Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"War has rules, mud wrestling has rules - politics has no rules."

- Ross Perot

"You meet saints everywhere. They can be anywhere. They are people behaving decently in an indecent society."

-Kurt Vonnegut

"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

- Sir Isaac Newton

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 12, 2023

2. Leaker of U.S. secret documents worked on military base, friend says

3. A New American Grand Strategy to Counter Russia and China by John Bolton

4. No Russia-Ukraine peace talks expected this year, U.S. leak shows

5. Ukraine’s Best Chance

6. What’s Really Going on Between Russia and China

7. US classified intelligence leak was carried out by young gun enthusiast

8. The West Needs a New Strategy in Ukraine

9. Should America Still Promote Democracy?

10. 'The Beginning Of The End': A Former Russian Military Intelligence Officer Explains Why He's Fighting For Ukraine

11. For Japan, ‘Ukraine is the Future of Asia’

12. Why China Should Worry About Asia’s Reaction to AUKUS

13. NSA Pushes Eavesdropping Law, Hits TikTok, Braces for AI-Boosted Attacks

14. The NSA’s Brain Drain Has a Silver Lining

15. Lawmakers demand answers after priests booted from Walter Reed campus

16. Zelensky slams 'beasts' who purportedly beheaded Ukrainian soldiers after video emerges

17. Paratroopers in Poland: Lessons from the 82nd Airborne Division's Deployment to Europe

18. U.S. may change how it monitors the web after missing leaked documents for weeks

19. Security Force Assistance Brigade commander under investigation

20. It’s Time to Re-Evaluate the Officer Evaluation System

21. Uneasy Coexistence on Guam: Military Buildup and an Indigenous Upwelling

22. We Walk Away from Counterinsurgency Capabilities at Our Own Risk

23. We Walk Away from Counterinsurgency Capabilities at Our Own Risk

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 12, 2023

Maps/graphics: https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-april-12-2023

Key Takeaways

The Kremlin’s campaign of “Russification” in Ukraine is burning back into Russia itself as it continues to empower and amplify overtly nationalist voices and ideologies.
The domestic ramifications of the acceptance of the ideology of “Russification” are manifested in the responses by Russian authorities and prominent Russian milbloggers to ethnic minorities in Russia.
These domestic-facing ramifications of “Russification” ironically continue to place the onus of the war effort on the exact communities that it marginalizes.
Russian milbloggers offered a muted response to a Kaluga Oblast court’s refusal to hear a case against Russian military doctor and “Union of Donbas Volunteers” member Yuri Yevich for “discrediting the Russian armed forces.”
The Russian nationalist community continues to glorify atrocities and advocate for the expansion of brutality.
Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks near Kreminna.
Russian forces continued ground attacks in and around Bakhmut and along the Avdiivka-Donetsk line.
Russian forces continue to construct defenses in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast and Crimea.
Russian officials continue to advance a law aimed at improving the effectiveness of issuing summonses and cracking down on Russian draft dodgers.
The Ukrainian Resistance Center released a report detailing the extent of illegal deportations of Ukrainian children from Donbas to the Russian Federation.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 12, 2023

Apr 12, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 12, 2023

Karolina Hird, Riley Bailey, Nicole Wolkov, Layne Philipson, George Barros, and Frederick W. Kagan

April 12, 5:30pm 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 map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

The Kremlin’s campaign of “Russification” in Ukraine is burning back into Russia itself as it continues to empower and amplify overtly nationalist voices and ideologies. Russia is engaged in a campaign of deliberate “Russification” within Ukraine aimed at the destruction of Ukrainian identity through a multitude of military, social, economic, legal, bureaucratic, and administrative lines of effort.[1] The ideologies that underpin the basis of this “Russification” also form the rhetorical backbone of the pro-war information space, which frequently mirrors its militarism with staunch Russian nationalism and intense xenophobia that is directed both at Ukraine and Ukrainian identity as well as at domestic minorities within Russia itself.

The domestic ramifications of the acceptance of the ideology of “Russification” are manifested in the responses by Russian authorities and prominent Russian milbloggers to ethnic minorities in Russia. Several Russian milbloggers and commentators published their reactions to a recent news story about the murder of a 17-year-old Russian student by a group of Tajik migrants in Chelyabinsk and used the story to criticize Central Asian migrants and ethnic minority communities for failing to integrate into Russian society.[2] Head of the Russian Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin accused migrants of destabilizing Russia by importing terrorism and extremist ideologies and emphasized the role of migration policy in ensuring public order.[3] Former Russian officer and ardent nationalist Igor Girkin amplified a criticism that authorities of the Tuvan Republic are returning the indigenous Tuvan names to 104 administrative-territorial units, which one milblogger decried as “pushing boundaries” unnecessarily during wartime.[4] Social media footage circulated on April 12 shows a group of Russian men reportedly giving the Nazi salute and walking past administrative buildings in Ufa, Bashkortostan while shouting “Russia is for Russians.”[5] These instances of xenophobia and racism exemplify the crux of domestic “Russification.” The war in Ukraine has empowered the most virulent voices in the information space to consolidate their ideology and project it both towards the Ukrainian people and towards non-Slavic minorities in Russia itself. This dynamic will likely escalate as the war continues and will outlive Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, pervading the Russian domestic space for years to come.

These domestic-facing ramifications of “Russification” ironically continue to place the onus of the war effort on the communities that it marginalizes. Bastrykin has previously called for military authorities to specifically recruit migrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus who received Russian citizenship because these migrants have a “constitutional obligation to protect the country that received them.”[6] Russian officials at the Sakharovo migrant center in Moscow are reportedly requiring the center’s employees to offer migrants contracts for military service, as ISW previously reported.[7] Russian officials have continuously targeted migrant and ethnic minority communities in ongoing force generation efforts, which largely places the military burden of the “Russification” project in Ukraine on communities and individuals that are its targets domestically.[8]

Russian milbloggers offered a muted response to a Kaluga Oblast court’s refusal to hear a case against Russian military doctor and “Union of Donbas Volunteers” member Yuri Yevich for “discrediting the Russian armed forces.” The Kozelsky District Court in Kaluga Oblast issued on April 12 a decision on the “return of the protocol” of Yevich’s administrative offense and other materials of the case to Russian law enforcement agencies, which permits those agencies to resolve any issues associated with the case materials.[9] Russian authorities may still decide to pursue legal prosecution against Yevich for the charge of “discrediting Russian armed forces” after reviewing and formalizing those case materials. Russian milbloggers had previously widely decried the charging of Yevich and voiced concerns that Russian authorities could use the law as carte blanche to suppress any Russian soldier, volunteer, or “patriot.”[10] A very limited number of Russian milbloggers amplified the court’s decision without additional commentary on April 12, however.[11] The court’s refusal to hear the case partially met Russian milbloggers’ previous demands, and the milbloggers’ failure to recognize this fact reflects the fact that this community focuses on promoting salient controversies to criticize Russian officials and institutions. Russian milbloggers’ responses to the court's refusal to hear the case may also be muted because they are worried that the charges against Yevich represent a trial run for using the law against the “discreditation” of the Russian Armed Forces to suppress segments of the ultranationalist pro-war community. Russian milbloggers may view the court’s refusal to hear the case as a pause in a possible Kremlin plan to begin censoring some segments of the Russian pro-war information space that have been highly critical of the Kremlin, and milbloggers will be unlikely to admit any satisfaction about this controversy until the case against Yevich is completely dropped.

The Russian nationalist community continues to glorify atrocities and advocate for the expansion of brutality. Russian milbloggers responded to widely circulated footage of a Russian soldier beheading a Ukrainian prisoner of war. A Wagner-affiliated Telegram channel attempted to excuse the beheading by claiming that both sides engage in brutal acts and asserted that this beheading would not be the last violent execution during the war.[12] The channel claimed that being accused of brutality during war is like getting fined for speeding during a car race—a claim it used when discussing two previous Wagner executions videos.[13] Russian forces’ continued use of such violent tactics and its support in the Russian information space undermines professionalism and discipline in the Russian military.

Key Takeaways

The Kremlin’s campaign of “Russification” in Ukraine is burning back into Russia itself as it continues to empower and amplify overtly nationalist voices and ideologies.
The domestic ramifications of the acceptance of the ideology of “Russification” are manifested in the responses by Russian authorities and prominent Russian milbloggers to ethnic minorities in Russia.
These domestic-facing ramifications of “Russification” ironically continue to place the onus of the war effort on the exact communities that it marginalizes.
Russian milbloggers offered a muted response to a Kaluga Oblast court’s refusal to hear a case against Russian military doctor and “Union of Donbas Volunteers” member Yuri Yevich for “discrediting the Russian armed forces.”
The Russian nationalist community continues to glorify atrocities and advocate for the expansion of brutality.
Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks near Kreminna.
Russian forces continued ground attacks in and around Bakhmut and along the Avdiivka-Donetsk line.
Russian forces continue to construct defenses in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast and Crimea.
Russian officials continue to advance a law aimed at improving the effectiveness of issuing summonses and cracking down on Russian draft dodgers.
The Ukrainian Resistance Center released a report detailing the extent of illegal deportations of Ukrainian children from Donbas to the Russian Federation.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn 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 push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks near Kreminna on April 12. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive actions near Bilohorivka (10km south of Kreminna) and Spirne (25km south of Kreminna).[14] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful operations near Torske, Nevske, and Makiivka (all within 14 to 21km west or northwest of Kreminna) and that Russian forces pushed Ukrainian forces out of positions near Shyplivka (9km south of Kreminna) and the Serebrianska forest area (10km south of Kreminna).[15] Another milblogger claimed that positional battles occurred near Makiivka (21km northwest of Kreminna) and Zhuravka gully (18km west of Kreminna) on April 11.[16] Footage published on April 11 purportedly showed elements of the 76th Airborne Assault Division (VDV) operating near Kreminna.[17]

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 and did not make any confirmed gains in the city on April 12. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that fierce fighting is ongoing within Bakhmut and that Russian troops conducted unsuccessful offensive actions near Khromove (3km west of Bakhmut) and Bohdanivka (5km northwest of Bakhmut).[18] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty stated that Wagner forces are attacking Bakhmut mainly in small tactical groups with the support of conventional Russian elements.[19] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Wagner assault detachments captured three unspecified city blocks within Bakhmut while Russian airborne (VDV) elements pinned Ukrainian forces down on Wagner’s flanks.[20] Russian milbloggers claimed that Wagner fighters attacked Ukrainian positions along Petra Chaikovskoho Street in southwestern Bakhmut and continued fighting in northern, central, and southwestern sectors of the city.[21] One Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces now control 80 percent of Bakhmut, including all central administrative buildings.[22] Russian forces are visually confirmed to control at least 76.5 percent of Bakhmut, per ISW’s April 11 control of terrain assessment.[23]

Russian forces continued ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City frontline on April 12. Geolocated footage posted on April 11 indicates that Russian forces have advanced near Novobakhmutivka (10km north of Avdiivka) and crossed the N20 Donetsk City-Kramatorsk-Slovyansk highway.[24] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continued unsuccessful offensive operations near Avdiivka itself; on the northwestern outskirts of Donetsk City near Pervomaiske and Nevelske; and on the southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City near Marinka and Pobieda.[25] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces continued efforts to encircle Avdiivka from the south and that the current frontline runs less than 1km south of Sieverne (5km due west of Avdiivka).[26] A Russian milblogger additionally claimed that fighting is ongoing in western Marinka.[27]

Russian forces did not conduct any claimed or confirmed ground attacks in western Donetsk Oblast on April 12.[28]

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

Russian forces continue to construct defenses in southern Ukraine. Russian milbloggers amplified stories from The Washington Post and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty showing satellite imagery in early April showing Russian-constructed fortifications throughout Crimea.[29] The imagery shows defenses along the M18 highway near Medvedivka, and along the North Crimean Canal near Armiansk, Maslove, and Novoivanivka likely constructed in early 2023. The imagery also shows the construction of fortifications along the beaches near Vityne in western Crimea. Milbloggers responded to satellite imagery on April 12 with the observation that it indicates that the Russian command has made the correct decision to address concerns over a Ukrainian counteroffensive.[30] The UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported on April 12 that Russia forces have completed three layers of defenses across about 120km of Zaporizhia Oblast.[31] ISW previously reported that the continued construction of fortifications in Crimea may suggest that Russian forces are unsure of their ability to hold occupied territories in southern Ukraine in anticipation of a Ukrainian counteroffensive.[32] Russian sources published footage on April 11 and 12 purportedly showing unspecified special forces elements of the Russian Airborne (VDV) forces and the ”Crimea” Volunteer detachment operating in the Zaporizhia direction.[33]

Russian forces conducted routine shelling in Kherson, Zaporizhia, Dnipropetrovsk, and Mykolaiv oblasts on April 12.[34]

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

Russian officials continue to advance a law aimed at improving the effectiveness of issuing summonses and cracking down on Russian draft dodgers. The Russian Federation Council approved a law creating a digital register of Russian citizens eligible for military service on April 12.[35] Russian Ministry of Digitalization head Maksut Shadaev stated on April 12 that the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) will determine the timing of the registry's launch after the adoption of the law but that this will not occur before the fall 2023 conscription cycle.[36] The law included amendments providing for punishments for not responding to summonses within a 20-day period and a stipulation allowing 18-year-olds to enter contract service without attending a technical school or completing the first three months of conscription service.[37] Russian opposition outlet Meduza reported that Kremlin-affiliated sources stated that government media received instructions for covering the bill on the afternoon of April 11 and that Russian officials are concerned about the public reaction to the new conscription measures.[38] Russian State Duma Defense Committee Chairman Andrei Kartapolov stated on April 11 that it was impossible to postpone the consideration of the law and its amendments as it is extremely relevant following mobilization measures in 2022 that revealed serious problems in the field of military registration.[39] Russian sources claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed the Russian Ministry of Digitalization to create the database for Russia citizens eligible for military service by 2024 but that the new rules on conscription will come into effect before the registry begins operating.[40] The Kremlin is likely attempting to improve the effectiveness of its conscription apparatus to support long-term force generation efforts and the Russian MoD’s long-term goals for expanding and professionalizing the Russian armed forces. ISW continues to assess that Russian forces will not commit conscripts to Ukraine in the foreseeable future, and the Kremlin’s continued focus on improving the conscription apparatus appears to be dissonant with immediate Russian force generation needs in Ukraine.

Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin identified Russian officials who are reportedly barring the Wagner Group from advertising in specific regions in Russia. Prigozhin accused St. Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov and unnamed Russian officials in Yaroslavl Oblast of refusing to allow Wagner to place public recruitment advertisements.[41] Russian sources reported on April 10 and 11 that Wagner is continuing mass advertisement campaigns throughout Russia.[42]

One hundred Russian mobilized personnel have reportedly disappeared after refusing to sign contracts with the Wagner Group. Russian sources reported that Russian forces transferred the 100 personnel to an unspecified training ground in Luhansk Oblast after the Wagner Group threatened them with violence for refusing to sign contracts on April 7.[43] Geolocated footage published on April 11 shows former South Ossetia president Lieutenant General Anatoly Bibilov threatening the mobilized personnel in Kadiivka, Luhansk Oblast over claims about desertion and Wagner personnel reportedly locking them in a repair plant before escorting them to the unspecified training ground.[44] A Russian source reported that the mobilized servicemembers have been unaccounted for since April 7.[45]

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

The Ukrainian Resistance Center released a report on April 12 detailing the extent of illegal deportations of Ukrainian children from Donbas to the Russian Federation. The Resistance Center reported that Russian forces have brought 100,000 Ukrainian children from eastern Ukraine to Russia under the continued guise of medical rehabilitation.[46] The Resistance Center stated that Russian authorities plan to spend 1.4 billion rubles (about $17 million) to intensify medical examinations of children in occupied territories and that the majority of those examined will be sent to Russia for “treatment.”[47] The Resistance Center reported that Russian occupation authorities have deported 39,000 of 75,000 children examined in occupied Donetsk Oblast since January 1, 2023, and diagnosed 66,000 of 94,000 children examined in occupied Luhansk Oblast with “pathology” that requires treatment in Russia.[48]

The Wagner Group is likely involved in the removal of Ukrainian civilians, including children, from Bakhmut. Wagner-affiliated source RIAFAN posted footage on April 11 detailing the story of an 11-year-old girl from Bakhmut whom Wagner found and “rescued.”[49] Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova reported on April 6 that her administration is working to provide humanitarian assistance to families with children whom Wagner removed from Bakhmut.[50] It is still unclear where these families and children are being re-homed, but it is likely that Wagner is facilitating their removal further into Russian occupied territory or deportation to the Russian Federation and using humanitarian justifications to do so.

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.

Belarusian maneuver elements continue conducting exercises across Belarus. An airborne infantry battalion of the Belarusian 38th Airborne Assault Brigade conducted tactical exercises at the Brest Training Ground in Brest, Belarus, on April 12.[51] Belarus’ military deployed an unspecified mechanized formation of Belarus’ Western Operational Command to Slonim Raion in Grodno Oblast to simulate transferring forcing from a peacetime to wartime posture.[52] A senior Belarusian security official stated that this formation will conduct a brigade tactical exercise involving about 6,000 personnel.[53] Engineer elements of the Belarusian 557th Engineering Brigade redeployed to their permanent base on April 12 after establishing a pontoon crossing over the Neman River in Lida Raion, Grodno Oblast.[54]

Belarus is conducting a command staff exercise in Borisov, Belarus, from April 11 – 13.[55] Unspecified Belarusian territorial defense and Ministry of Internal Affairs elements conducted tactical exercises at the Belarusian 227th Combined Arms Training Ground in Borisov, Belarus, on April 12 as part of a larger command staff exercise.[56]

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://isw.pub/RusCampaignOct14; https://www.understandingwar.org/back... https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[2] https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/24178; https://t.me/SergeyKolyasnikov...

[3] https://kursdela dot biz/news/2023-04-12/ubiystvo-shkolnika-kak-inostrantsy-uchatsya-v-chelyabinske-bez-znaniya-russkogo-2900732; https://www.interfax dot ru/russia/895222

[4] https://t.me/boris975/1818; https://t.me/strelkovii/4515

[5] https://twitter.com/PulseOfUkraine/status/1646029629914767361?s=20

[6] https://rus dot azattyk.org/a/32225030.html; https://rus dot azattyk.org/a/32091306.html

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

[8] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... https://isw.pub/RusCampaignJuly24

[9] https://tass dot ru/proisshestviya/17509355 ; https://egidacentr dot ru/stat/procedural-law/vozvrat-protokola-ob-administrativnom-pravonarushenii.html#:~:text=%D0%92%D0%BE%D0%B7%D0%B2%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%89%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5%20%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%B0%20%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B7%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%B6%D0%BD%D0%BE%20%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BA%D0%BE%20%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B8%20%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BA%D0%B5%20%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B0%20%D0%BA,%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%B6%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%BC%D1%83%20%D0%BB%D0%B8%D1%86%D1%83%2C%20%D1%81%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B2%D1%88%D0%B8%D0%BC%20%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BB%2C%20%D0%BF%D0%BE%20%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B7%D1%83%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BC%20%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%81%D0%BC%D0%BE%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8F%20%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B0.

[10] https://isw.pub/UkrWar041023

[11] https://t.me/voenacher/42823; https://t.me/notes_veterans/8926 ; http...

[12] https://t.me/grey_zone/18153

[13] https://t.me/grey_zone/15770; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrou...

[14]https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0yGsp7unLxdAYXnfTKLK...

[15] https://t.me/wargonzo/11897

[16] https://t.me/rybar/45723

[17] https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/46723

[18]https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02tiNNw4Z8rmn7hnkNGB...

[19] https://armyinform.com dot ua/2023/04/12/sergij-cherevatyj-zhodnyh-nou-hau-rosijske-vijskove-kerivnycztvo-ne-prodemonstruvalo/

[20] https://t.me/mod_russia/25581

[21] https://t.me/rybar/45723; https://t.me/z_arhiv/20233

[22] https://t.me/readovkanews/56689

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

[24] https://t.me/WarArchive_ua/725; https://twitter.com/JagdBandera/status/...

[25]https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02tiNNw4Z8rmn7hnkNGB...

[26] https://t.me/readovkanews/56689; https://t.me/wargonzo/11897; https://...

[27] https://t.me/wargonzo/11897

[28]https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02tiNNw4Z8rmn7hnkNGB...

[29] https://www.rferl.org/a/satellite-images-russia-war-preparation-crimea/3...

[30] https://t.me/milinfolive/99151; https://t.me/grey_zone/18155

[31] https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1646027148023537666/photo/1

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

[33] https://t.me/readovkanews/56697; https://t.me/milchronicles/1763

[34]https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02tiNNw4Z8rmn7hnkNGB...

[35] https://ria dot ru/20230412/reestr-1864771126.html ; https://t.me/rbc_news/71981

[36] https://tass dot ru/politika/17503149

[37] https://t.me/bbcrussian/44553 ; https://www.understandingwar.org/backg...

[38] https://meduza dot io/feature/2023/04/12/novaya-sistema-chelovekoorientirovana-i-udobna

[39] https://meduza dot io/feature/2023/04/12/novaya-sistema-chelovekoorientirovana-i-udobna

[40] io/news/2023/04/12/glava-mintsifry-reestr-voennobyazannyh-v-polnom-ob-eme-zapustyat-ne-ranshe-osennego-prizyva

[41] https://t.me/concordgroup_official/740

[42] https://t.me/astrapress/24749 ; https://t.me/chitaru75/31584

[43] https://t.me/mobilizationnews/10828; https://t.me/astrapress/24786; https://t.me/astrapress/24785

[44] https://twitter.com/AmamNgc/status/1646131082532716544?s=20; https://t.me/Donbas_Operativniy/34786

[45] https://t.me/astrapress/24785

[46] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2023/04/12/rosiyany-vyvezly-ponad-100-tys-ditej-zi-shodu-ukrayiny-na-likuvannya/

[47] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2023/04/12/rosiyany-vyvezly-ponad-100-tys-ditej-zi-shodu-ukrayiny-na-likuvannya/

[48] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2023/04/12/rosiyany-vyvezly-ponad-100-tys-ditej-zi-shodu-ukrayiny-na-likuvannya/

[49] https://t.me/riafan_everywhere/17817; https://t.me/brussinf/5861; https://t.me/yaremshooter/1250

[50] http://deti.gov dot ru/articles/news/gumanitarnyj-shtab-akcii-upolnomochennogo-detyam-v-ruki-pomog-sem-yam-spasennym-chvk-vagner-v-artemovske

[51] https://t.me/modmilby/25655

[52] https://t.me/modmilby/25626

[53] https://t.me/modmilby/25626

[54] https://t.me/modmilby/25616

[55] https://t.me/modmilby/25619 ; https://t.me/modmilby/25627

[56] https://t.me/modmilby/25647

Leaker of U.S. secret documents worked on military base, friend says

By Shane Harris and Samuel Oakford

April 12, 2023 at 9:36 p.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Shane Harris · April 13, 2023

Exclusive

THE DISCORD LEAKS | The online group that received hundreds of pages of classified material included foreigners, members tell The Post

April 12, 2023 at 9:36 p.m. EDT

The man behind a massive leak of U.S. government secrets that has exposed spying on allies, revealed the grim prospects for Ukraine’s war with Russia and ignited diplomatic fires for the White House is a young, charismatic gun enthusiast who shared highly classified documents with a group of far-flung acquaintances searching for companionship amid the isolation of the pandemic.

United by their mutual love of guns, military gear and God, the group of roughly two dozen — mostly men and boys — formed an invitation-only clubhouse in 2020 on Discord, an online platform popular with gamers. But they paid little attention last year when the man some call “OG” posted a message laden with strange acronyms and jargon. The words were unfamiliar, and few people read the long note, one of the members explained. But he revered OG, the elder leader of their tiny tribe, who claimed to know secrets that the government withheld from ordinary people.

The young member read OG’s message closely, and the hundreds more that he said followed on a regular basis for months. They were, he recalled, what appeared to be near-verbatim transcripts of classified intelligence documents that OG indicated he had brought home from his job on a “military base,” which the member declined to identify. OG claimed he spent at least some of his day inside a secure facility that prohibited cellphones and other electronic devices, which could be used to document the secret information housed on government computer networks or spooling out from printers. He annotated some of the hand-typed documents, the member said, translating arcane intel-speak for the uninitiated, such as explaining that “NOFORN” meant the information in the document was so sensitive it must not be shared with foreign nationals.

OG told the group he toiled for hours writing up the classified documents to share with his companions in the Discord server he controlled. The gathering spot had been a pandemic refuge, particularly for teen gamers locked in their houses and cut off from their real-world friends. The members swapped memes, offensive jokes and idle chitchat. They watched movies together, joked around and prayed. But OG also lectured them about world affairs and secretive government operations. He wanted to “keep us in the loop,” the member said, and seemed to think that his insider knowledge would offer the others protection from the troubled world around them.

“He’s a smart person. He knew what he was doing when he posted these documents, of course. These weren’t accidental leaks of any kind,” the member said.

The transcribed documents OG posted traversed a range of sensitive subjects that only people who had undergone months-long background checks would be authorized to see. There were top-secret reports about the whereabouts and movements of high-ranking political leaders and tactical updates on military forces, the member said. Geopolitical analysis. Insights into foreign governments’ efforts to interfere with elections. “If you could think it, it was in those documents.”

In those initial posts, OG had given his fellow members a small sip of the torrent of secrets that was to come. When rendering hundreds of classified files by hand proved too tiresome, he began posting hundreds of photos of documents themselves, an astonishing cache of secrets that has been steadily spilling into public view over the past week, disrupting U.S. foreign policy and aggravating America’s allies.

