Quotes of the Day:
President Yoon Suk Yeol @President_KR
Had a great time with @potus in Seoul, sharing our thoughts on the indispensable value of democracy and reaffirming our commitment to a global comprehensive strategic alliance. I'm especially glad to have had the opportunity to build close friendship and trust with the President.
“We cannot expect that everyone, to use the phrase of a decade ago, will talk sense to the American people. But we can hope that fewer people will listen to nonsense. And the notion that this nation is headed for defeat through deficit, or that strength is but a matter of slogans, is nothing but just plain nonsense.”
- John F. Kennedy
The Value of Insurgent/Resistor Intelligence in Unconventional Warfare
“There is no doubt that most partisan actions inflicted damage upon the opposing forces. Some of the damage was severe…. [However,] their second great contribution was in the field of intelligence…. [It] cannot be doubted that the partisans served well as field intelligence, especially after Army intelligence officers had been seconded to all partisan staffs in 1943. The scope was wide—the partisans were everywhere—their location ideal—behind the enemy’s front—and their instructions were detailed—in the Field Service Regulations, the Partisan Handbook, the Guide Book for Partisans, and so on.
We can be almost certain that again and again Russian attacks were mounted in those areas which partisan reports had indicated as vulnerable. The Russians during the war became expert in attacking the enemy’s weakest points: the small front-line gaps in the winter of 1941-2, the front held by German satellite troops at the beginning of the Stalingrad battle; and if there was neither gap nor satellite, it was almost always the seam between two enemy formations which the Red Army selected for its breakthrough attempts…. There was only one source which could consistently direct the Red Army against the weakest link of the enemy front, and this task… was entrusted to the partisans.
We are of course better informed about the value of French partisan intelligence. ‘In fact, the day the battle (in France) began,’ says General De Gaulle, ‘all the German troop emplacements, bases, depots, landing fields and command posts were precisely known, the striking force and equipment counted, the defense works photographed, the minefields spotted…. Thanks to all the information furnished by the French resistance, the Allies were in a position to see into the enemy’s hand and strike with telling effect.’ These words speak for themselves; no finer testimonial could be given.”
- Otto Heilbrunn, Partisan Warfare (1962)
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MAY 22 (PUTIN'S WAR)
2. Pentagon Weighs Deploying Special Forces to Guard Kyiv Embassy
3. Options for Defining the Next U.S. Defense Challenge
4. Biden: US would intervene with military to defend Taiwan
5. How to Prepare for the Next Ukraine
6. Spies’ night eyes: Once-restricted tech is helping spot Russian troops, Chinese missile sites and raging wildfires
7. Advancing Japanese diplomacy through the Quad: Why it matters for Tokyo
8. US SOF Applying Ukrainian Lessons Learned To Its Own Future Strategy | SOFX
9. Biden vows to defend Taiwan in apparent US policy shift
10. Belarusians join war seeking to free Ukraine and themselves
11. Putin complains about barrage of cyberattacks
12. Russia's withdrawal from Syria is an opportunity for Israel | Opinion
13. So Much for Reforming the World Health Organization
14. Aviation Giants Enter Final Stretch to Replace Black Hawk
15. Dodging shells, mines and spies: On the front with Ukraine’s snipers
16. It’s Time to Stop Giving Crypto Companies a Pass
17. FDD | Consider Designating Russia as a Jurisdiction of Primary Money Laundering Concern
18. Philippines' Marcos says he discussed defence deal with U.S. envoy
19. Philippines Under a New Marcos Won’t Be an Easy US Ally
20. Pentagon says ‘no decisions have been made’ on special forces at Kyiv embassy
21. This soldier fought for Finland, Nazi Germany and U.S. Special Forces
22. Biden launches Indo-Pacific trade deal, warns over inflation
23. A new approach to defending Taiwan at the UN
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MAY 22 (PUTIN'S WAR)
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MAY 22
Karolina Hird, George Barros, and Mason Clark
May 22, 4:00 pm ET
Russian forces made only minimal gains in eastern Ukraine on May 22. New reporting confirmed that Russian troops previously recaptured Rubizhne in northern Kharkiv Oblast, on May 19. Russian forces are likely committing additional reinforcements to hold their positions on the west bank of the Siverskyi Donets River in northern Kharkiv—rather than withdrawing across the river to use it as a defensive position—to prevent any further Ukrainian advances to the north or the east that could threaten Russian lines of communication to the Izyum axis.[1] Ukrainian sources additionally confirmed previous Russian-claimed advances around Popasna, and Russian forces likely seek to open a new line of advance north from Popasna to complete the encirclement of Severodonetsk while simultaneously driving west toward Bakhmut, though Russian forces are unlikely to be able to fully resource both lines of advance simultaneously.
Key Takeaways
- Ukrainian sources confirmed that Russian forces have secured local advances to the north and west of Popasna since at least May 20. Russian forces likely seek to push further west toward Bakhmut and north to support the encirclement of Severodonetsk but remain unlikely to achieve rapid advances.
- Russian forces will likely attempt to hold positions west of the Siverskyi Donets River against Ukrainian attacks (rather than retreating across the river) to prevent further Ukrainian advances from threatening Russian lines of communication to Izyum.
- Russian occupying forces continued filtration and deportation procedures in and around Mariupol.
- Russian forces are likely preparing to resume offensives 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 continued to prepare to resume offensive operations southeast of Izyum but did not make any confirmed advances on May 22.[2] The Ukrainian General Staff noted that Russian forces around Izyum are creating conditions to resume offensive actions toward Slovyansk.[3] Russian troops shelled frontline settlements to the southeast and southwest of Izyum, indicating continued Russian plans to move southward from Izyum toward the Donetsk Oblast administrative border.[4]
Russian forces continued ground assaults around Severodonetsk but did not make any confirmed advances in this area on May 22.[5] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops conducted unsuccessful offensive operations around Oskolonivka, Purdivka, Schedryshcheve, and Smolyianinove, all settlements to the east of Severodonetsk.[6] These offensive operations are likely meant to encircle Severodonetsk from the east, supporting previous advances towards the city from the north (via Rubizhne), west (via Bilohorivka), and south (via Popasna). Ukrainian sources additionally confirmed Russian claims that ISW was previously unable to verify that Russian troops have secured limited advances north and west of Popasna since at least May 20.[7] The Ukrainian General Staff confirmed that fighting is ongoing in the area of Toshkivka, Komyshuvakha, Trypillya, and Vasylivka—all settlements around Popasna where Russian sources claimed to have broken through Ukrainian defenses on May 21, though ISW cannot confirm if Russian forces have fully captured any of these locations.[8] Geolocated combat footage from Volodymirivka, just west of Popasna, further corroborates these claims.[9] Russian forces attacking out of Popasna in several directions likely seek to both complete the encirclement of Severodonetsk from the south and push westward in Donetsk Oblast toward Bakhmut via Trypillya, Lypove, and Vasylivka.[10]
Russian forces continued artillery attacks around Lyman on May 22 but did not make any confirmed ground advances in the area.[11] Militia forces of the Donetsk People’s Republic claimed that they took control of Novoselivka, a village in southern Donetsk Oblast.[12]
Supporting Effort #1—Mariupol (Russian objective: Capture Mariupol and reduce the Ukrainian defenders)
Russian forces continued clearing the territory of the Azovstal Steel Plant on May 22.[13] Occupation forces in Mariupol continued carrying out strict filtration and deportation procedures. The Territorial Defense Headquarters of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) claimed that 313 people, including 55 children, were deported from Mariupol to a filtration camp in Bezymmene.[14] Advisor to the Mayor of Mariupol Petro Andryushenko claimed that 70 people, including 12 children, were forcibly deported to Russia from Mariupol via the Nikolske filtration camp, although ISW cannot independently verify this claim.[15] Andryushchenko additionally stated that the occupation administration has tightened movement controls through the city of Mariupol, which is consistent with ISW’s earlier assessments that the information environment in Mariupol will become increasingly restricted in the coming weeks.[16]
Supporting Effort #2—Kharkiv City (Russian objective: Withdraw forces to the north and defend ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Izyum)
Russian forces focused on maintaining their positions north of Kharkiv City and shelled Ukrainian positions on May 22.[17] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that elements of the Russian 6th Combined Arms Army and Baltic Fleet are fighting to prevent Ukrainian troops from reaching the international border.[18] The Internal Ministry of the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) additionally stated that its personnel are operating in the towns of Kozacha Lopan and Rubizhne (the Rubizhne in Kharkiv Oblast, not Luhansk Oblast), confirming ISW’s previous assessment that Russian forces retook some territory on May 19 that was previously captured by Ukrainian forces.[19] Russian forces continued to inflict artillery damage on settlements around Kharkiv City.[20]
Supporting Effort #3—Southern Axis (Objective: Defend Kherson against Ukrainian counterattacks)
Russian forces likely continued preparations for renewed offensives on the southern axis on May 22. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops on this axis are focusing on building secondary lines of defense, strengthening air defense systems, conducting reconnaissance, and shelling Ukrainian positions, all of which indicates they are setting conditions for subsequent offensive actions.[21] Russian forces continued rocket and artillery strikes on Zaporizhia, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, and Mykolaiv Oblasts.[22] The Ukrainian Resistance Center additionally reported instances of Ukrainian partisan activity targeting collaboration officials and Russian artillery systems in Enerhodar and Melitopol, indicating continued and organized Ukrainian resistance in occupied areas of Ukraine.[23]
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. Russian 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.
[23] ttps://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2022/05/22/v-okupovanomu-energodari-pidirvaly-samoprogoloshenogo-miskogo-golovu/; https://nv dot ua/ukr/ukraine/events/energodar-nevidomi-pidirvali-pid-jizd-u-yakomu-zhive-kolaborant-andriy-shevchik-novini-ukrajini-50244199.html; https://t dot me/entime2022/394; https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2022/05/22/zsu-razom-iz-partyzanamy-u-zaporizhzhi-znyshhyly-kilka-vorozhyh-artylerijskyh-system-ta-radiolokaczijni-stancziyi/; https://t.me/zoda_gov_ua/8077
2. Pentagon Weighs Deploying Special Forces to Guard Kyiv Embassy
11. Special Operations Forces have a limited number of DIRECT roles:
Special Operations Forces are trained for specific missions. They are the most highly trained and proficient forces that the US possess but they are not the answer for every small contingency mission that comes along. Many conventional forces are more proficient at conventional type missions than the SOF. Even more specialized units exist and they should not be used outside their primary mission. Just because a select force is in being, does not automatically mean that it is the BEST to use. Politics will play in this decision, the HIGH RISK/HIGH GAIN nature of the specific operation may cause the political leaders to make this choice, even if better alternatives are available, i.e., such as have SEAL TEAM SIX do a routine beach recon.
We should ask are we using the right forces for the right missions?
But I hope we are not planning to use US Special Forces (USSF - the traditional USSF and not the other force that hijacked the acronym) as static guards. The Marine Security Detachments are the most proficient at doing that. We cannot use US Special Forces for missile defense which should be a force protection consideration in Ukraine (probably need Patriot PAC 3 but I would ask the missile defense experts to make the appropriate recommendations). We need the right forces for that but such force protection measures will not be inconspicuous. USSF can play a low visibility role in force protection outside the embassy compound worthing through, with, and by the local security forces and engaging with the local population.. They can be used for personal security detachments (PSDs) (though there are other forces well suited for that role as well). They could play a role in advising, assisting, and liaising with local security forces on a sustained basis (the Marine Security detachment could at best liaise with the local security forces as they do not have the depth or the training for sustained advising and assisting). But as noted above politics will play a role in decision making (as it always does).
Pentagon Weighs Deploying Special Forces to Guard Kyiv Embassy
Administration weighs desire to avoid escalating military presence against security of U.S. diplomats in a conflict zone
May 22, 2022 12:33 pm ET
WASHINGTON—U.S. military and diplomatic officials are weighing plans to send special forces troops to Kyiv to guard the newly reopened embassy there, proposals that would force the Biden administration to balance a desire to avoid escalating the U.S. military presence in the war zone against fears for the safety of American diplomats, U.S. officials said.
President Biden has yet to be presented with the proposal. But if he approves it, troops would be deployed only for the defense and security of the embassy, which lies within range of Russian missiles, U.S. officials said. Their presence inside Ukraine would mark an escalation from Mr. Biden’s initial pledge that no American troops will be sent into the country.
The administration seeks to balance concerns within the State Department that a robust, conspicuous security posture at the embassy could provoke Russian President Vladimir Putin with the need to deter a potential attack on American personnel—and have sufficient forces to extract them if fighting breaks out again in Kyiv. Russia continues to target the Ukrainian capital with occasional airstrikes or shelling even as the city has begun to return to normal.
For now, the State Department will furnish its own security, from a corps of guards in the Diplomatic Security Service, for the embassy in Kyiv.
Kristina Kvien, the senior U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, spoke at a news conference in Lviv earlier this month.
PHOTO: MYKOLA TYS/SHUTTERSTOCK
Preliminary planning is under way at the Pentagon and the State Department for possibly dozens of special forces troops who could augment security at the embassy, or could stand by to deploy if needed. In addition to using special forces troops to provide security at the embassy, officials are considering restoring a Marine security guard detachment, like those that normally provide security at embassies around the world. No formal proposals have been sent so far to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark Milley or Mr. Biden.
“We are in close touch with our colleagues at the State Department about potential security requirements now that they have resumed operations at the embassy in Kyiv,” said Pentagon press secretary John Kirby in a statement. “But no decisions have been made, and no specific proposals have been debated at senior levels of the department about the return of U.S. military members to Ukraine for that or any other purpose.”
Over time, and depending on how the conflict in the east unfolds, U.S. officials envision a larger presence for the U.S. to administer the tens of billions of dollars of weaponry that have poured into the country in recent months. And some U.S. military officials would like to return to Ukraine the special forces and other troops that were conducting train-and-advise operations for the Ukrainian military.
The embassy in Kyiv was all but shut by the time Russia invaded Ukraine Feb. 24, its diplomatic staff largely relocated 340 miles west to Poland, with a small group making short trips to a makeshift diplomatic post in Lviv, just inside the Ukraine border.
After Mr. Putin failed to achieve a key objective of taking Kyiv and installing a puppet government, Russian forces have shifted operations to the east. In late March, Russian forces began to focus on the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. Although Kyiv remains under threat of artillery and missile fire, several key U.S. allies have reopened their embassies or returned to Kyiv diplomats who had relocated to other parts of the country.
The U.S. Senate recently confirmed Bridget Brink as the new ambassador to Ukraine.
PHOTO: WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES
The State Department has already begun to lean on the U.S. military for security. On May 8, Kristina Kvien, the senior diplomat in the U.S. mission to Ukraine, and a small group of U.S. diplomats temporarily based in Poland returned to the U.S. Embassy complex in Kyiv to commemorate Victory in Europe Day with Ukrainian officials. They were escorted by U.S. Special Forces assigned from Joint Special Operations Command in Fort Bragg, N.C., who provided for their security—the first known instance in which American forces entered the country since the invasion.
Last Wednesday, the American flag was raised at the embassy. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the department had “put forward additional measures to increase the safety of our colleagues who are returning to Kyiv and have enhanced our security measures and protocols.” The Senate has recently confirmed a new U.S. ambassador to Kyiv, Bridget Brink, but she has yet to arrive in Ukraine.
The initial contingent of American diplomatic personnel will be small, and it will take time and resources to move them and their families back to the post, U.S. officials said. But the benefits of a renewed diplomatic presence are clear, U.S. officials say: U.S. personnel will be able to interact in person with the Kyiv government, monitor the distribution of billions of dollars in U.S. weaponry, keep an eye on Russian troop movements and offer technical assistance. The addition of more intelligence assets, say U.S. officials, is key.
The Kyiv embassy is a traditional European diplomatic installation, rather than a fortified complex as seen in some other parts of the world where security threats are more longstanding.
Officials see as unlikely an attack on the embassy like the 2012 assault on a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans including the top diplomat. But they are generally uneasy about sending American diplomats into an active war zone.
Also weighing on officials at the State Department and Pentagon is the evacuation of the Kabul embassy last summer. As the Taliban was taking control of Afghanistan, the Pentagon urged the State Department to begin to reduce the size of the embassy, which stood at more than 4,000 people. State Department officials hesitated moving diplomats out, determined to maintain a robust diplomatic mission in Kabul despite the deteriorating security situation.
Michael R. Gordon contributed to this article.
3. Options for Defining the Next U.S. Defense Challenge
Based on President Biden's comments in japan about defending Taiwan it looks like he has adopted something along the lines of option #1.
Excerpt:
Core defense issues are always contentious as committed constituencies leverage establishment processes for the resources needed to realize their aims – this is true today about how to prioritize resources for the most capable future Joint Force. There are impassioned pleas for investing in military capabilities for competition, limited conflicts, and gray zone challenges[9]. Others argue that investing for gray zone conflict is a waste[10]. U.S. defense leaders are at a fork in the road.
Options for Defining the Next U.S. Defense Challenge
Marco J. Lyons is a U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel who has served in tactical and operational Army, Joint, and interagency organizations in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Afghanistan, and in the Western Pacific. He is currently a national security fellow at Harvard Kennedy School where he is researching strategy and force planning for war in the Indo-Pacific. He may be contacted at marco_lyons@hks.harvard.edu. Divergent Options’ content does not contain information of an official nature, nor does the content represent the official position of any government, any organization, or any group.
National Security Situation: The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has a new classified National Defense Strategy (NDS), not yet released in an unclassified version, which is an occasion to consider what the next central defense challenge should be. The central defense challenge shapes prioritization of ends, ways, means, and helps define risk for U.S. defense policy makers.
Date Originally Written: May 15, 2022.
Date Originally Published: May 23, 2022.
Author and / or Article Point of View: If well-articulated, the NDS-established central defense challenge can drive the defense establishment to field more relevant forces, with decisive capabilities, that are postured to bolster deterrence and assurance in ways that help the U.S. avoid great power war. The author believes the 2018 central defense challenge – revisionist power plays – should be updated based on an assessment of the emerging security environment.
