Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.”

- Alfred North Whitehead

“Your role as a leader is to bring out the best in others, even when they know more than you.”

- Dr. Wanda Wallace

Characteristics of the American Way of War (1 of 13)

1. Apolitical. Americans are wont to regard war and peace as sharply distinct conditions. The U.S. military has a long history of waging war for the goal of victory, paying scant regard to the consequences of the course of its operations for the character of the peace that will follow. Civilian policymakers have been the ones primarily at fault. In war after war they have tended to neglect the Clausewitzian dictum that war is about, and only about, its political purposes. Characteristically, though certainly not invariably, U.S. military efforts have not been suitably cashed in the coin of political advantage. The traditional American separation of politics and the conduct of war is a lethal weakness when dealing with irregular enemies. Irregular conflict requires a unity of effort by all the instruments of grand strategy, and it must be guided by a unified high command. In that high command, the political authority has to be paramount. As a general rule, there can be no military solution to the challenge posed by irregulars. The principal task of the soldier is to provide the security without which decisive political progress is impossible.

- Colin Gray, 2006

1. The U.S. Is Not Yet Ready for the Era of ‘Great Power’ Conflict

2. U.S. Special Forces Want to Use Deepfakes for Psy-ops

3. China’s Ukraine Peace Plan Is Actually About Taiwan

4. Russia may be close to capturing Bakhmut. But a victory could come at a heavy cost

5. Wagner chief issues ultimatum to Putin as he threatens to let 'frontline collapse'

6. How to Defeat Russia's Mercenaries

7. Letter to Certain Congressional Committees on the Annual Report on the Legal and Policy Frameworks Guiding the United States' Use of Military Force and Related National Security Operations

8. Opinion | Democrats and Republicans agree on China. That’s a problem.

9. Republicans says China is America’s biggest threat, Democrats say Russia

10. China’s Xi Jinping Takes Rare Direct Aim at U.S. in Speech

11. Ukraine Signals It Will Keep Battling for Bakhmut to Drain Russia

12. The West Is Losing the Messaging War Over Ukraine

13. DHS has a program gathering domestic intelligence — and virtually no one knows about it

14. Marine combat engineers no longer capable of supporting the infantry

15. Exclusive: Ukraine seeks US cluster bombs to adapt for drone use, lawmakers say

16. At the National People’s Congress, the politics of numbers dominates. What those numbers mean for China and the world.

17. The war in Ukraine has shown the value of tanks, but militaries are now looking to stock up on slimmed-down versions of them

18. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 6, 2023

19. Army at 250: Beyond a Slogan, the Army Needs a New Narrative Strategy

20. Female 4-stars discuss sexism in the service, say the military is ‘much better’ for women now

21. Opinion | Biden must follow Roosevelt’s ‘arsenal of democracy’ example

22. Sixth-Generation Aircraft: How the B-21 Raider Will Transform Air Warfare

23. The New Anarchy: America faces a type of extremist violence it does not know how to stop.

1. The U.S. Is Not Yet Ready for the Era of ‘Great Power’ Conflict

Note:

This article is the first in a series examining the challenges faced by America’s military as it enters a new international era.

The U.S. Is Not Yet Ready for the Era of ‘Great Power’ Conflict

Since 2018, the military has shifted to focus on China and Russia after decades fighting insurgencies, but it still faces challenges to produce weapons and come up with new ways of waging war

By Michael R. GordonFollow

Updated March 6, 2023 11:54 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-military-china-taiwan-russia-great-power-conflict-481f7756?reflink=integratedwebview_share

Clint Hinote returned from a deployment in Baghdad in the spring of 2018 to a new assignment and a staggering realization.

A classified Pentagon wargame simulated a Chinese push to take control of the South China Sea. The Air Force officer, charged with plotting the service’s future, learned that China’s well-stocked missile force had rained down on the bases and ports the U.S. relied on in the region, turning American combat aircraft and munitions into smoldering ruins in a matter of days.

“My response was, ‘Holy crap. We are going to lose if we fight like this,’” he recalled.

The officer, now a lieutenant general, began posting yellow sticky notes on the walls of his closet-size office at the Pentagon, listing the problems to solve if the military was to have a chance of blunting a potential attack from China.

“I did not have an idea how to resolve them,” said Lt. Gen. Hinote. “I was struck how quickly China had advanced, and how our long-held doctrines about warfare were becoming obsolete.”

Mammoth shift

Five years ago, after decades fighting insurgencies in the Middle East and Central Asia, the U.S. started tackling a new era of great-power competition with China and Russia. It isn’t yet ready, and there are major obstacles in the way.

Despite an annual defense budget that has risen to more than $800 billion, the shift has been delayed by a preoccupation with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the pursuit of big-ticket weapons that didn’t pan out, internal U.S. government debates over budgets and disagreement over the urgency of the threat from Beijing, according to current and former U.S. defense officials and commanders. Continuing concerns in the Mideast, especially about Iran, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have absorbed attention and resources.

Lt. Gen. Clint Hinote discussed a drone with colleagues at Fort Irwin, Calif., in November.

PHOTO: PHILIP CHEUNG FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Corporate consolidation across the American defense industry has left the Pentagon with fewer arms manufacturers. Shipyards are struggling to produce the submarines the Navy says it needs to counter China’s larger naval fleet, and weapon designers are rushing to catch up with China and Russia in developing superfast hypersonic missiles.

When the Washington think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies ran a wargame last year that simulated a Chinese amphibious attack on Taiwan, the U.S. side ran out of long-range anti-ship cruise missiles within a week.

The military is struggling to meet recruitment goals, with Americans turned off by the long conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, potentially leaving the all-volunteer force short of manpower. Plans to position more forces within striking range of China are still a work in progress. The Central Intelligence Agency, after two decades of conducting paramilitary operations against insurgents and terrorists, is moving away from those areas to focus more on its core mission of espionage.

The U.S. military’s success in the Mideast and Afghanistan came in part from air superiority, a less well-equipped foe and the ability to control the initiation of the war. A conflict with China would be very different. The U.S. would be fighting with its Asian bases and ports under attack and would need to support its forces over long and potentially vulnerable supply routes.

If a conflict with China gave Russia the confidence to take further action in Eastern Europe, the U.S. and its allies would need to fight a two-front war. China and Russia are both nuclear powers. Action could extend to the Arctic, where the U.S. lags behind Russia in icebreakers and ports as Moscow appears ready to welcome Beijing’s help in the region.

This article is the first in a series examining the challenges faced by America’s military as it enters a new international era.

The U.S. military is still more capable than its main adversaries. The Chinese have their own obstacles in developing the capability to carry out a large-scale amphibious assault, while the weaknesses of Russia’s military have been exposed in Ukraine. But a defense of Taiwan would require U.S. forces, which are also tasked with deterring conflict in Europe and the Middle East, to operate over enormous distances and within range of China’s firepower.

The threat is mounting. Beijing has in recent years shifted the security terrain in its favor in the areas around China. In the South China Sea, it has built artificial islands and fortified them with military installations to assert control over the strategic waterway and deny the U.S. Navy freedom to roam.

Decades of ever bigger military budgets, including a 7% boost in spending this year, have improved the lethality of China’s air force, missiles and submarines, and better training has created a more modern force from what was once a military of rural recruits. China is developing weapons and other capabilities to destroy an opponent’s satellites, the Pentagon says, and its cyberhacking presents a threat to infrastructure.

The CIA said President Xi Jinping has set 2027 as a deadline for the Chinese military to be ready to carry out a Taiwan invasion, though it said Mr. Xi and the military have doubts whether Beijing could currently do so.

Structures on the artificial island in Cuarteron Reef in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, shown in October, part of China’s effort to control the strategic waters.

PHOTO: EZRA ACAYAN/GETTY IMAGES

Chinese military vehicles carrying the DF-17 hypersonic weapon system in a parade in Beijing in 2019.

PHOTO: XINHUA/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK

A China in control of the South China Sea and Taiwan would hold sway over waters through which trillions of dollars in trade passes each year. It would also command supplies of advanced semiconductors, threaten the security of U.S. allies such as Japan and challenge American pre-eminence in a part of the world it has dominated since World War II.

In its efforts to meet the new challenge, the Pentagon has expanded its access to bases in the Philippines and Japan while shrinking the U.S. military footprint in the Middle East. New tactics have been devised to disperse U.S. forces and make them less of an inviting target for China’s increasingly powerful missiles.

The Pentagon’s annual budget for research and development has been boosted to $140 billion—an all time high. The military is pursuing cutting-edge technology it hopes will enable the military services to share targeting data instantaneously so that U.S. air, land, sea and space forces, operating over thousands of miles, can act in unison, a current challenge.

Many of the cutting-edge weapons systems the Pentagon believes will tilt the battlefield in its favor won’t be ready until the 2030s, raising the risk that China may be tempted to act before the U.S. effort bears fruit.

A conflict in the Western Pacific might also give Russia’s military, which has been badly battered in Ukraine, the confidence to carry out President Vladimir Putin’s goals of reviving Russian power in what it believes to be its traditional sphere of influence in Central and Eastern Europe.

“This is a massive problem to dig out of,” said Eric Wesley, a retired Army lieutenant general who served as the deputy commanding general of the Army Futures Command, which oversees that service’s transformation. “We are in a vulnerable period where we are pursuing this deterrence capability and their time is running out.”

Chris Meagher, a top Pentagon spokesman, said that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was directly overseeing the implementation of the U.S. defense strategy to counter China and that the department’s forthcoming spending request would advance the effort.

“The challenge posed by the PRC is real, but this Department is tackling it in historic ways with urgency and confidence,” he said, referring to the People’s Republic of China. “Our strategy drove last year’s budget request and is driving our soon-to-be released budget, which will go even further in matching resources to our strategy. We are continuing our work developing new operational concepts, deploying cutting-edge capabilities, and making investments now and for the long term to meet the challenges we face.”

The Stratolaunch Roc, which is designed to launch hypersonic test vehicles, during a flight in October in Mojave, Calif.

PHOTO: PHILIP CHEUNG FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

F-35 fighter jets, which have advanced stealth capability, at a training exercise at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., in 2019.

PHOTO: ROGER KISBY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Unassailable U.S.

A little more than a generation ago, the U.S. looked unassailable. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the rapid success of the U.S.-led Desert Storm campaign to evict Saddam Hussein’s troops from Kuwait in 1991 demonstrated Washington’s ability to wage a new type of war, using precision-guided munitions and stealth technology to vanquish regional dangers. President George H.W. Bush declared a “new world order” with the U.S. as its anchor.

In 1995, Beijing began a series of aggressive military exercises near Taiwan to underscore its objections to a visit to the U.S. by Taiwan’s president. The Clinton administration responded with the largest display of American military might in Asia since the Vietnam War, sending U.S. ships through the Taiwan Strait and positioning two aircraft carrier battle groups in the region the following year.

Strategists at the Pentagon’s in-house think tank nonetheless saw trouble ahead.

By using long-range missiles, antisatellite weapons and electronic warfare, Beijing could turn the tables on Washington by attacking the bases and ports the U.S. relied on in the western Pacific to project power, potentially keeping the Americans far from the conflict.

Guided by his defense advisers, candidate George W. Bush proposed to skip a generation of technology and move to advanced tools, such as long-range weapons, sensors and data-sharing technology to counter Beijing’s “anti-access” strategy.

Then the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks changed the threat, and the Pentagon’s mission.

“There was a moment when we thought ‘Huzzah, the transformation of the force is actually going to happen,’ ” recalled Jeff McKitrick, who worked at the Pentagon think tank and is now a researcher with the Institute for Defense Analyses, a Pentagon-supported research center. “Then 9/11 came and everybody focused like a laser beam on the global war on terror.”

U.S. Army soldiers from the 10th Mountain and the 101st Airborne units disembark from a Chinook helicopter in 2002 at Bagram airfield in Afghanistan.

PHOTO: JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES

U.S. Marines in an M1A1 tank from Task Force Tarawa in 2003 near Al Kut, Iraq.

PHOTO: JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES

Soon this became the mission of Gen. Hinote, then a major, as well. He was known by the call sign “Q,” after the fictional character in the James Bond stories who runs the spy service’s gadget lab, because of his skill in programming the radars and sensors of fighter jets. At the outset of the 2003 Iraq war, he was assigned to a squadron of “stealthy” F-117 fighter jets.

He helped plan the operation to strike at military targets in Baghdad and disable the air defenses of Saddam Hussein’s forces. “We had a really good plan for taking down the Iraqi communications infrastructure, leadership infrastructure and what we thought were the weapons of mass destruction,” he said. “China learned from that.”

As the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dragged on, the top U.S. Air Force officer in Japan warned that China’s air defenses were becoming impenetrable to all but the most sophisticated U.S. fighters.

In 2009, Robert Gates, defense secretary from 2006 to 2011, limited the procurement of F-22 fighter jets to 187 to free up funds for other weapons programs.

The Air Force’s Air Combat Command said at the time that would leave the service nearly 200 short of the premier air-to-air fighter jets it previously sought for potential conflicts with China and Russia. Such air-to-air combat experience was limited: The June 2017 shootdown of a Syrian Su-22 jet by a Navy FA/18 over Syria was the first time a U.S. fighter pilot had blasted an enemy plane out of the sky since 1999.

Mr. Gates said he sought to hedge against future threats while also focusing on the war on terror. “My concern as secretary was all about balance,” he said, in an email response to questions. “The need to prepare for future potential large-scale conflict with Russia and China while properly funding the long-term ability to deal with smaller-scale conflicts we were most likely to face in the future.”

Mr. Gates said both Presidents Bush and Obama saw cooperation with China as possible and thought a conflict “was low probability.” He said that changed when Mr. Xi came to power in 2013. The Chinese president has backed a stronger Chinese military and a more assertive foreign posture as part of his campaign to expand Beijing’s global clout.

In 2011, Congress and the White House agreed to multiyear spending limits known as sequestration to curb the federal deficit. The move forced a series of across-the-board cuts and hampered initiatives to transform the military, including on artificial intelligence, robotics, autonomous systems and advanced manufacturing.

“With the grinding wars in the Middle East taking $60 billion to $70 billion a year, and service chiefs worried first and foremost about declines in force readiness, we simply didn’t have the necessary resources to cover down on all of the more advanced threats like hypersonics,” said former Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work. “The U.S. responses to China and Russia’s technical challenges were therefore delayed—and when it did respond, its choices were constrained by sequestration.”

Taiwan in focusIn 2018, the Pentagon issued a National Defense Strategy saying the U.S. would prepare for a new world of “great power competition.”

Deterring China from invading Taiwan, a longstanding U.S. partner that Beijing claims as Chinese territory, defines the challenge. Allowing China to take Taiwan, just 100 miles from the Chinese mainland, and then trying to wrest it back, Pentagon officials concluded, would involve the U.S. in a protracted fight and might spur China to escalate to nuclear weapons. The U.S. needed to demonstrate it could prevent Beijing from seizing the island in the first place—a requirement included in the Biden administration’s National Defense Strategy issued in 2022.

Chinese People’s Liberation Army soldiers during training in Kashgar, northwestern China, in 2021.

PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Joint exercises of warships of the Russian Pacific Fleet and the Chinese navy held in the East China Sea in December.

PHOTO: RUSSIAN DEFENCE MINISTRY PRESS/TASS/ZUMA PRESS

In 2019, Gen. Hinote, using his new authority in the Air Force’s future war office, organized another classified wargame. The simulation postulated a Chinese attack on Taiwan and assessed how two U.S. forces might fare in contesting it: an “outside force” made up entirely of long-range U.S. bombers and missiles, and an “inside force” of aircraft, ships and troops that would fight within the range of Chinese planes and missiles.

The conclusion was that neither approach would succeed on its own.

“We needed a mix to protect Taiwan and Japan,” he said. “Ever since, we have been gaming, simulating and experimenting to determine that mix.”

A more recent wargame conducted by the Pentagon’s Joint Staff showed the U.S. could stymie a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and force a stalemate if the conflict was fought later in the decade, although high casualties on both sides would result. That simulation assumed that the U.S. would have the benefit of new weapons, tactics and military deployments that are currently being planned at the Pentagon.

To prepare for the future, the Marine Corps has gotten rid of its tanks and is reinventing itself as a naval infantry force that would attack Chinese ships from small islands in the western Pacific. A new Marine littoral regiment, which operates close to the shore and will be equipped with anti-ship missiles, is to be based in Okinawa by 2025.

In an exercise in May 2021, the Marines lugged a 30,000-pound Himars missile launcher across a choppy sea to the Alaska shoreline, loaded it into a C-130 transport plane and flew it to a base in the wilderness. The purpose was to rehearse the sort of tactics the Marines would employ on islands in the western Pacific against the Chinese navy.

The Army, which saw its electronic warfare, short-range air defense and engineering capabilities atrophy amid budget pressures and the previous decades’ wars, is moving to develop a new generation of weapons systems that can strike targets at much longer ranges. It is planning to deploy a new hypersonic missile in the fall though its utility against Chinese forces will depend on securing basing rights in the Pacific.

The Navy, which is confronting budget pressures, personnel shortages and limits to American shipbuilding capacity, is currently planning to expand its fleet to at least 355 crewed ships, a size still smaller than China’s current navy. In the near term, the U.S. will have around 290 ships.

Military personnel secured a Himars rocket launcher into an aircraft during a training exercise at Fort Greely, Alaska, in 2021.

PHOTO: ASH ADAMS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Military personnel in training at Fort Greely in 2021.

PHOTO: ASH ADAMS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The Air Force, which has one of the oldest and smallest inventory of aircraft in its 75-year history, has rolled out the first B-21 bomber and is pursuing the capability to pair piloted warplanes with fleets of drones. It has tested a new hypersonic missile that will be fired from fighter aircraft, and developed plans to disperse its planes among a wider range of bases in the Pacific.

Decades-old B-52s are being refurbished to fill out the bomber fleet. The service has decided to buy the E-7 command aircraft—originally produced by Australia—and is procuring advanced weapons to attack Chinese invasion forces.

At times, the pace has been slower than Gen. Hinote would have liked. “As we began to push for change, we lost most of the budget battles,” he said. “There is more sense of urgency now, but we know how far we have to go.”

The general has pushed to equip cargo planes with cruise missiles to boost allied firepower, the use of high-altitude balloons to carry sensors and electric “flying cars” to carry people and equipment throughout the Pacific island chains—ideas that have led to experiments but so far no procurement decisions.

He thinks a future Air Force could rely more on autonomous, uncrewed aircraft and deploy fewer fighters. “When push comes to shove and you have to decide if you are going to field unmanned vehicles, or keep flying old aircraft, we’ve never made that decision,” he said.

“I think we’ve got a recipe for blunting” a Chinese attack, he said. “I just think you have to reinvent your force to do it.”

Photo Illustration: Adrienne Tong/The Wall Street Journal; Photos: Associated Press; EPA/Shutterstock; U.S. Navy; istock(2).

Design by Andrew Levinson.

Write to Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com

2. U.S. Special Forces Want to Use Deepfakes for Psy-ops

It is the procurement acquisition people that reveal more information about military intent than probably any other. You can't make these documents classified because then business would not be able to compete for the work. And of course the acquisition laws likely require ensuring multiple bids to ensure competition and they must comply with all regulations to ensure all businesses to include small businesses can "compete" for the contracts. I am sure the Chinese (and Russians, Iranians, and even north Koreans) are dissecting these types of documents - which are not unique to USSOCOM.

And as an editorial comment - we would be better served by spending more effort on overt PSYOP/influence operations rather than pursuing the discrete type of operation that likely requires a presidential finding. Such operations are necessary but they are not going to achieve the broad long term effects that we need to focus on achieving. Yes our adversaries are doing those type of operations but it does not always require fighting fire with fire. That said, investing in such capabilities can help us counter our enemies. I just want us to invest more in overt PSYOP/influence operations in addition to all the cool guy stuff.

Read this 23 page document to see what USSOCOM is anticipating for future requirements. It is quite revealing. I wonder if anyone in the J2, J3, or J5 reviewed this.

"USSOCOM-BAAST-2020, Amendment 3 FOR TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT AND ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT" https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23696654-us-socom-procurement-document-announcing-desire-to-utilize-deepfakes

U.S. Special Forces Want to Use Deepfakes for Psy-ops

The U.S. government spent years warning deepfakes could destabilize democratic societies.

Sam Biddle

March 6 2023, 12:59 p.m.

The Intercept · by Sam Biddle · March 6, 2023

U.S. Special Operations Command, responsible for some of the country’s most secretive military endeavors, is gearing up to conduct internet propaganda and deception campaigns online using deepfake videos, according to federal contracting documents reviewed by The Intercept.

The plans, which also describe hacking internet-connected devices to eavesdrop in order to assess foreign populations’ susceptibility to propaganda, come at a time of intense global debate over technologically sophisticated “disinformation” campaigns, their effectiveness, and the ethics of their use.

While the U.S. government routinely warns against the risk of deepfakes and is openly working to build tools to counter them, the document from Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, represents a nearly unprecedented instance of the American government — or any government — openly signaling its desire to use the highly controversial technology offensively.

SOCOM’s next generation propaganda aspirations are outlined in a procurement document that lists capabilities it’s seeking for the near future and soliciting pitches from outside parties that believe they’re able to build them.

“When it comes to disinformation, the Pentagon should not be fighting fire with fire,” Chris Meserole, head of the Brookings Institution’s Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative, told The Intercept. “At a time when digital propaganda is on the rise globally, the U.S. should be doing everything it can to strengthen democracy by building support for shared notions of truth and reality. Deepfakes do the opposite. By casting doubt on the credibility of all content and information, whether real or synthetic, they ultimately erode the foundation of democracy itself.”

“When it comes to disinformation, the Pentagon should not be fighting fire with fire.”

Meserole added, “If deepfakes are going to be leveraged for targeted military and intelligence operations, then their use needs to be subject to review and oversight.”

The pitch document, first published by SOCOM’s Directorate of Science and Technology in 2020, established a wish list of next-generation toys for the 21st century special forces commando, a litany of gadgets and futuristic tools that will help the country’s most elite soldiers more effectively hunt and kill their targets using lasers, robots, holographs, and other sophisticated hardware.

Last October, SOCOM quietly released an updated version of its wish list with a new section: “Advanced technologies for use in Military Information Support Operations (MISO),” a Pentagon euphemism for its global propaganda and deception efforts.

The added paragraph spells out SOCOM’s desire to obtain new and improved means of carrying out “influence operations, digital deception, communication disruption, and disinformation campaigns at the tactical edge and operational levels.” SOCOM is seeking “a next generation capability to collect disparate data through public and open source information streams such as social media, local media, etc. to enable MISO to craft and direct influence operations.”

SOCOM typically fights in the shadows, but its public reputation and global footprint loom large. Comprised of the elite units from the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force, SOCOM leads the most sensitive military operations of the world’s most lethal nation.

While American special forces are widely known for splashy exploits like the Navy SEALs’ killing of Osama bin Laden, their history is one of secret missions, subterfuge, sabotage, and disruption campaigns. SOCOM’s “next generation” disinformation ambitions are only part of a long, vast history of deception efforts on the part of the U.S. military and intelligence apparatuses.

Special Operations Command, which is accepting proposals on these capabilities through 2025, did not respond to a request for comment.

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Though Special Operations Command has for years coordinated foreign “influence operations,” these deception campaigns have come under renewed scrutiny. In December, The Intercept reported that SOCOM had convinced Twitter, in violation of its internal policies, to permit a network of sham accounts that spread phony news items of dubious accuracy, including a claim that the Iranian government was stealing the organs of Afghan civilians. Though the Twitter-based propaganda offensive didn’t use of deepfakes, researchers found that Pentagon contractors employed machine learning-generated avatars to lend the fake accounts a degree of realism.

Provocatively, the updated capability document reveals that SOCOM wants to boost these internet deception efforts with the use of “next generation” deepfake videos, an increasingly effective method of generating lifelike digital video forgeries using machine learning. Special forces would use this faked footage to “generate messages and influence operations via non-traditional channels,” the document adds.

While deepfakes have largely remained fodder for entertainment and pornography, the potential for more dire applications is real. At the onset of Russian’s invasion of Ukraine, a shoddy deepfake of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ordering troops to surrender began circulating on social media channels. Ethical considerations aside, the legality of militarized deepfakes in a conflict, which remains an open question, is not addressed in the SOCOM document.

As with foreign governmental “disinformation” campaigns, the U.S. has spent the past several years warning against the potent national security threat represented by deepfakes. The use of deepfakes to deliberately deceive, government authorities warn regularly, could have a deeply destabilizing effect on civilian populations exposed to them.

At the federal level, however, the conversation has revolved exclusively around the menace foreign-made deepfakes might pose to the U.S., not the other way around. Previously reported contracting documents show SOCOM has sought technologies to detect deepfake-augmented internet campaigns, a tactic it now wants to unleash on its own.

Perhaps as provocative as the mention of deepfakes is the section that follows, which notes SOCOM wishes to finely tune its offensive propaganda seemingly by spying on the intended audience through their internet-connected devices.

Described as a “next generation capability to ‘takeover’ Internet of Things (loT) devices for collect [sic] data and information from local populaces to enable breakdown of what messaging might be popular and accepted through sifting of data once received,” the document says that the ability to eavesdrop on propaganda targets “would enable MISO to craft and promote messages that may be more readily received by local populace.” In 2017, WikiLeaks published pilfered CIA files that revealed a roughly similar capability to hijack into household devices.

The technology behind deepfake videos first arrived in 2017, spurred by a combination of cheap, powerful computer hardware and research breakthroughs in machine learning. Deepfake videos are typically made by feeding images of an individual to a computer and using the resultant computerized analysis to essentially paste a highly lifelike simulacrum of that face onto another.

“The capacity for societal harm is certainly there.”

Once the software has been sufficiently trained, its user can crank out realistic fabricated footage of a target saying or doing virtually anything. The technology’s ease of use and increasing accuracy has prompted fears of an era in which the global public can no longer believe what it sees with its own eyes.

Though major social platforms like Facebook have rules against deepfakes, given the inherently fluid and interconnected nature of the internet, Pentagon-disseminated deepfakes might also risk flowing back to the American homeland.

“If it’s a nontraditional media environment, I could imagine the form of manipulation getting pretty far before getting stopped or rebuked by some sort of local authority,” Max Rizzuto, a deepfakes researcher with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, told The Intercept. “The capacity for societal harm is certainly there.”

SOCOM’s interest in deploying deepfake disinformation campaigns follows recent years of international anxiety about forged videos and digital deception from international adversaries. Though there’s scant evidence Russia’s efforts to digitally sway the 2016 election had any meaningful effect, the Pentagon has expressed an interest in redoubling its digital propaganda capabilities, lest it fall behind, with SOCOM taking on a crucial role.

At an April 2018 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. Kenneth Tovo of the Army Special Operations Command assured the assembled senators that American special forces were working to close the propaganda gap.

“We have invested fairly heavily in our psy-op operators,” he said, “developing new capabilities, particularly to deal in the digital space, social media analysis and a variety of different tools that have been fielded by SOCOM that allow us to evaluate the social media space, evaluate the cyber domain, see trend analysis, where opinion is moving, and then how to potentially influence that environment with our own products.”

While military propaganda is as old as war itself, deepfakes have frequently been discussed as a sui generis technological danger, the existence of which poses a civilizational threat.

At a 2018 Senate Intelligence Committee hearing discussing the nomination of William Evanina to run the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said of deepfakes, “I believe this is the next wave of attacks against America and Western democracies.” Evanina, in response, reassured Rubio that the U.S. intelligence community was working to counter the threat of deepfakes.

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The Pentagon is also reportedly hard at work countering the foreign deepfake threat. According to a 2018 news report, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the military’s tech research division, has spent tens of millions of dollars developing methods to detect deepfaked imagery. Similar efforts are underway throughout the Department of Defense.

In 2019, Rubio and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., wrote 11 American internet companies urging them to draft policies to detect and remove deepfake videos. “If the public can no longer trust recorded events or images,” read the letter, “it will have a corrosive impact on our democracy.”

Nestled within the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 was a directive instructing the Pentagon to complete an “intelligence assessment of the threat posed by foreign government and non-state actors creating or using machine-manipulated media (commonly referred to as ‘deep fakes’),” including “how such media has been used or might be used to conduct information warfare.”

Just a couple years later, American special forces seem to be gearing up to conduct the very same.

“It’s a dangerous technology,” said Rizzuto, the Atlantic Council researcher.

“You can’t moderate this tech the way we approach other sorts of content on the internet,” he said. “Deepfakes as a technology have more in common with conversations around nuclear nonproliferation.”

The Intercept · by Sam Biddle · March 6, 2023

3. China’s Ukraine Peace Plan Is Actually About Taiwan

Excerpts:

All told, Beijing rightly understands that any plan to retake Taiwan—or at least any plan that carries the least risk—is predicated upon manifesting and subsequently sustaining the 12 conditions found in its Ukraine peace plan. In recent years, Washington has made tremendous strides strengthening its alliance network in the Indo-Pacific, as well as better aligning and boosting regional partner capability. Efforts are also underway to undercut China’s supply chain dominance in certain sectors, as well as to dent Beijing’s ability to leverage its grip on critical minerals to advance its foreign policy objectives.

But to undermine China’s other strategic pillars, much work remains. The top priority is for Western countries, led by the United States, to accelerate the difficult task of defining and telegraphing plans to institute a robust sanctions regime with automatic triggers should China mobilize its forces for an invasion or proceed with one. Democracies must also selectively deepen their trade and industrial ties to Taiwan, in effect reducing Taiwan’s economic reliance on China, while also wielding their influence to bolster Taiwan’s legal participation in international organizations. Last, and most controversially, Western nations must consider weaponizing China’s core vulnerability—and one of its other peace plan principles—by threatening to target its heavy reliance on foreign countries for food, arguably the commodity most tied to China’s political stability and most likely to seed doubt into Xi’s invasion calculus.

As Putin learned the hard way, waging a war on faulty assumptions can mean the difference between victory and stalemate. Undermining Xi’s assumptions regarding a potential showdown over Taiwan may just be the best way to avoid one altogether.

China’s Ukraine Peace Plan Is Actually About Taiwan

Beijing’s phony proposal lays bare its conditions for winning an East Asian war.

By Craig Singleton, a senior China fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Foreign Policy · by Craig Singleton · March 6, 2023

After twelve grinding months, China appears no more capable of influencing the outcome of Russia’s war in Ukraine than it was at the conflict’s inception. Largely reduced to spectator status, Beijing’s primary role has been to provide Moscow with a financial lifeline by ramping up purchases of heavily discounted Russian crude oil and coal, while reaping an unexpected windfall from surging exports to Russia. But these and other Chinese half-measures appear aimed, for now, at ensuring Russia has what it needs to sustain its wartime economy—not actually win the war.

In a similar twist, China’s 12-point peace plan for Ukraine is not geared toward restoring peace in Europe. Indeed, China’s dead-on-arrival missive has little to do with ending the war in Ukraine and everything to do with setting the conditions to win a future war over Taiwan. Put differently, China recognizes the causes of Russia’s failure in Ukraine are the same that threaten its eventual reunification plans.

Read correctly, China’s phony peace proposal could also serve as the basis for a Western-led roadmap to prevent an Indo-Pacific war from breaking out in the first place.

