Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

- John Wooden

“Understanding the world too well, you see too many options and become as indecisive as Hamlet. No matter how far we progress, we remain part animal, and it is the animal in us that fires our strategies, gives them life, animates us to fight. Without the desire to fight, without a capacity for the violence war churns up, we cannot deal with danger.

The prudent Odysseus types are comfortable with both sides of their nature. They plan ahead as best they can, see far and wide, but when it comes time to move ahead, they move. Knowing how to control your emotions means not repressing them completely but using them to their best effect.”

- Robert Greene, The 33 Strategies of War

"Discipline does not mean suppression and control, nor is adjustment to a pattern or an ideology; it means a mind that sees 'what is' and learns from 'what is.' Such a mind has to be extraordinarily alert, aware."

- J. Krishnamurti, The Impossible Question

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 17, 2023

2. Pentagon’s top policymaker Kahl plans to resign, officials say

3. The Offensive Before the Offensive: Ukraine Strikes Behind Russian Lines

4. French Resistance Fighter Goes Public About Execution of German P.O.W.s

5. Biden Seeks to Rally G-7 Allies Against Russia and China, as Debt Talks Cloud Message

6. Russia fires 30 cruise missiles at Ukrainian targets; Ukraine says 29 were shot down

7. 'Clock has hit midnight': China loans pushing world’s poorest countries to brink of collapse

8. The President Must Move Swiftly to Nominate New National Cyber Director

9. Taiwanese Leader: Be ‘Firm and Determined’ in Deterring China

10. Ukraine vs. Taiwan: America's Defeatist, Pointless Debate

11. Developing Resistance and Resilience Is Critical for Taiwan

12. Why Ukraine Shouldn’t Talk to Russia—Yet

13. Building a ‘superhuman’: Focus on mind, body, soul drives evolution of America’s warfighters (Special Operations)

14. Opinion | Japan Can’t Pass the Buck Anymore

15. Leak suspect shared classified secrets with foreigners, prosecutors say

16. Pentagon policy chief Kahl to leave after summer NATO summit

17. History Rhymes: Lessons from Indo-Pacific Competition and Confrontation in the Gray Zone

18. Reports: Defense News correspondent arrested in India

19. No More Silent Service As Marine CH-53s Resupply Ballistic Submarine In Pacific

20. The U.S. Navy Desperately Needs to Crank Out Ships Like Hotcakes to Keep Up With China

21. From Ukraine war to China's rising power: 5 reasons this G7 matters

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 17, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-17-2023

Key Takeaways

Russian and Ukrainian officials acknowledged continued limited Ukrainian counterattacks near Bakhmut on May 17.
Ukrainian officials reported that terrain features constrain Ukrainian offensive operations across the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast.
US officials reported that a Patriot air defense system is operational after Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian missile strikes on Kyiv destroyed the system on May 16.
The Kremlin reportedly accused three hypersonic missile scientists of treason.
Select Russian strongmen (siloviki) are likely attempting to signal to Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin that he must cease his political ambitions in Russia.
The Russian siloviki may be intimidating Russian officials affiliated with Prigozhin to discourage their cooperation with Wagner but appear to be unsuccessful in their attempts to scare Prigozhin into obedience.
Russian authorities continue to crack down against domestic anti-war dissent in an effort to strengthen domestic repressions and prepare Russian society for a long-term war effort.
Russian authorities are likely forcefully integrating Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) dioceses in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast as part of a wider religious persecution campaign in occupied Ukraine.
Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks northeast of Kupyansk and along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
Russian forces continued to make incremental gains in Bakhmut and conducted limited ground attacks on the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line.
Russian forces continued to target west (right) bank Kherson Oblast and islands at the Dnipro River delta out of fear of planned Ukrainian counteroffensives.
The Kremlin continues crypto-mobilization efforts by recruiting regional volunteer battalions and criminals.
The Russian State Duma adopted amendments to the martial law on May 16 that authorize the forced and controlled movement of citizens from territories under the martial law to the territories without marital law.
Russian ultranationalists are speculating about the fate of Belarus’ independence in case of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s severe illness or death.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MAY 17, 2023

May 17, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 17, 2023

Grace Mappes, Kateryna Stepanenko, Nicole Wolkov, Layne Philipson, George Barros, and Frederick W. Kagan

May 17, 2023, 7pm ET

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

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

Note: The data cutoff for this product was 3pm ET on May 17. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the May 18 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Important Note: ISW has reindexed its map layer for reported Ukrainian counteroffensives on May 12, 2023. We removed reported Ukrainian counteroffensive coded before May 1, 2023, in order to delineate more clearly new Ukrainian territorial gains from gains secured in previous Ukrainian counteroffensives. ISW retained a few reported Ukrainian counteroffensives polygons from before May 1, 2023, specifically on the Dnipro River Delta south of Kherson Oblast, to preserve context in that complex area of operations. May 1, 2023, is an arbitrary date and does not mark the beginning or end of any assessed Ukrainian or Russian effort. ISW has reindexed its map layers before and similarly removed old reported Ukrainian counteroffensives around Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Chernihiv, and Sumy oblasts following the conclusion of the Battle of Kyiv in April 2022.

Russian and Ukrainian officials acknowledged continued limited Ukrainian counterattacks near Bakhmut on May 17. Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar stated that Ukrainian forces are advancing in unspecified areas on Bakhmut’s flanks.[1] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty stated that Ukrainian forces advanced up to 500 meters in the Bakhmut direction in the past day and continue to attack Russian flanks.[2] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian Airborne Forces (VDV) made marginal advances but acknowledged continued Ukrainian counterattacks against Bakhmut’s flanks near Bohdanivka (5km northwest of Bakhmut) and Ivanivske (6km west of Bakhmut).[3] Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin denied the MoD’s claim of territorial gains, however, and criticized the MoD for falsely portraying a retreat as capturing new positions.[4]One prominent milblogger complained that Russian forces must now react to Ukrainian actions, implying that Russian forces are losing the initiative in the Bakhmut area despite the limited nature of Ukrainian counterattacks in the area.[5]

Ukrainian officials reported that terrain features constrain Ukrainian offensive operations across the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast. Ukrainian Southern Forces Joint Press Center Head Nataliya Humenyuk acknowledged that the width of the Dnipro River hinders Ukrainian territorial advances in Kherson Oblast and called for the information space to “forget” about Ukrainian offensive activities in the Kherson direction.[6] Ukrainian Security Services (SBU) Colonel Roman Kostenko stated on May 14 that the Ukrainian forces pushed Russian forces back from the islands close to Kherson City and stated that the islands have poor terrain, no trenches, limited shelter, and that the ground is always wet.[7]

US officials reported that a Patriot air defense system is operational after Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian missile strikes on Kyiv destroyed the system on May 16. CNN cited three US officials as stating that a Patriot air defense system is still operational despite the Russian MoD claims that a Kinzhal missile destroyed it.[8] An unidentified US defense official had previously told CNN that the Patriot system likely suffered damage, but three officials specified that the system suffered minimal damage that does not impede its operations.[9] Officials did not specify if Russian missiles or debris caused the damage.

The Kremlin reportedly accused three hypersonic missile scientists of treason. Employees of the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mathematics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science published an open letter on May 15 in defense of three of their scientists — Anatoly Maslov, Alexander Shiplyuk, and Valery Zvegintsev — whom Russian authorities reportedly arrested in the past year under suspicion of committing “high treason.”[10] The open letter also noted that these arrests deter the younger generation from pursuing careers in science, which contributes to a decrease in the quality of scientific research. Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claimed that the Kremlin was aware of the open letter and that Russian security services are involved.[11]

Select Russian strongmen (siloviki) are likely attempting to signal to Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin that he must cease his political ambitions in Russia. Prigozhin responded to a media inquiry on May 17 about several allegations from Russian Telegram channels — which are reportedly affiliated with the Russian Presidential Administration and the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) — about Prigozhin’s political aspirations in Russia.[12] These channels claimed that Prigozhin is using the battle for Bakhmut and war in Ukraine to become a political figure in Russia rather than actually fighting for Russia’s interests.[13] The journalist directly asked Prigozhin if he thinks that Russian siloviki are trying to signal to him via these Telegram channels.[14] Prigozhin confirmed that he had an interaction with an unnamed Russian senior official “recently” who had accused Prigozhin of deliberately acting in his own self-interest.[15] Prigozhin emphasized that this official was not Russian President Vladimir Putin but indirectly implied that these sentiments are widespread in the Russian Presidential Administration — noting that the Telegram posts reflect the collective opinion of the bureaucratic community.

The Russian siloviki may be intimidating Russian officials affiliated with Prigozhin to discourage their cooperation with Wagner. One of the Telegram channels mentioned in the media inquiry noted that Prigozhin is losing contact with Chairperson of the Russian State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin and had a fight with First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Russian Presidential Administration Sergey Kiriyenko who originally supported his initiatives.[16] Volodin, for example, reportedly stopped pushing Wagner’s agendas to avoid a conflict with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. The channel observed that a member of the Russian Communist Party, Viktor Sobolev, originally supported a bill that favored Wagner only to later denounce Wagner as an “illegal armed formation” on May 15.[17] The channel noted that Prigozhin still has contact with Putin’s administration via Chief of Staff of the Russian Presidential Executive Office Anton Vaino and noted that Prigozhin’s fate lies entirely in Putin’s hands. Shoigu is reportedly unsuccessfully attempting to convince Putin to eliminate Prigozhin due to Prigozhin’s failure to secure battlefield victories — which likely indicates that Prigozhin’s bloody efforts to capture Bakhmut are in fact an attempt to compete with Shoigu for self-preservation.

The siloviki appear to be unsuccessful in their attempts to scare Prigozhin into obedience. Prigozhin stated that he is ready to take on the “bureaucrats” and accused them of attempting to gain more authority while using Wagner to fight the war. Prigozhin also accused unnamed officials of being apathetic about Russian deaths on the frontlines and sarcastically stated that the future Russian defense minister has been in Bakhmut for over a week when responding to a question asking if Shoigu had accepted his invitation to visit the Bakhmut frontline.[18] Prigozhin had been recently publicizing his cooperation with former Russian Deputy Minister of Defense for Logistics-turned-Wagner-Group-deputy-commander Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev, and it is possible that Prigozhin may be attempting to promote Mizintsev as a replacement for Shoigu.[19] Prigozhin is likely aware that Putin is not entirely convinced of Shoigu’s ability to win the war and may be hopeful that a decisive victory in Bakhmut would give him the leverage to replace Shoigu with Wagner-affiliated officials. Both Prigozhin and Shoigu likely perceive this feud as an existential matter.

Russian authorities continue to crack down against domestic anti-war dissent in an effort to strengthen domestic repressions and prepare Russian society for a long-term war effort. BBC’s Russia service reported on May 17, citing anonymous interlocutors, that the Russian General Prosecutor’s office and the Federal Service for the Supervision of Education and Science (Rosobrnadzor) conducted an unscheduled inspection at the European University in St. Petersburg as part of counterterror and counter-extremism measures.[20] BBC noted that the investigators investigated the dissertation topics and personal files of undergraduate and graduate students as well as the publications and classes of faculty in at least four departments: anthropology, history, sociology, and political science. BBC stated that the investigation affected several dozen faculty members and hundreds of students. BBC reported that Russian authorities have been conducting similar inspections at three other Moscow universities since 2021. One of the interlocutors stated that Russian authorities regularly conduct these inspections, resulting in faculty and curricula changes.

The Astrakhan Oblast “A Just Russia” party faction voted out faction head and former Russian State Duma Deputy Oleg Shein on May 16 after Shein resigned from the post on April 18.[21] Shein cited disagreements with federal “A Just Russia” faction co-leader Sergey Mironov — who is notably connected with Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin — for the Astrakhan faction’s vote and claimed that the party forced him out of his role due to his anti-war sentiment.[22] Shein later quipped that the faction had not yet ”invented” the reason for his ousting.[23]

Russian authorities are likely forcefully integrating Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) dioceses in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast as part of a wider religious persecution campaign in occupied Ukraine. Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill and the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) announced the adoption of the Berdyansk and Prymorsk UOC dioceses into the ROC on May 16.[24] [25] The ROC claimed that Berdyansk and Prymorsk dioceses, clergy, and parishioners voted to join the ROC after UOC leadership “abandoned” the dioceses.[26] [27] ISW has previously reported on Russia’s religious oppression occupied Ukraine, including the detention or assassinations of at least 29 Ukrainian clergy or religious leaders since the start of the war.[28] [29]

Key Takeaways

Russian and Ukrainian officials acknowledged continued limited Ukrainian counterattacks near Bakhmut on May 17.
Ukrainian officials reported that terrain features constrain Ukrainian offensive operations across the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast.
US officials reported that a Patriot air defense system is operational after Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian missile strikes on Kyiv destroyed the system on May 16.
The Kremlin reportedly accused three hypersonic missile scientists of treason.
Select Russian strongmen (siloviki) are likely attempting to signal to Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin that he must cease his political ambitions in Russia.
The Russian siloviki may be intimidating Russian officials affiliated with Prigozhin to discourage their cooperation with Wagner but appear to be unsuccessful in their attempts to scare Prigozhin into obedience.
Russian authorities continue to crack down against domestic anti-war dissent in an effort to strengthen domestic repressions and prepare Russian society for a long-term war effort.
Russian authorities are likely forcefully integrating Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) dioceses in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast as part of a wider religious persecution campaign in occupied Ukraine.
Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks northeast of Kupyansk and along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
Russian forces continued to make incremental gains in Bakhmut and conducted limited ground attacks on the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line.
Russian forces continued to target west (right) bank Kherson Oblast and islands at the Dnipro River delta out of fear of planned Ukrainian counteroffensives.
The Kremlin continues crypto-mobilization efforts by recruiting regional volunteer battalions and criminals.
The Russian State Duma adopted amendments to the martial law on May 16 that authorize the forced and controlled movement of citizens from territories under the martial law to the territories without marital law.
Russian ultranationalists are speculating about the fate of Belarus’ independence in case of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s severe illness or death.

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

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

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks northeast of Kupyansk and along the Svatove-Kreminna line on May 17. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive actions near Masyutivka (13km northeast of Kupyansk), Novoselivske (14 km northwest of Svatove), Stelmakhivka (15km northwest of Svatove), Nevske (19km northwest of Kreminna), and Bilohorivka (10km south of Kreminna).[30] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces conducted ground attacks near Synkivka (about 7km northeast of Kupyansk) and Novoselivske, and pushed Ukrainian forces to the Oskil River after taking Masyutivka.[31] ISW has not yet observed visual confirmation that Russian forces have captured Masyutivka. The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that the 252nd Motorized Rifle Regiment (3rd Motorized Rifle Division, 20th Combined Arms Army, Western Military District) repelled two Ukrainian ground attacks near Chervonopopivka (6km north of Kreminna).[32] Geolocated footage published on May 16 shows artillery elements of the Russian 20th Combined Arms Army (Western Military District) striking a bridge over the Zherebets River in Makiivka (22km northwest of Kreminna).[33]

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

Russian forces continued to make incremental gains in Bakhmut on May 17. Geolocated footage posted on May 17 shows that Wagner Group forces made incremental advances in southwestern Bakhmut.[34] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces conducted a failed ground attack west of Bakhmut near Ivanivske (6km west of Bakhmut) but advanced northwest of Bakhmut near the Bakhmut-Khromove highway, Orikhovo-Vasylivka (11km northwest), and Mynkivka (13km northwest).[35] Another milblogger claimed that Wagner forces completed the capture of a Ukrainian fortified area in western Bakhmut and began pressuring Ukrainian forces in an adjacent contested area.[36] Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed on May 16 that Wagner forces advanced 200 meters and that Ukrainian forces only control 1.46 square kilometers of territory in Bakhmut.[37] Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar acknowledged on May 17 that Russian forces made incremental advances in Bakhmut.[38]

Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks on the Avdiivka–Donetsk City line on May 17. The Ukrainian General Staff noted that Russian forces did not conduct any ground attacks near Avdiivka, but one milblogger claimed that Russian forces conducted an unsuccessful ground attack on the southwestern approach to Avdiivka.[39] The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Ukrainian forces repelled multiple Russian ground attacks in Marinka (27km southwest of Avdiivka).[40] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced 100 meters in Marinka and that Ukrainian forces control less than one square kilometer of Marinka.[41]

Russian and Ukrainian forces reportedly conducted limited ground attacks in western Donetsk Oblast on May 17. Ukrainian Defense Forces Tavriisk Direction Spokesperson Valeriy Shershen stated that Russian forces conducted 16 ground attacks against Ukrainian positions on unspecified areas of the western Donetsk–Zaporizhia Oblast frontline.[42] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces attempted to break through Russian defensive lines near Vuhledar.[43]

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

Russian forces continued to target west (right) bank Kherson Oblast and islands at the Dnipro River delta on May 16 out of fear of planned Ukrainian counteroffensives. Kherson Oblast Administration shelled Kherson Oblast 79 times between May 16 and May 17.[44] A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that the Russian Air Force struck Ukrainian units in Kizomys and Velentenske on west (right) bank Kherson Oblast with FAB-500 aerial bombs.[45] The milblogger also claimed that Russian forces struck Ukrainian military equipment on Malyi Potemkin Island southwest of Kherson City with Kh-22 and Kalibr missiles.[46] The Ukrainian Border Guard Service indicated that elements of the Russian 8th Separate Artillery Regiment of the 22nd Army Corps has been involved in large-scale artillery fire against Kherson City.[47]

Russian forces launched a missile strike on Mykolaiv City on the night of May 16. The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command reported that Russian forces used Kalibr cruise missiles to strike a shopping mall in Mykolaiv City.[48] A Russian source claimed that a Russian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) struck an unspecified object in the Inhulskyi Raion of Mykolaiv City, as well as a Ukrainian warehouse on the territory of a gas turbine in Mykolaiv City.[49]

Ukrainian forces reportedly continue to strike areas along critical logistics lines in southern Ukraine. Russian sources, including Zaporizhia Oblast occupation head Yevgeny Balitsky, claimed on May 17 that Ukrainian forces shelled Tokmak, Vasylivka, and Polohy in Zaporizhia Oblast.[50]