This account of how detailed intelligence documents intended for an exclusive circle of military leaders and government decision-makers found their way into and then out of OG’s closed community is based in part on several lengthy interviews with the Discord group member, who spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity. He is under 18 and was a young teenager when he met OG. The Post obtained consent from the member’s mother to speak to him and to record his remarks on video. He asked that his voice not be obscured.

What to know about the Discord leaks

Dozens of highly classified documents have been leaked online, revealing sensitive information intended for senior military and intelligence leaders. In an exclusive investigation, The Post also reviewed scores of additional secret documents, most of which have not been made public.

Where did they come from?

The top-secret documents appear to be — at least partly — from the Pentagon and many seem to have been prepared for senior military officials. Post reporting revealed that a man in his early to mid-20s allegedly shared them with members of an invitation-only Discord group.

What do the leaked documents reveal about Ukraine?

The documents reveal profound concerns about the war’s trajectory and Kyiv’s capacity to wage a successful offensive against Russian forces. According to a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment among the leaked documents, “Negotiations to end the conflict are unlikely during 2023.”

What else do they show?

The files include summaries of human intelligence on high-level conversations between world leaders, as well as information about advanced satellite technology the United States uses to spy. They also include intelligence on both allies and adversaries, including Iran and North Korea, as well as Britain, Canada, South Korea and Israel.

What happens now?

The leak has far-reaching implications for the United States and its allies. In addition to the Justice Department investigation, officials in several countries said they were assessing the damage from the leaks.

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His account was corroborated by a second member who read many of the same classified documents shared by OG, and who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. Both members said they know OG’s real name as well as the state where he lives and works but declined to share that information while the FBI is hunting for the source of the leaks. The investigation is in its early stages, and the Pentagon has set up its own internal review led by a senior official.

“An interagency effort has been stood up, focused on assessing the impact these photographed documents could have on U.S. national security and on our Allies and partners,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said in a statement.

Discord said in a statement that it is cooperating with law enforcement and has declined to comment further.

The Post also reviewed approximately 300 photos of classified documents, most of which have not been made public; some of the text documents OG is said to have written out; an audio recording of a man the two group members identified as OG speaking to his companions; and chat records and photographs that show OG communicating with them on the Discord server.

The young member was impressed by OG’s seemingly prophetic ability to forecast major events before they became headline news, things “only someone with this kind of high clearance” would know. He was by his own account enthralled with OG, who he said was in his early to mid-20s.

“He’s fit. He’s strong. He’s armed. He’s trained. Just about everything you can expect out of some sort of crazy movie,” the member said.

In a video seen by The Post, the man who the member said is OG stands at a shooting range, wearing safety glasses and ear coverings and holding a large rifle. He yells a series of racial and antisemitic slurs into the camera, then fires several rounds at a target.

The member seemed drawn to OG’s bravado and his skill with weapons. He felt a certain kinship with a man he described as “like an uncle” and, on another occasion, as a father figure.

“I was one of the very few people in the server that was able to understand that these [documents] were legitimate,” the member said, setting himself apart from the others who mostly ignored OG’s posts.

“It felt like I was on top of Mount Everest,” he said. “I felt like I was above everyone else to some degree and that … I knew stuff that they didn’t.”

‘A tightknit family’

The member met OG about four years ago, on a different server for fans of Oxide, a popular YouTuber who streams videos about guns, body armor and military hardware. He said a group of avid members found the server too crowded and wanted a quieter place to talk about video game tactics, so they broke off into their own, small group.

More like-minded Oxide fans joined the private Discord server, which came to be named “Thug Shaker Central,” and whose membership OG would effectively control as the administrator.

“We all grew very close to each other, like a tightknit family,” the member said. “We depended on each other.” He said that other members, and OG especially, counseled him during bouts of depression and helped to steady him emotionally. “There was no lack of love for each other.”

OG was the undisputed leader. The member described him as “strict.” He enforced a “pecking order” and expected the others to read closely the classified information he had shared. When their attention waned, he got angry.

Late last year, a peeved OG fired off a message to all the members of the server. He had spent nearly an hour every day writing up “these long and drawn-out posts in which he’d often add annotations and explanations for stuff that we normal citizens would not understand,” the member said. His would-be pupils were more interested in YouTube videos about battle gear.

“He got upset, and he said on multiple occasions, if you guys aren’t going to interact with them, I’m going to stop sending them.”

That’s when OG changed tactics. Rather than spend his time copying documents by keyboard, he took photographs of the genuine articles and dropped them in the server. These were more vivid and arresting documents than the plain text renderings. Some featured detailed charts of battlefield conditions in Ukraine and highly classified satellite images of the aftermath of Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian electrical facilities. Others sketched the potential trajectory of North Korean ballistic nuclear missiles that could reach the United States. Another featured photographs of the Chinese spy balloon that floated across the country in February, snapped from eye-level, probably by a U-2 spy plane, along with a diagram of the balloon and the surveillance technology attached to it.

OG shared several documents a week, beginning late last year. Posting pictures to the server took less time. But it also exposed OG to greater risk. In the background of some images, they could see items and furniture that they recognized from the room where OG spoke to them via video on the Discord channel — the kind of clues that could prove useful for federal investigators.

The dramatic and yet nonchalant presentation also reminded the group that OG could lay his hands on some of the most closely guarded intelligence in the U.S. government. “If you had classified documents, you’d want to flex at least a little bit, like hey, I’m the big guy,” the member said. “There is a little bit of showing off to friends, but as well as wanting to keep us informed.”

In a sense, OG had created a virtual mirror image of the secretive facility where he spent his working hours. Inside the Discord server, he was the ultimate arbiter of secrecy, and he allowed his companions to read truths that “normal citizens” could not.

A breach of secrecy

The photographs of printed secret documents now seen by millions may offer clues to the federal agents searching for OG. Reality Winner, who leaked secret National Security Agency documents to the news website the Intercept in 2017, was compromised by secret markings on printouts that helped narrow the search. OG’s documents look to have been printed on ordinary paper and were creased after having been folded in four. Sometimes, the photographs OG took of the documents appeared to have been taken over a bed. Items such as Gorilla Glue, a scope manual and nail clippers appeared in the margins. Other previously unreported images reviewed by The Post showed printed documents lying on top of a glowing red keyboard.

The breadth of the military and intelligence reports was extensive. For months, OG regularly uploaded page after page of classified U.S. assessments, offering a window into how deeply American intelligence had penetrated the Russian military, showing that Egypt had planned to sell Russia tens of thousands of rockets and suggesting that Russian mercenaries had approached Turkey, a NATO ally, to buy weapons to fight against Ukraine.

At least one of the documents appeared to have been printed from Intellipedia, a data-sharing system that intelligence agencies use to collaborate and post reports and articles.

The documents were another lesson for younger members in how OG thought the world really worked. The member said OG wasn’t hostile to the U.S. government, and he insisted that he was not working on behalf of any country’s interests. “He is not a Russian operative. He is not a Ukrainian operative,” the member said. The room on the server where he posted the documents was called “bear-vs-pig,” meant to be a snide jab at Russia and Ukraine, and an indication that OG took no sides in the conflict.

But OG had a dark view of the government. The young member said he spoke of the United States, and particularly law enforcement and the intelligence community, as a sinister force that sought suppress its citizens and keep them in the dark. He ranted about “government overreach.”

OG told his online companions that the government hid horrible truths from the public. He claimed, according to the members, that the government knew in advance that a white supremacist intended to go on a shooting rampage at a Buffalo supermarket in May 2022. The attack left 10 dead, all of them Black, and wounded three more. OG said federal law enforcement officials let the killings proceed so they could argue for increased funding, a baseless notion that the member said he believes and considers an example of OG’s penetrating insights about the depth of government corruption.

OG’s group itself had a dark side. The Discord server’s eventual name, Thug Shaker Central, was a racist allusion, and signaled to members that they were free to hurl epithets and crude jokes. The young member expressed some regret for their behavior but seemed to shrug off the offensive remarks as a clumsy attempt at humor.

It was not “a fascist recruiting server,” he told The Post.

One thing the members were not supposed to do was talk about the secrets OG had shared with them, including the classified documents.

“Most people in the server were smart enough as to kind of realize that … they shouldn’t be posted anywhere else,” the member said. And yet, the group contained foreign citizens — including from Russia and Ukraine, the members said — a defiance of the NOFORN warning printed across the top of so many documents OG shared.

The member estimated that the server hosted people from Europe, Asia and South America. “Just about every walk of life.” Of the roughly 25 active members who had access to the bear-vs-pig channel, about half were located overseas, the member said. The ones who seemed most interested in the classified material claimed to be from mostly “Eastern Bloc and those post-Soviet countries,” he said. “The Ukrainians had interest as well,” which the member chalked up to interest in the war ravaging their homeland.

For years, U.S. counterintelligence officials have eyed gaming platforms as a magnet for spies. Russian intelligence operatives have been suspected of befriending gamers who they believe work for intelligence agencies and encouraging them to divulge classified information, a senior U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

It’s not clear whether any of those efforts have been successful. But if foreign operatives finagled an invitation to OG’s server, they would have been free to view the documents and make copies of them, as some members did.

The server sprouts a leak

All winter, OG uploaded documents to the server. No one talked about sharing them elsewhere. Then, unbeknown to the group, on Feb. 28, another teenage user from the Thug Shaker Central server began posting several dozen photographs showing classified documents on another Discord server affiliated with the YouTuber “wow_mao.” Some of the documents offered detailed assessments of Ukraine’s defense capabilities and showed how far U.S. intelligence could see into Russia’s military command.

On March 4, 10 documents appeared on “Minecraft Earth Map,” a Discord server focused on the popular video game. A user operating the account that posted the smaller tranche of images told The Post they obtained them on wow_mao.

Secret and top-secret documents were now available to thousands of Discord users, but the leak wouldn’t come to the attention of U.S. authorities for another month. Meanwhile, OG stopped sharing images in the middle of March. On April 5, classified documents assessing the war in Ukraine were posted on Russian Telegram channels and the message board platform 4chan, and began migrating to Twitter. One image, showing a March 1 Ukraine status update, had been crudely doctored to inflate the number of Ukrainian casualties and downplay those on the Russian side.

The next day, shortly before the New York Times first reported on the leak, OG came into the server “frantic, which is unusual for him,” the member said.

“He said something had happened, and he prayed to God that this event would not happen. … But now it’s in God’s hands.”

Not a whistleblower

For all OG’s disdain for the federal government, the member said there was no indication that he was acting in what he thought was the public interest by exposing official secrets. The classified documents were intended only to benefit his online family, the member said.

“I would definitely not call him a whistleblower. I would not call OG a whistleblower in the slightest,” he said, resisting comparisons to Edward Snowden, who shared classified documents about government surveillance with journalists.

Remarkably, the member said he has been in touch with OG in the past few days, even as an FBI manhunt is underway and the Pentagon launches its own inquiry into the leaks. After shuttering the Thug Shaker Central server, OG moved the community to another server to communicate with his online family.

He “seemed very confused and lost as to what to do,” the member said. “He’s fully aware of what’s happening and what the consequences may be. He’s just not sure on how to go about solving this situation. … He seems pretty distraught about it.”

In his final message to his companions, OG admonished them to “keep low and delete any information that could possibly relate to him,” the member said. That included any copies of the classified documents OG had shared.

When it dawned on them that OG was in grave peril and intended to disappear, the members of Thug Shaker Central “full-on sobbed and cried,” the young member said. “It is like losing a family member.”

In hours of interviews, he continued to express admiration and loyalty to a man who may have endangered his young followers by allowing them to see and posses classified information, exposing them to potential federal crimes.

“I figured he would not be putting us in any sort of harm’s way,” the member said.

The exposure of the documents has severed friendships and cut him off from the man who buoyed his confidence and made him feel safe. The member said that the stress of the loss, coupled with the enormity of the leaks, has left him worried and sleepless.

Now he says he believes that the world should see the secrets OG passed along to a tiny group. He argued that the public deserves to know how intelligence agencies spend their tax dollars, and was particularly outraged that the documents show U.S. surveillance of foreign allies.

But what the young man regarded as a revelation will come as no surprise to the countries whose officials the U.S. has been monitoring for decades. While rarely discussed, and embarrassing for Washington when exposed, it’s widely understood that the U.S. intelligence community monitors many friendly governments, just as foreign allies try to do the same.

Thousands of military personnel and government employees around OG’s age, working entry-to-low-level positions, could plausibly have access to classified documents like the ones he allegedly shared, according to U.S. officials and experts who have seen the documents reported in the media. Despite what his young followers thought, OG would have had no special knowledge compared with his peers. He possessed no special power to predict events. Rather, he appears to have persuaded some highly impressionable teenagers that he’s a modern-day gamer meets Jason Bourne.

The member said he’s confident the authorities will find OG. But when they do, he won’t be charged. Instead, he believes, OG will be imprisoned without due process at Guantánamo Bay or disappeared to a “black site,” if he’s not “assassinated” for what he knows.

The member, as well as the OG follower who corroborated his account, found no fault in their leader’s actions and instead said they blame the teen who posted the documents on the wow_mao server for wrecking their community.

“Maybe we should have had better opsec,” the member said, harnessing the jargon of military and intelligence personnel for “operations security.”

He insisted said he will not divulge OG’s identity or location to law enforcement until he is captured or can flee the United States. “I think I might be detained eventually. … I think there might be a short investigation on how I knew this guy and they’ll try to get something out of me. They might try to threaten me with prison time if I don’t reveal their identity.”

To date, no federal law enforcement officials have contacted the young group member. Asked why he was prepared to help OG even at the risk of his own freedom, the young man replied without hesitation: “He was my best friend.”

The Washington Post · by Shane Harris · April 13, 2023

3. A New American Grand Strategy to Counter Russia and China

The one thing he overlooks is the requirement for the US government to be able to conduct a superior form of political warfare (which might be called competitive statecraft)

Strategic competition is political warfare, irregular warfare is the military contribution to political warfare (competitive statecraft), and special warfare is the SOF contribution to irregular warfare.

And as the Joint Concept for Competing states we need to expand the competitive mindset (which I would argue is political warfare/competitive statecraft), shape the competitive space, and conduct advanced integrated campaigning.

Excerpts:

To get the ball rolling, here are three critical elements for any plausible course of strategic thinking:

First, Washington and its allies must immediately increase defense budgets to Reagan-era levels relative to gross domestic product and sustain such spending for the foreseeable future.

...

Second, America’s collective-defense alliances need improvement and expansion, with new ones forged to face new threats.

...

Third, after Ukraine wins its war with Russia, we must aim to split the Russia-China axis.

A New American Grand Strategy to Counter Russia and China

The U.S. and its allies can’t afford to drift aimlessly as history’s tectonic plates shift.

By John Bolton

April 12, 2023 11:55 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-new-american-grand-strategy-to-counter-russia-and-china-asian-nato-aukus-collective-defense-taiwan-da555cf

The post-Cold War era is over. This brief interregnum following the Soviet empire’s defeat proved an illusory holiday from reality and is now rapidly disappearing before expanding or newly emerging threats. History often fails to arrange itself conveniently for our understanding, especially for those alive when its tectonic plates shift. By any standard, however, history is now moving rapidly.

Xi Jinping certainly thinks so. He told Vladimir Putin after their recent Moscow summit: “Right now there are changes—the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years—and we are the ones driving these changes together.” For China’s communists, that century started with the 1927 onset of civil war against Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang, culminating victoriously in 1949 when Mao Zedong established the People’s Republic of China and famously declared that “the Chinese people have stood up!”

Mr. Putin similarly proclaimed that “an era of revolutionary changes” is under way globally, but not as exuberantly as Mr. Xi. Mr. Putin is clearly the junior partner as the Beijing-Moscow relationship shifts from “entente” to “axis.” Nonetheless, the Kremlin holds a strong strategic hand in nuclear weapons and energy. China’s nuclear weapons remain critically dependent on Russia for highly enriched uranium, and Moscow’s grip on Europe’s civil nuclear-power industry is firm.

America’s next president will take office in 2025, the 75th anniversary of NSC-68, Harry S. Truman’s foundational document of U.S. Cold War strategy. With less than two years before Inauguration Day, presidential candidates should be thinking in grand-strategy terms, for both campaign policy statements and their incipient administrations. Given the Sino-Russian axis and accompanying rogue-state outriders like Iran and North Korea, any serious contemporary reincarnation of NSC-68 will be as daunting and hard to swallow as the original.

To get the ball rolling, here are three critical elements for any plausible course of strategic thinking:

First, Washington and its allies must immediately increase defense budgets to Reagan-era levels relative to gross domestic product and sustain such spending for the foreseeable future. Federal budgets need substantial reductions to eliminate deficits and shrink the national debt, so higher military spending necessitates even greater reductions domestically. So be it. Neither the obese welfare state nor massive income-redistribution schemes protect us from foreign adversaries. Higher levels of economic growth, freed from crushing tax and regulatory burdens, will underlie the necessary military buildup.

Twenty years ago we rightly thought in terms of “full-spectrum superiority.” With the advent of cyberwarfare, hypersonic weapons, drone capabilities in every physical domain and more, today’s spectrum is even broader. Key sectors like national missile defense have languished. Politicians have ignored our aging nuclear stockpile and the inevitable need to resume some underground testing to ensure our nuclear deterrent’s safety and reliability. Nor can we omit massive increases in the defense-industrial base and logistical and transportation resources, the unheralded but basic instruments of defense.

Second, America’s collective-defense alliances need improvement and expansion, with new ones forged to face new threats. Good allies are critical force-multipliers, a test not all our current “allies” meet. We should pursue José Maria Aznar’s proposal to take the North Atlantic Treaty Organization global, inviting Japan, Australia, Israel and others committed to NATO defense-spending targets to join. Efforts like the Proliferation Security Initiative against weapons of mass destruction, from which Russia recently withdrew, need reinvigoration. We must address the unease our Middle East friends feel about American resolve and, consistent with longstanding U.S. policy, exclude Moscow from regional influence, along with Beijing.

Emerging Indo-Pacific security efforts like the Quad (India, Japan, Australia and America) and Aukus nuclear-powered-submarines can be enhanced and replicated. An Asian NATO isn’t imminent, but there is enormous room for innovative alliances with like-minded states, including more South Korea-Japan-U.S. cooperation. Most urgently, Washington and its European and Asian allies should provide Taiwan much more military aid and embed Taipei into collective-defense structures with other states opposing Beijing’s hegemonic aspirations.

Third, after Ukraine wins its war with Russia, we must aim to split the Russia-China axis. Moscow’s defeat could unseat Mr. Putin’s regime. What comes next is a government of unknowable composition. New Russian leaders may or may not look to the West rather than Beijing, and might be so weak that the Russian Federation’s fragmentation, especially east of the Urals, isn’t inconceivable. Beijing is undoubtedly eyeing this vast territory, which potentially contains incalculable mineral wealth. Significant portions of this region were under Chinese sovereignty until the 1860 Treaty of Peking transferred “outer Manchuria,” including extensive Pacific coast lands, to Moscow. Russia’s uncontrolled dissolution could provide China direct access to the Arctic, including even the Bering Strait, facing Alaska.

Obviously, any modern-day NSC-68 would include far more, but the gravity and scope of the strategic task ahead are ample motivation to launch the debate. You can bet Beijing and Moscow are thinking about it.

Mr. Bolton is author of “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.” He served as the president’s national security adviser, 2018-19, and ambassador to the United Nations, 2005-06.

Appeared in the April 13, 2023, print edition as 'A New American Grand Strategy to Counter Russia and China'.

4. No Russia-Ukraine peace talks expected this year, U.S. leak shows

No Russia-Ukraine peace talks expected this year, U.S. leak shows

The war is expected to spill into 2024 with neither side notching victory and both refusing to negotiate, U.S. intelligence officials surmise

April 12, 2023 at 6:36 p.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by John Hudson · April 12, 2023

The grinding war between Ukraine and Russia is expected to bleed into 2024 with neither side securing victory yet both refusing to negotiate an end to the conflict, according to a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment that is among the highly sensitive U.S. government materials leaked online and obtained by The Washington Post.

The analysis concludes that, even if Ukraine recaptures “significant” amounts of territory and inflicts “unsustainable losses on Russian forces,” an outcome U.S. intelligence finds unlikely, the nation’s gains would not lead to peace talks.

“Negotiations to end the conflict are unlikely during 2023 in all considered scenarios,” says the document, which has not been disclosed previously.

The assessment, based on close U.S. scrutiny of each side’s troop counts, weaponry and equipment, could galvanize the war’s critics who have called on major powers such as the United States and China to push for Kyiv and Moscow to reach a settlement and end a conflict that has displaced millions and left hundreds of thousands dead or wounded.

Asked about the DIA’s assessment, a U.S. official said the decision on when to negotiate is up to President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian people, underscoring what has been a hands-off approach to mediation espoused by the administration since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022. The United States will continue to stand with Kyiv and provide it with the equipment and weapons that will bolster its position at the negotiating table, whenever that day comes, the official said.

What to know about the Discord leaks

Dozens of highly classified U.S. military and intelligence documents have been leaked online, revealing a detailed picture of the war in Ukraine, as well as analysis and sensitive information on Russia and other countries — from classified sources. The leak has far-reaching implications for the United States and its allies. Here’s what we know.

Where did they come from?

The top-secret documents appear to be — at least partly — from the Pentagon. Many seem to have been prepared for Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other senior military officials, though hundreds of others may have had access. The files include reports from across the U.S. intelligence community, including from the CIA, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, FISA court warrants and more.

What do the leaked documents reveal about Ukraine?

The documents contain assessments of the progress of war in Ukraine, including precise battlefield tactical information. They reveal profound concerns about about the war’s trajectory and Kyiv’s capacity to wage a successful offensive against Russian forces. They also show the extent to which the United States has infiltrated the Russian military. According to a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment among the leaked documents, “Negotiations to end the conflict are unlikely during 2023 in all considered scenarios.”

What else do they show?

Who leaked the documents?

We don’t know who leaked the documents or why, but the Justice Department has said it is investigating the leak. The documents initially appeared in early March on a now-shuttered Discord server; then several of the images were posted on Twitter. Some versions appear later to have been digitally manipulated to inflate Russian military strength.

What happens now?

In addition to the Justice Department investigation, officials in several countries said they were assessing the damage from the leaks.

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The document leak, which first came to authorities’ attention last week, has provided extensive insight into U.S. intelligence activities worldwide and exposed the national security establishment’s deep misgivings about the war’s trajectory. Many of the classified assessments that have surfaced thus far date to February and March, first appearing on the Discord messaging platform before spreading elsewhere online. Both the Pentagon, where many of the leaked materials appear to have originated earlier this year, and the Justice Department have said they are investigating the matter.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment. Spokespersons for the Russian and Ukrainian governments did not respond to requests for comment.

Beyond forecasting a costly open-ended conflict, the newly disclosed document also predicts how Ukrainian and Russian military leaders will respond to battlefield challenges, and it anticipates that the year will end with the two sides achieving only “marginal” territorial gains as a result of “insufficient troops and supplies for effective operations.”

Such a stalemate, where neither side achieves a decisive advantage, is described in the document as “the most likely scenario.”

For the Ukrainian side, an ongoing war of attrition will lead to frustration within the country and “criticism” about how the war is conducted, “making leadership changes more likely,” the document says.

It is unclear if the document is referring to leadership changes in a political or military context. Zelensky remains broadly popular in Ukraine, but tensions exist between his office and Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, head of Ukraine’s armed forces, whom some in Kyiv view as a political threat.

A stalemate also will result in Ukraine enacting the “full mobilization” of its remaining eligible population, the document predicts, sending more young men to the front lines. At the same time, Ukraine probably will intensify its reliance on strikes in Russian territory, the document says, a dynamic that has disquieted some U.S. officials fearful that such attacks could compel President Vladimir Putin to escalate the conflict or give China cause to begin providing lethal support to Russia.

For the Russian side, the stalemate will force Moscow to employ “degraded reserves due to dwindling combat power,” the document says. The Kremlin also is likely to “accelerate” efforts to integrate captured territories into Russia.

“It’s always been a race to see who runs out of resources first,” said Heather Conley, a Europe scholar and president of the German Marshall Fund.

She said she agreed with the U.S. intelligence contention that negotiations would begin only after one side is “exhausted,” a prospect that appears far off.

Jeff Rathke, a scholar at Johns Hopkins University and former U.S. diplomat, said the assessment “reflects a sobriety about the likelihood of either side being able to mount or to mass decisive military power in places where it can achieve strategic effect.”

The newly disclosed document also analyzes what might result from Russia or Ukraine achieving a “decisive advantage” on the battlefield. In the event that Russia deals a significant blow against Ukraine and captures more territory, Moscow is likely to “posture forces to achieve further objectives, such as regime change” in Ukraine, it says.

Regime change appeared to be the goal of Russia’s invasion, but its forces were thwarted in their blundering attempt to sack the capital.

In the scenario in which Ukraine gains a decisive advantage, however, U.S. intelligence believes that Kyiv is likely to “conduct riskier offensive operations for additional gains.” In response, Russia could be expected to “increase nonconventional attacks on Ukraine,” though, importantly, “nuclear use remains unlikely,” the document says. Officials predict that, rather than giving up, the Kremlin would opt to announce a “new national mobilization” to sustain further combat operations.

