Please note I will be traveling to Mongolia for the next few days and I do ont expect to be able to put out another new daily news and commentary until at least Sunday night and then it will be dependent on connectivity.. I know I will have connectivity when we are in Ulaanbaatar but when we are in the countryside we may not have it for a couple of days.

Quotes of the Day:

"Freedom is man's capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves." - Rollo May

Steve Jobs died as a billionaire, with a fortune of $7 billion, at the age of 56 from pancreatic cancer, and here are some statements attributed to him as his “last words...”

"At this moment, lying on the bed, sick and remembering my whole life, I realize that all the recognition and wealth I have is meaningless in the face of imminent death. 

You can hire someone to drive your car, earn money for you—but you can't hire someone to carry illness for you. As we get older we get smarter, and we slowly realize that when the watch is worth $30 or $300 – both show exactly the same time.

Whether we drive a car worth $150,000, or a car worth $2,000 - the road and distance are the same, we reach the same destination.

If we drink a $300 or $10 bottle of wine, we'll be equally drunk.

Five undeniable facts:

1. Do not educate your children to be rich. Educate them to be happy. So when they grow up they will know the value of things and not their price.

2. Eat your food as medicine, otherwise you will have to eat your medicine as food.

3. The one who loves you will never leave you, even if they have 100 reasons to give up. They will always find one reason to hold on.

4. There is a big difference between being human and being humane.

5. If you want to go fast - go alone! But if you want to go far - go together.

"When you reach the top, keep climbing." 

- Zen proverb

1. The Russian Way of War in Ukraine: A Military Approach Nine Decades in the Making

2. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 15, 2023

3. Japan in Talks to Provide Artillery Shells to U.S. to Boost Stocks for Ukraine

4. China eyes Blinken’s imminent visit with deep distrust and low expectations

5. Once allies, Russia's mercenary boss is now in a more precarious position with Putin

6. Military retirees to be booted from bases in Turkey. Who’s next?

7. US training of Ukrainian troops adequate but not perfect, IG reports

8. Biden ‘open’ to plan that eases Ukraine’s path to NATO membership

9. S. Korean, Israeli Defense Firms Are Outpacing Competitors, Estonia Says

10. Want to improve civil-military relations? Teach military history

11. Hacker Groups Allegedly Unite, Threaten Cyberattacks on Europe and US Banking Systems

12. History Points to the Most Probable Conclusion in Ukraine: Scorched Earth or Regime Change

13. Culture war fights, China dominate initial defense bill markups

14. Time To Fight Russia and China’s Economic Coercion

15. The 20th Shangri-La Dialogue: Duelling Visions of Regional Order

16. Exclusive: US government agencies hit in global cyberattack

17. Remarks by Matt Pottinger to Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen

18. U.S. Deploys F-22s to Syria to Deter ‘Unprofessional Behavior’ by Russia

19. Creatives as frontliners in the Philippines’ fight against disinformation

20. Like Ukraine, Myanmar Deserves International Aid

21. The Choice the Philippines Didn’t Want to Make

22. Philippine Congress Set to Approve Expanded U.S. Base Deal as China Expands Claims, Ambassador Says

23. What happens in Crimea will determine Taiwan’s fate

24. US deals huge blow to China as it builds new military base on pivotal island

25. A Drawn-Out Ukraine War Should Not Change U.S. Strategy

1. The Russian Way of War in Ukraine: A Military Approach Nine Decades in the Making

Some interesting analysis. I bet there are some great discussions about this at SAMS. We only got up to deep battle and deep operations when I was there in 1995 (they need to allow alumni to come back and get an update!). i would love to be in a seminar there now,

Excerpts:

Understanding the Evolution of Russian Military Strategy

Deep Battle and Deep Operations

Nonlinear Warfare 

Noncontact Warfare

Recent Developments

We are witnessing the maturation of deep-attack capabilities that were developed during the 1970s and 1980s. As Soviet/Russian military theorists have long understood, these advancements in weapons and sensor technology, over the course of several decades, have made large troop concentrations extremely vulnerable. Additionally, although this has not led to the removal of terms such as FLOT (forward line of own troops), FLET (forward line of enemy troops), and FEBA (forward edge of battle area) from the military lexicon, targets are now being struck throughout the entire depth of the front and beyond. These theorists also recognized at an early stage that there are two possible military solutions to counter this. The first is by improving the effectiveness of their own reconnaissance-fire and reconnaissance-strike complexes, in order to degrade the opponent’s deep-attack capabilities. The second is by dispersing formations on the battlefield in order to increase survivability.

However, current battlefield conditions are adding the related difficulty of achieving the concentration of forces necessary for establishing main efforts during offensive operations. This is reducing large-scale engagements and thereby necessitating a concentration and synchronization of effects, rather than a traditional physical massing of troops. In turn, this places an extra burden on command and control, especially when contested by electronic warfare. Only by disrupting the opponent’s kill chain can larger formations regain the ability to concentrate and engage in maneuver warfare. During the war in Ukraine, superiority in kill-chain effectiveness has become one of the prime objectives for both sides. In this war and any other characterized by the same dynamics, this superiority becomes an essential condition for victory.

The Russian Way of War in Ukraine: A Military Approach Nine Decades in the Making - Modern War Institute

mwi.usma.edu · by Randy Noorman · June 15, 2023

When Ukrainian forces launched offensives last September in both the country’s northeast and the south, retaking six thousand square kilometers of Russian-occupied territory, it reinforced a narrative about the war in Ukraine that weaved together a series of disparate facts into a concise story of the conflict: Russia’s initial invasion was blunted by a spirited and effective Ukrainian defense, after which Ukrainian forces combined tactical agility, wise operational planning, and international material support to inflict shocking numbers of casualties and persistent battlefield disappointment on their Russian adversaries.

Yet, there are features of the war—and of both sides’ performance—that are lost in this simplified narrative. Among these are the fact that, despite the numerous and obvious shortcomings displayed in Russian military forces’ performance in practice, on a conceptual level they are actually ahead of their time. Tracing nearly a century of Soviet and Russian strategic culture and military thinking makes this clear. More importantly, exploring this history of military thinking in the context of Moscow’s competition for advantage with its Western competitors and adversaries highlights dynamics that evolve in a continuous fashion, influencing the character of warfare today and in the future. In essence, then, by studying the history of ideas that shaped battlefields of yesterday, we can better understand those of today and conceptualize and prepare for those of tomorrow.

Understanding the Evolution of Russian Military Strategy

Foresight and forecasting are concepts in Russian military strategy that are generally associated with predicting the character of future warfare, which is then translated into forms and methods of warfare, like operational concepts, force structures, and necessary military equipment. As a survey of decades of history illustrates, Russian military strategy over the past decades has correctly forecasted a number of implications of advancements in weapons, as well as sensor technologies, that are currently affecting the character of warfare in Ukraine.

The capacity to detect and strike targets at ever-greater distances and with ever-growing precision increases the vulnerability of dense troop concentrations, and therefore limits the ability to conduct large-scale sequenced and concentrated operations. As such, in order to enhance survivability, current battlefield conditions are forcing military units to disperse into smaller formations, dig in, or both, unless these conditions are effectively countered. As a result, the battlefield tends to become more fragmented, offering more independent action to lower tactical formations as the depth of the front is expanding to a considerable extent.

In 1936, Georgii Isserson, one of the key architects of operational art—the effort to organize and align the effects of tactical actions against overarching objectives—within the Soviet Union during the 1930s, described the value of history in recognizing military developments:

Each historical period is pregnant with a new one and displays new rudimentary tendencies and forms.

Given Isserson’s maxim, it becomes especially valuable to examine two Soviet/Russian military concepts—nonlinear warfare (on the fragmented battlefield) and noncontact warfare—which originated during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Both of these concepts have had a significant impact on contemporary Russian military thinking regarding the conduct of large-scale conventional warfare. Primarily born out of advancements in military technology that where initially developed during the 1980s, these concepts have now finally reached maturity. They reinforce a trend in the Russian view of large-scale conventional warfare that has been ongoing since the advent of nuclear weapons. A properly contextualized historical examination must therefore begin during the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s Great Patriotic War—World War II—and continue through the Cold War to the present day.

Deep Battle and Deep Operations

The Great Patriotic War is considered to be the high mark of practicing Soviet operational art, whose theoretical foundations had been laid in the 1920s and 1930s. Its two primary elements, deep battle and deep operation, sought to attack enemy forces simultaneously throughout their entire tactical and operational depth by using long-range artillery, air strikes, and air landings. The aim was to penetrate enemy front line and follow this with a powerful mechanized second echelon that exploited the initial breakthrough. Needless to say, this necessitated an enormous troop density along an uninterrupted front line, multiple echelons deep, and the Red Army’s force structure was organized accordingly.

Soviet military strategy remained centered around what was called the strategy of destruction for most of the Cold War, preparing to conduct large-scale offensive operations during the initial period of war. Nonetheless, adaptations were made to this strategy over time. The first major change occurred during the 1950s, following the realization that any large-scale conventional war would involve the employment of nuclear weapons. This had a significant impact on Soviet military strategy and subsequent military force structure, as it increased the vulnerability of the traditional concentration of forces necessary for conducting deep operations. Units would need greater mobility to increase survivability. The subsequent Zhukov reforms therefore aimed to transform the larger and more cumbersome mechanized and rifle divisions of World War II into smaller and more mobile tank and motor rifle divisions.

This persistent threat prompted the Soviets during the late 1970s to gradually abandon deeply echeloned and densely packed forces, instead opting for more forwardly deployed tactical detachments and operational-level maneuver groups. This strong forward posture and added mobility aimed to further reduce vulnerability by increasing Soviet forces’ rate of advance. The necessary concentration of forces for offensive operations was no longer to be achieved by massed formations, but rather through rapid movement from dispersed positions and shifting fires, raising the importance of independently operating formations. Consequently, according to the Soviet view, the battlefield would become increasingly fragmented in nature, offering more independence of action to commanders of combined arms formations.

Nonlinear Warfare

In 1978, under a program called Assault Breaker, the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency began working on a number of advanced intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems, long-range strike capabilities, and precision-guided munitions. These deep strike and deep attack capabilities would enable US armed forces to detect and engage targets at far greater distances with a high degree of precision, aimed specifically against heavily concentrated Soviet rear-echelon forces before they could join the battle. This represented a technological solution to overcome the imbalance in conventional forces between NATO and the Warsaw Pact and formed a key component of the United States’ overarching AirLand Battle concept.

Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, chief of the Soviet General Staff at the time, devoted much attention to these emerging technologies, acknowledging their major implications for the character and conduct of conventional warfare. He even discussed the use of unmanned flying machines in 1984. The Soviets were quick to recognize the offensive potential of these weapons systems. Acknowledging the Soviet Union’s technological backwardness, Ogarkov became the driving force in developing new concepts and capabilities in order to counter these emerging threats, in large part laying the foundations for current Russian military strategy.

The capabilities that the Soviets sought to develop became known as the reconnaissance-strike and reconnaissance-fire complex, which enabled them to preemptively attack Western deep-strike and deep-attack systems. The reconnaissance-strike complex would utilize high-precision long-range weapons like ballistic and cruise missiles against operational- and strategic-level targets. The reconnaissance-fire complex was its tactical-level equivalent, using artillery like howitzers and rocket artillery, as part of brigades and divisions, firing both conventional and precision munitions. Based on active reconnaissance through advanced ISR sensors, combined with automated command and control and long-range precision-strike systems, the conceptual aim was to accelerate the process between detection, decision-making, and destruction of the target. Major General Ivan Vorobyev, one of Ogarkov’s contemporaries, envisioned these systems operating in a network of reconnaissance assets, enabling the near-real-time destruction of targets.

The Soviets’ concept development sought to mitigate the destructiveness of these new Western capabilities by further dispersing Soviet forces on the battlefield, including logistical support elements, to make them less vulnerable. In doing so, they recognized that maintaining momentum and achieving the necessary concentration before battle would become more difficult. Toward the end of the Cold War, these developments matured into what the Soviets called nonlinear battle. In 1990, Lieutenant Colonel Lester Grau, of the Soviet Army Studies Office at the US Army Combined Arms Center, wrote a report on Soviet forecasting of future war, stating:

The Soviets see non-linear battle as one in which separate “tactically independent” battalions and regiments/brigades fight meeting battles and secure their flanks by means of obstacles, long-range fires and tempo. . . . Large units, such as divisions and armies, may influence the battle through employment of their reserves and long-range attack systems, but the outcome will be decided by the actions of combined arms battalions and regiments/brigades fighting separately on multiple axes in support of a common plan and objective. . . . Tactical combat will be even more destructive than in the past and will be characterized by fragmented [ochagovyy] or non-linear combat. The front line will disappear and terms such as “zones of combat” will replace the outdated concepts of FEBA, FLOT and FLET. No safe havens or “deep rear” will exist.

Noncontact Warfare

These new NATO and especially US precision-strike capabilities, initially designed against Soviet follow-on echelons, were eventually deployed against Iraq during the First Gulf War in 1991. While the coalition air campaign went on for thirty-nine days, the ground offensive lasted a mere one hundred hours. Eight years later, the NATO campaign against Yugoslavia was even fought entirely without deploying ground forces. Both conflicts strongly influenced the Russian view of future war and determined the types of attack that Russian forces must be able to defend against, especially the threat of a massed aerospace attack.

According to late Major General Vladimir Slipchenko, arguably one of the most influential Russian military theorists of recent decades, Operation Desert Storm was the first manifestation of what Ogarkov had called a “revolution in military affairs”—a reference to the increasing use of long-range precision-strike systems in future war. Slipchenko’s own concept of sixth-generation warfare signaled the computerization of warfare and the increased use of standoff weaponry. Its most important element was therefore called noncontact warfare, as opposed to traditional fourth-generation contact warfare.

In future war, Slipchenko stated, the role of noncontact distant warfare would increase, using long-range strike systems and precision-guided munitions, directed by enhanced ISR and command-and-control capabilities and supported by space-based systems like surveillance, navigation, and communication satellites. He emphasized that the increased ability to find and strike targets at both greater speed and greater distances, today referred to as the kill chain in Western militaries, would make traditional mass concentrations of troops a dangerous undertaking.

Besides its tactical employment, remote, noncontact strikes as part of reconnaissance-strike complexes would also be conducted at operational and strategic distances, aimed at military, economic, and infrastructural targets, using cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and weaponized unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), as well as traditional airpower using precision munitions. Consequently, the battlefield would expand and Slipchenko concluded that:

Fundamental concepts such as “front,” “rear,” and “forward line” are changing. . . . They are now passé and being replaced by just two phrases: “target” and “non-target” for a high precision remote strike.

As a result, deep battles and deep operations were steadily being countered and replaced by the concept of deep attack. Because Russia, at the time, was lagging a generation behind, Slipchenko stressed that it needed to develop its own sixth-generation warfare capabilities.

Recent Developments

Over the last several decades, the concepts of nonlinear and noncontact warfare have been recurring themes among Russian military writers. Prominent theorists S. S. Bogdanov, a retired lieutenant general, and Colonel S. G. Chekinov agreed that, as a result of advancements in information technologies, remote engagement of the opponent using precision munitions would form a significant part of what they referred to as new generation warfare. This involved increasingly exposed flanks, blurring front lines between opponents, and expanding the strike range far beyond the front lines. Likewise, Colonel General Kartapolov pointed to the shift from large-scale operations to precision strikes along the front as well as deep inside an opponent’s territory.

In several fairly recent statements, General Valery Gerasimov, current chief of the Russian General Staff, himself has mentioned the expanding spatial scope of modern warfare, in which both the use and impact of precision weapons is increasing. Stating that long-range, contactless strikes are now conducted throughout the entire depth of the enemy’s territory, using reconnaissance-strike and reconnaissance-fire complexes. According to Gerasimov, “frontal engagements of large formations of forces” conducting “sequential and concentrated operations” are being replaced by dispersed, mobile, combined arms formations, linked in a single intelligence-information space, placing greater demands on command and control.

While theoretical developments do not necessarily mean that concepts are cast into doctrine and successfully translated into practice, both concepts have strongly influenced current Russian military thought and the forms and methods of warfare it anticipates. Instead of fighting along thousands of kilometers of uninterrupted front line, Russian military thinkers envisioned a future war in which linear contact warfare would occur only at specific locations, and nonlinear combat along most of the front, with effects substituting for troop concentrations in order to establish a main effort. Together with the prospect of more common small wars along Russia’s periphery, these views have strongly influenced Russian reorganization and modernization efforts, undertaken based on the increasing need for smaller, high-readiness, tactical formations capable of independent action and noncontact warfare.