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

The Kremlin continues crypto-mobilization efforts by recruiting regional volunteer battalions and criminals. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Volga region service Idel Realii reported that Ulyanovsk Oblast Governor Alexei Russkikh and Head of the Republic of Bashkortostan Radiy Khabirov announced the creation of new unspecified battalions that will fight in Ukraine.[51] Ukrainian Eastern Grouping of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty reported that Russian forces have started using assault companies called “Storm Z” consisting of criminals recruited who are awaiting their trials.[52] ISW has previously reported on the structure of “Storm Z” formations and their likely use in highly attritional ground assaults in western Donetsk Oblast.[53]

The Kremlin continues efforts to mobilize Russia’s defense industrial base (DIB) in order to replenish destroyed equipment. Russian military machine-building company Uralvagonzavod General Director Alexander Potapov reportedly announced the completion of state qualification tests on a 2S43 Malva self-propelled howitzer.[54] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces are in urgent need of this howitzer since the Russian military is ”completely deprived” of wheeled self-propelled artillery.[55] General Director of Tekhmash (a subsidiary of Russian state defense conglomerate Rostec) Alexander Kochkin announced that Russia has begun mass production of the “Broneborshik” (“armor-piercer”) air-launched missile that will be used in Ukraine in 2023.[56] Kochkin claimed that the "Broneborshik" model is designed for Su-25 attack aircraft, Mi-8 helicopters, and other aircraft equipped with unguided missile launchers. ISW previously reported that Rostec announced modifications to Su-25 attack aircraft.[57]

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

The Russian State Duma adopted amendments to the martial law legislation on May 16 that authorize the forced and controlled movement of citizens from territories under the martial law to territories without martial law.[58] The amendments allow Russian officials to transport civilians from occupied Ukrainian territories that are currently under the Russian martial law to Russian regions that are not subjected to the martial law.[59] The amendments allow for the detainment of individuals who refuse to comply with martial law restrictions for up to 30 days.[60] The amendments also allow Russian officials to postpone regional elections in territories under martial law, which ISW continues to assess indicate that Russian officials and occupation authorities may be setting informational conditions for September regional elections in case Russia loses more occupied territories as a result of Ukrainian counteroffensives.[61]

Ukrainian, Russian, and Turkish officials announced that the Black Sea grain deal has been extended for two more months. Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov stated on May 17 that Russia and Ukraine agreed to extend the Black Sea Grain Initiative until July 18 following several unsuccessful rounds of negotiations in Istanbul, Turkey.[62] Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova confirmed that Russia agreed to extend the grain deal to ensure global food security but claimed that there are "distortions" in the implementation of the deal that must be resolved as quickly as possible.[63] Turkish President Recep Erdogan reported on May 17 that Russia agreed not to restrict Turkish ships from entering the ports of Mykolaiv and Olbia.[64] No party specified what, if any, concessions Russia received to accept the extension. Russia will likely continue to attempt to gain further concessions from the West in July after the extension expires.

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

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

Russian ultranationalists are speculating about the fate of Belarus’ independence in case of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s severe illness or death. A leader of the small-scale Russian ultranationalist “Civil Solidarity” movement, Georgiy Fedorov, stated that the Union State of Russia and Belarus will change significantly if Lukashenko is no longer in power and claimed that unspecified “external forces” may attempt to seize power in a similar style to the 2020–2021 protests against Lukashenko’s government.[65] Fedorov claimed that Russian forces may step in to stabilize the domestic situation in Belarus, which would overstretch the Russian military and weaken Russian forces operating in Ukraine.[66]

The Belarusian Constitution defines two presidential succession protocols: one in case the president dies from natural causes and the other in case the president dies from violence. The Belarusian Constitution stipulates that, in the event of the president’s natural death, presidential powers transfer to Chairman of the Belarusian Council of the Republic of Belarus (Belarus’ upper house of parliament) until the next presidential election.[67] The Belarusian Constitution’s second presidential succession protocol stipulates that a state of emergency immediately goes into effect and presidential powers transfer to the Belarusian Security Council under the leadership of the Chairman of the Council of the Republic if the president dies from an assassination, terrorism, military aggression, or other external violent actions.[68] Lukashenko loyalist Natalya Kochanova, who has been closely affiliated with Lukashenko at least since she was appointed Deputy Prime Minister of Belarus in 2014, currently chairs the Council of the Republic. According to current Belarusian law, Kochanova is positioned to influence if not outright control much of Belarus’ executive authority in the event of Lukashenko’s ill health or death. It should also be noted that, Lukashenko’s eldest son, Viktor Lukashenko, is a member of the Belarusian Security Council and may be Lukashenko’s favored successor.

The Belarusian Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported on May 17 that conscripts of an unspecified Belarusian special forces brigade conducted a battalion tactical exercise as part of the ongoing combat readiness check.[69]

The Belarusian MoD also reported on May 17 that the International Exhibition of Armaments and Military Equipment (MILEX-2023) has begun in Minsk and will last from May 17–20.[70]

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

2. Pentagon’s top policymaker Kahl plans to resign, officials say

Pentagon’s top policymaker Kahl plans to resign, officials say

NBC News · by Courtney Kube

The Pentagon’s top policymaker plans to resign, according to three U.S. officials familiar with the decision.

Colin Kahl, who has served as under secretary of defense for policy since April 28, 2021, will likely leave the position later this summer, the officials said.

The officials, who asked not to be named, said Kahl plans to return to the private sector, most likely back to Stanford University where he was a professor and fellow before joining the Biden administration.

Kahl is on a leave of absence from Stanford for two years, according to a source familiar with the matter. As that deadline approached in April he requested an extension through mid-July to support Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and President Joe Biden at the NATO summit in Vilnius. He will leave after that, the source said.

A Pentagon spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Before his time at Stanford, Kahl was national security adviser to then-Vice President Joe Biden from October 2014 until January 2017. During the Obama administration he also served as a policy official in the Pentagon.

Kahl has not ruled out returning to serve in a second Biden administration, the three U.S. officials familiar with the decision said.

Two years ago Kahl faced a tough confirmation battle to become the number three civilian at the Pentagon, in part because of his critical comments about Republicans on social media while working in the private sector. Republicans also criticized his involvement in the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran known as the JCPOA and other policy views about the Middle East.

Kahl apologized for his comments on social media and the final vote to confirm him was 49 to 45. He did not receive a single Republican vote.

Sasha Baker, the deputy under secretary of defense for policy, could move up to the head policy job, at least in an acting capacity, the officials said.

Mara Karlin, the assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans and capabilities since August 2021, could be nominated to replace Kahl. She advises senior Pentagon leaders on defense strategy, national security and emerging capabilities. Karlin played a critical role in the crafting of the current National Defense Strategy.

But nominees to hold top Pentagon positions continue to be held up by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., over the Pentagon’s abortion policy. There are now 234 nominations stuck in the confirmation process, including two civilian nominees, Nickolas Guertin to be the assistant secretary of the Navy, and Ronald Keohane to be assistant secretary of defense for manpower and reserve affairs.

NBC News · by Courtney Kube

3. The Offensive Before the Offensive: Ukraine Strikes Behind Russian Lines

The Offensive Before the Offensive: Ukraine Strikes Behind Russian Lines

Kyiv aims to destroy ammunition, fuel and other supplies as it seeks to starve Russian forces in the field ahead of broader ground campaign

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-offensive-before-the-offensive-ukraine-strikes-behind-russian-lines-cea9320f?mod=hp_lead_pos6

KYIV, Ukraine—Early this month, four drones attacked a Russian oil refinery almost 300 miles from Ukraine. The next day, another drone hit it. Not long after another drone bombed a fuel depot on the other side of Russia, near Belarus.

Call it the offensive before the offensive. Strike by pinpoint strike, Ukraine is taking aim at ammunition stores and caches of other supplies that Moscow’s forces need to fight, seeking to weaken them ahead of a broader ground campaign to push back the Russian invaders.

Ukrainian leaders say they are waiting for more Western weapons to arrive before launching what has been billed as a “spring offensive” that is now likely to play out over the summer, spearheaded by newly trained units equipped with Western-supplied tanks, armored fighting vehicles and artillery.

A fire at a railway junction in the Russian-controlled Donetsk region in October following an attack. PHOTO: ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO/REUTERS

To set the stage, Ukraine has stepped up attacks on positions well inside Russian-held territory, part of what strategists call shaping operations, which are aimed at undermining the enemy and probing for gaps to exploit.

Ukraine staged similar attacks last year using U.S.-supplied Himars rocket systems before retaking territory in the Kharkiv region and the city of Kherson. Now it is reaching farther, using drones as well as newly supplied British long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles.

For Ukraine, which is battling a larger military, the attacks are important to chip away at Russia’s battlefield resources.

Any engagement longer than a few days becomes a logistical contest, say commanders, so destroying stores of ammunition, fuel and spare parts can be more significant than taking out individual tanks or artillery pieces, because the impact can be broader. A tank without fuel or shells is of little use.

“This is the preparatory stage,” said Oleksandr Kovalenko, an analyst at the Ukrainian Center for Security Studies. “It is about destabilizing and weakening the capabilities of the enemy before the offensive.”

Recent blasts at Russian infrastructure

Infrastructure type

Moscow

Oil

Railroad

May 10

Druzhba pipeline in Sven

BELARUS

May 2

Train derailment in Belye Berega

May 11

Oil depot in Klintsy

May 1

Train derailment in

Unechsky District

RUSSIA

Kyiv

UKRAINE

KAZAKHSTAN

RUSSIAN-

CONTROLLED

Apr. 24 & 27

Oil depot in Rovenki

May 3

Oil storage reservoir in Volna

200 miles

200 km

CRIMEA

May 4 & 5

Oil refinery in Ilsky

Apr. 29

Fuel tank in Sevastopol

Black Sea

Note: Russian-controlled area as of May 15.

Sources: Institute for the Study of War and AEI's Critical Threats Project (Russian-controlled area); Russian state media and official reports compiled by WSJ (blasts)

Emma Brown/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Moscow has blamed Kyiv for the recent spate of attacks targeting fuel storage and distribution networks on Russian soil and in occupied regions of Ukraine. Ukraine hasn’t claimed responsibility for the strikes.

In the most recent attack, a drone dropped explosives on a fuel depot in Russia’s Bryansk region, which borders Belarus and Ukraine, causing damage.

Days earlier, Russian state media said a fire broke out at the Ilsky oil refinery in the Krasnodar region after two days of drone attacks on the facility, which is almost 300 miles from the nearest Ukrainian-held area.

Russia said Ukraine used the Storm Shadow in strikes on the occupied eastern Luhansk region last week. Ukraine didn’t comment on the missile’s use.

“Every time they have to pull depots back further, it limits the amount that can get to the front because it has to go further in trucks,” said Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Recent attacks also include four on Russia’s fuel storage and distribution network on or near the occupied Crimean Peninsula. That fuel is used to power both Russia’s naval fleet at Sevastopol and its forces occupying parts of the southern Ukrainian regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, where analysts predict Kyiv may attempt a breakthrough.

French Resistance Fighter Goes Public About Execution of German P.O.W.s

The New York Times · by Constant Méheut · May 17, 2023

Forty-seven soldiers were shot dead and secretly buried shortly after D-Day, a veteran says. The story was hidden for decades.

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Edmond Réveil, a former French Resistance fighter, said he had witnessed but did not participate in the mass execution of German soldiers during World War II.Credit...Stéphanie Para/La Montagne, via Maxppp

Reporting from Paris

May 17, 2023, 5:15 p.m. ET

Shortly after D-Day during World War II, French resistance fighters took 47 captured German soldiers to a small wooden area in southwest-central France. In the scorching heat, they forced the soldiers to dig their own graves, shot them dead one by one and buried the bodies, covering the remains with quicklime, according to a witness.

The story of the mass execution was concealed from the public for decades, a stain on the heralded resistance movement, until the last-surviving witness broke his silence to a few people — and then revealed it to a global audience in interviews published in recent days.

“We were ashamed,” the witness, Edmond Réveil, who is now 98 and was part of the resistance group, told the French newspaper La Vie Corrézienne. “We knew that we should not kill prisoners.”

French historians have confirmed the general outlines of his story, but his version of events could not be independently verified. His public statements have sent shock waves through the Limousin, a rural area in central France that has long prided itself on its history of resistance during the war and paid a heavy price for it. German Nazi officers from the military arm of the SS, the Waffen-SS, slaughtered hundreds of civilians there in retaliation.

Mr. Réveil, who could not be reached for comment, told the newspaper he had witnessed but did not participate in the killings. He first revealed the grim details in 2019 at a veterans’ meeting. The French and German authorities were informed and planned to exhume the bodies. But the news was mostly kept secret.

“We knew that it was a story that could cause some reactions, some controversies, since it undermines a little of the history of the resistance,” said Philippe Brugère, the mayor of Meymac — where Mr. Réveil now lives and which is near the site of the killings. (The mayor himself had participated in the veterans’ meeting.)

“It was a taboo, a memory we didn’t want to talk about,” Mr. Brugère said.

Free French Fighters leading a group of Nazi prisoners as a crowd jeered in Paris in 1944.

The French resistance comprised underground organizations that fought the Nazi occupation of France and the collaborationist Vichy regime, playing a key role in the liberation of the country. In the Limousin, they attacked and sabotaged German troops, ultimately freeing the area by the end of summer 1944.

After France was liberated, Mr. Réveil joined the regular French Army and went on to fight in Germany. He then became a rail worker, married and had several children.

The execution of German soldiers followed French resistance groups’ liberation of the town of Tulle after two days of intensive fighting in June 1944. Some 50 Germans were taken prisoner and turned over to Mr. Réveil’s detachment, he said in a 2020 recorded conversation with Mr. Brugère that was shared with The New York Times.

“We couldn’t keep them,” Mr. Réveil said of the captured, explaining that the resistance group did not have enough food and that it was difficult to properly guard so many prisoners at once.

Then, Mr. Réveil says in the recording, his detachment got the order to kill the prisoners from the leadership of the French Liberation Army. But that remains uncertain, according to Xavier Kompa, head of the local branch of the National Office for Veterans.

Mr. Réveil said that his group took the prisoners to woods near a hamlet called Le Vert and that his commander, code name Hannibal, asked for volunteers to carry out the killings. Mr. Réveil said he and a few others refused.

Hannibal talked to each prisoner before he or she was shot, Mr. Réveil said. “He cried like a kid when it was time to shoot them, because it’s no fun to shoot someone,” Mr. Réveil added.

Among the prisoners was a Frenchwoman who had allegedly collaborated with the Gestapo. “Nobody wanted to kill her, so they drew lots,” Mr. Réveil said. “It smelled of blood.”

Meymac in central France. The area has long prided itself on its history of resistance during the war and paid a heavy price for it.

Mr. Réveil said the group decided never to speak of the massacre. He told La Vie Corrézienne that not even his wife and children knew about it.

Mr. Brugère, the mayor, said that people knew only that a group of German soldiers had been taken prisoner and that “suddenly, poof,” the group had vanished.

In 1967, 11 German bodies were exhumed in Le Vert, in what Mr. Brugère described as a discreet operation: No records were kept at the local level, few people heard about it, and the exhumations were halted for unclear reasons.

“We put a lid again on this memory,” he said.

It took another half-century and Mr. Réveil’s revelations for the case to be reopened. Mr. Brugère and Mr. Kompa, from the National Office for Veterans, said they informed the French and German authorities. Further inquiries were delayed because of the pandemic, but are expected to begin again next month.

A team from the German War Graves Commission will use ground-penetrating radar to find the site of the graves, according to the French Defense Ministry. Should the search prove successful, it will be up to Germany to exhume and rebury the bodies.

The Limousin area is remembered for its active resistance movement with several thousand fighters. In response to the uprising in Tulle, which is in the Limousin, a Waffen-SS unit hanged 99 civilians and sent 149 more to the Dachau concentration camp. The same SS unit was involved in the massacre of 643 inhabitants in Oradour-sur-Glane, considered the worst Nazi atrocity in France.

It is unclear whether Mr. Réveil will face any consequences for his revelations. The mayor said that he knew of no investigation into a possible war crime and that although it “could be considered as such under the law,” he saw it as “an unfortunate, tragic act of war” given the circumstances.

In the recorded conversation, Mr. Réveil was asked why he had broken his silence. He said he wanted to “make official” the history of the executions.

“Everybody knows about it,” he said of the veterans’ group and officials, “but nobody talks about it.”

The village of Oradour-sur-Glane, France, where 642 citizens were killed in a church set on fire by a Nazi SS division in June 1944.

The New York Times · by Constant Méheut · May 17, 2023

5. Biden Seeks to Rally G-7 Allies Against Russia and China, as Debt Talks Cloud Message

Biden Seeks to Rally G-7 Allies Against Russia and China, as Debt Talks Cloud Message

U.S. domestic politics have cut the president’s overseas trip in half

By Ken ThomasFollow

and Annie LinskeyFollow

Updated May 17, 2023 2:47 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/debt-talks-weigh-on-biden-as-he-seeks-to-rally-allies-at-g-7-against-russia-china-2a5b5afa?page=1

TOKYO—President Biden will seek to maintain unity among allies in supporting Ukraine and countering China’s economic clout at a summit of the Group of Seven industrialized nations, as the threat of default in the U.S. complicates that message and prompts him to curtail his international travel.

The White House said Biden would depart the G-7 in Hiroshima, Japan, on Sunday and scrap visits to Papua New Guinea and Australia—where he had been scheduled to meet with the leaders of Australia, India and Japan—so he could return to Washington to deal with an impasse over raising the country’s roughly $31.4 trillion borrowing limit. While his aides negotiate with Republicans in Washington, Biden will seek to assuage allies in Japan that the U.S. will avoid a default, which could threaten to undermine the global economy.

Biden, speaking to reporters at the White House before he departed for the trip, said he would talk to the three other members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, known as the Quad, during the G-7 summit. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will also be in Hiroshima.