U.S. officials have cautioned that such analysis related to the war in Ukraine is fluid, and the materials that leaked may lack nuance the United States has gleaned in the days since they were drafted. The newly disclosed document acknowledges that the stalemate it describes as the most likely scenario by year’s send may not hold if there are “substantive improvements to Ukrainian or Russian military capabilities.”

Both sides are preparing for fighting to escalate as warmer weather arrives, though officials in Kyiv and personnel on the war’s front lines have complained about logistical backlogs responsible for slowing promised deliveries of Western arms. Several nations, including the United States, committed battle tanks and other armored vehicles to Ukraine over the winter while initiating new training pipelines aimed at teaching advanced combat tactics to thousands of Ukrainian soldiers.

All the while, what remains very consistent in the Biden administration’s position on Ukraine is its deep skepticism about peace negotiations. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has openly questioned the value of permanent or temporary armistice agreements, telling members of the U.N. Security Council in February that they “should not be fooled by calls for a temporary or unconditional cease-fire.” Russia, he said then, will use “any pause in fighting to consolidate control.”

Blinken has also criticized countries for urging both sides to negotiate, pointing out that Russia is the aggressor and Ukraine has every right to fight to regain its territory.

Publicly, neither Russia nor Ukraine has ruled out negotiations, but their demands are leagues apart.

The 10-point peace plan Zelensky released last year demands the full withdrawal of Russian troops “from the territory of Ukraine,” including Crimea, the peninsula Putin annexed illegally in 2014 that now serves to facilitate the resupply of his forces inside Ukraine.

Moscow, meanwhile, has insisted that Ukraine must acknowledge the new “territorial realities,” which has been interpreted to mean that Zelensky and his Western backers must recognize the regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, which Russia does not even fully control, as Russian territory, a non-starter for Ukraine as well as the United States.

China proposed a 12-point peace plan for the conflict with criteria that few found objectionable, but it has gained little traction since it was introduced in February.

Samuel Oakford contributed to this report.

The Washington Post · by John Hudson · April 12, 2023

5. Ukraine’s Best Chance

Excerpts:

The West should have no illusions about what will be required of it on the military and economic fronts, even after the war. Although Kyiv has been grateful for Western weaponry, it has stressed repeatedly that much more is needed soon and indefinitely. If a Ukrainian victory seems nigh, U.S. and European policymakers will face urgent demands to boost their already substantial military support (even at the cost of diminishing their own military preparedness) to ensure that Kyiv clinches it.

In the economic realm, the war has produced staggering destruction in Ukraine as well as massive budget deficits. The latter, nearly $25 billion in 2022, could reach $38 billion this year. Kyiv’s needs for economic and humanitarian aid will increase as the war grinds on but will also persist once it ends. The World Bank estimates the cost of postwar reconstruction at $411 billion, while Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal has put it at $750 billion.

These challenges should, however, be seen in the context of what has happened since February 24. Not only has Ukraine averted defeat and subjugation, but its army has pushed Russia out of large parts of the country with a blend of grit, savvy military commanders, and abundant Western training and arms. Even if Kyiv ultimately has to settle for a political settlement that requires concessions, Putin will have failed to subordinate Ukraine, shear off vast tracts of its territory, including its coasts, and attach them to a Greater Russia. When the war began, it seemed as though he would succeed in achieving all of this and perhaps more. Now, a Ukrainian victory, even if it does not match Kyiv’s ideal, has become not just imaginable but also probable.

Ukraine’s Best Chance

A Successful Offensive Could End the War With Russia

By Rajan Menon

April 12, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Rajan Menon · April 12, 2023

Before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s army invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the prevailing view was that Ukrainian resistance would crumble quickly. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency thought so, as did Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, who reportedly predicted that Kyiv could fall in 72 hours. Yet more than a year later, Ukraine’s army fights on, having achieved remarkable advances on the battlefield. In March, it repelled Russia’s attack on Kyiv and areas north of the city. It had retaken Kharkiv Province by mid-September and has subsequently attacked the main Russian defense line between Svatove and Kreminna in adjacent Luhansk Province. In November, it forced Russia to withdraw from the part of Kherson Province that lies on the Dnipro River’s right bank. Ukraine has now regained about half of the land Russia seized after the invasion.

The initial pessimism about Ukraine’s chances was, however, scarcely unreasonable. Russia had overwhelming superiority in the standard measures of military power, such as the number of soldiers and the quantity and quality of major armaments. Moreover, Putin had initiated a megabucks military modernization drive in 2008 that was widely considered by experts to have made the Russian armed forces substantially stronger. For these reasons I, too, believed that Russia would prevail and not end up mired in a protracted war.

In the event, stronger morale, superior generalship, and Russia’s overconfidence (and consequent expectation of a rapid victory) proved to have an outsize importance. By now Ukraine has amply demonstrated just how significant these and other, often intangible elements can be. And Russia’s many military shortcomings have become evident to the point that even ardent pro-war Russian nationalists openly acknowledge them, recognizing that the winter offensive has failed to push the frontline forward substantially, and questioning the prospects for success. Yet many Western assessments of the war’s likely course and outcome still assume that none of this will matter very much and that Russia will prevail because it will learn from its mistakes and has material resources that far exceed Ukraine’s.

The Ukrainian army is now preparing for a spring offensive. Based on the lessons of the past 13 months (which I’ve explored over two trips to wartime Ukraine, including to places near the frontlines), a Ukrainian path to victory is entirely plausible—though not as complete a victory as Kyiv and its supporters want. As the war continues, the United States in particular, given its pivotal role in arming Ukraine, will face increasingly hard decisions about costs, sustainability, and risks. That makes it especially important to consider more limited definitions of victory. A less-than-perfect outcome can still amount to a remarkable achievement—and it is within Ukraine’s reach.

NUMBERS AREN’T EVERYTHING

As the war extends into its second year and the battle lines have become more fixed, some observers hold fast to the belief that a prolonged war will ultimately play to Russia’s advantage. One element of this argument—that time favors Russia because it has a far larger population than Ukraine and hence many more troops—cannot be dismissed lightly. Putin’s call-up of 300,000 reservists in September illustrated this numerical advantage. So have the waves of soldiers Russia used with abandon in Donetsk Province to take the town of Soledar and surrounding areas and in the long-drawn battle for Bakhmut.

Yet this assessment misses some of the most important ingredients of battlefield success, as well as key lessons provided by this particular conflict. Numbers can be misleading. For one thing, they say nothing about combat readiness, which has been a problem for Russia in part because many of the Russian army’s noncommissioned officers and other personnel dedicated to training have been sent to the front or to staff hollowed-out battalions. Those problems will worsen the longer the war continues. As the casualties mount, Russian reservists—who, unlike their American counterparts, are not required to train regularly—may be rushed to the front to replace their killed or wounded comrades. And even with Russia’s large military-age population, these casualties, estimated to be between 180,000 and 250,000, are taking a heavy toll.

Causalities are devilishly difficult to tally and therefore inevitably imprecise, and some observers have dismissed the numbers publicized by Western governments as vast exaggerations, just as they rejected Ukraine’s official tally of its own casualties as implausibly low. But even if Russia’s actual losses are only a third of the lower number, they far exceed the Red Army’s total during its decadelong war in Afghanistan. And there are signs that they have created a shortfall in troops. Russian authorities have tried to remedy the situation with steps such as offering signing bonuses that are multiples of local average incomes, raising the age limit for contractual military service, and discussing a similar step for conscription. Whatever the extent of the shortage, Russia will still nevertheless have more troops than Ukraine. As the attacker it needs a hefty margin of superiority at points of contact, the rule of thumb being three to one.

Yet the larger the army, the greater its needs, which highlights another problem: the deficiencies of Russia’s military supply system. Reports of ill-equipped troops heading into battle persist, as do stories about families’ feverish efforts to provide them with basic necessities such as helmets and vests. Even Russian officialdom has acknowledged the equipment shortages.

Although Russia has far more military hardware than Ukraine, its losses have also been surprisingly high.

What is more, the ability to mobilize more soldiers than the adversary may not prove decisive if they are poorly used. The Russian army’s bullheaded assault on Bakhmut, which began in August and continues despite huge casualties, casts doubt on the claim that it has learned from early mistakes and started fighting more savvily. Ditto the repeated attacks on places such as Kamianka, Vuhledar, and Avdiivka, despite the heavy toll in troops (many newly mobilized) and equipment exacted by Ukrainian forces occupying higher ground. In Vuhledar, the losses suffered recently by the 40th and 155th naval infantry brigades, the latter an elite “Guards” unit, were so high that their troops refused orders to fight on.

Nationalist supporters of the war have blasted the chaotic management of the September mobilization and the army’s performance in battle. One prominent hard-liner recently went so far as to rail against the “demonstrated blatant incompetence” of the military high command and the leadership of the Ministry of Defense, referring to them as “cretins.” That Putin has appointed the fourth commander of his “special military operation” in under a year and replaced other senior officers suggests that even he recognizes that Russia’s performance isn’t improving.

Although Russia has far more military hardware than Ukraine, its losses have also been surprisingly high. The destruction or capture of some 2,000 tanks may explain the turn to models dating back to the 1960s (T-62s) and even the 1940s (T-54s) as well as the recent decision to rely more on motorized rifle units. Despite the much-vaunted capabilities of Russia’s combat aircraft and attack helicopters, Moscow’s forces have lost 78 of the former and 80 of the latter. The repurposing of air defense and antiship missiles to strike targets on land and the purchases of Iranian drones also point to shortages.

MORALE MATTERS

There is also the question of morale, impossible to quantify but critical in war, as a 2018 RAND Corporation report demonstrated. Unlike Russians, Ukrainians are defending their homeland against an invader and believe that losing the war could lead to the loss of their country—a sentiment that visitors to Ukraine hear repeatedly. Because Russian soldiers are not in this predicament, Ukrainian troops have much greater resolve, which they have demonstrated by braving relentless attacks in places such as Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Vuhledar. Ukraine’s army has also suffered significant losses, but this is precisely where morale matters: in war, the side that has more of it will endure greater suffering and make bigger sacrifices.

Ukraine’s civilians have shown the same tenacity amid their own severe hardships. Indeed, the Russian army’s devastation of Ukraine—evidenced by destroyed cities, millions of refugees and internally displaced persons, and an economic contraction of nearly one-third—has only strengthened that tenacity. Ukrainians seem almost inured to the frequent alerts that serve as reminders of the ever-present danger of air and missile strikes. By the time of my second visit to Ukraine, in December, serial Russian strikes on the power grid, which started in early October, had cut off electricity and heat, even water, in cities, and Ukrainians were noticeably wearier. Yet a common refrain was that they had an obligation to live their lives with as much normalcy as possible, and without complaint, to honor their soldiers, who were enduring far worse. A September Gallup poll showed that Ukrainians overwhelmingly supported continued resistance, believed it would yield victory, and opposed territorial concessions to end the carnage. A survey in December showed no diminution in determination: only eight percent favored a land-for-peace deal. A February–March poll by the Kyiv International Institute for Sociology revealed that 68 percent favored fighting on to regain all territory lost since 2014, even if that meant enduring a long war and less Western military assistance. Societal sentiments matter: wars are fought at the front, but their outcomes can hinge on what happens in the rear.

That morale among Ukrainians has been matched by a surprisingly sustained and unified commitment from Ukraine’s supporters. Not only did Putin’s soldiers encounter a Ukrainian army that had gained valuable experience fighting the Russian-backed Donbas statelets since 2014, but the following year, Ukraine also started receiving extensive training from the West. By early 2022, the United States had trained 23,000 Ukrainian soldiers; Britain, 2,000; and Canada, 35,000 (in each case, counting security personnel). The United States plans to train 2,500 Ukrainians a month in Germany in 2023; Britain, which trained close to 5,000 last summer, has set its goal at 20,000, and the EU’s new Military Assistance Mission for Ukraine hopes to train 15,000.

The West’s commitment to Ukraine may well flag as costs and risks increase and military stocks run low.

Western arms deliveries have also increased, in value and sophistication. Kiel University’s Ukraine Support Tracker reckons that between January 24, 2022, and January 15, 2023, the United States committed over $47 billion in military assistance; Britain, Canada, and various European countries, more than $20 billion; and the EU’s European Peace Facility, over $3 billion. The armaments include shoulder-fired antitank missiles and antiaircraft systems, armored recovery vehicles, armored personnel carriers, artillery, self-propelled howitzers, counter-battery radars, air defense systems, drones, and courtesy of NATO countries that were once part of the Warsaw Pact, Soviet-era tanks.

Now that the handwringing over supplying Western tanks to Ukraine is past, Kyiv has begun to receive British Challenger 2s and German-made Leopard 2s (from Germany and several other European countries) and will eventually receive American Abrams M1A1s. As for airpower, Slovakia has pledged to send 13 Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jets and Poland, four, with the promise of more to come. Though the supply of Western warplanes remains uncertain, the Dutch government has said it will “keep an open mind” on Ukraine’s requests for U.S.-made F-16 fighter planes, and French President Emmanuel Macron has stated that he has not ruled out sending French combat aircraft.

The West’s commitment to Ukraine may well flag as costs and risks increase and military stocks run low, but that has yet to happen, doubtless to Putin’s surprise. Vast quantities of Western weaponry are headed Ukraine’s way as it gears up for its spring offensive. The tanks and infantry fighting vehicles will boost its prowess in armored warfare: the former will help punch through Russian defenses, and the latter will provide infantry better protection and greater speed. Mobile artillery and air defenses will make the tandem even more powerful. It will take months for all of the committed armaments to arrive, and Kyiv continues to worry about a shortage of artillery and shells. Yet for now, having paid a heavy price for a winter offensive that failed to yield commensurate gains and facing shortages of troops, ammunition, and equipment, the Russian army will be hard-pressed to launch another in short order and may already be shifting to a defensive stance.

THE NEXT OFFENSIVE

A lot is riding on the success of Ukraine’s coming offensive. Among other things, the country’s supporters will be watching carefully, assessing whether the victory that Kyiv seeks is feasible. But there is good reason to think that it could succeed beyond what skeptics believe. Ukraine’s military leaders have proved wily, agile, and resourceful to a degree that their Russian counterparts have not, and the cumulative effect of incoming Western armaments will increase the firepower at their disposal in multiple ways.

The recent deployment patterns of Ukrainian and Russian troops and the construction of Russian defense lines suggests that Ukraine’s offensive may focus on driving south into the Russian-held parts of Zaporizhzhia Province to cut Russia’s land corridor to Crimea. To that end, Ukraine will step up its strikes on Russian bases and supply depots as well as rail-based supply lines, the mainstay of Russian military logistics, that run through Tokmak (a major hub in Zaporizhzhia) south to Melitopol and onward to Kherson and Crimea. The strikes on the Melitopol region will also intensify. If Ukrainian forces reach Berdiansk or Mariupol, key ports on the Azov Sea coast, they will cut Russian forces in left-bank Kherson and in Zaporizhzhia off from each other, increasing their vulnerability to encirclement and making the supply and defense of Crimea harder—even if the Kerch Strait Bridge is fully repaired by July as planned. An alternative vector of attack could be from Kherson toward Crimea itself, though that would require a difficult crossing of the Dnipro River. Yet Russia’s decision to increase deployments and build trench lines in the peninsula’s north suggests that it has not ruled out that move. Either way, a southward advance could also place the Kerch Strait Bridge, damaged severely by a truck bomb in October, within range of Ukrainian missiles.

Buoyed by its battlefield successes, Kyiv seeks to recover all territories lost since 2014, including Crimea and all of eastern Ukraine, a definition of victory that President Volodymr Zelensky has repeatedly articulated and will not renounce lightly. Yet military circumstances may force Ukraine’s leaders to yield: despite its best efforts, their army may be unable to evict Russia from all lost territories. The West, having realized that, may press Kyiv to make hard choices because it wants to avoid endless and even costlier war—the more so if Western economies start encountering even stronger economic headwinds and fatigue takes hold in Ukraine. This scenario, while not inevitable, cannot be dismissed outright. Any end to the war short of outright Russian defeat would require Ukraine’s leaders to make painful concessions that would be deeply unpopular. Yet the course of the war, together with political and economic trends in the West, may require them to accept that continued fighting will not produce victory on the terms they want.

No matter the precise territorial configuration of a postwar Ukraine, Kyiv will insist on NATO membership and may well achieve it.

There are different ways to imagine the less-than-ideal outcomes, but consider two. In the first, Russia would retreat to pre-invasion battlelines, retaining Crimea and the land in Donbas that the two pro-Moscow statelets occupied before the war. In the second, Ukraine would recover all of Zaporizhzhia, and therefore the Azov Sea littoral, and Kherson, including the Russian-occupied segment of the Black Sea coast. Russia would retain Crimea and much of Donbas—Luhansk Province and the part of Donetsk Province that it controls—but relinquish the land corridor to the peninsula it now has through the southern parts of Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia Provinces.

Even the latter scenario would amount to a significant Ukrainian victory. Putin’s plan to install a quisling government in Kyiv and partition Ukraine by annexing its north, east, and south, including the Black and Azov Sea coastlines, would have failed. So would his bogus attempt last September to annex Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia Provinces, three of which he only partly controlled at the time. Ukraine would retain approximately 93 percent of its pre-invasion land area and about 89 percent of its pre–2014 territory. Although a settlement along these lines would fall well short of Kyiv’s ideal denouement, it would spare Ukraine further death and destruction, allow it to proceed with the mammoth task of postwar reconstruction, and enable millions of refugees and internally displaced people (together, nearly 14 million) to return home.

What is more, Putin would not just have failed to stop Ukraine’s alignment with the West, a longstanding goal, but would also have guaranteed and even accelerated it. No matter the precise territorial configuration of a postwar Ukraine, Kyiv will insist on NATO membership and may well achieve it. Even if the alliance cannot muster the unanimity needed to admit Ukraine, it could gain a security guarantee from the United States, Britain, Poland, and the Baltic countries, seen by Ukrainians as their most stalwart supporters, and other willing NATO states. If a security guarantee doesn’t materialize, Ukraine will have to settle for a long-term commitment by the West to provide military training and armaments. Ukrainians would see this outcome as tantamount to a betrayal, but it is not one they can rule out. Even in this circumstance, the enduring Western military assistance, the experience gained from this war, and Russia’s realization that Ukrainians will fight and fight well would provide Kyiv with a robust capacity for self-defense.

THE PERFECT AND THE GOOD

The West should have no illusions about what will be required of it on the military and economic fronts, even after the war. Although Kyiv has been grateful for Western weaponry, it has stressed repeatedly that much more is needed soon and indefinitely. If a Ukrainian victory seems nigh, U.S. and European policymakers will face urgent demands to boost their already substantial military support (even at the cost of diminishing their own military preparedness) to ensure that Kyiv clinches it.

In the economic realm, the war has produced staggering destruction in Ukraine as well as massive budget deficits. The latter, nearly $25 billion in 2022, could reach $38 billion this year. Kyiv’s needs for economic and humanitarian aid will increase as the war grinds on but will also persist once it ends. The World Bank estimates the cost of postwar reconstruction at $411 billion, while Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal has put it at $750 billion.

These challenges should, however, be seen in the context of what has happened since February 24. Not only has Ukraine averted defeat and subjugation, but its army has pushed Russia out of large parts of the country with a blend of grit, savvy military commanders, and abundant Western training and arms. Even if Kyiv ultimately has to settle for a political settlement that requires concessions, Putin will have failed to subordinate Ukraine, shear off vast tracts of its territory, including its coasts, and attach them to a Greater Russia. When the war began, it seemed as though he would succeed in achieving all of this and perhaps more. Now, a Ukrainian victory, even if it does not match Kyiv’s ideal, has become not just imaginable but also probable.

RAJAN MENON is Director of the Grand Strategy Program at Defense Priorities, Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor Emeritus of International Relations at City College of New York, and a Nonresident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Foreign Affairs · by Rajan Menon · April 12, 2023

6. What’s Really Going on Between Russia and China

Excerpts:

The Chinese-Russian relationship has become highly asymmetrical, but it is not one-sided. Beijing still needs Moscow, and the Kremlin can provide certain unique assets in this era of strategic competition between China and the United States. Purchases of the most advanced Russian weapons and military technology, freer access to Russian scientific talent, and the rich endowment of Russia’s natural resources—which can be supplied across a secure land border—make Russia an indispensable partner for China. Russia also remains an anti-American great power with a permanent seat on the UN Security council—a convenient friend to have in a world where the United States enjoys closer ties with dozens of countries in Europe and the Indo-Pacific and where China has few—if any—real friends. China’s connections are more overtly transactional than the deeper alliances Washington maintains.

That means that although China wields great influence in the Kremlin, it does not exert control. A somewhat similar relationship exists between China and North Korea. Despite the enormous extent of Pyongyang’s dependency on Beijing, and shared animosity toward the United States, China cannot fully control Kim Jong Un’s regime and needs to tread carefully to keep North Korea close. Russia is familiar with this kind of relationship since it maintains a parallel one with Belarus, in which Moscow is the senior partner that can pressure, cajole, and coerce Minsk—but cannot dictate Belarusian policy across the board.

Russia’s size and power may give the Kremlin a false sense of security as it locks itself into an asymmetrical relationship with Beijing. But the durability of this relationship, absent major unforeseeable disruptions, will depend on China’s ability to manage a weakening Russia. In the years to come, Putin’s regime will have to learn the skill that junior partners the world over depend on for survival: how to manage upward.

What’s Really Going on Between Russia and China

Behind the Scenes, They Are Deepening Their Defense Partnership

By Alexander Gabuev

April 12, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Alexander Gabuev · April 12, 2023

“There are changes happening, the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years,” Chinese leader Xi Jinping said to Russian President Vladimir Putin last month at the end of a state visit to Russia. “Let’s drive those changes together.” To this, the Russian leader responded, “I agree.”

This seemingly improvised yet carefully choreographed scene captured the outcome of Xi’s trip to Russia and the trajectory on which he and Putin have set Sino-Russian relations. Xi’s visit last month was first and foremost a demonstration of public support for the embattled Russian leader. But the truly significant developments took place during closed-door, in-person discussions, at which Xi and Putin made a number of important decisions about the future of Russian-Chinese defense cooperation and likely came to terms on arms deals that they may or may not make public.

The war in Ukraine and ensuing Western sanctions on Russia are reducing the Kremlin’s options and pushing Russia’s economic and technological dependency on China to unprecedented levels. These changes give China a growing amount of leverage over Russia. At the same time, China’s fraying relationship with the United States makes Moscow an indispensable junior partner to Beijing in pushing back against the United States and its allies. China has no other friend that brings as much to the table. And as Xi prepares China for a period of prolonged confrontation with the most powerful country on the planet, he needs all the help he can get.

FRIEND FROM AFAR

Senior figures in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have openly discussed the need for a closer partnership with Russia because of what they perceive as an increasingly hostile U.S. policy aimed at containing China’s rise. Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang told Chinese state media after the trip that the partnership with Russia is very important at a time when some forces are advocating “hegemonism, unilateralism, and protectionism” and are driven by a “Cold War mentality”—all CCP code words for U.S. policy toward China. Putting this reason front and center is revealing, and it explains why Xi decided to go to see Putin in person, despite the unfavorable optics of visiting just after the International Criminal Court had issued an arrest warrant for the Russian leader. The message of Xi’s trip was clear: China sees many benefits in its relationship with Russia, it will continue to maintain those ties at the highest level, and it will not be deterred by Western critics.

To deflect growing U.S. and European criticism of China’s support of Russia, Beijing came up with an elaborate diplomatic scheme, presenting a position paper on the Ukrainian crisis on February 24, the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The paper is a laundry list of talking points that Beijing has voiced throughout the war, including respect for the territorial integrity of states and opposition to unilateral sanctions. The proposal’s lack of specific details on crucial issues, such as borders and accountability for war crimes, is a feature, not a bug. Beijing is perfectly aware that neither Kyiv nor Moscow has much interest in talking at the moment, since both want to keep fighting to increase their leverage whenever they do sit down at the negotiation table. The Chinese proposal was little more than window dressing for Xi’s visit. The real action took place behind the scenes, in private negotiations between Putin and Xi.

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

At the conclusion of the trip, the Kremlin published a list of 14 documents signed by both China and Russia, including two statements by Xi and Putin. At first glance, these were largely insignificant memorandums between ministries; no major new agreements were announced. Yet a closer look reveals a very different picture, one that Beijing and Moscow have reason to conceal from the outside world.

In a departure from its usual practice, the Kremlin did not publish the list of officials and senior business leaders present at the talks. Their names can be discerned only by going through footage and photos from the summit and by reading into comments made to the Kremlin press corps by Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy aide. A close look reveals that more than half of Putin’s team participating in the first round of formal talks with Xi were officials directly involved in Russia’s weapons and space programs. That list includes former President Dmitry Medvedev, who is now Putin’s deputy in the presidential commission on the military-industrial complex; Sergei Shoigu, the defense minister; Dmitry Shugaev, who heads the federal service for military-technical cooperation; Yury Borisov, who runs the Russian space agency and who until 2020 had spent a decade in charge of the Russian weapons industry as deputy defense minister and deputy prime minister; and Dmitry Chernyshenko, a deputy prime minister who chairs a bilateral Russian-Chinese intergovernmental commission and is in charge of science and technology in the Russian cabinet. This group of officials was likely assembled to pursue one main goal: deepening defense cooperation with China.

Although China wields great influence in the Kremlin, it does not exert control.

Even though Beijing and Moscow have not made any new deals public, there is every reason to believe that Xi’s and Putin’s teams used the March meeting to come to terms on new defense agreements. After prior Xi-Putin summits, the leaders have privately signed documents related to arms deals and only later informed the world. In September 2014, for example, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the Kremlin sold its S-400 surface-to-air missile system to China, making Beijing the first overseas buyer of Russia’s most advanced air-defense equipment. The deal was not revealed until eight months later, however, in a Kommersant interview with Anatoly Isaykin, the CEO of Rosoboronexport, Russia’s main arms manufacturer.

