Quotes of the Day:
"There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self."
- Aldous Huxley
"There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction."
- John F. Kennedy
"Brevity is a great charm of eloquence."
- Marcus Tullius Cicero
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MAY 6 (PUTIN'S WAR)
2. Russia’s offensive in Donbas bogs down
3. ‘I Simply Refuse’: Wiretaps Catch Putin’s Troops Breaking Own Tanks in Sabotage Scheme
4. US seeks to downplay role in sinking of Russian warship
5. THE PLA’S EVOLVING OUTLOOK ON URBAN WARFARE: LEARNING, TRAINING, AND IMPLICATIONS FOR TAIWAN
6. US intelligence told to keep quiet over role in Ukraine military triumphs
7. The Croesus Delusion: Why We Habitually Misread Sun Tzu
8. Training, Weapons, Intel: The US Military's Slow Slide Toward Confrontation with Russia over Ukraine
9. Putin’s Private Army Accused of Raping New Moms on Maternity Ward
10. CIA instructs Russians on how to share secrets with the spy agency
11. The Lessons Taiwan Is Learning From Ukraine
12. Putin’s Next Power Play Is a Parade
13. China’s Xi Proposes Global Security Initiative
14. Taiwan jets scramble as China air force enters air defence zone
15. Shadow Risk: How Gray Zone Campaigns Can Escalate
16. The mystery of the Moskva and Makarov
17. To Save Democracy and Defeat Putin, Give Up ‘the West’
18. Where’s Biden on growing nuclear threats?
19. Ukrainian tractors vs. Russian tanks: The hundred-year history behind the meme
20. How the West should respond to China’s search for foreign outposts
21. Pentagon moves $1.45 billion to restock Javelin, Stinger missiles sent to Ukraine
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MAY 6 (PUTIN'S WAR)
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MAY 6
Mason Clark and George Barros
May 6, 5:00 pm ET
The Ukrainian counteroffensive north and east of Kharkiv city secured further gains in the last 24 hours and may successfully push Russian forces out of artillery range of Kharkiv in the coming days. Ukrainian forces captured several settlements north and east of Kharkiv in the last 24 hours, reducing the ability of Russian forces to threaten Ukraine’s second-largest city. This Ukrainian operation is developing into a successful, broader counteroffensive—as opposed to the more localized counterattacks that Ukrainian forces have conducted throughout the war to secure key terrain and disrupt Russian offensive operations. Ukrainian forces are notably retaking territory along a broad arc around Kharkiv rather than focusing on a narrow thrust, indicating an ability to launch larger-scale offensive operations than we have observed so far in the war (as Ukrainian forces predominantly retook the outskirts of Kyiv following Russian withdrawals rather than in a major counteroffensive). The willingness of Ukrainian forces to concentrate the forces necessary for this scale of offensive operations, rather than deploying these available forces to defenses in eastern Ukraine, additionally indicates the Ukrainian military’s confidence in repelling ongoing Russian operations to encircle Ukrainian forces in the Severodonetsk area. While Ukrainian forces are unlikely to directly threaten Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Izyum (as they run further to the east of recent Ukrainian advances), Ukrainian forces may be able to relieve Russian pressure on Kharkiv and possibly threaten to make further advances to the Russian border.
ISW cannot confirm initial reports of a Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship missile strike on the Russian frigate Admiral Makarov on May 6.[1] Pentagon Spokesperson John Kirby said the United States cannot confirm the reported strike and added “we’ve been looking at this all day.”[2] ISW will update this assessment with further information as it becomes available.
Key Takeaways
- The Ukrainian counteroffensive along a broad arc north and east of Kharkiv city took further terrain and will likely push Russian forces out of tube artillery range of the city in the coming days. The ability—and willingness—of the Ukrainian military to concentrate the forces in Kharkiv necessary to conduct this operation indicates Ukrainian confidence in repelling ongoing Russian attacks with their existing forces in the region.
- Russian forces did not make any progress on the Izyum axis.
- Russian forces likely secured small gains on the outskirts of Severodonetsk in the last 24 hours but are unlikely to successfully surround the town.
- Russian forces continued assaults on the Azovstal plant, but ISW cannot confirm any specific advances. Likely widespread civilian resistance to the Russian occupation may additionally be disrupting previously announced Russian plans to conduct a Victory Day exhibition in Mariupol.
- There were no significant changes on the southern axis in the last 24 hours and Russian forces continued to reinforce their forward positions.
- ISW cannot confirm reports of a Ukrainian anti-ship missile strike on the Admiral Makarov at this time.
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 the structure of its discussion of the primary efforts Russian forces are currently engaging in. The main Russian effort is concentrated in Eastern Ukraine and includes one subordinate main effort and four supporting efforts. The subordinate main effort is the encirclement of Ukrainian troops in the cauldron formed between the Izyum-Slovyansk highway and the Kreminna-Rubizhne-Popasna frontline in Luhansk. The four supporting efforts are: completing the seizure of Mariupol, retaining pressure on Kharkiv City, holding occupied territory on the Southern Axis, and threatening northeastern Ukraine from Russian and Belarusian territory.
ISW has updated its assessment of the five primary efforts Russian forces are engaged in at this time:
- Main effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and four 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;
- Supporting effort 4—Sumy and northeastern Ukraine.
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)
Ukrainian forces continued to repel Russian attacks on the Izyum axis in the last 24 hours, with Kharkiv Oblast civilian leadership reporting that Ukrainian forces inflicted heavy casualties on Russian forces on the outskirts of Barinkove.[3] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces prioritized aerial reconnaissance of Ukrainian positions and are deploying unspecified Eastern Military District units to the Izyum axis.[4] Russian forces around Izyum remain stalled and additional scattered reinforcements are unlikely to enable renewed advances.
Russian forces likely secured small gains on the outskirts of Severodonetsk on May 6. Russian forces continued attacks on Rubizhne and Voevodivka (just north of Severodonetsk) and likely captured Voronove (southeast of Severodonetsk).[5] Local Ukrainian and Russian sources both reported that Russian forces are attacking other unspecified villages on the outskirts of Severodonetsk in a likely attempt to surround the town.[6] Ukrainian forces repelled continuing Russian assaults around Popasna, and Russian forces did not launch any attacks against Avdiivka or Lyman.[7] The Ukrainian General Staff reported on May 6 that Russian shelling along the line of contact in eastern Ukraine is intended to interdict Ukrainian movements.[8]
Supporting Effort #1—Mariupol (Russian objective: Capture Mariupol and reduce the Ukrainian defenders)
Russian forces continued assaults on the Azovstal plant on May 6, but ISW cannot confirm any specific advances.[9] Pro-Russian Telegram channels claimed Russian forces captured 100 Ukrainian servicemen attempting to escape Azovstal, though ISW cannot confirm this claim.[10] The Ukrainian Presidential Office announced a new humanitarian corridor opened on May 6, but Russian forces reportedly violated a local ceasefire and launched anti-tank missiles at civilian vehicles evacuating from Azovstal.[11]
Russian forces continued occupation measures but likely face widespread civilian resistance and may not be able to fully secure the city on their intended timetable. Russian forces were observed changing road signs in Mariupol from Ukrainian to Russian on May 5, and Ukrainian officials reported on May 6 that Russian forces are disseminating false information on Ukrainian losses to lower civilian morale.[12] Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov declined to state if Russian forces would hold a parade in Mariupol on May 9, saying a wide celebration is currently impossible and claiming he could not say “on the behalf of the military if there are any plans” regarding a parade.[13] The continued resistance of Ukrainian forces in the Azovstal plant and likely widespread civilian resistance to the Russian occupation may be disrupting previously announced Russian plans to conduct a Victory Day exhibition in Mariupol.
Supporting Effort #2—Kharkiv City (Russian objective: Continue to pressure Kharkiv City to fix Ukrainian defenders there and prevent their movement to reinforce defenders on other axes.)
The Ukrainian counteroffensive north and east of Kharkiv made substantial progress in the last 24 hours and Ukrainian forces may be able to drive Russian forces out of tube artillery range of Kharkiv city itself in the coming days. The Ukrainian General Staff and independent sources reported that Ukrainian forces recaptured Oleksandrivka, Fedorivka, Ukrainka, Shestakovo, Peremoha, Tsirkuny, and part of Cherkasy Tishki from May 5-6.[14] Russian forces continued to shell Ukrainian positions, build up air defenses, and regroup damaged units on the Kharkiv axis.[15] Russian forces likely face the choice of sending additional reinforcements intended for eastern Ukraine to support defensive positions on the outskirts of Kharkiv or lose their ability to both shell the city and screen lines of communication through Kharkiv Oblast.
Supporting Effort #3—Southern Axis (Objective: Defend Kherson against Ukrainian counterattacks)
Russian forces in the entire southern axis did not conduct any active operations (halting recent attacks toward Kryvyi Rih and Zaporizhia) in the last 24 hours and continued to reinforce their frontline positions.[16] Russian forces continued to shell Ukrainian positions along the entire southern axis. The Ukrainian General Staff specified that Russian forces are strengthening their air defenses and electronic warfare capabilities in the southern direction.[17] Russian forces may be concentrating on reconnoitering Ukrainian positions and preparing for further offensive operations, as local Ukrainian authorities reported on May 5.[18] Ukrainian forces did not conduct any reported counterattacks toward Kherson in the past 24 hours, and ISW did not collect any additional data to verify claimed Ukrainian advances since May 4.[19]
The Ukrainian General Staff and Operational Command South reported that Russian forces continue to provoke tensions in Transnistria and seek ways to provoke an escalation, including by spreading false allegations of Ukrainians shooting into Transnistria.[20]
Supporting Effort #4—Sumy and Northeastern Ukraine: (Russian objective: Withdraw combat power in good order for redeployment to eastern Ukraine)
There were no significant events on this axis in the past 24 hours.
Immediate items to watch
- Russian forces will likely continue to merge offensive efforts southward of Izyum with westward advances from Donetsk in order to encircle Ukrainian troops in southern Kharkiv Oblast and Western Donetsk.
- Russia may change the status of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, possibly by merging them into a single “Donbas Republic” and/or by annexing them directly to Russia.
- Russian forces have apparently decided to seize the Azovstal plant through ground assault and will likely continue operations accordingly.
- Ukrainian counteroffensives around Kharkiv City may unhinge Russian positions northeast of the city, possibly forcing the Russians to choose between reinforcing those positions or abandoning them if the Ukrainians continue to press their counter-attack.
- Russian forces may be preparing to conduct renewed offensive operations to capture the entirety of Kherson Oblast in the coming days.
2. Russia’s offensive in Donbas bogs down
The view from Kyiv in the Kyiv Independant. Photos at the link.
Russia’s offensive in Donbas bogs down
The Battle of Donbas is raging high, but it’s not going the way Russia wanted it to.
Almost 20 days in, the much-anticipated and feared grand offensive falls short of expectations.
It is still not even close to achieving its ultimate goal — the encircling and crippling of the core Ukrainian military group in the region.
Amid fierce hostilities, Russia has only managed to achieve limited territorial gains at significant cost.
Slow and painful, the offensive has gradually stalled amid weak Russian reserves and strong Ukrainian defenses.
The assault appears destined to fall short of the symbolic success that Russia likely wished to achieve prior to Victory Day on May 9, the day on which Russia commemorates its role in the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
Broken axis
Prior to the beginning of the Donbas offensive in early April, Russia, according to estimates, concentrated a total of somewhere between 76 and 87 battalion tactical grounds (BTGs) in Ukraine – a total of around 70,000-80,000 troops.
According to the U.S. Department of Defense, over 22 BTGs were positioned in Russia’s Belgorod Oblast, likely to be replenished and remain in reserve.
These units essentially constituted the entire combat-capable force and reserve that Russia could dedicate to the campaign.
The failed blitzkrieg that followed, upon estimates by the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense, rendered nearly a quarter of Russia’s 120-125 BTGs incapable of any major operations.
What stood against Russia’s offensive, according to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, was a Ukrainian force of nearly 44,000 troops concentrated in heavily fortified, urban areas in central Donbas – the cities of Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Sievierodonetsk, Lysychansk, and the northern parts of Russian-occupied Donetsk.
In this new operation, Russia was to eliminate the Ukrainian salient with two massive strikes from the north (along the Izium-Sloviansk highway) and from the south of the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk oblasts.
The two key axes were to meet up in between, effectively cutting the Ukrainian force off from supplies and the rest of the country.
A critical axis was also to surround the Sievierodonetsk-Lysychansk area, bisecting the Ukrainian salient
The map shows the approximate Russian strike axes (red) and Ukrainian defense belts (blue) in the early stage of the Battle of Donbas (Liveuamap/The Kyiv Independent)
The start of Russia’s key offensive in Donbas was confirmed by Zelensky on April 18. Hostilities in the region never died down from day one of the big invasion but, in mid-April, Russian forces partially regrouped and focused on Donbas as the central prize.
However, as of early May, mere days before the May 9 deadline by which the Kremlin appears to have wanted to display some sort of “victory,” Russian forces have managed to achieve little.
Over two weeks of intense fighting, Russia has advanced by no more than 20-30 kilometers in either of the two axes, within a salient of nearly 14,000 square kilometers – roughly the size of the U.S. state of Connecticut.
The Russian military has made some limited gains south of Izium in Kharkiv Oblast, having advanced toward Barvinkove. But, as of early May, it has not managed to gain access to Izium or gain a foothold along the Barvinkove-Sloviansk road, which would allow it to approach Sloviansk from the west.
Russia currently has 25 BTGs attempting to advance in this direction, according to the British Ministry of Defense.
On the other axis, Russian forces since mid-April have managed to begin outflanking the Sievierodonetsk-Lysychansk area in Luhansk Oblast, having entered the town of Kreminna and moved some 30 kilometers west towards the towns of Yarova and Liman, where continue to face resilient Ukrainian defenses.
This advancement constitutes Russia’s biggest progress thus far after nearly three weeks of intense fighting.
On April 25, Russian forces also seized the town of Novotoshkivske in Luhansk Oblast, which had been razed to the ground amid hostilities and abandoned by civilians.
No significant progress has been achieved by Russia since then.
It is critical to note that, according to Western intelligence, the Kremlin likely counted on a decisive victory, including the complete seizure of Mariupol, by early May.
On the southern axis, parts of Russia’s 58th Combined Arms Army have also failed to demonstrate any significant gains in the recent weeks.
Ukrainian units continue to successfully defend key points of Huliaipole, Velyka Novosilka, and Vuhledar in Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk oblasts since mid-March, preventing the Russian axis from moving north.
According to the Pentagon, the southern deadlock appeared to have been so tight that Russia decided to withdraw at least two BTGs from Mariupol (despite ongoing attempts to take the Azovstal steel plant by storm) and likely redeploy them to Donbas.
The Battle of Donbas’ map looks virtually the same since the Russian withdrawal from the north in late March.
“Due to strong Ukrainian resistance, Russian territorial gains have been limited and achieved at significant costs to Russian forces,” the U.K. Ministry of Defense stated on April 29.
Moreover, according to British intelligence, following the battles of Kyiv, Sumy, and Chernihiv, the Kremlin had limited time to re-equip and reorganize its forces before the Donbas Offensive. Therefore, this reality, alongside poor morale, has hindered Russia’s combat effectiveness and the offensive’s momentum.
By early May, Russian attempts to advance stalled on all axes.
The map shows the approximate Russian strike axes (red) and Ukrainian defense belts (blue) in the early stage of the Battle of Donbas (Liveuamap/The Kyiv Independent)
Mobile defense
Since the end of the Battle of Kyiv, Russia appears to have learned some lessons.
Rather than head-on, frontal pushes, Putin’s forces have been methodically probing Ukrainian defenses and trying to hit where it hurts, enjoying quantitative superiority in terms of artillery power.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces are sticking to mobile defense tactics that have succeeded in undermining the Russian blitzkrieg in the north.
Instead of taking a hard and static defense against a technically superior enemy, the Ukrainian military maneuvers and rotates reserves, taking advantage of local terrain and exhausting Russian forces.