In 1999, Slipchenko asserted that noncontact warfare had not yet fully matured. Since then, however, the technology enabling it has finally come of age. In February 2020, Turkish forces employed UAVs and artillery against Syrian troops in a short, sharp engagement, destroying dozens of armored vehicles form a standoff distance. In in an even more convincing demonstration, the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War saw large-scale deployment of weaponized UAVs and loitering munitions being employed to great effect. Most Armenian casualties were inflicted by Azerbaijani standoff weapons, instead of through traditional close-combat engagements, undermining Armenia’s ability to concentrate sufficient forces in order to conduct combined arms counterattacks and ultimately inflicting a decisive defeat rarely seen in modern warfare.

Russia was watching both of these cases, but the Russian army had itself already demonstrated its reconnaissance-fire complex with frightening efficiency. On July 11, 2014, near the Ukrainian village of Zelenopillya, in the first of many cross-border artillery strikes, a Russian UAV spotted a Ukrainian tactical assembly area inside Ukrainian territory. The ensuing artillery strike, lasting under three minutes, killed over thirty Ukrainian soldiers, wounded another hundred, and destroyed two battalions’ worth of vehicles and equipment. Since then, Russian forces have continued enhancing their precision-strike capabilities and have expanded their concepts with several other variants, including radio-electronic strike, aimed primarily at disorganizing the opponent’s command and control and reducing the effectiveness of the enemy kill chain.

The Ukrainian Battlefield

Although not always portrayed as such, the war in Ukraine is, or at least has become, a peer conflict, largely because of the extent of Western and especially US support, providing Ukraine with significant amounts of advanced weapons systems—not to mention real-time battlefield intelligence to help identify Russian targets for Ukrainian long-range precision strikes. As a result, this is the first war in history in which both sides are capable of striking throughout the opponent’s tactical and operational depth with a high level of accuracy.

After the failure of the initial invasion, the subsequent period of the fighting in the Donbas was at first marked by Russian dominance in fires. Besides precision munitions, the employment of UAVs for target detection greatly enhanced the effectiveness of Russia’s large numbers of legacy artillery systems. Russian artillery batteries employing UAVs for target detection generally showed themselves capable of engaging Ukrainian positions within minutes after being detected. As a result, Ukrainian infantry companies were forced to disperse and often occupied front lines up to three kilometers wide. Consequently, battalions covered frontages that are traditionally the responsibility of brigades. Russian artillery superiority and sensor density even prevented Ukrainians from concentrating in units above company size, because anything larger would be detected prematurely and effectively targeted from a distance.

It was only when Ukrainian forces managed to establish their own effective kill chains that their artillery was partly able to counter this—particularly through the use of US-provided HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System), which is itself an offshoot of the Assault Breaker program. By effectively targeting Russian ammunition stocks, the Ukrainians steadily degraded Russian artillery superiority during the summer of 2022, forcing Russia to displace its railway logistics distribution centers from fifty to one hundred miles behind the front. Ukrainian long-range precision strikes also proved exceptionally effective in destroying Russian command posts. On the Kherson front, for example, over a period of eight months, they destroyed several high-level Russian headquarters, degrading Russia’s ability to conduct large-scale operations.

Whenever offensive or defensive maneuver is conducted, safety is found in mobility, with periods of concentration kept as short as possible. This was demonstrated during Ukraine’s Kharkiv offensive, where Ukrainian troops relied on speed and surprise, using lightly armed and fast moving reconnaissance units, and Russian troop density was relatively low. Whenever large formations remain static and concentrated, they become easily targeted. This was on display during the failed Russian crossing of the Siverskyi Donets on May11, 2022, when significant elements of a Russian motorized rifle brigade were located and destroyed by using aerial reconnaissance and artillery.

Currently, troop density and intensity of the fighting varies considerably along the front. This results in open flanks that need to be secured by other means. Meanwhile, the Russian army is adapting and its reconnaissance-fire complex continues to evolve, becoming highly responsive and with its artillery less vulnerable to counterbattery fire. Russian forces are also increasingly relying on loitering munitions for counterbattery fire and effectively using electronic warfare to counter Ukrainian UAVs. Ukrainian HIMARS strikes are even partially countered by Russian air defenses, while Russian command-and-control infrastructure has become much more resilient. Russian forces also rarely employ armor and infantry in concentrated assaults and in the defense occupy dispersed positions, while increasingly drawing on artillery to blunt Ukrainian attacks.

Implications for the War in Ukraine and Beyond

We are witnessing the maturation of deep-attack capabilities that were developed during the 1970s and 1980s. As Soviet/Russian military theorists have long understood, these advancements in weapons and sensor technology, over the course of several decades, have made large troop concentrations extremely vulnerable. Additionally, although this has not led to the removal of terms such as FLOT (forward line of own troops), FLET (forward line of enemy troops), and FEBA (forward edge of battle area) from the military lexicon, targets are now being struck throughout the entire depth of the front and beyond. These theorists also recognized at an early stage that there are two possible military solutions to counter this. The first is by improving the effectiveness of their own reconnaissance-fire and reconnaissance-strike complexes, in order to degrade the opponent’s deep-attack capabilities. The second is by dispersing formations on the battlefield in order to increase survivability.

However, current battlefield conditions are adding the related difficulty of achieving the concentration of forces necessary for establishing main efforts during offensive operations. This is reducing large-scale engagements and thereby necessitating a concentration and synchronization of effects, rather than a traditional physical massing of troops. In turn, this places an extra burden on command and control, especially when contested by electronic warfare. Only by disrupting the opponent’s kill chain can larger formations regain the ability to concentrate and engage in maneuver warfare. During the war in Ukraine, superiority in kill-chain effectiveness has become one of the prime objectives for both sides. In this war and any other characterized by the same dynamics, this superiority becomes an essential condition for victory.

Captain Randy Noorman MA is an officer in the Royal Netherlands Army and currently working as a military historian at the Dutch Institute for Military History, part of the Netherlands Defense Academy.

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

Image: Russian rocket artillery at Shikhany proving ground, 2018 (credit: mil.ru, via Wikimedia Commons)

mwi.usma.edu · by Randy Noorman · June 15, 2023

2. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 15, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-15-2023

Key Takeaways

• Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in at least three directions and reportedly made gains on June 15.
• Russian milbloggers continue to credit alleged superior Russian electronic warfare (EW) capabilities and defensive doctrine for Russian forces’ successful defenses against Ukrainian counteroffensive operations in southern Ukraine.
• Russian forces conducted another series of drone and missile strikes across Ukraine early in the morning of June 15.
• The Russian military is advancing initial efforts to stand up new corps- and army-level formations to implement Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s announced intent to conduct large-scale force restructuring by 2026, though these new formations are not yet staffed and operational.
• Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov deployed Chechen “Akhmat” special forces to border areas in Belgorod Oblast, likely as part of a continued effort to align himself with the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD).
• Western states may provide F-16 fighter aircraft and additional Leopard tanks to Ukraine in the coming months.
• Russian forces continued limited offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line.
• Ukrainian and Russian forces conducted ground attacks near Bakhmut, and Russian forces have gained territory as of June 15.
• Ukrainian and Russian forces reportedly continued limited ground attacks on the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line.
• Russian and Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations in western Donetsk Oblast.
• Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
• Ukrainian intelligence reported that Russian forces are beginning to decommission specialized company-size assault units and transferring their personnel to volunteer formations.
• Ukrainian partisans reportedly sabotaged a railway in occupied Melitopol, though ISW has observed no visual confirmation or Russian corroboration of the attack.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JUNE 15, 2023

Jun 15, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 15, 2023

Karolina Hird, Riley Bailey, Grace Mappes, and Mason Clark

June 15, 2023, 6:45pm ET

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

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

Note: The data cutoff for this product was 2:30pm ET on June 15. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the June 16 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in at least three directions and reportedly made gains on June 15. Ukrainian General Staff Spokesperson Oleksandr Shtupun reported that Ukrainian forces conducted successful offensive operations north and northwest of Bakhmut.[1] Ukraine’s Tavrisk Group of Forces Press Center reported that Ukrainian forces advanced up to one kilometer in western Donetsk Oblast and are continuing attempts to improve their tactical positions near Vuhledar (30km southwest of Donetsk City).[2] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian troops unsuccessfully attacked southwest and south of Orikhiv in western Zaporizhia Oblast and claimed that Ukrainian forces are increasing the tempo of counteroffensive operations in the area due to improved weather conditions.[3] Deputy Chief of the Main Operational Department of the Ukrainian General Staff Brigadier General Oleksii Hromov reported that Ukrainian forces have advanced up to 3km near Mala Tokmachka in western Zaporizhia Oblast and up to 7km near Velyka Novosilka in western Donetsk Oblast and have liberated seven settlements in those areas since beginning counteroffensive operations.[4] Advisor to the Ukrainian Presidential Office Mykhailo Podolyak however stated on June 15 that Ukrainian forces have yet to launch counteroffensives “as such” but acknowledged that Ukrainian forces are conducting offensive actions, a likely clarification that Ukrainian forces have not yet begun their main effort.[5] ISW assesses that ongoing Ukrainian offensive operations are likely setting conditions for wider Ukrainian counteroffensive objectives that are not immediately clear and therefore represent the initial phase of an ongoing counteroffensive.

Russian milbloggers continue to credit alleged superior Russian electronic warfare (EW) capabilities and defensive doctrine for Russian forces’ successful defenses against Ukrainian counteroffensive operations in southern Ukraine. A prominent Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces are implementing a “strategic defense” that seeks to attrit advancing Ukrainian forces in extended positional battles along a first line of defense before later launching counterattacks against weakened Ukrainian assault units.[6] ISW continues to assess that Russian forces are maintaining doctrinally sound defensive operations in this sector in which a first echelon of forces repels or slows attacking forces before a second echelon of forces counterattacks against any enemy breakthrough.[7] Another prominent Russian milblogger claimed that Russian EW complexes prevent Ukrainian forces from using precision-guided munitions guided by GPS coordinates and heavily disrupt Ukrainian radio communication.[8] The milblogger specifically claimed that Russian forces use “Murmansk-BN” EW complexes to disrupt sensors on Ukrainian aerial reconnaissance equipment and “Krasukha-4” EW complexes to suppress connections with satellite signals within a radius of 300km.[9] ISW has previously assessed that Russian EW capabilities have been critical in complicating Ukrainian attacks in the Zaporizhia direction, although it is unclear if continued successful Russian EW tactics are a result of superior capacities or improved Russian employment of these systems. ISW has previously noted that initial Ukrainian assaults and Russian defensive operations should not be extrapolated to predict the outcome of all Ukrainian counteroffensive operations.[10]

Russian forces conducted another series of drone and missile strikes across Ukraine early in the morning of June 15. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that between 00:20 and 04:30 local time on June 15, Russian forces launched four Kh-101/555 cruise missiles from four Tu-95 strategic bombers from over the Caspian Sea and 20 Shahed-typed drones from the northern and southern directions.[11]Ukrainian military sources reported that Ukrainian air defenses shot down one of the cruise missiles and all 20 Shaheds.[12] The remaining three cruise missiles struck industrial facilities in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.[13] Deputy Chief of the Main Operational Department of the UA Gen Staff Brigadier General Oleksii Hromov notably stated on June 15 that Russian forces have deployed a “Bal” Kh-35 coastal defense system to Bryansk Oblast, which Hromov warned may allow Russian forces to conduct strikes on Ukrainian far-rear areas in Zhytomyr, Kyiv, Poltava, Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Sumy, and Kharkiv oblasts.[14] Russian forces have long repurposed various missile systems, such as S-300 surface-to-air-missile systems, to strike ground targets and compensate for shortages of precision munitions, which is likely why Russian forces have deployed a coastal defense system to a land-locked oblast.

The Russian military is advancing initial efforts to stand up new corps- and army-level formations to implement Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s announced intent to conduct large-scale force restructuring by 2026, though these new formations are not yet staffed and operational. Independent Western open-source intelligence analysts began reporting in mid-May that Russian military authorities are actively recruiting officers and conscripts from Buryatia and Irkutsk to staff the new 25th Combined Arms Army.[15] The army HQ will reportedly be based in Yekaterinburg, Sverdlovsk Oblast.[16] ISW also previously reported on June 3 that Russia is forming the 40th Army Corps as part of the Southern Military District and actively trying to staff one of the corps’ motorized rifle battalions.[17] Efforts to construct and staff both the 25th Combined Arms Army and 40th Army Corps are likely part of the Russian Ministry of Defense’s (MoD) implementation of intended large-scale reforms of Russia’s ground forces to optimize for large-scale conventional warfare.[18] It remains unclear how Russian authorities intend to staff corps- and army-level formations to their doctrinal end strengths considering endemic force-generation challenges faced by the Russian military.[19] These formations may in part be intended to integrate a number of ad hoc volunteer formations that have been created over the course of the war in Ukraine, although Russia’s previous attempt to integrate volunteer battalions in the form of the 3rd Army Corps over the summer of 2022 did not yield particularly positive results.[20]

Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov deployed Chechen “Akhmat” special forces to border areas in Belgorod Oblast, likely as part of a continued effort to align himself with the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD). Kadyrov claimed on June 15 that the Chechen “Zapad Akhmat” Battalion arrived to the Nekhoteevka and Kozinka border checkpoints in Belgorod Oblast on his orders to protect the border from raids into Russian territory.[21] Kadyrov emphasized that the Akhmat forces will work in tandem with other Russian forces to defend Belgorod Oblast and residents of other border areas. Kadyrov likely aims to posture himself and Chechen forces as cooperating with the MoD, directly contrasting with Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin, who previously threatened to deploy Wagner forces to Belgorod Oblast without permission from the Russian MoD or the Russian military command.[22] Kadyrov has also taken advantage of the frequent Russian information-space discourse about Belgorod Oblast to posture himself as an effective and cooperative military leader without having to commit all Chechen forces to an attritive offensive or defense effort.

Western states may provide F-16 fighter aircraft and additional Leopard tanks to Ukraine in the coming months. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced on June 15 that Ukrainian pilots are already training on F-16 aircraft, allowing Western states to provide F-16s to Ukraine on an unspecified timeline.[23] The first of two chambers of the Swiss National Council voted on June 14 to decommission 25 Leopard-2 tanks and send the tanks back to Germany, which would then export the tanks to Ukraine.[24]

Key Takeaways

• Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in at least three directions and reportedly made gains on June 15.
• Russian milbloggers continue to credit alleged superior Russian electronic warfare (EW) capabilities and defensive doctrine for Russian forces’ successful defenses against Ukrainian counteroffensive operations in southern Ukraine.
• Russian forces conducted another series of drone and missile strikes across Ukraine early in the morning of June 15.
• The Russian military is advancing initial efforts to stand up new corps- and army-level formations to implement Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s announced intent to conduct large-scale force restructuring by 2026, though these new formations are not yet staffed and operational.
• Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov deployed Chechen “Akhmat” special forces to border areas in Belgorod Oblast, likely as part of a continued effort to align himself with the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD).
• Western states may provide F-16 fighter aircraft and additional Leopard tanks to Ukraine in the coming months.
• Russian forces continued limited offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line.
• Ukrainian and Russian forces conducted ground attacks near Bakhmut, and Russian forces have gained territory as of June 15.
• Ukrainian and Russian forces reportedly continued limited ground attacks on the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line.
• Russian and Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations in western Donetsk Oblast.
• Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
• Ukrainian intelligence reported that Russian forces are beginning to decommission specialized company-size assault units and transferring their personnel to volunteer formations.
• Ukrainian partisans reportedly sabotaged a railway in occupied Melitopol, though ISW has observed no visual confirmation or Russian corroboration of the attack.

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

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

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian forces continued limited offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on June 15. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Stelmakhivka (16km northwest of Svatove), Vyiimka (25km south of Kreminna), and Vesele (31km south of Kreminna).[25] Russian sources claimed on June 14 that elements of the 6th Combined Arms Army (Western Military District) conducted assaults in the direction of Kupyansk and that Russian forces continue to maintain a bridgehead on the west (right) bank of the Oskil River near Masyutivka (13km northeast of Kupyansk).[26] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty reported on June 15 that Russian forces have intensified indirect fire along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line.[27]

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

Click here to read ISW’s retrospective analysis on the Battle for Bakhmut.