After the U.S. Congress passed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act in 2017, Moscow and Beijing stopped disclosing their military contracts altogether. This U.S. law led to the sanctioning of the Chinese army’s armaments department and its head, General Li Shangfu (who was appointed China’s defense minister in March). Nevertheless, on rare occasions, Putin boasts about new deals, such as in 2019, when he announced that Moscow was helping to develop a Chinese missile early-warning system, and in 2021, when he revealed that Russia and China were jointly developing high-tech weapons.

ARMS LINKED

China has relied on Russian military hardware since the 1990s, and Moscow was its only source of modern foreign weapons following the arms embargo imposed by the EU and the United States after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Over time, as China’s own military industry progressed, its reliance on others decreased. Beijing can now produce modern weapons on its own and has a clear lead over Russia in many areas of modern military technology, including drones. But to boost its own research and development and production, Beijing still covets access to Russian technology to use in surface-to-air missiles, engines for fighter jets, and underwater warfare equipment such as submarines and submersible drones.

A decade ago, the Kremlin was reluctant to sell cutting-edge military technology to China. Moscow worried that the Chinese might reverse engineer the technology and figure out how to produce it themselves. Russia also had broader concerns about arming a powerful country that borders the sparsely populated and resource-rich Russian regions of Siberia and the Far East. But the deepening schism between Russia and the West following the 2014 annexation of Crimea changed that calculus. And after launching a full-scale war in Ukraine and prompting the complete breakdown of ties with the West, Moscow has little choice but to sell China its most advanced and precious technologies.

Even before the war, some Russian analysts of China’s defense industry had advocated entering into joint projects, sharing technology, and carving out a place in the Chinese military’s supply chain. Doing so, they argued, offered the best way for the Russian military industry to modernize—and without that progress, the rapid pace of China’s own R & D would soon render Russian technology obsolete. Today, such views have become conventional wisdom in Moscow. Russia has also started opening up its universities and science institutes to Chinese partners and integrating its research facilities with Chinese counterparts. Huawei, for example, has tripled its research staff in Russia in the wake of a Washington-led campaign to limit the Chinese tech giant’s global reach.

JUNIOR PARTNER

Neither Beijing nor Moscow has any interest in disclosing the details of any of the private discussions held during the Xi-Putin summit. The same goes for details on how Russian companies could gain better access to the Chinese financial system—which was the reason why Elvira Nabiullina, chair of Russia’s central bank, was a significant participant at the bilateral talks. That access has become critical for the Kremlin, since Russia is rapidly becoming more dependent on China as its main export destination and as a major source of technological imports, and as the yuan is becoming Russia’s preferred currency for trade settlement, savings, and investments.

The participation of the heads of some of the biggest Russian commodity producers indicates that Xi and Putin also discussed expanding the sale of Russian natural resources to China. Right now, however, Beijing has no interest in drawing attention to such deals, in order to avoid criticism for providing cash for Putin’s war chest. In any case, Beijing can afford to bide its time, since China’s leverage in these quiet discussions is only growing: Beijing has many potential sellers, including its traditional partners in the Middle East and elsewhere, whereas Russia has few potential buyers.

Eventually, the Kremlin may want at least some of the deals reached in March to become public to demonstrate that it has found a way to compensate for the losses it suffered when Europe stopped importing Russian oil and reduced its imports of Russian gas. But China will decide when and how any new resource deals are signed and announced. Russia has no choice but to patiently wait and defer to the preferences of its more powerful neighbor.

WHO’S THE BOSS?

The Chinese-Russian relationship has become highly asymmetrical, but it is not one-sided. Beijing still needs Moscow, and the Kremlin can provide certain unique assets in this era of strategic competition between China and the United States. Purchases of the most advanced Russian weapons and military technology, freer access to Russian scientific talent, and the rich endowment of Russia’s natural resources—which can be supplied across a secure land border—make Russia an indispensable partner for China. Russia also remains an anti-American great power with a permanent seat on the UN Security council—a convenient friend to have in a world where the United States enjoys closer ties with dozens of countries in Europe and the Indo-Pacific and where China has few—if any—real friends. China’s connections are more overtly transactional than the deeper alliances Washington maintains.

That means that although China wields great influence in the Kremlin, it does not exert control. A somewhat similar relationship exists between China and North Korea. Despite the enormous extent of Pyongyang’s dependency on Beijing, and shared animosity toward the United States, China cannot fully control Kim Jong Un’s regime and needs to tread carefully to keep North Korea close. Russia is familiar with this kind of relationship since it maintains a parallel one with Belarus, in which Moscow is the senior partner that can pressure, cajole, and coerce Minsk—but cannot dictate Belarusian policy across the board.

Russia’s size and power may give the Kremlin a false sense of security as it locks itself into an asymmetrical relationship with Beijing. But the durability of this relationship, absent major unforeseeable disruptions, will depend on China’s ability to manage a weakening Russia. In the years to come, Putin’s regime will have to learn the skill that junior partners the world over depend on for survival: how to manage upward.

ALEXANDER GABUEV is Director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

Foreign Affairs · by Alexander Gabuev · April 12, 2023

7. US classified intelligence leak was carried out by young gun enthusiast

This is based on the Washington Post report. An interesting editorial decision by the Jerusalem Post/Reuters for the focus of the headline.

US classified intelligence leak was carried out by young gun enthusiast

Jerusalem Post

The person who leaked US classified documents prompting a national security investigation is a gun enthusiast in his 20s who worked on a military base, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing fellow members of an online chat group.

The person shared classified information to a group on the instant messaging platform Discord of about two dozen men and young boys who shared a "mutual love of guns, military gear and God," the Post said.

The Post based its report, which did not name the person, on interviews with two members of the Discord chat group.

Reuters was unable to verify details of the report.

Discord said in a statement earlier on Wednesday that it was cooperating with law enforcement.

Plastic letters arranged to read ''Data Leak'' are placed in front of the Discord logo in this illustration taken March 9, 2022 (credit: REUTERS/DADO RUVIC/ILLUSTRATION/FILE PHOTO)

The Department of Defense and the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Officials' response to the new finding

The Department of Justice opened a formal criminal probe last week after the matter was referred by the Pentagon, which is assessing the damage done by what may be the most damaging release of classified US information in years.

The person went by the handle OG, slang for Original Gangster, or an old school traditionalist. The person was described by one of the Post's sources as being in his early to mid-20s, and was looked up to by members of the group.

"He's fit. He's strong. He's armed. He's trained. Just about everything you can expect out of some sort of crazy movie," said one member of the chat group, who was under 18 and spoke on the condition of anonymity with the permission of his mother, the Post reported.

In what appears to be the gravest leak of US secrets in years, pictures of sensitive documents were posed on Discord and other platforms including the online messaging board 4Chan, the encrypted Telegram global messaging app, and Twitter.

US national security agencies and the Justice Department are investigating the release to assess the damage to national security and relations with allies and other countries, including Ukraine.

Jerusalem Post

8. The West Needs a New Strategy in Ukraine

Excerpts:

For over a year, the West has allowed Ukraine to define success and set the war aims of the West. This policy, regardless of whether it made sense at the outset of the war, has now run its course. It is unwise, because Ukraine’s goals are coming into conflict with other Western interests. And it is unsustainable, because the war’s costs are mounting, and Western publics and their governments are growing weary of providing ongoing support. As a global power, the United States must acknowledge that a maximal definition of the interests at stake in the war has produced a policy that increasingly conflicts with other U.S. priorities.

The good news is that there is a feasible path out of this impasse. The West should do more now to help Ukraine defend itself and advance on the battlefield, putting it in the best position possible at the negotiating table later this year. In the meantime, Washington should set a diplomatic course that ensures the security and viability of Ukraine within its de facto borders—while working to restore the country’s territorial integrity over the long term. This approach may be too much for some and not enough for others. But unlike the alternatives, it has the advantage of blending what is desirable with what is doable.

The West Needs a New Strategy in Ukraine

A Plan for Getting From the Battlefield to the Negotiating Table

By Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan

April 13, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan · April 13, 2023

After just over a year, the war in Ukraine has turned out far better for Ukraine than most predicted. Russia’s effort to subjugate its neighbor has failed. Ukraine remains an independent, sovereign, functioning democracy, holding on to roughly 85 percent of the territory it controlled before Russia’s 2014 invasion. At the same time, it is difficult to feel sanguine about where the war is headed. The human and economic costs, already enormous, are poised to climb as both Moscow and Kyiv ready their next moves on the battlefield. The Russian military’s numerical superiority likely gives it the ability to counter Ukraine’s greater operational skill and morale, as well as its access to Western support. Accordingly, the most likely outcome of the conflict is not a complete Ukrainian victory but a bloody stalemate.

Against this backdrop, calls for a diplomatic end to the conflict are understandably growing. But with Moscow and Kyiv both vowing to keep up the fight, conditions are not yet ripe for a negotiated settlement. Russia seems determined to occupy a larger chunk of the Donbas. Ukraine appears to be preparing an assault to break the land bridge between the Donbas and Crimea, clearing the way, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky often asserts, for Ukraine to fully expel Russian forces and restore its territorial integrity.

The West needs an approach that recognizes these realities without sacrificing its principles. The best path forward is a sequenced two-pronged strategy aimed at first bolstering Ukraine’s military capability and then, when the fighting season winds down late this year, ushering Moscow and Kyiv from the battlefield to the negotiating table. The West should start by immediately expediting the flow of weapons to Ukraine and increasing their quantity and quality. The goal should be to bolster Ukraine’s defenses while making its coming offensive as successful as possible, imposing heavy losses on Russia, foreclosing Moscow’s military options, and increasing its willingness to contemplate a diplomatic settlement. By the time Ukraine’s anticipated offensive is over, Kyiv may also warm up to the idea of a negotiated settlement, having given its best shot on the battlefield and facing growing constraints on both its own manpower and help from abroad.

The second prong of the West’s strategy should be to roll out later this year a plan for brokering a cease-fire and a follow-on peace process aimed at permanently ending the conflict. This diplomatic gambit may well fail. Even if Russia and Ukraine continue to take significant losses, one or both of them may prefer to keep fighting. But as the war’s costs mount and the prospect of a military stalemate looms, it is worth pressing for a durable truce, one that could prevent renewed conflict and, even better, set the stage for a lasting peace.

THE WAR THAT WILL NOT END

For now, a diplomatic resolution to the conflict is out of reach. Russian President Vladimir Putin likely worries that if he stops fighting now, Russians will fault him for launching a costly, futile war. After all, Russian forces do not completely control any of the four oblasts that Moscow unilaterally annexed last September, NATO has grown bigger and stronger, and Ukraine is more alienated than ever from Russia. Putin seems to believe that time is on his side, calculating that he can ride out economic sanctions, which have failed to strangle the Russian economy, and maintain popular support for the war, an operation that, according to polls from the Levada Center, more than 70 percent of Russians still back. Putin doubts the staying power of Ukraine and its Western supporters, expecting that their resolve will wane. And he surely calculates that as his new conscripts enter the fight, Russia should be able to expand its territorial gains, allowing him to declare that he has substantially expanded Russia’s borders when the fighting stops.

Ukraine is also in no mood to settle. The country’s leadership and public alike understandably seek to regain control of all the territory Russia has occupied since 2014, including Crimea. Ukrainians also want to hold Moscow accountable for Russian forces’ war crimes and make it pay for the immense costs of reconstruction. Besides, Kyiv has good reason to doubt whether Putin can be trusted to abide by any peace deal. Rather than looking to the West for diplomatic intervention, then, Ukrainian leaders are asking for more military and economic help. The United States and Europe have provided considerable intelligence, training, and hardware, but they have held off providing military systems of even greater capability, such as long-range missiles and advanced aircraft, for fear that doing so would provoke Russia to escalate, whether by using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine or deliberately attacking the troops or territory of a NATO member.

Although Washington is right to keep a watchful eye on the risk of escalation, its concerns are overblown. Western policy is caught between the goals of preventing catastrophic failure (in which an under-armed Ukraine is swallowed by Russia) and catastrophic success (in which an over-armed Ukraine leads a cornered Putin to escalate). But it is difficult to see what Russia would gain from escalation. Expanding the war by attacking a NATO member would not be in Russia’s interests, since the country is having a hard enough time fighting Ukraine alone, and its forces are severely depleted after a year of war. Nor would using nuclear weapons serve it well. A nuclear attack would likely prompt NATO to enter the war directly and decimate Russian positions throughout Ukraine. It could also alienate China and India, both of which have warned Russia against the use of nuclear weapons.

But the implausibility of nuclear use isn’t the only reason the West should discount Russia’s posturing; giving in to nuclear blackmail would also signal to other countries that such threats work, setting back the nonproliferation agenda and weakening deterrence. China, for instance, might conclude that nuclear threats can deter the United States from coming to Taiwan’s defense in the event of a Chinese attack.

A destroyed vehicle in Chasiv Yar, Ukraine, April 2023

Kai Pfaffenbach / Reuters

It is thus time for the West to stop deterring itself and start giving Ukraine the tanks, long-range missiles, and other weapons it needs to wrest back control of more of its territory in the coming months. European countries have begun to deliver Leopard tanks, and the United States has pledged 31 Abrams tanks, which are scheduled to arrive in the fall. But both sides of the Atlantic should increase the size and the tempo of deliveries. More tanks would enhance Ukrainian forces’ ability to punch through Russia’s defensive lines in Ukraine’s south. Long-range missiles—namely, the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, which the United States has so far refused to provide—would allow Ukraine to hit Russian positions, command posts, and ammunition depots deep in Russian-held territory, preparing the way for a more successful Ukrainian offensive. The U.S. military should also begin training Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s. Training would take time, but starting it now would allow the United States to deliver advanced aircraft when the pilots are ready, sending a signal to Russia that Ukraine’s ability to wage war is on an upward trajectory.

Yet for all the good that greater Western military help would do, it is unlikely to change the fundamental reality that this war is headed for stalemate. It is of course possible that Ukraine’s coming offensive proves stunningly successful and allows the country to reclaim all occupied territory, including Crimea, resulting in a complete Russian defeat. But such an outcome is improbable. Even if the West steps up its military assistance, Ukraine is poised to fall well short of vanquishing Russian forces. It is running out of soldiers and ammunition, and its economy continues to deteriorate. Russian troops are dug in, and fresh recruits are heading to the front.

Moreover, if Moscow’s military position were to become precarious, it is quite possible that China would provide arms to Russia, whether directly or through third countries. Chinese President Xi Jinping has made a big, long-term wager on Putin and will not stand idly by as Russia suffers a decisive loss. Xi’s visit to Moscow in March strongly suggests that he is doubling down on his partnership with Putin, not backing away from it. Xi might also calculate that the risks of providing military assistance to Russia are modest. After all, his country is already decoupling from the West, and U.S. policy toward China seems destined to get tougher regardless of how much Beijing supports Moscow.

Ramping up the provision of military assistance to Ukraine, while it will help Ukrainian forces make progress on the battlefield, thus holds little promise of enabling Kyiv to restore full territorial integrity. Later this year, a stalemate is likely to emerge along a new line of contact. When that happens, an obvious question will arise: What next?

AFTER STALEMATE

More of the same makes little sense. Even from Ukraine’s perspective, it would be unwise to keep doggedly pursuing a full military victory that could prove Pyrrhic. Ukrainian forces have already suffered over 100,000 casualties and lost many of their best troops. The Ukrainian economy has shrunk by some 30 percent, the poverty rate is spiking, and Russia continues to bombard the country’s critical infrastructure. Around eight million Ukrainians have fled the country, with millions more internally displaced. Ukraine should not risk destroying itself in pursuit of goals that are likely out of reach.

Come the end of this fighting season, the United States and Europe will also have good reason to abandon their stated policy of supporting Ukraine for “as long as it takes,” as U.S. President Joe Biden has put it. Maintaining Ukraine’s existence as a sovereign and secure democracy is a priority, but achieving that goal does not require the country to recover full control of Crimea and the Donbas in the near term. Nor should the West worry that pushing for a cease-fire before Kyiv reclaims all its territory will cause the rules-based international order to crumble. Ukrainian fortitude and Western resolve have already rebuffed Russia’s effort to subjugate Ukraine, dealt Moscow a decisive strategic defeat, and demonstrated to other would-be revisionists that pursuing territorial conquest can be a costly and vexing enterprise. Yes, it is critical to minimize Russian gains and demonstrate that aggression doesn’t pay, but this goal must be weighed against other priorities.

The reality is that continued large-scale support of Kyiv carries broader strategic risks. The war is eroding the West’s military readiness and depleting its weapons stockpiles; the defense industrial base cannot keep up with Ukraine’s expenditure of equipment and ammunition. NATO countries cannot discount the possibility of direct hostilities with Russia, and the United States must prepare for potential military action in Asia (to deter or respond to any Chinese move against Taiwan) and in the Middle East (against Iran or terrorist networks).

The war is imposing high costs on the global economy, as well. It has disrupted supply chains, contributing to high inflation and energy and food shortages. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates that the war will reduce global economic output by $2.8 trillion in 2023. From France to Egypt to Peru, economic duress is triggering political unrest. The war is also polarizing the international system. As geopolitical rivalry between the Western democracies and a Chinese-Russian coalition augurs the return of a two-bloc world, most of the rest of the globe is sitting on the sidelines, preferring nonalignment to ensnarement in a new era of East-West rivalry. Disorder is radiating outward from the war in Ukraine.

Against this backdrop, neither Ukraine nor its NATO supporters can take Western unity for granted. American resolve is crucial for European staying power, but Washington faces mounting political pressure to reduce spending, rebuild U.S. readiness, and bulk up its capabilities in Asia. Now that Republicans control the House of Representatives, it will be harder for the Biden administration to secure sizable aid packages for Ukraine. And policy toward Ukraine could change significantly should Republicans win the White House in the 2024 election. It is time to ready a Plan B.

GETTING TO YES

Given the likely trajectory of the war, the United States and its partners need to begin formulating a diplomatic endgame now. Even as NATO members ramp up military assistance in support of Ukraine’s coming offensive, Washington should start consultations with its European allies and with Kyiv on a diplomatic initiative to be launched later in the year.

Under this approach, Ukraine’s Western supporters would propose a cease-fire as Ukraine’s coming offensive reaches its limits. Ideally, both Ukraine and Russia would pull back their troops and heavy weapons from the new line of contact, effectively creating a demilitarized zone. A neutral organization—either the UN or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe—would send in observers to monitor and enforce the cease-fire and pullback. The West should approach other influential countries, including China and India, to support the cease-fire proposal. Doing so would complicate diplomacy, but getting buy-in from Beijing and New Delhi would increase the pressure on the Kremlin. In the event that China refused to support the cease-fire, Xi’s ongoing calls for a diplomatic offensive would be exposed as an empty gesture.

Assuming a cease-fire holds, peace talks should follow. Such talks should occur along two parallel tracks. On one track would be direct talks between Ukraine and Russia, facilitated by international mediators, on the terms of peace. On the second track, NATO allies would start a strategic dialogue with Russia on arms control and the broader European security architecture. Putin’s effort to undo the post–Cold War security order has backfired and ended up strengthening NATO. But that reality only increases the need for NATO and Russia to begin a constructive dialogue to prevent a new arms race, rebuild military-to-military contacts, and address other issues of common concern, including nuclear proliferation. The “2 plus 4” talks that helped end the Cold War provide a good precedent for this approach. East and West Germany negotiated their unification directly, while the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union negotiated the broader post–Cold War security architecture.

Provided that Ukraine makes battlefield gains this summer, it is at least plausible that Putin would view a cease-fire and peace plan as a face-saving off-ramp. To make this approach even more enticing, the West could also offer some limited relief from sanctions in return for Russia’s willingness to abide by a cease-fire, agree to a demilitarized zone, and participate meaningfully in peace talks. It is of course conceivable that Putin would reject a cease-fire—or accept it only for the purpose of rebuilding his military and making a later run at conquering Ukraine. But little would be lost by testing Moscow’s readiness for compromise. Regardless of Russia’s response, the West would continue to provide the arms Ukraine needs to defend itself over the long term and make sure that any pause in the fighting did not work to Russia’s advantage. And if Russia rejected a cease-fire (or accepted one and then violated it), its intransigence would deepen its diplomatic isolation, shore up the sanctions regime, and strengthen support for Ukraine in the United States and Europe.

Another plausible outcome is that Russia would agree to a cease-fire in order to pocket its remaining territorial gains but in fact has no intention of negotiating in good faith to secure a lasting peace settlement. Presumably, Ukraine would enter such negotiations by demanding its top priorities: the restoration of its 1991 borders, substantial reparations, and accountability for war crimes. But because Putin would surely reject these demands out of hand, a prolonged diplomatic stalemate would then emerge, effectively producing a new frozen conflict. Ideally, the cease-fire would hold, leading to a status quo like the one that prevails on the Korean Peninsula, which has remained largely stable without a formal peace pact for 70 years. Cyprus has similarly been divided but stable for decades. This is not an ideal outcome, but it is preferable to a high-intensity war that continues for years.

CONVINCING KYIV

Persuading Kyiv to go along with a cease-fire and uncertain diplomatic effort could be no less challenging than getting Moscow to do so. Many Ukrainians would see this proposal as a sellout and fear that the cease-fire lines would merely become new de facto borders. Zelensky would need to dramatically scale back his war aims after having promised victory since the early months of the war—no easy task for even the most talented of politicians.

But Kyiv may ultimately find much to like in the plan. Even though the end of fighting would freeze in place a new line of contact between Russia and Ukraine, Kyiv would not be asked or pressured to give up the goal of taking back all of its land, including Crimea and the Donbas. Rather, the plan would be to defer settling the status of the land and people still under Russian occupation. Kyiv would forgo an attempt to retake these territories by force now, a gambit that would surely be costly but is likely to fail, instead accepting that the recovery of territorial integrity must await a diplomatic breakthrough. A breakthrough, in turn, may be possible only after Putin is no longer in power. In the meantime, Western governments could promise to fully lift sanctions against Russia and normalize relations with it only if Moscow signed a peace agreement that was acceptable to Kyiv.

This formula thus blends strategic pragmatism with political principle. Peace in Ukraine cannot be held hostage to war aims that, however morally justified, are likely unattainable. At the same time, the West should not reward Russian aggression by compelling Ukraine to permanently accept the loss of territory by force. Ending the war while deferring the ultimate disposition of land still under Russian occupation is the solution.

Under the best of circumstances, Ukrainians have tough days ahead of them.

Even if a cease-fire held and a diplomatic process got underway, NATO countries should continue to arm Ukraine, removing any doubts in Kyiv that its compliance with a diplomatic roadmap would mean the end of military support. Moreover, the United States could make clear to Kyiv that if Putin violated the cease-fire while Ukraine honored it, Washington would further step up the flow of arms and waive restrictions on Ukraine’s ability to target military positions inside Russia from which attacks are being launched. Should Putin spurn a clear opportunity to end the war, Western governments would win renewed public favor for providing such additional support to Ukraine.

As another incentive to Ukraine, the West should offer it a formalized security pact. Although NATO is unlikely to offer membership to Ukraine—a consensus within the alliance appears out of reach for now—a subset of NATO members, including the United States, could conclude a security agreement with Ukraine that pledges it adequate means of self-defense. This security pact, although it would fall short of an ironclad security guarantee, might resemble Israel’s defense relationship with the United States or the relationship that Finland and Sweden enjoyed with NATO before they decided to join the alliance. The pact might also include a provision similar to Article 4 of the NATO treaty, which calls for consultations when any party judges its territorial integrity, political independence, or security to be threatened.

Alongside this security pact, the EU should craft a long-term economic support pact and propose a timetable for admission to the EU, guaranteeing Ukraine that it is on the path toward full integration into the union. Under the best of circumstances, Ukrainians have tough days ahead of them; EU membership would offer them the light at the end of the tunnel that they so deserve to see.

Even with these inducements, Ukraine might still refuse the call for a cease-fire. If so, it would hardly be the first time in history that a partner dependent on U.S. support balked at being pressured to scale back its objectives. But if Kyiv did balk, the political reality is that support for Ukraine could not be sustained in the United States and Europe, especially if Russia were to accept the cease-fire. Ukraine would have little choice but to accede to a policy that gave it the economic and military support needed to secure the territory under its control—the vast majority of the country—while taking off the table the liberation by force of those territories still under Russian occupation. Moreover, the West would continue to use sanctions and diplomatic leverage to restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity—but at the negotiating table, not on the battlefield.

A WAY OUT

For over a year, the West has allowed Ukraine to define success and set the war aims of the West. This policy, regardless of whether it made sense at the outset of the war, has now run its course. It is unwise, because Ukraine’s goals are coming into conflict with other Western interests. And it is unsustainable, because the war’s costs are mounting, and Western publics and their governments are growing weary of providing ongoing support. As a global power, the United States must acknowledge that a maximal definition of the interests at stake in the war has produced a policy that increasingly conflicts with other U.S. priorities.

The good news is that there is a feasible path out of this impasse. The West should do more now to help Ukraine defend itself and advance on the battlefield, putting it in the best position possible at the negotiating table later this year. In the meantime, Washington should set a diplomatic course that ensures the security and viability of Ukraine within its de facto borders—while working to restore the country’s territorial integrity over the long term. This approach may be too much for some and not enough for others. But unlike the alternatives, it has the advantage of blending what is desirable with what is doable.