As such, Ukraine’s military retreated from Kreminna on April 18, a town northwest of Sievierodonetsk, to avoid being overwhelmed and to continue exhausting Russian forces for more suitable defense lines.
April’s rainy forecast, alongside the rugged, forested terrain of central Donbas also played in Ukraine’s favor.
Ukrainian forces have also continued to outmatch Russia in terms of unmanned aerial vehicles surveilling battlefields. The abundance of Western-provided, man-portable anti-aircraft weapons (particularly, advanced British-made Martlet MANPADs) has also helped the Ukrainian military limit the Russian artillery’s situational awareness as scores of Orlan-10s and other UAVs were downed.
Notably, as of May 6, Russia has not managed to overwhelm or surround any of Ukraine’s heavily fortified strongpoints and has also failed to merge their attack axes coming from Izium and Rubizhne in central Donbas.
Since the very beginning of the full-scale war, it has also failed to break through the old Donbas frontline in its best-defended sections, particularly near Donetsk and parts of Luhansk Oblast.
Even when it comes to overtaking the highway running southeast between Izium and Slovyansk, or the open steppe of Zaporizhia Oblast, Russian forces have found it costly to move on.
What lies ahead of Russia in the Battle of Donbas is a range of heavily fortified strongpoints, prepared for a long-lasting and fierce defense, including Sloviansk, Sievierodonetsk, Kurakhove, and Avdiivka.
At the same time, Ukraine’s rear appears to have motivated and experienced reserves at its disposal, particularly the 3rd and the 4th Tank Brigade units deployed to the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk area.
Nonetheless, Russia has not ceased its attempts to gnaw through Ukrainian defenses, even though its main forces have been in hard combat for more than 14 days.
As of May 6, local authorities report fierce fighting near Sievierodonetsk, with Russian forces trying to attack the city from multiple directions.
A Ukrainian tank man pictured near the town of Zolote in Luhansk Oblast on March 6, 2022. (ANATOLII STEPANOV/AFP via Getty Images)
Counter-offensive
In addition, Russia appears to have a rather scarce reserve for a large-scale operation that is the territorial size of the 1943 Battle of Kursk.
North of Kharkiv Oblast, Russia still deploys parts of the 6th Combined Arms Army, particularly the 200th Brigade, which is known to have sustained heavy losses near Kharkiv and withdrew for recovery.
Following nearly three weeks of the Battle of Donbas, the expert community is increasingly doubtful about any prospects of Russian success in the operation.
“Further Russian reinforcements to the Izium axis are unlikely to enable stalled Russian forces to achieve substantial advances,” the Institute of the Study of War (ISW), a Washington D.C.-based think tank, said on April 30.
“Russian forces appear increasingly unlikely to achieve any major advances in eastern Ukraine, and Ukrainian forces may be able to conduct wider counterattacks in the coming days.”
And indeed, on May 5, Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhniy announced in a conversation with the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark Milley that Ukrainian forces launched “counter-offensive actions” near Kharkiv and Izium.
Even before that, Ukraine’s military and U.S. intelligence both said that Ukrainian forces have managed to advance 40 kilometers near Kharkiv, mainly in areas northeast of the city.
On May 6, the Ukrainian military reported the liberation of a number of towns some 30 kilometers northeast of the city, having pushed the Russian forces farther north to the state border.
Ukraine’s activity in the region will likely be of secondary, auxiliary nature to divert parts of the main Russian forces in Donbas.
“The Ukrainian counteroffensive out of Kharkiv city may disrupt Russian forces northeast of Kharkiv and will likely force Russian forces to decide whether to reinforce positions near Kharkiv or risk losing most or all of their positions within artillery range of the city,” the ISW wrote on May 5.
“Russian forces made few advances in continued attacks in eastern Ukraine, and Ukrainian forces may be able to build their ongoing counterattacks and repulse Russian attacks along the Izyum axis into a wider counter offensive to retake Russian-occupied territory in Kharkiv Oblast.”
Illia Ponomarenko is the defense and security reporter at the Kyiv Independent. He has reported about the war in eastern Ukraine since the conflict’s earliest days. He covers national security issues, as well as military technologies, production, and defense reforms in Ukraine. Besides, he gets deployed to the war zone of Donbas with Ukrainian combat formations. He has also had deployments to Palestine and the Democratic Republic of the Congo as an embedded reporter with UN peacekeeping forces. Illia won the Alfred Friendly Press Partners fellowship and was selected to work as USA Today's guest reporter at the U.S. Department of Defense.
3. ‘I Simply Refuse’: Wiretaps Catch Putin’s Troops Breaking Own Tanks in Sabotage Scheme
Hopefully these reports are true.
‘I Simply Refuse’: Wiretaps Catch Putin’s Troops Breaking Own Tanks in Sabotage Scheme
MUTINY
Russian troops have begun sharing tips with one another on how to deliberately damage Russian tanks and disobey orders, according to Ukrainian intelligence.
Published May. 06, 2022 12:49PM ET
Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images
Russian fighters have been sharing tips with one another about how to deliberately damage their own equipment and hamper Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war plans in Ukraine, according to recordings of alleged Russian troops’ phone calls that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) intercepted.
In one regiment, one Russian soldier allegedly said they’ve been pouring sand into the tanks’ fuel systems to clog them up.
When the fellow Russian soldier on the other end of the line heard the unit wasn’t punished for the insubordination, he indicated he might repeat the tactic later in his own unit.
Another Russian fighter shared with a family member that he and his comrades deliberately damaged their tank—the last one left in their regiment—to interfere with an attack plan, as well, according to another intercept the SBU shared.
“We have one tank left in the regiment,” he said. “In short, we broke our tank ourselves in the morning so as not to go.”
Throughout the invasion, Russian battle plans haven’t gone the way Putin has wanted them to, leaving Putin frustrated and on edge, according to a senior U.S. defense official. One of his major goals was to capture the capital, Kyiv, and install a pro-Putin puppet government. But his troops faltered outside of the capital for days and had countless logistics problems, and in particular had troubles with the fueling, according to the defense official.
And while some U.S. officials have said for weeks that it’s at times been unclear if Russia’s military’s failings are due to lack of planning or just poor execution of plans, the intercepted calls suggest in some cases the answer is much simpler. The troops themselves are disobeying orders and sabotaging the war effort on purpose.
A mainstay of the war has been images of Russians abandoning their equipment and weapons. Russian military morale has been low from the beginning of the invasion, and it’s not getting any better; Russian troops have begun posting on social media begging for donations to the war effort, showing a side-by-side comparison between their dismal first-aid kits and the Ukrainians.
The Russian war effort isn’t only being hampered from the inside. Inspired by the Russians’ intercepted phone calls, Ukraine’s government encouraged other Russian troops to disobey orders and refuse to attack, echoing earlier calls to surrender and abandon the war path.
“The SBU welcomes this practice,” the SBU said in a statement Friday. "But even it can be improved—just ‘give up’ and leave the war in Ukraine!”
Ukrainians have been putting up a stiff resistance from day one of the war, surprising Putin along the way, according to the Pentagon.
The Pentagon, too, has been providing key intelligence that has helped the Ukrainians target key Russian assets, including the Russian warship the Moskva, which sank in the Black Sea after Ukrainians hit it in a missile strike in April, according to The Washington Post.
Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby has acknowledged the intelligence-sharing effort but said the U.S. had no part in the targeting.
4. US seeks to downplay role in sinking of Russian warship
If you are truly working "through, with, and by" you do not seek public credit for your actions. You are supposed to help the partner be successful.
US seeks to downplay role in sinking of Russian warship
AP · by AAMER MADHANI, NOMAAN MERCHANT and LOLITA C. BALDOR · May 6, 2022
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. says it shared intelligence with Ukraine about the location of the Russian missile cruiser Moskva prior to the strike that sank the warship, an incident that was a high-profile failure for Russia’s military.
An American official said Thursday that Ukraine alone decided to target and sink the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet using its own anti-ship missiles. But given Russia’s attacks on the Ukrainian coastline from the sea, the U.S. has provided “a range of intelligence” that includes locations of those ships, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Biden administration has ramped up intelligence sharing with Ukraine alongside the shipment of arms and missiles to help it repel Russia’s invasion. The disclosure of U.S. support in the Moskva strike comes as the White House is under pressure from Republicans to do more to support Ukraine’s resistance and as polls suggest Americans question whether President Joe Biden is being tough enough on Russia.
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Since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion in February, the White House has tried to balance supporting Ukraine, a democratic ally, against not doing anything that would seem to provoke a direct war between Putin and the U.S. and NATO allies. As the war has gone on, the White House has ramped up its military and intelligence support, removing some time and geographic limits on what it will tell Ukraine about potential Russian targets.
The official who spoke Thursday said the U.S. was not aware that Ukraine planned to strike the Moskva until after they conducted the operation. NBC News first reported on the American role in the sinking of the ship.
Speaking earlier Thursday after a New York Times report about the U.S. role in supporting Ukraine’s killing of Russian generals, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said American agencies “do not provide intelligence on the location of senior military leaders on the battlefield or participate in the targeting decisions of the Ukrainian military.”
“Ukraine combines information that we and other partners provide with the intel that they themselves are gathering and then they make their own decisions and they take their own actions,” Kirby said.
AP · by AAMER MADHANI, NOMAAN MERCHANT and LOLITA C. BALDOR · May 6, 2022
5. THE PLA’S EVOLVING OUTLOOK ON URBAN WARFARE: LEARNING, TRAINING, AND IMPLICATIONS FOR TAIWAN
THE PLA’S EVOLVING OUTLOOK ON URBAN WARFARE: LEARNING, TRAINING, AND IMPLICATIONS FOR TAIWAN
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been increasing its study, training, and preparation for future urban warfare over the past decade. The PLA has limited experience with urban warfare and so often relies on observations of other militaries to inform its outlook. Among the drivers for this interest in urban warfare is that any Chinese campaign to force “(re)unification” with Taiwan could involve intense fighting in Taiwanese cities. The current edition of the Science of Military Strategy mentions an urban offensive (城市进攻) as a component of island operations (岛上作战) but does not elaborate on the conduct of such an offensive, likely because of the sensitivity of this scenario. This campaign could present a particular challenge, given that over 90 percent of Taiwan’s population lives in cities. Beyond the possibility of invading Taiwan, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is also concerned about terrorist threats, whether real and imagined, within China’s cities or against the security of Chinese citizens and businesses worldwide. Meanwhile, the conduct of urban counterterrorism has become the focus of several exercises and exchanges undertaken by the PLA and the People’s Armed Police (PAP).
The PLA’s outlook on urban warfare has informed its efforts to introduce new tactics, training, and weapons systems. The continuation or potential acceleration of efforts on these fronts could be critical indicators of its progress toward fulfilling CCP objectives in military modernization, including those targeted against Taiwan. While attacks on cities have been difficult throughout history, modern urban warfare has proven uniquely challenging for even the most powerful militaries. Such operations can be costly, lengthy, and bloody while negatively impacting morale at home and prestige abroad. Chinese military discourse often describes urban warfare as “battling rats in a china shop” (在瓷器店中打老鼠). The complex environment allows adversary combatants to hide among civilians and creates high risks for collateral damage. Fighting in urban terrain inherently benefits defenders or insurgents who operate asymmetrically or can exploit an opponent’s aversion to causing collateral damage.
Within the past decade, the PLA has constructed specialized training facilities to simulate operations in urban environments and undertaken exercises that have contributed to establishing baseline proficiency in this style of combat. If China were to invade Taiwan, beyond the initial amphibious operations, the PLA would be confronted with considerable challenges, including considerations of public opinion and international legitimization. The success of such a campaign could depend upon the PLA’s capacity not only to counter potential American intervention but also to seize effective control across Taiwan quickly enough to enable a fait accompli that would be difficult to reverse. To that end, the PLA’s training exercises in urban warfare, especially by the Eastern Theater Command (ETC), have aimed to enhance the credibility of such capabilities while also advancing aims of coercive signaling. The PLA’s capacity to engage effectively in urban warfare at scale is an important benchmark for evaluating its prospects of using force to realize control of Taiwan.
Urban battlefields have often featured new technologies and necessitated the development of novel capabilities. The growing prevalence in urban combat of unmanned aerial and ground systems—drones—is a recent example of that trend. These systems can improve intelligence support at the tactical level, lessen the risks faced by troops, and facilitate the targeting of other weapon systems. The PLA’s avid interest in drones that could become more “intelligent” and autonomous in their operations reflects its belief that US, Russian, and Israeli military operations have already proven the efficacy of drones in urban combat. The complexity of the urban environment means that the PLA’s preparations for urban warfare will test the utility and reliability of its drone capabilities, as well as its other advanced technologies, and serve as a benchmark for the PLA’s progress toward “military intelligentization” (智能化).
This report explores the PLA’s history with urban warfare and considers several lessons from the PLA’s study of other militaries’ operations. Our analysis examines the PLA’s outlook on new technologies and emerging capabilities for future urban warfare, discusses several relevant weapon systems and capabilities that the PLA is pursuing, and evaluates the training and recent exercises through which the PLA is seeking to improve its proficiency in urban warfare. This report concludes by raising questions for future research and includes several recommendations and considerations for US and Taiwanese policy responses. The US military can look to leverage lessons learned from its conflicts over the past twenty years and explore options to contribute to Taiwan’s capabilities for robust defense and resistance within its cities. The PLA’s progress in preparing for urban warfare will merit continued analytic attention; an improved understanding of these dynamics could inform US and Taiwanese initiatives to bolster deterrence.
6. US intelligence told to keep quiet over role in Ukraine military triumphs
"Through, with, and by" requires people to be "quiet professionals" (and I am sure the professionals in the intelligence community want to keep very quiet).
US intelligence told to keep quiet over role in Ukraine military triumphs
Former US intelligence officers are advising their successors currently in office to shut up and stop boasting about their role in Ukraine’s military successes.
Two stories surfaced in as many days in the American press this week, citing unnamed officials as saying that US intelligence was instrumental in the targeting of Russian generals on the battlefield and in the sinking of the Moskva flagship cruiser on the Black Sea.
The initial report in the New York Times on Wednesday about the generals was partially denied by the White House, which said that while the US shares intelligence with Ukrainian forces, it was not specifically shared with the intent to kill Russian general officers.
The next day, NBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post all quoted officials as saying that US intelligence had helped Ukraine hit the Moskva with anti-ship missiles last month, making it the biggest Russian ship to be sunk since world war two.
As a general rule, espionage is carried out in secret, though western intelligence agencies have turned that rule on its head over the past few months by going public with what they knew about Russian preparations for invasion, and then with daily reports on the battlefield and from behind Russian lines.
The new disclosures are different however, as they concern what the US espionage agencies themselves have been doing, rather than commenting on the state of the war.
In both cases, the US was claiming a hand in historic humiliations for Moscow and for Vladimir Putin, triggering warnings of unintended consequences.
Paul Pillar, a former senior CIA official, said: “My personal view is it’s unwise. I am surprised at the extent of official confirmation of the role of US intelligence in the sinking into Moscow, and even more so the killing of the generals.
“The big concern is that this sort of public confirmation of this extensive US role in the setbacks dealt to the Russians may provoke Putin into escalation in a way that he might not otherwise feel it necessary to escalate.”
John Sipher, who served for 28 years in the CIA’s clandestine service, some of that time in Moscow, thought the decision to disclose details of intelligence sharing was misguided, but for different reasons.
“I just think it’s disrespectful to the Ukrainians,” Sipher said. “It’s taking away from the people who are actually on the ground, who are taking advantage of the intelligence, who are collecting their own intelligence, who are fighting day and night.”
However, he did not think that it significantly raised the risk of escalation between Russia and Nato.
“Putin understands how the game is played. He gets intelligence to try to kill Americans if the situation is reversed, as he did in Afghanistan and other places. The Russians have spent years attacking us with cyber warfare and disinformation,” Sipher said.
“So I don’t think them being upset that America is sharing intelligence is a game-changer.”
European officials made clear their own intelligence agencies would not be following the US lead.
“It’s stupid,” one official said. “I don’t think it is a carefully coordinated leak.”