Clearly, Beijing’s position paper, titled “The Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis,” reflects China’s concerns about current battlefield conditions in Europe. To date, transatlantic resolve to support Ukraine remains more or less resolute, even as Western democracies grapple with absorbing the costs associated with being cut off from Russian energy and other raw materials. Even though more Russian soldiers have perished in Ukraine than during all Russian wars combined since World War II, Russian President Vladimir Putin remains entirely too confident he can still defeat Ukraine and altogether too stubborn to change course. Meanwhile, China continues to vacillate in providing lethal assistance to Russia, a decision made more complicated now that Washington has leaked details on Beijing’s internal deliberations.

No doubt, Chinese leader Xi Jinping appears powerless to pull Putin back from the brink—not that Xi has demonstrated any inclination to do so. At the same time, China’s refusal to condemn Russia’s invasion has ravaged its credibility across Europe, including in countries such as Austria, Poland, and Croatia, where Beijing has historically enjoyed positive relations. And China’s sunk costs are not purely reputational but increasingly economic. With the war weighing on global growth, debt defaults in the developing world loom, with Beijing holding many of those loans. Economic uncertainty also threatens to depress worldwide demand for Chinese exports just as Beijing’s attempts to stimulate domestic consumer spending—the key to re-igniting China’s recovery and revamping the country’s broken growth model—have fallen flat.

Cue Beijing’s peace plan, both a masterstroke at misdirection as well as a not-so-subtle admission that Western unity, sanctions, supply chain instability, and potential grain disruption could derail China’s Indo-Pacific revisionism.

Sure, China’s diplomatic gambit was immediately disavowed as a viable path to peace in Ukraine in Washington, Brussels, Kyiv, and elsewhere. But read more carefully, Beijing’s proposal lays bare the rhetorical and legal scaffolding it intends to erect if and when Xi decides to forcefully retake Taiwan. If last August’s marathon of military maneuvers around the island revealed the attack vectors China likely intends to prosecute during an all-out amphibious assault on Taiwan, the laundry list of conditions embodied in the peace plan reveals how China intends to complicate Western attempts to replicate the Ukraine playbook during a future contingency.

Central to China’s peace plan are demands that Western countries abandon their “Cold War mentality” and avoid “bloc confrontation”—phrases that are code for NATO’s alliance system and Beijing’s belief that Kyiv should not receive any additional Western military assistance. China’s crack at military de-escalation masks its real motive: It would like Russia to prevail over Ukraine in the absence of continued U.S. and European support. That same preferred balance of power applies in a Taiwan contingency, too. In a head-to-head match-up between China and Taiwan, China wins handily. If Taiwan, like Ukraine, can draw on extended external military equipment, training, and real-time intelligence support, all bets are off. And so, Beijing remains focused on degrading the ability of international actors to inject strategic risk into Chinese decision-making, as well as on exploiting cleavages among U.S. allies.

Just as glaring is the plan’s outright rejection of unilateral sanctions, which China views as violating international law. Instead, China prefers measures be debated multilaterally by the U.N. Security Council, where Beijing and Moscow wield vetoes. Undoubtedly, the U.S. and European Union-led sanctions regime on Russia has exacerbated Beijing’s dread that it, too, could someday be economically hobbled. But whereas Russia turned to economically more powerful China for support, Beijing would largely be on its own if the situation were reversed. That stark realization undergirds China’s intensifying self-sufficiency push, which is aimed at sanctions-proofing its economy. Those measures include establishing a yuan-based commodities trading scheme and developing the Cross-Border Interbank Payments System, augmented by the digital yuan, to enable sanctioned entities to dodge SWIFT, the Western-controlled global payments network.

That same fear of sanctions factors into the plan’s push to “keep industrial and supply chains stable.” The timidity of Chinese firms—large and small, state-backed and ostensibly private—to cross the sanctions threshold suggests China’s campaign to inoculate itself from Western export controls remains a work very much in progress. Case in point: China’s meek response to U.S. semiconductor restrictions. Inflicting proportionate pain on the United States, Beijing worries, could be self-defeating given China’s dependence on Western markets and technology. Russia clearly fell victim to a similar vulnerability gap. In binding itself to global value chains in ways that Russia never could, Beijing hopes to exercise leverage over Western deliberations regarding Taiwan, rather than the other way around.

The plan has two final priorities: “ceasing hostilities” and “respecting the sovereignty of all countries.” The former reflects Beijing’s understanding that Russian casualty counts are unsustainable and that Moscow must regroup its forces. As for the latter, China has struggled to rationalize how Russia’s breach of Ukraine’s borders does not infringe upon Kyiv’s sovereignty. But that is largely irrelevant to Beijing’s situation, since China believes Taiwan enjoys neither borders nor sovereignty. And, at least as far as international law is concerned, China’s supposition stands strong. Taiwan’s arbitrary exclusion from the U.N. system, Western adherence to the “one-China” myth, and Taipei’s dwindling recognition network ensure that, unlike Ukraine, Taiwan’s international legal recourse could be limited following an invasion.

All told, Beijing rightly understands that any plan to retake Taiwan—or at least any plan that carries the least risk—is predicated upon manifesting and subsequently sustaining the 12 conditions found in its Ukraine peace plan. In recent years, Washington has made tremendous strides strengthening its alliance network in the Indo-Pacific, as well as better aligning and boosting regional partner capability. Efforts are also underway to undercut China’s supply chain dominance in certain sectors, as well as to dent Beijing’s ability to leverage its grip on critical minerals to advance its foreign policy objectives.

But to undermine China’s other strategic pillars, much work remains. The top priority is for Western countries, led by the United States, to accelerate the difficult task of defining and telegraphing plans to institute a robust sanctions regime with automatic triggers should China mobilize its forces for an invasion or proceed with one. Democracies must also selectively deepen their trade and industrial ties to Taiwan, in effect reducing Taiwan’s economic reliance on China, while also wielding their influence to bolster Taiwan’s legal participation in international organizations. Last, and most controversially, Western nations must consider weaponizing China’s core vulnerability—and one of its other peace plan principles—by threatening to target its heavy reliance on foreign countries for food, arguably the commodity most tied to China’s political stability and most likely to seed doubt into Xi’s invasion calculus.

As Putin learned the hard way, waging a war on faulty assumptions can mean the difference between victory and stalemate. Undermining Xi’s assumptions regarding a potential showdown over Taiwan may just be the best way to avoid one altogether.

Foreign Policy · by Craig Singleton · March 6, 2023

4. Russia may be close to capturing Bakhmut. But a victory could come at a heavy cost

Russia may be close to capturing Bakhmut. But a victory could come at a heavy cost | CNN

CNN · by Tim Lister · March 6, 2023

CNN —

For the first time in eight months, the Russians are on the cusp of taking a Ukrainian city, albeit a small one already abandoned by more than 90% of its prewar population.

Ukrainian defenses in and around the eastern city of Bakhmut are being squeezed by a combination of intense artillery, mortar fire, and airstrikes and a substantial commitment of ground forces, both Russian regulars and fighters of the Wagner private military company.

If and when Bakhmut falls, it may be tempting to ask whether Russian forces are improving, learning from the catalog of mistakes they have made so far in this conflict and finally exploiting their superiority in numbers and firepower.

The answer: probably not.

Mick Ryan, a former Australian general and author of the WarInTheFuture newsletter, says “the Ukrainian Armed Forces might decide that they have achieved all they can by remaining in their defensive locations around Bakhmut, and that force preservation for the battles that follow is more important.”

But a Ukrainian withdrawal does not equal disaster if carried out in an orderly way. “It should be treated as a routine tactic rather than a harbinger of disaster,” Ryan says.

The Ukrainians have used Bakhmut to inflict massive losses on the attacking force: by some estimates at a ratio of 7:1. There comes a moment when it is smarter to withdraw than suffer growing losses and the damaging blow to morale of seeing the surrender of hundreds and maybe thousands of surrounded Ukrainian soldiers.

For the Ukrainians judging that moment is critical.

But for the Russians, taking Bakhmut would not alter the fundamental shortcomings in their campaign.

Barrage fire

The battle for Bakhmut does suggest to some extent the Russians are changing their way of warfare, or at least trying to do so.

They still rely on massive barrages of indirect fire (artillery and howitzers, rockets, aerial bombardment) to pulverize defensive positions. This was the tactic in the cities of Mariupol, Severodonetsk and Lysychansk last year. In short: leave nothing standing that can be defended.

To recall the words of the Stalin-era Marshal Georgy Zhukov, “The longer the battle lasts the more force we’ll have to use.”

But such persistent fire demands an efficient logistics chain. Russian forces still struggle on that count.

A general view shows buildings damaged by a Russian military strike, amid their attack on Ukraine, in the frontline city of Bakhmut, in Donetsk region, Ukraine February 27, 2023. REUTERS/Alex Babenko

Alex Babenko/Reuters

Russian fighters are edging into the city of Bakhmut. Here's what you need to know

For sure, the end game in Mariupol and other cities taken last year ultimately involved men advancing street by street. But they were rarely Russian regulars, more often Chechen units, militia from the self-declared Luhansk and Donetsk Republics, and small numbers of Wagner operatives.

And frequently they were moving into territory already abandoned.

The campaign to take Soledar in January and now nearby Bakhmut has been out of the same playbook but with one notable and gruesome exception: the waves of infantry recruited by Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group sent to flood Ukrainian defenses.

Prigozhin has acted unilaterally to shame the Russian military and burnish his own reputation. Wagner fighters taken prisoner by the Ukrainians told CNN they had next to no coordination with regular Russian forces, except for artillery support, as they were sent forward in their hundreds and thousands into the Ukrainian line of fire.

Prigozhin bragged last week that if Wagner left Bakhmut, the front would fall.

The Russians have inflicted massive fire on Bakhmut and destroyed much of the city, from which 90% of the population has fled.

CNN

There are also signs that the Russians have used more infantry in their unsuccessful efforts to advance into Vuhledar, again with heavy losses.

It’s as if the Russians are bolting on rather than integrating a new dimension to their battle order: overwhelm Ukrainian defenses with wave after wave of cannon fodder – and accept casualty rates of up to 80% in the process.

Such a devastating percentage of casualties is unsustainable along front lines extending thousands of kilometers. To some analysts, such losses mean “the conditions are already present for a large-scale Russian military mutiny.”

Bakhmut has become an obsession for the Russians in the absence of progress elsewhere, far beyond any strategic rationale. Anxious that Prigozhin was taking the bouquets while it was taking the brickbats, the Russian Defense Ministry started pouring more forces into the area.

But the focus on Bakhmut may have come at a cost to Russian operations elsewhere. Rather than a triumph of Russian generalship, the grinding campaign to take Bakhmut, first attacked some 10 months ago, illustrates the desperate need for a “win” – any win – regardless of the broader battlefield.

That may explain why Ukrainian forces have been ordered to hold the line. Volodymyr Nazarenko, a deputy commander in the National Guard of Ukraine, said last week the Russians “take no account of their losses in trying to take the city by assault. The task of our forces in Bakhmut is to inflict as many losses on the enemy as possible. Every meter of Ukrainian land costs hundreds of lives to the enemy.”

Ukrainian servicemen fire a 105mm Howitzer towards Russian positions near the city of Bakhmut, on March 4, 2023.

Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images

Ukrainian service members ride atop of a tank outside Bakhmut, on March 4, 2023.

Oleksandr Ratushniak/Reuters

‘Battlefield leadership attrition’

Russia’s mobilization last autumn, recruiting some 300,000 men into uniform, provided a pool of foot soldiers and helped reconstitute units that had suffered heavy losses. At the same time, Prigozhin was scouring Russian prisons and converting his Wagner forces into the shock troops of the campaign.

Ukrainian commanders knew they would soon face another onslaught.

But according to the Modern War Institute at West Point, “Russia has been unable to prove it can effectively integrate new forces into damaged formations or build cohesive teams from ad hoc groupings of scattered unit remnants.”

Russia is now “attempting to fight a costly, prolonged conflict with a pickup team of replacements while suffering from severe battlefield leadership attrition,” the Institute assesses.

But there are more systemic issues.

The Ukraine conflict has seen Russian forces gradually trying to move away from reliance on Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs), combined arms formations that have proved ill-equipped for the Ukrainian conflict. Their Achilles heel: a lack of infantry and reconnaissance.

The lack of each within BTGs in the advance toward Kyiv a year ago was one of the reasons the campaign stuttered and failed. Russian forces were vulnerable to ambush.

That vulnerability has been aggravated by an ingrained culture that values obedience over initiative.

In the words of a recent study by the European Council on Foreign Relations, “The inadequate training and incompetence of Russian military personnel – combined with the strict hierarchies in which they operated, which left officers incapable of acting on their own initiative – meant that they were unable to quickly coordinate advances deep into enemy territory.”

As Rob Johnson wrote in the US Army War College Quarterly: “Basic battle skills (such as alertness, logistics management, and moving tactically across the terrain to avoid casualties) were substandard, and evidence suggests a significant lack of discipline.”

Such deficiencies are not cured overnight. And retooling formations and structures in the midst of fighting a war is not ideal, but even less so when there is a shortage of competent mid-level commanders. The loss of colonels and lieutenant colonels adds to Russian troubles.

A Ukrainian APC drives towards frontline positions near Bakhmut on Saturday, March 4.

Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

Soldiers from a Ukrainian assault brigade enter a command bunker while waiting for orders to fire a British-made L118 105mm Howitzers on Russian trenches on March 4, 2023 near Bakhmut.

John Moore/Getty Images

Russia “has responded to battlefield struggles in Ukraine by turning to its past model of fielding a large conscript force,” says the Modern War Institute. “In some ways this mirrors the tension between Russia’s pursuit of a technologically sophisticated way of war and its longstanding bias for simple, rugged mass.”

That rugged mass has certainly inflicted severe losses on Ukrainian units in the past few months, and some Ukrainian commanders have questioned the wisdom of clinging on to both Soledar and Bakhmut.

But even if the Russian flag is raised over the ruins of Bakhmut, it may turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory.

As Mick Ryan writes: “If the Russians do capture Bakhmut, they are seizing rubble. It is a town with minimal strategic importance, with almost no remaining infrastructure to support an occupying force. That the Russians have invested so much in its capture speaks volumes about their poor strategy in this war.”

On top of that, they have exhausted men and materiel that might have been badly needed as and when the Ukrainians eye counteroffensives in the months to come.

CNN · by Tim Lister · March 6, 2023

5. Wagner chief issues ultimatum to Putin as he threatens to let 'frontline collapse'

Wagner chief issues ultimatum to Putin as he threatens to let 'frontline collapse'

The chief of the Wagner Group has threatened Vladimir Putin with an ultimatum this evening, amid signs that a crisis could soon erupt inside the Kremlin.

By OLI SMITH

22:18, Sun, Mar 5, 2023 | UPDATED: 08:23, Mon, Mar 6, 2023

Express · by Oli Smith · March 5, 2023

Ukraine: Prigozhin says Bakhmut is 'surrounded' by Wagner

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The leader of the Wagner Group has demanded that the Russian military send his mercenary troops ammunition immediately. Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder and leader, who is on the frontline in the fight for Bakhmut, issued the demand under a veiled ultimatum. He warned that if his troops did not receive any more ammunition, they would retreat and the entire Russian frontline would collapse.

The threat was delivered in a four-minute video message recorded Sunday night near Bakhmut.

Mr Prigozhin said the retreat of mercenaries from Bakhmut due to "ammunition shortage" would lead to the collapse of the front up to the Russian border "or even further," adding Crimea would also fall to Ukraine.

The Wagner chief said: “If Wagner retreats from Bakhmut now, the whole front will collapse.

"The situation will be unpleasant for all military formations protecting Russia’s interests."

The threat was delivered in a four-minute video message recorded Sunday night (Image: GETTY)

'Putin's chef' and the chilling story of the ruthless Wagner Group

The hire-to-fight mercenary organisation first emerged in 2014 and has since been spotted in some of the world's bloodiest conflicts and civil wars. But what do we know about the Wagner Group and its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin?

Find out more HERE.

He said claimed that the Russian army would be “forced to stabilise the front” while “Crimea falls".

The Wagner Chief suggested that the Russian military brass was trying to "set up" his forces to be the scapegoats for a Russian defeat in Ukraine.

He said: "What if they want to set us up and say we are villains, and that’s why we aren’t given ammo and weapons and allowed to reinforce personnel, including convicts?”

Hitting out at Russia's regular army, Mr Prigozhin described his mercenaries as the “cement” holding the whole war effort together.

Russia is thought to have lost more than one hundred thousand soldiers in Ukraine (Image: Express.co.uk)

The mercenary boss is on the frontline in the fight for Bakhmut (Image: TELEGRAM)

Ukraine: Wagner Group defeat army unit named after Boris Johnson

He said: “Wagner is the cement. We are drawing the entire Ukrainian army on ourselves, breaking them and destroying them.”

The threatening video message comes just a day after Mr Prigozhin boasted that Wagner was on the brink of victory in Bakhmut.

The Wagner boss has increasingly spoken out against the Russian military elite in recent months.

DON'T MISS:

Intense fighting continues to reign in and around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut (Image: GETTY)

These measures would reduce the Wagner Group, and are cheaper than the hardware we send to kill them. Those who think international law can curb mercenarism are unrealistic. Even if we had solid laws (which we do not), who will go into Ukraine and arrest all those mercenaries? Not the UN or NATO. Also, mercenaries can shoot law enforcement dead. The market for force resists arrest, which is why mercenaries are the second oldest profession. Now they are back, and we must re-learn strategies to fight this unique form of warfare.

How to Defeat Russia's Mercenaries

SEAN MCFATE , EDUCATOR AND AUTHOR

ON 3/6/23 AT 7:22 AM EST

Newsweek · by Mark Davis · March 6, 2023

A year into Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the most striking yet least understood feature of the conflict is the return of mercenary armies to modern warfare. The last time Europe used them in combat, George Washington fought them in New Jersey. Now they are back. The Wagner Group numbers about 50,000 and takes whole towns like Soledar, as if it were antiquity. Chechen charismatic leader Ramzan Kadyrov says he is thinking of forming his own Muslim version of Wagner. I was a mercenary, or rather a "private military contractor" (euphemism of choice), and occasionally speak with members of the Wagner Group. While their atrocities are well known, the dangerous trend they represent is less understood. Privatizing war distorts warfare in ways four-star generals do not comprehend. But a clever strategist can exploit these distortions for victory. Below are three ancient stratagems to win against mercenaries drawn from history that could turn the tide of the war for Ukraine.

First Stratagem: When conflict is commoditized, then the logic of the marketplace and strategies of the souk apply to war. Nicolo Machiavelli wrote in The Prince that mercenaries are "faithless," and he ought to know. His Florence lost to smaller Pisa in 1506, when the latter bribed 10 of Florence's mercenary captains to defect in battle. Mercenary loyalty is for rent. In my conversations with Wagner mercenaries, no one is happy there. They are cannon fodder and know it, and we can exploit this. As the war has evolved, so has Wagner, splitting into two camps. The "old guard" was recruited before the invasion from professional military units across the former Soviet Union. They are not all Russian. The "new guard" were recently dumped out of prisons. Wagner Group is an uncomfortable mix of both.

A man wearing military camouflage stands at the entrance of the PMC Wagner Center in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on Nov. 4. OLGA MALTSEVA/AFP via Getty Images

Let's bribe Wagner mercenaries to exit Ukraine. The old guard will leave Russia behind for safer, more lucrative contracts in the Middle East or Africa, and the international community can facilitate it by finding non-lethal contracts defending infrastructure. It is not ideal, but mercenary survivors will seek new contracts anyway, and this method allows us to remove them from Ukraine sooner and closely monitor them, like parolees. Inversely, no one will hire the new guard because they are dangerous no-skill convicts. However, they will happily defect to Ukraine if promised not to be returned to Wagner in a prisoner swap. Wagner kills defectors by gruesome sledgehammer. The West can fund Wagner Group prison camps in Ukraine or elsewhere, where they can safely wait out the war. It would thin the ranks more quickly, cheaply, and humanely than M1 tanks.

Second Stratagem: We think of soldiers as wives and mercenaries as prostitutes, who turn love into a transaction, and this creates friction in the force. During the Middle Ages, knights and mercenaries despised one another as an affront to each's warrior ethos. When they fought, they rarely took prisoners, unless they could get ransoms for highborns (aristocratic mercenary captains were common). In 1209, Christian knights and papal mercenaries took the French city of Béziers, and then a dispute broke out over booty. The knights claimed it was righteously theirs, and chased the soldiers of fortune away. Outraged, the mercenaries burned down the city, loot and all.

Public and private sector soldiers dislike each other by nature, and it can be used against them in Ukraine. When the Wagner Group seized the town of Soledar in January and publicly gloated, Russian military leadership went berserk. It was the first Russian victory in months, and it upstaged the army. The defense ministry reported "Russian troops complete liberation of Soledar," without mentioning mercenaries. Later that day, they issued a "clarifying" statement giving "thanks to the courageous and selfless actions of the volunteers from Wagner." A wily strategist can exacerbate this natural feud by using disinformation to drive a wedge between the two forces, as happened in 1209. Let Wagner and the Russian military work against each other.

Third Stratagem: Private armies can become Praetorian Guards and the businessmen who own them kings. Medieval mercenary captains captured regions and spawned ruling dynasties, such as the Houses of Sforza ("Force") in Milan and Malatesta ("Bad Head") in Rimini. During the Thirty Years War, Count Albrecht von Wallenstein sourced rental regiments to Ferdinand II, the Holy Roman Emperor. As Wallenstein's private army grew, so did his political power. One night in 1634, Wallenstein woke up with a halberd run through his chest, courtesy of the Emperor.

The same situation is brewing in Moscow today, and perhaps can be hastened. Yevgeny Prigozhin is the billionaire oligarch who owns Wagner Group. Prior to the war, Russia's security elite known as the siloviki considered him a useful idiot. Now Wagner's success makes them look inept, while Prigozhin publicly derides them as "a bunch of clowns." Everyone knows what will happen if he threatens Putin: Halberd through the chest. Let's covertly engineer the perception that Prigozhin might use the Wagner Group to seize power and save Mother Russia, inducing Putin to take him out for us. Other oligarchs and siloviki suspect it anyway, and would probably welcome it. Prigozhin's death followed by the proscription of Wagner mercenaries would slash Russian troop strength by 50,000.

These measures would reduce the Wagner Group, and are cheaper than the hardware we send to kill them. Those who think international law can curb mercenarism are unrealistic. Even if we had solid laws (which we do not), who will go into Ukraine and arrest all those mercenaries? Not the UN or NATO. Also, mercenaries can shoot law enforcement dead. The market for force resists arrest, which is why mercenaries are the second oldest profession. Now they are back, and we must re-learn strategies to fight this unique form of warfare.

Sean McFate is a professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School and Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, and author of The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

Newsweek · by Mark Davis · March 6, 2023

7. Letter to Certain Congressional Committees on the Annual Report on the Legal and Policy Frameworks Guiding the United States' Use of Military Force and Related National Security Operations

This does not seem to have received too much attention.

a new term and acronym for me: civilian harm mitigation and response (CHMR) and a civilian protection center of excellence

The 3 page unclassified memo is here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2023-3-1-1081-4623000369_EXT_Unclassified_1264_Annual_Report_for_CY_2022_Tab-B.pdf

Key points of the memo:

- Establish a civilian protection center of excellence to serve as the hub and facilitator for DOD-wide analysis, learning, and training related to civilian harm mitigation and response (CHMR);

- Provide commanders and operators with more information to better understand the civilian environment;

- Incorporate guidance for addressing civilian harm across the full spectrum of armed conflict into doctrine and operation plans so that DOD is prepared to mitigate and respond to civilian harm in any future fight;

- Develop standardized civilian harm operational reporting and data management processes, including the development of a centralized, enterprise-wide data management platform, which will improve how DOD collects, shares, and learns from data related to civilian harm;

- Improve DOD’s ability to assess and respond to civilian harm resulting from DOD operations; • Incorporate CHMR into exercises, training, and professional military education across the joint force; • Incorporate CHMR into security cooperation and operations with allies and partners; and

- Establish a CHMR Steering Committee for the purpose of providing executive-level direction, guidance, and oversight of DOD CHMR, including by driving effective implementation of the CHMR-AP.

Letter to Certain Congressional Committees on the Annual Report on the Legal and Policy Frameworks Guiding the United States' Use of Military Force and Related National Security Operations | The White House

whitehouse.gov · by The White House · March 1, 2023

Dear Mr. Chairman: (Dear Madam Chair:) (Dear Madam Chairwoman:)

In accordance with section 1264 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018 (Public Law 115-91), as amended, 50 U.S.C. 1549(a), I am transmitting the annual report on the legal and policy frameworks guiding the United States’ use of military force and related national security operations.

I am enclosing a copy of the unclassified report, as well as its classified annex.

Sincerely,

JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.

View the unclassified report here.

whitehouse.gov · by The White House · March 1, 2023

8. Opinion | Democrats and Republicans agree on China. That’s a problem.

Excerpts:

The problem today isn’t that Americans are insufficiently concerned about the rise of China. The problem is that they are prey to hysteria and alarmism that could lead the United States into a needless nuclear war. Witness the unhinged reaction when a Chinese surveillance balloon drifted across the continental United States.

Many Americans acted as if Beijing were actually attacking us — rather than surveilling us, something that both the United States and China routinely do with their spy satellites. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) actually claimed that Beijing was trying to send a “message” that the “United States is a once-great superpower that’s … in decline.” In fact, there are indications that the balloon flew over the U.S. mainland only because strong winds blew it off course.

With U.S.-China tensions ratcheting up at a dangerous rate, the select committee could perform a real service by presenting a balanced and nuanced picture of how the United States should deal with China. But that’s not what it is doing. It is engaging in bipartisan alarmism. As one former National Security Council official told me: “This isn’t an evidence-driven exercise to identify America’s long-term interests and how China relates to them. It is a propaganda exercise that Beijing would find easily recognizable.”

Opinion | Democrats and Republicans agree on China. That’s a problem.

The Washington Post · by Max Boot · March 6, 2023

In these ultra-partisan times, pundits often bemoan the decline of bipartisanship. I’ve done so myself. But we should remember that when the two parties agree on an issue, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are right. It could mean they are falling prey to a collective delusion.

In 1964, for example, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorizing military action against North Vietnam. There were only two dissenting votes in the Senate and none in the House. Only later did it become clear that the factual basis of the resolution was fallacious (one of the two supposed North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. destroyers almost certainly did not occur) and that its impact was catastrophic: It would drag the United States into a losing war that left more than 58,000 Americans dead.

Nearly four decades later, in 2002, Congress authorized U.S. military action against Iraq by smaller (but still large) bipartisan majorities (296-133 in the House, 77-23 in the Senate) — setting the United States on the path to another disastrous conflict.

That history is worth keeping in mind lest we become too giddy in celebrating the current bipartisan agreement about the dangers posed by China. That consensus was on display last week in the first hearing of the newly formed House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which had been created by a vote of 365-65.

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Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and ranking minority-party member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) were a model of bipartisan comity. In fact, Krishnamoorthi insisted that Congress must be united because “the CCP wants us to be fractious, partisan and prejudiced.” But while the hearing was bipartisan, it was also disturbingly one-sided.

All four of the witnesses — former national security adviser H.R. McMaster, former deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger, Chinese dissident Tong Yi and business lobbyist Scott Paul — urged the hardest of hard lines against Beijing. Utterly missing were any of the numerous experts in the China-watchers community who would have warned of the risks of reckless confrontation, advocated dialogue with Beijing to reduce tensions and pointed out that there are issues (such as trade, global warming and the North Korean nuclear program) where cooperation with China is in our own interest.

In fact, Gallagher — a moderate by the standards of the House Republican caucus — implied that those who urge a less hawkish approach are Communist dupes: “The CCP has found friends on Wall Street, in Fortune 500 C-suites and on K Street who are ready and willing to oppose efforts to push back,” he said.

Jessica Chen Weiss, a political scientist at Cornell University who is a leading advocate of a more measured policy toward China, told me: “Gallagher has set the stage for anyone who raises questions about U.S. policy to be smeared as a friend of the Chinese Communist Party. … The initial selection of witnesses gives little reason to believe that the committee will invite differing viewpoints.”

The testimony about the threat from China wasn’t so much wrong as it was one-sided and misleading. For example, Krishnamoorthi displayed a chart juxtaposing U.S. manufacturing employment against the U.S. trade deficit with China from 1973 to 2015. “It starts out at roughly 18.8 or 19 million American jobs in manufacturing, and it goes all the way down to about 12.4 million jobs in 2015,” he said, implying that all of those jobs were lost to trade with China.

In fact, lots of other countries with robust manufacturing sectors, including Germany, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and Mexico, have contributed to U.S. job losses. So has automation. Moreover, an analysis in the Harvard Business Review found that while “some U.S. regions lost manufacturing jobs as a result of trade with China in the early 2000s … that trend has ended.”

Completely unmentioned were all the benefits of trade with China. The U.S.-China Business Council notes: “American companies exported $192 billion in goods and services to China in 2021, constituting 7.5 percent of U.S. exports … Exports to China support over 1 million U.S. jobs.” Meanwhile, cheap Chinese exports have fueled U.S. prosperity — and, until recently, with low inflation.

Trying to decouple the U.S. and Chinese economies, as the committee advocates, is undoubtedly necessary for some strategically important commodities, but it will come at a considerable cost. The Tax Foundation estimates that President Donald Trump’s tariffs on China will reduce U.S. gross domestic product by $55.7 billion and cost 173,000 full-time jobs. But anyone who watched the committee hearing would not have heard a peep about such sobering statistics.

Even when it came to China’s military buildup and its increasingly assertive foreign policy — where the threat to U.S. interests is clearer — the committee and its witnesses neglected to mention some important facts. There was much discussion, and appropriately so, of China’s attempts to take over the South China Sea and Taiwan. But no one pointed out that China has been much more cautious in the conduct of its foreign policy than Russia. While President Vladimir Putin has launched several wars since taking power in 2000, China hasn’t done so since its conflict with Vietnam in 1979.

And while it’s true that China is building up its military to enable an invasion of Taiwan, CIA Director William J. Burns cautions that no decision to attack has been made and that war is not “inevitable.” But that balanced assessment went unmentioned amid the committee’s relentless hyping of the Chinese threat.

What was the point of this hearing anyway? “Our goal is to communicate to our colleagues and the American people why the Chinese Communist Party is a threat,” Gallagher said. I think it’s safe to say that the American people have already received that message loud and clear. Americans’ views of China are at the lowest levels ever recorded. In 2022, 82 percent of respondents told the Pew Research Center that they have an unfavorable opinion of China.

The problem today isn’t that Americans are insufficiently concerned about the rise of China. The problem is that they are prey to hysteria and alarmism that could lead the United States into a needless nuclear war. Witness the unhinged reaction when a Chinese surveillance balloon drifted across the continental United States.

Many Americans acted as if Beijing were actually attacking us — rather than surveilling us, something that both the United States and China routinely do with their spy satellites. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) actually claimed that Beijing was trying to send a “message” that the “United States is a once-great superpower that’s … in decline.” In fact, there are indications that the balloon flew over the U.S. mainland only because strong winds blew it off course.

