhmut, a small industrial city, as increasingly tenuous in recent days, suggesting they may need to withdraw to prevent their troops from being trapped by Russian fighters advancing on three sides.
The fate of the city, which military experts say holds little strategic value, assumes outsize importance a year into President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale war, as Ukraine prepares for what is likely to be a grueling spring offensive and Western leaders scramble to deliver arms and ammunition they hope will tip the scales in its favor.
The months of brutal fighting in Bakhmut, resulting in thousands of dead and wounded on each side, underscores the remote likelihood of any near-term end to a conflict that has overturned decades of relative stability in Europe and intensified strains on the global economy.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking in a nightly video address on Sunday, acknowledged the battlefield difficulties in Ukraine’s embattled east and honored troops fighting there.
“It is one of the toughest battles,” he said. “Painful and challenging.”
While Zelensky has called for Russian forces to be repelled from every inch of his country, Putin has shown no willingness to back away from his own military aims.
The Ukrainian military’s General Staff said that Russia’s invading force continued “to advance in the direction of Bakhmut” on Sunday, citing Russia’s shelling of the city and surrounding villages.
Ukrainian soldiers, facing barrages of what they describe as random artillery, mortar and rocket strikes from nearby Russian troops, are operating mostly from trenches in and around Bakhmut and have few remaining routes toward safer ground.
Ukrainian military personnel who have been in the Bakhmut area in recent days said that Russian fighters have already secured positions in certain parts of the city. Defending forces remain in control of others.
The city, which Russians call by its Soviet-Russian name, Artyomovsk, is now almost completely destroyed, and most of its citizens, from a prewar population of 70,000, have fled.
Russian forces, led by the Wagner mercenary group, have waged a months-long onslaught. If the Ukrainians retreat, they will fall back just a few kilometers to long-planned defensive positions.
Nonetheless, the fight for the city has taken on enormous symbolic value in Kyiv and Moscow, with the Wagner chief, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, seeking to claim a victory for the Kremlin after Russia’s regular military suffered a string of defeats, first in its attempt to capture Kyiv, and then in Ukrainian counteroffensives in the northeast Kharkiv and southern Kherson regions.
Prigozhin has sent wave after wave of fighters, many of them convicted criminals recruited directly to the battlefield from prison, into Bakhmut, taking enormous casualties to make relatively tiny territorial gains.
Talking to children who left Russia about the war in Ukraine
Zelensky, in turn, has elevated the importance of Bakhmut, calling it “the fortress of our morale” and celebrating the troops defending it. In December, the Ukrainian leader made a rare front-line visit to Bakhmut to meet with troops. When he visited Washington, he gave U.S. lawmakers a flag from the city. Among Ukrainians, “Bakhmut stands” has become a rallying cry.
For Putin, capturing Bakhmut would deliver a needed victory and illustrate progress toward imposing Kremlin control in four eastern regions that the Russian leader has illegally declared as annexed.
The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has recently described the effort to seize four regions — Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — as a matter of upholding the Russian constitution, which was amended to declare the Ukrainian territory as belonging to Russia.
On Friday, Russian occupation officials formally declared Melitopol to be the new regional capital of Zaporizhzhia — a sign not only of Russia’s stubborn annexation claims but also of its failure to capture the actual regional capital: Zaporizhzhia city, which lies just east of Dnieper River.
Despite Ukraine’s successful counteroffensive in the fall, Russian forces now control roughly one-fifth of Ukrainian territory.
Kyiv’s Western backers, who have funneled an increasingly sophisticated array of weaponry into Ukraine over the past year, have warned it would threaten global security if Russia is permitted to prevail in Ukraine.
President Biden has vowed to support Ukraine “as long as it takes,” pledging continued American help most directly during a surprise visit to Kyiv last month. While the United States has provided some $30 billion in military aid since the conflict began, Biden must now contend with softening support at home, particularly among Republicans, who control the House of Representatives.
In an interview broadcast Sunday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that the terms of peace talks that might someday conclude the war must be defined by Ukraine, not its backers in the West. He said the onus for enabling such negotiations fell squarely on Russia.
“To my view, it is necessary that Putin understands that he will not succeed with his invasion and his imperialistic aggression, and that he has to withdraw troops,” he said in an interview with CNN. “This is the basis for talks.”
Why Russia and Ukraine are fighting over Bakhmut
According to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank that conducts daily analyses of combat developments, Russian fighters appear to be positioned to conduct a “turning movement” aimed at forcing Ukrainian troops to pull back from certain defensive positions. Ukrainian forces have destroyed several bridges in the area, ISW has said.
ISW, in its Saturday assessment, said that Russian forces “have not yet forced Ukrainian forces to withdraw and will likely not be able to encircle the city soon.”
Britain’s Defense Ministry said over the weekend that Ukraine’s position in Bakhmut was “under increasingly severe pressure” and cited additional Russian advances on the city’s northern edges.
Prigozhin, meanwhile, has claimed in recent days that Bakhmut is “practically surrounded” and that his fighters control all the main roads leading out of it.
The Russians have been pressuring the city from the north, east and south. Ukraine’s fallback positions generally lie to the west.
Ukrainian military leaders have already indicated that they would not attempt to hold the city at any cost, potentially choosing to reserve manpower for their spring campaign, which is expected to begin in coming weeks.
Isabelle Khurshudyan and Kamila Hrabchuk contributed to this report from Kyiv; Siobhán O’Grady and Anastacia Galouchka contributed from Dnipro, Ukraine.
9. Sketching Out the Rules for Offensive Cyber Operations
Excerpts:
The national strategy hints at this, stating that the U.S. will “hold irresponsible states accountable when they fail to uphold their commitments,” such as the United Nations mandate to refrain from using cyber operations to “intentionally damage critical infrastructure contrary to their obligations under international law.”
But experts are hoping for more—even if the public doesn’t get to see it.
Rob Carey, the president of Cloudera’s government solutions, likes that the strategy leaves room for “pushing back” against threat actors, because cyber defense sometimes means taking offensive actions.
“The document talks about ‘disrupt and dismantle threat actors.’ I love that because that's the ability to push back. Sometimes defense is good offense. And while successive presidents have opened up that gate, they have been, you know, a little conservative in how they do that,” Carey said.
Details on that may not be publicly disclosed due to their sensitivity, he said, “but they are talking about the right set of actions.”
Sketching Out the Rules for Offensive Cyber Operations
The White House released the first-ever National Cybersecurity Strategy this week. It leaves the door open for more defined use cases for cyber operations.
defenseone.com · by Lauren C. Williams
The White House’s new National Cybersecurity Strategy could lead to more precise guidance on how the Pentagon conducts offensive cyber operations when it releases its own strategy in the coming weeks.
“There continues to be, I think, some frustration in different parts of the ecosystem about how much and how often, whether it's defending forward or other capabilities that DOD can bring to the table are deployed,” said Megan Stifel, the chief strategy officer for the Institute for Security and Technology.
The Pentagon’s upcoming cyber strategy will most likely focus on defending its own networks and the security of the defense industrial base. But Stifel said she hopes it will also address offensive cyber operations.
According to the national strategy, “DOD’s new strategy will clarify how U.S. Cyber Command and other DOD components will integrate cyberspace operations into their efforts to defend against state and non-state actors capable of posing strategic level threats to U.S. interests,” while bolstering partnerships with law enforcement, intelligence, and other federal agencies.
The potential for new policy is especially pertinent because it can be difficult to contain the effects of cyber actions, said John Sahlin, General Dynamics Information Technology’s director of cyber solutions for its defense division.
“I think what will be very interesting is the notion of disrupting adversarial actors. And I think that's going to give us the most interesting changes from a policy perspective” especially when it comes to determining what a proportional response is from offensive cyber attacks, he said.
Defining what Sahlin called the “gradation of evaluating adversarial activity of engagement” could clarify the challenges around delivering a proportional response.
“The challenge with cybersecurity and cyber actors in terms of any kind of response is that there's this idea of a reciprocal and proportional measured response. And it's difficult to rein in a cyber response to limit the effect,” Sahlin said.
“But I think the biggest set of policies that could come from this is a more clear set of rules of engagement or rules of here's what a proportional response to this type of activity is. Because if everything is characterized as an attack, nothing is.”
The national strategy hints at this, stating that the U.S. will “hold irresponsible states accountable when they fail to uphold their commitments,” such as the United Nations mandate to refrain from using cyber operations to “intentionally damage critical infrastructure contrary to their obligations under international law.”
But experts are hoping for more—even if the public doesn’t get to see it.
Rob Carey, the president of Cloudera’s government solutions, likes that the strategy leaves room for “pushing back” against threat actors, because cyber defense sometimes means taking offensive actions.
“The document talks about ‘disrupt and dismantle threat actors.’ I love that because that's the ability to push back. Sometimes defense is good offense. And while successive presidents have opened up that gate, they have been, you know, a little conservative in how they do that,” Carey said.
Details on that may not be publicly disclosed due to their sensitivity, he said, “but they are talking about the right set of actions.”
defenseone.com · by Lauren C. Williams
10. The Disturbing Groupthink Over the War in Ukraine
Excerpts:
Let there be no doubt: Putin should immediately stop this insanity in Ukraine. This is a gruesome and murderous campaign he’s engaged in, and the death toll is shocking. The Biden administration should do what we are constantly told is untenable, unrealistic, or characterized as appeasement: make a negotiated end to the war the top priority. China has recently indicated a greater willingness to play a direct role. This is an opportunity for a major reset among nations. But that won’t happen because we lack leaders in the U.S. who have such bold vision, leaders willing to shift from the dominant imperial posture. So we are stuck with the current prospect of countless more Ukrainian civilians dying. In the face of that, how does one tell the Ukrainians not to fight? How does one say, “No, we won’t give you weapons, but we also are against what the aggressor is doing”? It’s a reasonable position for people watching this bloodbath to want to do everything possible to help Ukrainians defend themselves, and supporting weapons transfers to Ukraine does not make you a pawn of the U.S. imperial state. But the argument over whether the U.S. and NATO should be giving military aid is a trap because it’s presented as a binary choice. What has our government done to seek alternative paths? Has it exhausted all diplomatic efforts?
The Disturbing Groupthink Over the War in Ukraine
At this dangerous moment, with threats of nuclear conflict looming, we need a vigorous debate about U.S. policy toward Russia and Ukraine.
Jeremy Scahill
March 3 2023, 10:19 a.m.
The Intercept · by Jeremy Scahill · March 3, 2023
There is a disturbing aspect to the discourse in Washington, D.C., and European capitals surrounding the war in Ukraine that seeks to quash any dissent from the official narrative surrounding NATO’s military support for Ukraine. As the world was thrust into Cold War 2.0, the Western commentariat dusted off the wide brush wielded for decades by the cold warriors of old, labeling critics of the policy of massive weapons transfers to Ukraine or unquestioning support for the government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as Russian stooges or puppets. This is a dangerous trend that encourages groupthink over a potentially nuclear conflict.
Citizens have every right to question the role of their governments, particularly in times of war. Some of the dynamics around policing criticism of Zelenskyy or the Ukrainian government or the U.S. support for it are reminiscent of the efforts to stifle criticism of Israel through charges of antisemitism. Not only is this an intellectually bankrupt line of attack, but it also runs contrary to the vital principle of free debate in democratic societies. It also seeks to relegate to a dungeon of insignificance the vast U.S. record of foreign policy, military, and intelligence catastrophes as well as its abuses and crimes by pretending that only lackeys for Moscow would dare question our role in a foreign conflict on the other side of the globe.
Russia is fighting not just Ukraine, but also NATO infrastructure.
Russia is hardly a victim here. Vladimir Putin seems comfortable abetting a new cold war, and his unjustified attack against Ukraine has offered the U.S. and NATO a golden ticket to ratchet up militarism, European defense spending, and weapons production. At the same time, it is true, as Moscow alleges, that Russia is fighting not just Ukraine, but also NATO infrastructure. It is also true that prominent sectors of the U.S. security state want this war primarily to bleed Russia, and last year the White House had to walk back President Joe Biden’s off-the-cuff remark about Putin: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” The whole enterprise is an incredible boondoggle for the war industry, which now gets no-bid contracts baked in to build the defense “industrial base.”
I’m in
The idea that Putin could not have foreseen the likelihood of NATO coming to Ukraine’s defense — particularly with Biden, not Donald Trump, in the White House— is ludicrous. For years, through his actions and words, Putin has made clear that he has no respect for Ukraine as a sovereign nation, a sentiment that has only become more entrenched over the past year. The U.S. and its NATO allies, for their part, poked at Putin in an effort to back him into a corner he ultimately decided he would not accept. Still, he alone chose the path of invading a neighboring country, and for that, Putin should answer. At the same time, discussing the role of Western powers in bringing the world to this point should not be taboo, nor should it be used as a prompt to smear those raising relevant issues as doing Moscow’s bidding.
Against the backdrop of the Ukraine war, the U.S. has steadily intensified its preparations for a potential war with China. Biden recently declared, “I absolutely believe there need not be a new Cold War” with China, yet the U.S. posture has for years indicated the exact opposite. Japan recently announced that it is looking to purchase from the U.S. as many as 500 of the newest Tomahawk cruise missiles. The long-range weapons have, to date, only been available to the U.S. and Britain, but Japan, at the urging of Washington, has been deliberately increasing its defense spending and military capacity. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin praised Tokyo’s move toward the NATO goal of its members spending 2 percent of their GDP on military, saying it underscored “Japan’s staunch commitment to upholding the international rules-based order and a free and open Indo-Pacific.”
Meanwhile, the extremist right-wing government of Israel is on the war path against Iran and may well be actively planning for a military attack in the future. It also seems to be simply a matter of time before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launches yet another full-scale military onslaught against the Palestinians. Throughout the world, the U.S. and its allies are engaged in a gaslighting campaign of doublespeak as they engage in the very actions they claim their adversaries are plotting. In the National Security Strategy report released in October, the Biden administration declared that “the post-Cold War era is definitively over and a competition is underway between the major powers to shape what comes next.” It stated bluntly that the U.S. “military’s role is to maintain and gain warfighting advantages while limiting those of our competitors.”
