Quotes of the Day:

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

- Rumi

“The truth is like a lion. You don't have to defend it. Let it loose. It will defend itself.” 

- Augustine

"When people talk listen completely. Don't be thinking about what you're going to say Most people never listen. Nor do they observe."

- Ernest Hemmingway

1. Zelensky, in private, plots bold attacks inside Russia, leak shows

2. For Russians, Reading Is the New Resistance

3. How the Ukraine War Ends: Putin Gets Crushed by 'Guerilla' Fighters?

4. Soldier, single mom of two, perseveres to find balance

5. EU and US to pledge joint action over China concerns

6. The Bid to Dethrone the Dollar: The greenback’s dominance is here to stay. Here’s why.

7. U.S.-Thai Relations Have An Alliance Problem

8. From Rahmbo to Rahm-bassador: How an unlikely diplomat has wooed Japan

9. Opinion | It’s time to hold Russia accountable for its use of chemical weapons

10. Zelensky interview transcript: ‘Ukraine must win’

11. G-7 summit spotlights Japan’s growing role as strategic link for East Asia security

12. Why the Mk16 SCAR-L failed with Special Forces

13. Patriots Deployed Near Taiwan, Chinese PLA Warships Sighted Near Japan; Is Indo-Pacific Emerging The Next Battle Ground?

14.  "Osprey get out:" Okinawa protesters call for closure of U.S. military bases

15. Special Forces Soldiers Reveal First Details of Battle With Russian Mercenaries in Syria

16. A​nalysis​:​ Why is Vladimir Putin standing by Russian General Valery Gerasimov after four key failures during the Ukraine war?

17. Opinion: Ukrainian Special Operations Forces (UASOF) – They’re Coming for You

18. DOD Managers Need a New Approach. SOCOM Can Lead the Way

19. The Real Reason Why the U.S. Military's All-Volunteer Force Is In Trouble

20. Armed Overwatch special-ops turboprop enters low-rate production

21. Mattis + Vickers: An "Oh So Social" Conversation (General Jim Mattis interviews Dr. Michael Vickers about his forthcoming memoir.) (OSS Society)

1. Zelensky, in private, plots bold attacks inside Russia, leak shows

These leaks keep on giving.

Zelensky, in private, plots bold attacks inside Russia, leak shows

THE DISCORD LEAKS | U.S. intercepts reveal the Ukrainian’s leader’s aggressive instincts, a marked contrast to his public-facing image as the stoic statesman weathering Russia’s brutal onslaught

By John Hudson and Isabelle Khurshudyan

May 13, 2023 at 3:13 p.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by John Hudson · May 13, 2023

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has won the trust of Western governments by refusing to use the weapons they provide for attacks inside Russia and prioritizing the targeting of Russian forces inside Ukraine’s borders.

But behind closed doors, Ukraine’s leader has proposed going in a more audacious direction — occupying Russian villages to gain leverage over Moscow, bombing a pipeline that transfers Russian oil to Hungary, a NATO member, and privately pining for long-range missiles to hit targets inside Russia’s borders, according to classified U.S. intelligence documents detailing his internal communications with top aides and military leaders.

The documents, which have not been previously disclosed, are part of a broader leak of U.S. secrets circulated on the Discord messaging platform and obtained by The Washington Post. They reveal a leader with aggressive instincts that sharply contrast with his public-facing image as the calm and stoic statesman weathering Russia’s brutal onslaught. The insights were gleaned through intercepted digital communications, providing a rare look at Zelensky’s deliberations amid Russian missile barrages, infrastructure attacks and war crimes.

The Pentagon, where senior U.S. military leaders were briefed on the matters outlined in the leaked documents, did not dispute the authenticity of the materials.

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.

Who leaked the documents? Jack Teixeira, a young member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was charged in the investigation into leaks of hundreds of pages of classified military intelligence. The Post reported that the individual who leaked the information shared documents with a small circle of online friends on the Discord chat platform.

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.

1/5

End of carousel

In some cases, Zelensky is seen restraining the ambitions of his subordinates; in several others, he is the one proposing risky military actions.

In a meeting in late January, Zelensky suggested Ukraine “conduct strikes in Russia” while moving Ukrainian ground troops into enemy territory to “occupy unspecified Russian border cities,” according to one document labeled “top secret.” The goal would be “to give Kyiv leverage in talks with Moscow,” the document said.

In a separate meeting in late February with Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top military commander, Zelensky “expressed concern” that “Ukraine does not have long-range missiles capable of reaching Russian troop deployments in Russia nor anything with which to attack them.” Zelensky then “suggested that Ukraine attack unspecified deployment locations in Rostov,” a region in western Russia, using drones instead, according to another classified document.

In a meeting in mid-February with Deputy Prime Minister Yuliya Svrydenko, Zelensky suggested Ukraine “blow up” the Soviet-built Druzhba pipeline that provides oil to Hungary. “Zelenskyy highlighted that … Ukraine should just blow up the pipeline and destroy likely Hungarian [Prime Minister] Viktor Orban’s industry, which is based heavily on Russian oil,” the document says.

In detailing the conversation, intelligence officials concede that Zelensky was “expressing rage toward Hungary and therefore could be making hyperbolic, meaningless threats,” a qualification that does not accompany the other accounts of Zelensky suggesting bold military action. Though Hungary is nominally part of the Western alliance, Orban is widely considered Europe’s most Kremlin-friendly leader.

When asked if he had suggested occupying parts of Russia, Zelensky, during an interview with The Post in Kyiv, dismissed the U.S. intelligence claims as “fantasies” but defended his right to use unconventional tactics in the defense of his country.

“Ukraine has every right to protect itself, and we are doing it. Ukraine did not occupy anyone, but vice versa,” Zelensky said. “When so many people have died and there have been mass graves and our people have been tortured, I am sure that we have to use any tricks.”

The use of long-range missiles to hit inside Russia is a particularly sensitive topic for the White House, which has long worried that the Ukraine conflict could escalate out of control and force a catastrophic standoff between the United States and Russia, the world’s largest nuclear powers.

Though Washington has given Zelensky billions of dollars’ worth of advanced weaponry, President Biden has steadily rebuffed the Ukrainian leader’s request for long-range ATACMS, shorthand for the Army Tactical Missile System, capable of striking targets up to 185 miles away. Since the start of the war, Biden has said the United States is “not encouraging or enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders.”

When asked about the intelligence indicating he had weighed the use of long-range missiles to hit Russia, Zelensky said it is not something Ukraine is entertaining. “No one in our country has given orders for offensives or strikes on Russian territory,” he said.

It is unclear whether the United States has shared accounts of Zelensky’s plotting with allied nations, but the Ukrainian president continues to enjoy the strong support of Western governments, which have provided him with an increasingly sophisticated array of weaponry.

This past week, Britain became the first Western country to provide Ukraine with long-range missiles. The Storm Shadow, a cruise missile system with stealth capabilities, has a range of 155 miles, far exceeding the 50-mile range of the U.S.-provided HIMARS launchers.

British Defense Minister Ben Wallace said Friday that the missile would give Ukraine “the best chance” to defend itself and would be for use only “within Ukrainian sovereign territory.” A spokesman with the British Embassy in Washington declined to comment on whether Zelensky’s leaked remarks might give London pause about its decision.

The Biden administration says Zelensky’s intercepted comments are not the cause for withholding ATACMS.

“Ukraine has repeatedly committed to employ U.S.-provided weapons responsibly and strategically when needed to counter Russian aggression, and we are confident that will continue to be the case,” said a U.S. defense official who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic.

Since last year, Zelensky has promised that Ukraine would never use U.S. weapons to strike inside Russia, a pledge the White House says he has fulfilled.

“President Zelensky has kept the promises he has made to President Biden, and we do not believe that that will change,” said a senior administration official.

One reason for not providing the long-range missiles is the “relatively few ATACMS” the United States has for its own defense needs, Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Defense One in March.

Zelensky, however, said he believes the United States isn’t sending the weapons because it doesn’t trust Kyiv.

“I think they are afraid that we might use them on the territory of Russia,” Zelensky told The Post. “But I would always tell our partners … ‘We have a priority target for which we are spending the ammunition packages we receive, and we spend it on the deoccupation of purely Ukrainian territories,’” he said.

While there is no indication that Ukraine has used Western missiles to strike into Russian territory, the same cannot be said for Kyiv’s use of armed drones.

Explosions caused by unmanned aerial vehicles have become a regular occurrence in Russia, including in Rostov, where a drone crashed into an oil refinery this month. Ukrainian officials are often coy about the incidents, hinting that they’re responsible without directly taking credit.

Two drone attacks in December on Russia’s Engels air base in Saratov, more than 370 miles from the Ukrainian border, showed “that we have the ability to reach many kilometers farther than they could expect,” Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said in an interview earlier this year.

Russia this month accused Ukraine of staging a drone attack intended to kill President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. Videos circulating on social media and verified by The Post show two drones streaking toward the Kremlin at about 2:30 a.m. local time. The allegation was forcefully denied by Ukrainian officials, including Zelensky.

Not all of the classified documents show Zelensky pushing for more aggressive action.

One document describes a plan developed by Ukraine’s military intelligence agency last year to conduct covert attacks on Russian forces in Syria using secret Kurdish help. The detailed plot would have opened a new battlefield thousands of miles from Ukraine, but in December, Zelensky directed his aides to “cease planning for operations against Russian forces in Syria,” the document says, without explaining why the plan was aborted.

Zelensky, in the recent interview, said he reserved the right to explore a range of military options.

“I have a lot of generals with whom I work,” Zelensky said. “And these are my personal conversations.”

“The war is about the occupation of Ukraine,” he added. “Ukraine must win.”

Khurshudyan reported from Kyiv. Siobhán O’Grady in Kyiv contributed to this report.

The Washington Post · by John Hudson · May 13, 2023

2. For Russians, Reading Is the New Resistance

Books, information, knowledge, understanding, etc., - will set you free.

Every SF, PSYOP, and CA team organizing or supporting resistance should have practical book lists for the appropriate target audience. 

Here is my foundational book list for SF, PSYOP, and CA forces (non-target audience specific - these are recommended for operators and planners).

Recommended Readings

In addition to Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, ARIS, Mao, The USMC Small Wars Manual, Sam Sarkesian, Jack McKuen, and Military and Civilian Reading Lists:

Psychological and Cultural:

1. Ted Gurr – Why Men Rebel, 1970
2. Eric Hoffer – The True Believer, 1951 (23d ed., 2002)
3. Crane Brinton – Anatomy of a Revolution, 1965
4. Anna Simons – “21st Century Cultures of War: Advantage Them,” (FPRI, April 2013)
5. Montgomery McFate – Military Anthropology: Soldiers, Scholars, and Subjects the Margins of Empire (2018)

Practical:

1. Paul Smith, On Political War (1989)
2. China’s Unrestricted Warfare (1999)
3. Gene Sharp – From Dictatorship to Democracy, 2002
4. Saul Alinksy – Rules for Radicals, 1971
5. Mark Boyatt: Special Forces: A Unique National Asset "Through, With and By."
6. Current USAJFKSWCS UW doctrine (Note: USSOCOM UW Doctrine is FOUO)

For Russians, Reading Is the New Resistance

What bestselling books tell us about how Russians are processing the war.

MAY 14, 2023, 6:30 AM

By Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

Foreign Policy · by Andrei Kolesnikov · May 14, 2023

When Russia launched the war that Russians must not call a war—the “special military operation,” in the Kremlin’s parlance—many Russians immediately recognized the Orwellian reality in which they now lived. As forbidden language was replaced with official euphemisms and the authorities launched an increasingly harsh crackdown on dissent, many Russians felt a distinct sense of déjà vu. Suddenly, George Orwell’s 1984, a dystopian novel about a totalitarian regime in a state of perpetual war written in the 1940s, became the most popular fiction book. In 2022, it could be seen in the hands of people strolling on Moscow’s boulevards or lying next to vacationers sunbathing on Kaliningrad’s beaches.

1984 is not the only book on Russians’ wartime reading list, which offers a window into how the book-reading public is processing its country’s increasingly militarist and totalitarian turn. As the economy foundered, laws against opposition tightened, and news of Russia’s military failures in Ukraine began to trickle in, people started buying noticeably fewer business and self-improvement tomes and more fiction. Predictably, escapism was in high demand: Sales of romance, fantasy, science fiction, and detective books have grown especially strongly.

This year has seen a surge in the popularity of books, movies, and TV shows about spies and espionage. Cold War psychology is back as the Kremlin tells Russians they are fighting not Ukraine, but the “collective West.” The genre’s popularity also reflects a growing spy mania in President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, where paranoia reigns about internal enemies and foreign agents.

But the most intriguing part of the Russian reading list is on the nonfiction side. For about two months after the war began in February 2022, the bestseller on the Ozon online marketplace was the Russian translation of Man’s Search for Meaning, a book by the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl. Originally published in 1946 under the German title, A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp, Frankl explores ways to find strength and resilience in the midst of the worst possible adversity and oppression. The book’s revival is not exactly flattering to the Russian regime.

Indeed, if book sales are any guide, there has been a surge in interest in Nazi Germany among Russian readers—and that doesn’t mean the usual fare about Soviet heroism during the Great Patriotic War. Bestsellers among educated Russians include newly translated works, such as Sebastian Haffner’s Defying Hitler: A Memoir, which depicts the transformations taking place in Germany in the 1930s through the eyes of a young lawyer. There is a whole bouquet of parallels that Russian readers will surely recognize as they experience the transformation of Putin’s authoritarian regime to a hybrid totalitarian one: the persecution of dissenters; the progressive Gleichschaltung, or total coordination of public life with the regime; the willingness of ordinary people to obey; the temptations of self-isolation as people attempt to live a parallel, unnoticed life against the background of the unfolding nightmare; the feeling of a wasted life, like Haffner’s father in the book.

Nicholas Stargardt’s book The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-45—published in Russian as The Mobilized Nation—has also become a bestseller, perhaps because Russians have found themselves mobilized in every sense. The book explores mass behavior during war, including the emotional mobilization in support of state power. The book’s popularity is another suggestion that the experience of Nazi society strikes a chord with today’s Russians.

A man waring a dark coat sits on a bench as he reads a Russian translation of George Orwell's book "1984" in Moscow's Pushkinskaya Square. A fence is behind him with an overcast sky and old building with a tower in the distance.

A man reads a Russian translation of George Orwell’s book “1984” in Moscow’s Pushkinskaya Square on April 28, 2021. Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images

In another parallel to the German experience, more Russians are now contemplating collective guilt and responsibility for their regime, the war, and the widespread atrocities committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine. In this respect, the publication of The Question of German Guilt, a series of lectures given by the German psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers in 1945, has come at a very opportune moment.

The question of collective guilt or responsibility arose among the more reflective part of Russian society immediately after the invasion—so powerful was the shock. And these debates have not ceased. What is the difference between guilt and responsibility? Should liberal Russians who hold democratic views, take a pro-Western stance, and have opposed Putin all their lives, feel guilt or at least responsibility for what is happening? Should or could they have done more to oppose Putin? The German author Thomas Mann, taking offense at U.S. government restrictions on exiles like himself, once noted in one of his letters that he had begun to fight Adolf Hitler before the Americans did. The same is true of Russian society: Many people fought against Putin when, for example, European governments and companies were building good working relations with him.

Jaspers brings some clarity to this debate. There is a group of individuals legally guilty of Russia’s crimes, and there are other individuals bearing different degrees of moral responsibility. Ultimately, books like Jaspers’s help readers determine for themselves the extent to which they share responsibility. As the war goes on and Russia is increasingly isolated from the West, these reflections and debates are becoming more and more acute: Some Russians believe, as Haffner writes, that a dictator occupies his own nation before occupying another—while others reject the very idea that Russians are also victims. Russian civil society—split between those who left and those who stayed behind—is not as hopeless as some might believe if these discussions are taking place, and books like Jaspers’s and Haffner’s are being read.

Read More

Graves of mercenaries recruited by the Wagner group and killed during Russia's war in Ukraine are seen covered in flowers at the Beloostrovsky cemetery in St. Petersburg, Russia.

For Russians, It’s the Wild 1990s All Over Again

Overflowing graveyards and other parallels signal a threat to Vladimir Putin’s rule.

An illustration shows a shredded U.S. dollar bill atop a bright fuzzy background for a story about de-dollarization

The Bid to Dethrone the Dollar

The greenback’s dominance is here to stay. Here’s why.

A target depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin is riddled with bullet holes in a shooting range in Lviv, Ukraine, on Feb. 18, 2022.

Russian Guerrillas Are Trying to Violently Overthrow Putin

The Russian president faces a growing threat from his own citizens.

With public protest of any kind now illegal and immediately broken up, reading has also become a form of resistance: By buying these books, Russians are comparing Putin’s regime with the worst examples of totalitarianism. Interestingly, they are looking to Nazi Germany, even though there are countless parallels between the Russian present and their own country’s past. The 1940s and early 1950s under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, in particular, were marked by paranoia and the persecution of perceived traitors, spies, and “rootless cosmopolitans,” in many ways analogous to how today’s dissenters are labeled “foreign agents,” “fifth columnists,” and “national traitors.”

One reason Russians are reading up on Hitler, not Stalin, may be that there is not much popular Russian literature about that era in the Soviet Union. Russia publishes many excellent academic books on the historical details of the Soviet period (as well as much pseudo-historical junk). But clever academic books are for a narrow, specialized readership, and the era when exposing Stalinism was popular among a larger public has long passed. Unlike in some other Soviet successor states—such as the Baltic countries and Ukraine—there is today no mass comprehension in Russia of the dark pages of the country’s own history, which is probably why the general public is more at ease with foreign experience. And it’s important to keep in mind that books on everyday life in Nazi Germany are bestsellers not among wide masses, but among a more or less intellectual segment of society.

Reading about past European dictatorships as a lens into the Russian present goes beyond the interest in Nazi Germany. Already in multiple printings is a new book by Alexander Baunov, my colleague at the newly inaugurated Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin. Written for a Russian audience, The End of the Regime: How Three European Dictatorships Ended is devoted to the evolution and fall of the Franco dictatorship in Spain, the Salazar regime in Portugal, and the military junta in Greece. While the book makes no mention of Putin, Russian readers are good at sniffing out analogies. They dream of the Putin regime ending, too, or at least evolving into a less harsh form of governance. Naturally, therefore, they are interested in the process of how dictatorships fall and transition to another form of government. In Baunov’s book, readers are looking for examples—and for glimmers of hope.

Unwittingly, one of the Kremlin’s own policies may be boosting sales of books casting an unflattering light on the regime. A 2022 amendment to the law on the status of foreign agents requires that all books, articles, or other publications produced with the help of foreign funding to be prominently labeled as the work of a foreign agent. True to the dictum that forbidden fruit is always sweeter, that label will work like advertising to attract certain readers. The label has been slapped on many of the best and most popular Russian fiction and nonfiction authors, including Boris Akunin, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Dmitry Glukhovsky, and Dmitry Bykov.

One crucial resemblance to Soviet times is the newly political role of reading. Unable to protest openly, people are expressing a different kind of resistance by reading literature that is banned, discouraged, or casts an unfavorable light on the regime—if only by comparison. At first glance, this kind of resistance might not seem like much, especially given the ongoing war, which a majority of Russians say they support. Yet the act of reading these books should not be dismissed lightly. It matters for the future of Russia which books its citizens are reading, and what kind of worldview they are forming as a result.

Books are independently selected by FP editors. FP earns an affiliate commission on anything purchased through links to Amazon.com on this page.

Foreign Policy · by Andrei Kolesnikov · May 14, 2023

3. How the Ukraine War Ends: Putin Gets Crushed by 'Guerilla' Fighters?

How the Ukraine War Ends: Putin Gets Crushed by 'Guerilla' Fighters?

19fortyfive.com · by Peter Suciu · May 13, 2023

On Tuesday morning, it was reported that anti-Putin Russians operating as the Freedom of Russia Legion conducted a raid that damaged a Sukhoi Su-24 (NATO reporting name: Fencer) tactical bomber at the Sukhoi Superjet Company’s aviation plant in Novosibirsk, in the south of Siberia. The unit announced its actions via the Telegram social messaging platform.

“As we were informed, the plane was successfully burnt out. It will no longer need repairs,” the group stated.

The guerrilla force added, “You can’t fight for peace by killing children and women in a neighboring country. The Kremlin has indeed ‘managed to repeat’ the crimes of the Nazi regime against humanity, and everyone involved will be held accountable for it in court.”

The Freedom of Russia Legion was formed in March of last year. It is made up of defectors of the Russian military, as well as other Russian and Belarusian volunteers, and reportedly consists of two battalions, and its members have called for the preservation of a united and indivisible Russia within the borders of 1991.

It now fights under a white-blue-white tricolor flag, while its members claim to stand for democracy, individual liberty, and against separatism within Russia, according to its Telegram posts.

Its members share a common goal, the downfall of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Kremlin has countered that the Freedom of Russia Legion doesn’t actually exist, and is instead a Ukrainian PR project.

21st Century Partisans

The Freedom of Russia Legion is not alone in conducting guerrilla operations.

In January, a group calling itself BOAK (Russian for “Combat Organization of Anarcho-Communists”) claimed responsibility for damaging a section of tracks along the Trans-Siberian Railway in Russia’s Krasnoyarsk region. The rail line is used by the Russian military to transport supplies to Ukraine.

According to Ukrainian intelligence, there had been 40 acts carried out against the Kremlin by anti-Putin Russians last year. However, some of these efforts aren’t entirely meant to support Ukraine – rather, they’re simply against the current regime. The BOAK group could be described as operating as part of the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” type of scenario, at least for now.

“We are not only against Putin and the war but also against Russian imperialism and against the existing capitalist system of oppression in general,” a BOAK representative told Al Jazeera by email.

Moreover, despite being “communist” in name, it is still very much at odds with Russia’s Communist Party, which embraces Stalinism and has enthusiastically rallied behind Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We are disgusted by this fratricidal bloodbath, and we believe only by halting Putin’s aggression we can hope for this to stop and to never happen again,” the BOAK spokesperson added.