“America’s role in the world is vital, especially right now,” Biden said.

Asked what message it sends to allies to cancel the trip and whether doing so was a win for China, he said, “No, no, because we’re still meeting.”

Russia fires 30 cruise missiles at Ukrainian targets; Ukraine says 29 were shot down

AP · by SUSIE BLANN · May 18, 2023

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia fired 30 cruise missiles against different parts of Ukraine early Thursday in the latest nighttime test of Ukrainian air defenses, which shot down 29 of them, officials said.

One person died and two were wounded by a Russian missile that got through and struck an industrial building in the southern region of Odesa, according to Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesperson for the region’s military administration.

Loud explosions were heard in Kyiv as the Kremlin’s forces targeted the capital for the ninth time this month in a clear escalation after weeks of lull and ahead of a much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive using newly supplied advanced Western weapons.

Debris fell on two Kyiv districts, starting a fire at a garage complex. There was no immediate word about any victims, Serhiy Popko, head of the Kyiv Military Administration, said in a Telegram post.

Ukraine also shot down two Russian exploding drones and two reconnaissance drones, according to authorities.

The missiles were launched from Russian sea, air and ground bases, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the Ukrainian commander in chief, wrote on Telegram.

Several waves of missiles were aimed at areas of Ukraine between 9 p.m. Wednesday and 5.30 a.m. Thursday, he said.

Russian forces used strategic bombers from the Caspian region and apparently fired X-101 and X-55-type missiles developed during Soviet times, Kyiv authorities said. Russia then deployed reconnaissance drones over the capital.

In the last major air attack on Kyiv, on Tuesday, Ukrainian air defenses bolstered by sophisticated Western-supplied systems shot down all the incoming missiles, officials said.

That attack used hypersonic missiles, which repeatedly have been touted by Russian President Vladimir Putin as providing a key strategic advantage. The missiles, which are among the most advanced weapons in Russia’s arsenal, are difficult to detect and intercept because of their hypersonic speed and maneuverability.

But sophisticated Western air defense systems, including American-made Patriot missiles, have helped spare Kyiv from the kind of destruction witnessed along the main front line in the country’s east and south.

While the ground fighting is largely deadlocked along that front line, both sides are targeting each other’s territory with long-range weapons.

Meanwhile, Kremlin-installed authorities in occupied Crimea reported the derailment of eight train cars Thursday due to an explosion.

Russian state media reported the train was carrying grain.

Quoting a source within the emergency services, state news agency RIA Novosti said that the incident occurred not far from the city of Simferopol. The Crimean Railway reported that the derailment was caused by “the interference of unauthorized persons” and that there were no casualties.

The Russia-installed head of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, said that train services on the affected section of the line were suspended.

Also, two people were wounded in a drone attack in Russia’s southern Kursk region, which borders Ukraine, the regional governor reported Thursday.

In a Telegram post, Roman Starovoit claimed Ukrainian forces dropped an explosive device from a drone on a sports and recreation complex.

___

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

AP · by SUSIE BLANN · May 18, 2023

7. 'Clock has hit midnight': China loans pushing world’s poorest countries to brink of collapse

Just saying: China seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, and displace democratic institutions

'Clock has hit midnight': China loans pushing world’s poorest countries to brink of collapse

AP · by BERNARD CONDON · May 18, 2023

A dozen poor countries are facing economic instability and even collapse under the weight of hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign loans, much of them from the world’s biggest and most unforgiving government lender, China.

An Associated Press analysis of a dozen countries most indebted to China — including Pakistan, Kenya, Zambia, Laos and Mongolia — found paying back that debt is consuming an ever-greater amount of the tax revenue needed to keep schools open, provide electricity and pay for food and fuel. And it’s draining foreign currency reserves these countries use to pay interest on those loans, leaving some with just months before that money is gone.

Behind the scenes is China’s reluctance to forgive debt and its extreme secrecy about how much money it has loaned and on what terms, which has kept other major lenders from stepping in to help. On top of that is the recent discovery that borrowers have been forced to put cash in hidden escrow accounts that push China to the front of the line of creditors to be paid.

Countries in AP’s analysis had as much as 50% of their foreign loans from China and most were devoting more than a third of government revenue to paying off foreign debt. Two of them, Zambia and Sri Lanka, have already gone into default, unable to make even interest payments on loans financing the construction of ports, mines and power plants.

In Pakistan, millions of textile workers have been laid off because the country has too much foreign debt and can’t afford to keep the electricity on and machines running.

In Kenya, the government has held back paychecks to thousands of civil service workers to save cash to pay foreign loans. The president’s chief economic adviser tweeted last month, “Salaries or default? Take your pick.”

Since Sri Lanka defaulted a year ago, a half-million industrial jobs have vanished, inflation has pierced 50% and more than half the population in many parts of the country has fallen into poverty.

Experts predict that unless China begins to soften its stance on its loans to poor countries, there could be a wave of more defaults and political upheavals.

“In a lot of the world, the clock has hit midnight,” said Harvard economist Ken Rogoff. “ China has moved in and left this geopolitical instability that could have long-lasting effects.”

HOW IT’S PLAYING OUT

A case study of how it has played out is in Zambia, a landlocked country of 20 million people in southern Africa that over the past two decades has borrowed billions of dollars from Chinese state-owned banks to build dams, railways and roads.

The loans boosted Zambia’s economy but also raised foreign interest payments so high there was little left for the government, forcing it to cut spending on healthcare, social services and subsidies to farmers for seed and fertilizer.

In the past under such circumstances, big government lenders such as the U.S., Japan and France would work out deals to forgive some debt, with each lender disclosing clearly what they were owed and on what terms so no one would feel cheated.

China

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Leaders arrive for G-7 summit in Japan

China lifts ban on Australian timber imports in another sign of improving bilateral relations

But China didn’t play by those rules. It refused at first to even join in multinational talks, negotiating separately with Zambia and insisting on confidentiality that barred the country from telling non-Chinese lenders the terms of the loans and whether China had devised a way of muscling to the front of the repayment line.

Amid this confusion in 2020, a group of non-Chinese lenders refused desperate pleas from Zambia to suspend interest payments, even for a few months. That refusal added to the drain on Zambia’s foreign cash reserves, the stash of mostly U.S. dollars that it used to pay interest on loans and to buy major commodities like oil. By November 2020, with little reserves left, Zambia stopped paying the interest and defaulted, locking it out of future borrowing and setting off a vicious cycle of spending cuts and deepening poverty.

Inflation in Zambia has since soared 50%, unemployment has hit a 17-year high and the nation’s currency, the kwacha, has lost 30% of its value in just seven months. A United Nations estimate of Zambians not getting enough food has nearly tripled so far this year, to 3.5 million.

“I just sit in the house thinking what I will eat because I have no money to buy food,” said Marvis Kunda, a blind 70-year-old widow in Zambia’s Luapula province whose welfare payments were recently slashed. “Sometimes I eat once a day and if no one remembers to help me with food from the neighborhood, then I just starve.”

A few months after Zambia defaulted, researchers found that it owed $6.6 billion to Chinese state-owned banks, double what many thought at the time and about a third of the country’s total debt.

“We’re flying blind,” said Brad Parks, executive director of AidData, a research lab at the College of William & Mary that has uncovered thousands of secret Chinese loans and assisted the AP in its analysis. “When you look under the cushions of the couch, suddenly you realize, ‘Oh, there’s a lot of stuff we missed. And actually things are much worse.’”

DEBT AND UPHEAVAL

China’s unwillingness to take big losses on the hundreds of billions of dollars it is owed, as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have urged, has left many countries on a treadmill of paying back interest, which stifles the economic growth that would help them pay off the debt.

Foreign cash reserves have dropped in 10 of the dozen countries in AP’s analysis, down an average 25% in just a year. They have plunged more than 50% in Pakistan and the Republic of Congo. Without a bailout, several countries have only months left of foreign cash to pay for food, fuel and other essential imports. Mongolia has eight months left. Pakistan and Ethiopia about two.

“As soon as the financing taps are turned off, the adjustment takes place right away,” said Patrick Curran, senior economist at researcher Tellimer. “The economy contracts, inflation spikes up, food and fuel become unaffordable.”

Mohammad Tahir, who was laid off six months ago from his job at a textile factory in the Pakistani city of Multan, says he has contemplated suicide because he can no longer bear to see his family of four go to bed night after night without dinner.

“I’ve been facing the worst kind of poverty,” said Tahir, who was recently told Pakistan’s foreign cash reserves have depleted so much that it was now unable to import raw materials for his factory. “I have no idea when we would get our jobs back.”

Poor countries have been hit with foreign currency shortages, high inflation, spikes in unemployment and widespread hunger before, but rarely like in the past year.

Along with the usual mix of government mismanagement and corruption are two unexpected and devastating events: the war in Ukraine, which has sent prices of grain and oil soaring, and the U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates 10 times in a row, the latest this month. That has made variable rate loans to countries suddenly much more expensive.

All of it is roiling domestic politics and upending strategic alliances.

In March, heavily indebted Honduras cited “financial pressures” in its decision to establish formal diplomatic ties to China and sever those with Taiwan.

Last month, Pakistan was so desperate to prevent more blackouts that it struck a deal to buy discounted oil from Russia, breaking ranks with the U.S.-led effort to shut off Vladimir Putin’s funds.

In Sri Lanka, rioters poured into the streets last July, setting homes of government ministers aflame and storming the presidential palace, sending the leader tied to onerous deals with China fleeing the country.

CHINA’S RESPONSE

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a statement to the AP, disputed the notion that China is an unforgiving lender and echoed previous statements putting the blame on the Federal Reserve. It said that if it is to accede to IMF and World Bank demands to forgive a portion of its loans, so do those multilateral lenders, which it views as U.S. proxies.

“We call on these institutions to actively participate in relevant actions in accordance with the principle of ‘joint action, fair burden’ and make greater contributions to help developing countries tide over the difficulties,” the ministry statement said.

China argues it has offered relief in the form of extended loan maturities and emergency loans, and as the biggest contributor to a program to temporarily suspend interest payments during the coronavirus pandemic. It also says it has forgiven 23 no-interest loans to African countries, though AidData’s Parks said such loans are mostly from two decades ago and amount to less than 5% of the total it has lent.

In high-level talks in Washington last month, China was considering dropping its demand that the IMF and World Bank forgive loans if the two lenders would make commitments to offer grants and other help to troubled countries, according to various news reports. But in the weeks since there has been no announcement and both lenders have expressed frustration with Beijing.

“My view is that we have to drag them — maybe that’s an impolite word — we need to walk together,” IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said earlier this month. “Because if we don’t, there will be catastrophe for many, many countries.”

The IMF and World Bank say taking losses on their loans would rip up the traditional playbook of dealing with sovereign crises that accords them special treatment because, unlike Chinese banks, they already finance at low rates to help distressed countries get back on their feet. The Chinese foreign ministry noted, however, that the two multilateral lenders have made an exception to the rules in the past, forgiving loans to many countries in the mid-1990s to save them from collapse.

As time runs out, some officials are urging concessions.

Ashfaq Hassan, a former debt official at Pakistan’s Ministry of Finance, said his country’s debt burden is too heavy and time too short for the IMF and World Bank to hold out. He also called for concessions from private investment funds that lent to his country by purchasing bonds.

“Every stakeholder will have to take a haircut,” Hassan said.

China has also pushed back on the idea, popularized in the Trump administration, that it has engaged in “debt trap diplomacy,” leaving countries saddled with loans they cannot afford so that it can seize ports, mines and other strategic assets.

On this point, experts who have studied the issue in detail have sided with Beijing. Chinese lending has come from dozens of banks on the mainland and is far too haphazard and sloppy to be coordinated from the top. If anything, they say, Chinese banks are not taking losses because the timing is awful as they face big hits from reckless real estate lending in their own country and a dramatically slowing economy.

But the experts are quick to point out that a less sinister Chinese role is not a less scary one.

“There is no single person in charge,” said Teal Emery, a former sovereign loan analyst who now runs consulting group Teal Insights.

Adds AidData’s Parks about Beijing, “They’re kind of making it up as they go along. There is no master plan.”

LOAN SLEUTH

Much of the credit for dragging China’s hidden debt into the light goes to Parks, who over the past decade has had to contend with all manner of roadblocks, obfuscations and falsehoods from the authoritarian government.

The hunt began in 2011 when a top World Bank economist asked Parks to take over the job of looking into Chinese loans. Within months, using online data-mining techniques, Parks and a few researchers began uncovering hundreds of loans the World Bank had not known about.

China at the time was ramping up lending that would soon become part of its $1 trillion “Belt and Road Initiative” to secure supplies of key minerals, win allies abroad and make more money off its U.S. dollar holdings. Many developing countries were eager for U.S. dollars to build power plants, roads and ports and expand mining operations.

But after a few years of straightforward Chinese government loans, those countries found themselves heavily indebted, and the optics were awful. They feared that piling more loans atop old ones would make them seem reckless to credit rating agencies and make it more expensive to borrow in the future.

So China started setting up offshore shell companies for some infrastructure projects and lent to them instead, which allowed heavily indebted countries to avoid putting that new debt on their books. Even if the loans were backed by the government, no one would be the wiser.

In Zambia, for example, a $1.5 billion loan from two Chinese banks to a shell company to build a giant hydroelectric dam didn’t appear on the country’s books for years.

In Indonesia, a Chinese loan of $4 billion to help it build a railway also never appeared on public government accounts. That all changed years later when, overbudget by $1.5 billion, the Indonesian government was forced to bail out the railroad twice.

“When these projects go bad, what was advertised as a private debt becomes a public debt,” Parks said. “There are projects all over the globe like this.”

In 2021, a decade after Parks and his team began their hunt, they had gathered enough information for a blockbuster finding: China’s hidden loans amounted to at least $385 billion in 88 countries, and many of those countries were in far worse shape than anyone knew.

Among the disclosures was that Laos was on the hook for a $3.5 billion Chinese loan to build a railway system, which would take nearly a quarter of country’s annual output to pay off.

Another AidData report around the same time suggested that many Chinese loans go to projects in areas of countries favored by powerful politicians and frequently right before key elections. Some of the things built made little economic sense and were riddled with problems.

In Sri Lanka, a Chinese-funded airport built in the president’s hometown away from most of the country’s population is so barely used that elephants have been spotted wandering on its tarmac.

Cracks are appearing in hydroelectric plants in Uganda and Ecuador, where in March the government got judicial approval for corruption charges tied to the project against a former president now in exile.

In Pakistan, a power plant had to be shut down for fear it could collapse. In Kenya, the last key miles of a railway were never built due to poor planning and a lack of funds.

JUMPING TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE

As Parks dug into the details of the loans, he found something alarming: Clauses mandating that borrowing countries deposit U.S. dollars or other foreign currency in secret escrow accounts that Beijing could raid if those countries stopped paying interest on their loans.

In effect, China had jumped to the front of the line to get paid without other lenders knowing.

In Uganda, Parks revealed a loan to expand the main airport included an escrow account that could hold more than $15 million. A legislative probe blasted the finance minister for agreeing to such terms, with the lead investigator saying he should be prosecuted and jailed.

Parks is not sure how many such accounts have been set up, but governments insisting on any kind of collateral, much less collateral in the form of hard cash, is rare in sovereign lending. And their very existence has rattled non-Chinese banks, bond investors and other lenders and made them unwilling to accept less than they’re owed.

“The other creditors are saying, ‘We’re not going to offer anything if China is, in effect, at the head of the repayment line,’” Parks said. “It leads to paralysis. Everyone is sizing each other up and saying, ‘Am I going to be a chump here?’”

LOANS AS ‘CURRENCY EXCHANGES’

Meanwhile, Beijing has taken on a new kind of hidden lending that has added to the confusion and distrust. Parks and others found that China’s central bank has effectively been lending tens of billions of dollars through what appear as ordinary foreign currency exchanges.

Foreign currency exchanges, called swaps, allow countries to essentially borrow more widely used currencies like the U.S. dollar to plug temporary shortages in foreign reserves. They are intended for liquidity purposes, not to build things, and last for only a few months.

But China’s swaps mimic loans by lasting years and charging higher-than-normal interest rates. And importantly, they don’t show up on the books as loans that would add to a country’s debt total.

Mongolia has taken out $5.4 billion in such swaps, an amount equivalent to 14% of its total debt. Pakistan took out nearly $11 billion in three years and Laos has borrowed $600 million.

The swaps can help stave off default by replenishing currency reserves, but they pile more loans on top of old ones and can make a collapse much worse, akin to what happened in the runup to 2009 financial crisis when U.S. banks kept offering ever-bigger mortgages to homeowners who couldn’t afford the first one.

Some poor countries struggling to repay China now find themselves stuck in a kind of loan limbo: China won’t budge in taking losses, and the IMF won’t offer low-interest loans if the money is just going to pay interest on Chinese debt.

For Chad and Ethiopia, it’s been more than a year since IMF rescue packages were approved in so-called staff-level agreements, but nearly all the money has been withheld as negotiations among its creditors drag on.

“You’ve got a growing number of countries that are in dire financial straits,” said Parks, attributing it largely to China’s stunning rise in just a generation from being a net recipient of foreign aid to the world’s largest creditor.

“Somehow they’ve managed to do all of this out of public view,” he said. “So unless people understand how China lends, how its lending practices work, we’re never going to solve these crises.”

___

Condon reported from New York and Washington. AP writers Munir Ahmed in Islamabad and Noel Sichalwe in Lusaka, Zambia, contributed to this report.

___

Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org.

AP · by BERNARD CONDON · May 18, 2023

8. The President Must Move Swiftly to Nominate New National Cyber Director

Conclusion:

The new National Cybersecurity Strategy has been released, and now the hard part is to implement the strategy over the next two years. President Biden must maintain the momentum the administration has cultivated by setting up and resourcing the office. The White House should send her nomination to Congress, where she should receive fair consideration and swift nomination.

The President Must Move Swiftly to Nominate New National Cyber Director

thecipherbrief.com

May 17th, 2023 by Samantha F. Ravich, Suzanne Spaulding, |

Dr. Samantha Ravich is the chair of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. She serves on the U.S. Secret Service’s Cyber Investigation Advisory Board and was vice chair of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, and co-chair of the Artificial Intelligence Working Group of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board.