Ukrainian forces continued counterattacks on the northern and southern flanks of Bakhmut on June 15. Ukrainian General Staff Spokesperson Oleksandr Shtupun stated that Ukrainian forces conducted successful counterattacks near the Rozdolivka-Krasnopolivka (13–16km north of Bakhmut) and Berkhivka-Yahidne (2–4km north of Bakhmut) lines.[28] Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces advanced near Klishchiivka (5km southwest of Bakhmut) and conducted additional counterattacks near Ozaryanivka and Kurdyumivka (both 12–14km southwest of Bakhmut).[29] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty stated that Ukrainian forces have recaptured 16 square kilometers of ground during counterattacks near Bakhmut in the past two weeks.[30] Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar stated that Russian forces are transferring reserves from the Kherson direction to the Bakhmut area, though ISW has not yet observed Russian elements previously committed to Kherson Oblast recommitted near Bakhmut.[31]

Russian forces continued limited ground attacks near Bakhmut and have gained territory as of June 15. Geolocated footage shows that Russian forces have captured Sakko i Vantsetti (15km north of Bakhmut) as of June 14.[32] ISW previously reported that milbloggers claimed that Russian forces withdrew from positions near Sakko i Vansetti on May 18.[33] The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Orikhovo-Vasylivka (11km northwest of Bakhmut), Yahidne, Berkhivka, and Rozdolivka.[34]

Ukrainian and Russian forces reportedly continued limited ground attacks on the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line on June 14. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive actions near Avdiivka, Marinka (on the southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City), Krasnohorivka (immediately west of Donetsk City), and Novomykhailivka (11km southwest of Donetsk City).[35] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted ground attacks near Pervomaiske (11km southwest of Avdiivka) and Opytne (3km southwest of Avdiivka).[36] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) acknowledged that Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations in the Donetsk direction, which likely includes the Bakhmut or Avdiivka areas.[37]

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

Russian and Ukrainian forces both conducted offensive operations in western Donetsk Oblast on June 15. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces in the Shakhtarske (western Donetsk direction) conducted an unsuccessful attack towards Vodiane (directly northeast of Vuhledar and about 36km due east of Velyka Novosilka).[38] The Ukrainian Tavrisk Group of Forces Press Center notably reported on June 15 that Ukrainian forces have advanced up to one kilometer in the Vulhedar area, and Tavrisk Commander Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi stated that Ukrainian troops continue moving forward in this area.[39] Russian forces likely conducted a limited ground attack in the Vuhledar area in order to draw Ukrainian forces away from Velyka Novosilka, where Ukrainian troops continue counteroffensive operations. Russian milbloggers continued to claim that Ukrainian forces are fighting south of Velyka Novosilka, particularly in the Makarivka-Urozhaine area.[40] One milblogger indicated that Ukrainian troops have made marginal advances southwest of Novodonetske (10km southeast of Velyka Novosilka).[41] Several Russian sources claimed that elements of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) operational-tactical formation “Kaskad” are striking Ukrainian concentration areas in the Velyka Novosilka area.[42]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on June 15. Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian troops unsuccessfully attacked southwest and south of Orikhiv and warned that Ukrainian forces may be regrouping and preparing for renewed offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast.[43] Several milbloggers additionally claimed that the intensity of Ukrainian attacks near Orikhiv has increased as weather conditions have ameliorated.[44] Geolocated footage posted on June 15 shows elements of the Russian BARS-23 “Sudaplatov” volunteer battalion firing at Ukrainian forces in western Zaporizhia Oblast near Lobkove.[45]

Russian sources seized on International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafeal Grossi’s visit to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) to accuse Ukraine of threatening the safety of the plant. A Russian media aggregator posted footage of various Russian authorities escorting Grossi around the ZNPP and claimed that ZNPP employees showed Grossi evidence that Ukraine is endangering the ZNPP.[46] The IAEA and Grossi have not yet released independent statements on the situation at the ZNPP as of the time of this publication. Russian Federal Service for Environmental, Technological, and Nuclear Supervision Rostekhnadzor stated that the ZNPP is operating normally as of June 15.[47] Ukrainian State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate Head Oleh Korikov however reported that Russian officials at the ZNPP stopped automatic transmission of information from radiation monitoring sensors two weeks ago, forcing IAEA inspectors to manually record radiation readings on their phones and send them to the IAEA for monitoring purposes.[48]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted limited sabotage and reconnaissance efforts on the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast on June 15. Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian troops repelled a Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance group that attempted to land near Oleshky (just southeast of Kherson City) and Hola Prystan (just southwest of Kherson City) with 40 personnel and four boats.[49] Oleshky and Hola Prystan have both suffered from substantial flooding following the destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant (KHPP) dam, so it is unclear exactly where Russian sources claimed Ukrainian forces were able to land, although Kherson Oblast occupation head Vladimir Saldo claimed that the water level has fallen to 0.1 meters in Oleshky and 0.25 meters in Hola Prystan.[50] Ukrainian Kherson Oblast authorities noted that 27 settlements remain flooded on the west (right) bank of Kherson Oblast and 17 remain flooded on the east bank.[51]

Russian sources claimed that Ukraine conducted a drone attack on occupied Crimea on the night of June 14 to 15.[52] Crimean occupation head Sergey Aksyonov claimed that Ukrainian forces launched nine drones at Crimea and that Russian air defense shot down six of the drones and the electronic warfare (EW) disabled the remaining three.[53] One drone reportedly detonated in the village of Dokuchevo in central Crimea.[54]

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

Ukrainian intelligence reported that Russian forces are beginning to decommission specialized company-size assault units and transferring their personnel to volunteer formations. The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported on June 15 that the Russian military formed a special commission, headed by Deputy Chief of Staff of the Russian grouping in Ukraine Major General Oleg Polguev, to transfer personnel from “Storm-Z” assault units to four volunteer detachments and three volunteer brigades of the Russian “Volunteer Corps.”[55] Russian forces formed the specialized “Storm-Z” assault units during their 2023 winter–spring offensive campaign to conduct highly attritional assaults and urban combat operations around Bakhmut and along the Donetsk City–Avdiivka line.[56] Russian forces staffed these specialized units primarily with convict recruits, and GUR reported that these personnel have shown extremely low combat capabilities and are particularly prone to alcoholism, looting, and desertion.[57] Russian forces likely decided to decommission the “Strom-Z” assault units because of these personnel issues and due to the fact that Russian forces are largely defending against Ukrainian counteroffensive operations in rural areas that do not require urban combat specialties. GUR reported that the Russian commission ordered Russian forces to transfer 2,000 convict recruits from “Storm-Z” assault units to training grounds in Ukraine where formations of the “Volunteer Corps” are currently training.[58] The formations of the “Volunteer Corps” recently formalized contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD), and the MoD is likely using the personnel transfers to further formalize the organization of these volunteer formations.[59]

The Financial Times reported on June 15 that Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a confidential decree strengthening the nationalization of Western assets in Russia. Putin reportedly signed the decree in the past week, which enables Russian officials to appropriate Western assets at significantly lower prices and requires that private Russian buyers of nationalized Western assets are fully Russian held or in the process of excluding foreign shareholders.[60] The Financial Times reported that sources close to the Kremlin stated that Russian officials are attempting to punish Western countries that have seized Russian assets while rewarding Western businesses that have yet to leave Russia.[61] The Kremlin may be intensifying the nationalization of Western assets in Russia to threaten the remaining Western businesses operating in the country from leaving.

A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces are searching for a Russian junior sergeant who is wanted for the murder of five other Russian soldiers in the Bakhmut area.[62]

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

Ukrainian partisans reportedly sabotaged a railway in occupied Melitopol. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on June 15 that Ukrainian partisans blew up a railway in northern Melitopol, derailing five train cars carrying iron ore on an unspecified date.[63] Ukrainian Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov reported on June 13 that an explosion in northern Melitopol damaged 50 meters of rail track, derailing a freight train carrying iron ore.[64] ISW has not observed any visual evidence or Russian corroboration of the attack or derailment.

Ukrainian officials reported that Russian occupation authorities continue to forcibly relocate Ukrainian children to Russia and repopulate occupied areas with Russian civilians. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on June 15 that Russian officials forcibly relocated 150 Ukrainian children from children’s camps in occupied Luhansk Oblast to recreation centers in the Karachay-Cherkessia Republicon June 8, where 750 Ukrainian children have resided since early June. [65] Ukrainian Mariupol Mayoral Advisor Petro Andryushchenko reported that 200,000 Russian students will travel to Mariupol in 2023 as part of Russian efforts to “restore” the city.[66] Andryushchenko also stated that Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) authorities will launch a mortgage program to repopulate occupied Donetsk Oblast and build universities for Russian students.

Russian occupation authorities expanded their patronage networks with Russian regions at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. Russian occupation officials announced that occupied Zaporizhia Oblast is partnering with the regional governments of Pskov and Kursk oblasts, and the DNR is partnering with the Republic of Bashkortostan and Kirov Oblast.[67] Russian occupation officials also announced that the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) and the Kherson Oblast occupation administration attended the forum to expand mutual cooperation on development efforts.[68]

Russian authorities continue preparing for the September 2023 elections in occupied regions. The Russian Central Election Commission (CEC) announced that occupied areas will hold elections for 80 total campaigns on September 10, including for the: DNR People’s Council and 21 DNR municipalities, LNR People’s Council and 28 LNR municipalities, the Zaporizhia occupation Legislative Assembly and 16 municipalities, and the Kherson Oblast occupation Duma and 14 municipalities.[69] Russian CEC Chairperson Ella Pamfilova stated that the CEC consulted with the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and Federal Security Service (FSB) before announcing the timing of elections in occupied areas.[70] The Russian State Duma previously adopted amendments to the martial law legislation allowing officials to postpone regional elections in territories under martial law.[71]

Significant activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks).

ISW will continue to report daily observed Russian and Belarusian military activity in Belarus, as part of ongoing Kremlin efforts to increase their control over Belarus and other Russian actions in Belarus.

Nothing significant to report.

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

3. Japan in Talks to Provide Artillery Shells to U.S. to Boost Stocks for Ukraine

And now Japan is going to step up to be a partner in the Arsenal of Democracy as well.

Japan in Talks to Provide Artillery Shells to U.S. to Boost Stocks for Ukraine

Tokyo looks for workaround to help Kyiv’s counteroffensive despite curbs on weapons exports

By Alastair GaleFollow

Updated June 15, 2023 8:30 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/japan-in-talks-to-provide-artillery-shells-to-u-s-to-boost-stocks-for-ukraine-7be5ddf9?mod

The U.S. has sent more than two million 155mm artillery rounds to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began in February 2022. PHOTO: ARIS MESSINIS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

TOKYO—Japan is in talks to provide artillery shells to the U.S. to bolster stocks for Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russia—a pivot for a country that has long curbed exports of lethal weapons.

A global hunt for artillery shells for Ukraine has intensified as Kyiv presses to regain territory in its southeast from Russian forces. The U.S. has sent more than two million 155mm artillery rounds to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began in February 2022, and Washington has been pressing its allies to contribute supplies.

On Tuesday, the U.S. announced a new package of military support for Ukraine, including 155mm artillery shells. The U.S. has drawn deeply from its stocks and is looking for ways to support Ukraine without harming its own military readiness.

Japan is considering supplying 155mm artillery shells to the U.S. under a 2016 agreement that allows the two countries to share ammunition as part of their longstanding security alliance, said people familiar with the talks. The shells would help replenish U.S. supplies as it supports Ukraine’s war effort, according to these people.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin held talks earlier this month in Tokyo with Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada. After the meeting, Austin praised Japan for the nonlethal military support it has given Ukraine and said additional assistance would be welcome.

Late last year, Japan pledged to sharply raise military spending over five years to 2% of its gross domestic product.

The U.S. applauded the move as it looks for Tokyo to play a larger role in regional security and push back against China’s growing military power. Washington has also encouraged developing ties between Tokyo and NATO.

An agreement has already been reached for South Korea to provide hundreds of thousands of 155mm artillery rounds for Ukraine via shipments to the U.S., The Wall Street Journal has reported.

It couldn’t be learned how many shells Japan might supply or when. Ukrainian troops are using more than 90,000 rounds of 155mm ammunition a month, Defense Department officials say.

Shells at a U.S. Army ammunition plant. The U.S. is seeking ways to support Ukraine without harming its own military readiness. PHOTO: HANNAH BEIER/GETTY IMAGES

Japan’s Ministry of Defense said it hasn’t made any final decision to supply artillery shells to the U.S. or Ukraine. It said it is holding various discussions with the U.S. and declined to say what they were about.

A Pentagon spokesman said, “We continue to work together with Japan and more than 50 countries around the world to provide support to Ukraine.” The spokesman said it was up to each country to decide what it could provide. 

Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, said Washington was working with allies to help Ukraine because “over the last 18 months America’s military-industrial base and stockpiles have been stretched.”

Since the start of the invasion Japan has provided bulletproof vests, helmets and other nonlethal military aid to Ukraine. But it has stopped short of offering weapons, citing self-imposed restrictions. 

Following its defeat in World War II, Japan renounced the use of military force to settle international disputes. In the 1960s, the cabinet approved restrictions on arms exports and ruled out the transfer of lethal weapons overseas. Separately, a law restricts the export of equipment used by the Self-Defense Forces, as Japan’s military is known.

While the artillery-shells plan wouldn’t involve directly sending lethal weapons to the battlefield, it would still be politically sensitive in Japan, where many voters are uneasy about being ensnared in overseas conflicts.

At the same time, some conservative Japanese lawmakers say the country should follow the U.S. and European nations by directly arming Ukraine.

The Japanese military is decommissioning M270 multiple-launch rocket systems, similar to the Himars rocket launchers that Ukraine received from the U.S. and used successfully against Russia.

Some conservative Japanese lawmakers favor directly arming Ukraine, such as by supplying M270 multiple-launch rocket systems that Japan’s military is decommissioning. PHOTO: KIYOSHI OTA/BLOOMBERG NEWS

The rocket launchers could help Ukraine, said Masahisa Sato, a lawmaker in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. “What a waste,” he said. 

Japan’s ruling party and its coalition partner began debating loosening restrictions on weapons exports earlier this year, but any move to do so would likely be months away.

Polls suggest that voters in Japan generally support strengthening the military to defend against regional threats and back Ukraine in its war with Russia, but they aren’t enthusiastic about sending weapons. An opinion poll by the Nikkei newspaper published in May showed only 26% of respondents supported dropping restrictions on the export of lethal weapons.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has backed a review of restrictions on weapons exports and held talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on June 9. 

Zelensky has refrained from pressuring Tokyo publicly. When he attended the Group of Seven summit in Hiroshima in May, Zelensky was asked at a press conference whether he wanted Japan to change its weapons-export rules.

“I would like all states that are capable of providing us with help to do so, but I understand that there are certain legislative or constitutional complications,” Zelensky replied.

Replenishing artillery-shell supplies could be one of the most effective ways for Japan to help Ukraine, said military analysts, and surplus howitzers would help, too. 

“The bottom line is that this is primarily an artillery war, so artillery platforms with sufficient ammunition will certainly always be welcome by Ukraine,” said Franz-Stefan Gady, a military analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think tank.

Chieko Tsuneoka and Nancy Youssef contributed to this article.

Write to Alastair Gale at alastair.gale@wsj.com

4. China eyes Blinken’s imminent visit with deep distrust and low expectations

Quote: " The secret to true happiness is low expectation and insensitivity." - Olivia Goldsmith.

I guess China will truly be happy.

China eyes Blinken’s imminent visit with deep distrust and low expectations

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/15/china/blinken-china-visit-us-tensions-analysis-int-hnk/index.html?utm

Analysis by Nectar Gan, CNN

Updated 3:08 AM EDT, Fri June 16, 2023

Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. Sign up here.

Hong KongCNN — 

As US Secretary of State Antony Blinken prepares for his long-delayed trip to China this weekend aimed at stabilizing tense relations between the world’s two superpowers, the mood in Beijing is hardly welcoming.

Days before his departure, the top US diplomat received a stern rebuke from his Chinese host, who squarely blamed Washington for the recent spike in tensions after Blinken scrapped an earlier trip in February over a suspected Chinese spy balloon that flew over the US.

In a phone call with Blinken, China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang urged the US to “show respect” on Beijing’s core concerns and stop interfering in its internal affairs, according to a Chinese readout.

That statement – which was noticeably more prickly than the readout of the same call from the State Department – speaks volumes of Beijing’s low expectations for the high-stakes visit as well as the deep distrust that swirls over the Biden administration’s push for a “thaw” in frosty relations, experts say.

Chinese state media has stayed largely muted in recent days for what will be the most senior visit by an American official in five years.

“The coverage of Blinken’s visit in China is not nearly as extensive or enthusiastic as it has been in the West,” said Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center, a think tank in Washington.

“After the earlier postponement due to the balloon incident, the Chinese are worried about another potential embarrassment. The expectations are low and carefully managed,” she said.

Low expectations

While the US has been driving recent outreach, it has also played down expectations.