Though Moscow largely denies that these groups even exist, just last December, Putin signed legislation into law that punishes the crime of sabotage with up to a life term in prison; as well as up to 20 years for aiding, training, or organizing saboteurs; and up to 10 years for being part of a sabotage group.

Despite the threats, it is likely that such groups will continue to conduct operations to bring down the regime.

Just as the Tsar was so hated by members of the revolutionary movement in the early 20th century, Putin and his government now face a very similar threat.

Author Experience and Expertise:

A Senior Editor for 19FortyFive, Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu.

19fortyfive.com · by Peter Suciu · May 13, 2023

4. Soldier, single mom of two, perseveres to find balance

Jim Perkins posted this commentary on LinkedIn in response to the article below.

Jim Perkins

Jim Perkins

• 2nd

• 2nd

Sr. Director, Product Management @ Salesforce - Modernizing the US government one legacy system at a time

Sr. Director, Product Management @ Salesforce - Modernizing the US government one legacy system at a time

1h • Edited •

1h • Edited •

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7063483949485809664/

YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN, ARMY MOTHERS

Some Army public affairs officer thinks this is a feel good story of grit and perseverance, but as a father, Army spouse, and officer in the Army Reserve this just reads like a strong argument for not joining the Army. Go figure, the Army published this right before Mother’s Day

Nobody has children so they can wake them before dawn and drop them at child care for 12 hours. Nobody thinks it’s reasonable to send your kids away to grandparents for weeks and not be able to take a day off work to connect with them.

If you ask people to choose between serving their country and this lifestyle, they’ll pick family - and they do in droves. The military can’t meet recruiting numbers, but the military actually has a retention problem that drives their recruiting challenge.

This military culture of today is just 1,000 policy patches slapped onto the system of the 1960’s. At some point, the DoD needs to consider when wholesale reform is needed (the answer is yesterday) because incremental isn’t working.

The Gates Commission that created the All Volunteer Force didn’t even consider women in the military, but today over 50% of married female service members are dual military. Instead of simply allowing women to serve, this data means that the DoD must design a system that intentionally accommodates dual military families (among other populations).

The DoD just set aside $250M to pay to move pets during PCS, but have they seriously evaluated whether relentless moves every 1-4 years is even necessary let alone beneficial? How would readiness be impacted by inter-post transfers or leveraging digital technologies (and occasional travel) to facilitate remote work? Not work from home, but simply working from a different base.

In working groups for AVF reform, these are the discussions that generate the most pearl clutching. Senior DoD leaders who opted to spend 30+ years dragging their families around the world are largely too afraid or biased to even pilot test these types of changes. They want more child care hours, not better working conditions. This is the social equivalent of “faster horses” instead of cars.

The bill is coming due and these same people will quickly blame society for not wanting to serve when they are responsible for not keeping the contract worthwhile.

Happy Mothers Day, ladies.

​

Soldier, single mom of two, perseveres to find balance

https://www.army.mil/article/266651

By Joe Lacdan, Army News ServiceMay 11, 2023​

FORT CAVAZOS, Texas — Her day begins at 3:30 a.m., when Sgt. Kathryn Daniels hydrates and prepares herself for work as a Stryker systems mechanic.

Before sun rises, the 24-year-old mother has woken her two children, Isabella, 3, and son, Tiago, 15 months, and helped them put on their clothes for preschool. At 6 a.m. she drives 20 minutes from the family’s home in base housing to drop her kids off at their child care center just outside of the Texas installation.

Then already wearing her black exercise sweats, she hustles back to her unit’s formation at the Fort Cavazos motorpool. For an hour she does pushups, sit-ups and a short run with Soldiers in her unit.

She returns home to shower, quickly change into her combat uniform and tie her hair in time for an eight-hour workday.

Occasionally, she will get a call from the child care center when one of her children gets sick. Then she must scramble from managing Soldier mechanics at the motorpool’s Stryker bay and call the family’s pediatrician. Sometimes, she has to leave work to take one of her children to the doctor.

She remains in the bay until 5 p.m., depending on the number of vehicles that need maintenance. Then she must drive to the day care center to take her kids home. After preparing dinner and feeding her children, she puts them to bed at 8:30 p.m. Then spends time cleaning the house. “So, it’s just go, go, go until 9 o’clock for me,” she said.

Daniels dedicates time to review disciplinary actions or paperwork she needs to file. And then she has few brief moments for herself before she finally goes to bed at around 10:30.

Being a single mother of two and a Soldier can be a daunting task. But Daniels, one of about 9,800 single moms serving in the Army today, weathers that challenge every day.

“You're doing a two-person job as one person,” she said.

When Daniels and her daughter’s father, a fellow Soldier, separated in 2021, she unexpectedly had more responsibility placed upon her shoulders.

She became the sole caretaker of Isabella, but then in February 2022 life threw her another curve. She took the role of lead supervisor of her squad at the Fort Cavazos motorpool vehicle repair shop shortly before giving birth to her son.

“It was like a sink or swim situation where I needed to learn how to take charge and get everything done that need to be done without any prior knowledge,” Daniels said. “And that really tested me.”

To fulfill her duties both as Soldier and as a mother, Daniels meticulously plans each segment of her day, and holds herself to high standards.

At times she has struggled. During one of her pregnancies, she could barely keep pace with other Soldiers at Master Resilience Training. She said initially when she enlisted in the Army in 2018, she didn’t always have leaders that empathized with a mothers’ needs.

She said that after giving birth to Isabella in 2019, she felt pressure to return to duty before she had fully recovered from her pregnancy.

“When I first came [into the Army] it was such a different environment,” she said. “When I had my daughter, and fighting through that kind of stigmatism when you're pregnant, it's super difficult to get that … I don't want to say respect, but it's really hard.”

Fortunately for Daniels, that burden has become lighter.

Her command staff at Fort Cavazos has accommodated her needs, allowing her to take additional time to pump breast milk after the birth of her son. The Stryker Brigade cadre set up special rooms at the motorpool for new moms to breastfeed. The space includes a refrigerator, water station and a couch.

In April 2022, Secretary of the Army Christine E. Wormuth approved the Parenthood, Pregnancy and Postpartum Army Directive which called for measures that provide provisions for new and expectant mothers.

The 12 policy changes included specific areas for new moms to pump breast milk, extensions up to 24 months for Soldier-moms lactating while in training or on deployment. It also opens more professional military training and temporary promotions for pregnant and postpartum NCOs.

“We're not punished for having children,” Daniels said. “Like, there's no shame in it. When I first had my daughter, it was very frowned upon to have problems with your children.”

“And now if there's an issue then they're like, ‘Alright, let us know if you need help.’ And I haven't seen it like this until after having my son. And it’s made my stress level, go way, way, down.”

Going the extra mile

At a hotel in Memphis, Daniels reunites with her two children on a March afternoon.

She and her friend, Sgt. Ke Spears, have driven nine hours from Killeen, Texas, to Tennessee to meet Daniels’ parents who cared for her children while Daniels spent 14 days in field training. Daniels’ parents have travelled 10 hours west from Daniels’ hometown near Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina.

Less than 24 hours before, Spears had just picked up Daniels from the Killeen-Fort Cavazos Regional Airport after returning to Texas from her training.

Daniels, Spears and Daniels’ parents spend an hour dining at a restaurant before making the nine-hour trip home. She and Spears must still report for duty at Fort Cavazos the following day.

“[Being a single mom] could be extremely challenging,” said Spears, who has a four-year-old son herself. “Sometimes you have leadership that do not have family or have not been in that situation before. But you just have to have the right attitude and right mindset and wake up every morning and say ‘Hey, I got to do this for my baby, no matter what.’”

The two women bonded when Daniels took over as squad leader for Stryker mechanics while Spears became a lead supervisor of logistics.

They both knew the struggles of being a single mother in the Army, while also taking duties as young leaders.

They coordinated their schedules tightly around their duties at the motorpool, fitness training and their children’s day care and health care needs. They spend time in each other’s homes while also coordinating play dates for their children.

However, the uncertainty of child care looms every time they must deploy, train in the field or go on temporary duty. During each separation, she must prepare enough snacks and pack enough clothing for each day apart.

Daniels knows that the more difficult time apart from her kids is coming. Daniels will soon deploy as part of a security force assistance brigade — special training units that travel to locations throughout the globe. She faces the uncertainty of not knowing how long she will be gone. It could be anywhere from a couple weeks to nine months.

But she knows she can count on her Family Care Plan, which provides care for military members when a Soldier deploys, and the support of Daniels’ family and friends.

Daniels said that she relies on her ability to plan and manage her schedule to find balance as a single mother and Soldier.

“I've just known it for so long now,” Daniels said. “At some point … it's not going to be this hard. I guess that’s kind of what pushes me.”

5.nEU and US to pledge joint action over China concerns

EU and US to pledge joint action over China concerns

Reuters · by Philip Blenkinsop

BRUSSELS, May 13 (Reuters) - Washington and the EU will pledge joint action to tackle concerns focused on China about non-market practices and coordinate their export controls on semiconductors and other goods at a meeting this month, a draft statement showed.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, European Commission Vice-President Margrethe Vestager and other senior officials are due to meet for the fourth edition of the EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council (TTC) in Lulea, Sweden, on May 30-31.

The draft statement seen by Reuters said the two sides would address non-market practices and economic coercion, and aim to hold regular talks on efforts to stop their companies' knowledge linked to outbound investment supporting technologies of strategic rivals - an oblique reference to China.

They will also coordinate on their export controls on "sensitive items" - including goods that have a military use - and semiconductors, said the statement, which only mentions China twice and could still be changed before the meeting.

Brussels says it considers China a partner in some fields, an economic competitor and a strategic rival. The European Union plans to recalibrate its China policy, recognising coordination with a more hawkish United States is essential.

Highlighting the medical devices sector in China, the document said the transatlantic partners are "exploring possible actions" over the threat posed by non-market policies and practices.

They also aim to cooperate on efforts to counter foreign manipulation of information, including "China's amplification of Russian disinformation narratives about the war" in Ukraine.

The two sides also said they were committed to working with the G7 to coordinate action to counteract acts of economic coercion, such as the trade restrictions the EU says China has imposed on EU member Lithuania.

Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop Editing by Helen Popper

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Reuters · by Philip Blenkinsop

6. The Bid to Dethrone the Dollar: The greenback’s dominance is here to stay. Here’s why.

I defer to the economic experts but this does seem like good news. I remain concerned and worried about what is happening with the dollar and the global financial system

Excerpts:

For both trade financing and reserves, China’s long-standing efforts to expand the use of the yuan have failed to make much of a dent. In March, the dollar accounted for 41.7 percent of global payments—just slightly eclipsing the yuan’s share of 2.4 percent, according to data from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. Similarly, last year, 58 percent of the world’s foreign exchange reserves were held in dollars, compared to just 2.7 percent in Chinese yuan. It’s hard to replace the dollar when one doesn’t allow free convertibility, which severely limits the yuan’s international appeal.

“The numbers are still showing that the dollar is still the dominant currency,” Subacchi said.

Beijing will keep trying, and keep failing. The yuan’s not convertible, the government controls capital flows, and even its value is manipulated by Beijing. You can’t do business with IOUs, but you can always do business with a bushel of greenbacks.

“I think there will be incremental moves to make greater use of the yuan to denominate China’s trade with commodity-exporting countries,” Setser said. “And then I think China will discover that it is difficult to fully go much further and to really radically change the structure of how it settles its trade, because it still wants to sell to the U.S., still wants to sell to Europe. Its economy doesn’t balance without significant exports.”

The Bid to Dethrone the Dollar

The greenback’s dominance is here to stay. Here’s why.

By Christina Lu

Click + to receive email alerts for new stories written by Christina Lu Christina Lu

Foreign Policy · by Christina Lu · May 12, 2023

In the millennia that humans have roamed the earth, the world has cycled through a number of obscure, even unusual, currencies. The ancient Mayans are believed to have used chocolate as money; traders in the Solomon Islands favored dolphin teeth. Yap islanders, at least those with strong backs, tended toward massive stones. The British pound, the oldest global currency still used today, anchored the global economy, until its fall in the early, mid, and late 20th century.

In the millennia that humans have roamed the earth, the world has cycled through a number of obscure, even unusual, currencies. The ancient Mayans are believed to have used chocolate as money; traders in the Solomon Islands favored dolphin teeth. Yap islanders, at least those with strong backs, tended toward massive stones. The British pound, the oldest global currency still used today, anchored the global economy, until its fall in the early, mid, and late 20th century.

Today, it is the dollar that reigns supreme. The world’s biggest economy (probably) can print greenbacks at will. The dollar is the world’s most widely held reserve currency and also dominates global trade. Oil, no matter how many times Saudi Arabia and China hold their breath, is still priced in the dollar. Most other major commodities are, too. As is pretty much everything else.

Yet talk of de-dollarization is in the air. Fueled by fears of U.S. sanctions, Russia and China appear to be ramping up efforts, yet again, to use the renminbi (RMB) in trade with partners, while BRICS countries are weighing a new common currency as yet another alternative.

“Every night I ask myself why all countries have to base their trade on the dollar,” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva lamented last month. “Who was it that decided that the dollar was the currency after the disappearance of the gold standard?”

First of all, gold bugs, dollar dominance came first. And second, don’t believe the hype about the demise of the dollar.

Wait, back up. What even is de-dollarization?

De-dollarization refers to a country’s effort to become less dependent on the dollar, whether by using another currency to settle cross-border trade or diversifying reserves away from the dollar by turning to gold, the Chinese yuan, or bitcoin. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the greenback has become less vital for that country’s economy—or that its reign is over. (Especially when the U.S. Federal Reserve’s decisions on interest rates mark the tune that nearly every other country dances to.)

“To me, de-dollarization just means a government’s ability to reduce its dependence or reliance on the dollar,” said Daniel McDowell, a professor of political science at Syracuse University. “I think the key thing here is to try to distinguish or separate the concept of de-dollarization from the end of dollar dominance. I don’t think those two things have to go together.”

What’s with all of the hype now?

Much of the current attention is driven by Russia, which has ramped up its use of the yuan to cope with sweeping Western sanctions. After the Kremlin invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the G-7 hit back with a spate of punishing economic measures. That strangled the Russian economy—and forced Moscow to rapidly seek alternatives to both the dollar and euro.

“There’s no doubt that the Russians have been forced to de-dollarize and also de-euroize their trade,” said Brad Setser, a former senior advisor to the U.S. trade representative during the Biden administration, now at the Council on Foreign Relations. “There is evidence that Russia in particular is making greater use of the yuan, and it’s also clear that the Chinese and others are looking for opportunities to expand the use of the yuan in trade settlement.”

China’s recent efforts have only added fuel to the fire. As part of China’s bid to internationalize its currency, a number of countries beyond Russia—including Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, India, Argentina, Brazil, Pakistan, Iraq, and Bolivia—have recently either traded in the yuan or expressed their willingness to do so in the future. They are spinning their tires: Cross-border transactions denominated in RMB are still a tiny fraction of business done in the dollar or the euro.

Why are they so desperate to diversify away from the dollar?

As Western nations levy harsh sanctions against Moscow, Beijing is worried that it could be next. Given the current fraught geopolitical climate, China hopes that reducing its reliance on the dollar will help act as a buffer against the threat of U.S. sanctions.

“I don’t think that any Chinese economists believe that they can actually supplant the dollar globally,” said Gerard DiPippo, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Their goals are more modest. It’s about mitigating Chinese banks’ sanctions exposure, which is very hard to do.”

It’s not just the threat of sanctions that’s prompting these moves, either. For some countries, it’s out of necessity; they have to turn to the yuan, or other forms of currency, when they are unable to access dollars. Argentina, for instance, announced that it would use the yuan to purchase Chinese goods as it grapples with shrinking dollar reserves.

Countries that are economically dependent on China may also be attempting to curry favor with Beijing, which has been encouraging the internationalization of the yuan. “It could just be about trying to signal to China that we’re on your team and we want to help you there,” McDowell said. “So some of it’s political and symbolic.”

Is this new?

No, this has been underway for years. China’s efforts to internationalize the yuan date back to at least the 2008 global financial crisis, when American banks stopped lending and Beijing was left in the lurch. Ever since, China has worked to build up its resilience and expand the use of the yuan in trade, including by striking a spate of bilateral currency swap deals and establishing the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS).

“It’s really nothing new,” said Zongyuan Zoe Liu, a fellow for international political economy at the Council on Foreign Relations and FP columnist. “It’s not that China has just recently been doing it, or they just suddenly decided this is a good idea. They have been doing this for a while.”

But China and Washington don’t get along. What has given impetus to the latest push is broader dissatisfaction with America’s economic stewardship, starting with a spray-and-pray approach to economic sanctions and ending, or just beginning, with the current debt ceiling crisis.

“Geopolitical concerns have become a bigger driver of the push in interest in internationalizing the currency,” McDowell said. “I think Chinese policymakers are concerned about being sort of facing similar kinds of financial pressures that Russia has faced at some point in the future.”

Can these efforts threaten the dollar’s dominance?

Not anytime soon. Even though the yuan has been increasingly used in international payments for bilateral trade, the “actual share is tiny” in comparison to the dollar, said Paola Subacchi, a professor at Queen Mary, University of London.

For both trade financing and reserves, China’s long-standing efforts to expand the use of the yuan have failed to make much of a dent. In March, the dollar accounted for 41.7 percent of global payments—just slightly eclipsing the yuan’s share of 2.4 percent, according to data from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. Similarly, last year, 58 percent of the world’s foreign exchange reserves were held in dollars, compared to just 2.7 percent in Chinese yuan. It’s hard to replace the dollar when one doesn’t allow free convertibility, which severely limits the yuan’s international appeal.

“The numbers are still showing that the dollar is still the dominant currency,” Subacchi said.

Beijing will keep trying, and keep failing. The yuan’s not convertible, the government controls capital flows, and even its value is manipulated by Beijing. You can’t do business with IOUs, but you can always do business with a bushel of greenbacks.

“I think there will be incremental moves to make greater use of the yuan to denominate China’s trade with commodity-exporting countries,” Setser said. “And then I think China will discover that it is difficult to fully go much further and to really radically change the structure of how it settles its trade, because it still wants to sell to the U.S., still wants to sell to Europe. Its economy doesn’t balance without significant exports.”

Foreign Policy · by Christina Lu · May 12, 2023

7. U.S.-Thai Relations Have An Alliance Problem

All our alliances require individual management. There is no one size fits all in alliance management.

U.S.-Thai Relations Have An Alliance Problem

No matter who wins the upcoming elections, Bangkok will keep leaning toward China.

By Benjamin Zawacki, the author of Thailand: Shifting Ground Between the US and a Rising China and a 2022-23 Mansfield-Luce Scholar.

Foreign Policy · by Benjamin Zawacki · May 12, 2023

This weekend, Thailand will hold its first national election in more than four years, and only its second since a coup d’état nine years ago. Regardless of its outcome, the old adage that “politics stops at the water’s edge” is certain to hold concerning the kingdom’s prevailing foreign policy orientation toward China, and to result in further weakening of its treaty alliance with the United States.

Last year was clearly the United States’ strongest in Thailand since the coup. In February, in the Biden administration’s report on the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy—the first to be released publicly from the White House—Thailand was mentioned on page one, and the first-ever combined U.S.-Thailand Strategic and Defense Dialogue took place in Washington in May. The Thais then remained in town for the U.S.-ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Special Summit, the first ever to be held in Washington, D.C., and effectively an apology for the Trump administration’s treatment of Thailand during its ASEAN chair year in 2019.

Thailand then joined 12 other nations in signing on to Biden’s new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity. An agreement in June concerning technology that detects threats to military installations was little-noticed but significant, as it was negotiated by the U.S. Air Force, which had expressed concern about increasing Thai-Chinese air force cooperation since 2015.

During the summer, the United States stepped up its ground game in Thailand with a series of high-level visits. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin discussed military modernization and interoperability with his Thai counterparts. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Thai Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai signed a bilateral communiqué they extolled as an expansion of the “communiqué in Washington 60 years ago that solidified the US-Thai alliance,” signed by then-Thai Foreign Minister Thanat Khoman and then-U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk. And the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok received a new ambassador in Robert F. Godec, who differed from his predecessor, appointed by former U.S. President Donald Trump, in having held two previous ambassadorships during 37 years of foreign service experience.

The fourth visitor arrived in November accompanied by controversy. On the one hand, the attendance of Vice President Kamala Harris at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) gathering could only be seen as the kind of quintessentially American mistake it had been making in Thailand for 25 years. After Bangkok agreed to change the original APEC dates to accommodate midterm U.S. congressional elections, Biden still chose to attend the moveable feast of his granddaughter’s wedding over a gathering of 15 fellow heads of government. The Thais gave Chinese President Xi Jinping a rock star’s welcome and, six months on, have largely forgiven the White House but not forgotten.

Yet somewhat blunting the damage was that Harris was in Thailand at all, after skipping it on a trip to the region in 2021, and that earlier in the month Biden himself had attended the ASEAN summit in Cambodia and upgraded U.S.-ASEAN relations to a “comprehensive strategic partnership.” To the last in-person ASEAN summit, Trump had sent a national security advisor who was less than two months into his job and had never worked in Asia.

In contrast to a banner year for America, Chinese relations with Thailand in 2022 hit an equally rare rough patch. Beginning in January, Beijing upset trade ties with the continued the closure of its land borders, which Thais depend upon for many of their exports of rubber, electrical parts, produce, and other perishables to China. The same happened to Thai seafood, cars, and other goods when turnaround times at ports in Shanghai and Shenzhen went from hours to weeks. Nor could coveted Chinese travelers leave their country: Thailand’s total 11.5 million tourists in 2022 was nearly equal to those from China alone in 2019.

Pre-COVID-19, the Chinese had also bought the largest share of Thai condominiums sold to foreigners—nearly 10 times larger than the next country. During the first quarter of 2022, however, transfers to Chinese buyers dropped by 38 percent as city after city in China went into lockdown. This hit both Thailand’s private and public sectors hard, as its post-coup governments had bet heavily on unchecked condo construction. Overall, Thailand’s trade deficit in goods and services with China, which had soared from $21 billion in 2020 to $30 billion in 2021, crested $31 billion last year when it might have decreased substantially instead.

