Quotes of the Day:
"Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity."
- Louis Pasteur
"The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own."
- Aldous Huxley
"Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost."
-John Quincy Adams
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MAY 21 (PUTIN'S WAR)
2. A world grain shortage puts tens of millions at risk
3. Milancy Harris Nominated to be Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Security and Intelligence (Former DASD for IW & CT)
4. Zelensky: Only diplomacy can end Ukraine war
5. SOCOM finally found its next-generation personal defense weapon
6. Opinion | Biden has the means to reduce inflation. Why isn’t he acting?
7. ‘Quad’ security group plans system to track illegal fishing by China
8. Militia Violent Extremists in the United States: Understanding the Evolution of the Threat
9. The Liberal Obsession With ‘Disinformation’ Is Not Helping
10. Belarusians join war seeking to free Ukraine and themselves
11. Russia bans 963 Americans, including Biden and Harris — but not Trump
12. Kremlin Goes After Its Ultimate Foe: Rob Reiner
13. Why an ordinary US-Asean summit is special
14. Inside Pentagon's decision to redeploy US Special Forces to Somalia
15. Ukraine: How Russia Is Emptying The World’s Breadbasket – OpEd
16. A Whole Age of Warfare Sank With the Moskva
17. Ukraine’s first lady details war’s toll on the Zelensky family
18. Opinion | We Must Prepare for Putin’s Worst Weapons
19. Ukraine endgames 2.0: Can either side ‘win’ this war?
20. Transcript: Robert Gates on "Face the Nation," May 22, 2022
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MAY 21 (PUTIN'S WAR)
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MAY 21
Karolina Hird, George Barros, and Mason Clark
May 21, 5:30 pm ET
Russian forces intensified efforts to encircle and capture Severodonetsk on May 21 and will likely continue to do so in the coming days as efforts on other axes of advance, including Izyum, remain largely stalled. Russian troops in Luhansk Oblast will likely move to capitalize on recent gains made in the Rubizhne-Severodonetsk-Luhansk-Popasna arc to encircle and besiege Severodonetsk—the final Ukrainian strongpoint in Luhansk Oblast. Russian milbloggers are hypothesizing on the success of Russian tactics in the area and have dubbed it the Battle of Severodonetsk—emphasizing that this is the preliminary line of effort in the Donbas theatre.
Key Takeaways
- Russian forces are conducting operations to cut off Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) between Severodonetsk and Lysychansk across the Severskyi Donetsk River.
- The information space in Mariupol will likely become increasingly restricted in the coming weeks as Russian forces shift focus from completing the capture of the Azovstal Steel Plant to consolidating occupational control of the city.
- Russian troops are likely reinforcing their grouping around Kharkiv City to prevent further Ukrainian advances toward the international border.
- Russian forces may be assembling forces in certain areas of Zaporizhia and Kherson oblasts to initiate further offensive operations on the southern axis.
We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because those activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.
ISW has updated its assessment of the four primary efforts Russian forces are engaged in at this time. We have stopped coverage of supporting effort 4, “Sumy and northeastern Ukraine,” because it is no longer an active effort.
- Main effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and three supporting efforts);
- Subordinate main effort—Encirclement of Ukrainian troops in the cauldron between Izyum and Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts
- Supporting effort 1—Mariupol;
- Supporting effort 2—Kharkiv City;
- Supporting effort 3—Southern axis.
Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine
Subordinate Main Effort—Southern Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk Oblasts (Russian objective: Encircle Ukrainian forces in Eastern Ukraine and capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
Russian forces made small advances southeast of Izyum on May 21. Footage posted by the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) on May 21 showed DNR forces examining a destroyed dam in Oskil, about 10 km southeast of Izyum, suggesting that Ukrainian forces likely withdrew from the settlement across the Oskil River.[1] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces around Izyum are preparing to resume an offensive in the direction of Slovyansk.[2] Russian forces additionally shelled Velyka Komyshuvakha to the southwest of Izyum and Dovehenke to the southeast of Izyum, indicating they plan to continue offensive operations to the south of Izyum.[3]
Russian forces made gains in the Rubizhne-Severodonetsk-Lysychansk area and intensified efforts to capture Severodonetsk on May 21. Russian troops blew up a bridge across the Severskyi Donetsk River between Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, setting conditions to sever Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) and take Severodonetsk.[4] Pro-Russian milbloggers wrote about the beginning of the Battle of Severodonetsk on May 20 and claimed that Russian forces are closing in on the area from the north, east, and south.[5] The milbloggers emphasized the importance of disrupting Ukrainian GLOCs between Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, which are facilitated by at least two major bridges across the Severskyi Donetsk River. Russian forces’ destruction of at least one of the two bridges between the two towns will likely hinder Ukrainian GLOCs to Severodonetsk and indicate a Russian effort to encircle the city.[6] Russian forces reportedly conducted attacks against several towns around Popasna, which may allow them to push northward toward Severodonetsk.[7] Russian claims about their gains around Popasna remain unconfirmed by open sources as of the time of this publication.[8]
Russian forces focused on offensive operations around Lyman but did not make any confirmed advances on May 21.[9] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops are fighting in Lypove, Vasylivka, Marinka, and Novomykhailivka under air and artillery support and that Russian forces plan to resume operations in the area of Yampil-Siversk (just east of Lyman) by crossing the Severskyi Donets River.[10] The main Russian effort in the Lyman area will likely focus on advancing westward to reach the Donetsk-Kharkiv Oblast administrative border and merge with operations to the south of Izyum.
Supporting Effort #1—Mariupol (Russian objective: Capture Mariupol and reduce the Ukrainian defenders)
The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed full control of Mariupol as the last group of Ukrainian fighters surrendered and left the Azovstal Steel Plant on May 21.[11] The announcement of the conclusion of hostilities in Mariupol comes a month after Russian President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu claimed victory in the Battle of Mariupol on April 21.[12] Russian forces reportedly began demining the territory of the plant and restoring the Port of Mariupol.[13]
Russian occupation forces are likely intensifying “filtration” processes to consolidate control of Mariupol. Ukrainian Ombudsman Lyudmila Denisova stated that up to 4,000 men from Mariupol are now in filtration camps outside of the city, and Advisor to the Mayor of Mariupol Petro Andryushchenko claimed that Chechen Rosgvardia troops are taking over control of filtration points as DNR forces redeploy to other areas.[14] The information space in Mariupol will likely become increasingly restricted in the coming weeks as Russian forces shift their attention from the capture of Azovstal to consolidating occupational control over the city.
Supporting Effort #2—Kharkiv City (Russian objective: Withdraw forces to the north and defend ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Izyum)
Russian forces maintained their positions to prevent further Ukrainian advances toward the Russian border and conducted air and artillery strikes north of Kharkiv City on May 21.[15] The Ukrainian General Staff noted that Russia intends to strengthen its grouping around Kharkiv City with unspecified elements of the 1st Guards Tank Army.[16] The Internal Minister of the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) additionally claimed that its personnel are operating in Vovchansk, northern Kharkiv Oblast.[17] These reports indicate that Russian forces are reinforcing their presence north of Kharkiv City to hold their current positions and push back potential Ukrainian advances further north toward the international border and east toward Russian GLOCs heading toward Izyum.
Supporting Effort #3—Southern Axis (Objective: Defend Kherson against Ukrainian counterattacks)
Russian forces may be preparing for an offensive to capture the remainder of northern Kherson Oblast and push toward Zaporizhia City despite not making any confirmed advances on the southern axis on May 21.[18] The Kherson Regional State Administration stated that Russian troops are replenishing their grouping in Vysokopillyya and Arkhangelske, northern Kherson Oblast, in anticipation of increased combat activity in the area of the Kherson-Mykolaiv Oblast border.[19] The Zaporizhia Regional Military Administration noted that there is a high concentration of Russian forces in Inzhenerne, south of Huliapole, indicating that Russian troops are potentially preparing for continued offensives toward Huliapole.[20] The Zaporizhia Regional Military Administration claimed that occupying forces in Melitopol are hanging banners to celebrate the 220th anniversary of the Taurida Governate, which may indicate Russian forces intend to make occupied areas in Kherson and Zaporizhia a quasi-republic like the LNR or DNR, but also emphasizes lack of consistency in handling occupation agendas across Ukraine.[21] Russian forces additionally shelled and launched missile strikes on Mykolaiv, Odesa, Zaporizhia, and Kherson oblasts.[22]
Ukrainian authorities are reportedly strengthening border security between Ukraine and Transnistria.[23] The local Ukrainian border guard detachment announced new restrictions prohibiting the civilian use of drones, night vision equipment, and navigation of small boats in the area. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces are protecting the border and conducting counter-sabotage measures.[24]
Immediate items to watch
- Russian forces are likely reinforcing their grouping north of Kharkiv City to prevent further advances of the Ukrainian counteroffensive toward the Russian border. Russan forces may commit elements of the 1st Tank Army to northern Kharkiv in the near future.
- The Russians will continue efforts to encircle Severodonetsk and Lysychansk at least from the south, possibly by focusing on cutting off the last highway connecting Severodonetsk-Lysychansk with the rest of Ukraine.
- Russian forces in Mariupol will likely shift their focus to occupational control of the city as the siege of Azovstal has concluded.
- Russian forces are likely preparing for Ukrainian counteroffensives and settling in for protracted operations in southern Ukraine.
2. A world grain shortage puts tens of millions at risk
Excerpts:
Reactions to higher food prices in rich countries are making things even harder. Food prices account for about 1.3 percentage points of America’s 8.3% inflation rate, and about 1.0 percentage points of the euro area’s 7.4% rate. They are thus one of the factors driving more aggressive monetary policies. The higher rich-world interest rates which ensue drag down currencies and tighten financial conditions in emerging economies. Falling currencies make food imports costlier still.
To bolster their currencies such countries need either to increase interest rates, to intervene with their often scant hard-currency reserves, or to do a bit of both. All the options come with costs that can exacerbate food insecurity. Putting up interest rates, as many have done over the past year, has in most cases merely slowed the pace of depreciation and has driven up the cost of credit—which hurts farmers, especially when inputs are expensive. Using up currency reserves, on the other hand, means they cannot be used to buy food. Choosing not to subsidise food and not to prop up the currency may preserve reserves, but it greatly increases the risks of social unrest.
It is possible to have the currency slide and to lose reserves at the same time. Egypt chose to allow the Egyptian pound to depreciate by 14% in March rather than run down its reserves to prop the currency up. Even so, it saw its hard-currency reserves drop by about 10%, to $37bn, from February to March, in part because, as the depreciating pound made it harder for people to buy food, the state was buying more for them. Turkey, too, has experienced both a drop in its reserves and in the value of its currency since the beginning of the year. Its inflation rate has surged to nearly 70%. Iran has experienced demonstrations of public anger since reducing grain subsidies. Trouble seems certain to spread.
The World Bank sees the war’s effects on trade and welfare as representing a reduction in global real income of about 0.74%, or $600bn. In low-income economies the figure rises to 1.0%—which given their low incomes represents only about $5bn. That sounds rather small. But the concentration of those losses in places wracked by hunger looks set to bring with it spectacularly disproportionate social, political and human damage.
A world grain shortage puts tens of millions at risk
War, extreme weather and export controls are all contributing
In 2001 olena nazarenko’s father started farming in Lukashivka, a small village about 100km north of Kyiv, with three cows and a horse called Rosa (”Dew” in Ukrainian). In 2020 Mrs Nazarenko and her husband Andriy inherited the 400-hectare (1,000-acre) farm, now named Rosa after that founding horse. Early this year they took out a substantial loan to cover fertiliser for the coming spring-wheat crop.
On March 9th, well before they had planted any, Russian troops occupied the village and the couple fled. On March 31st, when the invaders had turned tail, they returned. It was a harsh homecoming. The main farm building was shelled out. Three tractors had been vandalised and their diesel drained. Of their 117 cows, 42 were dead and the rest were roaming fields littered with debris, mines, mortar shells, unexploded cluster bombs and burnt-out trucks. Fifty tonnes of wheat, sunflower seed and rye had been destroyed, costing them tens of thousands of dollars. “We have no money left,” says Mrs Nazarenko. “We have nothing to pay salaries and are struggling to pay interest on the loan.”
Lukashivka and the villages around it have seen thousands of tonnes of grain destroyed or left to rot; much the same is true throughout the country’s war zones. Russian forces have targeted grain elevators and fertiliser plants, leaving the infrastructure in pieces. The share of last year’s grain harvest still in the country—about 25m tonnes of grain, a lot of it maize (corn)—is stuck there, because Odessa’s ports, through which 98% of the grain exports normally pass, are blockaded. Getting the grain to alternative ports in Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltics is hard. “Before the war Ukraine exported about 5m tonnes of grain a month,” says Mykola Solskiy, the minister for agriculture. “Last month we managed to get 1.1m tonnes out.”
Vikas Kumar Singh, a farmer in Dharauli, a village in Uttar Pradesh about 700km south-east of Delhi, has no unexploded ordnance to worry about. But his March, too, was troubled. “It got too hot too early,” he explains, picking up a handful of recently harvested wheat from a pile in his shed with a dejected look on his face. “See, the grains are thinner than they’re supposed to be.” After being battered by severe winds and hail in February, the Chandauli district in which Dharauli sits suffered intense and unseasonable heat, shrivelling the ears of wheat when they should have been burgeoning. The same happened across most of the country. “Things are much worse in Maharashtra,” says Awadh Bihari Singh, who farms nearby.
Mr Vikas Singh reckons that his yield is down by about a quarter compared with last year’s. The district as a whole has harvested around a fifth less wheat than in a normal year, reckons Mr Awadh Singh. Before the heatwave, when a bumper harvest had seemed on the cards, the government had looked forward to the rupee being strengthened by grain exports. When expectations of the harvest’s size tumbled it flip-flopped. Accelerating exports encouraged by high prices abroad raised worries of a shortage at home.
On May 13th, the Indian government imposed an export ban on wheat, though it says it will make exceptions for specific countries in need; on May 15th a 500,000-tonne deal with Egypt was reported. There are currently 26 countries implementing severe restrictions on food exports. In most cases they are outright bans. The various measures cover 15% of the calories traded worldwide.
It takes a world to feed a world, and the way the world does it is through trade. By some estimates four-fifths of the global population live in countries which are net importers of food. More than 20% of the world’s calories, and more than 18% of its grain, crosses at least one border on the journey from plough to plate.
At the beginning of 2022 the world-spanning system which makes this possible was already in a ropey state. The number of people with access to food so poor that their lives or livelihoods were at immediate risk had risen from 108m to 193m over the past five years, according to the un’s World Food Programme (wfp). A lot of that near-doubling of “acute food insecurity” was due to the covid-19 pandemic, which reduced incomes and disrupted both farm work and supply chains; a good bit more was down to rising prices of energy and shipping as the effects of the pandemic wore off. Things were made worse by swine flu in China and a series of bad harvests in exporting countries, some of which were due to La Niña conditions that began in the middle of 2020. La Niña is a recurrent pattern of currents and wind patterns in and over the equatorial Pacific which has worldwide effects, just as its also-troublesome counterpart El Niño does.
Global grain stocks were, admittedly, quite high. But they were mostly in the hands of well-off importing nations, not those of exporters keen to sell them or poor importers likely to need them. “If we do not address the situation immediately,” David Beasley, who runs the wfp, told the Munich Security Conference in February, “over the next nine months we will see famine, we will see destabilisation of nations and we will see mass migration.”