View all articles by Samantha F. Ravich

Suzanne Spaulding is senior adviser for homeland security and director of the Defending Democratic Institutions project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Previously, she served as undersecretary for the Department of Homeland Security. She has worked in the executive branch in Republican and Democratic administrations.

View all articles by Suzanne Spaulding

OPINION — The Office of the National Cyber Director successfully led the development of the new National Cybersecurity Strategy. Now, the office is missing a key ingredient for implementing the strategy’s numerous tasks – a Senate-confirmed director.

Luckily, there is a straightforward solution to this problem: the president should nominate acting Director Kemba Walden who has already proven herself to be a well-qualified, highly capable leader.

The congressionally-mandated Cyberspace Solarium Commission (on which we both served) recommended establishing a national cyber director in its original March 2020 report to institutionalize a national-level mechanism for coordinating cybersecurity issues. Congress agreed and established the Office of the National Cyber Director in the FY2021 National Defense Authorization Act. Since then, the office drafted and released the National Cybersecurity Strategy, which reflects the legacy of the inaugural director, Chris Inglis, who retired in February.

Since Chris’s departure, there has been a three-month delay (and counting) in nominating a candidate to replace him. Not only will this hinder the implementation of the strategy, but it will also lead to a lessening of the stature of the office Chris led in standing up.

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Acting Director Walden, however, is an eminently qualified candidate with the necessary experience to lead the ONCD at such a critical time. As the first principal deputy national cyber director, she worked alongside Chris to build the office’s capacity to advise the president and coordinate across the interagency. She was also a key author of the National Cybersecurity Strategy.

From her time leading Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit in fighting against ransomware, she gained an appreciation for the unique role and capabilities of the private sector. From her experience at the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency, she had an important perspective on how the U.S. must bolster and protect our critical infrastructure. As a Cyber Safety Review Board member, she models the importance of collaborating between the government and the private sector.

We routinely engage with government and private sector leaders, and they also find Kemba an excellent choice for NCD—thoughtful, collaborative, and willing and able to do the hard work needed to help move the country toward a more secure future. Acting NCD Walden is a forward-thinking leader who can seamlessly step into this position today.

The new National Cybersecurity Strategy has been released, and now the hard part is to implement the strategy over the next two years. President Biden must maintain the momentum the administration has cultivated by setting up and resourcing the office. The White House should send her nomination to Congress, where she should receive fair consideration and swift nomination.

Dr. Ravich and Ms. Spaulding served as commissioners on the congressionally mandated Cyberspace Solarium Commission and continue to serve as distinguished advisors to CSC 2.0.

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals.

Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to [email protected] for publication consideration.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

9. Taiwanese Leader: Be ‘Firm and Determined’ in Deterring China

Excerpt:

The U.S. is the leader of global freedom, democracy, and the rule of law. So, the U.S. needs to be a role model to act justly and to love mercy so the U.S. can continue to promote these universal values worldwide. When I read about some U.S. politicians [lobbying for Chinese entities], I hope they will have a further understanding about the true nature of the CCP authoritarian regime and to be cautious when dealing with the CCP regime.

Taiwanese Leader: Be ‘Firm and Determined’ in Deterring China

By Susan Crabtree - RCP Staff

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/05/17/taiwanese_leader_be_firm_and_determined_in_deterring_china__149241.html

SPECIAL SERIES:

Religious Liberty Around The World

Taiwan’s top legislative leader, You Si-kun, is in Washington this week for meetings with top China critics in Congress, including former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, as the Biden administration prepares a $500 million fast-tracked arms package for the island in the face of growing aggression from China.

The $500 million is viewed as a down payment the U.S. plans to provide by the end of the year on a much larger promised $4.5 billion package the Biden administration has pledged to deliver over the next four years. Most of that money has been delayed, partly because of existing U.S. commitments to support Ukraine.

Through visits with key lawmakers, You Si-kun hopes to deepen economic and security ties with U.S. officials as worries grow about a potential invasion by China, which considers the thriving democracy part of its territory but has downplayed its territorial claims until President Xi Jinping renewed them in recent years.

The visit comes at a delicate time for the Biden administration. Last week, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met with his Chinese counterpart in Vienna for two days in what the White House deemed were “substantive and constructive” talks, a hopeful sign of easing tensions between Washington and Beijing.

China has responded to past visits between Washington and Taiwanese officials, including Pelosi’s visit to Taipei in August, by stepping up military drills around the island and unleashing a slew of retaliatory economic restrictions on Taiwan. Beijing also warned House Speaker Kevin McCarthy not to visit Taiwan after reports surfaced that he planned a trip there later this year. McCarthy met with Taiwan’s outgoing president Tsai Ing-wen in California in April but is not expected to have a face-to-face meeting with You this week.

You, a founding member of Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party in the 1980s, has served as president of its legislative body since 2020 and previously served as the island’s premier from 2002 to 2005 under President Chen Shui-bian.

You spoke with RealClearPolitics on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, you called on the United States to rely on the virtues of justice and mercy to guide its decision-making as Taiwan asks for continued military support against China’s aggression. You also talked about China posing a global threat, including to the West. What can you tell skeptics in the United States who ask why it’s in the U.S. self-interest to come to Taiwan’s aid if China were to invade?

We can see that over the [past] 10 years, the global democratic landscape is withering, with examples in Hong Kong, Afghanistan, Myanmar, and with the Russian aggression against Ukraine. According to the 2022 Freedom House report, the state of democracy in over 60 countries is declining. And if China continues to become more powerful, and if the democracy of many countries continues to wither because of [China’s] Belt and Road initiative, then civilization will face a very dark future. We are afraid that the values of democracy, freedom, and human rights will have a very, very dark future.

Taiwan is very important because it’s the only democracy in Chinese-speaking communities. If Taiwan’s democracy is destroyed, then China can tell the world that human rights [and] democracy are not suitable for Asian countries.

If we would like to see international-ordered structures created by Europe and the United States continue and not be destroyed by China, we need to face or overcome the challenges posed by China.

Putting that aside, when we look at the global economy, every day, 50% of global trade travels through the Taiwan Strait. If there is any war, that would profoundly impact the global economic supply chain, so protecting Taiwan is in the global economic interest.

You spoke at the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington three months ago and called out China for engaging in an “all-out assault” on religion. Do you think the United States is doing enough to confront China’s religious and human rights abuses? What could our government do better?

The U.S. has made tremendous contributions to protecting global liberty, human rights, and freedom. In the year 2000, the whole world thought that when China adopted a market economy … that would lead to democratization. Regrettably, this expectation was wrong and failed our expectations. This misjudgment led to a bigger and more powerful China, which is an authoritarian country, and that’s why it has threatened global peace and stability.

The U.S. has been very active in collaborating with Asian countries such as the Republic of Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan to form a kind of crescent alliance of defense in the hope of deterring the CCP, so it will not take any reckless actions against Taiwan.

What do you make of the shifting rhetoric from Washington on protecting Taiwan? President Biden last year said U.S. forces would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, but the White House appeared to walk back the comments, saying the U.S. policy toward Taiwan has not changed.

When we think of the peace and stability of the Indo-Pacific region, I suggest that the U.S. needs to be firm and determined so that the CCP regime will not take reckless action.

The Biden administration has rejoined the United Nations Human Rights Council after the Trump administration in 2018 pulled out, calling it a “cesspool of political bias” and a protector of human rights abusers. What is the more effective U.S. strategy?

It’s probably the result of different times and different situations. As far as I know, the Trump administration’s withdrawal from this council was because of CCP [efforts] to control the majority of votes in the council.

But we respect any U.S. decision to participate in this council or not.

On this trip, you plan to meet with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and you’ve already met with other top China critics in Congress, but Speaker McCarthy is not among the group who plan to meet with you. What message does it send if the speaker of the House declines to meet with you during your visit?

Because my visit this time is [because of an] invitation by the Hudson Institute to give a keynote speech. And in addition, I want to take this opportunity to invite members of the Congress to visit Taiwan in September for the International Religious Freedom Summit and also for a parliamentary intelligence and security summit to be held in January next year. It's not one of my major purposes to meet certain people. So, I think it’s never too late to meet anyone I would like to meet in the future if there is any opportunity.

Do you think the outcome in Ukraine is related to what will happen in Taiwan? Do you see any parallels?

Russian aggression in Ukraine reminds the global democratic community that authoritarian regimes tend to invade other countries any time and out of [sync with] our expectations. The best strategy is to be prepared so that we can preserve peace. Because of the Russian-Ukraine war, that helped the United States and European countries do some soul-searching and draw their attention to the situation across the Taiwan Strait. And because of the Russian-Ukraine war, the people of Taiwan have raised their alert against the CCP regime.

Considering your views of China as a global threat and its “all-out assault” on religion and other human rights, what do you think about U.S. lawmakers and former senior officials who leave office and now lobby on behalf of Chinese companies, such as TikTok and others? For instance, former Sen. Barbara Boxer was registered as a foreign agent for the video surveillance company Hikvision, which the CCP uses for repression against the Uyghurs and other religious minorities, before she deregistered amid a backlash.

The U.S. is the leader of global freedom, democracy, and the rule of law. So, the U.S. needs to be a role model to act justly and to love mercy so the U.S. can continue to promote these universal values worldwide. When I read about some U.S. politicians [lobbying for Chinese entities], I hope they will have a further understanding about the true nature of the CCP authoritarian regime and to be cautious when dealing with the CCP regime.

Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics' White House/national political correspondent.

10. Ukraine vs. Taiwan: America's Defeatist, Pointless Debate

Probably one of the most succinct but important statesman about the US challenges and failures:

Excerpt:

The “abandon Europe for Asia” school is wrong, but not because it lacks an accurate picture of the resource constraints facing the U.S. military. The radical contraction of the United States’ defense industrial base is in fact one of the reasons we find ourselves wanting to choose among vital priorities. But this situation is not a function of limited resources per se. Rather it is the result of three decades of policy in which procurement flattened, and of a just-in-time philosophy that drove weapons and munitions acquisitions.

Ukraine vs. Taiwan: America's Defeatist, Pointless Debate

The “abandon Europe for Asia” school is wrong, but not because it lacks an accurate picture of the resource constraints facing the U.S. military.

19fortyfive.com · by Andrew A. Michta · May 17, 2023

Ever since Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine and the Biden administration galvanized a NATO-wide effort to supply Kyiv with weapons and aid, U.S. policy has witnessed a deepening rift.

On one side are those — this author included — who see our response as a reaffirmation of America’s strategic DNA. On the other side of the rift stand those who maintain that the European theater is a distraction from the primary threat the United States faces, which is in the Indo-Pacific as China gears up to attack Taiwan. The argument against aiding Ukraine contains two subsets: First is the claim that by aiding Ukraine, the United States has in effect created a Sino-Russian alliance, whereas our goal should be to do a “Nixon-Kissinger in reverse” and peel Russia away from China. Second is that this is predominantly a question of resource constraints.

The China-first argument posits that our defense-industrial base is too small to support actions in both theaters, and we need to husband our stocks of weapons and munitions to defend Taiwan.

The relative value of each argument aside, egos are also on the line, and with the presidential primaries approaching, support of Ukraine and Taiwan, or of Ukraine versus Taiwan, could become hopelessly politicized, paralyzing rational debate over the issue.

Disjointed Debates

One unfortunate aspect of America’s foreign- and national-security policy debates is that they can never be disconnected from larger policy positions that think tanks and government officials have taken, or from how they wish to position themselves going forward. Debates that often prove decisive in guiding the nation’s future foreign and security policy are usually about the past. They are often empty of foresight.

Such is the case with the false dichotomy between Ukraine and Taiwan, which has seen the larger context of U.S. geostrategic priorities fade in the background. The fundamentals of American power are barely discernible in this debate, if at all. What ought to be a debate about strategy has defaulted to the operational level, or even at times to tactics. After two decades of profligate spending on a failed war in Afghanistan, we seem reduced to talking about numbers and logistics, as though strategy was driven not by desired end-states but rather by current defense spending rates and production capacity.

It is worth restating, then, that the starting point of any strategic debate is to affirm the basics of geopolitics. The United States is a quintessentially maritime power, a sort of Great Britain on a continental scale, whose security and prosperity depends on its being anchored on both sides of the World Ocean. Our Constitution charges Congress with the duty to maintain a navy, while an army is to be raised as needed. This fundamental reality of American geopolitics and power has been understood by successive U.S. presidents, and since America’s rise to status as a global power in the early 20th century, this reality has driven our grand strategy.

Soldiers fire a 25mm tracer round from an M2A3 fighting vehicle during an integrated night live-fire exercise at Camp Adazi, Latvia, Nov. 25, 2021.

Fundamental Geopolitics

The United States fought in two World Wars and then engaged in the Cold War to ensure that no one power would dominate the resources of Europe and Eurasia. Such a development would have ended our country’s unfettered access to the world’s resources, pushed us back into our hemisphere, and ultimately transformed the United States into a regional player, diminishing the country’s prosperity and security.

Suffice it to say that the past three decades of globalization and explosive global trade were made possible by America’s naval power, for it was the U.S. Navy that protected the sea lanes. The fascination with Asia at the expense of Europe in American policy debates overlooks the fact that in terms of both manufactured goods and services, America remains Europe’s greatest trading partner, with 75% of our commerce with Europe going through the North Atlantic. To argue that we can leave Europe to its own resources in order to deal with China’s threat to Taiwan, without facing defeat in both theaters, is myopic in the extreme.

The “abandon Europe for Asia” school is wrong, but not because it lacks an accurate picture of the resource constraints facing the U.S. military. The radical contraction of the United States’ defense industrial base is in fact one of the reasons we find ourselves wanting to choose among vital priorities. But this situation is not a function of limited resources per se. Rather it is the result of three decades of policy in which procurement flattened, and of a just-in-time philosophy that drove weapons and munitions acquisitions.

An M1A2 Abrams SEP V2 main battle tank, assigned to Cold Steel Troop, 1st Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, fires a M865 target practice cone stabilized discarding sabot with tracer on December 9, 2021, at the National Training Center and Fort Irwin training area.

A similar contraction of the defense sector occurred across Europe and among our Asian allies as well. No surprises there — defense contractors are not in the charity business. They will not build new plants, hire labor, and expand output unless there are contracts to ensure that goods will be purchased. In light of the rates at which stocks are being consumed on the battlefields in Ukraine, it is clear that our capacity is inadequate. In major state-on-state conflict of the kind that proponents of a pivot to Taiwan are entertaining, we must have excess stockpiles. Without redundancies, we will not be able to sustain a prolonged effort.

Securing Our Stocks

Bottom line: The discussion we should be having in the United States and among our allies is about the imperative to rebuild our capacity. Simply reallocating assets from one theater to the other solves nothing. It fails to address the structural vulnerability that remains. The expansion of our defense-industrial base is the answer for another reason: During the last 20 years of operations in Afghanistan and in the Middle East, our logistical supply lines were secure. But in the environment of actual and potential great-power conflict that we inhabit today, we must assume that our logistical chains will be threatened, making systemic redundancies for weapons stocks and ammunition imperative.

It is high time we start debating in earnest about our nation’s security at a grand-strategic level. The United States and its democratic allies are on the cusp of arguably the most challenging era we have lived through since the end of the Cold War. The war in Ukraine is a system-transforming conflict that has already reshaped Europe’s security environment and will continue to restructure power distribution worldwide. The Sino-Russian alliance has sought to create a two-frontier crisis for the United States at a time when our Joint Force is too small for two major theaters. Yet instead of addressing the core issue of what needs to be done to rebuild, we are tying ourselves in knots with arguments over which theater is more important. Today we have a non-NATO force grinding down Russian land forces on non-NATO territory — all Ukraine needs is weapons and money to buy us more time to rearm. In the process, the Ukrainian military is in effect dismantling the two-frontier crisis, while Beijing watches carefully whether we have the political will to complete the job.

The starting point for any grand strategy in our era of great-power competition is an acknowledgement that the European and Asian theaters are connected, and that Ukraine and Taiwan are not an either/or proposition. The era of unipolarity and of the Global War on Terror has accustomed Washington to think in terms of achieving objectives at a relatively low cost. Those days are over. The current era will be one of protracted systemic instability, one lacking the shortcuts, pivots, and resets that we became so accustomed to during our brief moment of systemic unipolarity.

STRAIT OF MALACCA (June 18, 2021) The Navy’s only forward-deployed aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) transits the South China Sea with the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Halsey (DDG 97) and the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Shiloh (CG 67). Reagan is part of Task Force 70/Carrier Strike Group 5, conducting underway operations in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific. (U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Rawad Madanat)

We will prevail if we strengthen our alliances and commit sufficient resources to the fight. The Europe vs. Asia argument is a false distinction. It perpetuates our vulnerability rather than addressing it, it deepens partisanship rather than fostering consensus on foreign and security policy, and it is a strategic blueprint for American defeat. It is simply wrong.

A 19FortyFive Contributing Editor, Dr. Andrew A. Michta is Dean of the College of International and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch, Germany and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Scowcroft Strategy Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. The opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, the U.S. Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

19fortyfive.com · by Andrew A. Michta · May 17, 2023

11. Developing Resistance and Resilience Is Critical for Taiwan

Excerpts:

Building a resistance capability is not a stand-alone solution in defense. However, incorporated into a larger holistic defense concept, it is very effective to frustrate an adversary that is not easily countered or matched. It is not easy. It is uncomfortable for defense officials to recommend building resistance and resilience in a nation. But this is what is needed. Defense capabilities are no longer black-and-white.

European nations are embracing concepts like the Resistance Operating Concept and creating roadmaps for other nations facing similar threats. The threat Taiwan faces is real, and the time is now to stop trying to solve the same problem with the same answer. Resistance and resilience capabilities are critical defense capabilities that Taiwan should immediately incorporate into its overall defense plan.