This concerned the Thais, but they also knew that China’s zero-COVID policy would end eventually. What actually unsettled them, according to this author’s official sources, was Beijing’s abrupt replacement of policies and practices governed by information and a balance of interests—and which had fueled its growth for three decades—with those driven by ideology.

Thais welcomed China’s belated opening in December but worried about what newly arrived tourists might be carrying with them, since Beijing continued to share risible COVID-19 statistics when it deigned to share them at all. From the start it had made available to its citizens only domestic vaccines, refusing to acquire Western-developed mRNA versions and even sowing disinformation about them. This, too, mattered to Thailand, since Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines, which it purchased from China, had long proven less effective than the vaccines the United States and other Western countries gave them.

While China’s signature Belt and Road Initiative had never been prominent in Thailand otherwise, there was hope that a high-speed rail connecting China’s Kunming with Bangkok would finally gain momentum. December 2021 had seen the completion of the first link between Kunming and Vientiane, Laos. Then in April 2022, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi pressed his counterpart, Don, for faster construction during an in-person meeting. News of this pressure reached the public, however, exposing both a coercive underside to Chinese diplomacy and the perception of Thai subservience. Not surprisingly then, the rail’s progress remained slow at the end of the year, and China’s grander vision of eventually extending it to Singapore seemed ever more faint.

Nor did Wang’s promotion of China’s new Global Security Initiative gain much traction during a visit to Bangkok in July, perhaps because Chinese engineers broke ground the previous month on a section of Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base to which China had reportedly been given exclusive access. Thailand has no desire to see the Chinese project their presence even further—as they also did last year in Laos and Myanmar—on its three largest borders.

In August, Beijing sent its JH-7AI fighters for the first time to partake in annual Sino-Thai Falcon Strike air force exercises, but the headlines were stolen by trouble below the surface. China’s 2017 deal to sell Thailand up to three S-26T Yuan-class submarines was impeded when Germany, slated to supply the first sub’s engine, refused to deliver it to China if it was to be resold to Thailand. Aware that much of the Thai public viewed the deal as out of touch with COVID-19 (and military) contingencies, Bangkok declined China’s offer to install an engine of its own making.

This reversal of great power fortunes would seemingly give reason to believe that a new government in Bangkok will inherit a U.S.-Thai alliance moving from strength to strength. The United States itself has certainly not let up in 2023, sending the most troops in a decade for the Cobra Gold military exercises in February, promoting this year’s 190th anniversary of the bilateral Treaty of Amity of Commerce, and looking to complete a new U.S. Consulate General in Chiang Mai by Christmas.

But there is a problem: Taiwan.

On Aug. 3, 2022, then-Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi concluded a two-day visit to Taiwan that triggered large-scale Chinese naval-air force exercises around the island. Pelosi was the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit since 1997, but her trip was also part of a pattern of tighter U.S.-Taiwan relations going back to Trump’s days as president-elect. Trump’s actions had alarmed a Thailand chronically averse to rumblings of regional tension and instability—but were tempered by a belief that they might pass with his presidency.

That did not happen. In May, Biden stated for the second time that the United States would defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack. The third time, containing the additional point that U.S. troops would be deployed, occurred just seven weeks after China’s partial blockade of the island in response to Pelosi’s visit and just days after the U.S. Senate passed a new Taiwan Policy Act containing $6.5 billion in military assistance.

Pelosi’s visit and Biden’s words, rendering U.S. “strategic ambiguity” on Taiwan far less ambiguous, got the Thais shaking their heads and wringing their hands. In the eight months since her visit, this author has yet to speak with a single Thai official, policymaker, or relevant senior professional who does not think that the United States alone—not China, not both—is responsible for renewed uncertainty and apprehension regarding Taiwan.

The irony is that also on Aug. 3, 2022, the same day Pelosi’s visit ended and eight months after the Thai cabinet approved $414 million to purchase four F-35A fighter jets from the United States, Thailand’s House of Representatives approved $14.7 million to initiate the procurement. Its timing raised uncomfortable questions of where, when, and for what purpose such next-generation jets might be scrambled.

At the same time, as singular and significant an issue as Taiwan is, it is also symbolic of a much larger current running against timely and successful U.S. attempts to regain lost ground in Thailand: the People’s Republic of China. Put simply, to Washington, China is a competitor, adversary, and even threat; to Thailand, it is a cooperative partner, friend, and source of stability. While the latter characterization warrants the occasional qualification, the two positions are not only opposite, but largely opposing.

This current includes the South China Sea, about which the United States and Thailand agree only on the most basic of principles, and Hong Kong, where the United States has condemned and Thailand condoned Chinese repression. It also includes a post-coup Myanmar and an occupied Ukraine, which have likewise seen the United States react with outrage and calls for action, and Thailand with silence and straw men—responses at least amenable to, if not outright consistent with, Beijing’s interests and policies. Indeed, as one of the first attempts since 1941 to annex a sovereign nation transpires on NATO’s doorstep, Thailand happens to be one of only three major non-NATO allies in the whole of East Asia. Yet it joined just 34 other countries last October in abstaining from a vote to condemn Russia’s invasion in the United Nations General Assembly.

Thus, even as the United States increased its engagement with Thailand in 2022 on issues of mutual concern in Thailand, its bigger-picture concerns informing that engagement were not being viewed by Thai counterparts through the same lens. More importantly, U.S. action in those areas, particularly but not solely in Taiwan, either widened preexisting gaps between Washington and Bangkok or created new ones.

Under these conditions, the U.S.-Thai alliance has simply become an empty vessel. When the United States and Thailand first initialed their treaty alliance via the 1962 Thanat-Rusk communiqué, China and the fear of communist infiltration, insurrection, and/or invasion was the reason for both countries to participate. By the turn of the 21st century, the Cold War had been won, but a new War on Terror would begin—with Southeast Asia as its “second front”—and again, Washington came calling in Bangkok. Less threatened and thus less exercised than previously, Thailand nonetheless cooperated with the United States for more than a decade in that war, often citing their bilateral treaty alliance and winning for itself major non-NATO ally status as well.

The third time, however, ever since Trump branded China a peer competitor early in his tenure, the Thais have listened politely to U.S. charges against the Chinese and just as politely set them aside. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” had resonance during the Cold War; 40 years on, Bangkok sees only friends—and alliances are not formed for friends, but against enemies and adversaries.

Geopolitically, alliances by definition apply to big-picture and clear-cut concerns, such as invasions and coups, and are often linked to ideology as much as to interests. They are prominent in a country’s identity, in how it sees itself, and what it stands for; and in its image, how it is defined and seen by others. They are “as long as it takes” commitments, transcending quotidian issues and periodic differences, and are sometimes—blood being thicker than water—the result or cause of bloodshed.

During Blinken’s visit to Thailand last July, the full name of the high-level document he and Don signed was the United States-Thailand Communiqué on Strategic Alliance and Partnership. That final word, partnership, signifies a major, if muted, concession by both sides. For the Thais, decades of beseeching the United States to conceive the alliance in nonmilitary terms—during the 1980s wave of protectionism, the 1997 financial crisis, the 2010 unrest in Bangkok—has finally been accepted as a lost cause. For the Americans, the same is true regarding repeated and increasing attempts to convince Thailand that China (and its constituent issues in Taiwan and elsewhere) is an adversary.

The communiqué’s contents are even more revealing, as the stated goal to “Advance Our Treaty Alliance” is just the ninth of 15 numbered paragraphs and says little beyond “promoting regional peace and security.” The rest of the document focuses on supply chains, criminal networks, public health, food security, energy, digital economy, climate change, cyber security, and a host of other issues—nearly all of which are the subject of U.S. engagement with nearly all other countries in the world with which it engages, including China. No alliance is required; a partnership will do.

Unfortunately, the communiqué’s paragraph on “core principles” also speaks more to past alignment than to a shared approach to present or future governance. For the past two decades, Thai governments of every stripe and color have at least implicitly adopted the “China model” of authoritarian capitalism in their foreign and domestic affairs: How else does one explain Thailand’s affinity for militaries and “strong men” at home as well as abroad? Not for nothing has the United States twice excluded Thailand from its Summit for Democracy.

The United States had a banner year in Thailand in 2022, deepening a partnership it had for too long left untended. “At the water’s edge,” however, beginning but not ending in Taiwan, new lines and limits were drawn that will require more than a single election—and more than the mere rattling of sabers—to cross. Until and unless the United States and Thailand find their “alliance” in a genuine crucible, a partnership it will remain.

Foreign Policy · by Benjamin Zawacki · May 12, 2023

8. From Rahmbo to Rahm-bassador: How an unlikely diplomat has wooed Japan

Excerpts:

Just as he rode the “L” regularly as mayor of Chicago, Emanuel takes the subway around Tokyo. This has endeared him to the Japanese public, which has never seen a U.S. ambassador who prefers public transportation over being chauffeured, and earned him the nickname “tetsu-ota,” or train geek.

He stands out in other ways, too.

It wasn’t until he’d been here for six months that Emanuel, who talks with his hands but is half a finger short (it was cut off by a meat slicer while he worked at Arby’s as a teen), learned that a missing digit gives off an ominous vibe in Japan. This is because the yakuza, or the mob, is known for amputating fingers (although usually pinkies) as punishment.

Emanuel and his wife, Amy Rule, have taken to Japan, especially the food scene. They like to explore cocktail bars and restaurants, from casual izakaya bars and food courts in the basements of Tokyo department stores to Michelin-starred eateries.

He misses spicy food — most Japanese food is mild — but says he’s learned that Japanese cuisine is “so much more complex” than simply sushi. Although he adds he can’t get enough of the sprawling fish and food markets.

When it comes to alliance matters, Emanuel has his hands in seemingly every issue, including tasks that typically wouldn’t involve an ambassador. He’s making calls, negotiating prices, giving political messaging tips to Japanese officials and reinforcing the alliance, especially if it’s in a way that will catch China’s attention.

From Rahmbo to Rahm-bassador: How an unlikely diplomat has wooed Japan

The Washington Post · by Michelle Ye Hee Lee · May 14, 2023

Asia

By

Updated May 14, 2023 at 2:52 a.m. EDT|Published May 14, 2023 at 2:00 a.m. EDT

TOKYO — Tokyo’s Pride Parade is about to begin and Rahm Emanuel, the American ambassador to Japan who’s supposed to be kicking off the march, is buried somewhere inside the crowd.

LGBTQ rights activists are greeting him like a celebrity. Then he’s spotted talking with U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), a Japanese American and gay member of Congress who is in town for the event. But wasn’t he just over there, chatting with a Japanese lawmaker?

If there’s one word that describes Emanuel’s approach to his new diplomatic incarnation, it’s dynamic. And that dynamism will be on full display this weekend, when the Group of Seven summit takes place in Hiroshima and Emanuel will no doubt be everywhere.

Being ambassador to Japan is an important but typically cushy appointment, managing an alliance that has remained largely stable for seven decades and has been bestowed to political giants like Caroline Kennedy, former vice president Walter Mondale and former Senate majority leader Howard Baker.

Yet for Emanuel, 63, his schedule here rivals his time as White House chief of staff or as mayor of Chicago. He has been an unusually hands-on, visible and outspoken American ambassador. The kind that Japan has never seen before.

By the time he came down the spiral staircase of his official residence shortly after 8 a.m. on a recent day a Post reporter spent with him, he’d already taken calls from U.S. officials before the East Coast evening. Those calls resume once he’s done with his Japanese workday, when Washington, which is currently 13 hours behind Tokyo, wakes up.

Emanuel’s nomination for the posting in 2021 grabbed headlines in Tokyo because he had the trifecta the Japanese government covets most in a U.S. ambassador: proximity to the president, to congressional leadership and Democratic insiders.

But even as his close ties to the Biden administration were welcomed in Japan, his appointment still seemed like a mismatch. Emanuel is a famously hard-charging political operative whose reputation as “Rahmbo” was parodied in mostly bleeped-out “Saturday Night Live” sketches; Japan is so polite that it’s considered too rude to tell someone a flat-out “no.” Emanuel can barely sit still; Japan prizes calm and orderliness.

Yet in his first 15 months, Japan has embraced Emanuel. In Japan, he’s Rahm-san, his excellency, the “undiplomat” and a darling of Japanese Twitter.

“I’m a diplomat now. … It’s a calmer Rahm Emanuel,” he says with a grin, sitting in shirtsleeves in the garden of the ambassador’s residence on a balmy Tokyo day. It’s already 12:30 p.m. and he had not uttered a single four-letter word, he notes. Not yet. “I mean, I do have a full day ahead of me.”

His interpretation of the job is a signature mix of mayor, political operative, fundraiser and media hound.

Just as he rode the “L” regularly as mayor of Chicago, Emanuel takes the subway around Tokyo. This has endeared him to the Japanese public, which has never seen a U.S. ambassador who prefers public transportation over being chauffeured, and earned him the nickname “tetsu-ota,” or train geek.

He stands out in other ways, too.

It wasn’t until he’d been here for six months that Emanuel, who talks with his hands but is half a finger short (it was cut off by a meat slicer while he worked at Arby’s as a teen), learned that a missing digit gives off an ominous vibe in Japan. This is because the yakuza, or the mob, is known for amputating fingers (although usually pinkies) as punishment.

Emanuel and his wife, Amy Rule, have taken to Japan, especially the food scene. They like to explore cocktail bars and restaurants, from casual izakaya bars and food courts in the basements of Tokyo department stores to Michelin-starred eateries.

He misses spicy food — most Japanese food is mild — but says he’s learned that Japanese cuisine is “so much more complex” than simply sushi. Although he adds he can’t get enough of the sprawling fish and food markets.

When it comes to alliance matters, Emanuel has his hands in seemingly every issue, including tasks that typically wouldn’t involve an ambassador. He’s making calls, negotiating prices, giving political messaging tips to Japanese officials and reinforcing the alliance, especially if it’s in a way that will catch China’s attention.

“I call him the chief of staff to Japan-U. S. relations,” said a high-ranking Japanese official who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Forcefulness is not something that we are used to in Japanese culture, but in this case, it’s very effective.”

Like all long-term relationships, the United States and Japan have had their ups and downs. At one of those low points, like the trade dispute in the 1980s, an aggressive ambassador may have only flared tensions.

But right now, the alliance is on an upswing. The Biden administration is leaning into Japan to help counter Russia, China and North Korea. Wary of the same threats, Japan dramatically expanded its foreign policy footprint, walking in lockstep with America and the West.

“Nothing about this period of time, in the world or in the Indo-Pacific, calls for doing the same-old, same-old,” Emanuel said. “You’ve got to reimagine, or redefine, diplomacy.”

It’s not been without blips, however, like when he recently breached protocol by accidentally dialing the South Korean prime minister, whom he’s known for a decade and had just seen in Seoul, rather than the South Korean ambassador to Japan to discuss Tokyo-Seoul relations.

Emanuel says he’s aware he’s not a cookie-cutter ambassador.

“I come in color,” he said, adding that he didn’t take up the post just to attend meetings and write memos. “But also, times call for doing something different. … The goal is to put points on the board, get results.”

So far, those new points have included rolling back Trump-era steel tariffs, arranging the U.S. airlift of 38 tons of Japanese nonlethal equipment to Ukraine, coordinating with Japan on its record high defense spending hike, and facilitating Panasonic’s $4 billion deal with Kansas to build a new EV battery plant for Tesla.

But there are two issues where Emanuel has taken a particularly activist approach, both in public and behind closed doors. He is pushing for major economies to form an “anti-coercion coalition” to counter the Chinese and advocating for the legalization of same-sex marriage in Japan — both issues that are under close watch ahead of the G-7 summit.

On this particular day, like so many days, China is at the top of the morning’s agenda. A meeting with a venture capital firm. A speech to attentive students at Sophia University. The theme: How the United States and allies can counter Chinese economic coercion.

He’s channeled his political fundraising skills toward raising money for university programs to train Japanese engineers on quantum computing and semiconductor technology, so that Japan can support the United States in one of its races against China.

In the afternoon, Emanuel’s other core interest — same-sex marriage — is on his agenda. Over lunch and coffee meetings, he asks Japanese lawmakers about the political jockeying over a potential bill supporting LGBTQ equality and how he, a longtime advocate of LGBTQ rights, could help.

Japan is the only G-7 country not to recognize same-sex marriages, even though about 71 percent of the public support it. Those who oppose it are in the minority, but they’re vocal — both in the Japanese national assembly and online, where opponents have criticized Emanuel’s outspoken efforts to bring about change: “Please do your LGBT activities only in the United States. Please don’t bring the despicable culture to Japan,” one tweet reads. “Please stop interfering,” reads another.

But Emanuel is used to criticism and is standing firm, noting that the majority of the Japanese public is on his side and that gay rights is a priority of the Biden administration. “Advocating for LGBTQ rights has been my whole life, full stop,” he said.

It’s not clear yet whether either of these efforts will come to fruition. But for now, Japanese officials say his rhetoric on China — Japan’s largest trading partner — is working for them.

Seiji Kihara, deputy chief cabinet secretary, said Japan needed to take a “very balanced position” on China, which is not only its biggest trading partner but a regional heavyweight.

“We have to say what we have to [say] to China, but at the same time, we need to make very steady and constructive relations,” Kihara said in an interview. “Rahm represents one part of our position, and I think it’s helpful. Sometimes a bit too outspoken, but nevertheless, the benefit is bigger than the damage.”

Japanese officials and foreign diplomats say Emanuel’s directness and political savvy have helped him gain the trust of senior Japanese government officials, his counterparts and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who, in a statement, called him “honest, forthright and truthful.”

Kurt Campbell, President Biden’s coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, said Emanuel has been effective in the role because, in addition to foreign policy, national security and local politics, he knows the “universal truths of what it takes to be successful as a politician.”

“He is relentless, inventive. He’s a challenge sometimes, for sure. He speaks his mind. But he’s quite effective. He’s a complete breath of fresh air,” Campbell said.

Decades in politics have helped his transition to ambassadorial life, Emanuel said: Understanding what people need, building trust and making personal connections, despite language or cultural differences.

“There’s no doubt the kind of skills you need in politics are not really different than in the diplomatic world,” he said. “It’s about knowing human relationships.”

Julia Mio Inuma in Tokyo and Ellen Nakashima in Washington contributed to this report.

The Washington Post · by Michelle Ye Hee Lee · May 14, 2023

9. Opinion | It’s time to hold Russia accountable for its use of chemical weapons

Excerpt:

The erosion of decades-long norms against possession and use of chemical weapons threatens all peace-seeking countries. It is inexcusable that the United States and its allies have failed to hold Moscow to the same standard as Syria. The United States must send a clear message to Putin to deter further chemical weapons use as tools of intimidation and war.

​

Opinion | It’s time to hold Russia accountable for its use of chemical weapons

By Anthony Ruggiero and Andrea Stricker

May 12, 2023 at 1:26 p.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Anthony Ruggiero · May 12, 2023

Anthony Ruggiero is a senior fellow and senior director of the Nonproliferation and Biodefense Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and served as the National Security Council’s senior director for counterproliferation and biodefense in the Trump administration. Andrea Stricker is a research fellow and deputy director of the program.

The film “Navalny” won the Academy Award in March for best documentary feature. The picture details the Kremlin’s 2020 apparent attempt to assassinate Alexei Navalny using a chemical nerve agent and Navalny’s subsequent imprisonment. Today, he languishes in poor health in solitary confinement within a Russian penal colony.

That Oscar for the film about Navalny was well-deserved, but there is a better way to honor his legacy: by holding Russia accountable for its ongoing, banned possession and use of chemical weapons.

This month, the United States and its allies have a chance to right that wrong at an important conference to be held in The Hague by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which monitors international efforts to eliminate the production and use of chemical weapons.

Unbelievably, Russia remains an OPCW member in good standing despite seemingly maintaining a prohibited chemical weapons program. Washington should reinforce its zero-tolerance policy and marshal diplomatic support to present Russian President Vladimir Putin with an ultimatum: Disclose the full extent of his program or be suspended from the organization.

More than 2½ years ago, the Russian opposition leader was poisoned and became violently ill on a flight in Russia, an attack the U.S. State Department says the Russian state is responsible for. In what looked to be an orchestrated coverup, the hospital that subsequently treated Navalny tried to keep him from leaving for treatment abroad before the nerve agent in his system could dissipate and leave no trace.

After international pressure, including from then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Kremlin acquiesced to Navalny’s evacuation to a German hospital capable of treating complex poisonings. Berlin asked the OPCW to investigate, and a team collected samples from Navalny. Several independent labs confirmed the presence of the banned nerve agent Novichok — a substance that’s mere existence, much less its deployment, contravenes Russia’s obligations under international agreements.

Navalny made a miraculous recovery, and then turned the tables on Putin and his henchmen. Working with Bellingcat as well as CNN, he identified his attempted assassins. Five months after the attack, Navalny returned to Moscow, accepting that he would likely face political imprisonment and torture. The Russian state promptly arrested him, and, following sham trials, Navalny has spent the past two years in prison and a maximum-security penal colony.

Yet this was not the first time Putin has seemingly used chemical weapons.

Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian opposition leader and Post contributor, might have been the victim of a Novichok attack in 2015 and 2017. Moscow recently sentenced him to 25 years in prison on spurious charges.

In 2018, it’s suspected that Russian intelligence agents traveled to Britain to assassinate Sergei Skripal, a Russian double agent who defected to the U.K. Novichok was used on Skripal and his daughter. They survived, but the poison inadvertently killed a mother of three who later happened upon the bottle used to transport the nerve agent.

In 2020, the Justice Department issued an indictment against six computer hackers from Russia’s military intelligence agency for a variety of reasons, including spear phishing campaigns targeting the OPCW’s Skripal investigation.

The OPCW has also reported in impressive detail on the Russian military’s support for Syria’s chemical weapon attacks in Douma. Yet Russia still enjoys prominence in the OPCW, where it long shielded Syria from penalties for Damascus’s chemical weapons attacks on its own people.