Just six days after he spoke those words Russia rammed a rifle barrel into the already creaking machinery. In 2021 Russia and Ukraine were the world’s first and fifth biggest exporters of wheat, shipping 39m tonnes and 17m tonnes respectively—28% of the world market. They also grow a lot of grain used to feed animals, such as maize and barley, and are the number one (Ukraine) and number two (Russia) producers of sunflower seeds, which means they have 11.5% of the vegetable-oil market. All told, they provide almost an eighth of the calories traded worldwide.
Ukrainian food exports were promptly throttled by the war; Russian ones were dented by the indirect effects of sanctions. Grain prices shot up. Having fallen back a little as the shock wore off, they are now on the rise again. On May 16th, the first day of trading after India imposed its restrictions, wheat prices in Chicago, the global benchmark, rose by 6%; on May 18th they were 39% higher than they were when Russia launched its invasion.
America’s department of agriculture (usda) reckons that war and bad weather mean global wheat production is likely to fall for the first time in four years, which is bad. What is worse is that wheat is not really traded globally. Buyers often have long-standing bilateral relationships with exporters and set channels of trade which make switching suppliers hard. According to the un’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (fao) nearly 50 countries depend on either Russia or Ukraine, or both, for more than 30% of their wheat imports; for 26 of them the figure is over 50%.
That it should come to this
East Asian countries which import a lot of Black Sea wheat, such as Indonesia, can fairly easily switch to rice. For most other big importers cutting off wheat would involve drastic changes in diet. Many countries in the Persian Gulf and north Africa eat at least twice as much bread per person as gluten-loving Americans. Some grain can be diverted from other markets, at the right price, and European farming interests say that governments are coming to them actively seeking deals: “Everything is on the table”, says a big French producer.
Still, shortfalls seem certain. The wfp, on which more than 115m people depend, and last year got 50% of its wheat from Ukraine, says the crisis could drive 47m more people into acute food insecurity.
The war is also having effects on the things farmers need to grow food in the first place—and thus on how much they will plant in the seasons to come. Farms run on fuel. With Russia the world’s biggest natural-gas exporter and its second-biggest oil exporter, fuel prices have risen. Farms also need fertiliser. Of the three main types of industrial fertiliser Russia is the biggest exporter in one market (nitrogen-based fertilisers, the only expensive ingredient of which is natural gas), the second biggest in another (potash, which provides potassium) and the third in the third (phosphates). Pesticides and herbicides, often produced from hydrocarbons, have also gone up in price.
There is a lengthening shadow over another of the farmers’ prerequisites, too—one which predates the war and will outlast it. Good harvests need good, or at least moderate, weather. They are not well served by extremes. But climate change means extremes are increasingly what they get. Analysis by Britain's Met Office shows that global warming has made an extreme Indian heatwave like this year’s 100 times more likely.
And global markets mean the effects of these extremes can add up in a way that goes beyond the globally correlated patterns of disruption brought on by the see-sawing of La Niña and El Niño. The deluge which forced Chinese farmers to delay planting winter wheat last year, thus reducing this year’s expected harvest, and India’s subsequent stem-shrivelling heat may not have any direct connection. But when the probability of extremes goes up worldwide, so too does the probability of multiple regions suffering from one sort of extreme or another at the same time, or in the same time frame.
And time frames matter. Although many commodities can be produced year round, crops depend on the seasons. Miss the window for certain crucial steps, such as planting, fertilising or harvesting, and much of a year’s work can be lost in a matter of weeks.
This is the worry when it comes to Ukraine's winter wheat. Sown last year, it will be ready for harvest come June. Mr Solskiy expects this year's harvest to be 20-30% smaller than expected. Roughly half the winter-wheat fields are in the part-occupied, part-fought-over south-east. Many fields are scattered with explosives. Infrastructure has been destroyed. Water, power and fuel are sure to be in short supply.
Yields in the fields which do get harvested will be down by 10%, according to the fao: fertiliser applications have been missed; pests and diseases have run amok. And as long as Odessa is blockaded, the harvest will have no route to market. Nor can it be stored away. The blockade means that the country’s silos are still more than half full with last year’s crop. Unless exports through the Black Sea start again millions of tonnes could simply rot.
Things rank and gross in nature
The crops now nodding their heads in Russian fields should fare better. International sanctions do not target food exports directly, and though they make the trade more difficult, ways through and around the problems they create can be contrived. Though exports have dropped by a few million tonnes, Russia has managed to sell more grain since the war began than experts expected, with Egypt, Iran, Syria and Turkey the main buyers. When this summer’s harvest is brought home most of it will get to market. But that will not set right the shortfall in Ukraine.
Nor is the rest of the world well placed to make good the lack. China has warned that last year’s floods mean its winter-wheat crop could be “the worst in history”. Much of America’s grain belt is undergoing a drought as bad as the one which it saw in 2012-13. Around 40% of the wheat growing in America’s parched plains was recently deemed in poor or very poor condition (15-20% is average). On May 12th the usda predicted that the country’s production of hard red winter wheat, the main kind grown in the plains, would fall by 21% compared with 2021. Europe is getting too little rain at a point in the season when wheat is most vulnerable to dryness. A little late rain may be enough to revive the crops. But it seems certain that production will come up alarmingly short this year.
There are still stocks in exporting countries that could make up some of the difference. Nick Schaefer, who works at a grain elevator in Rugby, North Dakota, says he sees 40 to 50 trucks a day dropping off grain to be loaded onto trains heading west. And he knows there’s more where that came from. “It seems like whenever they sold, [the price] keeps going higher. So definitely, what they’ve got left in the bin, they’re probably going to hold on, just to see what happens.”
Normally the farmers would have an incentive to run down stocks before the harvest, when prices typically drop. But this year that looks unlikely to hold. Futures markets expect wheat and maize prices to stay at today’s extortionate levels until mid-2023. Mr Solskiy says that it will be when the harvest fails to change things that the world will start to feel the true impact of the crisis.
“There is no room for any weather issue in the northern hemisphere this season,” says an executive at one of the world’s largest traders. While Ukraine’s output remains inaccessible, “every single tonne in the market will be needed,” says Michael Magdovitz of Rabobank, a Dutch lender. That tight coupling of supply and demand means that prices will be very volatile, too, moving on the slightest bit of news; further shocks could send them much higher.
What of harvests after that of this year’s winter wheat? In Ukraine and elsewhere a smaller wheat crop is also planted in the spring, along with other things. For Mr Nazarenko this meant first uprooting the aftermath of war. With a number of employees, friends and relatives he walked the fields, removing spent shell cases and some unexploded shells, marking unexploded mines, pulling a “Smerch” rocket from the mud in which it was entombed with a tractor. “It was scary, but we did not have a choice,” he says.
In the end, he managed to sow most of his fields, barring the one still taken up by burnt-out Russian trucks. That puts him ahead of many. Some lack seeds. Some must plant at night to avoid air raids. Some are planting potatoes for home consumption rather than grain for export. A recent survey by Ukraine’s agriculture ministry suggests 30-50% of the country’s spring-wheat fields could end up not being planted. Yields may also suffer. Fertiliser is not yet scarce but some may well be repurposed to make explosives; ammonium nitrate serves well in both offices. Diesel is twice the price it was before the war, and it is hard to get hold of even if you can pay. Pesticides look set to be scarce.
Grown by what it fed on
Russian farmers do not face the problems of bombing, but they too will be short of inputs. The country’s large farms, which specialise in supplying global markets with grain, require a lot of them. Last year Russia imported $870m-worth of pesticides and $410m-worth of seeds—mostly from the eu. Elusive bank financing, payment headaches and a lack of willing shippers are making such purchases much more difficult. Most big Western seed and chemicals companies have pulled out of Russia, or are in the process of doing so (Chinese ones have stayed). Some may return after the war ends, but some may stay away.
Fertiliser will not be in short supply for the Russians. But it will be in most other places. In 2021, 25 countries got more than 30% of their fertilisers from Russia. In Europe energy-security concerns are restricting the use of natural gas to make nitrogen-based fertiliser, so the continent will need to import more, adding extra demand to a market where the natural-gas price has already increased most manufacturers’ costs. Nigeria and Qatar, flush with natural gas, are opening new nitrogen plants; there also seems to be some room for increasing Canada’s potash production. But prices will stay high.
More costly energy and fertilisers drive up prices across all sorts of agriculture. The farmers in Chandauli say high prices for fertiliser, diesel and labour have pushed their costs up by 20-25% so far this year. And wheat prices have effects across the market, too. If the cost of a commodity goes up, consumers look for alternatives. That is why food-price inflation is being seen in commodities that are not directly affected by the war, says Seth Meyer, the usda’s chief economist. Indicators of price volatility compiled by the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, dc, are flashing bright red for all major grains—including, for the past couple of months, rice, for which there are currently no supply concerns.
Flat and unprofitable
This all serves to blunt a seemingly natural response to high grain prices: for farmers to grow more grain. When input prices go up more than the grain prices, farmers’ margins fall. Josef Schmidhuber of the fao reckons the price of cereals, and food more generally, as perceived by farmers—that is, taking into account the costs of inputs—reached a peak in March 2021. Since then they have fallen by 27%.
Rather than rushing to plant more grain because the sale price looks high, farmers are looking at switching to crops with lower input costs. In March a usda survey found many American growers intending to move from maize to soyabeans this season. Grain prices may yet climb higher, tempting farmers back in. But they are also likely to remain highly volatile, depriving growers of the certainty they need to plan a big expansion one year in advance.
If it is hard to increase supply, what about decreasing demand? In theory there are low-hanging fruit where crops are used to feed cars or cattle rather than people. Gro Intelligence, a data firm, calculates that the calories diverted by current biofuel production and new commitments could soon be equivalent to the yearly needs of 1.9bn people. Biofuel production has increased markedly in America, Brazil and Europe as the oil price has risen; expensive crude makes the sector more profitable. Repealing biofuel mandates could lessen the damage.
The amount of food eaten by animals is even more vast. Last year China imported a record 28m tonnes of maize—more than what Ukraine normally exports in a year—to feed its immense hog herd. About 40% of the wheat grown in the eu is eaten by cows. About a third of America’s maize is devoured by cattle. If the amount of such feed is reduced, though—or if, by using substitutes such as grass, maize stalks and silage, its energy content is lowered—the animals grow less, or more slowly, or both. That drives up the price of the end product. In the food-price crisis of 2007-08 changes to animal feed, together with culls and production cut-backs, caused meat and dairy prices to rocket.
No countries are immune to the effects of this crisis. Lamentably, people go hungry even in the richest economies. The countries hit worst, though, are poor ones, because poor people spend a greater share of their income on food. In most emerging markets food consumes something like a quarter of household budgets, as opposed to less than a fifth in advanced economies. In sub-Saharan Africa the figure is 40%. And grain makes up a larger part of those budgets than it does in richer places.
Many of these economies were in poor shape well before the food crisis hit. Across sub-Saharan Africa, output remains substantially below the level that they would have reached had pre-pandemic trends continued. The debt burdens of more than half of the region’s low-income economies are either judged to be unsustainable or may soon become so, according to the imf. Governments in such straits are poorly placed to help their citizens weather a food-price shock.
Reactions to higher food prices in rich countries are making things even harder. Food prices account for about 1.3 percentage points of America’s 8.3% inflation rate, and about 1.0 percentage points of the euro area’s 7.4% rate. They are thus one of the factors driving more aggressive monetary policies. The higher rich-world interest rates which ensue drag down currencies and tighten financial conditions in emerging economies. Falling currencies make food imports costlier still.
To bolster their currencies such countries need either to increase interest rates, to intervene with their often scant hard-currency reserves, or to do a bit of both. All the options come with costs that can exacerbate food insecurity. Putting up interest rates, as many have done over the past year, has in most cases merely slowed the pace of depreciation and has driven up the cost of credit—which hurts farmers, especially when inputs are expensive. Using up currency reserves, on the other hand, means they cannot be used to buy food. Choosing not to subsidise food and not to prop up the currency may preserve reserves, but it greatly increases the risks of social unrest.
It is possible to have the currency slide and to lose reserves at the same time. Egypt chose to allow the Egyptian pound to depreciate by 14% in March rather than run down its reserves to prop the currency up. Even so, it saw its hard-currency reserves drop by about 10%, to $37bn, from February to March, in part because, as the depreciating pound made it harder for people to buy food, the state was buying more for them. Turkey, too, has experienced both a drop in its reserves and in the value of its currency since the beginning of the year. Its inflation rate has surged to nearly 70%. Iran has experienced demonstrations of public anger since reducing grain subsidies. Trouble seems certain to spread.
The World Bank sees the war’s effects on trade and welfare as representing a reduction in global real income of about 0.74%, or $600bn. In low-income economies the figure rises to 1.0%—which given their low incomes represents only about $5bn. That sounds rather small. But the concentration of those losses in places wracked by hunger looks set to bring with it spectacularly disproportionate social, political and human damage. ■
3. Milancy Harris Nominated to be Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Security and Intelligence (Former DASD for IW & CT)
Milancy Harris Nominated to be Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Security and Intelligence
Milancy Harris Nominated to be Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Security and Intelligence - HS Today
Harris is currently the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Irregular Warfare and Counterterrorism at the U.S. Department of Defense.
May 20, 2022
President Biden announced today that he will nominate Milancy Harris for Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Security & Intelligence.
Harris is currently the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Irregular Warfare and Counterterrorism at the U.S. Department of Defense. Prior to taking this role, she served on the Intelligence Community Agency Review Team for the Biden-Harris Transition. Harris joined the Intelligence Community in 2004 as an Analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Harris previously served in a variety of analytic and staff roles at the National Counterterrorism Center and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence until 2019. She also served as a Director for Counterterrorism on the National Security Council staff from 2015-2017. Outside of government, her work focused on technology governance issues and content moderation.
Originally from Wisconsin, Harris holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Marquette University and a Master’s Degree from The George Washington University.
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4. Zelensky: Only diplomacy can end Ukraine war
Then we have to ask what is the acceptable durable political arrangement that will satisfy the interests of both sides to allow a diplomatic end to Putin's War?
Talk amongst yourselves.
Zelensky: Only diplomacy can end Ukraine war
Published
17 hours ago
The war in Ukraine can only be resolved through "diplomacy", President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.
Speaking on national TV, he suggested his country could be victorious against Russia on the battlefield.
However, he added that the war could only come to a conclusive halt "at the negotiating table".
Meanwhile, heavy fighting is taking place in and around Severodonetsk, as Russian forces step up efforts to seize the whole of the Luhansk region.
Local governor Serhiy Haidai said the Russians were "destroying" Severodonetsk as they gradually surrounded it.
Writing on the messaging app Telegram, he said Ukrainian troops had repelled 11 attacks on the frontline - with eight tanks among the Russian vehicles destroyed. There was no independent confirmation of the claims.
BBC correspondent James Waterhouse said Russia had increased its artillery and air strikes as well as missile attacks - gaining ground mile by mile in Luhansk while the Ukrainians are forced to retreat.
In his TV address, Mr Zelensky said the conflict "will be bloody, there will be fighting, but it will only definitively end through diplomacy".
But he indicated this would not be easy, as neither side wanted to give anything up.
On Tuesday, Kyiv's lead negotiator, Mykhaylo Podolyak, said talks were on hold.
The following day, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused Kyiv authorities of not wanting to continue talks to end hostilities.
Russian news agencies say the last meeting happened nearly a month ago, on 22 April.
With no end in sight to the fighting, the US is sending more military, economic and humanitarian aid.
On Saturday, President Joe Biden signed a bill to provide a package for Ukraine worth nearly $40bn (£32bn), the White House said.