RICHARD HAASS is President of the Council on Foreign Relations.
CHARLES KUPCHAN is Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University.

Foreign Affairs · by Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan · April 13, 2023

9. Should America Still Promote Democracy?

The NEOCONs do not "own democracy" in my opinion.

Here is Max Boot's concluding comments to Thomas Carothers and Tom Malinowski's review of his original essay. But this is exactly what is needed -a formula for balancing interests and values (ideals).

Excerpt:

Finally, I did not try to lay out a formula for balancing interests and ideals in U.S. foreign policy, because I acknowledge both to be important. My only point, really, was that Americans should not be so blinded by fantasies of exporting democracy—whether by military force, covert operations, or sanctions—that they exaggerate their ability to determine the internal politics of foreign countries or that they do damage to their ability to protect their national security. As both Carothers and Malinowski point out, there are many ways that the United States can and should promote democracy and human rights “with humility and restraint.” On that, we can agree.

Should America Still Promote Democracy?

In response to What the Neocons Got Wrong

By Max Boot

How Not To Overcorrect

By Thomas Carothers

The Neoconservative Fantasy

By Tom Malinowski

Max Boot Responds

By Max Boot

Foreign Affairs · by April 13, 2023 · April 13, 2023

How Not To Overcorrect

Thomas Carothers

Max Boot (“What the Neocons Got Wrong,” March 10) deserves praise for some serious soul searching. Yet in renouncing his prior belief in military-led regime change, he commits the basic error of viewing efforts to support democracy as a purely idealistic endeavor, divorced from U.S. security interests. Although he acknowledges that “the United States should continue to champion its ideals and call out human rights abuses,” he advises Washington “not [to] be ashamed to prioritize its own interests.” Leaving aside the fact that the United States has not in recent memory exhibited much shame in prioritizing its interests globally, the problem with this formulation is that the strength of an ally’s democracy is often connected with U.S. security interests.

This dynamic has been evident on many occasions in recent decades. In the Philippines, the 2016 election of an authoritarian populist—Rodrigo Duterte—led to the weakening of long-standing security ties with Washington. The replacement of Duterte with a less autocratic leader, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr., in 2022, saw the country renew its defense cooperation with the United States. Washington’s security relationship with Ankara has diminished over the last 15 years in close parallel with the decline of Turkey’s democracy: the illiberal worldview of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan drew him away from his country’s traditional security partnership with the United States. Democratic decline in Hungary has led that country to become China’s and Russia’s best friend in the European Union, even during the years when U.S. President Donald Trump warmly embraced Hungary’s illiberal prime minister, Viktor Orban. Trying to limit or counter democratic erosion, therefore, can directly serve U.S. security interests even as it advances U.S. ideals.

Several countries of major security importance to Washington are in the midst of troubling backsliding. Israel’s democratic troubles and growing polarization, for example, may hurt U.S. security interests in the Middle East by dividing and weakening the Israel Defense Forces or heightening tensions with the Palestinians or Iran. In India, the accelerating deterioration of democracy could hurt the country’s long-term reliability as a U.S. security partner by provoking serious domestic unrest that forces the government to divert attention and resources away from external engagement. Mexico’s troubling democratic erosion—vividly diagnosed by Denise Dresser in Foreign Affairs—may lead to less effective cooperation with the United States on drug policy, immigration, and other key concerns. Falling back on simple bromides about not apologizing for relations with autocrats and prioritizing interests over ideals fails to provide any useful guidance for assessing how democracy and security intersect.

The United States cannot direct or control the democratic trajectory of other countries.

The question of what the United States can do to strengthen an eroding democracy is, therefore, critical. Here, too, Boot’s account falls short. He presents a stark choice between doing too much (forcible regime change) or too little (criticizing human rights abuses). There are many other options for supporting democracy. Washington can use economic carrots and sticks alongside bilateral and multilateral diplomatic engagement. It can underwrite targeted political assistance programs, which bolster key democratic institutions and processes, including electoral management bodies and judicial systems. The United States cannot and should not expect to direct or control the democratic trajectory of other countries, but it can have a positive impact through smart engagement. This was seen in 2022, when the Biden administration made clear that any military-backed attempt to keep then Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in power after his loss in the presidential election would have serious consequences for the U.S.-Brazilian relationship. This action helped support a mostly peaceful transfer of power.

In short, I commend Max Boot for his effort to renounce military-oriented democratic maximalism. But he retreats too far into putatively rigorous realism, overlooking the crucial fact that democracy and security are often inextricably interconnected. I urge him to avoid trading one simplified dogma for another and instead embrace the complex realities of U.S. interests and choices relating to democracy and security as they play out in many countries around the world.

THOMAS CAROTHERS is Co-Director of the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The Neoconservative Fantasy

Tom Malinowski

In 2003, a group of American intellectuals known as neoconservatives argued that the invasion of Iraq was justified, not just because of the country’s purported possession of weapons of mass destruction but because it was a dictatorship. They hoped to remove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power and transform Iraq, as Max Boot wrote at the time, into “a beacon of hope for the oppressed peoples of the Middle East.”

Twenty years later, writing in Foreign Affairs (“What the Neocons Got Wrong, March 10”), Boot cringes at his youthful naiveté and declares he is “a neocon no more.” He acknowledges that in 2003, he was “wildly overoptimistic about the prospects of exporting democracy by force.” He is plainly right. It is an oxymoronic fantasy to think that democracy, a system rooted in freedom of individual choice and built on institutions trusted by the people they serve, can be exported to a country by military invasion.

But Boot goes much further than merely renouncing his belief in the use of military power to impose freedom abroad. Because he personally ascribed moral motives to the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq, Boot argues that the United States must never again make foreign policy an “altruistic exercise.” Neocons once misguidedly cast the invasion as a war for democracy; for this reason, he says, the promotion of democracy no longer “belongs at the center of U.S. foreign policy.”

I have long admired Boot as a writer. But I fear that like many true believers in a given faith, he has exchanged one dogma for another. Just as the neocons once saw every confrontation with a dictator through the prism of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of the Nazis in Munich in 1938, Boot now views every attempt to advance American ideals globally through the prism of the mistake in Iraq. But there is a vast middle ground between these simplistic, opposing worldviews, and there is much more history to guide the United States than the examples of Munich and Iraq. What is needed today is not more dogma but better judgment.

FORGOTTEN SUCCESSES

Unfortunately for those who seek easy answers, history does not teach black-and-white lessons about the use of military power for humanitarian ends. Democracy promotion was not, in fact, the Bush administration’s reason for invading Iraq. Had it been, the war would still have been a catastrophe. The U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was in some ways a political success, producing vast gains for education and civic society, but it ended as a military failure.

Then again, when military power has been used to stop atrocities rather than impose democracy, it has often worked. The United States stopped genocides in Bosnia and Kosovo. The no-fly zone that Washington imposed over Iraq from 1991 to 2003 protected Iraqi Kurds from Saddam’s massacres and enabled them to build a relatively successful autonomous state. A NATO–United Nations intervention stopped political violence in Ivory Coast in 2011, and U.S. President George W. Bush’s use of the Marines helped end Liberia’s civil war in 2003. Some of these examples may seem obscure, but that is precisely because success is easily forgotten.

Boot pans the NATO intervention in Libya for not producing “the blooming of a Jeffersonian democracy.” We agree there! And yet for a year following Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi’s fall in 2011, the country did see a flourishing of free speech, independent media, and women’s rights. It held one of the most peaceful and free elections in the history of postconflict societies, which its most moderate parties won. Libya’s democracy was done in by warlord militias. They were armed with weapons raided from Qaddafi’s arms depots, which NATO had refused to secure, and supported by the United Arab Emirates, which flew mercenaries from the Russian Wagner paramilitary company into the country to overthrow the U.S.-backed legitimate government with barely a peep of protest from Washington. If Libya today is a “Hobbesian hell” (Boot’s colorful exaggeration), it is partly the result of decisions motivated by the amoral realism he now recommends.

Perhaps the most complicated recent case study is Syria. Plenty of non-neoconservatives, such as former U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, urged the imposition of a no-fly zone there to protect civilians. They lost that argument. The result was that the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad pushed millions of refugees into Europe, prompting a rightward shift in many countries and contributing to the Brexit vote in 2016. U.S. inaction invited a Russian intervention that presaged Putin’s attacks on Ukraine and enabled the rise of the so-called Islamic State (or ISIS), unleashing carnage around the world and eventually forcing the United States to go to war in Syria anyway.

Even if the United States had been able to prevent these calamities with the kind of no-fly zone that had worked in Iraq in the 1990s, it would not have brought Jeffersonian democracy to Syria. There would still be violence and terrorism there. U.S. planes might still be patrolling its skies, and the Beltway consensus would probably be that the whole thing had been a mistake because, in that alternate universe, no one would know what intervention had prevented: the rise of ISIS, Assad’s chemical attacks, and a mass human exodus. The lesson is that often, all that can be done in such situations is to manage a problem. But the difference between a managed mess and an unmanaged catastrophe can be measured in hundreds of thousands of lives.

Washington has not pushed for regime change and had been willing, until recently, to work with Russia when interests overlapped.

How about the nonmilitary promotion of democracy by the United States? Boot says that economic sanctions have worked only in a few instances, such as in South Africa. But this is not entirely true. Sanctions played a crucial role, for example, in Myanmar’s real, although now interrupted, transition to democracy. Boot is correct that “the United States might be able to do more for the people of Cuba and Venezuela by easing sanctions in return for human rights improvements rather than demanding regime change.” But how could Washington offer to ease sanctions if it had not first imposed them?

The Western promotion of democratic ideals through diplomacy, the funding of local activists, and the enticement of EU and NATO membership has clearly made a huge difference in Ukraine and its post-Soviet neighbors. Perhaps Boot thinks that democracy promotion in this part of the world meets his test of humility and restraint—since Washington has not pushed for regime change and had been willing, until recently, to work with Russia when interests overlapped.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin clearly disagrees. From his standpoint, the United States has supported activist groups that publicized his corruption, exposed his theft of elections, and spread the ideas that endanger his survival. Putin tried to help Donald Trump win the 2016 U.S. presidential election and to snuff out Ukraine in part because he saw even modest efforts to promote democracy as an existential threat.

It is possible to conclude from this experience that challenging powerful dictatorships on human rights is too dangerous to attempt at all (which is not Boot’s argument). Or Washington could recognize that it is in a genuine, high-stakes contest with autocracy and take it seriously. Even if the United States deprioritizes calling out the abuses of dictatorships and supporting their opponents, it will eventually do something that an autocracy cannot tolerate, and the autocracy will lash out, as Putin has. Or an autocracy will do something that the United States cannot tolerate, such as Russia’s poisoning of dissidents in London. So I would prefer to meet this challenge head on, rather than by pretending it is not central to U.S. foreign policy. And if, as Boot writes, “great-power competition is back,” is it not worth considering what that competition is about and what the United States’ comparative advantages are?

THE WORLD AS IT IS

When I served as U.S. President Barack Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, the commander of U.S. Pacific Forces, Admiral Harry Harris, told me that from his standpoint, China’s threats to Taiwan, incursions in the South China Sea, and repression in Hong Kong and Xinjiang were “the same issue.” He meant that China, like Russia, was trying to undermine the global norms that favor the democratic, rule-of-law-respecting powers and constrain the freedom of action of the authoritarian powers. “Whenever we’re strong on human rights,” Harris told me, “it helps me on my issues.” I replied that “whenever we’re strong on the South China Sea or trade, it helps me on mine.” The tired distinction between “values” and “interests” in U.S. foreign policy is absolutely meaningless in the competition with China, as it is in Ukraine.

No serious person argues against maintaining “close contact with Beijing” or insists that the United States should “cut off” Saudi Arabia—the straw men Boot uses. But hesitation to enforce one set of norms with these countries invites the violation of other norms. The focus of U.S. foreign policy should be on building and expanding alliances with governments that genuinely share American values and goals, not competing with China for the favor of kleptocrats and sociopaths.

Boot should not ascribe to today’s advocates of a pro-democracy foreign policy the messianic faith in American power that confused him in 2003. It is widely understood that democratic progress can be elusive and that the United States can do little on its own to guarantee it. Boot quotes a study by the Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth that charts the declining success rate of peaceful mass protests around the world. But even that study says that protests are still successful 34 percent of the time. If there is even a 20 percent chance that a protest movement could change China or Iran or Russia for the better, those are as good or better odds for advancing U.S. interests than anything else tried in the last few decades. If the United States could increase those odds by even a few points, it would be rational to try.

A foreign policy true to U.S. ideals aligns Washington with people everywhere who share them, demonstrates confidence, distinguishes the United States from its adversaries, lends legitimacy to its use of power, and helps its leaders maintain domestic support. That is a foreign policy for people who see the world as it is and are willing to work patiently to make it better. Policymakers should not let the mistakes that others made 20 years ago blind them to its necessity and continued utility.

TOM MALINOWSKI represented New Jersey’s Seventh Congressional District in the House of Representatives from 2019 to 2023 and was Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor from 2014 to 2017. He is a Senior Fellow at the McCain Institute.

Max Boot Responds

Max Boot

I am grateful to Tom Malinowski and Thomas Carothers for their close reads of my article and for their thoughtful responses. Both of them caution that the fact that the Iraq war was ill advised and ill fated does not mean that democracy promotion and human rights have no role in U.S. foreign policy. I completely agree with them, and said so in my essay. “I am trying harder than I did in my callow youth,” I wrote, “to reconcile the aspirations of idealism with the restraints of realism.... I still believe the United States should continue to promote human rights and defend democracy, but I have sadly concluded that U.S. foreign policy should not fixate on exporting democracy.”

HOW IT SHOULD BE

I agree with Malinowski that there is a “vast middle ground” between wars designed to foster democracy by force and a completely amoral, realpolitik policy that does not acknowledge any imperative to promote democracy or human rights. The former extreme may be said to be represented by U.S. President George W. Bush, and the latter by President Donald Trump. Malinowski is right that what we need “is not more dogma but better judgment.”

That is why I wrote that I still “favor maintaining U.S. military advisers in Iraq as a hedge against the power of Iran and the resurgence of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS).” Likewise, “I still opposed the pullout [from Afghanistan] negotiated by Trump and executed by President Joe Biden because I thought it was possible to keep the Taliban out of power at relatively low cost, and I feared the dangerous signal that a U.S. exit would send to other aggressors.”

I also noted that I remain a firm advocate of supporting Ukraine and Taiwan in their struggles against despotic neighbors. “Even though I am no longer as idealistic as I once was,” I wrote, “I have not become the kind of self-styled realist who blames the United States for Russian aggression or thinks that it should sacrifice Ukraine as the price of peace. Nor do I approve of a president kowtowing to dictators (as Trump did). The United States remains the world’s most powerful liberal democracy, and it has a moral obligation to at least speak up for its principles.” In other words, contrary to what Malinowski suggests, I have not “exchanged one dogma for another.” I am, instead, trying to articulate a dogma-free foreign policy that looks at every situation on its merits rather than seeking to reduce complex realities to simplistic ideological slogans.

I fully agree with Carothers that it is far easier for the United States to work with democracies than dictatorships, and that we should try to do what we can to avert democratic backsliding in Hungary, India, Israel, Mexico, Turkey, and elsewhere. I noted that the United States has a better track record of defending democracy than exporting it. But I am also enough of a realist to acknowledge that in cases where those countries turn into autocracies, we do not have the option of sanctioning them or cutting them off altogether. India, for example, remains an invaluable counterweight to China, despite Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s appalling attacks on democracy and civil liberties.

We do not have the luxury of refusing to deal with the leader of as important a country as Saudi Arabia.

Malinowski claims that “no serious person argues against maintaining ‘close contact with China’ or insists that the United States should ‘cut off’ Saudi Arabia” and describes these positions as “straw men” that I have invented. In fact, plenty of people are intensely critical of Biden when he meets with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman or Chinese President Xi Jinping. For example, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders said of Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia in July 2022: “I don’t think that that type of government should be rewarded with a visit by the president of the United States.” And after Biden met with Xi in November and proclaimed that the United States and China could avoid a “cold war,” Republicans accused him of naivete and appeasement. These critics may not argue that we should cut off diplomatic relations with Riyadh or Beijing, but they do seem to oppose any substantive outreach.

Indeed, Malinowski introduced legislation in 2021 to deny the Saudi crown prince entry into the United States. Although I am horrified by the crown prince’s role in the murder of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi—and by Saudi Arabia’s broader crackdown on liberal dissidents at home and abroad—I do not think we have the luxury of refusing to deal with the leader of such an important country. Saudi Arabia is not only the world’s largest oil exporter but it is also a critical check on Iranian expansionism. If the United States abdicates its diplomatic role in the region, others will step in. This was seen recently, when China brokered an agreement to restore diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

I agree, in theory, with Malinowski when he writes, “The focus of U.S. foreign policy should be on building and expanding alliances with governments that genuinely share American values and goals, not competing with China for the favor of kleptocrats and sociopaths.” But in the real world, the United States often has to deal with kleptocrats and sociopaths to advance its own interests, however distasteful that may be.

Finally, I did not try to lay out a formula for balancing interests and ideals in U.S. foreign policy, because I acknowledge both to be important. My only point, really, was that Americans should not be so blinded by fantasies of exporting democracy—whether by military force, covert operations, or sanctions—that they exaggerate their ability to determine the internal politics of foreign countries or that they do damage to their ability to protect their national security. As both Carothers and Malinowski point out, there are many ways that the United States can and should promote democracy and human rights “with humility and restraint.” On that, we can agree.

MAX BOOT is Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam.

Foreign Affairs · by April 13, 2023 · April 13, 2023

10. 'The Beginning Of The End': A Former Russian Military Intelligence Officer Explains Why He's Fighting For Ukraine

This is excellent work by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). This is why the US Global Media Agency exists. It does important work (the flagship VOA and Radio Free Asia as well as REF/RL).

'The Beginning Of The End': A Former Russian Military Intelligence Officer Explains Why He's Fighting For Ukraine

rferl.org · by Taras Levchenko

KYIV – Vladislav Ammosov says he spent more than 15 years building a career in the Russian military and its intelligence service, known by the acronym GRU. Now he is in Kyiv, ready to take up arms against his homeland.

“The country to which I swore allegiance…no longer exists,” he told RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, which has examined documents relating to Ammosov’s Russian military service record.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensives, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.

During a recent stroll through the center of Kyiv, Ammosov stopped to look at a display of destroyed Russian military equipment.

“These guys did not understand what they were dying for,” he said. “I’m glad they never made it here. I’m glad we are standing in a free, thriving city. At the same time, I feel sorry for the guys who were in these vehicles. They could have lived their lives if Russia was a normal country.”

When Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ammosov was among those few Russians who were ready to fight on Kyiv’s side.

“I called the Ukrainian Embassy, and I tried to contact the Free Russia legion,” he said, referring to a military structure within the Ukrainian armed forces in which Russian defectors and Russian and Belarusian volunteers serve to fight against the Russian military. “But it was to no avail. I almost gave up.”

But in November 2022, a Russian emigre organization recruiting volunteers to fight for Ukraine, the Civic Council, was formed in Poland. In particular, the group recruits Russian citizens who are not ethnic Russians, including Tatars, Bashkirs, Chechens, and others. Ammosov is an ethnic Yakut from Siberia’s Sakha Republic, also called Yakutia.

'I Hope...I Will Earn Trust'

The Russian security services’ have a long record of planting spies and provocateurs within the ranks of opposition groups, a practice that goes back to tsarist times, and it is often even said there is no such thing as a “former” GRU officer. So Ammosov is not surprised when he is asked how he can be trusted.

“There are never any guarantees,” he said. “But I hope that with my service and my work against Russia, I will earn trust.”

RFE/RL could not independently verify Ammosov’s account of his past, but it was supported by the service-record documents. He said that he has been repeatedly vetted by Ukrainian security and military structures.

“I have passed all imaginable and unimaginable checks,” he said. “If I am talking to you now, then I passed them.”

“I am ready to go to the territory of Russia,” he added, “and destroy the enemies there. The enemies of my homeland are those who support Putin’s government…. My compatriots, it turns out, have become servants of dark forces.”

Moscow’s unfounded claims that fascists have taken control of Ukraine are risible to Ammosov.

“There is no state more fascist than Russia,” he said.

An Imperialist's Progress

Ammosov’s transformation has been a long time coming, its seeds sown early in his military career. As he describes it, he is a veteran of Moscow’s two wars in Chechnya, in the 1990s and 2000s, and a graduate of some of the country’s most prestigious military institutes. In retrospect, he says, he was being trained to be an “imperialist.”

“I am a product of the Soviet Union,” he said.

The wars in Chechnya “sobered me up,” he added. “I was influenced by propaganda and thought there were real bandits there. But I saw ordinary people and saw what they were fighting for. It was a people’s war for freedom.”

He also became disenchanted with Russian officers at that time.

“I was always taught that officers were the best people in the country,” Ammosov said. “But then I saw what they were like when they went 10 days without drinking. There were some who just screwed everything up. There were some who sold their weapons. There were some who just betrayed us and sent us to be slaughtered.”

For Japan, ‘Ukraine is the Future of Asia’

Tokyo has abandoned decades of passivity and become a global strategic actor.

Mohan-C-Raja-foreign-policy-columnist

C. Raja Mohan

By C. Raja Mohan, a columnist at Foreign Policy and a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

Foreign Policy · by C. Raja Mohan · April 13, 2023

As much of the world was focused on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s high-profile visit to Moscow last month, it was lost to many observers that Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was in Kyiv at the same time on an equally consequential visit. Making an unannounced trip to see Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Kishida offered Japan’s solid support.

Three themes immediately stood out from the simultaneous presence of Xi in Moscow and Kishida in Kyiv. First, it pointed to East Asia’s active and growing role in shaping European security, perhaps for the first time since the medieval Mongol invasions. If China joins Iran in more actively supporting Russia in Ukraine, it would have profound implications for the course of the war—and the map of Eastern Europe. South Korea has emerged as a major weapons supplier to Poland, which is transforming into NATO’s most important military frontline state. The presence of the so-called AP4 (Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea) at NATO meetings is becoming routine.

Second, Kishida underlined that China’s view of the war in Ukraine is not necessarily the view in the rest of Asia.

And third, the parallel visits exposed the hollowness of Xi’s claims to be a neutral peacemaker in Ukraine. Even as some European leaders, like French President Emmanuel Macron, have hailed Xi as Europe’s savior who can mediate an end to Russia’s war, Kishida’s meeting with Zelensky served to highlight the one-sided nature of Beijing’s so-called peace initiative in Ukraine.

Traveling to Ukraine seems to have given a bounce to Kishida’s sagging ratings at home, but it also underlines the definitive break from decades of Japanese passivity on the world stage. Although it was perhaps coincidental that Kishida found himself in Kyiv at the same moment that Xi was in Moscow, his trip to Ukraine illustrated Japan’s emergence as a geopolitical actor to be reckoned with.

To be sure, the remaking of Japan as a key power in the security sphere began under the late Shinzo Abe, the former prime minister who undertook the onerous task of getting Japan to rethink its role in Asia and the world and shake off the political shackles of the past. Abe made much progress on revamping Japan’s national security policies during his two tenures as prime minister, from 2006 to 2007 and from 2012 to 2020.

But few expected Kishida to build on Abe’s strategic legacy. Abe’s shoes were big to fill, and Kishida was widely viewed as weak. The Ukraine crisis, however, offered a huge opportunity that Kishida seized with both hands to radically reorient Japan. If Abe had to struggle to get his ideas accepted by the political class, Russia’s attack on Ukraine has heightened popular awareness of the fundamental changes in Japan’s security environment. That a major power armed with nuclear weapons could invade a neighbor with impunity, seeking to unilaterally change borders by force, shook Japan to the core. Kishida’s plans to double defense expenditure over the next five years; modernize the military to better deter North Korea, Russia, and China; and take on a larger regional security role have thus found less resistance.

Long viewed as passive and pacifist, Japanese foreign policy seemed to produce few strategic ideas of its own. Tokyo was happy to follow Washington’s lead while avoiding challenging Beijing. Over the last decade and a half, however, Japan has begun to develop new geopolitical approaches, promote them, and get them accepted by allies and partners.

None of Japan’s foreign-policy innovations are more important than the invention of “Indo-Pacific” as a geostrategic concept and the establishment of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (or Quad), both of which are now integral to Asian geopolitics. Abe first outlined both ideas in an address to the Indian Parliament in August 2007. It was one thing to frame new ideas in a speech—and entirely another to get others to see their merit.

The initial international response to both ideas was skepticism among Japan’s friends and outright hostility from Beijing. But Japan’s sheer persistence and a rising China’s growing assertiveness saw Tokyo’s Quad partners—Australia, India, and the United States—come around to accepting Abe’s ideas.

In late March, Kishida also traveled to India to offer an upgraded vision for the Indo-Pacific that outlined a range of ideas to strengthen the region’s security, and he presented a more ambitious Japanese contribution to realizing it. This includes joint military training, and cooperation on maritime security.

A third important innovation from Japan was to transcend the “hub and spokes” system that defined the postwar U.S.-led security order in Asia. While Japan attaches great significance to its bilateral alliance with the United States, it has recognized the importance of directly connecting the spokes. Japanese efforts to build bilateral strategic partnerships with other countries in the region complement Tokyo’s alliance with Washington and deepen the basis for regional security amid growing Chinese military power and diplomatic assertiveness, with its destabilizing impact on the region. The strongest of these new regional relationships are with Quad partners Australia and India, but ties to South Korea and the Philippines are strengthening as well.