We are in the midst of a perilous moment in world history, one that demands a robust debate about the motives and actions of powerful nation states. There should be more debate, not less. Groupthink does a disservice to a democratic society, particularly when the world is closer to the threat of nuclear war than at any time in recent history.
Members of the U.S. Army take part in the NATO military exercise “Iron Wolf 2022-II” at a training range in Pabrade, north of Vilnius, Lithuania, on Oct. 26, 2022.
Photo: Mindaugas Kulbis/AP
Brutal Anniversaries
Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine passed the one-year mark in late February and came just a month before the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a war based on lies and waged with a gratuitous and sustained brutality. Biden not only supported that war, but as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the lead up to “shock and awe,” he also helped facilitate it. The neocons and cruise-missile liberals who got it wrong on Iraq should employ a bit more humility in being so certain their analysis of global affairs is sounder than that of critics who have consistently gotten it right about American wars when it mattered — before they started.
One of the most striking aspects about the past year is how little debate we’ve seen over U.S. and NATO policy.
None of this is to say that there is only one right position on Ukraine. Nor does it mean that there are not some deranged people who are actively cheering on Putin as he wages an illegitimate and heinous war. But one of the most striking aspects about the past year is how little debate we’ve seen over U.S. and NATO policy. The role of Western powers in the war in Ukraine will have far-reaching consequences for global security and relations among nations. It will impact the stability of the U.S. economy and is setting precedents that will have repercussions, including on matters of international law. It also will legitimize a new set of norms permitting proxy warfare and will encourage malign actors to use the “Ukraine principle” to their advantage.
It is unfortunate that the most prominent political critique of U.S. policy in Ukraine from official quarters emanates from a handful of congressional Republicans whose dominant rationale for their position is a rancid potpourri of “America First” principles and warped Trumpist ideology. At its best, some Republican opposition is rooted in a libertarian anti-interventionism. Overwhelmingly, U.S. liberals, neoconservatives, and old-school Republicans have fallen into line with the Biden administration policy. Even the mildest effort at dissent in Congress has been ridiculed and calls for a negotiated end to the war retracted.
Standing alongside Zelenskyy on his recent trip to Kyiv, Biden celebrated the massive scope of military support from the U.S. and its NATO allies, declaring “that’s how long we’re going to be with you, Mr. President: for as long as it takes.” Biden announced new rounds of support to Kyiv on top of the more than $30 billion given to date in weapons and other military aid. After a series of “war games” with Ukrainian military officials this week at a U.S. base in Germany, NATO’s supreme allied commander for Europe, Gen. Christopher Cavoli, said the U.S. and NATO “can keep going as long as necessary.” Such open-ended commitments from U.S. officials are bolstered by a recent shift in U.S. defense spending and procurement authorities reminiscent of the Cold War.
During her trip to Ukraine soon after Biden’s, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen asserted that U.S. support for Ukraine “is motivated, first and foremost, by a moral duty to come to the aid of a people under attack.” American officials should not be able to utter such phrases without answering for why this supposed moral duty does not apply to the Palestinians or why this moral duty somehow disappears when the U.S. wages offensive wars or supports its allies in their own campaigns of mass slaughter.
The argument over whether the U.S. and NATO should be giving military aid is a trap because it’s presented as a binary choice.
Let there be no doubt: Putin should immediately stop this insanity in Ukraine. This is a gruesome and murderous campaign he’s engaged in, and the death toll is shocking. The Biden administration should do what we are constantly told is untenable, unrealistic, or characterized as appeasement: make a negotiated end to the war the top priority. China has recently indicated a greater willingness to play a direct role. This is an opportunity for a major reset among nations. But that won’t happen because we lack leaders in the U.S. who have such bold vision, leaders willing to shift from the dominant imperial posture. So we are stuck with the current prospect of countless more Ukrainian civilians dying. In the face of that, how does one tell the Ukrainians not to fight? How does one say, “No, we won’t give you weapons, but we also are against what the aggressor is doing”? It’s a reasonable position for people watching this bloodbath to want to do everything possible to help Ukrainians defend themselves, and supporting weapons transfers to Ukraine does not make you a pawn of the U.S. imperial state. But the argument over whether the U.S. and NATO should be giving military aid is a trap because it’s presented as a binary choice. What has our government done to seek alternative paths? Has it exhausted all diplomatic efforts?
Many of the supporters of NATO policy in Ukraine act as if Zelenskyy’s wishes and requests should govern the decisions of the U.S. and European nations. This is dangerous. At times, Biden has rightly pumped the brakes on sending sophisticated or high-powered weapons systems, only to later relent under pressure. Momentum is now building in Congress and among some influential liberal media voices to push Biden to authorize the transfer of F-16 fighter jets. A similar campaign has been waged to give Ukraine top-tier U.S. weaponized drones. The consequences of these decisions will impact the whole world, and people not only have a right to debate the policy, but they are also right to do so.
Questioning the current U.S. policy is not appeasement or Russian puppetry, particularly because the false choice — let Putin conquer Ukraine completely, or flood Ukraine with Western weapons — is so insidiously and dishonestly pushed by the elite power structure in Washington D.C. and Europe. The fact is that prominent U.S. officials and pundits have stated from the very early stages of this war that Ukraine is a convenient battleground to debilitate Russia and hopefully end Putin’s reign, which is very different from a “moral” duty to protect the defenseless.
The Intercept · by Jeremy Scahill · March 3, 2023
11. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 5, 2023
Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-5-2023
Key inflections in ongoing military operations on March 5:
- The Ukrainian Air Force Command and Ukrainian news outlet Defense Express reported that Russian forces began using new UPAB-1500V aerial bombs against Ukrainian targets.[33]
- Russian forces continued to conduct limited ground attacks northwest and south of Kreminna.[34]
- Russian forces continued to conduct ground attacks near Avdiivka and on the western outskirts of Donetsk City.[35] A Russian source claimed that Russian forces advanced to Pervomaiske, 8km northwest of Donetsk City.[36]
- The Ukrainian General Staff continued to report that Russian forces are attempting to create conditions for the transition to an offensive in some areas of the Zaporizhia and Kherson directions.[37] ISW has not observed indicators that Russian forces are preparing to launch sustained offensive operations in Zaporizhia Oblast or any offensive activity in Kherson Oblast.
- Ukrainian Deputy Prosecutor General Viktoriya Litvinova reported that Russia deported about 16,000 children of whom 307 were able to return to Ukraine.[38] The Ukrainian Presidential Commissioner for Human Rights Daria Herasimchuk reported that Russian officials use coercive tactics to separate Ukrainian children from their parents in order to deport them.[39]
- Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska reported that Ukrainian prosecutors are investigating 171 cases of sexual assault committed by Russian Forces against Ukrainian citizens.[40]
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 5, 2023
Mar 5, 2023 - Press ISW
Download the PDF
Grace Mappes, Riley Bailey, Kateryna Stepanenko, Nicole Wolkov, and Frederick W. Kagan
March 5, 8:25pm ET
Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain maps that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.
ISW is publishing an abbreviated campaign update today, March 5. This report analyzes the ongoing Battle for Bakhmut and Russian prospects for further offensive efforts. Ukrainian forces may be conducting a limited fighting withdrawal in eastern Bakhmut and are continuing to inflict high casualties against the advancing mixed Russian forces. Russian milbloggers have also lowered their expectations of Russian forces’ ability to launch additional offensives, which would likely culminate whether or not Russian forces actually capture Bakhmut. If Russian forces manage to secure Bakhmut they could then attempt renewed pushes towards one or both of Kostyantynivka or Slovyansk but would struggle with endemic personnel and equipment constraints. The likely imminent culmination of the Russian offensive around Bakhmut before or after its fall, the already culminated Russian offensive around Vuhledar, and the stalling Russian offensive in Luhansk Oblast are likely setting robust conditions for a future Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Ukrainian forces are likely conducting a limited tactical withdrawal in Bakhmut, although it is still too early to assess Ukrainian intentions concerning a complete withdrawal from the city. Ukrainian forces may be withdrawing from their positions on the eastern bank of the Bakhmutka River given recent geolocated footage of the destruction of the railway bridge over the river in northeastern Bakhmut on March 3.[1] Russian war correspondents and milbloggers claimed that Russian forces captured eastern, northern, and southern parts of Bakhmut on March 5 and claimed to be reporting from positions in eastern Bakhmut, but ISW cannot independently verify these claims at this time.[2] Geolocated footage showed that Wagner Group forces continued to make advances in northeastern Bakhmut and advanced near the Stupky railway station on March 5.[3] A Ukrainian serviceman told a Ukrainian outlet that Russian forces have yet to cross the Bakhmutka River into central Bakhmut as of March 4, and Russian milbloggers claimed that the Wagner Group pushed Ukrainian positions back to central Bakhmut.[4] It is unclear if Ukrainian forces are planning to hold positions on the western bank of the Bakhmutka River.
The Ukrainian defense of Bakhmut remains strategically sound as it continues to consume Russian manpower and equipment as long as Ukrainian forces do not suffer excessive casualties. Ukrainian forces are unlikely to withdraw from Bakhmut all at once and may pursue a gradual fighting withdrawal to exhaust Russian forces through continued urban warfare. Russian forces are unlikely to quickly secure significant territorial gains when conducting urban warfare, which usually favors the defender and can allow Ukrainian forces to inflict high casualties on advancing Russian units—even as Ukrainian forces are actively withdrawing. The Bakhmut city center is located on the western bank of the Bakhmutka River, and Russian forces will need to fight through the area if they are unable to advance directly north or south of Bakhmut to the west of the city center. Such urban conditions and river features may benefit Ukrainian forces if Ukrainian forces are able to hold the line from Khromove (a settlement on Bakhmut’s northwestern outskirts) south to the T0504 Bakhmut-Kostyantynivka highway. Russian milbloggers noted that Ukrainian forces are retaining the ability to defend Khromove and are continuing to repel Russian attacks on Ivanivske and on the T0504 highway to the south.[5] The Ukrainian defense of positions near Khromove and on the T0504 could force Russian forces to fight through the urban terrain of central Bakhmut, which could impose significant delays and losses on Russian forces and accelerate the culmination of Russia’s offensive. Urban warfare in Bakhmut may further degrade already exhausted Russian mixed forces in a fashion similar to that caused by Ukraine’s fighting withdrawal from the Severodonetsk-Lysychansk line, which effectively ended Russian offensive operations in Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts in the summer of 2022.
The Russian military’s attritional campaign to capture Bakhmut has likely prompted Russian milbloggers to adopt more realistic expectations for further Russian operations in Ukraine. Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) commander and Russian milblogger Alexander Khodakovsky questioned whether Russian forces are prepared for potential Ukrainian counteroffensive operations after possibly "getting carried away by Bakhmut [and] Vuhledar" and suggested that Russian forces may have set conditions for Ukrainian counteroffensives by heavily expending combat power and resources on these operations.[6] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces would likely have to conduct a short operational pause following the potential capture of Bakhmut.[7] Another prominent Russian milblogger offered a more ambitious assessment that Russian forces would take Kostyantynivka by the end of spring 2023 and launch an offensive on the Slovyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration between the summer and fall of 2023.[8] Even this relatively ambitious assessment contrasts with previous high expectations from Russian milbloggers, many of whom claimed that the entire Ukrainian frontline around Bakhmut would collapse and Ukrainian forces would fall back to Kramatorsk and Slovyansk following the Russian capture of the small settlement of Soledar northeast of Bakhmut on January 11.[9] Russian milbloggers similarly shifted to more conservative expectations focused on the immediate capture of specific settlements as the highly attritional campaign to capture Lysychansk and Severodonetsk in the summer of 2022 progressed and the overall offensive culminated.[10] Nine months of highly attritional, slow Russian advances in the Bakhmut area have likely heavily informed these increasingly realistic and constrained Russian milblogger assessments.
The Russian military will nevertheless likely fail to meet Russian milbloggers’ expectations despite these more realistic assessments. The timeline offered by even the most ambitious assessment suggests that Russian campaigning to capture all of Donetsk Oblast would be a years-long effort. Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin similarly assessed that it would take Russian forces up to two years to reach the Donetsk Oblast administrative borders.[11] Russian forces currently do not have the manpower and equipment necessary to sustain offensive operations at scale for a renewed offensive toward Kramatorsk and Slovyansk, let alone for a years-long campaign to capture all of Donetsk Oblast. Meaningful Russian offensives around Vuhledar or elsewhere in western Donetsk Oblast are also highly doubtful. Russia will have to mobilize considerably more personnel and fundamentally transform its military industry to be able to support such operations. The Russian military‘s likely continued failure to achieve a decisive victory in Donetsk Oblast will likely draw increasing ire from Russia’s ultranationalist pro-war community.
The Russian offensive to capture Bakhmut will likely culminate whether Russian forces capture the city or not, and the Russian military will likely struggle to maintain any subsequent offensive operations for some months. The conventional Russian military recently massed and lost significant numbers of mobilized personnel for a since-culminated offensive push near Vuhledar, Donetsk Oblast. Russian "major" offensives in the Kupyansk, Svatove, and Kreminna directions in Luhansk Oblast are also failing to generate any significant successes on the frontlines.[12] The Russian military relied on Wagner Group forces to make any advances in the nine-month effort for Bakhmut and has since reinforced Wagner forces in Bakhmut with Russian airborne elements and mobilized personnel.[13] Russian forces likely lack the capability to further reinforce the Bakhmut area significantly without pulling forces from another area of the front line due to the lack of untapped reserves, with the possible exception of the 2nd Guards Motorized Rifle Division that was last reported in Luhansk but uncommitted to the fighting.[14] The culmination of all these efforts further supports ISW’s assessment that Russian forces likely lack the combat power to sustain more than one simultaneous offensive.[15] The Russian effort against Bakhmut does not further the Russian military’s operational or strategic battlefield aims, and significant Ukrainian defenses in the surrounding area undermine any tactical significance that capturing Bakhmut likely has for Russian forces. Ukrainian forces will likely have a window of opportunity to seize the battlefield initiative and launch a counteroffensive when the Russian effort around Bakhmut culminates either before or after taking the city.