The money represents the largest programme of American assistance since Russia launched its invasion in February.
The bill, which will funnel support to Ukraine for about the next five months, includes some $6bn budgeted for armoured vehicles and air defences.
President Zelensky tweeted his gratitude, saying military aid was "needed more than ever".
It also emerged on Saturday that President Biden is one of over 900 US citizens who have been indefinitely banned from entering Russia.
The list also includes Secretary of State Antony Blinken, CIA chief William Burns and hundreds of members of Congress.
5. SOCOM finally found its next-generation personal defense weapon
Pretty pricey. I hope the US government is getting a bulk discount:
NEW
SIG SAUER
MCX
$2,607.99
300 AAC BLACKOUT
SEMI AUTO
30+1 ROUNDS
5.5" BARREL
NEW
SIG SAUER
MCX
$2,499.99
5.56 X 45 MM NATO
SEMI AUTO
30+1 ROUNDS
5.5" BARREL
SOCOM finally found its next-generation personal defense weapon
After five years of searching, U.S. Special Operations Command has settled on Sig Sauer's lightweight PDW.
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After years of searching, U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) has picked Sig Sauer to provide its next personal defense weapon for U.S. special operations forces.
On Thursday, SOCOM released a notice of intent to award a five-year fixed firm price contract to the firearms manufacturer. The new personal defense weapon of choice for SOF troops? The Sig Sauer MCX “Rattler,” which can be chambered in both .300 Blackout and 5.56mm calibers.
“After years of continuous market research, USSOCOM HQ has concluded that Sig Sauer is the only vendor that can fulfill USSOCOM’s need for the Commercial PDW requirement. USSOCOM HQ has been researching and reviewing different systems since 2017,” the notice of intent said. “We have meticulously reviewed each system for technical acceptance and whether it fits the commercial definition. Except for Sig Sauer, the vendors did not meet the technical requirements and/or the weapons do not meet the commercial definition.”
The size and cost of the order were not disclosed.
SOCOM started its hunt for a new personal defense weapon in 2017, hoping to get a new weapon built around the M4 carbine’s receiver, giving SOCOM operators more firepower while still being compact and portable. The command procured 10 Rattlers in 2018 for testing and evaluation, but kept its search going, issuing another search for weapon system designs in 2019. The goal was to find a new PDW with “a highly concealable .300 Blackout upper receiver group (URG) and buttstock kit solution for the M4A1 platform.”
Turns out that, after all of that searching, it was back to the MCX Rattler. SOCOM noted that requirements meant no prototypes or weapons were in limited development, and Sig Sauer’s new weapon fit the bill for rapid fielding.
“The PDW system will allow Operators to have maximum firepower in a concealable weapon,” SOCOM said in the notice. The order will include the guns themselves plus suppressors, magazines and cleaning gear, plus additional parts and training on the new platforms.
It’s worth noting that .300 Blackout round is designed to be quieter than regular ammunition, while still being powerful, and that personal defense weapons are meant to provide more firepower than a pistol while being much more portable and compact than carbines or rifles, making them ideal in close-quarters scenarios.
Sig Sauer has called the MCX Rattler its most “discreet platform,” and the 5.5-inch barrel certainly makes it short. The MCX Rattler is also designed to quickly switch between the types of ammunition.
The pick by SOCOM was another major contract for Sig Sauer, which previously snatched up high-profile (and lucrative) contracts for the Pentagon-wide Modular Handgun System contract and Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapon rifle and automatic rifle variants.
It’s unclear when the Sig Rattlers will go into the field with SOCOM operators, or if some of the initial orders are already in use.
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6. Opinion | Biden has the means to reduce inflation. Why isn’t he acting?
A strong critique of the Biden administration.
Conclusion:
A conventional wisdom has congealed in the United States that decades of free trade have led to stagnant wages for the middle class and misery for the working class. That view conveniently excludes the massive benefits of dramatic and sustained reductions in the costs of crucial aspects of life such as food, clothing and technology. We are witnessing what happens when the economic winds move in the opposite direction, and costs start spiraling up. It might make us all a little nostalgic for globalization.
Opinion | Biden has the means to reduce inflation. Why isn’t he acting?
President Biden says that combating inflation is his “top domestic priority.” But he certainly isn’t acting that way. He has in plain sight several measures that would reduce inflation significantly, and yet appears hesitant to take them. As many distinguished economists have noted, the repeal of most or all of Donald Trump’s tariffs would be the single most effective way of reducing inflation in the near future.
As a reminder, a tariff is a tax on goods paid by the U.S. consumer who buys those goods. It is by definition inflationary; it raises the price of a good such as an imported car. But it causes even more inflation than that, because it raises the price of the domestically made equivalent goods as well. If a Mazda sells for more, then Ford and General Motors also tend to raise prices on their cars.
The reverse logic applies as well. If you cut tariffs, that also has a broader effect: When the Mazda gets cheaper, Ford and GM will cut prices to compete.
In March, the Peterson Institute for International Economics produced a study estimating that reversing most of the Trump tariffs would reduce inflation by 1.3 percentage points. Lawrence H. Summers, a Post contributing columnist who has been prescient on many things in this economic crisis, endorsed that study, concurring that trade barrier reduction was the single biggest microeconomic measure “by far” that could be taken to alleviate inflation in the near term.
The second one, he noted, would be immigration reform. This is the time to reverse more of Trump’s restrictions on immigration, many done by executive action and hundreds of which are still in effect, which have caused severe worker shortages in industries such as farming, construction and health care.
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The problem, however, is not one relating to facts or logic. No one seriously disputes the validity of these claims. During the campaign, Biden lambasted Trump’s tariffs on China and much of his immigration policy. Yet after entering office, the Biden White House has behaved on these issues like a deer caught in the headlights — paralyzed by fear that any major shifts might get attacked by Republicans.
This defensive crouch is not just visible in economic policy, but foreign policy as well. Biden campaigned on the notion that Trump had been a dangerous aberration in American politics, that his policies had been far outside the mainstream, and that Biden would return the country to normalcy. Imagine if Biden, in his first week in office, had done just that, reversing a slew of Trump policies — ending the tariff wars, reentering the Iran nuclear deal and restoring some normalcy to America’s relationship with Cuba.
Instead, almost a year and a half into the Biden administration, on issue after issue, we are still living in Trump’s world. Biden might have paid a small political price initially, but that would have been short-lived, and he would have reaped the gains of more sensible policies for the rest of his term.
The Democratic Party has learned the wrong lessons from Trump’s narrow victory in 2016. It believes the only way to woo White working-class voters is to engage in a set of Trump-lite economic policies — chiefly protectionism and mercantilism. But Trump voters are motivated largely by cultural issues: Just listen to Ron DeSantis, J.D. Vance, Mehmet Oz and others rail about cancel culture, gender identity, woke corporations and now abortion. In that realm, Democrats need to listen more and adjust their rhetoric and actions. On economics, voters are looking for results — some of which Biden could easily deliver by reducing tariffs and easing certain immigration restrictions.
Inflation hurts the poor and the lower middle class the most, because they spend a much larger share of their income on items such as food and clothing that get cheaper thanks to global trade. Getting cheap stuff at Walmart is a much bigger boon for someone making $30,000 a year than $300,000. In Britain, inflation, which is at a 40-year high — mostly caused by Brexit — is having a particularly adverse effect on lower-income groups. Similarly, studies show that tariffs are also regressive, hurting the poor much more than the rich.
A conventional wisdom has congealed in the United States that decades of free trade have led to stagnant wages for the middle class and misery for the working class. That view conveniently excludes the massive benefits of dramatic and sustained reductions in the costs of crucial aspects of life such as food, clothing and technology. We are witnessing what happens when the economic winds move in the opposite direction, and costs start spiraling up. It might make us all a little nostalgic for globalization.
7. ‘Quad’ security group plans system to track illegal fishing by China
I think we probably know China's reaction.
Excerpts:
The initiative will use satellite technology to connect existing surveillance centres in Singapore, India and the Pacific to create a tracking system for illegal fishing from the Indian Ocean and south-east Asia to the South Pacific, according to the official.
...
He said the US, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, UK and France would soon launch an initiative called “Partners of Pacific” to help Pacific Island nations.
‘Quad’ security group plans system to track illegal fishing by China
Announcement by US, Japan, Australia and India to come during Joe Biden’s Asia trip
The US, Japan, Australia and India will on Tuesday unveil a maritime initiative aimed at curbing illegal fishing in the Indo-Pacific, a US official said, in the latest effort by the “Quad” to counter Chinese activity in the region.
President Joe Biden and the other Quad leaders — Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and newly elected Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese — will announce the initiative at a summit in Tokyo, according to the official, who alleged that China was responsible for 95 per cent of the illegal fishing in the Indo-Pacific.
The initiative will use satellite technology to connect existing surveillance centres in Singapore, India and the Pacific to create a tracking system for illegal fishing from the Indian Ocean and south-east Asia to the South Pacific, according to the official.
The system will allow the US and its partners to monitor illegal fishing even when fishing boats have turned off the transponders that are typically used to track maritime vessels.
“We’re going to provide a global capacity that will link the systems together to be able to track illegal shipping for the first time,” said the official.
“China has become the world’s largest perpetrator of illegal fishing,” said Charles Edel, Australia chair at CSIS, a think-tank. “They have drastically depleted global fish stocks and undermined traditional livelihoods of many countries, so any steps taken to track, identify and curb such activity would have environmental and security benefits for the region.”
“We’re just asking people in the region to remember that the US and our partners and allies have been the partner of choice on security and peace implementation since the end of World World Two,” said a US state department official, who added that Washington was “deepening our relationships with the region” to counter China.
He said the US would help on everything from education for girls to science and English-language education. It would also find ways to help them protect their marine resources and democratic institutions.
“America has tools, and collectively others do too, that can help them meet what it is they want,” the official said. “What most of them want is not a military base with the People’s Republic of China.”
The other official said the US was crafting a multi-faceted strategy that would range from more engagement to providing help on climate change, which is an existential threat for some Pacific Island nations.
He said the US, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, UK and France would soon launch an initiative called “Partners of Pacific” to help Pacific Island nations.
The official added that the US was also talking to Fiji about drawing it “more closely into the emerging economic architecture that the US is designing”. Biden will on Monday launch an “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework” to enhance economic engagement with countries in Asia.
The new maritime initiative comes as the US and its allies worry that Beijing is negotiating a security pact with Kiribati, a nation of 33 islands than span roughly 3,000km along the divide between the North and South Pacific, as reported by Financial Times reported on Friday.
The US was alarmed this year when China signed a security pact with the Solomon Islands. Some experts think it could pave the way for China to build a naval base and project power further into the Pacific.
Gregory Poling, head of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at CSIS, said Chinese military access to Kiritimati (Christmas Island) or other islands in eastern Kiribati would be much more serious than the Solomons.
“Not only are they relatively close to Hawaii, but under the Treaty of Tarawa the US agreed to give up its claims to those islands on the condition that Kiribati wouldn’t allow any third party basing on them without consulting the US,” Poling said.
Speaking about China’s efforts to draw Pacific Island countries closer, the first US official said they marked a much more ambitious strategy that required Washington to significantly “step up our game”.
“China has done a lot of stuff in the Pacific that is sort of old wine in new bottles. I do not believe that’s what we’re dealing with,” he said.
“This is a step change in their ambition. And it is a direct challenge that we in the West, as countries that have long standing interests in the Pacific, have to address.”
8. Militia Violent Extremists in the United States: Understanding the Evolution of the Threat
Militia Violent Extremists in the United States: Understanding the Evolution of the Threat
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Colin P. Clarke & Samuel Hodgson
Abstract Militia violent extremists (MVEs) pose a growing threat within the United States. MVEs were the most prominent and well-organised participants in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol and have plotted numerous acts of lethal violence against law enforcement, government officials, and civilians in the past decade. MVEs are motivated by a belief that private citizens must use violence to resist government overreach, combat purported tyranny, or maintain law and order. While participants in the broader militia movement embrace similar beliefs, MVEs are distinguished by their willingness to carry out violence.
MVEs typically organise in small local or regional militias, though many movement participants do not affiliate with a specific organization. The modern militia movement developed at the end of the twentieth century, but social media has transformed the movement’s structure and fuelled its growth. Movement members have organised loose umbrella networks at the national level, most notably the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, while others have coalesced around specific memes or ideas, including the accelerationist Boogaloo movement, border defence, opposition to federal stewardship of public land, and opposition to COVID-19 public health measures. MVE violence has been similarly diverse. In addition to the attack on the U.S. Capitol, MVEs have attempted to kill law enforcement officers, plotted to kidnap government officials, and engaged in multiple standoffs with law enforcement in response to government action.
Because the MVE movement is largely domestic, U.S. policymakers have several options for countering this threat. The U.S. government can limit radicalisation through transparency around its domestic activity, thereby countering the anti-authority sentiments and conspiracy theories that fuel the movement. Further, federal legislation targeting militia activity and improved counterextremism training can provide law enforcement with the tools necessary to address MVE-linked criminal activity.
9. The Liberal Obsession With ‘Disinformation’ Is Not Helping
I think the first paragraph on the excerpt below is a good diagnosis of much of the problem.
Excerpts:
Like other pathological reactions to trauma, the disinformation neurosis tended to re-create the conditions that produced the affliction in the first place. (Freud called this “repetition compulsion.”) By doubling down on elite technocracy — and condescension toward the uneducated rubes suffering from false consciousness — liberals have tended to exacerbate the sources of populist hostility. As Joe Bernstein documented in Harper’s last year, the “antidisinformation industry” has attracted massive investment from wealthy Democratic donors, the tech industry, and cash-rich foundations. Hundreds of millions of disinfo dollars are sloshing around the nonprofit world, funding institutes at universities and extravagant conventions across the world. Last month’s “Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy” conference was headlined by Barack Obama and featured Anne Applebaum, David Axelrod, Jeffrey Goldberg, and a lengthy list of other academic, journalistic, and political luminaries. I’m sure very interesting ideas were discussed there. But gathering the leading lights of liberalism to an auditorium at the University of Chicago — so that they together can decide which information is true and safe to be consumed by the rabble outside — strikes me as a hollow exercise in self-soothing, more likely to aggravate the symptoms of our legitimacy crisis (distrust and cynicism) than resolve any of its impasses.
Don’t get me wrong: There are obviously hard problems to be worked out regarding technology, speech, and democracy, and I have great respect for scholars working in that nettlesome nexus. But as Bernstein put it, the new class of disinformation experts, however well intentioned, “don’t have special access to the fabric of reality.” If faith in our institutions is to be restored, I don’t think it will be accomplished by stigmatizing doubt or obstructing the dissemination of falsehood. After all, faith is not a matter of fact and fiction.
I still think the antidote is from the 2017 National Security Strategy. (yes I am beating this horse with this quote). Although this is externally focused - it is the antidote to threats to democracy from external and internal sources.
"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."
But I know the above quote (and me for offering it) will be criticized for it being a naive aspiration. But I am still bullish on democracy, the great American experiment, and the American people.
The Liberal Obsession With ‘Disinformation’ Is Not Helping
Why the swift death of the White House’s disinformation board is probably a good thing.
Pandora’s Box, 2021. © Marcel Dzama. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner. Art: Marcel Dzama
On Wednesday, the Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz reported on the disastrous rollout of the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board. Announced on April 27 with a hazy remit to “coordinate countering misinformation related to homeland security,” the initiative generated immediate fierce backlash from conservative pundits and politicians who compared it to the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984. The expert tapped to lead the board, Nina Jankowicz, faced a wave of ferocious, viral, and often personal attacks online as well as scrutiny over her past statements seeming to betray her partisan sympathies. Now, just three weeks later, the Disinformation Governance Board is no more, and Jankowicz has resigned.