Background: The first NDS of the Biden administration is complete. A classified NDS was submitted to Congress in late March 2022, and an unclassified version is planned for release later in May or June, according to a Defense Department fact sheet[1]. The geostrategic situation is rapidly changing and where world politics and the international system are headed is hard to predict. Foreign policy expert Zalmay Khalilzad and defense expert David Ochmanek wrote in the late 1990s that the United States had not yet settled on any fundamental principles to guide national strategy[2]. The situation doesn’t seem that different today, and American defense discussions reference various state and non-state threats as primary. Great powers, bloc-based rivalry, and the possibility of major power war seem to be on the rise. National consensus on the central defense challenge will help lay a foundation for coherent security policy.
Significance: The emerging U.S. national security situation is especially volatile with the potential for major war, protracted violent competition, and weakening international order. The geopolitical commentator George Friedman has highlighted Chinese and Russian vulnerabilities – economic and military – while emphasizing that the United States has the opportunity to be the greatest of the great powers and steer international system to peace and stability[3]. The United States still possesses great capabilities and opportunities, but defense analysts need to clearly see the emerging situation to successfully navigate the threats and changes.
How U.S. defense leaders prioritize challenges affects foreign perceptions of American commitment. U.S.-driven sanctions and materiel aid in the current Russo-Ukrainian war demonstrate that American power will continue to be directed toward stability and improving European security. The truth remains that U.S. great power is preferable to the hegemony of any other great power in the world[4]. Still, it is well for the United States to guard against overreaching. American policymakers face a problem of spreading national security resources too thin by prioritizing multiple state challengers, like China, Russia, and Iran or North Korea[5]. The next central defense challenge needs to prioritize U.S. military resources, planning, and posture – the full breadth of defense activities.
More than at any time since 1991, as some kind of multipolar great power international system emerges in the coming years, U.S. policy makers can ensure the best investment in capabilities for achieving objectives over time by properly prioritizing challenges.
Option #1: The Secretary of Defense identifies China’s ability to impose regional military hegemony as the central defense challenge. This option would prioritize investing in a Joint Force that demonstrates the ability to counter hard military capabilities in the Indo-Pacific. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has twice the U.S. number of active duty soldiers, a larger surface navy, the DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missile and DF-17 hypersonic missile, as well as increasingly capable joint commands[6]. Some researchers point to China’s recent fielding of powerful space-based capabilities to allow for real-time targeting of moving targets without ground support[7]. This option acknowledges that the geostrategic pivot for U.S. security is in Eurasia and especially the far eastern part.
Risk: Prioritizing the challenge from the PLA may embolden Russia, North Korea, and other capable threat actors as they assume American leaders will overfocus on one region and one great power rival. Development of capabilities for China and particularly the Western Pacific may leave the Joint Force poorly equipped for large-scale combined arms operations based on heavy, protected, mobile firepower and closer-range fires. A future force designed for maritime, air, and littoral environments might lack the ability to conduct prolonged urban combat.
Gain: Identifying PLA capabilities for regional hegemony as the primary defense challenge will make it easier to marshal resources and plan to employ joint forces in high-technology, protracted warfare – a more cost-intensive force development. Even a smaller-scale war with China would require prodigious amounts of long-range fires, air, surface, sub-surface, space, and cyberspace warfighting systems because of China’s potential economic and diplomatic power, and the ranges involved in reaching high-value PLA targets.
Option #2: The Secretary of Defense identifies the Russian Armed Forces’ ability to defeat U.S.-European security ties as the central defense challenge. This option would prioritize investing in a more capable North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) through Joint Force capabilities that are substantially more combined/coalition interoperable than today. This option acknowledges the Russian Armed Forces that invaded Ukraine in February 2022, after threatening Kyiv to varying degrees since 2014, and suggests that NATO deterrence was ineffective in convincing Moscow that military aggression was a losing policy.
Risk: Over-focusing on building alliance capabilities to counter Russian tank and artillery formations might inhibit needed modernization in U.S. air, maritime, and space capabilities, including artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and fully networked joint/combined command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.
Gain: The Russian Armed Forces will likely continue to rely on hybrid forms of warfare, mixing conventional force employment with irregular ways, including information and psychological warfare, due to economic limitations. Focusing on building U.S. capabilities for state-based hybrid warfare will allow the future Joint Force to operate effectively along the full spectrum of conflict.
Option #3: The Secretary of Defense identifies transregional, non-state threats like climate change as the central defense challenge. This option acknowledges that non-state threats to U.S. interests are mixing with traditional military threats to create an especially complicated security environment[8]. Focusing on transregional, non-state threats aligns with prioritizing a stable global trade and financial system to the benefit of U.S. and partner economic interests.
Risk: The defense capabilities to address transregional, non-state threats do not have extensive overlap with those needed for state-based threats, conventional maneuver warfare, or great power war. The United States could reduce investment in great power war just when the chances of this form of conflict is rising.
Gain: Investment in addressing transregional, non-state threats could make the Joint Force more affordable in the long-term if breakthrough capabilities are developed such as new forms of energy production and transportation.
Other Comments: Core defense issues are always contentious as committed constituencies leverage establishment processes for the resources needed to realize their aims – this is true today about how to prioritize resources for the most capable future Joint Force. There are impassioned pleas for investing in military capabilities for competition, limited conflicts, and gray zone challenges[9]. Others argue that investing for gray zone conflict is a waste[10]. U.S. defense leaders are at a fork in the road.
Recommendation: None.
Endnotes:
[2] Zalmay M. Khalilzad and David A. Ochmanek, Strategic Appraisal 1997: Strategy and Defense Planning for the 21st Century (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1997), https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA325070.pdf. Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. defense leaders have opted for ambiguity in defining defense challenges primarily because the nation faced so many. The options here assume that as the United States loses its unipolar dominance, the value of stricter prioritization of challenges will become clearer.
4. Biden: US would intervene with military to defend Taiwan
Hard to walk this back a second time (though it seems they are trying to). I think the President is telling us how he really feels.
Biden: US would intervene with military to defend Taiwan
AP · by JOSH BOAK, AAMER MADHANI and ZEKE MILLER · May 23, 2022
TOKYO (AP) — President Joe Biden said Monday that the U.S. would intervene militarily if China were to invade Taiwan, saying the burden to protect Taiwan is “even stronger’ after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It was one of the most forceful presidential statements in support of self-governing in decades.
Biden, at a news conference in Tokyo, said “yes” when asked if he was willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if China invaded. “That’s the commitment we made,” he added.
The U.S. traditionally has avoided making such an explicit security guarantee to Taiwan, with which it no longer has a mutual defense treaty, instead maintaining a policy of “strategic ambiguity” about how far it would be willing to go if China invaded. The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which has governed U.S. relations with the island, does not require the U.S. to step in militarily to defend Taiwan if China invades, but makes it American policy to ensure Taiwan has the resources to defend itself and to prevent any unilateral change of status in Taiwan by Beijing.
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Biden’s comments drew a sharp response from the mainland, which has claimed Taiwan to be a rogue province.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin expressed “strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition” to Biden’s comments. “China has no room for compromise or concessions on issues involving China’s core interests such as sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
He added, “China will take firm action to safeguard its sovereignty and security interests, and we will do what we say.”
A White House official said Biden’s comments did not reflect a policy shift.
Speaking alongside Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Biden said any effort by China to use force against Taiwan would “just not be appropriate,” adding that it “will dislocate the entire region and be another action similar to what happened in Ukraine.”
China has stepped up its military provocations against democratic Taiwan in recent years aimed at intimidating it into accepting Beijing’s demands to unify with the communist mainland.
“They’re already flirting with danger right now by flying so close and all the maneuvers that are undertaken,” Biden said of China.
Under the “one China” policy, the U.S. recognizes Beijing as the government of China and doesn’t have diplomatic relations with Taiwan. However, the U.S. maintains unofficial contacts including a de facto embassy in Taipei, the capital, and supplies military equipment for the island’s defense.
Biden said it is his “expectation” that China would not try to seize Taiwan by force, but he said that assessment “depends upon just how strong the world makes clear that that kind of action is going to result in long-term disapprobation by the rest of the community.”
He added that deterring China from attacking Taiwan was one reason why it’s important that Russian President Vladimir Putin “pay a dear price for his barbarism in Ukraine,” lest China and other nations get the idea that such action is acceptable.
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Fearing escalation with nuclear-armed Russia, Biden quickly ruled out putting U.S. forces into direct conflict with Russia, but he has shipped billions of dollars in U.S. military assistance that has helped Ukraine put up a stiffer-than-expected resistance to Russia’s onslaught.
Taipei cheered Biden’s remarks, with Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Joanne Ou expressing “sincere welcome and gratitude” for the comments.
“The challenge posed by China to the security of the Taiwan Strait has drawn great concern in the international community,” said Ou. “Taiwan will continue to improve its self-defense capabilities, and deepen cooperation with the United States and Japan and other like-minded countries to jointly defend the security of the Taiwan Strait and the rules-based international order, while promoting peace, stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region.”
It’s not the first time Biden has pledged to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack, only for administration officials to later claim there had been no change to American policy. In a CNN town hall in October, Biden was asked about using the U.S. military to defend Taiwan and replied, “Yes, we have a commitment to do that.”
Biden’s comments came just before he formally launched a long-anticipated Indo-Pacific trade pact that excludes Taiwan.
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White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan confirmed Sunday that Taiwan isn’t among the governments signed up for the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, which is meant to allow the U.S. to work more closely with key Asian economies on issues like supply chains, digital trade, clean energy and anticorruption.
Inclusion of Taiwan would have irked China.
Sullivan said the U.S. wants to deepen its economic partnership with Taiwan on a one-to-one basis.
—-
Miller reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.
AP · by JOSH BOAK, AAMER MADHANI and ZEKE MILLER · May 23, 2022
5. How to Prepare for the Next Ukraine
From perhaps the next SECDEF.
Learn, adapt, and ANTICIPATE.
Conclusion:
If the United States and its allies and partners want to meaningfully strengthen their capacity to deter and defeat future attacks by Russia, China, and other authoritarian states, there is much they can learn from the war in Ukraine. Above all, the early trajectory of this crisis makes clear that Washington cannot and should not wait until conflict looms to start strengthening its own ability to prevent aggression and the ability of at-risk partners to defend themselves. Security assistance should be accelerated and focused on providing asymmetric capabilities that are not provocative on their own but instead turn vulnerable partners into “porcupines” that are difficult and costly to attack.
These lessons can most obviously be applied in the case of Taiwan, where Chinese leadership may contemplate future military action to conquer the island. Efforts to strengthen the U.S. deterrent posture in the Indo-Pacific should go hand in hand with helping Taipei strengthen a multilayered defense, from its maritime and air approaches to its cybersecurity and the security of its major cities. Washington should ramp up its provision of key defensive capabilities, including antiship missiles, sea mines, and air and missile defenses. It should also offer more training in insurgency and popular resistance, so that in the event of a Chinese attack, Taiwan could buy time for the international community to muster an effective response.
In Ukraine, Western countries were quickly able to mobilize and fill gaps with military aid after the Russian invasion began; they should not count on such favorable conditions in other conflicts. As the rest of this war plays out, the United States and its partners should be thinking carefully about how to deter and, if necessary, prevail in the next one. They can be sure that their adversaries will be learning their own lessons as well.
How to Prepare for the Next Ukraine
Washington Must Ramp Up Support for Vulnerable Partners—Before It’s Too Late
May 23, 2022
It is too soon to predict how Russia’s brutal, unjustified war against Ukraine will end. But for now, it is clear that the Russian military has shockingly underperformed in the first phase of the war, whereas the Ukrainian military has punched far above its weight. Other revisionist powers contemplating aggression will be looking closely at Russia’s failings to avoid making the same mistakes, and the countries they threaten will be looking to Ukraine’s example for insight into how to fend off a larger, better-equipped adversary.
But there are also lessons for the United States. U.S. defense leaders need to consider what outcomes in Ukraine mean not only for how Washington assesses the military capabilities of adversaries in the future but also for how the United States and its allies can use asymmetric tactics to undermine those adversaries’ strengths and exploit their weaknesses. For example, militaries fielded under leaders who do not tolerate dissent or question assumptions will be vulnerable to a host of problems, from strategic miscalculation and inadequate logistics to poor battlefield command and troop morale. This is a systemic weakness of authoritarian regimes, but other states can also be susceptible. In addition, militaries that have not been tested in battle may struggle to train troops for the actual conditions they will face in war, to fight effectively as a joint force, and to adapt in real time to an adversary’s asymmetric tactics.
Moscow’s war effort has been deeply flawed, but that is not the only reason Ukrainian forces have fared so well: they have been able to take advantage of Russian weaknesses thanks in part to the help they have received from the West. The remarkable performance of Ukraine’s military is a direct result of a multiyear security-assistance effort undertaken by the United States and its NATO allies since Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea. In those eight years, support in the form of equipment, training, and help with planning transformed the Ukrainian military into a far more capable fighting force. Over the past three months, unified Western assistance has made a difference on the battlefield, too. Dozens of countries have come together to share intelligence, offer military and economic aid, and impose severe economic and political costs on Russia.
In Ukraine, Washington now has a working model for strengthening the ability of its allies and partners to defend themselves and, possibly, to deter future conflict. It should not wait until another powerful nation menaces a smaller neighbor to act on the lessons from this war.
WHERE RUSSIA WENT WRONG
Russia has made many missteps before and since the February invasion, and zeroing in on the sources of these problems provides clues to avoiding or overcoming them. Moscow and other would-be aggressors will learn from these failures, and so should Washington, taking note of the ways in which the next country to launch a war of aggression might seek to improve on Russia’s performance in Ukraine.
Many of Russia’s errors stem from the leadership climate in the Kremlin. Authoritarian leaders do not tolerate dissent or unwelcome news, and Russian President Vladimir Putin is no exception. As was apparent in his televised meeting with his top national security advisers prior to the invasion of Ukraine, Putin has created a climate in which subordinates fear contradicting or even questioning his worldview. Speaking truth to Putin is a recipe for public humiliation, dismissal, or worse. In the context of war, the result is that leaders do not stress-test their assumptions and that they adapt far too slowly when their plans do not survive contact with reality. Putin’s initial belief that the Russian military had overwhelming superiority and that the Ukrainians lacked the will and ability to fight quickly proved false, but the Kremlin did not adjust its approach. Instead, Putin’s toxic leadership and brittle decision-making process set the conditions for the failed drive to take Kyiv.
The intolerance of dissent and debate is a hallmark of authoritarian systems, but democracies are by no means immune to the problem. In the United States, faulty assumptions and poor planning bedeviled the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Creating a leadership climate in which dissent is not only tolerated but also solicited as plans develop dramatically improves the chances of successful outcomes.
Ukraine has been able to exploit Russian weaknesses thanks in part to the help it received from the West.
There is a saying among military professionals often attributed to Omar Bradley, the American general who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff after World War II: “Amateurs talk strategy. Professionals study logistics.” Russia’s military logistics in this war have been wholly inadequate. The Ukrainians exploited this shortcoming, sabotaging forward units and poorly defended supply lines as the Russian army attempted to reach Kyiv over land. Moscow’s forces quickly ran out of fuel, food, and other basic supplies. Was this failure to provide logistical support and operational security to the invasion forces a consequence of inadequate planning? Did graft and corruption siphon resources away? Was it sheer incompetence? Probably all of the above. Russia’s shortcomings in this area and its inability to adapt under attack have revealed a critical vulnerability that Ukrainian forces should continue to exploit. Its failure also serves as a warning for any future aggressor that seeks to project power across long distances or contested terrain.
Another surprise has been the failure of the Russian air force to gain control of Ukraine’s skies or successfully conduct joint operations with troops on the ground, despite having a larger fleet than Ukraine. Ukrainian forces have shot down an estimated 172 Russian aircraft in the first two months of the war alone. Russian pilots are limited by the fact that they have few long-range precision-guided missiles in their inventory, which means they must often operate within the reach of Ukrainian antiaircraft weapons. To date, the Russian air force has primarily conducted deliberate strikes on military and civilian targets (the latter contributing to charges of war crimes), while providing little to no close air support for ground forces in combat. Without reconnaissance and strike craft in the air, soldiers are left far more vulnerable and less effective.
Russian forces also appeared to be inadequately trained for the type of operations they have been asked to execute. Ground forces were unprepared for the intensive block-to-block fighting that is the hallmark of urban warfare. Nor were they ready to face a Ukrainian adversary schooled in asymmetric tactics, ready to sabotage invading forces by puncturing the gas tanks of idling tanks and armored vehicles at night or launching small-unit ambushes to take out senior Russian military commanders and their communication networks.
Finally, the Russian military’s poor performance and rampant commission of war crimes is a testament to the poor quality of its leadership. Professional ethos is critical on the battlefield. But Russia lacks a professional noncommissioned officer corps, it relies on conscripts with little training and low morale, and it blatantly disregards international law and military ethics.
Together, these errors add up to a broader failure at the strategic level. Putin’s miscalculation is bringing about the very future he feared: a more united and resolute transatlantic alliance, Finland and Sweden clamoring to join NATO, a fortified NATO military posture on Russia’s periphery, and a commitment to increased defense spending by previously reluctant European member states. The result is a stronger, reinvigorated NATO and a weaker, more isolated Russia.
HOW UKRAINE TOOK ADVANTAGE
By contrast, the performance of the Ukrainian military in this conflict thus far has surpassed expectations. This is not the same military that could not prevent Russian forces from occupying Crimea in 2014. What changed?
First, in the years since Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, Ukraine focused on becoming, as General Tony Thomas, former commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, once put it, more like “a porcupine,” indigestible to the Russian bear. With the help of the United States and other NATO members, Ukraine undertook a concerted effort to train and equip its forces to better impede and repel a Russian invasion. In the process, the Ukrainian military became more agile and innovative. It has mastered the use of the Javelin missile system and small drones to take out Russian tanks, as well as Stinger and other surface-to-air missiles to shoot down Russian aircraft. And it has learned how to conduct highly effective sabotage operations under the cover of darkness. Ukraine’s investment in reorienting its force for asymmetric warfare is paying large dividends in the current conflict. Now, the United States and its allies can study the Ukraine case to replicate the sustained training and advising, the focus on new operational concepts, and the alignment of means with desired outcomes that make it possible for security assistance to have an outsized impact.
Washington should not wait to act on the lessons from this war.