With U.S.-China tensions ratcheting up at a dangerous rate, the select committee could perform a real service by presenting a balanced and nuanced picture of how the United States should deal with China. But that’s not what it is doing. It is engaging in bipartisan alarmism. As one former National Security Council official told me: “This isn’t an evidence-driven exercise to identify America’s long-term interests and how China relates to them. It is a propaganda exercise that Beijing would find easily recognizable.”

The Washington Post · by Max Boot · March 6, 2023

9. Republicans says China is America’s biggest threat, Democrats say Russia

But Max Boot thinks the two parties are aligned on China???

Republicans says China is America’s biggest threat, Democrats say Russia

by Conn Carroll, Commentary Editor March 06, 2023 04:04 PM

Washington Examiner · March 6, 2023

Asked by Gallup to name the nation’s greatest enemy, 50% of Americans volunteered China as their top choice, including 76% of Republicans. Democrats chose Russia as the greatest enemy of the United States. North Korea finished a distant third for respondents from both parties.

This will be the third year in a row that most Americans chose China as America’s greatest enemy. In the history of the poll, only Iran has held the top spot longer, and even then, just 32% chose Iran as the top threat.

SUPPLY-SIDE PROGRESSIVISM HAS A SINGLE WOKE FEMALE PROBLEM

China’s “association with the origin of COVID” appears to be driving the Republican and independent belief that China is the nation’s biggest threat. As recently as 2018, just 11% of all adults thought China was America's greatest enemy. That percentage had already doubled to 22% by 2020 before soaring to 50% this year. Just last week, the Department of Energy joined the FBI in naming a Chinese lab leak as the most likely origin of COVID-19.

Only North Korea has ever topped 50% in this Gallup poll, reaching 51% in 2018 before President Donald Trump temporarily defused tensions with the Hermit Kingdom.

Gallup has only been asking the question since 2000. Most likely, Russia would have been the top response at any time between World War II's end and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Traditionally, it was the Republicans who were most likely to identify Russia as America’s greatest enemy, but that all changed after Hillary Clinton baselessly blamed Russian interference for her 2016 loss to Trump.

As recently as 2018, a majority of Democrats (67%) believed the false claim that "Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump elected." There is no evidence Russia tampered with any votes.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Washington Examiner · March 6, 2023

10. China’s Xi Jinping Takes Rare Direct Aim at U.S. in Speech

China’s Xi Jinping Takes Rare Direct Aim at U.S. in Speech

Leader blames Washington-led ‘containment, encirclement and suppression’ for challenges at home

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-xi-jinping-takes-rare-direct-aim-at-u-s-in-speech-5d8fde1a

By Chun Han WongFollow

, Keith ZhaiFollow

and James T. AreddyFollow

Updated March 6, 2023 6:47 pm ET

Chinese leader Xi Jinping issued an unusually blunt rebuke of U.S. policy on Monday, blaming what he termed a Washington-led campaign to suppress China for recent challenges facing his country.

“Western countries—led by the U.S.—have implemented all-round containment, encirclement and suppression against us, bringing unprecedentedly severe challenges to our country’s development,” Mr. Xi was quoted by state media as saying on Monday.

Mr. Xi’s comments marked an unusual departure for a leader who has generally refrained from directly criticizing the U.S. in public remarks—even as his decadelong leadership has demonstrated a pessimistic view of the bilateral relationship.

The accusation of U.S. suppression of China’s development over the past five years comes as Mr. Xi faces charges from investors that China’s economy has been damaged by his policies, including the emphasis on national security.

The comments were part of a speech to members of China’s top political advisory body during an annual legislative session in Beijing, according to a Chinese-language readout published by the official Xinhua News Agency.

While Mr. Xi has mentioned the U.S. in critical tones during internal speeches, such remarks have often filtered out through subordinates relaying his messages for broader audiences, within the party and beyond. In statements made in public settings or directly reported by state media, Mr. Xi has typically been more measured and vague regarding the U.S. and other Western countries, referring to them as “certain” countries rather than naming them explicitly.

Now by directly accusing the U.S. of seeking containment, a term loaded with Cold War meaning, Mr. Xi appears to be associating himself more closely with nationalist rhetoric—widely used by lower-ranking officials and state media—that attacks Washington, at a time when bilateral tensions continue to simmer over trade, technology, geopolitical influence and discordant views on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The English-language version of Mr. Xi’s speech reported by Xinhua didn’t refer to containment or the U.S. Instead, it quoted him telling fellow officials to “have the courage to fight as the country faces profound and complex changes in both the domestic and international landscape.”

President Biden says the U.S. competes with China but doesn’t want conflict, though Beijing worries that an emphasis in his national-security strategy on historic rivalry between democracies and autocracies is a sign Washington seeks regime change in Beijing. “We’re not looking for a new Cold War,” Mr. Biden said last month.

The escalatory spiral makes it hard to cool tensions but both China and the U.S. have room to tame the rhetoric, Jessica Chen Weiss, a Cornell University professor and former State Department adviser, told an online conference hosted by Foreign Policy magazine on Monday. “The current tit-for-tat spiral serves no one,” she said.

The accusations by Mr. Xi against the U.S., delivered to an audience that includes politically connected businesspeople, appeared in part to be an effort by Mr. Xi to shift blame away from his own policymaking, including tough Covid controls that have weakened the economy and pressure on technology companies that cost the industry some of its dynamism.

Delegates attending the opening legislative session on Sunday.

PHOTO: NG HAN GUAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Chinese leaders often speak in opaque terms but as Mr. Xi continues to consolidate power, he might be searching for new ways to explain the country’s gathering troubles, including on the economy, said Shirley Martey Hargis, a nonresident fellow at the Washington think tank Atlantic Council. “It’s either take the blame or shift it,” she said.

At Monday’s meeting, which included representatives from China’s state-backed national chamber of commerce, Mr. Xi sought to boost confidence within the private sector—a crucial driver of growth and supplier of jobs in the world’s second-largest economy, but also a community shaken by regulatory crackdowns and harsh pandemic lockdowns in recent years.

The Chinese leader insisted that the Communist Party “has always regarded private enterprises and private entrepreneurs as our own people,” and would provide them with support whenever they run into difficulties, Xinhua said.

At the same time, Mr. Xi urged business people to strive for wealth with a sense of responsibility, righteousness and compassion, and to bear in mind his push for “common prosperity”—aimed at redistributing more of China’s wealth, amid concerns that the elite classes had benefited disproportionately from the country’s economic boom.

According to Xinhua, Mr. Xi also defended his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and addressed the growing tensions between China and the West. He also urged the business community to work together with the party to overcome difficulties in an uncertain global environment.

“In the coming period of time, the risks and challenges that we face will only increase and intensify ever more,” Mr. Xi was quoted as saying by Xinhua.

Chinese officials have long warned the U.S. against what they call Cold War thinking, and Mr. Xi appeared to make a similar point in his November summit with President Biden, according to China’s official summary of the meeting. It quoted the Chinese leader as saying, “Suppression and containment will only strengthen the will and boost the morale of the Chinese people.”

House Committee Warns of Beijing’s Threat to U.S. Interests and Values

“You will kill ten of us, we will kill one of you, but in the end, you will tire of it first."

― Ho Chi Minh

Ukraine Signals It Will Keep Battling for Bakhmut to Drain Russia

The New York Times · by Andrew E. Kramer · March 6, 2023

Gradual Russian advances and high Ukrainian casualties have fueled talk of a retreat from the eastern city, but Ukrainians say Russian losses are worse, a reason to keep them fighting.

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Ukrainian soldiers on a tank headed in the direction of the frontline near Bakhmut this month.Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times

March 6, 2023, 7:00 p.m. ET

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s top generals want to bolster the defenses of the embattled eastern city of Bakhmut, the government said Monday, signaling that rather than retreat from the city, they will pursue a strategy of bleeding the Russian army in a battle of attrition before a planned Ukrainian counterattack.

Ukraine has calculated that the brutal siege is weakening and tying down Russia’s military, even as Kyiv awaits a new arsenal of weaponry from the West, including tanks and long-range precision rockets to enable an expected drive to retake occupied territory elsewhere. This achievement, Ukrainian officials say, justifies their own high casualty toll, though soldiers in the field and some military analysts have questioned the wisdom of defending a mostly abandoned, ruined city.

In seesaw fighting on the city’s artillery-blasted streets and nearby villages and farm fields, the losses on both sides have been staggering, in the longest sustained Russian assault since the invasion last year. Gradual Russian advances have led some Ukrainian officials in recent weeks to hint at the possibility of a retreat to avoid encirclement, but Ukrainian assault brigades went on the attack over the weekend and appeared to push back Russian forces.

The leader of the Wagner mercenary group, which has led Russian assaults on Bakhmut, said on Monday that Russia was at risk of losing the battle — just days after he had claimed to have the Ukrainians on the brink of defeat.

After meeting with top generals on Monday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that both the commander in chief of Ukraine’s military, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, and the commander of ground forces, Oleksandr Syrsky, supported reinforcing Bakhmut’s defenses.

Smoke plumes rising from a Ukrainian position damaged by a Russian strike near Bakhmut this month.Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times

“Both generals replied: do not withdraw and reinforce,” Mr. Zelensky said later in his nightly video address. He added, “I told the commander in chief to find the appropriate forces to help the guys in Bakhmut.”

Neither in his address, nor in a statement issued earlier by his office, was any mention made of a possibility some independent analysts have described — a quiet, gradual Ukrainian pullback into smaller, easier-to-defend pockets within the city, rather than a broad, sudden retreat.

In attacking Bakhmut since last summer, Russia’s signature tactic has been to send waves of assaults by small units that suffer fearful losses, probing defenses and forcing the Ukrainians who gun them down to reveal their positions to follow-up attackers. In particular, fighters recruited from among prison inmates by the Wagner mercenary group have been used this way.

Asked on Monday about the fighting in Bakhmut, Lloyd J. Austin III, the U.S. defense secretary, said, “What I do see on a daily basis is the Russians continuing to pour in a lot of ill-trained and ill-equipped troops, and those troops are very quickly meeting their demise.”

The State of the War

Bakhmut: After months of epic struggle, the fight over the Ukrainian city had seemed to be reaching a climax, with Russian forces close to encircling the city. Then Ukrainian assault brigades went on the attack.
Action in the Skies: Against the odds, Ukraine’s helicopter brigades are using aging vehicles to fight a better equipped adversary.
Arming the World: As traditional weapons suppliers like the United States face wartime production shortages, South Korea has stepped in to fill the gap by arming Ukraine’s allies — but not Ukraine itself, to try to avoid provoking Russia.

No independent count of the dead and wounded has been possible, and each side is seen as inflating the other’s losses while concealing its own. Over the weekend, the secretary of Ukraine’s national security council, Oleksiy Danilev, asserted that Russia’s loses in attacking entrenched positions were seven times Ukraine’s.

But Ukraine, with a population one-third of Russia’s, is less able to absorb the losses, and is trading the lives of experienced soldiers for those of Russian ex-convicts whose Wagner commanders often treat as expendable.

The fighting in Bakhmut has taken a central place in a power struggle between the Russian armed forces and Wagner’s ambitious, self-promoting leader, Mr. Prigozhin, who has repeatedly accused the military leaders of incompetence and of depriving him of needed ammunition. On Monday, he wrote on social media that Wagner’s representative to the regional military command “had his pass canceled and was denied access to the group’s headquarters.”

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, in a still frame from a recent video taken in Paraskoviivka, Ukraine, near Bakhmut, and released by his public relations firm.Credit...Concord Press Service

Later in the day, in an audio message on social media, Mr. Prigozhin claimed that it was his forces that were in danger of being trapped, in a coming Ukrainian counteroffensive, and said that Wagner units needed more men and munitions.

His bureaucratic rival, Defense Minister Sergei K. Shoigu, made a rare visit on Monday to Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory, including the city of Mariupol, the defense ministry said. Video montages released by the ministry showed a stony-faced Mr. Shoigu looking over maps and talking to subordinates, a muted contrast to Mr. Prigozhin’s hyperbolic video dispatches, often claiming to be on the front lines and making unverified claims about Wagner’s advances.

Western officials say Russian forces have suffered around 200,000 killed or wounded, a devastating toll in a little over a year of war, in addition to the loss of thousands of tanks and armored vehicles. To make up for those losses, they have poured into Ukraine inexperienced conscripts called up last fall.

Recent Russian attacks along the front lines in eastern Ukraine were at first regarded as exploratory stages of Russia’s long-anticipated spring offensive, but are increasingly being seen by military analysts as the best that exhausted Russian forces can manage.

A photo released by the Russian military shows Defense Minister Sergei K. Shoigu visiting Russian soldiers in occupied Ukraine.Credit...Russian Defense Ministry

Some Ukrainian units inside Bakhmut are expected to deploy to southern Ukraine for a counteroffensive aimed at the occupied city of Melitopol, possibly in the spring, in a bid to split Russian-occupied land in two and even threaten Moscow’s hold on the Crimean peninsula. That would require crossing, with little cover, dozens of miles of flat farmland, which is heavily mined and defended by the Russians.

Capturing Bakhmut would hand Russia its first significant battlefield victory in months, while for Ukraine, the city has become an emblem of resistance.

But withdrawing from Bakhmut would not alter the strategic picture, Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian minister of defense, said in an interview on Monday. “If we walked out of Bakhmut they would just move to the next city, using exactly with the same tactics,” Mr. Zagorodnyuk said.

“This tactic has been working,” he said of the Russian human wave attacks, but it has been confined mostly to Bakhmut; it cannot be replicated widely because of a shortage of recruited prisoners.

Russian forces are now attacking the city from three directions and fighting for control of access roads to the west, needed by Ukraine for resupplying troops, evacuating the wounded and for an exit if the decision comes to withdraw.

On Monday morning, Ukraine’s military said that Russian forces “continue attempts to storm the city of Bakhmut and neighboring settlements.”

Ukrainian civilians carrying water back to their homes in Chasiv Yar, near Bakhmut, on Sunday.Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times

Mr. Zelensky, who last month called Bakhmut “our fortress” and vowed not to give up the city, used his nightly address on Sunday to praise Ukrainian soldiers defending it for their bravery.

The city’s defense has become a symbol of defiance in Ukraine, even as the Ukrainian military, which had been praised for its adroitness in previous battles, has become enmeshed in a grinding clash in Bakhmut that has persisted for months as casualties mounted. A song lauding the defenders of “fortress Bakhmut” has played on Ukrainian radio. And there is no sign, so far, that Mr. Zelensky is losing popular support for the city’s defense.

“It is one of the toughest battles,” he said of fighting in eastern Ukraine. “Painful and challenging.”

But if the Ukrainians were to pull back to “some very defensible terrain” near the city, “I would not view that as an operational or a strategic setback,” Mr. Austin, the U.S. defense secretary, told reporters while traveling in Jordan. “I certainly don’t want to discount the tremendous work that the Ukrainians’ soldiers and leaders have put into defending Bakhmut, but I think it’s more of a symbolic value than it is a strategic and operational value.”

Ukrainian special forces signaled another act of defiance against Russia on Monday by openly announcing a drone strike inside Russian territory, which destroyed an unmanned observation tower in the Bryansk region. That was a break from Ukraine’s policy of deliberate ambiguity over such strikes inside Russia.

Russia and Ukraine share a land border extending more than 1,200 miles, including several hundred miles in the eastern Donbas region, parts of which are controlled by Moscow. Russia has used territories close to Ukraine — including Bryansk, along Ukraine’s northeastern border — to stage ground, air and artillery assaults on Ukraine throughout the war.

The timing of the attack on the observation tower was not clear, but the Kraken unit, which reports to Ukrainian military intelligence, released a video that it said showed the assault, on its Telegram channel on Monday. It came days after a brief armed incursion into Russia, also in the Bryansk region, by a group of Russian volunteers claiming to fight for Ukraine.

Officials in Kyiv have said they reserve the right to strike targets within Russia that they say are used to attack Ukrainian towns and cities, but have promised not to use weapons supplied by Western allies, who fear Moscow could view that as a provocation.

Reporting was contributed by Marc Santora from Kyiv, Cassandra Vinograd from London and Anatoly Kurmanaev from Berlin.

The New York Times · by Andrew E. Kramer · March 6, 2023

12. The West Is Losing the Messaging War Over Ukraine

I read somewhere today on social media or one of the discussion groups I belong to that speculated that we are being conditioned to negotiate away Ukraine. It seems like this is one of those articles that might contribute to that effort.

Excerpts:

But Ukraine’s allies should worry that Moscow’s intransigence is being obscured by the idea that the West is unwilling to accept compromises for peace. That is a problem of communication and messaging, one that needs to be addressed swiftly.

While France’s Emmanuel Macron is a magnet for criticism in the West, he is also the only one among its leaders who has consistently said that this war will ultimately end through negotiation and compromise. He repeated at the Munich Security Conference last month that the goal was to achieve an “imperfect balance” that is “sustainable for Russia itself.” Given that no nuclear-armed power has ever been forced into unconditional surrender, Macron’s French rationalism is, as usual, on point.

The rest of the world sees what Macron sees. Like him, it understands that at some point we will have to start thinking about the guarantees, reparations, and peacekeeping arrangements that will need to accompany any ceasefire.

That point is now. Nobody expects any real negotiations to begin tomorrow. But everyone has a right to expect that work towards a peace plan is intensive and ongoing. And, certainly, they will want to hear that commitment to peace from the world leaders best placed to make a difference.

The West Is Losing the Messaging War Over Ukraine

The longer the country’s allies resist talking about the compromises that will be required to end the fighting, the more ground they will lose in the rest of the world.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-03-06/ukraine-war-us-is-losing-the-messaging-war-to-russia?sref=hhjZtX76

ByMihir Sharma

March 6, 2023 at 6:30 PM EST

Here in New Delhi, policy makers are beginning to worry. India’s long-awaited presidency of the G-20 grouping is turning out to be even more difficult than they anticipated.

Indian leaders hope the G-20 can effectively replace the various other atrophied organs of multilateralism. But two major summits in recent weeks ended without a joint communique, with countries so sharply divided over the war in Ukraine that they could not even sign up to a common statement on other pressing issues.

The West Is Losing the Messaging War Over Ukraine

The longer the country’s allies resist talking about the compromises that will be required to end the fighting, the more ground they will lose in the rest of the world.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-03-06/ukraine-war-us-is-losing-the-messaging-war-to-russia?sref=hhjZtX76

ByMihir Sharma

March 6, 2023 at 6:30 PM EST

Here in New Delhi, policy makers are beginning to worry. India’s long-awaited presidency of the G-20 grouping is turning out to be even more difficult than they anticipated.

DHS has a program gathering domestic intelligence — and virtually no one knows about it

By BETSY WOODRUFF SWAN

03/06/2023 04:30 AM EST

Politico

Collecting information from Americans raises ongoing civil liberties concerns.

A virtually unknown DHS program allowed officials to go directly to incarcerated people — circumventing their lawyers — for interviews, raising important civil liberties concerns, according to legal experts. | Susan Walsh/AP Photo

03/06/2023 04:30 AM EST

For years, the Department of Homeland Security has run a virtually unknown program gathering domestic intelligence, one of many revelations in a wide-ranging tranche of internal documents reviewed by POLITICO.

Those documents also reveal that a significant number of employees in DHS’s intelligence office have raised concerns that the work they are doing could be illegal.

Under the domestic-intelligence program, officials are allowed to seek interviews with just about anyone in the United States. That includes people held in immigrant detention centers, local jails, and federal prison. DHS’s intelligence professionals have to say they’re conducting intelligence interviews, and they have to tell the people they seek to interview that their participation is voluntary. But the fact that they’re allowed to go directly to incarcerated people — circumventing their lawyers — raises important civil liberties concerns, according to legal experts.

That specific element of the program, which has been in place for years, was paused last year because of internal concerns. DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, which runs the program, uses it to gather information about threats to the U.S., including transnational drug trafficking and organized crime. But the fact that this low-profile office is collecting intelligence by questioning people in the U.S. is virtually unknown.

The inner workings of the program — called the “Overt Human Intelligence Collection Program” — are described in the large tranche of internal documents POLITICO reviewed from the Office of Intelligence and Analysis. Those documents and additional interviews revealed widespread internal concerns about legally questionable tactics and political pressure. The documents also show that people working there fear punishment if they speak out about mismanagement and abuses.

One unnamed employee — quoted in an April 2021 document — said leadership of I&A’s Office of Regional Intelligence “is ‘shady’ and ‘runs like a corrupt government.’” Another document said some employees worried so much about the legality of their activities that they wanted their employer to cover legal liability insurance.

Carrie Bachner, formerly the career senior legislative adviser to the DHS under secretary for intelligence, said the fact that the agency is directly questioning Americans as part of a domestic-intelligence program is deeply concerning, given the history of scandals related to past domestic-intelligence programs by the FBI.

Bachner, who served as a DHS liaison with Capitol Hill from 2006 to 2010, said she told members of Congress “adamantly” — over and over and over again — that I&A didn’t collect intelligence in the U.S.

“I don’t know any counsel in their right mind that would sign off on that, and any member of Congress that would say, ‘That’s OK,’” said Bachner, who currently runs a consulting firm. “If these people are out there interviewing folks that still have constitutional privileges, without their lawyer present, that’s immoral.”

DHS Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis Kenneth Wainstein, a former federal prosecutor who took the helm of I&A last June, said in a statement that his office is addressing its employees’ concerns. An I&A spokesperson provided POLITICO with a list of steps the office has taken since September 2020 to address internal complaints, including conducting a number of new trainings and hiring two full-time ombudsmen.

In its statement, I&A did not address the domestic-intelligence program. But POLITICO reviewed an email, sent last August, saying that the portion of the program involving interviews with prisoners who had received their Miranda rights was “temporarily halted” because of internal concerns.

“The true measure of a government organization is its ability to persevere through challenging times, openly acknowledge and learn from those challenges, and move forward in service of the American people,” Wainstein said in his statement. “The Office of Intelligence and Analysis has done just that over the past few years ... Together, we will ensure that our work is completely free from politicization, that our workforce feels free to raise all views and concerns, and that we continue to deliver the quality, objective intelligence that is so vital to our homeland security partners.”

‘A loophole that we exploit’

A key theme that emerges from internal documents is that in recent years, many people working at I&A have said they fear they are breaking the law.

POLITICO reviewed a slide deck titled “I&A Management Analysis & Assistance Program Survey Findings for FOD.” FOD refers to I&A’s Field Operations Division — now called the Office of Regional Intelligence — which is the largest part of the office, with personnel working around the country. Those officials work with state, local and private sector partners; collect intelligence; and analyze intelligence. When the U.S. faces a domestic crisis related to national security or public safety, people in this section are expected to be the first in I&A to know about it and then to relay what they learn to the office’s leadership. Their focuses include domestic terror attacks, cyber attacks, border security issues, and natural disasters, along with a host of other threats and challenges.

The survey described in the slide deck was conducted in April 2021. A person familiar with the survey said it asked respondents about events of 2020. Its findings were based on 126 responses. Half of the respondents said they’d alerted managers of their concerns that their work involved activity that was inappropriate or illegal. The slide deck seems to try to put a positive spin on this.

“There is an opportunity to work with employees to address concerns they have about the appropriateness or lawfulness of a work activity,” it reads.

“Half of the respondents have voiced to management a concern about this, many of whom feel their concern was not appropriately addressed.”

Other documents laid out concerns related to a specific internal dispute about how the law applies to I&A’s interactions with American citizens.

Three legal texts govern I&A’s activities: Title 50 of the U.S. Code, which lays out laws about national security; Executive Order 12333, which details how the Intelligence Community works; and the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which set up the Department of Homeland Security. The U.S. intelligence agencies governed by Title 50 face strict rules related to intelligence activity in the U.S. or targeting U.S. citizens. Internally, many I&A personnel have raised concerns that they get asked to take steps that are inappropriate for a Title 50 agency.

On Nov. 12, 2020, barely a week after Election Day, Robin Taylor, then the director of I&A’s Field Operations Division, emailed to multiple officials a summary of 12 listening sessions that an internal employee watchdog had held with division employees.

Taylor’s email included a few lines referencing employees’ concerns about the scope and appropriateness of their work.

“Many taskings seem to be law enforcement matters and not for an intelligence organization,” read one portion, referring to assignments. “How is any of this related to our Title 50 authorities? Even if we are technically allowed to do this, should we? What was the intent of Congress when they created us? ‘Departmental Support’ seems like a loophole that we exploit to conduct questionable activities.”

Later in that document came a line that was even more bleak: “Showing where we provide value is very challenging.”

Taylor, who is no longer at I&A, could not be reached for comment.

Another document, with notes from listening sessions that the Ombudsman — an internal sounding board for employee concerns — held with Field Operations Division employees in late October of 2021, shows that concerns about Title 50 persisted into the Biden administration.

“I&A and FOD leadership don’t seem to understand how Title 50 applies to FOD, which causes conflicts,” the document says.

The document also suggests that some in the division feel that when it comes to determining their legal boundaries, they’re on their own.

“The liability for negative consequences of field employees’ activities in the field falls on them, even if they received supervisor and G4 approval for their activities,” the document states. “Employees recommended I&A provide field employees with professional liability insurance.”

In response, an I&A spokesperson pointed to I&A’s Intelligence Oversight Guidelines.

“Whether supporting a National or Departmental mission under Title 50 or Title 6, I&A’s activities are conducted according to its Intelligence Oversight Guidelines which appropriately restrict the collection, maintenance, and dissemination of U.S. persons information and place additional emphasis on preserving the privacy and civil rights and civil liberties of U.S. persons,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

The spokesperson also said I&A has implemented new training on intelligence legal authorities. And Steve Bunnell, DHS’s former general counsel, returned to the department to advise Wainstein and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on “the strategic direction of the organization and identify any areas of significant risk.”

Fears of Retaliation

The Management Analysis and Assistance Program survey slide deck from April 2021 details another prevalent concern: retaliation against people who speak out. Many employees didn’t even want to fill out a survey on working conditions because they feared being punished for sharing negative views, according to the document.

“Numerous narrative comments, as well as inquiries prior to taking the survey, indicate the members of the workforce did not want to provide feedback due to fear of retaliation,” it reads.

Taylor’s Nov. 12, 2020, email about listening sessions also painted a grim picture.

“Are these sessions pointless?” opened a section listing participants’ main concerns. “Some believed that the feedback would be used against them in their performance evaluations,” that section added.

And it reflected a low view of the division’s leaders.

“One individual said that FOD [Field Operations Division] leadership is ‘shady’ and ‘runs like a corrupt government,’” the document said, later suggesting that people who raise concerns could be punished with contentious assignments. “If you speak out, you’ll find yourself on the SW border or in Portland, recalled by FOD HQ, or moved,” it said. “If HQ finds out that you’ve spoken to others outside the Division (e.g. OCG, Ombuds), you’ll get in trouble.”

“OCG” appears to be a typo of the acronym for DHS’s Office of General Counsel. “Ombuds” refers to I&A’s ombudsman.

And employees didn’t see evidence that managers faced any punishment for engaging in retaliation. The document summarizing the Ombudsman’s October 2021 listening sessions reflects this.

“FOD and I&A leadership are not held professionally accountable — including for retaliation against employees, inexperience leading to poor decision-making, and a lack of transparency — and are not addressing issues revealed in crisis events they presided over.”

An I&A spokesperson said in a statement that the office has set up mandatory whistleblower protection training for all supervisors and managers, and also requires annual refresher training on the issue. This was one of many changes at I&A since September 2020, according to the statement. The office has also added “additional employee feedback mechanisms” so people working there can share concerns candidly and anonymously, according to the statement. And the office has “refreshed Intelligence Oversight training” for new hires, and has added monthly trainings on the topic that all employees can join. Live training is also available on request, according to the statement.

“I&A leadership clearly and repeatedly underscores the expectation that all I&A employees are empowered to express concern and professionally challenge their leadership, the Office of General Counsel, I&A’s Ombudsmen, and the Intelligence Oversight Officer without fear of retaliation,” the statement added.

Politicization

Another major concern: political pressure. An Intelligence Community Climate Survey Analysis for FY 2020, during the Trump administration, found that a “significant number of respondents cited concerns with politicization of analytic products and/or the perceptions of undue influence that may compromise the integrity of the work performed by employees. This concern touches on analytic topics, the review process, and the appropriate safeguards in place to protect against undue influence.”

The same document said that “a number of respondents expressed concerns/challenges with the quality and effectiveness of I&A senior leadership” including “inability to resist political pressure.”

The mistrust is pervasive, the document says.

“The workforce has a general mistrust of leadership resulting from orders to conduct activities they perceive to be inappropriate, bureaucratic, or political,” it reads. “They don’t believe they received convincing justification for these actions and the assuring words of leadership that we are operating within our authorized mission ring hollow when we are abruptly told to stop what we’re doing, leadership is removed, and outside investigators are brought in to audit our actions.”

Chad Wolf, who headed the Department of Homeland Security during the last year of the Trump administration, told POLITICO via email that I&A’s challenges have “largely stemmed from lack of proper leadership and a clearly defined mission.”

“I&A is part of the Intelligence Community but operates in a domestic environment and within a Department with specific operational, law enforcement based responsibilities,” he continued. “That is a unique role for a relatively young Department. The concept of I&A is sound but how it is put into practice and operationalized has proven difficult.”

From Trump to Biden

Some of the office’s problems appear to have continued under the Biden administration.

In an email on March 14, 2022, Deputy Under Secretary for Intelligence Enterprise Operations Stephanie Dobitsch passed along results from a survey of U.S. Intelligence Community employees focused on analytic objectivity and process. The survey was taken from Spring 2020 through May 2021, spanning much of the last year of the Trump administration and the first four months of Biden’s term. It shows that in numerous areas, people working at I&A were more concerned about their workplace than people working at other U.S. intelligence agencies. Those areas included “Experiences with Distortion/Suppression of Analysis.”

Dobitsch added in her email to multiple officials about the survey that “[p]rotecting bureaucratic interests surfaced as an important factor in the most significant distortion or suppression experience.” She added that I&A has “come a long way” in improving its analytic processes since the survey was conducted.

Dobitsch was connected to one of I&A’s biggest recent controversies: the decision in the summer of 2020, during the last year of the Trump administration, to direct I&A’s intelligence collectors to treat the protection of all public monuments, memorials, and statues as part of their mission.

On July 1, 2020, Dobitsch emailed out a “job aid” — meaning, an instruction document — from the office’s Intelligence Law Division about “I&A’s activities in furtherance of protecting American monuments, memorials, and statues and combating recent criminal violence.” At the time, Dobitsch was acting deputy under secretary for intelligence enterprise operations. Her email came at a tumultuous moment when people around the country had been tearing down statues of some American historical figures. In her email, Dobitsch told recipients to reach out to herself “or the attorneys” with any questions or concerns.

A few weeks later, on July 23, Dobitsch sent another email lamenting leaks about I&A’s activities related to Portland, Oregon, where large groups of people protesting the George Floyd murder surrounded the federal courthouse and clashed with police. She also praised the work I&A was doing there, and strongly defended it as fully within the office’s authority.