A key goal of Japan’s regional strategy is to strengthen the defense infrastructure and capabilities of Indo-Pacific states. If the Abe administration sought to give Japan’s substantial overseas development assistance a strategic character, Kishida is now developing a framework for overseas security assistance. These new Japanese initiatives have full U.S. support, with Washington eager to see its allies and friends become stronger by collaborating with each other and making themselves more capable in coping with the challenge from Beijing.

Just as important as Japan’s role in developing a new security architecture for Asia are Tokyo’s efforts to tie Europe to the Asian security order. Similar to the way Abe’s Indo-Pacific concept imagined the strategic unity between the Indian and Pacific oceans, he also recognized the deep interconnection between security in Europe and Asia.

It was nearly five years ago that Abe was inviting Britain and France, Western Europe’s leading military powers, to contribute to Asian security. Abe understood that isolationist pressures on U.S. foreign policy—which became so visible during the presidency of Donald Trump—meant that Asia couldn’t rely solely on the United States for its future security. Abe looked beyond the region for further partners to manage Indo-Pacific security challenges.

Since then, many European powers, including France, Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands, have outlined Indo-Pacific strategies. The 2022 U.S. National Security Strategy issued by the Biden administration also underlines the need for allies and partners in Europe and Asia to work together.

One of Abe’s last acts before his life was cut short by an assassin was to raise the question of Washington’s extended deterrence in Asia and to call for a debate on deploying U.S. nuclear weapons in the region. So far, Kishida has rejected nuclear sharing with the United States, and he has repeated the Japanese commitment to nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation. But the issue of a U.S. nuclear security commitment to Asia is unlikely to go away as China continues to modernize and expand its nuclear arsenal.

Underlying Japan’s new security vision is a clear recognition of the Chinese threat to Asia. Unlike many of its European peers who were or still are unwilling to come to terms with Russia’s or China’s aggressively revisionist ambitions, Tokyo has not let its massive economic exposure to Beijing get in the way of dealing with it. Proximity surely helped Tokyo perceive the problem clearly, but Japan had to overcome the inevitable constraints presented by the dangers of sharing a contested maritime frontier with China.

Equally significant has been Japan’s decision to highlight the implications of Russian aggression against Ukraine. In arguing that “Ukraine is the future of Asia,” Kishida has pressed Japan and Asia to see the implications of a nuclear-armed power unilaterally changing the territorial status quo.

With its increasingly clear-eyed security policies, Japan is reminding the West—especially Europe, which had become geopolitically complacent in the decades after the Cold War—that coping with the challenges presented by China and Russia demands greater discipline. This includes a much needed strategic outreach to the global south, where Kishida has called on other G-7 countries to do more to address developing countries’ own concerns and priorities instead of projecting Western policies and preaching to them about how to run their affairs.

As it rises to become a major geopolitical actor in Asia and the world, Japan has become the unlikely actor persuading the West to rethink its strategic assumptions. As France’s Macron and other European leaders struggle to come to terms with the challenges presented by Russia and China, Japan has injected a much-needed sense of clarity to the strategic discourse in Europe and Asia.

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Foreign Policy · by C. Raja Mohan · April 13, 2023

12. Why China Should Worry About Asia’s Reaction to AUKUS

But AUKUS needs to be about more than just submarines and technology. It has a lot of potential.

Why China Should Worry About Asia’s Reaction to AUKUS

Even some non-aligned countries have cautiously signaled support.

By Derek Grossman, a senior defense analyst at the Rand Corp.

Foreign Policy · by Derek Grossman · April 12, 2023

When U.S. President Joe Biden met with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in San Diego last month, the three leaders announced a crucial next step for the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) security pact. Australia will purchase at least three, and possibly five, Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines from the United States and eventually, alongside Britain, deploy a new class of nuclear-powered submarines jointly developed by the three nations.

The submarines plan is just one part of the deepening security collaboration among the three countries aimed at countering China. Next steps could include basing U.S. nuclear-capable platforms—such as strategic bombers—in Australia as well as cooperation on hypersonic missiles, cyber operations, quantum computing, and in other areas. All this likely makes AUKUS more consequential for the regional military balance than any other of the so-called mini-lateral groupings, including the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) joining Australia, India, Japan, and the United States; or the Five Power Defense Arrangements among Australia, Britain, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Singapore. AUKUS is truly unique because of its exclusive focus on modernizing and enhancing the interoperability of the participants’ military capabilities to deter and, if necessary, defeat China in a potential future conflict.

Predictably, Beijing has railed against AUKUS. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin accused the three nations of engaging in “hegemonic practice” and said the deal demonstrates a “Cold War mentality” designed to contain China. Beijing has also raised concerns about AUKUS allegedly undermining the international nuclear non-proliferation regime, with Wang warning the three partners against going down this “dangerous path.”

Aside from China’s, responses to AUKUS across the Indo-Pacific have been generally positive—or at least not negative—since the pact was announced in September 2021. Some countries, mainly in Southeast Asia, are concerned about the potential for nuclear proliferation. Overall, however, most Indo-Pacific nations either support AUKUS or avoid publicly opposing it, suggesting widespread and varied concerns about China’s military buildup, growing power, and intentions in the region. This bodes well for AUKUS’ ability to tie in additional allies and partners for the purpose of peacetime deterrence. In the case of AUKUS’ closest friends, this could even extend to military operations in a potential war.

As a stalwart U.S. ally with an increasingly strained relationship with China, Japan unsurprisingly supports AUKUS. During a call with Albanese last month, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida noted that AUKUS would “contribute to the peace and stability of the Indo-Pacific region amidst an increasingly severe security environment.” Last December, Tokyo released its new National Security Strategy, which described Beijing’s military activities as “unprecedented and the greatest strategic challenge.”

Japan’s primary concern is its dispute with China over the Senkaku Islands (which Beijing calls the Diaoyu Islands). But in recent years, Tokyo has increasingly voiced its concerns over Beijing’s military pressure against Taipei, as well. Writing in Foreign Policy, Hoover Institution scholar Michael Auslin argued that Japan belongs in AUKUS (making it JAUKUS?). Tokyo hasn’t taken an official position, but it is unlikely to engage in any use of nuclear technology for warfare. Fierce domestic political opposition rooted in the public’s memory of World War II still exists in Japan. Still, Tokyo is likely to find other parts of the AUKUS agenda, such as quantum computing, more appealing and politically feasible.

South Korea, another critical U.S. ally, hasn’t officially weighed in on AUKUS. Understandably, this is because South Korea focuses on North Korea and tries to maintain a delicate balance between China and the United States. However, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol is clearly uncomfortable with Chinese assertiveness in the region. In June 2022 in Madrid, he became the first South Korean leader to attend and speak at a NATO summit, where the main topic of discussion was how the alliance could counter China and Russia. Under Yoon, South Korea is reportedly seeking to increase engagement with, and potentially join, the Quad, another security grouping designed in large part to check China. Yoon’s administration is also poised to participate in the U.S.-led Chips 4 alliance, alongside Japan and Taiwan, in an effort to diversify semiconductor manufacturing away from China.

When asked as an election candidate in 2021 what he thought of AUKUS, Yoon responded that Seoul did not need the type of nuclear-powered submarines headed for Australia. That said, since the recent test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile by North Korea, Yoon may well change his mind. There are other reasons for Seoul to consider nuclear-powered submarines; indeed, South Korean officials have privately suggested they desire the national prestige and expertise associated with having them. Additionally, polling shows 71 percent of South Koreans in favor of re-stationing nuclear weapons in their country. What’s more, Yoon commented in January that South Korea might have to go nuclear to counter a nuclear-armed North Korea. Hence, Seoul might benefit from AUKUS-style arrangements in the future. That said, it is currently very unlikely Washington would accommodate it.

Meanwhile, Taiwan—frequently the target of China’s ire—has understandably embraced AUKUS. In the most recent statement on the topic, in March, Taipei’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it “welcome[d] the steady advancement of AUKUS,” adding “[the ministry] believes that this trilateral cooperation will strengthen deterrence capability in the Indo-Pacific and contribute to the maintenance of regional peace and stability.” Taiwan probably hopes AUKUS speeds up and deepens defense collaboration so that the island can maximize deterrence or effectively leverage the pact in a future conflict.

In Southeast Asia, AUKUS is more controversial. Despite China’s encroachments in the South China Sea and elsewhere, virtually all nations are attempting to stay out of great power competition by neither endorsing nor condemning the pact. The region’s only strong AUKUS supporter is the Philippines, another U.S. ally that also faces daily Chinese pressure in the disputed South China Sea. For the Philippine government in Manila, AUKUS is a helpful addition to regional security architecture. In 2021, Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. noted that AUKUS “should restore and keep balance rather than destabilize it.”

Among other Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) states, AUKUS gets cautious support. Singapore, for example, has not released a statement since last month’s summit in San Diego. But in 2021, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and then-Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison discussed the then-new pact, which Lee reportedly hoped would “contribute constructively to the peace and stability of the region and complement the regional architecture.”

Vietnam, a key emerging U.S. security partner, has likewise remained cautious but supportive. In 2021, Vietnam refused to outright reject AUKUS, warning only that “nuclear energy must be developed and used for peaceful purposes.” Following the recent AUKUS summit, a Hanoi spokesperson said that “peace, stability, cooperation, and development in the region and the world is the common goal of every country, and countries are responsible for contributing to this goal.” Reading between the lines, this implies that China must do its part as well.

Both Indonesia and Malaysia, while skeptical that the pact will be stabilizing, will not oppose it either. In public statements, they have focused only on the possible nuclear proliferation consequences. Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs merely commented last month that “Indonesia expects Australia to remain consistent in fulfilling its obligations” under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Safeguards. Even Malaysia, a far more outspoken skeptic, acknowledged in a statement “the needs of countries in terms of enhancing defence capabilities” even as it warned that AUKUS must “fully respect and comply” with Malaysia’s restrictions on nuclear-powered submarines in its waters. Malaysia also urged all countries to refrain “from any provocation that could potentially trigger an arms race or affect peace and security in the region.”

Even Cambodia—a virtual Chinese client state—has not opposed AUKUS outright, even as it expressed its concerns. In an exchange with Australia in 2021, Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Prak Sokhonn remarked that Cambodia, as a war-torn nation, “expected that AUKUS [would] not fuel unhealthy rivalries and further escalate tension.” Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen last month wondered aloud why Cambodia accepted AUKUS’ explanation that it would not inject nuclear weapons into the region while Western powers refused to believe Cambodian assurances that Chinese construction at a naval base in southern Cambodia was not for the Chinese military.

Notably, Thailand—another U.S. treaty ally in Southeast Asia—has so far avoided commenting on AUKUS at all, perhaps to maintain cordial and productive relations with China, which it views more benignly than many other ASEAN countries.

India, of course, is the most consequential nation to the success of Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy. It hasn’t publicly weighed in on AUKUS—but in a highly telling move, New Delhi in 2022 voted against China and Russia’s attempts in the IAEA to derail the pact on the grounds that nuclear sharing for submarine propulsion violated the NPT. New Delhi diligently worked behind the scenes with many IAEA states to uphold the merits of the AUKUS agreement, in a clear move to shut down Beijing. To be sure, there are other reasons for India’s vote, such as the AUKUS nations’ earlier assistance in getting India into the Nuclear Suppliers Group, an export control regime for nuclear material and technology, and AUKUS members’ cooperation with India on counterterrorism. But the vote was primarily aimed at countering China, making it a win for AUKUS.

The one region where the reaction to AUKUS suggests the broadest strategic realignment is Oceania, where there has been a surprising level of support. New Zealand—which has a long China-friendly past and an even longer record of opposing any nuclear-related initiatives—decided, at Washington’s invitation, to explore non-nuclear cooperation with AUKUS nations. The new defense minister, Andrew Little, said last month, “When you look at the geostrategic situation we have in the Pacific at the moment, I think the longer-term challenge is that our partners and neighbors will say to us, ‘We expect more.’” His comments suggest that New Zealand feels obligated to further assist Pacific Island nations in offering alternatives to China’s rise in the region.

Among Pacific Island nations—which, like New Zealand, have traditionally been highly suspicious of anything nuclear—AUKUS has surprisingly robust support. This month, the chairman of the region’s most important multilateral body, the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), said he was “reassured” by AUKUS nations’ explanation of their plans and intentions. Fiji, the region’s heavyweight and host of the PIF headquarters, openly supports AUKUS. Samoan Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mataafa said, “This is how Australia sees its role in the security aspects of the region, and we understand that.” To be sure, the Solomon Islands, with whom China last year inked a new security agreement authorizing its navy ships to make routine port calls, expressed concerns over keeping the region a nuclear-free zone, as directed by the PIF’s Treaty of Rarotonga. But only Tuvalu has thus far condemned AUKUS. Its foreign minister tweeted, “As we discuss nuclear-powered submarines in the Pacific, we must also address concerns about increased militarization of the region.”

If most Indo-Pacific nations strongly or cautiously support AUKUS—or refuse to condemn it—then Beijing will have more geostrategic and military implications to worry about than AUKUS itself. China will thus need to work overtime to undermine not only AUKUS, but also those who might enable it with their support, acquiescence, or silence. Besides China, the small handful of nations that have outright opposed the deal are largely pariah states aligned with Beijing, specifically Myanmar and North Korea. Beyond the region, China’s “no limits” partner, Russia, opposes it too. But the fact that these countries are such a small minority suggests that AUKUS—as long as it continues to assuage nuclear proliferation concerns—will be viewed in the region as a legitimate counter to Chinese military excesses.

Foreign Policy · by Derek Grossman · April 12, 2023

13. NSA Pushes Eavesdropping Law, Hits TikTok, Braces for AI-Boosted Attacks

Excerpts:

“Do I think if I loaded TikTok on my phone, they're going to get to all the other sensitive things through that TikTok app tomorrow? Probably not. The cost of exposing to TikTok in that way to exploit one or a small set of users probably isn't worth it. But all the data, the metadata, that they do collect, that goes back to big servers, accessible to China—that's a problem,” Joyce said.

...

AI will also help certain hackers reach a new level, he said.

“Is it going to replace hackers and be this super AI hacking? Certainly not in the near term, but it will make the hackers that use AI much more effective and they will operate better than those who don't,” he said.

NSA Pushes Eavesdropping Law, Hits TikTok, Braces for AI-Boosted Attacks

AI will help malicious actors “to be better or faster,” says the spy agency’s cybersecurity director.

defenseone.com · by Lauren C. Williams

NSA leaders are fighting to persuade Congress to renew a controversial law that cuts red tape for intelligence agencies eavesdropping on foreign actors but which has also been improperly used hundreds of times to collect data on Americans.

“So FISA Section 702 is up for renewal this year. And it is a vital source of intelligence. It is an authority that lets us do collection against a known foreign entity who chooses to use U.S. infrastructure,” Rob Joyce, the National Security Agency’s cybersecurity director, said Tuesday during a Center for Strategic and International Studies event. “It makes sure that we don't afford the same protections to those foreign malicious actors who are on our infrastructure as we do the Americans who live here.”

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, gives the U.S. government the ability to digitally spy on foreign targets outside of the U.S. without a warrant. But civil-liberties groups have documented hundreds of times that U.S. citizens’ social-media interactions, phone calls, and emails have accidentally been gathered in 702-related surveillance. New America calls such violations “inadvertent or unintentional” yet “extremely concerning” because they reveal “systemic problems that result from the scope and complexity of the Section 702 surveillance program.” Even the court that oversees FISA cases has noted violations.

But supporters of the law describe it as integral to intelligence and law enforcement efforts. Section 702 is set to expire and is up for reauthorization this year with an expected debate to come. And NSA plans to advocate hard for keeping it, Joyce said.

“I can't do cybersecurity at the scope and scale we do it today without that authority, and so we'll be working hard with Congress, with the administration, with our partners at FBI and others, DOJ, to figure out how we get 702 reauthorized. It's really vital.”

New privacy laws, as well as privacy provisions in cybersecurity laws, are complicating things as well. The standards advanced in the European Union’s five-year-old General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, have presented some roadblocks for intelligence agencies.

“There were second-order effects that we didn't—I won't say we didn't appreciate, because there were people sounding the alarm. They were not fully considered in the weight of that,” Joyce said.

For example, it became more difficult to force internet registries to disclose who owns a domain name.

“The default was you couldn't know that thing. And so cybersecurity researchers all over the world lost the ability to follow connectivity between banned domains. So we've got to think about second-order reflections,” Joyce said. “There is a need for data privacy, but we've got to have rational connectivity to the rule of law processes that still makes cybersecurity effective.”

TikTok and ChatGPT: our friendly AI overlords?

Joyce said the concern with TikTok isn’t potentially exposing personal data of a subset of individuals but the possibility that the Chinese government could access every bit of metadata the platform gathers.

“Do I think if I loaded TikTok on my phone, they're going to get to all the other sensitive things through that TikTok app tomorrow? Probably not. The cost of exposing to TikTok in that way to exploit one or a small set of users probably isn't worth it. But all the data, the metadata, that they do collect, that goes back to big servers, accessible to China—that's a problem,” Joyce said.

TikTok CEO Shou Chew, who faced intense questioning from Congress last month, pledged that the app would remove U.S. users’ non-public data to servers that can only be accessed by U.S.-based employees. But the NSA cyber director said, echoing lawmakers' concerns, that even the algorithms pose a threat.

“The idea that they own the algorithms that promote or suppress the content. That's a huge problem when you have millions upon millions of eyes consuming the content, and they can dial up something that is divisive, or they can dial down something that is threatening to the PRC. That's the advantage,” he said.

ChatGPT, which holds some promise to improve daily operations in the Pentagon, also poses concern to cybersecurity, particularly when it comes to crafting more sophisticated phishing messages.

“The technology's impressive. It is really sophisticated,” Joyce said. “Is it going to, in the next year, automate all of the attacks on organizations? Can you give it a piece of software and tell it to find all the zero-day exploits for it? No, but what it will do is it's going to optimize the workflow. It's going to really improve the ability for malicious actors who use those tools to be better or faster.”

That includes phishing or fraud messages that read more like native English-language speakers.

“And in the case of the malicious foreign actors, it will craft very believable native-language English text, that could be part of your phishing campaign or your interaction with a person or your ability to build a backstory—all the things that will allow you to do those activities or even malign influence—that's going to be a problem,” Joyce said.

AI will also help certain hackers reach a new level, he said.

“Is it going to replace hackers and be this super AI hacking? Certainly not in the near term, but it will make the hackers that use AI much more effective and they will operate better than those who don't,” he said.

defenseone.com · by Lauren C. Williams

14. The NSA’s Brain Drain Has a Silver Lining

Excerpt:

The cybersecurity paradigm has changed. A Crowdstrike analyst’s work can inform the strategic thinking of the president of the United States. Developers at Meta disrupt Russian botnets. But neither can legally burrow into the internal networks of malign cybers actors for doctrinal insights. The talent transfer has tremendous implications, both positive and negative, for America’s cyberdefense posture. A secure future in cyberspace will emerge not from siloed and competing centers of excellence, but from the fusion of public and private sector collaboration. It’s important we get it right.

The NSA’s Brain Drain Has a Silver Lining

Agency leaders should use former employees to recruit new talent and cement public-private working relationships.

defenseone.com · by Evan Rosenfield

For more than 60 years, the National Security Agency was the employer of choice for the country’s top cyber and tech talent. Even the Edward Snowden scandal in 2013 did little to mar the agency’s ability to hire and keep talent. In 2015, then-Director Mike Rogers could rightly boast about his agency’s under-2 percent voluntary attrition rate, better than its government and industry peers.

But by 2016, reports of a brain drain were emerging from the halls of Fort Meade. Competition with Big Tech for talent had intensified. Internal discontent over organizational tumult, bureaucratic inertia, and lagging innovation pushed the attrition rate past 6 percent. One cybersecurity executive was reportedly “stunned by the caliber of would-be recruits” leaving government service. Two years later, attrition had risen to 8 percent—even 9 percent for technical personnel—in what was described as an attritional “epidemic.”

This year, the agency more comfortable operating in the shadows launched “one of its largest hiring surges in 30 years” to confront its talent shortage. The public campaign even includes job postings on LinkedIn (where most employees don’t have accounts). NSA also awarded defense giant CACI International $2.4 billion to augment the ranks of NSA’s analysts.

A retention problem at NSA is a prima facie cause for national-security concern. But there’s a silver lining in the trends driving this exodus: they are the down payment on a stronger, more diverse, and more resilient cybersecurity ecosystem.

First, the talent exodus from NSA to the private sector reflects a development long sought by agency leaders: companies are at last ready and willing to take more responsibility for cyber defense. Those leaders have for years called upon companies to bolster their cyberdefenses and share more cybersecurity information because as much as 85 percent of critical cyber infrastructure – just as important to national security – is privately owned and operated, and therefore outside NSA’s purview. (Amazon Web Services going down, for example, would hurt the American economy more than a temporary NSANet outage.)

Now it is happening. If cybersecurity is a “team sport” as current NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone likes to say, then the private sector has muscled its way off the bench and into the starting lineup. Recall that FireEye alerted the NSA, and not the reverse, about the 2020 Solar Winds hack, one of the most sophisticated cyber attacks ever.

Second, the movement of cyber talent between NSA and the private sector facilitates the necessary cross-pollination of knowledge, expertise, and perspective that improves collective defense. Cyber threats to the public and private sectors have converged, and hackers in Beijing and Moscow no longer reserve their most complex tools for government networks. NSA’s growing cadre of cyberwarriors have a deep understanding of malign cyber actors’ tradecraft, tools, and capabilities, but are less knowledgeable about U.S-based activity. Private industry monitors a larger virtual attack surface area, including domestic networks, and is quicker to share information about threats, respond to incidents, and manage crises. With a healthier appreciation for each other’s capabilities, priorities, and ways of working, both NSA and the private sector can foster organizational trust and forge a more constructive relationship.

Third, the high demand for former NSA employees increases the agency’s attractiveness as an employer. People may be more likely to apply to NSA if they believed a stint at the agency would boost their career, not sentence them to a 30-year stint in government. (Look at how students flood top consulting firms and investment banks with resumes, partly attracted by the impressive career doors that open to them when they depart.) Today, the breadth and diversity of exit opportunities for both technical and non-technical NSAers is rich. Ex-agency employees populate the threat intelligence teams at Fortune 500 companies. As startup founders, they raised over $300 million in venture capital in 2021 and more than $1 billion since 2013, according to Pitchbook data. They serve in senior White House positions.

So what should the NSA do?

First, NSA leaders must reimagine the agency’s role within the broader cybersecurity ecosystem; it’s no longer the only game in town. One inspiration could be Unit 8200, NSA’s Israeli counterpart. Most of Unit 8200’s worker-bees leave the service when their conscription ends, then go on to work at, run, and start some of the world’s leading cyber companies (think Palo Alto Networks and NSO).

Second, NSA should use former employees as unofficial ambassadors for the agency and its mission to the rest of the cybersphere. They have worked on both sides of the fenceline and can build bridges between the startup world, private sector, and the powerful government science and technology workforce. They understand the agency’s DNA, but have a cross-ecosystem perspective. To be sure, NSA senior leaders have made outreach to former employees a priority. Forums like an NSA Alumni Board could institutionalize alumni engagement.

The cybersecurity paradigm has changed. A Crowdstrike analyst’s work can inform the strategic thinking of the president of the United States. Developers at Meta disrupt Russian botnets. But neither can legally burrow into the internal networks of malign cybers actors for doctrinal insights. The talent transfer has tremendous implications, both positive and negative, for America’s cyberdefense posture. A secure future in cyberspace will emerge not from siloed and competing centers of excellence, but from the fusion of public and private sector collaboration. It’s important we get it right.

Evan Rosenfield spent almost a decade in the U.S. intelligence community, serving in various operational, analytical, and policy positions in counterterrorism and cybersecurity.

defenseone.com · by Evan Rosenfield

15. Lawmakers demand answers after priests booted from Walter Reed campus

Lawmakers demand answers after priests booted from Walter Reed campus

militarytimes.com · by Leo Shane III · April 12, 2023

Republican lawmakers want to know why a group of Catholic priests was barred from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center just before Easter week services, leaving troops there with limited options for their religious celebrations.

Clergy from Holy Name College, a community of Franciscan Catholic priests and brothers – who have worked on the military campus for nearly two decades – were told earlier this month that they would no longer be permitted access for religious services.

“It is incomprehensible that essential pastoral care is taken away from the sick and the aged,” Catholic Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio of the U.S. Archdiocese for Military Services said in a statement. “This is a classic case where the adage ‘if it is not broken, do not fix it’ applies.”

Medical center officials told Military Times the contract between the college and campus expired after military officials opted to partner with a different firm.

However, officials with the Franciscan college said in a statement that the new group — Mack Global LLC — does not have Catholic clergy under contract to provide services and sacraments, leaving Catholic troops without reasonable access for their religious needs. Mack Global did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

How harshly should DoD punish political, religious proselytizing?

Army Reserve Maj. Jamie Schwandt, who identified himself as an Army officer in the video, said his proclamations were not political opinions but facts.

In a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Tuesday, a group of 11 Republican members of Congress called the situation “utterly unconscionable” for troops at the medical campus.

“The Defense Department’s actions to deny Catholic Pastoral Care from service members and veterans at Walter Reed goes against the morals, way of life, and rights that make up the fabric of our great nation,” they wrote.

Walter Reed officials said in a statement provided to the Military Times that the Mack Global contract “is under review to ensure it adequately supports the religious needs of our patients and beneficiaries.”