Since 2014, the United States and other Western countries have also been supplying Ukraine with military equipment that is more sophisticated and more lethal than what it possessed before. The United States provided more than $2.5 billion in military aid during this period. Many argued this was not enough in terms of either quantity or quality. But Western partners have made up for much of this shortfall with a dramatically increased supply of essential military equipment since February. The United States alone has sent Ukraine more than $3 billion in military aid, including 1,400 Stinger antiaircraft missiles and 5,100 Javelin antitank missiles, along with Mi-17 helicopters, patrol boats, counterartillery and counterdrone tracking radar systems, armor, guns, helmets, grenade, C-4 explosives, and coastal defense vessels. Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and other countries have provided weapons and supplies worth hundreds of millions of dollars. This veritable flood of military equipment over the past three months has been possible because Ukraine shares a land border with NATO countries far from its border with Russia. The gift of favorable geography may not be present in future conflicts, so proactive security assistance will be imperative to avoid a situation where the United States and its allies are scrambling to fill gaps after a crisis erupts.
Just as important as the equipment itself is how Ukraine has used it. For example, military historians may look back on this war as a turning point in the use of drones on the battlefield, as thousands of reconnaissance and lethal unmanned aircraft spread out over the skies of Ukraine, taking on armored targets at a fraction of the cost of conventional systems. But the United States and its allies could have made an even more concerted effort to prepare Ukrainian defense forces for this war. Some countries’ hesitation to provide lethal assistance to Kyiv before Russia’s invasion meant that Ukrainian forces have had to receive crash courses on how to operate new equipment mere days or hours before using it in battle. This is obviously not ideal, and such last-minute instruction may not be possible in future conflicts. Vital training must therefore happen long before they occur.
Ukraine has also benefited from its existential interest in winning this war and the greater resolve that comes with it. There is no stronger motivation to fight than defending one’s family, home, and country. Many Russian soldiers, meanwhile, do not understand why Russia went to war in the first place; some have family and cultural ties to Ukraine. This disparity in resolve manifests on the battlefield. It is not surprising that even hardened fighters from the Wagner Group—Russian mercenaries notorious for their brutal tactics in Libya and Syria—have, according to media reports, refused to serve in Ukraine. And the readiness of the Ukrainian people to resist Russia’s aggression has inspired the kinds of international support that yield tangible benefits, from security assistance and military equipment to economic and humanitarian aid and substantial sanctions against Russia. The will to fight matters, in more ways than one.
THE COALITION BEHIND KYIV
The United States’ and its allies’ contributions to Ukraine’s success so far offer a template that can be applied to future conflicts. Of particular note is the Biden administration’s unprecedented use of intelligence. The rapid declassification of information early in the crisis to combat Russian propaganda with hard facts denied Putin the ability to set a false narrative and manufacture a justification for war. By sharing intelligence with partners, Washington had an easier time bringing together a large and effective international coalition, since its allies and partners were able to develop a common assessment of the threat. And, if media reports that the United States has provided intelligence to Ukrainian forces are true, Washington has undoubtedly enhanced their effectiveness on the battlefield, enabling them to thwart Russian advances and target Russian force concentrations.
Beyond intelligence sharing, the Biden administration’s extensive consultation with allies and partners has paid off in the initial response to the Russian invasion. A high degree of collaboration at both the logistical and the policy levels has enabled remarkable transatlantic unity behind tightening sanctions and a well-coordinated flow of military equipment to fill critical gaps in Ukraine’s arsenal, from Russian-made air-defense systems provided by eastern European nations to artillery, mortars, ammunition, antiship missiles, armed drones, and armored vehicles from others. The synchronized use of multiple supply lines from frontline NATO countries into Ukraine has made it possible to deploy new equipment in record time. For all its success, the surge in military aid to Ukraine has also revealed vulnerabilities in the U.S. defense industrial base—stocks of Stinger antiaircraft missiles, for example, have been significantly depleted, and replacing them will take time. Washington will need to shore up the weak links, but on the whole, it can treat the Ukraine case as a model of close coordination working well.
What is most important is that the United States and its allies have maintained their robust support for Ukraine without triggering a broader war between Russia and NATO. As Russian leaders engage in nuclear saber rattling, the U.S. response has been calm and deliberate. The United States and NATO have walked a careful line when it comes to military involvement, rejecting proposals for a no-fly zone to avoid putting their personnel in direct contact with Russian forces while still reaffirming their commitment to defend “every inch” of NATO territory. Time will tell whether this balance is sustainable. If Russian forces appear headed for defeat and Putin employs chemical or tactical nuclear weapons to try to regain the initiative, or if Russia miscalculates and strikes supply lines inside NATO territory, such clear escalation will test the alliance’s measured posture.
THE NEXT WAR
If the United States and its allies and partners want to meaningfully strengthen their capacity to deter and defeat future attacks by Russia, China, and other authoritarian states, there is much they can learn from the war in Ukraine. Above all, the early trajectory of this crisis makes clear that Washington cannot and should not wait until conflict looms to start strengthening its own ability to prevent aggression and the ability of at-risk partners to defend themselves. Security assistance should be accelerated and focused on providing asymmetric capabilities that are not provocative on their own but instead turn vulnerable partners into “porcupines” that are difficult and costly to attack.
These lessons can most obviously be applied in the case of Taiwan, where Chinese leadership may contemplate future military action to conquer the island. Efforts to strengthen the U.S. deterrent posture in the Indo-Pacific should go hand in hand with helping Taipei strengthen a multilayered defense, from its maritime and air approaches to its cybersecurity and the security of its major cities. Washington should ramp up its provision of key defensive capabilities, including antiship missiles, sea mines, and air and missile defenses. It should also offer more training in insurgency and popular resistance, so that in the event of a Chinese attack, Taiwan could buy time for the international community to muster an effective response.
In Ukraine, Western countries were quickly able to mobilize and fill gaps with military aid after the Russian invasion began; they should not count on such favorable conditions in other conflicts. As the rest of this war plays out, the United States and its partners should be thinking carefully about how to deter and, if necessary, prevail in the next one. They can be sure that their adversaries will be learning their own lessons as well.
6. Spies’ night eyes: Once-restricted tech is helping spot Russian troops, Chinese missile sites and raging wildfires
One of the many excellent high tech capabilities with a broad range of applications.
Excerpts:
The SAR industry is really just starting in the U.S. Depending on who you ask, it’s anywhere from five to 10 years behind the cloud-beleaguered, picture-taking space industry.
But the demand for said data is outstripping the amount available — on the government-crisis side if not the walrus-guy side. “‘We need to have an image of Ukraine every 30 minutes,’” said Dominocielo, mimicking the government, which is interested in buying more shots from high-demand areas than it’s physically possibly to take, given the number of radar spacecraft up there, even if the feds bought every single SAR image. “The data is dribbling out,” said Master. “It’s just starting.”
Spies’ night eyes: Once-restricted tech is helping spot Russian troops, Chinese missile sites and raging wildfires
Synthetic aperture radar satellites are changing how we see the world.
Freelance Reporter
May 23, 2022
Todd Master has been spending a lot of time lately looking at the weather forecasts in Ukraine. He doesn’t need to meteorologically or militarily prepare — he lives safely in Santa Barbara, California. Instead, he wants to know whether satellites might be able to take good pictures of the besieged country that day. Those images can reveal details about the ongoing war with Russia that might otherwise be inaccessible to people thousands of miles away.
Satellite images of the Russian invasion revealed the miles-long military convoy near Kyiv, a new base in Crimea, bodies on streets, a bombed-out theater. But the total number of public, high-resolution pictures is low given how long the war has been going on. “It’s not because they’re not sharing all of them,” said Master, chief operating officer at a satellite company called Umbra. “It’s because those are the only really great ones.”
The reason? “It’s pretty much cloudy every day,” he said.
Satellites equipped with regular cameras can’t, it turns out, snap shots of most of the planet most of the time: Around 70 percent of the globe is shrouded in clouds, and at any given time about half of the planet also happens to be dark. That’s where a newer kind of satellite comes in. Instead of using cameras to detect visible light, they rely on a technology called synthetic aperture radar (SAR) that beams microwaves at Earth. These microwaves shoot through clouds and don’t know the difference between day and night. They reflect off whatever they hit on the ground and bounce back up to detectors on the satellites.
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The result is detailed maps that show the world as it is, and as it’s changing. That’s why, back in March, Ukraine’s vice prime minister and minister of digital transformation asked SAR companies to send real-time data his way.
Once the shrug-shouldered stepchild of the commercial satellite sector, the SAR industry is now having a moment: Both the cost of launch and the price of relevant technology have dropped during the 21st century, as both have become more capable. The intelligence community is buying data and analytics from private companies. The regulatory environment has loosened. Energy industrialists, climate researchers, farmers and disaster-response firms are all interested in what this spacey radar can do for them.
SAR satellites have helped discover a giant wind turbine farm likely powering Chinese missile silos, mapped flooding after a typhoon, tracked rogue ships and watched wildfire progression. They can stare through a hurricane and catch what North Korea is up to at 2 a.m. They can see whether a car has driven through snow or left ruts on a muddy road — in the dark, during a storm. “It’s like a whole different way of looking at the Earth,” said Alberto Valverde, of the Analytic Tradecraft Office at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. “It’s almost like having a night-vision flashlight.”
Predictably, startups and defense giants alike are coming to cash in. Master’s firm, Umbra, is part of that gold rush. The company hopes that it can help spread access to radar snapshots, so not just spies and soldiers but also scientists and insurance companies can see the shifting world in a new way.
And “shifting,” here, is key: SAR’s value lies in “coherent change detection.” That’s fancy language for being able to see differences in the landscape from day to day — essentially by comparing one image with another and seeing what changes. In addition to increasing the resolution you’d get from a single picture, SAR can also watch a building layer up. Watch an object disappear one day, or another appear the next. “I want to know immediately when the doomsday device gets rolled out,” joked Master.
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These days, it feels like slightly less of a joke than it used to.
Eyes in the sky
The satellite industry has, for decades, launched cameras into space and beamed back pictures. Today, the sharpest spacecraft — big, expensive beasts made by companies like Maxar and Airbus — could pick out something the size of a mass-market paperback from space with a little extra data processing. And hordes of smaller, cheaper satellites collectively take less-HD pictures more frequently. A California firm called Planet images Earth’s entire landmass every day. It has started to offer higher-resolution shots, too, to compete with the big guns more directly.
But while those images make flashy headlines, and do paint a picture both valuable and literal, their use is limited: You can’t always, or even often, get a picture when and where you want. “If it’s cloudy, they can see the clouds,” said Payam Banazadeh, CEO and founder of Capella Space, which operates a suite of SAR satellites. “If it’s foggy, they see the fog. If it’s hazy or smoky, they see the haze and the smoke.”
All those environments are transparent, though, to SAR. “People can count on this imagery being taken at the time that they really need it,” said Banazadeh, “no matter what the condition is.”
Capella, in most ways, is ahead of Umbra. The company has seven satellites in orbit, compared with Umbra’s two. Umbra is working to get its first data out, while Capella is already selling its wares. And, sure, Umbra’s data will be sharper — with sub-25-centimeter resolution compared with Capella’s 50, like seeing a paperback book rather than a medium moving box. But there’s a lot to be said for having bytes already on the ground.
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Both companies have competition big and small, here and abroad. Big aerospace and defense companies like Airbus, L3Harris, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon all have SAR arms. So do smaller firms like Finland’s Iceye, and Florida’s PredaSAR.
That is, or at least will be, a lot of data to deal with. And that’s where companies like New York’s Ursa come in. Ursa helps people buy radar images and develops software to make sense of the strange data. Typically, someone comes to them with a problem — How do we determine where a landslide slid? for example — and they develop digital tools that dig into SAR data for the answer.
That’s not easy or intuitive. Our eyes don’t see in microwaves, and so evolution didn’t configure our brains to interpret their echoes. “The analysis of the data was kind of relegated to very sophisticated Ph.D.s,” said Adam Maher, Ursa’s CEO and founder. Or people within government who had been working with SAR satellites, sometimes of a classified sort, for decades.
The spies loosen their grip
SAR isn’t a magical new technology. It goes back to 1951, when Carl Wiley, an engineer who worked for Goodyear Aircraft Company, later acquired by Lockheed Martin, found a way to shrink the giant World War II-era radar antennas and yet get the same sharpness in the image.
This “synthetic aperture radar” concept — soon also discovered by academics at the University of Michigan and the University of Illinois — ended up on the SR-71 Blackbird, one of the first stealth aircraft. SAR stayed largely in the air, not above the atmosphere, for a while.
The first civilian SAR satellite, called SeaSat, launched in 1978. But it was lonely up there, or so it seemed. “The United States did indeed have its own radar satellites,” said Master. “We just didn’t talk about it.” These SAR satellites were part of classified programs, of the sort Master used to work on.
Master occasionally uses words like “dank” to describe his company and its work (“We’ve chosen to adopt it as our own unique word for ‘cool,’” he said) and now sports a beard and lives civilian life seaside. But he once was a cleaner-cut part of the Air Force and managed space programs for DARPA, the Defense Department’s risky R&D arm.
Federal regulations once effectively kept private American companies, like the one that now employs Master, from creating their own SAR systems. The U.S. government thought the technology too revelatory of terrestrial secrets, with its all-seeing microwave eyes, and wanted to keep what its own hush-hush SAR satellites might know quiet.
That’s not quite how space works, though. Companies in other countries were not bound by such chains. “Everywhere else in the world, you had a wide proliferation of these radar satellites, except for the United States,” said Gabe Dominocielo, Umbra’s chief strategy officer and co-founder.
Effectively banning SAR in the U.S. was like confessing a crush to three friends, only telling one not to talk about it and expecting it to stay hidden. After all, anyone could buy that foreign data — including the U.S. government. And it did. “The United States cannot control what companies in other countries are allowed to do,” said Joanne Gabrynowicz, professor emerita of space law at the University of Mississippi and editor-in-chief emerita of the Journal of Space Law.
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The regulations nevertheless kept a U.S. SAR industry from starting up, while other countries (Canada, Italy, Germany) were gaining antenna expertise. Things started to change in 2009, when the U.S. issued a limited commercial SAR license. But things didn’t really start to turn around until 2020, when the Commerce Department issued a rule codifying licensing reforms. That allowed U.S. companies to sell SAR data as long as it was not better quality than that of foreign companies. That shift signaled a recognition, said Gabrynowicz, that limiting U.S. capabilities would not necessarily limit the data available to adversaries. Thus, hobbling technology didn’t lead to more national security.
But the shift wasn’t necessarily driven from inside D.C.: U.S. companies who wanted to make SAR satellites pushed for change. “It’s not that policy is driving commercial SAR investments or capabilities,” said Josef Koller of the Center for Space Policy and Strategy at the Aerospace Corporation. “It’s the other way around.”
As the regulations began to change, so did the global dynamics. “We’ve sat down in the last like five years and built the next generation of radar satellites,” said Dominocielo, who co-founded a for-profit lawyer-referral firm before forming Umbra, “which are less expensive and higher quality than anywhere else in the world.”
Those commercial U.S. satellites are still strapped by regulation: Companies like Umbra and Capella can only release imagery as good as what other countries sell in the open. “My goal is to try to stop that from happening,” said Master, to make sure the U.S. is allowed to at least try to pull ahead, rather than staying yoked neck-and-neck.
Countering disinformation
It turns out, though, that having commercial SAR data is also good for the very people who like to keep SAR data secret. Take the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, or NGA, a space-centric spy agency that, in 2020, did a survey of private SAR capabilities and identified several “unclassified types of collection needs.” That’s according to Jared Newton, who serves as technical executive for its commercial and business operations group.
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Spies being spies, Newton is cagey about the details of those use cases, generalizing first to “observing different classes of objects at different facilities.” He goes on to say that they’ve done demos counting cars in parking lots, or the number of aircraft at a jet-resting spot.
After that, the agency and National Reconnaissance Office, which runs the nation’s surveillance satellites, awarded “study contracts” to a few companies to buy their data, play around with it and judge its quality. Those went to both Capella and Umbra, along with PredaSAR and the American arms of Airbus and Iceye. NGA also has contracts with Ursa and BlackSky, among others, for SAR analysis.
One reason to buy from these private companies — even if you perhaps have the best secret SAR satellites in the world — is that you can actually pass their goods around. “The key differentiator really is just, frankly, the shareability of the information,” said Newton. You can send them to allies and to the public.
Koller sees in this show-and-tell the ability to change the information landscape in a detectable way: Publish images that support your narrative, or ones that contradict others’ narratives, or their disinformation. This happened when, for example, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claimed that bodies in Bucha, Ukraine, streets were staged after the Russians left: Satellite images taken almost two weeks before their departure, by contrast, showed bodies already there.
From troop movements to walrus migrations
Troop amassment, tank movement and bomb damage are obviously of prime interest to defense types. But people outside the military-industrial complex are also interested in using SAR to measure sea ice, detect oil spills, evaluate collapsed mines, make flood maps, track glacier variations, check out wind patterns, watch erosion, cultivate knowledge of vegetation, predict landslides and presage volcanic activity. Ursa’s website hosts a list of 26 use cases, from A to Z — A being “auto manufacturing trends” and Z being the state of the oil field in Zawiya, Libya.
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Those unclassified, often feel-good examples are the ones companies typically want to talk about — and the ones they claim they’re interested in amassing. They want more customers who aren’t named “Uncle Sam.” But even traditional satellite-portrait-takers struggle with that. And making the case that a farmer or city planner needs your data is even harder when you have to explain an acronym. “It’s much easier to do if you can show them a picture,” said Koller.
It’s also much easier if your space shots don’t break ground-based banks. The cost of a single satellite image can sometimes edge up against $10,000. “No one’s gonna buy that except for a government,” said Dominocielo. Specifically: the U.S. government. Cut that in half, maybe other governments look. At $1,000, tycoons in, say, the energy sector take notice. But you have to go below that to reliably get the little guy. “I want to get as close to free as possible,” said Dominocielo, “while still being able to eat.”
By making satellites smaller and cheaper, companies like Umbra and Capella can sell their data for less — just as getting ingredients for less money lets you price cookies low.
Both companies like to use homey analogies for the diminution of their satellites. They each fold up the antennas before launch, and those antennas then unfurl themselves once in orbit. Before takeoff, Umbra’s is “dorm fridge-sized”; Capella’s is like a “backpack.” When deployed, they are around the same size — 100 square feet — or, as Umbra puts it, “larger than an SUV.” Umbra’s satellites cost less than $5 million to build, compared with costs up to $500 million for a traditional large one.