But problems were brewing. The following week, on July 30, The Washington Post reported that I&A had published intelligence reports on journalists covering the events in Portland. The next day, the Post reported that I&A had viewed protesters’ messages on the Telegram app, including communications about protest routes and avoiding police. DHS then used that information in intelligence reports that it shared with partners, according to the Post.

And on August 1, news broke that the then-head of I&A, Brian Murphy, was being ousted from that role. A top lawyer from the office, Joseph Maher — who would later go on to work on the Jan. 6 select committee — replaced him. And two weeks later, on August 14, Maher sent a message to the I&A workforce rescinding the job aid that Dobitsch had sent out.

“We have determined that in applying I&A’s collection and reporting authorities to ‘threats to damage or destroy any public monument, memorial, or statue’ [emphasis added] rather than to the narrower category of ‘threats to damage, destroy, or impede Federal Government Facilities, including National Monuments and Icons,’ the subject Job Aid created confusion where it was supposed to provide clarity,” read the message. “Although there is more than one view regarding I&A’s authorities in this area, we consider the narrower interpretation to better align with the threats of concern to I&A.”

It read as a major walk-back of the job aid that had been sent just a few weeks earlier — and an example of the kind of reversals that fuel employees’ fears about the quality of legal guidance they’re receiving. Dobitsch has since been hired permanently into the role that she held in an acting capacity during the Portland scandal.

Spencer Reynolds, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School and a former DHS intelligence and counterterrorism attorney, told POLITICO that I&A’s mission makes it uniquely susceptible to political pressure.

“In recent years, the office’s political leadership—Democrat and Republican—has pushed I&A to take a more and more expansive view of its mandate, putting officers in the position of surveilling Americans’ views and associations protected by the U.S. Constitution,” he emailed. “There’s a tendency to use the office’s power to paint political opponents—be they left-wing demonstrators or QAnon truthers—as extremists and dangerous. This has had a disastrous impact on morale—most people don’t join the Intelligence Community to monitor their fellow Americans’ political, religious, and social beliefs. At the same time, leadership has sidelined I&A’s oversight offices, leaving employees with little recourse.”

The I&A statement said the office has brought on a research director tasked with ensuring I&A’s products are free from political interference.

The office has also hosted sessions with an ombudsman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence focused on identifying, resisting, and reporting political pressure, according to the statement. The office has also “embedded Intelligence Oversight Personnel with I&A’s Open Source Intelligence team and widely communicated 24/7 points of contact for the Intelligence Law Division and Intelligence Oversight Officer.”

Domestic intelligence collection

The documents also cast light on the virtually unknown program run by the office that, in the views of some experts, raises civil liberties concerns: the Overt Human Intelligence Collection Program, abbreviated internally as OHIC.

POLITICO reviewed a document from 2016 detailing how the program should work, as well as emails from last year about pausing part of the program. These emails show that even though the program has been running for years, officials overseeing it still feel more guardrails may be needed to protect Americans’ rights.

Under the rules outlined in the document, the program’s intelligence-gathering can’t be done secretly. I&A employees are supposed to receive special training on collecting human intelligence, or HUMINT — meaning, intelligence that comes directly from people rather than from satellite images, intercepted emails, or other sources. Those collectors, after notifying their supervisors, arrange interviews with people they’d like to talk to. They can reach out to anyone, including government employees, people in the private sector, and — importantly — “[p]ersonnel in DHS administrative detention, FSLTT [Federal, State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial] law enforcement confidential informants, and personnel serving any type of criminal sentence who are incarcerated or on parole.”

DHS administrative detention includes immigrant detention centers around the country, as well as Customs and Border Protection facilities on the border.

I&A intelligence collectors can interview “willing sources who voluntarily share information,” the document says. Before asking questions, collectors must “explicitly state” that they work for DHS, that participation is voluntary, that the interviewer or interviewee can end the interview at any time, and that the interviewee has no special rights to review or control how I&A uses the information shared. Interviewers must also tell interviewees that they “will not exercise any preferential or prejudicial treatment in exchange for the source’s cooperation,” the document says.

There’s also a lot the interviewers can’t say, according to the document. They can’t make “any promises” in exchange for information, including promises of help with criminal justice or immigration proceedings. They also can’t imply that they hold “any sway over the deliberations of a judge, either criminal or immigration, or any government official with responsibilities related to the subject of the interview.” And they can’t “[c]oerce, threaten, or otherwise intimidate the source or any person or object of value to the source.” They also can’t “[t]ask the source to conduct any activities.”

The document doesn’t refer specifically to how interviewers should handle conversations with people who are jailed and awaiting trial. It doesn’t prohibit interviews with them. And the document doesn’t require that interviewers contact their lawyers before reaching out to prospective interviewees who are jailed and awaiting trial. A person familiar with how the program operates said I&A does not require its intelligence collectors to reach out to the lawyers of interview subjects who are incarcerated and awaiting trial.

Potential interview subjects in these situations face unique legal risks and opportunities when dealing with government officials. And there’s a standard practice for law enforcement officials when they want to talk to someone awaiting trial about topics related to their legal situations: These officials first ask for permission from their lawyers. In fact, legal ethics rules require that lawyers seeking to communicate with people who have lawyers talk to those people’s counsel, rather than the people themselves.

Adding another wrinkle to the I&A interviews with jailed people: The instruction document indicates that a law enforcement officer must be present when these interviews take place. It’s unclear what, if anything, keeps those officers from sharing what they overhear with prosecutors or investigators, or using it themselves — especially if interviewees’ lawyers aren’t aware that the conversations are happening and, therefore, can’t warn their clients of potential risks.

Bachner, the former DHS official, said incarcerated people likely feel alarmed when approached by U.S. intelligence officials who want to question them and may feel compelled to cooperate even if told otherwise.

“If you’re a prisoner and somebody says that, you’re scared,” she said.

She added that the practice raises a host of other questions.

“What do they do with that information they collect, and is it legal?” she said. “Where do they store that information?”

In I&A, there are also concerns about the program. In August 2022, an I&A official emailed personnel there telling them to temporarily stop interviewing jailed people who were awaiting trial and had been read their Miranda rights.

“[Office of Regional Intelligence] leadership is asking collectors to temporarily halt all engagements/debriefings/interviews of mirandized individuals who are in pre-trial/pre-conviction detention [bold and italics in original text],” wrote Peter Kreitner, the acting deputy chief of a team in I&A’s Office of Regional Intelligence.

Kreitner noted that the pause came in the wake of a meeting with DHS’s Intelligence Law Division and I&A’s Intelligence Oversight Office, an internal watchdog.

“This decision is out of an abundance of caution with the intent to clearly identify and define the procedures for collection activities of this nature,” Kreitner’s email continued, adding that “a final decision and follow-on guidance will be issued.”

Professor Laurie Levenson of Loyola Law School, who specializes in criminal procedure, said that having government officials interview jailed, pre-trial people without their lawyers present is “precarious.”

“When they go in to talk to somebody, the ordinary course is to get the permission of that person’s lawyer once they’ve been formally charged, period,” she said.

“There’s also the appearance of not adhering to our ordinary practices of protecting people’s constitutional rights,” Levenson continued. “And that’s a broader concern. That’s why I applaud those who say, ‘Let’s put a pause on this and see what we’re doing, see what the normal rules are, and see what the limitations would be on doing these interviews without going through counsel.’”

Patrick Toomey, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, said DHS’s human-intelligence program raises serious concerns.

“DHS should not be questioning people in immigration or criminal detention for ‘human intelligence’ purposes without far stronger safeguards for their rights,” Toomey said. “While this questioning is purportedly voluntary, DHS’s policy ignores the coercive environment these individuals are held in. It fails to ensure that individuals have a lawyer present, and it does nothing to prevent the government from using a person’s words against them in court.”

Another element: People facing criminal charges often share information with the government in hopes of receiving leniency at sentencing. By participating in intelligence interviews without their lawyers’ guidance, those opportunities could evaporate. And the policy specifically says I&A collectors can’t provide any help to the people they interview in exchange for information.

Much remains unknown about the program and its impact — both on the people its collectors question and on any benefits it provides for U.S. national security.

“‘Collecting’ and ‘HUMINT’ are two words that should never be associated with I&A, never,” said Bachner. “It should be ‘analytics’ and ‘state and local support.’ That’s what should be associated with I&A.”

I&A did not provide comment specifically on the overt HUMINT collection program. It is not known how many people conduct interviews under the program, how many people they interview per year, and how many of those interviewees are incarcerated.

The partial halt of the human-intelligence collection program as described in Kreitner’s email, coming amid the further concerns about the legality of I&A’s activities expressed in internal surveys, underscores the challenges facing Wainstein and other I&A leaders. And, according to Reynolds, the former I&A lawyer now at the Brennan Center, the office needs to take meaningful steps to reassure the public and congressional watchdogs.

“I&A needs to refocus its approach, stop basing its intelligence activities on the constitutionally protected views of Americans, and stop treating vandalism and fistfights as terrorism,” he said. “It needs meaningful engagement with its oversight offices and to listen to its personnel when they voice their concerns.”

POLITICO

Politico

14. Marine combat engineers no longer capable of supporting the infantry

A lot of self criticism (or retiree criticism) in the Marine Corps these days.

Marine combat engineers no longer capable of supporting the infantry

marinecorpstimes.com · by Lt. Gen. William Keys (retired) · March 6, 2023

Marine Corps success in combat always has been characterized by offensive operations, principally the rapid movement inland by Marine infantry in the attack.

If a natural or manmade obstruction stalled an attack, combat engineers were called forward to breach the obstacle quickly and effectively or bridge the wet or dry gap.

But Marine Corps combat engineers are no longer capable of providing this essential support. If called upon today to breach a minefield, reduce an obstacle or bridge a gap, the combat engineers would have nothing acceptable to send forward.

The Marine Corps has dangerously divested all its assault breaching and bridging capabilities. The engineers are still willing but are no longer capable.

Marine Corps divestment of needed engineering structure and equipment coupled with other debilitating losses in tanks, artillery, assault amphibious vehicles, helicopters, tiltrotor aircraft and strike/fighter aircraft were part of an unwise “divest to invest” strategy, voluntarily pursued by the Marine Corps to self-fund future, experimental capabilities.

Marines remove scout sniper platoons from infantry battalions

Instead of scout sniper platoons, infantry battalions will have scout platoons.

The armored vehicle launched bridge, tank track width mine plow, armored combat earthmover and assault breacher vehicle were all jettisoned from the Marine Corps inventory over the past three years, apparently without consideration for future mobility requirements or for the protection of the individual Marine.

Marine Corps combat engineers no longer possess mobility and survivability equal to the force being supported. Without some armored protection, the engineers are exponentially more vulnerable to enemy small arms, mortars and artillery fires.

Unwise, or maybe better said, foolish divestments make it impossible for combat engineers to accomplish the essential missions of rapidly breaching minefields, barriers and obstacles; conducting route clearance under fire; rapidly laying down bridging for crossing streams and gaps and constructing roads and trails.

These engineering requirements are not limited to major land wars. Mines, damaged or destroyed bridges, and improvised explosive devices will inevitably confront Marine forces in any future conflict, small as well as large.

For those who think that U.S. Army or coalition forces will provide Marine forces the breaching and assault bridging capabilities needed is not just wishful thinking; it is dangerous thinking. We know of no service agreements that will support this assertion.

The rush to restructure and reequip the Marine Corps as an abstract regional force is codified in the Marine Corps concept document Force Design 2030. Prior to jettisoning needed structure and equipment, coupled with similar but external losses in the maritime prepositioning force and amphibious shipping, Marine air-ground task forces were trained and equipped to immediately deploy anywhere, across the spectrum of conflict. They were ready, relevant, and capable of responding to any crises or contingency as the nation’s premier 9-1-1 force.

Today, Marines remain ready to answer the call, but the capabilities needed for global response have been sacrificed as bill-payers for unproven organizations, equipment, and munitions narrowly tailored against one threat and in one location ― China’s navy in the western Pacific. The emasculation of Marine Corps capabilities and the myopic focus on a single enemy is a threat to national security.

The loss of all assault breaching and bridging capabilities significantly limits where Marine ground forces can be committed to combat, today and in the future.

Combat engineers no longer have the manpower and equipment to facilitate the unimpeded maneuver of Marine infantry through explosive and nonexplosive obstacles and across gaps.

The Marine Corps is gambling the mission and the lives of its Marines on the forlorn hope that someone else will answer the infantry’s call “engineers up” when pinned down and unable to maneuver through a minefield or across a river.

The recently published article by former Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Charles Krulak and former Commander United States Central Command General Anthony Zinni, offers a distinct alternative to Force Design 2030. Vision 2035 would restore the Marine Corps to its congressional mandated role as the Nation’s 9-1-1 force, capable of responding quickly and effectively to any threat worldwide.

A key component of the vision is a robust combat development process to determine the capabilities and requirements needed for global response in an age of precision munitions. Global response in “every clime and place” will require the restoration of assault breaching and bridging. The specific requirements will be determined through a rigorous combat development process.

United States Marines will encounter simple and complex obstacles, natural and man-made, when fighting a determined enemy, not just in the Indo-Pacific region but in all theaters.

Force Design 2030 has cheated Marine Corps combat engineers of the tools they need to breach these obstacles and ensure the freedom of movement Marine infantry and other elements of the force must have to fight and win.

The nation requires a Marine Corps ready, relevant, and capable of responding globally to any threat. The Marine Corps must have combat engineers with robust and effective assault breaching and bridging capabilities. Future battles, as past battles, will be decided by the combined elements of maneuver, fires, and information.

Lt. Gen. William Keys, retired, recipient of the Navy Cross for heroic actions in the Vietnam War, led the 2nd Marine Division when it had to breach explosive and non-explosive obstacles and bridge gaps to maintain the momentum of the attack into Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm.

Maj. Gen. Ronald Richard, retired, was the Operations Officer for the 2nd Marine Division during Operation Desert Storm.

This article is an Op-Ed and as such, the opinions expressed are those of the authors. If you would like to respond, or have an editorial of your own you would like to submit, please email Military Times Editor Andrea Scott.

15. Exclusive: Ukraine seeks US cluster bombs to adapt for drone use, lawmakers say

DPICM.

"Give Ukraine the “right artillery ammo:" DPICM" by Dan RIce https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/give-ukraine-right-artillery-ammo-dpicm

Exclusive: Ukraine seeks US cluster bombs to adapt for drone use, lawmakers say

Reuters · by Jonathan Landay

WASHINGTON, March 6 (Reuters) - Ukraine has broadened a request for controversial cluster bombs from the United States to include a weapon that it wants to cannibalize to drop the anti-armor bomblets it contains on Russian forces from drones, according to two U.S. lawmakers.

Kyiv has urged members of Congress to press the White House to approve sending the weapons but it is by no means certain that the Biden administration will sign off on that. Cluster munitions, banned by more than 120 countries, normally release large numbers of smaller bomblets that can kill indiscriminately over a wide area, threatening civilians.

Ukraine is seeking the MK-20, an air-delivered cluster bomb, to release its individual explosives from drones, said U.S. Representatives Jason Crow and Adam Smith, who both serve on the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee. That is in addition to 155 mm artillery cluster shells that Ukraine already has requested, they said.

They said Ukrainian officials urged U.S. lawmakers at last month's Munich Security Conference to press for White House approval.

Ukraine hopes cluster munitions will give it an edge in the grinding fight against Russian forces in eastern Ukraine.

The Ukrainian government has said publicly that it wants U.S. cluster munitions. The petition for MK-20s - also known as CBU-100s - has not been reported previously.

The Ukrainian Embassy referred Reuters to the defense ministry in Kyiv, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A National Security Council spokesperson said that while Ukraine and the White House "closely coordinate" on military aid, she had no "new capabilities to announce."

FIGHTING THE "HUMAN WAVE"

Ukraine wants the artillery rounds - the Dual-Purpose Conventional Improved Munitions (DPICM) - to halt the kinds of "human wave" attacks that Russia has mounted in its months-long drive to overrun the ruined eastern city of Bakhmut, the lawmakers said.

Each shell disperses 88 submunitions.

The MK-20 is delivered by aircraft. It opens in mid-flight, releasing more than 240 dart-like submunitions, or bomblets.

The Ukrainian military believes these submunitions "have better armor-piercing capability" than the weapons it has been dropping from drones, said Smith, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.

Ukraine, battling an enemy with more manpower and weaponry, has used drones extensively for surveillance and for dropping explosives on Russian forces.

Crow, a Democrat and U.S. Army veteran, said he might support giving the MK-20 with assurances that Ukrainians would remove the bomblets and "use them in a non-cluster employment."

Textron Systems Corporation stopped producing MK-20s in 2016 after the United States halted sales to Saudi Arabia but a congressional aide said there are more than 1 million of them in U.S. military stockpiles.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who also participated in last month's conference, confirmed that Ukrainian officials in Munich urged U.S. lawmakers to press the White House to provide Kyiv with cluster munitions. He said he would do so this week.

The congressional aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Ukrainian officials also privately have been lobbying lawmakers in Washington to press for White House approval.

"That's not going to happen," Smith said, referring to Biden administration signoff.

CONTROVERSIAL WEAPONS

Since the start of the conflict Ukraine has asked for - and largely received - weapons that the U.S. initially refused, including HIMARS missile launchers, Patriot air defense batteries and Abrams tanks. But cluster munitions could be a step too far for the administration and some in Congress.

Opponents argue that when bomblets scatter they can maim and kill civilians and have high failure rates, with duds posing a danger for years after a conflict ends.

A 2008 pact prohibiting the production, use and stockpiling of cluster munitions has been adopted by 123 countries, including most of NATO's 28 members. The United States, Russia and Ukraine have declined to join.

Giving the Ukrainians "a banned weapon would undermine their moral authority in a way that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin would exploit," said Tom Malinowski, a former congressman who served as the top State Department human rights official.

But there is some support in Congress. The congressional aide said most Republicans "are fairly amenable" to Ukraine's requests.

"This is a war where (the Ukrainians) are outmanned," Graham told Reuters. "And cluster munitions really are pretty lethal to mass formations as well as armor. In the areas where they are going to use this stuff there are no civilians."

A 2009 law bans exports of U.S. cluster munitions with bomblet failure rates higher than 1 percent, which covers virtually all of the U.S. military stockpile. U.S. President Joe Biden can waive the prohibition.

Ukrainian and Russian forces both have used such weapons since Russia first seized Ukrainian territory in 2014, according to news reports and human rights groups.

The U.S. Army is spending more than $6 million a year to decommission 155 mm cluster artillery shells and other older munitions, according to budget documents

Providing DCIPMs would ease shortages of other kinds of 155 mm shells that Washington has been shipping to Kyiv in massive quantities, the congressional aide said.

Crow said he opposed providing the DCIPMs to Ukraine because of the high failure rate of the bomblets, which would worsen Ukraine’s already massive unexploded ordnance problem.

The State Department says that some 174,000 square-kilometers of territory – nearly one-third of Ukraine – are contaminated by landmines or other "explosive remnants of war."

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

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Reuters · by Jonathan Landay

16. At the National People’s Congress, the politics of numbers dominates. What those numbers mean for China and the world.

Excerpts:

G: Will numbers become less relevant as loyalty to Xi becomes more and more important?

JW: In many ways, Xi Jinping remains trapped in a world of numbers. Governing a state of 1.4 billion people in some ways requires statistics and numbers — there’s no way to avoid it completely. Even in various campaigns, the anti-poverty campaign or common prosperity, slogans will often be translated into various numerical targets. I think that the big question is less, “Will numbers rule?” but more “Which numbers?” Are they going to be about the numbers of times that you have posted online about the wonderful “Xi Jinping Thought,” or is it going to be about the increased renewable energy production that has taken place in your province, or is it just pure growth?

That remains the question going forward. I think that you’ll see a blend of all of those and at various moments, some will seem stronger than others. But I’m hopeful at least that there is some indication that the direction will be toward improving the lives of the Chinese people.

At the National People’s Congress, the politics of numbers dominates. What those numbers mean for China and the world.

From GDP to poverty alleviation and renewable energy, the Communist Party is obsessed with numbers. Which matter most in the Xi Jinping era?

Lili Pike

China Reporter

March 6, 2023

grid.news · by Lili Pike

China’s annual National People’s Congress began this weekend in Beijing with the typical fanfare. The thousands of delegates who make up the world’s largest legislature streamed in from across the country. Technically, they come to vote on legislation and elect new government officials, but in reality the meetings are more of a performance — the actual decisions have been made well in advance by China’s top leaders.

The key part of that performance is the Government Work Report, which was delivered this year by China’s outgoing premier, Li Keqiang. During Li’s hourlong speech Sunday, the camera panned the Great Hall of the People to show delegates representing China’s 56 ethnic groups, all studiously reading the report.

This year’s opening speech — as is usually the case — was a collection of Communist Party slogans and statistics, a presentation that makes an American State of the Union address look like a Hollywood production. Perhaps the most human moment came when Li spoke about the pandemic: “Our people in their hundreds of millions have prevailed over many difficulties and challenges, made great sacrifices and played their due part,” Li said. “It has not been an easy journey for anyone, but together we have overcome the huge challenge of covid-19.”

But for the most part, the government’s long list of accomplishments and goals were conveyed in numbers — a lot of numbers: 17,000 kilometers of high-speed rail built over the past year, a 40 percent increase in the length of drainage pipelines, the percentage of urban residents — up to 65 percent, “value-added high-tech manufacturing” up by 11 percent. And on it went. Among goals for the year ahead: 12 million new urban jobs and 650 million metric tons of grain production.

No number is more closely anticipated — in China and beyond — than the GDP (gross domestic product), the prime metric for economic growth. The National People’s Congress is the occasion for publicly announcing the growth target for the year ahead — and this weekend that target was announced as “around 5 percent.” For observers, it was a low-end forecast, one that signals caution about China’s economic recovery from the pandemic and the “zero-covid” policy that decimated jobs and factory activity. GDP in 2022 clocked in at just 3 percent growth, among the lowest figures in decades and short of China’s 5.5 percent target by a wide margin.

Whether it’s the GDP or more mundane statistics, the Chinese Communist Party has something of an obsession with numbers and metrics-based forecasts. It also has an uneven record of getting those forecasts right — or even reporting them accurately. Watching which numbers are elevated and which are swept under the rug — such as the true number of covid deaths, to take a recent number that the party has tried to bury — provides hints about the party’s priorities and challenges.

Few scholars have paid as much attention to the party’s fixation on targets and statistics than Jeremy Wallace, a professor of government at Cornell University. Last fall, Wallace published “Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts,” a book that examines the politics of numbers in China. The book’s title is a reference to former party chairman Mao Zedong’s edict — “seeking truth from facts” — a phrase that Mao’s successor Deng Xiaoping used to criticize the leader’s excesses years later. The phrase is still used today; it was even mentioned in Li’s speech this weekend. Grid spoke to Wallace about what the latest numbers and targets tell us, and whether the party, in the era of the current leader, Xi Jinping, has once again strayed from “seeking truth from facts.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Grid: First of all, what does the announced GDP target — 5 percent — signal to you about where China is heading this year?

Jeremy Wallace: I think a 6 percent growth target would have suggested putting the pedal to the metal and releasing the real estate monster that they’ve been trying to hold back. So, I’m heartened that the growth target has been set at a reasonable 5 percent rather than a higher level. Given the pent-up demand from the lockdown year of 2022, reaching this number will not require massive contortions or doubling down on ill-considered investments.

G: Why does the Chinese government set a GDP target? Why does that matter for the government?

JW: The GDP target has been at the center of China’s political economy for most of the past three decades. It structures the way that local government actors and businesses operate. It’s the annual piece of a broader system of grand plans and five-year plans and other things along those lines — quantitative targets that are at the core of the political system. The origins of that system come out of the Cultural Revolution and all of the tumult of Mao Zedong. Having a numbers-based system both seemed relatively fair and relatively pragmatic in a lot of ways to elites in China. And having that concrete set of numbers that officials could be responsible for — targets to hit — has become and remains the core of Chinese politics.

G: How has the huge focus on GDP benefited China, and in what ways has it fallen short?

JW: So the way that I summarized this in “Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts” is, “A few numbers came to define Chinese politics until they did not count what mattered and what they counted didn’t measure up.”

I think the important thing to remember is that, fundamentally, this was very successful. China’s growth story, the reason we’re talking about China’s National People’s Congress, is that China has become an incredibly successful economic development story. And GDP targeting is part of that story, and I think a major part of it.

Over time, though, and especially I would say in the mid 2000s and going forward, the kind of faults of that system, the kind of weaknesses — what it overlooked and what it wasn’t counting — became increasingly apparent. So problems like corruption, like pollution, debt that became overwhelming, were not counted, and they needed to come into focus. Also if what is happening in this system of GDP targets is essentially what political scientists refer to as “output legitimacy” — that a government is seen as justified in its rule because of its performance, its outputs — that performance is slowing, and so that’s not the business you necessarily want to be in.

G: China’s GDP target remains important, but Chinese leaders have tried to introduce other targets and priorities over the years. Can you talk about that shift?

JW: The failures of this system of what I call “limited quantified vision,” I think were really apparent by the mid 2000s, so before Xi Jinping comes into power — the Hu Jintao, Wen Jiabao period. And in fact, Wen Jiabao famously says the four “Uns” — that the Chinese government was “unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated and ultimately unsustainable.” So the interesting thing is that under that regime, under those leaders, the government expanded the set of indicators that local officials would be judged by — expanded radically so rather than just a few indicators like GDP or overall economic performance, environmental indicators were added and so forth [social development and innovation metrics were also added]. But the balance of the numbers still was tilted toward the economy.

G: So if I’m a local government official in China in recent years — let’s say pre-covid, because the covid period is so different — am I still being primarily judged on my economic performance?

JW: There are a lot of other issues that local government officials are judged on these days. All of those expanded numbers that came under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiaobao are still there, but I think there’s increasingly an expanded range of political performance [indicators] — about party-building or ideological performance that are present on cadre evaluation forms. By all indications, the annual cadre evaluation system continues to exist with lots of statistical measurements, but it is less important in the Xi-dominated top-down system than it was previously.

G: So it’s not only a local official’s numeric performance that matters but also their alignment with Xi’s priorities. I’m interested in the moments we’ve seen where local governments have seemed to go to extreme lengths to try to get their name out there and get promoted, like going too far in implementing covid lockdowns. Do those moments reflect a desire to overachieve on the number that they think is most important to Xi Jinping at the moment?

JW: I think it remains the case that Xi Jinping has a system of quantified governance — that he thinks about numbers and puts out targets. Local officials will sometimes skate where they think he’s going or push too hard thinking that this is the thing that will please the Dear Leader. And sometimes I’m sure that that has been successful for individual politicians. On the other hand, the stories you’re noting are often the opposite, right? When local officials go too far, it harms citizens, and there’s a negative reaction. And those [cases] are also incredibly important and suggest that there are real reasons and advantages to having elections and having kind of open systems of information transmission — that the closed information environment under Xi Jinping has real costs.

G: Speaking of the closed information environment, I think a lot of people just assume most Chinese data is unreliable if not entirely falsified. How do you think about that issue? What are the cases where the government does change the data to put out a more positive narrative? And how much of this is top-down versus bottom-up? (Grid recently reported on a mystery surrounding China’s carbon emissions reporting in 2022 — experts say that emissions may have been overreported because local officials and coal miners wanted to show they were meeting energy security-based mining targets.)

JW: So let’s focus on the covid wave and the official death statistics, because I think they fit this stereotype of “You can’t trust the dictator’s data.” China’s rapid move away from zero-covid led to the virus exploding across the country in a way that it really has not anywhere else on the planet in the entire history of the pandemic. So there were more infections over a shorter period of time, and yet the official death count remains around 90,000 people. Infection numbers are well over a billion, and yet, the death numbers don’t really comport with what we know about the virus. And so it’s about 1/10 — the official statistics of around 90,000 versus the estimates that public health researchers put out have suggested around a million deaths during this period.

So that kind of gross, completely disconnected from reality, distortion of statistics does happen and is happening in this case but is not the normal story. The normal story — what happens is when you get caught for data manipulation is that people lose trust. And I think perhaps with the covid story, the government decided that this was singular, this was a particular moment. If the lesson that is learned is you can’t trust the Chinese government when a pandemic wave is ripping through the population and killing a million people, they’re willing to take that loss. But that’s different than a basic economic reality, where if they report grossly false statistics about economic development, year after year, then businesses and others will take their money and go elsewhere. So I think that the way that statistical manipulation usually works in China is not the gross distortion, kind of hiding huge faults, but instead, relatively subtle: 8 percent growth becomes 9.5 percent growth. Those types of things that help you vis-à-vis your competitors as a local government official but not truly distorting from reality.

G: How do you think about the questions around the GDP number from last year? Is that an example of kind of a marginal fudging?

JW: The number came in above expectations, and it just tips [China] just a little bit ahead of the U.S. GDP growth figure from last year. I think that’s not coincidental. I think there was some desire by Chinese elites that they wanted to continue their record of having more rapid growth than the United States. So if it was close enough that they could kind of nudge it in that direction, I think some believe, and I think I’m probably with them, that you might have seen some manipulation on that front.

G: Will numbers become less relevant as loyalty to Xi becomes more and more important?

JW: In many ways, Xi Jinping remains trapped in a world of numbers. Governing a state of 1.4 billion people in some ways requires statistics and numbers — there’s no way to avoid it completely. Even in various campaigns, the anti-poverty campaign or common prosperity, slogans will often be translated into various numerical targets. I think that the big question is less, “Will numbers rule?” but more “Which numbers?” Are they going to be about the numbers of times that you have posted online about the wonderful “Xi Jinping Thought,” or is it going to be about the increased renewable energy production that has taken place in your province, or is it just pure growth?

That remains the question going forward. I think that you’ll see a blend of all of those and at various moments, some will seem stronger than others. But I’m hopeful at least that there is some indication that the direction will be toward improving the lives of the Chinese people.

Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this article.

grid.news · by Lili Pike

17. The war in Ukraine has shown the value of tanks, but militaries are now looking to stock up on slimmed-down versions of them

Please go to he link to view all the photos. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-war-in-ukraine-has-shown-the-value-of-tanks-but-militaries-are-now-looking-to-stock-up-on-slimmed-down-versions-of-them/ar-AA18fEpr?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=3f4cc34ff8a8406c9598bbede5c39d79&ei=51

The war in Ukraine has shown the value of tanks, but militaries are now looking to stock up on slimmed-down versions of them

msn.com · by insider@insider.com (Benjamin Brimelow) 1 day ago

The war in Ukraine has generated renewed interest in the role of tanks on the modern battlefield.
Even before the war, some militaries were developing "light tanks" to complement heavier main battle tanks.
Light tanks are seen as filling a capability gap between main battle tanks and other armored vehicles.

1/6 SLIDES © Ben Birchall — PA Images/Contributor/Getty Images

Armored vehicles from 5 countries are headed to Ukraine, but there's still some big items left on Kyiv's heavy armor wish list

Five countries have said they'll send armored vehicles to Ukraine.
The US, Germany, France, and Sweden will provide armored fighting vehicles, and the UK will send tanks.
Still, some big items long requested by Kyiv have been kept out of Western military aid packages.