Endemic personnel and equipment constraints will likely prevent Russian forces from launching another prolonged offensive operation like the Battle for Bakhmut in the coming months. Secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council Oleksiy Danilov stated on March 3 that Russian military casualties in Bakhmut equate to one Ukrainian loss per seven Russian losses.[16] White House officials reported on February 17 that the Wagner Group, which has predominantly fought in the Bakhmut area, has suffered 30,000 casualties with about 9,000 fighters killed since the start of the full-scale invasion in Ukraine.[17] It is highly unlikely that Russian forces will be able to sustain grinding human wave attacks following the capture of Bakhmut, and the Kremlin will need to launch another mobilization wave to replenish heavy Russian losses in the area since May 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been delaying announcing the second mobilization wave since January and is reportedly doubling down on "quiet mobilization" to avoid generating possible unrest in Russia.[18] The Wagner Group reportedly opened recruitment centers in about 30 cities as of March 5.[19] These recruitment efforts will take several months at least, however, causing delays that will likely deprive Russia of the initiative and may support Ukraine’s ability to conduct counteroffensives. Ukrainian and Western officials have noted that Russia continues to face ammunition shortages, and the struggling Russian defense industrial base cannot remedy such shortages in the near term.[20]
The Russian Armed Forces will continue to rely on irregular formations in further offensive operations in the coming months. The Russian military command largely relied on Wagner convict forces to carry out costly infantry frontal assaults, with Western intelligence officials and prison advocacy groups estimating that 40,000 to 50,000 convicts joined the Wagner Group.[21] Wagner has since started using its elite elements after losing much of its convict force.[22] It is unclear how combat-capable Wagner forces will be after the culmination of Russian operations around Bakhmut. Wagner forces may thus also require significant reconstitution. Russian conventional forces’ reliance on Wagner to conduct assaults and make advances in Bakhmut depleted a key mitigation for the limitations of the conventional Russian military.
Russian forces have previously relied on unconventional forces from the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republic (DNR/LNR) militias, Chechen units, and the Wagner Group in attritional campaigns to capture Mariupol, Severodonetsk, and Lysychansk, although the campaign to capture Bakhmut has represented a major inflection in the Russian military’s reliance on such forces.[23] Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed on March 4 that Russian forces would fail to seize Bakhmut and the front line would collapse if Wagner forces stopped fighting.[24] Prigozhin announced on February 9 that Wagner had stopped recruiting from prisons while the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) reportedly incorporated convicts into conventional and LNR Militia formations.[25] ISW previously assessed that the MoD’s efforts to restrict Wagner’s force generation efforts could indicate that the MoD is prioritizing its power struggle against Prigozhin over achieving Russia’s war aims.[26]
Russian forces would have the choice of two diverging lines of advance after capturing Bakhmut but would likely struggle to sustain offensive operations and make any significant gains. Russian forces could attempt to advance west along the T0504 highway to Kostyantynivka or northwest along the E40 to Slovyansk, but heavy Ukrainian fortifications in both directions would likely inflict high casualties against attacking Russian forces and force the effort to culminate prematurely. These highways lead away from each other on diverging axes that are not mutually supporting, and Russian forces’ best chance at success would be to prioritize one of these lines of effort. Russian forces would likely face similar if not worse personnel and equipment shortages compared with those that hindered their efforts against Bakhmut and other axes, however. Russian forces would likely have to choose between relaunching an offensive effort towards Kostyantynivka or Slovyansk at a great cost they cannot afford to pay, or resting and reconstituting, thereby setting favorable conditions for a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
It is not clear if Russian forces intend to resume offensives near Vuhledar, and it is highly unlikely that Russian forces would advance far enough in this direction to support operations elsewhere in any case. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on March 5 that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu instructed Eastern Military District (EMD) commander Colonel General Rustam Muradov to take Vuhledar at any cost, amid conflict between the two over the lack of progress and significant losses in the area, supporting ISW’s previous assessment that Shoigu may be evaluating Muradov’s continued suitability as EMD commander.[27] The conflict between Russia‘s top military commanders will likely compound the effects of catastrophic personnel and manpower losses that are constraining Russian operational capabilities in the Vuhledar area.[28] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that commanders of the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade of the Pacific Fleet are refusing to conduct offensive operations in the area and that Russian forces have lost control over an irregular Cossack battalion formation near Vuhledar.[29] Russian forces have reportedly reconstituted the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade at least seven times since the start of the invasion, and the combat effectiveness of this committed formation is likely negligible.[30] Russian forces are highly unlikely to be able to conduct any concentrated offensive effort with the current demoralized and degraded forces in the Vuhledar area. If Shoigu did instruct Muradov to resume offensives on Vuhledar, Muradov would likely require new manpower and equipment reserves to follow through on these instructions. ISW assessed that Shoigu likely met with Muradov on March 4 to assess the possibility of resuming offensives around Vuhledar, although it still is not evident whether Shoigu has decided to provide Muradov with the necessary resources to do so.[31]
Resumed Russian offensives near Vuhledar are highly unlikely to support Russian offensive operations elsewhere in Donetsk Oblast. Vuhledar is about 24km away from Marinka and Kurakhove as well as the N15 highway that Ukrainian forces use as a ground line of communication (GLOC) for operations in western Donetsk Oblast. Russian forces would need to advance 24km to support operations along the western outskirts of Donetsk City in the direction of Marinka or to threaten rear Ukrainian positions in uncontested areas of Donetsk Oblast in the direction of Kurkahove. Russian forces failed to advance four kilometers from Mykilske and Pavlivka to Vuhledar in the recent three-week offensive to capture the settlement. Russian forces have not made advances anywhere near 24km in Ukraine since the first months of the full-scale invasion.
The likely imminent culmination of the Russian offensive around Bakhmut, the already culminated Russian offensive around Vuhledar, and the stalling Russian offensive in Luhansk Oblast are likely setting robust conditions for Ukrainian counteroffensive operations. ISW previously assessed that Russian forces had regained the initiative in Ukraine as of February 8, but Russian forces have since failed to capitalize on that initiative to secure any operationally significant gains.[32] Russian forces will likely lose the initiative in Ukraine within the coming months due to the likely culmination of their three main offensive efforts. Ukrainian forces previously seized the initiative after the culmination of the Russian offensive to capture Severodonetsk and Lysychansk in July of 2022 and conducted counteroffensives operations a few months later that resulted in the liberation of large swathes of territory in Kharkiv and Kherson oblasts. The culmination of Russia’s current three offensive efforts will likely allow Ukrainian forces to launch counteroffensives anywhere along the frontline that they deem best suited for such operations. The high manpower and equipment costs that the Russian military has spent in failed offensive operations in Luhansk and western Donetsk oblasts and on the operationally insignificant city of Bakhmut will benefit these likely upcoming Ukrainian counteroffensives.
Key inflections in ongoing military operations on March 5:
- The Ukrainian Air Force Command and Ukrainian news outlet Defense Express reported that Russian forces began using new UPAB-1500V aerial bombs against Ukrainian targets.[33]
- Russian forces continued to conduct limited ground attacks northwest and south of Kreminna.[34]
- Russian forces continued to conduct ground attacks near Avdiivka and on the western outskirts of Donetsk City.[35] A Russian source claimed that Russian forces advanced to Pervomaiske, 8km northwest of Donetsk City.[36]
- The Ukrainian General Staff continued to report that Russian forces are attempting to create conditions for the transition to an offensive in some areas of the Zaporizhia and Kherson directions.[37] ISW has not observed indicators that Russian forces are preparing to launch sustained offensive operations in Zaporizhia Oblast or any offensive activity in Kherson Oblast.
- Ukrainian Deputy Prosecutor General Viktoriya Litvinova reported that Russia deported about 16,000 children of whom 307 were able to return to Ukraine.[38] The Ukrainian Presidential Commissioner for Human Rights Daria Herasimchuk reported that Russian officials use coercive tactics to separate Ukrainian children from their parents in order to deport them.[39]
- Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska reported that Ukrainian prosecutors are investigating 171 cases of sexual assault committed by Russian Forces against Ukrainian citizens.[40]
[1] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...
[2] https://t.me/sashakots/38745; https://t.me/milchronicles/1623; https://t.me/epoddubny/15081; https://t.me/epoddubny/15082
[3] https://t.me/nm_dnr/9967 ; https://twitter.com/fdov21/status/1632301504311750657
[4] https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-03-04-23/in... ; https://t.me/epoddubny/15081
[5] https://t.me/boris_rozhin/79711; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/79771; https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/45845
[6] https://t.me/aleksandr_skif/2606
[7] https://t.me/vysokygovorit/10931
[8] https://t.me/boris_rozhin/79696
[9] https://isw.pub/UkrWar011223 ; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...
[10] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... ; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... ; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... ; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... ;
[11] https://dzen dot ru/video/watch/63e67fbd7270fb396dc1e99d?share_to=telegram
[12] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...
[13] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...;
[14] https://isw.pub/UkrWar021923
[15] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...
[16] https://www.ukrinform dot net/rubric-ato/3677516-danilov-on-russian-military-losses-near-bakhmut-1-to-7-in-our-favor.html
[17] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/white-house-wagner-group-has-suffer... https://www.voanews.com/a/wagner-group-s-use-of-convicts-in-ukraine-echo...
[18] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...
[19] https://t.me/vysokygovorit/10934
[20] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/u-rosii-zakinchatsia-instrumenty-viiny.html; https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2023/03/02/war-top-ukraine-spy... https://www.wsj.com/articles/russias-munitions-shortages-raise-questions...
[21] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/12/europe/wagner-convicts-eastern-ukrain...
[22] https://www.voanews.com/a/wagner-group-s-use-of-convicts-in-ukraine-echo...
[23] https://isw.pub/RusCampaignApr20 ; https://isw.pub/RusCampaignJune21 ; https://isw.pub/UkraineConflictUpdate11 ; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... ; https://isw.pub/RusCampaginMar18 ; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...; https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-ass...; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...; https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-ass...; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... ; https://isw.pub/RusCampaignJune4; https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-ass... ; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-ass...; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... https://www.kyivpost dot com/ukraine-politics/ukrainian-officials-dozens-of-rf-mercenaries-from-libya-syria-russia-killed-in-popasna-attacks.html
[24] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1632148708748935168; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EelfGtZEB1o&t=125s
[25] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...; https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/14/europe/russian-army-prisoners-conscri...
[26] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...
[27] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...
[28] https://isw.pub/UkrWar03012023 ; https://isw.pub/UkrWar021323 ;
[29] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02Sd8dbuKmYrpZvdQoxy... ; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0LTubMS8E8AWjctuzfVi...
[30] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2023/02/27/rosiyany-trymayut-trupy-svoyih-soldativ-na-skladah-aby-ne-vyplachuvaty-groshi-ridnym-spovid-okupanta/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VyogLhqX9E&ab_channel=Центрнаціональногоспротиву
[31] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...
[32] https://isw.pub/UkrWar020823
[33] https://defence-ua dot com/weapon_and_tech/rf_zastosuvala_proti_ukrajini_novi_planujuchi_1500_kg_bombi_upab_1500v_nova_j_dovoli_vagoma_zagroza-10836.html; https://suspilne dot media/404672-ukraini-potribni-zahidni-vinisuvaci-dla-zahistu-vid-novih-rosijskih-aviabomb-povitrani-sili/
[34] https://t.me/luhanskaVTSA/9074; https://t.me/serhiy_hayday/9581; https://t.me/notes_veterans/8345; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02Sd8dbuKmYrpZvdQoxy...; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0LTubMS8E8AWjctuzfVi...
[35] https://t.me/readovkanews/54059; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0LTubMS8E8AWjctuzfVi...; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02Sd8dbuKmYrpZvdQoxy...
[36] https://t.me/wargonzo/11249
[37] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0LTubMS8E8AWjctuzfVi... https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02Sd8dbuKmYrpZvdQoxy...
[38] https://suspilne dot media/404612-rosiani-deportuvali-blizko-16-tisac-ukrainskih-ditej-zastupnica-genprokurora-viktoria-litvinova/
[39] https://suspilne dot media/404612-rosiani-deportuvali-blizko-16-tisac-ukrainskih-ditej-zastupnica-genprokurora-viktoria-litvinova/
[40] https://suspilne dot media/404252-v-ukraini-zareestrovanij-171-vipadok-seksualnogo-nasilstva-z-boku-vijskovih-rf-olena-zelenska/
File Attachments:
DraftUkraineCoTMarch05,2023.png
Zaporizhia Battle Map Draft March 05,2023.png
Kherson-Mykolaiv Battle Map Draft March 05,2023.png
Kharkiv Battle Map Draft March 05,2023.png
Donetsk Battle Map Draft March 05,2023.png
12. A man, a medal and what it takes to lead
Our nation is so fortunate to have men such COL Davis.
A man, a medal and what it takes to lead
armytimes.com · by Todd South · March 3, 2023
A young Paris Davis met a handful of soldiers while attending college in the deep South in the late 1950s.
Davis is Black, the soldiers were white.
Those soldiers had some words for him.
“A couple of NCOs thought I might be a fair soldier,” Davis told Army Times. “They said I ought to go into the military. The first thing they told me ‘do what the sergeants tell you, they’re not going to lead you wrong.’ And I did and they did and that’s why we’re in this room.”
Davis shared that memory as he spent the day being interviewed by multiple media outlets Thursday, a short time before he would stand in his old uniform, festooned with ribbons, badges and medals, but with space for one more – the Medal of Honor.
On Friday, President Joe Biden looked at retired Army Col. Paris Davis and then to the crowd and said that this day may be the “most consequential” of any day during his presidency.
“Paris, you are everything this medal means,” Biden said. “And you are everything our generation aspired to be and you’re everything our nation is at our best.”
The nation may have waited nearly six decades to right the wrong of not bestowing this medal on Davis, but the octogenarian released those prospects before weapons had cooled from the harrowing battle he’d survived.
The fight
Spc. Ronald Deis didn’t even know what Green Berets were in 1963 when he attended advanced infantry training while waiting on an officer candidate position. He joined the Army to fly helicopters.
But he and five other soldiers in the same status listened to a gruff first sergeant as he clicked through slides showing the work that the newly-formed Special Forces were doing.
“And when he showed a slide of a Green Beret in a jungle eating a snake I said, ‘sign me up,’” he said.
Deis didn’t look back, ripping through the training and landing in Okinawa, Japan for his first unit assignment.
The first sergeant told him and the other newbies they were forming a team that was headed to Vietnam.