Still, their data isn’t yet for everyone. Umbra’s highest-quality images, for example, will go for around $3,000 at the outset (“with an immediate goal of trying to drive that downwards rather than upwards,” Master promises, a direction some satellite companies go). Its lower-quality images with 0.5-meter resolution (about 1.6 feet) will initially cost around $750. But they do come with a Creative Commons license, which is rare. Usually, said Dominocielo, “if you want to share that image with anyone else, you need to get permission.”
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Even, he adds, “your wife.”
Those accessible parts of Umbra’s strategy come courtesy, in part, of a controversial industry figure named Joe Morrison. Morrison writes a newsletter called “A Closer Look” and regularly rails about satellite imagery’s high prices and opaque purchasing protocols. “He wrote a blog post talking about how satellite providers are the absolute worst,” said Dominocielo. “And everything they do is wrong. They don’t care about their customers. They only prioritize the government.”
After Dominocielo read the article, he called Morrison — who at the time had a job at a company called Azavea, which buys and analyzes satellite shots for organizations like the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and the World Bank — and offered him a job. “Executives are like, this guy’s like an asshole, right?” Dominocielo, an executive, said, referring to outsiders.
“I’d much rather trust the guy who buys the imagery,” Dominocielo continued, “than some suit who thinks selling an image for $10,000 is a good idea.”
But despite dreams of diversification, Master said 50 percent of the overall SAR market is nevertheless the U.S. government, and 25 percent is allied foreign governments. The democratization is only in the other 25 percent — with customers who might, for example, want to monitor oil pipelines across borders. “You can’t send a guy with a Jeep and a clipboard,” Dominocielo said. Then there are the weird one-offs, like the research group that wants to use the radar to track migrating walruses.
The SAR industry is really just starting in the U.S. Depending on who you ask, it’s anywhere from five to 10 years behind the cloud-beleaguered, picture-taking space industry.
But the demand for said data is outstripping the amount available — on the government-crisis side if not the walrus-guy side. “‘We need to have an image of Ukraine every 30 minutes,’” said Dominocielo, mimicking the government, which is interested in buying more shots from high-demand areas than it’s physically possibly to take, given the number of radar spacecraft up there, even if the feds bought every single SAR image. “The data is dribbling out,” said Master. “It’s just starting.”
Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this article.
7. Advancing Japanese diplomacy through the Quad: Why it matters for Tokyo
Excerpts:
Reinforcing this, as economic security concerns become increasingly salient in regional strategic competition, Japan’s proven record with regard to multilateral economic institutions and regimes positions it well to contribute to shared Quad objectives in areas such as rules/standards-setting and increased connectivity initiatives. Thus, Japan’s own efforts to deepen cooperation, including economic integration with Southeast Asia, through the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and the ASEAN outlook on the Indo-Pacific, reinforce the Quad’s objectives to recognise ‘ASEAN centrality’. The same applies to the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework and Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Japan can also make a significant contribution in the maritime sphere. With impressive naval and coast guard capabilities, it can confidently help deal with issues including law enforcement, maritime domain awareness, partner capacity-building, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. It is well practised in responding to natural disasters, for example, both domestically and overseas, often in tandem with Quad partners, such as the 2004 core group response to the Boxing Day Tsunami. The Quad discussed HADR for the Ukraine earlier this year. As a maritime nation, Japan can do its part in the Quad shipping taskforce, designed to establish low-to-zero-emission shipping corridors and green and decarbonise the shipping value chain (in coordination with the Quad climate working group).
Recognising that regional challenges cannot be addressed by any country alone, Japan is a keen proponent of Quad cooperation in terms of the national benefits derived from minilateralism and as an active and meaningful contributor to its mandate. Indeed, Tokyo’s sustained championship of minilateral cooperation through the Quad and other mechanisms is testament to the emergent leadership role the country has assumed in regional affairs.
Advancing Japanese diplomacy through the Quad: Why it matters for Tokyo | The Strategist
The Japan–Australia–US–India Quadrilateral Strategic Dialogue, or ‘Quad’, has gained increasing salience in Tokyo’s efforts to advance its own vision of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP), and its broader diplomatic objectives. With the next quadrilateral leader’s summit, to be held in-person in Tokyo tomorrow, it’s worth examining why Japan has so assiduously placed the Quad at the forefront of its regional diplomacy.
Japan initiated the FOIP in 2016 as an unprecedented diplomatic initiative based around three core pillars—rule of law, economic prosperity and peace and stability. The US, and then Australia and India have progressively endorsed this approach and now the FOIP has become codified as the formula around which Quad cooperation has coalesced. The Prime Minister’s Office of Japan (Kantei) has launched a new Quad website in which advertises its mission statement as ‘practical cooperation in various areas, including quality infrastructure, maritime security, counter-terrorism, cyber security, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, with the aim of realizing a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP)”.’
Uniting its Quad partners around its own vision for the Indo-Pacific must register as a significant success for Japan’s reinvigorated diplomatic agenda. It is also indicative of the greater efforts that Japan is investing in its external relations as part of its avowed ‘proactive contribution to international peace’.
The FOIP encompasses a range of policies and practical agreements that explicitly serve to shape the Indo-Pacific in the direction of a ‘rules-based order’. Such an order, as exemplified to in Quad statements, places emphasis on respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states, freedom from military, economic and political coercion, and promotion of regional stability and economic prosperity. With increasing challenges to this order—ranging from Chinese assertiveness in the East and South China Seas to North Korean nuclear-missile development and Russian aggression in Ukraine—Tokyo (along with its partners) has stressed the need to prevent the region being governed by the axiom of ‘might makes right’.
Two further dimensions to order-building through the Quad on the FOIP model are pertinent. The first is the material balance of power in the region. As China’s strategic weight waxes relative to the US and its allies, bringing India into alignment with the American alliance network—as an individual strategic partner and through the Quad—assists in redressing the shifting power balance in a way favourable to Japan. This is not to suggest that the Quad will be formalised into an ‘Asian NATO’ as its critics claim, but that quadrilateral cooperation does provide a measure of strategic reassurance for Tokyo.
The second is the ideological dimension to Quad cooperation. For Tokyo, uniting four of the region’s most significant democracies is seen as desirable in a world in which democratic liberalism is endangered, human rights are violated and free trade is imperiled. Indeed, Tokyo has long sought to build an ‘Arc of Freedom and Prosperity’ (in 2007, when the Quad first convened) or a ‘Democratic Security Diamond’ (in 2012, upon the return of Shinzo Abe as PM). Upholding such principles, and thus the progressive consolidation of the Quad, tangibly supports Tokyo’s implementation of ‘values-based diplomacy’.
From this, it’s clear why Japanese diplomacy places such a premium on the Quad given the intersections with its own foreign, economic and security policy objectives (as stated in the 2021 diplomatic bluebook). In other words, Japan has much to gain from championship of the Quad.
But in return, Japan has much to offer its Quad partners on the basis of the shared interests and values identified above.
Japan has been undergoing a quiet revolution in terms of its national security strategy over recent years. The combination of domestic security reforms, new security legislation and the restructuring and re-equipping of the Japan Self-Defense Forces makes Japan a far more forward-leaning and capable partner to the other Quad members. The proposed doubling of the Japanese defence budget, if it eventuates, will be a game-changer in Japan’s national security posture.
Thus, all the Quad partners collectively and individually benefit from what Japan brings to the table in terms of achieving common aims. Here, I identify just three ways in which Japan can purposefully contribute to aspects of the Quad agenda.
First, Japan’s economic contribution will be impactful in terms of its technological prowess and its ample official development assistance polices and investment capacities. Japan’s’ existing Partnership for Quality Infrastructure policy is indicative of the contribution it can make to providing the pressing needs for developmental and infrastructure needs in Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands and beyond (through the Quad Infrastructure Coordination Group). Japan is also well positioned to contribute to the Quad’s mandate for advanced technological collaboration in relation to green technology, clean energy, robotics, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, cyber, space, the electromagnetic spectrum and other emerging defence technologies.
All of this capability will assist in the Quad’s aspirations to establish a ‘secure technology ecosystem’ and to share standards through the Quad Senior Cyber Group, as well as to assist members to collectively keep pace in the unfolding technological competition in the Indo-Pacific.
Reinforcing this, as economic security concerns become increasingly salient in regional strategic competition, Japan’s proven record with regard to multilateral economic institutions and regimes positions it well to contribute to shared Quad objectives in areas such as rules/standards-setting and increased connectivity initiatives. Thus, Japan’s own efforts to deepen cooperation, including economic integration with Southeast Asia, through the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and the ASEAN outlook on the Indo-Pacific, reinforce the Quad’s objectives to recognise ‘ASEAN centrality’. The same applies to the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework and Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Japan can also make a significant contribution in the maritime sphere. With impressive naval and coast guard capabilities, it can confidently help deal with issues including law enforcement, maritime domain awareness, partner capacity-building, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. It is well practised in responding to natural disasters, for example, both domestically and overseas, often in tandem with Quad partners, such as the 2004 core group response to the Boxing Day Tsunami. The Quad discussed HADR for the Ukraine earlier this year. As a maritime nation, Japan can do its part in the Quad shipping taskforce, designed to establish low-to-zero-emission shipping corridors and green and decarbonise the shipping value chain (in coordination with the Quad climate working group).
Recognising that regional challenges cannot be addressed by any country alone, Japan is a keen proponent of Quad cooperation in terms of the national benefits derived from minilateralism and as an active and meaningful contributor to its mandate. Indeed, Tokyo’s sustained championship of minilateral cooperation through the Quad and other mechanisms is testament to the emergent leadership role the country has assumed in regional affairs.
8. US SOF Applying Ukrainian Lessons Learned To Its Own Future Strategy | SOFX
If I were examining the USSOCOM budget I would apply SOF truth number one to every line and ask how this line item is helping the operator on the ground, in the air, on the sea, and the operational units? I am not talking about preservation of the force efforts and taking care of families (which are important and must be invested in) but investing in the individual operator at all levels. We too often chase the shiny object at the possible expense of the operator (though we later try to justify the shiny object by saying it is in support of the operator). "Irregular warfare is far more intellectual than a bayonet charge." T.E. Lawrence. We need to invest in brains as much as we do brawn and technology. Perhaps more so. We need to be able to outfight our enemies but to sustain operational and strategic success we must outthink them.
I would like to see a priority on funding for training, education, and long term operational deployments to allow operators to develop relationships and deep understanding of the breadth and depth of the operational area and the threats, challenges, and opportunities therein (to include identification of potential or nascent resistance).
US SOF Applying Ukrainian Lessons Learned To Its Own Future Strategy | SOFX
While the Russian military has been largely ignoring the costly lessons learned on the ground in Ukraine as the continue to struggle in a bloody stalemate, the US military, especially the Special Operations Command (SOCOM), is paying close attention.
And the war in Ukraine will change the way American special operators fight wars in the future. SOCOM has been heavily focused on counterterrorism for more than two decades since the days immediately following 9/11. That focus is shifting into what Rear Admiral Hugh Howard, the commander of the Navy’s Special Warfare characterized a few weeks ago as the “fifth modern era” for special operations forces.
And among the lessons learned that SOCOM is taking from Ukraine, thus far are some new developments as well as some of the oldest tenets or “truths” that are the principles of all of the US Special Operations forces.
SOF Truths #1 Humans Are More Important Than Hardware:
The war in Ukraine has shown that the continuing and long-term international partnerships that the US special operators have worked to build over decades of training and fighting around the world been invaluable and will continue to be paramount in the years to come.
Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities in late April, Army Lieutenant General Jonathan Braga of the Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) said the relationships built not only need to be maintained but expanded across Eastern Europe.
“With the scale and scope of the threat of Russia and China, we won’t be able to do this alone,” Braga was quoted by Defense One. “That’s why I talked about our international partners and how increasing their capacities and their capabilities is so critical.”
Speaking about how the numerous Special Operations Forces from different countries have banded together over the war in Ukraine has been a key factor, he said.
“I won’t name the number right now, but they have absolutely banded together…And I think that really bore out from the last 20 years of working together, sweating together, bleeding together on different battlefields, on different continents,” Braga added.
Drone Operators, A Career Specialty Within SOCOM?
During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US ruled the sky and our adversaries had little to no combat airpower to speak of. That included the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or drones. That won’t be the case in future conflicts as even off-the-shelf commercially available drones have been widely used in Ukraine and will be a fixture on any battlefield.
USASOC is contemplating discontinuing the practice of having a drone operator as an additional duty, but actually creating an MOS for it, and possibly a separate career field within special operations dedicated to drone operations so that it’s “not just an additional duty, it’s an actual specialty,” Braga said.
During the on-going Special Operations Forces Industry Conference (SOFIC 2022) that ends on Thursday, SOCOM commander, Army General Richard Clarke said that the command is looking hard at which drone systems need to be kept and which ones need to go.
“We need to look hard at all those systems and go, which ones within our enterprise are the biggest bang for the buck? And which ones do we need to retain? And which ones do we actually need to cut away?” Clarke said on Tuesday at SOFIC.
Contested Communications, Counter-Drone/IED Operators:
Also, during the SOFIC conference, a Marine Corps Special Operations Command officer told Marine Corps Times that SOCOM needs a small device that can both jam radio frequencies to disrupt roadside bombs from exploding as well as neutralize drone threats by land, air and sea.
This is another hard lesson that the Russians have yet to learn from during their invasion of Ukraine. Their secure communications have been severely lacking and they’ve had to resort to the use of walkie-talkies as well as cell phones. And the Ukrainians have exacted a heavy toll on many of their senior officers because of it.
SOCOM is also working on an unmanned counter-drone system that will have a multimission domain. SOCOM has one system called MODI right now but is working on a next generation system that is more man-portable.
9. Biden vows to defend Taiwan in apparent US policy shift
I think this is the key point and why Biden probably made the statement he did:
US President Joe Biden has warned China is "flirting with danger" over Taiwan
Biden vows to defend Taiwan in apparent US policy shift
By Tessa Wong
BBC News
Published
40 minutes ago
Mr Biden likened a possible Chinese attack on Taiwan to the situation in Ukraine
US President Joe Biden has warned China is "flirting with danger" over Taiwan, and vowed to intervene militarily to protect the island if it is attacked.
Speaking in Japan, he appeared to contradict long-standing US policy in the region, although the White House insisted there had been no departure.
Mr Biden drew a parallel between Taiwan and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, prompting an angry rebuke from Beijing.
He is on his first tour of Asia as US president, visiting regional allies.
Mr Biden prefaced his remarks saying US policy toward Taiwan "has not changed". But his comments in Tokyo are the second time in recent months he has unequivocally stated the US would defend Taiwan if China attacked, in what has been seen as a change in tone.
The US has previously been vague on what it would do in such a situation.
China regards Taiwan as a breakaway province that must be re-unified with the mainland.
Beijing's foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin insisted: "Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's territory... there's no room for compromise or concession.
"The Taiwan question and the Ukraine issue are fundamentally different. To compare those two is absurd. We once again urge the US to abide by the One China principle."
The US has no official diplomatic ties with Taiwan, but sells arms to it as part of its Taiwan Relations Act, which states that the US must provide the island with the means to defend itself.
At the same time, it maintains formal ties with China and also diplomatically acknowledges China's position that there is only one Chinese government.
What did Biden say - and why does it matter?
Mr Biden was answering questions in Tokyo during a press conference with Japanese PM Fumio Kishida, when a journalist asked them about the defence of Taiwan.
The US president began by directly linking the China-Taiwan situation to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. If there was a rapprochement eventually between Ukraine and Russia, and sanctions were not sustained, "then what does this signal to China about the cost of attempting to take Taiwan by force?" he asked.
Image source, Getty Images
Image caption,
Chinese military aircraft regularly fly into Taiwan's self-declared air defence zone
He added that while "my expectation is that it [a Chinese invasion] will not happen, it will not be attempted", at the same time it depended on "how strong the world makes clear that that kind of action is going to result in long term disapprobation".
He was then asked directly if the US would defend Taiwan militarily if China invaded, when it has not done so in the invasion of Ukraine, and he responded: "Yes... that's the commitment we made.
"The idea that it [Taiwan] can be taken by force... is just not appropriate. It will dislocate the entire region and be another action similar to what happened in Ukraine."
It took the US State Department only minutes to start walking back Joe Biden's comments.
This is not the first time he has said he would defend Taiwan. It could be an expression of his deep personal disquiet about the Ukraine invasion, and the prospect of something similar happening in Taiwan.
In March, he did something very similar when he said "Vladmir Putin cannot stay in power", forcing US officials to swiftly deny America was calling for regime change in Moscow. But when asked about it later, Mr Biden did not back down. He was, he said, expressing his "moral outrage" at what Putin was doing.
Today he seemed to be saying "I won't let that happen to Taiwan". The official position of the US government on Taiwan is "strategic ambiguity" - the US doesn't commit to defend Taiwan, but it doesn't say it wouldn't either. This is supposed to keep China guessing.
But as China has got stronger, and its threats to Taiwan more real, there have been voices calling for an end to this fudge.
Former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe recently said it was time for America to be clear to Beijing - and say it would defend Taiwan. Others think this is a really bad idea and could provoke Beijing in to accelerating its plans to retake the island.
Privately, many senior officials in Washington and Tokyo are extremely worried about Taiwan, about Beijing's growing military advantage, and they are fumbling for a new strategy to deal with the threat.
In the meantime, Mr Biden seems to be speaking his own truth.
China and Taiwan: The basics
- Why do China and Taiwan have poor relations? China and Taiwan were divided during a civil war in the 1940s, but Beijing insists the island will be reclaimed at some point, by force if necessary
- How is Taiwan governed? The island has its own constitution, democratically elected leaders, and about 300,000 active troops in its armed forces
- Who recognises Taiwan? Only a few countries recognise Taiwan. Most recognise the Chinese government in Beijing instead. The US has no official ties with Taiwan but does have a law which requires it to provide the island with the means to defend itself
10. Belarusians join war seeking to free Ukraine and themselves
Who is working on the resistance potential in Belarus?
Belarusians join war seeking to free Ukraine and themselves
WARSAW, Poland — 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.
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.
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.
Belarus regiment leader, Vadim Prokopiev, left, Polish instructor, Dariusz Tomysek, center, and a volunteer from Belarus speak during a training session at a shooting range near Warsaw, Poland, on Friday, May 20, 2022. (Michal Dyjuk/AP)
“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.