According to Lorenz and her sources (other disinformation researchers, as well as staffers in DHS and on the Hill), Jankowicz was taken down “by the very forces she dedicated her career to combating” and was undermined by a flat-footed, timid response from the Biden White House. The campaign against Jankowicz and the board, Lorenz writes, was “a prime example of how the right-wing internet apparatus operates, where far-right influencers attempt to identify a target, present a narrative and then repeat mischaracterizations across social media and websites with the aim of discrediting and attacking anyone who seeks to challenge them.” In other words, the Disinformation Governance Board was undone by a “textbook disinformation campaign.”
This version of the story is richly ironic and tragic. As one Hill staffer told Lorenz, “Nina’s role was to come up with strategies for the department to counter this type of campaign, and now they’ve just succumbed to it themselves.” But from another perspective, the right’s campaign against the Disinformation Board resembled any other successful advocacy effort to halt a government initiative. As with most activist endeavors, some of the facts were fudged, innocuous statements were deprived of context and tendentiously interpreted, those in charge were depicted as cartoonish villains, and a more complex story was reduced to a fairy-tale struggle between the forces of good and evil — not great, but when it comes to political messaging in our polarized age, par for the course. (I can recall quite a bit of Manichaean simplification happening during the Trump years.)
Obviously, I sympathize with Jankowicz. No doubt she faced an astronomical volume of right-wing nastiness, dishonest attacks on her reputation, and genuinely disturbing threats. I’m sure the administration could have done more to insulate her from the backlash. But other than that, I don’t see how a fully operational Disinformation Governance Board could have prevented this outcome — except via the very means conservatives (mistakenly?) feared it would possess. If, as Lorenz is careful to note, “neither the board nor Jankowicz had any power or ability to declare what is true or false, or compel Internet providers, social media platforms or public schools to take action against certain types of speech,” then how would it have prevented right-wingers from tweeting terrible, dishonest things about Jankowicz? Lorenz’s reporting seems to arrive at a Catch-22: The right’s campaign to depict Jankowicz as a government censor amounts to “disinformation” only if she and the DHS were indeed helpless to stop it.
I know, I’m being slightly glib. The truth is, I think it’s important for smart people to analyze the ways in which the architecture of social media facilitates and incentivizes witch hunts and the dissemination of hateful, dishonest content. And the government likely has a role to play in coercing tech platforms to prioritize the public interest over the profit motive in crafting their algorithms. But I don’t think it requires any great leap of conspiratorial thinking to find fault with a disinformation board under the aegis of the DHS. Government officials — whoever resides in the White House — are professional liars. They lie haughtily in the interest of “national security,” sheepishly in the interest of saving face, and passionately when their jobs are on the line. Would Jankowicz’s office have been empowered to counter “disinformation” coming from her own department? Or only from those criticizing it? And what would its remit have been under the next Republican presidency? As one conservative writer put it, “It’s not clear to me that Democrats have fully reckoned with the non-negligible possibility that Donald Trump is in charge of the new Disinformation Governance Board in 2 years.”
But the other pernicious problem with liberals’ fixation on “disinformation” is that it allows them to lie to themselves.
Trump’s ascendance in 2016 posed a painful psychic challenge to liberal elites. It suggested the possibility that many millions of Americans were motivated by deep, venomous dissatisfactions with the world they had helped create, that our cultural disagreements were profound, not superficial, and that our perspectives were practically irreconcilable inversions of each other. Political reality seemed to tilt on its axis. How could a man who appeared to them so transparently abhorrent and clownish be welcomed by others as a savior — or at least as a tolerable alternative to the status quo?
“Disinformation” was the liberal Establishment’s traumatic reaction to the psychic wound of 2016. It provided an answer that evaded the question altogether, protecting them from the agony of self-reflection. It wasn’t that the country was riven by profound antinomies and resentments born of material realities that would need to be navigated by new kinds of politics. No, the problem was that large swaths of the country had been duped, brainwashed by nefarious forces both foreign and domestic. And if only the best minds, the most credentialed experts, could be given new authority to regulate the flow of “fake news,” the scales would fall from the eyes of the people and they would re-embrace the old order they had been tricked into despising. This fantasy turned a political problem into a scientific one. The rise of Trump called not for new politics but new technocrats.
Like other pathological reactions to trauma, the disinformation neurosis tended to re-create the conditions that produced the affliction in the first place. (Freud called this “repetition compulsion.”) By doubling down on elite technocracy — and condescension toward the uneducated rubes suffering from false consciousness — liberals have tended to exacerbate the sources of populist hostility. As Joe Bernstein documented in Harper’s last year, the “antidisinformation industry” has attracted massive investment from wealthy Democratic donors, the tech industry, and cash-rich foundations. Hundreds of millions of disinfo dollars are sloshing around the nonprofit world, funding institutes at universities and extravagant conventions across the world. Last month’s “Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy” conference was headlined by Barack Obama and featured Anne Applebaum, David Axelrod, Jeffrey Goldberg, and a lengthy list of other academic, journalistic, and political luminaries. I’m sure very interesting ideas were discussed there. But gathering the leading lights of liberalism to an auditorium at the University of Chicago — so that they together can decide which information is true and safe to be consumed by the rabble outside — strikes me as a hollow exercise in self-soothing, more likely to aggravate the symptoms of our legitimacy crisis (distrust and cynicism) than resolve any of its impasses.
Don’t get me wrong: There are obviously hard problems to be worked out regarding technology, speech, and democracy, and I have great respect for scholars working in that nettlesome nexus. But as Bernstein put it, the new class of disinformation experts, however well intentioned, “don’t have special access to the fabric of reality.” If faith in our institutions is to be restored, I don’t think it will be accomplished by stigmatizing doubt or obstructing the dissemination of falsehood. After all, faith is not a matter of fact and fiction.
10. Belarusians join war seeking to free Ukraine and themselves
Resistance in Belarus? Could there be a revolution?
Excerpts:
Weakening Putin, the Belarusian volunteers believe, would also weaken Lukashenko, who has held power since 1994, and create an opening to topple his oppressive government and bring democratic change to the nation of nearly 10 million people.
For many of the Belarusians, their base is Poland, a country along NATO’s eastern flank that borders Belarus and Ukraine and which became a haven for pro-democracy Belarusian dissidents before becoming one for war refugees from Ukraine.
Some of the fighters are already in Poland, and some only pass through briefly in transit on their way to Ukraine.
“We understand that it’s a long journey to free Belarus and the journey starts in Ukraine,” said Vadim Prokopiev, a 50-year-old businessman who used to run restaurants in Minsk. He fled the country after a rumor spread that he would be arrested for saying publicly that the government wasn’t doing enough for small businesses.
Belarusians join war seeking to free Ukraine and themselves
AP · by VANESSA GERA · May 22, 2022
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — One is a restaurateur who fled Belarus when he learned he was about to be arrested for criticizing President Alexander Lukashenko. Another was given the choice of either denouncing fellow opposition activists or being jailed. And one is certain his brother was killed by the country’s security forces.
What united them is their determination to resist Lukashenko by fighting against Russian forces in Ukraine.
Belarusians are among those who have answered a call by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for foreign fighters to go to Ukraine and join the International Legion for the Territorial Defense of Ukraine. And volunteers have answered that call, given the high stakes in a conflict which many people see as a civilizational battle pitting dictatorship against freedom.
For the Belarusians, who consider Ukrainians a brethren nation, the stakes feel especially high. Russian troops used Belarusian territory to invade Ukraine early in the war, and Lukashenko has publicly stood by longtime ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin, describing him as his “big brother.” Russia, for its part, has pumped billions of dollars into shoring up Lukashenko’s Soviet-style, state-controlled economy with cheap energy and loans.
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Weakening Putin, the Belarusian volunteers believe, would also weaken Lukashenko, who has held power since 1994, and create an opening to topple his oppressive government and bring democratic change to the nation of nearly 10 million people.
For many of the Belarusians, their base is Poland, a country along NATO’s eastern flank that borders Belarus and Ukraine and which became a haven for pro-democracy Belarusian dissidents before becoming one for war refugees from Ukraine.
Some of the fighters are already in Poland, and some only pass through briefly in transit on their way to Ukraine.
“We understand that it’s a long journey to free Belarus and the journey starts in Ukraine,” said Vadim Prokopiev, a 50-year-old businessman who used to run restaurants in Minsk. He fled the country after a rumor spread that he would be arrested for saying publicly that the government wasn’t doing enough for small businesses.
“When the Ukraine war will be eventually over, our war will just start. It is impossible to free the country of Belarus without driving Putin’s fascist troops out of Ukraine,” he said.
Prokopiev heads a unit called “Pahonia” that in recent days has been training recruits. The Associated Press interviewed him as he oversaw an exercise that involved firing pistols and other weapons into old cars in simulations of war scenarios. They were being trained by a Polish ex-police officer who is now a private shooting instructor.
Prokopiev wants his men to gain critical battle experience, and he hopes that one day soon a window of opportunity will open for democratic change in Belarus. But he says it will require fighters like himself to be prepared, and for members of the security forces in Belarus to turn against Lukashenko.
Massive street protests against a 2020 election widely seen as fraudulent were met with a brutal crackdown, leading to Prokopiev’s belief that no “velvet revolution” can be expected there.
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“Power from Lukashenko can only be taken by force,” he said.
On Saturday, a group of men with another unit, Kastus Kalinouski, gathered in Warsaw in the Belarus House, where piles of sleeping bags, mats and other Ukraine-bound equipment were piled high. They sat together, talking and snacking on chocolate and coffee as they prepared to deploy to Ukraine later in the day. Most didn’t want to be interviewed out of concerns for their security and that of family back home.
The unit, which isn’t formally under Ukraine’s International Legion, was named after the leader of an anti-Russian insurrection in the 19th century who is viewed as a national hero in Belarus.
One willing to describe his motivations was a 19-year-old, Ales, who has lived in Poland since last year. He fled Belarus after the country’s security service, still called the KGB, detained him and forced him to denounce an anti-Lukashenko resistance group in a video recording. He was told he would be jailed if he didn’t comply.
Dressed all in black from a hooded sweatshirt to his boots, he admitted to feeling nervous as the moment arrived to head into Ukraine. He had never received any military training, but would get it once he arrived in Ukraine. But just how much, and where he would be deployed, he didn’t yet know.
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He said he was going to fight not only to help Ukraine, “but to make Belarus independent.” He said it was also important for him that people realize that the Belarusian people are very different from the Lukashenko government.
It is a dangerous mission, and several of the volunteers from the Kastus Kalinouski unit have died.
Still, fighting in Ukraine can feel less dangerous than seeking to resist Lukashenko at home, where many activists are in prison in harsh conditions.
Organizing the Kastus Kalinouski recruits was Pavel Kukhta, a 24-year-old who already fought in Ukraine’s Donbas region in 2016, suffering burns and the loss of most of his hearing in one ear. He described his unit as a regiment, meaning it would have hundreds of members, but he wouldn’t give its exact number.
Kukhta said that his half-brother, Nikita Krivtsov, was found dead by hanging in a wooded area outside Minsk in 2020. Police have said there was no evidence of foul play, but Kukhta says he and the rest of the family are certain he was killed for joining the anti-Lukashenko protests.
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But he insisted that his support for Ukraine in the war is not about revenge, only about fighting for democratic change.
“If Putin is defeated, Lukashenko will be defeated,” he said.
___
AP · by VANESSA GERA · May 22, 2022
11. Russia bans 963 Americans, including Biden and Harris — but not Trump
Putin says, "I'll punish you Americans. You can't come to Russia any more." (note my attempt at sarcasm).
It is interesting that the Russians are sanctioning dead people. I suppose it must include their ghosts being banned from going to Russia too. (more sarcasm).
Excerpts:
Some of those mentioned in Saturday’s list, including Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, were sanctioned in March and barred from entering Russia.
The list appears to include major officials from the Biden administration, such as Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and former White House press secretary Jen Psaki. The president’s son, Hunter Biden, is also named, as is former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
...
The Russian Foreign Ministry’s list of 963 Americans includes many members of Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is not on the list. Also not listed is Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who delayed a Senate vote on aid for Ukraine last week when he was the only senator to object. The Senate passed the measure this week, and Biden signed the $40 billion package of new military and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine into law on Saturday while visiting Seoul.
...
On Saturday, House Republicans such as Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Matt Gaetz (Fla.) and Paul A. Gosar (Ariz.), as well as House Democrats including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.) and Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), found themselves barred from Russia. In the Senate, Republicans Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.) are on the list, as are Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Mark R. Warner (Va.) and Dianne Feinstein (Calif.).
Russia also named former senators John McCain (R-Ariz.). Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) as among the current or ex-lawmakers barred from entering the country, even though they are all dead. McCain died in 2018 at 81. Reid died in December at age 82, while Hatch died last month at 88.
Russia bans 963 Americans, including Biden and Harris — but not Trump
By Timothy Bella
Updated May 21, 2022 at 3:47 p.m. EDT|Published May 21, 2022 at 11:25 a.m. EDT
Russia permanently banned nearly 1,000 Americans, including President Biden and Vice President Harris, from entering the country in response to the United States’ support of Ukraine and the historic sanctions facing Moscow nearly three months into its invasion.
On Saturday, the Russian Foreign Ministry published an updated list of 963 Americans barred from entering Russia — a largely symbolic move featuring a wide-ranging collection of Biden administration members, Republicans, tech executives, journalists, lawmakers who have died, regular U.S. citizens and even actor Morgan Freeman.
“In the context of response to the constantly imposed anti-Russian sanctions by the United States and in connection with incoming requests about the personal composition of our national ‘stop list,’ the Russian Foreign Ministry publishes a list of American citizens who are permanently banned from entering the Russian Federation,” the Foreign Ministry said in a news release.
Some of those mentioned in Saturday’s list, including Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, were sanctioned in March and barred from entering Russia.
The list appears to include major officials from the Biden administration, such as Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and former White House press secretary Jen Psaki. The president’s son, Hunter Biden, is also named, as is former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Saturday.
One prominent name missing from the list: former president Donald Trump. In fact, the only prominent Trump administration official included in the ban is former secretary of state Mike Pompeo.
The Russian Foreign Ministry’s list of 963 Americans includes many members of Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is not on the list. Also not listed is Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who delayed a Senate vote on aid for Ukraine last week when he was the only senator to object. The Senate passed the measure this week, and Biden signed the $40 billion package of new military and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine into law on Saturday while visiting Seoul.
The new aid package signals that the United States and its allies are preparing for a longer conflict in the country. The package includes $20 billion in additional military aid that will finance the transfer of advanced weapons systems. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Biden, adding that the defense assistance is “needed more than ever.”
The list of banned Americans was released at a time when Russia is continuing intense shelling of Severodonetsk, the easternmost city under Ukraine’s control, which looks set to be the war’s next major battlefield. Fighting is underway on the city’s outskirts, and “the Russians are destroying Severodonetsk, like Mariupol,” Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai said early Saturday. He said six civilians were killed on Friday during Russian bombardments in and around the city.
After the United States and other countries imposed historic sanctions on Russia because of the invasion, Americans remain stalwart in their support for Ukraine, with a large bipartisan majority favoring increased sanctions against Russia and most also backing military and humanitarian support for Ukrainians, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll earlier this month. In all, 73 percent say the United States is doing either the right amount or too little to support Ukraine.