Russia also uses disinformation campaigns to delegitimize the OPCW, raise doubts about the organization’s impartiality and corral the votes of other rogue states. It has also attempted to lay a pretext for a false-flag chemical weapons attack on Ukraine, further underscoring its weak commitment to the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, which underpins the OPCW.

Despite Russia’s active campaign to undermine the core purpose of the OPCW, the United States and Europe have issued a series of sanctions and strongly worded statements against Russia, but have taken no action where it could be most effective.

At the conference later this month, Washington should build a diplomatic coalition to give Putin an ultimatum: fully disclose his chemical weapons program within 90 days or face suspension of Russia’s OPCW voting rights and ability to hold office. At the Executive Council, the OPCW’s policymaking body — which next meets in July — a vote of two-thirds of the 41 current member states can pass a decision. Given current membership of the Executive Council and previous voting behavior, the United States and its allies stand a solid chance of passing an ultimatum for Russia.

In 2021, OPCW members — led by Washington and Europe — used a similar approach to hold Syria accountable for its continued use of chemical weapons and suspended Damascus’ voting rights and privileges after the 90-day deadline had passed. The results have been strikingly positive: Damascus can no longer stymie routine OPCW business and the organization is functioning more effectively. With Syria sidelined, Russia and its voting coalition no longer attempt to hold every OPCW decision hostage as a means of delaying Syria-related investigations. Sidelining Russia’s troublemaking ability in the OPCW would have similar, positive effects.

The erosion of decades-long norms against possession and use of chemical weapons threatens all peace-seeking countries. It is inexcusable that the United States and its allies have failed to hold Moscow to the same standard as Syria. The United States must send a clear message to Putin to deter further chemical weapons use as tools of intimidation and war.

The Washington Post · by Anthony Ruggiero · May 12, 2023

10. Zelensky interview transcript: ‘Ukraine must win’

Zelensky interview transcript: ‘Ukraine must win’

The Washington Post · by Washington Post Staff · May 13, 2023

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelensky have been at the center of the world’s attention for more than 14 months — since Russia launched an invasion that has killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians and subjected many more to occupation. The pressure hasn’t let up on Zelensky or his country as Western partners now wait for Kyiv to use newly donated modern weaponry, including battle tanks, in a highly anticipated spring counteroffensive.

Washington Post Executive Editor Sally Buzbee, Foreign Editor Douglas Jehl, Russia and Eastern Europe editor David M. Herszenhorn, Ukraine bureau chief Isabelle Khurshudyan and Ukraine chief correspondent Siobhán O’Grady interviewed Zelensky for an hour on May 1 at the presidential office building in Kyiv. They discussed the expected counteroffensive, leaked U.S. intelligence documents that revealed sensitive information about Ukraine, and whether he worries about how the U.S. presidential election will impact support for his country.

The following is a transcript of the interview, translated and lightly edited for clarity. Zelensky spoke in Ukrainian except where noted.

Q: Ukraine has been planning a counteroffensive for many months. Can you tell us about any specifics? What do you need to succeed?

A: Thank you very much for your question. First of all, we don’t plan a counteroffensive for months. This is a priority issue for us, so we had to be prepared in advance with our plans. And this is the truth. Our partners understand this as well. There are issues in a number of areas. The first issue is, of course, ammunition. I say this as a priority — not because I want to complain, but because it is a resource without which a counteroffensive is impossible. But I want to clearly say that without this resource, the defense of the state is impossible. It’s not just an issue with regards to the counteroffensive. The issue is to have a counteroffensive and to not lose the territories that we have. Despite the fact that we are stronger — I think we are more motivated than Russia. But nevertheless, we have to prepare everything and be stocked with weapons and motivated people in order not to lose our own people. Therefore, the most important thing we need are resources for the plans that have already been made. To be honest, this is also influenced by the weather. This is an absolute fact because, let’s just say, the ground has to be suitable for our weapons. We don’t have such a wide range of armored vehicles. Yes, it’s difficult for our enemy as well, these weather conditions. But they will be on the defense in this scenario. I believe that they have failed in their offensive. They have failed, probably partially. They are trying to — we see that from time to time they are making attempts to attack, but, nevertheless, they are bogged down in the mud of their decisions. In the mud of the lack of motivation of their military personnel. And of course, now you see what tactics they have chosen. They destroy places completely. So, they don’t have a military tactic. They realized that they can’t enlist motivated people, and they started the … powerful tactic of using Wagner [fighters] because their own military personnel are incapable. And they shoot [their own] Wagner [troops] if they retreat. So that’s how they choose to operate. As for any reasonable operations, we do not see their side engaging in them on the battlefield, so they adopted other tactics. They could not go around us one by one, nor could they encircle us, nor could they assault. Everywhere they achieved only partial successes, or successes for a limited time, and then they were pushed back again by our troops. And so, they came to the tactics that they used at the beginning of the war in some small villages. Now they don’t care whether it’s a small village or a big one. [That tactic] is the complete destruction of everything, of all infrastructure, buildings, civilians, etc. What we see in Bakhmut, if you look at it from the sky, if you have some kind of satellite capabilities to look at these images, you will see that absolutely everything is destroyed. … As soon as the delivery of weapons that were agreed upon with our partners is completed, we will be ready for a counteroffensive, of course taking into account the changes in weather. And the goal remains the same — the de-occupation of our territory.

Q: Do you have enough troops to launch the counteroffensive? And then to replace any potential casualties?

A: Thank you very much. Our main tactic from the very beginning of the war and even before the war — it was not a tactic then, but my attitude toward people — is that we should be in control of all of our territory but we should also save as many people as possible. During the war, our tactics haven’t changed. We understand that war takes people from us. Unfortunately, it takes the brave and, unfortunately, it takes the best. But nevertheless, we understand that despite the counteroffensive — and we will do it — we must ensure that we minimize losses as much as possible. And so, when we say what we need, we need everything that enables us to protect people — artillery systems and long-range artillery. By the way, we don’t understand what the problem is here with long-range systems, long-distance missiles. The issue with our partners is that, I think they are afraid that we might use them on the territory of Russia. But I would always tell our partners, “Listen, our task is to de-occupy our territory. We don’t have any disposable shells, and we don’t have any targets like that. We have a priority target for which we are spending the ammunition package we have. And we spend it on the de-occupation of purely Ukrainian territories.” But we would need to do that with long-range missiles and systems. So now I don’t quite understand, I’ll tell you frankly, why we can’t get long-range artillery. Because the objective of long-range artillery is definitely not to use it on Russian territory. And I believe that we will cope with this deficit. We are working on this in many different areas. And I’ll tell you frankly, we are [working] on different continents to get it. And of course, in any case, in terms of a full-scale war — and this means [in terms of] a full-scale de-occupation of our territories, absolutely all of them — we need aviation. We are currently losing in the sky. We always say that the strength of our people outweighs the strength of the Russian Federation. I think we are also stronger than Russia in terms of motivation. On the battlefield, on the ground, we have shown what we can do. But we are absolutely reasonable people. If they have absolute superiority in the sky, then so be it. To solve such a problem, you have to be honest about it. And our partners as well, we would like to get their support to provide us with Western-standard fighter jets, certainly the F-16. There are other fighter jets, [Eurofighters] and so on. There are different names. We work with all of them to obtain something in this area.

Q: In terms of a counteroffensive, do you have any specific expectations of what you need to accomplish? And what does your military have to show to keep the support that you have now and future support?

A: Look, we are an independent state. And even though we have partners, we are the ones making the decisions, no matter what. [About] where we are going, in what direction we’re moving … and the course of our actions. But, of course, in this sequence, we depend on our partners again for support. We don’t want to lose their support. We cannot head toward a certain goal when we are not sure that we have enough weapons, enough training for officers … that we have enough to accomplish one or another objective. So, of course, we consider what we can get from our partners and what we can count on. And that’s why it’s like that. … Look, nobody expects as much [from this counteroffensive] as we do. I’ll tell you frankly, I’m not sure that absolutely all of our partners believe that we are able to break the Russian Federation. It is true that our partners’ confidence in us has grown. The fact that there is a big difference between how we started the war, and all of my dialogues with partners, and how I put maximum pressure on them to help; the fact that there is a huge difference between what happened before the full-scale war in terms of our support and the signals I gave to our partners and what is happening now — their confidence in us has grown. It has multiplied by many times over, so it has not grown by percentages but multiplied many times. I am grateful for this, of course, to many — to our military, to our people who stood up and did not run away, and to our partners. That, after all, this is probably where the strength of democracy lies, that even when people do not really believe in you, there is still a dialogue. And that’s important, that our partners are not closed off. This was also very important because you just can’t, you know, just believe. Still, we’re talking about more-pragmatic things here. This is not about having faith in God. And that’s why you have to trust. And we have been building all this trust through appropriate powerful steps in Ukraine and through diplomacy, of course. And that’s why — I know that there is skepticism among some partners that it would be scary if Ukraine liberates absolutely all of its territories. But I, for example, can live with this skepticism. And I believe that the more victories we have on the battlefield, frankly, the more people will believe in us, which means we will get more help. These are my conclusions.

Q: And you now maintain your position not to negotiate with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin?

A: Look, we have dealt with different Putins. It’s a completely different set of traits in different periods. Putin is not alone, Putin has an entourage. They made their respective decisions. In 2019, their collective organism — the Kremlin, headed by Putin — said that ‘yes, we will probably find a diplomatic solution.’ I very much wanted this. In 2020 or 2021, this whole collective mind made up something else in their heads, but did not enter into a dialogue with us and did not do everything we had agreed with them in 2019. We cannot say that Putin alone started a full-scale war in 2022. And it would be, to be honest, just insulting to all those people who have died. They have a large collective responsibility for this. And that’s why I’m just not ready to talk to him. I am not ready to talk to this collective. Not because someone is stubborn, but because they have chosen the path of destruction of Ukraine — a full-scale path. That’s why we can’t absolve anyone of responsibility. There is a collective here, and it is responsible for the war of aggression — a full-scale, well-thought-out war with a desire to destroy all life. And before that, they promised something — and not only to Ukraine but to all leaders — that they would not invade. That is, we are dealing with people with whom, on the one hand, it is impossible to make agreements because they will not execute them. There is no point. And on the other hand, these same people are murderers and terrorists, and so you cannot just give in to their demands. This is what happened at the beginning of the war when they gave us ultimatums. That is all. I think it makes no sense for Ukraine to negotiate with this collective with the name “Putin.”

Q: You said Ukraine cannot go further with a counterattack before it gets more weapons. What specifically do you need? Do you need more missiles or launchers?

A: We don’t have enough. We don’t have enough armored vehicles that will save our people who will be pushing the front line forward. And it’s very difficult for us to go against thousands of Russian armored vehicles. It’s very difficult to go up against that with a minimal number, so we need the appropriate number [of vehicles] to do that. And our partners have all of them and have had them for a long time. And these months, which you have mentioned, of operational preparation — all these months our partners have known all this. The second point, as I said, is that when you take counteroffensive actions, you have — I’ll give you the example of Kherson. Don’t forget, you have de-occupied territories that still need to be defended by someone. Life has returned [to these territories] and so have people, but it is also within reach of certain weapons that kill people. That’s why we need protection, additional air defense systems. And here we can say that we had a breakthrough with the Patriots decision. But we also need to remember that the name alone does not protect people. There is a corresponding number of such systems. We are grateful that a start has been made, but we have to protect the sky. And again, our partners have the number of air defense systems that we need to protect ourselves on a national level. And it’s the same with the second part of this issue on the protection of territories — [protection of] schools, universities, infrastructure. For this we need long-range systems, long-distance missiles. Again, this is the example of Kherson, when the enemy crossed to the other side of the Dnieper River and they are at a distance where we can’t encroach on the target. … They can take troops from there and move them to the east or to the south. And it reinforces them. Why? Because they know that we cannot reach them. We can’t reach them, and we suffer every day because they do have the ability to target our people. That’s another issue. And no matter how many people say that this is not a counteroffensive but a defensive mission, no, these missions always go hand-in-hand. That’s all. Because someone is defending, someone is attacking. If there is no one to defend, you will not have the resources to attack, you will throw resources at defense. That’s how it all works. That’s exactly how it works. Next, aviation, as I said. But these are big things, and in terms of aviation by NATO standards, like F-16s, no one is waiting for those — this is true, we will start our actions before this aircraft [is delivered]. But it would have made it much easier for us. You have to understand that we will definitely be fighting Russian aircraft in a counteroffensive. But in any case, even with a deficit like this, we will attack accordingly. Speaking of deficits … our partners’ 155-caliber artillery systems are excellent. I won’t say the exact number we’re talking about, but you have to understand that they break down and need to be repaired. We have learned all this. We have built a great infrastructure for these renovations, but when they break down … in this interval, we need to replace them with something. So, this is also a deficit.

Q: So, it sounds like a counteroffensive is many months away.

A: No.

Q: You need more weapons, but can you get them within weeks, or a month?

A: We work not only with the United States of America. The United States of America is certainly a leader in the delivery of aid. We are very grateful for that. But we cannot rely on the United States alone and we cannot rely on the months that you mentioned. Because by defending this or that area, your resources lessen. Both human and ammunition resources. That’s why no one will wait very long. We will start the counteroffensive as soon as we have the minimum with which we can launch forward. That is why we are working with partners — with Britain, France, Germany, Italy. We are working with our Slovak partners, with Poland. We work with different countries. We work with Canada. We are working, we have started working with other continents. And here I would not like to say with which other governments outside the European continent, because not all of them are going to be happy if this information is made public. We are working. We are doing everything we can to strengthen our army. And here, you know, there is such a balance. On the one hand, the United States … is our biggest leader in supplying, in helping. I cannot complain about their help. And on the other hand, the deficit that we have today — I am sure that the United States could cover it. But I also cannot rely solely on the United States. That’s all. For this we have other powerful partners, like Sweden. Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands are really helping us a lot. And they help us a lot with the deficit I told you about. And let’s not forget that we have a threat from the sea. And so, there are various systems that protect us from that direction as well. And here I am grateful to them as well. And Finland. So basically, the world is fighting for Ukraine today as well.

Q: You’ve said that no one has greater expectations for this counteroffensive than you. What specifically needs to happen for you to consider it a success?

A: Any de-occupied territories, I believe, is a success. I remind you once again whom we are fighting. We understand that it is a large number of people and so on. I can’t tell you which towns or cities, which borders are a significant success for us and which are average — only because I don’t want to prepare Russia for how, in which directions and where and when we will be [attacking]. But we definitely want to do it. I can tell you for sure that after the counteroffensive operation, I will be able to say quite frankly whether we were counting on such a process or whether we were counting on something better — whether we failed at something. You can always say this because there is no criticism in it. It is self-criticism. We are ready [to say if] we fell short. And it is also important to recognize this. Not only within the state but also for our partners. And to show it, because all our conversations are recorded. I mean the meetings where we note that we asked for one, two, three, four, five things, and we got one, two, three. We are grateful. But you can see that if we had received four, five, we could probably have achieved more, or vice versa. We just thank them very much and say that this part of your help gave us a greater result than we had expected.

Q: On a different topic, can you tell us about your reaction to the leaked Pentagon documents on the Discord server? Did Washington give you a heads-up or did you find out yourself through news reports the extent of the leaks?

A: If we are talking about me personally, and I would like to talk about myself personally, I learned everything from the newspapers, from the internet. I read it. I read that some information was leaked, and then, I think … I don’t remember what the first newspaper was, was it The Washington Post? … I think so, and then I learned everything from The Washington Post and other platforms that exist within our country. … I did not receive information from the White House or the Pentagon beforehand. We did not have that information. I personally did not. It’s definitely a bad situation. Well, I’m explaining to you my attitude toward it. I think it doesn’t help. I recently spoke to our Nordic friends, by the way, and they asked me how I felt about it, and I said there is definitely no advantage for Ukraine. This will not motivate our soldiers. [Is there an advantage] for our population? Well, maybe some are interested by this, and some might be very interested. In some places it’s a hype, somewhere it’s a scandal. For us — look, anything that informs our enemy in advance in one way or another is definitely a minus for us. I don’t see any advantages here. And then there’s this [TV show] that we have now, and I consider it a [TV show]. … People ask me, who benefits from this? My answer is very simple: I don’t have time to figure out who benefits from this. I’m looking at who, aside from Ukraine, doesn’t benefit from it. And I believe that it is unprofitable for us first of all. It is unprofitable for us. I also believe that it is not beneficial to the reputation of the White House, and I believe it is not beneficial to the reputation of the United States. This is my opinion. I don’t know all the internal processes. I’m telling you frankly. And I don’t know because, frankly, we’re at war. And, unfortunately, despite the fact that this is our largest partner, I don’t know all the political developments that are going on within the United States. Of course, these are things that will bring about adjustments. You have to understand this. Not because the leak is true or false, but simply because it happened. Everyone is evolving in any case. Russia is adapting, Ukraine is adapting, partners are changing the way they’re passing on supplies, taking appropriate steps to defend or attack. … It’s summer outside. You want to go out, and you are not getting a warning. You go out, and it’s raining. In any case, it’s a surprise. Some people like rain, and some people don’t. I’m just talking about myself. I did not like this rain very much.

Q: Do the leaks and the fact that the United States was listening in on your communications tarnish your trust in Washington?

A: I’m not sure they’re listening. I mean, if we could come up with some more evidence. Well, that’s one conversation and another story. That’s what I told you. We are fighting, we are at war. Listen, I — I cannot risk our state. I can’t. Even if I wanted to say something to someone, something very heated and very personal, I would probably think, even though I am a sharp person, quite sharp. And where I can put pressure, where I can speak frankly, I do it. But there are high risks. If it were my war against Putin, and there were two of us on the battlefield, I would tell everyone what I think of them. But here the story is a little different. We are all responsible. And that’s it. That’s why I don’t know whose manipulation this is or whether it’s an accident, and stuff like that. And why should I? Despite such information leaks, I have to prepare the state for de-occupation, not for other steps. And this is my task. Do you remember how our conversation with [President Donald] Trump got out? They printed it. Well, to be honest, I didn’t give my permission for that either.

Q: The Washington Post has obtained documents that we have not published details about yet. We would like to ask you about some information there and also to give you the opportunity to respond to what is in there. One of them says that on January 31, you suggested occupying parts of Russia along the border for future leverage in the negotiations. Is that true?

A: Hardly (laughs).

Q: Do you think Ukraine has a right to occupy parts of Russia?

A: Let’s not get into fantasies. Ukraine has every right to protect itself. And we are doing it. Ukraine did not occupy anyone, but vice versa. The war is about the occupation of Ukraine. Ukraine must win. What steps to take in order to win? That’s another question. And don’t be offended here, I’m not ready to share. I’ll tell you honestly. Well, when so many people have died and there have been mass graves and our people have been tortured, I am sure that we have to use any tricks, any absolutely different methods of response. Because we are not rapists. So [there must be] different responses than the Russian Federation.

Q: The documents also say that you spoke withValery Zaluzhny, head of the Ukrainian armed forces, on Feb. 28 about striking troops in Russia’s Rostov region. We know that there have been several strikes on Russian territory. Is that something you personally ordered?

A: First of all, I can repeat it again. We are fighting a war for our territory, fighting on our territory and de-occupying our territory. That’s it. All my conversations with Zaluzhny, [Oleksandr] Syrsky, [Oleksandr] Tarnavsky — I have a lot of generals with whom I work, with whom I talk, and I talk directly to them, I know all of their needs. And these are my personal conversations, and no one in our country has given orders for offensives or strikes on Russian territory.

Q: The documents say …

A: [In English] Will we speak about these documents?

Q: A couple more questions.

A: [In English] Just a couple more documents.

Q: The documents indicate that HUR, your intelligence directorate, has back-channel contact with Yevgeniy Prigozhin that you were aware of, including meeting with Yevgeniy Prigozhin and HUR officers. Is that true?

A: This is a matter of [military] intelligence. Do you want me to be convicted of state treason? And so, it’s very interesting, if someone is saying that you have documents, or if someone from our government is speaking about the activities of our intelligence, I would also like to ask you a question: With which sources from Ukraine do you have contact? Who is talking about the activities of our intelligence? Because this is the most severe felony in our country. Which Ukrainians are you talking to?

Q: I talked to officials in government, but these documents are not from Ukraine, they are from …

A: It doesn’t matter where the documents are from. The question is with which Ukrainian official did you talk? Because if they say something about our intelligence, that’s treason. If they say something about a specific offensive plan of one general or another, this is also treason. That’s why I asked you, which Ukrainians are you talking to?

Q: About these specific documents? You are the first person I am talking to about them.

A: Okay.

Q: And I can read you what information exactly there is about Prigozhin and the GUR. On February 13,Kyrylo Budanov, chief of Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence, informed you about a Russian plan to destabilize Moldova with two former Wagner associates. Budanov informed you that he viewed the Russian scheme as a way to incriminate Prigozhin because “we have dealings” with him. You instructed Budanov to inform Moldovan President Maia Sandu, and Budanov told you that the GUR had informed Prigozhin that he would be labeled a traitor who has been working with Ukraine. The document also says that Budanov expected the Russians to use details of Prigozhin’s secret talks with the GUR and meetings with GUR officers in Africa …

A: Listen, to be honest, well, you just read something, you say something. I just don’t understand where you get it, whom you talk to and so on. You talk about how I met with Budanov. This suggests that you — how do you put it? It looks like you have people who have some records or you have some evidence or you have something, because that’s what it looks like. You are again doing, I apologize, what you were doing before. You are releasing some sort of information that does not help our state to attack and does not help us to defend our state. So, I don’t quite understand what you are talking about. I don’t quite understand your goal. Is your goal to help Russia? I mean, that means we have different goals. If I’m not sitting at the same table with them, I don’t quite understand what we’re talking about. Each of these inquiries simply demotivates Ukraine, demotivates certain partners to help Ukraine. Well, one way or another, I just don’t understand your goal.

Q: Our goal is not to help Russia.

A: Well, it looks different.

Q: No one gave us this information personally. These were in the leaked documents, which do indicate, as I said earlier, that the United States is listening in on you.