Developing Resistance and Resilience Is Critical for Taiwan

19fortyfive.com · by Justin Woodward · May 17, 2023

Since the U.S. formally switched recognition from the Republic of China to the People’s Republic of China in 1979, Washington has operated a policy of strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan.

The United States sustains its political commitment to Taiwan as structured in the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA). The 1979 Act is the congressionally approved policy that states the U.S. “will make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary for defense.”. This policy supported a peaceful resolution in the Taiwan Strait and crafted a status quo. The TRA has also served as the foundation for U.S. and Taiwan military defense sales over the last four decades.

History of Support

Washington has consistently provided military aid to Taiwan for 80 years. Starting in 1941 under President Franklin Roosevelt and the lend-lease act, the U.S. sent military aid and advisors to the Republic of China. Following World War II and with the onset of the Chinese civil war, the U.S. sided against the Communists and continued to back the Republic of China, whose government consolidated on the small island of Taiwan. Under the 1954 Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, the United States continued to provide military aid, training, and support to the nationalists during the first and second Taiwan Strait crises, in 1954 and 1958, respectively.

In 1979, under President Jimmy Carter, the United States switched national recognition from the Republic of China to the People’s Republic of China, ending the mutual defense treaty with Taipei. The U.S. abrogation of that treaty decreased the military presence on the island, but under the TRA, Washington maintained unofficial ties with the authorities of Taiwan.

One area where support is unambiguous is in the robust defense sales relationship that the U.S. established with Taiwan. From 1980 to 2020, the United States supplied more than 34 billion dollars-worth of military aid to the island. Presently, Taiwan remains the fourth-highest purchaser of U.S. military equipment, after Israel, Japan, and Saudi Arabia. The United States remains the number one provider of defense articles to Taiwan.

Across the strait, the PRC does not operate a policy of strategic ambiguity. Since 1979, China has been clear on its policy: They believe Taiwan and its inhabitants belong under their control. Chinese President Xi Jinping has repeatedly reiterated the intent to bring Taiwan under Beijing’s control, if necessary by the use of military force.

While the intent may have always been there, experts for a long time did not believe China had the military capability to take the small island by force. This has changed. According to the 2019 DIA China Military Power report, “Beijing’s longstanding interest to eventually compel Taiwan’s reunification with the mainland and deter any attempt by Taiwan to declare independence has served as the primary driver for China’s military modernization.” It appears that the PRC now has the military capability to take Taiwan.

Over the decades, China has also executed a sophisticated pressure campaign across all domains, isolating Taiwan and presenting the option of one country, two systems, as the only viable choice for the future. This comprehensive campaign has left Taiwan globally isolated, with few options to source military capabilities. China is a military giant compared to its island neighbor, U.S. support notwithstanding. The PRC boasts the world’s largest standing army and a $252 billion defense budget as of 2020, compared to Taiwan’s $13 billion defense budget, creating a significant mismatch. Competing in a pure arms race with China will only exhaust Taiwan’s limited resources.

Image: Creative Commons.

While Beijing may have the advantage in the military sphere, though, Taiwan offers something that cannot be bought.

Intangible Advantages

Taiwan and the PRC are Chinese societies that govern on opposite spectrums, and Taiwan’s comparative advantage over Beijing is the very nature of governance. The PRC is an authoritarian government with tight control over the people and government — the party rules with an iron fist. The results are seen in autonomous regions such as Xinjiang, Tibet, and Outer Mongolia, and in special autonomous zones such as Hong Kong. Speaking against the government results in harsh punishments, lengthy prison sentences, and extreme censorship.

Conversely, Taiwan is a beacon of Chinese democracy. In 2021, Freedom House ranked Taiwan as the second-freest country in Asia in terms of access to political rights and civil liberties. In 2021, Heritage ranked Taiwan number six in the world on the index of economic freedom, and China at 107 out of 178, in a survey covering categories such as judicial effectiveness, government integrity, and labor and business freedom.

Image: Creative Commons.

Taiwan thus presents an open Chinese society that is in competition against a closed Chinese society. The will of free people cannot be underestimated. While China is a giant in military might, authoritarian governance will never satisfy a population bent on resisting the regime and seeking an alternate option.

Inspiration Across the Globe

Translating this advantage to the military sphere is challenging. One solution lies across the globe in Europe, where smaller nations are preparing their collective defenses against another military giant.

Baltic states faced with a similar threat are applying an asymmetric approach. These smaller nations foster pre-crisis resiliency through a concept of total defense — a whole-of-society approach. They incorporate their peoples into their national defense plans, and integrate national resistance planning in their approach. Many of these nations are adopting a notion called the Resistance Operating Concept. The Concept “explores actions that a sovereign state can take to broaden its national defense strategy and prepare to defend itself against a partial or full loss of national sovereignty.”

The Resistance Operating Concept is an innovative, complementary tool in the modern military arsenal that speaks to the military-power side of statecraft, bringing it to civil society and the broader population. In 2015 Sweden updated its defense bill to include investments linking military and civil defense under a hybrid-warfare resilience concept. Estonia has made resistance and reliance a critical part of its national security planning since 2008, incorporating the Estonian Defense League into military-civil fusion planning to create a whole-of-nation approach.

One example of how resistance and resilience are critical in a total-defense concept is Ukraine. Experts across the world projected that with its outnumbered and outgunned military, Ukraine would capitulate within a matter of weeks, if not days, to the Russian military. Resistance and resilience have played an immense role in resisting and repelling the Russian invasion. Civilians integrated with military units are defending their areas and withstanding conventional onslaughts. These resistance units are part of a whole-of-government approach to defense.

Image: Youth Daily News.

Ukraine’s performance has sparked numerous nations to adopt a resistance and resilience concept as part of their national defense. In May 2022, for example, Lithuania’s parliament incorporated a new strategy for civil resistance against occupation. These countries offer Taiwanese leadership examples and options.

Changing the Script for Taiwan

It is clear that Taiwan continues to rely on the U.S. to provide defense articles. But most experts continue to assess that Taiwan would not stand a chance against the growing Communist threat across the water. Some experts have gone so far as to claim Taiwan’s defense forces would not last 24 hours against a potential PRC invasion. Without a change, it is apparent that an ordinary military approach leads Taiwan toward an inevitable mismatch.

A potential solution lies in alternate defense capabilities. Tanks and planes of course matter, but an asymmetric approach may boost the defender in facing such a giant military threat. Taiwan should invest in asymmetric defense capabilities to counter conventional military threats. Recent Taiwanese defense reviews highlight the need to integrate such capabilities into defense plans. However, which capabilities are required is less than clear. The European nations employing the Resistance Operating Concept are great models for Taiwan.

Investing in resilience and resistance training programs for the Taiwanese military is not escalatory in nature, but supports the protection aspect of defense planning. The U.S. military has decades of global training and experience in building and supporting similar programs and could support training to designated elements of the Taiwan military.

These programs are cost-effective and provide an asymmetric advantage that complements conventional military defense to counter an invading force. The U.S. should provide options to offer resistance and resilience as a critical defense capability to Taiwan under the TRA. Developing such capabilities is not necessary for the entire force, as conventional defense is the priority, but perhaps specially selected units could be made to focus on building the capability in the military first, with the intent to expand into the civilian realm.

A Plan of Action

U.S. forces can provide specialized training, but Taiwan is responsible for starting the process. U.S. forces shouldn’t be training random civilian groups. The Taiwanese authorities need to organize the civilian sector into forces that can contribute to the Resistance Operating Concept. This could begin with specializing units to support the Concept from the reserves, trained by Taiwanese special operations forces, which can act as a force multiplier. They do not need to be combat-focused, but could also develop critical support skills.

Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Building a resistance capability is not a stand-alone solution in defense. However, incorporated into a larger holistic defense concept, it is very effective to frustrate an adversary that is not easily countered or matched. It is not easy. It is uncomfortable for defense officials to recommend building resistance and resilience in a nation. But this is what is needed. Defense capabilities are no longer black-and-white.

European nations are embracing concepts like the Resistance Operating Concept and creating roadmaps for other nations facing similar threats. The threat Taiwan faces is real, and the time is now to stop trying to solve the same problem with the same answer. Resistance and resilience capabilities are critical defense capabilities that Taiwan should immediately incorporate into its overall defense plan.

The above work reflects the authors’ opinion and does not represent the official policy or position of the Special Forces Regiment, the Department of Defense, or the United States Army. Major Justin Woodward is a Special Forces officer, veteran of small wars, and a student of Unconventional Warfare. He has served in the Army in various roles for 15 years.

19fortyfive.com · by Justin Woodward · May 17, 2023

12. Why Ukraine Shouldn’t Talk to Russia—Yet

Excerpts:

Expectations of Ukraine must, however, remain realistic. Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov recently warned against assuming that the Ukrainian military will deliver “something huge.” “The expectation from our counteroffensive campaign is overestimated in the world,” he said. Such high hopes—especially if accompanied by ill-advised assertions that the West has given Ukraine everything it needs for victory—could lead to serious disappointment, even if Ukrainian forces do in fact perform well. That sort of disappointment might well prompt more Western voices to conclude that the war has stalemated and call for Ukraine to agree to concessions.

That, in turn, would suggest to Russian President Vladimir Putin that the West is pessimistic about Ukraine’s chances, is tiring of the war, and may be softening in its willingness to keep military aid flowing to Ukraine. Such an inflated Russian assessment of its position would only encourage the Kremlin to maintain its insistence on excessive terms.

Paradoxically, for those who seek an early cessation of hostilities, this messaging to Moscow may actually interfere with the convergence of expectations necessary to create an opening for talks, and thus postpone any possible peace settlement. The best way for the West to maintain solidarity with Kyiv and give peace a chance is to disabuse Russia of the notion that it can simply outlast Western unity with Ukraine.

Why Ukraine Shouldn’t Talk to Russia—Yet

Until the fighting makes both sides converge over the war’s realistic outcome, the West would undermine its ally by advocating for a peace deal.

By Hein Goemans and Branislav Slantchev

Premature Calls for Ukraine-Russia Talks Are Dangerous

The Atlantic · by Hein Goemans, Branislav Slantchev · May 17, 2023

Russia’s war in Ukraine has been raging for more than a year. And for more than a year, various international leaders—including French President Emmanuel Macron and Chinese leader Xi Jinping—not to mention domestic pundits and politicians, have been calling for negotiations to end the bloodshed. Though well-intentioned, these appeals fail to take into account the fundamental nature of war, which requires the fighting to play out before a lasting peace can be a realistic possibility. At this moment in the conflict, any calls for talks are more likely to prolong the war and increase the suffering they seek to end.

War begins with a disagreement: Each side refuses to accept the terms the other is willing to offer, in the belief that fighting will lead to better ones. War ends with an agreement: Each side prefers to accept the terms offered, because it has come to believe that continuing to fight is unlikely to improve them. According to this logic, war is caused by conflicting expectations—about how troops and equipment will perform in battle, how competent the leadership will turn out to be, how ready society will be to bear the costs of war, how resilient the economy and industry will be in sustaining the war effort, how reliable allies and other third parties will prove to be.

All of these factors influence national leaders’ estimates of what can be achieved by military means, and those estimates remain hypothetical until tested in the real world. The fighting is therefore a process of learning, of gaining information that can lead to adjusted expectations. War is a harsh but honest teacher, and fighting furnishes the hard evidence that could create the conditions for peace.

Conflicting expectations about how a war will unfold cannot be resolved through diplomacy—only through fighting. Although most wars do end at the bargaining table, negotiations rarely begin before heavy fighting has taken place. If the West is genuinely committed to supporting Ukraine against Russia’s current war aims, then any calls for peace talks are counterproductive.

Once a conflict breaks out, expectations are confirmed or belied by events. Some corrections happen very quickly. Before the Russian invasion in February 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was not considered a particularly strong leader by either the Russians or the West, or even by most Ukrainians. When Russia’s forces rushed toward Kyiv in an attempt to swiftly topple the government, many people expected Zelensky to flee. But the president astonished everyone by standing firm in Kyiv and rallying the population to defend its homeland against what at the time appeared to be insurmountable odds.

This sequence of events could easily have gone the other way, causing confusion, a collapse of Ukrainian morale, and the emergence of a Russian-controlled provisional government that would have undermined Ukraine’s war effort and devastated its prospects. This appears to have been the Russian expectation, and until Zelensky’s character and capability were tested by war, Moscow had no way to test its prior estimate of his worth as a wartime leader and reconcile conflicting expectations about how the invasion would actually unfold.

Gil Barndollar: Ukraine has the battlefield edge

The failure of the initial Blitzkrieg, and Russia’s withdrawal of its forces from Kyiv and Zhytomyr in early April 2022, revealed that the vaunted Russian military was considerably less competent than most observers—including, arguably, the Kremlin itself—had believed it to be. As one would expect, the underperformance of its military caused Russia’s leaders to revise some of their war aims. The partial withdrawal, which Moscow called a “gesture of goodwill,” was accompanied by a declaration that the main objective of the war was to secure the Donbas. This indicated that the Kremlin had abandoned regime change as a goal.

At the same time, because of Ukraine’s newly revealed battle-worthiness, the West shifted its military assistance to providing equipment more suitable for conventional rather than guerrilla war—HIMARS rockets, self-propelled artillery, air-defense systems. Aid began to flow at a greater volume. Ukraine itself became more optimistic and raised its own war aims. In place of Kyiv’s initial willingness, in March, to offer some concessions to Russia, such as neutrality in exchange for a Russian withdrawal to the pre-invasion line of control, the revised war expectations led Ukraine’s leaders to believe that they could eject the Russians by force—so they were no longer willing to offer such concessions.

The developments that followed over the summer initially seemed more consistent with Russia’s estimates, as its military made some progress, albeit at heavy cost. By the fall, though, these expectations were being shattered by a Ukrainian counteroffensive, which rapidly liberated large areas of the country’s northeast and south—the Kharkiv Oblast, Kherson, and Izyum. Once again, both sides revised their war expectations.

The Ukrainians began to talk openly about pushing Russian forces not just to the pre-invasion line of control but out of Ukraine altogether—an ambition that also included the liberation of Crimea, which had been annexed by Moscow in 2014. Confronted with incontrovertible proof that it was failing in its objectives, the Kremlin altered its strategy again in an effort to restore its fortunes, declaring a major mobilization of some 300,000 new recruits, putting parts of the economy on a war footing, and tightening domestic political control.

Read: ‘An army of zombies is leading us to hell’

None of this brought any nearer the prospect of a negotiated end to hostilities as the two sides’ expectations of the war’s outcome continued to diverge sharply. Strategic adjustments—possible only because each side still has untapped human and material resources to sustain the war effort—create new grounds for uncertainty. These unknowns then in effect require another round of fighting to resolve.

The Russian winter/spring offensive, currently winding down, revealed that even the newly mobilized forces were not capable of achieving significant advances and could obtain only local tactical victories at enormous cost. If the Kremlin had hoped by now to shatter Ukraine’s defenses and weaken the West’s commitment to supporting Kyiv, it must be severely disappointed by its military’s meager performance.

Russia’s current strategy is to demonstrate to Kyiv and the West that it can outlast their unity. Because that makes it imperative for Moscow to thwart Ukraine’s coming offensive, Russia has dug hundreds of miles of fortified defenses in the occupied territories and has at least 200,000 troops in reserve to hold those lines. Reportedly, it has also been rationing artillery shells to ensure sufficient stocks to repel an attempted Ukrainian breakthrough. Russian leaders hope that if their defensive strategy succeeds, Western support will begin to crumble, leaving a weakened Kyiv obliged to agree to Russian terms.

Contrary to this scenario, Ukraine’s strategy is to demonstrate that the Russians cannot retain their conquered territory. So the Ukrainians have to show that they can breach those defenses and liberate occupied zones in spite of Russia’s newly mobilized reinforcements. Although Ukraine’s dogged defense of Bakhmut has earned criticism from some observers, its purpose was to buy time while holding back most of its forces for more training in order to integrate additional Western-supplied weapon systems.

Ukrainian advances could persuade Moscow to lower its expectations again and force it to offer peace conditions that Kyiv might be willing to accept. Only then could negotiations work. But their success would still depend on finding terms that would lead to a stable peace rather than a brief ceasefire. And right now Ukraine has yet to test its new capabilities, so it has no reason to scale back its ambitions.

From the June 2023 issue: The counteroffensive

Expectations of Ukraine must, however, remain realistic. Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov recently warned against assuming that the Ukrainian military will deliver “something huge.” “The expectation from our counteroffensive campaign is overestimated in the world,” he said. Such high hopes—especially if accompanied by ill-advised assertions that the West has given Ukraine everything it needs for victory—could lead to serious disappointment, even if Ukrainian forces do in fact perform well. That sort of disappointment might well prompt more Western voices to conclude that the war has stalemated and call for Ukraine to agree to concessions.

That, in turn, would suggest to Russian President Vladimir Putin that the West is pessimistic about Ukraine’s chances, is tiring of the war, and may be softening in its willingness to keep military aid flowing to Ukraine. Such an inflated Russian assessment of its position would only encourage the Kremlin to maintain its insistence on excessive terms.

Paradoxically, for those who seek an early cessation of hostilities, this messaging to Moscow may actually interfere with the convergence of expectations necessary to create an opening for talks, and thus postpone any possible peace settlement. The best way for the West to maintain solidarity with Kyiv and give peace a chance is to disabuse Russia of the notion that it can simply outlast Western unity with Ukraine.

The Atlantic · by Hein Goemans, Branislav Slantchev · May 17, 2023

13. Building a ‘superhuman’: Focus on mind, body, soul drives evolution of America’s warfighters (Special Operations)

Excerpts:

For the Pentagon, that’s the extreme end of a rather wide spectrum, and one that’s not ready to implement on a significant scale. But military leaders already have embraced the broader idea of optimal human performance. No longer is the focus only on how high soldiers can jump, how fast they can run or how quickly they’re able to solve problems in a high-stakes environment.

Case in point: Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael Martin, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command-Korea, said the most important factor in ensuring that his elite unit is ready for potential war with North Korea is that the mental toughness, physical fitness and emotional health of his personnel are all in top form.