An official from another European country cast doubt on the centrality of US intelligence to the Ukrainian targeting of Russian generals, saying the main factor was the predictability of Russian officers as they followed rigid Soviet-era doctrine. The breakdown in their secure communications equipment and the top-down hierarchy of the Russian army meant the top officers had to travel to the frontlines to be sure their orders were carried out and Ukrainian snipers were waiting from them.
In the case of the Moskva, US officials were at pains to emphasise that Ukraine made its own targeting decisions, and drew information from multiple sources.
“We are not the only sole source of intelligence and information to the Ukrainians. They get intelligence from other nations as well and have a pretty robust intelligence collection capability,” John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said.
“They’ve been fighting this war against Russia for eight years. It’s not like they are completely blind to the way Russia organises itself and the way Russia conducts itself on the battlefield.”
7. The Croesus Delusion: Why We Habitually Misread Sun Tzu
Author's Abstract:
While Sun Tzu remains a cornerstone of every U.S. military officer’s professional military education, and is often viewed as a window into current Chinese strategic thinking, how well do we really understand the text? Have we subjected it to harsh philological, historical, and philosophical debates similar to the ones surrounding Clausewitz? This article will argue that we should remain skeptical over our modern interpretations of the work. This article highlights how even a phrase thought to be a bedrock concept of Sun Tzu, “Know the Enemy, Know Yourself,” is not quite what it seems when placed within its proper historical and textual roots. My hope is that we elevate the study of this enigmatic text from mere hagiography into a more historically grounded realm of debate.
The Croesus Delusion: Why We Habitually Misread Sun Tzu
By John F. Sullivan
My words are sufficient for your use. Someone who casts aside my words and changes my ideas is like a person who casts aside the harvest and just picks up grains.
—Mozi (c.a. 5th century BCE)
Herodotus begins his inquiry into the origins of the Greco-Persian wars by recounting the tale of the Lydian king Croesus, then the most wealthy and powerful ruler in the pre-Hellenic world. When the upstart Persians—under their dynamic leader Cyrus—began consolidating a rival empire in the east, Croesus dispatched emissaries to two Greek oracles seeking guidance as to whether “he would be able to check Persian power before it became too strong.” According to Herodotus, “both oracles concurred in their reply; they predicted that if Croesus were to wage war against the Persians, he would destroy a great empire.” Believing these pronouncements to be auspicious, Croesus promptly initiated war with Cyrus. The Lydians, however, were decisively defeated, Croesus enslaved, and his kingdom annihilated. As Herodotus drolly noted, the oracles’ predictions were ultimately proven correct: “he put an end to a great empire—his own.”
The Croesus Delusion—a tendency to readily accept ambiguous oracular pronouncements as validation of one’s own prejudices and biases despite evidence of contradictory meanings—subtly shades many modern interpretations of ancient writings (see, for example, the Thucydides Trap). Contemporary thinking on China’s most famous ancient military philosopher, Sun Tzu, is certainly no exception. Explanations of his eponymous text, titled erroneously and misleadingly in English as the Art of War, but more accurately rendered as Master Sun’s Military Methods (Sunzi Bingfa), continue to be a prominent source of evidentiary-free speculation. We would like to believe Sun Tzu leads us to mastering powerful methods of “winning without fighting,” even though textual and historical evidence supports a more limited interpretation of “gaining victory through the avoidance of pitched battles.” The promise of enlightened techniques designed to “take the enemy whole and intact” resonate deeply with our desire to be thought of as beneficent persuaders rather than military conquerors. We easily reject, therefore, the non-revolutionary and more likely proffered advice of “prioritizing one’s own self-preservation.”
Ever since B.H. Liddell Hart saw in Sun Tzu’s work a convenient foil to counter the influence of his perceived theoretical antithesis, Clausewitz, Western analyses of this complex and ambiguous text have been unnecessarily distorted and pointlessly simplified. Stripped of its oracular and prognosticative nature, the original text reveals itself to be more, not less relevant to contemporary thinking. To illustrate this, revising the conventional interpretation of “know the enemy, know yourself” to better reflect its proper textual and historical roots transforms the phrase from a banal admonition to “do better at intelligence” into a much more complex rumination on civil-military relations. Sun Tzu, contrary to the interpretation favored by most modern commentators, considered navigating domestic political factions to be just as perilous an endeavor as battling one’s enemy.
Not Lost in Translation, but Distorted in Interpretation
That Sunzi Bingfa consistently remains one of the most popular and often translated Chinese texts in the West is hardly surprising. It is astonishingly short, composed of approximately 6,000 characters, with the average English translation length just shy of 10,000 words. In comparison, the Han dynasty-era text, Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji), clocks in at over half a million characters. Sun Tzu’s brevity, however, is misleading. Grappling with the text requires considerable effort to make sense of its difficult and often ambiguous syntax. Consider one brief example highlighting the challenge in accurately rendering the original text into comprehensible modern prose. In the third chapter, Sun Tzu discusses what actions should be taken in relation to the enemy based on differing force ratios. Below is the original language and a rough direct translation of the advice being proffered when considering a force ratio of two to one:
倍 則 分 之
Double Then Divide It
First note the original language does not clearly distinguish between subject and object. Are we to assume that one’s own force is double the size of the enemy, or is the enemy force twice the size of our own? The plain language of the text does not make this clear. Moreover, this makes the recommended action ambiguous. Is one expected to divide one’s own army, or compel the enemy to split up its own?
Better translation alone will not be able to dispel the penumbra of vagueness. Instead, we need careful interpretation derived from all available sources. How does the clause fit in with ones directly preceding and following it? How does it either support or diverge from the main themes developed in the chapter (or the overall text)? Is this specific sentence structure used in other portions of the work and can it help to dispel the ambiguity here? Can evidence derived from other contemporaneous writings help clarify its meaning? What historical factors might shed light on its intended purpose? Do extant military examples from the period suggest favoring splitting one’s own army or do they suggest compelling the enemy to divide themselves to be the preferred option? What does splitting a force achieve? Did the command structure and training methods used by the militaries of that era suggest that coordinated split operations were a feasible option in the field?
Clearly, getting this “right” would be a laborious process. Few translators seem willing to make the effort. Read the Giles or Sawyer translation, and they suggest you should split your own army. Consult the Griffith or Mair version, and they propose that only the enemy should be divided. Accessing the traditional historical commentators does little to resolve the issue. According to Song dynasty scholar Zhang Yu, one should split one’s own army. Tang dynasty writer Du Mu, meanwhile, remains convinced that the enemy should be divided. In the end, we can comfort ourselves by rationalizing that millennia old rules about ideal force ratios have little relevance to thinking about contemporary warfare. But what about the verses we generally believe still speak lucidly and powerfully to us today?
Know the Enemy and Know Yourself: Are We Missing Another Potential Adversary?
Most who have read the text in translation will maintain an unshakeable conviction that Sun Tzu clearly and unequivocally directs us to “Know the Enemy and Know Ourselves.” Consult almost any competent translation of the text and this recollection will be validated. The phrase is first mentioned in the final verse of the third chapter. Below is one of the earliest English translations, published by Lionel Giles in 1910, in which subsequent translations only slightly vary from:
Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
Yet many will be surprised to learn that even this is technically incorrect. At no point within the verse does Sun Tzu specifically reference any real or hypothetical “enemy.” The original language he uses to convey both poles of the knowledge equation is shown below:
知 彼 知 己
Know Other Know Self
Notice, though, that the character counterbalancing “Self” is not the enemy, but instead rendered as “Other.” This is a deliberate choice. Ancient Chinese writing possessed a distinct and unambiguous character to express one’s enemy, di (敵). Sun Tzu uses this exact term for denoting an enemy 70 times within the text, making it one of its most frequently used terms. The character used here, however, purposefully conveys a more neutral tone, and it is important for us to attempt to reason out why this might have been an important distinction.
That modern scholars unambiguously render the original character for “other” in English as “enemy” is a logical translation choice. Who else, in conveying military theory, could be considered the “other” contrasted with “oneself,” if not the enemy? Western military thinking is primed to think in terms of the simple binary “red” and “blue” forces.” Yet we should remain open to considering whether the original text specifically meant “other” to include entities outside the scope of one’s traditional military enemy. By contextualizing the work, we discover that Sun Tzu is more concerned with how his own ruler, fellow ministers, and even his own army might imperil his chances for victory. Counterintuitively, these domestic political and military factions do not belong on the “self” side of the knowledge equation, but instead need to be viewed as distinct “others”—ones capable of jeopardizing a commander’s chances of victory and perhaps even his very survival.
To recognize this, we need to first note that the verse in question begins with a conjunctive adverb. Rendered by Giles as “hence,” the ancient Chinese character gu (故) performed the same function as it does in modern writing—linking one part of a thought with the one immediately preceding it. If we follow this chain of conjunctive adverbs, we find the logic of the text suggests that we should consider “know other, know self” in relation to the three verses directly preceding it.
Broadening our analysis, we can see that Sun Tzu’s idea begins with an observation that it is the general—not the ruler, the people, court ministers, or the army writ large—who is the true “bulwark of the state.” Therefore, the author begins by distinguishing the general from “other” factions within his own state. The text next describes the three ways in which one’s own ruler’s actions, not the enemy’s, might interfere with and hamper the general’s ability to achieve victory. Finally, it proceeds to outline the five key factors “from which victory can be known”:
(1) One who knows when he can fight, and when he cannot fight, will be victorious.
(2) One who recognizes how to employ large and small numbers will be victorious.
(3) One whose upper and lower ranks have the same desires will be victorious.
(4) One who, fully prepared, awaits the unprepared will be victorious.
(5) One whose general is capable and not interfered with by the ruler will be victorious.
Note that the enemy as a subject of analysis is almost completely absent within these five keys to victory. Instead, the general’s relationship with both his own court and his subordinate units dominates all five factors. Thus, when Sun Tzu sums up this thinking with his memorable phrase, we should not assume that only the “enemy” is to be assigned to the “other” side of the knowledge equation. Internal factions within one’s own state are equally, if not more likely, to constitute a threat to successful conducting military operations. Based on this analysis, a more fitting interpretation of this verse should be:
Thus it is said: If you know the other [factions that are capable of disrupting victory] and know yourself, you will not face peril in a hundred battles. If you do not know the other [factions] but do know yourself, you will alternate victories with failures. If you know neither the other [factions] nor yourself, in each battle you will face certain defeat.
Sun Tzu considered navigating civil-military relations to be just as perilous an endeavor as engaging in armed combat with one’s enemy. Gaining insight into the historical factors that influenced this outlook might help us better understand why he might have felt the need to set himself apart so starkly from his fellow compatriots.
A Hundred Battles a Day: With Friends Like These Who Needs Enemies?
As Mark Edward Lewis explains in his seminal work, Sanctioned Violence in Early China, the appearance of Sun Tzu’s text coincided with epochal changes in how practitioners of that time thought about and conducted warfare. As central authority under the Zhou kings declined and regional rulers capitalized on expanding their territories and resources, the make-up of armies shifted from small forces dominated by an insular nobility to large conscript armies in need of someone possessing the technical and organizational skills to command them. An increased desire for competence over pedigree opened the field to a wider pool of potential command applicants. The Zuozhuan documents the first evidence of this shift, when in 684 BCE the ruler of the state of Lu was convinced by a commoner named Cao Gui to adopt his plan to defeat a powerful army at the Battle of Changshao. In one of the few overt historical references found in the Sunzi Bingfa, Cao Gui is acknowledged by name in the eleventh chapter as an exemplar of courage—perhaps in a nod to the trailblazing legacy he left for later generations of commanders in training.
Yet catapulting commoners into the ranks traditionally dominated by the highest strata of nobility incurred significant personal risk. Take the example of two prominent Chinese historical figures of the fourth century BCE, Wu Qi and Shang Yang. Both began as petty officials who swiftly ascended to the apex of military and political power through sheer will and raw talent. Both were highly successful military commanders who personally led their state’s armies to stunning victories. Both were posthumously recognized with eponymous texts outlining their thinking on military and political matters (Wuzi and The Book of Lord Shang). Yet despite their stellar records and laudatory accomplishments, both individuals were violently executed not by any enemy army or hired assassin, but by jealous nobles of the domains in which they faithfully served. As the third century BCE legalist text, Hanfeizi, noted, “Superiors and inferiors fight a hundred battles a day.” Politics, much like war, was a blood sport in that era. The ruler’s court was also a battlefield, often more treacherous and deadly than the terrain occupied by the enemy army.
The historical military record of this period documents few examples of commanders being killed in battle, but a defeated commander would often be executed or compelled to commit suicide upon returning home. Today, where a losing general is more likely to secure a lucrative book deal or profitable consulting gig, it is difficult to grasp how perilous and precarious the position of commander was at the time. Not understanding the threats emanating from domestic internal factions would be akin to professional malpractice. While we would like to believe that Sun Tzu’s caution and reticence to engage the enemy prematurely was driven by a humane desire to prevent unnecessary violence against his foes, a more probable justification is that potential violence to his own person resulting from an unsuccessful campaign was the dominant factor driving his penchant for battle avoidance.
We can find only one extant example of a near-contemporaneous text directly borrowing Sun Tzu’s phrase “know the other, know yourself” (知彼知己). It is found in the Annals of Lü Buwei, a compendium of political and military knowledge compiled in the mid-third century BCE. In a chapter titled “Scrutiny of the Subtle,” one vignette depicts the eve of battle, in which a commander slaughters a lamb to feed to his warriors, but the meat runs out before reaching his chariot driver. The next day, as they prepare for battle, the driver angrily tells his commander, “Yesterday, in the matter of the lamb you were in charge; in today’s affair I am in charge.” He then purposefully drives the lone command chariot into the waiting enemy force. The Annals provides this moral to the story:
[The commander] fed his officers but forgot his own charioteer; the outcome was the defeat of his army and his own capture. Is this not fitting? Thus, as a general principle, before battle everything should be thoroughly considered and fully prepared; only when you know both the [other] and yourself (知彼知己) may you proceed.
The fact that the example used to illustrate this lesson consists of a commander stymied by the actions of his own soldier, not from any enemy action, lends further credence to the viability of revising our contemporary interpretation of this famous phrase. As the Hanfeizi similarly cautions, “Prepare as you may against those who hate you, calamity will come to you from those you love.”
Conclusion
Naturally, this revised interpretation differs significantly from our conventional understanding of the verse’s intended message. Michael Handel, in his highly influential book, Masters of War, categorized ‘know your enemy and know yourself’ as “a classical definition of net assessment.” Yet one could argue that Sun Tzu likely had a much different lesson to convey. As we currently debate the continued viability of our long-standing models of civil-military relations, Sun Tzu’s warning is that maintaining clear boundaries between civilian and military spheres might be an untenable position. Even if we hope to keep the military largely non-partisan, history shows that militaries cannot remain apolitical indefinitely. Sun Tzu reminds us that only the foolish commander would disregard this reality.
“The primary purpose of any theory,” Clausewitz observed, “is to clarify concepts and ideas that have become, as it were, confused and entangled.” This advice is equally applicable to our study of Sun Tzu. The authors of these ancient texts were not writing in a vacuum, and it is important that we first attempt to discover the “confused and entangled concepts” they were attempting to untangle and clarify. As the irreverent Daoist text, the Zhuangzi, notes: “Words are not just wind. Words have something to say. But if what they have to say is not fixed, then do they really say something? Or do they say nothing?” The words of these ancient Chinese texts have long been unmoored from the original foundation which tethered them. It remains an extraordinarily difficult, but certainly not impossible, task to make their words mean something again. Otherwise, much like Croesus, we are destined to simply read into ancient texts the soothing messages we wish to hear, rather than the uncomfortable truths we prefer were never uttered.
About the Author(s)
John F. Sullivan is a former U.S. Army China Foreign Area Officer. He is currently working on an historical commentary to the Sunzi Bingfa, grounding its interpretation in the wider body of contemporaneous military, philosophical, and historical texts from the Warring States era.