Western security assistance to Ukraine as it fights Russia has ramped up in the first few weeks of the new year, with five different countries announcing that they intend to provide Kyiv with armored combat vehicles.

On Thursday, Sweden, an aspiring NATO member, became the latest country to announce that it will send much-sought-after military hardware, pledging to transfer Combat Vehicle 90 infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine as part of its largest aid package so far.

Sweden has joined the US, Germany, and France, which have said that they will send Bradley, Marder, and AMX-10 RC armored vehicles, respectively. And the UK has said that it will send a squadron of Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine, making it the first Western country to send Western-made tanks to Kyiv.

While these much-sought-after weapons will give Ukraine a significant boost in firepower and ground combat capability, a handful of big-ticket items on Kyiv's heavy armor wish list continue to be kept out of military aid packages, such as the German-made Leopard tank and the American M1 Abrams tank.

NATO countries have pressed Germany to approve sending its tanks to Ukraine, but Berlin has been unwilling to sign off on any transfers, saying that the US would also need to send its own tanks. However, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Thursday that his country may eventually go rogue and send its Leopard tanks to Kyiv without German approval.

Ukraine's push to secure tanks and fighting vehicles comes as Russia's unprovoked invasion nears its one-year mark, with fighting heavily concentrated in the eastern Donbas region. Heavy armor could help Kyiv make advances in what has turned into a bloody and grinding affair.

Take a look at the five pieces of heavy armor that Western countries are sending to Ukraine.

2/6 SLIDES © JOEL SAGET/AFP via Getty Images

AMX-10 RC

France was the first country to announce that it would send Western-made armored vehicles to Ukraine, opening the door to additional transfers. French President Emmanuel Macron told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in early January that Paris would transfer the AMX-10 RC to Kyiv.

The AMX-10 RC is a French-made armored combat and reconnaissance vehicle. It was first designed in the early 1970s and has decades of combat experience in places like the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Capable of traveling at up to 50 mph, the vehicle is armed with a 105 mm cannon and armor to protect it against small arms fire and shrapnel.

3/6 SLIDES © US military photo by Staff Sgt. Charles Porter

M2 Bradley

Soon after France's announcement, the US followed suit with its own pledge to send Western armor to Ukraine.

The White House announced it would send 50 M2A2 Bradley fighting vehicles — capable of transporting troops, conducting reconnaissance missions, and providing fire support.

Bradley fighters are armed with a 25 mm M242 Bushmaster chain gun and a 7.62 mm M240C machine gun, as well as a Tube-Launched, Optically-Tracked, Wire-Guided (TOW) missile system.

The weapon was designed by BAE Systems and has been in use since the early 1980s. It played a prominent role in both the Gulf and Iraq wars.

4/6 SLIDES © AP Photo/Michael Sohn

Marder

The US decision to transfer Bradleys to Ukraine was presented alongside Germany, which said it would provide Kyiv with Marder infantry fighting vehicles.

This weapon was designed in the 1960s and has seen on-the-ground experience in Afghanistan and Kosovo. It is equipped with a 20 mm automatic cannon and anti-tank missiles, and is defended by steel armor.

The Marder can travel up to 40 mph and can carry a crew of three and six fully-equipped infantry soldiers, according to Forbes.

5/6 SLIDES © Photo by Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images

Challenger 2

Perhaps the most significant of the heavy armor going to Ukraine is the Challenger 2 — the UK's main battle tank.

Defense chief Ben Wallace announced on Monday that the UK would send a squadron of the tanks as part of the country's "most significant package of combat power" for Ukraine so far.

First introduced in the 1990s, the Challenger 2 was built to replace its predecessor, the Challenger 1, and has seen combat experience in Iraq and Eastern Europe.

A crew of four can operate the weapon, which is armed with a L30A1 120 mm rifled gun, a chain gun, and a machine gun. On roads, it has a range of 340 miles and can travel at speeds of up to 37 mph; off-roads, this drops to 160 miles and 25 mph, respectively.

6/6 SLIDES © US Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Yvonna Guyette

Combat Vehicle 90

Sweden's government announced on Thursday that it would send an undisclosed number of Combat Vehicle 90 (CV90) fighting vehicles with ammunition to Ukraine as part of its biggest military aid package to the country.

The CV90 is an infantry fighting vehicle built by BAE systems in the early 1990s. It has seen combat experience in Afghanistan and Liberia. Sweden is one of several European countries that has the weapon in its arsenal.

Two users can operate the vehicle's cannon, the primary armament accompanying its multiple grenade launchers and machine gun.

Russia's renewed attack on Ukraine is the first major war between modern militaries in decades, and many countries are analyzing every aspect of the conflict for insights with which to better train and equip their own forces.

One of the biggest lessons has been that despite high losses, tanks remain a vital part of modern warfare, with Russia planning to ramp up its production of them and Ukraine scrambling to secure Western-made tanks for its troops.

Western efforts to get tanks and other armored vehicles to Ukraine have cast new attention to the utility of light tanks, which largely fell out of favor after World War II.

Though not as powerful or as heavily armored as main battle tanks, light tanks are increasingly seen as filling a capability gap between full-fledged tanks and infantry fighting vehicles.

Even before Russian troops crossed into Ukraine last year, several countries were investing in light tanks to bolster their armored forces on future battlefields.

Light tanks

The term "light tank" harkens to when tank doctrine was still being formulated by major military powers in the early 20th century.

At the time, the role of tanks was subject to debate, but their designs were largely based on three factors: mobility, armor, and firepower. Light tanks reflected an emphasis on mobility. They were smaller and had lighter armor and less firepower.

While heavy and medium tanks were mainly for use in direct combat against enemy armor and fortifications, light tanks were meant to take on infantry and other light armor. They were used for scouting for enemy forces, screening for friendly troops, and conducting armored reconnaissance, as well as for skirmishes and fire-support missions.

By the middle of World War II, tanks were mostly classified as heavy, medium, or light. Other specific types, such as tank destroyers and assault guns, were phased out after the war.

Militaries continued developing light tanks during the Cold War — the US and USSR had light tanks that could be air-dropped or deployed amphibiously — but became less common by the end of the 20th century, especially as infantry fighting vehicles proved to be cheaper and about as versatile.

That shift produced a gap between main battle tanks, like the M1 Abrams, and infantry fighting vehicles like the M2 Bradley and wheeled fighting vehicles like the Stryker.

What many see as missing is a weapon that can effectively support infantry in difficult environments such as mountains, woodlands, and islands, while having enough firepower to deal with things like bunkers, machine-gun nests, and lightly armored vehicles.

Main battle tanks are not as reliable in those environments because of their size — a modern Abrams tank weighs 73 tons — and their need to watch for enemy tanks. But infantry fighting vehicles may not be adequately armed or armored, and wheeled vehicles may struggle with rough terrain.

Modern light tanks

That capability gap stirred interest in light tanks, and over the past decade, three major militaries have adopted new designs.

The most well known and numerous is China's Type-15, also known as the ZTQ-15. It was officially adopted in 2018 and some 500 are believed to be in service. It weighs about 36 tons with its full armor package, has a crew of three, and is armed with a rifled 105 mm gun.

The Type-15 does especially well in high-altitude environments like the Himalayas, where thin air makes it difficult to operate heavier tanks. Many have been deployed there, opposite Indian T-90 and T-72 tanks.

Japan also introduced its Type-16 in 2018. The Type-16 has a tank-like turret but has wheels instead of tracks, reflecting an intention to operate only on Japanese territory, where road networks are generally well developed. It weighs 26 tons, has a crew of four, and is armed with a rifled 105 mm gun.

Tokyo classifies the Type-16 as a "maneuver combat vehicle," and it was acquired as part of an effort to trim Japan's tank fleet while still being able counter China.

The Type-16 is meant to respond quickly to attacks and to provide reconnaissance and fire support for infantry. Its weight and size mean it can fit in Japan's Kawasaki C-2 transport planes, and its high mobility allows it to operate anywhere in Japan, including offshore islands.

Some 141 Type-16s are in service with plans to build as many as 230.

In June, the US Army awarded General Dynamics Land Systems a $1.14 billion contract for the Mobile Protected Firepower system, the service's first new vehicle design in over 40 years.

Part of the Next Generation Combat Vehicle program, the MPF is the US Army's attempt to provide infantry brigade combat teams with an asset that can destroy enemy fortifications and lightly armored vehicles.

Weighing 38 tons, the MPF will have a crew of four and a 105 mm gun. It features an enhanced vision package with cameras on the front, sides, and rear and has an exterior "infantry phone" so troops can talk directly to the crew. Like the Type-15 and Type-16, the MPF can be mounted with additional armor if needed.

GDLS began assembling the first MPFs in December and plans to deliver the first batch later this year. The Army plans to acquire 504 of them and to assign 14 to each IBCT.

Other countries have shown similar interest. Russia hopes to begin mass production of its 2S25M Sprut, which carries the same 125 mm gun as Russia's main battle tanks, while India is pursuing its own light tank to better equip its forces deployed to counter China in the Himalayas.

msn.com · by insider@insider.com (Benjamin Brimelow) 1 day ago

18. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 6, 2023

Maps/graphics: https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-6-2023

Key Takeaways

Ukrainian authorities indicated that Ukraine will continue to defend Bakhmut for now.
Bakhmut is not intrinsically significant operationally or strategically as ISW has previously observed. But Ukraine’s fight for Bakhmut has become strategically significant because of the current composition of Russian forces arrayed in the area. The Battle of Bakhmut may, in fact, severely degrade the Wagner Group’s best forces, depriving Russia of some of its most effective and most difficult-to-replace shock troops.
Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin apparently fears that his forces are being expended in exactly this way. The severe degradation or destruction of the elite Wagner fighting force would have positive ramifications beyond the battlefield.
The Kremlin is returning to its previously unsuccessful volunteer recruitment and crypto-mobilization campaigns to avoid calling the second mobilization wave. The return of the voluntary recruitment and crypto-mobilization campaigns likely indicates that the Kremlin will not launch another mobilization wave at least before the summer 2023 due to spring conscription cycle on April 1.
A reportedly captured Russian military manual suggests that Russian forces intend to use the newly created “assault detachment” elements in urban warfare.
Russian forces utilized a new type of guided aerial bomb against Ukrainian targets amid continued precision missile shortages.
Russian forces continued to conduct ground attacks northwest of Svatove and near Kreminna.
Russian forces secured territorial gains in Bakhmut but have not yet encircled the city or forced Ukrainian forces to withdraw.
Russian forces continued to conduct ground attacks near Avdiivka and west of Donetsk City.
Russian forces continue struggling to maintain fire control over the Dnipro River Delta in Kherson Oblast.
Russian military command is failing to properly equip its forces despite forces increasingly conducting close combat in Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials reported on alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 6, 2023

Mar 6, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 6, 2023

Karolina Hird, Kateryna Stepanenko, Grace Mappes, Nicole Wolkov, and Frederick W. Kagan

March 6, 10:45pm 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.

Ukrainian authorities indicated that Ukraine will continue to defend Bakhmut for now. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated at the end of the day on March 6 that he has ordered reinforcements to Bakhmut.[1] This announcement follows Zelensky’s March 6 meeting with Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi and Commander of Ukrainian Ground Forces Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi where both commanders recommended the continued defense of Bakhmut and asked Zelensky to strengthen Ukrainian forces in the area.[2] Ukrainian Presidential Advisor Mykhailo Podolyak similarly stated on March 6 that the Ukrainian defense of Bakhmut thus far has “achieved its goals” and been a “great strategic success.”[3] Statements made by Ukrainian officials regarding Bakhmut are likely meant in part to respond to the continued concern expressed by some Americans regarding the costs of Ukraine’s continued defense of Bakhmut. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stated on March 6 that he would not view a Ukrainian withdrawal from Bakhmut as a “significant strategic setback,” possibly intimating that he favors such a withdrawal.[4]

Bakhmut is not intrinsically significant operationally or strategically as ISW has previously observed. Taking Bakhmut is necessary but not sufficient for further Russian advances in Donetsk Oblast, and Russian forces have already taken such heavy losses fighting for the city that their attack will very likely culminate after they have secured it—if not before. The loss of Bakhmut is not, therefore, of major operational or strategic concern to Ukraine, as Secretary Austin and others have observed.

But Ukraine’s fight for Bakhmut has become strategically significant because of the current composition of Russian forces arrayed in the area. Some Western reports have recently suggested that Ukraine is expending its own elite manpower and scarce equipment on mainly Wagner Group prison recruits who are mere cannon fodder, noting that such an exchange would be to Ukraine’s disadvantage even at high ratios of Russian to Ukrainian losses. That observation is valid in general, although the pool of Russian convict recruits suitable for combat is not limitless and the permanent elimination of tens of thousands of them in Bakhmut means that they will not be available for more important fights.

Russian forces fighting in Bakhmut are now drawn from the elite elements of the Wagner Group and from Russian airborne units as well as from lower-quality troops. Ukrainian intelligence has supported ISW’s assessment that Russian forces near Bakhmut have recently changed tactics and committed higher-quality special forces operators and elements of conventional forces to the fight.[5] ISW has previously reported on the increasing presence of Russian Airborne (VDV) forces around Bakhmut since late December into early January, indicating that conventional Russian troops may be supporting or even supplanting Wagner’s operations around Bakhmut.[6] The Wagner Group is still likely using prisoners to support operations in Bakhmut, albeit to a much more limited extent than in previous months due to massive losses suffered by those recruits in attritional frontal assaults. But Wagner has now also committed its very best soldiers to the fight, and it is they who are being attrited along with the conscripts.

The Battle of Bakhmut may, in fact, severely degrade the Wagner Group’s best forces, depriving Russia of some of its most effective and most difficult-to-replace shock troops. The Wagner attacks already culminated once, causing the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) to commit some of its elite airborne troops to the fight. It may well culminate again before taking the city, once more forcing the Russian military to choose between abandoning the effort or throwing more high-quality troops into the battle. The opportunity to damage the Wagner Group’s elite elements, along with other elite units if they are committed, in a defensive urban warfare setting where the attrition gradient strongly favors Ukraine is an attractive one.

Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin apparently fears that his forces are being expended in exactly this way. Prigozhin made a number of statements on March 5 and 6 that suggest that he fears that the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) is fighting the Battle of Bakhmut to the last Wagner fighter and exposing his forces to destruction. Prigozhin claimed that he wrote a letter to the commander of Russian forces in Ukraine (presumably Chief of the General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov) with an urgent appeal for the Russian command to allocate ammunition to Wagner but that his representative was denied access to Russian headquarters and could not deliver the appeal.[7] Prigozhin later published a response to the Zelensky-Zaluzhnyi-Syrskyi meeting on March 6 and claimed that Ukraine has formed a number of offensive groups in Donetsk Oblast to “unblock” Wagner’s blockade of Bakhmut and that he has been “raising the alarm” to call for ammunition and reinforcements for Wagner.[8] Prigozhin claimed that if Wagner does not receive needed ammunition and reinforcements and the blockade of Bakhmut breaks, all is essentially lost and that he will stay with Wagner to the end.[9] Prigozhin’s plea to the Russian General Staff and suggestion that he will stay with Wagner until the bitter end suggests that he is working to position himself as the ultimate martyr for the ideological cause that Bakhmut has come to represent in the Russian milblogger information space. More importantly, it shows that he sees his elite forces to be in grave danger.

The severe degradation or destruction of the elite Wagner fighting force would have positive ramifications beyond the battlefield. Prigozhin has ostentatiously ramped up efforts to disseminate Wagner’s militarism and ideology throughout Russia by advertising Wagner’s role in Bakhmut. The Wagner Group has recently opened several recruitment centers at sports clubs throughout Russia, opened a youth branch, and is visiting schoolchildren to lecture them about Wagner’s structure and show them unfiltered combat footage from Ukraine.[10] Wagner’s success in Bakhmut thus far has given Prigozhin a major advantage in the information space, bolstering his reputation and increasing his popularity in a way that will likely have long-term impacts in the Russian domestic sphere. Prigozhin is one of the most extreme of the Russian pro-war nationalists. He is one of the very few with a serious military force loyal to himself. He has even seemed at times a possible threat to Putin or a possible successor. Which may be why Putin is allowing the Russian MoD to hang him out to dry. Badly damaging Prigozhin’s power and reputation within Russia would be an important accomplishment from the standpoint of the long-term prospects for restoring sanity in Russia. That is an aim in America’s interests as well as in Ukraine’s, and it raises the stakes in the Battle of Bakhmut beyond matters of terrain and battlespace geometry.

The Kremlin is returning to its previously unsuccessful volunteer recruitment and crypto-mobilization campaigns to avoid ordering another major involuntary reserve call-up. Russian Telegram channels began advertising for recruitment into existing volunteer battalions after ceasing such recruitment calls in September 2022 at the start of involuntary reserve mobilization.[11] Some local Russian officials are also setting up mobile recruitment centers in order to advertise voluntary military contract service — a phenomenon that ISW observed during the previous volunteer recruitment campaign between late May 2022 and September 2022.[12] Russian officials are even advertising contract service in unusual places: A Moscow-based psychiatrist is reportedly calling on suicidal men to enlist.[13] Russian ultranationalist social media networks are also increasingly advertising recruitment for Wagner Group units across almost 30 Russian cities.[14] Ukrainian officials observed instances of Russian occupation officials registering male teenagers born in 2006 from occupied Luhansk Oblast for military service.[15] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that military recruitment centers in occupied Donetsk Oblast received instructions to clarify personal credentials of reserve officers under 65 years of age, and soldiers, sergeants, and warrant offices under the age of 50.[16] Russian officials had extensively conducted similar crypto-mobilization in occupied Ukrainian territories throughout the war, especially over the summer.

Such voluntary recruitment drives may also indicate that the Kremlin is running out of combat-ready reserves to continue its offensive operations past the Battle of Bakhmut and its failed offensives around Vuhledar and in Luhansk Oblast. ISW assessed on February 26 that Russian President Vladimir Putin had turned to voluntary recruitment campaigns in late May 2022, when the Russian military began to run out of reserves as it was conducting a costly offensive on the Severodonetsk-Lysychansk line — over a month before Russian attack culminated in Luhansk Oblast.[17] Putin later abandoned his country-wide and summer-long volunteer recruitment campaign and ordered an involuntary reservist call-up in response to the sweeping Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kharkiv Oblast in September 2022.[18] The Kremlin may be repeating similar efforts in hopes that such irregular forces will be sufficient to retain Russian initiative on the frontline. Russian veterans and milbloggers, however, observed that Russia will not be able to achieve its objectives of reaching the administrative borders of Donetsk Oblast without the large-scale mobilization of personnel, economy, and industry.[19]

The return of the voluntary recruitment and crypto-mobilization campaigns likely indicates that the Kremlin will not launch another mobilization wave before the summer of 2023 at the earliest because the spring conscription cycle is due to begin on April 1. Western officials previously reported that Putin had been delaying announcing the second mobilization wave since January and was leaning towards conducting “silent mobilization” out of concern for the stability of his regime.[20] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) likely again advised Putin to launch another mobilization over the winter as an involuntary call-up at that time would be less likely to overwhelm already struggling Russian military recruitment centers between bi-annual conscription cycles. ISW had observed numerous indicators that Russia was preparing to execute the second mobilization wave since fall 2022, but Putin passed the mobilization window to avoid further antagonizing Russians who did not support previous involuntary call-ups.[21] The Russian MoD will likely be unable to embark on mobilization processes until after Russia completes its spring conscription cycle given that Russian military recruitment centers appear to have the administrative capacity to prepare and generate roughly 130,000 conscripts per bi-annual cycle.[22] That limitation appears to be relatively inflexible and likely explains why the 300,000 reservists called up in the fall seem to have been trained in batches rather than all at once. It likely also explains why Russian forces are using training areas in Belarus to reconstitute formations damaged in combat. Putin would likely need to delay the spring conscription cycle if he decided to announce mobilization now, likely for longer than the one-month delay in the autumn conscription cycle caused by his September 2022 reserve call-up.[23]

A reportedly captured Russian military manual suggests that Russian forces intend to use the newly created “assault detachment” elements in urban warfare. Ukrainian news outlet Censor.NET originally published the alleged manuals that detail the formation and use of the assault detachment on December 12.[24] ISW previously reported on the “assault detachment” on February 27 and assessed that this newly minted formation is likely an effort to compensate for current combat power limitations by breaking maneuver forces into smaller and more agile structures, thereby partially institutionalizing practices previously used to tactical effect by the Wagner Group in urban combat.[25] A Ukrainian reserve officer amplified documents in the manual on March 5 that recommend assault detachment tactics to be applied in an urban context.[26] The document recommends that Russian forces begin their assaults by targeting the defense‘s frontline with tanks or explosives to make holes in fences and buildings to ensure safe passage of an assault company and suggests how to seize observation points, confuse the enemy, seize multi-story buildings, and take cover. The documents also makes suggestions for Russian forces operating in an assault platoon to break into small groups and clear multi-story and multi-entrance buildings. The Ukrainian reserve officer noted that while the Russian military attempts to create more flexible military formations, instructions are “blindly applied across the battlefield based on a few successful examples.”[27] ISW previously assessed that the documents indicate that the Russian military attempts to simplify combined arms warfare to compensate for the challenges posed by manpower and equipment losses and inexperienced and untrained mobilized personnel.[28] Assault detachments may suffer significant losses in urban warfare given the extensive use of untrained personnel and attritional tactics.

Russian forces utilized a new type of guided aerial bomb against Ukrainian targets amid continued precision missile shortages. Ukrainian news outlet Defense Express reported on March 4 that Russian forces used the UPAB-1500V guided aerial bomb against an unspecified target in Chernihiv Oblast within the past few weeks. Defense Express noted that Russian bomber aircraft can release the bombs up to 40km from the intended target and that the aircraft can maintain a low altitude of 14km, both of which would lessen the risk of Ukrainian air defenses taking out the Russian bombers.[29] Ukrainian Air Force Spokesperson Yuriy Ignat stated that a Russian Su-34 may have been trying to launch a UPAB-1500V when Ukrainian forces shot the jet down.[30] Ignat stated on March 6 that Russian forces will undertake every possible measure to procure more weapons and warned not to underestimate Russia’s ability to procure artillery shells, drones, and missiles for use in Ukraine.[31]

Key Takeaways

Ukrainian authorities indicated that Ukraine will continue to defend Bakhmut for now.
Bakhmut is not intrinsically significant operationally or strategically as ISW has previously observed. But Ukraine’s fight for Bakhmut has become strategically significant because of the current composition of Russian forces arrayed in the area. The Battle of Bakhmut may, in fact, severely degrade the Wagner Group’s best forces, depriving Russia of some of its most effective and most difficult-to-replace shock troops.
Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin apparently fears that his forces are being expended in exactly this way. The severe degradation or destruction of the elite Wagner fighting force would have positive ramifications beyond the battlefield.
The Kremlin is returning to its previously unsuccessful volunteer recruitment and crypto-mobilization campaigns to avoid calling the second mobilization wave. The return of the voluntary recruitment and crypto-mobilization campaigns likely indicates that the Kremlin will not launch another mobilization wave at least before the summer 2023 due to spring conscription cycle on April 1.
A reportedly captured Russian military manual suggests that Russian forces intend to use the newly created “assault detachment” elements in urban warfare.
Russian forces utilized a new type of guided aerial bomb against Ukrainian targets amid continued precision missile shortages.
Russian forces continued to conduct ground attacks northwest of Svatove and near Kreminna.
Russian forces secured territorial gains in Bakhmut but have not yet encircled the city or forced Ukrainian forces to withdraw.
Russian forces continued to conduct ground attacks near Avdiivka and west of Donetsk City.
Russian forces continue struggling to maintain fire control over the Dnipro River Delta in Kherson Oblast.
Russian military command is failing to properly equip its forces despite forces increasingly conducting close combat in Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials reported on alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

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

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

Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks northwest of Svatove on March 5 and 6. Luhansk Oblast Administration Head Serhiy Haidai stated on March 5 that Russian forces tried and failed to break through Ukrainian defenses near Svatove.[32] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Hryanykivka (54km northwest of Svatove).[33] Russian sources posted footage on March 4 claiming to show the 3rd Motorized Rifle Division (20th Combined Arms Army, Western Military District) operating along the Svatove-Kreminna line.[34]

Russian forces continued offensive operations near Kreminna on March 5 and 6. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Nevske (17km north of Kreminna), Bilohorivka (10km south of Kreminna), and the Serebrianska forest area (10km south of Kreminna).[35] A Russian milblogger claimed on March 5 that Russian forces conducted ground attacks against Terny (17km west of Kreminna) and Torske (14km west of Kreminna).[36] The milblogger claimed on March 6 that Russian forces attempted to advance near Bilohorivka, towards Nevske, and from Shypylivka (8km southeast of Kreminna) toward the Serebrianska forest area.[37] A Russian BARS-13 (Russian Combat Reserve of the Country) commander claimed on March 6 that the front line stabilized near Kreminna and that there are contested (grey) zones along the frontline.[38]

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

Russian forces continued ground attacks in and around Bakhmut on March 6 and secured gains but still have not succeeded in encircling the city. Geolocated footage posted on March 6 shows Wagner Group infantry hanging a Wagner flag and posing in front of the T-34 tank monument in eastern Bakhmut, confirming the Wagner has advanced westward along Maksyma Horkoho street towards Bakhmut’s city center.[39] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported on March 6 that Russian forces are storming Bakhmut despite continued losses and reported that Ukrainian troops repelled Russian attacks on Bakhmut itself; northwest of Bakhmut near Zalizianske (7km northwest), Dubovo-Vasylivka (6km northwest), and Orikhovo-Vasylivka (10km northwest); and west of Bakhmut near Ivanivske (5km west).[40] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces have cleared the Miasokombinat suburb of northeastern Bakhmut and are advancing in urban areas of eastern Bakhmut.[41] Several Russian milbloggers amplified the assertion that Russian forces control 40 percent of Bakhmut and that while Russian forces have fire control of all roads into Bakhmut, they still lack physical control of critical supply routes into the city.[42] Several Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces continue withdrawing from within Bakhmut to secondary lines of defense.[43] A Russian milblogger notably claimed that Ukrainian troops mounted a counterattack along the Bohdanivka-Ivanivske line and near the T0504 Kostiantynivka-Chasiv Yar-Bakhmut route west of Bakhmut on March 6.[44]

Russian forces continued ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City frontline on March 5 and 6. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops conducted unsuccessful offensive actions towards Avdiivka itself; around Avdiivka near Krasnohorivka (9km north of Avdiivka), Kamianka (5km northeast of Avdiivka), and Severne (5km west of Avdiivka); on the northwestern outskirts of Donetsk City near Vodyane, Pervomaiske, Nevelske, and Krasnohorivka (the Krasnohorivka just northwest of Donetsk City and not the Krasnohorivka north of Avdiivka); and on the southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City near Marinka and Pobieda.[45] Spokesperson for the Joint Press Center for Ukrainian Ukrainian Tavriisk Defense Group spokesperson Colonel Oleksiy Dmytrashkivskyi stated on March 5 that Russian forces are concentrating near Krasnohorivka and Vodyane on the northwestern outskirts of Donetsk City and that offensive efforts in this area are led by elements of the 114th Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment (127th Motorized Rifle Division, 5th Combined Arms Army, Eastern Military District) and 136th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade (58th Combined Arms Army, Southern Military District).[46] Dmytrashkivskyi also noted that Russian forces have reconstituted the 200th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade (14th Army Corps, Northern Fleet) following catastrophic losses in Kharkiv Oblast and redeployed the brigade to the Donetsk area.[47] The presence of likely heavily degraded and poorly reconstituted elements of three separate military districts suggests that Russian forces will be unable to pursue successful offensive operations in Donetsk Oblast in the near future. Russian milbloggers also claimed that Russian troops advanced within Marinka and had success along the Pobieda-Novomykhailivka line southwest of Donetsk City between March 5 and 6.[48] ISW has not observed visual confirmation of this claim.

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks in western Donetsk Oblast on March 5 or 6. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations in the western Donetsk direction on both March 5 and 6 but did not specify where these offensive actions occurred.[49] Russian milbloggers continued to amplify footage that reportedly shows elements of the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade conducting positional battles in the dacha area on the outskirts of Vuhledar (30km southwest of Donetsk City).[50] Milbloggers warned that Ukrainian troops are preparing for counteroffensives near Vuhledar.[51] Russian force capacity and consistent failures to take ground in western Donetsk Oblast has become a clear point of neuralgia for the Russian military command, as ISW previously assessed.[52] Anxiety emanating from the Russian milblogger community regarding Ukrainian counteroffensive capabilities in this sector of the front is likely emblematic of greater breakdowns in the Russian information space following persistent losses in the Vuhledar area.

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

Russian forces continue struggling to maintain fire control over the Dnipro River Delta in Kherson Oblast. Geolocated footage from a Russian milblogger on March 6 shows Russian forces striking a Ukrainian reconnaissance group’s position on Velykyi Potemkyne Island near Bilohrudove (11km southwest of Kherson City).[53] The milblogger posted footage of two other engagements on February 27 and claimed that Russian forces forced Ukrainian forces to retreat from their positions after half an hour of artillery fire.[54] ISW is unable to confirm the milblogger’s claims of short engagements; the extent and duration of Ukrainian positions on the islands in the Dnipro River Delta remain unclear.

Russian milbloggers are growing increasingly concerned that Ukrainian forces may conduct a counteroffensive push in southern Ukraine. Zaporizhia Oblast occupation official Vladimir Rogov claimed on March 6 that Ukrainian forces have massed 12,000 troops for an offensive push towards the Sea of Azov coastline in late March or early April.[55] Some Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces transported new weapons and military equipment to western Donetsk Oblast for a future offensive against Melitopol.[56] Another milblogger speculated that Ukrainian forces may instead target Mariupol.[57]

Ongoing efforts to stabilize the situation at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) have stalled amid deteriorating conditions at the plant. Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko stated on March 5 that ZNPP negotiations have reached an impasse and that Ukraine’s efforts to regain control of the ZNPP have failed.[58] Halushchenko noted that Russian authorities are operating the ZNPP in a way that damages the equipment and facilities. The Ukrainian Zaporizhia Oblast Military Administration reported that Russian authorities struggle with a “catastrophic” shortage of personnel to operate the ZNPP and employ personnel without proper training or credentials.[59] Ukrainian nuclear energy operator Energoatom reported on March 6 that Russian authorities made plans to loot the ZNPP of specialized equipment in case Russian forces withdraw from the plant.[60] International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Grossi stated that unspecified “military action” near the ZNPP has increased in recent weeks and reiterated calls to establish a safety and security zone at the plant.[61]

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

Russian military command is failing to properly equip its forces despite close combat engagements in Ukraine. The UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) that Russian military command is ordering mobilized reservists to assault Ukrainian concrete positions with only firearms and shovels.[62] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian officers on the Donetsk, Marinka, Kupyansk, Zaporizhia, and Kreminna frontlines lack jeeps and pickup trucks for daily reconnaissance, sabotage, and logistics efforts.[63] The milblogger noted that the Russian reliance on trucks is impractical as these vehicles have high fuel consumption and noted instances of breakdown of automotive equipment as a result of low-quality fuel and lubricants.[64] Another milblogger complained that Russian forces lack modern optical systems because the Russian MoD took over four months to sign a contract with a company for the production of optical systems.[65] The milblogger added that the Russian MoD also did not make the promised downpayment for these optical systems. Another milblogger observed that Russian medics refuse to treat injured Russian servicemen, forcing Russian forces to drag injured personnel kilometers away from the frontlines.[66] Mobilized personnel from Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, and Kaliningrad oblasts complained about receiving outdated weaponry from the 1940s.[67]

Russian news outlets are attempting to downplay reports of the Russian military command’s improper treatment of mobilized servicemen in Ukraine. A prominent Russian news aggregator published a statement reportedly from an Irkutsk Oblast mobilized serviceman on March 5 who denied viral social media reports that the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) command threw mobilized servicemen from the 1439th Regiment into an assault operation without proper training.[68] The mobilized serviceman claimed that his unit routinely undergoes training and does not have issues with morale.[69]

The Russian MoD’s efforts to integrate the DNR forces into the Russian Armed Forces are continuing to fuel tensions between different armed formations. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on March 6 that Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov is actively recruiting DNR fighters into his units in an effort to increase his influence in occupied Donetsk Oblast.[70] The Center noted that the Kremlin is becoming increasingly nervous because Kadyrov appears to be conserving his forces by only performing policing measures without participating in combat, while other Russian armed formations are suffering significant personnel losses.