“The gunship is a great platform, but it’s not worth its weight in gold unless the crew is full up, i.e., cognitively, preservation of force and family, all the pillars for us to be high-functioning military members,” Gen. Martin told The Washington Times in an exclusive interview.

Building a ‘superhuman’: Focus on mind, body, soul drives evolution of America’s warfighters

washingtontimes.com · by Ben Wolfgang

Subscriber-only

By - The Washington Times - Wednesday, May 17, 2023

TAMPA, Florida — Promises of transformative military technology were around every corner at the Special Operations Forces conference, but few compared to the idea of upgrading human beings themselves.

“I think that’s the future. It’s getting there where we’re going to be able to create superhumans,” Alex Guerrero, the medical practitioner best known for his work on the “TB12 Method” with legendary NFL quarterback Tom Brady, told the Special Operations Forces Week audience here.

It may sound like science fiction, but Mr. Guerrero’s declaration dovetails with a multipronged effort inside the U.S. armed forces to usher in the next phase of evolution for America’s warfighters.

From biomechanics to mental health, from psychological toughness to spiritual reawakening, military leaders are fully embracing the idea of nurturing the mind, body and soul in concert to create warriors fully equipped for the conflicts of the 21st century — both on the battlefield and inside one’s own mind.

Mr. Guerrero’s concept of “superhumans” hinges on culturing the microbiomes of elite athletes or other prime specimens and quite literally incorporating them into other humans’ makeup. Such a radical step could in theory upgrade the strength, speed, physical endurance and recovery time for otherwise average individuals, using cutting-edge science to build more capable men and women.

For the Pentagon, that’s the extreme end of a rather wide spectrum, and one that’s not ready to implement on a significant scale. But military leaders already have embraced the broader idea of optimal human performance. No longer is the focus only on how high soldiers can jump, how fast they can run or how quickly they’re able to solve problems in a high-stakes environment.

Case in point: Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael Martin, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command-Korea, said the most important factor in ensuring that his elite unit is ready for potential war with North Korea is that the mental toughness, physical fitness and emotional health of his personnel are all in top form.

“The gunship is a great platform, but it’s not worth its weight in gold unless the crew is full up, i.e., cognitively, preservation of force and family, all the pillars for us to be high-functioning military members,” Gen. Martin told The Washington Times in an exclusive interview.

“Whether you’re stationed in Korea or the United States, or somewhere else and coming to Korea to train hard, [it’s important] that you have all the opportunity to ensure you are functioning at the highest rate, cognitively, physically, emotionally, everything is in order,” he said. “You bring that operator, that combat support person, forward. That to me is the secret sauce.”

Marrying man and machine

Deep inside the Pentagon, there’s been a subtle shift in how best to use technology to aid America’s warfighters.

The best, most advanced equipment has long been a part of U.S. military might, but the focus increasingly is turning to not just how humans can use that technology, but how the two can operate together in an almost symbiotic manner to create capabilities far beyond what people can accomplish on their own.

Perhaps no program better exemplifies that approach than the military’s “hyper-enabled operator” initiative, the offshoot of an ill-fated effort to build a futuristic suit similar to Marvel superhero Iron Man’s famed battle gear.

The suit itself failed to meet some of its lofty expectations, but the technological aims of that program are moving full steam ahead. Officials describe a future in which special forces personnel are outfitted with a range of technologies that can compile and analyze mountains of data — including information collected from commercially available sources or through social media channels — in order to accurately predict what will happen next on a battlefield.

With all of that data available to them in real time, military personnel may be able to find and identify threats without ever laying physical eyes on them.

“We want this operator to be super users of their environment across multiple domains, so they’re a little bit [able] to see around corners,” Army Col. Jarret Mathews, director of the Joint Acquisition Task Force at U.S. Special Operations Command, said during a presentation at the special forces conference here.

In a wartime environment, Col. Mathews said, the hyper-enabled operator system could translate road signs, graffiti and other messages from foreign languages to English or whatever language the operator wants. Such a tool could be vital in battles in a foreign land.

What’s more, officials say the system will ultimately be able to understand and respond to the user just as a human would, helping to solve problems and gather necessary information in a matter of seconds.

“Don’t think you have to utter certain keywords or key phrases. You just talk to it like you would another person, and it understands your intent and puts together responses,” Col. Mathews said.

Mind and soul

Building better soldiers with the aid of modern equipment is just one part of the equation. What’s arguably even more important, officials say, is caring for the emotional and psychological well-being of warfighters.

Technology can help with that, too, as America’s special forces community is building new artificial intelligence-driven tools that could soon predict when personnel are on the verge of an emotional upheaval or mental health event that could impact their readiness and performance under pressure.

“We select folks in SOCOM to be resilient. And sometimes there’s an assumption that once we pick those resilient people, they’re going to be resilient from here on out — once they’re good, they’re good,” said Army Lt. Col. Amanda Robbins, command psychologist at U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCOM.

“I think the challenge has been for the psychological domain and for that psychological support to be thought of as something that can aid performance,” Col. Robbins said at a panel discussion here. “I think the next horizon is often going to be how do we get ahead of finding out where those [emotional] snowballs are going to come? How do we get ahead of taking that data, that AI, that machine learning, and how do we incorporate that with the human element?”

“How do we incorporate those to provide commanders, to provide organizations, with a good risk assessment of how this is going to impact later on when the stress comes?” she said.

Underlying that psychological analysis may be something even more elemental. Maj. Gen. Thomas Solhjem, chief of chaplains for the Army, said an individual’s spirituality — and finding ways to nurture it — is the core principle upon which all other physical and psychological concepts are built.

“It’s really the docking station for everything else we’re talking about,” Gen. Solhjem told an audience here. “Now I think we’re at another major inflection point … About 40, 45 years ago we threw out the baby with the bathwater. We threw out religion and with it spirituality in an effort to be more inclusive as a people, not realizing the damage that we inherently did to our culture as a result of that.”

• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.

washingtontimes.com · by Ben Wolfgang

14. Opinion | Japan Can’t Pass the Buck Anymore

Excerpts:

Observers often warn that a militarily stronger Japan triggers unease in a region where memories of its wartime violence persist and where an arms race is already underway. But outside of China and North Korea, many countries in the region and beyond do not fear a larger Japanese security role; security partners like India and Australia have encouraged it. Many East Asian countries view Japan favorably based on close ties in trade, technology, tourism and education; Tokyo’s leadership in regional institutions and economic development; and its Covid-related assistance. Surveys show that Japan is the major power that is most trusted among Southeast Asian countries, and Japan has increased security cooperation with Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

Even South Korea, where historical resentment of Japan persists, is pursuing its closest security cooperation with Japan in decades, propelled by the perception of shared threats from China and North Korea.

The balance of power in Asia is shifting toward China. This is not a far-off threat that Japan can avoid. This is Japan’s fight.

Opinion | Japan Can’t Pass the Buck Anymore

The New York Times · by Jennifer Lind · May 18, 2023

Guest Essay

Japan Can’t Pass the Buck Anymore

May 18, 2023, 1:00 a.m. ET

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Dr. Lind is an expert on Japan and East Asian security.

Ever since World War II ended, Japan has been passing the buck.

Sheltered by the postwar U.S. security alliance, Japan provided bases for American forces but kept its own military spending remarkably low for a country of its size and wealth, resisting American urging to share more of the burden.

China makes that no longer tenable. Its ambitions and expanding global influence threaten Japanese territory and an international order — based on democracy, free trade and respect for human rights — in which Japan plays a leading role.

Much is made of U.S. cultural and historical ties to Europe. But Japan is the linchpin of today’s paramount geopolitical competition — China’s push for regional dominance of East Asia — and it is America’s most essential ally. As leaders of Group of 7 countries meet in Hiroshima this week with China high on the agenda, Japan and its allies must recognize that Japan is critical to successfully managing the Chinese challenge and needs to finally get off the sidelines.

The Cold War centered on a geopolitical competition for the dominance of Europe. The United States and NATO mobilized massive military power to deter an invasion of West Germany by the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies. By contrast, Japan stayed in the background. Its postwar Constitution — written primarily by U.S. occupation officials — forbade maintaining “land, sea and air forces.” This suited leaders in Tokyo who sought to avoid divisive political debates about military spending (which was capped at 1 percent of G.D.P. for decades), and a Japanese public still traumatized by defeat in World War II. It also reassured Asian nations that Japan would not again embark on overseas aggression.

As the United States later realized Japan’s value as a Cold War ally, it encouraged Tokyo to be more proactive. But Japanese leaders feared getting dragged into what they saw as America’s far-flung adventures — or worse, a superpower war. In 1960, after a U-2 spy plane flown by the American pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev threatened to attack air bases that hosted such planes. Protests broke out in Tokyo, calling for an end to the U.S. alliance. The alliance endured, but Japanese leaders continued to resist American calls for participation in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf.

China, North Korea and a more belligerent Russia have prompted Japan to reassess. Over the years Japanese governments have reinterpreted the pacifist Constitution to increase the military’s capabilities and its role within the alliance. Today, Japan’s Self-Defense Forces field highly sophisticated maritime capabilities and, while Japan still does not participate directly in overseas military operations, it sends peacekeepers to U.N. missions, supported U.S. naval forces in the Indian Ocean during the invasion of Afghanistan and has provided nonlethal aid to Ukraine since the Russian invasion.

In December, Japan’s cabinet approved plans to double military spending to 2 percent of G.D.P. over the next five years, which, if realized, would make it the world’s third-largest spender on defense after the United States and China, and has announced plans to acquire U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles. Rising numbers of Japanese support stronger military forces.

These changes have been rightly acknowledged as a remarkable departure for Japan. But — as Germany’s present-day backtracking on its own pledges to increase military spending illustrate — there is no guarantee that they will materialize. Even if they do, they may not be enough.

During the Cold War, America’s economy was far stronger than the Soviet Union’s, and Japan grew to be the world’s second-largest economy. While the United States and Japan performed at the technological cutting-edge, the Soviets lagged after the dawn of the information age.

But China today is far more formidable. The world’s second-largest economy, China has increased its military spending tenfold since 1995. It now fields the world’s largest navy in number of vessels, the largest coast guard and has drastically increased its missile forces. China is using its military and coast guard to menace Taiwan — which Japan views as critical for its own security — and intimidate neighboring countries over disputed territories, including Japanese-administered islands in the East China Sea.

One could argue that America’s prodigious military strength is sufficient to meet the Chinese challenge. But an ambitious global strategy already makes many claims on U.S. military forces. Despite repeated promises to “pivot” to Asia, Washington’s attention remains divided: It has been fighting a proxy war in Europe for more than a year, and a war against Iran becomes more of a threat if Tehran acquires nuclear weapons.

Japan has a choice to make. It could continue to pass the buck, hoping that the United States will catch it. It could end its U.S. alliance to pursue neutrality or appease China. But either option is risky for a country on the frontline. If Japanese leaders are indeed committed to resisting Chinese dominance of Asia, they must view their country as the equivalent of West Germany during the Cold War: Highly threatened, at the center of geopolitical competition and contributing significantly to its own defense. Yet Japan’s new plans for military spending remain modest: Even after doubling its spending, Japan would still fall below the global average of 2.2 percent of G.D.P. Deterring a regional superpower such as China will likely require greater effort.

Observers often warn that a militarily stronger Japan triggers unease in a region where memories of its wartime violence persist and where an arms race is already underway. But outside of China and North Korea, many countries in the region and beyond do not fear a larger Japanese security role; security partners like India and Australia have encouraged it. Many East Asian countries view Japan favorably based on close ties in trade, technology, tourism and education; Tokyo’s leadership in regional institutions and economic development; and its Covid-related assistance. Surveys show that Japan is the major power that is most trusted among Southeast Asian countries, and Japan has increased security cooperation with Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

Even South Korea, where historical resentment of Japan persists, is pursuing its closest security cooperation with Japan in decades, propelled by the perception of shared threats from China and North Korea.

The balance of power in Asia is shifting toward China. This is not a far-off threat that Japan can avoid. This is Japan’s fight.

Jennifer Lind (@profLind) is associate professor of government at Dartmouth, a faculty associate at the Reischauer Institute for Japanese Studies at Harvard University and an associate fellow at Chatham House.

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The New York Times · by Jennifer Lind · May 18, 2023

15. Leak suspect shared classified secrets with foreigners, prosecutors say

Leak suspect shared classified secrets with foreigners, prosecutors say

The Justice Department, in a court filing ahead of Jack Teixeira’s next detention hearing, also says it found red flags in his Air Force record

May 17, 2023 at 8:28 p.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Devlin Barrett · May 18, 2023

The Air National Guard member accused in a high-profile classified leaks case appears to have shared sensitive secrets with foreign nationals and had raised concern among his co-workers in the months before he was charged with mishandling and disseminating national security information, prosecutors said in a court filing Wednesday.

Jack Teixeira, 21, was arrested in April after FBI agents traced back to him a collection of classified material posted in an online chat group. Authorities say Teixeira, who worked as an IT professional at a military base in Massachusetts’s Cape Cod, misused his top secret clearance to share U.S. intelligence assessments and other sensitive information with others on Discord, a social media platform popular with video game players.

He is scheduled to appear in court Friday where U.S. magistrate judge David Hennessy plans to rule on whether Teixeira should remain behind bars while awaiting trial. In their Wednesday court filing, prosecutors offered new evidence, “which compounds the national security and public safety risks that the government previously noted to the Court,” and shows, they said, that he should not be released.

One of the groups where he shared information had upward of 150 users, officials said, and among the members “are a number of individuals who represented that they resided in other countries” and whose accounts trace back to foreign internet addresses.

Teixeira’s “willful transmission of classified information over an extended period to more than 150 users worldwide” undermines his lawyer’s claims that he never meant for the information to be shared widely, prosecutors wrote.

Teixeira’s lawyer filed court papers arguing that prosecutors have wrongly compared his conduct to high-profile leak cases from the past, when the case is more similar to lesser-known leak investigations in which defendants were released on bond.

The new filing also recounts online chats in which Teixeira appears to both brag about how much classified information he knows and has shared, and understand the potential legal consequences of such actions.

“Knowing what happens more than pretty much anyone is cool,” the airman allegedly wrote in a chat dated mid-November. When another user suggested he write a blog about the information, Teixeira replied, “making a blog would be the equivalent of what chelsea manning did,” referring to a major classified leak case in 2010.

The filing also shows that Teixeira was written up by colleagues for apparently not following rules for the use of classified systems. A Sept. 15 Air Force memorandum included in the newly released court materials notes that Teixiera “had been observed taking notes on classified intelligence information” inside a room specifically designed to handle sensitive classified material.

Teixeira, the Air Force memo says, was instructed “to no longer take notes in any form on classified intelligence information.” About a month later, a memo noted that Teixeira “was potentially ignoring the cease-and-desist order” given to him in September. He was instructed to stop “any deep dives into classified intelligence information and focus on his job,” that memo said.

Then in January, a member of his unit observed Teixeira “viewing content that was not related to his primary duty and was related to the intelligence field.” That memo also noted that Teixeira “had been previously notified to focus on his own career duties and to not seek out intelligence products.”

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.

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A member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, Teixeira has been charged with two counts: retention and transmission of national defense information and willful retention of classified documents. He faces up to 25 years in prison. As the investigation proceeds, he could face additional charges.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers had sparred over whether Teixeira should be released on bond. Federal prosecutors said he posed a security risk because he might still possess classified documents that investigators have not yet found, and foreign governments could try to recruit him to find out what he knows.

Teixeira’s lawyer, Brendan Kelley, has said that with careful monitoring Teixeira could safely go home — arguing authorities have tried to make a young man who still lives with his parents in the community where he grew up sound more dangerous than he is.

Hennessy, the judge, had pushed back on suggestions from Teixeira’s attorney, who claimed his client only meant to share the information with a small group of online friends, not the wider world.

“The defendant put top-secret information on the internet, and your argument is that he had no idea that it would go anywhere beyond the server,” Hennessy said at a hearing last month. “I find it a little incredible that the defendant could not foresee that possibility.”

Teixeira’s father told the court last month that, if his son were released, he would notify authorities should any bond conditions be violated, and that there would be security cameras around the home to alert the father to any movement there while he was at work.

“The damage the Defendant has already caused to the U.S. national security is immense. The damage the Defendant is still capable of causing is extraordinary,” prosecutors wrote in an earlier court filing. “Detention is necessary to ensure that the Defendant does not continue on his destructive and damaging path.”

In their filings, prosecutors have said Teixeira exhibited disturbing behavior five years ago while a high school student, and was suspended after a classmate overheard him talking about weapons, “including Molotov cocktails, guns at the school, and racial threats.”

More recently, according to prosecutors, Teixeira posted comments online about conducting a mass shooting, including in November when he wrote in a social media post that if he had his way, he would “kill a … [expletive] ton of people,” which he said would be “culling the weak minded.” In previous court filings, prosecutors also shared photos of what they characterized as an “arsenal” of weapons found in his home.

Teixeira’s lawyer has said the talk of an arsenal was overheated — because the guns in court images that had been thought to be in his room are not real weapons guns, but replicas known as airsoft guns. The firearms in Teixeira’s house are locked away in a cabinet, according to Kelley.

Prosecutors say there also is evidence that, as the leak investigation progressed, Teixeira may have destroyed evidence of his crimes and told others not to talk to authorities. Earlier this month, Teixeira allegedly told an online friend: “If anyone comes looking, don’t tell them” anything, and encouraged that person to “delete all messages.”

Teixeira’s attorneys have pushed back against those claims, saying Teixeira was peacefully reading a Bible when agents came to arrest him, and that prosecutors’ notions of the risks to national security if he is released are far-fetched and fanciful.

The prosecution, Teixeira’s lawyer Allen Franco wrote in a court filing last month, has engaged in “hyperbolic judgments and provides little more than speculation that a foreign adversary will seduce Mr. Teixeira and orchestrate his clandestine escape from the United States. This argument is illusory. The government has presented no articulable facts to support these assertions.”

The Washington Post · by Devlin Barrett · May 18, 2023

16. Pentagon policy chief Kahl to leave after summer NATO summit

A little more clarity. But who will replace him? And can they get anyone through the nomination process any time soon given all the holds on appointees?