8. Training, Weapons, Intel: The US Military's Slow Slide Toward Confrontation with Russia over Ukraine
In my opinion, although counterintuitive, the more we try to minimize our actions to prevent the "slow slide toward confrontation" the more likely we are going to see escalation. Timidness gives rise to the perception of weakness and perceived weakness increases the possibility of escalation. And of course regardless of what the US does, escalation could still be in Putin's cards to play. Therefore we should do everything we can to help make Ukraine strong.
Training, Weapons, Intel: The US Military's Slow Slide Toward Confrontation with Russia over Ukraine
In early March, defense officials avoided even confirming the first Stinger missiles were being sent to Ukraine amid concerns of escalating the conflict as Russian troops marched toward Kyiv, and defense analysts counted the days until Russian President Vladimir Putin would likely control the government of his next-door neighbor.
But over the last two months, as Ukraine has made a stand and fought back against the invasion, the aid has ballooned to billions of dollars' worth of helicopters, armored vehicles, newly developed drones and artillery.
Reports this week that U.S. intelligence had helped Ukraine sink a Russian warship and kill Russian generals on the battlefield were the latest signs of what appears to be the Pentagon's slow, steady march to deeper involvement in the European war.
The Pentagon has now moved to releasing itemized lists of the thousands of weapons, ammunition and hardware now being shipped to allies in Kyiv. It has also announced a new Florida National Guard mission to train Ukrainians on the howitzers and radar systems in Germany, creating a rotating pipeline of skilled troops to fight the Russians.
The use of U.S. intel in the sinking of the ship Moskva by Ukrainian missiles and Russia's stunning loss of about a dozen generals in the war was not publicly acknowledged by the Pentagon, despite reports by multiple news outlets. Still, it was met with an acknowledgment that the military is sharing vital battlefield intelligence with Ukraine.
"We try to provide them useful and relevant, timely intelligence so that they can better defend themselves," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Friday. "But ultimately, they make the decision about what they're going to do with that information."
The loss of the Moskva, the flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet, and the loss of generals have been an international embarrassment for Moscow, if not strategic victories that have shifted momentum to Ukraine.
The changing U.S. involvement is at least partly due to the changing nature of the war, which began Feb. 24 when Putin invaded Ukraine. Early in the conflict, the Ukrainians were seen as underdogs, but Putin's forces floundered, and the U.S. and the West became bolder in their assistance to Kyiv.
The war has now shifted to the eastern Donbas, a flat region where artillery will play a key role in the fight as it stretches into its third month. Ukrainian requests for armor and larger weapons have been granted.
The Pentagon has been authorized to send about $4 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the start of the war, with the bulk of that coming over the past month. In mid-April, President Joe Biden ordered the first 18 of the M777 howitzers and 40,000 rounds be sent to Ukraine. The announcement detailed 1,400 Stinger and 5,500 Javelin shoulder-fired missiles, as well as 22 other categories of weapons and battlefield supplies, including armored personnel carriers, helicopters, radars and drones.
Another 72 howitzers and 144,000 rounds, as well as vehicles to tow the cannons, were authorized by Biden on April 21 -- a massive increase from the first tranche. The president is now requesting Congress approve a $33 billion aid package for Ukraine, with $16 billion of that directed to the Pentagon.
On Friday, the White House announced yet another package of "artillery munitions, radars, and other equipment." The new aid amounted to $100 million, according to Reuters.
In addition to the massive uptick in weapons headed to Ukraine, the Pentagon announced that U.S. troops would start training the Ukrainians on the equipment. A Florida National Guard unit recently pulled from Ukraine in the lead-up to Russia's invasion had never left the continent and is now heading up that mission, it said last week.
The 160 Guard troops assigned to the 53rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, known as Florida's "Gator Brigade," are training the Ukrainians on the M777 howitzers and radar systems in Grafenwoehr, Germany, and other sites in Europe that the Pentagon did not disclose.
So far, the Guard has trained 150 Ukrainians on the howitzers. Another 15 have completed training on AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel air surveillance radar system, and 60 on the M113 armored personnel carriers, Kirby said Friday. Another 50 are in training on the M113 now, he said.
The military's involvement in the Ukraine war has "absolutely" increased since the start, said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"I see two things going on. One of them is an increased willingness to talk about what we're doing," Cancian said. "If you're an administration being criticized for not doing enough, the inclination is to say more about what you are doing.
"But there's no question we're doing more over time," he said.
In the early days of the war, the U.S. was sending Javelins and Stinger missiles that accounted for roughly $50 million per day. By last month, that average was closer to $100 million per day, according to Cancian.
The Ukrainians had already been training on those weapons, as well as some of the other Soviet-era weapons that the West had supplied to help in its war effort. But the addition of U.S. arms, such as the M777 howitzer and the Sentinel radar system, required training, which required the expertise of the Guard.
"Each step, you can see both an increase in cost and an increase in the scope of the activity," Cancian said.
The next step in U.S. involvement is likely to be the addition of defense contractors inside Ukraine to maintain the influx of American weapons systems, which are flooding into Ukraine and may risk being sidelined without proper handling and care, Cancian said.
Biden has insisted U.S. troops will not enter Ukraine. But the administration could find a workaround by funding Ukrainian maintenance contracts with foreign companies, he said.
"All the equipment that we're giving to the Ukrainians is just too extensive to be absorbed in the short amount of time that we're giving them," Cancian said. "I think we're just asking too much, frankly, and I think what's going to happen is that, when that becomes apparent, we'll start using contractors in some way."
-- Travis Tritten can be reached at travis.tritten@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Tritten.
9. Putin’s Private Army Accused of Raping New Moms on Maternity Ward
Tragic, disgusting, brutal, and pure evil. These words are not sufficient to describe this barbarism.
Putin’s Private Army Accused of Raping New Moms on Maternity Ward
SICK AND TWISTED
Russian mercenaries allegedly stormed a hospital and attacked mothers recovering from childbirth on multiple occasions.
Updated May. 07, 2022 2:29AM ET / Published May. 06, 2022 10:51PM ET
Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty/Security Service of Ukraine
On the night of April 10, three Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group, which is also active in Ukraine right now, allegedly staged the attacks at a hospital in the Henri Izamo military camp in the capital Bangui.
Officials stationed in CAR’s military headquarters, but who keep an eye on the activities of so-called Russian “military instructors,” told The Daily Beast that the men forced themselves on women—a couple of whom had just given birth—who were receiving treatment in the infirmary's maternity ward.
“[The military headquarters] received a report last month from the [hospital] center detailing how three Russian instructors stormed the maternity ward and began to sexually assault women on admission,” one of the officials told The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity, as he wasn’t authorized to speak to the press.
Many of the mercenaries operating in Africa under Wagner—a private military company run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, one of President Putin’s closest associates—were withdrawn to help fight the war in Ukraine—as first reported by The Daily Beast—but there are still plenty in operation on the continent.
“Among the victims, the military was informed, are two mothers who had just given birth to babies and health workers on duty,” said the official, who added that the military “is convinced that the report is genuine.”
Another official in CAR’s military headquarters with knowledge of the operations of Wagner mercenaries in the restive African nation told The Daily Beast that it was the third time the military had received a report about Russian mercenaries invading the maternity ward of the infirmary and sexually assaulting women.
On all three occasions, according to the official, investigators found the allegations to be “genuine,” but taking action against the mercenaries was almost impossible as officers are “scared of angering the Russians.”
A human rights campaigner who has spoken to a victim of a previous rape at the Henri Izamo military camp informed The Daily Beast that the Russian mercenaries who assaulted her when she was receiving treatment at the infirmary sometime last year arrived late at night, dragged her out of her bed, and began to rape her on the floor.
“She was so sick and was sleeping when the Russians arrived,” said Cédric Niamathé, a Bangui-based human rights activist who helps connect victims of various abuses to human rights lawyers. “All she could remember was opening her eyes and seeing a naked white soldier, who had covered her mouth with his hand, on top of her, raping her.”
A couple of regional publications—quoting eyewitnesses—have given accounts of how the most recent incident occurred.
HumAngle, a West and Central Africa-focused news site headquartered in Nigeria, quoted a gendarme who was on duty on that day as saying that the Russians arrived at the infirmary's maternity ward “with pistols and whisky in their hands” and met the two women who had just given birth, as well as some other female health workers, in the room.
“They started indecently touching the women and signaling for sex from the two women who had just put to bed,” said the gendarme. He also alleged that the Russians tried to rape the nurse on duty who had confronted them saying the women had just given birth and still had blood on them. “She struggled to free herself [and] ran to the labour room,” he reportedly said.
“As this was going on,” said the gendarme, a “nurse aide who happened to be an adjutant-chef (Chief Warrant Officer) and who was still in the maternity tried to beg the Russians to be human but they turned on her and sexually abused her one after the other.”
Corbeau News Centrafrique, one of CAR’s best-known independent news outlets, which spoke to an eyewitness, reported that the sexual assault on the nurse aide lasted for hours, with each mercenary allegedly taking turns to abuse her. The news outlet also reported that one of the women who had just given birth said her ordeal was painful and humiliating.
Victims of rape hardly ever get justice in CAR. Over four years ago, Human Rights Watch documented 305 cases of rape and sexual slavery carried out against women and girls by members of armed groups between early 2013 and mid-2017. Of the 296 victims interviewed, only 11 of the 296 women interviewed said they made an attempt to file a criminal complaint. No members of armed groups was ever arrested or tried for committing sexual violence, according to the organization. Instead, the number of victims continued to grow.
In 2020, the Gender-Based Violence Information Management System—a monitoring system maintained by humanitarian partners including UNFPA—recorded 2,281 cases of sexual violence. More than a third of those brutalities were committed by members of armed groups.
As for those women reported to have been raped at the Henri Izamo military camp by Wagner mercenaries, there would be no surprise if justice isn’t served. Even those with the power to either take action or recommend that action be taken are unconvinced that anyone will be punished.
“Disciplining a Russian instructor who has committed a crime is not what the military can confidently act on,” a senior CAR military official told The Daily Beast privately. “Only the president can decide on how to deal with the Russians.”
10. CIA instructs Russians on how to share secrets with the spy agency
I was going to ask why we are reading about this but it appears the CIA published the "instructions" on Instagram.
Of course this could be part of a dissent and discord program to undermine the legitimacy of the Russian government.
And it comes from this account (which must be the "real" CIA since it ha a blue check mark on the web)
cia
Verified
Message
Follow
Central Intelligence Agency
Government organization
We are the Nation's first line of defense. We accomplish what others cannot accomplish and go where others cannot go.
CIA instructs Russians on how to share secrets with the spy agency
The U.S. government is also tracking a surge in interest among Russians trying to skirt state censors online
May 3, 2022 at 1:41 p.m. EDT
With the war in Ukraine in its third month, the CIA is taking a new approach to its core job of recruiting spies and soliciting secrets.
On Monday, the CIA published instructions for how Russians can covertly volunteer information using an encrypted conduit to the agency’s website. The hope is to attract intelligence — and potentially gain more access to official Russian secrets — from disaffected people who have been trying to contact the CIA since the war began, officials said.
To ensure the would-be informants are not caught by Russian state security, the CIA spelled out detailed Russian-language instructions in three social media posts on how to use the Tor Internet browser, which lets users move online anonymously, as well as virtual private networks, or VPNs. The steps will open a dedicated channel to the CIA that is more secure than navigating to the agency using an ordinary Web browser or Internet connection.
“Do not use your home or office computer to get in touch with us,” the agency cautions in its step-by-step guide. To circumvent online monitors, Russians should use a VPN that is not based in Russia, China or other countries considered “unfriendly” to the United States. Free VPNs are generally inferior to paid services, the CIA advises, encouraging its contacts to spring for a premium version.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted more Russians to take the risky step of getting in touch with the intelligence agency, officials said.
“Concerned Russians are trying to engage CIA, and we wanted to provide a way to safely contact us,” said a CIA official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive intelligence issues.
The CIA is accustomed to disaffected citizens or government employees volunteering information, sometimes when they show up at U.S. embassies. “Walk-ins,” whether physical or digital, are scrutinized and vetted, and officials often try to determine what access they might have to secrets other than the ones they come bearing, according to former intelligence officials familiar with the process.
The new instructions are aimed at “those who feel compelled to reach us because of the Russian government’s unjust war,” a CIA spokesperson said in an email. “Our global mission demands that individuals can contact us securely from anywhere.”
The agency asks digital walk-ins to provide their full name, the country from which they are corresponding, their official position and “what access you have to information of interest to our organization.”
There is no guarantee that the information Russians pass over the transom will be useful. But the fact the CIA looked for a way to make it easier for motivated Russians to make contact suggests there are many potential recruits queuing up, intelligence veterans said.
“It is a signal that they are being overwhelmed by people trying to contact U.S. intelligence in ways that are less than secure,” said John Sipher, a former CIA officer who served for nearly 30 years, including in Russia. “In this day and age, I think it is appropriate to offer means for initial contact that are safer than walking into an embassy or approaching an American on the street.”
Dan Hoffman, a retired intelligence officer who served as the CIA’s top official in Moscow, said Russian counterintelligence will be on heightened alert for those looking to spill secrets.
“You want to be really careful with Russians who are seeking to provide information. The FSB in particular will be watching for people,” Hoffman said, referring to the principal Russian security agency and successor to the KGB.
The CIA’s intelligence-gathering tactics fit within a broader strategy by the U.S. government to counter Russian efforts at stifling free speech and access to credible news and information.
The State Department recently sponsored an online conversation on Telegram, a popular social media application in Russia, featuring Victoria Nuland, the undersecretary for political affairs, that drew about 2.3 million engagements, according to a State Department official.
A significant number of the comments directed at Nuland were critical of the United States, the official said, but the sheer volume indicated that Russians were interested in hearing from an American official and could get access to her comments via Telegram, which the government has not blocked.
The Russian government has cracked down on some social media platforms and limited Russians’ ability to use them. But a number are still active and thriving, the official said. YouTube continues operating with millions of viewers, and tens of millions of Russians are using the WhatsApp messaging service, the official said, citing conversations with the app’s owner, Meta.
Reports of “the demise of means of communication with Russia are a bit exaggerated,” the official said. “The fact is we are still able to talk to Russian audiences.” The official noted that it is key to use Russian to maximize engagement.
The department has also seen evidence that Russians are actively looking for ways to skirt Internet restrictions. Following a push by the government to clamp down on the flow of information about the war after it began, Russians sought out VPNs in large numbers. Demand for VPN services in Russia rose 2,692 percent in March, according to data from Top10VPN. Russia’s ban on Facebook and Twitter helped drive demand for the services, the company reported.
The State Department official said that the Russian government appears to have let some popular social media companies continue operating, for a few reasons. First, the government’s ability to cut off access is limited compared with other authoritarian regimes such as China. But the Kremlin may also want to placate Russians who are chafing under other online restrictions and speech controls, such as a prohibition on using the word “war” to describe Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
“I think [Russian officials] know if they take away a widely popular platform there will be complaints about that,” the State Department official said. He added that the authorities in Moscow could still move to block WhatsApp and YouTube if the content Russians encounter runs afoul of the official line.
“There are so many users in Russia still dependent on those platforms, I think the government was hesitant to pull those away and create more discontent within the country,” the official said.
11. The Lessons Taiwan Is Learning From Ukraine
A patriot:
I was taken aback when Wang told me over dinner at a local Japanese-style izakaya restaurant that she’d decided to broaden her skill set from her usual thyroid, liver, pancreatic, and intestinal surgeries to include trauma—namely bullet and shrapnel wounds. Gun and bomb violence are almost nonexistent in Taiwan, but having spent her whole life unworried about the possibility of China attacking her homeland, she said she had begun to think about how she could help if the worst happened. “Although the threat from China has always been there,” she said, “it has also always seemed so distant for us.”
...
As in Ukraine, the most important factor in Taiwan’s survival is the willingness of its people to defend its hard-earned democracy. Wang, the surgeon, told me that she’s already shifted from wanting to avoid getting involved in politics to feeling a sense of responsibility for doing so, and hopes that other Taiwanese do too.
“I want to be more brave, and am more willing to speak up about my feelings for my country,” she said. “No matter what happens, I will choose to stand up for Taiwan.”