Russia announced its own sanctions against the United States in March, barring Biden and other administration officials from the country. Some on the list had already been sanctioned by Russia.
On Saturday, House Republicans such as Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Matt Gaetz (Fla.) and Paul A. Gosar (Ariz.), as well as House Democrats including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.) and Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), found themselves barred from Russia. In the Senate, Republicans Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.) are on the list, as are Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Mark R. Warner (Va.) and Dianne Feinstein (Calif.).
Russia also named former senators John McCain (R-Ariz.). Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) as among the current or ex-lawmakers barred from entering the country, even though they are all dead. McCain died in 2018 at 81. Reid died in December at age 82, while Hatch died last month at 88.
The collection of those banned from Russia includes people from all walks of life, according to a review of the list by The Washington Post. Eighty-six people named on Russia’s “black list” were identified only as “U.S. citizens.” Those barred include rabbis, an LBGTQ activist, an attorney in Iowa, executives at defense contractors and a history professor at Yale University.
Russia focused on the U.S. tech industry in naming Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft President Brad Smith to the list. American journalists barred by Russia include The Post’s David Ignatius, George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, Susan Glasser of the New Yorker, Bret Stephens of the New York Times and Bianna Golodryga of CNN. No journalists or hosts from Fox News were banned by Russia on Saturday, according to the list.
One of the surprise entries on the list was Freeman, 84, an Academy Award-winning actor. The Russian Foreign Ministry noted in his entry that Freeman made the “stop list” because in 2017 he “recorded a video message accusing Russia of conspiring against the United States and calling for a fight against our country.” Freeman spoke out against Russia in a video from a group that sought to raise awareness about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
“We have been attacked,” Freeman said at the time. “We are at war.”
Russia claimed Saturday that the list was published in response to “the hostile actions taken by Washington” during the invasion of Ukraine.
“Russia does not seek confrontation and is open to honest, mutually respectful dialogue, separating the American people, who are always respected by us, from the U.S. authorities, who incite Russophobia, and those who serve them,” the Foreign Ministry wrote. “It is these people who are included in the Russian ‘black list.’ ”
Several Americans who made Russia’s “black list” responded on social media. Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, cheekily said that making the list was “an honor.” Norman Barbosa, a former federal prosecutor who now works at Microsoft, noted how he was “in good company” with nearly 1,000 Americans.
Donna Brazile, a veteran political strategist and former interim Democratic National Committee chair, wondered why Russian President Vladimir Putin included her among those banned from Russia. “Oh well, I support democratic governments over authoritarian led dictators,” she tweeted. “Bye Putin!”
Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) emphasized that Russia including her on the list of banned Americans would not change her mind on the invasion.
“If Vladimir Putin thinks permanently banning me from Russia is going to change my support for Ukraine, I’ve got bad news for him. It’s not,” she wrote. “The United States stands with Ukraine.”
If Vladimir Putin thinks permanently banning me from Russia is going to change my support for Ukraine, I’ve got bad news for him. It’s not. The United States stands with Ukraine. https://t.co/zAWx7NEacy
— Congresswoman Lori Trahan (@RepLoriTrahan) May 21, 2022
12. Kremlin Goes After Its Ultimate Foe: Rob Reiner
Of course Rolling Stone helps us learn about the other people sanctioned by the Russians.
Kremlin Goes After Its Ultimate Foe: Rob Reiner
May 21, 2022 1:20PM ET
Russia Foreign Ministry also announces sanctions against Morgan Freeman, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and hundreds more… but not Donald Trump
Rob Reiner
Getty Images
The Russian government announced sanctions against nearly 1,000 Americans Saturday, effectively banning them from entering the country due to their support of Ukraine during the ongoing invasion. However, among the hundreds of politicians, journalists, intelligence officers and professors, a pair of names stand out on the Kremlin’s list: Rob Reiner and Morgan Freeman.
Any chance that Reiner might film the upcoming Spinal Tap sequel in Moscow have been dashed as the filmmaker has been barred from the country for his role as “one of the creators of the Internet resource Investigate Russia.” Reiner has also long pushed the Russiagate theory, going as far as stating that Donald Trump was Vladimir Putin’s “asset.”
While Morgan Freeman has not tweeted about the Ukraine invasion, the actor was penalized over his voiceover work in a 2017 video messaged that accused “Russia of conspiring against the United States and calling for a fight against our country,” the Russian Foreign Ministry claims; at the time, Russia’s state-controlled media lashed out at Freeman for lending his voice to the Reiner-produced Investigate Russia video, the BBC reported.
The Kremlin’s perfunctory list of 963 sanctioned people includes politicians from both sides of the aisles, and complete opposite ends of the spectrum: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Maxine Waters, Katie Porter and Adam Schiff are listed alongside Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, and Paul Gosar. President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Attorney General Merrick Garland and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have also been sanctioned by Russia, but as the Washington Post notes, the list excludes one prominent name: former president Donald Trump.
Other sanctioned standouts include George Soros, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, movie producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, Good Morning America’s George Stephanopoulos (co-anchors Robin Roberts and Michael Strahan remain unsanctioned) and former Utah senator Orrin Hatch, who is dead.
13. Why an ordinary US-Asean summit is special
Excerpts:
South-east Asia and the wider region need Asean-centred institutions, of which the dialogue with the US constitutes one strand. The US is often accused of bypassing Asean, and Asean is frequently blamed for lowest-common-denominator decision-making. The constant footsteps of progress are commonly missed amid the finger-pointing, especially in the choreography of politicians who know how to share a stage.
There is an unquantifiable but significant benefit from deepening personal relations among leaders and ensuring South-east Asian leaders have a better sense of the political challenges facing any occupant in the White House. Much of these emotional ties are translated into deeper trust and rapport, mainly bilaterally.
...
His meetings in North-east Asia may now be the catalyst for shifting Asean-US relations into a higher gear. Major support for the Biden administration's new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework can give form to the missing or at least amorphous economic dimension of US policy - a policy left floundering since previous political leaders of both parties turned against the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
An inclusive and comprehensive Indo-Pacific Economic Framework governing rules of the road for the future economy, supplemented by activities such as Asean-US educational and training exchanges, can accelerate integration of the regional economy for the benefit of all. That integration, in turn, helps to assure that America's longstanding balancing role will continue too.
Asean may not be the centre of US Indo-Pacific strategy, but it can provide the brackets that frame its boundaries and hug its core constituents. The first bracket was provided by the stability of the Asean-US special summit, a vital prelude to America's rediscovery of the economic dimension of policy. In November, Asean's capstone events can place the second bracket, which will highlight the essential need for a free and open Indo-Pacific, also to be inclusive.
If all goes well, Mr Biden's trip to Cambodia and South-east Asia can connect the dots between an inaugural Asean-US summit and a surprising degree of reciprocity, respect and pragmatism in the conduct of relations. Maybe a new era of relations awaits after all.
Why an ordinary US-Asean summit is special
Critics have pointed to the lack of flashy outcomes. That is to miss the true measure of foundation-laying in the relationship and how Asean fits into America’s Indo-Pacific strategy.
For The Straits Times
US President Joe Biden attending the US-Asean special summit in Washington on May 13, 2022. PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
PUBLISHED
43 MINS AGO
Whatever else the Asean-US special summit was, it was profoundly ordinary. Yet it was the matter-of-fact nature in which Mr Biden went about for the first time hosting his South-east Asian counterparts at the White House that provided a glimmer of diplomatic normalcy in an age of upheaval and rivalry. More importantly, the summit laid a sturdy foundation on which Mr Biden can now hoist the economic pillar of his regional strategy.
The summit's quiet stability had all the hallmarks of a programme orchestrated by someone skilled at political juggling while avoiding the spotlight: President Joko Widodo was indispensable and his effort should go some way towards deepening Indonesian-US relations. Equally valuable was the critical advance visit to the White House by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong six weeks before the Asean-US summit.
The main headlines to emerge evinced a mood of serenity, not the herky-jerky commotion that can accompany American policymakers seeking to impress on domestic and foreign audiences that the United States remains a formidable force for good in the world.
The summit underwhelmed some commentators. But America's relations with South-east Asia are best when officials break bread, not news, and when taboo subjects are discussed behind closed doors rather than aired in public.
Reality not mythology
That said, give critics of the Asean-US summit their due. There is legitimate cause for concern.
It is simple to praise Asean but can an institution marked by such pervasive indifference to Russian aggression, unable to conclude a code of conduct for the South China Sea, and helpless in holding Myanmar's junta accountable for instigating civil war serve as the fulcrum on which the region operates?
It is also easy to praise America's latest effort to place priority on the Indo-Pacific region without swallowing the narrative of primacy or predictability. Bipartisan support for standing up to China is not quite the same as an ironclad commitment to upholding the international order, including the global trading system, or mean that resources will swiftly and generously follow pronouncements made by the executive branch.
Sceptics have grounds to critique the summit for its triumph of symbolism over action and for a joint vision statement enumerating principles and activities that don't quite add up to a shared strategy. Nonetheless, there has been an overall stabilising quality to America's engagement with Asean over the decades; and throughout the 45-year history of Asean, there has been a pattern of Asean-US rule-building. That is why the summiteers in Washington emphasised their common adherence to values and norms enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, the Asean Charter, the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and other landmark documents.
This is not to say that all leaders present - and certainly not the leadership in Naypyidaw that was deliberately left off the invitation list - hew to all these principles. Some Americans were irked about seeing Cambodian flags flying in Washington. Yet the announcement that relations would be upgraded to a "comprehensive strategic partnership" at the 10th Asean-US summit this November is the logical next step in the progression of stronger US ties with South-east Asia.
Governments employ superlatives such as "special" to give support for diplomatic envoys, partnerships and meetings. There is nothing wrong with that and public opinion is well attuned to state-sponsored boosterism. I wish I could report that passions ran high in the US after Asean leaders flew home, but that would only be true if I referred to shortages of infant baby formula, the tussle between pro-choice and pro-life movements, inflation and Mr Elon Musk's bid to acquire Twitter.
Slow but steady
Working to establish slow but steady progress can be a thankless task. If power plays and black swan events don't upend a government's plans, then there's always social media to pick apart rational policy and diplomatic discourse.
There is a time and place for speaking plainly about hard power. For example, US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin should use the upcoming Shangri-La Dialogue to make an emphatic statement about America's commitment to peace and security. Even if the bulk of what he says accentuates the positive tone set by the Asean-US summit, combined with the momentum for a new economic framework, a few choice words about attempts to change the status quo through the use of force or coercion can also contribute to regional order.
The same might be said of further cooperation over maritime security. Dispatching the US Coast Guard to help make even a modest contribution to halting the pernicious problem of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing can only contribute to the public good. Similarly, promoting the Mekong-US partnership remains the right thing to do and also connects continental and maritime South-east Asia with US interests on land and sea.
When Mr Biden named a close adviser, Mr Yohannes Abraham, to fill the long overdue vacancy for America's envoy to Asean, he made the mission of inching forward towards binding Asean and the US over time a personal statement.
The Biden administration also has set a new tone of respect and consideration for South-east Asia. For careful observers of US foreign policy, one could detect not so much a new era of relations as a fresh air of cooperation in how America comports itself. Contrast the image of a spry 79-year-old Mr Biden helping a counterpart down from the raised dais used for the group photo with a picture of his predecessor elbowing his way past the Prime Minister of Montenegro at a Nato summit in Brussels. The contrast lends credibility to the "principles of equality, partnership, consultation and mutual respect" to which the leaders affixed their names at the White House earlier this month.
Indeed, the special quality of the Asean-US summit was its ordinariness, predictability and lack of controversy. Those are three qualities in short supply in a world buffeted by pandemic disease, economic volatility, dogmatic ideology, disruptive technology and major-power competition.
Regional architecture and good governance work best when the system functions well without the heavy hand of the authority having to call attention to itself, except in true emergencies. So, too, is the case with high-level diplomacy.
New era ahead
South-east Asia and the wider region need Asean-centred institutions, of which the dialogue with the US constitutes one strand. The US is often accused of bypassing Asean, and Asean is frequently blamed for lowest-common-denominator decision-making. The constant footsteps of progress are commonly missed amid the finger-pointing, especially in the choreography of politicians who know how to share a stage.
There is an unquantifiable but significant benefit from deepening personal relations among leaders and ensuring South-east Asian leaders have a better sense of the political challenges facing any occupant in the White House. Much of these emotional ties are translated into deeper trust and rapport, mainly bilaterally.
The inaugural joint US-Thailand Strategic and Defence Dialogue held before the Asean-US summit afforded a golden opportunity for repairing America's alliance with Bangkok, still ailing from the 2014 coup. America's diplomatic pragmatism was also amply on display, whether in the warm congratulatory words for the newly elected president of the Philippines or in welcoming Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen to the White House. The latter action perfectly sets the scene for when Mr Biden can officially declare the elevation of Asean-US relations in Phnom Penh this November.
His meetings in North-east Asia may now be the catalyst for shifting Asean-US relations into a higher gear. Major support for the Biden administration's new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework can give form to the missing or at least amorphous economic dimension of US policy - a policy left floundering since previous political leaders of both parties turned against the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
An inclusive and comprehensive Indo-Pacific Economic Framework governing rules of the road for the future economy, supplemented by activities such as Asean-US educational and training exchanges, can accelerate integration of the regional economy for the benefit of all. That integration, in turn, helps to assure that America's longstanding balancing role will continue too.
Asean may not be the centre of US Indo-Pacific strategy, but it can provide the brackets that frame its boundaries and hug its core constituents. The first bracket was provided by the stability of the Asean-US special summit, a vital prelude to America's rediscovery of the economic dimension of policy. In November, Asean's capstone events can place the second bracket, which will highlight the essential need for a free and open Indo-Pacific, also to be inclusive.
If all goes well, Mr Biden's trip to Cambodia and South-east Asia can connect the dots between an inaugural Asean-US summit and a surprising degree of reciprocity, respect and pragmatism in the conduct of relations. Maybe a new era of relations awaits after all.
- Patrick M. Cronin is Asia-Pacific Security Chair at the Hudson Institute in Washington
14. Inside Pentagon's decision to redeploy US Special Forces to Somalia
Inside Pentagon's decision to redeploy US Special Forces to Somalia
- Staff reporter GAROWE ONLINE
- Posted On
The move reverses a decision by Trump to withdrawal in 2020. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Nicholas M. Byers)
MOGADISHU, Somalia - Rising Al-Shabaab attacks within Somalia and the need to train more local security forces informed the US decision to reinstate troops to the Horn of Africa nation, a year after an unceremonious exit occasioned by an order signed by former President Donald Trump.
Last year, Trump signed an order authorizing the repositioning of US troops as part of a "cost-saving" strategy, a move which was repelled by senior members of the Pentagon and senators, who have since convinced President Joe Biden to reverse the decision.
On Monday, Biden authorized the deployment of fewer than 500 troops to the East African nation to "reestablish a small, persistent U.S military presence in Somalia" in order to better target al-Shabab and its leaders, a senior administration official told reporters, VOA reports.
The decision, the official noted, was occasioned by the growing Al-Shabaab threat which could further destabilize the country. Throughout the elections period, the Al-Qaida associate has managed to wage deadly attacks, mainly targeting security forces, senior government officials and innocent civilians.
"Since then, al-Shabab … has unfortunately only grown stronger," the White House official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss the new authorization.
The President of the Federal Republic of Somalia Hassan Sheikh Mohamud thanked and appreciates Biden for authorizing the deployment of American troops to Somalia. He said the US has always been a reliable partner in our quest for stability and the fight against terrorism.