“And naturally, I said yes,” Deis said.
That’s when he met Davis.
“I like to tell people that he did not lead as an authoritarian,” Deis said. “The men on the team I think respected him from the very start.”
On June 17, 1965, in the vicinity of Bong Son, Republic of Vietnam, Davis, three other Green Berets and an inexperienced company of the 883rd South Vietnamese Regional Force in an attack on an enemy base.
That night, Davis captured two enemy personnel himself and questioned them. He learned that a “vastly larger enemy force” patrolled the area. The captain put his men into position and commenced the attack.
Enemy fire wounded Davis on the initial attack, but he fought through, and killed several enemy soldiers in hand-to-hand combat, according to the award citation.
Despite a counterattack that separated Davis from his troops, he led the four soldiers he had with him as they braved intense fire, destroyed gun emplacements and captured more enemy soldiers.
Deis’ job during the mission required him to fly in a small spotter plane and monitor the unfolding operation and coordinate communications, fire and air support.
Within a half hour in the air, enemy fire shot down Deis’ plane. He made it to headquarters and started receiving wounded from the fight and hearing spurts of radio traffic on what his captain and teammates faced out there.
“I knew my teammates were all wounded and I knew that [Capt.] Davis was trying desperately to get his people back to an evacuation site where they could get them off the battlefield.”
Retired Army Col. Paris Davis, an Ohio native, who is set to receive the Medal of Honor for his service in the Vietnam War speaks during an interview with the Associated Press at a hotel in Arlington, Va., Thursday, March 2, 2023. (Andrew Harnik/AP)
After the chaos of battle separated Davis from his men, he regrouped his forces, broke contact with the enemy and called for air and artillery fire as the enemy again counterattacked. A close-range shot from another enemy soldier wounded Davis for the second time.
He tackled the man, defeating him in hand-to-hand combat before he saw two American soldiers wounded and pinned under ongoing small arms fire.
Asked, all these decades later, what stood out most from those two trying days, Davis shared with Army Times a snippet of those memories.
He crawled out 150 yards to one of his soldiers who’d been shot in the temple but still lived.
“Seeing him going in and out of reality, at one point he grabs my hand and says, ‘am I gonna die?’ and I say, holding his hand, ‘not before me,’” Davis said.
The captain timed moving the wounded off the battlefield with smoke, close air and artillery fire.
Not everyone made it. But Davis knew the bodies had to come home.
Without disclosing too many details, he said he had some “choice” words with an individual on one of the evacuation aircraft about leaving without the dead.
“I refused to leave and he thought I should,” Davis said. He thinks that had some initial impact on his Medal of Honor recommendation package being “lost” more than once. Others believe race was a factor, Davis served as a pioneering Black officer, the first to lead Special Forces troops in combat.
“At that time I thought something happened and I might not get the medal,” Davis said. “And I just completely forgot about it, I really did.”
Deis remembers a sergeant, a kind of mentor of his, arriving back at the headquarters, having spent the past two days in battle with Davis. This sergeant had seen much combat, more than any other in the group.
“I was helping get leeches off of his body from him lying in a rice paddy all day and he mentioned that he thought that Capt. Davis deserved the Medal of Honor for what he observed that day,” Deis said. “I never forgot that. That was pretty profound.”
After the fight
Davis did later receive the Silver Star Medal. But as the decades dragged on, that didn’t sit right with Deis and others, who, starting in 2016 began a campaign of their own to have the medal recommendation reconsidered by the Army.
“It matters to me because I know what it takes to be nominated for the Medal of Honor,” Deis said. “To not have that recognized is an injustice.”
Maj. Gen. Patrick Roberson, deputy commander of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, knows a few things about valor after his own decades-long career in Special Forces.
Roberson told Army Times that the timeframe in which Davis and his team served as one of the golden ages of special operations as the newly formed Green Berets tested their mettle and fought in an entirely different kind of war than their predecessors.
Retired Army Col. Paris Davis, an Ohio native, who is set to receive the Medal of Honor for his service in the Vietnam War, hugs his friend Jim Moriarty before sitting down for an interview with the Associated Press at a hotel in Arlington, Va., Thursday, March 2, 2023. (Andrew Harnik/AP)
Some of what was established by those Vietnam-era teams continued to be common practice a generation later in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Small teams working with indigenous forces in the midst of enemy territory can sound pretty familiar to a Green Beret of any age.
A number of the Vietnam War veterans in the special operations community come to speak at training events and lectures still, he said.
“When we look back on what they were doing, they did it masterfully,” he said.
Roberson said Davis’ actions and his career provide inspiration for him and the entire Army.
Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Weimer, the top enlisted individual for U.S. Special Operations Command and the incoming Sergeant Major of the Army, said that since childhood he has been a student of the Green Berets of Vietnam.
“I was not surprised,” Weimer said. “When the story came out I was not really surprised because of the amount of heroism that took place on a regular basis back then with little fanfare.”
The senior NCO said that Davis’ service in Vietnam and his career are living the motto of the Special Forces – “De Oppresso Liber” or “to free the oppressed.”
“I am a Green Beret today because of Green Berets like Col. Davis.”
Another life
Davis stayed in the Army after Vietnam, making colonel in 1981 and assuming command of the 10th Special Forces Group at Fort Devens, Massachusetts.
Which was his favorite command, he told Army Times.
“I was so happy,” he said. “It was like being in a place and loving every bit of it.”
Davis retired as a colonel in 1985. The proud father of three children published the Metro Herald newspaper for 30 years in Alexandria, Virginia following his Army career.
If his medal has a purpose, he said he hopes it serves to honor what all of the men of his team did during their time in Vietnam. Many, he said, didn’t receive the valor awards that they deserved.
Hero. Bravery. Courage. These are words that are hard to accept for anyone. Davis is no different.
“Was I scared?” Davis said. “Yeah.”
“Am I a real brave man?” he said. “No. Every person on that team could have been me.”
President Joe Biden awards the Medal of Honor to retired Army Col. Paris Davis for his heroism during the Vietnam War, in the East Room of the White House, Friday, March 3, 2023, in Washington. (Evan Vucci/AP)
About Todd South
Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.
13. ‘America Was Behind Me’ A long-overdue Medal of Honor for a hero of the Vietnam War.
There should be no doubt about COL Davis' heroism. It was not a one time thing.
Excerpt:
The Army says Col. Davis is now one of four service members to receive both the Medal of Honor and the Soldier’s Medal, an award given for an act of heroism that doesn’t involve enemy conflict. He received the Soldier’s Medal after saving the life of a soldier in Vietnam who was stuck in an overturned fuel truck just before it exploded.
And this is an example of the greatness of America. Not only the individual heroism and service to his country, but that our country does correct its mistakes.
‘America Was Behind Me’
A long-overdue Medal of Honor for a hero of the Vietnam War.
By James FreemanFollow
March 3, 2023 7:25 pm ET
https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-was-behind-me-2b710632
President Joe Biden presents the Medal of Honor to retired U.S. Army Colonel Paris Davis during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House March 3, 2023 in Washington.
PHOTO: WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES
Listen to article
Length(6 minutes)
Queue
Decades overdue, the United States on Friday honored a courageous hero who blazed a trail of leadership that still inspires.
There are some people who manage to rise to the occasion in a moment when they are most needed and somehow summon the will to go above and beyond the call of duty. And then there are people like Paris Davis, who manage to perform such acts of bravery again and again, moment after moment, hour after hour after hour. The Journal’s Joseph Pisani reports:
Retired Army Col. Paris Davis, a Vietnam veteran and one of the country’s first Black Special Forces officers, received the Medal of Honor from President Biden Friday, nearly 60 years after he was first nominated.
The White House transcript includes the official citation about events in the Republic of Vietnam in 1965:
Captain Davis and three other U.S. Special Forces advisors accompanied the Vietnamese 883rd Regional Force Company on its first combat mission, a daring nighttime raid against a Viet Cong regional headquarters housing a superior enemy force.
Captain Davis’s advice and leadership allowed the company to gain the tactical advantage, allowing it to surprise the unsuspecting enemy force and kill approximately 100 enemy soldiers. While returning from the successful raid, the regional force company was ambushed and sustained several casualties.
Captain Davis consistently exposed himself to the hostile... fire to rally the inexperienced and disorganized company. He expertly directed both artillery and small arms fire, enabling other elements of the company to reach his position.
Although wounded in the leg, he aided in the evacuation of other wounded men in his unit, but refused medical evacuation himself. Following the arrival of air support, Captain Davis directed artillery fire within 30 meters of his own position in an attempt to halt the enemy’s advance.
If the story had ended there, Paris Davis would be justly celebrated for his sacrifices. But the citation continues:
Then, with complete disregard for his own life, he braved intense enemy fire to cross an open field to rescue his seriously wounded and immobilized team sergeant. While carrying the sergeant up the hill to a position of relative safety, Captain Davis was again wounded by enemy fire.
Despite two painful wounds, Captain Davis again refused medical evacuation, remained with the troops, fought bravely, and provided pivotal leadership and inspiration to the regional force company as they repelled several Viet Cong assaults on their position over a period of several hours.
When friendly reinforcements finally arrived, Captain Davis again refused medical evacuation until he had recovered... a U.S. advisor under his command who had been wounded during the initial ambush and presumed dead.
While personally recovering the wounded soldier, he found him severely wounded but still clinging to life. Captain Davis directed the helicopter extraction of his wounded colleague not leaving the battlefield himself until after all... friendly forces were recovered or medically evacuated.
Somewhere along the way, an enemy grenade resulted in such damage to his hands that Mr. Davis had to fire his weapon with his little finger, according to an Army Times report from Davis Winkie. But our hero kept right on battling.
On Friday President Joe Biden explained what happened when a U.S. helicopter arrived:
Captain Davis’s commander gave him a direct order: “Get on board.”
Davis’s response was just as direct. “Sir,” he said, “I’m just not going to leave. I still have an American out there.”
Unsure if he was still alive, Captain Davis began to plan how he would get his medic.
Just the day before, the medic had found out he was the — good news: He was a new father. His wife had given birth to their first child. Captain Davis was going to give him a chance to see his baby boy.
He pinpointed the medic’s position and began crawling toward him with gunfire and grenades still exploding around him.
When he got there, the medic, still alive, asked him, “Am I going to die?” “Am I going to die?” Captain Davis responded, “Not before me.”
The president added on Friday:
And although the men who were with him on that June day immediately nominated Captain Davis to receive the Medal of Honor, somehow... the paperwork was never processed not just once, but twice
But you know what [Colonel] Davis said after learning he would finally receive the Medal of Honor?... “America was behind me.” “America was behind me.” He never lost faith, which I find astounding.
Prepare to be further astounded, because it seems that astounding bravery was something of a habit. The Journal’s Joseph Pisani reports:
The Army says Col. Davis is now one of four service members to receive both the Medal of Honor and the Soldier’s Medal, an award given for an act of heroism that doesn’t involve enemy conflict. He received the Soldier’s Medal after saving the life of a soldier in Vietnam who was stuck in an overturned fuel truck just before it exploded.
As for the heroism that resulted in the Medal of Honor, Mr. Winkie wrote for Army Times:
The Black officer’s commander immediately recommended him for the Medal of Honor, but the paperwork disappeared at least twice. He eventually received a Silver Star Medal for his actions that day, and Davis’ team members have long argued that his race played a role.
Colonel Davis suspects that his refusal to be evacuated may have had something to do with it. Todd South reports today in Army Times:
On Friday, President Joe Biden looked at retired Army Col. Paris Davis and then to the crowd and said that this day may be the “most consequential” of any day during his presidency.
“Paris, you are everything this medal means,” Biden said. “And you are everything our generation aspired to be and you’re everything our nation is at our best.”
Amen.
***
James Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival.”
***
Follow James Freeman on Twitter.
Subscribe to the Best of the Web email.
To suggest items, please email best@wsj.com.
(Lisa Rossi helps compile Best of the Web.)
14. US to send bridge-launching vehicles for tank deployments to Ukraine in new $400M aid package
Bridging should be an indicator of possible preparation for offensive operations.
US to send bridge-launching vehicles for tank deployments to Ukraine in new $400M aid package
Stars and Stripes · by Svetlana Shkolnikova · March 3, 2023
Specialist John Koutsoyanopulos, a combat engineer from the 82nd Brigade Engineer Battalion, 2nd ABCT, 1st Infantry Division, trains soldiers on the operation of the M60 Armored Vehicle-Launched Bridge system Feb. 28, 2020. The M60 AVLB is based on the M60 Patton main battle tank hull and is used for the launching and retrieval of a 60-foot, scissor-type bridge. (Simon McTizic/U.S. Army)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. is sending Ukraine another $400 million in arms and equipment from its military stockpiles, including armored vehicles that can launch bridges for rapid tank deployments, defense officials announced Friday.
The latest security assistance for Ukraine comes amid a two-day Washington visit by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who agreed last month to deliver German tanks to the battlefield only after the U.S. said it would eventually send its own Abrams tanks.
Armored vehicle-launched bridges are included for the first time in a security assistance package to help Ukrainian troops quickly deploy tanks and other armored vehicles across rivers and other gaps.
“Russia alone could end its war today,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. “Until Russia does so, for as long as it takes, we will stand united with Ukraine and strengthen its military on the battlefield so that Ukraine will be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.”
Much of the newest aid is dedicated to resupplying Ukraine with critical munitions as Kyiv’s artillery stockpile runs low. It includes additional artillery rounds for howitzers and rockets for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, which Ukraine has used to hit Russian ammunition depots, logistics supplies and command centers on Ukrainian territory.
Stevedore drivers work through the night to load Bradley Fighting Vehicles onto the ARC Integrity on Jan. 25, 2023, at the Transportation Core Dock in Charleston, S.C. More than 60 Bradleys were shipped by U.S. Transportation Command as part of the U.S. military aid package to Ukraine. (Oz Suguitan/Defense Department)
The U.S. is also sending more ammunition for the 109 Bradley fighting vehicles pledged to Ukraine as well as demolition munitions and equipment for obstacle clearing, according to the Defense Department. In a sign of the war’s intense toll on weapons systems, the U.S. is also delivering spare parts and testing and diagnostic equipment to support vehicle maintenance and repair.