A: And if you have classified documents, it means someone gave them to you. If you have access to documents, someone gave them to you. Today, in the world of modern technology, when you have access, it’s not necessarily someone gave it to you. You have access. You are now quoting some documents as originals, without understanding the responsibility for this, you are just talking about some information. For me, this is incomprehensible information, but in this, in our dialogue, I want to understand why you are doing this. I told you at the beginning of our conversation that I believe that the TV show that was launched, launched in the information field, helps — I don’t know who, but it helps Russia, it definitely doesn’t help Ukraine. You are engaged in continuing this story. And so, I ask you if it’s your choice and if you think that the Russian Federation needs to be helped in a variety of spheres — that they were expecting a Ukrainian counteroffensive in whichever direction, so that they know when we are coming, so that they know our powerful forces and what we are planning, what our intelligence is doing? Well, if that’s the case, then.

Q: I would say that these documents were leaked, not by us, and they were on the internet in a chatroom for weeks.

A: They were not on the internet, they were a part of something. We, the normal society, couldn’t access all of this. We couldn’t. And then, I think, information began to come out that we would partially publish everything else. I think it’s yours — or your editorial board, or whoever. I don’t want to offend anyone, I don’t know. That’s why you are releasing this information one by one today. You publish information about a counteroffensive in Ukraine, about this or that. I told you that I believe that this is, how to put it? — someone heard something somewhere, someone published something somewhere, but the information is compiled, and it is different, and it definitely does not work in Ukraine’s favor. That’s all. And now you want to take the bull by the horns. You need to substantiate or not substantiate this information, and then there will be a certain weight to your information, because the president of Ukraine reacts to it. Do you understand? And this is what you do. You are right now playing with, I think, things that aren’t good for our people. This is not the first time I’ve told you this. I think it’s wrong, but nevertheless, you say, “Just a little bit more, it’s not over yet.” Well, yes, it is. There are still a few people left in Ukraine. I am not interested in seeing this number of people decrease. That’s why we are fighting. [In English] I am so sorry, I was not so quick, I was too long about these documents. I don’t know about this …

Q: We came to talk to you about this. It is clearly sensitive for you and your country.

A: [In English] It is not sensitive. If I answer you that it’s sensitive, it means that these are real documents. Please, stop playing games with me. I am the president of a war country, a country in war. I said about my reaction to these documents, I said that it’s not good for our people. You know, I am not playing “Counter-Strike.” We are preparing a counteroffensive. You know, these are different things — that’s why I said all of the details from me you will hear. And of course, we are thankful for your work, your help when you support Ukraine in this war. You did a big job. And now I am saying about these documents … I don’t recognize it as documents. I didn’t see that. That is the first thing. I don’t know how you’ve got it and my question was to you: “Why are you continue doing that?” Okay. You are free. I mean, you will do what you want, but I don’t want to speak about it with details. Because I don’t know about what I am speaking. It’s something with some information. And I said that I didn’t have any contact with the White House about these documents. Or not documents. About these papers. Or not papers. About this platform. Or a fake platform. … I didn’t have before, now, and, I don’t know, maybe in the future. I just say the same message very publicly and very open. I said it to you, with some journalist and to a lot of leaders. When they asked me about this, I said it’s not good for us. What can I say? It’s not good. I don’t know if it was fake or what a percent — I don’t know what it is. And I don’t know who needs it and what is the game. I don’t know what for. That’s it. For me, it’s not serious. It sounds like somebody said, somebody heard something …

Q: Is it fair for the United States to impose restrictions on strikes inside Russian territory when Russia strikes civilian infrastructure in Ukraine?

A: We do not have such capabilities. We don’t have the capabilities to strike in the Russian Federation. We do not have long-range weapons to this day.

Q: But there are regular drone strikes within Russia.

A: [In English] What Russia? On Crimea? Crimea is a territory of Ukraine. We use sea drones as you know. And we said about it openly. Or with a ship, Moskva.

Q: Are you worried that the politics in the Western countries that support you could change in a way that could hurt their support for Ukraine? There is growing Republican skepticism in the U.S. Congress about aid for Ukraine. There is a chance that Donald Trump could be reelected president next year. Can you talk to us about that? How do you see that? Are you worried about that? For support for your country?

A: It is difficult for me to say what the policy of another president will be if there will be another president. First of all, it’s not clear to me whether the war will continue in a year when there will be elections in the United States of America. And I would like to believe that the war will be over and we will have won by then. Secondly, and I say it again, I don’t know. We can only watch. And it is the choice of the American people who the next president will be. I would like to believe that in general, because the war will not just be over, but there will still be something to be done. Then we have to do everything to prevent Russia from returning in a few years with some more steps of aggression. That is why the United States is our partner not only in this war but for many years to come. And that’s why I’m interested in what the United States will do regarding Ukraine. This is really very important for us. And of course, we heard some messages from former president Trump that he would end the war very quickly. Then I have a question. Why didn’t he end it? I would have given him a standing ovation if he had ended it then. But it didn’t work out that way, and then a full-scale war started. But the war has been going on since 2014. All those who have been presidents since 2014, all this time they had a chance to end the war. But I’m not saying that they had the capacity, because it’s difficult, it’s just difficult to end it, because it’s Russia. And that’s all. Because with all due respect, there must be a foundation to meet any challenge. Then there is the story that today there are other challenges and many Republicans and Democrats come to us who support us very, very strongly. And there are skeptics — what can I say, we understand. Look, I think that everyone … not everyone fully understands the consequences of what is happening. Not everyone understands who President Putin is. And some people, I think, just don’t care what happens to Ukraine. Unfortunately, I have to say, they don’t care. They are only interested in what will happen to them and their business or something else because this is an individual choice for everyone.

Q: Mr. President, Ukraine has not published its military casualties count over the course of the war. What do you gain from hiding this number? Should the world not know the cost of this war to Ukraine by knowing the numbers?

A: This is just a general decision. A general decision from our military. All this will be [made public] after we end the war. We know the losses. We value every person, and this is one of the things that, of course, will be fully accessible to the whole world. I think, to be honest, it is first of all important for the relatives and friends of those people who lost their loved ones, and then, I think, for everyone else. But, nevertheless, this is the decision [that has been made]. The fact that the number is many times less than that of Russians is understood by everyone in the world. And if you have the relevant documents, maybe you can tell us how many people have died, how many were wounded and what their names are?

Q: Do you not think it would help the cause of scaling up the ammunition you’re saying you need if people understood the extent to which Ukrainians are dying on the battlefield?

A: Listen, our intelligence agencies are working — Ukrainian, with the United States, with Britain, with other partners. Everyone is working, everyone understands each other’s respective steps. And everyone understands approximately how many people we have lost. That’s why everyone knows everything that is available, what is needed to get the required weapons. Everyone knows it.

Q: The fight is obviously continuing in Bakhmut. Has it been worth the number of soldiers who died and got wounded there to continue fighting?

A: It is an unequivocal decision of the entire military and the political leadership. Everybody understands that Bakhmut is the only thing that the Russian president and Prigozhin can sell to their dismantled army and to their society. They need Bakhmut only to say: “Here, the operation is ours. You see, we are doing everything right. Let’s continue. You see that this is a great victory.” Because 99 percent of the Russian Federation does not even understand what Bakhmut is, has never been there and has never seen it. And because they believe their TV, not their eyes. And that’s it. Therefore, this will open up the possibility for Russia to go further, and it will go further and accumulate forces — go further to Donbas, then toward Dnipro and so on. That’s all. And that’s why today Bakhmut is a point that really holds. It really keeps a large number of Russian troops occupied and prevents them from breaking through our country in different directions. That is why all of our military believes that this is a very important point and that a large number of enemy troops are destroyed there — 10 times more [than our losses]. They don’t spare them, they abandon them, but our troops destroy them. That is why this is such an important moment in this war.

Q: You recently spoke by phone to Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Did he give you any guarantees that China wouldn’t supply lethal military aid to Russia?

A: You should [already] have the answer to this question. We did not talk about any guarantees — it was our first conversation since the war started. For me, it is very important that China respects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine according to our 1991 administrative borders, including the island of Crimea. All of this is very important to me. In response to all this, I heard that China respects the territorial integrity of Ukraine. The second aspect that we raised on my side was the deportation of children. No one can help us. It is true that over 19,000 children have been taken away, and we have not found a format for returning them. We can only use some kind of corridors to pull Ukrainians out of there, but it is very, very, very difficult. So, when we talk about how to engage China, it’s very difficult, and we all understand why, but nevertheless, we talked about this aspect with the Chinese leader so that he could influence the development of the situation so that children could return. I cannot find an approach to this process through the United Nations or other institutions unfortunately. For now. But we are fighting. The third question is that I would like to have, you know, the opportunity to refer to documents from the past. And we had, for better or worse — everyone has a different attitude to this document, but for us, it is an official document, and for the world, I think, it is, too. It is the Budapest Memorandum, where China is one of the guarantors. And there, we were guaranteed safety and territorial integrity on the condition of the renunciation of nuclear weapons. … First, today we do not have territorial integrity. And the guarantors of the Budapest Memorandum, let’s just say, are all involved in this war to varying degrees. We really want them to help us. And the second issue today is the capture of the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia. This is also a nuclear weapon, because there are risks due to the capture of six nuclear units, and so I talked to him that we must respect our Budapest Memorandum, everyone who was involved in this in any case. We have to put pressure on the fact that there are nuclear risks. And China needs to put pressure on Russia to de-occupy our nuclear power plant. Basically, these points, as I told the Chinese leader, are the points of our formula for peace. And I would very much like to see China’s presence, among other states, throughout these points. For us, the more countries are present in our peace formula, the safer it is for us.

Q: Will there be parliamentary elections in the fall?

A: If we have martial law, we cannot have elections. The constitution prohibits any elections during martial law. If there is no martial law, then there will be. Well, the law says that according to the constitution of Ukraine, after martial law ends, I think, in 90 days, elections are held. It’s something like that. I don’t remember actually.

Anastacia Galouchka contributed to this report.

The Washington Post · by Washington Post Staff · May 13, 2023

11. G-7 summit spotlights Japan’s growing role as strategic link for East Asia security

​Excerpts:

​NATO invited Japan and South Korea, along with Australia and New Zealand, to attend its Madrid conference last year. Japan and South Korea, due to their defense treaties with the U.S. and the presence of thousands of American troops in their territory, already use many U.S.- and NATO-standard systems.

That enables NATO forces to work smoothly with Japanese and South Korean counterparts. Small contingents of British troops, including marine commandos and paratroops, have already drilled with Japanese and South Korean forces this year.

Crucially, the increasing interoperability also allows the two Asian manufacturing powerhouses to sell arms and equipment to the armed forces of NATO members.

South Korea last year announced a major arms sale to Poland, worth as much as $18 billion, that includes combat aircraft, fleets of tanks and self-propelled and rocket artillery. Seoul is also sending a reported 500,000 155 mm artillery shells to the Pentagon.

As Tokyo ramps up its defense sector, Japan’s Mitsubishi has entered a commercial alliance with NATO members Italy and Britain to jointly design and build next-generation stealth fighters by 2035. The three have agreed to merge their separate stealth-fighter programs into one.

G-7 summit spotlights Japan’s growing role as strategic link for East Asia security

washingtontimes.com · by Andrew Salmon

People pass by a TV screen showing South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, left, during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Sunday, May 7, 2023. The leaders … more >

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As it prepares to host a high-stakes G-7 summit next week, Japan‘s expanding role as a strategic hub — both across East Asia and in the growing links between the Atlantic and Pacific — is coming into ever sharper focus

Japanese media reported this week that the missile defense radar networks of Japan and South Korea are to be interlinked via the United States. The connection signals the emergence of tangible, U.S.-sponsored trilateral defense cooperation bloc off China’s eastern flank.

Separately, Tokyo’s foreign minister revealed this week that NATO is discussing the establishment of a new liaison office in Japan, a tightening of ties between the Western military alliance and Europe and the budding East Asian defensive coalition.

Both moves are likely to generate high-fives in the Pentagon. Not only do they signal that the push to build an effective partnership between the often-squabbling East Asian democracies is bearing fruit, they also mark milestones in Japan‘s incremental but unmistakable evolution from a pacifist nation to an active security partner with Washington.

In 2015, Tokyo amended its post-World War II constitution to expand the role for its military and allow the defense of allies. Since 2018, Japan has been mobilizing expeditionary assets beyond its borders, notably with marine brigades and F-35 aircraft carriers. In 2022, it announced the acquisition of long-range cruise missiles and plans to double the defense budget by 2027.

Japan has not acted in a vacuum. The arguments of Tokyo hawks have been empowered by the actions of potential adversaries: China’s ongoing arms buildup, North Korea’s ever-expanding arsenal of nuclear-capable missiles, and Russia’s status quo-shattering invasion of Ukraine.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida hosts President Biden and the leaders of the other G-7 industrial democracies for three days starting May 19 in his constituency, Hiroshima. That city was obliterated by the U.S. atomic strike in 1945, but the anti-nuclear message that G-7 leaders hope to project now is aimed squarely at Moscow.

“While Russia implied the use of nuclear weapons in its aggression against Ukraine, the 77 years of history since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, during which time no nuclear weapons have been used, must not be ignored,” Mr. Kishida wrote on the Japanese Foreign Ministry website.

Thin red line of radars

In a widely noticed article earlier this month, Tokyo’s Yomiuri newspaper reported that Japan, South Korea and the U.S. are to link their missile-defense radar networks via Hawaii’s Indo-Pacific Command, allowing real-time data sharing on such threats as North Korean ballistic missile tests.

Seoul’s Defense Ministry spokesman Jeon Ha-gyu told reporters only that discussions are ongoing, but there are already reports that the plan could be agreed to by June.

South Korea and Japan have a long, fraught political, cultural and diplomatic relationship. No alliance unites Seoul and Tokyo, forcing Washington to step in. The proposed trilateral linkage would eliminate blind spots in radar coverage, as well as the time lag in transferring and sharing data.

The coordinated radar cordon, while ostensibly aimed at North Korea, looks likely to unsettle China, which reacted furiously to the 2017 deployment of a U.S. THAAD anti-missile battery in South Korea as a threat to Beijing’s own nuclear deterrence capability.

That year, then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in floated the “three nos” to Chinese President Xi Jinping in an effort to calm the diplomatic waters: no more THAAD; no signing up with a U.S.-led missile defense system; and no joining a trilateral alliance with Japan.

The formality of the “Three Nos” remains unclear, but last year, Beijing warned Seoul that it expects the Moon pledges to be honored. Conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol, who succeeded Mr. Moon in 2022, apparently does not feel bound by his predecessor’s offer.

The development is the fruit of warming ties between Seoul and Tokyo, largely pushed by Mr. Yoon. The South Korean president visited Tokyo last month, and Mr. Kishida came to Seoul earlier this month.

Tokyo and Brussels

On another front, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi confirmed in a May 10 interview with CNN that Tokyo’s plans to invite NATO to open the organization’s first Asian office, saying that discussions are underway but the details have not been fully worked out.

Mr. Hayashi said, “The reason why we are discussing this is that since the aggression by Russia to Ukraine, the world [has] become more unstable.”

According to Japanese media, the liaison office was first discussed between Mr. Kishida and NATO Secretary General Jans Stoltenberg during the latter’s Asia tour in January. Japan also plans to open a mission to NATO, led by an official at the ambassador level.

European and East Asian security ties already extend to joint cybersecurity, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has had diplomatic and military reverberations that are being felt in both theaters.

NATO invited Japan and South Korea, along with Australia and New Zealand, to attend its Madrid conference last year. Japan and South Korea, due to their defense treaties with the U.S. and the presence of thousands of American troops in their territory, already use many U.S.- and NATO-standard systems.

That enables NATO forces to work smoothly with Japanese and South Korean counterparts. Small contingents of British troops, including marine commandos and paratroops, have already drilled with Japanese and South Korean forces this year.

Crucially, the increasing interoperability also allows the two Asian manufacturing powerhouses to sell arms and equipment to the armed forces of NATO members.

South Korea last year announced a major arms sale to Poland, worth as much as $18 billion, that includes combat aircraft, fleets of tanks and self-propelled and rocket artillery. Seoul is also sending a reported 500,000 155 mm artillery shells to the Pentagon.

As Tokyo ramps up its defense sector, Japan’s Mitsubishi has entered a commercial alliance with NATO members Italy and Britain to jointly design and build next-generation stealth fighters by 2035. The three have agreed to merge their separate stealth-fighter programs into one.

• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.

Copyright © 2023 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

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washingtontimes.com · by Andrew Salmon

12. Why the Mk16 SCAR-L failed with Special Forces

I only had a few opportunities to shoot the SCAR when it was just being fielded. It did not impress me. I remained partial to the M4.

Why the Mk16 SCAR-L failed with Special Forces

wearethemighty.com · by Miguel Ortiz · May 12, 2023

In the mid-2000s, as the Global War on Terror escalated, U.S. Special Operations Command sought to replace the M4 carbine with a more robust weapon. The solicitation was dubbed the Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle program. SOCOM wanted a light SCAR-L and heavy SCAR-H chambered in 5.56x45mm and 7.62x51mm, respectively. In the end, only the MK16 SCAR-H was adopted.

The Mk17 SCAR-H has been more successful than its lighter counterpart (U.S. Army)

The SCAR competition was close, with companies like Colt and Robinson Arms submitting rifles for consideration. In the end, SOCOM selected the SCAR submissions from FN Herstal for further testing. In 2007, retired Special Forces Master Sgt. Jeff Gurwitch was part of the evaluation committee that was charged with determining if the SCAR-L was a suitable replacement for the M4. He shared his experiences on his YouTube channel, Modern Tactical Shooting.

Maybe the stock latch on the foremost Ranger's SCAR-L broke (U.S. Army)

Over a two-week period, the Special Forces committee evaluated the SCAR-L in simulated real-world scenarios. One of the first issues that Gurwitch and the other operators found with the weapon was the flimsiness of its buttstock. Jokingly referred to as the tactical UGG boot for its shape and tan color, the SCAR-L's stock could easily be folded under light impacts. The plastic button and spring that was supposed to keep the stock locked in the deployed position was inadequate.

The SCAR-L introduced a whole new type of malfunction (U.S. Army)

Another issue that the committee had with the SCAR-L was actually a requirement established by SOCOM for the SCAR program: the reciprocating charging handle. Located just beneath the top rail, the SCAR's charging handle is extremely close to optics or other accessories mounted on top of the rifle. This often leads to shooters scraping their knuckles as they charge the weapon. Moreover, the back and forth movement of the charging handle with each shot opened the potential for the shooter's hand to get in the way and cause a malfunction. By contrast, the more powerful round of the SCAR-H moves the charging handle with enough force to knock a hand out of the way.

An AFSOC airman with a Mk16 SCAR-L in Afghanistan (U.S. Army)

The next issue found specifically with the SCAR-L wasn't necessarily the weapon's fault. When the feed lips on a magazine begin to fail, it can release two or even three rounds during a cycle and cause a malfunction. With the SCAR-L, a double or triple feed malfunction was magnified by the weapon's interior space. There was enough room between the operating rod and the channel that it rode in to allow multiple rounds or spent casings to become stuck inside the rifle. The only way to clear this malfunction was to disassemble the SCAR-L. This issue was not found on the SCAR-H due to the larger diameter of its operating rod and bullet casings.

The SCAR-Ls that were already acquired by SOCOM continued to see use (U.S. Army)

The final major issue experienced during the Special Forces trial was the heating of the lower rail which is attached to the barrel of the SCAR-L. After firing two magazines on automatic, the weapon's lower rail would become as hot as an M4's handguard after three to four magazines. This was an issue for Special Forces who have a standard operating procedure of laying down heavy rifle fire to break contact with the enemy. Overheating issues were experienced with some early Special Forces M4s, but were resolved with heavier barrels.

Cypriot Special Forces armed with SCAR-Ls while U.S. Navy SEALs in the background wield Mk18s (U.S. Special Operations Command Europe)

In April 2010, the FN SCAR was formally adopted with the SCAR-L as the Mk16 and the SCAR-H as the Mk17. However, just two months later, SOCOM announced the cancellation of the Mk16 acquisition. In the end, the SCAR-L wasn't seen as a worthwhile improvement over the M4 which went through further evolutions under SOCOM. FN has since made improvements to the SCAR-L including the release of a non-reciprocating charging handle version, strengthening the folding stock button and reducing the open space in the operating rod channel.

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wearethemighty.com · by Miguel Ortiz · May 12, 2023

13. Patriots Deployed Near Taiwan, Chinese PLA Warships Sighted Near Japan; Is Indo-Pacific Emerging The Next Battle Ground?

George Washington: "To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace."​

Patriots Deployed Near Taiwan, Chinese PLA Warships Sighted Near Japan; Is Indo-Pacific Emerging The Next Battle Ground?

eurasiantimes.com · by Ashish Dangwal · May 13, 2023

As tensions rise between China and Japan, a flotilla from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy has been sighted in waters near Japanese islands.

China’s ‘Satellite Killer’ Spacecraft Threatens To Puncture US Military In Space By Crippling Its Recon, Navigation & EW Satellites

This move follows what the Chinese state media claim to be Japan’s provocative statements concerning the island of Taiwan.

According to a press release from Japan’s Ministry of Defense Joint Staff, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force has detected a flotilla from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy.

The flotilla includes the Type 055 large destroyer Lhasa, a Type 052D destroyer, a Type 054A frigate, and a Type 903A comprehensive replenishment ship. The vessels were observed sailing westward between two southern Japanese islands on May 11.

The PLA Navy flotilla, as reported in the Japanese press release, was first observed on April 30 when it sailed from the East China Sea through the Tsushima Strait into the Sea of Japan.

China PLA Navy Type 055 destroyer Lhasa (102), Type 052D destroyer Guiyang (119), Type 054A frigate Zaozhuang (542), and Type 903A replenishment ship Taihu (889) transit the waters between Japan’s Smith Island and Tori-Shima westbound on May 11. JAPAN MoD

Between May 5 and 6, the flotilla proceeded from the Sea of Japan through the Soya Strait into the West Pacific.