Pentagon policy chief Kahl to leave after summer NATO summit

Defense News · by Stephen Losey · May 17, 2023

WASHINGTON — Colin Kahl, who has served for two years as the Pentagon’s policy chief under the Biden administration, will resign this summer.

Kahl, who the Senate confirmed as undersecretary of defense for policy in a party-line vote in April 2021, will return to his role as a professor at Stanford University, a Defense Department official familiar with Kahl’s plans told Defense News. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the individual was not authorized to talk publicly on the matter, said Kahl is still notifying his colleagues about the plan.

Kahl’s planned resignation was first reported by NBC News.

The official said that Stanford originally agreed to allow Kahl a two-year leave of absence from his professorship. But as that mid-April deadline approached, Kahl got Stanford’s permission to stay on a few months more.

The extension will allow Kahl to remain in his role supporting and advising Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin through the NATO Summit planned for July 11-12 in Vilnius, Lithuania, the official said.

The official said there is no specific date yet set for Kahl’s return to Stanford, but staying on for the Vilnius summit — which the official called an “important milestone event” for the department — will keep him in his current role at least through mid-July.

Kahl’s confirmation in 2021 was tumultuous, and Senate Republicans unanimously objected to making him the No. 3 civilian at the Pentagon. Some lawmakers criticized Kahl’s support for the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran, and in his confirmation hearing he apologized for his “sometimes disrespectful” language in tweets harshly criticizing Republican lawmakers during the Trump administration.

The Senate Armed Services Committee ultimately deadlocked on his nomination, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tiebreaking vote in the Senate to advance his nomination. The Senate ultimately voted to confirm Kahl 49-45 when a few Republican senators were absent.

Before coming to the Pentagon two years ago, Kahl served as co-director of Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. He was also the first Steven C. Házy senior fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, as well as a political science professor.

Kahl served as deputy assistant to President Barack Obama and national security adviser to then-Vice President Joe Biden from 2014 to 2017.

About Stephen Losey

Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.

17. History Rhymes: Lessons from Indo-Pacific Competition and Confrontation in the Gray Zone

Excerpts:

The less obvious lesson is that, at present, the CCP has been and is being deterred from undertaking military adventurism, just as Japan was contained in the late 1930s. While the West recently recognized that it is in competition, the CCP has maintained an incremental struggle for a century. Communicating unambiguously that the West will confront certain gray zone activities may serve to prevent rational actors from being sidelined from national strategy conversations, but confrontation that looks like containment may also prove counterproductive—as it did with Japan.

Western nations must also recognize that other forms of gray zone activities are self-defeating, such as bellicose diplomacy and rushed One-Belt, One-Road projects. It is in Western interests not to deter such activities, but instead patiently highlight such mistakes in the application of soft power. Just as Japan became a pariah state through aggressive demands and its subsequent post-occupation suppression of nationalist movements, China will likewise mobilize global disapproval through continued “wolf warrior” antics and its repressive policies against non-Han Chinese minorities.

The confrontation with Japan became a conflict due to the distraction created by a war in Europe and Japan’s under-appreciated subversive activities. We should learn from this history so we can avoid repeating it.

History Rhymes: Lessons from Indo-Pacific Competition and Confrontation in the Gray Zone - Irregular Warfare Initiative

irregularwarfare.org · by Andrew Maher · May 18, 2023

“I said that I was accustomed to hear that statement [‘peaceful rise’], and that it meant, and was not infrequently stated to mean, that it would be peaceful if all Japanese demands were conceded, but that if they were refused ‘a different situation would arise.’”

These undiplomatic words were spoken eighty years ago by the Australian diplomat Sir Jon Latham. However, they might conceivably have been uttered in recent weeks about another Asian power. Statements like these remind us that there is nothing new about states competing and cloaking such competition in placating words that belie their actions. New terminology, such as “gray zone,” can confuse if not given appropriate historical context. History rhymes, and thus can offer lessons as to how competition in Asia manifests, how a sense of confrontation may develop in the future, and how extremely costly conflict might be avoided.

This piece addresses the history of the period of competition that Australia experienced before Japan escalated into a state of “confrontation” in mid-1940, prior to then making its stunning expansion southwards in December 1941. Such history echoes today in the actions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), its economic neo-colonialism in the form of debt-trap diplomacy, and its synchronization of efforts under the One-Belt, One-Road narrative of dual-use economic-military infrastructure. The implication is both cautionary and sobering. Competition in the Asia-Pacific has happened before, and historical examples like these can inform today’s foreign policy.

The Japanese strategic narrative of the late 1930s argued for the liberation of oppressed Asians from the yoke of colonial imperialism, with the siren song of a “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.” This narrative tapped into unsettled nationalist discontent that occasionally flared into insurrection. Nationalist groups from Burma, French Indochina, and the Netherlands East Indies saw hope in the Japanese narrative and organized underground networks to contest and subvert their existing systems of government.

Japanese military planning included the use of “Fifth Columnist” activities in South-East Asia, termed Kame, or “Tortoise.” In the words of a 1945 Allied intelligence report, preserved in the Australian War Memorial Archives, these activities were:

[I]ntended to combine local organisations which had subversive aims or tendencies with a superior organisation whose task it would be to coordinate their activities throughout the whole area of operations… In their plan of expansion in G.E.A. [Greater East Asia], the Japanese fully realized the great tactical value of this doctrine “Asia for the Asiatics” and the whole forces of their propaganda was turned to the fullest exploitation of this doctrine among the peoples of this area.

In Japan, as now in China, the narrative was one of leveraging ethnic and cultural affinity to subvert target governments from within. The Kame plan echoes with how Beijing seeks a “One China” narrative, to the detriment of ethnic Chinese who are facing extra-judicial policing and coercion globally.

As early as 1937, Australia felt the threat of Japanese economic penetration both directly, through ultimately denied iron ore interests in Western Australia, and indirectly, from fishing vessels throughout the Indo-Pacific that would encroach upon Australia’s territorial waters. Japanese enterprises also invested in the nearby islands of Portuguese Timor (oil, pearling, and coffee) and French New Caledonia (nickel). Australian policymakers feared that the economic dependence these territories had on such exports might give the Japanese political leverage for concessions—a concern that today might be termed export market coercion or debt-trap diplomacy.

The Japanese economic front invested in dual-use infrastructure that might prove valuable in a conflict. The South Seas Development Company (Nanyo Kohatsu Kabushiki Kaisa) had built port facilities in Palau (then Japanese) in May 1939, including two oil tank installations (capacity 10,000 tons), according to documents in the Australian War Memorial Archives. The Japanese also pursued oil, mining, and shipping lines, and airfield concessions in Portuguese Timor, heralding alarm in Canberra and triggering Australian and British competition for such concessions. Aggressive diplomacy in 1939 sought a deal: “in return for Japan’s guaranteeing Macao, the Portuguese would adhere to the Anti-Comintern Pact, ecognize [Japanese-controlled] Manchukuo, and grant Japan [an] air base in Timor.” A year later, the Japanese bluntly warned they would foment trouble in Macao unless Japanese concessions in Timor were satisfied.

Such behavior echoes in today’s aggressive “wolf-warrior” diplomacy of veiled threats, subversion as a punishment, and trade in dubious promises. This behavior didn’t work in 1940, and it’s no more effective today. Senior policymakers ranging from the president of the Federated States of Micronesia to the former minister of foreign affairs of the Republic of Korea are calling out the erosion of their sovereignty that comes with Chinese political bullying, and resistance to Chinese lobbying is the net result.

The West understood the threats Japanese infrastructure and economic investment posed, but the Portuguese Prime Minister did not see such engagement as a threat—a difference of viewpoint that opened a schism with the Portuguese Minister for Colonies. The British consul-general in Batavia reported to the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Anthony Eden in July 1937:

If Japan puts into impecunious Portuguese Timor the capital suggested, harbour, godown and other improvements are likely to follow, and she might even, before long, obtain a permanent hold on that colony analogous to the position she has achieved at Davao, in Mindanao… It must, too, be borne in mind that Timor would make an admirable base for those Japanese fishery activities [including poaching in Australian waters] which have so greatly increased in the last year or two and have become so embarrassing to the Governments both of Australia and of the Netherlands East Indies.

The Japanese practice of leveraging commercial fronts for political and intelligence purposes dates at least as far back as the Mukden incident of 1931, and the use of Japanese journalists as part-time intelligence agents has also been documented. The Japanese intelligence network also included, from at least 1937, the equipping of Japanese fishing fleets with wireless radio to report from the Persian Gulf to New Zealand to the Japanese Admiralty. It is thus not unreasonable to view such Japanese fishing fleets as a maritime militia.

Examining such Japanese gray zone activities highlights how Japan was effectively deterred from direct military action in the 1930s against Britain, France, Portugal, and the Netherlands, all of whom held colonial possessions that Japan coveted, or had the ability to disrupt its plans for the dominance of China. Incremental gains were all Japan could hope to achieve without triggering a crisis. Likewise, Western nations were deterred from contesting Japanese military might in Asia, recognizing such action might risk the loss of Hong Kong or North Borneo, or might even spiral into a broader conflict (as it subsequently did) involving Australia and New Zealand.

It is important to recognize that the West thus also decided to compete through gray zone activities, recognizing that keeping Chiang Kai-Shek fighting in a proxy war against Japan might limit Japan’s “striking powers against any part of the British or French Empires.” US firms were discouraged from extending credits to Japanese firms through an informal direction to handicap the Japanese economy. Ports across the British empire imposed a routine delay of twenty-four hours to Japanese shipping. Furthermore, when required in September 1940, Australia intervened in Noumea to prevent a rebellion from installing a pro-Japanese government and thus securing nickel output for Japanese industry.

Competition transitioned into something sharper in June 1940, likely influenced by Germany’s stunning success in Europe. A Japanese “confrontation” with the West arguably began with semi-diplomatic threats to close the Burma-China and Hong Kong Frontiers and to withdraw all British troops from Shanghai. British support to their Chinese proxy was proving a marked irritant to the Imperial Japanese Army, and it was with this context that the British chose to escalate in the form of Mission 204: A training mission to raise Chinese guerrilla warfare battalions to fight the Japanese. The strategic implications of this confrontation were well understood: “unless [the] British cease assistance to Chinese Government, Japanese forces will seize Indo-China, Netherlands East Indies, and Hong Kong.”

Deterrence ultimately failed in 1941 for multiple reasons. Competition escalated into a confrontation because vital Japanese interests (the dominance of north-east Asia and access to essential mineral resources) were threatened, whereas the United States and Britain believed that economic warfare would “bring Japan to her senses.” Efforts to defuse tensions—namely through British suspension of supplies through Burma—were exploited by Japan, which never intended to negotiate in good faith. Confrontation gave space for ego and nationalistic fervor to overtake rationality. Ultimately, the threat of consequence carried little meaning for European powers clearly beset by German expansion. At the same time, the Japanese misunderstood and underappreciated America’s own willingness to mobilize for war.

The lesson today is that One-Belt, One-Road is a similar program of infrastructure development through which economic coercion and dual-use infrastructure can support war plans. State-owned enterprises and large-scale electronic surveillance both conduct and expand the channels through which intelligence can be collected. Economic coercion creates fissures that undermine domestic unity. Fissures induced by corrupt officials or sympathetic media outlets weaken a domestic counter-narrative. Such political warfare levers might also be used to create the perception of ‘fifth columnists’ among the ethnic Chinese population in domestic constituencies. These tensions fray the social fabric, often in a manner disproportionate to the actual threat of subversion.

The less obvious lesson is that, at present, the CCP has been and is being deterred from undertaking military adventurism, just as Japan was contained in the late 1930s. While the West recently recognized that it is in competition, the CCP has maintained an incremental struggle for a century. Communicating unambiguously that the West will confront certain gray zone activities may serve to prevent rational actors from being sidelined from national strategy conversations, but confrontation that looks like containment may also prove counterproductive—as it did with Japan.

Western nations must also recognize that other forms of gray zone activities are self-defeating, such as bellicose diplomacy and rushed One-Belt, One-Road projects. It is in Western interests not to deter such activities, but instead patiently highlight such mistakes in the application of soft power. Just as Japan became a pariah state through aggressive demands and its subsequent post-occupation suppression of nationalist movements, China will likewise mobilize global disapproval through continued “wolf warrior” antics and its repressive policies against non-Han Chinese minorities.

The confrontation with Japan became a conflict due to the distraction created by a war in Europe and Japan’s under-appreciated subversive activities. We should learn from this history so we can avoid repeating it.

Andrew Maher is a PhD candidate and lecturer on irregular warfare with the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Canberra. He holds fellowships with the Modern War Institute at West Point, Joint Special Operations University, and Charles Sturt University Terrorism Studies programs. He has served in the Australian Army for over twenty years with multiple deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, and holds BEng/BBus from the University of Southern Queensland and an MA in Defence Studies from UNSW Canberra.

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

18. Reports: Defense News correspondent arrested in India

Reports: Defense News correspondent arrested in India

Defense News · by Stephen Losey · May 17, 2023

WASHINGTON —Indian authorities have arrested Vivek Raghuvanshi, a defense journalist and longtime correspondent for Defense News, and accused him of espionage, according to reports in the Indian press.

Raghuvanshi’s arrest drew a condemnation from Sightline Media Group, the publisher of Defense News and Military Times.

“We call for the immediate release of freelance reporter Vivek Raghuvanshi following his arrest in India,” said Mike Gruss, Sightline’s editor-in-chief. “Vivek has written about the Indian defense industry for Sightline publications for more than three decades and has shown that he is a journalist of integrity and the highest ethical standards.

“Vivek is deeply respected by his colleagues and by his readers in the defense industry, who know they can rely on for accurate reporting and fairness,” Gruss continued. “Sightline leaders have not seen any evidence to substantiate these charges and repudiate attacks on press freedom.”

Sightline Media Group is an independent, for-profit U.S. media company with correspondents around the world. It is not affiliated with the U.S. government.

The Indian Express reported that India’s Central Bureau of Investigation arrested Raghuvanshi and a former commander in the Indian navy, Ashish Pathak, on Tuesday night. The Indian Express quoted a CBI spokesperson who said the bureau had conducted multiple searches.

The National Press Club also called on Indian authorities to release Raghuvanshi.

“We were disappointed to hear of the arrest of journalist Vivek Raghuvanshi in India this week,” National Press Club President Eileen O’Reilly and National Press Club Journalism Institute President Gil Klein said in a statement. “The charges against him of working with a foreign intelligence service are completely at odds with his well-established professional profile. Vivek has a solid reputation and the respect of his colleagues.”

Defense News reporter Jen Judson was the 115th president of the National Press Club.

Raghuvanshi’s arrest comes at a time of increasing concern about the state of press freedoms in India. Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists were among the human rights organizations that issued a statement on World Press Freedom Day earlier this month calling on Indian authorities to stop prosecuting journalists and online commentators for criticizing government policies.

The human rights organizations cited multiple cases in recent years in which press freedoms had been suppressed in India. Those included a March 2022 incident in which airport authorities prevented a prominent female Muslim journalist, Rana Ayyub, from flying from Mumbai to London to speak at a journalism gathering. Ayyub is a critic of the Bharatiya Janata Party, a major political party in India.

The organizations also said three journalists were re-arrested by Kashmir authorities in 2022 under a law that allows authorities “to arbitrarily detain people without evidence and thorough judicial review.” At the time of their re-arrests, those three journalists were out on bail on other cases the human rights organizations said were “filed against them in retaliation for their journalism work.”

About Stephen Losey

19. No More Silent Service As Marine CH-53s Resupply Ballistic Submarine In Pacific

No More Silent Service As Marine CH-53s Resupply Ballistic Submarine In Pacific

The at-sea resupply of the USS Maine highlights new concepts of operations and a broader openness about Navy submarine activities.

JOSEPH TREVITHICK

PUBLISHED MAY 17, 2023 3:48 PM EDT

thedrive.com · by Joseph Trevithick · May 17, 2023

The U.S. Navy's top submarine officer in the Pacific has said that his forces are no longer just "a silent service" in a recent interview with Breaking Defense. This reflects an increasing willingness by the Navy to discuss the activities of its Ohio class missile submarines and other types to help deter potential adversaries, particularly China. An announcement today from the U.S. Marine Corps about resupplying an Ohio class ballistic missile submarine, or SSBN, in the Philippine Sea using CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters reflects this policy shift and highlights new concepts of operations.

The U.S. Marine Corps' III Marine Expeditionary Force (III MEF), headquartered on the Japanese island of Okinawa, issued a press release about the recent vertical replenishment of the Ohio class SSBN USS Maine in the Philippine Sea earlier today. Two CH-53Es from Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 462 (HMH-462), part of III MEF's 1st Marine Aircraft Wing (1st MAW), carried out the recent replenishment mission. Cargo was lowered down to the submarine via hoists on the helicopters.

The Navy currently has 14 Ohio SSBNs in service, which form the sea-based leg of America's nuclear deterrence triad. The service has four other Ohios converted into conventionally-armed guided missile submarines. Those boats are capable of carrying up to 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles, as well as serving as motherships for special operations forces and uncrewed platforms, underwater command and intelligence fusion centers, and more, as detailed in this past War Zone feature.

"1st MAW’s persistent and forward presence makes it the backbone of the Stand-in-Force’s

expeditionary capability," U.S. Marine Corps Col. Christopher Murray, head of the Marine Aircraft Group 36 (MAG-36), part of 1st MAW based in Okinawa, said in a statement. "The intricacies of seamlessly sustaining the force through naval integration and aviation-delivered logistics is a testament to our adaptability, readiness, and ability to project power within the Indo-Pacific."

A view of the Ohio class SSBN USS Maine from one of the Marine CH-53Es involved in the vertical replenishment mission last week. USMC

The concept of a "Stand-in-Force," or SiF, that can operate effectively within an opponent's so-called "Weapons Engagement Zone" is a central component of the Marine Corps' Expeditionary Advance Base Operations (EABO) concept. The service is still in the process of refining EABO, but it is focused on the idea of relatively small, but still robust Marine task forces being able to rapidly deploy to remote or austere forward locations, establish temporary bases to hold enemy forces in the area at risk, and then be just as capable of redeploying as the situation demands. The Corps has made clear that readily deployable aviation contingents, including F-35B Joint Strike Fighters, MV-22B Ospreys, and helicopters, as well as ground-based stand-off strike capabilities, will be key enablers of these concepts of operations.