Al-Shabab "has increased the tempo of its attacks, including against U.S. personnel," the official said. "We're concerned about the potential for al-Shabab's upward battlefield and financial trajectory to generate more space for the group to plan and ultimately to execute external attacks," the official told VOA.
The US Africa Command under the leadership of General Stephen Townsend has often described Al-Shabaab as one of the largest, wealthiest and deadliest Al-Qaida affiliates in the world. The group is known for extortion syndicate targeting businesses.
Since the exit of US Africa Command troops from Somalia, Al-Shabaab's attacks have increased especially in the central and southern parts of the country. A fortnight ago, the militants raided a Burundian AU forces Forward Operating Base in Middle Shabelle, killing over 30 soldiers.
Due to the surging attacks, sources told VOA, the African Union Transition Mission [ATMIS] is planning to reduce the number of bases following an increased attack targeting its soldiers. Previously, the US troops used to assist the mission troops by providing aerial protection during operations.
The U.S. is "aligning our global counterterrorism efforts with where the threat to Americans is most acute," the White House official told reporters. "Al-Shabab in Somalia simply has to be among our highest priorities on that score."
Colonel Ahmed Abdullahi Sheikh, the commander of elite Danab Special Forces who is trained by the US, welcomed the decision by Biden to redeploy soldiers back to the country, adding that their presence will further neutralize the group.
"This is a welcome step because al-Shabab has been emboldened," Colonel Ahmed Abdullahi Sheikh told VOA.
"Just recently, we saw al-Shabab bring out their technicals and other vehicles we haven't seen earlier in similar attacks," he said. "They don't fear the strikes and the U.S. capabilities as they used to do previously."
Sheikh further described the U.S. decision to again keep troops in Somalia as "timely," with the country electing Hassan Sheikh Mohamud as its new president on Sunday.
"It's a very positive start for our new president-elect when he starts his first day in office that he has that support he can count on," the Somali colonel said.
Since the official exit of the US Africa Command from Somalia, a number of soldiers have been commuting to the country from Kenya and Djibouti. And now, they will have to establish a base in the country for swift actions and training.
"Since that time, we have been commuting to work," General Stephen Townsend, head of United States Africa Command, told lawmakers in April 2021. "There's no denying the reposition of forces outside Somalia has introduced new layers of complexity and risk."
Pentagon has since defended the decision-making process to again position some U.S. troops in Somalia. The plan has been in place following pressure from the US Senate and other stakeholders.
"This isn't about a tipping point," Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters, in response to a question from VOA. "This was an outgrowth of a very deliberate, mature, reasonable policy process here at the Pentagon to come up with a recommendation, again, based on the advice and counsel of General Townsend."
He added, "This is the best way for us to continue what has remained a very valuable advise-and-assist and training mission."
Al-Shabaab has over 5000 active fighters but the group has been degraded significantly following collaborative military actions. The country elected Hassan Sheikh Mohamud as president on Sunday, and the US now wants to focus on the fight against Al-Shabaab.
GAROWE ONLINE
15. Ukraine: How Russia Is Emptying The World’s Breadbasket – OpEd
Excerpts:
Dankevych warned that food security would remain a challenge through 2023.
“The market cannot adjust quickly and in a short time for this war,” he said. “This will have different effects [depending on] the regions: in the American market, it may increase food prices, in Africa and Asia it may mean hunger.”
Ukraine: How Russia Is Emptying The World’s Breadbasket – OpEd
By Oksana Cooper*
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As a Ukrainian living in Germany, Anna Vlasiuk has spent countless hours on the phone to make sure her family in north-western Ukraine was safe. Then one day, the war came to her local grocery shop.
“I went to the supermarket and there was a sign saying, ‘No sunflower oil in our store, due to the war in Ukraine,’ the 32-year-old human rights worker told IWPR. She added that her father, a farmer in the region of Rivne near the Polish and Belarus border, had been warning her that it was just a matter of time until the Russian invasion would hit the tables of millions in Ukraine and around the world.
There is growing concern about a Kremlin strategy to cripple food production in Ukraine, which is already having a disastrous impact on supplies around the world.
Ukraine is a global agricultural powerhouse. Its black soil is fertile, its land cheap to farm, and deep seaports have provided a convenient route to international markets. According to the UN agricultural agency, FAO, dozens of countries rely on Ukraine for at least 50 per cent of their wheat imports, including Africa’s Sahel region.
Two months into the war, the impact is clear. Exports from Ukraine have stalled as Russia blocks the ports and bombs depots, planting has slowed down and future harvests are in question, with experts remaining pessimistic about farming in eastern and southern Ukraine.
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“A large area there is out of full control of Ukrainian military forces and there are problems with harvesting winter crops that farmers have sown before the war,” economist Vitalii Dankevych told IWPR. “In de-occupied territories, fields were heavily mined.”
Dankevych, a faculty head at Polissya National University in the north-western city of Zhytomyr, maintained that farmers will gather less than 30 per cent than in last year’s harvest. As millions of Ukrainians have fled, manpower will also prove to be a problem.
David Beasley, the executive director of the World Food Programme, stated that there was “no question” that Russian president Vladimir Putin was using hunger as a weapon against Ukraine. Ukrainian authorities accused Russia of engineering a famine.
According to the UN, Russia’s blockade in the Black Sea is preventing the export of about 4.5 million tonnes of grain. The Russian army has destroyed at least two storage facilities and troops have been accused of looting machinery as well as tonnes of stored grain, an act that Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmitro Kuleba said increased the threat to global food security.
On May 4, Taras Vysotsky, first deputy minister of agrarian policy, confirmed that Russian troops removed about 1.3 million tonnes of wheat from the occupied territories.
“On average Ukraine exported about five to six million tonnes of grain per month by sea, [feeding about] 400 million people worldwide,” explained Dankevych. “[It was] the bread basket of Europe and many Asian and African regions…. producing for world export about 16 per cent of corn, 12 of wheat and 50 per cent of sunflower oil.”
He added that, as ports were blocked, railway exports could handle only a “very small portion” of 600,000 tonnes in one month. In addition, Ukraine and the EU railtracks have different gauges, which adds a layer of difficulty.
Low supplies and high prices are already making some countries food insecure and supermarket chains in Europe are rationing the number of bottles of sunflower oil that one customer can purchase.
In Rivne, Anna’s father Valery said that money for the new planting season and selling grain from last year’s harvest were the two main problems small farmers like him face.
“[We] didn’t have time to sell our grain. Last year’s harvest was good, especially for corn. And this is also a problem with storage, if exporting through ports won’t be possible soon,” the 60-year-old told IWPR. He added that he had planned to grow sunflowers this year as Ukraine is equipped with large processing plants, making local production and logistics easier.
One of the largest processing plants of sunflower oil however is in Nova Kakhovka, a strategic southern port city on the Dnipro River, currently occupied by the Russians – as is the region’s main city of Kherson.
Kyrylo Lypko, an export key account manager at Chumak, which owns the plant and is one of Ukraine’s leading food processing companies told IWPR that “we don’t have export now, our factory is occupied”.
Valentyn Bevz works for an agricultural firm in Teplyk, a town in the western region of Vinnytsia close to the border with Moldova, that used to export large quantities of grains, in particular wheat.
“This has been helpful for keeping the firm alive in wartime. We have money for sowing in the new season. Planting continues, but the resources and logistics issues are costly,” he explained, adding that grain surplus could eventually be used to feed livestock in case ports remain under blockade. Not ideal for so much produce, he noted.
Getting back all the stock that is already sitting in Ukrainian ports is another issue.
“Some time ago I drove close to Yuzhny port, in the area of Odesa. The grains were unloaded back onto the rail cars, there were more than 50,” Benz explained to IWPR, adding that farmers must themselves bear all the costs of the complex logistics the port blockade had caused.
Russian troops occupied Volodymyr Semiryaga’s farm, in Peresadivka, a village in Mykolaiv region, for a week in March – and it was devastating.
“They fired from tanks towards our storage, which had equipment and products. It was all burned. Only a small tractor is restored now. There’s a very difficult situation, I need to work, and I don’t know how,” Semiryaga, who leases about 100 hectares of land to cultivate mainly grain and oilseed, told IWPR. Fighting continued about 40 kilometres from his village, he said, and he could not receive any credit for additional financing for his farm.
Dankevych warned that food security would remain a challenge through 2023.
“The market cannot adjust quickly and in a short time for this war,” he said. “This will have different effects [depending on] the regions: in the American market, it may increase food prices, in Africa and Asia it may mean hunger.”
*Oksana Cooper is a contributor to IWPR, where this article was published
16. A Whole Age of Warfare Sank With the Moskva
Note relationship to the USMC force modernization debate.
Excerpts:
On April 14, 2022, the Ukrainians sank the Russian cruiser Moskva with a pair of Neptune anti-ship missiles. And that success posed an urgent question to the world’s major militaries: Has another age of warfare just begun? After 20 years spent fighting the post-9/11 wars, the United States military’s attention is again focused on a peer-level adversary. The Pentagon hasn’t been thinking this way since the Cold War, and it is attempting a profound transformation. Today, fierce debate attends this transformation, and nowhere more acutely than in the Marine Corps.
...
Berger believes a new age of war is upon us. In “Force Design 2030,” he puts the following sentence in bold: “We must acknowledge the impacts of proliferated precision long-range fires, mines, and other smart weapons, and seek innovative ways to overcome these threat capabilities.” The weapons General Berger refers to include the same family of anti-platform weapons Ukrainians are using to incinerate Russian tanks, shoot down Russian helicopters, and sink Russian warships. The successes against a platform-centric Russian Goliath by an anti-platform-centric Ukrainian David have elicited cheers in the West, but what we are witnessing in Ukraine may well be a prelude to the besting of our own American Goliath.
...
Events in Ukraine seem to validate Berger’s anti-platform-centric view of warfare, in much the same way that World War I validated those who had argued that defense had become stronger than offense. Of course, no form of warfare maintains primacy forever. Krulak made this point as we finished our conversation. “We need to be careful we don’t learn the wrong lessons from Ukraine. You have a great measure. The next thing you know they come up with a countermeasure. So you come up with a counter-countermeasure.”
...
The wager that Berger and the Marine Corps are making is that anti-platform systems won’t be an American Maginot Line, but the best way to save a generation of Americans from their own Somme or Moskva.
A Whole Age of Warfare Sank With the Moskva
A fierce debate is raging within the U.S. Marine Corps about what comes next.
On March 9, 1862, the Union warship Monitor met its Confederate counterpart, Virginia. After a four-hour exchange of fire, the two fought to a draw. It was the first battle of ironclads. In one day, every wooden ship of the line of every naval power became immediately obsolete.
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. If the battle of the ironclads settled once and for all the wood-versus-iron debate, Japanese carrier-based aircraft settled the battleship-versus-carrier debate by sinking the cream of America’s battleship fleet in a single morning.
On April 14, 2022, the Ukrainians sank the Russian cruiser Moskva with a pair of Neptune anti-ship missiles. And that success posed an urgent question to the world’s major militaries: Has another age of warfare just begun? After 20 years spent fighting the post-9/11 wars, the United States military’s attention is again focused on a peer-level adversary. The Pentagon hasn’t been thinking this way since the Cold War, and it is attempting a profound transformation. Today, fierce debate attends this transformation, and nowhere more acutely than in the Marine Corps.
In March 2020, the Marine commandant, General David Berger, published “Force Design 2030.” This controversial paper announced a significant restructuring based on the belief that “the Marine Corps is not organized, trained, equipped or postured to meet the demands of the rapidly evolving future operating environment.” That “future operating environment” is an imagined war with China in the South Pacific—but in many ways, that hypothetical conflict resembles the real war in Ukraine.
The military we have—an army built around tanks, a navy built around ships, and an air force built around planes, all of which are technologically advanced and astronomically expensive—is platform-centric. So far, in Ukraine, the signature land weapon hasn’t been a tank, but an anti-tank missile: the Javelin. The signature air weapon hasn’t been an aircraft, but an anti-air missile: the Stinger. And as the sinking of the Moskva showed, the signature maritime weapon hasn’t been a ship, but an anti-ship missile: the Neptune.
Berger believes a new age of war is upon us. In “Force Design 2030,” he puts the following sentence in bold: “We must acknowledge the impacts of proliferated precision long-range fires, mines, and other smart weapons, and seek innovative ways to overcome these threat capabilities.” The weapons General Berger refers to include the same family of anti-platform weapons Ukrainians are using to incinerate Russian tanks, shoot down Russian helicopters, and sink Russian warships. The successes against a platform-centric Russian Goliath by an anti-platform-centric Ukrainian David have elicited cheers in the West, but what we are witnessing in Ukraine may well be a prelude to the besting of our own American Goliath.
Like its Russian counterpart, the American military has long been built around platforms. To pivot away from a platform-centric view of warfare is both a cultural challenge—what does it mean to be a fighter pilot without a jet, a tanker without a tank, or a sailor without a ship?—and a resource challenge. It asks the U.S. military, as well as the U.S. defense industry, to divest itself of legacy capabilities like, for example, a $13 billion Ford-class aircraft carrier, in order to invest in new, potentially less profitable technologies like, say, $6,000 Switchblade drones that can kill tanks.
Divestment is central to Berger’s strategic vision. Several months ago, he announced that the Marine Corps would reduce its size. Several of its infantry battalions, aircraft squadrons, artillery batteries, and every last one of its tanks would go. According to Berger, the Marine Corps is “operating under the assumption that we will not receive additional resources” and “must divest certain existing capabilities to free resources for essential new capabilities.”
As divest to invest has become the new Marine Corps catchphrase, a bevy of retired generals have spoken out publicly against Berger, in an unprecedented display of disunity among senior commanders. One of the dissenters is a former commandant, retired General Charles Krulak. “You’re divesting yourself of huge capability to buy capability that’s still on the drawing boards,” Krulak told me. “We’re being painted as a bunch of old farts who want the Marine Corps to remain as it was and don’t understand the impact of technology on warfare. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
To discount Krulak’s views would be a mistake. His tenure as commandant ushered in significant innovations for the Corps. He laid the intellectual groundwork that allowed the Corps to fight in the post-9/11 world. He also acquired the V-22 for the Marine Corps, a first-of-its-kind tilt-rotor aircraft that is both a plane and a helicopter. Berger’s strategic vision is also first-of-its-kind; in the event of a war with China, it imagines a 21st-century island-hopping campaign in which bands of 60 to 70 highly trained, lethally equipped Marines would infiltrate onto islands in the South Pacific to target the Chinese navy with advanced missile systems and other long-range weapons. The war at sea, in Berger’s vision, would be decided by a slew of Moskva-like engagements.
Berger’s critics don’t buy it. “The assumption that Marines can get on contested islands without being detected and conduct resupply missions is unrealistic,” Krulak said. “Plus, you’re underestimating the capability of the Chinese. The belief that these forces will shoot and scoot counts on Marines moving faster than a Chinese missile flies. You’re going to lose Marines and be unable to evacuate our wounded and dead. The Navy won’t sail in to get our wounded.”
Admiral James Stavridis, who spent much of his 40-plus-year Navy career in the South China Sea, is a believer in Berger’s vision. “The Army of tomorrow will look like the Marine Corps of today,” Stavridis told me. “What General Berger is doing is critical.” A truism among Marines is that the Corps must be at its most ready when America is at its least. In the 1930s, the Marine Corps pioneered the amphibious doctrine that would pave the way not only for the island-hopping campaigns in the Pacific, but also the amphibious landings that allowed the Army to liberate Europe. Innovation, according to Stavridis, remains a core Marine mission.