“We’re not going to Beijing with the intent of having some sort of breakthrough or transformation in the way that we deal with one another,” Daniel Kritenbrink, the State Department’s top diplomat for East Asia, told reporters in a briefing Wednesday.

“We’re coming to Beijing with a realistic, confident approach and a sincere desire to manage our competition in the most responsible way possible. We do hope at a minimum that we will achieve that goal,” he said.

But even that will be a tall order given the deep suspicion in Beijing, due to a major breakdown of political trust between the two superpowers that began during the Trump administration.

“The dominant view in China is that the words and deeds of the US are inconsistent – they don’t do what they say,” said Wang Yong, an international relations professor at Peking University in Beijing.

New Chinese ambassador warns of 'serious difficulties' in US-China relations upon arrival in US

In recent months, while pushing to resume high-level diplomatic talks, the US has slapped sanctions on Chinese companies, pushed allies to restrict semiconductor tech experts to China, rallied other advanced economies to counter Beijing’s “economic coercion,” and signed a new trade deal with Taiwan – a self-ruling democracy Beijing views as its own.

These actions have drawn the ire of Beijing, prompting it to question the “sincerity” of the Biden administration.

“The US side asks for communication on the one side, yet on the other, suppresses and contains China by every possible means,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said last month, a day after US President Joe Biden predicted a “thaw” in relations.

“The mixed signals sent by the US side are very confusing. This makes the Chinese side have no particularly high hopes for Blinken’s visit,” Wang said.

Chinese experts say the key issues at the top of Beijing’s agenda include Taiwan and US technology export controls, especially curbs on the supply of advanced semiconductors and chipmaking equipment to China.

Cold shoulder

At the heart of Beijing’s complaint is its rejection of a central premise of the Biden administration’s China strategy – that the two superpowers can compete aggressively with each other while keeping communication lines open to avoid veering into conflict.

The result is a stark contrast in attitudes. While the US has appeared eager to repair ties, China has reacted passively and done little to hide its displeasure.

Tong Zhao, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said China was seeking to exert pressure by acting deliberately cold and distant to US outreach, including rejecting Washington’s proposition to establish “guardrails” for the relationship and risk-reduction mechanisms.

China recently refused a US proposal for Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to meet his Chinese counterpart Li Shangfu, questioning the “sincerity” of the invitation. (Chinese experts say it was because the US failed to lift sanctions on Li, imposed in 2018 over China’s purchase of Russian weapons.)

China accuses US of 'provocation' after near collision of warships

China cut off talks with US military commanders following former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last August. The lack of communication between the world’s two most powerful militaries has fueled fears of miscalculation and conflict.

The two sides have seen multiple dangerous military interactions in recent months, including a near collision of warships in the Taiwan Strait and a close encounter of military jets over the South China Sea.

Zhao said China has adopted “a brinkmanship policy” to highlight the risk of military confrontation to the US.

“China has always believed that this risk is caused by the unilateral and unreasonable actions of the US. By making the risk more clear, China thinks it can push the US to recognize its own behavior problems and make unilateral compromises,” Zhao said.

“To some extent, China is seeking to deliberately raise some risks at the tactical level, in the hope of forcing the US to make compromises in favor of China at the strategic level.”

‘Last chance’

Despite anger over what it sees as recent US efforts to contain China, Beijing has agreed to Blinken’s rescheduled visit after a four-month delay.

Part of the reason is practical – experts say the Blinken trip appears to be blocking visits by other US cabinet members that China deems important, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and climate envoy John Kerry.

Beijing might also be concerned about the optics, especially for countries caught in the intensifying US-China rivalry.

“It is important for China not to appear to be the one rejecting dialogue, especially when the US has been pushing for it,” said Sun at the Stimson Center.

But there is also a sense of necessity, given China’s lackluster economic recovery since emerging from strict “zero-Covid” lockdowns late last year.

The disappointing economic data may have clouded China’s optimistic view on the balance of power between it and the US, Zhao said. To maintain economic growth, it is all the more important for China to seek a stable relationship with the US, especially in trade, he added.

As Beijing's intelligence capabilities grow, spying becomes an increasing flashpoint in US-China ties

But none of these reasons is likely to change Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s long-term strategic concerns about the US.

Countering the US has increasingly been a focal point in China’s foreign and security policies, including efforts to weaken American influence in the developing world, Zhao said.

Last month, Xi delivered a blunt assessment of how he views the world, calling on his top national security officials to think about “worst case” scenarios and prepare for “stormy seas,” amid a hardening effort to counter any perceived internal and external threats.

To some experts, these remarks are meant to prepare China for an eventual showdown with the US in the foreseeable future.

China is also very much aware the US is headed into a presidential election cycle, where hawkish rhetoric against Beijing may intensify further.

That means a clock is ticking.

Wang, the expert at Peking University, said Blinken’s long-delayed visit is the “last chance” to repair ties with China before the US election next year.

“There is not much time left,” he said. “The political polarization in the US is so severe that if it is delayed further, it will be very difficult for the Biden administration to find another suitable opportunity to improve relations in the remaining year.”

5. Once allies, Russia's mercenary boss is now in a more precarious position with Putin

I think they should have a shoot out and see who comes out on top.

Seriously, will this threaten Putin? Can he crush Prigozhin?

Once allies, Russia's mercenary boss is now in a more precarious position with Putin

KEY POINTS

• Close followers of Russia are keeping a close eye on emerging tensions between the Kremlin and the head of Russian private military company, the Wagner Group.
• 
  
• There’s no love lost between the head of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and Russia’s Ministry of Defense, with Prigozhin openly and repeatedly criticizing the ministry’s most senior officials.
• 
  

CNBC · by Holly Ellyatt · June 16, 2023

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of the Wagner Group military company, arrives during a funeral ceremony at the Troyekurovskoye cemetery in Moscow, Russia, Saturday, April 8, 2023.

AP

Tensions have emerged this week between the Kremlin and the head of Russian private military company, the Wagner Group, as President Vladimir Putin appeared to take sides in a long-running and very public dispute between Russia's mercenaries and the defense ministry.

It's well known that there's no love lost between the outspoken Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin and Russia's Ministry of Defense; Prigozhin has openly and repeatedly criticized the ministry's most senior officials, including Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, in expletive-laden rants slamming Russia's military strategy in Ukraine.

He has also accused senior defense officials of treachery and deliberately withholding ammunition for the Wagner Group which has spent months fighting in Bakhmut, the epicenter of intense hostilities in Ukraine.

Prigozhin has been very careful not to direct any public criticism toward the Kremlin and Putin, and is one of the president's long-standing associates and supporters.

But now, however, tensions appear to be emerging between Prigozhin and the Russian leadership, putting him in a precarious position with the Russian president.

While Wagner has had its uses in Ukraine (and arguably, has been able to boast some gains where Russia's regular army has not) Russia's defense ministry has been keen to curb the group's influence, and particularly that of Prigozhin.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (C) speaks with Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu (R) and Chief of the Gen. Valery Gerasimov (L) after a meeting of the Russian Defence Ministry Board on December 21, 2022.

Mikhail Klimentyev | Afp | Getty Images

The latest move to rein in the mercenary group came last Saturday when Shoigu announced that "volunteers formation" and private military companies would have to sign contracts directly with the ministry by July 1.

The ministry claimed that "this will give volunteer formations the necessary legal status, create common approaches to organizing comprehensive support and fulfilment of their tasks," according to state news agency TASS.

Prigozhin reacted to the announcement with characteristic defiance, stating Sunday that "Wagner will not sign any contracts with Shoigu," adding that the order did not apply to the Wagner Group.

But then the move to enforce contracts with private military companies was explicitly endorsed by Putin on Tuesday, with the president saying he wanted the law changed to legalize their activities.

"This is the only way to ensure social guarantees (for mercenary fighters) because there is (currently) no contract with the state and no contract with the Defence Ministry," Putin told a group of war correspondents.

Remarkably, despite Putin's comments, Prigozhin again refused to sign any contract, saying Wednesday that "when we began to participate in this war, no one said that we would be obliged to conclude agreements with the Ministry of Defense," he said on Telegram according to a translation by Google.

He added that "none of the Wagner PMC fighters is ready to go down the path of shame again. And so no one will sign contracts."

Precarious place for Prigozhin

Prigozhin has stated that he's confident a compromise can be found that avoids the need for a contract with the defense ministry, but analysts say the mercenary boss is on shaky ground in his apparent defiance of Putin.

The U.K's defense ministry remarked on rising tensions Thursday, noting that "for several months, Wagner owner Yevgeny Prigozhin has been aiming vitriolic criticism at the MoD [Ministry of Defense] hierarchy but deferred to Putin's authority."

Now, it noted, that "Prigozhin's rhetoric is evolving into defiance of broader sections of the Russian establishment." It warned that July 1— the deadline for the volunteers to sign contracts — "is likely to be a key way-point in the feud."

Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin attends the funeral of Dmitry Menshikov, a fighter of the Wagner group who died during a special operation in Ukraine, at the Beloostrovskoye cemetery outside St. Petersburg, Russia, on Dec. 24, 2022.

AP

Prigozhin has become an increasingly high-profile figure, entering the independent Levada Center's index on Russian people's trust in public figures for the first time in May — giving him a rating of 4%. This puts him on the same trust level as former President Dmitry Medvedev and Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov.

Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, noted Wednesday that he could find himself increasingly vulnerable as he becomes more high profile, and is seen to present a possible challenge to Putin.

"Prigozhin is playing at independent politics, raising the stakes and testing the susceptibility of the system as he goes. But both technically and physically, this is only possible as long as this shaven-headed enfant terrible is useful to Putin," Kolesnikov said in comments published in Carnegie Politika.

However, he noted, that "in the current political system ... Prigozhin can only be against the elite — and popular as a result — so long as he is for Putin. It would take the slightest sign from Putin for the Wagner boss to disappear from the information space (and indeed other spaces)," he said.

While Prigozhin represents "an emerging leader who speaks to the people without intermediaries, just as befits a populist and true leader," Kolesnikov said "the only problem is that Russia already has such a leader: President Vladimir Putin."

CNBC · by Holly Ellyatt · June 16, 2023

6. Military retirees to be booted from bases in Turkey. Who’s next?

What about Europe, Japan, and Korea?

Military retirees to be booted from bases in Turkey. Who’s next?

militarytimes.com · by Karen Jowers · June 15, 2023

Military retirees living in Turkey have been put on notice that, beginning in fiscal 2024, they will not have access to U.S. military bases in that country — but they have just received a 3½ month reprieve from the original June 15 cutoff date.

The memo rescinding the Thursday deadline was issued June 13 by Air Force Col. Calvin B. Powell, commander of the 39th Air Base Wing at Incirlik Air Base. The restrictions are now scheduled to take effect Oct. 1. Powell’s original memo, dated May 27, gave retirees roughly two weeks’ notice.

“The United States’ bilateral agreements with Turkey do not permit U.S. Forces to extend [Status of Forces Agreement] privileges or access to installations, facilities and activities to retirees,” according to Powell’s June 13 memo.

Turkey isn’t the only country where these measures are being considered. Officials at Aviano Air Base, Italy, are “looking into potential access changes,” said Air Force Capt. Mark Goss, a spokesman for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa. “At this time we cannot confirm if/when this change may take place” at Aviano, he said. “If there is a change in installation access policies, wing leadership will communicate this to those affected.”

Changes in the Philippines had also been in the works last year, but were put on hold.

For retirees in Turkey, it means they are prohibited from shopping at commissaries and Army and Air Force Exchange Service locations, according to Powell’s memo. Retirees also will not be authorized to use military postal services beyond Oct. 1. It revokes access to the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System and ID card offices, the Tricare representative, legal offices, and every other service available on the installations and geographically separated units.

The new rules apply to Incirlik Air Base, Izmir Air Station and Ankara Air Station, as well as the 425th Air Base Squadron and 717th Air Base Squadron, two geographically separated units.

“This impacts a lot of retired U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force NCOs and their families,” said one retiree, who asked to remain anonymous. “Retirees have had access for years. Many living here depend on the APO lifeline for Tricare and VA medication refills.”

Express Scripts Pharmacy can only mail Tricare prescription medications to U.S.-based addresses, State Department Pouch Mail and APO/FPO/DPO addresses.

A big concern for him, he said, is voting. Retirees in Turkey and elsewhere rely on the APO mail system to vote in U.S. elections. The military postal service is more reliable for getting their ballots from local election officials in the U.S. and returning them in time to be counted.

In the summer of 2022, military retirees in the Philippines were told their military mail privileges would be cut off, but that decision was put on hold pending further review by defense officials.

According to Department of Defense actuarial tables, there were 121 military retirees living in Turkey as of September 2020. The new rules also affect their widows and dependents.

The number could be an undercount, the retiree stated, because it probably doesn’t count retirees who live in Turkey half the year.

Goss said the decision was a result of a “comprehensive review of the mission sets of the 39th Air Base Wing units in Turkiye, force protection conditions, resources and manning, and all relevant agreements, laws and regulations” to ensure compliance in international agreements with Turkey, and to ensure that their geographically separated units “remain effective in their mission.”

In effect, this allows base privileges for those from other countries, but not for military retirees, the retiree said.

“In Izmir, the U.S. air facility is about three miles from NATO Land Command headquarters,” the retiree said. “Its sole purpose is to support NATO. Now our allies can use the [exchange] and commissary, but long-serving American military retirees can’t. In Ankara, it is the same. While retirees in Incirlik have not had access for years because it is a Turkish-flagged air base, they have been able to visit Ankara or Izmir.”

Officials are not rescinding the retirees’ privileges per se, he said. “They’re just barring access to the buildings,” which has the same effect.

At Aviano Air Base, word has gotten out that changes in base access may be afoot, said the son of one military widow. His mother needs to be able to go the credit union and post office, he said.

“Her Social Security and survivor’s benefits come to her credit union [on Aviano], and they are getting more stringent about requiring account holders to come in person,” he said.

She’s elderly and in poor health, he said, and needs someone to drive her and help her about. But over the past year, she has also had more trouble in getting access for her sons to bring her on base, although they have U.S. passports.

About Karen Jowers

Karen has covered military families, quality of life and consumer issues for Military Times for more than 30 years, and is co-author of a chapter on media coverage of military families in the book "A Battle Plan for Supporting Military Families." She previously worked for newspapers in Guam, Norfolk, Jacksonville, Fla., and Athens, Ga.

7. US training of Ukrainian troops adequate but not perfect, IG reports

The challenges of building an aircraft while in flight.

Excerpts:

The largely positive report underscored some challenges, however. Investigators found that, for a small number of programs, the Army failed to promptly provide equipment manuals in Ukrainian.

“The backlog of translated materials may have negatively impacted the training of some platforms,” the report noted. Army officials blamed the logjam on delays in foreign disclosure approval — the process by which the government vets and distributes sensitive information to foreign parties.

Army trainers also struggled to upskill Ukrainian soldiers to U.S. military standards because the Ukrainian government only allotted a limited amount of time for the effort, according to investigators. Advanced individual training for a U.S. Army cannon crewmember learning the ins and outs of an M119 howitzer usually lasts seven weeks; Ukrainian troops reportedly received six days of training for the same weapon.

A Ukrainian official interviewed by investigators insisted the tight turnaround was sufficient, since most Ukrainians participating in the training were, they claimed, experienced fighters.

US training of Ukrainian troops adequate but not perfect, IG reports

militarytimes.com · by Jaime Moore-Carrillo · June 15, 2023

Ukrainian soldiers have received adequate training from U.S. Army personnel in the use of sophisticated American military technology, but challenges remain, Department of Defense investigators concluded in a report released Thursday.

DoD’s Office of Inspector General “did not identify any instance” between April and December 2022 when U.S. military advisers “did not provide [Ukrainian Armed Forces]-requested operational or maintenance training.”

“Ensuring that Ukrainian forces are proficient in using the equipment provided by the DoD is critically important,” Inspector General Robert Storch said in a press release. “Such proficiency leads to greater mission success and reduces the likelihood of use of U.S.-provided equipment in a way that could lead to the equipment failing or becoming unusable.”

RELATED

US Abrams tanks for training Ukrainian forces arrive in Germany early

Abrams tanks needed for training Ukrainian forces have arrived in Germany slightly ahead of schedule, already on their way to the Grafenwoehr Army base.

The largely positive report underscored some challenges, however. Investigators found that, for a small number of programs, the Army failed to promptly provide equipment manuals in Ukrainian.

“The backlog of translated materials may have negatively impacted the training of some platforms,” the report noted. Army officials blamed the logjam on delays in foreign disclosure approval — the process by which the government vets and distributes sensitive information to foreign parties.