Campus officials declined to provide specifics on how many troops at Walter Reed are practicing Catholics. The center does have one active-duty Army Catholic Priest assigned to the campus, providing “pastoral counseling and sacramental rites,” the statement said, but the U.S. Archdiocese for Military Services said he is in the process of separating from service.

The medical center also said three additional Catholic priests in the Washington, D.C. region are available for assistance, and they are confident that the center has “sufficient resources to provide for the religious needs of our Catholic beneficiaries” at the current time.

But lawmakers in their letter challenged that assertion. They’re asking for an official department response on what services were provided to Catholic troops over Easter week, what pastoral counseling help is currently available to troops and whether a “for-profit secular firm” was the best choice for the new contract.

They also voiced “glaring concerns about the DoD’s lack of consideration for the needs of Catholic service members and veterans receiving care at Walter Reed.”

Walter Reed officials did not say when their contract review may be completed.

About Leo Shane III

Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.

16. Zelensky slams 'beasts' who purportedly beheaded Ukrainian soldiers after video emerges

I fear this will get worse as the fighting becomes more desperate and Russia's military capabilities decline.

Zelensky slams 'beasts' who purportedly beheaded Ukrainian soldiers after video emerges | CNN

CNN · by Vasco Cotovio,Andrew Carey,Josh Pennington,Yulia Kesaieva · April 12, 2023

CNN —

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday condemned as “beasts” those who purportedly beheaded Ukrainian soldiers shown in two videos that emerged on social media in the past week.

The videos appear to be of separate events – one of them may have been filmed very recently, while the other, from the amount of foliage seen on the ground, looks like it was filmed during the summer.

The first video, which was posted to a pro-Russian social media channel on April 8, was purportedly filmed by Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group and appears to show the beheaded corpses of two Ukrainian soldiers lying on the ground next to a destroyed military vehicle.

In the video, a voice can be heard, behind the camera, the sound seemingly distorted to prevent the speaker’s identification.

“(The armored vehicle) got f**ked by a mine,” the voice, speaking Russian, says.

Apparently referring to the bodies on the ground, the voice, laughing, continues, “They killed them. Someone came up to them. They came up to them and cut their heads off.”

The dead soldiers also appear to have had their hands cut off.

Russian social media accounts say the video was shot near Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, which has been the scene of the war’s fiercest fighting for many months, with Wagner fighters heavily involved. CNN is unable to independently confirm the video’s location.

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See footage of Bakhmut obtained from a Ukrainian armored vehicle

02:24 - Source: CNN

The second video, which was posted on Twitter and is heavily blurred, looks to have been filmed during the summer because of the amount of plant life on the ground. It purports to show a Russian fighter using a knife to cut off the head of a Ukrainian soldier. A voice at the beginning of the video suggests the victim might have still been alive when the attack began.

Zelensky vowed those behind the purported atrocities would be held accountable. “There is something that no one in the world can ignore: how easily these beasts kill,” he said in a video message.

“We are not going to forget anything. Neither are we going to forgive the murderers. There will be legal responsibility for everything. The defeat of terror is necessary,” he said.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday the video was “terrible” but “first of all, we need to verify the authenticity” of the footage.

In his regular call with journalist, Peskov said: “Of course, these are terrible shots. Then it may be a reason to check whether this is true or not, whether this took place and, if so, where and from which side.”

On Monday, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said that Wagner was “reportedly continuing to commit war crimes by beheading Ukrainian servicemen in Bakhmut,” referencing a photo shared on pro-Russian social media sites showing what appeared to be a severed head, which they claimed belonged to a Ukrainian soldier, mounted on a spike.

The ISW has reported similar incidents in Popasna, in the Luhansk region, where Wagner troops were also operating earlier in the war.

Some pro-Russian social media accounts have suggested Ukrainian forces were responsible for the beheadings in an effort to conceal identification. This echoes a similar claim made by Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin in January after his fighters apparently found bodies with severed hands and heads near Bakhmut.

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Leader of Russian mercenary army lashes out at Putin's military

02:38 - Source: CNN

Dariia Zarivna, adviser to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said Wednesday the videos are part of a psychological operation “aimed at intimidation.”

“It completely dehumanizes and demonstrates the essence of a terrorist country,” she said of the videos.

“But it is important to understand the purpose. This is an PSYOP [psychological operation] aimed at intimidation. The target audience is not only Ukraine, but also Western societies,” she reasoned.

“It doesn’t work on us, though. The Russians are afraid of this, but not us,” she added.

CNN’s Anna Chernova contributed to this report.

CNN · by Vasco Cotovio,Andrew Carey,Josh Pennington,Yulia Kesaieva · April 12, 2023

17. Paratroopers in Poland: Lessons from the 82nd Airborne Division's Deployment to Europe

Excerpt:

Several thousand 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers were deployed to Poland in February of last year, amid mounting signs of Russia’s intention to invade Ukraine. We were there “to reassure our NATO allies, deter any potential aggression against NATO’s eastern flank, train with host-nation forces, and contribute to a wide range of contingencies.” Prior to our arrival, it had been over seventy-five years since a paratrooper from the division had set foot on the European continent during a period of such tension. Although their predecessors in the division had jumped into combat or manned their gliders into places such as Sicily, Salerno, Anzio, Normandy, Holland, Belgium, and ultimately Germany, last year’s deployment brought the paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division to a new country to add to its lineage: Poland.

Paratroopers in Poland: Lessons from the 82nd Airborne Division's Deployment to Europe - Modern War Institute

mwi.usma.edu · by Daniel Kinney · April 13, 2023

On a cold night in early March 2022, I was driving through southeastern Poland with my brigade’s engineer officer. We had just completed a site survey to get showers and tents installed at two different tactical assembly areas (TAAs) and we were driving north, back to our own TAA near the Ukrainian border. We stopped at a local gas station on the way, and as Major Wooten went inside to pay for the fuel, three small SUVs pulled up next to our vehicle. The occupants seemed weary, in a hurry, and distressed. From the passenger seat, I watched as one of them opened the back of the third SUV and saw a small suitcase fall out. The vehicle was overflowing with luggage. After she slammed the tailgate closed and as she moved back toward the driver’s door, she looked at me, in my uniform. For a brief moment, it seemed as if time was stopped for both of us. I saw a small light blue and yellow flag on the vehicles’ license plates and she likely noticed the subdued US flag on my right shoulder—we shared a moment of realization as we each understood why the other was there. The three vehicles left the gas station as quickly as they arrived, continuing their journey west, further from the invasion of their home country that they had just fled.

Several thousand 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers were deployed to Poland in February of last year, amid mounting signs of Russia’s intention to invade Ukraine. We were there “to reassure our NATO allies, deter any potential aggression against NATO’s eastern flank, train with host-nation forces, and contribute to a wide range of contingencies.” Prior to our arrival, it had been over seventy-five years since a paratrooper from the division had set foot on the European continent during a period of such tension. Although their predecessors in the division had jumped into combat or manned their gliders into places such as Sicily, Salerno, Anzio, Normandy, Holland, Belgium, and ultimately Germany, last year’s deployment brought the paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division to a new country to add to its lineage: Poland.

I had the privilege of serving on the brigade staff during this crisis, including a brief period as the brigade S4—the unit’s logistics officer. As a captain with less than a year’s experience, I had my work cut out for me at times. Although challenging, I found motivation and drive seeing young paratroopers in action and knew good staff work would eventually lead to making each paratrooper’s day a little easier. Working on the brigade staff for the planning, deployment, and first few months on the ground, when tensions were extraordinarily high, gave me somewhat of a broad perspective on the deployment. When I assumed company command for the second half of the deployment, which was a challenging transition, I gained an entirely different perspective: I went from planning with division and corps down to the company level, where my paratroopers were now executing those same plans and operations.

The time we spent in Poland is a chapter in the 82nd Airborne Division’s history, and the experience offers lessons not only for future soldiers who will wear the All-American patch but for the entire Army. From my vantage point—first as a staff officer and then as commander of the brigade’s field maintenance company—I had the chance to learn several of these lessons firsthand. Operation European Assure, Deter, and Reinforce was a first in many aspects, and both its successes and failures must be captured. That’s simply how we make our Army better.

Planning, Planning, Planning

Planning, of course, is the necessary first step to successfully executing anything, so it is only appropriate it be discussed first. In the words of General George S. Patton, “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.” My experiences in Europe last year suggest this philosophy remains as true as ever. There are plans officers at every echelon of staff, but it is not their job alone to plan operations. They must gather and receive input from experts in order to create, codify, and bring a successful plan together. Knowledge coupled with experience has the potential to bring some of the greatest operations to fruition. In addition, even at the lowest levels, far below where there are dedicated planners, planning still happens, which I saw firsthand. From the infantry team leader to the division staff, every echelon is planning to own its square and accomplish the mission. It is vital for higher headquarters to give the time necessary for subordinates to plan, and the amount of time given will determine the quality and type of planning done at each of these levels. Not every situation is going to be ideal and you’re never going to have a perfect plan no matter how much time you have available, something General Patton clearly understood in his time. Accepting this is arguably the hardest part of planning and the most important lesson I took away from my time on the brigade staff. Application of this lesson means using your time wisely for planning and building flexibility into your plan so you can adjust to on the ground conditions.

Logistics Matters

Logistics still matters. Army Doctrine describes it as one of four components of the sustainment warfighting function—along with financial management, personnel services, and health service support. The other three components of sustainment are important, but during our time in Poland it was logistics that was the driving factor that allowed us to rapidly deploy and build combat power to succeed in our mission. From the strategic selections, movements, and staging of Army pre-positioned stocks to the fueling and feeding of paratroopers, logistics enabled our readiness should we be called upon to act while in Europe. What seemed most challenging for us was the lack of an established Army supply chain from the supply support activity to the end user. We had to design and stand up the flow of water, food, fuel, and parts to maintain our readiness and support training with our Polish allies. Although bumpy at first, we eventually got into a rhythm of movements that at times utilized aircraft for high-demand items.

To put the challenge we faced in perspective, one infantry battalion deployed with just four tricon containers of equipment—only four containers, each one-third the size of a twenty-foot shipping container, for an entire battalion of over 550 paratroopers. With some analysis, I soon figured out that companies across the brigade had on average a third of their authorized quantity of rolling stock equipment. This made logistics even more critical for the first thirty days since a single truck breaking down could mean possible disaster and essential supplies not delivered. In the end, paratroopers across the brigade went above and beyond to keep things running even with thousands of miles being logged weekly. The success was largely attributable to the brigade’s forward support companies. Even with limited resources available, they made the mission happen every single day. With our limited equipment and the majority of it being from Army pre-positioned stocks, every truck counted when it came to firepower and making the mission happen.

It’s important to note, as well, that forward support companies bring more to the fight than the logistics and other tasks they’re normally associated with. One night while we were in Poland, our brigade commander at the time, Colonel Eugene Ferris, told me he used to call them “fighting support companies.” I had never thought of them in that sense, but he clearly had the utmost respect for the forward support company in his infantry battalion when he was a company commander. They delivered time and again supporting his unit with not only logistics, but firepower when needed.

When it came to life support (billeting, laundry services, etc.), the logistics civil augmentation program, more commonly known as LOGCAP, was where we made our money. For the first three to four weeks paratroopers were on ground, it was difficult with unestablished life support, but after becoming fully operational the life support assets vastly improved the overall quality of life for our paratroopers. Many people are often critical of the Army’s reliance and utilization of the LOGCAP; however, it has become a part of the Army’s doctrine and logisticians have consequently integrated it into their sustainment concepts of support. The LOGCAP coupled with organic capabilities offers a much larger projection of combat power. In our case, time and space to deploy was limited and we knew that life support requirements could be augmented through the LOGCAP assets available in Europe. The Army does have capabilities to meet life support requirements, such as shower and laundry units, but given the constraints we faced, the LOGCAP was able to meet the life support requirements in a timely manner for our deployment to Europe.

On April 28, I took command of the field maintenance company in the brigade support battalion. The company is responsible for pass-back maintenance for the brigade and also has unique capabilities like fabrication, welding, and repair of communications and electronic missile systems. Simply put, forward support companies play man-to-man defense when supporting their respective battalions, whereas the field maintenance company plays zone defense, ready to support any unit that requires assistance across the brigade. This concept is the same in infantry, Stryker, and armored brigade combat teams, although personnel, resources, and equipment available vary between each. When I took command, it was truly impressive to see the company’s paratroopers assist other units and people they had never even met before. In the end, they understood the importance of the zone defense and how as a strong team they could handle any problem thrown their way.

Logistics always has and always will establish—or limit—the momentum for maneuver on the battlefield. This means that logisticians of all ranks must be problem solvers. They must think critically to identify a problem and think creatively to solve it. With a handful of equipment from Army pre-positioned stocks and the single container of tools my company had deployed with, my paratroopers continued to repair and fix anything thrown their way. It was not like a combat training center rotation, where a unit deploys with its equipment and draws the rest before entering the box. As expected, work came our way, much of it challenging, but the team routinely came up with creative solutions. The best example was the repair of three M777 howitzers that were damaged in transport on their way to Ukraine. They arrived with bent lunette rings, but with some tools and a few hours, the paratroopers had all three artillery pieces back on their way east.

The Tyranny of Distance and Challenge of Unfamiliar Environments

The tyranny of distance is real and paratroopers saw it firsthand when Russia crossed the border into Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Many people, including myself, expected that Russia could steam a considerable distance into Ukraine before ever encountering any substantial resistance or difficulties. But whatever Russia’s plan was, it surely didn’t work. Russian forces experienced very little success in the north, and with the exception of the southeastern portion of Ukraine, they were burning through equipment and supplies at an unimaginable rate. Russia’s inability to keep vital supplies moving toward their front lines assured they’d never get to Kyiv even over a few weeks’ time. In mid-March, the world saw this firsthand when global media reported on the massively long military convoy composed of armored vehicles sitting just outside Kyiv. This climactic event highlighted the tyranny of distance the Russians were facing daily, a challenge that would have been equally familiar to armies across history.

The US Army is not immune to this fundamental reality. Almost all American conflicts in history have been fought on foreign soil, but while the concept of the tyranny of distance is not new to us, that is not to say it isn’t painful at times. We have experienced the tyranny of distance, but have evolved our doctrine to aid young leaders and give them a perspective of what they might be walking into when deploying to a foreign country. Russia experienced it well within their first few weeks after crossing into Ukraine. For context, the country of Ukraine is similar to the size of Texas. The monumental challenge of achieving any objective over the entirety of an area of that scale, in the face of resistance from the population, quickly undercut Russia’s military manpower advantage. The tyranny of distance was one of the most insurmountable challenges Russian forces faced before they even started moving into Ukraine.

A related challenge is that of working in an unfamiliar environment. In the Quartermaster Basic Officer Leader Course, we briefly touched on an analytical framework called PMESII-PT, which helps organize information about eight operational variables—political, military, economic, social, information, infrastructure, physical environment, and time. As I deployed in February to Poland, I watched the intelligence personnel in our brigade S2 team utilize the same exact framework. This technique gives context to unfamiliar influences and factors for consideration when operating in a foreign environment. We applied the method to Poland to better understand everything we could about the nation we were going to be deploying to. It gave great context to our understanding of the country—including the Polish people and what their cultural expectations were, which proved especially useful when meeting with Polish military leaders. The variable that stood out to me most as a logistician was infrastructure. I was concerned that our equipment might be so large or heavy that it could cause damage. This led us to plan alternate routes and was a driving consideration for commanders when maneuver planning.

Making Interoperability Work

Much has clearly not gone according to Russia’s plan, but one of the most significant misjudgments was the effect the invasion would have on NATO solidarity. The alliance has been galvanized by a stronger sense of purpose than it has had since the end of the Cold War, with even Sweden and Finland seeking membership after decades of nonalignment.

At the heart of an alliance’s effectiveness is interoperability. This word has sometimes become a buzzword used at briefings and even the subject of memes. NATO defines it as “the ability for Allies to act together coherently, effectively and efficiently to achieve tactical, operational, and strategic objectives.” This sounds about right if you are standing in Brussels and gazing at the flags of NATO nations. Young paratroopers began to ask why senior leaders kept referencing interoperability with just about everything we were doing. When I asked one of my paratroopers what he thought interoperability means, he replied, “It’s being able to fight or accomplish the mission with our teammates even if they speak ‘something else’ or wear a different uniform.” Well said if you ask me. It’s more than just the strategic objectives, but also about the exposure of NATO allies working together. In our case, it was the division working alongside our Polish allies.

Of course, much of interoperability is a function of hardware and other equipment. But it’s also more than that. In early February, while on the brigade staff, I was working to track the marshaling of equipment being flown into Poland on C-17s. Aircraft would land with paratroopers who would then drive off the equipment and move to a staging area. Units then convoyed form the staging area to specific locations to build the brigade’s combat power. One morning, I found myself heading across the street from the division headquarters to the Polish tactical operations center with a major, one of the division planners. There was a meeting and I was filling in for a brigade planner who had not yet made it to Poland. I was there with a general purpose: to see what I could learn from the meeting. The Polish commander greeted us with a large smile and thanked us for coming. I could tell he was truly concerned about the tensions in his eastern neighbor, Ukraine. Ninety minutes later, after we had discussed some specific questions and scheduled another meeting for the following day, he offered us coffee before we left. Little planning was actually accomplished in the meeting, and yet the introductions and next day’s discussion turned out to be a base for our relationship with the Polish military. In the following months, we would conduct numerous training events with the Polish military and have the opportunity to learn about how they fight and train. These relationships are the intangible but essential components at the heart of interoperability.

My last reflection is on the people I had the privilege to meet all along the deployment because they were the one thing that made the difference when it really mattered. The Army states that its number one priority is people and this deployment affirmed to me the significance of that priority. We succeeded and were prepared for the deployment because of our people. Around the end of March, many paratroopers began to lose their sense of purpose, in large part because they realized they would not have the chance to assist with evacuations or conduct other military operations of such apparent significance. As a leader, it was extremely challenging to convey to paratroopers that we had met the expectations set for us. We succeeded even though our mission evolved after arriving. The relationships we built with our Polish allies accomplished a strategic objective and reinforced our commitment to NATO. For me, the deployment also highlighted the type of people we have in our Army. In an event in history as unique as this, I was proud of the paratroopers who were once again at the forefront during a crisis. Most importantly, we learned lessons from the experience—lessons that will improve the Army’s readiness not only to support the ongoing US response to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, but also for the next time it is called upon to safeguard American interests abroad.

Daniel (Dan) Kinney is a captain in the US Army currently assigned to 82nd Brigade Support Battalion, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina as a field maintenance company commander. Dan is a logistics officer and has a master’s degree in transportation and logistics management. He has served as a distribution platoon leader, battalion S4 officer-in-charge, and brigade staff officer.

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

Image credit: Sgt. Catessa Palone, US Army

mwi.usma.edu · by Daniel Kinney · April 13, 2023

18. U.S. may change how it monitors the web after missing leaked documents for weeks

Excerpts:

The secret Pentagon documents appeared in an obscure part of the internet focused on gaming, and some former intelligence officials said it was understandable that U.S. authorities did not spot the disclosure.

The U.S. government may not have been looking there, but cybersecurity experts have long known that Discord has been used by criminals and hackers to spread malware and stealthily transfer stolen information.

“The Discord domain helps attackers disguise the exfiltration of data by making it look like any other traffic coming across the network,” said a 2021 report by Cisco’s Talos cybersecurity team.

U.S. may change how it monitors the web after missing leaked documents for weeks

President Biden and other officials were dismayed when they learned the documents had been online for at least a month. “Nobody is happy about this,” said one official.

NBC News · by Carol E. Lee, Ken Dilanian and Dan De Luce

The Biden administration is looking at expanding how it monitors social media sites and chatrooms after U.S. intelligence agencies failed to spot classified Pentagon documents circulating online for weeks, according to a senior administration official and a congressional official briefed on the matter.

The possible change in the intelligence-gathering process is just one potential shift as officials scramble to determine not only how the documents leaked but also how to prevent another damaging incident.

President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin were briefed about the disclosure last week, administration officials say, but the secret documents appeared online in early March on the Discord social media app, according to Bellingcat, the open-source investigative group. Some documents may have appeared as early as January, the group said.

The president and other officials were dismayed when they learned the documents had been online for at least a month.

“Nobody is happy about this,” said the senior administration official.

The administration is now looking at expanding the universe of online sites that intelligence agencies and law enforcement authorities track, the official said.

The secret Pentagon documents appeared in an obscure part of the internet focused on gaming, and some former intelligence officials said it was understandable that U.S. authorities did not spot the disclosure.

The U.S. government may not have been looking there, but cybersecurity experts have long known that Discord has been used by criminals and hackers to spread malware and stealthily transfer stolen information.

“The Discord domain helps attackers disguise the exfiltration of data by making it look like any other traffic coming across the network,” said a 2021 report by Cisco’s Talos cybersecurity team.

U.S. investigating leak of intelligence documents

April 11, 202301:36

The intelligence community is now grappling with how it can scrub platforms like Discord in search of relevant material to avoid a similar leak in the future, said the congressional official.

The disclosure also has raised fresh questions about how sensitive intelligence information is handled inside the government, and whether the pool of people allowed to access it needs to be scaled back.

In the aftermath of the leak, the administration has already tightened access to classified information and is looking at other steps, officials said.

The leaked documents appear to contain “sensitive and highly classified material” and pose a potentially serious risk to national security, the Pentagon said on Monday. NBC News obtained more than 50 of the documents, which appear to be briefing slides for the U.S. military’s Joint Staff based on information from a range of U.S. intelligence agencies.

The documents include detailed intelligence on Russian tactical moves in the war in Ukraine, descriptions of Ukraine’s combat power and weaknesses, alleged sabotage by Ukrainian agents inside Belarus and Russia, and spying reports on allies, including South Korea and Israel. Much of the intelligence reporting in the documents signals intelligence — or electronic eavesdropping — as the source of the information, a crucial tool for America’s spy services.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA, the National Security Agency and the Pentagon have declined to comment on the information contained in the documents.

This intelligence leak doesn’t appear, at least so far, to resemble previous incidents that involved double agents handing over information directly to foreign adversaries or self-described whistleblowers providing secret documents to media outlets. Instead, the information appeared in a private online chatroom, not a typically secure location to pass along sensitive material to a spy service, but also not an obvious means to reveal secrets to the world.

Photographs of some of the documents first appeared on Discord app channels focused on the Minecraft computer game and followers of a minor YouTube celebrity, known as wow_mao, according to Bellingcat and other online experts. The photographed documents then eventually made their way to the image board 4Chan, then pro-Russian Telegram channels and Twitter. The New York Times first reported on the documents last week.

If the administration tries to check online chatrooms more closely, it will have to navigate legal safeguards designed to protect Americans’ privacy and freedom of expression, former intelligence officials said.

Watching a public chatroom is fair game, but law enforcement agencies don’t have the legal authority to monitor a private online chatroom without probable cause, the former officials said.

“We do not have nor do we want a system where the United States government monitors private internet chats,” said Glenn Gerstell, former general counsel of the National Security Agency from 2015 to 2020.

U.S. laws prohibit searching private chatrooms preemptively and “scanning for classified documents” that may or may not be there, Gerstell said.

As a democracy, the U.S. requires law enforcement authorities to balance national security with civil liberties, said James Lewis, a former senior intelligence official and now a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

“If you don’t know there’s a crime being committed, you can’t just burst into the club,” Lewis said.

However, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have come under criticism for how they responded to alarming posts on social media in the run-up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by former President Trump supporters.

The House Jan. 6 committee concluded the FBI and DHS were too cautious about acting on information gleaned from social media out of misplaced concern over potential free speech violations, NBC News previously reported.

Dozens of intelligence documents about U.S. adversaries and allies leaked

April 10, 202301:54

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., said the leak raised yet more questions about how the government manages its secrets, only months after revelations that successive administrations appeared to have mishandled classified documents.

“We’ve now got two examples, you know, the potential mishandling of documents by current and former presidents and now this potential leak, or real leak,” Warner told NBC News in an interview in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

“I think it does raise a question that in some cases we way overclassify. In other cases, we may ... give out the documents to too many people,” the senator said.

“I think it’s time that Congress plays a role here in setting some parameters,” Warner said.

Ronald Marks, a former CIA officer and a visiting professor at George Mason University, said the pendulum has swung back and forth over the past two decades over how much intelligence should be shared across the government.

“Remember, the whole thing after 9/11 was the need to share. And the concern was that if you kept this stuff too tight, we might miss something,” Marks said.

“So you get more and more info all the time, which means you’ve got to store this stuff and collate this stuff, which means that you’ve got more and more contractors and other people involved with it all the time,” he said.

A Pentagon team is currently evaluating the potential fallout from the leak. Sen. Warner said “it’s too early to tell” how much damage may have been caused by the disclosure.

The exposure of so much classified reporting from electronic surveillance could have a devastating impact on the country’s intelligence-gathering, according to Gerstell and other former intelligence officials.

“This could be very, very significant in terms of denying us access to information that is strategically important for us, and that would be a bad outcome. Because it would take years for us to recover that kind of access and cost a lot of money,” he said.

NBC News · by Carol E. Lee, Ken Dilanian and Dan De Luce

19. Security Force Assistance Brigade commander under investigation

The buried lede:

Should he be permanently relieved, Chung would be at least the fifth brigade commander removed since October.

Security Force Assistance Brigade commander under investigation

armytimes.com · by Davis Winkie · April 12, 2023

Army officials have suspended the commander of the 5th Security Force Assistance Brigade, stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington.