The Lessons Taiwan Is Learning From Ukraine
Russia’s invasion on the other side of the world has spurred ordinary Taiwanese to take practical steps to guard against similar action by Beijing.
The more I’ve gotten to know her, the more I’ve come to think that Wang Tzu-Hsuan exemplifies some of the best qualities of the younger Taiwanese I’ve met here in Taipei: open-minded, serious but not too serious, spontaneous, and thoughtful. At 33, she is unlike most surgeons in Taiwan—who are typically older, and male—and while many of her medical-school classmates sought more lucrative careers in the United States, she opted to stay, out of a sense of duty. When she’s not busy in the operating room or meeting with patients, we catch up over food or drinks and talk about what’s happening in the world, which for us in Taiwan, where pandemic rules still bar foreign visitors, feels quite far away.
I was taken aback when Wang told me over dinner at a local Japanese-style izakaya restaurant that she’d decided to broaden her skill set from her usual thyroid, liver, pancreatic, and intestinal surgeries to include trauma—namely bullet and shrapnel wounds. Gun and bomb violence are almost nonexistent in Taiwan, but having spent her whole life unworried about the possibility of China attacking her homeland, she said she had begun to think about how she could help if the worst happened. “Although the threat from China has always been there,” she said, “it has also always seemed so distant for us.”
Not anymore. Seeing the devastation that Russian bombs and missiles have wrought upon once-tranquil Ukrainian cities spurred Wang to approach local volunteer groups to figure out how to prepare a generation of surgeons who have never experienced war for the realities of conflict. The Chinese Communist Party seeks to annex Taiwan, which it claims despite having never ruled it, and eliminate Taiwanese identity. With a densely concentrated population roughly the size of Florida on a mostly mountainous island that is little bigger than Maryland, any invasion attempt by China would incur substantial civilian casualties.
Wang is not alone, either. Many Taiwanese are looking at Ukraine’s current reality as something that could befall their homeland. A number of Taiwanese friends and interviewees have told me they’d stay and fight, while others have described family plans to secure citizenship elsewhere, just in case. The former commander of Taiwan’s military has called for the formation of a territorial defense force to deter China’s ambitions. The war has intensified political discourse too, and Taiwanese politicians are using it to rationalize their views of China: For President Tsai Ing-wen’s Democratic Progressive Party, it justifies the past five years of buying weapons from the U.S. while expanding largely unofficial diplomacy with other democracies; for many members of the opposition party Kuomintang, an on-and-off frenemy of the Communists over the past century, heightened concerns over an invasion attempt by Beijing highlight the risks of getting too close to Washington.
Both Taiwan and Ukraine democratized in the 1990s, following years of brutal authoritarian rule. Today these two young democracies, as well as those in Central and Eastern Europe—who share similar histories—are most directly affected by Russia’s and China’s expansionist pushes. Whereas the “threat to democracy” posed by the Beijing-Moscow alliance is more ephemeral in older and more established democracies such as the United States, Britain, Germany, France, and Japan, in Ukraine it is manifested in widespread death and destruction. In Taiwan and the European countries of the former Soviet bloc, it is viscerally unsettling.
Indeed, if there is a front line in the emerging global standoff between democracy and autocracy, it lies at the borders of these younger democracies, where peoples and governments are changing their behavior in real ways and making tangible sacrifices to maintain their freedoms—from a peacetime surgeon in Taiwan preparing to deal with conflict, to countries adjoining Ukraine donating weapons to aid the fight against Russia.
Whether Ukraine and Taiwan get the support they need to remain sovereign is likely to be a defining geopolitical question of this generation, extending beyond regional political dynamics. Countries in both Europe and Asia appear to see this clearly now—note how quickly the Biden administration enlisted Asian allies such as South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and even Singapore to sanction Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. Their willingness to show concern about faraway Ukraine suggests that they think one day they could be looking for similar support from Europe, should China enter into a conflict with one of them.
The revanchist violence that Vladimir Putin has unleashed on Ukrainians has yet to come to Taiwan, but it has jarred the collective consciousness nevertheless. There have been multiple protests outside the de facto Russian embassy in Taipei, a solidarity march through the center of the capital, and a rush to send money and nonmilitary aid to Ukraine. Tsai’s move to sanction Russia and cut it off from crucial Taiwanese semiconductors is perhaps the most confrontational she’s been with any major power. (For his part, Putin declared in a joint statement with President Xi Jinping on February 4 that Russia considers Taiwan “an inalienable part” of China.)
Just as much as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has stoked fears here in Taiwan that a Chinese attack might be more a matter of when than if, the whole-of-society Ukrainian response has also inspired Taiwanese to think that, should Xi make a move, it wouldn’t necessarily end in Chinese victory. “I think Ukraine has shown us all a lesson that people in their own countries have to be willing to fight for their democracies and freedom, if it really comes down to it,” Albert Wu, a historian who relocated back from Paris last year, told me. “Their bravery and resistance has been a real inspiration to us all.”
Ukrainians I know who live here have made similar observations. “I hear from Taiwanese friends saying that Ukraine is currently fighting for Taiwan as well, and that means a lot,” Oleksander Shyn, a university student living in Taipei, told me. “Because if Ukraine loses, and if the Ukrainian people end up in Putin’s hands, it might inspire China to do this here. So while most people around the world are wishing us peace, many Taiwanese people are wishing us victory.”
The Russian invasion has awoken many of Taiwan’s leaders and its people from a collective slumber, a less-than-urgent attitude toward the threat from Beijing rooted in decades of a poorer China being ill-equipped to pull off what would be the largest amphibious invasion ever. But China’s rapid economic development, and consequent naval buildup, is tipping the scales in Beijing’s favor.
Last month, Taiwan’s defense minister, Chiu Kuo-cheng, proposed extending military conscription for men from the current four months to one year. In a mid-March survey by the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation, 75.9 percent of respondents supported the idea. One senior legislator from Tsai’s ruling party has floated the idea of mandating conscription for Taiwanese women for the first time.
Thinking has been changing at the diplomatic level too, with a growing awareness in Taiwan and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe that the threats they face are part of a global struggle. In recent months, Taipei has seen a flurry of visits from lawmakers from Lithuania, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Estonia, and Latvia, all of whom became democracies in the 1990s after being controlled by Moscow. Alongside those was a visit from Jakub Janda, a Russia expert who arrived here late last year from Prague. The 31-year-old Czech think-tank director and reservist’s mission: to establish a Taipei office for the European Values Center for Security Policy, founded in 2005 to protect Czech democracy. Now back in Prague, Janda told me that the struggles against Russian expansionism in Europe and Chinese expansionism in Asia have converged. After the initial Russian invasion of Ukrainian territory in 2014, Janda said, his think tank’s focus shifted to protecting European democracy from Russia. By 2018, Beijing’s growing influence in Central Europe led the center to include China in its remit.
Today it is clear, Janda said, that Ukraine and Taiwan are not disparate geopolitical tinderboxes, but rather different fronts of the same battle against a new bloc that occupies eastern Ukraine and Crimea, has taken over and militarized disputed islands in the South China Sea, and subsumed Hong Kong’s democracy. Both Russia and China have territorial disputes with Japan. Moscow has put former Soviet states on alert, while also making vague nuclear threats in Europe’s direction. Meanwhile, Beijing is testing the resolve of India, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia to defend their territory.
To either side of the Atlantic, the repercussions of a successful Russian invasion of Ukraine are obvious: Countries once under Soviet sway would face a greater threat from Putin, who might continue his adventurism to shore up support as the Russian economy suffers from sanctions. Citizens in Western democracies are less aware, however, of the importance of Taiwan’s continued sovereignty to the current security order in Asia, and beyond.
Geographically, China would control key sea lanes through the South and East China Seas, significantly increasing its ability to exert military pressure across the Western Pacific and political influence around the globe. Technologically, Beijing’s jurisdiction over the world’s most advanced semiconductor manufacturing facilities would put China in a commanding position to establish dominant military advantages, expand global economic dependencies, and set the standards for humankind’s technological future.
Politically, “the loss of Taiwan would validate and propel Beijing’s narratives of the inevitability of American decline and the superiority of China’s ruthlessly efficient autocratic system over the incoherence and disunity of Western-style liberal democracy,” says Ivan Kanapathy, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments who previously served as the National Security Council’s deputy senior director for Asia and as a U.S. military attaché in Taipei. It would, he told me, “represent an epochal strategic shift of global power and influence.”
As in Ukraine, the most important factor in Taiwan’s survival is the willingness of its people to defend its hard-earned democracy. Wang, the surgeon, told me that she’s already shifted from wanting to avoid getting involved in politics to feeling a sense of responsibility for doing so, and hopes that other Taiwanese do too.
“I want to be more brave, and am more willing to speak up about my feelings for my country,” she said. “No matter what happens, I will choose to stand up for Taiwan.”
12. Putin’s Next Power Play Is a Parade
Excerpts:
“The celebration under Putin has become increasingly politicized,” said Jade McGlynn, a scholar in Russian studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and the author of the forthcoming book The Kremlin’s Memory Makers.
“Paradoxically, it’s something deeply personal and emotional and powerful, but also in recognition of that power, it’s something that the state tries to use for its own benefit.”
Some Western officials say they anticipate Putin will use the Victory Day parade to up the ante on the invasion by calling for a mass mobilization of its army to pour more troops into Ukraine. About one-quarter of the Russian formations sent into the first phase of the war have been battered so hard that they are now out of action, Western officials have said. Ukrainian defense officials estimate that Russia has lost close to 25,000 troops in two months of fighting, an unprecedented level of attrition in modern warfare.
Putin’s Next Power Play Is a Parade
Foreign Policy · by Robbie Gramer, Jack Detsch, Amy Mackinnon · May 6, 2022
The Russian leader is expected to use his country’s upcoming World War II Victory Day celebration to stir up support for the bungled war in Ukraine.
MiG-29 fighter jets fly over downtown Moscow during a rehearsal for Russia's World War II Victory Day parade.
MiG-29 fighter jets fly over downtown Moscow during a rehearsal for Russia's World War II Victory Day parade on May 4. Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images
On May 9, Russia will mark the 77th anniversary of the end of World War II as it does every year: with military parades across the country, the grandest of which is set to take place in Moscow’s Red Square. Only this year, Ukrainian and Western officials expect Russian President Vladimir Putin to seize the opportunity of a day steeped in patriotic fervor to escalate the war in Ukraine.
Western officials have been warning for several weeks that Moscow is under self-imposed pressure to chalk up some kind of victory to announce on Victory Day, as Russia’s 10-week campaign in Ukraine has floundered and fallen far short of the Kremlin’s initial goals to swiftly capture Kyiv. Putin has hinged much of his power and framed Russia’s identity around the Soviet Union’s experiences in World War II, known in Russia as the “Great Patriotic War.” He has sought to portray the war in Ukraine as a new chapter in the fight against fascism, based on flagrant falsehoods that Ukraine is overrun with Nazis controlled by the West and needs liberation. (From 1939 to 1941, the Soviet Union was in cahoots with Nazi Germany and supplied it with oil, grain, and arms up until the very day Germany invaded.)
That “liberation” has come at a dire humanitarian cost, as the Russian military’s offensives under the guise of “denazification” have killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians and forced millions from their homes.
Moscow’s constant invocation of World War II and claims that it is fighting Nazism once again have also backfired on the world stage, as Russian forces commit mass atrocities against Ukrainian civilians and have shelled areas near Holocaust memorial sites. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov enraged Israel and other Western countries by falsely asserting that Adolf Hitler had “Jewish blood” and claiming that the “most ardent antisemites are usually Jews” in comments attempting to justify how Russia could be “denazifying” a country whose president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is himself Jewish. (Putin later reportedly issued a rare apology to Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett over the remarks.)
Despite the steep cost in lives on both the Ukrainian and Russian sides, the Kremlin has doubled down on invoking historical parallels to World War II to justify its invasion of Ukraine. It is invoking a slogan that has gained traction since Russia’s initial invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014: “We can do it again.”
“It’s a great opportunity for Putin to play on nationalist sentiments, and the Kremlin is very good at the theatrics of events like this,” said Timothy Frye, a scholar on post-Soviet foreign policy at Columbia University. “In the short run, there will be a continuation of this rally-around-the-flag effect likely after May 9.”
It’s hard to overstate the importance of the May 9 commemoration for Russia. The Soviet Union is estimated to have lost some 24 million people during World War II. Reverence for those who perished and served in the Soviet Red Army runs deep in Russian culture and is central to Russia’s national identity. War memorials are the centerpiece of many Russian cities, often serving as the backdrop for wedding photos of newly married Russian couples.
“The celebration under Putin has become increasingly politicized,” said Jade McGlynn, a scholar in Russian studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and the author of the forthcoming book The Kremlin’s Memory Makers.
“Paradoxically, it’s something deeply personal and emotional and powerful, but also in recognition of that power, it’s something that the state tries to use for its own benefit.”
Some Western officials say they anticipate Putin will use the Victory Day parade to up the ante on the invasion by calling for a mass mobilization of its army to pour more troops into Ukraine. About one-quarter of the Russian formations sent into the first phase of the war have been battered so hard that they are now out of action, Western officials have said. Ukrainian defense officials estimate that Russia has lost close to 25,000 troops in two months of fighting, an unprecedented level of attrition in modern warfare.
“I think he will try to move from his ‘special operation,’” British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told LBC Radio last week. “He’s been rolling the pitch, laying the ground for being able to say, ‘Look, this is now a war against Nazis, and what I need is more people. I need more Russian cannon fodder.’”
In another symbolic move, U.S. President Joe Biden plans to sign the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act into law on May 9, reviving a World War II-era authority to loan defense articles to the besieged country.
One data point they cite: Russia appears to be stepping up its military mobilization in recent weeks, as retired Russian troops have reportedly been summoned for conscription as potential contract employees to administer occupied areas of Ukraine. Other European officials expect the Russian military to step up its offensive in eastern Ukraine in the days leading up the commemoration so Putin can declare some form of victory and claim he has “liberated” the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.
One Western diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive government assessments of war told Foreign Policy on Thursday that Russia has a possible menu of options for its World War II anniversary, including a declaration of victories in Ukrainian territories that haven’t yet been conquered by the Russian military, holding parades on captured areas of Ukraine, or announcing moving the war to a new phase, such as a greater mobilization.
The diplomat also said Russia is likely to announce on or around May 9 phony elections in the occupied territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kherson, which the Kremlin is seeking to annex from Ukraine by means of a trumped-up referendum. Such a move would mirror similar declarations of sovereignty in Ukrainian breakaway territories that preceded Putin’s full-scale invasion in February.
Ukrainian officials fear that Moscow may look to hold a victory parade amid the rubble of Mariupol, a strategic Ukrainian port city that has been under siege by Russian troops for nearly two months. (Russia has denied reports that it plans to hold a victory parade in Mariupol.) An estimated 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers are holding out in Mariupol, taking shelter in a sprawling steel factory while Russia consolidates control over other parts of the city. Russia began an all-out assault on the Azovstal steel plant on Thursday.
Britain’s defense ministry assessed on Friday that Russia’s storming of the plant was connected to Putin’s desire to have a symbolic victory in Ukraine in time for the May 9 parade but added that Russia would likely take losses in the attack on the mazelike facility and the resources it would use to snuff out Ukrainian resistance could slow down Russian gains elsewhere in eastern Ukraine.
But U.S. Defense Department spokesperson John Kirby said on Thursday that the United States saw no correlation between the Victory Day celebrations and the Kremlin’s tactical approach to the war, adding that Russia’s military progress in the Donbas remained “uneven.” Other experts believe Putin isn’t under pressure to produce a clear victory by the May 9 commemoration simply because he commands so much control over the country and the Kremlin’s propaganda machine has kept a tight lid on Russia’s embarrassing military failures at home.
“I’m not sure Putin is under so much pressure that it seems to us,” said Middlebury’s McGlynn. “We all know how badly the Russian military is doing, but obviously most Russians don’t, and even if they did, the control [Putin has] is so total that I don’t think he’s under the same level of pressure” as the leader of a democratic country would be, she added.