Army trainers also struggled to upskill Ukrainian soldiers to U.S. military standards because the Ukrainian government only allotted a limited amount of time for the effort, according to investigators. Advanced individual training for a U.S. Army cannon crewmember learning the ins and outs of an M119 howitzer usually lasts seven weeks; Ukrainian troops reportedly received six days of training for the same weapon.

A Ukrainian official interviewed by investigators insisted the tight turnaround was sufficient, since most Ukrainians participating in the training were, they claimed, experienced fighters.

The Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine, established and overseen by the 7th Army Training Command, is tasked with “training, equipping and providing doctrinal assistance” to the UAF. Conceived in 2015, the group has coordinated live-fire exercises, tactical drills and other exercises at Grafenwoehr Training Area in Germany since April 2022.

The report estimates the U.S. had sent Ukraine $22 billion in military aid through presidential drawdowns between August 2021 and May 2023 (other tallies claim it’s more than twice that). Much of that assistance has come in the form of advanced weaponry unfamiliar to Ukrainian recipients, such as the HIMARS rocket launcher and M109 howitzer.

American cash and gear continues to flood into the eastern European country. DoD announced Tuesday a fresh $325 million infusion of aid. Some lawmakers and analysts have begun to clamor for increased scrutiny, fearful of what they view as runaway spending with unclear end goals and dubious impacts.

A separate DoD IG report released Monday found that defense personnel sometimes struggled to “complete required shipping or transfer documentation” or “confirm quantities of items being transferred” to Ukraine, gaps that could lead to excess or misplaced aid deliveries, investigators warned.

8. Biden ‘open’ to plan that eases Ukraine’s path to NATO membership

Biden ‘open’ to plan that eases Ukraine’s path to NATO membership

By ALEXANDER WARD and PAUL MCLEARY

06/15/2023 06:51 PM EDT

Politico

The proposed removal of the Membership Action Plan would provide neither a formal invitation nor a timeline for joining the alliance.

President Joe Biden (right) spoke about the possible removal of a MAP for Ukraine’s entry into NATO with Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Washington this week. | Alex Wong/Getty Images

06/15/2023 06:51 PM EDT

President Joe Biden is “open” to removing a big hurdle to Ukraine’s membership in NATO after the war, even if the plan doesn’t specify when Kyiv would join the alliance.

According to two U.S. officials, Biden would welcome the removal of a Membership Action Plan, or MAP, for Ukraine’s entry into the military alliance. The MAP requires a candidate nation to make military and democratic reforms, with NATO’s advice and assistance, before a determination of membership can be made. By removing that requirement, Ukraine would still need to make some pro-democracy changes, but alliance members could at any point afterward unanimously welcome Kyiv into the club.

Biden spoke about the idea with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who has quietly floated the proposal, in Washington this week. The president made clear that he was “open” to the idea if allies supported the plan, said a senior U.S. official who was granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive conversation. A formal announcement of the MAP requirement’s removal would most likely come at NATO’s July summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.

“We are engaging with our NATO allies on this middle ground approach to determine whether it can gain consensus,” the senior official said. “We are seeking to find common ground on language that supports NATO’s commitment to Ukraine’s transatlantic integration.”

For the plan to move forward, “the alliance would need to go along with it.”

Stoltenberg told USA Today this week that he saw “no point” in holding the summit without offering a clear “signal” that Ukraine would eventually be a NATO member. The Washington Post first reported the Biden administration’s interest in the plan.

Ivo Daalder, the U.S. ambassador to NATO from 2009 to 2013, called the MAP-removal idea a “significant” step. “It does mean that you can get to the process of membership much more speedily,” he said. “It tells the Ukrainians they are moving closer.”

The process can take years. North Macedonia, which joined the alliance in 2020, entered its MAP in 1999 when the country had a different official name, the Republic of Macedonia.

Ukraine sought membership in NATO in 2008. But Russia was openly against the idea, a stance that made allies such as France and Germany nervous about spelling out the steps that Ukraine and Georgia should have to take in their MAPs in order to join. Doing so would signal to Moscow that, eventually, those former Soviet countries would form part of the Western military bloc it opposes.

The alliance’s compromise decision, codified in NATO’s Bucharest Summit Declaration, was that both nations wouldn’t be told what their specific MAP should be but would someday become members. Russia still invaded Georgia four months afterward. Ukraine’s movement toward membership was scrapped in 2010 after Viktor Yanukovych, who saw no need for further integration with NATO, became Ukraine’s president.

One adviser to the Ukrainian government said the MAP issue has become “toxic” for some on NATO’s eastern front who support a quick Ukraine admission into the alliance due to the varying standards applied to different prospective alliance members. The adviser noted that Ukraine’s military has quickly modernized to NATO standards, while some democratic reforms have been put on the back burner due to the war.

NATO’s most recent member, Finland, was allowed to join this year without a MAP in place. Sweden would receive the same treatment as Finland, but it’s still awaiting Turkey’s and Hungary’s approval to join.

“Ukraine is equally prepared, from a military point of view, as Finland and Sweden,” said Kurt Volker, the U.S. special representative for Ukraine during the Trump administration. He further offered that NATO should add a “political chapeau” to its proposal that shows the alliance is “more forward-leaning” in its belief that Ukraine will eventually become a member state. “They could affirm they’ll review Ukraine’s pathway during next year’s summit in Washington,” he said.

Pulling Ukraine under the NATO umbrella is “the only logical solution,” one European diplomat said, adding that in the meantime, Europe and the U.S. must “provide Ukraine clear-cut NATO security guarantees. This is important for the future of European security.”

An informal meeting of NATO foreign ministers May 31 and June 1 saw allies check each others’ temperature on the MAP-removal proposal, Daalder noted. The diplomats further considered tethering Ukraine closer to the alliance by upgrading the existing Ukraine-NATO Commission into a Council, which would allow Kyiv to call official meetings with members.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hoped his country would receive both security guarantees and a clear, speedy pathway to NATO membership during next month’s gathering in Vilnius. The Biden-backed Stoltenberg plan falls short of that wish but does improve Ukraine’s chances of accession after the war.

The proposal is also a compromise. Some allied members, particularly in Eastern Europe, want Ukraine to become a member imminently, even with Russian troops inside the country and missiles striking civilian targets. Others fear that welcoming Ukraine soon would further exacerbate strained relations with Russia while accepting a member that suffers from corruption and other anti-democratic problems.

Plus, NATO’s Article 5 compels allies to come to the defense of an attacked fellow member. To welcome Ukraine into the club now would effectively put NATO at war with Russia.

“I think the allies now are in agreement that a proper invitation is unlikely while they’re engaged in a full-scale war,” the current U.S. ambassador to NATO, Julianne Smith, told POLITICO last week.

Daalder thinks the plan might work because “it’s not an invitation to membership or a timeline,” but “it does remove a hurdle.”

Hanging over allied meetings in Brussels this week and next month’s summit is the fate of Stoltenberg, whose tenure has already been extended three times. None of the top candidates floated so far — Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, British defense secretary Ben Wallace or and Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas — has been able to make themselves the consensus pick.

Stoltenberg is open to staying in his position to ensure continuity as the war in Ukraine grinds through its second year but is concerned about appearing to be a fallback option if there is no broad consensus among the 31 members of NATO about who should take the reins.

POLITICO

Politico

9. S. Korean, Israeli Defense Firms Are Outpacing Competitors, Estonia Says

Excerpts:

Speaking at the Defense One Tech Summit, Salm said Israeli and South Korean firms, which face some challenges their NATO competitors don’t have, have nevertheless provided weapons faster and more cheaply amid a global hunger for weapons and ammunition caused by the Ukraine war.

“If we want our defense industries to be competitive, then we need to be competitive on the market basis,” he said.

Estonia and its Baltic Sea neighbors have ratcheted up purchases of arms from Israeli and South Korean firms since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine 16 months ago.

S. Korean, Israeli Defense Firms Are Outpacing Competitors, Estonia Says

A top Defense Ministry official says the non-NATO firms have been faster to deliver as the global hunger for arms rises.

defenseone.com · by Sam Skove

Estonia’s top Defense Ministry civil servant had a blunt message for Western arms makers on Thursday: Shape up, or see Israel and South Korea replace you.

“Somehow we in the defense sector sometimes think that different rules apply to us,” said Kusti Salm, Permanent Secretary of the Estonian Ministry of Defense. “They don't.”

Speaking at the Defense One Tech Summit, Salm said Israeli and South Korean firms, which face some challenges their NATO competitors don’t have, have nevertheless provided weapons faster and more cheaply amid a global hunger for weapons and ammunition caused by the Ukraine war.

“If we want our defense industries to be competitive, then we need to be competitive on the market basis,” he said.

Estonia and its Baltic Sea neighbors have ratcheted up purchases of arms from Israeli and South Korean firms since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine 16 months ago.

Over the next decade, Estonia plans to spend a total of $14.5 billion on military modernization, a figure that will increase its defense spending to 3% of annual GDP from 2024 to 2027.

Many of these weapons come from Israel or South Korea, including self-propelled artillery, loitering munitions, and anti-tank missiles, all systems that are well-represented in the war in Ukraine.

Another $1.1 billion will be spent solely on ammunition. Estonia, like many countries, is rethinking their stockpile needs as Ukraine and Russia collectively burn through tens of thousands of artillery shells a day.

Poland in particular has gone all-in on weapons from South Korea, buying nearly 1,000 tanks, 600 pieces of artillery, and fighter jets since the start of the war in Ukraine.

“Europe didn’t have what we need,” said Poland’s Ambassador to NATO, Tomasz Szatkowski, at an interview that aired during Defense One’s Tech Summit on Wednesday. “There is an absolute shortage of spare parts for the systems we do have.”

Western firms, meanwhile, have complained of numerous obstacles to increasing production, from trouble attracting staff to remote ammunition plants to a lack of machine tools.

Salm, who previously served as head of defense acquisition in Estonia, isn’t having it. Israeli and South Korean firms are “entering into the markets of European nations with double the obstacles and somehow they can do it,” he said.

In his talk, Salm also warned of a potential increase in Russian cyberattacks on NATO targets. One main reason that Russia has been relatively restrained in such attacks has been the threat of Western sanctions in response, he said. But the West has in the past 16 months levied just about every sanction it could think of.

“There is nothing to sanction Russia against anymore.” Salm said. “So there is almost no deterrence for them to not use cyber against NATO countries, for example.”

defenseone.com · by Sam Skove

10. Want to improve civil-military relations? Teach military history

Excerpts;

According to the Society for Military History, out of the roughly 1,400 Ph.D. awarding institutions in the United States, only 21 of them offer Ph.D. programs with a focus in military history — less than two percent.

...

Some scholars challenge the significance of this data, citing courses and faculty that brush up against military issues in other fields, such as social history, international relations and political science. This is true to an extent, but the above numbers are worth reflecting on because they speak to the state of the field and its broader scope of influence on policy and American culture.

War has disrupted and restructured the world in ways that nothing else has. Failing to study it drives deeper wedges between civilian leaders, the military, and the people they serve, which further complicates civil-military relations and by extension defense policy. Perhaps more troubling, it guarantees that the disease of war will continue to spread and appear in anachronistic forms that shock the conscience of a future-focused world.

Want to improve civil-military relations? Teach military history

BY MICHAEL P. FERGUSON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 06/15/23 4:00 PM ET

The Hill ·· June 15, 2023

General Charles Q. Brown will have no shortage of challenges waiting for him when he becomes the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff later this year. In addition to Russia’s escalating war on Ukraine, rising tensions in the Indo-Pacific, and civil war in Africa, Brown takes the reins at a time when the joint force is experiencing some of its worst recruitment shortfalls. Meanwhile, controversies related to the supposed politicization of the military continue to shape public opinion.

The latter two challenges are connected to the notion of civil-military relations, a long-standing charter rooted in civilian control of the military and the relationship between society and its service members. French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville was one of the first to explore this relationship in his observations of American democracy two centuries ago, but the concept faced particular scrutiny under President Donald Trump’s administration.

Friction between leaders in Washington sparked debates on the role of active and retired defense officials in the political process and a decrease in elected leaders with military experience. Some see a crisis emerging as common ground between the two groups recedes. In response to these challenges, President Joe Biden reiterated the importance of maintaining civilian control of the military in the 2022 National Security Strategy. The U.S. Army War College even established a civil-military relations center earlier this year.

Carrie Lee, codirector of the new center, sees America “at the cross section of a deterioration of norms across the force that have been in the making for several decades.” While the perspectives on this challenge differ vastly, most experts agree that the problem is fundamentally one of cultural division and poor civic education. At a time when the average young American knows more about TikTok trends than the role of the United States in World War II, it is not shocking that some see a widening civil-military divide.

Retired Air Force Brigadier General Paula Thornhill published “Demystifying the American Military” in 2019 as a clarion call to inject a rudimentary understanding of the military into America’s education system. Policymakers such as Sen. Chuck Grassley and scholars who study civil-military relations believe the concept must be rooted in mutual understanding, but the last three decades have made such reciprocity more complex.

The number of veterans in Congress plummeted after the Cold War, from 118 in 1991 to 64 in 1997, and it continues to decline. Even after two decades of post-9/11 wars, the number of veterans in the current Congress remains near an all-time low of 35. This increases the risk of military officials becoming overly involved in the political process and creates opportunities for unrealistic expectations of what the military can achieve.

Bringing military history back into civic education is thus essential to bridging the civil-military gap by connecting the experiences of service members to the American people. Such efforts would also help empower less-experienced civilian leaders to push back against potentially risky or wishful military advice.

Military history, though, is of marginal interest on most college campuses — especially at the top private universities that produce a disproportionate number of policymakers. According to the late military historian Edward M. Coffman, in 2011, even after a decade of war, only five percent of America’s 14,000 history professors were interested in military history. There was certainly no shortage of lectures on history repeating itself after America’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. Yet interest in the formal study of that history remained negligible. According to the Society for Military History, out of the roughly 1,400 Ph.D. awarding institutions in the United States, only 21 of them offer Ph.D. programs with a focus in military history — less than two percent.

This scarcity says less about the quality of scholarship at schools that teach military history — some of which are world class — and more about high-performing civilians who hail from schools where they were less likely to encounter military literature in their studies. Charged with oversight of the world’s most well-funded and powerful joint force, public officials must be exposed to the complexities of military history in order to include its valuable lessons on civil-military relations.

Some scholars challenge the significance of this data, citing courses and faculty that brush up against military issues in other fields, such as social history, international relations and political science. This is true to an extent, but the above numbers are worth reflecting on because they speak to the state of the field and its broader scope of influence on policy and American culture.

War has disrupted and restructured the world in ways that nothing else has. Failing to study it drives deeper wedges between civilian leaders, the military, and the people they serve, which further complicates civil-military relations and by extension defense policy. Perhaps more troubling, it guarantees that the disease of war will continue to spread and appear in anachronistic forms that shock the conscience of a future-focused world.

Western civilization paid for its lessons in military history with the blood of millions. Those lessons came at too high of a price to be treated like footnotes in the tome of human experience. Passing that history onto the next generation is the best way to ensure civilian and military leaders alike peer into the future with clear eyes.

Capt. Michael P. Ferguson is a U.S. Army officer with twenty years of combat, staff and security cooperation experience on four continents. He is co-author of the forthcoming “The Military Legacy of Alexander the Great: Lessons for the Information Age.” The views expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Army, U.S. Department of Defense, or U.S. government.

The Hill · by Rebecca Beitsch · June 15, 2023

11. Hacker Groups Allegedly Unite, Threaten Cyberattacks on Europe and US Banking Systems

Video at the link: https://themessenger.com/news/hacker-groups-allegedly-unite-threaten-cyberattacks-on-europe-and-us-banking-systems?utm

Hacker Groups Allegedly Unite, Threaten Cyberattacks on Europe and US Banking Systems

The groups have allegedly identified the US Federal Reserve System as a target

Published 06/15/23 03:30 PM ET|Updated 11 hr ago

Monique Merrill

themessenger.com

Russian-affiliated hacker collectives Killnet, REvil, and Anonymous Sudan have reportedly united in a planned cyberattack against the Western financial system. They aim to target the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) system, as reported by Cyberknow.

Their alleged goal is to "repel the maniacs according to the formula," and they have both European and U.S. banking systems in their sights, including the US Federal Reserve System.

View post on Twitter

REvil operates as a ransomware-as-a-service group, previously notorious for launching attacks against an Apple supplier. Killnet, a hacking collective, came into the limelight during the early stages of the Russian invasion of Ukraine by initiating distributed denial-of-service attacks against government institutions. Anonymous Sudan, a group driven by political motivations, has previously targeted Microsoft.

It's worth noting that REvil was responsible for the 2022 Medibank data breach, compromising the health records of nearly 10 million Australians.