Russia is likely attempting to rectify long-term mobilization and force-generation effects on Russian demographics and the economy. A Russian new outlet reported that the Russian State Duma Committee of the Financial Market wants to launch “children’s deposits” that would allow the state to deposit a certain amount of money to families after the birth of a child.[71] Head of the Duma Committee of the Financial Market Anatoliy Aksakov noted that such provision would “stimulate childbearing” and will “form the financial base of credit institutions.”[72] The Russian Central Bank is extending restrictions on foreign currency cash withdrawals until September 9.[73]

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

Ukrainian officials reported on alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine. Footage published on March 6 shows Russian forces reportedly executing a Ukrainian prisoner of war (POW) for saying “Slava Ukraini” (Glory to Ukraine).[74] Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets stated that he sent the video to ombudsmen and unspecified international partners and called for holding Russia accountable for each war crime committed in Ukraine.[75] Executing POWs without a prior judgement from a regularly constituted court is a violation of Article III of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.[76] Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska announced on March 5 that Ukrainian authorities are investigating 171 cases of Russian forces sexually assaulting Ukrainians, including 39 cases against male victims and 13 cases against children.[77] Zelenska stated that Russian forces use rape as a weapon against Ukrainian civilians. Ukrainian Deputy Prosecutor General Viktoriya Litvinova reported on March 5 that there are 2,651 criminal cases against Russian forces for crimes against Ukrainian children and that Russian forces have killed 462 and wounded 931 since the start of the war. Litvinova noted that the full scale of Russian crimes against children is unknown.[78]

Ukrainian officials provided more detail on the extent and tactics of Russian schemes to forcibly relocate Ukrainian children to Russia and other crimes against Ukrainian children. Litvinova reported that Russia forcibly relocated about 16,000 Ukrainian children to Russia and Ukrainian authorities were able to recover 307.[79] Ukrainian Presidential Commissioner for Human Rights Daria Herasimchuk stated that Russian occupation authorities use five schemes to forcibly relocate Ukrainian children: killing the parents, separating parents and children during filtration, stripping parental rights, take children from care institutions, and creating unsuitable conditions for children’s lives and offering, sometimes forcing, parents to send children to rehabilitation camps.[80]

Russian occupation authorities continue to construct new housing facilities in occupied Ukraine. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) announced on March 6 that Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu visited occupied Mariupol to inspect ongoing efforts to build housing facilities and other infrastructure in the city.[81] Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin announced on March 6 that Russia will build over 2,800 apartment buildings in newly occupied Ukraine and 47 high rise buildings in Mariupol and Volnovakha, Donetsk Oblast and Alchevsk, Luhansk Oblast in 2023.[82]

Russian occupation authorities continue to struggle to provide medical care to both civilians and Russian forces in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast. Zaporizhia Oblast occupation head Yevgeny Balitsky announced on March 6 that mobile hospitals and doctors will begin operating in Zaporizhia Oblast after the Russian Cabinet of Ministers allocated over one billion rubles (about $13.2 million) to this effort across occupied Ukraine.[83] Russian authorities will likely use these teams to compensate for existing medical infrastructure that Russian forces are using for their own care. Russian authorities may also leverage these mobile teams as medics for Russian forces along critical areas in the front line. Russian milbloggers called on the Russian Human Rights Committee to raise the salaries of doctors in occupied Ukraine and amplified public calls for donations on behalf of the doctors.[84] The milbloggers claimed that doctors from occupied Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts only receive salaries of 30–35 thousand rubles ($397–464) per month, whereas doctors from Russia receive salaries of 60–80 thousand rubles ($795–1,061).[85]

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

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

Nothing significant to report.

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

[1] https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-03-06-23/h_...

[2] https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-03-06-23/h_... media/405461-na-stavci-u-prezidenta-obgovorili-podalsi-dii-na-bahmutskomu-napramku-ci-budut-posiluvati-pozicii/; https://www.president.gov dot ua/en/news/volodimir-zelenskij-proviv-zasidannya-stavki-verhovnogo-golo-81461

[3] https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-03-06-23/h_...

[4] https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-03-06-23/h_...

[5] https://www.facebook.com/easternforces/posts/pfbid0WFgxFQ5DCaz1ABvsJHhC5... media/399485-oleksandr-sirskij-rozpoviv-pro-situaciu-v-bahmuti/

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

[7] https://t.me/concordgroup_official/554

[8] https://t.me/concordgroup_official/558

[9] https://t.me/concordgroup_official/558

[10] https://t.me/TeamSobol/15732; https://t.me/mozhemobyasnit/14823; https://t.me/mozhemobyasnit/14823; https://t.me/mozhemobyasnit/14823; https://stepnaya-now dot ru/2023/03/04/v-rostove-otkrylsya-tsentr-nabora-bojtsov-dlya-chvk-vagner/; https://www.1rnd dot ru/news/3557543/v-rostove-otkrylsa-centr-nabora-bojcov-dla-cvk-vagner; https://dzen dot ru/a/ZAI02XaeEBSdSzvR; https://vk dot com/mol_wagner_center ; https://www.kommersant dot ru/doc/5845348; https://ria dot ru/20230303/klub-1855561044.html ; https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-ass...

[11] https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/22963; https://t.me/BTGR_NEVSKIY/95

[12] https://t.me/mobilizationnews/9655; http://notes.citeam.org/mobilizatio...

[13] https://t.me/bazabazon/16178; http://notes.citeam.org/mobilization-mar-...

[14] https://t.me/vysokygovorit/10934

[15] https://t.me/luhanskaVTSA/9077

[16] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0yNY19AKnwMB7sNqDAmz...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[24] https://censor dot net/ru/news/3386414/minoborony_rossii_izdalo_metodichku_po_shturmovym_deyistviyam_po_opytu_voyiny_protiv_ukrainy_dokument

[25] https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-ass...

[26] https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1632337874912780294

[27] https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1632337891387998208?s=20

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

[29] 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

[30] https://suspilne dot media/404672-ukraini-potribni-zahidni-vinisuvaci-dla-zahistu-vid-novih-rosijskih-aviabomb-povitrani-sili/

[31] https://suspilne dot media/404954-rosia-ne-mae-spromoznosti-otociti-bahmut-ssa-ocinuut-pidgotovku-ukrainskih-pilotiv-376-den-vijni-onlajn/?anchor=live_1678111733&utm_source=copylink&utm_medium=ps

[32] https://t.me/luhanskaVTSA/9083

[33]https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0yNY19AKnwMB7sNqDAmz...

[34] https://t.me/anna_news/47150; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19758

[35] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0yNY19AKnwMB7sNqDAmz...

[36] https://t.me/wargonzo/11249

[37] https://t.me/wargonzo/11257

[38] https://t.me/wargonzo/11269

[39] https://twitter.com/AUSTROHNGARO2/status/1632758900817551365?s=20 ; ht...

[40] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0yNY19AKnwMB7sNqDAmz...

[41] https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/45869; https://t.me/rybar/44304

[42] https://www.kp dot ru/daily/27473.5/4729512/; https://t.me/epoddubny/15084; https://t.me/epoddubny/15085; https://t.me/rybar/44299

[43] https://www.kp dot ru/daily/27473.5/4729512/; https://t.me/milchronicles/1626; https://t.me/readovkanews/54108; http...

[44] https://t.me/rybar/44304

[45] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0LTubMS8E8AWjctuzfVi...

[46] https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=937066807430761; https://suspilne dot media/404327-stvorenna-centru-z-rozsliduvanna-zlociniv-rf-u-gaazi-dodatkovi-tanki-vid-britanii-375-den-vijni-onlajn/

[47] https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=937066807430761; https://suspilne dot media/404327-stvorenna-centru-z-rozsliduvanna-zlociniv-rf-u-gaazi-dodatkovi-tanki-vid-britanii-375-den-vijni-onlajn/

[48] https://t.me/milchronicles/1624; https://t.me/wargonzo/11257; https://.... https://t.me/rybar/44302

[49] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0LTubMS8E8AWjctuzfVi...

[50] https://t.me/readovkanews/54059; https://t.me/sashakots/38752; https:/...

[51] https://t.me/rybar/44321; https://t.me/aleksandr_skif/2610 ; https://...

[52] https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-ass...

[53] https://t.me/RVvoenkor/39909; https://twitter.com/EjShahid/status/16327...

[54] https://t.me/RVvoenkor/39332

[55] https://t.me/vrogov/8014

[56] https://t.me/aleksandr_skif/2610 ; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19778

[57] https://t.me/vrogov/8014; https://t.me/vrogov/8010

[58] https://www.kmu dot gov.ua/news/bud-iaki-perehovory-shchodo-zaes-maiut-bazuvatys-na-povnii-demilitaryzatsii-stantsii-herman-halushchenko

[59] https://t.me/zoda_gov_ua/17183

[60] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2023/03/06/okupanty-gotuyutsya-do-mozhlyvogo-vidhodu-iz-zaes-i-poznachayut-obladnannya-yake-mozhna-vkrasty/

[61] https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/statements/iaea-director-generals-introd...

[62] https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1632270968868466689

[63] https://t.me/dva_majors/10245

[64] https://t.me/dva_majors/10245

[65] https://t.me/notes_veterans/8343; https://t.me/vysokygovorit/10932

[66] https://t.me/karkuschaZ/421

[67] https://t.me/mobilizationnews/9654; https://notes.citeam.org/mobilizati...

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

[69] https://t.me/readovkanews/54077

[70] https://sprotyv dot mod.gov.ua/2023/03/06/kadyrov-verbuye-bojovykiv-dnr-dlya-svoyeyi-armiyi/

[71] https://t.me/bazabazon/16194

[72] https://t.me/bazabazon/16194

[73] https://t.me/bazabazon/16200; https://meduza dot io/news/2023/03/06/bank-rossii-prodlil-ogranicheniya-na-snyatie-nalichnoy-valyuty

[74] ***GRAPHIC*** https://twitter.com/igorlachenkov/status/1632731944038412288?s=20

[75] https://t.me/dmytro_lubinetzs/1854

[76] https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/geneva-conve...

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[78] https://suspilne dot media/404612-rosiani-deportuvali-blizko-16-tisac-ukrainskih-ditej-zastupnica-genprokurora-viktoria-litvinova/

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Army at 250: Beyond a Slogan, the Army Needs a New Narrative Strategy - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Dan Vallone · March 7, 2023

Fifty years ago, the Army left Vietnam and entered the American consumer market. The shift to an all-volunteer force in 1973 compelled the Army to define, shape, and communicate a public narrative in ways it had never previously contemplated. For much of the past two decades, that narrative proved remarkably resilient and strong, sustaining high levels of public esteem even as attitudes towards the wars the Army was fighting turned negative. But today that narrative is breaking down. Whether it is increased politicization or the transition out of the “Global War on Terror,” the Army’s public communications capabilities are under pressure on multiple fronts. The drop in public confidence in the military is one indicator of this, but the recruiting shortfall of 2022 — where the Army missed its goals by 15,000, or 25 percent — puts the challenge into stark relief. There are steps the Army is already taking, such as bringing back its highly successful “be all you can be” slogan as part of a new marketing campaign. But they are piecemeal. The recruitment crisis is part of a much larger issue. The Army doesn’t just need a new slogan, it needs a whole new narrative strategy.

The Army should make a serious effort to retake the communications initiative before the situation grows even worse. In new research from my organization, More in Common, we found that many Americans see the military as too involved in politics: Seven in ten say the military should be separate from politics, but only four in ten feel it actually is. Absent a change in this dynamic, the Army could easily fall into a vicious cycle where Americans increasingly see it through a political filter.

With a new narrative strategy, the Army could begin to overcome political polarization and bring coherence to the myriad of communications it sends out. It could focus its storytelling on what researchers call the transactional and the transcendent, or in the case of the Army, pragmatism and patriotism. And it could build a sense of belonging and purpose across all the audiences it needs to reach. Done well, a new narrative strategy would empower all the Army’s messengers, from a senior leader testifying to Congress to a recruiter talking with parents at the dining room table, to deploy messaging that best resonates with the specific audiences while still telling a common story about the Army.

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Listening is the first step in building such a strategy. Much of the effectiveness of a narrative strategy flows from the degree to which the storytelling resonates with the values, perspectives, and beliefs of the intended audience. For the Army, this means hearing from Americans — of all backgrounds and perspectives — about how they understand three key concepts: the Army’s purpose, the relationship between the Army and the American people, and the broader threat landscape. The Army has a unique opportunity on the horizon to gather such input: its 250th birthday in 2025. This major milestone presents a natural vehicle to hold Americans’ attention, break through polarized media channels, and hear directly from individuals and communities across the country. The Army should take advantage of this by launching an “Army at 250” campaign to hold large-scale listening and engagement sessions across the nation.

Analyzing the Recruitment Crisis: The Missing Role of Narrative

Overlooked in explanations for the recruiting shortfall is the role that narrative plays in Americans’ decisions about military service. This reflects the fact that, as researchers at RAND noted, individuals’ recruitment decisions “are typically modeled within an occupational choice framework, where individuals are assumed to enlist if the expected value of joining the military exceeds the opportunity cost of not doing so.” Such models generate important insights that have improved policies, benefits, and recruiting practices, but they also tend to isolate recruitment from the broader relationship the Army has with the American people.

The effects of this isolation are visible in the contrast between coverage of the recruitment crisis and recommendations put forth by many researchers. Coverage of the crisis invariably highlights the public debate over whether the military has become too “woke,” yet recommendations from experts tend to focus exclusively on changes to recruitment policy and practice. The disconnect between a public narrative centered on ideology and proposed solutions centered on practical considerations makes it harder for the Army to take constructive action. Even though there is little data to suggest concerns about progressive indoctrination are much of a factor in recruitment (more on this later), the Army has to address the public narrative in order to create durable political support for changes to policy and practice. Effective narrative strategy in this context creates the conditions to successfully implement structural improvements.

This is not to dismiss or minimize the value econometric analyses provide towards recruitment efforts. Studies have consistently found that macroeconomic factors, such as the unemployment rate and the value of military pay relative to civilian pay, exert a significant influence on Americans’ decisions to join the Army. Public opinion also makes this point as well — in the Fall 2021 Joint Advertising, Market Research, and Studies survey of 16- to 21-year-old Americans, for example, 58 percent selected “Pay/money” as a main reason why they might consider joining the military. Similarly, operational considerations, such as the system the Army uses to medically screen recruits, also weigh heavily on recruiters’ success in meeting their goals. It stands to reason that such variables will play a key part in addressing today’s challenge.

However, these econometric models need to be complemented by and integrated with studies that look at narrative and at what sociologist Dr. Charles Moskos described as “institutional” variables such as duty and patriotism. The influence of such variables is evident in surveys asking service members why they joined: The March 2018 New Recruit survey found that the top reason selected for why an individual wanted to join the Army was “pride or self-esteem/honor.” Institutional variables have always been a critical element in why Americans choose to serve in the Army, but they receive much less emphasis in conversations about improving recruiting outcomes. In short, while there are levers the Army can pull that are unique to recruitment, the crisis cannot be addressed in isolation from the broader challenge the Army faces in communicating with the American people.

Crafting Effective Communications: Persuasive Narratives

Before the Army can build a new narrative strategy it has to align behind a shared definition of what narrative is. This is harder than it may seem. While the Army has developed more expertise with narratives over the past two decades, its focus has been at the operational or tactical level. As a result, there is a dearth of research or guidance on the role of narrative in the relationship between the Army and the American society. Fortunately, the Army can draw on both past experience and research executed in support of the wars on terror to form an actionable definition for narrative.

In the aftermath of war or in periods of relative peace such as the current moment, the Army has often struggled to produce a compelling narrative. This is evident with the most recent statement on the posture of the United States Army, which outlined six objectives to guide the force, from becoming more data-centric to building positive command climates. Each objective is important, but the overall package fails the test for persuasive narratives — the sum is not greater than its parts. There is no broader theme, no story of purpose that ties the objectives together to produce a more coherent message, and no thread linking the Army’s past, present, and future. A stark contrast is evident with the posture statement from 2002, which included the following: “Today, we are engaged in a global war on terrorism and defense of our homeland. Soldiers, On Point for the Nation, are protecting and promoting American interests around the globe. They are accomplishing these vital missions much as we have for over 226 years with little fanfare or attention.” These three sentences convey the essence of persuasive narratives in how they articulate a bold, new mission of vital urgency that is, at the same time, a continuation of an uninterrupted legacy of humble service and sacrifice for the nation.

In addition to learning from its own past narratives, the Army can draw from a summary of research on narrative produced for the Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Series. Although the focus is on narratives in the context of insurgency, the authors provide a working definition for persuasive narratives that is applicable to the domestic landscape. Drawing on social science research, they define a narrative as “a coherent system of interrelated and sequentially organized stories that serve a common rhetorical desire.” What this means for the Army is that a narrative is a system of stories — themes, frames, slogans, mottos, unit histories, visual cues, etc. — that fit together and reinforce a common meta-story about the Army.

A narrative strategy matches the desired narrative end state — the meta-story about the Army it wants people to hear and feel — with the appropriate methods and resources to reach and connect with different audiences. A strategy creates coherence while allowing for high degrees of customization and enables the Army to be both deliberate and opportunistic in how it communicates. But for a strategy to be effective, the Army needs a clear narrative end state.

The Army’s Narrative Strategy: Purpose, People, Context

The Army’s narrative strategy will only be as effective as the degree to which people can understand what the Army does, why they themselves belong in the Army, and why this matters. Although the Army touches on all three themes — call them purpose, people, and context — in its current vision of Army of 2030, it’s not clear there is alignment in how the Army and the American people understand these themes.

Purpose

The Army’s purpose, as it understands it, has remained consistent since its founding in 1775: winning wars. When commissioning George Washington as commander in chief of the Continental Army, the Continental Congress described the Army’s purpose as the “Defence of American liberty, and … repelling every hostile invasion thereof.” Today the Army says its mission is to “deploy, fight, and win our nation’s wars by providing ready, prompt, and sustained land dominance by Army forces across the full spectrum of conflict as part of the joint force.” What is less clear today is how Americans outside the Army understand its purpose. Americans have for decades associated winning wars with the types of victories achieved in World War II, yet, as Ambassador Ryan Crocker said in testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2021, “Winning and losing, victory and defeat were terms that I did not use in war zones such as Afghanistan and Iraq.” Reflecting this disconnect, most Americans feel America did not succeed in Afghanistan and Iraq, but there is little data to suggest people feel the Army failed in its purpose. This indicates there is a disjuncture in how the Army and the public conceive of its purpose.

Public perceptions of purpose have also likely been influenced by high-profile domestic missions performed by the Army over the past several years. Whether providing protest response in 2020, deploying to the southern border, or securing the U.S. Capitol in the aftermath of January 6, the Army has had a highly visible role in multiple politically charged events. While additional research is needed to fully understand the effects of these missions on public attitudes towards the Army, it is likely that, in addition to potentially weakening public trust, they caused further confusion and fracturing in how Americans understand the Army’s purpose.

People

In addition to exploring contrasting conceptions of purpose, the Army also needs to assess how Americans, both those in and out of uniform, understand the relationship between the Army and society. This has vital implications for the way potential recruits understand their place in it. There are longstanding dynamics to examine, such as the tension between perceptions of the Army as a patriotic institution of citizen-soldiers versus a highly technical professional organization and the widening gap between the Army and most Americans in terms of social contacts. Even more urgent, however, is for the Army to grapple with newer developments, most notably the stark ideological polarization in the country and its increasing impact on attitudes towards the Army.

In research my organization conducted in late 2022, we found substantial ideological polarization in attitudes towards the military. For example, 45 percent of Democrats versus 15 percent of Republicans feel the military places too little resources and attention towards addressing racism in the force. 60 percent of Republicans versus 39 percent of Democrats agree with the statement, “There is a tradeoff where the more the military focuses on diversity and inclusion, the less it can focus on preparing for war.”

This polarization is both captured and distorted by headlines about a “woke” military and by commentary suggesting conservatives are turning away from military service. In reality, the picture is much more complex. Republicans’ confidence in the military, while still high overall, has dropped, going from 81 percent to 71 percent in one year, a significant decline. At the same time, however, Americans are still much more likely to think members of the military are more conservative (32 percent) than the rest of society than they are to think servicemembers are more liberal (10 percent). This is particularly true for Republicans, 40 percent of whom say servicemembers are more conservative. Further, recent surveys fielded for the Army found that young Americans were deterred from serving primarily due to concerns about the dangers of Army life or that service would put them behind their peers professionally. Getting a firmer grasp of the myths and realities of how Americans perceive their relationship with the Army is crucial if the Army is to speak effectively in a polarized communications environment.

Context

Finally, the Army needs to hear how Americans understand the broader threat context. Americans sense that we have shifted out of the Global War on Terror era. In the most recent Reagan Foundation survey, Americans reported China (43 percent) and Russia (31 percent) as the countries posing the greatest threat to the US. The Army’s Vision 20230 makes this transition explicit, but lacks an overarching frame to help Americans contextualize the security environment in ideological and material terms.

This is a departure from both the Global War on Terror and Cold War eras, where there were compelling frames about the nature of the threat landscape. A risk the Army faces when there is no single threat analogous to that of the Soviet Union or global terrorism is that it defaults to enumerating challenges — China, Russia, cyber, space, climate, etc. — rather than telling a story about the people, values, and ideas at stake. It also becomes more tempting to emphasize the “what” (“deliver precise, longer-range fires,” “sense farther and more persistently”) over the deeper “why.” Yet it is precisely in such a moment, when there are a multitude of threats and Americans’ concerns about foreign affairs are diverging along ideological lines, that the need for a coherent and crisp articulation of the security landscape, one that speaks to issues of identity and values, is greatest.

It is not the Army’s responsibility alone to describe the overall threat context. Both the National Security Strategy and the National Defense Strategy harness the frame “strategic competition.” This frame may convey significant, if still contested, meaning to policy insiders, but it is of questionable value when talking with most Americans, who are less engaged in the nuance of national security and international relations vocabulary. This means it is incumbent on the Army to apply scaffolding, or vertical integration: linking high-level frames with stories that are more salient at the local and personal levels. Vertical integration is what will enable the Army to be coherent across all its communications about the national security landscape, from Pentagon briefings to remarks from a recruiter at a local high school.

Conclusion: Army at 250

The competing and at times contradictory signals in Americans’ attitudes towards the military underscore the need for more research to better understand how Americans feel towards the Army. Already though, two points are clear. First, the landscape is more polarized than when “be all you can be” was previously launched in 1981. And second, things could get worse. A new narrative strategy will help the Army disrupt these dynamics, but only if it produces stories that resonate deeply and widely across the population.

The best method for generating such results starts with hearing directly from the American people, at scale and in-person. As a mechanism to accomplish this, the Army should harness its upcoming 250th anniversary to launch a major public engagement initiative: Army at 250. The focus of this initiative should be on holding thousands of events across the country over the next few years.

The 250th anniversary presents an unusual opportunity to engage with Americans directly. It is the type of milestone that speaks to the need that people have for collective experiences. It is something that people will instinctively pay more attention to, an enormous asset in a competitive attention economy and polarized communications landscape.

The Army should work with civil society partners to execute this project. Veterans organizations, faith groups, and businesses could all set up events and support with marketing. As they are already doing for the nation’s 250th birthday in 2026, states and localities could pass legislation and establish committees to bring more people into the process. The Army should invite historians and filmmakers to study, write, and produce content about the Army’s history and story. Finally, Army at 250 should also include events with military servicemembers and their families, to ensure the new narrative strategy resonates with those currently serving.

The Army has a uniquely compelling story to tell. It is one of service and patriotism, of social mobility and economic opportunity, and, at a time of polarization, one of Americans from all backgrounds supporting each another in a shared endeavor. But this story will not tell itself. A new narrative strategy will be vital in connecting with the American people for years to come.

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Dan Vallone is executive director for More in Common US, where he leads the Veterans and Citizens Initiative, a research project to help bridge the gap between the veteran and military family community and the broader society. A former Army infantry officer, Dan served in Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. Sign up for More in Common’s newsletter to track research into polarization in America.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Dan Vallone · March 7, 2023

20. Female 4-stars discuss sexism in the service, say the military is ‘much better’ for women now

Female 4-stars discuss sexism in the service, say the military is ‘much better’ for women now

Stars and Stripes · by Doug G. Ware · March 6, 2023

Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan, Air Force Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost, Army Gen. Laura Richardson, and Navy Adm. Lisa Franchetti speak Monday, March 6, 2023, at the “Beyond Firsts: Powering the Future Force” panel discussion at the Military Women’s Memorial in Arlington, Va. In celebration of Women’s History Month, the top female military officers gathered for the first time to share their unique perspectives and experiences as service members, the importance of recruiting and retaining the best talent, and the impacts of having a diverse, inclusive warfighting force. (Auburn Braithwaite/Department of Defense)

WASHINGTON — All four of the U.S. military’s four-star female officers gathered in public Monday for the first time to talk about the sexism that they have experienced in the service and how far women still must go before they’re fully integrated members of the armed forces.

Army Gen. Laura Richardson, Air Force Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost, Navy Adm. Lisa Franchetti and Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan were panelists for the discussion called “Beyond Firsts: Powering the Future Force” held at the Military Women’s Memorial in Arlington, Va. All four were promoted to four-star generals and admirals in their respective services within the last two years.

“It has truly been a journey,” said Fagan, who entered the Coast Guard in 1981 and became commandant in mid-2022.

“In the 75 years since we have had the opportunity to serve, we certainly have come a long way,” said Van Ovost, who has been in charge of U.S. Transportation Command since October 2021. “Our progress has been accelerated, but we have a way to go still.”

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Tyshaa Kelman, a Brooklyn, New York native and a supply administrator with III Marine Expeditionary Force Support Battalion, III Marine Expeditionary Force Information Group at U.S. Army Garrison Casey, South Korea, on Feb. 13, 2023. (Kira Ducato/U.S. Marine Corps)

All four women had plenty to say about experiencing resistance on their rise through the ranks. They all entered service in the 1980s, an era when women were still barred from serving in combat roles and most leadership positions were filled by men. And sometimes those men did not make them feel welcomed.

“I got to my first ship and my chief engineer … said, ‘I don’t think women should be on ships. I don’t think you should be here, and I think I’m going to make sure you fail,’” said Franchetti, who joined the Navy in 1985. “That was pretty eye-opening that someone would say that.”

Franchetti, who has been the vice chief of naval operations since September 2022, said: “My team found out about it … and they basically set out to make sure that didn’t happen and that he was wrong. We basically made it look like he was the failure for not wanting us to be there.”

She said, at one point, the sexist treatment that she experienced almost persuaded her to leave the Navy for a career as a massage therapist.

“I was definitely going to get out,” Franchetti said. “In the end, what it really came down to was the Navy had everything I wanted. I got to travel, I got a new job every two years … and I really liked our mission.”

Richardson, the first woman to take command of U.S. Army North in 2019 and commander of U.S. Southern Command since 2021, said there are plenty of examples in her area of responsibility — Latin America and the Caribbean — of female leaders becoming more commonplace.

“In this region, we have got two women presidents, we have two women vice presidents, we have two women ministers of defense, we have got the only woman chief of defense in the world right now, from Jamaica,” Richardson said. “So, we have some great shining examples.”

It wasn’t until 1948 that American women were allowed to be full-time members of the military during peacetime. Before that, they could only serve in times of conflict. It would be another 68 years, however, before women could serve in combat roles.

By 2021, there were 232,000 female service members, representing 17.3% of the active-duty U.S. military, according to the Pentagon’s most recent figures.

Graduates from recruit company X-202 complete basic training at U.S. Coast Guard Training Center Cape May, N.J., on Nov. 18, 2022. (Shannon Kearney/U.S. Coast Guard)

Each of the female officers on the panel Monday expressed a deep gratitude for progress in gender parity, as well as some frustration that progress always comes slowly.

For example, there are still no women who are Navy SEALs. The first woman to become an Army Green Beret didn’t happen until 2020. Moreover, only a handful of women have successfully trained to become Army Rangers.

By the time that Van Ovost became an Air Force pilot in the 1980s, she was one of the military’s few female flyers. She pointed out Monday that progress for women is moving even slower in other parts of the world.

“The Middle East is slightly different,” she said, eliciting laughter from the audience. “They’re a few decades behind us, but there is great hope. I was in Saudi Arabia … there are women now driving. There are women going to school. There are women entrepreneurs. They can decide to work without having their guardians sign them up.”

Dozens of young women in the military attended the panel discussion. Some of them asked Van Ovost, Richardson, Franchetti and Fagan how they might carry the torch for women when the military still struggles to deal with discrimination and sexual assault. Last year, a Pentagon study showed a record number of sexual assaults in the military in 2021 — about 36,000 incidents. The study said 8.4% of women reported being sexually assaulted on duty.

“All of the services have been on a journey around sexual harassment, sexual assault, bullying, and I consider where we are today -- versus where we were eight or 10 years ago -- a much better position,” Fagan said, noting she successfully encouraged her daughter to join the Coast Guard. “I would not have brought or encouraged my daughter to come in if I didn’t believe” the military culture is safer now.

Some of the officers on the panel noted other difficult challenges for female troops such as trouble finding child care and female-specific uniforms.

“If [women] were fully included, we would have the armor that’s built for a woman’s body, based on how we carry the weight,” Van Ovost said. “We’d have flight suits that fit us and uniforms that would fit us, so we wouldn’t have to be accommodated.”

“We are just going to keep chipping away at it,” she added.

Stars and Stripes · by Doug G. Ware · March 6, 2023

21. Opinion | Biden must follow Roosevelt’s ‘arsenal of democracy’ example

Opinion | Biden must follow Roosevelt’s ‘arsenal of democracy’ example

The Washington Post · by Editorial Board · March 6, 2023

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine did not catch the West’s intelligence agencies unaware. But no one in Washington or Europe anticipated the scale at which they would need to provide Kyiv with arms and munitions. That’s an increasing challenge for NATO and other countries rightly determined to prevent a Russian victory, and the dire consequences for the United States and its allies that would follow. It needs to be addressed swiftly.