Open-source intelligence analysts who have been tracking Russia’s preparations for the parade in Moscow’s Red Square expect it to be significantly scaled down from recent years, a possible sign of the setbacks Russia has faced in its war in Ukraine. Gone are the artillery pieces and long-range fires paraded in Moscow in 2021, which Russia has sent into the Donbas; they are expected to be replaced with Soviet-era Grad rockets.
Just 131 vehicles are expected to take part in the procession, considerably fewer than the Kremlin rolled out last year. And Russia’s planned flyover of the parade with jets in a “Z” formation, Russia’s symbol for victory, will be done with outmoded MiG-29 fighters, not the country’s state-of-the-art Sukhoi fighter jets. Internet sleuths also spotted some of the Russian vehicles deployed in Ukraine decorated with the Cross of St. George—a sign that they might’ve been originally dedicated for the World War II anniversary.
“If I was Putin, I’d want to make a bigger parade this year than normal,” said Oliver Alexander, an independent open-source analyst who has been following Russia’s preparations for the parade. “It being significantly scaled down isn’t really a sign that things are going great.”
Robbie Gramer is a diplomacy and national security reporter at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @RobbieGramer
Jack Detsch is Foreign Policy’s Pentagon and national security reporter. Twitter: @JackDetsch
Amy Mackinnon is a national security and intelligence reporter at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @ak_mack
13. China’s Xi Proposes Global Security Initiative
Conclusion:
Despite the hypocrisy and power politics at the foundation of the GSI, it is likely to garner significant support in some parts of the world, especially the Middle East, Africa, and other regions that are far from China. As the world becomes increasingly bipolar, we will see a repeat of some of the features of Cold War period, especially weaker states playing the two polar powers against each other. Although this will be difficult for countries that are proximate to China or the U.S., this will definitely be a rational strategy for others to adopt because they can derive benefit from both sides. Thus, while it is important to point out the hypocrisy in the GSI, it would be foolish to dismiss it or assume that it will not garner support from other countries.
China’s Xi Proposes Global Security Initiative
Despite the hypocrisy and power politics at the foundation of the GSI, it would be foolish to dismiss it or assume that it will not garner support from other countries.
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Chinese President Xi Jinping has come up with a new global security proposal questioning implicitly the logic of the Indo-Pacific strategy, as well as the Quad involving Australia, Japan, India, and the United States. Xi proposed a new “Global Security Initiative” at the Boao Forum for Asia’s annual conference in China on April 21, while calling out Cold War mentality, hegemonism, and power politics as issues that would “endanger world peace” and “exacerbate security challenges in the 21st century.”
According to Xi, the initiative is meant to “uphold the principle of indivisible security, build a balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture, and oppose the building of national security on the basis of insecurity in other countries.” Xi also emphasized the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations, as well as their right to choose their own development paths and social systems.
Following Xi’s speech, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin, at a regular press briefing, sought to clarify what the new initiative means. He said that “with growing threats posed by unilateralism, hegemony and power politics, and increasing deficits in peace, security, trust and governance, mankind is facing more and more intractable problems and security threats.” A week later, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in a piece published in People’s Daily elaborated, saying that the initiative “contributes Chinese wisdom to make up for the human peace deficit and provides Chinese solution to cope with international security challenge.” Wang reportedly added that “China will never claim hegemony, seek expansion or spheres of influence, nor engage in an arms race.”
When asked about Xi’s speech, a U.S. State Department spokesperson said that China is maintaining the same line as Russia, “parrot[ing] some of what we have heard coming from the Kremlin,” including the concept of “indivisible security.” Commenting on Xi’s initiative, an Asian diplomat reportedly said that China tends to “come out with an excessively large framework that nobody objects to. The idea is that even if countries don’t agree wholeheartedly, at least they can’t fully oppose it. Then, bit by bit, they use the framework to chip away at the US.”
It is quite possible that the Global Security Initiative (GSI) will start to play a prominent role in Chinese public diplomacy and foreign policy posture, so it is worth taking seriously. A few initial comments can be made about Xi’s proposed GSI.
The first is the blatant hypocrisy. China is proposing principles that it has clearly already violated. For example, Xi’s statement begins by talking about sovereignty and territorial integrity, but China’s behavior in both the South China Sea and along the Sino-Indian border clearly violate the notions of sovereignty and territorial integrity of its neighbors. Similarly, Xi’s statement talks about taking the legitimate security concerns of all countries seriously and not pursuing one’s own security at the cost of others, none of which can be seen in China’s own behavior. There are other similar contradictions between the principles stated in the GSI and China’s own behavior, but these two stand out as the most blatant. Of course, great powers being hypocritical in their public statements of policy is not new. The hypocrisy should nevertheless be noted.
The second comment worth making at this juncture is that despite talking about rejecting the Cold War mentality, the GSI is a clear attempt at promoting power politics in a manner beneficial to China. Many of the proposals in the GSI are a thinly veiled effort to compete with the United States and its partners and allies. When Xi says “say no to group politics and bloc confrontation” or criticizes “small circles,” there can be little doubt that he is targeting security partnerships that the United States is anchoring in the Indo-Pacific, such as those that include India, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and others. Not only are these proposals driven by China’s effort to compete with the United States, but they are yet again hypocritical considering that China itself has had close alignments with states, such as the Soviet Union in the past, and continues to have long-lasting security partnerships with both Pakistan and North Korea. And, of course, Putin and Xi signed earlier this year what can easily be characterized as a new security partnership.
Similarly, the essence of many of the proposals in the GSI comes down to the presumption that Asian affairs should be managed by Asian countries, which conveniently gives China a domineering position because of its size and power, and equally conveniently seeks to push the United States out of the Indo-Pacific. This is a blatant effort at the pursuit of an Asian hegemony by China and one that is designed to promote China’s interests in its great power competition with the United States.
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Despite the hypocrisy and power politics at the foundation of the GSI, it is likely to garner significant support in some parts of the world, especially the Middle East, Africa, and other regions that are far from China. As the world becomes increasingly bipolar, we will see a repeat of some of the features of Cold War period, especially weaker states playing the two polar powers against each other. Although this will be difficult for countries that are proximate to China or the U.S., this will definitely be a rational strategy for others to adopt because they can derive benefit from both sides. Thus, while it is important to point out the hypocrisy in the GSI, it would be foolish to dismiss it or assume that it will not garner support from other countries.
14. Taiwan jets scramble as China air force enters air defence zone
Is this part of the PRC's global security initiative?
Taiwan jets scramble as China air force enters air defence zone
TAIPEI, May 6 (Reuters) - Taiwan's air force scrambled on Friday to warn away 18 Chinese aircraft that entered its air defence zone, Taiwan's defence ministry said, part of what is a regular pattern of incursions that has angered the government in Taipei.
Taiwan, claimed by China as its own territory, has complained of repeated such missions by Chinese aircraft, which have become a common occurrence over the past two years or so.
Taiwan is currently in a heighten state of alert due to fears China could use Russia's invasion of Ukraine to make a similar military move on the island, though Taipei's government has not reported any signs Beijing is about to attack.
The number of aircraft involved was well off the last large-scale incursion, 39 Chinese aircraft on Jan. 23, and since then, such fly-bys have been with far fewer aircraft.
The ministry said the latest mission included six Chinese J-11 and six J-16 fighters as well as two H-6 bombers.
There was no immediate comment from China's Defence Ministry. China has described previous such missions as to defend the country's sovereignty and to counter "collusion" with foreign forces - a veiled reference to U.S. support for Taiwan.
The bombers, accompanied by a Y-8 anti-submarine aircraft, flew to the south of Taiwan through the Bashi Channel which separates the island from the Philippines.
The other aircraft flew over an area to the northeast of the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands at the top end of the South China Sea, according to a ministry map.
Taiwanese fighters were sent up to warn the Chinese aircraft and air defence missiles were deployed to "monitor the activities", the ministry said, using standard wording for how Taiwan describes its response.
No shots have been fired and the Chinese aircraft have not been flying in Taiwan's air space, but in its Air Defence Identification Zone, a broader area Taiwan monitors and patrols that acts to give it more time to respond to any threats.
Japan this week reported eight Chinese naval vessels, including an aircraft carrier, passed between islands in Japan's southern Okinawa chain, to the northeast of Taiwan.
China has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control, and the Taiwan Strait remains a potentially dangerous military flashpoint.
Reporting by Ben Blanchard;Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Tomasz Janowski
15. Shadow Risk: How Gray Zone Campaigns Can Escalate
Excerpts:
While the gray zone is preferred to war, the national security community doesn’t have a systematic appreciation of when or how these interactions – what Herman Kahn referred to as a sub-crisis maneuvers – become a step to war.
To better understand escalation dynamics in the gray zone, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) conducted 20 crisis simulations over the fall and winter of 2021 and analyzed the results using social science experiment methods to isolate risk attitudes. The resulting study uncovered that gray zone competition might be prone to previously unaccounted for escalation pathways. The researchers found a recurrent tendency to defer risk into the future, producing shadow risk, in treatments with long-term military response options. The results imply an inversion to the classic commitment trap in international relations. The adage that Germany started World War I in 1914 over concerns about the shifting balance of power by 1917 is potentially reversed in gray zone campaigns. Players seeking to avoid taking risky moves in the short term increase escalation risks in the long term when crises prove intractable. This finding also reinforces earlier literature on rivalry, which sees increasing threat spirals in each subsequent crisis between states like China and the United States — especially when they are subject to interest asymmetries, shifting power transitions and cycles, as well as territorial concerns and third-party alliances.
Shadow Risk: How Gray Zone Campaigns Can Escalate
At what point does the pressure generated and sustained by gray zone campaigns escalate?
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From the escalating crisis in Ukraine to multifaceted Chinese efforts to pressure Taiwanese leaders, there appears to be a worrying rise in international crises and militarized disputes. States initiate these crises in, and sustain pressure through, gray zone campaigns. Gray zone campaigns create new routes to circumvent conventional deterrence and achieve previously obstructed goals while presumably avoiding the incurrence of risk. As states continue to adopt gray zone tactics, traditional deterrence dynamics could potentially hold less bearing in preventing future conflicts. Within this new field of competitive interaction between states, the coexistence of potential escalation pathways seems plausible.
At what point does the pressure generated and sustained by gray zone campaigns escalate, and what are the implications for modern strategy if it does?
In current and future standoffs with states like Russia and China, the U.S. and allied decisionmakers will confront shadow risk, a tendency to defer escalation decisions, and as a result, could inadvertently assume a more aggressive posture in future confrontations. This broadly suggests that unchecked gray zone coercion raises the risk of a crisis between the United States, U.S. allied nations, and an antagonist operating within the gray zone. There is a strongly implied need to expand current crisis communication channels between both our allies and rivals.
While the gray zone is preferred to war, the national security community doesn’t have a systematic appreciation of when or how these interactions – what Herman Kahn referred to as a sub-crisis maneuvers – become a step to war.
To better understand escalation dynamics in the gray zone, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) conducted 20 crisis simulations over the fall and winter of 2021 and analyzed the results using social science experiment methods to isolate risk attitudes. The resulting study uncovered that gray zone competition might be prone to previously unaccounted for escalation pathways. The researchers found a recurrent tendency to defer risk into the future, producing shadow risk, in treatments with long-term military response options. The results imply an inversion to the classic commitment trap in international relations. The adage that Germany started World War I in 1914 over concerns about the shifting balance of power by 1917 is potentially reversed in gray zone campaigns. Players seeking to avoid taking risky moves in the short term increase escalation risks in the long term when crises prove intractable. This finding also reinforces earlier literature on rivalry, which sees increasing threat spirals in each subsequent crisis between states like China and the United States — especially when they are subject to interest asymmetries, shifting power transitions and cycles, as well as territorial concerns and third-party alliances.
Policymakers from Beijing and Moscow to Washington and its network of partners need to better understand all potential escalation risks inherent in gray zone campaigns. To do this, there must be an expansion of crisis communication channels and even participation in multitrack simulations and wargames not only for Washington and its partners, but also with rivals. Shadow risk presents a new form of inadvertent escalation that could turn a future dispute into a dangerous war absent a mutual understanding of strategic choice and crisis bargaining.
To this end, and in support of its calls for integrated deterrence, the Biden administration should expand (and test) the crisis communication channels it has with rival nuclear powers. Those channels are certainly getting worked through the Ukraine crisis and would have only benefited from prior exchanges. These exercises should include holding crisis simulations and wargames that bring together a mix of national security professionals and policymakers to help build a common understanding of escalation risks. The events should include partners and allies as well as representatives from rival great powers. By using open, unclassified forums to talk about great power competition, leaders gain an appreciation for how rivals see disputes and bargain. Better to play a game today than fight a war tomorrow.
GUEST AUTHOR
Carolina G. Ramos
Carolina G. Ramos is a research associate with the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.
GUEST AUTHOR
Benjamin Jensen
Benjamin Jensen, Ph.D., is a senior fellow for future war, gaming, and strategy in the International Security Program at CSIS.
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For an overview of the methodology used in the tabletop exercise, please see here.
16. The mystery of the Moskva and Makarov
Excerpts:
There is little doubt that the P-8A was coordinating with the Ukrainians, perhaps directly or through satellite connections, or possibly via handoffs to US and NATO forces and then to the Ukrainians. Otherwise, what was it doing shadowing Russian ships in international waters, risking a possible confrontation?
The possible use of radar jamming by the US Navy against Russian targets is something that cannot now be proven. Among the possibilities for the Russian ships are bad electronics, bad operators, or outside jamming and spoofing. With two ships now hit, jamming and spoofing are a real possibility. It is unlikely we will ever know for sure.
The mystery of the Moskva and Makarov
With two Russian ships hit, jamming and spoofing are a real possibility; it is unlikely we will ever know for sure
asiatimes.com · by Stephen Bryen and Shoshana Bryen · May 6, 2022
The Russian cruiser Moskva was attacked in the Black Sea on April 13. There are unconfirmed reports also that the Russian frigate Admiral Makarov was attacked on May 6. As details emerge, four important questions arise:
First, were these vessels, equipped with supposedly excellent air defense systems, caught by surprise and, if so, how did that happen? There is no suggestion, from any source, that Russian sailors attempted to shoot down Ukrainian missiles, or even that they knew they were there before they were hit.
Second, was there anything special about the Ukrainian missiles that made them undetectable?
Third, why didn’t either or both ships respond?
Fourth, what, if any, role did the US play in the attack on both of these ships?
Russian warships are equipped with modern air defenses, combining excellent radars and effective interceptor missiles of different types. The Moskva has two systems: an older one known as the Osa-MA (SS-N-4), a short-range system that is supposed to counter inbound anti-ship missiles; and the newer S-300F, a more capable, longer-range air and missile defense system.
The Makarov is equipped with the 3S90M BUK air defense system, featuring the 9m317m interceptor. These are fairly long range, up to 130 km (80 miles). The BUK is a well-regarded and lethal air defense cluster (radars, transporter or launch tubes, interceptor missiles). It has a response time from target detection of between 10 and 15 seconds.
The Ukrainian anti-ship Neptune missile that struck the Moskva is a subsonic, sea-skimming cruise missile that flies at a top speed of approximately 900 km/h (559 mph).
At 60 miles from shore, Neptune would require a little more than six minutes to hit a target; at 20 miles, a little over 2 minutes. While sea skimmers can be hard to detect, there is nothing stealthy about the Neptune, which is based on the Russian KH-35 anti-ship missile.
As for the Makarov, given its location and potential vulnerability, it would be reasonable to assume that if it was struck, most likely it was either a Neptune missile or a slow-flying drone, such as the Turkish-made Bayraktar.
Both the Makarov and the Moskva had layered defenses, consisting of air defense missiles, rapid-fire guns, and MANPAD ground to air missiles, including the latest Russian MANPAD called Verba (9K333).
It is a bit of a presumption to think the layers are in any way integrated (the US until recently didn’t do so, but should have). But, even so, if a threat was detected, one would expect all stations to be on the highest alert.