Milan Jovic/Getty images

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12. History Points to the Most Probable Conclusion in Ukraine: Scorched Earth or Regime Change

Conclusion:

If the war continues, there are two likely outcomes. One is the Russian body count of lost soldiers will continue to climb, the mobilization will resume, and the people will react by forcing an end of the war through protest or regime change as they did during World War I. The other possible outcome, and certainly even worse than the first, is that Ukraine begins to take Crimea back and Putin feels the only way to avoid defeat is a scorched earth policy. In this case, he is likely to use a tactical nuclear weapon, thus preventing Ukrainian victory and destroying Crimea in the process. Diplomacy has not worked yet in this conflict. I hope I am wrong and there is a third option. I recommend we all pray that the third option materializes, but if history is to be a guide the outcome is likely listed above.

History Points to the Most Probable Conclusion in Ukraine: Scorched Earth or Regime Change

Robert Umholtz  June 16, 2023

thestrategybridge.org · June 16, 2023

Russia and Ukraine are locked in a war that has outlasted any realistic forecast. Why are these nations still engaged in a conflict that is so detrimental to both sides? Because these two countries have a shared history that includes scorched earth and the willful destruction of personal property rather than forfeiture, the most likely outcome is either complete victory for one party, or regime change that brings the war to a rapid conclusion. Over a thousand years of invasions, occupation, and suffering have influenced the psyches of both the Ukrainians and Russians in ways that make only these two outcomes likely. Analyzing Russian and Ukrainian history through invasions, scorched earth policies, and popular uprisings provides a clear understanding that control of Crimea is the ultimate objective of each nation, and the endgame will be determined by whoever is willing to suffer the most to achieve their goal.

To understand the current conflict in Ukraine, it is important to first acknowledge that Russia and Ukraine each claim Kiev as the birthplace of their respective cultures. The origins of each culture have been lost to history and were first documented centuries later by monks, but the fact remains that each country has rooted their identity and origin in what is known as Kievan Rus. Rus refers to the people loosely united in principalities across Ukraine and Western Russia prior to the invasion of the Mongols and subsequent rise of Moscow and a unified Russian state. Following the victory of Muscovy over the Mongols, Ukraine often enjoyed long periods of freedom from Russia intermixed with Russian conquest of Ukrainian territory. During Russian domination, Ukrainian culture was squashed by Russian officials and laws that prohibited printing in the Ukrainian language. Ukrainians at times welcomed and accepted Russian culture and protection while tsars often employed the Ukrainian Cossacks to safeguard the borderlands as well as pacify indigenous peoples of the steppe as the Russian Empire expanded east into Siberia. The Cossacks, as fierce defenders of the border, were appreciated by tsars, when they weren’t rebelling or supporting foreign incursions into Russia, because Russia and Ukraine share a history of invasions.

“The entrance of Alexander Nevsky to Pskov after the Battle of Ice” by Mikhail Ananievich Ananiev (Soviet Art)

Mongols, Teutonic Knights, Napoleon, and the Germans are but a few of the many invaders who wreaked havoc from the Vistula to the Urals and created a fear of invasion that is deeply ingrained in the Russian psyche. Prior to the Mongol invasion of the 13th century, Kievan Rus was loosely connected through blood and economic relationships. A collective military force was only achieved in an ad hoc manner and limited in scope to principalities that found it beneficial to temporarily unite in battle. Thus, when the Mongols invaded what is now Russia and Eastern Ukraine they encountered limited resistance and subjugated the Rus for nearly two centuries. While the Russians were under Mongol rule, the Teutonic Knights invaded from the West. The Russians rallied under Alexander Nevsky and repulsed the invaders. This event is celebrated every year and is used by Russian President Vladamir Putin as an example of the continuous threat the West poses to the motherland also referred to as the Rodina.[1] Invasions continued from the west through the centuries, but Napoleon’s march across Russia and into Moscow, known in Russia as the Patriotic War, and Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa, known as the Great Patriotic War are two more examples of invasions of Western powers which reaffirm the suspicions Russians have of the West. The anxiety these invasions created has been passed down from generation to generation. It has also provided, in both cultures, the fortitude required to survive as nations on the fringes of both the East and the West.

Unwavering defense of the Rodina, as well as Ukrainian actions during collectivization, show the willingness of both countries to suffer all things rather than submit to invaders. During our trips into Russia, the crews I flew with had a saying, “you can’t out suck the Russians.” In the process of interacting with the Russians it seemed there was no limit to the amount of suffering the Russians were willing to endure. On a trivial level, this was recognized in the meals, lodging, and temperature controls on the exhaust-filled buses in Siberia whenever we landed in the country. However, there are historic examples that show how much the Russians and Ukrainians are willing to endure for their homeland and their posterity. During the Patriotic War, Russians set their crops and towns on fire during their retreat to prevent Napoleon’s forces from scavenging for resources despite the complete destruction that was brought upon their own territory. When Napoleon reached Moscow, he found it ablaze. Napoleon waited a month in the heart of Russia for a surrender, but the Russians refused to give up their land. Napoleon was forced to retreat and lost over half a million men, predominantly to the elements and starvation. This was repeated during the Great Patriotic War. Four million people were left in Stalingrad for two years as it was besieged by the Nazis while both sides died of hunger and the elements. Nearly a million more civilians died in the Siege of Leningrad (St. Petersburg).

Soviet military, partisans, and civilians destroyed anything from factories to fields that could be used by the Nazi war effort. On 28 July 1942, Stalin issued order number 227, commonly known as “not one step back.” This order prevented troops from retreating during battles by establishing lines of soldiers behind the front who were ordered to shoot anyone retreating. Soviet citizens and soldiers had to suffer all things rather than surrender. This mentality is true for the Ukrainians as well. During collectivization under Stalin, the Ukrainians were ordered to hand their livestock and land over to the government. Rather than allow the government control of their property, the Ukrainians killed their livestock and burned their crops. This, along with the disastrous policies of collectivization, led to the death of millions of Ukrainians in a single year in the famine known as Holodomor.[2] These are but a few examples that lend credence to the facetious saying “you can’t out suck the Russians.” In Eastern Ukraine, there are two peoples with distinct cultures and intersecting histories that prove neither nation is willing to give in and relinquish their claim to sovereign soil, particularly Crimea. These claims are once again deeply rooted in history, but also in strategic significance.

Ukrainian Cossacks and Russian soldiers have fought and died on the Crimean Peninsula since the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century. The territory from the River Don to Crimea, once dominated by Tartars and Turkish tribes, became a haven for nomads, bandits, and Russians who were unable to effect change in their society and chose to vote with their feet by leaving their homes and joining the ranks of the Cossacks. Russian tsars often tasked the Cossacks with defending this territory from invading Turks. Through several centuries, Cossacks also aided foreign invaders and supported uprisings and usurpers from this region. During this same time, Russia grew as an empire. Russia dealt with two issues simultaneously. First, there was an inferiority complex; Russia grappled with this problem by expanding its territory to “civilize” its neighbors, believing this would elevate their status in the eyes of Western Europe. Second, Russia’s maritime trade is limited by its warm water access. St. Petersburg was established to help solve this issue, thereby gaining access to the Baltic Sea. This, however, was not enough. Russia needed another port, one that would provide access to the Mediterranean and true access to global trade. This could only happen through the Black Sea. Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and Nicholas I are a few of the most well-known rulers who have gained and/or lost Crimea for the Russian Empire prior to Putin’s invasion in 2014. The problem with competing globally for prestige and resources is that the Russian government’s desires may be too lofty for the people to bear.

Silent protest has been a hallmark of Russian and Ukrainian defiance to authoritative figures, but both cultures share a propensity for violence against malevolent regimes. Prior to the fall of the Soviet Union, peasants and serfs in the Russian Empire and rural people in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R) made up the majority of the Russian population. Only in the 1950s was the majority of the population “urban” by Soviet definitions of urban, which was defined by growth in “industrialization, transportation accessibility, and immigration.”[3] This meant there was no representation for the common Russian in an autocratic society or for rural citizens of the U.S.S.R. The only means of influence serfs before Emancipation in 1861 and peasants had over the government was their ability to vote with their feet. Peasants and runaway serfs fled to Siberia, Ukraine, and Poland. This was, perhaps, the safest way to defy the government.

"Pugachev's execution on Bolotnaya Square. (Wikimedia)

The other option was rebellion. The most well-known of these rebellions was the Pugachev Rebellion. Led by a Cossack, peasants rose up against Catherine the Great’s policies that had become more burdensome and as a result the state’s reach into regions where they had fled became tighter. The 19th century was full of protests, secret clubs, and assassination attempts on the tsars who resisted the liberties associated with the enlightenment that had already swept across the Atlantic and Western Europe. This culminated in 1917 when Nicholas II abdicated the throne. Among the numerous problems Russia faced was that Russia was locked in World War I, fighting for ethnic Slavs, and losing young men at an unconscionable rate. Analogous to today, as the war went on Russians were untrained, ill equipped, undertrained, and sent to the front without weapons. This was one of the three main issues – economic depression and lack of land for peasants are the others—that led to the October Revolution. Additionally, Ukraine promptly declared independence from the Russian Empire in 1917 and went through several different systems of governance through the end of the Russian Civil War in 1921. The Ukrainians demonstrated, similarly, their willingness to protest in the streets in the winter of 2013-2014. The Maidan Uprising was a revolt against Victor Yanukovych, the President of Ukraine, whose government chose to tie the Ukrainian economy to Russia instead of the European Union, against the will of the people. I had the opportunity to walk through to the streets of Kiev shortly after the protests to see the damage done, the makeshift barriers built of burnt tires, the gas masks abandoned in the streets, and flags of nations within the EU flying high on wooden poles. The result was the ousting of Yanukovich and eventually, the election of a comedian as president, who has become the embodiment of Ukrainian independence and defiance in the face of what once appeared to be inevitable destruction. Now, two nations are entwined in Eastern Ukraine battling for what is left of Eastern Ukraine. The ultimate prize is Crimea.

Russia achieved a symbolic victory when it invaded and captured Crimea with little resistance from the international community, but Ukraine is likely to continue fighting at this point until Crimea is back under Ukrainian control. The history discussed above proves each nation is willing to suffer unimaginable loss before relinquishing the land they believe is rightfully theirs. The difference between Russia’s invasion of Crimea and the invasion in 2022 is that the international community did not support Ukraine in 2014 the way it has for the last year. Now, Ukraine has put up a resistance that has cost the lives of so many Russian military members that a partial mobilization was required to replenish the forces lost. During this time, Russian men were quick to vote with their feet. Russia had to ban one-way flights, women and children were left behind as men waited in lines backed up over 10 miles from the Kazakh border, and European countries began accepting applications of Russian citizens fleeing the mobilization.[4] The current estimate of the number of Russians who fled since the conscription in 2022 is 500,000 men to 1 million; compare that with the 209,000 men who were charged with draft dodging over a ten year span during the Vietnam War.[5]

If the war continues, there are two likely outcomes. One is the Russian body count of lost soldiers will continue to climb, the mobilization will resume, and the people will react by forcing an end of the war through protest or regime change as they did during World War I. The other possible outcome, and certainly even worse than the first, is that Ukraine begins to take Crimea back and Putin feels the only way to avoid defeat is a scorched earth policy. In this case, he is likely to use a tactical nuclear weapon, thus preventing Ukrainian victory and destroying Crimea in the process. Diplomacy has not worked yet in this conflict. I hope I am wrong and there is a third option. I recommend we all pray that the third option materializes, but if history is to be a guide the outcome is likely listed above.

Robert Umholtz is an officer in the U.S. Air Force and teaches Russian History at the United States Air Force Academy. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of the U.S. Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

The Strategy Bridge is read, respected, and referenced across the worldwide national security community—in conversation, education, and professional and academic discourse.

Thank you for being a part of The Strategy Bridge community. Together, we can #BuildTheBridge.

Header Image: Cat in Ruins, Borodianka, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine, 2023 (Alex Fedorenko).

Notes:

[1] “Battle Reenactments in Russia More than History Recreated Mediaeval Campaigns [sic] against Western Foes Fuel Local Support for the War against Ukraine,” Taipei Times, August 25, 2022, accessed October 1, 2022, https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2022/08/25/2003784115.

[2] “Holodomor: The Ukrainian Genocide,” College of Liberal Arts Holocaust and Genocide Studies (University of Minesosta, n.d.), accessed October 2, 2022, https://cla.umn.edu/chgs/holocaust-genocide-education/resource-guides/holodomor.

[3] Lewis, Robert A., and Richard H. Rowland. “Urbanization in Russia and the USSR: 1897-1966.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 59, no. 4 (1969): 776–96. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2561838.

[4] Kareem Fahim, Zeynep Karatas, and Robyn Dixon , “The Russian Men Fleeing Mobilization, and Leaving Everything Behind,” The Washington Post, September 28, 2022, accessed October 2, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/russia-turkey-partial-mobilization-ukraine/.

[5] Ebel, Francesca and Ilyushina, Mary, “Russians Abandon Wartime Russia in Historic Exodus.” The Washington Post. February 13, 2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/02/13/russia-diaspora-war-ukraine/; Jessie Kindig, “Draft Resistance in the Vietnam Era,” Civil Rights and Labor History Consortium (University of Washington, 2008), last modified 2008, accessed October 2, 2022, https://depts.washington.edu/antiwar/vietnam_draft.shtml.

thestrategybridge.org · June 16, 2023

13. Culture war fights, China dominate initial defense bill markups

I wish someone could negotiate an armistice in this culture war. It is going to destroy us from the inside out. And the extreme right and extreme left are both guilty of extremes on the issues. We need cooler heads with common sense to prevail.

Culture war fights, China dominate initial defense bill markups

BY ELLEN MITCHELL AND BRAD DRESS - 06/16/23 6:00 AM ET

The Hill · · June 16, 2023

House lawmakers this week introduced major military policy and funding changes they hope to see in defense spending bills later this year, previewing efforts to combat China and to address contentious culture war issues.

Over the course of seven subcommittee gatherings on Tuesday and Wednesday, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) passed an initial round of markups for the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), with plans to finalize the proposal in front of the full panel next week.

While HASC Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) praised the bipartisan work of the seven subcommittees, the months ahead have plenty of political landmines, from a fight over Space Command headquarters to abortion policies in the military.

Rogers said the bill “puts our national security first by boosting innovation, providing for our warfighters, and focusing on our defense industrial base.”

Culture war clash

The GOP-controlled House Appropriations Committee on Thursday in closed session began to mark up its spending bill for the Pentagon that would fund the policies, weapons and equipment within the NDAA.

That legislation includes about $826 billion for new discretionary defense spending, about $285 million more than Biden’s request.

But Democrats are uniting against the draft bill, calling out a $1.1 billion cut to the salaries of civilian personnel, a $714 million reduction to climate change programs and a roughly $100 million cut to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts.

Other provisions would ban funding for critical race theory, diversity efforts, gender-affirming care and for drag queen events tied to story hours for children on military bases or to support military recruiting.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), ranking member on the Appropriations committee, blasted the legislation for inserting “partisan riders that have nothing to do with national security.”

Republicans are “seeking to reverse bipartisan policies to have equality for women and to make it uncomfortable for LGBTQ+ Americans to serve in the military,” DeLauro said.

“Fostering an environment where every American who would willingly put their lives on the line to protect and serve this nation feels they are welcomed and supported should not be controversial,” she said in a statement. “This bill is a nonstarter that fails to meet the agreement signed into law.”

And Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), the ranking member of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee, called it “regrettable that the Republican majority has produced a Defense Appropriations bill that would undermine our military’s readiness and leave us less secure in the world, not more.”

“These riders make it almost impossible to gain bipartisan support,” she said in a statement.

Democrats on the panel are also upset about a provision that would bar the Pentagon from continuing a policy providing paid leave and reimbursing travel costs for service members who travel to get an abortion. That policy has attracted the ire of Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), who is holding up some 200 Pentagon nominees in protest.

Space Command struggle

In another contentious move, House Republicans inserted a provision in the markup to freeze spending to build the U.S. Space Command (Spacecom) headquarters until a final location is announced and justified in a report.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, who oversees Spacecom, would also see his travel budget slashed until a report on the location of the permanent headquarters is given to Congress.

Similarly, the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday added language into its 2024 military construction funding bill that would prevent funds for building out the command’s headquarters until the final Air Force plan.

The Hill previously reported on the inclusion of the language in the appropriations bill. Republicans are concerned that if construction and leases continue, Spacecom may never be relocated.

In 2019, the Trump administration revived Spacecom after its discontinuation in 2002, establishing a temporary location at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado with a plan for a permanent location in Alabama’s Huntsville, known as Rocket City.