“Power from Lukashenko can only be taken by force,” he said.
RELATED
Retired Army Lt. Col. John Culp is currently volunteering in Kyiv with the nonprofit Bomb Techs Without Borders.
By Blair Drake
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.
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.
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.
11. Putin complains about barrage of cyberattacks
He doth protest too much? Taste of his own medicine? Could not happen to a better guy.
Putin complains about barrage of cyberattacks
MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin says his country has faced a barrage of cyberattacks from the West amid the invasion of Ukraine but has successfully fended them off.
Speaking Friday to members of Russia’s Security Council, Putin noted that “the challenges in this area have become even more pressing, serious and extensive.”
He charged that “an outright aggression has been unleashed against Russia, a war has been waged in the information space.”
Putin added that “the cyber-aggression against us, the same as the attack on Russia by sanctions in general, has failed.”
He ordered officials to “perfect and enhance the mechanisms of ensuring information security at critically important industrial facilities which have a direct bearing on our country’s defensive capability, and the stable development of the economic and social spheres.”
Also on Friday, Ukrainian authorities said their troops repelled a Russian attack in the east, as Moscow struggled to gain ground in the region that is now the focus of the war even while intensifying its campaign there.
Battered by their monthslong siege of the vital port city of Mariupol, Russian troops need time to regroup, Britain’s Defense Ministry said in an assessment — but they may not get it. The city and the steelworks where Ukrainian fighters have held off the Russian assault for weeks have become a symbol of Ukraine’s stoic resistance and surprising ability to stymie a much larger force.
In this photo taken from video released by the Russian Defense Ministry on Thursday, May 19, 2022, shows Ukrainian servicemen as they leave the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, in territory under the government of the Donetsk People's Republic, eastern Ukraine. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
On Friday, a number of soldiers — just how many was unclear — were still holed up in the Azovstal plant, following the surrender of more than 1,900 soldiers in recent days, according to the latest figure from Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. Efforts to remove the dead from the battle were also underway, according to Denis Prokopenko, the commander of the Azov Regiment, which is among those defending the plant.
Speaking of the “fallen heroes,” Prokopenko said: “I hope soon relatives and the whole of Ukraine will be able to bury the fighters with honors.” The Red Cross, meanwhile, said it has visited prisoners of war from all sides of the conflict, amid international fears that the Russians may take reprisals against Ukrainian prisoners.
With the battle for the steel plant winding down, Russia has already started pulling troops back from the site. But the British assessment indicated Russian commanders are under pressure to quickly send them elsewhere in the Donbas.
“That means that Russia will probably redistribute their forces swiftly without adequate preparation, which risks further force attrition,” the ministry said.
The Donbas is now President Vladimir Putin’s focus after his troops failed to take the capital in the early days of the war. Pro-Moscow separatists have fought Ukrainian forces for eight years in the region and held a considerable swath of it before Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion.
But the effort to take more territory there has been slow-going. In a sign of Russia’s frustration with the war, some senior commanders have been fired in recent weeks, the British Defense Ministry said.
12. Russia's withdrawal from Syria is an opportunity for Israel | Opinion
Excerpts:
Israel's message now should be tailored not only to Hezbollah but to the regime in Teheran. In 2009, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei directed his military to invest heavily in PGMs, knowing they would enable the regime or its proxies to strike Israeli targets within 10 feet of their intended mark. The IDF has declared PGM's to be Israel's second most dire threat, subordinate only to Iran's nuclear program. Through the "war between wars," Israel's message has been one of action, not words.
Successive U.S. administrations have looked the other way while Israel has targeted Iranian smuggling and military activity in Syria. But if the United States signs the deeply-flawed looming nuclear deal with Iran, the massive sanctions relief that Iran receives would be a boon to Iran's military efforts.
Between Russia's departure, Lebanon's crisis, and the recent snag in the nuclear negotiations, Israel may have a short window of opportunity to significantly reduce the Iranian threat in Syria and PGM production infrastructure in Lebanon. This can be aided with political and diplomatic assistance from Washington. Barring such assistance, Israel can be expected to act alone.
Russia's withdrawal from Syria is an opportunity for Israel | Opinion
JACOB NAGEL AND JONATHAN SCHANZER , FOUNDATION FOR DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES
ON 5/20/22 AT 2:24 PM EDT
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz revealed details about the largest Israel Defense Force (IDF) drill in recent years last week. The drill included simulated airstrikes on Iran and a simulated multi-front war against Iran-backed proxies in Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza. The message was unmistakable: The Israeli government is weighing its military options, and the military is readying for whatever the government decides. Iran should be worried.
Right now, however, all eyes are on Syria. The war in Ukraine has prompted Russia to redeploy some forces and hardware out of Syria, where it has been buttressing the embattled regime of Bashar al-Assad. As the Russians depart, the Iranians want to fill the void.
The Israelis are determined not to let that happen. The Syrian-Israeli border, as well as key bases and facilities in Syria, have witnessed significant clashes in recent years. The Iranian regime continues to build its capabilities to target Israel from this war-torn territory. And Israel continues to erode those capabilities.
One of the most dramatic incidents occurred in 2018, when an armed Iranian drone crossed into Israel. The drone was dispatched from T4 Air Base in Syria. The IDF shot it down, then launched one of the largest military operations in Syria in decades.
Such clashes, along with other incidents across the Middle East and even in Iranian territory, are part of the new reality in the region. Israel calls it the "war between wars." It's a campaign to damage Iran's capabilities in Lebanon, Syria, and anywhere the Islamic Republic is preparing to wage war against Israel.
Once upon a time, Israel only targeted Tehran's proxies when they attacked first. But Israel's leaders understand this is no longer viable, particularly in Syria, where Iran appears determined to establish offensive capabilities on Israel's doorstep.
Israel is also operating against Iranian smuggling of what they call "game-changing weapons," a euphemism for precision guided munitions (PGMs). Israel is tracking PGM parts, production machines, and anything else that might contribute to independent PGM production.
With Iran's guidance, Hezbollah has been manufacturing PGMs or converting older rockets into PGMs. Reports suggest that Hezbollah is assembling PGMs in underground facilities in Lebanon, producing a few PGMs per day.
The Russian departure from Syria is now a danger and an opportunity for Israel. The Iranians clearly seek to fill the void in key territory that Russia vacates. But such plans are predictable and transparent. Israeli military operations can potentially force the Iranians out. Indeed, without the Russians and their advanced air defense systems, the Israeli Air Force should have significantly more freedom to maneuver.
A picture shows an Iron Dome defence system battery, designed to intercept and destroy incoming short-range rockets and artillery shells, and Israeli military vehicles stationed near the border with Lebanon in the Israeli annexed Golan Heights on February 18, 2022. - Israel's military said its air defences fired at an unmanned aerial vehicle that had crossed into its airspace today, the second such incident in as many days. JALAA MAREY/AFP via Getty Images
After years of careful deconfliction with the Kremlin driven by the fear of accidentally targeting Russian jets in the skies over Syria or Russian troops on the ground, the IDF can now press its advantage. With the Russians focused on Ukraine, the number of Israeli operations in Syria has reportedly already increased and will likely only intensify.
Even the Assad regime, which would have lost power without Iranian and Russian intervention, may welcome an intensifying Israeli campaign; the Iranian regime has overstayed its welcome in Syria, violating the country's sovereignty and encumbering its diplomatic ties to the Arab world. Indeed, several pragmatic Arab states are in favor of jettisoning Iranian forces from Syria in an effort to stabilize the region after years of tumult.
But even if Israel drives Iran out of Syria, Hezbollah's PGM production in Lebanon remains a threat Israel cannot ignore. The rules of engagement until now have been such that Israel has mostly avoided striking inside Lebanon. That may need to change, particularly as the estimated stockpile of these weapons—estimated in the hundreds presently—continues to grow.
A war against Hezbollah is one that Israel has long avoided to prevent widespread damage, but it would be far worse for Lebanon, which is currently writhing in political and economic crises. Hezbollah understands that a destructive war in Lebanon will hurt its own image, not to mention its capabilities.
Israel's message now should be tailored not only to Hezbollah but to the regime in Teheran. In 2009, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei directed his military to invest heavily in PGMs, knowing they would enable the regime or its proxies to strike Israeli targets within 10 feet of their intended mark. The IDF has declared PGM's to be Israel's second most dire threat, subordinate only to Iran's nuclear program. Through the "war between wars," Israel's message has been one of action, not words.
Successive U.S. administrations have looked the other way while Israel has targeted Iranian smuggling and military activity in Syria. But if the United States signs the deeply-flawed looming nuclear deal with Iran, the massive sanctions relief that Iran receives would be a boon to Iran's military efforts.
Between Russia's departure, Lebanon's crisis, and the recent snag in the nuclear negotiations, Israel may have a short window of opportunity to significantly reduce the Iranian threat in Syria and PGM production infrastructure in Lebanon. This can be aided with political and diplomatic assistance from Washington. Barring such assistance, Israel can be expected to act alone.
Brigadier General (Res.) Professor Jacob Nagel is a former Israeli national security adviser to PM Netanyahu (Acting). He is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a visiting professor at the Technion Aerospace Faculty. Jonathan Schanzer is senior vice president for research at FDD, and a former terrorism finance analyst at the United States Department of the Treasury.
The views in this article are the writers' own.
13. So Much for Reforming the World Health Organization
Excerpts:
Both the Biden administration and Tedros have a similar blind spot. Both have moved on from efforts to determine the origins of the COVID pandemic. When Tedros visited Washington last month, the subject was not mentioned in readouts of his meetings with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen or Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. The issue was relegated to the readout of Tedros’ meeting with Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Brain McKeon. Yet elaborate plans for preventing the next pandemic have little value if the United States and WHO refuse to learn the lessons of this one.
In light of all these problems, Congress should begin oversight of the administration’s pandemic preparedness initiatives. This could start with hearings with the Departments of State and Health and Human Services on the IHR regulations, China’s influence in the WHO, and the organization’s substandard management. Since their votes will be necessary to ratify a pandemic preparedness treaty, senators should influence the negotiations by insisting that the treaty pass a simple test: If it existed in January 2020 would it have prevented China from hiding the COVID-19 pandemic?
Biden said he would reform the WHO, but expanding the powers of a director general who helped hide a global pandemic achieves just the opposite. The administration ought to adjust its course or risk facilitating the emergence of another pandemic.
So Much for Reforming the World Health Organization
The Biden administration vowed it would change the body from within, but its proposals play into the hands of China.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. (Photo by Johanna Geron/AFP/Getty Images.)
President Joe Biden, in one of his first acts in office, reversed his predecessor’s decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO). The Biden administration emphasized that it would strengthen and reform the WHO from within. On Sunday, the WHO’s 194 member states will gather in Geneva for the 75th World Health Assembly (WHA) and vote on reforms that would enhance WHO authority and limit the autonomy of national governments. In isolation, some of these reforms are perfectly sensible. Yet the WHO and its director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, remain beholden to China, a problem that Biden has no apparent plan to correct. Thus, in practice, enhancing WHO authorities plays into the hands of Beijing rather than promoting actual reform.
The Biden administration’s pivotal failure in dealing with the WHO was its inexplicable decision not to field an alternative candidate for director general. Tedros is unopposed for another five-year term, even though he amplified Beijing’s obstruction and obfuscation in the critical early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. On January 29, 2020, Tedros said, “I will praise China again and again, because its actions actually help in reducing the spread of coronavirus to other countries.” Those comments were as wrong then as they are shocking in hindsight. Just one day later, Tedros declared the COVID-19 outbreak a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC).
In January 2022, the WHO Executive Board (whose members include Russia and Syria) formally nominated Tedros for a second term, and the WHA will officially appoint him in Geneva. With his reelection secured, Tedros proposed an expansion of the director general’s control of the organization’s budget. Currently, the director general controls only the 20 percent of the WHO budget that comes from mandatory member state contributions. The remaining 80 percent consists of voluntary contributions that member states and non-governmental organizations earmark for specific programs. Tedros wants mandatory payments to make up half of the WHO’s $2 billion budget by 2028. The Biden administration initially opposed this plan, while U.S. allies in Europe supported it. The administration eventually agreed to the change in late April, when Tedros announced an agreement that will take effect in 2024.
The Biden administration itself proposed other reforms the WHA is likely to ratify. On January 20, the United States proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR), a “legal framework that defines countries’ rights and obligations in handling public health events and emergencies that have the potential to cross borders.” The WHO coordinates IHR implementation and helps build the capacity of member states to follow the IHR. The regulations were last updated in 2005 following China’s unsuccessful efforts to hide the SARS outbreak of 2003. While many of the Biden administration’s suggestions are constructive when considered on their own, China’s pervasive influence and Tedros’ poor management render the U.S. proposals either irrelevant or even harmful in practice.
Biden’s proposed amendments alter the procedures for declaring a PHEIC. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Beijing hid information from the WHO and the public that exacerbated the impact of the outbreak. The existing IHR requires the concurrence of the affected state party before the director general can trigger a PHEIC but the U.S. amendments remove that requirement. The director general must invite the affected state party to present its views to the emergency committee, which is charged with advising the director general on whether to declare a PHEIC. The director general is also required to consider information from the affected state party and other state parties.
Biden’s IHR proposals also increase WHO powers in other ways. If the director general determines an event does not rise to the level of a PHEIC but does require “heightened international awareness and a potential international public health response,” the amendments would allow him to issue an “intermediate public health alert.” The U.S. amendments also allow WHO regional directors to declare that an event constitutes a “public health emergency of regional concern.” There is no clear process for making these determinations, nor do the amendments clarify whether an affected state party can block them. The Biden administration needs to ensure clarification so these changes do not become a blank check for WHO to assert itself.
In principle, these changes limit the ability of China and others to block WHO action at the outset of a pandemic or other public health emergency, but for as long as WHO leadership is beholden to Beijing, procedural changes are mostly irrelevant. State parties can reject or express reservations about the amendments six months after WHA adoption. The amendments take effect six months after that period. Members of Congress should insist that the Biden administration address concerns about possible infringement on U.S. sovereignty. What provisions are in place, or could Congress enact, to ensure that WHO leadership is not dictating U.S. public health policies?
The Biden administration is also recommending the creation of an IHR compliance committee to monitor adherence to the regulations. The proposal is a middle ground between the status quo of zero enforcement and real sanctions for violating the IHR. While there is merit to ensuring member states implement the IHR, the Biden administration has not explained how this committee would operate. With Tedros in charge, the committee may do nothing to address China’s misconduct.
Another issue for Biden is that the WHO empowers dictatorships while marginalizing democratic governments, especially those of Taiwan and Israel. Syria’s Assad regime bombs hospitals but is entering its second year on the WHO’s Executive Board, which implements “the decisions and policies of the [World] Health Assembly, and advise and generally to facilitate its work.” The Russian Federation is attacking health care facilities, including a children’s hospital, in Ukraine and is in its third and final year of its current term on the board. The deputy speaker of Russia’s State Duma said Moscow could withdraw from the WHO, which would be a welcome development, yet it may realize it can cause more damage by obstructing it from within.
Meanwhile, Tedros will likely exclude Taipei from participating as an observer at the WHA. Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a strong statement of support for Taiwan’s inclusion, but this is a futile gesture given the administration’s support for Tedros’ re-election. Similarly, there is a full day at each WHA reserved for negative reports about Israel, even though no other government faces such scrutiny. This remains a convenient distraction from the hospital bombings carried out by Russian and Syrian forces, or Beijing’s mass sterilization of its Uyghur minority.
Another big change in the works, although not for this year, is a treaty “to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.” The WHO’s intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) began public hearings last month. The INB’s ambitious schedule includes consideration of a working draft by the week of July 18. The group will provide a status update at next year’s WHA. The WHO expects to discuss and potentially adopt a pandemic treaty at the 77th WHA in May 2024.
The contours of the treaty are unclear but the recent rhetoric on pandemic preparedness is not promising. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the WHO’s third-largest donor, will be an influential player in this process. Bill Gates published a new book, How to Prevent the Next Pandemic, and recommended a permanent 3,000-person team, managed by the WHO, focused on pandemic preparedness. As with the IHR reforms, this is not a bad idea on its own. But what is the point of such changes if the WHO cannot address the problem of Chinese influence? In his book, Gates does not even consider how to deal with China’s obstruction and obfuscation in the initial days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Both the Biden administration and Tedros have a similar blind spot. Both have moved on from efforts to determine the origins of the COVID pandemic. When Tedros visited Washington last month, the subject was not mentioned in readouts of his meetings with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen or Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. The issue was relegated to the readout of Tedros’ meeting with Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Brain McKeon. Yet elaborate plans for preventing the next pandemic have little value if the United States and WHO refuse to learn the lessons of this one.
In light of all these problems, Congress should begin oversight of the administration’s pandemic preparedness initiatives. This could start with hearings with the Departments of State and Health and Human Services on the IHR regulations, China’s influence in the WHO, and the organization’s substandard management. Since their votes will be necessary to ratify a pandemic preparedness treaty, senators should influence the negotiations by insisting that the treaty pass a simple test: If it existed in January 2020 would it have prevented China from hiding the COVID-19 pandemic?
Biden said he would reform the WHO, but expanding the powers of a director general who helped hide a global pandemic achieves just the opposite. The administration ought to adjust its course or risk facilitating the emergence of another pandemic.
Anthony Ruggiero is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He previously served in the U.S. government for more than 19 years, including as senior director for counterproliferation and biodefense (2019-2021) on the National Security Council. Follow Anthony on Twitter @NatSecAnthony. FDD is a Washington, D.C.-based, nonpartisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy.
14. Aviation Giants Enter Final Stretch to Replace Black Hawk
What can really replace the great Blackhawk?
Aviation Giants Enter Final Stretch to Replace Black Hawk
Aviation Giants Enter Final Stretch to Replace Black Hawk
5/23/2022
By
Bell Textron V-280 Valor, Boeing-Sikorsky Defiant X
Bell Textron, Boeing-Sikorsky photos
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — As the Army prepares to decide on a replacement for the venerable but aging Black Hawk, competitors are putting the finishing touches on their offerings.
The service is expected to make a decision on its future long-range assault aircraft, or FLRAA, program this fall, a decision so imminent that the Army has entered a “quiet period” on the competition.