In a ground war that in some ways has come to resemble World War I — with thousands of artillery rounds fired daily against deeply dug-in armies — Ukrainian forces are now at risk of running low on key munitions. They are firing shells faster than supplier nations are producing them. There are other historic echoes. Just as President Franklin D. Roosevelt called on Americans to rally behind the country’s European allies as the “arsenal of democracy” in 1940, a year before Pearl Harbor, President Biden will be tested and judged by his own success in making a similar case for this country to step up by applying its military and industrial might.

The most pressing need in Ukraine is the supply of 155mm howitzer shells, which in recent months have become the main munition holding Russia at bay. The United States has supplied more than 1 million to Ukraine since the war’s outset, according to the Pentagon. Ukrainian artillery units have been firing them at a rate of roughly 3,000 daily — perhaps one-third the number of rounds screaming back at them from the Russian side. The math is unforgiving. Not only is Ukraine’s inventory dwindling, but the U.S. prewar production of the shells, fewer than 15,000 per month, is scarcely enough to sustain Ukraine for five days.

To its credit, the Biden administration is gearing up for a sixfold increase in monthly production of the shells, and sharply accelerating the manufacture of other materiel. European countries, too, are rushing to furnish Ukraine with more shells. That will take time, however, not least because defense-procurement bureaucracies, in this country and other major industrialized democracies, have been calibrated mainly for peacetime since the Cold War. Germany in particular, which has tried to surge its defense spending, faces long-standing problems with red tape and inefficiencies that have impeded arms production.

Also on the Editorial Board’s agenda

Biden has a new border plan.
The United States should keep the pressure on Nicaragua.
America’s fight against inflation isn’t over.
The Taliban has doubled down on the repression of women.
The world’s ice is melting quickly.

The Department of Homeland Security has provided details of a plan to prevent a migrant surge along the southern border. The administration would presumptively deny asylum to migrants who failed to seek it in a third country en route — unless they face “an extreme and imminent threat” of rape, kidnapping, torture or murder. Critics allege that this is akin to an illegal Trump-era policy. In fact, President Biden is acting lawfully in response to what was fast becoming an unmanageable flow at the border. Read our most recent editorial on the U.S. asylum system.

Some 222 Nicaraguan political prisoners left that Central American country for the United States in February. President Daniel Ortega released and sent them into exile in a single motion. Nevertheless, it appears that Mr. Ortega let them go under pressure from economic sanctions the United States imposed on his regime when he launched a wave of repression in 2018. The Biden administration should keep the pressure on. Read recent editorials about the situation in Nicaragua.

Inflation remains stubbornly high at 6.4 percent in January. The Federal Reserve’s job is not done in this fight. More interest rate hikes are needed. Read a recent editorial about inflation and the Fed.

Afghanistan’s rulers had promised that barring women from universities was only temporary. But private universities got a letter on Jan. 28 warning them that women are prohibited from taking university entrance examinations. Afghanistan has 140 private universities across 24 provinces, with around 200,000 students. Out of those, some 60,000 to 70,000 are women, the AP reports. Read a recent editorial on women’s rights in Afghanistan.

A new study finds that half the world’s mountain glaciers and ice caps will melt even if global warming is restrained to 1.5 degrees Celsius — which it won’t be. This would feed sea-level rise and imperil water sources for hundreds of millions. Read a recent editorial on how to cope with rising seas, and another on the policies needed to fight climate change.

1/6

End of carousel

The need to provide more weapons systems to Ukraine is equally urgent. Yet the problem, depending on the system, tends to be different. Take, for instance, the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), the precision multiple rocket launcher that has been used to deadly effect against Russian ammunition dumps, command posts and other targets. Hundreds of HIMARS are in U.S. and other NATO countries’ inventories, yet just 20 or so have been sent so far to Ukraine. The Ukrainians have shown their ability to shift the battlefield momentum with HIMARS, and they have pleaded for more of them. Yet the Western allies have dragged their feet.

One reason is that Washington and its allies are reluctant to draw from stockpiles of the weapon, given the need to train their own forces on its use. War planners in the Pentagon are wary of eroding U.S. military readiness in the event of another conceivable ground war — on the Korean Peninsula, for example, or involving NATO’s Baltic allies. That same reluctance is at play with other weapons. The result is a gap between the West’s supportive rhetoric on equipping Ukraine against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ruinous invasion, and the pace of actual deliveries of arms and ammunition, which is slower than Kyiv needs to push back Russian forces.

Some U.S. military officials have suggested that Ukraine should slow the rate at which it fires artillery shells, or pick its targets more selectively. That’s an armchair general’s risky prescription, overlooking the fact that Kyiv is already enormously outgunned and outmanned. It’s worth remembering that Ukrainian forces have massively outperformed expectations. More than a year after an invasion that most outsiders believed would succeed within days, second-guessing Ukrainian tactics is the height of presumption as their citizens continue dying on the battlefield against a country with triple Ukraine’s population and an economy nearly 10 times its size.

The burden is rightly on the West to ramp up production and shipment of the weapons and munitions Ukraine needs. And there are steps Washington and its allies can take to achieve that, beyond the sharp increases in defense spending to meet what seems likely to be a long-term commitment to Kyiv’s security, along with other growing threats to U.S. interests.

One sensible move would be to send Ukraine some weapons currently in the arsenals of National Guard units in individual states. Granted, that has the potential to erode their training capacity and combat readiness in the short term. Until the stockpiles could be replenished, it is likely some governors would complain.

In other cases, the administration would be wise to undertake a clear-eyed analysis of the strategic consequences of framing these decisions too narrowly. According to Mark Cancian of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Pentagon has shipped about 40 percent of the U.S. stockpile of some 20,000 Javelin antitank missiles, leaving a hole in our inventory that will take several years to fill at the current production level. It is understandable that Pentagon planners are reluctant to deplete their own supplies further. Yet if Ukraine’s planned spring offensive fails for lack of Javelins or other weapons that Washington could have provided in greater numbers, the Biden administration will regret its hesitation to take unorthodox steps.

It’s critical that the administration perceive those interests clearly and explain them compellingly to what recent polls suggest is an increasingly skeptical American public. Turning back Russian aggression is not only important for our European allies’ security but also to maintain a basic principle of civilized international relations: that one state cannot invade and subjugate another that has posed no threat. It is also crucial to transmit the message to China, North Korea and other would-be aggressors that the United States will stand fast in defense of its own interests and other democracies.

The Washington Post · by Editorial Board · March 6, 2023

22. Sixth-Generation Aircraft: How the B-21 Raider Will Transform Air Warfare

Sixth-Generation Aircraft: How the B-21 Raider Will Transform Air Warfare

19fortyfive.com · by Philip Handleman · March 6, 2023

Editor’s Note: This is part III of a multipart series looking at the origins and potential of the B-21 Raider. You can find part I here and part II here.

What Makes the B-21 a Gamechanger

The things that look to be gamechangers in setting the B-21 apart are the secrets hidden within its inner sanctum. At the bomber’s December 2, 2022 rollout, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said as much: “You know, the B-21 looks imposing. But what’s under the frame and space-age coatings is even more impressive.”

The powers stemming from the B-21’s core – less the touchable gadgets and more the abstract capacities – involve the moving and digesting of raw data faster than humans can think. The B-21’s networking prowess is intimated to include the ability to securely share a wealth of gathered inputs via the electromagnetic spectrum while the bomber acts contemporaneously as a bomb delivery platform, communications relay node and command-and-control manager.

The B-21’s advances stand to transform the nature of air warfare and could alter perceptions of the bomber from a mere bomb-dropper to a multifaceted atmospheric battle-star that leapfrogs the enemy’s decision-making through lightning-quick processing and sharing of the information flow, giving new meaning to the old adage that knowledge is power.

Among its “under the frame” breakthroughs, the B-21 is expected to have an optionally-crewed capability as that was an element of the contract. While missions into the foreseeable future will likely be flown with crews on board, having the option to operate a large stealthy bomber interchangeably with or without onboard pilots would chart new ground. In either case, B-21 combat sorties are contemplated, at least in part, as formation flights with smaller un-crewed combat air vehicles now in development.

Known as Autonomous Collaborative Platforms or ACPs, these ultra-sophisticated drones will constitute part of a family of systems to be built around the B-21 – the concept where the bomber is not just an airplane but a system of systems. That concept is to have equal applicability to the F-22 Raptor’s forthcoming replacement, the NGAD (Next Generation Air Dominance) fighter, which is on track to be the Air Force’s first sixth-generation fighter with initial operational capability possibly by 2030.

ACPs can be thought of as “loyal wingmen,” but will provide much more than such traditional escort attributes as situational awareness cues and protection against interceptors. In fact, ACPs are likely to be reconfigurable for multiple purposes.

Conceivably launched by the bomber itself or supporting aircraft, the diversity of roles served by these un-crewed vehicles will, according to the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, probably include offensive/defensive counterair, suppression of enemy air defenses on the ground, intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance, communications relay and jamming. Some of these roles would be additive. For example, carefully positioned ACPs would extend the bomber’s already far-reaching communications linkages.

ACPs may even join the bombers in attacking the targets. They could function in massive swarms or serve as decoys. And, unlike old-style crewed escort aircraft, these drones would be expendable.

The multidimensional chessboard involving coordination between crewed and un-crewed vehicles will have too many pieces moving too fast for humans alone to manipulate. Achieving dominance of the electromagnetic environment while concurrently executing either a kinetic or directed-energy attack on assorted ground targets, some of which may be in motion, will necessitate rapidly fusing and sifting through throngs of data by nimble computers, adjusting frequency settings, trajectories, pitch angles and more in an immensely fluid threat ecosphere. Reliance on advances in automation, artificial intelligence, predictive analytics and machine learning is the only way the new bomber is going to be able to make the complexity manageable.

In fact, Northrop Grumman used the occasion of the rollout to talk up the bomber’s new software and cloud computing tied to a “digital twin.” The point was to focus attention on the significant level of digitization as an enabler of a production-ready bomber right off the bat, long-term maintenance sustainability and an open architecture for ease of future upgrades.

As laudatory as these capabilities will be, one senses that they represent the tip of the proverbial iceberg in terms of the full scope of the new bomber’s processing power and networking capacity. In its advanced computing systems, the B-21 may well cross a new technological threshold.

Northrop Grumman comes to the table with an extensive background in software development, having taken the technology both figuratively and literally to new heights. It pioneered autonomous operations with its cutting-edge high-altitude RQ-4 Global Hawk/MQ-4C Triton family of drones. An outgrowth of that program is what the company calls a “leading prototype” of the Defense Department’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) system, a generic warfighting tool prioritized by the Pentagon. According to the implementation plan for the system, released publicly on March 17, 2022 by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, JADC2 is meant to ensure that warfighters “keep pace with the volume and complexity of data in modern warfare.”

Northrop Grumman’s JADC2 version, known proprietarily as the Distributed Autonomy/Responsive Control (DA/RC) system, is described on the company’s Web site as a “transformational software technology” that “connects and controls a wide range of complex systems across all domains and services in highly contested environments.” The company indicates that DA/RC will enable human-machine collaboration for enhanced warfighter decision-making in the world’s increasingly lethal, maze-like battlespaces.

While the company does not expressly say that DA/RC or a derivative will be the basis for the B-21’s connectivity and control functions, the system as presented possesses must-have attributes for the new bomber. Also, Air & Space Forces Magazine reporting indicates Northrop Grumman has a stealthy Global Hawk replacement, the RQ-180, in the works and that it bears a resemblance to the B-21. This suggests that some version of the company’s advanced software package from its high-flying drones will be central to the B-21.

Here, though, is arguably one of the B-21’s potential pitfalls for, as real-world experience has demonstrated, systems heavily laden with software are invariably subject to a mix of internal and external vulnerabilities. Any software-centric machine is only as good as the programmers’ vision. That means having to think through every possible scenario and devise corresponding lines of code so that hiccups do not happen at the most trying of times.

Engineer and former Air Force pilot James Albright asserted in a three-part series on aircraft reliability for Business & Commercial Aviation in early 2023 that aircraft software can never be fully tested except in the real world “because the real world is too complicated to predict in a research and development environment.” He posited that finding where design theory falls short of operational reality takes longer where software is involved, prolongating aviation’s customary discovery-and-repair cycle.

While cockpit automation has long been a staple of everyday flight as seen through the widespread use of such workload-relieving systems as autopilots and auto-throttles, the trend in highly advanced aircraft is for the computer operating system to serve as the platform’s wired nerve center – if not the brain then an indispensable lobe. Unless the baseline software and what are likely to be its many updates over time are as near to flawless and impregnable as humans can make them, the B-21’s software dependency could become its Achille’s heel. Yes, ironically, one of the very things that makes a combat aircraft like the B-21 so formidable contains the seed to render it vulnerable.

Northrop Grumman

While some point to statistics that purport to show aircraft have become safer with the introduction of software into flight operations, the track record of software in airplanes is a cautionary tale. The successful integration of the former into the latter hinges on effectively managing the inescapable tension between aviation’s traditionalist wrench-turners and their latter-day colleagues in the design-build enterprise, the computer geeks. The two represent distinct cultures that are not often in tune. Unfortunately, software flaws in some of the most high-tech planes have caused troublesome effects in the air and on the tarmac.

The most often cited example is when a formation of six F-22s crossed the International Date Line for the first time during a 2007 flight from Hawaii to Japan. The onboard computers were said to have suffered a systemwide “crash,” leaving the brand-new fighters bereft of their navigation systems, radios and certain other instruments. It could have been a calamitous event had it not been for clear weather and accompanying tanker aircraft that provided visual guidance back to the departure point. While the Air Force never publicly explained the cause, it is presumed that the fighters’ software was inadequately programmed for the initial passage through the imaginary line that represents the divide of calendar days between East and West. A fix was reportedly instituted within the next 48 hours.

The even newer F-35 Lightning II has had its own tortured history of software difficulties, causing aircraft availability to suffer. The Director of the Pentagon’s Office of Operational Test and Evaluation, Nickolas Guertin, had particularly harsh words for the F-35’s software in his 2022 annual report, issued in January 2023. Referring to the fighter’s software modernization effort, the report stated: “The F-35 program continues to field immature, deficient, and insufficiently tested Block 4 mission systems software to fielded units. The operational test (OT) teams continue to identify deficiencies that require software corrections and, with them, additional time and resources.” The report also criticized the F-35 Joint Program Office for not adequately planning for operational tests of the new hardware configuration known as Technology Refresh 3 (TR-3).

Additionally, the fighter’s computer-based maintenance system, Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS), has been notoriously problematic, also resulting in unacceptable mission capability rates. The system is being replaced by means of a transition to a new system, Operational Data Integrated Network (ODIN), with the associated hardware of ODIN Base Kits (OBKs) already having been distributed to selected field units to take the place of ALIS Standard Operating Units (SOUs). The report describes the three-step process for the transition as behind schedule due to delays caused by the reallocation of resources to correct issues with the first step’s software release. According to the report, the originally planned flight testing of the ALIS “containerization” has been moved back nearly a year, from July 2023 to June 2024.

The search for light at the end of the F-35’s software tunnel has been going on a long time. Production of the fighter began in 2006 and as of February 1, 2023 Lockheed Martin’s Web site indicates 890 F-35s have already been delivered.

In theory, software should enhance a complicated machine’s functionality and ease of operation. For executing exceptionally complex tasks, software plays an absolutely essential role by processing data at speeds that would not otherwise be possible. However, as noted, software anomalies have had a nasty habit of sprouting up unexpectedly, jeopardizing not only readiness but also safety. Those in the field are left to grapple with glitches that cause systems not to work as advertised, forcing them to perform nagging reboots or having to simply wait for software updates that may contain glitches of their own. Cost and efficiency have suffered too, frustrating bureaucrats seeking to manage tight budgets.

Innocent oversights by software programmers are one thing. Add to that the malicious activities of enemy hackers who will spend every waking hour seeking to exploit weak spots with relentless cyberattacks. How much resiliency will be built into the B-21’s connectivity and control software? If one bomber’s system is taken down would it trigger a domino effect? What are crews to do if they lose contact with their command authority?

Several months before the B-21’s rollout, on August 23, 2022, the Air Force addressed the question of severed communications links between crews and their higher-ups during combat operations. In Air Force Doctrine Note 1-21, which introduces a new “scheme of maneuver” known as Agile Combat Employment (ACE), the service concedes that it should be “expected and anticipated” that in modern war some “force elements” will be cut off from “higher echelon commands.” The document instructs that in such instances the crews should focus on carrying out the commander’s intent and exercise initiative to seize “emergent opportunities.” That is fine as far as it goes, but there appears to be no Plan B if enemy hackers go beyond disrupting communications and infiltrate the B-21’s computers.

B-21: Software Is Key

The pressure is on Northrop Grumman’s software developers to come up with an ironclad protective bubble against hacking attempts as well as inadvertent bugs. Managing to do so would be a stroke of genius on par with Jack Northrop’s flying-wing epiphany. The next major milestone is coming as the company preps the newly-introduced bomber for its flight test program, expected to commence at Edwards Air Force Base in mid-2023.

B-21 Raider

If the company can smoothly integrate its software into its exquisitely tweaked airframe, fashioning an airtight seal against the would-be interlopers and snuffing out the gremlins a priori, the plane will be on course to betoken a new era of aerial weaponry and open a significant new chapter in the history of air warfare. Through mastery of the complex technologies going into its flagship platform, Northrop Grumman has a real shot at justifying its claim that the B-21 is the world’s maiden sixth-generation aircraft.

Author Expertise and Experience

Philip Handleman is a pilot and aviation author/photographer. With retired Air Force Lt. Col. Harry T. Stewart, Jr., he cowrote Soaring to Glory: A Tuskegee Airman’s Firsthand Account of World War II. Mr. Handleman’s photograph of the Air Force Thunderbirds was featured on the postage stamp honoring the 50th anniversary of the Department of the Air Force in 1997.

19fortyfive.com · by Philip Handleman · March 6, 2023

23. The New Anarchy: America faces a type of extremist violence it does not know how to stop.

Conclusion:

Ending political violence means facing down those who use the language of democracy to weaken democratic systems. It means rebuking the conspiracy theorist who uses the rhetoric of truth-seeking to obscure what’s real; the billionaire who describes his privately owned social platform as a democratic town square; the seditionist who proclaims himself a patriot; the authoritarian who claims to love freedom. Someday, historians will look back at this moment and tell one of two stories: The first is a story of how democracy and reason prevailed. The second is a story of how minds grew fevered and blood was spilled in the twilight of a great experiment that did not have to end the way it did.

The New Anarchy

America faces a type of extremist violence it does not know how to stop.

By Adrienne LaFrance

The Atlantic · by Adrienne LaFrance · March 6, 2023

“Blood grows hot, and blood is spilled. Thought is forced from old channels into confusion. Deception breeds and thrives. Confidence dies, and universal suspicion reigns. Each man feels an impulse to kill his neighbor, lest he be first killed by him. Revenge and retaliation follow. And all this … may be among honest men only. But this is not all. Every foul bird comes abroad, and every dirty reptile rises up. These add crime to confusion.”

— Abraham Lincoln, letter to the Missouri abolitionist Charles D. Drake, 1863

I. ON THE BRINK

In the weeks before Labor Day 2020, Ted Wheeler, the mayor of Portland, Oregon, began warning people that he believed someone would soon be killed by extremists in his city. Portland was preparing for the 100th consecutive day of conflict among anti-police protesters, right-wing counterprotesters, and the police themselves. Night after night, hundreds of people clashed in the streets. They attacked one another with baseball bats, Tasers, bear spray, fireworks. They filled balloons with urine and marbles and fired them at police officers with slingshots. The police lobbed flash-bang grenades. One man shot another in the eye with a paintball gun and pointed a loaded revolver at a screaming crowd. The FBI notified the public of a bomb threat against federal buildings in the city. Several homemade bombs were hurled into a group of people in a city park.

Explore the April 2023 Issue

Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.

Extremists on the left and on the right, each side inhabiting its own reality, had come to own a portion of downtown Portland. These radicals acted without restraint or, in many cases, humanity.

In early July, when then-President Donald Trump deployed federal law-enforcement agents in tactical gear to Portland—against the wishes of the mayor and the governor—conditions deteriorated further. Agents threw protesters into unmarked vans. A federal officer shot a man in the forehead with a nonlethal munition, fracturing his skull. The authorities used chemical agents on crowds so frequently that even Mayor Wheeler found himself caught in clouds of tear gas. People set fires. They threw rocks and Molotov cocktails. They swung hammers into windows. Then, on the last Saturday of August, a 600-vehicle caravan of Trump supporters rode into Portland waving American flags and Trump flags with slogans like TAKE AMERICA BACK and MAKE LIBERALS CRY AGAIN. Within hours, a 39-year-old man would be dead—shot in the chest by a self-described anti-fascist. Five days later, federal agents killed the suspect—in self-defense, the government claimed—during a confrontation in Washington State.

What had seemed from the outside to be spontaneous protests centered on the murder of George Floyd were in fact the culmination of a long-standing ideological battle. Some four years earlier, Trump supporters had identified Portland, correctly, as an ideal place to provoke the left. The city is often mocked for its infatuation with leftist ideas and performative politics. That reputation, lampooned in the television series Portlandia, is not completely unwarranted. Right-wing extremists understood that Portland’s reaction to a trolling campaign would be swift, and would guarantee the celebrity that comes with virality. When Trump won the presidency, this dynamic intensified, and Portland became a place where radicals would go to brawl in the streets. By the middle of 2018, far-right groups such as the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer had hosted more than a dozen rallies in the Pacific Northwest, many of them in Portland. Then, in 2020, extremists on the left hijacked largely peaceful anti-police protests with their own violent tactics, and right-wing radicals saw an opening for a major fight.

We face a new phase of domestic terror, one characterized by radicalized individuals with shape-shifting ideologies willing to kill their political enemies.

What happened in Portland, like what happened in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, was a concentrated manifestation of the political violence that is all around us now. By political violence, I mean acts of violence intended to achieve political goals, whether driven by ideological vision or by delusions and hatred. More Americans are bringing weapons to political protests. Openly white-supremacist activity rose more than twelvefold from 2017 to 2021. Political aggression today is often expressed in the violent rhetoric of war. People build their political identities not around shared values but around a hatred for their foes, a phenomenon known as “negative partisanship.” A growing number of elected officials face harassment and death threats, causing many to leave politics. By nearly every measure, political violence is seen as more acceptable today than it was five years ago. A 2022 UC Davis poll found that one in five Americans believes political violence would be “at least sometimes” justified, and one in 10 believes it would be justified if it meant returning Trump to the presidency. Officials at the highest levels of the military and in the White House believe that the United States will see an increase in violent attacks as the 2024 presidential election draws nearer.

In recent years, Americans have contemplated a worst-case scenario, in which the country’s extreme and widening divisions lead to a second Civil War. But what the country is experiencing now—and will likely continue to experience for a generation or more—is something different. The form of extremism we face is a new phase of domestic terror, one characterized by radicalized individuals with shape-shifting ideologies willing to kill their political enemies. Unchecked, it promises an era of slow-motion anarchy.

Consider recent events. In October 2020, authorities arrested more than a dozen men in Michigan, many of them with ties to a paramilitary group. They were in the final stages of a plan to kidnap the state’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, and possessed nearly 2,000 rounds of ammunition and hundreds of guns, as well as silencers, improvised explosive devices, and artillery shells. In January 2021, of course, thousands of Trump partisans stormed the U.S. Capitol, some of them armed, chanting “Where’s Nancy?” and “Hang Mike Pence!” Since then, the headlines have gotten smaller—or perhaps numbness has set in—but the violence has continued. In June 2022, a man with a gun and a knife who allegedly said he intended to kill Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was arrested outside Kavanaugh’s Maryland home. In July, a man with a loaded pistol was arrested outside the home of Pramila Jayapal, the leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. She had heard someone outside shouting “Fuck you, cunt!” and “Commie bitch!” Days later, a man with a sharp object jumped onto a stage in upstate New York and allegedly tried to attack another member of Congress, the Republican candidate for governor. In August, just after the seizure of documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, a man wearing body armor tried to breach the FBI’s Cincinnati field office. He was killed in a shoot-out with police. In October, in San Francisco, a man broke into the home of Nancy Pelosi, then the speaker of the House, and attacked her 82-year-old husband with a hammer, fracturing his skull. In January 2023, a failed Republican candidate for state office in New Mexico who referred to himself as a “MAGA king” was arrested for the alleged attempted murder of local Democratic officials in four separate shootings. In one of the shootings, three bullets passed through the bedroom of a state senator’s 10-year-old daughter as she slept.

Gretchen Whitmer: The plot to kidnap me

Experts I interviewed told me they worry about political violence in broad regions of the country—the Great Lakes, the rural West, the Pacific Northwest, the South. These are places where extremist groups have already emerged, militias are popular, gun culture is thriving, and hard-core partisans collide during close elections in politically consequential states. Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia all came up again and again.

For the past three years, I’ve been preoccupied with a question: How can America survive a period of mass delusion, deep division, and political violence without seeing the permanent dissolution of the ties that bind us? I went looking for moments in history, in the United States and elsewhere, when society has found itself on the brink—or already in the abyss. I learned how cultures have managed to endure sustained political violence, and how they ultimately emerged with democracy still intact.

Some lessons are unhappy ones. Societies tend to ignore the obvious warning signs of endemic political violence until the situation is beyond containment, and violence takes on a life of its own. Government can respond to political violence in brutal ways that undermine democratic values. Worst of all: National leaders, as we see today in an entire political party, can become complicit in political violence and seek to harness it for their own ends.

II. SALAD-BAR EXTREMISM

If you’re looking for a good place to hide an anarchist, you could do worse than Barre, Vermont. Barre (pronounced “berry”) is a small city in the bowl of a steep valley in the northern reaches of a lightly populated, mountainous state. You don’t just stumble upon a place like this.

I went to Barre in October because I wanted to understand the anarchist who had fled there in the early 1900s, at the beginning of a new century already experiencing extraordinary violence and turbulence. The conditions that make a society vulnerable to political violence are complex but well established: highly visible wealth disparity, declining trust in democratic institutions, a perceived sense of victimhood, intense partisan estrangement based on identity, rapid demographic change, flourishing conspiracy theories, violent and dehumanizing rhetoric against the “other,” a sharply divided electorate, and a belief among those who flirt with violence that they can get away with it. All of those conditions were present at the turn of the last century. All of them are present today. Back then, few Americans might have guessed that the violence of that era would rage for decades.

In 1901, an anarchist assassinated President William McKinley—shot him twice in the gut while shaking his hand at the Buffalo World’s Fair. In 1908, an anarchist at a Catholic church in Denver fatally shot the priest who had just given him Communion. In 1910, a dynamite attack on the Los Angeles Times killed 21 people. In 1914, in what officials said was a plot against John D. Rockefeller, a group of anarchists prematurely exploded a bomb in a New York City tenement, killing four people. That same year, extremists set off bombs at two Catholic churches in Manhattan, one of them St. Patrick’s Cathedral. In 1916, an anarchist chef dumped arsenic into the soup at a banquet for politicians, businessmen, and clergy in Chicago; he reportedly used so much that people immediately vomited, which saved their lives. Months later, a shrapnel-filled suitcase bomb killed 10 people and wounded 40 more at a parade in San Francisco. America’s entry into World War I temporarily quelled the violence—among other factors, some anarchists left the country to avoid the draft—but the respite was far from total. In 1917, a bomb exploded inside the Milwaukee Police Department headquarters, killing nine officers and two civilians. In the spring of 1919, dozens of mail bombs were sent to an array of business leaders and government officials, including Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

All of this was prologue. Starting late in the evening on June 2, 1919, in a series of coordinated attacks, anarchists simultaneously detonated massive bombs in eight American cities. In Washington, an explosion at the home of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer blasted out the front windows and tore framed photos off the walls. Palmer, in his pajamas, had been reading by his second-story window. He happened to step away minutes before the bomb went off, a decision that authorities believed kept him alive. (His neighbors, the assistant secretary of the Navy and his wife, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, had just gotten home from an evening out when the explosion also shattered their windows. Franklin ran over to Palmer’s house to check on him.) The following year, a horse-drawn carriage drew up to the pink-marble entrance of the J. P. Morgan building on Wall Street and exploded, killing more than 30 people and injuring hundreds more.

From these episodes, one name leaps out across time: Luigi Galleani. Galleani, who was implicated in most of the attacks, is barely remembered today. But he was, in his lifetime, one of the world’s most influential terrorists, famous for advancing the argument for “propaganda of the deed”: the idea that violence is essential to the overthrow of the state and the ruling class. Born in Italy, Galleani immigrated to the United States and spread his views through his anarchist newspaper, Cronaca Sovversiva, or “Subversive Chronicle.” He told the poor to seize property from the rich and urged his followers to arm themselves—to find “a rifle, a dagger, a revolver.”

Galleani fled to Barre in 1903 under the name Luigi Pimpino after several encounters with law enforcement in New Jersey. He attracted disciples—“Galleanisti,” they were called—despite shunning all forms of organization and hierarchy. He was quick-witted, with an imposing intellect and a magnetic manner of speaking. Even the police reports described his charisma.

Left: Mug shot of the anarchist leader Luigi Galleani, 1919. Right: The aftermath of the Wall Street bombing outside the J. P. Morgan building, 1920. (Paul Spella; source images: Paul Avrich Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections, Library of Congress; Bettmann / Getty)

The population of Barre today is slightly smaller than it was in Galleani’s day—roughly 10,000 then, 8,500 now—and it is the sort of place that is more confused by the presence of strangers than wary of them. The first thing you notice when you arrive is the granite. There is a mausoleum feel to any granite city, and on an overcast day the gray post-office building on North Main Street gives the illusion that all of the color has suddenly vanished from the world. Across the street, at city hall, I wandered into an administrative office where an affable woman—You came to Barre? On purpose?—generously agreed to take me inside the adjacent opera house, which, recently refurbished, looks much as it did on the winter night in 1907 when Galleani appeared there before a packed house to give a speech alongside the anarchist Emma Goldman.

Galleani almost certainly could have disappeared into Barre with his wife and children and gotten away with it. He did not want that. In his own telling, Galleani’s anger was driven by how poorly the working class was treated, particularly in factories. In Barre, granite cutters spent long hours mired in the sludge of a dark, unheated, and poorly ventilated workspace, breathing in silica dust, which made most of them gravely ill. Seeing the town, even a century after Galleani was there, I could understand why his time in Vermont had not altered his worldview. In the foreword to a 2017 biography, Galleani’s grandson, Sean Sayers, put a hagiographic gloss on Galleani’s legacy: “He was not a narrow and callous nihilist; he was a visionary thinker with a beautiful idea of how human society could be—an idea that still resonates today.” For Galleani and other self-identified “communist anarchists” like him, the beautiful idea was a world without government, without laws, without property. Other anarchists did not share his idealism. The movement was torn by disagreements—they were anarchists, after all.