Based on the recorded tracks of the flotilla attached to the Japanese press release, it appears that the Chinese naval vessels are potentially following a clockwise circumnavigation around Japan.

In an interview with Nikkei Asia, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida stated that the issue of Taiwan is essential not only for Japan but also for the entire world.

Additionally, Kishida emphasized that Japan’s longstanding position is that the Taiwan issue should be resolved peacefully through dialogue. He expressed that the Group of Seven (G7) countries, representing rich democracies, are united in this perspective.

On the same day, Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi confirmed that Japan had lodged a diplomatic protest with China regarding what he described as “extremely inappropriate” comments by Chinese Ambassador to Japan Wu Jianghao.

The Chinese official’s comments were related to Tokyo’s policy toward Taiwan.

In a conference held on April 28, the Chinese Ambassador to Japan, Wu Jianghao, made remarks characterizing the notion that Taiwan is linked to Japan’s security as “absurd and dangerous.”

Chinese destroyer Lhasa

Heightened Military Movements In The Region

Japan has recently announced that it has stationed Patriot missiles on Miyako Island. This island, which holds significant strategic value as a node on the “first island chain,” is located close to Taiwan.

However, Chinese experts have criticized this deployment, who believe it to be a provocative move.

Wei Dongxu, a military expert based in Beijing, told the State media that Japan’s deployment of Patriot missiles in its southwestern islands, including Miyako Island, is unrelated to the Korean Peninsula, which is geographically distant.

Instead, the expert argues that the true intention behind the deployment is to equip these islands with anti-air and anti-ship missile capabilities, potentially indicating preparation for military intervention in the Taiwan issue.

The exchange of contentious rhetoric between China and Japan highlights the increasing regional tensions over the Taiwan issue.

File: Patriot-3 Missile

However, a former Chinese military official has warned that although much attention has been concentrated on the Taiwan Strait as the potential flashpoint for a US-China conflict, the outbreak of war could be ignited in an entirely different location.

Zhou Bo, a former senior colonel in China’s PLA, said that the rising number of close encounters at sea and in the air raises the risk of a conflict being initiated by an accidental incident or miscalculation in the heavily militarized South China Sea.

He also noted that a conflict over Taiwan is unlikely to be triggered by accident due to the intense scrutiny of every word and action taken by both sides involved.

The South China Sea is a region where the US and its allies often challenge China’s sovereignty claims, especially in the disputed Spratly and Paracel Islands.

Zhou explained, “The real challenge for China and the US is not to avoid a new Cold War, but avoiding conflict most likely triggered by an accident.”

An incident in late December is a stark example of how difficult these encounters can be. During that incident, a Chinese fighter jet and a US Air Force reconnaissance aircraft came extremely close to each other, with just a distance of three meters (10 feet) separating them over the South China Sea.

Following the incident, both sides engaged in a war of words. The Pentagon asserted that its RC-135 aircraft was lawfully carrying out routine operations in international airspace, while Beijing countered that the aircraft was conducting close-in reconnaissance near China’s southern coastline and the islands it claims in the Paracels.

This exchange reflects the heightened tensions and differing perspectives between the two nations regarding military activities in the region.

• Contact the author at ashishmichel(at)gmail.com
• Follow EurAsian Times on Google News

eurasiantimes.com · by Ashish Dangwal · May 13, 2023

14. "Osprey get out:" Okinawa protesters call for closure of U.S. military bases

We need Okinawa as one of our ISBs (intermediate staging base). Of course that is one of the reasons why the Okinawans want our bases removed.

"Osprey get out:" Okinawa protesters call for closure of U.S. military bases

Axios · by Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian · May 13, 2023

This story is part of a series supported by the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting.

OKINAWA — Thousands of protesters gathered near Kadena Air Base in Okinawa on Saturday to call for the closure of U.S. military bases on the Japanese island.

Why it matters: The annual protests come as Okinawa is increasingly at the center of a possible superpower showdown in the Pacific.

• The island's location — just a one-hour flight east of Taiwan — makes it key to any U.S. military response if China were to attack Taiwan.

What they’re saying: Protesters chanted “Give us back our peaceful life!” and “Osprey get out!” — a reference to the military helicopters often seen in the skies over the island.

• A U.S. Marines spokesperson on the island did not respond to a request for comment.

Background: The U.S. military has had an extensive presence on the island since 1945, and occupied it until 1972, when it was returned to Japanese sovereignty.

• Chemical contamination in areas close to the bases, noise pollution, and crimes committed by U.S. servicemen, including rape, have in the past enraged the population and sparked massive protests.
• Protesters told Axios that they feel they have long been forced to bear a disproportionate burden of the U.S.-Japan military alliance. Okinawa makes up less than 1% of Japan’s total land area but hosts more than 70% of all U.S. military facilities in Japan.

Okinawa Gov. Denny Tamaki has lobbied the Japanese and U.S. governments to reduce the military presence on the island.

• President Biden said last year that he was "profoundly grateful for Japan's resolute support for democracy, freedom, and the rule of law and for Okinawa's contribution to advancing these ideals."

Axios · by Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian · May 13, 2023

15. Special Forces Soldiers Reveal First Details of Battle With Russian Mercenaries in Syria

Long read.

Spoiler alert:

“To make it short, we’ve had our fucking asses kicked,” one Wagner Group veteran says in a recording. “They tore us to pieces. … They beat our asses like we were little pieces of shit.”

Nine of the 10 tanks were destroyed, as well as all six artillery pieces. The Special Forces team destroyed the lone surviving tank a few days later.

“We did not sustain a single injury,” Chauncey says. “We didn’t sustain a single death. I mean, guys were dinged up. Guys had PTSD from that battle, but everyone made it home.”

Special Forces Soldiers Reveal First Details of Battle With Russian Mercenaries in Syria

thewarhorse.org · by Kevin Maurer · May 11, 2023

Explosions flashed in the fog hanging over the Euphrates River like a coming summer storm.

The continuous thunder of Russian guns pounded the American positions in a burned-out natural gas refinery in eastern Syria. Tracers crisscrossed the Syrian sky. The Special Forces soldiers felt the rumble of the explosions through the armored cabins of their trucks.

Overhead, America’s most lethal aircraft—F-15E strike fighters, AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, and MQ-9 Reapers—pounded the Russian guns and enemy formations below.

U.S. Army Spc. Joshua Dixon, an aircraft structural repairer with 90th Aviation Support, 11th Combat Aviation Brigade, sits on the side of an AH-64 Apache helicopter in the Operation Inherent Resolve Combined Joint Operations Area, which provides support against ISIS in Syria, May 28, 2022. Photo by Cpl. Nicholas Fuel, courtesy of the U.S. Army.

The Special Forces team had been in combat against ISIS fighters for months, but this was different. ISIS, for the most part, was a few mortar rounds or spray-and-pray potshots from an AK-47. This was a trained Russian force with artillery and armored vehicles.

This was a fair fight, and the U.S. troops were driving into it.

“It looked like New York City on New Year’s Eve,” Chauncey, a former Special Forces team sergeant who helped lead a quick reaction force (QRF) to the refinery, tells The War Horse. “By far, the most chaotic battle scene that I’ve ever observed, let alone be a part of.”

The soldiers’ last names have been withheld to protect their identities.

In February 2018, the American Special Forces team deployed to Syria as part of the ongoing campaign against ISIS that began in 2015. But after months of successful operations against ISIS, the team now faced a new adversary. Around 500 pro-Syrian government forces, including Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group, launched a nearly four-hour attack on a small group of 40 American Special Operations troops and their Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) allies at a Conoco natural gas refinery in eastern Syria. Among the largest in the area, it had multiple buildings that provided good cover. It offered the Russians a foothold on the east side of the river.

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The Wagner Group seized oil and gas fields in Syria to protect them for the Assad government, with mercenaries earning a share of production proceeds, according to American intelligence officials. Documents obtained by The New York Times referred to the fighters at the refinery as a “pro-regime force,” loyal to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. While the group included some Syrian government soldiers and militias, American military and intelligence officials determined the majority were private Russian paramilitary mercenaries, likely affiliated with the Wagner Group, a company frequently used by the Kremlin to carry out objectives without appearing to be directly linked to the Russian government.

Exclusive interviews with three former Special Forces soldiers who fought in the battle reveal some of the first details about the clash from American troops on the ground. This is the first public, on-the-record account from participants of one of the deadliest battles the American military has faced in Syria since they deployed to fight ISIS in September 2014 under the Obama administration.

The possibility of Russian military forces and American troops colliding in Syria was a constant concern as the adversaries took opposing sides in Syria’s seven-year civil war. In February 2018, this battle became one of the rare occasions that American and Russian combatants exchanged fire.

During a lull in the artillery barrage, the QRF, made up of Green Berets and Marines, finally arrived at the refinery and unleashed a barrage of gunfire, turning the tide of the battle. But the QRF’s success was short-lived. Over the ridge, one of the Special Forces soldiers spotted the worst-case scenario:

Russian tanks slowly advanced toward the refinery.

‘I Made Peace With What Was About to Happen’

The Wagner Group, a private Russian military company, has been accused of committing war crimes in multiple conflicts around the world.

The accusations against the Wagner Group have been widely reported in the media and have been the subject of investigations by various human rights organizations. Recently, the leader of the Wagner Group said the mercenaries would leave Bakhmut, Ukraine, because they don’t have enough ammunition from the Russians to “grind the meat,” and that his company has lost “tens of thousands” of people in Ukraine.

The U.S. government has also imposed sanctions on the Wagner Group. In January 2023, the United States named the “Russian proxy” group a “transnational criminal organization.”

Despite the accusations, the Russian government has denied any official links to the Wagner Group and has dismissed the allegations of war crimes as baseless.

The Syrian battlefield was a confusing three-way shooting range, with American forces and their SDF allies battling ISIS fighters, even as pro-Syrian forces and their Wagner Group allies also hunted the terrorists. The oil-rich province of Deir al-Zour bordered Iraq. The Euphrates River divided the conflicting factions. Russia was on one side of the river, and the United States—and ISIS—on the other. It was often difficult to discern friend from foe, Josh says.

An M2 Bradley, with Alpha Troop, 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, scans for threats near an oil refinery in northeast Syria in 2020. Photo by Spc. Jensen Guillory, courtesy of the U.S. Army.

Andrew, a new team leader on his first deployment as a Special Forces officer, led the Special Forces team, which had cleared an area farther south. But they headed out again after seeing little activity. In the days leading up to the refinery attack, the Russians and Americans remained on opposite sides of the river.

The Russians planned to seize the oil refinery after arriving in Deir al-Zour governorate, Andrew says. A team of about 30 soldiers from Joint Special Operations Command was stationed at the refinery, while Andrew’s team and platoon of Marines were located at a mission support site 20 minutes away, monitoring drone feeds of the area.

At three p.m., the Russian-led force began to gather near the refinery, and by early evening, more than 500 troops and 27 vehicles, including tanks and armored personnel carriers, were in position.

The situation confounded military officers and intelligence analysts in the region and in Washington as they watched on drone feeds. Pilots and ground crews across the region went on alert, while Andrew and Chauncey—the Special Forces team sergeant—gathered the team and prepared the QRF.

Soldiers loaded three M-ATV armored trucks and an MRAP armored truck with equipment, ammunition, and food. They staged the convoy so the soldiers and Marines could race to the trucks and leave immediately. They checked their weapons and ensured each had extra ammunition and thermal optics. A Black Hawk with additional medical support arrived with extra blood for transfusions, Andrew says.

By nightfall, everyone was prepared for a fight, but hoped they wouldn’t have to be: The Special Forces armored trucks were no match for the Russian tanks.

At 8:30 p.m., three Russian-made T-72 tanks, weighing almost 50 tons and armed with 125 mm guns, moved to within a mile of the refinery. The Americans watched as artillery crews rehearsed firing the gun, but never loaded a shell, and soldiers massed near armored personnel carriers for an attack—alerting the Americans that the fighters were, in fact, Russian.

“I think part of the tell was that Russian doctrine says that they’re going to do things that look like exercises right up into the point,” says Josh, who monitored the Wagner Group’s movements through the drone feeds.

Around 10 p.m., the American soldiers at the outpost saw a column of tanks and other armored vehicles turn and drive toward the refinery from a nearby neighborhood where they had attempted to gather undetected. Andrew and Chauncey raced to where Chauncey’s team waited. They’d already loaded the trucks that evening.

“Hey men, the guys down there are getting attacked,” Chauncey said. “We have to go and respond.”

The five armored trucks peeled out of the outpost and down the road. They drove under blackout conditions—no headlights. An unarmored pickup truck with SDF troops led the team. The SDF forces didn’t have night vision, so it was difficult for them to navigate the road, which was littered with debris, crater holes, and giant dirt berms to create serpentine barriers around checkpoints.

“We’re hauling in the dark, and then, all of a sudden, you pump on these berms and it’s a mad dash to get slowed down and then serpentine through these berms and then get moving again,” Josh says.

As the Special Forces convoy approached the refinery, the Russian mercenaries and Syrian forces attacked the outpost, using a mixture of tank fire, large artillery, and mortar rounds.The air was filled with dust and shrapnel. The commandos crouched behind trucks or dirt berms as the Russian mercenaries advanced behind the artillery barrage.

One Predator was on station when the attack started. It fired all of its hellfire missiles, destroying the enemy artillery so the U.S. troops could focus on the ground fight. Then the Predator lingered over the battlefield to provide a video feed of the fighting to battle captains in the command center and officials in Washington.

Members of 5th Special Forces Group (A) conduct .50-caliber weapons training during counter-ISIS operations at Al Tanf garrison in southern Syria in November 2017. Photo by Staff Sgt. Jacob Connor, courtesy of the U.S. Army.

For the first 15 minutes, American military officials in Washington worked to contact their Russian counterparts and urge them to stop the attack. When the Russians denied it was their forces, American troops fired warning shots at a group of vehicles and a howitzer, but the troops continued to advance.

The Wagner mercenaries had a surface-to-air system that made it impossible for American aircraft to press the attack. Only after officials in Washington talked to their Russian counterparts did the surface-to-air system get shut down, allowing American aircraft to return and attack.

The SDF truck leading the Special Forces convoy stopped short of the compound as artillery shells rained down on the refinery. Up ahead, the sky flashed with explosions and tracer fire. The SDF soldiers in the unarmored truck leading the convoy took one look, turned around, and took off.

Smartest man on the battlefield, Chauncey remembers thinking.

Others had the same reaction. Over the radio, they heard the American commando force in the refinery. Every time the commandos keyed their mics, explosions from incoming rounds drowned out their transmissions. It felt like being in the front row of an arena rock show. The commandos could feel the sound in their chests.

“I made peace with what was about to happen,” Josh says. “Because of what was coming over the radio, I was like, ‘We have to get there for our dudes.’”

Inside the compound, the commandos and their SDF allies were dug in. Without heavy weapons, they could do nothing but hunker down. During a lull in the artillery barrage, Andrew got on the radio with the commandos’ commander, who “sparkled” them into the perimeter using an infrared laser. Jumping from his truck to talk with the commandos’ commander, Andrew spotted defensive positions on the berm with commandos or SDF fighters next to six-foot craters where artillery shells had landed.

Miraculously, the small team of American troops emerged unscathed, with only one allied Syrian fighter wounded. The commandos’ commander was relieved to see the team.

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“We’re just hiding behind the trucks eating artillery,” he told the Special Forces team.

But that was just the start. The Russians had a combined arms battalion of about 500 soldiers, tanks, armored personnel carriers, and artillery with support elements close by. The Americans now had a half-dozen trucks and fewer than 50 guys.

“The scale of this thing is a big part of this and why the air support was so critical,” Josh says.

Another wave of fighters were inbound, but not on station yet, as the Russians advanced.

“They’re not going to be here for a while,” the commando commander told Andrew. “Can you guys see?”

The commandos were lightly armed with only machine guns and small arms that lacked the range or punch to do real damage to the Russians. The five QRF trucks, armed with .50-caliber machine guns, could see the whole battlefield and had the range to engage the Russians advancing toward the refinery. The Special Forces trucks lined up behind the berm facing the advancing pro-Syrian troops and Wagner Group mercenaries.

The enemy opened fire with a twin-barrel anti-aircraft autocannon, sending a steady stream of shells into the compound.

As the trucks pulled into the defensive line, Chauncey got on the internal truck radio to rally the team.

“Hey, this is what we get paid for,” he remembers telling the three other Special Forces soldiers. “I want everybody to be alert, aware, like eyes open. If you see anything at all, give us a distance, direction, description of what you see. Call out what you see, and then we’ll make decisions on the fly and get busy.”

‘They’re Not Hitting Anything’

The Russian mercenaries left their vehicles and moved toward the outpost on foot. The Special Forces team used joysticks to fire the heavy machine guns in remote turrets on the roof.

Hey, these guys must think that they just annihilated this location, Chauncey remembers thinking as he watched the Russians approach. They’re just going to walk up and take it.

There were no friendly forces in front, so the gunners didn’t have to worry about hitting civilians. If it moved, it was likely an enemy, and they were cleared to engage.

“Let’s open up and let ’em know we’re here,” Chauncey said.

Josh’s team in truck two tracked a small group of mercenaries about 1,000 meters from the trucks and closing. The gunner rotated the .50-caliber machine gun robotically stabilized on the roof. It could put thousands of rounds on target from more than 1,000 yards. Even on cyclic, where the gun doesn’t stop shooting until it runs out of bullets, it could maintain a grouping that fits on the hood of a small car. A targe

“Laz these guys and shoot ’em,” Josh said.

The gunner—an explosive ordnance disposal tech attached to the team—hit the trigger but didn’t depress the safety. After a few attempts to fire, Josh reached for the controller. Josh zeroed in on the group of Russian and pro-Syrian fighters and fired. The .50-caliber machine gun on top of the truck roared and the white-hot silhouettes of men approaching the berm exploded into parts scattered across the black sand.

Seconds after Josh cut down the group, the whole horizon lit up with machine gun fire. The rest of the Russian force, dug into hasty fighting positions after the airstrikes, hammered the berm with small arms and machine-gun fire. The Special Forces gunners marked Russian vehicles and fighting positions. It didn’t take long for the American machine guns to start “talking,” meaning there was no space between bursts as the different guns fired at the Russian positions. The wall of fire was steady and overwhelming, forcing the Wagner mercenaries and pro-Syrian forces to take cover.

F-22 Raptors from Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, are refueled by a KC-135 Stratotanker on their way to Iraq to fight ISIS in 2015. Photo by Staff Sgt. Perry Aston, courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.

“We’re a lot more accurate than they are,” Chauncey says. “We can see the sparks flying from hitting metal. We can see fighting positions getting shot up. We know that we are having good effects and we’re killing personnel.”

The terrain was baseball-diamond flat. Dirt from the berm kicked up in front of the trucks as the mercenaries and pro-Syrian forces advanced. But they didn’t hit any of the trucks. The Special Forces soldiers figured the Syrian soldiers and Russians lacked night vision.

“They can’t be that bad a shot,” Josh said. “They’re not hitting anything.”

Soon, the machine gun on Josh’s truck ran out of ammunition. A giant canister that held about 400 rounds sat next to the gun. To reload it, someone had to climb outside the truck amid a maelstrom of shrapnel and machine-gun bullets and feed belts of ammunition into the canister.

Three soldiers, including Josh, sat in the truck. The driver had to stay in case the truck needed to move. The EOD tech wasn’t trained to reload the gun. That left Josh. A hatch in the truck’s roof could split open. But the seal was so tight that, to open it, Josh would have to lie on his back in the center seat and kick it. And additional equipment and supplies crowded the roof.

He would have to risk the bullets and shrapnel.

Josh popped open his armored passenger side door and climbed onto the truck’s roof. The EOD tech handed him ammunition belts so he could connect them into a daisy chain and S-fold them into the container—otherwise the gun would jam.

Josh got to work reloading the canister, but his night vision scopes focused on a set distance, making close-in work difficult. He connected two belts—about 100 rounds—and was reaching for another belt when an artillery round landed nearby. The shockwave hit Josh in the chest, followed by an earth-shattering thud.

He needed to reload faster.

Flipping up his night vision goggles, he flicked on a headlamp with a red lens that hung around his neck so he could load the last belts. A few seconds after he turned on his light, he heard a chopping sound.

Tracers from the anti-aircraft cannon climbed into the air in line with the truck.

Why are they shooting tracers? Josh remembers wondering, just as it dawned on him that the tracers were aimed at his red light.

He flicked off the light and huddled down as the first rounds from the cannon arrived. The noise wasn’t the hard snap from a rifle but something deeper.

Guttural.

And loud.

It was so loud he couldn’t hear himself cackling as the shells passed overhead and landed harmlessly behind him. Josh knew he was in trouble. He couldn’t count on them to miss again.

He needed to get into the truck.

You idiot, he remembers thinking. You put your headlamp on. They just called your bluff. You put your light on. One could have had your number on it and there wouldn’t have been anything left to send back. I need to get the gun back up—and before I eat a Red Bull can-sized slug while I’m doing it.

The team that took on the Wagner Group in Syria. Photo courtesy of the author.

He folded the last bands of ammunition into the canister and scrambled back into the armored crew compartment.

A few trucks away, Chauncey drew out his team’s positions and estimated where the Wagner Group positions were located on a piece of paper. He felt confident because, in his mind, they were winning. Then he got a call from one of the team’s trucks.

“Hey Zulu,” the Special Forces soldier said, using the team sergeant’s call sign.

“What’s up?” Chauncey said. “Go ahead. Send your traffic.”

“Hey, I got eyes on these really big vehicles.”

Chauncey knew what they were, but no one wanted to say it.

Russian tanks were advancing.

‘We’re Going to Stay and Fight’

Chauncey counted 10 tanks on the horizon. They moved forward slowly, one at a time.

“Gimme five rounds on that really big vehicle,” Chauncey said to the truck team that spotted the tanks.

On an older model tank, the .50 caliber might punch some holes through the armor. Not so on newer models. The bullets would bounce right off. If they had the newer models, the Special Forces team was in trouble.