Since coming into office, President Biden has authorized reviews of Trump’s decision to relocate Spacecom. None of the reviews found anything improper in the decision, though one found the Air Force did not follow best practices.

Alabama Republicans, including Rogers, are frustrated with the delay over relocating Spacecom and grew incensed last month after it was reported the new headquarters might be scrapped entirely over a near-total abortion ban in Alabama.

An aide for the HASC Republicans said during a Monday background briefing that Rogers is of the mind that Huntsville “won fairly.”

“I think the chairman’s view is why should you be using taxpayer dollars to build up all this infrastructure when the Air Force made a decision that has been reviewed by two different reviewers and found that Huntsville, Alabama, won and won fairly?” the aide said.

Rogers is also investigating the delayed decision to relocate Spacecom.

Combating China

Lawmakers shaped the bulk of the defense bill around deterring Chinese aggression, including support for a more than $9 billion investment in the Indo-Pacific region, where the U.S. is concerned about China’s growing influence.

But that focus means casting off six older or troubled Navy ships, including the decommissioning of two Littoral Combat Ships.

“You’ll see that throughout our bill, especially with the Pacific Deterrence Initiative – divesting from some of these old legacy platforms that are not survivable in the Indo-Pacific region against a very capable adversary,” the aide told reporters. “We’re really taking a hard look and making some tough choices on things we don’t think we need anymore as we’re confronting a 21st-century military.”

One NDAA provision requires the review and congressional notification of Russia-China cooperation on nuclear development. Additional efforts to counter Beijing include improving shipbuilding capacity, with an aim for the procurement of nine battle force ships, as well as boosting hypersonic missile training and supporting the development of next-generation aircraft.

Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), the chair of the Tactical Air and Land Forces subcommittee, said a key part of the bill is retooling the Army to operate more efficiently in the Indo-Pacific.

“The Army needs a new strategy that looks beyond a potential European conflict and focuses instead on fully providing the capabilities required to meet the Indo-Pacific’s challenges of distance and depth,” he said at a Tuesday hearing.

House appropriators also said their bill includes funding to counter China through security cooperation programs with Taiwan and prioritizing delivering weapons to the independent island that China claims as its over sovereign territory.

Aiding Ukraine

For Ukraine, at least $300 million is proposed to support the nation in its fight against Russia, including at least $80 million to be used to supply Kyiv with the Army Tactical Missile System, a long-range artillery weapon.

The billions of dollars in aid for Ukraine that was approved last year is likely run out by the fall. Lawmakers are expected to pass a supplemental package along with the NDAA to support Kyiv.

The Biden administration has so far resisted sending long-range missiles to Ukraine, largely over fears of Kyiv striking into Russian territory. The U.K. last month became the first country to provide Ukraine with long-range artillery in the war against Russia.

And keeping in mind the billions of dollars in weapons the United States has pulled from its own stockpiles to send to Ukraine since Russia first attacked the country in February 2022, the NDAA looks to bolster industry by keeping production lines running smoothly through more multiyear procurements.

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine really showed [lawmakers] the state of our defense industrial base. Starting last year members really started to figure out we can’t just turn the dial and create a bunch of Javelins and Stingers and torpedoes quickly,” the aide said.

Other standouts

Other standouts in the House NDAA bill include a significant 5.2 percent pay raise for service members next year and the establishment of a Space National Guard.

The fight against cancer faces daunting new challenge: debt politics Federal government to give states $930M in grants to expand high-speed internet

The bill also addresses mental health and suicide prevention, bolsters retention and recruiting efforts for military branches, and moves to abolish the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation program.

The HASC and its Senate counterpart is are expected to send their versions of the NDAA to the full chambers for votes later this summer.

The congressional armed services committees were originally scheduled to take up the NDAA last month, but the debt limit fight caused a delay. Part of the negotiated deal in that battle is a plan to spend $886 billion on defense in 2024.

The Hill · · June 16, 2023

14. Time To Fight Russia and China’s Economic Coercion

And support our allies.

Conclusion:

In an increasingly competitive world with rising authoritarian threats, this is what U.S. leadership must look like. By demonstrating our commitment to our allies, deepening our economic integration with reliable trading partners and building democratic coalitions, we can face down authoritarian bullying and build a better, freer world.

Time To Fight Russia and China’s Economic Coercion

Published 06/16/23 07:00 AM ET|Updated 14 hr ago

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.)

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Around the world, autocratic states like China and Russia are using heavy-handed economic coercion to intimidate smaller countries and economies to get their way. As senators from both parties, we think we need to act to strengthen our nation’s ability to step up to this challenge.

At the recent G-7 meeting in Japan, President Biden and the other leaders of the world’s largest democratic countries and economies agreed to launch a new Coordination Platform on Economic Coercion to strengthen information sharing and collaboration, as well as to build new tools to deter and counter economic coercion. That’s why we hope to move forward with our bill, the Countering Economic Coercion Act, to enable a forceful response to coercive actions in concert with our like-minded partners overseas.

There are many examples of economic coercion just in the past few years. To punish Lithuania for allowing Taiwan to open a representative office in Vilnius, China unleashed an economic broadside against the Baltic state, blocking bilateral trade and blacklisting Lithuanian products in international markets. Russia weaponized its integration in European energy markets to try to force Western governments to back down from their support of Ukraine. And China responded to Australia’s call for an independent inquiry into the origins of COVID-19 by disrupting valuable Australian exports. China is Australia’s top export market, and the pain imposed on a wide range of Australian businesses, farmers and miners was real, as China blocked billions in exports of barley, beef, wine and coal.

In addition to these overt actions, China has made countless other economic threats, leveraging the size of its market to extract political compliance through economic intimidation. This economic coercion can serve as a powerful deterrent: If a smaller economy knows it will get walloped with one of China’s economic hammers, it is much less likely to take any action that might irritate Beijing. By using economic hammers to threaten, bully and bludgeon, China exploits economic interdependence to impose its will on the world and influence the sovereign political decisions of democratic states.

Of course, the United States uses economic sanctions to protect our own interests and discipline malign actors overseas. However, our actions are transparent, open to legal scrutiny and grounded in international norms. When China or Russia carry out threats of economic coercion, they act without accountability or transparency, and they undermine international rules meant to protect the defenseless. Because their actions are often informal and opaque, existing international mechanisms cannot respond rapidly or effectively.

The United States has stood by its allies when they have come under economic attack, but we need to update our policy toolkit so that we can respond more forcefully and more quickly. That is why we introduced our bipartisan and bicameral Countering Economic Coercion Act, which would give the executive branch more tools to support our allies when they are subject to economic bullying — and to punish the countries carrying out this malign behavior.

Our bill would allow the president to act quickly by temporarily decreasing duties on certain imports from targeted countries and offering the U.S. market as an alternative when China shuts down trade. The bill also allows the executive branch to speed up regulatory processes to facilitate rapid export financing, import approvals, and other trade, aid and investment assistance.

A quick response to support our allies helps ease their economic pain and gives time for supply chains to shift, private markets to adjust and new investors to step in. This is important because China often targets economic disruption where it will be most painful, including perishable produce or other products with a short shelf life. By supplanting China as a trading partner for targeted countries, we can also create new opportunities for U.S. businesses, workers and consumers.

By offering mechanisms to support targeted countries, we expect our bill will serve as a deterrent: if China and Russia know we stand ready to assist any foreign partner targeted with economic coercion, they will be less likely to attempt economic aggression. Further, our bill would allow the president to increase duties on imports from the country carrying out economic coercion. Forcing China and Russia to pay an economic price for beating up on vulnerable economies will enhance the deterrent effect and help protect our allies.

As our colleagues in Congress consider this legislation, most of our G-7 allies are considering similar laws that would allow them to respond more forcefully to economic coercion as well. This is a good thing — the more unified we are with like-minded democratic allies in responding to anti-democratic bullying and intimidation, the more successful we will be.

In an increasingly competitive world with rising authoritarian threats, this is what U.S. leadership must look like. By demonstrating our commitment to our allies, deepening our economic integration with reliable trading partners and building democratic coalitions, we can face down authoritarian bullying and build a better, freer world.

Sen. Chris Coons is the Democratic junior senator from Delaware.

Sen. Todd Young is the Republican senior senator from Indiana.

Coons and Young serve on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. They are sponsors of the Countering Economic Coercion Act.

themessenger.com

15. The 20th Shangri-La Dialogue: Duelling Visions of Regional Order

Conclusion:

The duelling visions of regional order set out by the US and Chinese defence chiefs present a major challenge for ASEAN. With Austin’s stated engagements appearing to sideline ASEAN and potentially undermining its centrality, and with Li’s words not entirely squaring with China’s deeds in the South China Sea and elsewhere, ASEAN has its work cut out for it. The bloc must continue to skilfully navigate this rivalry, addressing the ever-mounting challenges to its unity, centrality and, ultimately, relevance in the regional architecture.

IP23046 | The 20th Shangri-La Dialogue: Duelling Visions of Regional Order

Tsjeng Zhizhao Henrick

16 June 2023

https://www.rsis.edu.sg/rsis-publication/idss/ip23046-the-20th-shangri-la-dialogue-duelling-visions-of-regional-order/

The authors’ views are their own and do not represent the official position of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, NTU. These commentaries may be reproduced with prior permission from RSIS and due recognition to the authors and RSIS. Please email to Editor IDSS Paper at RSISPublications@ntu.edu.sg.

In the recent 20th Shangri-La Dialogue, both the American and Chinese defence chiefs outlined their respective countries’ visions for the Asia-Pacific region. HENRICK TSJENG evaluates both perspectives and ruminates on how ASEAN should respond to maintain unity and ASEAN Centrality.

COMMENTARY

The 20th Shangri-La Dialogue saw the American and Chinese defence ministers give their respective takes on their visions for the Asia-Pacific region. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III focused heavily on bolstering US alliances and partnerships, as well as the AUKUS partnership and Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad). He mentioned the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting-Plus (ADMM-Plus) in the second half of his speech and expressed support for ASEAN Centrality, but otherwise dedicated little time for the bloc.

In contrast, China’s Minister of Defense, General Li Shangfu, gave more airtime to Beijing’s engagement with ASEAN. By the first half of his speech, he indicated that “China firmly supports ASEAN Centrality and its strategic autonomy.” He spoke of the massive ASEAN-China trade figures and the Belt and Road Initiative, and highlighted China’s active participation in ASEAN-led forums like the ADMM-Plus and ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). As expected, both sides sniped at each other, trading accusations and warnings over flashpoints in the region, namely on the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Indonesian Minister of Defense Prabowo Subianto adjourn a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) 20th Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, 2023. ASEAN will have to navigate the duelling visions that Austin and China’s Minister of Defense, General Li Shangfu, outlined for the region. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Duelling Visions for the Region

The remarks by the defence ministers reflect their respective countries’ duelling visions of regional order. For one, the United States is once again banking on its old “hub and spokes” system of alliances that was formed during the Cold War, with the development of minilaterals like the Quad and AUKUS as additions to that system. In terms of ASEAN engagement, Austin’s speech appears to be a disappointing reversal of the Indo-Pacific Strategy released by the White House last year, and his declarations of support for ASEAN Centrality seem nothing more than lip service. America’s own confrontational approach towards China also demonstrates its vision of regional order that excludes China and Russia – something that ASEAN is loath to do despite its members’ own misgivings about the latter two countries.

America’s approach at the dialogue inevitably gives the impression that ASEAN is being sidelined in favour of its alliances as well as minilaterals, particularly the Quad and AUKUS. In this context, America’s pronouncements of support for ASEAN Centrality are not likely to provide any assurance to Southeast Asian capitals. Even the minilaterals may be feeling the neglect: President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from a Quad summit in Sydney, Australia, led to the meeting’s cancellation, further signalling Washington’s lack of attention and commitment to the region, even if the underlying reason for Biden’s absence – the need to resolve the debt ceiling crisis – is understandable.

Meanwhile, Li provided a rosy picture of China’s benign plans for the world, including Southeast Asia, exhorting the audience to “work hand in hand to build an Asia-Pacific community of shared future”. At the same time, Li criticised the existing international order as a “so-called rules-based international order”, where “exceptionalism and double standards” are practised just to serve the interests of a few countries. He urged countries to “abide by … the UN Charter and complement and refine existing rules to make the international order fairer and more equitable.”

Nonetheless, he glossed over accusations of Chinese aggression in the disputed South China Sea, simply asserting that China remains committed to the implementation of the Declaration of the Conduct of Parties (DOC), as well as negotiations and final conclusion of the Code of Conduct (COC). He made no clear assurances that China would tone down its maritime activities within its nine-dash line claim, which both the Philippines and Vietnam have encountered in the past few months. Instead, a senior general of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) reiterated during a briefing after Austin’s speech that China has “indisputable sovereignty over its South China Sea islands and their adjacent waters” based on historical rights.

What Should ASEAN Do?

ASEAN continues to play a key convening role in the region. However, competition for influence and dominance between the United States and China will continue to hover over the bloc in the foreseeable future.

For one, ASEAN’s constant quest for strategic autonomy will face mounting difficulties. ASEAN member states have, in various ways, sought to seek a balance among the major external powers while giving all of them a stake in the region’s peace and security; after all, one of the bloc’s principles is inclusivity. However, each individual ASEAN member has a different national approach towards the US and Chinese visions of regional order. Should both Washington and Beijing force ASEAN members to choose sides, existing divisions within ASEAN would deepen.

Many ASEAN countries continue to welcome US presence in the region. However, America’s tendency to give ASEAN scant attention while focusing on its existing allies and partnerships simply sidelines ASEAN and undermines its centrality. Washington’s hostility towards Beijing certainly does not help, given China’s indispensable economic role in the region.

ASEAN must therefore tread carefully. Constructive engagement between the United States and ASEAN must continue, no matter how distracted Washington may be at any point. Allies of the United States, such as Australia, Japan and South Korea, should also be engaged in the name of ASEAN inclusivity, as the presence of these countries could help make up for any distraction by Washington, even if in a limited way. ASEAN also needs to convince Washington to take steps to lower tensions with China.

Meanwhile, China’s own regional vision appears benign. However, its belligerence towards the United States and its allies also point to a far more exclusionary vision of order than ASEAN as a whole would be comfortable with. This is especially so, given the number of ASEAN member states and regional countries maintaining close ties with Washington and being unwilling to cut those ties just to please Beijing. It would also mean that selective application of international law by China would be commonplace, especially in disputed areas such as the South China Sea. Beijing has refused to accept the 2016 Arbitral Tribunal award, which ruled that China’s maritime claims in the disputed area with the Philippines have no basis in international law.

ASEAN should undoubtedly maintain close economic ties with China, given how intertwined their economies are. A decoupling is simply untenable in this region. The bloc should nonetheless continue to insist on an inclusionary regional security architecture, rather than one in which China simply dominates, so that ASEAN can continue to negotiate with China from a better position over contested areas, especially the South China Sea.

Additionally, ASEAN will need to deepen internal conversations about how to deal with troubled areas in the region like the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait. It also has to use its convening power to get both great powers to speak to each other, like it did during last year’s ADMM-Plus when the American and Chinese defence chiefs met after a freeze in relations due to then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan visit.

Finally, ASEAN should strengthen its internal cohesion, especially in defence cooperation, so that it can more effectively put up a unified front while engaging the great powers. An encouraging sign in that regard was the hosting of the Second ASEAN Multilateral Naval Exercise in May. Moreover, Indonesia – the current ASEAN chair – announced that ASEAN will hold joint military drills in September. These drills are reportedly slated to take place in waters claimed by Indonesia off Natuna island where Chinese vessels have periodically intruded. Nonetheless, Cambodia has since claimed that Phnom Penh has not agreed to these drills.

Conclusion

The duelling visions of regional order set out by the US and Chinese defence chiefs present a major challenge for ASEAN. With Austin’s stated engagements appearing to sideline ASEAN and potentially undermining its centrality, and with Li’s words not entirely squaring with China’s deeds in the South China Sea and elsewhere, ASEAN has its work cut out for it. The bloc must continue to skilfully navigate this rivalry, addressing the ever-mounting challenges to its unity, centrality and, ultimately, relevance in the regional architecture.

Henrick TSJENG is Associate Research Fellow with the Regional Security Architecture Programme, Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Categories: IDSS Paper / International Politics and Security / Americas / East Asia and Asia Pacific / Global / Southeast Asia and ASEAN

Last updated on 16/06/2023

16. Exclusive: US government agencies hit in global cyberattack

​We are all part of the cyber war battlefield.​ There are no frontlines and rear areas.