Ukraine is widely expected to launch a counteroffensive in the spring as it seeks to retake territory occupied by Russian forces since 2014, when the Kremlin illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula and fomented a separatist uprising in the eastern Donbas region.
Total U.S. military aid to Ukraine has exceeded $32 billion since Russia’s invasion of its neighbor last year. The latest aid package marks the 33rd time that the U.S. has reached into its weapons inventories to supply Ukraine since August 2021, according to the State Department.
The new announcement of military support comes a week after the one-year anniversary of the war and days after Blinken spoke to his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, for the first time since the invasion. Blinken said Friday that the U.S. will continue to rally the world to support Ukraine.
“This week, as Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine continues at great cost, we are again reminded of the boundless courage and steadfast resolve of the people of Ukraine as well as the strong support for Ukraine in the international community,” Blinken said in a statement.
Svetlana Shkolnikova
Svetlana Shkolnikova
Svetlana Shkolnikova covers Congress for Stars and Stripes. She previously worked with the House Foreign Affairs Committee as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow and spent four years as a general assignment reporter for The Record newspaper in New Jersey and the USA Today Network. A native of Belarus, she has also reported from Moscow, Russia.
Stars and Stripes · by Svetlana Shkolnikova · March 3, 2023
15. Special Operations News Update - March 6, 2023 | SOF News
Special Operations News Update - March 6, 2023 | SOF News
sof.news · by SOF News · March 6, 2023
Curated news, analysis, and commentary about special operations, national security, and conflicts around the world.
Photo / Image: U.S. Army Paratroopers assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade, descend onto Frida Drop Zone, Pordenone, Italy after exiting U.S. Air Force C-130 Hercules aircraft from the 86th Air Wing during airborne operation on Nov. 16, 2022. (U.S. Army photo by Paolo Bovo)
Do you receive our daily newsletter? If not, you can sign up here and enjoy it five (almost) days a week with your morning coffee (or afternoon tea depending on where in the world you are).
SOF News
Dave Maxwell Now VP at CAPS. David Maxwell, a former U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel (ret.), has been appointed to the position of Vice President at the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy. He had a 30-year career in Special Forces followed by many years of academic work.
https://apstrategy.org/2023/02/25/david-maxwell-vice-president/
USMC Scout Snipers – Going Away? The Marine Corps has had Scout Snipers since World War II. Marine reconnaissance and special operations units will continue to have their own school-trained snipers. The USMC is replacing the Scout Sniper Platoons found at infantry battalions with Scout Platoons. The 0317 MOS will no longer be awarded; however the Reconnaissance Sniper (0322) will be found organic to recon battalions. The structural change is stemming from the Force Design 2030 – an overhaul of the Marine Corps force structure. “The Marine Corps is getting rid of Scout Snipers”, Task & Purpose, February 27, 2023.
SOF and Drones. The use of drones are changing the way SOF and covert operations are supported and conducted. The UAVs are used to monitor enemy movements, scout out potential targets, and carry out strikes with precision accuracy. “The Role of Army Drones in Special Forces and Covert Operations”, TS2, March 2023.
SPRINT – Secret SOF Aircraft? The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Agency (DARPA) announced that it’s working with the U.S. Special Operations Command on the Speed and Runway Independent Technologies (SPRINT) program. The project could meet a growing demand for aircraft that can land on unprepared surfaces. “The Pentagon’s Mysterious New Aircraft Doesn’t Need a Runway”, Popular Mechanics, March 3, 2023.
IW Medical Resiliency. The Center for Global Health Engagement of the Uniformed Services University, the Irregular Warfare Center, and ASD SO/LIC combined thier resources to hold a three-day conference. The Irregular Warfare Medical Resiliency Working Group met in Bethesda, Maryland on February 22-24, 2023. (DoD, Mar 3, 2023).
MARSOC 3 Update. An appeals court will review the case of a third defendent in the ‘MARSOC 3’ case – which may result in a dismissal. The case revolves around the death of a retired Green Beret who was involved in an altercation with the three Marines. “Dismissal of 3rd ‘MARSOC 3’ defendent’s case to be weighed by court”, Marine Corps Times, February 28, 2023.
U.S. SOF, Drones, and Facial Recognition. If you are on a ‘hit list’ maintained by one of the United States more secretive organizations then drones could become a bigger problem than before. Flying aerial robots now have a facial recognition capability that targeteers can utilize for hitting terrorists and other targets. “Yikes, the U.S. is Now Using Facial Recognition Rigged Drones for Special Ops”, Gizmodo.com, February 27, 2023.
International SOF
Flintlock 2023. Twenty-nine nations and approximately 1,300 personnel are participating in an annual special operations exercise in Africa. This year the event takes place in the countries of Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire from March 1-15, 2023. U.S. Africa Command and Special Operations Command Africa are providing key support to the exercise. “AFRICOM’s SOF exercise kicks off in Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire”, DVIDS, March 1, 2023.
SAS Rescue Operation in Iraq. In 2005 two Special Air Service operators were captured by Iraqi police forces and then turned over to a militia group in Basra, Iraq. A SAS unit, disobeying orders from London, conducted a rescue. “The time the SAS defied orders to rescue two of their won in Iraq”, We Are the Mighty, March 2, 2023.
SOF History
OSS and Propaganda. On March 3, 1943, the Morale Operations Branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was established. It utilized psychological warfare to sap morale, induce confusion, and sow distrust within the populations of Axis countries and within the ranks of their armed forces.
5th SFG(A). On March 3, 1971, the 5th Special Forces Group departed South Vietnam. The Green Berets were withdrawn as part of the U.S. troop reductions in Vietnam.
Ballad of the Green Beret. On March 5, 1966, a song about Special Forces hit number one on the music charts. https://specialforcestraining.info/balladgreenberets.htm
UW Tactics Through History. Unconventional warfare has been used by small and large nations alike over the course of time. Read more in “A Look at the Unconventional Tactics Use by Western Militaries Throughout History”, SOFREP, February 28, 2023. (subscription)
National Security and Commentary
National Cybersecurity Strategy. The administration has released the National Cybersecurity Strategy that will help secure the digital ecosystem for Americans and the nation. It outlines some fundamental shifts in how the United States allocates roles, responsibilities, and resources in cyberspace. “Biden-Harris Administration Announces National Cybersecurity Strategy”, The White House, March 2, 2023. The full document – National Cybersecurity Strategy – can be read online here. (The White House, March 2023, PDF, 39 pages)
Bring Back the 6th SOS. One of the more striking self-inflicted wounds that USSOCOM and AFSOC have inflicted on the special operations community is the closing down of the 6th Special Operations Squadron. The unit was uniquely suited for building partner capacity, security force assistance, and aviation foreign internal defense. However, Air Force Special Operations Command recently ‘remissioned’ the unit and discarded the special capabilities of the airmen who did some very important work overseas. Ioannis Koskinas provides the details in “Ready, FIRE, Aim: Great Power Competition without Combat Aviation Advisors”, Small Wars Journal, March 1, 2023. See also “Any Time Any Place? Why Cutting the Air Force’s Irregular Warfare Capabilities is a Mistake”, Modern War Institute at West Point, August 4, 2022.
Defining Special Forces. Pierre Jean Dehaene, a PhD candidate at King’s College London and a soldier in the Belgian Army with a special operations background, provides his thoughts of special operations forces. “Defining the Special in Special Forces: A Soldier’s Perspective”, Small Wars Journal, March 5, 2023.
IW – Incorporating Past Lessons. The painful experience of the two-decade long Global War on Terror (it is not over, is it?) should be remembered and incorporated into ‘lessons learned’. So argues James Holmes of the U.S. Naval War College. He believes that the thoughts of Mao Zedong and Julian Corbett should influence the U.S. approach to Irregular Warfare doctrine. “Irregular Warfare, American Style”, 1945, March 4, 2023.
Afghanistan
Video – Happy Afghan Soldier’s Day 2023. This ten minute video features American and Afghan veterans recognizing a special day for members of the Afghanistan Security Forces. Stan McCrystal, Scott Miller, and others from the U.S. and Afghan special operations community say their part. Honor the Promise, YouTube, February 27, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsT8w4Y469U
Operation Anaconda. One of the biggest operations in Afghanistan in 2002 took place in the Shah-i-Khot Valley during March 2020. The 10th Mountain Division led the effort supported by the Air Force with airstrikes and by 200 U.S. SOF and 200 SOF from Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, Norway, New Zealand. Included in the force were some Afghan allies as well. Read a detailed account of the battle in “Operation Anaconda”, Military Review, March 2017.
Scott Mann – Retired Green Beret. A career Special Forces officer, now retired, provides a glimpse of his life during his long career in SF – to include his tours in Afghanistan. He is now very involved in the Afghan Evac community helping former Afghan SOF escape Afghanistan and relocate to the U.S. “From Pineapple Express to Last Out, retired Green Beret continues the fight for Afghanistan veterans”, We Are the Mighty, March 2, 2023.
Africa
“Danab” – Somali Elite Unit and U.S. SOF. A special operations unit in the Somali armed forces has been in the forefront of the fight against Al Shabab. U.S. Commandos are actively providing assistance, intelligence, mission planning, and training to the elite unit. Eric Schmitt, a senior writer on the Times staff has visited Somalia several times. This comprehensive report by Eric is a result of his most recent trip to the country. “U.S. Commandos Advise Somalis in Fight Against Qaeda Branch”, The New York Times, February 27, 2023.
HR in Africa by CV-22 Unit. In October 2020 four CV-22s departed Naval Station Rota, Spain to drop off a team of Navy SEALs in northern Nigeria by parachute. The mission was a hostage rescue of an American. “How the Air Force flew its longest-distance night hostage rescue”, Task and Purpose, February 23, 2023.
Wagner Group in Sahel. While the French are downsizing their presence in the Sahel region of Africa a Russian paramilitary group is stepping up . . . and into the vacumn left behind. “The Wagner Group’s Growing Shadow in the Sahel: What Does it Mean for Counterterrorism in the Region?”, Modern War Institute at West Point, March 2, 2023.
Troubles in Tunisia. Hundreds of opposition supporters are marching through the streets of the capital demanding that President Kais Saied step down. The U.S. State Department has issued a travel advisory. (Aljazeera, Mar 5, 2023).
Upcoming Events
April 5-6, 2023. San Diego, California
Warrior West
ADS
April 14-16, 2023. Fort Benning, Georgia
Best Ranger Competion
May 8-11, 2023. Tampa, Florida
SOF Week
USSOCOM
May 16-18, 2023. Fort Bragg, NC and via Zoom
Geostrategic Symposium 2023
USASOC
May 22-26, 2023. Indianapolis, Indiana
Special Forces Association Convention
May 31, 2023. Ijamsville, MD
6th Annual Golf Tournament
Three Rangers Foundation
Old Salt Coffee is a corporate sponsor of SOF News. The company offers a wide range of coffee flavors to include Green Eyes Coffee, a tribute to those Navy special operations personnel who operate in the night.
Pubs, Reports, and Videos
Pub – Disruptive Technology in SOF. Failure to effectively harness disruptive innovations today reduces future decision options, operational capability, and the likelihood of winning tomorrow’s fight. Joint Special Operations University (JSOU), February 28, 2023, PDF, 90 pages.
https://www.jsou.edu/Press/PublicationDashboard/223
Proceedings. The March 2023 issue of Proceedings by the U.S. Naval Institute is now available online. There are a number of interesting articles to read. Topics include spy Baloons, Liberty Lifter, ship class designations, enlisted education, submarines and China, fighting without ‘the network’, a strategy of denial for the Western Pacific, book reviews, China’s navy, seafloor cables and pipelines, and more. Not a lot of SOF material here; but still interesting reading.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2023/march
Country Reports on Terrorism 2021. The Department of State has released its annual report on terrorism. This report, required by Congress, was published in February 2023. The DoS is having trouble getting this report out in a timely manner. PDF, 330 pages.
https://www.state.gov/reports/country-reports-on-terrorism-2021/
Takeaways on DoS Terrorism Report. Katherine Zimmerman, a fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, examines the Department of State terrorism report. “Takeaways from the State Department’s Report on Terrorism”, AEI, March 2, 2023.
CTC Sentinel. The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point has posted its February 2023 issue of CTC Sentinel.
https://ctc.westpoint.edu/february-2023/
Video – IWC Overview. The Irregular Warfare Center has posted a video describing the purpose of the IWC. YouTube, March 3, 2023, 3 mins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jlsv8t0NwHs
Podcasts
SOFCAST. United States Special Operations Command
https://linktr.ee/sofcast
The Pinelander. Blacksmith Publishing
https://www.thepinelander.com/
The Indigenous Approach. 1st Special Forces Command
https://open.spotify.com/show/3n3I7g9LSmd143GYCy7pPA
Irregular Warfare Podcast. Modern War Institute at West Point
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/irregular-warfare-podcast/id1514636385
sof.news · by SOF News · March 6, 2023
16. Beijing takes conciliatory tone on Taiwan with call to ‘advance’ exchanges
Is the wolf crawling back into its sheep's clothing?
All warfare (and I would argue especially political warfare) is based on deception.
Beijing takes conciliatory tone on Taiwan with call to ‘advance’ exchanges
- Premier Li Keqiang reiterates there will be steps to oppose ‘Taiwan independence’ and promote ‘reunification’ with the island
- Delivering the government’s work report, he says Beijing has resolutely fought against separatism and countered interference
Amber Wang in Beijing
Published: 2:51pm, 5 Mar, 2023
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3212412/beijing-takes-conciliatory-tone-taiwan-call-advance-exchanges?utm_source=rss_feed
There was no mention of opposing foreign interference on Taiwan in the plan for this year, as there was in last year’s government work report.
It comes as tensions are soaring across the Taiwan Strait, with concern growing that Beijing might try to take the self-ruled island – which it sees as its territory – by force in the next few years.
Beijing’s defence budget was also unveiled on Sunday, up by 7.2 per cent to 1.5537 trillion yuan (US$224.9 billion) – a slight increase from last year’s 7.1 per cent growth.
Taiwan’s presidential election is meanwhile looming early next year, and some analysts in Beijing say there is a shift in public opinion on the island towards peace and opposing provocations by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, which has rejected the one-China principle.