The debate in the Marine Corps is more profound than the internecine politics of one service branch; it’s a debate about which form of warfare will dominate in the next decades of the 21st century, a platform-centric one or an anti-platform-centric one. Historical precedent abounds for these types of debates. Before the First World War, in the opening years of the 20th century, many militaries adhered to the cult of the offense, a then-stale belief that well-trained, determined troops would always carry the day over a defending force. In the Napoleonic Wars 100 years before, this had often proved true. But up against the 20th century’s breech-loading rifles and machine guns, the offense had become the weaker form of warfare. Tragically, it took the Marne, the Somme, and countless other bayonet charges into the teeth of chattering machine guns for the generals of that era to accept that their understanding of warfare was dated.
Representative Seth Moulton, a former Marine and Iraq War veteran who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, believes that today’s dissenting generals are failing to comprehend how much technology is changing the battlefield and how quickly the services must adapt. “When you look at what weapons are on top of the Ukrainians’ wish list,” Moulton told me, “it isn’t towed howitzers. Top of their list are armed drones, anti-tank missiles, and anti-ship missiles.”
But what if Berger is wrong? What if his “divest to invest” strategy winds up overinvesting the Marine Corps in a highly specific vision of warfare that never comes to pass? According to Moulton, much of this comes down to the role the Marine Corps has traditionally played as an incubator for new ideas as the smallest, most nimble of the services. “Our country can afford to have the Marine Corps overinvested in a new type of warfare that never comes to pass,” Moulton explained. “What our country cannot afford is to have the Marine Corps underinvested in a new type of warfare that does come to pass.”
Events in Ukraine seem to validate Berger’s anti-platform-centric view of warfare, in much the same way that World War I validated those who had argued that defense had become stronger than offense. Of course, no form of warfare maintains primacy forever. Krulak made this point as we finished our conversation. “We need to be careful we don’t learn the wrong lessons from Ukraine. You have a great measure. The next thing you know they come up with a countermeasure. So you come up with a counter-countermeasure.”
One of the most famous countermeasures developed after the end of the First World War was France’s Maginot Line, a physical shrine to the primacy of defense. What the French failed to account for was that in two short decades, certain developments—more advanced tanks, aircraft, and combined-arms doctrine—had once again swung the balance, allowing offense to reassume its role as the dominant form of warfare. The result was a German blitzkrieg in June 1940 that simply maneuvered around the Maginot Line.
The wager that Berger and the Marine Corps are making is that anti-platform systems won’t be an American Maginot Line, but the best way to save a generation of Americans from their own Somme or Moskva.
17. Ukraine’s first lady details war’s toll on the Zelensky family
Ukraine’s first lady details war’s toll on the Zelensky family
Olena Zelenska says she didn’t see President Volodymyr Zelensky for 2 ½ months
In a rare joint television interview, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and first lady Olena Zelenska said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has “torn apart” their family as it has for millions of other households across the country.
Zelenska, who has two children with Ukraine’s wartime president, admitted that she had barely seen Zelensky since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine. She said she and her husband have been mainly communicating by phone since then.
“Our family was torn apart, as every other Ukrainian family,” Zelenska said. “He lives at his job. We didn’t see him at all for 2 ½ months.”
Yet Zelenska was quick to dismiss the idea raised by one of the interviewers from the Ukrainian television network ICTV that the war had “basically taken her husband away.”
“Nobody takes my husband away from me, not even the war,” Zelenska replied.
The interview marked the second time the couple, who married in 2003, have appeared together since Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24. During the sit-down, Zelenska said she was “grateful” for their joint television appearance because it meant they could finally spend time together.
“A date on TV, thank you,” she joked. Zelensky nodded alongside her.
In the early days of the war, Zelensky said he was Russia’s “target No. 1” and that his family was “target No. 2.”
“They want to destroy Ukraine politically by destroying the head of state,” he told Ukrainians in a February address, although he refused to flee. Instead, Zelensky took to the streets of the capital, posting defiant videos on social media that earned him global praise, while his wife and children hunkered down in an undisclosed location for their safety.
During their interview, Zelenska said she remembers waking up to “weird noises” as Russia began its invasion and noticing that her husband was not by her side. Zelensky was already awake and in the next room, putting on a suit.
“It has started,” she remembers him telling her before he left — words she said left her in a state of “anxiety and stupor.”
The war has raised the profile of Ukraine’s president, who has delivered video addresses to Ukrainians most nights and has spoken to parliaments around the world. He has appeared virtually at events from the Grammys to the Cannes Film Festival that opened last week.
Before becoming president three years ago, Zelensky was a comedian and actor who played the role of a president on screen. The 44-year-old also voiced Paddington Bear and, in 2006, won Ukraine’s version of “Dancing with the Stars.”
“We understand what it takes for the U.S. first lady to come here during a war when the military actions are taking place every day, where the air sirens are happening every day, even today,” Zelenska said at the time.
“The people of the United States stand with the people of Ukraine,” Biden told her.
Zelensky and his wife made their television appearance as Russia scrambled to rebound in Ukraine after suffering huge losses. Prospects for victory are fast dwindling for Vladimir Putin’s troops — despite early predictions that Moscow would sweep to victory largely unchallenged, The Washington Post reported.
“We broke the back of the largest or one of the strongest armies in the world,” Zelensky told the interviewers.
During the couple’s hour-long interview, Zelenska expressed hope that once the war is over she could return to focusing on issues that affect Ukrainian women, such as unequal pay.
“After the victory, we will remember the heroism of our Ukrainian women,” she said.
18. Opinion | We Must Prepare for Putin’s Worst Weapons
Opinion | We Must Prepare for Putin’s Worst Weapons
Guest Essay
We Must Prepare for Putin’s Worst Weapons
May 21, 2022, 1:00 a.m. ET
A Russian test of an intercontinental ballistic missile launched by a nuclear submarine in 2020.Credit...Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, via Associated Press
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Mr. Romney is a senator from Utah and was the Republican nominee for president in 2012.
Russia’s foreign minister and its ambassador to the United States have both signaled that Russia’s debacle in Ukraine could lead to a nuclear strike. By claiming that Russia is readying its weapons, by warning of a “serious” risk of nuclear escalation and by declaring “there are few rules left,” they purposefully rattled the ultimate saber. Vladimir Putin himself has noted that he has weapons his opponents do not and that he will “use them, if needed.” Even the C.I.A. director, William Burns, has warned of the possibility that Mr. Putin could use a tactical nuclear weapon, even if there is no “practical evidence” right now to suggest it is imminent. Nevertheless, we should be prepared; the former secretary of state Henry Kissinger has argued that we should give the threat consideration.
We should imagine the unimaginable, specifically how we would respond militarily and economically to such a seismic shift in the global geopolitical terrain.
President Biden is right not to have elevated our nuclear DEFCON level. Nor has the administration’s rhetoric stooped to Mr. Putin’s bait. In 2012, I noted that Russia was the biggest geopolitical adversary to the United States, and it clearly remains a source of great concern to both Republicans and Democrats. Given the magnitude of consequence of a nuclear strike, our potential options merit thought, by our leaders and by American citizens alike.
By invading Ukraine, Mr. Putin has already proved that he is capable of illogical and self-defeating decisions. If he loses in Ukraine, he not only will have failed to achieve his life’s ambition to reverse what he sees as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century — the collapse of the Soviet Union — but he will also have permanently diminished Russia as a great power and reinvigorated its adversaries. It is possible that Mr. Putin could face significant internal challenges to his leadership. In such a circumstance, he may be able to convince himself that the United States and the West are the reason he invaded Ukraine and that the propaganda he has deployed to justify this immoral invasion was true from the beginning.
Some will conclude that to avoid provoking Russia — and thus avoid the prospect of a Russian nuclear strike — we should pre-emptively restrain Ukraine from routing the Russian military. We could limit the weapons we send, hold back on intelligence and pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky to settle. I disagree; free nations must continue to support Ukrainians’ brave and necessary defense of their country. Failing to continue to support Ukraine would be like paying the cannibal to eat us last. If Mr. Putin, or any other nuclear power, can invade and subjugate with near impunity, then Ukraine would be only the first of such conquests. Inevitably, our friends and allies would be devoured by brazen, authoritarian nuclear powers, the implications of which would drastically alter the world order.
The right answer is to continue to give Ukraine all the support it needs to defend itself and to win. Its military successes may force Mr. Putin to exit Ukraine or to agree to a cease-fire acceptable to the Ukrainian people. Perhaps his control of Russian media would enable him to spin a loss into a face-saving narrative at home. These are the outcomes he would be smart to take. But if a cornered and delusional Mr. Putin were to instead use a nuclear weapon — whether via a tactical strike or by weaponizing one of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants — we would have several options.
There are some who would argue for a nuclear response. But there is a wide range of options, and they need not be mutually exclusive. For example, NATO could engage in Ukraine, potentially obliterating Russia’s struggling military. Further, we could confront China and every other nation with a choice much like that George W. Bush gave the world after Sept. 11: You are either with us, or you are with Russia — you cannot be with both.
Russia’s use of a nuclear weapon would unarguably be a redefining, reorienting geopolitical event. Any nation that chose to retain ties with Russia after such an outrage would itself also become a global pariah. Some or all of its economy would be severed from that of the United States and our allies. Today, the West represents over half of the global G.D.P. Separating any nation from our combined economies could devastate it. The impact on Western economies could be significant, but the impact on the economies of Russia and its fellow travelers would be much worse. It could ultimately be economic Armageddon, but that is far preferable to nuclear Armageddon.
Together with our key NATO allies, we should develop and evaluate a broad range of options. I presume the president and the administration are already engaged in such a process. The potential responses to an act so heinous and geopolitically disorienting as a nuclear strike must be optimally designed and have the support of our NATO allies. Mr. Putin and his enablers should have no doubt that our answer to such depravity would be devastating.
Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) is a senator from Utah and was the Republican nominee for president in 2012.
19. Ukraine endgames 2.0: Can either side ‘win’ this war?
Again I ask, what is the acceptable durable political arrangement that will satisfy both sides?
Ukraine endgames 2.0: Can either side ‘win’ this war?
Russian mistakes, Ukrainian resilience and NATO support have narrowed the options for how the conflict might end.
Joshua Keating
Global Security Reporter
May 20, 2022
One week after the war in Ukraine began, Grid laid out five scenarios for how it might end. It was already apparent then that the war would not be the quick and decisive Russian rout that many had expected, but two months later, it’s clear that the article still gave the Russian military too much credit.
Two of those scenarios — a complete Russian takeover of Ukraine and a division of the country in two, with a new border along the Dnieper River — are now off the table. Before the war, many predicted the Ukrainian resistance to transform into an underground insurgency against a Russian occupation. Instead, Ukraine’s military is intact and still fighting a conventional war.
The true nightmare scenario of three months ago — a direct Russia-NATO war — is still possible but looks less likely today. Given the difficulties they’ve had overcoming Ukraine, it’s hard to see what the Russians could accomplish by striking Poland, the Baltic states or any other country under NATO’s security umbrella. This is not to say that an errant missile strike or misread intelligence couldn’t still lead to a deadly miscalculation.
A palace coup in the Kremlin — another scenario from the article — remains a possibility, and a cottage industry of speculation about the state of Vladimir Putin’s health has emerged, but so far, there have been few signs of cracks within the Russian president’s inner circle. While there have been some scattered moments of high-level dissent, we haven’t yet seen the kind of fracturing among Putin’s top aides or mass public opposition that would force the Kremlin to change its strategy. Anything is possible, but it’s probably not a good idea to count on a deus ex machina emerging in Moscow to bring the killing to a close.
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The other scenario in the March list — a negotiated settlement — seems a distant hope for now. Ceasefire talks between Ukraine and Russia have been on hold since revelations about the massacre of Ukrainian civilians in areas around Kyiv emerged in early April. A deal may eventually end this war — it’s arguably still the mostly likely outcome — but it doesn’t seem to be coming soon.
One scenario that notably did not make Grid’s initial list was an outright Russian defeat. Today, an increasing number of Western lawmakers and prominent commentators say that Ukrainian victory is the only acceptable outcome and that international support must continue until it is achieved. “Victory” for Ukraine is no longer inconceivable after the Russian retreats from Kyiv and the country’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, though those calling for victory often don’t define what exactly it would mean.
So how have the likely outcomes changed?
Where things stand
The current state of play is that Russia and Ukraine are locked in a brutal and artillery-heavy war of attrition in the Donbas region in the east. Russian forces have failed at their initial goals of capturing all of Ukraine and are having difficulty with even the more limited goals they’ve been pursuing since April. Ukrainian forces have mounted successful counterattacks and forced Russian troops to withdraw from the city of Kharkiv but haven’t been able to disrupt Russian supply lines, and the Ukrainian troops in the besieged city of Mariupol surrendered this week. The situation is approaching a stalemate, though not yet to the point that either side is ready to negotiate concessions.
“We underestimated the Ukrainians and exaggerated the strength of the Russians. Now, I think we’re doing the reverse,” Thomas Graham, former Russia director of the White House National Security Council, told Grid. “Russia still has significant resources that they can throw into this conflict today.”
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While Russian forces have been losing troops and equipment at a prodigious rate, they seem to have no shortage of artillery systems and ammunition — which could prove decisive in this next phase of the war. And there’s been comparatively little coverage of Ukrainian casualties compared with Russian losses; Ukrainian forces may be in worse shape than we think. But they clearly have advantages in morale, cohesion and international support.
We know this much: The potential outcomes today are not what they appeared to be three months ago. So, with all necessary caveats and a great deal of humility, here’s an updated look at the most likely endgames for the war in Ukraine. All are long-term scenarios contingent on events on the battlefield. As Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London, told Grid, “we’ll get a better idea later this month” of which scenario is most likely.
Russian victory
Kyiv may be off the table for now, but the more modest goal of taking all of Donetsk and Luhansk, the two Ukrainian provinces that make up the Donbas region, remains attainable. While progress has been slow, Russia has made gains in the Donbas. Russian forces also control the southern cities of Berdyansk and Kherson, meaning there is now a land bridge between Russian-held areas in the east and the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014, cutting off Ukraine’s access to the Sea of Azov.
The final fall of Mariupol will free some Russian battalions for fighting elsewhere (though these units are not exactly in prewar condition), as will the Russian retreat from the area surrounding Kharkiv in the northeast. With these reinforcements and their advantages in firepower, the Russians could continue the slow grinding work of encircling Ukrainian forces in the Donbas, eventually forcing a retreat.
In political terms, Putin would declare that the people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk have been liberated from Ukrainian forces; he might even annex these areas into Russia. Russia might also either annex or support a new self-declared autonomous region in Kherson, or other areas it has taken over outside the Donbas.
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This might just be enough for Putin to declare victory in his “special military operation.” But Russian forces’ battlefield performance is going to have to improve dramatically to allow him to do so, and it may only be a matter of weeks until personnel losses make even this smaller-scale “victory” impossible.
Return to status quo
Russia’s quick and bloodless annexation of Crimea in 2014 was an exception to the rule. Generally speaking, in recent decades, most attempts at territorial conquest have failed, and the most common outcome — think Iraq and Kuwait in the 1990s, Argentina and the Falklands in the 1980s, or North and South Korea in the 1950s — has been a restoration of the borders that existed before the invasion. In the Ukraine case, this would mean Russian forces retreating to the areas of Ukraine they controlled as of Feb. 23: Crimea, and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Ukrainian counteroffensives have already forced Russian forces to withdraw from Kyiv and Kharkiv. Another counteroffensive was recently launched on the Russian-held town of Izyum, a key supply node in Russia’s efforts to encircle Ukrainian forces in the Donbas. Still, says Sam Cranny-Evans, a research analyst at the Royal United Services Institute in London, to achieve a return to the pre-February borders, “Ukrainians have to be able to not just withstand what the Russians are currently doing, but actually push it back as well. And I think that may be quite a big ask.”