“Roger that,” the gunner said over the radio, and opened fire.

Chauncey saw the tracers race across the black sky. Five rounds right on target. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.

Followed by bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.

Chauncey hit his gunner on the leg.

“Hey, gimme five rounds on that tank that’s further to the west, further to our right.”

“Roger that, five rounds.”

The gunner rotated the machine gun above Chauncey’s head and fired. Five out. Five rounds bounced.

“Hey, truck two—get eyes on that center vehicle,” Chauncey radioed to Josh.

“Yep. Roger that.”

“Gimme five rounds.”

Same result.

They were in trouble.

The Russian tanks were about 2,000 meters away, which in a tank battle means close range. But the Russian crew lacked the night vision capability to move at speed. Andrew and Chauncey came up with a hasty plan: Without aircraft cover, they’d have to abandon the plant.

A pair of U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles fly over northern Iraq early in the morning of Sept. 23, 2014, after conducting airstrikes in Syria. Photo by Senior Airman Matthew Bruch, courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.

“Hey, what’s up with aircraft?” Chauncey asked Andrew.

He was fighting to get aircraft on station. Andrew called back to the commandos.

“Hey, you guys got anything?” he said.

No one had an answer on aircraft. Andrew didn’t know the Russians had an anti-aircraft missile system active, denying the airspace. Meanwhile, on the ground, the Special Forces team would die without help.

They had to slow down the tanks while the team and commandos consolidated and waited for air cover.

But Andrew knew they couldn’t leave. That would open the path for a large Russian force to continue north with nothing stopping it from reaching the American support base and controlling the region his team had just spent months clearing of ISIS. It also gave them access to a network of oil and natural gas refineries in the region.

“Keep shooting and marking anything armor with tracers for when aircraft checks in,” Andrew said.

Chauncey knew the team was united. They called the team a pirate ship because if anything happened, they were all going down together. And now facing tanks, that was a real chance. Despite recent showings on the battlefields of Ukraine, the tank is still an apex predator on the battlefield. The American Special Forces didn’t have a weapon that could stop them. It was like being stalked by a turtle. With every minute, the tanks slowly closed.

Chauncey keyed his mic.

“We’re going to stay and fight,” he told the team.

No one questioned the order. But privately, for the second time in the battle, Josh considered his chances of survival. He’d already tempted fate with his headlamp. It was only a matter of time before the tanks would be close enough to hit the MAT-V trucks, and despite being armored, they stood no chance against the tank’s 125 mm cannon.

“Everything that we’ve accomplished, and this is where everything ends,” Josh tells The War Horse. “Against Russian mercenaries with tanks. Not even the enemy that we came to fight. We had to make peace with the possibility of not making it back, but it was easier to swallow knowing we were defending our friends and doing what needed to be done.”

Despite long odds, the American trucks continued to fire at the oncoming tanks and Russian positions. The tank gun barrels flashed under the green hue of the night vision goggles as the shells whistled overhead. The Special Forces trucks sat on the berm, easy targets had the Russians been able to shoot at night. Despite closing, every tank round missed.

But the tanks were getting close, with one less than a kilometer away, despite a steady stream of fire from the American trucks.

The Blackbeard logo used by the special forces team that went up against the Wagner Group in Syria. The team called themselves “pirates,” because if they got in a fight, they were all going down together. Photo courtesy of the author.

From the corner of his eye, Chauncey saw a flash. The first tank, which had closed to less than a kilometer, exploded in a massive fireball.

“What the heck was that?”

He craned his neck to see out of the small, bullet-resistant windows. Before Chauncey got an answer, a tank farther to the west exploded as two pairs of Apache attack helicopters flew overhead. Once they cleared the berm, the attack helicopters opened fire with the chain gun under the cockpit, raking Russian fighting positions. The Special Forces team lit up the advancing tanks with machine gun fire as the Apaches circled for another run.

“As soon as they saw us shoot something, it blew up,” Chauncey said. “They cut through tanks, and they just came in and laid waste for the next probably 45 minutes. They just destroyed everything.”

The Apaches arrived just in time. Josh vividly remembers hearing the chain gun go off and then more rockets striking the tanks.

“I’m a full believer that without the air that responded to us on station, we all would’ve been a bunch of grease stains on the earth in a line in an oil field in Syria.”

‘Just Tighten Your Helmet and Lock the Doors’

Things were looking up when a battle captain in the command center radioed Andrew.

“Hey, just be advised, incoming bomber,” the battle captain said.

“Roger,” Andrew said, happy to have more air cover.

“No, dude,” the battle captain said. “Russian bomber inbound.”

American aircraft had superiority over Syria, but if the Russians were sending a bomber—that changed the battlefield calculus. Andrew got on the team net and warned them about the incoming bomber.

“Do what you want with it, but there’s nothing you can do,” Andrew said. “Just tighten your helmet and lock the doors.”

For the next several minutes, Andrew waited for the bomber. Would it drop or just buzz them? He’d survived a tank battle already, but this was worse. A 500-pound bomb would kill his whole team. Just before the bomber was supposed to arrive, the battle captain called back.

No bomber.

The Russians turned back.

An hour later, the Russian fighters started to retreat. Russian and American officials declared a cease-fire, and the Special Forces watched as the mercenaries and Syrian fighters returned to collect their dead. Bodies and burnt vehicles were laid out in front of them.

It was two hours to dawn. The team watched from the berm as the Russians cleared the field. The team ran an ammo check and cross-loaded supplies. Andrew ordered his men to rest and try to eat. Sleep in shifts if they could. But most were too jacked on adrenaline.

The next day, Chauncey saw coverage of the battle on CNN. It sounded clinical and watered down. Nothing like what he’d experienced the night before.

“We went through 4,000 or 6,000 rounds [of .50 caliber] that night,” Andrew says. “I think the total [battle damage assessment] after the fact was like 350 [killed].”

The exact casualty count for the Feb. 7 fight is unclear, but sources have estimated between 100 and 300 Russian and pro-Syrian fighters were killed or wounded in the battle. Russian officials claim only five Russian citizens died, but audio recordings of Wagner Group soldiers suggest hundreds of mercenaries were killed. One Wagner Group veteran confirmed the Apache attack in the recordings, describing it as “a fucking merry-go-round with heavy-caliber machine guns.”

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“To make it short, we’ve had our fucking asses kicked,” one Wagner Group veteran says in a recording. “They tore us to pieces. … They beat our asses like we were little pieces of shit.”

Nine of the 10 tanks were destroyed, as well as all six artillery pieces. The Special Forces team destroyed the lone surviving tank a few days later.

“We did not sustain a single injury,” Chauncey says. “We didn’t sustain a single death. I mean, guys were dinged up. Guys had PTSD from that battle, but everyone made it home.”

This War Horse feature was reported by Kevin Maurer, edited by Kelly Kennedy, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Headlines are by Abbie Bennett.

thewarhorse.org · by Kevin Maurer · May 11, 2023

16. ​A​nalysis​:​ Why is Vladimir Putin standing by Russian General Valery Gerasimov after four key failures during the Ukraine war?

​A​nalysis​:​

Why is Vladimir Putin standing by Russian General Valery Gerasimov after four key failures during the Ukraine war?

ABC.net.au · by Mick Ryan · May 8, 2023

In warfare, an important target is often the enemy commander and the headquarters that assists them to plan and execute military operations.

By killing a senior military leader, planning and decision-making can be slowed down. This can lead to a breakdown in the cohesion of a large military force, allowing friendly forces to attack it piecemeal or exploit tactical opportunities while it is unable to respond effectively.

The Chinese call this systems destruction warfare. It is an extraordinarily effective approach if planned and coordinated well, particularly given the reliance on communications, sensors and AI-based decision-support tools by modern militaries.

However, for their coming offensive, the Ukrainians are likely to avoid targeting one Russian commander in particular. This specific senior Russian officer has been unimaginative and ineffective since the beginning of the war, so much so that it almost seems he is working for the other side at times.

Valery Gerasimov and Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu would have played key roles in the planning and approval of the Ukraine strategy.(Reuters: Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov)

A list of failures

This individual is General Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and the overall commander of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine.

So far in this war, Gerasimov has been a four-time loser.

1. The invasion plan

His first failure was the original plan for the invasion of Ukraine.

Based on assumptions that the Ukrainians could not put up an effective defence, that the Ukrainian government would flee and that the West would not intervene, it planned on taking over Ukraine in 10 days or less.

But the Ukrainians had other ideas, and the Russian forces appeared uncoordinated and chaotic in their inability to achieve their original strategy.

As the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Gerasimov and Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu would have played a key role in the planning and approval of this plan.

2. The early weeks of war were a shambles

Gerasimov's second failure was the shambolic initial weeks of the Russian mobilisation that was announced by President Vladimir Putin in September 2022.

Not only should Gerasimov have anticipated such a move once it was clear the war was not going well (that is his job), but it also appeared that the military commenced its mobilisation efforts from a standing start after Putin's announcement.

The old Soviet-era army had extensive mobilisation plans and processes for the rapid expansion of the ground forces. Gerasimov, a product of this era, appears to have forgotten the need for the infrastructure, training cadres and reserve equipment for such mobilisation efforts. This is largely due to a third failure.

3. Russia lost capacity for rapid expansion

Gerasimov's third failure, which had a major influence on mobilisation failures as well as the Russian Army's operational challenges, was the decade-long program of transformation overseen by Gerasimov and Shoigu.

Commenced in 2012 and designed to professionalise the Russian military, modernise its equipment and bring it to a higher state of readiness, this program removed much of the old Soviet architecture for mobilisation.

This was no accident; it was a deliberate design choice. And while this transformation was lauded by many in the West for its innovation, the reality is it removed the capacity for rapid expansion. And as Ukraine has shown, the Gerasimov reforms have failed to build the kind of modern, integrated and well-led military institution that is essential to success in contemporary war.

4. Failed offensives

To round out his abysmal recent record, General Gerasimov assumed command of the Russian forces in Ukraine and launched a widescale offensive in January this year. A series of thrusts were conducted on five main axes of advance from the Kreminna region, and all the way south through Bakhmut, Avidivka, Donetsk and Vuhledar.

The Russian military has experienced very limited success with these offensives, and even lost ground in the past month. According to US intelligence sources, the Russians have lost more than 100,000 soldiers since December 2022, including 20,000 killed. They have also lost so much equipment that tanks from the 1950s are being issued to Russian units in Ukraine.

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So why is Putin standing by Gerasimov?

Given this record of poor performance, one would think that Gerasimov's days might be numbered.

The reality, however, is that Putin is likely to keep him in his position for the time being. Not only is Gerasimov adept at palace politics in the Kremlin, but he is very loyal to Putin.

As Russian expert Dara Massicot noted when Gerasimov replaced previous commander Sergey Surovikin in January this year: "They have taken someone who is competent and replaced him with someone who is incompetent, but who has been there a long time and who has shown that he is loyal."

In authoritarian regimes, competent soldiers are less important than loyal ones. And, as Gerasimov may find out in the future, they also make excellent scapegoats for tyrants wishing to save their own skin.

Russia has experienced heavy losses during the war but loyalty in military leaders is valued more highly than competence. (AP: Pavel Golovkin)

What will happen next?

What does Gerasimov's performance augur for the months ahead? Ukrainian offensives are widely expected to be launched in the coming weeks, or even the coming days.

The limp and ineffective offensives launched by Gerasimov this year have consumed large amounts of ammunition and equipment in addition to the number of soldiers killed and wounded.

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This will constrain Gerasimov's ability to effectively respond to the coming Ukrainian offensives. Regardless of the number of obstacles his forces construct to slow down the Ukrainians, the Russians have a massive front line to defend. It is a task that would challenge the very best of armies, and the Russians can hardly be described as that.

There is an old saying: "When your enemy is making mistakes, don't get in their way."

In this war so far, Gerasimov has demonstrated a great talent for strategic mistakes. Therefore, the Ukrainians will not only avoid targeting Gerasimov, but they will also probably be doing everything possible to ensure Gerasimov stays in command.

Because given his track record, and the forthcoming Ukrainian offensives, Gerasimov is very likely in the coming months to transition from a four-time loser to a five-time loser.

Mick Ryan is a strategist and retired Australian Army major general. He served in East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan, and as a strategist on the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is also a non-resident fellow of the Lowy Institute and at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

ABC.net.au · by Mick Ryan · May 8, 2023

17. Opinion: Ukrainian Special Operations Forces (UASOF) – They’re Coming for You

We can learn a lot from all our counterparts wherever we go. We must understand the indigenous way of war and learn from it.

Opinion: Ukrainian Special Operations Forces (UASOF) – They’re Coming for You

Ukraine’s SOF operators once learned advanced tactics from US and UK experts. Now, with combat experience, Ukrainians are teaching their SOF counterparts a thing or two.

By Steve Brown

May 13, 2023, 9:39 am

kyivpost.com · by Steve Brown

NATO defines special operations as: “military activities conducted by specially designated, organized, selected, trained and equipped forces using unconventional techniques and modes of employment.”

The Ukrainian Special Operations Forces (UASOF) motto “I’m Coming For You!” (Іду на ви!) was that of the tenth-century Ukrainian leader Sviatoslav ‘The Brave,’ a Grand Prince of Kyiv renowned for his bravery and his success in defeating armies that greatly outnumbered his own. In light of the situation Ukraine’s armed forces find themselves in today, the motto is ever more appropriate.

In his keynote speech to the 2023 Special Operational Forces Conference and Exhibition (SOF Week) the Commander of the US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), General Bryan P. Fenton, talked about building special forces relationships with other countries and made special reference to the US relationship with Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces (UASOF).

His view seems to be that US special operations forces (USSOF) have taught Ukraine all they know but now the UASOF have shown the USSOF a thing or two they didn’t know which they are now putting into practice.

Where it all began

The first modern special forces unit was the Special Air Service (SAS), formed in July 1941 from the unorthodox idea of a British Army Lieutenant, David Stirling. He believed that highly mechanized forces relied so much on logistics to operate, that a small team of highly trained soldiers operating behind enemy lines could gain intelligence, attack enemy supply routes, destroy enemy fuel and ammunition dumps, destroy aircraft on the ground, and generally wreak havoc.

When fighting a largely defensive war the ability to project disruptive forces behind enemy lines and blunt their attacking ability now seems such an obvious strategy. The success of the SAS meant that the idea quickly caught on with all other armies. There are hardly any armed forces in the world that have not developed a special forces capability. None more so than Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces – although it nearly didn’t happen.

UASOF – a short history

Ukraine’s Special Forces Command was originally created from elements of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic’s ‘GRU’ [Military Intelligence] Spetsnaz. While they took part in some military operations, such as in Afghanistan, they were very much used, in the years immediately following the break-up of the Soviet Union, to support active, domestic military intelligence operations.

However, when the 2014 Russian invasion started, many Ukrainian regular forces were deployed around the world, in places such as Kosovo and Somalia. The government initially turned to former Ukrainian Spetsnaz personnel to defend Ukraine – and they did a reasonable job.

In 2007, Ukrainian Defense Minister Anatoliy Hrytsenko published a new doctrine for the creation and use of Special Operations Forces that would support conventional military operations rather than just be the executive arm of the armed forces ‘secret police.’

The Office of the UASOF and training centers were established, and links were formed with US and UK special forces. Despite this promising start, in 2011 the Ukrainian MoD decided to disband its Special Operations Forces for both financial and doctrinal reasons.

In September 2014, then-President Poroshenko decided to rapidly reform the UASOF, appointing the deputy commander and chief of staff of the Ukrainian airborne forces, Sergei Kryvonos, as the head of the Special Operations Directorate of the General Staff of Ukraine. By the end of 2014, the unit had around 4,000 operators ready to deploy or undergoing training.

In 2015, the UAF General Staff transferred control of the UASOF to the Ministry of Defense, which promptly decided to dismantle and reorganize the unit reducing its strength to 2,000 operators and issuing a new concept for Special Operations Forces in January 2016.

Major General Igor Lunyov was appointed as Commander of the new UASOF with Kryvonos as his Deputy and Chief of Staff. Three years later, one of the UASOF units, the 140th Special Operations Forces Centre, became the first non-NATO unit to be certified as a Special Operations Forces (SOF) unit eligible to join the NATO Response Force (NRF).

Lyunov was replaced as UASOF commander by Major General Hryhoriy Halahan in August 2020 and he in turn was replaced by the current commander, Brigadier General Viktor Khorenko in July 20022. Following Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion, Ukraine increased the number of UASOF operators to around 3,000.

Brigadier General Viktor Khorenko, Commander UASOFPhoto: UASOF Twitter

Current organization of the UASOF

The 2016 concept laid out the following structure for the UASOF:

[note: locations for units are as at peacetime and may no longer be current]

UASOF Command - Berdychiv, Zhytomyr region consisting of:

· 99th Command and Support Battalion

· 142nd Education and Training Centre

· Land warfare and special purpose units

Special reconnaissance and direct-action operations units:

· 3rd Special Purpose Regiment “Prince Svetoslav the Brave” - Kropyvnytskyi, Kirovograd region.

· 8th Special Purpose Regiment “Iziaslav Mstislavich” - Khmelnitsky, Khmelnitsky region.

· 140th Special Operations Forces Centre - Khmelnitsky, Khmelnitsky.

Aviation Special Purpose Unit:

· 35th Mixed Aviation Squadron - Havryshiyka Air Base, Vinnytsia region. This unit is mainly involved in the extraction, resupply, and rescue of UASOF teams.

Naval Special Purpose Unit:

· 73rd Maritime Special Operations Centre - Pervomaisky Island, Mykolaiv region.

This unit focuses on maintaining security in the Black Sea and also counterterrorism maritime missions.

Information and Psychological Warfare (IPW):

· 16th IPW Operations Centre - Huiva, Zhytomyr region

· 72nd IPW Operations Centre - Brovary, Kyiv region

· 74th IPW Operations Centre – Lviv

· 83rd IPW Operations Centre – Odesa

What does the UASOF do?

The Ukrainian concept for special forces operations envisages coordinated operations involving both UASOF and the conventional Ukrainian Armed Forces. The actual mechanisms for this are obviously sensitive but in outline UASOF tasks include:

· Operational raids behind enemy lines;

· Intelligence gathering including development of intelligence networks;

· Counterterrorism activities;

· Search, rescue and evacuation of hostages and prisoners;

· Cooperation with partner special forces units;

· Psychological operations;

· Support to drug and arms counter-trafficking operations;

· Training support to partner police and military forces.

Weapons and equipment

As is common with special operational forces worldwide, the UASOF has a vast range of weaponry and special equipment. Since the full-scale invasion, what was already an impressive arsenal, has been supplemented by high-quality, Western donated equipment.

The UASOF arsenal consists of semi-automatic pistols, assault rifles, sniper rifles, light machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, anti-tank guided weapons, man-portable air defense systems, defensive and offensive grenades, and a range of suppressors (silencers).

Typical SOF weapons and personal equipmentPhoto: Reddit

UASOF are provided with the best quality equipment available, including personal uniforms, load carrying equipment, helmets, body armor, underwater equipment, overt and covert communications, thermal and other imaging equipment.

The UASOF have access to a wide range of vehicles and other forms of operational transport including small patrol boats, Zodiac-style small boats, high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles (HMMWVs), and a range of aviation support including helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft.

UASOF actions against the Russian invasion

Many, if not most, of the operations that UASOF are called on to perform are shrouded in secrecy and will remain non-attributable, at least until someone writes a memoir after the war is over. There are, however, events that Ukraine has confirmed that involved SOF personnel and others that point firmly to their involvement.

Since the start of the war, UASOF sources have claimed responsibility for a number of special reconnaissance and direct-action operations targeting Russian personnel, materiel and infrastructure at the front line and behind enemy lines.

It is known that UASOF forces played a key role in defensive actions against Russian airborne forces that tried to seize Hostomel airport in the first days of the war. UASOF ‘held the ring’ until conventional Ukrainian territorial defense and regular forces could be organized and deployed to eventually dislodge the Russian paratroopers, after a battle that lasted for six days, much of which was filmed at the time.

In the early days of the full-scale invasion Russia’s lack of operational planning, lack of communications and poor military performance allowed UASOF to operate with comparative freedom. The epitome of this was the almost 60 km traffic jam that resulted when Russian forces from ten separate tactical units converged on the paved roads leading to Kyiv, because of the soft ground conditions in February 2022.

Here and in other areas, small UASOF teams armed with anti-tank weapons, initially rocket-propelled grenades, were able to ambush columns. They used, in hindsight, a simple tactic. A team would hit the front vehicle in a convoy, another team would hit the rear vehicle. The rest of the convoy either unable or struggling to maneuver would then be picked off almost at leisure by other UASOF teams. It got even worse for the Russians when anti-tank guided weapons, Javelin and NLAW, arrived from the West.

In the early months of the war, the UASOF were not used for special operations, but to replace ordinary infantry for missions that were considered to be critical. As more conventional Ukrainian forces were recruited, trained, and deployed to the front lines, which began to become more stable, the UASOF was released to play the role for which they had been created: leading resistance and sabotage efforts behind enemy lines.

UASOF operations and tactics are a direct extension of long-standing special forces doctrine. It is based on the deployment of small teams (typically 4-6 operators) to gather targeting intelligence for commanders and to conduct sabotage operations against targets of opportunity such as logistics trains, command centers, and high-value targets such as aircraft, ammunition dumps and fuel depots. This not only degrades the enemy’s military capability but also impacts his morale by spreading fear well beyond the front line.

In the current war, the UASOF is aided by: an ability to recruit human agents in Russia and the occupied territories; access to Western satellite, electronic warfare, signals and cyber intelligence; the possession of strike drone and electronic warfare technology that provides its teams the ability to deploy capabilities that Russian forces cannot easily identify, target, or engage; the poor levels of professionalism among Russian troops allotted to protect key assets; the motivation of Ukrainian special forces to operate at very high risk in defense of their country.

Starting in July and August attacks began to happen in both occupied areas of the Donbas and in Russian areas close to the border, which were undoubtedly the work of UASOF. This included the destruction of an ammunition storage site in Timonovo, a key logistics hub in the Russian oblast of Belgorod.