Future Vertical Lift — which includes FLRAA and the service’s future scout helicopter — is one of the Army’s top three major modernization priorities as the service prepares for great power competition with China and Russia. The first Army unit is slated to be equipped with FLRAA by fiscal year 2030.
The rapidly approaching contract decision doesn’t mean that both teams haven’t been busy. Executives at opposing aerospace teams Boeing-Sikorsky and Bell Textron said they are using the coming months to lower risk for their platforms through additional testing and qualifications and digital manufacturing efforts.
Each team has developed a platform radically different from the Black Hawk, which dates to the 1970s.
One Boeing and one Sikorsky pilot flew the Defiant X — the team’s prototype based on the Sikorsky X2 experimental coaxial twin-rotor helicopter — 700 nautical miles from West Palm Beach, Florida, to Nashville for the Army Aviation Association of America summit.
While it was a risk to make the trip using the prototype, the confidence the test pilots had in the platform convinced executives to get it airborne, said Paul Lemmo, president of Sikorsky, during a press briefing leading up to the summit.
“We had our engineering and safety teams take a very deep look at sending it … but the test pilots were confident every step of the way and, really, that’s what helped us make the decision,” he said.
While the flight itself was risky, he noted other risk reduction techniques the engineering team uses, such as evaluations of the platform and design through a propulsion test bed.
Until the competition decision, Boeing and Sikorsky will continue to fly the Defiant X and run tests that “expand the flight envelope,” said Lemmo. Sikorsky and Boeing have already demonstrated the requirements for the Army’s joint multi-role demonstration contract, which the companies were awarded in 2020, he noted. The Army awarded the contracts to the companies to develop a prototype for the competition, and both companies entered the second phase of the program in March last year.
“So anything we do now is really just additional testing that we want to do,” he said.
While Bell’s V-280 Valor prototype — a tiltrotor based on the V-22 Osprey designed by Bell — isn’t seeing as much flying time, the company is working just as hard to reduce risk for the program, Frank Lazarra, director of advanced vertical lift, said on the sidelines of the Army aviation summit.
After the prototype aircraft stopped flying, Bell’s engineering team removed gearboxes and performed inspections and engineering validations with “very positive results,” he said.
“There is still the give and take or the back and forth between us and our government teammates on requirements or the possibilities for the aircraft,” he said.
Bell wants to show off how quickly it can manufacture parts once the program starts, Lazarra said. The company opened its Manufacturing Technology Center last year to reduce cycle times across its enterprise. Shortening production time for the V-280 is one of its primary focuses, said Gerard Nanni, manager of manufacturing innovation.
For example, one shaft used on the tilt rotor has a lead time of 330 days, but the center has been able to cut it down to 16 hours, Nanni explained. This makes the entire enterprise less risky for the Army, he said.
“We’re able to rapidly incorporate changes because of our shortened standard time and manufacturing,” he said.
Developing training and system integration options for the platform will be another focus of Bell’s time leading up to a contract award.
Though the Sikorsky-Boeing team has taken to the air to make its case to the Army, Lazarra pointed out that Bell’s tilt-rotor design has made similar length flights in the past. For example, the V-280 flew from Amarillo, Texas, to Fort Worth, about 370 miles nonstop. The V-280 aircraft did not have to stop for fuel during that trip, unlike the Defiant X flight, which flew twice the distance and had to refuel twice, Lazarra said.
At the same time, competitors are battling to prove the mettle of their FLRAA engines. Honeywell’s HTS7500 turboshaft engine will power the Defiant X, Boeing and Sikorsky announced in March.
The turboshaft engine is undergoing tests for integration into the Defiant X and other qualification testing this year. One example of testing is measuring how well it holds up to pressure, John Russo, vice president general manager for Honeywell Aerospace military turboshaft engine product line, said at a company event in April.
Without using “exotic” materials such as ceramic coatings, the engine can maintain low turbine temperatures “for reliability, for maintainability as well as risk reduction,” he said. He explained sticking with currently used coatings keeps the turbine from melting down without the risk of less proven technology.
Lazarra noted the Rolls Royce AE 1107F engine on the V-280 results in a more efficient platform than the Bell V-22, which is powered by a Rolls-Royce T406.
While not much is known about the engine that Rolls Royce announced in 2020, Director of Defense Programs at Rolls Royce Candice Bineyard said it is already in production.
Rolls Royce has invested $600 million for upgrades to facilities and manufacturing capabilities. The company has “really put ourselves in a position to deliver,” she said.
Meanwhile, progress on the Army’s future attack reconnaissance aircraft, or FARA, is hinged on its engine development. The Army hopes to field its future scout helicopter in 2028, but the industry competitors say they are waiting for the Army and its industry partner General Electric to wrap up its modernized turbine engine design before their efforts can fully kick off. The Army awarded General Electric a $517 million contract to replace the GE T700 engine with a T901 engine through a program called the Improved Turbine Engine Program, according to the company.
For example, Bell’s 360 Invictus prototype is about 85 percent complete and will reach 90 percent completion in May or June, said Chris Gehler, the vice president and program director for the Invictus program.
“We’re going to do everything we can without the engine … but once we have the engine then we’ll do the full in the loop testing of everything,” he said on the sidelines of the Army aviation conference.
General Electric provided a 3D-printed version of the T901 to work with until the finished product is ready for first flight in November, said Brig. Gen. Robert Barrie, Army program executive officer for aviation. Despite testing delays resulting from COVID-19, Barrie added he is confident in GE’s ability to deliver by November and then reach first flight in the third quarter of 2023.
“There is a pathway for them to fly in ‘23,” Barrie said. “There’s some risk associated with that, but it’s all hands on deck to manage and mitigate those risks.”
The engine reached “light off” — the first time fuel is ignited in the engine — in March, a “significant” milestone, Barrie added.
Gehler said Bell’s engineering team is running checks on “electronics aspects” and the aircraft’s hydraulics. The test fit of the 3D-printed engine with the Invictus air frame was successful, he noted.
Bell has brought the price of Invictus “well below” the $30 million average cost per platform required by the Army, according to Gehler. He said the platform’s smaller size and weight have been instrumental in keeping costs low.
The Raider X — Sikorsky-Boeing’s FARA offering — is at a similar completion rate as its rival for the initial design — about 85 percent, said Jay Macklin, Sikorsky’s business development director for future vertical lift.
While waiting for the engine, the engineering team wants to decrease overall risk to the program, Macklin noted. This includes building a second fuselage for the prototype.
“The reason we did that is that’s now being integrated in our structural test program [and] will be used to validate the flight and ground loads capability in the airframe,” he said.
The second fuselage gives Sikorsky the option to build a second competitive prototype, but “we’ll kind of make those decisions as we go down,” Macklin said. The company will also give the Army data from tests on the S-97 Raider, the platform Raider X is based on, he noted.
“As all programs move through their process and things move all around, we feel like this is the best way to reduce risk to provide an absolutely low risk solution for that increment 1 design,” he said.
For the upcoming fiscal year, the Army is not slowing down on its investment in future vertical lift. Service officials told reporters the Army is requesting $1.5 billion for its future vertical lift program, nearly identical to last year’s budget request.
The 2023 budget request includes $468.7 million for FARA’s hardware and software development, component subsystem assembly, integration and testing as well as software and hardware in the loop efforts, said Brig. Gen. Michael McCurry at a roundtable in March after the budget request was released.
He added that the $693.6 million request for FLRAA would go toward finishing preliminary design efforts, weapon systems and virtual prototyping. Later in fiscal year 2023, the Army would use the funding to look for weapons system contract options, he said.
The future vertical lift portfolio isn’t going to change the “core competencies” of aviation, but how the Army fights will shift, said Maj. Gen. David Francis at a panel during the Army aviation summit.
“The geometry of the battlefield, the options available to maneuver commanders, is going to significantly change, and we’re going to be able to provide much more capability and many more options to our maneuver commanders based on the capability that future vertical lift is going to provide,” he said.
15. Dodging shells, mines and spies: On the front with Ukraine’s snipers
Dodging shells, mines and spies: On the front with Ukraine’s snipers
A visit to the town of Maryinka brings a rare close-up look at the nature of the war in eastern Ukraine, described by Ukraine’s president as ‘hell’
By Sudarsan Raghavan
May 21, 2022 at 2:00 a.m. EDT
A visit to the town of Maryinka brings a rare close-up look at the nature of the war in eastern Ukraine, described by Ukraine’s president as ‘hell’
By
May 21, 2022 at 2:00 a.m. EDT
MARYINKA, Ukraine — Shortly after the Ukrainian sniper team arrived, a Russian shell slammed close to the operations base, rattling the windows and shaking the earth. A second one crashed moments later, then a third. Two Ukrainian drone operators arrived on yellow bicycles. They, too, had narrowly avoided a mortar attack.
On this volatile morning, the snipers’ mission was to set up a forward position in this war-wrecked front-line town, vital to slowing the Russian advance in eastern Ukraine. It required a risky 300-yard dash across several street blocks, including a main road that the Russians were actively pounding. The unit had to avoid stepping on mines — or revealing themselves to locals who might tip off the Russians.
There was a lull in the artillery barrage.
“Let’s go now,” declared Dmytro Pyatnikovskiy, 38, the leader of the five-member team.
But then another shell rammed into the ground.
With Russia’s military pushed out of Kyiv and on the retreat in Kharkiv, the war is now being waged largely in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, in and around villages and towns like Maryinka. Russian forces are trying to push south from the town of Izyum and west from Moscow-backed separatist-controlled areas in a bid to fully take over Donbas, to which the Kremlin has laid claim on the grounds of defending its large Russian-speaking population.
But the Ukrainian troops here, a mix of soldiers and volunteers, have resisted stiffly, inflicting heavy casualties under conditions that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has described as “hell.” More than a month after Moscow shifted its focus to seizing the country’s east, the Russians have made limited gains so far; in many areas, their offensive has ground to a stalemate.
A visit to Maryinka brought a rare close-up look at the current nature of the war in eastern Ukraine — fueled now by crushing artillery battles aided by drones and snipers — and showed why Russian forces have failed to break Ukraine’s defensive lines.
“The Russians only fire with artillery and tanks now,” said Curly, 35, a drone operator who gave only his nom de guerre. “They don’t engage in close combat. Because they know they will get kicked by us. There are Russian ground units, but they are afraid to come to Ukrainian positions. We shell them with mortars.
“It’s like badminton.”
Another lull. Pyatnikovskiy, known to his team as Dima, glanced at his comrades and nodded. This was their window of opportunity.
Carrying their rifles, they moved out of the building and onto a side street. Curly, a welder before the war who has fought in the town since April and knows the terrain, joined them. As they reached an intersection, Curly suggested they go straight across — there had been less shelling up ahead. But Dima disagreed.
“Do you want to go through the park?” Dima asked. “There is nowhere to take cover.”
“There is,” Curly replied.
“There are at least walls here,” said Dima, indicating the road to his left. Everyone followed.
They trotted alongside the walls of abandoned houses, some shattered by artillery, and past fences pocked with shrapnel. Tree-lined sidewalks were strewn with broken glass and torn open by mortar fire. The streets were ghostly. Not a resident was in sight.
As they neared the main road, the soldiers started to run.
The day before, the sniper team had set up camp in a village overlooking a lake roughly five miles outside Maryinka. They took food and other supplies, constructed a makeshift shower and dug a pit latrine.
Like many Ukrainian fighters, the five had been civilians before Russia invaded on Feb. 24. All from the southeastern city of Dnipro, they shared a passion for high-powered guns; all were members of a local shooting club called Wild Fields. They joined a volunteer corps and were sent to protect strategic sites. But what they really wanted was to put their skills to use. Now they were finally getting their chance. For three of them, Maryinka was their first front-line mission.
They were a motley crew. There was Alex, 34, a tall, blond boxing trainer; Andrei Kolupailo, 47, a towering businessman; and Oleksi Shapoval, 33, a wiry construction worker. Dima, also a construction worker, was a sniper trainer at the shooting club. All had purchased their own sniper rifles.
Oksana, 35, the curly-haired mother of a 5-year-old boy, was a former electrical engineer who had spent six years as a fire juggler in a circus that traveled around the world. She was now one of the small group of female snipers in the Ukrainian forces who can hit a target nearly a mile away.
“It is frowned upon in our society that a woman is in the military and doing this line of work,” said Oksana, who for this reason declined to give her family name. “I may be judged later for decisions I made here. But it’s not about gender to be patriotic and do your part for your country.”
What team members lacked in front-line experience, they made up in confidence. They were bolstered by Ukrainian counteroffensives around Kharkiv that drove the Russians beyond artillery range and, in some cases, back to their border. Ukrainian aircraft and drones are actively bombing Russian positions in Donbas.
The snipers’ primary mission was reconnaissance. But they also had orders to kill high-value targets, such as commanders or officers, whenever they saw an opportunity.
“Finally! I get to kill the occupiers,” Oksana said. “We were trained to be here.”
The Russians “have had losses in Kyiv,” she said. “They have had losses now in Kharkiv. We are more than capable of fighting off the Russians. They will not push through here.”
But the snipers also understood the volatility of the landscape, and how swiftly front lines in Donbas can shift. The region is made up of two provinces, Luhansk and Donetsk, portions of which were under Russian control before the war.
Russian forces have seized nearly all of Luhansk and besieged the strategic city of Severodonetsk from three sides. If the city falls, it could open the way for the Russians to push toward major cities such as Kramatorsk and Slovyansk.
The Ukrainians still control much of Donetsk, but after weeks of bombardment, the Russians have taken the port city of Mariupol. Keeping the Russians from seizing Maryinka has grown more urgent.
“It’s very important,” Kolupailo said. “If we lose this location, the Russians can advance in Donetsk.”
This town has been in the crosshairs of war since 2014, when conflict erupted between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces. By the time a cease-fire was signed the following year, Maryinka had been shattered.
The town now is split between Ukrainian and Russian zones, lines that have been static for weeks. The sides are fighting a battle of attrition in which the enemy is rarely seen.
“It’s harder to gain territory here because the Russians have had more time to fortify their positions,” Dima said. “They have the same problem with pushing through the line into the Ukrainian side because the Ukrainian positions are also fortified.
“It’s a game of moving backward and forward.”
That hasn’t stopped the Russians from trying. Last month, they reached a bridge roughly a mile from the operations base. The Ukrainians destroyed it, Curly said, but the Russians managed to cross the river and a battle erupted. The Ukrainians pulled back. “There is still a dead soldier from my unit lying there,” Curly said.
But since then, the Russians have not moved.
“We have to fall back sometimes from our positions because we are getting shelled, we are getting bombed,” Curly said. “We don’t surrender the territory, but we retreat tactically.
“Now, every time the Russians try to advance with their tanks, they get shelled from the Ukrainian side. They cannot move forward from that position.”
Each side flies surveillance drones to spy on the other and to identify targets to shell. Curly’s drones have sent back images of Russian positions and tank movements, vital information for the mortar and artillery units.
Curly’s younger brother, whose nom de guerre translates roughly to “crappy Ukrainian car,” is an actor and aviation hobbyist. A few weeks ago, he devised tiny homemade bombs to attach to the drones. One night, Curly attached a thermal scope to a drone, spotted a group of Russian soldiers and dropped one of his brother’s bombs on them.
When the Ukrainians spot a Russian drone overhead, they prepare for a barrage of artillery.
The Ukrainian forces here have received some U.S. and Western military support, including Javelin and NLAW antitank missiles. But they have far from enough heavy weaponry to launch counteroffensives, soldiers said. “If we have more of these weapons, it will tip the scale against the Russians,” Curly’s brother said.
Behind their own lines, the Ukrainians suspect that a large percentage of the civilians who have remained in Maryinka support Russia and are collaborating with the enemy. Locals accused of tipping off the Russians to Ukrainian positions have been apprehended and jailed. One elderly woman was caught carrying Russian passports and several burner phones, Dima said.
A group of suspected Russian sympathizers is living in a basement of a school. Recently, Ukrainian soldiers found two phones with suspicious numbers. Now it’s a police matter, Curly said. The soldiers saw a benefit to keeping the residents in the school, which was near the operations base.
“Their presence actually helps because the Russians are not firing at this position,” Curly said.
For the snipers, there are additional challenges. Their reconnaissance mission means observing Russian forces to understand their number, the timing of their movements and the type and amount of equipment they have.
“It’s very important for us to learn about all of the threats so Ukrainians won’t become targets for Russians,” Oksana said. “As snipers, we are trying to minimize the risks for all units on the ground and in the area.”
But getting close enough to surveil the Russians is a risky endeavor. Both sides have planted mines and improvised explosives around the town. “Mines are everywhere,” said Kolupailo. “You have to be very mindful of where you are stepping.”
Another danger is the Russians spotting the snipers and shelling them. “The first obstacle is you have to choose the location wisely, Kolupailo said. “The second one is to sneak into the position quietly, and the third is to leave the location quietly.”
But even the best-laid plans can go awry. Two weeks ago, a different team led by Dima set up position in a building. Other units had said their intelligence indicated there were no Russian positions nearby, said Shapoval (He was with Dima on that mission, too).
“A few minutes later, [a rocket-propelled grenade] struck a few meters away from us,” Shapoval said.
The intelligence had been wrong. The snipers dismantled their guns and fled before they could be targeted again.
All these risks weighed on Dima, Shapoval and Alex as they ran across the main road. Oksana and Kolupailo remained in their camp, preparing to take the next shift.
The snipers crossed the road and walked swiftly past an abandoned market, its windows blown out, its roof battered by shells. As they turned into a yard with rusting, broken cars, a shell crashed.
“Go, go, go!” Dima yelled, ordering everyone to take cover near a wall.
They opened a red gate into a yard filled with debris to get to a former administrative building, its windows barricaded with sandbags and books. They gingerly climbed stairs littered with bricks and debris toward the top floor.
They were wary of mines or other booby traps. With the windows of the building large and open, they walked low to the ground, their backs hunched, to avoid appearing in a Russian sniper’s crosshairs.
The Ukrainians’ focus was on an emerald green hilltop nearly a mile away.
“The Russian positions are over there,” Dima said, pointing out the window. “The sandbags you see are Ukrainian. Everything beyond that point is Russian.”
In a corner of the room, away from the windows, the snipers set up a high-powered rifle and pointed the long scope at the hilltop. Alex pulled out a pair of binoculars and Dima directed him to observe the Russian position. Shapoval opened a tripod and placed a camera atop it. He looked through the rifle’s scope.