The more moderate tone on Taiwan also comes as the United States is seeking closer ties with the island. That includes two rounds of trade talks under the new US-Taiwan Initiative on 21st-Century Trade, an effort to boost economic ties opposed by Beijing. Taipei and Washington indicated during talks in January that they could reach agreement on issues such as trade facilitation and the promotion of good regulatory practices.
Li said Beijing had resolutely fought against separatism and countered interference. He was referring to People’s Liberation Army activities last year such as the unprecedented drills held around Taiwan after then-US House speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei, and regular warplane sorties near the island.
China's 'two sessions': Premier Li Keqiang emphasises achievements, economy in final work report
The outgoing premier said Beijing would adhere to the one-China principle and the 1992 consensus and promote the peaceful development of cross-strait ties, while the process of “peaceful reunification” would be advanced.
“We should encourage people on both sides of the strait to jointly promote Chinese culture and advance China’s rejuvenation,” Li said to loud applause from the nearly 3,000 National People’s Congress deputies watching on in the Great Hall of the People.
Relations have deteriorated across the strait since Tsai Ing-wen, of the pro-independence DPP, was elected president in 2016. Tsai refused to endorse the 1992 consensus – a tacit understanding that both sides recognise that there is only one China, but each can have its own interpretation of what that means.
Exchanges between the two sides have been largely suspended since then, and Beijing has repeatedly said it would not rule out the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control and stepped up military intimidation of the island.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has fuelled concerns that Beijing could launch an attack on Taiwan, while Beijing has urged the world not to draw parallels between Ukraine and Taiwan.
Responding to Li’s report, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council said in a statement that Beijing should handle cross-strait issues in a rational and equal way, with mutual respect.
It also called on the leadership in Beijing to accept that “the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are not affiliated with each other”, to respect Taiwanese people’s adherence to democracy and freedom, and to give up political coercion.
There have been signs in recent months of efforts by Beijing to promote cross-strait exchanges. That includes talks in February in Beijing between Song Tao, the new head of the mainland’s Taiwan Affairs Office, and a delegation of senior Taiwanese politicians led by Andrew Hsia, vice-chairman of the opposition Kuomintang party.
Beijing also resumed imports early this year from more than 60 Taiwanese food suppliers that had been barred, and indicated it would continue to restore transport links between Taiwan and mainland China that were suspended because of Covid-19 restrictions and political tensions.
Zhang Wensheng, deputy dean of the Taiwan Research Institute at Xiamen University, said mentions of Beijing’s policy on Taiwan in the government work report were “moderate”.
“In the coming stage, restoring and promoting cross-strait exchanges, and promoting the peaceful and integrated development of cross-strait relations will be the focus of the Taiwan policy,” Zhang said.
Last month CIA director William Burns said US intelligence showed that President Xi Jinping had told his country’s military to “be ready by 2027” to invade Taiwan though Xi might now be harbouring doubts about his ability to do so given Russia’s experience in its war with Ukraine.
This comes after a previous assessment made by a US military official that Beijing could invade the island as soon as this year, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s comment last year that China was pursuing “reunification on a much faster timeline”.
Beijing’s decision to highlight peaceful reunification and cross-strait exchanges in the work report could be an effort to counter the US narrative, with Qin Gang, China’s foreign minister, urging countries last month to stop advocating “Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow”.
Amber Wang
+ myNEWS
Amber Wang is a reporter for the China desk, and focuses on Chinese politics and diplomacy. She joined the Post in 2021, and previously worked for The New York Times and Southern Metropolis Daily.
17. Interpreting China’s unambitious growth target
Excertps:
Foreign investors will be relieved by one thing that was not in it. The term “common prosperity” (gòngtóng fùyù) did not feature. The slogan, which refers to Mr Xi’s campaign to narrow economic inequality, has become synonymous with bashing billionaires and reining in China’s expansive internet companies, like Alibaba and Tencent. (A similar term, gòngtóng fánróng, which is often translated as common prosperity, did appear in an unrelated context.) Like last year, Mr Li patted his government on the back for restraining the “blind expansion of capital”, but this time he was careful to describe those restraints as “law-based”.
The most striking novelty in this year’s report was its nostalgia. Last year’s edition turned from the past to the present by the eighth page (of the English translation). This year’s version did not leave the past behind until the 31st page and then spared only four pages to discuss priorities for 2023. Perhaps because he has reached the end of his career expressway, Mr Li felt unable to offer much guidance on the new team’s plans. He did not want to offer too many hostages to fortune and sought safety in brevity. It is hard to predict the future, especially when you will have no role in shaping it.
Graphics at the link: https://www.economist.com/china/2023/03/05/interpreting-chinas-unambitious-growth-target
Interpreting China’s unambitious growth target
The government has played it safe with the economy—and its own reputation
https://www.economist.com/china/2023/03/05/interpreting-chinas-unambitious-growth-target
The Economist
OVER THE next week China’s National People’s Congress, its rubber-stamp parliament, will formally confirm Xi Jinping’s new term as president and the appointment of a new economic team around him. On March 5th Li Keqiang, the country’s outgoing prime minister (pictured, right), opened the congress with his annual “work report”. It confirmed a GDP growth target of “around 5%” for China in 2023, lower than many external forecasts. The target’s conservatism sets the tone for an event which is likely to be about China’s leaders tightening their control over the state.
When China’s government sets its economic growth target for the year, it often faces a dilemma. A balance must be struck between inspiring confidence and maintaining credibility. A high target could give courage to entrepreneurs, making fast growth easier to achieve. But ambitious targets can also be missed, denting the government’s reputation. (They can also induce reckless stimulus spending to avert any such embarrassment.)
Last year China’s government missed its growth target by a wide margin (see chart), largely owing to its costly attempt to keep covid-19 at bay. This year it has prized credibility over confidence. The new target of 5% may seem like a respectable pace to set, roughly in line with China’s underlying “trend” rate of growth. But the economy would normally be expected to exceed that trend comfortably this year, because it fell so far short of it last year. Even if this year’s growth target is met, China’s GDP will remain more than 2% below the path it was supposedly on before the Omicron variant hit China.
The government is nonetheless hoping that China will create about 12m new urban jobs this year. Indeed, the government’s jobs target this year is more demanding than last year (12m versus “over 11m”) even though its growth target is less so. The government may be hoping that China will enjoy an unusually “job-full” recovery, as labour-intensive service industries, like retail and catering, bounce back from the pandemic-era restrictions that hit them particularly hard. It also wants employment to keep pace with the record 11.58m students who are expected to graduate from universities and colleges in 2023.
The undemanding growth target removes any pressure to stimulate the economy further. Compared with last year, Mr Li’s report to the congress contained fewer exhortations to local governments to keep the economy going. He instead pointed out the need to prevent a build-up of new debts. “The budgetary imbalances of some local governments are substantial,” he noted. This year they will be allowed to issue 3.8trn-yuan ($550bn) worth of “special” bonds (which are supposed to finance revenue-generating infrastructure projects). On paper, that quota is a little higher than last year. But it may not feel like it in practice, because local-government spending last year was bolstered by an unusually large stash of bond proceeds carried over from 2021.
The controlling party
The report’s conservatism is in keeping with the emerging theme of this year’s congress, which is about China’s rulers tightening their grip over the state apparatus. After securing a third term as leader of China’s communist party in October, Xi Jinping will be formally appointed once again as president on March 10th. Two days later a number of his protégés and trusted aides will be appointed to key positions in state institutions. Li Qiang, the party’s number two, is expected to replace Li Keqiang as prime minister. He Lifeng, who worked with Mr Xi in Fujian (and attended his second wedding), is likely to become a deputy prime minister in charge of economic policy. He may also serve as party chief of the People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank. If so, he will oversee a new governor of the central bank, who is likely to be Zhu Hexin, a commercial banker who also served as vice-governor of the province of Sichuan.
The congress will also approve part of a “relatively extensive” plan to reorganise the relationship between China’s state institutions and its ruling communist party. The plan would give the party more direct control over national security, culture, science and finance, including reviving the Central Financial Work Commission that operated for five years after the Asian financial crisis. The commission would represent yet another attempt to impose more party-led co-ordination on China’s economic-policymaking bodies.
Once this closer control has been imposed on the state apparatus, what goals will be set for it? Mr Li’s work report offered little concrete guidance. Like previous editions, it is a combination of theological boilerplate (“hold high the great banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics”), policy bromides (“We should enhance the intensity and effectiveness of our proactive fiscal policy”) and technocratic factoids (China increased the length of expressways by 30% and drainage pipelines by more than 40% over the last five years).
Foreign investors will be relieved by one thing that was not in it. The term “common prosperity” (gòngtóng fùyù) did not feature. The slogan, which refers to Mr Xi’s campaign to narrow economic inequality, has become synonymous with bashing billionaires and reining in China’s expansive internet companies, like Alibaba and Tencent. (A similar term, gòngtóng fánróng, which is often translated as common prosperity, did appear in an unrelated context.) Like last year, Mr Li patted his government on the back for restraining the “blind expansion of capital”, but this time he was careful to describe those restraints as “law-based”.
The most striking novelty in this year’s report was its nostalgia. Last year’s edition turned from the past to the present by the eighth page (of the English translation). This year’s version did not leave the past behind until the 31st page and then spared only four pages to discuss priorities for 2023. Perhaps because he has reached the end of his career expressway, Mr Li felt unable to offer much guidance on the new team’s plans. He did not want to offer too many hostages to fortune and sought safety in brevity. It is hard to predict the future, especially when you will have no role in shaping it.■
The Economist
18. USS George Washington destined for Japan to replace USS Ronald Reagan, report says
USS George Washington destined for Japan to replace USS Ronald Reagan, report says
Stars and Stripes · by Alex Wilson · March 3, 2023
An F-35C Lightning II stealth fighter waits to launch from the aircraft carrier USS George Washington in the Atlantic Ocean, Aug. 23, 2016. (Brenton Poyser/U.S. Navy)
YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — The aircraft carrier USS George Washington is expected in two years to return to Japan, its base of operations until eight years ago when it was replaced by the USS Ronald Reagan, according to a Japanese news agency.
Preparations are underway to replace the Ronald Reagan, which operates from the 7th Fleet homeport at Yokosuka, Nikkei Asia said Wednesday in a report that cited U.S. Pacific Fleet spokesman Lt. Brian Cunningham. Additional details are not available until “proper coordination is complete,” the report said.
Cunningham acknowledged Stars and Stripes' request for information Friday but did not respond further that day. A 7th Fleet spokesman had referred questions to Pacific Fleet on Thursday.
The George Washington is expected in Yokosuka by 2025, Nikkei reported.
The aircraft carrier, commissioned in July 1992, is undergoing mid-life nuclear refueling and maintenance at the Newport News shipyard in Virginia; it was homeported at Yokosuka from 2008 to 2015.
The carrier’s refit began in 2017 and was expected to last four years but has been significantly delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and other setbacks.
The U.S. Navy and Boeing test the MQ-25 Stingray, an aerial refueling drone, at Naval Station Norfolk, Va., Nov. 11, 2021. (Samantha Jenkins/U.S. Navy)
Those improvements will permit the carrier to embark the MQ-25A Stingray, a 50-foot drone that can refuel other aircraft in flight and extend the carrier air wing’s range, Nikkei reported.
The Stingray can fly 500 nautical miles and deliver up to 16,000 pounds of fuel mid-air to F-18 Super Hornets, EA-18G Growlers and F-35C Lightning IIs, according to its manufacturer Boeing’s website.
The drone is the world’s first “operational, carrier-based unmanned aircraft” and a “critical part of the future” for carrier strike groups and air wings, according to U.S. Naval Air Systems Command.
The George Washington’s 2008 arrival in Yokosuka was preceded several months by more than 240 Navy families.
When the Ronald Reagan arrived to replace the George Washington in 2015, approximately two-thirds of the ships’ respective crews transferred between them.
The Ronald Reagan will have spent almost 10 years in Yokosuka by 2025, nearly the Navy limit for ships deployed overseas.
Congress set the 10-year limit in the fiscal 2019 Defense Department budget following the back-to-back collisions in 2017 of the destroyers USS John S. McCain and USS Fitzgerald, both based at Yokosuka more than a decade when they separately collided with commercial vessels.
Alex Wilson
Alex Wilson
Alex Wilson covers the U.S. Navy and other services from Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan. Originally from Knoxville, Tenn., he holds a journalism degree from the University of North Florida. He previously covered crime and the military in Key West, Fla., and business in Jacksonville, Fla.
19. Russia’s Halfway to Hell Strategy
Excerpts:
Nevertheless, in the first year of war, Putin’s partial escalation strategy has generally served him well. It has allowed him to maintain political stability through a combination of intimidation and indifference. Internationally and domestically, it has helped him prepare Russia for a very long war without making the kinds of sacrifices that might ultimately cause the population to rebel. And above all, it has given him flexibility. The more radical options—including economic nationalization and full mobilization—are still open, and the country’s bureaucracy is already prepared to set them in motion.
The question is, How long can this not-quite-total war be sustained? The longer the war goes on, the more Putin will have to take some of the more drastic steps he has threatened. And at some point, he will run out of room to play with.
Russia’s Halfway to Hell Strategy
Why Putin Has Not Yet Launched a Total War in Ukraine
March 6, 2023
Foreign Affairs · by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan · March 6, 2023
On September 21, 2022, when Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his large-scale mobilization of fighting-age men, it was seen as a dramatic move toward total war. No longer could the Kremlin downplay the war in Ukraine as a mere “special operation” in which ordinary Russians had little involvement. Fearful of what was to come, hundreds of thousands of young men fled the country as rumors circulated that the security services were going to close the borders to prevent more people from leaving—and take drastic measures to pressure those who had left to return and fight. Many also assumed that Putin’s order would be followed by a second, even broader draft, and that all of Russian society would soon be put on a continual war footing.
Yet few of these rumors proved true. For the remainder of 2022, and even through the first anniversary of the war in late February, Russia’s borders remained open, and a second mobilization never happened. Instead, the country was left in a state of “partial mobilization,” as Putin had called it. Indeed, despite huge numbers of Russian casualties in Ukraine, not every family has been affected, and for many middle-class Russians, life has continued much as it did before.