The damaged Moskva being towed to shore. Image: Flickr
In neither case, as far as can be said based on current information, did the Russian ship fight back. If there were good air defenses (the Makarov went into service only in 2015), including good radars, and modern electronic countermeasures as well, why didn’t either or both fight?
It could be that the Russian radars and other sensors are not as good at detecting sea-skimming missiles as Moscow wanted the West to believe. Or something else happened.
The P-8A controversy
Ukrainian officials say that the Moskva was targeted with the help of the United States. The Pentagon officially denies that – as it has denied reports that US overhead systems were targeting Russian generals in the Ukraine war.
What we can say for sure in the case of the Moskva is that there was a P-8A Navy surveillance and anti-submarine-warfare aircraft in the Black Sea in the ship’s vicinity. Is targeting all that the P-8A was doing?
The P-8A is a Boeing modified 737 that replaced the venerable P-3 anti-submarine surveillance aircraft. Introduced into the US fleet in 2013, the P-8A like the P-3 can drag sonars to detect submarines. It can also launch torpedoes and Harpoon anti-ship missiles.
In the case of the Moskva, there is no evidence that the P-8A launched any weapons. It would cross a very sensitive line and put the US directly in the Ukraine war without Congressional or public Presidential authorization. Of course, anything is possible. Certainly, if the P-8A is out there, along with following Russian warships and submarines, it would have been testing various onboard systems against major Russian naval combatants.
The P-8A has an elaborate AN/ALR-55 electronic countermeasures suite built by BAE systems. These are brand new systems and if they are on the P-8s operating in the Black Sea arena, they would have been installed in the past year, or even in the past few months.
A KC-135 Stratotanker with the 927th Air Refueling Wing, Florida refuels a P8 Poseidon with Jacksonville Naval Air Station, Florida above the Atlantic Ocean during sunset May 10, 2021. Photo: US Air Force / Senior Airman Tiffany A Emery
Much of what the ALR-55 can do is classified, but it is capable of jamming enemy radars or, possibly, spoofing radars. Therefore, it is theoretically possible that if the US Navy P-8A was connected in real-time or near-real-time to Ukraine’s Neptune operators, it could blank out or spoof the radars on the Russian ships.
There is little doubt that the P-8A was coordinating with the Ukrainians, perhaps directly or through satellite connections, or possibly via handoffs to US and NATO forces and then to the Ukrainians. Otherwise, what was it doing shadowing Russian ships in international waters, risking a possible confrontation?
The possible use of radar jamming by the US Navy against Russian targets is something that cannot now be proven. Among the possibilities for the Russian ships are bad electronics, bad operators, or outside jamming and spoofing. With two ships now hit, jamming and spoofing are a real possibility. It is unlikely we will ever know for sure.
asiatimes.com · by Stephen Bryen and Shoshana Bryen · May 6, 2022
17. To Save Democracy and Defeat Putin, Give Up ‘the West’
Excerpts:
What is true is that, in the old democracies, it took centuries to establish the institutions that underpin liberty. These range from the separation of powers to the rule of law and civic traditions of free speech, among others. Historically, it’s fair to say, liberalism has usually preceded democracy.
But the two can also be adopted at the same time, as any number of successful democracies prove — from Taiwan to Germany, which both embraced liberty late, but then with gusto. Moreover, democracy does not inherently conflict, as its enemies claim, with tradition, religion, or communitarian values.
Instead, democracy is the collective goal of a society to guarantee as much freedom and dignity as possible to its citizens, to encourage and welcome their participation in public life, and to check and balance power wherever it accumulates. Nowhere is it ever perfect or complete; everywhere it is worth improving.
Nothing about this is Western. But everything about it negates the worldview of a brutal despot like Putin. This is why Scholz is right to try to broaden the world’s resistance to the dark side. It’s also why India, Indonesia, South Africa, Senegal and all other democracies should rethink their national interests, and rise to the call of freedom by joining the struggle against Putin.
To Save Democracy and Defeat Putin, Give Up ‘the West’
In inviting non-Western democracies to the G7, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has the right idea.
May 7, 2022, 3:00 AM EDT
Even clumsy communicators occasionally say something worth hearing. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, for example. He’s of late been accused of muddling his messages in support of Ukraine and much else. But if you pay attention, he’s actually trying to achieve something huge: a global — rather than “Western” — alliance of democracies against autocracies such as Russia and China.
By accepting that mission, he’s in effect taken the baton from U.S. President Joe Biden, who hosted a rather underwhelming “summit for democracy” in December. That was before Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine, when rallying the freedom-loving nations didn’t seem quite as urgent. Nor did it help that the U.S., long the world’s beacon of liberty, is itself struggling to preserve democracy at home.
Democracy in Germany — which the country learned largely from the Americans after World War II — looks reassuringly sturdy, by contrast. Moreover, Scholz happens to be holding a large bullhorn right now. This year, his government is presiding over the Group of Seven (G7), a forum of the world’s wealthiest liberal democracies. Besides Germany, it includes the U.S., Canada, France, Italy, Japan and the U.K. They’ll meet on June 26-28 in Elmau, a castle at the foot of the Bavarian Alps.
But Scholz is also inviting several other democracies to Elmau. These include India — whose prime minister, Narendra Modi, Scholz hosted this week — as well as Indonesia, South Africa and Senegal. He’s also hinted that he’ll try to nudge Indonesia, which holds the rotating presidency of the G20, to keep Russia away from that forum’s summit in Bali this November.
India, Indonesia, Senegal and South Africa have at least two things in common. First, they are non-Western democracies. Second, three of them (India, Senegal and South Africa) abstained from a vote at the United Nations in March to condemn Russia’s attack on Ukraine, and all four from a vote in April to suspend Russia from the UN’s Human Rights Council.
Their ballots at the UN suggest that, like some other Asian, African and South American democracies, these countries don’t yet regard Russia’s war on Ukraine as the world’s — and by extension, their own — problem. And yet it is: What Russian President Vladimir Putin is brutalizing is the right of Ukrainians to be free and democratic. By putting might over right, he’s waging war against liberty. To defeat him, all democracies should stand together. The family photo can’t just be a picture of a bunch of white guys and one Asian.
In a TV interview this week, Scholz tried (words never come easily to him) to explain his thinking. “If we reduce ‘the West,’ the people to whom we’re allied, to those who were already democratic at the beginning of the previous century, then we’re aiming too low,” he said. Pressed for clarification, he added that “in defending democracy, we’d make a big mistake if we viewed it as a Western way of life. It has to do with our view of human nature, of humanity.”
Scholz thereby waded headlong into a controversy that’s almost as old as democracy itself. Is it based on Western values, or universal ones? Uncountable PhD theses over the years, not to mention the stump speeches of wannabe tyrants, have argued the former. Liberal democracy, in these narratives, just isn’t suitable to certain cultures — tribal, Islamic or Confucian ones, say.
In the 1990s, for example, Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore, propagated the theory that liberal democracy conflicts with “Asian values.” That nebulous label implied some allegedly superior cultural cocktail favoring community, hierarchy, consensus and harmony over unfettered self-expression and individualism.
Such pop-sociology is, of course, manna from heaven for neo-Confucian emperors everywhere, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, who’d rather not be bothered by the feedback from the people they rule. Simultaneously, it’s shown to be hogwash by such vibrant — and still very Confucian — democracies as Taiwan, South Korea or Japan. Each has followed its own path to democracy and practices its own culturally distinct flavor of it.
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Other attempts to disavow democracy as Western and thus alien and unsuitable are just as inane. Putin’s, for example. Even while he was still pretending to be democratic (by allowing the ritual of elections), he also painted Western liberalism as inherently decadent and soft — in effect, as a gateway drug to godlessness and homosexuality. The worst part is that his admirers in the West, such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, parroted this bilge.
What is true is that, in the old democracies, it took centuries to establish the institutions that underpin liberty. These range from the separation of powers to the rule of law and civic traditions of free speech, among others. Historically, it’s fair to say, liberalism has usually preceded democracy.
But the two can also be adopted at the same time, as any number of successful democracies prove — from Taiwan to Germany, which both embraced liberty late, but then with gusto. Moreover, democracy does not inherently conflict, as its enemies claim, with tradition, religion, or communitarian values.
Instead, democracy is the collective goal of a society to guarantee as much freedom and dignity as possible to its citizens, to encourage and welcome their participation in public life, and to check and balance power wherever it accumulates. Nowhere is it ever perfect or complete; everywhere it is worth improving.
Nothing about this is Western. But everything about it negates the worldview of a brutal despot like Putin. This is why Scholz is right to try to broaden the world’s resistance to the dark side. It’s also why India, Indonesia, South Africa, Senegal and all other democracies should rethink their national interests, and rise to the call of freedom by joining the struggle against Putin.
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:
18. Where’s Biden on growing nuclear threats?
Excerpts:
The world is an increasingly dangerous place, only made more menacing by the proliferation of nuclear technology and nuclear weapons, and dangerous threats involving their use by desperate, dictatorial regimes.
Consequently, given its record to date, the Biden administration must up its “game” diplomatically and militarily to protect American interests, considering the growing nuclear threat the U.S. and its allies are clearly facing.
Where’s Biden on growing nuclear threats?
[This article has been published in Restoring America to highlight the nuclear threat the U.S. faces from several foreign foes, and to consider how the Biden administration's response to that threat has exacerbated it].
As Russia’s unjust war on Ukraine slogs on, the world keeps spinning, including unwelcome nuclear saber-rattling from a litany of U.S. foes that has reached a deeply unsettling din worth noting.
Understandably, the conflict in Ukraine is drawing a significant amount of foreign policy attention these days. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is the largest conflict in Europe since World War II.
Unfortunately, the brandishing of bombs by North Korea, Iran, and Russia has become increasingly worrisome as nuclear and missile threats skyrocket since the Biden administration took office.
North Korea:
North Korea is dead serious about its nuclear and ballistic missile programs , but talks with Pyongyang about its nuclear arsenal have gone nowhere since Joe Biden entered the White House more than 15 months ago.
Indeed, Pyongyang has gone “ballistic,” with at least 14 missile tests already this year.
A North Korean long-range ballistic missile test in March was assessed to be able to reach the United States. It was also the first intercontinental ballistic missile test since 2017 — and the missile is expected to be capable of carrying multiple warheads .
Some think that an underground nuclear test might be coming, too — the first since 2017 as well.
Addressing a military parade in Pyongyang in late April that reportedly included submarine-launched and hypersonic missiles, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un promised to quickly expand his nuclear arsenal and expressed a willingness to use those weapons preemptively if provoked.
Iran:
The Biden administration’s negotiations with the Iranian regime about its increasingly threatening nuclear and missile programs are now moving into a second year of talks. So far, the meetings aren’t going well — to say the least.
The Vienna talks about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (aka the Iran nuclear deal) stalled in March. The negotiating teams from Iran, U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China have presumably returned to their capitals.
It’s not clear when — or whether — the talks will resume.
Equally disturbing, Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently testified to Congress that Iran could have the uranium needed for a nuclear weapon — aka “ breakout time” — in a few weeks if it decided to do so.
That’s deeply troubling.
“Lengthening and strengthening” of the (deeply flawed ) Iran nuclear deal that Team Biden promised seems increasingly unlikely at this point — meaning, the chance of nuclear crisis with the Iranian regime looks increasingly likely.
Russia:
It’s no surprise that Moscow has been brandishing its hefty nuclear sword recently. It feels it needs to remind those supporting Ukraine of its nuclear superpower status — and the potential consequences of doing so.
For instance, this week, Russian state TV threatened to drown Britain with a “nuclear tsunami” for its support of Ukraine, claiming that its nuclear-powered, nuclear-tipped torpedo, Poseidon, could cause a tidal wave to swamp the island nation.
In addition, Moscow recently test-launched a new heavy intercontinental ballistic missile, the Sarmat. The city-busting missile is capable of carrying 20 nuclear warheads and can also be equipped with a nuclear-armed hypersonic glide vehicle.
Moreover, with its military efforts to subjugate Ukraine not going well, it’s also possible that Russia might actually use a tactical nuclear weapon to influence — or end — the war on Ukraine on its terms.
The world is an increasingly dangerous place, only made more menacing by the proliferation of nuclear technology and nuclear weapons, and dangerous threats involving their use by desperate, dictatorial regimes.
Consequently, given its record to date, the Biden administration must up its “game” diplomatically and militarily to protect American interests, considering the growing nuclear threat the U.S. and its allies are clearly facing.
This piece originally appeared in the Daily Signal and is reprinted with kind permission from the Heritage Foundation.
19. Ukrainian tractors vs. Russian tanks: The hundred-year history behind the meme
Ukrainian tractors vs. Russian tanks: The hundred-year history behind the meme
Photos and videos of Ukrainian farmers hauling away Russian tanks have been wildly popular since the war began. History shows why tractors are such a powerful symbol of Ukrainian resistance.
Freelance Reporter
May 6, 2022
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, news outlets and social media have captured the magnitude of the destruction: Cities like Kharkiv, Kyiv, Mariupol, Chernihiv and Kherson surrounded by Russian tanks; shelling; children taking shelter in subway stations with relatives’ phone numbers written on their skin. But occasionally there have been more hopeful images, like those of the Ukrainian popular resistance. In the country’s small towns and villages, farmers driving humble tractors have hauled away Russian tanks.
These photos and videos symbolize a popular narrative of Ukrainian heroes defending their homeland, risking their lives for the democratic world. In this narrative, farmers and, by extension, civilians, are not merely powerless victims of Russian aggression; they are people who just want to lead normal lives and are determined to fight back.
While these images are hard to verify, they’ve birthed a plethora of memes that raise the morale of Ukrainian troops and their supporters. Internet users have created images in which the defiant tractor drags a Soyuz space rocket, a submarine, the sunken Moskva cruiser on the bottom of the Black Sea. There are T-shirts featuring tractors and army patches that read “Tactical Agricultural Unit”; there is a video game called Ukrainian Farmy and an NFT project. Most of these products are marketed to raise funds for soldiers and displaced mothers and children.
“We need this epic-creating for courage,” said Artem Chapeye, a Ukrainian writer and photographer who joined the army to defend Kyiv. “You’re the good guy helped by tractors and naming your kids — of course only in fantasy — Javelina if it’s a girl or Bayraktar if a boy.”
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While Javelin anti-tank missiles and Bayraktar drones are instruments of war, the tractors’ main task is to provide food. Ukrainian agriculture feeds not only the army and the civilians, but also people elsewhere in the world. The country, which has long been nicknamed “the breadbasket of Europe,” is one of the largest exporters of grains. Before the war, it accounted for roughly 10 percent of global wheat exports and almost 15 percent of total corn exports, according to the country’s national bank.
“Disruption of grain supplies from the Black Sea region, mainly from Ukraine, threatens global food security,” wrote Olga Bondarenko, chief economist of the National Bank of Ukraine, in an op-ed for the Kyiv Independent. “Shortages of cereals can worsen nutritional intake and living standards of more than 5% of the world population.”
In interviews with Grid, farmers said they had done what they could during the spring planting campaign, some of them working in difficult conditions: wearing bulletproof vests, fearing land mines and planting their seeds under gunfire. “We completely understand the responsibility that is on us,” said Vitalii Primov, a farmer from the Sumy region, which has been heavily shelled since the first day of the invasion. “Many countries are concerned about the food crisis because of the war, but we will do our best.”
Ukrainians and their tractors
Ukrainians’ affinity for tractors began around 1930 in the vibrant city of Kharkiv, then the capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. It was there that the Soviets decided to erect one of the country’s largest tractor manufacturing plants, which Joseph Stalin called “a steel bastion of the collectivization of agriculture in the Ukraine.”
At that time, tractors were a game-changer. They were the epitome of engineering, replacing wooden horse-drawn plows that rolled over the soil. Their disruptive power was highlighted by Soviet propaganda, including movies about tractors, parades, songs and celebrations, according to Christina E. Crawford, assistant professor of architecture at Emory University.