In Galleani’s day, as in our own, the lines of conflict were not cleanly delineated. American radicalism can be a messy stew of ideas and motivations. Violence doesn’t need a clear or consistent ideology and often borrows from several. Federal law-enforcement officials use the term salad-bar extremism to describe what worries them most today, and it applies just as aptly to the extremism of a century ago.

When Galleani had arrived in America, he’d encountered a nation in a terrible mood, one that would feel familiar to us today. Galleani’s children were born into violent times. The nation was divided not least over the cause of its divisions. The gap between rich and poor was colossal—the top 1 percent of Americans possessed almost as much wealth as the rest of the country combined. The population was changing rapidly. Reconstruction had been defeated, and southern states in particular remained horrifically violent toward Black people, for whom the threat of lynching was constant. The Great Migration was just beginning. Immigration surged, inspiring intense waves of xenophobia. America was primed for violence—and to Galleani and his followers, destroying the state was the only conceivable path.

The spectacular violence of 1919 and 1920 proved a catalyst. A concerted nationwide hunt for anarchists began. This work, which culminated in what came to be known as the Palmer Raids, entailed direct violations of the Constitution. In late 1919 and early 1920, a series of raids—carried out in more than 30 American cities—led to the warrantless arrests of 10,000 suspected radicals, mostly Italian and Jewish immigrants. Attorney General Palmer’s dragnet ensnared many innocent people and has become a symbol of the damage that overzealous law enforcement can cause. Hundreds of people were ultimately deported. Some had fallen afoul of a harsh new federal immigration law that broadly targeted anarchists. One of them was Luigi Galleani. “The law was kind of designed for him,” Beverly Gage, a historian and the author of The Day Wall Street Exploded, told me.

During the Years of Lead, at least 400 people were killed and some 2,000 wounded in more than 14,000 separate attacks.

The violence did not stop immediately after the Palmer Raids—in an irony that frustrated authorities, Galleani’s deportation made it impossible for them to charge him in the Wall Street bombing, which they believed he planned, because it occurred after he’d left the country. Nevertheless, sweeping action by law enforcement helped put an end to a generation of anarchist attacks.

That is the most important lesson from the anarchist period: Holding perpetrators accountable is crucial. The Palmer Raids are remembered, rightly, as a ham-handed application of police-state tactics. Government actions can turn killers into martyrs. More important, aggressive policing and surveillance can undermine the very democracy they are meant to protect; state violence against citizens only validates a distrust of law enforcement.

But deterrence conducted within the law can work. Unlike anti-war protesters or labor organizers, violent extremists don’t have an agenda that invites negotiation. “Today’s threats of violence can be inspired by a wide range of ideologies that themselves morph and shift over time,” Deputy Homeland Security Adviser Josh Geltzer told me. Now as in the early 20th century, countering extremism through ordinary debate or persuasion, or through concession, is a fool’s errand. Extremists may not even know what they believe, or hope for. “One of the things I increasingly keep wondering about is—what is the endgame?” Mary McCord, a former assistant U.S. attorney and national-security official, told me. “Do you want democratic government? Do you want authoritarianism? Nobody talks about that. Take back our country . Okay, so you get it back. Then what do you do?”

III. CREEPING VIOLENCE

In another country, and in a time closer to our own, a sustained outbreak of domestic terrorism brought decades of attacks—and illustrates the role that ordinary citizens can sometimes play, along with deterrence, in restoring stability.

On Saturday, August 2, 1980, a bomb hidden inside a suitcase blew up at the Bologna Centrale railway station, killing 85 people and wounding hundreds more, many of them young families setting off on vacation. The explosion flattened an entire wing of the station, demolishing a crowded restaurant, wrecking a train platform, and freezing the station’s clock at the time of the detonation: 10:25 a.m.

The Bologna massacre remains the deadliest attack in Italy since World War II. By the time it occurred, Italians were more than a decade into a period of intense political violence, one that came to be known as Anni di Piombo, or the “Years of Lead.” From roughly 1969 to 1988, Italians experienced open warfare in the streets, bombings of trains, deadly shootings and arson attacks, at least 60 high-profile assassinations, and a narrowly averted neofascist coup attempt. It was a generation of death and bedlam. Although exact numbers are difficult to come by, during the Years of Lead, at least 400 people were killed and some 2,000 wounded in more than 14,000 separate attacks.

As I sat at the Bologna Centrale railway station in September, a place where so many people had died, I found myself thinking, somewhat counterintuitively, about how, in the great sweep of history, the political violence in Italy in the 1970s and ’80s now seems but a blip. Things were so terrible for so long. And then they weren’t. How does political violence come to an end?

No one can say precisely what alchemy of experience, temperament, and circumstance leads a person to choose political violence. But being part of a group alters a person’s moral calculations and sense of identity, not always for the good. Martin Luther King Jr., citing the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, wrote in his “Letter From Birmingham Jail” that “groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.” People commit acts together that they’d never contemplate alone.

From the August 1963 issue: Martin Luther King Jr.’s letter from Birmingham Jail

Vicky Franzinetti was a teenage member of the far-left militant group Lotta Continua during the Years of Lead. “There was a lot of what I would call John Wayneism, and a lot of people fell for that,” she told me. “Whether it’s the Black Panthers or the people who attacked on January 6 on Capitol Hill, violence has a mesmerizing appeal on a lot of people.” A subtle but important shift also took place in Italian political culture during the ’60s and ’70s as people grasped for group identity. “If you move from what you want to who you are, there is very little scope for real dialogue, and for the possibility of exchanging ideas, which is the basis of politics,” Franzinetti said. “The result is the death of politics, which is what has happened.”

In talking with Italians who lived through the Years of Lead about what brought this period to an end, two common themes emerged. The first has to do with economics. For a while, violence was seen as permissible because for too many people, it felt like the only option left in a world that had turned against them. When the Years of Lead began, Italy was still fumbling for a postwar identity. Some Fascists remained in positions of power, and authoritarian regimes controlled several of the country’s neighbors—Greece, Portugal, Spain, Turkey. Not unlike the labor movements that arose in Galleani’s day, the Years of Lead were preceded by intensifying unrest among factory workers and students, who wanted better social and working conditions. The unrest eventually tipped into violence, which spiraled out of control. Leftists fought for the proletariat, and neofascists fought to wind back the clock to the days of Mussolini. When, after two decades, the economy improved in Italy, terrorism receded.

The second theme was that the public finally got fed up. People didn’t want to live in terror. They said, in effect: Enough. Lotta Continua hadn’t resorted to violence in the early years. When it did grow violent, it alienated its own members. “I didn’t like it, and I fought it,” Franzinetti told me. Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, a sociology professor at UC Santa Barbara who lived in Rome at the time, recalled: “It went too far. Really, it reached a point that was quite dramatic. It was hard to live through those times.” But it took a surprisingly long while to reach that point. The violence crept in—one episode, then another, then another—and people absorbed and compartmentalized the individual events, as many Americans do now. They did not understand just how dangerous things were getting until violence was endemic. “It started out with the kneecappings,” Joseph LaPalombara, a Yale political scientist who lived in Rome during the Years of Lead, told me, “and then got worse. And as it got worse, the streets emptied after dark.”

A turning point in public sentiment, or at least the start of a turning point, came in the spring of 1978, when the leftist group known as the Red Brigades kidnapped the former prime minister and leader of the Christian Democrats Aldo Moro, killing all five members of his police escort and turning him into an example of how We don’t negotiate with terrorists can go terrifically wrong. Moro was held captive and tortured for 54 days, then executed, his body left in the back of a bright-red Renault on a busy Rome street. In a series of letters his captors allowed him to send, Moro had begged Italian officials to arrange for his freedom with a prisoner exchange. They refused. After his murder, the final letter he’d written to his wife, “my dearest Noretta,” roughly 10 days before his death, was published in a local newspaper. “In my last hour I am left with a profound bitterness at heart,” he wrote. “But it is not of this I want to talk but of you whom I love and will always love.” Moro did not want a state funeral, but Italy held one anyway.

Top: A bodyguard slain by the Red Brigades during the kidnapping of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, 1978. Bottom: Graffiti in Milan supporting the Red Brigades, 1977. (Paul Spella; source images: Gianni Giansanti / Gamma-Rapho / Getty; Adriano Alecchi / Mondadori Portfolio / Getty)

The conventional wisdom among terrorism experts had been that terrorists wanted publicity but didn’t really want to kill people—or, as the Rand Corporation’s Brian Jenkins put it in 1975, “Terrorists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead.” But conditions had become so bad by the time Moro was murdered that newspapers around the world were confused when days passed without a political killing or shooting in Italy. “Italians Puzzled by 10-Day Lull in Terrorist Activity,” read one headline in The New York Times a few weeks after Moro’s murder. “When he was killed, it got a lot more serious,” Alexander Reid Ross, who hosts a history podcast about the era called Years of Lead Pod, told me. “People stopped laughing. It was no longer something where you could say, ‘It’s a sideshow.’ ”

The Moro assassination was followed by an intensification of violence, including the Bologna-station bombing. People who had ignored the violence now paid attention; people who might have been tempted by revolution now stayed home. Meanwhile, the crackdown that followed—which involved curfews, traffic stops, a militarized police presence, and deals with terrorists who agreed to rat out their collaborators—caused violent groups to implode.

The example of Aldo Moro offers a warning. It shouldn’t take an act like the assassination of a former prime minister to shake people into awareness. But it often does. William Bernstein, the author of The Delusions of Crowds, is not optimistic that anything else will work: “The answer is—and it’s not going to be a pleasant answer—the answer is that the violence ends if it boils over into a containable cataclysm.” What if, he went on—“I almost hesitate to say this”—but what if they actually had hanged Mike Pence or Nancy Pelosi on January 6? “I think that would have ended it. I don’t think it ends without some sort of cathartic cataclysm. I think, absent that, it just boils along for a generation or two generations.” Bernstein wasn’t the only expert to suggest such a thing.

No wonder some American politicians are terrified. “We’ve had an exponential increase in threats against members of Congress,” Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, told me in January. Klobuchar thought back to when she was standing at President Joe Biden’s inauguration ceremony, two weeks after the attempted insurrection. At the time, as Democrats and most Republicans came together for a peaceful transfer of power, she felt as though a violent eruption in American history might be ending. But Klobuchar now believes she was “naive” to think that Republicans would break with Trump and restore the party’s democratic values. “We have Donald Trump, his shadow, looming over everything,” she said.

This past February, Biden sought to dispel that shadow as he stood before Congress to deliver his State of the Union address. “There’s no place for political violence in America,” he said. “And we must give hate and extremism in any form no safe harbor.” Biden’s speech was punctuated by jeers and name-calling by Republicans.

IV. A BROKEN SOCIAL CONTRACT

The taxonomy of what counts as political violence can be complicated. One way to picture it is as an iceberg: The part that protrudes from the water represents the horrific attacks on both hard targets and soft ones, in which the attacker has explicitly indicated hatred for the targeted group—fatal attacks at supermarkets and synagogues, as well as assassination attempts such as the shooting at a congressional-Republican baseball practice in 2017. Less visible is the far more extensive mindset that underlies them. “There are a lot of people who are out for a protest, who are advocating for violence,” Erin Miller, the longtime program manager at the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database, told me. “Then there’s a smaller number at the tip of the iceberg that are willing to carry out violent attacks.” You can’t get a grip on political violence just by counting the number of violent episodes. You have to look at the whole culture.

A society’s propensity for political violence—including cataclysmic violence—may be increasing even as ordinary life, for many people, probably most, continues to feel normal. A drumbeat of violent attacks, by different groups with different agendas, may register as different things. But collectively, as in Italy, they have the power to loosen society’s screws.

In December, I spoke again with Alexander Reid Ross, who in addition to hosting Years of Lead Pod is a lecturer at Portland State University. We met in Pioneer Courthouse Square, in downtown Portland. I had found the city in a wounded condition. This was tragic to me two times over—first, because I knew what had happened there, and second, because I had immediately absorbed Portland’s charm. You can’t encounter all those drawbridges, or the swooping crows, or the great Borgesian bookstore, or the giant elm trees and do anything but fall in love with the place. But downtown Portland was not at its best. The first day I was there I counted more birds than people, and many of the people I saw were quite obviously struggling badly.

On the gray afternoon when we met, Ross and I happened to be sitting at the site of the first far-right protest he remembers witnessing in his city, back in 2016; members of a group called Students for Trump, stoked by Alex Jones’s disinformation outlet, Infowars, had gathered to assert their political preferences and provoke their neighbors. Ross is a geographer, a specialty he assumed would keep him focused on land-use debates and ecology, which is one of the reasons he moved to Oregon in the first place. After that 2016 rally, Ross paid closer attention to the political violence unfolding in Portland. We decided to take a walk so that Ross could point out various landmarks from the—well, we couldn’t decide what to call the period of sustained violence that started in 2016 and was reignited in 2020. The siege? The occupation? The revolt? What happened in Portland has a way of being too slippery for precise language.

We walked southwest from the square before doubling back toward the Willamette River. Over here was the historical society that protesters broke into and vandalized one night. Over there was where the statues got toppled. (“Portland is a city of pedestals now,” Ross said.) A federal building still had a protective fence surrounding it more than a year after the street violence had ended. At one point, the mayor had to order a drawbridge raised to keep combatants apart.

On the evening of June 30, 2018, Ross found himself in the middle of a violent brawl between hundreds of self-described antifa activists and members of the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer, a local pro-Trump offshoot. Ross described to me a number of “ghoulish” encounters he’d had with Patriot Prayer, and I asked him which moment was the scariest. “It’s on video,” he told me. “You can see it: me getting punched.” I later watched the video. In it, Ross rushes toward a group of men who are repeatedly kicking and bludgeoning a person dressed all in black, lying in the street. Ross had told me earlier that he’d intervened because he thought he was watching someone being beaten to death. After Ross gets clocked, he appears dazed, then dashes back toward the fight. “That’s enough! That’s enough!” he shouts.

By the time of this fight, Patriot Prayer had become a fixture in Portland. Its founder, Joey Gibson, has said in interviews that he was inspired to start Patriot Prayer to fight for free speech, but the group’s core belief has always been in Donald Trump. Its first event, in Vancouver, Washington, in October 2016, was a pro-Trump rally. From there, Gibson deliberately picked ultraliberal cities such as Portland, Berkeley, Seattle, and San Francisco for his protests, and in doing so quickly attracted like-minded radicals—the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, Identity Evropa, the Hell Shaking Street Preachers—who marched alongside Patriot Prayer. These were people who seemed to love Trump and shit-stirring in equal measure. White nationalists and self-described Western chauvinists showed up at Gibson’s events. (Gibson’s mother is Japanese, and he has insisted that he does not share their views.) By August 2018, Patriot Prayer had already held at least nine rallies in Portland, routinely drawing hundreds of supporters—grown men in Boba Fett helmets and other homemade costumes; at least one man with an SS neck tattoo. In 2019, Gibson himself was arrested on a riot charge. Patriot Prayer quickly became the darling of Infowars.

Paul Spella; source image: Nathan Howard / Getty

The morning after I met Ross, I drove across the river to Vancouver, a town of strip-mall churches and ponderosa pine trees, to meet with Lars Larson, who records The Lars Larson Show—tagline: “Honestly Provocative Talk Radio”—from his home studio. Larson greeted me with his two dogs and a big mug of coffee. His warmth, quick-mindedness, and tendency to filibuster make him irresistible for talk radio. And his allegiance to MAGA world helps him book guests like Donald Trump Jr., whom Larson introduced on a recent episode as “the son of the real president of the United States of America.” Over the course of our conversation, he described January 6 as “some ruined furniture in the Capitol”; suggested that the city government of Charlottesville, Virginia, was secretly behind the violent clash at the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally; and made multiple references to George Soros, including suggesting that Soros may have paid for people to come to Portland to tear up the city. When I pressed Larson on various points, he would walk back whatever he had claimed, but only slightly. He does not seem to be a conspiracy theorist, but he plays one on the radio.

Larson blamed Portland’s troubles on a culture of lawlessness fostered by a district attorney who, he said, repeatedly declined to prosecute left-wing protesters. He sees this as an uneven application of justice that undermined people’s faith in local government. It is more accurate to say that the district attorney chose not to prosecute lesser crimes, focusing instead on serious crimes against people and property; ironically, the complaint about uneven application comes from both the far left and the far right. When I asked Larson whether Patriot Prayer is Christian nationalist in ideology, the question seemed to make him uncomfortable, and he emphasized his belief in pluralism and religious freedom. He also compared Joey Gibson and Patriot Prayer marching on Portland to civil-rights activists marching on Selma in 1965. “What I heard people tell Patriot Prayer is ‘If you get attacked every time you go to Portland, don’t go to Portland,’ ” he told me. “Would you have given that same advice to Martin Luther King?”

Gibson’s lawyer Angus Lee accused the government of “political persecution”; Gibson was ultimately acquitted of the riot charge. Patriot Prayer, Lee went on, is “not like these other organizations you referenced that have members and that sort of thing. Patriot Prayer is more of an idea.” Gibson himself once put it in blunter terms. “I don’t even know what Patriot Prayer is anymore,” he said in a 2017 interview on a public-access news channel in Portland. “It’s just these two words that people hear and it sparks emotions … All Patriot Prayer is is videos and social-media presence.”

Portland stands as a warning: It takes very little provocation to inflame latent tensions. Once order collapses, it is extraordinarily difficult to restore.

The more I talked with people about Patriot Prayer, the more it began to resemble a phenomenon like QAnon—a decentralized and amorphous movement designed to provoke reaction, tolerant of contradictions, borrowing heavily from internet culture, overlapping with other extremist movements like the Proud Boys, linked to high-profile episodes of violence, and ultimately focused on Trump. I couldn’t help but think of Galleani, his “beautiful idea,” and the diffuse ideology of his followers. One key difference: Galleani was fighting against the state, whereas movements like QAnon and groups like Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys have been cheered on by a sitting president and his party.

When I met with Portland’s mayor, Ted Wheeler, at city hall, he recalled night after night of violence, and at times planning for the very worst, meaning mass casualties. Portlanders had taken to calling him “Tear Gas Ted” because of the police response in the city. One part of any mayor’s job is to absorb the community’s scorn. Few people have patience for unfilled potholes or the complexities of trash collection. Disdain for Wheeler may have been the one thing that just about every person I met in Portland shared, but his job has been difficult even by big-city standards. He confronted a breakdown of the social contract.

“Political violence, in my opinion, is the extreme manifestation of other trends that are prevalent in our society,” Wheeler told me. “A healthy democracy is one where you can sit on one side of the table and express an opinion, and I can sit on the other side of the table and express a very different opinion, and then we have the contest of ideas … We have it out verbally. Then we go drink a beer or whatever.”

When extremists began taunting Portlanders online, it was very quickly “game on” for violence in the streets, Wheeler said. In this way, Portland stands as a warning to cities that now seem calm: It takes very little provocation to inflame latent tensions between warring factions. Once order collapses, it is extraordinarily difficult to restore. And it can be dangerous to attempt to do so through the use of force, especially when one violent faction is lashing out, in part, against state authority.

Aaron Mesh moved to Portland 16 years ago, to take a job as Willamette Week’s film critic, and since then has worked his way up to managing editor. He is sharp-tongued and good-humored, and it is obvious that he loves his city in the way that any good newspaperman does, with a mix of fierce loyalty and heaping criticism. Like Wheeler, he trained attention on the dynamic of action and reaction—on how rising to the bait not only solves nothing but can make things worse. “There was this attitude of We’re going to theatrically subdue your city with these weekend excursions,” Mesh said, describing the confrontations that began in 2016 as a form of cosplay, with right-wing extremists wearing everything from feathered hats to Pepe the Frog costumes and left-wing extremists dressed up in what’s known as black bloc: all-black clothing and facial coverings. “I do want to emphasize,” he said, “that everyone involved in this was a massive fucking loser, on both sides.”

It was as though all of the most unsavory characters on the internet had crawled out of the computer. The fights were enough of a spectacle that not everyone took them seriously at first. Mesh said it was impossible to overstate “the degree to which Portland became a lodestone in the imagination of a nascent Proud Boys movement,” a place where paramilitary figures on the right went “to prove that they had testicles.” He went on: “You walk into town wearing a helmet and carrying a big American flag” and then wait and see “who throws an egg at your car or who gives you the middle finger, and you beat the living hell out of them.”

Both sides behaved despicably. But only the right-wingers had the endorsement of the president and the mainstream Republican Party. “Despite being run by utter morons,” Mesh said of Patriot Prayer, “they managed to outsmart most of their adversaries in this city, simply by provoking violent reactions from people who were appalled by their politics.” The argument for violence among people on the left is often, essentially, If you encounter a Nazi, you should punch him. But “what if the only thing the Nazi wants is for you to punch him?” Mesh asked. “What if the Nazis all have cameras and they’re immediately feeding all the videos of you punching them to Tucker Carlson? Which is what they did.”

The situation in Portland became so desperate, and the ideologies involved so tangled, that the violence began to operate like its own weather system—a phenomenon that the majority of Portlanders could see coming and avoid, but one that left behind tremendous destruction. Most people don’t want to fight. But it takes startlingly few violent individuals to exact generational damage.

V. THE COMPLICIT STATE

America was born in revolution, and violence has been an undercurrent in the nation’s politics ever since. People remember the brutal opposition to the civil-rights struggle, and recall the wave of terrorism spawned by the anti-war movement of the 1960s. But the most direct precursor to what we’re experiencing now is the anti-government Patriot movement, which can be traced to the 1980s and eventually led to deadly standoffs between federal agents and armed citizens at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992, and in Waco, Texas, in 1993. Three people were killed at Ruby Ridge. As many as 80 died in Waco, 25 of them children. Those incidents stirred the present-day militia movement and directly inspired the Oklahoma City bombers, anti-government extremists who killed 168 people at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995. The surge in militia activity, white nationalism, and apocalypticism of the 1990s seemed to peter out in the early 2000s. This once struck me as a bright spot, an earlier success we might learn from today. But when I mentioned this notion to Carolyn Gallaher, a scholar who spent two years following a right-wing paramilitary group in Kentucky in the 1990s, she said, “The militia movement waned very quickly in the 1990s not because of anything we did, but because of Oklahoma City. That bombing really put the movement on the back foot. Some groups went underground. Some groups dispersed. You also saw that happen with white-supremacist groups.”

A generation later, political violence in America unfolds with little organized guidance and is fed by a mishmash of extremist right-wing views. It predates the emergence of Donald Trump, but Trump served as an accelerant. He also made tolerance of political violence a defining trait of his party, whereas in the past, both political parties condemned it. At the height of the Patriot movement, “there was this fire wall” between extremist groups and elected officials that protected democratic norms, according to Gallaher. Today, “the fire wall between these guys and formal politics has melted away.” Gallaher does not anticipate an outbreak of civil strife in America in a “classic sense”—with Blue and Red armies or militias fighting for territory. “Our extremist groups are nowhere near as organized as they are in other countries.”

Because it is chaotic, Americans tend to underestimate political violence, as Italians at first did during the Years of Lead. Some see it as merely sporadic, and shift attention to other things. Some say, in effect, Wake me when there’s civil war. Some take heart from moments of supposed reprieve, such as the poor showing by election deniers and other extremists in the 2022 midterm elections. But think of all the ongoing violence that at first glance isn’t labeled as being about politics per se, but is in fact political: the violence, including mass shootings, directed at LGBTQ communities, at Jews, and at immigrants, among others. In November, the Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin warning that “the United States remains in a heightened threat environment” due to individuals and small groups with a range of “violent extremist ideologies.” It warned of potential attacks against a long list of places and people: “public gatherings, faith-based institutions, the LGBTQI+ community, schools, racial and religious minorities, government facilities and personnel, U.S. critical infrastructure, the media, and perceived ideological opponents.”

The broad scope of the warning should not be surprising—not after the massacres in Pittsburgh, El Paso, Buffalo, and elsewhere. One month into 2023, the pace of mass shootings in America—all either political or, inevitably, politicized—was at an all-time high. “There’s no place that’s immune right now,” Mary McCord, the former assistant U.S. attorney, observed. “It’s really everywhere.” She added, “Someday, God help us, we’ll come out of this. But it’s hard for me to imagine how.”

The sociologist Norbert Elias, who left Germany for France and then Britain as the Nazi regime took hold, famously described what he called the civilizing process as “a long sequence of spurts and counter-spurts,” warning that you cannot fix a violent society simply by eliminating the factors that made it deteriorate in the first place. Violence and the forces that underlie it have the potential to take us from the democratic backsliding we already know to a condition known as decivilization. In periods of decivilization, ordinary people fail to find common ground with one another and lose faith in institutions and elected leaders. Shared knowledge erodes, and bonds fray across society. Some people inevitably decide to act with violence. As violence increases, so does distrust in institutions and leaders, and around and around it goes. The process is not inevitable—it can be held in check—but if a period of bloodshed is sustained for long enough, there is no shortcut back to normal. And signs of decivilization are visible now.

A pro-Trump demonstrator at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, when insurrectionists stormed the building (Paul Spella; source image: Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty)

“The path out of bloodshed is measured not in years but in generations,” Rachel Kleinfeld writes in A Savage Order, her 2018 study of extreme violence and the ways it corrodes a society. “Once a democracy descends into extreme violence, it is always more vulnerable to backsliding.” Cultural patterns, once set, are durable—the relatively high rates of violence in the American South, in part a legacy of racism and slaveholding, persist to this day. In The Delusions of Crowds, William Bernstein looks further afield, to Germany. He told me, “You can actually predict anti-Semitism and voting for the Nazi Party by going back to the anti-Semitism across those same regions in the 14th century. You can trace it city to city.”

Three realities mark the current era of political violence in America as different from what has come before, and make dealing with it much harder. The first—obvious—is the universal access to weaponry, including military-grade weapons.

Second, today’s information environment is simultaneously more sophisticated and more fragmented than ever before. In 2006, the analyst Bruce Hoffman argued that contemporary terrorism had become dangerously amorphous. He was referring to groups like al-Qaeda, but we now witness what he described among domestic American extremists. As Hoffman and others see it, the defining characteristic of post-9/11 terrorism is that it is decentralized. You don’t need to be part of an organization to become a terrorist. Hateful ideas and conspiracy theories are not only easy to find online; they’re actively amplified by social platforms, whose algorithms prioritize the anger and hate that drive engagement and profit. The barriers to radicalization are now almost nonexistent. Luigi Galleani would have loved Twitter, YouTube, and Telegram. He had to settle for publishing a weekly newspaper. Because of social media, conspiracy theories now spread instantly and globally, often promoted by hugely influential figures in the media, such as Tucker Carlson and of course Trump, whom Twitter and Facebook have just reinstated.

The third new reality goes to the core of American self-governance: people refusing to accept the outcome of elections, with national leaders fueling the skepticism and leveraging it for their own ends. In periods of decivilization, violence often becomes part of a governing strategy. This can happen when weak states acquiesce to violence simply to survive. Or it can happen when politicians align themselves with violent groups in order to bolster authority—a characteristic of what Kleinfeld, in her 2018 book, calls a “complicit state.” This is a well-known tactic among authoritarian incumbents worldwide who wield power by mobilizing state and vigilante violence in tandem.

Complicity is insidious. It doesn’t require a revolution. You can see complicity, for example, in Trump’s order to the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” in the months ahead of January 6. You can see it in the Republican Party’s defense of Trump even after he propelled insurrectionists toward the U.S. Capitol. And you can see it in the way that powerful politicians and television personalities continue to cheer on right-wing extremists as “patriots” and “political prisoners,” rather than condemning them as vigilantes and seditionists.

Americans sometimes wonder what might have happened if the Civil War had gone the other way—what the nation would be like now, or whether it would even exist, if the South had won. But that thought experiment overlooks the fact that we do know what it looks like for violent extremists to win in the United States. In the 1870s, white supremacists who objected to Reconstruction led a campaign of violence that they perversely referred to as Redemption. They murdered thousands of Black people in terror lynchings. They drove thousands more Black business owners, journalists, and elected officials out of their homes and hometowns, destroying their livelihoods. Sometimes violence ends not because it is overcome, but because it has achieved its goal.

Norbert Elias’s warnings notwithstanding, dealing seriously with society’s underlying pathologies is part of the answer to political violence in the long term. But so, too, is something we have not had and perhaps can barely imagine anymore: leaders from all parts of the political constellation, and at all levels of government, and from all segments of society, who name the problem of political violence for what it is, explain how it will overwhelm us, and point a finger at those who foment it, either directly or indirectly. Leaders who understand that nothing else will matter if we can’t stop this one thing. The federal government is right to take a hard line against political violence—as it has done with its prosecutions of Governor Whitmer’s would-be kidnappers and the January 6 insurrectionists (almost 1,000 of whom have been charged). But violence must also be confronted where it first takes root, in the minds of citizens.

Ending political violence means facing down those who use the language of democracy to weaken democratic systems. It means rebuking the conspiracy theorist who uses the rhetoric of truth-seeking to obscure what’s real; the billionaire who describes his privately owned social platform as a democratic town square; the seditionist who proclaims himself a patriot; the authoritarian who claims to love freedom. Someday, historians will look back at this moment and tell one of two stories: The first is a story of how democracy and reason prevailed. The second is a story of how minds grew fevered and blood was spilled in the twilight of a great experiment that did not have to end the way it did.

*Lead image source credits from left to right: Kathryn Elsesser / AFP / Getty; Michael Nigro / Sipa USA / Alamy; Mathieu Lewis-Rolland / AFP / Getty; Alex Milan Tracy / AP; Michael Nigro / Sipa USA / Alamy; Michael Nigro / Sipa USA / AP; Mathieu Lewis-Rolland / AFP / Getty; Mark Downey / ZUMA / Alamy; Mathieu Lewis-Rolland / AFP / Getty

This article appears in the April 2023 print edition with the headline “The New Anarchy.” When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

The Atlantic · by Adrienne LaFrance · March 6, 2023

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FIGHTING THE "HUMAN WAVE"

CONTROVERSIAL WEAPONS

At the National People’s Congress, the politics of numbers dominates. What those numbers mean for China and the world.

From GDP to poverty alleviation and renewable energy, the Communist Party is obsessed with numbers. Which matter most in the Xi Jinping era?

Lili Pike

China Reporter

March 6, 2023

The war in Ukraine has shown the value of tanks, but militaries are now looking to stock up on slimmed-down versions of them

Armored vehicles from 5 countries are headed to Ukraine, but there's still some big items left on Kyiv's heavy armor wish list

AMX-10 RC

M2 Bradley

Marder

Challenger 2

Combat Vehicle 90

Light tanks

Modern light tanks

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 6, 2023

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Army at 250: Beyond a Slogan, the Army Needs a New Narrative Strategy - War on the Rocks

Female 4-stars discuss sexism in the service, say the military is ‘much better’ for women now

Opinion | Biden must follow Roosevelt’s ‘arsenal of democracy’ example

Sixth-Generation Aircraft: How the B-21 Raider Will Transform Air Warfare

What Makes the B-21 a Gamechanger

B-21: Software Is Key

Author Expertise and Experience

The New Anarchy

Explore the April 2023 Issue

How to Defeat Russia's Mercenaries

ON 3/6/23 AT 7:22 AM EST

“You will kill ten of us, we will kill one of you, but in the end, you will tire of it first."