The surprising reality of the September mobilization has highlighted a larger feature of Putin’s war in Ukraine. Often, the Kremlin has initially appeared to take a maximalist course. Instead of invading eastern Ukraine, it launched a full-scale assault on the whole country and tried to take Kyiv. In addition to deploying tanks, missiles, and heavy artillery, Putin has repeatedly made threats about using nuclear weapons. And he has seemingly been willing to sacrifice tens of thousands of men to fuel his war. At home, meanwhile, the government has announced extreme measures to clamp down on the Russian media and popular dissent as well as to put the Russian economy on a war footing.
Yet many of these moves have been considerably less severe in practice than they seem on paper. In Ukraine, despite increasing attacks on civilian areas, Russia has held back from using its full arsenal. And although Putin has done much to tighten his grip on Russian society in the year since the invasion, many of his most far-reaching domestic measures have been incompletely implemented. Again and again, the Kremlin has stopped short of total militarization and total mobilization—whether of the economy or society at large.
By many indications, this partial approach to total war is not haphazard, nor is it simply the result of failed execution. Instead, Russia appears to be pursuing a deliberate strategy aimed at both the West and its own population. By staking out a maximalist stance on the war, the Kremlin can suggest to the West that it is prepared to do whatever it takes to win in Ukraine, without necessarily having to make good on its threats. At home, meanwhile, the Russian government can convey to ordinary Russians that it has the option of tightening the screws further, but that it is not going out of its way to alienate the population. In both cases, the strategy offers Putin an open path toward further escalation, but without the immediate costs.
SELECTIVE CENSORSHIP, NARROW NATIONALIZATION
Since the opening weeks of the invasion in February 2022, the Kremlin’s calibrated actions have often defied its total-war rhetoric. Consider how the government has sought to manage Russian society. Almost immediately, the military offensive was followed by a frontal attack on Russia’s independent media and civil society. In March, the popular liberal radio station Ekho Moskvy and the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta were shut down; journalists were forced into exile; and draconian new censorship laws were introduced. Most important, the government took aim at social media, apparently seeking to silence any circulation of independent information about the war.
Yet the measures were oddly incomplete. The Russian authorities swiftly outlawed and blocked Facebook, as well as some other platforms, including Instagram. For years, Facebook had been known for being one of the only online spaces where liberal Russians could talk freely about politics; unsurprisingly, the government designated Facebook as a company that conducted “extremist activities.” Many social media users took this step to mean that even logging in to Facebook might lead to criminal prosecution, and thousands of people deleted the Facebook app from their smartphones in case they were stopped by police and their phones searched. But enforcement never followed. Even more striking was the selective nature of the social media crackdown. The government has not censored YouTube or Telegram, the messaging app, which are two of the most popular platforms in Russia. Instead, they have been allowed to flourish, and become even more important, as the war has progressed.
A similar pattern has unfolded with Putin’s economic policies. In the spring of 2022, the Kremlin seemed prepared to take far-reaching steps to expand government control of the economy. Draft legislation on a nationalization program was promptly prepared and sent to the Duma, and foreign companies worried that their assets and operations would be seized. To many observers, there was also a logic for such moves: foreign companies were rapidly leaving the country, raising the specter of massive layoffs and possible social unrest—a scenario the Kremlin was anxious to avoid. It was for much the same reasons that the Bolsheviks had initially nationalized factories and banks after the Russian Revolution in 1917.
Yet the 2022 draft legislation was never signed into law, and foreign companies were mostly left to make their own arrangements about their Russian assets. In October, the government did order industries that were crucial for the war effort to come under direct state control via a new special coordinating council on military supplies. But fears of a completely militarized economy have proved to be overblown.
PRESIDENT PUTIN, NOT GENERAL STALIN
To the extent that Russia is seeking to fight a total war, as many Western commentators have suggested, Putin’s handling of the mobilization question has been especially striking. Not only has the Kremlin avoided a second wave of mobilization, despite significant manpower demands, but it has also made extensive use of mercenaries from the Wagner Group, some of whom have been recruited from Russian prisons. In this way, rather than pursue a full-scale mobilization, the Russian government has for the time being opted to use other resources while keeping the mobilization only partial. The tactic appears to be serving its purpose: in recent weeks, the Wagner Group has been the only unit that was on the offensive, and although it has suffered heavy casualties, its losses are not of concern to the military.
At the same time, Putin has shown relative restraint toward officials or agencies within the government that are implicated in some of the war’s failures or that seem to disagree with his own policies. Historically, when authoritarian regimes go to war, they almost always use repression to make the country more unified, usually by ruthlessly attacking perceived internal enemies. Typically, such crackdowns are aimed at those who dissent from the leader’s views, as well as elites to make sure they do not waiver from the official line. Such repression can sometimes be systematic, as for example in Russia itself under Stalin and other leaders. Indeed, Putin seemed to be firmly on this path even before the invasion, sending high-level officials and governors, as well as officers of Russia’s FSB security service, to jail by the dozens.
Yet when the invasion started, and quickly went badly, Putin limited his anger toward the siloviki, the security elite. The FSB’s Fifth Service, the arm of the agency in charge of keeping an eye on Russia’s immediate neighbors, was the first to receive the president’s wrath. It was the Fifth Service that had briefed Putin about the political situation in Ukraine and suggested, incorrectly, that the government in Kyiv would quickly collapse. In March 2022, the head of the service, Sergei Beseda, was secretly placed under house arrest and was soon shuffled off to the Lefortovo Prison—the notorious prison where leading political prisoners and spies have long been sent.
For all the talk, Putin has yet to adopt a Stalinist playbook.
Next, it was the National Guard’s turn: in the same month, the deputy head of the National Guard, Roman Gavrilov, was forced into early retirement: he had been in charge of supplying the National Guard’s special forces, which had been sent to war woefully underequipped. Some units had been given antiriot gear instead of armor and ammunition, as if they had expected to meet protesters on the streets of Kyiv, not Ukrainian troops. There were rumors that Gavrilov had been arrested and that various army generals would soon be fired or imprisoned as retribution for the army’s poor performance on the battlefield.
But then, within a few weeks, the repressions suddenly stopped. Some were even undone: Sergei Beseda was released and returned to his office in Lubyanka and then deliberately displayed at several public events. What is more, in February 2023, his son, Alexander Beseda, was given a remarkable promotion to become the head of the government department that oversees all the security agencies.
With Russia facing increasing pressure from the West and humiliation on the battlefield, hard-line parliamentarians, propagandists, and members of the secret services have been evoking Stalinism as an example of a way to run the country properly during wartime. And some observers, noting the extreme measures that have been mooted, have suggested that Putin is already following a Stalinist playbook. But such an approach would require much more dramatic steps than Putin has actually taken. During World War II, the entire Soviet government was militarized; even Stalin and his ministers wore uniforms and assumed the rank of general. The economy and the society at large were completely mobilized and turned into what became known as a “home front,” with parts of the population and entire factories moved to other regions under orders of the Stalin government. For all the talk, the Russian government never adopted a full-scale Stalinist approach to managing the war at home.
Finally there is the issue of nuclear weapons. Since at least the summer of 2022, Putin has put on the table the option of using a tactical nuclear weapon to change the situation in Russia’s favor. (In September, he announced that Russia was prepared to use “all available means” in its war and that “this was not a bluff.”) Even setting aside the Kremlin’s rhetoric, hard-liners close to the regime have suggested that the Russian military and Putin considered using a tactical nuclear weapon—for instance, against the defenders of Mariupol in the spring of 2022. Despite major Russian setbacks, however, Putin did not choose that path. Instead, he has doubled down on a conventional war, which he has amplified via mobilization and massive airstrikes on Ukrainian infrastructure.
SPACE TO ESCALATE
Throughout the past year, then—arguably the most difficult year for Putin in more than two decades in power—the Russian president time and again escalated on many fronts, at home and on the battlefield. And yet he has never quite followed through in bringing Russia into a total war. Why?
Since the early stages of the war, the total-war concept has clearly been in Putin’s thoughts. In April 2022, Putin told the Duma that “all parliamentary parties, despite their competition with each other, invariably come out with a unified position when it comes to basic national interests, to solving issues of defense and security of our Fatherland,” making clear that no debate about the war was to be tolerated. Then, in July, Putin told the leaders of Russia’s political parties that it was the collective West that had started the war in Ukraine, indicating that the war in Ukraine is part of the centuries’ long existential battle between Russia and the West. And he made his New Year address flanked by soldiers.
Yet judging by Russia’s actions, it has in practice sought to do something different from wage total war. Throughout 2022, the Kremlin made a point of showing that more drastic options were available to it: it could always do more. But it also showed that, for the time being, it was content to only go so far. The point here was that by laying out these extreme options—nationalizing industry, mobilizing the economy, pursuing systematic repression, or even using tactical nuclear attacks—the Kremlin has staked out space to escalate. It has already announced, in effect, what more it could do, whether on the battlefield or in conducting repressions at home.
For Putin, this approach serves multiple purposes. The primary target may be Western governments, which are deeply concerned about the possibility of uncontrollable escalation. The Kremlin is adamant about showing them that it has many options but has thus far kept things under control—unlike Kyiv, which in its desperation is, according to Russia, prone to escalation. At home, Moscow’s approach also serves another purpose: to demonstrate that it is capable of calibrating its response to Western sanctions and military failures, and that it does not need to go all the way until it truly must.
WORSE TO COME
Putin’s halfway strategy has scored some notable successes. Throughout 2022, for example, the Russian economy was not hobbled by excessive militarization or government control. To the contrary, Russia’s economic contraction was smaller than most Western analysts predicted. Moreover, the strategy also helped Putin maintain a fine balance between tightening the rules and not alienating Russia’s economically active urban middle class. For their part, many ordinary Russians have been glad to ignore the war as much as possible, and the Kremlin’s strategy has skillfully played on these feelings: it has allowed many Russians to pretend that they will not be affected by the war.
Indeed, the strategy has also been aimed at those who fled into exile. Many Russian men who went abroad to avoid being mobilized have since been signaled that they will not be punished at home if they return. On February 1, for example, Russia’s Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov reported to Putin that 9,000 “illegally mobilized citizens”—people who are supposed to be exempt from mobilization because they perform critical jobs in IT or in the banking and financial system—had already been returned home. The Russian authorities are also seeking ways to lure the country’s exiled IT specialists—which it needs to sustain the war effort—back to Russia. The government has promised workers in this category exemption from the draft and a free plane ticket home. Putin knows his people well: some Russians, desperate to believe there is a way back to prewar reality, are returning to Russia thanks to this strategy.
The Russian bureaucracy stands ready to carry out more radical options.
In some crucial areas, Putin’s incremental approach has backfired. For example, in the months since the war started, many independent journalists, investigators, and bloggers who had originally fled the country have launched their own YouTube channels, taking advantage of the lack of censorship. Now, dozens of political shows, interviews, and uncensored videos offer Russians the opportunity to get the truth about the war every day. Throughout the past year, many people have developed a habit of getting their news from YouTube, and that includes older Russians as well as young people. Indeed, it was through YouTube and Telegram that many Russians learned of the massacre of Ukrainian civilians in Bucha and the humiliation of Russian troops in Kherson.
At the same time, millions of Instagram users have learned to used virtual private network (VPN) services to access the platform. As a result, though many of them were not previously interested in political content, they now have access to alternative news sources about the war from the non-Russian internet. Thus, by the time of the war’s first anniversary in late February, much of Russia’s urban population was able to circumvent Russia’s internet censorship. (So far, however, it has not made a big impact on public opinion because many still chose to believe the government’s own propaganda.)
Nevertheless, in the first year of war, Putin’s partial escalation strategy has generally served him well. It has allowed him to maintain political stability through a combination of intimidation and indifference. Internationally and domestically, it has helped him prepare Russia for a very long war without making the kinds of sacrifices that might ultimately cause the population to rebel. And above all, it has given him flexibility. The more radical options—including economic nationalization and full mobilization—are still open, and the country’s bureaucracy is already prepared to set them in motion.
The question is, How long can this not-quite-total war be sustained? The longer the war goes on, the more Putin will have to take some of the more drastic steps he has threatened. And at some point, he will run out of room to play with.
- ANDREI SOLDATOV is an investigative journalist and Co-Founder and Editor of Agentura.ru, a watchdog of the Russian secret services’ activities.
- IRINA BOROGAN is an investigative journalist and Co-Founder and Deputy Editor of Agentura.ru.
-
They are the co-authors of The Compatriots: The Russian Exiles Who Fought Against the Kremlin.
Foreign Affairs · by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan · March 6, 2023
20. How China Is Attempting to Control the ‘Information Pipes’
I hope we are addressing this.
Smart move on China's part. Just like when you conduct a revolution; what are the first targets? Media and broadcast capabilities. Control those you can control the population.
Again, my thesis: China seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, and displace democratic institutions.
How China Is Attempting to Control the ‘Information Pipes’
thediplomat.com · by Joshua Kurlantzick · March 3, 2023
Advertisement
In the past decade, China’s government has stepped up its efforts to wield powerful tools of information around the globe – in its near neighborhood and, increasingly in more distant places including North America, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. These tools include Beijing’s own major state media outlets, like Xinhua, which have been expanded while China tries to make them credible, palatable alternatives to existing global newswires based in liberal democracies, like The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, Reuters, Kyodo, and others. It also includes Beijing’s growing efforts to use proxies to control Chinese-language media outlets within other countries around the world, as well as Beijing’s increasingly sophisticated use of disinformation on major social media platforms in its neighborhood and globally.
Yet even as China attempts to use the control over media and information it has amassed, it is also working to dominate the “pipes” through which this information moves. I use the term pipes to mean the broad underpinnings of global information networks, including the actual physical infrastructure and the rules and norms that govern how information flows. More specifically, these pipes include the physical telecommunications networks for wireless and wired data; mobile phones and other devices that display information; tools that create the Internet of Things; tools that allow for surveillance; leading search engines, web browsers, and social media platforms; and the standards that govern the internet.
With greater influence in these areas, China would not have to rely as much on other countries to disseminate Xinhua, CGTN, and CRI, or on media coverage from local Chinese-language outlets controlled by Beijing. Instead, it could use its own pipes to more aggressively, and mostly covertly, spread state media coverage onto internet networks, social media platforms, mobile phones and other devices, browsers, and television conglomerates controlled by or closely linked to the Chinese government, which would deprive news consumers in many countries of independent coverage about China.