Col. Jonathan Chung, who took command in June 2021, “has been assigned to U.S. Army Pacific pending the outcome of an administrative investigation,” said Forces Command spokesperson Paul Boyce in a statement to Army Times on Wednesday.

Asked to clarify whether the colonel’s reassignment was permanent or temporary, Boyce said Chung “has been suspended as the commander until the investigation is complete.”

It’s not clear why Chung came under investigation or why he was suspended from command. He did not immediately respond to a comment request sent via social media.

The brigades were established to assist U.S. allies and partners with conventional military training. Officials formed six geographically-oriented brigades between 2017 and 2020. The brigades draw on experienced enlisted NCO volunteers and operate in small teams, often of a dozen or fewer soldiers for months at a time in disparate locations through an assigned combatant command region.

In recent years the Army has relied on these brigades to bolster support and provide a U.S. military presence in regions both in peer-competitor environments, such as Europe and Asia, and non-peer adversary environments such as Africa and Latin America.

Should he be permanently relieved, Chung would be at least the fifth brigade commander removed since October.

In October, two 1st Cavalry Division brigade commanders at Fort Hood, Texas — Col. Jon Meredith of the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team and Col. Anthony Wilson of the division’s 1st Sustainment Brigade — were fired. Meredith was under criminal investigation, though officials have not specified whether he will face any charges.

Then in November, the Louisiana National Guard removed Col. Scott Desormeaux from his dual role commanding the state’s 256th Infantry Brigade Combat Team and historic Jackson Barracks post after an investigation found he sent “inappropriate text messages to other service members.”

Col. Ann Meredith was fired as the 89th Military Police Brigade commander at Fort Hood in March amid a criminal investigation “distinct from the previous investigation of her husband Col. Jon Meredith,” according to Stars and Stripes. It’s not clear whether she will face court-martial.

Col. Tony Braxton will temporarily take command of Chung’s brigade, said Forces Command spokesperson Boyce.

About Davis Winkie

Davis Winkie is a senior reporter covering the Army, specializing in accountability reporting, personnel issues and military justice. He joined Military Times in 2020. Davis studied history at Vanderbilt University and UNC-Chapel Hill, writing a master's thesis about how the Cold War-era Defense Department influenced Hollywood's WWII movies.

20. It’s Time to Re-Evaluate the Officer Evaluation System

When I came in the Army they just unveiled the 10 block system. My first OER was a 4 block. The senior rater told me that was good because it was one above the midpoint so I was "above average."

It’s Time to Re-Evaluate the Officer Evaluation System - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Brennan Randel · April 13, 2023

The recently-passed James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 contained an inconspicuous provision that could significantly impact how the military services evaluate their officers. What started in the House-passed version as section 508, directing the Army to review its evaluation system, expanded to include a review of all services’ evaluations in the compromise bill between the House and Senate. Now, section 509C of the final bill requires the comptroller general of the United States to review military officer performance evaluations and provide recommendations to the secretary of defense on how to improve the processes. For the Army, this means that a long-needed overhaul of its evaluation system could be nearer than anyone thought.

Under Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville’s leadership, the Army has embarked on an ambitious, years-long journey to revamp its approach to talent management. From the Assignment Interactive Module 2.0 portal to the Battalion Commander Assessment Program and the Colonels Command Assessment Program, the Army has enacted meaningful change that improves — but has not yet perfected — the process of putting the right people into the right billets and the right leaders into the right commands. But while the Army designed the new talent management system for the information age, the evaluation system for officers is an industrial-age relic.

Become a Member

It’s all well and good to institute a process that finds the best lieutenant colonels for battalion command, but if the Army’s evaluation system doesn’t promote the best officers to lieutenant colonels and colonels, the command assessment programs cannot select from among the best. It is time for the Army to make a substantial change to its officer evaluation system, and the comptroller general should recommend that the Army transition to across-the-board quarterly evaluations. Quarterly evaluations would provide frequent, formal feedback to officers, do away with the much-maligned permanent evaluation profiles, and remove extraneous information from evaluation forms. Drawing from more data points, the Army could then promote, retain, and select for command the highest performing officers.

Flaws with the Current System

The Army implemented its current evaluation forms in late 2013. These forms aimed at “instilling rater accountability, more accurately identifying elite performers and synching the report with current leadership doctrine.” The length of evaluations — one year — remained constant. And while different evaluation forms exist for company-grade officers, field-grade officers, and colonels, the new forms all had two common components: numerically constrained block checks for the most qualified officers and subjectively written narratives. An evaluated officer receives a block check and written narrative from their boss — their rater — and their boss’s boss — their senior rater. Sometimes they also receive a narrative from an intermediate rater.

The block checks and narratives may have been an upgrade from prior iterations of the Army’s evaluation system, but they are insufficient for the Army’s “information age” talent management apparatus. Among several problems with the block-check system is that the senior rater must consider not only the evaluated officer’s potential against their peers in the unit but also against all future, theoretical peers. This is because an evaluator’s block-check profile is permanent — a top block given now generally means one fewer top block to give later. An evaluator may find themselves giving the best officer they’ve ever encountered a “center-of-mass” rating because they ran out of top blocks.

And if numerically constrained block checks represent one major flaw, the other is the narrative blocks. Modern-day Army evaluations have become so over-inflated with flowery verbiage that someone could write an evaluation for a subordinate that would make their mother blush but would not get them promoted. Phrases such as “promote ahead of peers” are frequently used to indicate strong performance and promotion potential, but less than 10 percent of officers are actually promoted below the zone. The narrative blocks allow evaluators to make up for a mismanaged or immature block-check profile. In using these narratives, astute evaluators can use superlatives to highlight the promotion potential of their subordinates. “Top 1 percent of officers I’ve observed in twenty years” is a common way to call out a high performer, whether they received a top block-check or not.

The problem, though, is two-fold. First, there is no restriction on how many “top 1 percent officers” an evaluator can mention. If they believed every one of their 20 subordinates deserved a strong evaluation, they could include that same language. The second problem is the disparity in competency between evaluators. Because no formal guidance exists for how to write the narrative blocks, the best some officers receive is a slide show from Human Resources Command. A rated officer is therefore at the mercy of the informal mentorship that their evaluators received on how to write a strong narrative. The slide show demonstrates how easily a well-intentioned but undertrained evaluator could mismanage this process. For a “lackluster/weak” evaluation, the slide recommends evaluators use such comments as “Superior/Outstanding performance,” but without enumeration or comparison to other officers in the senior rater’s unit.

Beyond the faults with the block-check system and the written narratives, there are several more significant shortcomings with the annual evaluation. The first and most evident is that many evaluations aren’t annual. While officers should strive for a yearly evaluation, there are multiple situations in which an officer is assessed less frequently — change of rater, senior rater option, and change of duty, to name a few. The minimum requirement for these evaluations is 90 days of service, meaning an officer with three months in the job could be evaluated against an officer who has been in their position for a full year or even more under an extended annual evaluation!

Another area for improvement is the performance feedback hole that exists in the current system. While the Army mandates quarterly counseling for officers, these feedback sessions are too often deprioritized and forgotten when the training calendar becomes busy. The first performance-based feedback that many officers receive is when they sign their annual evaluation. For a company commander receiving the most critical evaluation of their young career, it is too late to take feedback and earn a better rating if they only receive one annual evaluation before they finish command.

The problem isn’t that the system is unfair. An unfair system can still produce outstanding outcomes for an organization. The problem is that the system is unfair, and because it’s unfair, it produces results that can stifle the promotion prospects for the highest-potential officers. Also, the seemingly arbitrary nature of the existing process might encourage a star performer to depart the Army and try their luck in the private sector, which many perceive as more meritocratic. To address the deficiencies in the current system, the Army should overhaul the evaluation system and conduct across-the-board quarterly evaluations of officers.

The Great Transition: Quarterly Evaluations

If the Army decided to ditch the annual evaluation, it would be in good company. A 2016 Harvard Business Review report claimed that more than a third of U.S. companies — including IBM, General Electric, and Microsoft — were doing away with annual performance reviews in favor of “frequent, informal check-ins between managers and employees.” By transitioning to quarterly evaluations, the Army would address many of the shortfalls found in the annual system.

First, and perhaps most important, quarterly evaluations would mandate frequent feedback and give low-performing officers an azimuth check and an opportunity to change their behavior. Quarterly evaluations would also put all officers on the same evaluation plane. Officers with short evaluations would no longer be compared against officers with a full-year evaluation. More frequent evaluations would also benefit officers down the road when senior leaders meet to conduct promotion boards. Board members would have more data to determine an officer’s promotion potential, and one poor evaluation wouldn’t derail an officer’s chances.

However, a quarterly evaluation system would undoubtedly increase the time burden for leaders. To make quarterly evaluations work, the Army would have to make several critical adjustments. To start, the Army would have to reduce the number of officers each senior rater evaluates, and then reduce the time they spend filling out the evaluation form.

The first step in reducing the number of officers each rater evaluates is removing the permanent block-check profile — perhaps the most reviled component of the current system among officers.

Because evaluators would assess all subordinates over the same period, they would no longer need to carry forward their profile: It would reset every quarter. Each quarter, evaluators could indicate who their top-third officers are, who the middle-third officers are, and who falls in the bottom third. Or the Army could require evaluators to rank their rated officers, 1 through X. The following quarter, they would reevaluate and reorder their subordinates, as appropriate.

By removing the permanent evaluator profile, the Army could then reduce the number of officers senior raters evaluate. This should be relatively simple. The current system incentivizes the “pooling” of as many officers into a senior rater’s evaluation scheme as possible. Pooling gives the senior rater many evaluations to spread over a large population to balance their ratio of top blocks to middle blocks. They can then give average evaluations to officers who do not need a strong evaluation — officers who are not in their key development positions or who are separating from the service — and give more top-block evaluations to officers who would have otherwise missed out.

But with the permanent evaluation profile gone, evaluators would no longer need to pool officers. A framework for revised rating schemes should follow a simple principle: commanders evaluate commanders, and staff officers evaluate staff officers. With pooling gone, there would be no compelling reason for a brigade commander to evaluate all company commanders in the brigade, and the brigade assistant operations officers, and the company-grade brigade staff officers, and the commander’s adjutant. The deputy brigade commander, operations officer, or executive officer could evaluate the non-commanders.

The next challenge the Army would need to address is the forms themselves. The current forms, the DA 67-10 series, contain irrelevant information and are long overdue for a change. The company-grade report, with its six attribute narrative blocks, is the most egregious of the four forms. Between the rater narrative, the rater’s block check, the six attribute narratives, the intermediate rater narrative, the senior rater narrative, and the senior rater block check, the rater’s narrative and senior rater’s narrative and block check are the only components that allegedly matter to promotion boards.

Figures 2 and 3. DA Form 67-10-1, company-grade report.

The sections of the form that provide no functional value — to the rated officer, promotion boards, or command selection boards — should be removed. The six blocks that reflect an officer’s six core attributes? Gone. Three successive assignments? Gone. Three broadening assignments? Gone. Intermediate rater’s comments? Definitely gone. The form should be condensed to one page and include only what a promotion board or a command select board considers. If the rater’s comments and senior-rater’s comments and block check are the only things that matter, they should be the only items included.

To improve the subjective narrative block, the new form could have drop-down options that would auto-generate senior rater comments — a sort-of mad-lib but for Army officers. Standardized narratives would insert a level of commonality into evaluations that would eliminate the necessary luck of receiving an evaluation from an officer who knows how to write a strong one. In providing pre-determined responses to evaluators, the Army would ensure homogeneity across all evaluations. Promotion boards would finally be able to compare apples to apples.

This would also be a good opportunity for the Army to publish formal, widely available regulations on evaluations and board proceedings. The Army can’t publish a directive that claims, “if you receive an evaluation that says this, then you will be promoted.” But it would be helpful if an Army regulation or pamphlet highlighted what a strong evaluation looks like without guaranteeing anything.

A new system would undoubtedly present unique challenges. What do you do if an officer hasn’t performed duties for the entire quarter? Or was on temporary duty? Or changed duty in the middle of a quarterly rating period? Or what if the senior rater is replaced during the quarter? But the Army can think through these issues and design policies to address non-conventional situations. And the exceptions would make more sense under a quarterly evaluation system — recall that the current system requires exceptions that could have two peers receiving evaluations over vastly different time spans.

Moving Forward

Beyond ongoing reforms to talent management, the Army — with the help of civilian leaders and Congress — has also implemented quality-of-life improvements designed to retain high-performing soldiers and officers. These improvements include a focus on spousal hiring, increased professional licensing reciprocity among states, a 12-week parental leave policy, hikes to housing allowance in high-cost-of-living areas, and a 4.6 percent pay bump. But these efforts don’t address a significant concern among officers considering alternative career paths — does the Army properly evaluate its highest-performing officers and give them the best opportunities for promotion, and then put those officers in leadership positions where they can fulfill a desire to lead soldiers at increasingly higher levels of impact?

Quarterly evaluations would be a monumental reform, but the Army and — as per section 509C — the comptroller general should at least consider the idea. More frequent, formal, and fair feedback can’t be bad for young officers. Yes, evaluators would have to spend more time — perhaps considerably more time — evaluating their subordinates. But if the Army believes that its strategic advantage is its people, this additional time commitment would be a worthwhile investment. Not to mention, the Army could lessen the time burden imposed by a quarterly system by reducing the number of people each leader evaluates and redesigning the form to eliminate unneeded information. And, of course, after it reforms the officer evaluation system, the Army could take those reforms and improve the non-commissioned officer evaluation system, which has essentially adopted the officer block checks and written narratives in recent years.

Whatever the comptroller general recommends, and whatever the Army eventually decides to implement, one thing is clear: The current system is outdated. It should be improved upon, if not upended and replaced with something new altogether.

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Brennan Randel is an active-duty Army aviation officer serving as a congressional budget liaison.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Department of the Army or the Department of Defense.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Brennan Randel · April 13, 2023

21. Uneasy Coexistence on Guam: Military Buildup and an Indigenous Upwelling

Uneasy Coexistence on Guam: Military Buildup and an Indigenous Upwelling

The New York Times · by Damien Cave · April 13, 2023

Guam Dispatch

The U.S. military is increasing its presence just as the island’s Chamorro people are trying to strengthen their bonds.

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Chamorro students paddling in traditional outrigger canoes at Tumon Bay in Guam.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Reporting from Guam

Published April 12, 2023Updated April 13, 2023, 5:17 a.m. ET

“Balutan! You’ve got to balutan!”

Anthony Mantanona — Uncle Tony, Guam’s favorite Indigenous baker — pointed to trays of fresh coconut bread, reminding the barbecue’s departing guests to follow one of Chamorro culture’s elemental tenets: Balutan, or grab a to-go plate, be generous, be grateful, share.

“If you don’t need much, give it to someone else,” he yelled.

The Chamorro people were Guam’s first inhabitants, and through 500 years of colonization by Spain, Japan and, most recently, the United States, they have survived by sharing their land, sea and sky while holding fast to core cultural values.

Now, the Chamorro way is again being tested, as another round of encroachment by the U.S. military comes just as new efforts are being made to strengthen Guam’s Indigenous bonds.

Chamorro high school students learning how to sail.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

The barbecue was being held in the backyard of a 1950s ranch-style house that doubles as a cultural center. Mr. Mantanona was baking in an outdoor oven, as children practiced speaking Chamorro and community leaders welcomed friends and curious newcomers.

In the air, American F-15s roared past every few minutes, their noise, markings and speed a reminder of the dangerous world that continues to make demands on Guam’s people.

Roughly a third of the island has been under Defense Department control for decades. But with China and the United States locked in a bitter contest for strategic advantage, Guam — a volcanic outcrop the size of Chicago, with 168,000 people — has become an even more vital military launchpad.

Adding to the 22,000 U.S. troops already here, another 5,000 Marines will soon move into a new base named after Brig. Gen. Vicente T. Blaz, the first Chamorro to become a Marine Corps general officer.

At a barbecue for the Chamorro community in Guam.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

A few miles away, a pier for nuclear-powered submarines is being upgraded. More than a dozen sites have also been identified as potential locations for missile defense systems, while Andersen Air Force Base has plans for a new weapons complex.

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On-island, as they say here, off-island challenges are invading once again.

Surprisingly perhaps, the heavy buildup has not created much fear. Guam’s inhabitants have known for years that their home could be a target. It’s in missile range of regional adversaries, far closer to China and North Korea than Honolulu.

By The New York Times

But especially among Chamorros, who are Guam’s largest ethnic group, the risk of war and the U.S. military’s plans have reinforced divided identities.

Credit...By Chang W. Lee

Guam swims in a murky pool of Americanism. It has one of the U.S. military’s highest rates of recruitment, with Chamorros heavily represented in the ranks, but even the most decorated veterans have little say in what the federal government does on the island. It is an unincorporated territory without full representation in Congress. Its residents cannot vote for president, and while there is an elected local government, Guam remains more garrison than state; the island was handed to the U.S. Navy after the Spanish-American War in 1898.

As the author and lawyer Julian Aguon has put it: “Militarism is normalized on Guam. It’s part of our meat and drink. It’s a protein we have to work very hard to break down.”

For Suruhana Rosalia Fejeran Mateo, or Mama Chai, an 87-year-old traditional Chamorro healer, the steady creep of militarization still brings new surprises. Recently, when she trekked to a remote beach to collect plants for treating ailments, U.S. marshals confronted her, warning that she had wandered into a no-go zone.

“We’re not destroying the area, we’re just taking medicine,” said Mama Chai, a traditional Chamorro healer who was stopped by U.S. marshals when she trekked to a remote beach to collect plants for treating various ailments.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

They did not say why the beach was off-limits, said Vinessa Duenas, 26, an apprentice who was with her, learning the old ways. Mama Chai saw the interference as a bizarre reminder of the island’s dissociation from its ancient culture.

“We’re not destroying the area,” she said. “We’re just taking medicine.”

At a beach near Naval Base Guam, Ron Acfalle ran his hand along a narrow wooden canoe with a turtle and other Chamorro imagery on its hull. Once in the water, the canoe will have a triangular sail — a sight first seen and praised by Spanish explorers who reached Guam in 1521.

The colonizers called them “flying proas” and later destroyed the boats to keep people from fleeing, trading with other islands, or planning a revolt. It was the beginning of Guam’s role as a strategic international outpost.

Chamorro imagery on a proa, a traditional canoe.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Now students of Indigenous science are learning how to sail and navigate with the stars.

“The whole idea was to bring back what our ancestors had left behind,” said Mr. Acfalle, 64, a homebuilder and co-founder of Ulitao, a nonprofit seafaring organization. “To recreate the design that was recognized by the Europeans as one of the fastest canoes they’d ever seen.”

Smiling with pride, he said he had returned to Indigenous culture slowly. He grew up being taught that America had liberated his people from the cruel Japanese troops who seized Guam in 1941. He and his relatives were like General Blaz and many others: They chose to be grateful after the Americans returned in 1944 with a military presence.

But over time, they saw their language fade, with few asking why learning Chamorro was discouraged. Guam’s children weren’t taught local history when Mr. Acfalle went to school. They ate American foods. They fought in Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East, hoping the United States would love them back, only to find that most Americans barely knew Guam existed.

Blowing a shell to welcome tourists at an adventure park in Guam.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

And at home, the land became littered with ordnance, the sea with spills of heavy oil.

“I’m a former Marine, you know, back in the ’70s,” Mr. Acfalle said. “I come home and I’m fighting what the military has been doing to our people.”

He connected with others in the community through a Chamorro dance group, and raised his six children to respect their roots even as one of them joined the military, too. He started studying ancient seafaring and now has become part of a loose network of Chamorro leaders — including Mr. Mantanona — who have channeled their concerns about Guam into cultural preservation and promotion.

“People want more,” Uncle Tony said.

Chamorro leaders have fought for their language and history to be passed down to their children.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

The history of Guam is now a regular feature of the island’s high school curriculum. A new museum, with Chamorro words carved into the facade, opened a few years ago, and paddling in traditional outrigger canoes is an increasingly popular sport.

But even in renaissance, risk swirls through the Guam air. At the barbecue, as the jet engines raged above ringing cellphones and a speaker blaring Steely Dan, three bursts on a conch shell rang out.

A 9-year-old boy in a baseball uniform with dirt on his knees, chest and somehow his back stood between a garden and a view of waves crashing whitewash onto a shallow reef. A slugger for sure, he’d just come from the diamond of America’s favorite pastime when his mother asked him to explain why he had blown the three bursts from the shell.

“Sky, sea and land,” he said, in Chamorro and English.

It was a call to the ancestors, asking for protection.

Chamorro stone pillars at a burial site in Guam. They are found throughout most of the Mariana Islands.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

The New York Times · by Damien Cave · April 13, 2023

22. We Walk Away from Counterinsurgency Capabilities at Our Own Risk

We Walk Away from Counterinsurgency Capabilities at Our Own Risk

military.com · by 12 Apr 2023 Military.com | By Gary Anderson · April 12, 2023

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

Generals are often accused of wanting to fight the last war. That is only partly true. The winning side in any war is likely to want to repeat its successes. The losers often look to new methods to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, or conversely, they seek to avoid the type of conflict that caused the loss.

That was certainly true in the years between the two world wars. The winning French of World War I believed that the methodical battle doctrine that eventually won the conflict had staunched the accumulation of hundreds of thousands of unnecessary casualties earlier in the war. The losing Germans chose to innovate and make the maximum use of emerging technologies.

Following Vietnam, the losing Americans took both approaches. Our generals avoided guerrilla-type wars such as they faced in Indo-China and were determined to concentrate on the conventional threat posed by the Soviet Union and North Korea, as well as on combined arms use of emerging precision technologies. Conventional warfare concepts such as maneuver warfare and air-land battle were refined and appeared to pay off handsomely in Operation Desert Storm and early in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. But you don't always get the war that you want.

I came on active duty with the Marine Corps as Vietnam wound down in 1971 and watched the transition from counterinsurgency to a more conventional approach unfold. The model Vietnamese village in the woods of Quantico, Virginia, was dismantled, and the counterinsurgency package had been drastically reduced from the late '60s when it was the centerpiece of the training curriculum. By the time I attended the Marine Corps War College in the 1990s, the counterinsurgency schooling had been reduced to a few hours of case studies on the French experience in Algeria and a hand wave at Vietnam. The army schools were much the same.

Consequently, as Iraq and Afghanistan degenerated into insurgencies, the military was again caught flat-footed. When the Marine Corps put together a course to prepare advisers for both countries, it had to go to the archives section of the university library to dig out course material. The Army was in much the same boat.

History appears to be repeating itself in the wake of the Afghanistan debacle. The services are again focusing on conventional conflict with peer competitors, and China will likely be the flavor of the month for years to come. No service has played the China card more aggressively than the Marine Corps. The current commandant, Gen. David Berger, has reoriented the Corps almost exclusively on China, with the Marines creating the maritime equivalent of a Maginot Line, positioning its forces to fire anti-ship missiles against an expected breakout of the Chinese Navy from the South China Sea. These small, distributed forces would presumably play "whack-a-mole" by moving anti-ship missile armed forces among the many islets in the South China Sea area by light amphibious craft and helicopter.

To afford these anti-ship systems, Gen. Berger has divested the Marine Corps of capabilities that were essential to making the Marines the nation's worldwide force-in-readiness. Tanks, heavy engineer equipment, about a third of assault infantry and many attack helicopter assets are gone, as well as much of its towed artillery and snipers at the battalion level.

The Marines war-gamed their new approach on the naval breakout scenario, which most analysts see as the least likely. The most likely conventional force scenario is a Chinese attack on Taiwan, with an attempt to limit the conflict to an exclusion zone around the Formosan area. The Marine Corps approach would be virtually useless in that event.

The most likely scenario for Chinese expansion outside the South China Sea is exactly what it is attempting today. The country is building influence among the poor states of Micronesia and Melanesia through investment in willing partners, such as the Solomon Islands, and undermining governments in South and Southeast Asia that lean heavily toward the U.S. and its regional allies. Those battles in the Gray Zone between economic/political competition and conventional war are the most likely scenarios by far.

The Marine Corps and, to a lesser extent, the Army are becoming both mentally and physically less ready to meet these challenges. The counterinsurgency expertise built up in Iraq and Afghanistan is rapidly eroding, and the military education establishments of all the services are also being allowed to atrophy. The Marine Corps has rid itself of exactly the knowledge and combat capabilities that would be needed to help friendly nations defeat a Chinese-inspired insurgency.

Our weakness in this area has probably not gone unnoticed by our friends in Beijing who will likely exploit it. They probably already are.

Gary Anderson retired as chief of staff of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab. He later served as a special adviser to the deputy director of defense and was a senior civilian adviser in Iraq and Afghanistan.

military.com · by 12 Apr 2023 Military.com | By Gary Anderson · April 12, 2023

23. We Walk Away from Counterinsurgency Capabilities at Our Own Risk

In the current description of Irregular Warfare it consists of five activities: unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, counterinsurgency, counter terrorism., and stability operations. More than COIN is necessary for the future of strategic competition.

As I have said: strategic competition is political warfare (or competitive statecraft), irregular warfare is the military contribution to political warfare (competitive statecraft), and special warfare is the SOF contribution to irregular warfare.

We Walk Away from Counterinsurgency Capabilities at Our Own Risk

military.com · by 12 Apr 2023 Military.com | By Gary Anderson · April 12, 2023

Our weakness in this area has probably not gone unnoticed by our friends in Beijing who will likely exploit it. They probably already are.

military.com · by 12 Apr 2023 Military.com | By Gary Anderson · April 12, 2023

De Oppresso Liber,

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Editor, Small Wars Journal

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