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But it took some time to get there. In the late 1920s, Soviet leaders tried unsuccessfully to build tractors themselves, relying on industrial espionage and reverse engineering. They took apart an American Fordson tractor in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) and replicated the parts, but after years of trying and failing, they realized they couldn’t do it — they didn’t know enough about the necessary alloys, so the tractors broke easily. So a group of Soviet executives went to Caterpillar hoping to strike a deal for the development of the Kharkiv plant. Caterpillar asked for 7 million rubles gold and prohibited the Soviets from getting involved in the enterprise or studying the production of the machines. These conditions were rejected.
Ultimately, in the spring of 1930, the Soviets decided that it was more efficient to duplicate a tractor plant than to build one from scratch, so they modeled the Kharkiv factory on the one in Stalingrad (now Volgograd). That plant’s blueprints were created by the famous American architecture firm Albert Kahn, which also worked for Henry Ford at the large River Rouge auto plant in Dearborn, Michigan.
The Stalingrad factory already produced the International Harvester tractors, so those tractors were also chosen for Kharkiv. In 1932, the plant made 17,374 tractors, an accomplishment that earned it the Order of Lenin, a medal awarded for outstanding services rendered to the state. Soon after, in 1937, the plant made the first mass-produced tractor of Soviet design, the caterpillar SXTZ-NATI, followed by many others. Later, another factory was built in Dnipropetrovsk (now Dnipro), which produced smaller tractors, as well as space rockets, trams, wind turbines and satellites.
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The working class and the peasantry had tractors. They had fertile land. They worked the fields growing crops. But they couldn’t benefit from it: In the early 1930s, over 90 percent of the agricultural land in the Soviet Union was collectivized, and rural households lost the ownership of the goods they farmed. The wives of American engineers working in Kharkiv wrote in their journals about food shortages and deaths due to famine, known in Ukraine as the Holodomor. Experts estimate that some 4 million people died of hunger.
“The tractor becomes such an important symbol because you could also construe it as a machine that was, in a way, imported to dominate the peasantry,” Crawford told Grid.
Ukrainians regained control of their agricultural land only after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, but the decade that followed was challenging. Workers from across the former Communist bloc had very modest salaries because their factories made products of lower quality compared with those in the West. As a result, most families couldn’t make ends meet, and yearly inflation reached triple digits. Some were forced to sell their belongings for food.
Anatoliy Kostyuk, now the head of the agricultural enterprise Pylypchanske in the Kyiv region, remembers that the farm he worked for bought a worn-out Kharkiv T-150 tractor in 1996 for “a bag of sugar.”
“This tractor was far from perfect and gave us more trouble than it was worth,” but it helped the farm move forward and grow its business so that a few years later, in 2000, it could purchase “a more reliable KhTP [Kharkiv Tractor Plant] 17221 wheeled tractor,” he said. “This tractor worked great and never let us down!”
A photo example of a typical Ukrainian tractor provided to Grid by Anatoliy Kostyuk. (Anatoliy Kostyuk)
Granted, the Kharkiv tractors are not the best in the world. “They are not as advanced and up to date as … foreign machinery,” said Artur Levytskyy, who leads the machinery department of the agricultural enterprise El Gaucho, located in the Ternopil region of western Ukraine. “Most tractors have been imported into Ukraine, [and] the most popular [is] John Deere.”
Still, the Kharkiv tractors made a name for themselves, at least in the former Eastern Bloc, because they’ve always been affordable. Often, when the tractors broke, farmers would roll up their sleeves in the middle of the field and fix them themselves.
In its near-century of existence, the Kharkiv factory “produced more than 3 million units of heavy equipment,” according to Sergii Rodionov, a spokesperson for the plant. In fact, there were many tractors all across the former USSR. The Soviets had about twice as many tractors as the U.S. during the Brezhnev Era (1964 to 1982). “The main problem they had was that they produced tractors, but not parts,” said Mark B. Tauger, a history professor at West Virginia University. “So Soviet farms acquired extra tractors just to use as sources for spare parts.”
Now, as the area of the Kharkiv factory is shelled heavily by the Russians, Rodionov looks back at its history. “[We have] survived the Second World War, [and] twice the occupation of Kharkiv,” he said. The factory has always adapted. During World War II, it built an improvised tank, the KhTZ-16, on the chassis of one of its tractors.
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Rodionov said the agricultural machines the factory makes are versatile, so he was not surprised to see them in photos and videos shared all over the internet.
“It was in the first weeks of the war when we were sitting in the basement,” he recalled. “Someone I know showed a video showing a KhTP T-150 tractor pulling abandoned military equipment. This tractor model has been produced for over 40 years.”
Now, Ukrainian farmers have flipped the old narrative of the machine brought by Moscow leaders to dominate them. The tractor, Crawford agreed, has become “an important symbol of resistance.”
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Farmers vs. tanks
Farmers know a thing or two about wars. Throughout history, soldiers came disproportionately from the countryside, both in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
Hauling away a heavy-tracked military vehicle with an ordinary tractor is not that difficult from a technical perspective. It’s the same process as towing a car. “If the wheels and tracks are intact, you can set the gear neutral and release the brakes,” said the owner of the Finnish YouTube hobby channel Satunnaista sotilashistoriaa (”random military history”), who created a video to explain how it’s done.
“Farmers have a lot of experience with machinery and vehicles. I’m pretty sure they can figure out how to handle any vehicle they want to tow,” he told Grid.
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In the former Soviet Bloc, the idea of using tractors to tow tanks is nothing new. A military book published in 1980 in Romania shows civilians different ways of dragging a tank during a potential invasion. The book, “Asigurarea tehnica de blindate si autotractoare,” (“Technical maintenance of armored vehicles and tractors”), by Tiberiu Urdareanu, has several instructive images.
In 1980, an instruction manual for military vehicle maintenance shows different ways to tow a tank with tractors. (Unknown)
Still, approaching an abandoned piece of military equipment in a hot war is not a task for civilians. There could be armed soldiers nearby, land mines, booby traps or even a Ukrainian army unit across the field, a few kilometers away, targeting that tank.
But many farmers take these risks in order to do their part in this war. “They are showing the middle finger to the Russians,” said Alexander Grover, a computer scientist from Chicago who has lived in Kyiv and Lviv for the past six years and is now based in Lviv. He added that he has a deep respect for “these middle-aged and older-age farmers, people between their late 40s and early 80s, [who] are taking part in the war without any weapons.”
Grover, who used to work for a company in eastern Ukraine that owns several farms, is about to launch an NFT project that features tractors towing tanks, hoping to raise money for the army. He said selling digital goods is more practical than T-shirts in a time of war because they “have a higher profit margin, with less supply chain issues.”
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Like Grover and other civilians, tractor enthusiasts and farmers are doing their best to support the army. As the outskirts of Kyiv were attacked by the Russians, Kostyuk and his fellow farmers dug trenches, built dugouts and provided Ukrainian soldiers with three meals a day. Near Kharkiv, in a territory controlled by Russians, dairy farm owner Nataliya Koval started distributing food to the villagers. “We provide people with milk and dairy products, cheese, bread, pastries and meat,” she told Grid.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised the farmers in a speech: “Our ‘tractor troops’ — Ukrainian farmers — take Russian equipment in the fields and give it to our Armed Forces of Ukraine.” Across the country, professional and amateur mechanics take Russian military equipment, restore it, paint the blue and yellow flag on top of the Russian symbols, and hand it to their army for free.
Nobody knows exactly what happened to the Russian military vehicles taken by tractors, but it is said that the Ukrainians have more tanks now than they did at the beginning of the war.
In interviews with Grid, several farmers speculated that some of their peers had simply moved the military vehicles to clear the land for the spring planting season, perhaps selling them for scrap or on eBay to anyone who wants to own a piece of history.
“Have you captured a Russian tank or armored personnel carrier and are worried about how to declare it? Keep calm and continue to defend the Motherland! There is no need to declare the captured Russian tanks and other equipment.”
To Chapeye, the writer who joined the army to defend Kyiv, the value of these combat trophies is monumental. They keep the dream of independence alive and help motivate him and his fellows to continue fighting. “This feels like the time we’re creating a legend or rather an epic of the Ukrainian People, ourselves,” he said. “This is our ‘Iliad.’”
Stories like these help him for two reasons: “humor and realizing we are the future.”
A collective resistance
War trauma is collective. But so is resistance. A strong sense of belonging and connection can make it easier to navigate rage, grief, and survivor’s guilt. “Every individual who resists shows others that they are trying to change in small ways the landscape they are facing,” said Gwen V. Mitchell, a psychology professor at the University of Denver.
“As we watch the farmers in Ukraine engage in acts of collective resistance, we are naturally finding ourselves deeply moved because we are not simply observing resilience; we are watching collective action,” she said. “We can indeed find a way to thrive while others are attempting to destroy us.”
The war trauma will likely be imprinted in many generations to come, but right now, Ukrainians don’t have the time to think about that. They focus on the immediate and the biblical story they associate with their fight.
“We have the feeling like we’re the guardians of the galaxy,” said Chapeye, “unwillingly placed at the pivoting point in human history, deciding whether there will be a new turn toward a 1930s-style autocracy in the world, or repelling this tendency with our bodies, our lives, when needed.”
As a soldier helping to defend his country, he feels bolstered by that sense of collective resistance — by the bravery of farmers.
The interview with Vitalii Primov was translated by Inna Virin, an English teacher from Kyiv who is now in Berlin. Anatoliy Kostyuk’s words were translated by Elizaveta Shevchenko, a 17-year-old high school student from Irpin currently in Bucharest, Romania. Oleksandra Horchynska, a journalist living in Bonn, Germany, helped translate songs and provided insights into Ukrainian culture. Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this article.
20. How the West should respond to China’s search for foreign outposts
Conclusion:
America and its allies will not be able to stop China everywhere—nor should they try. A limited Chinese military presence abroad does not have to be a threat. In Djibouti Chinese soldiers have thus far co-existed with American, French, Italian and Japanese forces, all of which have their own bases in the country. Rather than play “global whack-a-mole”, as an American expert puts it, Western countries should treat this challenge like chess. That means anticipating Chinese moves, making blocking manoeuvres when necessary, and thinking in a strategic way. Just don’t treat countries like the Solomons as pawns.
How the West should respond to China’s search for foreign outposts
A Chinese deal with the Solomon Islands should be a wake-up call
THE UNITED STATES maintains hundreds of military bases in at least 45 countries. Britain runs plenty of outposts overseas. French forces are stationed from Ivory Coast to New Caledonia. Even tiny Singapore has training camps abroad. But five years after it opened—to the alarm of Western officials—China’s naval base in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, remains its only military bastion beyond its borders.
China wants to change that. Over the past two decades it has amassed more ships than America’s navy has in total. Lately it has increased efforts to find foreign berths for them. It is thought to have approached at least five potential host countries. A deal with the Solomon Islands, signed in April, has raised fears that China may establish a military foothold there. And it has deepened concerns that, one day, China will challenge American naval dominance in the Pacific.
China calls America “imperialist” for keeping foreign bases, while insisting that its own military expansion is peaceful, nothing to worry about and only natural for a rising power. It is surrounded by unfriendly island chains and narrow straits. Most of its trade in goods moves by sea. It is only prudent for China to seek friendly ports abroad, its officials say. It needs a navy equal to the task of defending its overseas investments, shipping routes and citizens who live or work abroad.
The neighbours are not convinced. China has built landing strips and missile batteries to assert its claims to disputed reefs in the South China Sea. It reserves the right to seize the democratic island of Taiwan by force. Its open ambition to control more territory than it currently does suggests a darker side to this maritime diplomacy. Its goal in Asia is a continent made up of individual countries that genuflect to the regional giant. It wants America out of its backyard, and an end to American-led alliances.
The Solomons deal is a warning to America and its allies. China denies a naval base is in the works, but a leaked draft of the secret agreement envisages the deployment of Chinese troops and visits by Chinese ships. That could give China a military presence not just near important shipping routes, but between America and its Pacific allies, Australia and New Zealand.
How to respond? For a start, democracies should learn from China, which has spent years diligently wooing Pacific Island governments. America’s engagement, by contrast, waned after the cold war’s end, giving it the reputation of a fickle and high-handed partner. It closed its embassy on the Solomons in 1993. Australia’s national broadcaster stopped short-wave radio transmissions to the Pacific five years ago, despite their value to locals as a source of information. China Radio International now broadcasts on some of those same frequencies. China persuaded the Solomons and Kiribati to stop recognising Taiwan in 2019, reportedly in exchange for generous aid and aeroplanes.
America and its allies, who still enjoy more goodwill in the region than China, should offer Pacific Islanders a better, more transparent deal. Aid is not the problem—Australia is still the largest donor to the Solomons. Instead Western countries need to offer enhanced terms of trade, more open labour markets and technology and expertise, especially in areas that matter to Pacific states, such as climate change, education, environmental protection, health care, illegal fishing and internet connectivity.
America has promised to reopen its embassy and hold a strategic dialogue with the Solomons. Better still would be to create a new position, American ambassador to the Pacific, with a more direct line to the White House. That would help America, Australia and New Zealand co-ordinate their policies across the region, not just with each other, but with Japan, France and other like-minded democracies that have interests there.
America and its allies will not be able to stop China everywhere—nor should they try. A limited Chinese military presence abroad does not have to be a threat. In Djibouti Chinese soldiers have thus far co-existed with American, French, Italian and Japanese forces, all of which have their own bases in the country. Rather than play “global whack-a-mole”, as an American expert puts it, Western countries should treat this challenge like chess. That means anticipating Chinese moves, making blocking manoeuvres when necessary, and thinking in a strategic way. Just don’t treat countries like the Solomons as pawns. ■
21. Pentagon moves $1.45 billion to restock Javelin, Stinger missiles sent to Ukraine
Pentagon moves $1.45 billion to restock Javelin, Stinger missiles sent to Ukraine
The Pentagon has shifted $1.45 billion to the Army and Marine Corps to restock Javelin anti-tank and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles the United States has sent to Ukraine, the Defense Department’s top weapons buyer said Friday.
The funds come from the $13.6 billion supplemental funding granted by Congress in March for Ukraine-related assistance — $3.5 billion of which is meant to replenish U.S. weapons stocks.
“Following the required 30-day notification to Congress, the first tranche of funds, roughly $1.45 billion, was transferred to the Army and Marines earlier this week to procure replenishment stocks of Stingers, Javelins and other key components,” William LaPlante, the undersecretary of Defense for acquisition and sustainment, told reporters.
Inside Defense first reported on the transfer, which includes about $1.1 billion for the Army — split between $809 million for Javelin missiles and $303 million for Stingers — with the Marine Corps getting $370 million for Stingers, according to a document the outlet obtained from the Pentagon comptroller.
The U.S. has given Ukraine more than 1,400 Stinger systems and 5,500 Javelins along with billions of dollars’ worth of other weapons since Russia began its attack on Ukraine on Feb. 24.
The missiles, which can be man-carried and launched, have been used to great effect against Kremlin forces.
But with the U.S. having provided a third of its stockpile of Javelins and a quarter of its Stingers in just under three months of war, the Biden administration is scrambling to refill those depleted supplies.
To that end the administration has requested a second supplemental from Congress, another $33 billion to support the Ukrainian military and economy and address the humanitarian crisis prompted by the war. About $5.4 billion of that would go toward additional weapons replenishment.
Raytheon won’t be able to ramp up production of Stingers until at least 2023, as the company must “redesign some of the electronics in the missile and the seeker head,” due to some components no longer being commercially available, CEO Greg Hayes said.
LaPlante on Friday acknowledged the Pentagon’s hurdles.
“I think the last few weeks have really highlighted the intensity of conventional conflicts now in the 21st century. And the demand for munitions and weapons platforms, it really outpaces anything we’ve seen in recent memory,” he said.
LaPlante noted that the Army is “actively negotiating” with industry for Stingers and related components, with an award expected at the end of May.
For Javelins, an award is imminent, he added.
In addition, the Pentagon will award a $17.8 million contract for industry to produce and ship Switchblade unmanned aerial systems to Ukraine.
“That’s an award that’s going to be seen later today, later this afternoon,” LaPlante said.
The contract will be funded from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative — a $300 million pot of money included in the March supplemental funding — with $136.8 million of that awarded so far, LaPlante said.
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.