If Beijing had more control of the pipes of information, it also could, within foreign countries, more easily censor negative stories and social media conversations, and spread stories, rumors, opinions, accusations, blandishments, and other types of disinformation, obviously types of sharp power. Ultimately, it could use the pipes to help foreign countries copy China’s surveillance strategies and to export China’s vision of a closed and controlled domestic internet, part of Beijing’s overall model of technology-enabled authoritarianism.
Building the Internet
Chinese state companies are laying down many of the new physical or virtual pipes for global information flows in the developing world. The state-controlled China Telecom, for instance, has rolled out the third-biggest mobile phone network in the Philippines, despite concerns raised by security experts and some lawmakers about Beijing dominating a portion of the country’s mobile infrastructure. China Telecom partnered with the tycoon Dennis Uy, a close ally of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, in obtaining and rolling out its mobile network. This is a strategy Chinese state firms have used in many countries. By partnering with local tycoons, Chinese firms often are able to land contracts to build mobile and fixed internet infrastructure, sometimes without any transparent bidding processes.
In Africa, Beijing has become by far the dominant builder of new physical infrastructure for the transmission of information. China Telecom and ZTE, whose biggest shareholder is a state-owned enterprise, are building the core of new mobile and fiber-optic networks across the African continent, competing largely with Huawei, which is a private Chinese company, but with historic links to the People’s Liberation Army.
In return, they get help. Under China’s Digital Silk Road (DSR) initiative, part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), many Chinese companies that build telecommunications infrastructure in Africa and other regions get loans from Chinese banks on extremely generous terms. Non-Chinese competitors face huge hurdles in corralling the same level of diplomatic support from their own governments or getting anything like the cheap financing, usually from Chinese state banks, that Chinese companies enjoy.
Advertisement
Huawei has signed numerous commercial contracts around the world to build next-generation 5G networks, though it has been shut out of many liberal democracies. Still, it is poised to be the dominant 5G provider in sub-Saharan Africa, with competitors lagging behind. In Southeast Asia, meanwhile, Huawei already has built many of the shorter undersea cables linking the region’s telecommunications networks, and the company has inked deals to develop 5G networks in Cambodia, the Philippines, and Thailand – and possibly in Indonesia. And in the Pacific Islands, Huawei and other Chinese tech giants have competed aggressively with Australian and other companies to make new deals in places like Fiji. Around the world, Huawei is completing thousands of miles of undersea cable, through which most telecommunications traffic travels. In Central Asia, meanwhile, Huawei has already become the dominant provider of new 5G technology, including in the region’s most populous state, Uzbekistan, and its freest, Kyrgyzstan.
Even in some democracies where leaders have significant concerns about allowing Chinese companies to build telecommunications infrastructure, Huawei has made inroads, although some of its efforts are now stalling in richer countries worried about the downsides of being reliant on Huawei and other Chinese tech firms. Yet Huawei’s low costs and high levels of experience with technology often give them a leg up in getting contracts to build infrastructure, particularly in developing countries. Huawei also has become increasingly innovative, becoming one of the biggest investors in research and development of any tech company in the world.
Chinese firms are winning Internet of Things (IoT) contracts as well. Beijing has placed a particular priority on this sector since at least the late 2000s, when then-Premier Wen Jiabao declared it a national priority. Emily de La Bruyère and Nathan Picarsic, formerly of the consulting firm Long Term Strategy Group, have written that Chinese companies have built “a network of sensors [in China] – including but not limited to surveillance cameras, car navigation systems, and smart electricity monitors.” Any information that is gathered is passed along to the China Academy of Sciences (CAS), a leading Chinese research institution. According to de La Bruyère and Picarsic, CAS “explains that the system is a ‘test zone for a global network.’”
Poland and other European states have given IoT contracts to Chinese companies, like the surveillance camera giant Hikvision, which is part of a massive state enterprise. Chinese-built surveillance camera systems even have been used in official buildings in Europe and North America, including departments of the U.K. government and U.S. military bases, though they now have been banned. In 2019, the U.S. government added Hikvision and several other Chinese firms to an economic blacklist, in part due to their involvement in abuses in Xinjiang. (The Hikvision cameras were being used on U.S. bases right up until the ban.) But even these U.S. actions did not appear to stop the firms’ global expansion.
Apps and Screens
Social media platforms are another kind of information pipe. A decade ago, Chinese companies had virtually no presence on social media. Since then, Chinese firms like WeChat, Weibo, and TikTok have expanded quickly, both at home and abroad.
TikTok, the short-video app, now rivals longer-established social media networks like Twitter and Instagram in terms of its number of new users, and is gaining massive cultural influence among preteens, teens, and young adults around the world. In 2021, it had the most downloads of any app, even though it was only launched globally in 2017. The app has become omnipresent on the phones of high school and college students, with an estimated 40 percent of its users between the ages of 16 and 24.
Enjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full access. Just $5 a month.
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance Limited, presents itself as a global firm, and TikTok as no different from platforms run by U.S.-based companies like Facebook or Twitter. But these claims ring hollow, as multiple reports have found that TikTok has at times tried to alter or suppress content related to China, and as the Chinese government has taken a stake in ByteDance and gained an important seat on its board.
The China-based app WeChat also has begun to spread outside China. WeChat, owned by the Chinese conglomerate Tencent, has become a ubiquitous tool in China: Many middle-class Chinese have come to rely on it for much of their family, social, and work lives.
Usage of WeChat is spreading among Chinese speakers in every corner of the world. It has 1.24 billion users and it has expanded across Southeast Asia and South Asia. The United States, meanwhile, is believed to be the second largest-source of WeChat users, behind China. The Trump administration tried to crack down on it and its parent company with an executive order – but WeChat is still accessible, since the Biden administration rescinded plans to ban its service in the United States.
Advertisement
In Thailand, nearly 20 percent of the population uses the app. In Malaysia, a country of around 32 million people, there are reportedly 20 million WeChat accounts. The app’s group chats, which can include up to 500 people, are channels for the spread of information sympathetic to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), while people who offer critical commentary in the chat are censored. (While WeChat is not known primarily as a news app, its content often contains news stories, links to stories, and discussions about stories, making it a major disseminator of information about Chinese domestic and foreign policies.) In Northeast Asia, WeChat has become the second-most-popular messaging app in Mongolia, and is widely used in Japan and South Korea.
While Chinese social media platforms are spreading, Chinese mobile phone makers also are enjoying success, particularly in developing regions like Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. In these places, inexpensive Chinese phones have gained huge market shares, competing with more expensive rivals like Samsung and Apple. And because China was an early adapter in many new smartphone-related features like having one super app like WeChat, Chinese firms actually have surpassed non-Chinese rivals in developing many apps beloved by consumers, as well as developing specific innovations for markets in Africa and other developing regions.
The numbers do not lie. Today, China-based mobile phone companies make more than half of the phones purchased annually in Africa, including both smartphones and budget phones. In Southeast Asia, they are becoming increasingly popular, after garnering two-thirds of the market in India, a major geopolitical rival, and much of the market in China.
Many Chinese-made phones come loaded with the apps of the biggest Chinese social media platforms and web browsers, giving them an instant entrée to users in Africa, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and other regions, although they have also been accused of coming preloaded with spyware.
Chinese companies also are gaining ground in the global digital television market. They are no longer just copying foreign technologies but have become innovative and competitive. The Chinese pay television company StarTimes, for example, has become one of Africa’s leading digital television operators. With its cheap TV packages and easy-to-install hardware, it can reach formerly unserved populations from Kenya to Nigeria to Rwanda.
“The pay TV company [i.e., StarTimes] is leading the continent’s transition from analog to digital television with some of the world’s most affordable cable/satellite TV packages priced as low as $4 per month. In the burgeoning Digital TV sector, StarTimes is far and away the market leader. The company’s reach covers 90 percent of the continent’s population,” wrote Eric Olander. StarTimes has announced nascent plans to expand its inexpensive services into Latin America as well.
Other large Chinese companies are entering the digital and satellite television markets in Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. ZTE has launched digital television services in Pakistan and is exploring other markets, while Chinese provincial and national state television networks are expanding into neighboring Southeast Asian cable markets like Laos, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam.
Influence Through Omission
By controlling the information pipes, Beijing can exert influence through omission. In other words, what does not appear about China in the media in other states can be as important as what does appear.
Beijing wants to silence conversations about many topics – Xinjiang, Tibet, the South China Sea, its COVID-19 policies, and so on. It wants to make these tough topics disappear. And if they disappear for an extended period of time from media coverage and public conversations in other countries, that disappearance feeds on itself, creating a greater boon for China. Publics and opinion leaders do not learn about these issues sensitive to China; over time, publics and opinion leaders become less informed about these issues; with less information, they naturally speak and write about the topics less and less.
It is next to impossible for China to get positive coverage about these topics if they are covered openly and fairly. China could achieve this outcome, of course, through clear and open threats to punish other countries with economic measures, diplomatic measures, or other sanctions, for instance. But the bullying approach, though it certainly has worked with foreign companies and some foreign states fearful of being excluded from China’s market or facing other sanctions from Beijing, has major downsides as well.
WeChat provides an opportunity for Beijing to help contain what appears in the news about China in other countries. As users outside China have gravitated to the app, including its popular messaging service, WeChat has become a central source of news for many Chinese-language speakers beyond the mainland. Wanning Sun, of the University of Technology Sydney, has found that while most Mandarin speakers in Australia do not get much of their news directly from Chinese state media, a majority of them do access WeChat and obtain news from it, such as from news shared in groups and messages. In fact, Sun found that about 60 percent of Mandarin speakers in Australia used WeChat as their primary source of news and information.
Advertisement
Enjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full access. Just $5 a month.
Yet much of the news shared on WeChat stems from Xinhua, Global Times, CGTN, and other state media outlets, which are controlled by Beijing and uncritical of the Chinese government. Case studies of Mandarin speakers in Australia and their use of WeChat found that, during some periods of time, most channels they accessed had no stories about Chinese politics. Mandarin-speaking Australians who relied on WeChat for news often were getting no news about Chinese politics at all.
The Chinese government, however, is getting plenty of news about what users of WeChat, and several other social media platforms, are interested in. WeChat offers no privacy protections like end-to-end encryption, and the Chinese government extensively monitors and censors content on the platform.
There is evidence that WeChat is applying tactics outside China that it uses inside the country, thus potentially curtailing critical discussions about Beijing in developed democracies like the United States, Australia, and many European countries. Sarah Cook of Freedom House shows that WeChat is “systematically monitoring conversations of users outside China and flagging politically sensitive content for some form of scrutiny,” including messages in both English and Chinese, as well as other languages. A study of WeChat by Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto found that “WeChat communications conducted entirely among non-China-registered accounts are subject to pervasive content surveillance that was previously thought to be exclusively reserved for China-registered accounts.”
Exporting Repression
China also offers other countries a tested model of how to control a domestic internet, by blocking content and monitoring and punishing internet users. Beijing promotes its model of a closed, monitored, filtered internet in several ways. Until COVID-19, it trained foreign officials and held regular high-level meetings with national and local leaders from Africa to Southeast Asia, where Chinese officials and corporate executives promote internet control technologies; these trainings likely will resume as COVID-19 is controlled. The number of these trainings in information management has increased since the mid-2010s, and trainings often focus on how China has blocked certain social media platforms, forced domestic social media platforms to submit to state guidelines, and used a range of filtering methods to scrub social media and messaging sites.
According to an estimate by Freedom House, China has held trainings and seminars on information management with officials from 36 countries. The true number of countries that have sent representatives to China to study information management is probably much higher, since Freedom House only analyzed officials from 65 countries. (There are 193 member states in the United Nations.)
Freedom House’s study of these trainings showed that many countries often follow up on trainings, like the ones that were done for Southeast Asian states, by importing specific types of Chinese assistance and introducing cybersecurity laws that constrain the internet in similar ways to China’s controls. Indeed, in recent years Southeast Asian states like Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Thailand appear to have modeled their increasingly tough cybersecurity laws — which include clauses allowing for widespread blocking of information, massive government monitoring of domestic internets, and provisions to force companies to keep data locally — on China’s own efforts to control its domestic internet, or to have sent officials to China to study cybersecurity practices and then brought those practices back home.
And as China returns to the global stage, after getting its domestic problems under control, it is likely to expand its promotion of its internet model – and its many other ways of controlling and using information pipes as well.
This article is excerpted from Josh Kurlantzick’s new book “Beijing’s Global Media Offensive: China’s Uneven Campaign to Influence Asia and the World.”
Joshua Kurlantzick
Joshua Kurlantzick is Senior Fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations.
thediplomat.com · by Joshua Kurlantzick · March 3, 2023
21. Finnish Army’s winter uniforms make US Army digs look like trash bags
I bet the Finnish uniforms are even more functional as well as fashionable.
Finnish Army’s winter uniforms make US Army digs look like trash bags
militarytimes.com · by Sarah Sicard · March 3, 2023
Finland’s Army is small but mighty — and they dazzle in white.
Participating in Arctic Forge 23 with U.S. soldiers and troops from Norway, Finnish personnel donned sleek winter camouflage uniforms that looked cooler than the snowy conditions through which they’re expected to navigate.
A video shared to the U.S. Army Europe and Africa’s Instagram shows a “Staff Sgt. Krista,” a Finnish Army reservist, owning the elements in a way that would make America’s Next Top Model’s J. Alexander clutch his chest.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by U.S. Army Europe and Africa (@usarmyeuraf)
On the other hand, the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division, the 11th Airborne Division and the Virginia Army National Guard look like hot garbage, literally speaking.
Another reel featuring American soldiers shows attire resembling white Hefty garbage bags draped over standard ACUs.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by U.S. Army Europe and Africa (@usarmyeuraf)
To quote Katy Perry, “Do you ever feel like a plastic bag, drifting through the wind, wanting to start again?”
We bet U.S. soldiers do.
Observation Post is the Military Times one-stop shop for all things off-duty. Stories may reflect author observations.
About Sarah Sicard
Sarah Sicard is a Senior Editor with Military Times. She previously served as the Digitial Editor of Military Times and the Army Times Editor. Other work can be found at National Defense Magazine, Task & Purpose, and Defense News.
22.
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
| 