Politically, this would be a tough sell for both sides. There’s no “off-ramp” in this scenario for Putin: Russia will have lost thousands — perhaps tens of thousands — of lives and cratered its own economy to accomplish absolutely nothing. For Ukraine, after the horrors of Bucha, Chernihiv and Mariupol, there will be little appetite to stop fighting while Russia is still occupying parts of its territory.
For Ukraine’s Western backers, however, a return to the status quo ante that stops the killing, turns down the risk of World War III and begins the rebuilding of Ukraine is going to look a lot more appealing as the war — along with the refugee flows and billions of dollars in weapons shipments — drag on month after month. French President Emmanuel Macron is among a small group of leaders already searching very publicly for a way out.
Freedman told Grid that foreign leaders should avoid “defining Ukrainian objectives for them.” He continued: “if you look at the balance of forces, it’s not looking bad for Ukraine. The Russian morale is in decline. They’re having real problems, whereas Ukraine is getting stronger. I really don’t think it’s an impossibility that Ukraine could win.”
Full Russian collapse
Officially, at least, when Ukraine says it wants Russian forces out of its territory, it means all of its territory. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba recently told the Financial Times that while the original Ukrainian goal had been to force Russian forces back to their pre-Feb. 24 positions, battlefield success had caused his government to upgrade its goals, and that “victory for us in this war will be the liberation of the rest of our territories.”
As Kuleba himself acknowledged, this will be tough. The general rule of thumb in warfare, which Russia has been reminded of the hard way, is that in a fight over territory, the defender holds a 3-to-1 advantage over the attacker. If Ukraine attacks Russian-held areas of the Donbas, that advantage will flip to the Russians. After months of bruising battle, the Ukrainians will be moving against heavily fortified Russian positions with stretched supply lines. Taking Crimea seems very unlikely: It’s a well-fortified peninsula, the Ukrainians may face a hostile civilian population, and given that Moscow considers it Russian territory rather than just a Russian-backed separatist region, an attack on Crimea is arguably the sort of threat to the “very existence” of the state that would justify nuclear weapons use under Russia’s official doctrine.
A couple of breaks would have to go Ukraine’s way to make this happen. Kyiv’s Western backers would have to continue the flow of weapons, money and equipment for a long time, and the Russian state’s will to fight would have to collapse. We may get a better sense of whether this is possible in a few months, as Russian losses rise and international sanctions really start to bite into the Russian economy.
Forever war
What if the war just doesn’t end? After all, Ukraine and Russia had been in a state of low-intensity warfare from 2014 until 2022. Could that sort of violent stasis return?
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Graham, now a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told Grid he can envision a scenario in which Russia is able to “freeze the situation where they are, where they are in control of a substantial amount of Ukrainian territory, in the hopes that this would devolve into something similar to this situation to have had in the Donbas for the past eight years: a line of contact, periodic shelling across that line, people die on both sides, but no major military operations or significant exchanges of territory.”
Russia likely does not have the ability to continue fighting at the current level of intensity deep into this summer. Some sort of operational pause will be required, at which point it may push for a ceasefire deal. The Ukrainians are likely to be skeptical of any deal that gives Russia time to replenish its reserves, but depending on the state of its own forces, Kyiv may have to agree. As Kuleba acknowledged in the same Financial Times interview, Ukraine may be forced to eventually negotiate a settlement but wants to “approach the unavoidable moment with the strongest cards possible.”
Any pause likely wouldn’t last long. Cranny-Evans warns that if the Russians are able to rest and regroup, we could see “a return of Russia’s maximalist aims” — attacks beyond the Donbas aimed once again at regime change, this time with Ukraine’s most capable military units badly degraded.
This would be a stretch for Russia’s capabilities, and Ukraine has far more internationally supplied firepower at its disposal than it did when the war began, but as we consider “endgames,” it’s worth keeping in mind one grim fact: We probably haven’t yet come to this war’s final chapter.
Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this article.
20. Transcript: Robert Gates on "Face the Nation," May 22, 2022
The former SECDEF covers a lot of ground. Here is one of many of his comments:
MARGARET BRENNAN: China?
GATES: China is not going to want to become dependent on Russia for its energy sources. China will want to remain diversified. They might buy some more Russian oil and gas, but nothing like what would be required to replace the European market.Putin will remain a pariah. It's hard to see Putin ever walking in the door of the White House or number ten Downing Street or at the Elysee. So I-I think Russia- he has put Russia really behind the eight ball economically, militarily, and because now people are going to look at the Russian military and say, you know, this was supposed to be this fantastic military. Well, they give a good parade, but in actual combat, not so hot.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Xi Jinping is watching what's happening in Ukraine and he is taking notes. What do you think his lesson is so far?
GATES: He and Putin have- have had a common narrative about the decline of the West We're paralyzed, we're polarized. We can't get anything done. The alliance was divided and had lost its purpose and so on. Boom. We totally underestimated the West. We underestimated the United States' willingness to take the lead again. We underestimated the willingness of the Europeans to come together and of the United States to put this coalition together. And we underestimated how fast and how severe the sanctions are that they could place. So maybe the West isn't as weak as we thought. Second lesson is looking at the Russian military performance. He's got to ask himself what if my equipment isn't any better than the Russians? What if my troops aren't any better than the Russians? Maybe my military is not as good as they're telling me they are. The Chinese have given the Russians all kinds of rhetorical and political support. But they are doing very little concretely to help the Russians. My guess is, Putin told Xi before the Olympics, look, I'm going to do this. It's going to take a few days and it'll be done I'd wager, that Xi never expected a protracted, brutal conflict that would isolate Russia so much from the rest of the world. And so I think he's playing it actually very cautiously.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Is the rise of China still inevitable?
GATES: China and-and its role as a- growing role as a global power will continue. They do have some real problems. The big issue for Xi where he can't admit he's wrong is on the zero-Covid. And you know, when you shut down a city of 25 million people for weeks and people don't have food, they don't have water, they don't have medical care. This has consequences and-and how can he say I got that wrong when you- its resulted in so much economic and and human cost.
Transcript: Robert Gates on "Face the Nation," May 22, 2022
The following is a transcript of an interview with former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates that aired Sunday, May 22, 2022, on "Face the Nation."
MARGARET BRENNAN: You've said that you've been disappointed in Republican leaders for not standing up for traditional Republican values. We just had this awful shooting in Buffalo, New York. Liz Cheney, Congresswoman, said, "House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy and anti-Semitism. History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse. Republican leaders must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them." Do you think Republican leaders are enabling those things she said?
GATES: I don't know that I would go that far. I do know that there aren't enough of them denouncing those things, denouncing white supremacy, denouncing-
MARGARET BRENNAN: Why?
GATES: We have too many people who- who are in politics to further their own agendas and to further their own personal prospects rather than what's good for the country. And I would say that's true in both parties.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Do you think it is important for the American public to have a full accounting of the events of January 6th with these public hearings that are planned in the weeks ahead?
GATES: I think so. What happened on January 6th was- was a huge blight on our democracy.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You think there is value in having this aired publicly?
GATES: I think so, yes. I think people need to understand. My worry is that people will- that everybody will retreat to their ideological corner. And, and so nobody will- nobody will listen. I think maybe the best thing to do is just to rerun the videos.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Former Trump Secretary of Defense Mark Esper was with us on Face the Nation recently, and he revealed some pretty shocking things about what he witnessed when he was part of the administration. Unconstitutional, illegal, immoral actions. Firing missiles into Mexico. Shooting American protesters in the legs. Did you know that these types of ideas were being considered at that time?
GATES: A few of them. Not, not those specific ones, but, but some others that he talks about. So- and people would call me from the Pentagon and tell me that, you know, we're- we're wrestling with how to respond to this. So I had some flavor of it, but none of the kind of detail that- that Mark Esper has in his book.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Do you believe President Trump running for office again would present that threat to national security?
GATES: It would concern me.
MARGARET BRENNAN: That's a very diplomatic phrase.
GATES: That's and that's- that's where I am.
ROBERT GATES: I think it's huge, Margaret. I think it changes the geopolitics in Europe in a dramatic way. Now he's got NATO on his doorstep, not only in Ukraine and elsewhere, he's going to have them on his border in Finland. And- and you know, it's an amazing thing he's done because he's- he's gotten Sweden to abandon 200 years of neutrality. So I think- I think Putin, one of his many, huge miscalculations in invading Ukraine is he has dramatically changed the geostrategic posture of Western Europe. And now that you have the Swedes and the Finns as part of that, he's really put Russia in a- in a much worse strategic position than it had before the invasion.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But he could still win, Vladimir Putin could still win in Ukraine?
GATES: If winning means taking over the country and absorbing it into Russia, the whole country, I think that's very unlikely at this point. He has the potential to hold on to a good part of the Donbass. But I think in terms of pushing on to Odessa or trying to bring a change of government in Kyiv or absorb Ukraine, I think if that's winning, I don't see that he can win.
MARGARET BRENNAN: What are the security guarantees that the West needs to put in Zelenskyy's hands, to put in Ukraine's hands, to actually broker a deal?
GATES: I think access to Western weapons, continued training by NATO countries, including the United States. A promise to have a- keep a large NATO's presence in Eastern Europe next door to Ukraine, the supply lines. The other thing that I think is really going to be critically important, especially if this conflict drags on for a very long time, is the West has to come together and figure out some way to help Ukraine economically, long term. Both short term humanitarian needs, but then rebuilding
MARGARET BRENNAN: Do you have a concern that if Putin is cornered, that he would actually use a tactical nuke?
GATES: I think the probability of him using a tactical nuclear weapon is low, but not zero. There are no large masses of Ukrainian forces that would be taken out by a tactical nuclear weapon. And if it's not got a military purpose, then the only purpose is as a terror weapon to try and break the will of the Ukrainian people. And I think that moment has come and gone. I don't think that there's anything at this point that will break the will of the Ukrainian people. The other thing that I hope somebody around Putin is reminding him is that, in that part of the world, and particularly in eastern Ukraine, the winds tend to blow from the west. If you set off a tactical nuclear weapon in eastern Ukraine, it's going to- the radiation is going to go into Russia. So I just hope somebody reminds him of that.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You've called Vladimir Putin a man of the past. But when I talk to officials now, they say he could be around for another decade.
GATES: His invasion has- has weakened Russia and it's got now long term economic problems. Europe, I think, is very serious at this point about weaning itself away from Russian- dependence on Russian oil and gas. So that will weaken Russia significantly. Where where is he going to find that market around the world for-
MARGARET BRENNAN: China?
GATES: China is not going to want to become dependent on Russia for its energy sources. China will want to remain diversified. They might buy some more Russian oil and gas, but nothing like what would be required to replace the European market.Putin will remain a pariah. It's hard to see Putin ever walking in the door of the White House or number ten Downing Street or at the Elysee. So I-I think Russia- he has put Russia really behind the eight ball economically, militarily, and because now people are going to look at the Russian military and say, you know, this was supposed to be this fantastic military. Well, they give a good parade, but in actual combat, not so hot.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Xi Jinping is watching what's happening in Ukraine and he is taking notes. What do you think his lesson is so far?
GATES: He and Putin have- have had a common narrative about the decline of the West We're paralyzed, we're polarized. We can't get anything done. The alliance was divided and had lost its purpose and so on. Boom. We totally underestimated the West. We underestimated the United States' willingness to take the lead again. We underestimated the willingness of the Europeans to come together and of the United States to put this coalition together. And we underestimated how fast and how severe the sanctions are that they could place. So maybe the West isn't as weak as we thought. Second lesson is looking at the Russian military performance. He's got to ask himself what if my equipment isn't any better than the Russians? What if my troops aren't any better than the Russians? Maybe my military is not as good as they're telling me they are. The Chinese have given the Russians all kinds of rhetorical and political support. But they are doing very little concretely to help the Russians. My guess is, Putin told Xi before the Olympics, look, I'm going to do this. It's going to take a few days and it'll be done I'd wager, that Xi never expected a protracted, brutal conflict that would isolate Russia so much from the rest of the world. And so I think he's playing it actually very cautiously.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Is the rise of China still inevitable?
GATES: China and-and its role as a- growing role as a global power will continue. They do have some real problems. The big issue for Xi where he can't admit he's wrong is on the zero-Covid. And you know, when you shut down a city of 25 million people for weeks and people don't have food, they don't have water, they don't have medical care. This has consequences and-and how can he say I got that wrong when you- its resulted in so much economic and and human cost.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You were directly involved in and overseeing the wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan for so long. The Taliban is back in power in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda is in the government. Women on the street have to cover their faces and their bodies now. Girls don't have widespread access to education. How do you make sense of where we are now?
GATES: Well, I think people predicted every single one of those things would happen if we got out of Afghanistan altogether. I think we made a mistake in pulling everybody out. I think that had we kept a small number of U.S. troops, 5,000, 6,000, something on that order, the contractors would have stayed. The equipment would have been repaired and taken care of. We built- we built a military modeled on our own, which requires a lot of logistical support, a lot of sophisticated maintenance and so on.
MARGARET BRENNAN: How was that not known after 20 years of war? How is that dependence not recognized?
GATES: I think people did recognize it. And that's one of the reasons that people in the military argued for keeping a number of people there, because only if we had some representation in our military would the contractors who take care of those things been willing to stay, so they weren't at risk. And when you had military, Afghan military suddenly realizing they're getting no ammunition, they're getting no food, they're getting no support and they're isolated. It's kind of no wonder that most of them gave up. It wasn't that they were cowardly or that they were unwilling to fight. It was they had poor leadership. And-and they-they had this dependency on on technical support that went away.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You must have seen the special inspector general report that came out just a few days ago. It blamed both President Trump and President Biden for withdrawing the military and contractors.
GATES: Don't forget, it started under President Obama. So you have three presidents.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You would add culpability there?
GATES: Yeah. They all wanted out of Afghanistan, the forever war. But that allows for no shades of gray. It's either all in or out- all out, is the way it was portrayed. And in fact, there were alternatives. And the military put forward some of those alternatives, which was a relatively small number of people that we would plan to keep there for some indefinite period.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mhmm. You admitted your own error there in that model of replicating an American type military style and trying to rebuild it within the Afghan forces.
GATES: Yeah, I mean, it was well along that way when I got there, but I certainly didn't do anything to change it.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You said before, the biggest threat to the United States is our polarization and the distance, the two square miles that encompass the White House and the Capitol building. Do you still feel that way?
GATES: Totally.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You don't see signs of improvement?
GATES: No. I will say this: there is one glimmer of hope that I see, and it's in kind of my world. Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have done something no other living human beings have done. They've actually brought Republicans and Democrats together on Capitol Hill and with the administration. Apart from a handful of isolationist Republican senators, you've got a pretty - from left to right - a pretty strong consensus in Washington. But I would say it's broader than just Ukraine. You have the same kind of attitudes toward China and how we react to China and to Russia more broadly beyond Ukraine. So maybe that's- maybe that's a foundation. Maybe there's a way to build on that. And who knows, if you begin to get it in national security policy, maybe you can get it in some other places.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I'll take the optimism.
GATES: Well, I'm not sure I'd take the bet, but you might take the optimism.
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