The Russians were launching mortar fire, shells and Grad rockets toward the area. The rifle the snipers had set up could hit a target a mile away. They would be able to kill the Russian troops that were firing on them.
“This is going to be our position,” Dima said.
Serhii Korolchuk contributed to this report.
16. It’s Time to Stop Giving Crypto Companies a Pass
Excerpts:
As cryptocurrency use grows, so will the need for tighter anti-money laundering and sanctions rules targeting exchanges, wallet providers and other digital asset platforms. In March, President Joe Biden issued an executive order directing key national security agencies to develop a comprehensive strategy to keep America safe and hold our enemies accountable in the evolving digital asset space. Congress, which has historically enacted new sanctions in the face of myriad threats on a bipartisan basis, should be part of that process, too.
It’s true Sherman and Warren’s bills need improvement, including a standard for sanctions to be imposed only if virtual currency platforms know or should have known about illicit activity in their midst—the same standard applied to banks. But their overarching direction is correct—and Congress needs to lead in designing sanctions for the age of digital assets, not just with respect to Russia.
Republicans should help their Democratic colleagues improve their proposals, and get on the right side of policymaking in the face of crypto’s national security challenges. As Putin’s crimes against humanity continue in Ukraine, no one should get a pass—least of which platforms designed to conceal identities and make illicit finance that much easier.
It’s Time to Stop Giving Crypto Companies a Pass
The young industry is pushing back on attempts at regulation, but it’s undeniable that crypto is used for sanctions evasion and illicit activity.
(Photograph by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images.)
In response to growing concerns, including from U.S. sanctions officials that Vladimir Putin and his oligarch allies might look to cryptocurrency to conceal their financial movements, two bills—one in the House, sponsored by Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), the other in the Senate, sponsored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—would authorize the president to impose financial sanctions on any digital asset trading platform that provides services to a sanctioned Russian person or entity.
The pro-crypto lobby is unhappy, and has reportedly spent $460,000 to oppose the legislation. While the decision to side with Putin and his allies risks significant reputational damage for a burgeoning industry desperate for Washington’s legitimization, it should also serve as a wake-up call to congressional Republicans to stop giving crypto companies a pass.
“These bills don’t target Russian oligarchs, who aren’t using (& can’t use) crypto to evade sanctions,” declared the policy director for the Blockchain Association, a lobbying group representing more than 70 crypto platforms. The statement is not true. Crypto can be used for sanctions evasion, and sanctions have always been applied to platforms that knowingly enable or facilitate sanctionable transactions. Indeed, Russian crypto abuses are nothing new.
Russia has emerged as a haven for cybercriminals who live on the digital decentralized ledger known as the blockchain, and it’s already the third-largest cryptocurrency miner in the world. Russia is a hub for “ransomware-as-a-service” providers who operate on the dark web, often with the connivance or even support of Putin’s regime. Now, as traditional bank compliance programs shut down the oligarchs’ ability to move funds, cryptocurrency platforms are an attractive conduit for sanctions evasion.
Why then is the pro-cryptocurrency lobby so blatantly denying reality and opposing sanctions intended to put even more pressure on Putin and his allies?
The banking sector managed to adapt to this kind of legislating over the past two decades. After the 9/11 attacks, Congress passed legislation holding banks accountable for money laundering and terror finance happening under their noses. That, combined with the Treasury Department’s development of financial sanctions authorities and an explosion of congressionally mandated sanctions targeting banks doing business in places like Iran, led to a massive investment in compliance software, systems, and personnel by the financial industry.
Crypto, however, is still in its infancy. Understanding that laws and regulations forcing onerous standards on transparency and preventing illicit activity on its platforms could upend its market strategy and depress investment, the crypto industry is pushing back on efforts to hold it accountable.
Until now, part of the attraction for virtual-currency users has been the relative anonymity of certain digital assets—the ability to mask identities and move money absent government oversight or intervention. Which is why terrorist organizations, cartels, human traffickers, cybercriminals, and run-of-the-mill money launderers have often looked to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to facilitate their illicit operations.
The Treasury Department is keenly aware of the illicit-finance challenges posed by cryptocurrencies. Last year, Treasury published its first sanctions compliance guideline for the virtual currency industry and has since targeted wallets and exchanges tied to ransomware attacks. In April, the department imposed sanctions on a crypto miner in Russia and just last week announced its first-ever sanctions targeting a “virtual currency mixer”—a technology that makes it even harder to track the origin, destination, and counterparties of blockchain transactions.
As cryptocurrency use grows, so will the need for tighter anti-money laundering and sanctions rules targeting exchanges, wallet providers and other digital asset platforms. In March, President Joe Biden issued an executive order directing key national security agencies to develop a comprehensive strategy to keep America safe and hold our enemies accountable in the evolving digital asset space. Congress, which has historically enacted new sanctions in the face of myriad threats on a bipartisan basis, should be part of that process, too.
It’s true Sherman and Warren’s bills need improvement, including a standard for sanctions to be imposed only if virtual currency platforms know or should have known about illicit activity in their midst—the same standard applied to banks. But their overarching direction is correct—and Congress needs to lead in designing sanctions for the age of digital assets, not just with respect to Russia.
Republicans should help their Democratic colleagues improve their proposals, and get on the right side of policymaking in the face of crypto’s national security challenges. As Putin’s crimes against humanity continue in Ukraine, no one should get a pass—least of which platforms designed to conceal identities and make illicit finance that much easier.
Richard Goldberg, a former National Security Council official, is a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and host of “Cryptonite,” a podcast on cryptocurrency policymaking.
17. FDD | Consider Designating Russia as a Jurisdiction of Primary Money Laundering Concern
Excerpts:
Meanwhile, following Moscow’s March departure from the FATF-style regional watchdog MONEYVAL, Russia will face less international scrutiny regarding illicit finance. FATF itself “is reviewing Russia’s role” in the body, per a March 4 statement, and has faced international calls to expel Moscow.
Treasury has already begun laying the groundwork for a 311 designation of Russia as a whole. In a March 7 advisory, Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network warned “all financial institutions to be vigilant against [Russian] efforts to evade” U.S. sanctions, outlining various schemes Russian actors may use to obscure their money’s ultimate owner and source. While that particular advisory did not directly accuse Moscow of fostering illicit financial activity, it underscores the heightened illicit-finance risks Russia poses.
A 311 designation against the Russian Federation can further U.S. efforts to combat Russian sanctions evasion and fight corruption worldwide. To maximize effectiveness, Washington should layer this designation with other sanctions to compel financial institutions to cut ties or curtail operations with Russian banks.
FDD | Consider Designating Russia as a Jurisdiction of Primary Money Laundering Concern
John Hardie
Research Manager and Senior Research Analyst
fdd.org · by Matthew Zweig Senior Fellow · May 20, 2022
Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) last week called on the Treasury Department to designate a Russian bank and two related entities as institutions of “primary money laundering concern” (PMLC) under Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act. While these three targets merit examination, Treasury should consider evidence that the entirety of Russia is rapidly emerging as a PMLC.
Daines urged Treasury to impose a Section 311 designation against Bank Rossiya, the personal bank of Vladimir Putin and a number of his key associates. Treasury imposed sanctions blocking the property of Bank Rossiya in 2014. Daines also called for similar designations against two Cyprus- and Netherlands-based firms controlled by Bank Rossiya that “appear to act as funnels for Russia’s money laundering and investment activities.”
The Russian illicit-finance threat extends far beyond these three targets, however. Over the past several years, investigations have unearthed a slew of major money laundering schemes originating from or otherwise involving Russia.
Section 311 empowers Treasury to label a type of transaction, a foreign financial institution, or an entire jurisdiction as a PMLC. There is precedent for designating entire countries as PMLCs, as Treasury did to Iran and North Korea. Following a designation, Treasury can apply measures to counter the money laundering threat, such as requiring U.S. banks to apply enhanced due diligence or to halt or restrict their financial transactions with the designated institution or jurisdiction.
PMLC designations also discourage non-U.S. banks from doing business with the designated jurisdiction. Because most major banks worldwide depend on the U.S. financial system, they will often voluntarily eschew business in designated jurisdictions out of an abundance of caution. A PMLC designation is thus an important building block in any comprehensive sanctions program, which is precisely where the Russia program is heading.
While Russia’s central bank deserves some credit for shuttering hundreds of suspicious banks as part of a campaign to clean up Russia’s banking sector, Russian authorities still allow well-connected figures to launder stolen funds with impunity. Russia received good marks in its latest review by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a 39-member intergovernmental body that establishes international standards for combating illicit finance. However, FATF focuses more on whether countries have proper anti-money laundering statutes on the books than whether the government enforces those laws.
Facing unprecedented economic pressure following its invasion of Ukraine, Russia will likely expand efforts to evade Western sanctions, thereby reinforcing the argument for treating the entire country as a PMLC. The Russians have long been adept at laundering money abroad, whether to evade financial sanctions and export controls, stash dirty money offshore, or facilitate meddling in foreign countries. Already, Moscow and Russian oligarchs, banks, and companies are working to circumvent existing or potential sanctions, such as shifting assets to networks of opaque shell companies.
Meanwhile, following Moscow’s March departure from the FATF-style regional watchdog MONEYVAL, Russia will face less international scrutiny regarding illicit finance. FATF itself “is reviewing Russia’s role” in the body, per a March 4 statement, and has faced international calls to expel Moscow.
Treasury has already begun laying the groundwork for a 311 designation of Russia as a whole. In a March 7 advisory, Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network warned “all financial institutions to be vigilant against [Russian] efforts to evade” U.S. sanctions, outlining various schemes Russian actors may use to obscure their money’s ultimate owner and source. While that particular advisory did not directly accuse Moscow of fostering illicit financial activity, it underscores the heightened illicit-finance risks Russia poses.
A 311 designation against the Russian Federation can further U.S. efforts to combat Russian sanctions evasion and fight corruption worldwide. To maximize effectiveness, Washington should layer this designation with other sanctions to compel financial institutions to cut ties or curtail operations with Russian banks.
Matthew Zweig is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where John Hardie is research manager and a senior research analyst. They both contribute to FDD’s Center on Economic and Financial Power (CEFP). For more analysis from the authors and CEFP, please subscribe HERE. Follow Matthew on Twitter @MatthewZweig1. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_CEFP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research center focused on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Matthew Zweig Senior Fellow · May 20, 2022
18. Philippines' Marcos says he discussed defence deal with U.S. envoy
Philippines' Marcos says he discussed defence deal with U.S. envoy
MANILA, May 23 (Reuters) - Philippines president-elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr said on Monday he discussed the extension of a joint military agreement with an envoy of defence ally the United States, after meetings with senior diplomats of four countries.
Ambassadors of Japan, India and South Korea and the U.S. U.S. Chargé d’Affaires made courtesy calls on Monday to Marcos, the son and namesake of the notorious late dictator, following his landslide election victory this month. read more
Marcos, 64, who take office late in June, said he discussed with the U.S. envoy the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) and how it would be redefined amid a changing regional landscape, plus funding for climate change mitigation.
"We would welcome any assistance for the economy that we can get from the United States," Marcos told a news conference. "Trade, not aid."
The VFA, which provides a legal framework by which U.S. troops can operate on Philippine soil, was a bone of contention for incumbent President Rodrigo Duterte, who repeatedly threatened to scrap it.
"Security concerns of course has always been a big part of our relationship with the United States," Marcos said.
Analysts expect Marcos to pursue close China ties, which could complicate relations with former colonial power Washington, his military, and the Philippine public, with which the United States is popular.
He last week spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping and said he wanted bilateral ties to "shift to a higher gear". read more
Marcos said he discussed aid projects with Japan's ambassador, microfinance with India and with South Korea, information technology, regional security and the possible reactivation of a disused nuclear plant.
The plant was intended by his late father to be part of his economic modernisation legacy, but was mothballed after his overthrow in a 1986 "people power" uprising, two years after completion. read more
Marcos said he asked Arsenio Balisacan, the national anti-trust agency chief, to be economic planning minister, a role he held from 2012 to 2016 under an administration that was a rival to the influential Marcos family.
Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Martin Petty
19. Philippines Under a New Marcos Won’t Be an Easy US Ally
Excerpts:
What can the US do to steer the Philippines away from Chinese influence? Incentives could include intelligence-sharing on rebel Islamic movements in the southern islands; US Special Forces training focused on counterterrorism; providing radar, sonar and satellite systems useful to the Philippines for monitoring its vast seascape; training in coastal maritime operations conducted by the US Coast Guard; potentially giving away ships from US Coast Guard and Navy (the littoral combat ships the Navy wants to decommission should be considered); and counter-narcotics training and intelligence support through the Drug Enforcement Agency. Additional economic and humanitarian assistance, particularly tied to Covid-19, and free-trade incentives could be rolled in as well.
Despite the overhang of a controversial period of colonial oversight early in the 20th century, polls consistently show that Filipinos have positive feelings about the US, certainly a higher opinion than they have of China. There is also an influential community of around 5 million Filipino-Americans helping link the nations together.
With a new team taking power in Manila, the US must engage aggressively. In World War II, General Douglas MacArthur famously said after being expelled from the islands by the Japanese, “I will return.” The US today must seek to return to a tight and lasting relationship with the Philippines.
Philippines Under a New Marcos Won’t Be an Easy US Ally
May 22, 2022, 6:00 PM EDT
Biden, in Asia, should send a signal that Washington won’t let a longtime friend drift into China’s sphere.
This month’s landslide election in the Philippines returned the Marcos family to power, in the form of Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., the eldest son of the longtime dictator and staunch US ally who was overthrown in 1986. For Joe Biden, now on his first trip to the region as US president, it’s unclear whether this is good news or bad.
The previous Filipino president, Rodrigo Duterte, had a rocky relationship with Washington (for example, calling President Barack Obama “the son of a whore”). Duterte’s daughter Sara was elected vice president on a platform of continuing her father’s programs, including a willingness to tighten ties with China.
Still, as the US works to build a diplomatic coalition in the Indo-Pacific to balance China, it has an opportunity to improve relations with the rapidly growing archipelagic nation of 110 million.
As a junior officer in the US Navy, I sailed into Subic Bay at the island of Luzon for the first time in 1977. I was an ensign serving as the antisubmarine officer on a destroyer, the Hewitt, focused on the threats emanating from the Soviet Union.
Subic Bay Naval Station was one of the largest in the world, situated on over 250 square miles, with extensive repair and logistics facilities. Nearby Cubi Point Naval Air Station was likewise a crucial American outpost throughout the Cold War and the war in Vietnam. To the north, near Manila, US jets operated out of Clark Air Force Base, another huge installation with a population of 15,000 US citizens. In those years, it would have been hard to imagine not having access to such crucial locations.
But a natural disaster, the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991, severely damaged Clark Air Force Base and led to its closure. The Subic Bay port was also badly damaged. That catastrophe, combined with changing politics in the Philippines and disputes over leasing costs, ended the overall basing arrangements and led to the departure of all significant US forces in 1992.
As an alternative, the US has built up its naval and aviation capabilities in Guam, a US territory 1,500 miles to the east of Luzon, and in Japan and South Korea. The Pentagon has also upped its contingents in Australia and Singapore, both solid US allies.
Yet a glance at the map shows why the Philippines remain so geopolitically important, especially in the growing regional and international competition with China. The vast island chain forms the “Eastern Wall” of the South China Sea, through which passes a third of the world’s maritime trade.
That body of water — half the size of the continental US — is also full of hydrocarbons, both oil and gas. Couple that with the Philippines’ youthful population and long historical relationship with the U.S., which annexed the islands in 1898, and it is clear that the alliance is an important one for Washington.
Unfortunately, the unpredictable autocrat Duterte moved his nation much closer to China’s sphere of influence — despite significant territorial disputes in the South China Sea. The Filipinos won a landmark decision from an international tribunal in 2016 that denied many of China’s maritime claims, but the Manila government largely failed to enforce its victory.
US counterterrorism missions supporting Philippine efforts against radical Islamic groups were truncated, and at one point the Philippines threatened to withdraw from the Visiting Forces Agreement, a standard pact required for the deployment of US forces to a foreign nation. Ultimately, the Duterte administration stayed in the forces agreement, and this spring conducted an exercise involving thousands of service personnel from both countries, known as the Balikatan (a Tagalog word meaning “shoulder to shoulder”).
While the return of a Marcos to the presidency provides a potential opportunity for increased re-engagement, the initial indications are not promising. The first significant outreach by the new president was not to Washington but to Beijing, in a highly publicized phone call with President Xi Jinping. While the two leaders acknowledged their ongoing disagreement over the islands and fishing grounds of the South China Sea, it’s obvious that the Marcos regime will look for significant financial support from China. The new president says his nation’s diplomatic ties with Beijing are “set to shift to a higher gear.”
On the other hand, president-elect Marcos went to Australia for vacation immediately after the election, indicating at least an openness to continuing strong relations with the West.
Biden’s Asia trip will include a meeting Tuesday with the leaders of the other members of the so-called Quad — Australia, India and Japan. The goal is to reassure allies that it will not lose sight of the challenges in the Pacific even as the war in Ukraine is drawing attention to Europe. Biden wants that message to resonate across the region, including in the Philippines.
The likelihood of a sudden epiphany in Manila about an improved security relationship with the US is low. But the new government is likely to hedge by working with Washington on various issues. And the 1951 Mutual Defense Agreement, which guarantees both nations will react to an attack on the other, will continue as the security bedrock for Manila.
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What can the US do to steer the Philippines away from Chinese influence? Incentives could include intelligence-sharing on rebel Islamic movements in the southern islands; US Special Forces training focused on counterterrorism; providing radar, sonar and satellite systems useful to the Philippines for monitoring its vast seascape; training in coastal maritime operations conducted by the US Coast Guard; potentially giving away ships from US Coast Guard and Navy (the littoral combat ships the Navy wants to decommission should be considered); and counter-narcotics training and intelligence support through the Drug Enforcement Agency. Additional economic and humanitarian assistance, particularly tied to Covid-19, and free-trade incentives could be rolled in as well.
Despite the overhang of a controversial period of colonial oversight early in the 20th century, polls consistently show that Filipinos have positive feelings about the US, certainly a higher opinion than they have of China. There is also an influential community of around 5 million Filipino-Americans helping link the nations together.