There were further attacks including on the Russian airfield in Stary Oskol, just 80 km from Voronezh, the headquarters of Russia's Western Military District. There were explosions at a number of sites around the Kherson dam, at the southern juncture of the Dnieper River, in the build-up to the retaking of Kherson in December. There have been reports of increasing numbers of explosions in occupied areas including across the Crimean Peninsula, which are seen as concerted efforts to degrade Russian command and logistics in advance of an anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Other spectacular attacks, probably initiated by UASOF elements, include the October 8 attack on the Kerch road and rail bridge that links Russian-occupied Crimea with the Russian mainland which, over 6 months later, has still not fully reopened. The attack was also noteworthy because it seems to have been the first use by UASOF of uncrewed surface vessels (USVs), popularly known as the Kamikaze boat.

Ukrainian Kamikaze boat.Graphic: HI Sutton

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The USVs are also believed to have been used in an attack on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in the Sevastopol naval base on the night of April 24.

Recent attacks on Russian territory including the improvised explosive attacks on key pro-Kremlin individuals Darya Dugina, Vladlen Tatarsky and Zakhar Prilepin and the drone attack on the Kremlin as well as more unexplained explosions, widespread fires, cut power lines and derailed trains have all been blamed on Russian anti-Kremlin ‘partisans.’ It is more than likely that these were actually carried out by UASOF operators or by Russian nationals who have been trained and equipped by them.

One of the (many) advantages UASOF, especially those of its members from the East and South of Ukraine, is that they not only speak the language of the enemy but also understand the mentality of the opposition.

The ongoing war in Ukraine war is the first time in which a well-equipped special operations force has had to conduct ongoing, high-intensity combat operations against a conventional, well-equipped, well-armed adversary.

General Fenton’s view is shared by European and NATO SOF, particularly those nations close to Russia’s borders, including Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Poland, who are taking note of the way their Ukrainian brethren are operating – how they are being deployed, the tactics they are using, the countermeasures both they and the enemy are using.

Steve Brown

After a career as a British Army Ammunition Specialist and Bomb Disposal Officer, Steve later worked in the fields of ammunition destruction, demining and explosive ordnance disposal with the UN and NATO. In 2017, after taking early retirement, he moved to Ukraine with his Ukrainian wife and two sons where he became a full-time writer. He now works as an English language editor with the Kyiv Post.

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18. DOD Managers Need a New Approach. SOCOM Can Lead the Way

Excerpts:

Professional planners in DoD are schooled on Measures of Performance and Measures of Effectiveness, but dynamically assessing campaign performance has always been a challenge. Planners might draw inspiration from an approach pioneered by Intel and Google: the Objectives and Key Results construct. Clear OKRs with time-bound, measurable objectives and an associated data structure that provides real-time feedback on performance are within our grasp—paving the way for truly data-driven trans-regional campaigning in support of integrated deterrence. The same applies to other managerial priorities that are associated more with the business operations of SOCOM: personnel, materiel, and resourcing portfolios. Data analytics and machine learning can augment enterprise-wide planning to bring implementation and outcomes into greater focus. Data analytics and eventually ML can also reveal opportunities to drive greater efficiency and effectiveness into these bureaucratic ecosystems, illuminating trade-offs needed to accelerate modernization efforts.

Making the most of data requires focus on the critical, though less flashy, aspects of digital transformation—mainly data stewardship, data interoperability, data quality, and digital literacy. It means accountability in executing the “data decrees” and creating a data-centric architecture that enables data interoperability. SOCOM is investing in such an architecture and the foundational elements necessary to become a data-drive organization. The goal is to instrument the Command for greater performance in execution.

Governance means ensuring broad enterprise understanding of and alignment on goals and objectives. It requires assessing performance as revealed by the data. The SOF emphasis on “truth over harmony” is tailor-made to benefit from data-driven, evidence-based insights. Data and machine learning have the potential to transform traditional governance processes by establishing a single source of truth for enterprise operations, freeing up time to instead focus on resolving barriers to execution.

SOF needs transformation in all three areas to move from a data-informed organization to a data-driven one that can harness machine augmentation for its business operations and campaigning. And if this pathfinding is successful—and it must be—the rest of the Defense Department has a blueprint to follow.

DOD Managers Need a New Approach. SOCOM Can Lead the Way

The Pentagon's McNamara-era philosophy is woefully insufficient to a world that changes daily. U.S. Special Operations Command is working to craft a better one.

BY DAN FOLLIARD

CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, US SOCOM

MAY 12, 2023

defenseone.com · by Dan Folliard

Many proposals to speed up the Defense Department’s adoption of artificial-intelligence tools cite flaws in the acquisition process or the need for technological innovation or experimentation. But at its heart, AI adoption is not a tech problem or an evangelism problem: it is a management problem. DoD is hamstrung by a management system born in the 1950s and 1960s. The Department needs a new management philosophy, enabled by data, analytics, and AI—and it needs a place to incubate this new way of doing things. Special Operations Forces, a microcosm of DoD and a pioneering organization, is poised to be a pathfinder.

For all the important changes of the past half-century, DoD’s management system remains anchored to the federated approach of industrial titans that won World War II and the systems analysis/cost control methods introduced by Robert McNamara. To be sure, one of McNamara’s management precepts was “get the data.” But approaches that may have worked when the Library of Congress held an estimated 124 gigabytes of information are hopelessly overmatched when the world generates millions of gigabytes per second. The decision-making processes and cycles that were appropriate for the pre-internet era are now inundated by the force created by the mass and acceleration of data. The central question is no longer an optimization problem of defense resources to strategy, as it was during McNamara’s era—it is how to accelerate performance to keep pace with the rate of change in the modern world.

Certainly, data, analytics, and AI have begun to infiltrate the Department’s business and operational matters. Leaders today have unprecedented visibility to “see” the Department in ways that McNamara could not have envisioned. Two of the most prominent examples are the Advancing Analytics, or ADVANA, program, which has made substantial progress in tying together the Department’s business data; and Project Maven, which has made similar gains on management of the operational and tactical matters. Data interoperability provides an opening not just for basic business intelligence, but for driver-based planning and true enterprise business performance management. Promising efforts have emerged to help illuminate whether investments generate desired outcomes. Some recent examples include the Department’s “Pulse” initiative to help measure business health and the Navy’s “Performance to Plan” effort, which aims to improve tactical aircraft readiness.

But this piecemeal approach is insufficient to the urgent need to harness AI amid near-peer competition. Without a new management philosophy, enabled by data, analytics, and AI, DoD will be hard-pressed to deliver agility and improved performance in the face of rapid change.

SOF can set the standard

The past two decades of counterterrorism operations saw Special Operations Forces burnish their reputation as a pathfinder for the Joint Force—including by producing modern data management and AI tools that are now widely used to great effect. But a new era brings new demands. The latest National Defense Strategy emphasizes campaigning—across geography, domain, and time—as a key “way” to achieve the “ends” of maintaining a rules-based international order. The nation needs SOF to campaign globally in support of integrated deterrence while continuing counterterrorism operations and standing ready for crisis response. And with stable, timely budgets less frequent and Overseas Contingency Operations funding a thing of the past, SOF must make better use of its taxpayer dollars.

Machine augmentation of decision-making is not just a tactical problem – it is a strategic problem. It is no longer enough for Special Operations Forces to ensure proficiency on the battlefield. Better business operations and cross-regional campaigning are needed for long-term success against strategic competitors and financial topline pressures. The central problem is to increase performance—both to go faster and to lift all boats in our own enterprise and with our joint, interagency, and international partners. The solution must include adopting data and ML/AI for enterprise management, business operations, and campaigning.

U.S. Special Operations Command is the perfect testbed for new management theories based on data, analytics, and AI. A microcosm of the Joint Force, it has operational responsibilities executed in coordination with and through the geographic combatant commands. It also has service-like authorities to organize, train, and equip special operators. SOCOM has an annual budget of around $14 billion; a diverse and global workforce of some 70,000; and air, land, and sea assets. Its data has the good and bad pathologies of the all services and combatant commands. If SOCOM can learn to use data, analytics, and AI to improve business operations and campaign globally, it can provide a gold standard for others in DoD to emulate.

The good news is that the command need not start from scratch. Just as the Pentagon adopted the management playbook from General Motors in the 1950s, SOCOM is drawing inspiration from large successful companies that have digitally transformed management and operations. It is blending these digital-era approaches with lessons from its recent decades of counterterrorism and crisis-response operations: a team-of-teams mindset, relentless mission focus, data-driven tactical operations.

The result is a blueprint for the Joint Force. Data-driven management operations create a virtuous cycle that drives greater enterprise performance, just as the “find, fix, finish, exploit, analyze, and disseminate” construct drove better performance for special operators and their joint, interagency, and international teammates. Data and machine learning improve performance at all echelons.

Three key areas

In practical terms, modernizing management means transforming and aligning three key areas: planning, data, and governance.

Professional planners in DoD are schooled on Measures of Performance and Measures of Effectiveness, but dynamically assessing campaign performance has always been a challenge. Planners might draw inspiration from an approach pioneered by Intel and Google: the Objectives and Key Results construct. Clear OKRs with time-bound, measurable objectives and an associated data structure that provides real-time feedback on performance are within our grasp—paving the way for truly data-driven trans-regional campaigning in support of integrated deterrence. The same applies to other managerial priorities that are associated more with the business operations of SOCOM: personnel, materiel, and resourcing portfolios. Data analytics and machine learning can augment enterprise-wide planning to bring implementation and outcomes into greater focus. Data analytics and eventually ML can also reveal opportunities to drive greater efficiency and effectiveness into these bureaucratic ecosystems, illuminating trade-offs needed to accelerate modernization efforts.

Making the most of data requires focus on the critical, though less flashy, aspects of digital transformation—mainly data stewardship, data interoperability, data quality, and digital literacy. It means accountability in executing the “data decrees” and creating a data-centric architecture that enables data interoperability. SOCOM is investing in such an architecture and the foundational elements necessary to become a data-drive organization. The goal is to instrument the Command for greater performance in execution.

Governance means ensuring broad enterprise understanding of and alignment on goals and objectives. It requires assessing performance as revealed by the data. The SOF emphasis on “truth over harmony” is tailor-made to benefit from data-driven, evidence-based insights. Data and machine learning have the potential to transform traditional governance processes by establishing a single source of truth for enterprise operations, freeing up time to instead focus on resolving barriers to execution.

SOF needs transformation in all three areas to move from a data-informed organization to a data-driven one that can harness machine augmentation for its business operations and campaigning. And if this pathfinding is successful—and it must be—the rest of the Defense Department has a blueprint to follow.

Dan Folliard is the Chief Digital and AI Officer at U.S. Special Operations Command. He is a career civil servant and was formerly a senior executive in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, serving in both OUSD(Policy) and in the immediate office of multiple Secretaries and Deputy Secretaries of Defense.

The opinions expressed here are the author’s and do not represent an official position of U.S. Special Operations Command or the Department of Defense.

defenseone.com · by Dan Folliard

19. The Real Reason Why the U.S. Military's All-Volunteer Force Is In Trouble

The Real Reason Why the U.S. Military's All-Volunteer Force Is In Trouble

19fortyfive.com · by Brandon Temple · May 13, 2023

Stuart Scheller took to the pages of RealClearDefense recently to identify a real crisis in America’s military. The all-volunteer force is in great peril, he argued. On that point, Mr. Scheller will find no rebuttal from me—we are indeed at an inflection point and changes within and outside of the military are required.

However, Scheller’s reasoning seems rooted more in politics than relevant data. What’s more, the conclusions are a projection of his well-documented grievance against Department of Defense (DOD) leadership. I argue the root problem is not so much leadership or politics but the recruiting pool itself. More importantly, this problem predates many of the failures of leadership and so-called “wokeness” that Scheller cites in his editorial.

It is no secret the DOD is struggling to recruit young talent. The DOD missed its recruiting goal in FY22, with the Army having the most trouble and missing its goal by more than 10,000 troops. Scheller suggests the primary reason is political when he asserts that “young Americans are not lazy or stupid.” He argues they can sense hypocrisy. “On the one hand, military leaders preach higher purpose, sense of duty, honor, and other noble virtues. But with the other hand, they rack up long lists of failures and double standards.” He argues the pool of 17–24-year-old men and women are opting out of military service because they distrust military leadership.

What Scheller fails to mention is that 77 percent of that recruiting pool is ineligible for service under current entry standards.

Let me repeat that. More than three-quarters of the primary military recruiting pool cannot make it through the door. That leaves roughly 23 percent of potential recruits in the primary target demographic to ponder and analyze the leadership troubles within the DOD before raising their right hand.

Scheller’s other theme is politicization of the military and its leadership. This is certainly an issue and a contributing factor to the problem. A recent poll conducted by The Heritage Foundation found that 65 percent of active-duty service members are concerned about politicization in the ranks. As for the recruiting pool, the majority of recruits (70 percent) have a family member in the armed forces. If 65 percent of active-duty service members are concerned with politicization in the ranks, it’s fair to assume that they may be urging family members to consider other career paths.

While politicization of the military appears to be a factor in the current recruiting woes, it is certainly not the root cause. The problem of recruiting pool eligibility predates both the Biden and Trump Administrations, “wokeness,” and COVID-19. An article in the left-leaning news outlet Vox found that “Before 2014, the call to “stay woke” was, for many people, unheard of.” This provides a general starting point for when the woke movement began.

Interestingly, the same year the woke movement was taking off, the Pentagon was already sounding the alarm that approximately 71 percent of the 34 million 17-to-24-year-olds would not qualify for military service. To be sure, wokeness in the military is concerning to many, particularly on the right. The author shares many of these concerns. But the recruiting problem predates the woke movement, the Biden and Trump Administrations, and other military controversies such as the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

Additionally, Scheller points to an all-time low confidence in military officers, citing a 2022 Gallup poll. He writes: “Americans’ faith in military officers has degraded to the lowest levels ever recorded.” What he fails to mention is that the all-time low is particular to Republican respondents. In the same poll, we find that Republicans had record highs in confidence in military officers during the Trump Administration. This suggests Republican views are highly dependent on which party occupies the oval office, and that these numbers could skyrocket back to normal levels if a Republican wins the presidency in 2024.

Scheller claims retention among active-duty service members is another major issue. On this point, however, he shifts his causation from the political to the economic. He runs through a brief economic history of the all-volunteer force, the 20-year pension system, and the new Blended Retirement System.

He cites the latter as a main culprit in retaining talent. He claims that without the financial incentives of the old pension system, why would anybody stick around for “…18-hour days building power-point slides with vague purpose, withstand beratement, and move every three years when other opportunities await?” The job sucks, it’s hard, and there is no incentive to stick around when other opportunities beckon, Scheller tells us.

But as we have seen with recent Big Tech layoffs and other adverse labor consequences of a slowing economy, the alternative to military services isn’t all roses and wealth. Plus, those that do offer a retirement program typically rely on the 401(k). Scheller provides no data on the Blended Retirement System and its effect on retention. He also missed a key piece of data: 83 percent of service members who serve don’t make it to retirement. Thus, it would seem the 20-year pension model wasn’t as effective in retention as Scheller concludes.

Scheller ends the essay with his hypothesis on the DOD’s solution to the recruiting crisis. The powers that be in the DOD will gather in some cigar-smoke-filled basement bunker, twist their mustaches, and come up with a plan to start a war. They will solve recruiting and retention with a quick rally around the flag moment that will send our men and women into harm’s way. On this point, I guess we can only wait and see.

Scheller hits on many real points but misses the mark on root causes. The data and facts point to a shrinking pool of eligible candidates among the target demographic of 17–24-year-olds. The politicization of the force, wokeness, and policies like the COVID vaccine mandate certainly played a role in repelling certain recruits.

But the evidence shows the recruiting pool crisis predates these cultural issues. If we are going to save the all-volunteer force model, we must start by increasing the number of eligible candidates in the 17-24-year-old demographic. We also must tailor incentives and recruiting methods to the current generation of potential recruits. The ways and means to do this are what we should be focusing on going forward.

Brandon Temple, Ph.D., is an Air Force Special Warfare Officer serving as a legislative liaison to the House of Representatives. Prior to this assignment, he was a Defense Legislative Fellow serving as National Security Advisor to a member of Congress. Any comments or recommendations in this article are the author’s personal views. They do not represent the position of any branch of the United States Government, the Department of Defense, or the Department of the Air Force. This first appeared in RealClearDefense.

19fortyfive.com · by Brandon Temple · May 13, 2023

20. Armed Overwatch special-ops turboprop enters low-rate production

Armed Overwatch special-ops turboprop enters low-rate production

flightglobal.com · by Ryan Finnerty

Fixed-Wing

By 2023-05-12T17:34:00+01:00

L3Harris and Air Tractor have entered low-rate initial production (LRIP) on their joint Sky Warden light attack turboprop for US Special Operations Command (SOCOM).

The AT-802U Sky Warden collaboration between L3 Harris and Air Tractor was selected in 2022 for SOCOM’s Armed Overwatch programme to deliver a low-altitude close air support platform

The command’s acquisitions executive Jim Smith confirmed the initial production run during the Special Operations Forces Week conference in Tampa, Florida on 9 May.

“We’re very pleased with the progress,” Smith says.

L3Harris has previously said the LRIP contract for Armed Overwatch covers six new aircraft under Lot 1 production.

L3Harris and Air Tractor were selected for SOCOM’s Armed Overwatch programme in 2022, with their single-engined AT-802U Sky Warden, beating designs from Sierra Nevada and Textron. The platform, a derivative of Air Tractor’s crop-dusting aircraft, will replace Pilatus U-28A Draco turboprops used by SOCOM for aerial reconnaissance.

The programme of record includes up to 75 aircraft at a value of $3 billion.

In its solicitation for Armed Overwatch, SOCOM said it sought an aircraft that can function in an “austere and permissible environment” – it favoured a rugged and reliable aircraft capable of operating from short runways, rather than a faster or stealthy modern fighter.

At the time of the Armed Overwatch award in August 2022, L3Harris said Sky Warden was production-ready and that deliveries could begin within 12 months.

SOCOM now says full-rate production of AT-802Us has been delayed approximately three months owing to new training and to system requirements that military officials requested L3Harris address.

“This will be the first tail dragger aircraft in the air force… inventory in many years,” Smith says. “We want to make sure we’ve added time in the schedule for our operators, our pilots to work with the technology.”

Tail draggers – or tail-wheel aircraft – have two forward landing gears and a single rear wheel.

All current US Air Force fighters, bombers and cargo aircraft use tricycle gear configurations, with two main landing gear assemblies and a forward nose gear. The lone exception is Lockheed Martin’s U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance jet, which has a bicycle landing gear configuration, involving forward and aft centreline gears and wing-mounted ”outrigger” gears.

Smith says SOCOM also asked L3Harris to incorporate a different radio system into Sky Warden, to improve commonality with ground forces.

“That did cause a change from what they had demonstrated,” Smith notes. “So we had to add a bit of time for them to incorporate [it].”

The radio in question is L3Harris’s Falcon AN/PRC-167 wideband tactical system, which can be carried by ground troops. L3Harris says the radio can overcome “extreme distances, geographical barriers and adversarial [electronic warfare] aggression”.

The company did not respond to a request for comment about its latest timeline for Sky Warden production and deliveries.

21. Mattis + Vickers: An "Oh So Social" Conversation (General Jim Mattis interviews Dr. Michael Vickers about his forthcoming memoir.) (OSS Society)

RSVP here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mattis-vickers-an-oh-so-social-conversation-tickets-627293320207

I am looking forward to reading Dr. Vinckers new book.

Jun 13

Mattis + Vickers: An "Oh So Social" Conversation

General Jim Mattis interviews Dr. Michael Vickers about his forthcoming memoir.

General Jim Mattis interviews Dr. Michael Vickers about his forthcoming book. In By All Means Available: Memoirs of a Life in Intelligence, Special Operation and Strategy, Vickers recounts his remarkable career, from his days as a Green Beret to his vision for victory in Afghanistan to his role in waging America’s war with al-Qa’ida at the highest levels of government. In captivating detail, he depicts his years in the Special Forces—including his training to parachute behind enemy lines with a backpack nuclear weapon in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe—and reveals how those experiences directly influenced his approach to shaping policy. Vickers has played a significant role in most of the military and intelligence operations of the past four decades, and he offers a deeply informed analysis of the greatest challenges facing America today, and in the decades ahead.

Riveting and illuminating, this is a rare and important insider’s account of the modern military and intelligence worlds at every level.

“Mike Vickers’s amazing life story could easily be confused with a first-rate adventure novel. He tells it factually and deliberately, ensuring that we understand the context of his selfless service and many consequential achievements. And he tells it with humility, giving us some insight into the character of this most interesting and accomplished man.” —Admiral Eric T. Olson, U.S. Navy (Retired), Former Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command

“Mike Vickers has written the best and most comprehensive memoir yet about American military special operations and CIA covert actions during the last decade of the Cold War and the generation-long U.S. war against foreign terrorists. From running the Reagan administration’s war against the Soviets in Afghanistan to the killing of Usama Bin Ladin and beyond, Vickers was at the center of planning and implementing some of the most consequential secret presidential directives. His ability to think and plan both strategically and tactically was rare, but to add to that superb practical execution made Vickers a talent unique in the intelligence agencies and in the Department of Defense. From enlisted Green Beret to some of the most senior positions in government, Vickers saw it all, experienced it all. Readers of his memoir are in for a rare treat and a gripping story." —Robert M. Gates, Director of Central Intelligence 1991–1993 and Secretary of Defense 2006–2011

“In my over 50 years of public life, I have known only a few special people totally devoted to the challenge of protecting our country. Mike Vickers is one of those very special people. His experiences are without equal. But because he spent his life as a “silent warrior” most of what he accomplished is out of the public eye. He was always in the right place at the right time, providing essential courage, advice, and devotion critical to accomplishing the mission. He helped make our country safer. There is no greater legacy for a ‘silent warrior.’” —Leon E. Panetta, Former Secretary of Defense and Director, CIA

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com