The Marines have already been exploring other ways that forces might be able to contribute to larger operations using the EABO concept. This includes supporting anti-submarine warfare missions and using forward bases as critical logistics nodes inside contested environments.

Marine units resupplying Navy submarines, including Ohio SSBNs, might be another way to leverage EABO. At-sea replenishment of submarines in forward areas could be valuable for ensuring interrupted deployments, or even extending them, in the midst of a crisis or contingency.

A box of cargo about to be lowered down to the USS Maine from a Marine CH-53E last week. USMC

"The U.S. Navy's ballistic missile submarine force has demonstrated yet again that we have the proven capability to work seamlessly alongside III Marine Expeditionary Force to execute our mission, allowing us to remain on station," Navy Cmdr. Travis L. Wood, the USS Maine's commanding officer, said in a statement about the recent vertical replenishment of his boat in the Philippine Sea. "Rotary-wing vertical replenishment such as this allow us to quickly resupply so that we can constantly maintain pressure against any adversary who would wish to do harm to the homeland."

The Navy's interest in this kind of resupply capability for its forward-deployed submarines has been apparent for some time now. The service has demonstrated the potential to use various aircraft, including Air Force C-17A Globemaster III cargo planes, Marine MV-22 tilt-rotors, and Navy MH-60 Sea Hawk helicopters and drones, for these kinds of missions in recent years. Even platforms with limited capacity could still be used to deliver vital spare parts, medical supplies, or other cargo to submarines, as well as other ships, at sea.

This all comes amid an increasing willingness of the part of the Navy to disclose where its submarines are and what they are doing, in general. This is a trend that The War Zone has been very actively tracking in recent years. The service has historically been tight-lipped about submarine forces, often referred to as the "Silent Service." The Navy's various classes of submarines inherently provide discreet platforms capable of conducting a host of missions, including stand-off strike, intelligence-gathering, special operations support, and more, even inside denied or otherwise sensitive areas.

"I would no longer characterize ourselves as a silent service," Navy Rear Adm. Jeffrey Jablon, who is currently commander of Submarine Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet (SUBPAC), told author and defense expert Robbin Laird earlier this year according to a piece Breaking Defense published last week. "Deterrence is a major mission for the submarine force You can’t have a credible deterrent without communicating your capabilities; if the adversary doesn’t know anything about that specific deterrent, it’s not a deterrent."

Jablon's viewpoint here is particularly notable in the context of Ohio SSBNs and deterrence given that those boats are often touted as the most survivable leg of the U.S. nuclear triad given their ability to effectively disappear for months at a time.

Laird said that Jablon told him during the interview that, at that time, there were 18 unspecified Navy submarines sailing across the full expanse of the Pacific Ocean, seven of which were conducting operations west of the international dateline. That part of the Pacific includes the Philippine Sea where the recent vertical replenishment of USS Maine occurred.

USS Maine underway in the Philippine Sea last week. USMC

"The submarine force is now becoming part of the ‘combat clusters’ that you’re talking about instead of an independent operator. In the Cold War, we operated independently, alone, and unafraid," Jablon explained to Laird, who also said the SUBPAC commander specifically highlighted work with the Marines using the EABO concept. "During the land wars, we started becoming part of the joint force as we provided land fires via the TLAM [Tomahawk Land Attack Missile]. Now, we are fully integrated with the joint force in terms of targeting and communications. But, of course, we can also conduct independent operations as the ‘silent service’ when directed."

In the Pacific, the major target of any U.S. deterrence efforts, broadly, is dissuading the Chinese government from engaging in various malign activities. Concerns have been growing in recent years across the U.S. government about the potential for a Chinese military intervention against Taiwan well before the end of the decade.

However, China is not the only country the U.S. military seeks to deter in the Pacific, including through the increasing disclosures about Navy submarines in the region, especially Ohio class SSBNs and SSGNs. For instance, public submarine deployments and other shows of force are often meant to send signals to North Korea. They have the added effect of helping to reassure American allies and partners, too.

Just last month, President Joe Biden, speaking alongside his South Korean counterpart Yoon Suk Yeol, announced plans for more port visits in that East Asian country involving unspecified Navy "nuclear submarines." Reports at the time said that this could include the first visit by an Ohio SSBN to the Pensinal in some four decades. Ohio SSGNs have made stops in South Korea more recently than that. This was all part of a new expanded nuclear-deterrence-focused security framework called the Washington Declaration, which you can read more about here.

The Ohio class SSGN USS Michigan seen during a very rare public port visit to Busan, South Korea, in 2017 at a time of heightened tensions with North Korea. USN

U.S. submarine operations in the Pacific, as well as those conducted by its allies, have gained new attention in recent years due to the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) security agreement. A major component of this has been expanding Australia's submarine capabilities. The Australian government currently plans to buy at least three U.S.-made nuclear-powered Virginia class boats and pursue a domestically-developed nuclear-powered design with American and British assistance.

Submarine activity in the Pacific overall has been more and more of a hot topic. China's People's Liberation Army Navy continues to expand the size and capabilities of its own submarine fleets, which includes a growing number of Type 094 SSBNs. There is evidence that the PLAN is increasing the scale and scope of its routine SSBN operations, as well.

With regard to U.S. Navy submarines, and the service's increasing disclosure of their movements, this all extends well beyond the Pacific. There has been a similar surge in publicly announced U.S. submarine activity in and around Europe and the Middle East in recent years that has looked clearly intended to send signals to Russia and Iran, respectively.

All told, the recent use of Marine CH-53Es to resupply the USS Maine in the Philippine Sea is a demonstration of what could be a very useful capability in various scenarios in the future. At the same time, the public disclosure of the at-sea replenishment mission, and of Maine's presence in the region at all, reflects a larger change in the Navy's willingness to talk openly about its submarine activities to help deter opponents in the Pacific and beyond.

Contact the author: joe@thedrive.com

thedrive.com · by Joseph Trevithick · May 17, 2023

20. The U.S. Navy Desperately Needs to Crank Out Ships Like Hotcakes to Keep Up With China

The U.S. Navy Desperately Needs to Crank Out Ships Like Hotcakes to Keep Up With China

Popular Mechanics · May 15, 2023

The U.S. Navy wants to accelerate the number of new Constellation-class frigates to four per year.
This accelerated buy-in would add 40 ships to the fleet in just a decade.
Aging ships and a failed class of warships has made it tough for the Navy to grow the fleet.

The U.S. Navy wants its new class of guided-missile frigates now, and it wants a lot of them.

Last month, the service outlined plans to open a second shipyard, and add four new Constellation-class frigates per year—a rate not matched since the Cold War. The plan could finally increase the size of the Navy’s battle fleet, a number that the Chinese navy has already left in the dust.

Four Per Year

Constellation’s various combat systems, including a 57-millimeter automatic cannon, vertical-launch missile silos, anti-ship missiles, machine guns, and aviation and defensive systems.

U.S. Navy

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday told a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee that he wants to go from two ships per year at one shipyard to production at two shipyards, according to USNI News; it’s inferred that the Navy wants four frigates per year, in addition to its other, annual warship buys.

Constellation to the Rescue

The Perry-class frigate USS Vanderbilt docks in Ho Chi Minh City in 2003, the first American warship to do so since the end of the Vietnam War. Having small warships like frigates allows an important visit like this to remain low-key, drawing less attention than an aircraft carrier or even destroyer.

Getty Images

The Navy retired the Perry class in the 2000s and 2010s—first to downsize, and then with the anticipation that the new frigate-sized littoral combat ships would replace them. But the littoral combat ship experiment has proven a failure, with maintenance problems, high operating costs, and a lack of equipment to make them useful. The Navy is retiring half of the LCS ships, the Freedom-class, after just a few years of service, while the Independence class is under strict scrutiny.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy is struggling to grow the fleet. The service set a goal of 355 ships during the Trump Administration, but after four years of inaction, it’s dropped the number and now is shooting for between 321–372 ships. In addition to issues with the littoral combat ship, the service cut the number of Zumwalt-class destroyers from 32 to 3, and failed to design and fund a new class of cruiser. The service has gotten by on coasting on the large number of Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and Ticonderoga-class cruisers; but the first of the Burkes are nearing retirement age, and the Navy claims the Ticonderogas, the largest and most powerful ships in the fleet, are too old and worn-out to continue serving. As a result, the Navy has been stuck in a cycle of five steps forward, four steps back.

The Chinese Threat

No other warship is more emblematic of the rise of the Chinese navy than Shandong, China’s second aircraft carrier. Shandong also illustrates how the People’s Liberation Army Navy is not only more numerous but growing larger in ship size.

Getty Images

The Chinese navy, on the other hand, has had no such problems. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has grown from a “green water” coastal force to a full blue-water navy capable of navigating thousands of miles. In 2021, the Pentagon said the PLAN consisted of 355 warships, a number that would rise to 400 by 2025. While American warships enjoy a distinct qualitative edge, China is catching up.

China’s navy is not only larger than its American counterpart, but it has the benefit of focus, lasering in on the Western Pacific. The U.S. Navy, on the other hand, must contend with a number of potential adversaries, including China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. This means splitting its attention and resources between the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, and Mediterranean/Persian Gulf. If multiple crises demand the Navy’s attention, it could face a demand for more ships than it actually has.

The Takeaway

The Constellation class of frigates is enormously important to the future of the Navy and American seapower. If the effort to grow the fleet stalls, that could send the wrong signal to the rest of the world—particularly China. War with any foreign power isn’t guaranteed, and would be even less likely if potential enemies looked at the balance of forces and concluded the United States would be a tough enemy to beat. A strong fleet isn’t just important in wartime, it’s important in peacetime, too.

Kyle Mizokami

Kyle Mizokami is a writer on defense and security issues and has been at Popular Mechanics since 2015. If it involves explosions or projectiles, he's generally in favor of it. Kyle’s articles have appeared at The Daily Beast, U.S. Naval Institute News, The Diplomat, Foreign Policy, Combat Aircraft Monthly, VICE News, and others. He lives in San Francisco.

Popular Mechanics · May 15, 2023

21. From Ukraine war to China's rising power: 5 reasons this G7 matters

The five:

Nuclear symbolism

Threats from Moscow

A summit on China’s doorstep

This is now a bumper summit

Debt ceiling looms

From Ukraine war to China's rising power: 5 reasons this G7 matters | CNN

CNN · by Brad Lendon · May 18, 2023

CNN —

This year’s G7 meeting in Japan holds special significance, not only for its location.

The leaders of the world’s most advanced democracies are meeting in Hiroshima, the site of the world’s first ever nuclear attack – a fitting reminder of the risks of nuclear war as they discuss Russia and the conflict in Ukraine.

China, just a short flight away, will also be on the agenda as they discuss its offer to play peacemaker, despite its close relationship with the aggressor.

There’s a lot to get through before US President Joe Biden flies back to the US to deal with a looming debt ceiling crisis.

Here’s what to watch:

Nuclear symbolism

Not far from the leaders’ meeting venue is the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, where dozens of timepieces are displayed, many still stopped at 8:16 a.m.

That was the time on August 6, 1945, that a US Army Air Force B-29 bomber dropped a single atomic bomb over the city, killing 70,000 people with its initial blast, and leaving tens of thousands of others to die slowly from burns or radiation-related illnesses.

The bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy,” was the first step in a nuclear arms race that almost 80 years later sees a world with roughly 12,500 nuclear warheads – many of them exponentially more powerful than Little Boy – in possession of nine nuclear-armed countries, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida arrives at Hiroshima airport to attend the G7 leaders' summit in Hiroshima, Japan, on Thursday.

Androniki Christodoulou/Reuters

Two years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, some of the US scientists who developed those atomic weapons established the Doomsday Clock, an annual indicator of how close the world is to nuclear disaster.

According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, “the Clock now stands at 90 seconds to midnight – the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been.”

There are several reasons for that: China is building up its nuclear arsenal; North Korea has been testing nuclear-capable missiles at a record rate; Iran continues to move toward developing its own nuclear weapons.

But the Bulletin says the main reason the clock is at its most dangerous level is the biggest topic the G7 leaders will face in Hiroshima – Russia’s war on Ukraine – and the potential for the conflict to escalate “by accident, intention, or miscalculation.”

Threats from Moscow

Russia’s invasion of its western neighbor is now well into its second year.

Moscow’s arsenal of almost 6,000 nuclear warheads always looms large, especially as the war has been in a stalemate – if not swinging in Ukraine’s favor – as Kyiv’s forces are bolstered by weapons supplied by most of the countries gathering in Hiroshima.

Together with his wife Britta Ernst, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz boards an air force plane for his trip to Hiroshima and the G7 summit.

Kay Nietfeld/dpa/picture alliance/Getty Images

When Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida – who hails from Hiroshima – visited Kyiv in March, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky praised him for keeping the G7 united behind Ukraine.

“Prime Minister Kishida stated that, as the G7 Presidency, Japan would maintain the unity of the G7 in imposing strict sanctions against Russia and providing support to Ukraine,” a joint statement from the two leaders said.

Don’t expect any cracks in G7 unity over Ukraine at the summit.

A picture shows F-16 fighter jets during the NATO international air force exercise Frisian Flag, at Leeuwarden Air Base on March 28, 2022.

Jeffrey Groeneweg/ANP/AFP/Getty Images

UK, Netherlands are working to procure F-16 fighters for Ukraine, Downing Street says

Britain has just delivered advanced missiles to Ukraine and is pledging to lead a coalition to provide Kyiv with F-16 fighter jets; Germany just announced its biggest aid package yet for Ukraine, $3 billion worth of tanks, armored vehicles, reconnaissance drones and ammunition; earlier this month, the US Defense Department announced a $1.2 billion package to bolster Ukraine’s air defenses and artillery stockpiles.

The biggest challenge for the G7 leaders may be keeping that momentum going. Economic resources are not unlimited and all face domestic pressures as their countries continue to recover from the pandemic.

But US President Joe Biden seems unwavering.

“You remind us that freedom is priceless; it’s worth fighting for as long as it takes,” he told Zelensky in Kyiv in February. “And that’s how long we’re going to be with you, Mr. President: for as long as it takes.”

A summit on China’s doorstep

About a thousand miles to the west of Hiroshima is Beijing, whose military buildup is a big concern for G7 host Kishida and Japan’s most important ally, the United States.

With one eye on China and the other on North Korea, Kishida in December promised to double Tokyo’s military budget. The plan could see Japan have the world’s third-largest military budget, behind the US and China.

There doesn’t seem to be any question Biden has Kishida’s back when it comes to China. After all, tens of thousands of US troops are based in Japan, and the two allies in January announced a significant strengthening of their military relationship, with new US Marine units being set up to boost Japan’s defense.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak leaves the Japanese aircraft carrier JS Izumo after a visit to the Japan Maritime Self-Defence Force (JMSF) at the Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, on Thursday.

Stefan Rousseau/Pool/AFP/Getty Images

Britain too is strengthening military ties with Japan, announcing in January a “historic defense agreement” that would allow them to deploy forces in each other’s countries.

One of Tokyo’s biggest concerns with Beijing is its stance on Taiwan, the self-governed island over which the Chinese Communist Party claims sovereignty despite never having controlled it. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has not ruled out the use of force to bring Taiwan under Beijing’s control.

In military exercises last August, Chinese missiles fell into Japan’s exclusive economic zone in the vicinity of Japanese islands near Taiwan.

Japan Foreign Minister, Yoshimasa Hayashi, looks on during an interview with CNN.

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But the G7 isn’t nearly as united on China as they are on Russia.

After French President Emmanuel Macron visited Beijing in April he said Europe must not become “just America’s followers” when asked about the prospect of China invading Taiwan.

Europe must not get “caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its strategic autonomy,” Macron said.

That didn’t go over well in the US and with some of Macron’s European partners, and can be expected to be a topic of conversation, at least behind closed doors, at the G7.

This is now a bumper summit

The meeting in Hiroshima was supposed to be followed next week by a summit in Australia of the leaders of the informal Quad alliance: the US, Japan, India and Australia.

But with domestic economic concerns boiling in Washington, Biden said he would be needed at home right after the G7, so the Quad meeting has now been hastily arranged in Hiroshima.

US President Joe Biden walks across the South Lawn before boarding Marine One and departing the White House on Wednesday for the G7 summit.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese hopes the Quad discussions won’t be a sideline event.

“The Quad is an important body and we want to make sure that it occurs at leadership level and we’ll be having that discussion over the weekend,” he said.

The meeting will be the third in-person leaders’ gathering of the Quad. Known formally as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, the group was founded over 15 years ago but has seen increased prominence in recent years, in what analysts see as a response to China’s increasingly assertive foreign policy.

The leaders are expected to discuss deepening their cooperation on a range of issues from critical and emerging technologies, to climate change and maritime domain awareness, according to a statement released by the White House last month.

Debt ceiling looms

Biden cutting his Pacific trip short provides some symbolism in itself, that for all the talk of new economic orders in the world, the US economy remains the most significant force.

The US president said he could not justify the trip to Australia, with a stopover in Papua New Guinea, because his presence in Washington could help get the US Congress to pass legislation raising the US government’s debt ceiling.

Should Congress fail to do so by June 1, and the US government default on its debt, the effects could could shred the US economy and imperil the financial security of millions of Americans.

It would ripple around the world. According to the Congressional Research Service, about 30% of US government debt is held by foreigners with interest paid on that 30% of the debt totaling $184.4 billion in 2022.

Two of the biggest holders of that debt, Japan and Britain, will be at the table with Biden in Hiroshima.

CNN · by Brad Lendon · May 18, 2023

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

V/R

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow

Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Phone: 202-573-8647

Personal Email: d avid.maxwell161@gmail.com

Web Site: www.fdd.org

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

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FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

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