With a new team taking power in Manila, the US must engage aggressively. In World War II, General Douglas MacArthur famously said after being expelled from the islands by the Japanese, “I will return.” The US today must seek to return to a tight and lasting relationship with the Philippines.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
To contact the author of this story:
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
20. Pentagon says ‘no decisions have been made’ on special forces at Kyiv embassy
Pentagon says ‘no decisions have been made’ on special forces at Kyiv embassy
The Pentagon said “no decisions have been made” about sending special forces to protect the newly reopened embassy in Kyiv, following a report from The Wall Street Journal that officials are considering the deployment.
The Journal cited U.S. officials saying a potential U.S. troop presence at the embassy would only be for defense and security of the embassy specifically, but that the plan had not yet been presented to Biden.
“We are in close touch with our colleagues at the State Department about potential security requirements now that they have resumed operations at the embassy in Kiev,” the Pentagon said in a statement to The Hill on Sunday, “but no decisions have been made — and no specific proposals have been debated — at senior levels of the department about the return of U.S. military members to Ukraine for that or any other purpose.”
Should such a plan progress, it would mark a backtracking on the president’s promise that U.S. troops would not be sent to Ukraine amid Russia’s invasion of the country.
Currently, the Kyiv embassy’s security comes from the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service, the Journal noted.
The Biden administration is seeking to balance concerns about provoking Russian attacks on American personnel while also having enough forces to extract those Americans in the event of an escalation of attacks on Kyiv.
Last month, the Biden administration announced that the U.S. embassy in Kyiv would be reopened after Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin both visited Ukraine’s capital city.
The embassy raised the U.S. flag once again on Wednesday, about three months after lowering it before Russia launched its invasion.
The Senate also confirmed Bridget Brink last week as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. The veteran foreign service officer was nominated to the position last month by President Joe Biden.
21. This soldier fought for Finland, Nazi Germany and U.S. Special Forces
This would never happen today with our fear of immigrants. He certainly would not get security clearance with all his "foreign contacts."
But seriously this is one great American and what makes America truly great.
I had the honor of attending the interment ceremony for this great American SF soldier (along with the remains of the members of the Vietnamese crew of the helicopter) at Arlington in 2003.
This soldier fought for Finland, Nazi Germany and U.S. Special Forces
In 1939, an officer in the Finnish army helped defend his country against a Soviet invasion, earning two Medals of Liberty for his actions.
In 1941, a soldier fighting for the SS joined Germany’s war against the Red Army, commanding a tank platoon in the Karelia offensive.
In 1963, a member of the U.S. Special Forces earned a Bronze Star and Purple Heart in Vietnam and undertook a reconnaissance mission to search for the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos.
All three soldiers were the same man: Lauri Törni.
Finland formally applied to join NATO last week, marking a dramatic reversal from its longtime policy of military nonalignment. For many years, before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February caused Finnish public support for joining NATO to jump to a record 76 percent, just 20 to 25 percent of Finns had wanted to join the alliance.
But Finland and NATO have worked together in the past, including in 1996 when Finland contributed a battalion to the peacekeeping forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina as part of the Bosnian War. And no one better embodies the complexities and contradictions of Finland’s foreign entanglements over the decades than Törni.
Across his various postings for three countries, Törni’s apparent motivation — to keep Russian aggression at bay — is one that seems to be shared by the majority of today’s Finns.
Conflict with Russia was a reality for Törni, not just a fear. When he volunteered for military service in September 1938 and the Red Army moved to occupy Finland, he and his countrymen found themselves overwhelmed by Soviet manpower.
According to Mika Karttunen’s 2007 documentary, “Törni - Sotilaan Tarina (A Soldier’s Story),” Törni’s proficiency in combat saw him recommended for Reserve Officer School, where he was given command of a Swedish-speaking company — even though he didn’t speak Swedish.
He used hand signals to lead his team, which excelled in battle. Törni was awarded first- and second-class Medals of Liberty before the Winter War ended on March 13, 1940, with Finland ceding land to the U.S.S.R. but maintaining its sovereignty and most of its territory.
He returned to find his hometown of Vyborg destroyed and his family homeless.
Nazi Germany offered the Finnish forces arms and assistance in return for passage into their country. When Finland sent a voluntary battalion to SS Division Wiking, Törni — restless from time away from the battlefield, and having fallen into brawling and heavy drinking — was among the volunteers onboard a ship of 289 recruits.
He was promoted to the rank of Untersturmführer, but his prospects for further advancement were limited. Men who did not get along with the Germans were sent back. Törni was one of them.
When a second conflict between Finland and the U.S.S.R., the Continuation War, broke out on June 25, 1941, Törni was given command of a machine gun platoon. He was promoted to lieutenant and awarded a third-class Cross of Freedom medal for his leadership.
He was also able to form his own company, Detachment Törni. The company’s work behind enemy lines involved hogtieing Soviet troops, disabling transport and sowing terror among the Russians. It earned Törni a German Iron Cross from his occupying commanders, and a 3-million-mark bounty on his head from the Soviets.
Russian female enlistees were said to have patrolled battle lines shouting through megaphones: “Bring us Törni’s head! Dead or alive! You’ll get 3 million!”
A further honor — the second-class Mannerheim Cross, which Törni received on June 9, 1944 — came with a 50,000-mark cash prize, most of which Törni drank away with his comrades.
With his homeland in turmoil and the threat of Soviet occupation still hovering, Törni boarded a U-boat for Germany in 1945, seeking action after having been refused permission to join the Lapland War in the north of his country. But World War II was drawing to a close, and the 1944 Moscow Armistice — signed by Finland, Russia and the United Kingdom — had ordered the Finnish government to expel the occupying German troops.
The next year, Törni was arrested by Finnish state police for high treason. Convicted in 1948 of “arming a resistance movement against the Finnish and Soviet forces,” he was sent to Turku Provincial Prison — and then escaped.
Törni tried to reach Sweden but was caught, earning a six-month extension to his original sentence. A further escape saw him recaptured and sent to another prison. He was pardoned by Finnish President Juho Paasikivi in December 1948.
Seeking a fresh start, Törni boarded a freighter bound for Venezuela, and then a Norwegian vessel heading for the United States. It was illegal for him to enter, but Törni jumped ship and swam to Mobile, Ala., stepping onto U.S. soil on Sept. 20, 1950.
Despite a lack of money or a firm grasp of the English language, Törni made it to New York, where he was welcomed by the Finnish immigrant community. According to the 2007 documentary, some of his enlisted buddies “pulled some strings,” and Törni’s application for U.S. citizenship was approved on Jan. 27, 1954. His service under a third flag could begin.
Lauri Törni changed his name to Larry Allan Thorne. With his SS tattoo removed and a wealth of combat experience to draw on, he received postings at Forts Dix, Carson, Benning and Bragg. He was selected for training as a Special Forces officer, and in 1963 began his first tour of Vietnam, setting up a base camp near the Cambodian border.
Thorne helped build schools and hospitals, and would return to Fort Bragg with Bronze Star and Purple Heart medals.
But when faced with an old enemy — civilian restlessness — he volunteered for a second tour with the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (Studies and Observations Group), a top-secret unit not officially recognized by the government, and tasked with recon missions across the border into Laos. Thorne’s long-range patrol skills developed during the Continuation War could once again be called upon.
On Oct. 18, 1965, the former Finnish Civil Guard, ex-Untersturmführer and serving Special Forces major boarded an unmarked helicopter tasked with finding the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a communist supply route. It disappeared in bad weather.
More than 50 search missions failed to find Thorne or his comrades, each made difficult by the fact he was never officially in Laos. Thorne was declared dead on Oct. 19, 1966.
His remains would be eventually recovered 33 years later by Joint Task Force Full Accounting on the Laotian border. Today his grave lies at Arlington National Cemetery.
The American author Robin Moore, who visited Thorne’s camp at Chau Doc, Vietnam, wrote a character in his 1965 novel, “The Green Berets,” inspired by the Finn: Officer Sven (Steve) Kornie.
The book — which in 1968 became a film starring and directed by John Wayne — describes its Nordic hero as “the ideal Special Forces officer. Special Forces was his life: fighting, especially unorthodox warfare, was what he lived for.”
22. Biden launches Indo-Pacific trade deal, warns over inflation
Biden launches Indo-Pacific trade deal, warns over inflation
AP · by JOSH BOAK and AAMER MADHANI · May 23, 2022
TOKYO (AP) — President Joe Biden launched a new trade deal with 12 Indo-Pacific nations Monday aimed at strengthening their economies as he warned Americans worried about high inflation that it is “going to be a haul” before they feel relief. The president said he does not believe an economic recession is inevitable in the U.S.
Biden, speaking at a news conference after holding talks with Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, acknowledged the U.S. economy has “problems” but said they were “less consequential than the rest of the world has.”
He added: “This is going to be a haul. This is going to take some time.” In answer to a question, he rejected the idea a recession in the U.S. is inevitable.
His comments came just before Biden’s launch of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. His administration says the trade deal is designed to signal U.S. dedication to the contested economic sphere and to address the need for stability in commerce after disruptions caused by the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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Nations joining the U.S. in the pact are: Australia, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Along with the United States, they represent 40% of world GDP.
The countries said in a joint statement that the pact will help them collectively “prepare our economies for the future” after the fallout from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
Biden and Kishida were joined for the launch event by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while representatives from the other countries appeared by video. Modi was in Tokyo for Tuesday’s meeting of the Quad, a four-country security group that also includes the U.S., Japan and Australia.
The White House said the framework will help the United States and Asian economies work more closely on issues including supply chains, digital trade, clean energy, worker protections and anticorruption efforts. The details still need to be negotiated among the member countries, making it difficult for the administration to say how this agreement would fulfill the promise of helping U.S. workers and businesses while also meeting global needs.
Critics say the framework has gaping shortcomings. It doesn’t offer incentives to prospective partners by lowering tariffs or provide signatories with greater access to U.S. markets. Those limitations may not make the U.S. framework an attractive alternative to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which moved forward without the U.S. after former President Donald Trump pulled out. China, the largest trading partner for many in the region, is also seeking to join TPP.
“I think a lot of partners are going to look at that list and say: ‘That’s a good list of issues. I’m happy to be involved,’” said Matthew Goodman, a former director for international economics on the National Security Council during President Barack Obama’s administration. But he said they also may ask, “Are we going to get any tangible benefits out of participating in this framework?”
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Kishida hosted a formal state welcome for Biden at Akasaka Palace, including a white-clad military honor guard and band in the front plaza. Reviewing the assembled troops, Biden placed his hand over his heart as he passed the American flag and bowed slightly as he passed the Japanese standard.
The Japanese premier took office last fall and is looking to strengthen ties with the U.S. and build a personal relationship with Biden. The two leaders ended their day with dinner at Kochuan, an iconic Tokyo restaurant on the grounds of a Japanese garden.
Kishida said at their meeting that he was “absolutely delighted” to welcome Biden to Tokyo on the first Asia trip of his presidency. Along with Biden, he drove a tough line against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, saying the aggression “undermines the foundation of global order.”
Biden, who is in the midst of a five-day visit to South Korea and Japan, called the U.S.-Japanese alliance a “cornerstone of peace and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific” and thanked Japan for its “strong leadership” in standing up to Russia.
Kishida welcomed the new Biden trade pact but said he still hoped the president would reconsider the United States’ position and return it to the Trans-Pacific pact that Trump withdrew from.
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“We think it’s desirable for the United States to return to the TPP,” he said.
The new pact comes at a moment when the administration believes it has the edge in its competition with Beijing. Bloomberg Economics published a report last week projecting U.S. GDP growth at about 2.8% in 2022 compared to 2% for China, which has been trying to contain the coronavirus through strict lockdowns while also dealing with a property bust. The slowdown has undermined assumptions that China would automatically supplant the U.S. as the world’s leading economy.
“The fact that the United States will grow faster than China this year, for the first time since 1976, is a quite striking example of how countries in this region should be looking at the question of trends and trajectories,” said White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
The two leaders also met with families of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea decades ago. The White House said Biden “expressed his deepest condolences for their suffering, and called on North Korea to right this historic wrong and provide a full accounting of the 12 Japanese nationals who remain missing.”
The launch of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, also known as IPEF, has been billed by the White House as one of the bigger moments of Biden’s Asia trip and of his ongoing effort to bolster ties with Pacific allies. Through it all, administration officials have kept a close eye on China’s growing economic and military might in the region.
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In September the U.S. announced a new partnership with Australia and Britain called AUKUS that is aimed and deepening security, diplomatic and defense cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region.
The U.S. president has also devoted great attention to the informal alliance known as the Quad, formed during the response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed some 230,000 people. Biden and fellow leaders from the alliance are set to gather Tuesday in Tokyo for their second in-person meeting in less than a year.
And earlier this month, Biden gathered representatives from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Washington for a summit.
Taiwan — which had sought membership in the IPEF framework— isn’t among the governments that will be included. Participation of the self-ruled island of Taiwan, which China claims as its own, would have irked Beijing.
Sullivan said the U.S. wants to deepen its economic partnership with Taiwan, including on high technology issues and semiconductor supply on a one-to-one basis.
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The U.S. recognizes Beijing as the one government of China and doesn’t have diplomatic relations with Taiwan. However, it maintains unofficial contacts with Taiwan, including a de facto embassy in Taipei, the capital, and supplies military equipment to the island for its defense.
Biden’s comments drew a sharp response from China, which has claimed Taiwan to be a rogue province.
A White House official said Biden’s comments did not reflect a policy shift.
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Associated Press writers Zeke Miller and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.
AP · by JOSH BOAK and AAMER MADHANI · May 23, 2022
23. A new approach to defending Taiwan at the UN
Excerpts:
Moreover, if executed correctly, this appropriations maneuver could potentially be applied to other UN entities and multilateral institutions that have erroneously excluded Taiwan. That includes the International Civil Aviation Organization, a Chinese-led UN body that adamantly refused to share information about aviation operations with the Taiwanese government even as COVID-19 spread globally.
As Secretary of State Antony Blinken remarked last year, “Taiwan’s meaningful participation in the UN system is not a political issue, but a pragmatic one.” Working together, members of Congress from both political parties can and should help the Biden administration make good on its promise to defend Taiwan’s international standing. If not at the WHO, then when?
A new approach to defending Taiwan at the UN
BY CRAIG SINGLETON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 05/22/22 5:00 PM ET
Bowing to Chinese pressure for the fifth year in a row, the World Health Organization (WHO) is set to arbitrarily deny Taiwan’s request to attend the global health body’s annual agenda-setting meeting this month in Geneva. But, if the Biden administration and Congress are serious about undercutting Beijing’s campaign to delegitimize its democratic rival, then Washington should condition future WHO funding on the reinstatement of Taiwan to its rightful place at the United Nations (UN) specialized agency.
The Chinese Communist Party has long feared recognition of Taiwan as a sovereign state and its potential membership at the UN. The outpouring of sympathy for Ukraine following Russia’s unprovoked invasion has aroused fears that Taiwan would muster similar support if Beijing sought to achieve reunification by force. In response, Beijing has doubled down in claiming that the two scenarios are “totally different” and that Taiwan is an inseparable part of China’s territory. Yet China’s confidence has clearly been shaken. The result: Beijing will intensify its efforts to diplomatically isolate Taiwan, having already succeeded in reducing the number of countries that recognize Taipei from 20 in 2011 to only 13 today.
Luckily for China, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has enacted sweeping measures limiting Taiwan’s meaningful participation in UN activities. Under Guterres’ leadership, the UN has even denied Taiwanese diplomats credentials to access UN facilities. To justify Taiwan’s exclusion, Guterres has cited Beijing’s preferred interpretation of UN General Assembly resolution 2758, which, in 1971, awarded the Chinese seat at the UN to the People’s Republic of China based in Beijing. Still, this resolution did not prohibit Taiwan from participating at the UN and for decades following 2758’s adoption Taiwan regularly contributed to UN initiatives. Perhaps coincidentally, Beijing’s annual financial commitments to the UN have surged to more than $367 million — an increase of 75 percent — during Guterres’ term, making China now the second-largest UN contributor after the United States.
Much like Guterres, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’ hostility towards Taiwan has been evident since the start of his tenure in 2017. Back then, and with Beijing’s support, Tedros unilaterally upended years of precedent by prohibiting Taiwan from serving as a non-voting observer during WHO meetings, like this month’s World Health Assembly. That ban remained in effect throughout the pandemic, even as WHO experts hailed Taiwan’s exemplary response to the public health crisis. Regrettably, Taiwan’s marginalization at the WHO appears unlikely to change anytime soon. That’s because Tedros is on track to be reelected this month to a second five-year term after the Biden administration declined to nominate a more qualified, objective candidate to lead the beleaguered global health organization.
Perhaps sensing that Taiwan’s exclusion from the WHO risks becoming the norm rather than the exception, bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill last month directing the State Department to provide Congress with regular updates regarding U.S. efforts to reestablish Taiwan’s WHO status. The bill, which President Biden should sign into law, is certainly a step in the right direction. But, if the Biden administration is to be successful, its negotiators need more than a strategy — they require leverage.
One novel concept would be for Congress, the WHO’s third largest funder, to condition a portion of its contributions on Taiwan’s eventual re-instatement to the WHO. More specifically, Congress could mandate that Washington’s voluntary contributions, which totaled $415 million in 2021, be disbursed in two conditional tranches: the first following a stated commitment from Tedros that he plans to invite Taiwan to 2023’s World Health Assembly, and the second after Taiwan’s successful participation in next year’s event.
This approach would not jeopardize the WHO’s most pressing operations, such as its highly successful measles and polio vaccination campaigns. The reason: such initiatives are partially funded by Washington’s mandatory WHO dues, which totaled an additional $285 million last year, and contributions from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Moreover, if executed correctly, this appropriations maneuver could potentially be applied to other UN entities and multilateral institutions that have erroneously excluded Taiwan. That includes the International Civil Aviation Organization, a Chinese-led UN body that adamantly refused to share information about aviation operations with the Taiwanese government even as COVID-19 spread globally.
As Secretary of State Antony Blinken remarked last year, “Taiwan’s meaningful participation in the UN system is not a political issue, but a pragmatic one.” Working together, members of Congress from both political parties can and should help the Biden administration make good on its promise to defend Taiwan’s international standing. If not at the WHO, then when?
Craig Singleton, a former U.S. diplomat, is a senior China fellow at the non-partisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
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.