Exclusive: US government agencies hit in global cyberattack | CNN Politics

CNN · by Sean Lyngaas · June 15, 2023

CNN —

“Several” US federal government agencies have been hit in a global cyberattack that exploits a vulnerability in widely used software.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency “is providing support to several federal agencies that have experienced intrusions affecting their MOVEit applications,” Eric Goldstein, the agency’s executive assistant director for cybersecurity, said in a statement on Thursday to CNN, referring to the software impacted. “We are working urgently to understand impacts and ensure timely remediation.”

It was not immediately clear if the hackers responsible for breaching the federal agencies were a Russian-speaking ransomware group that has claimed credit for numerous other victims in the hacking campaign.

A CISA spokesperson had no comment when CNN asked who carried out the hack of federal agencies and how many have been affected.

But the news adds to a growing tally of victims of a sprawling hacking campaign that began two weeks ago and has hit major US universities and state governments. The hacking spree mounts pressure on federal officials who have pledged to put a dent in the scourge of ransomware attacks that have hobbled schools, hospitals and local governments across the US.

Headquarters of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) are pictured in London on March 11, 2023.

Susannah Ireland/AFP/Getty Images

Russian-speaking cyber gang claims credit for hack of BBC and British Airways employee data

Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the university’s renowned health system said in a statement this week that “sensitive personal and financial information,” including health billing records may have been stolen in the hack.

Meanwhile, Georgia’s state-wide university system – which spans the 40,000-student University of Georgia along with over a dozen other state colleges and universities – confirmed it was investigating the “scope and severity” of the hack.

A Russian-speaking hacking group known as CLOP last week claimed credit for some of the hacks, which have also affected employees of the BBC, British Airways, oil giant Shell, and state governments in Minnesota and Illinois, among others.

The Russian hackers were the first to exploit the vulnerability, but experts say other groups may now have access to software code needed to conduct attacks.

The ransomware group had given victims until Wednesday to contact them about paying a ransom, after which they began listing more alleged victims from the hack on their extortion site on the dark web. As of Thursday morning, the dark website did not list any US federal agencies.

The episode shows the widespread impact that a single software flaw can have if exploited by skilled criminals.

The hackers – a well-known group whose favored malware emerged in 2019 – in late May began exploiting a new flaw in a widely used file-transfer software known as MOVEit, appearing to target as many exposed organizations as they could. The opportunistic nature of the hack left a broad swath of organizations vulnerable to extortion.

Progress, the US firm that owns the MOVEit software, has also urged victims to update their software packages and has issued security advice.

CNN · by Sean Lyngaas · June 15, 2023

17. Remarks by Matt Pottinger to Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen

Remarks by Matt Pottinger to Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen

fdd.org · by Elizabeth Robbins · June 15, 2023

Madam President,

Thank you for meeting with us today. I would like to extend our sincere gratitude to you, your government, and the people of Taiwan for the very warm welcome we received this week. My colleagues—some of whom are here for the first time—have been raving about the natural beauty of this brilliant island, about the delicious food, and especially about the openness and kindness of the people we’ve met.

We are a group of American and Israeli combat veterans and national security practitioners who have come to exchange views with Taiwan government officials, military officers, and private citizens. We have come in a spirit of humility to learn from Taiwan and to be helpful where possible. We have had detailed discussions this week. We have exchanged views about lessons democracies are drawing from recent wars waged by aggressors in the Middle East and now Europe.

Because the lessons of war are written in blood, citizens of free societies have a special duty to study those lessons carefully. Ukraine offers some important lessons for Taiwan. The most important is that deterrence is far preferable to war. So how can we maintain effective deterrence and sustain peace and prosperity for Taiwan? The formula could be described as “capability times credibility.”

By capability, I mean deep stores of asymmetrical and affordable munitions, realistic training and smart tactics. It means a large number of small, mobile, dispersed, precision, lethal weapons.

By credibility, I mean that special blend of courage, confidence, and will to fight. The soldiers and citizens of Ukraine show us those qualities every day on the battlefield. When it comes to demonstrating credibility during peacetime, Israel can provide some inspiration. Israel has less than half Taiwan’s population and lacks the seas and mountains that protect Taiwan. Yet Israel has, by itself, won every war it has fought and deterred enemies from attempting an invasion for the last 50 years, despite facing numerically superior and technologically sophisticated foes like Iran.

From what we have seen this week, we believe that Taiwan—backed by powerful fellow democracies—is assembling the ingredients to safeguard its peace and security, even in the face of the Chinese Communist Party’s militarism and threats. The secret ingredient that can catalyze all the others into long-term deterrence is culture.

Here, too, Israel provides some useful lessons. In Israel, young men and women participate in compulsory military service. They train frequently and realistically as reservists. And they maintain robust civil defense capabilities. Military service is held in the highest esteem across Israeli society. Men and women compete to serve in the most elite units the way Americans compete to enter Ivy League schools. And soldiers acquire leadership and technical skills that enrich Israel’s economy and prosperous technology sector.

On behalf of our delegation and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, we congratulate Taiwan for its steps to reenergize its culture of national service through policies such as extending compulsory service to a full year. This is a step toward building a culture—and an ecosystem—that will strengthen deterrence and ensure Taiwan remains a guardian, rather than a victim, at the frontier of liberty and democracy.

Thank you.

fdd.org · by Elizabeth Robbins · June 15, 2023

18. U.S. Deploys F-22s to Syria to Deter ‘Unprofessional Behavior’ by Russia

U.S. Deploys F-22s to Syria to Deter ‘Unprofessional Behavior’ by Russia

fdd.org · · June 15, 2023

Latest Developments

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) announced on June 14 the deployment of advanced fighter jets, F-22 Raptors, to the Middle East to deter dangerous and provocative behavior by Russian aircraft in the region. According to CENTCOM’s statement, deployment of the F-22s from the 94th Fighter Squadron based at Virginia’s Langley Air Force Base demonstrates the “U.S.’ ability to re-posture forces and deliver overwhelming power at a moment’s notice.”

Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, CENTCOM commander, said in the statement, “Russian Forces’ unsafe and unprofessional behavior is not what we expect from a professional air force. Their regular violation of agreed upon airspace deconfliction measures increases the risk of escalation or miscalculation.”

Expert Analysis

“The Biden administration must ensure that U.S. forces in Syria have both the permission and the means to defend themselves and make aggressors regret their actions. Otherwise, we should expect more provocative behavior from the Russians and more attacks from Iranian terror proxies.” — Bradley Bowman, Senior Director of FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power

“The deployment of low-density, high-value assets like the F-22 to the CENTCOM area of responsibility to deter Russia is yet another example of how great power competition doesn’t just take place in Europe and Asia but happens in the Middle East as well. Washington ignores Russian and Chinese activities in the region at its own peril.” — Ryan Brobst, FDD Senior Research Analyst

Russia Remains in Syria

On March 16, Kurilla told the Senate Armed Services Committee during a hearing that Russia has made little change to its forces in Syria despite the war in Ukraine. Instead, it seeks to expand its influence in Syria and undermine efforts at regional stability as it supports Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. The Washington Post reported on June 1 that leaked documents and intelligence officials indicate that Assad, Russia, and Iran are plotting to drive American forces out of Syria. Russia currently deploys approximately 2,500 troops in Syria.

Russia’s Provocative Behavior

Kurilla told the committee that Russian aircraft violate deconfliction protocols daily and fly over U.S. bases, with a significant spike in such conduct beginning on March 1. Armed planes flew over U.S. bases nearly every day that month. In April, Defense One reported that Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, commander of U.S. Air Forces Central Command, described Russian fighter jets “aggressively maneuvering” close to U.S. planes, appearing to try to goad them into a dogfight.

Vital U.S. Interests in Syria

Despite the destruction of the ISIS caliphate, approximately 900 U.S. troops serve alongside the Syrian Democratic Forces in Syria, working to contain the remnants of ISIS, prevent a resurgence of the group, and detain approximately 10,000 of its fighters in jails. Kurilla said during his Senate testimony that despite being significantly degraded, ISIS can still conduct operations within and outside the area.

Related Analysis

“Degrade and Destroy: The Inside Story of the War Against the Islamic State, from Barack Obama to Donald Trump,” FDD Event with Michael Gordon, Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Sean MacFarland, Michèle Flournoy, and Bradley Bowman

“Lebanese Hezbollah Making Preparations to Target U.S. Troops in Syria,” by Joe Truzman and Bill Roggio

“Iran-backed Militias Target U.S. Troops in Eastern Syria,” by Joe Truzman

fdd.org · · June 15, 2023

19. Creatives as frontliners in the Philippines’ fight against disinformation

Excerpts:

More work needs to be done to realise the potential of the creative sector as a frontline in the fight against disinformation. To do this, it is necessary to learn from the ‘success stories’ of disinformation narratives — what makes them compelling and relatable?

Approaches do not need to be universal. While human rights organisations employ different strategies in addressing state abuses, groups can work with artists to explore campaigns that use humour and creativity to deliver messages that are more engaging to the public.

Anti-disinformation programs also need to better integrate the work of content creators, influencers, artists, comedians and filmmakers when designing and implementing programs. Facts need to speak to the soul. For this to happen, the Philippines’ ‘anti-disinformation community’ needs to place artists at the forefront of programs designed to fight disinformation.

Creatives as frontliners in the Philippines’ fight against disinformation | East Asia Foru​m​

eastasiaforum.org · by Juan Felix · June 16, 2023

Authors: Juan Felix, Active Vista Center Inc., Ferdinand Sanchez II and Nicole Curato, University of Canberra

The Philippines is often portrayed as one of the world’s most important battlegrounds against disinformation. Many observers have attributed the back-to-back electoral victories of strongman Rodrigo Duterte in 2016 and Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the son of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, in 2022 as outcomes of systematic disinformation and historical revisionism, which distorted the will of Filipino voters.

Recent survey results have shown that 70 per cent of Filipinos consider fake news and its spread online as a serious problem while 51 per cent find it difficult to identify fake news on television, radio or social media.

Civil society groups, journalists and donor agencies have launched various initiatives to combat disinformation. Among the most popular are fact-checking initiatives and digital literacy campaigns, which seek to address deficits in information by giving the public access to credible news reports and building their capacities to tell truth from lies.

These initiatives are valuable, but they are not enough. Successful battles win hearts and minds. Fact-checking and digital literacy campaigns can win minds, but we need imaginative and compelling stories to win hearts.

Research has shown that belief in false information is not just driven by cognitive failures but also by emotional factors. These findings resonate with our own work in the Philippines. In the past year, we have been monitoring the nature of revisionist narratives that boost the image of the Marcos family. Marcos Jr’s stunning electoral victory was anchored on an ‘artful political narrative’ that depicted the Marcos family as victims of history defined by the country’s liberal political elite and deserving of reclaiming their rightful place — the Malacañang Palace.

Similarly, Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign strategy cannot simply be reduced to voters being fed incorrect statistics about crime and drug use — he importantly appealed to people’s longstanding latent anxieties about their family’s security.

The Marcos and Duterte camps have been successful in advancing compelling narratives for their political gain. But these narratives are not necessarily durable. As media studies scholar Jason Cabanes and historian Fernando Santiago put it, counter-disinformation efforts can ‘turn disinformation campaigns on their head by turning their own strategies against them’.

Creative sector initiatives have the potential to destabilise the dominant storylines that legitimise Duterte’s drug war and the Marcoses’ historical revisionism by prompting reflection, initiating conversation and building empathy among Filipinos.

‘Potential’ is the keyword in our findings. Film screenings, avatars and hip-hop are some art forms that can forge an emotional connection between politically charged content and people’s everyday experiences. But these initiatives need to be scaled up. Compared to influence operations that seed conspiracy theories and misleading news reports, the creative sector’s efforts are often underfunded and limited in reach.

Artist collectives, for example, regularly hold film screenings on human rights. Many of these films give voice and visibility to ordinary Filipinos who survived state-sponsored violence during the Marcos dictatorship. Shorter versions of these films are uploaded on YouTube, such as the story of catechists whose families were murdered by the military because they were accused of being communist sympathisers. These art forms contest the narrative peddled by YouTube influencers that the Marcoses’ ouster from power was a case of infighting among elites, positioning it instead as one that was driven by ordinary people’s desire for freedom and justice.

Compelling as this narrative may be, these films and YouTube clips are in direct competition with cultural products that make the Marcoses relatable. Viral TikTok videos portray Marcos Jr’s children as heartthrobs while light-hearted films like Maid in Malacanang effectively distance the Marcoses from the brutality associated with the dictatorship. This relatable content is part of long-term efforts meant to engage in historical denialism.

The creative sector is confronted with the daunting task of sustaining the struggle against disinformation actors, while enacting concerted truth-telling initiatives that cater to wider audiences and broadening spaces for critical reflection.

More work needs to be done to realise the potential of the creative sector as a frontline in the fight against disinformation. To do this, it is necessary to learn from the ‘success stories’ of disinformation narratives — what makes them compelling and relatable?

Approaches do not need to be universal. While human rights organisations employ different strategies in addressing state abuses, groups can work with artists to explore campaigns that use humour and creativity to deliver messages that are more engaging to the public.

Anti-disinformation programs also need to better integrate the work of content creators, influencers, artists, comedians and filmmakers when designing and implementing programs. Facts need to speak to the soul. For this to happen, the Philippines’ ‘anti-disinformation community’ needs to place artists at the forefront of programs designed to fight disinformation.

Juan Felix is Program Manager for Research and Social Analysis of Active Vista Center Inc., the learning center of DAKILA — Philippine Collective for Modern Heroism.

Ferdinand Sanchez II is Research Assistant at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, the University of Canberra.

Nicole Curato is Professor of Political Sociology at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, the University of Canberra.

This piece is based on a collaborative research project funded by Internews under the Six-Track Engagement Against Disinformation Initiative (STEAD-i). Monitoring of disinformation narratives was based on reports lodged on TotooBa.info. This piece does not reflect the views of Internews.

eastasiaforum.org · by Juan Felix · June 16, 2023

20. Like Ukraine, Myanmar Deserves International Aid

Unofficial "pilot teams" are already working in Burma. We just need the political will to act.

Excerpts:

But a swift victory will require the support and assistance of the international community and in this, we cannot compare ourselves to Ukrainians. We have received very little in the way of materiel support. A mere 1 percent of the aid going to Ukraine would prove instrumental in the Myanmar revolution’s ability to achieve a decisive victory in a matter of months instead of the years-long struggle we face against such lopsided combat power.

The current resistance movement is unique in Myanmar’s history and worthy of international support. With our pan-ethnic unity of purpose, unwavering belief in democracy and commitment to the cause, this is the best — and perhaps last — chance, after seven decades of unending war, to bring peace, democracy and freedom to Myanmar.

Regardless of the support we get from the international community, the Myanmar people will not waver in their determined struggle against the military dictatorship. However, if international support reinforces the struggle, the will of the people is sure to triumph over the military dictatorship in a shorter time span, leading to a swifter emergence of a peaceful federal democratic union and the restoration of stability in both the country and the region.

Like Ukraine, Myanmar Deserves International Aid

The resistance’s historic unity for democratic change is worthy of the world’s support.

Tuesday, June 13, 2023 / BY: Gun Maw; Yee Mon; Min Ko Naing

PUBLICATION TYPE: Analysis and Commentary

Lt. Gen. Sumlut Gun Maw is the vice chairman of the Kachin Independence Council. Yee Mon is the minister of defense of the National Unity Government. Min Ko Naing is one of Myanmar's most prominent activists and a former student leader of the renowned 8888 movement.

usip.org

The unprecedented unity in Myanmar, spurred by the coup and its brutal power grab, is exemplified by the solidarity of the various organizations that we represent: an ethnic armed group, the National Unity Government (NUG) and the pro-democratic 8888 generation group. Each of these groups helps lead today’s groundbreaking multi-ethnic resistance movement.

Almost immediately after the coup in February 2021, diverse elements of the population — elected leaders, political parties, civil society groups of all kinds, ethnic minority organizations, striking civil servants — joined hands to establish a complex structure of interim governance to guide a revolutionary movement that aims to establish a new federal democracy.

Within a few months, a combination of de jure and de facto representatives of the National Unity Consultative Council and Committee Representing the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw formed the NUG to guide the resistance structure. The resistance movement has been steadily fostering unity and cohesion by engaging in inter-resistance dialogue, bringing together individuals from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds, spanning generations, regions and walks of life. To this end, a “Federal Democracy Charter” has been produced to lay the foundation for the state that we aim to achieve upon victory — a “peaceful federal democratic union that guarantees freedom, justice and equality.”

The Coup Regime’s War on Myanmar

In the meantime, we are up against a regime of boundless cruelty at war with its own people. A recent example: On the morning of April 11, 2023, a deafening cacophony of explosions woke the secluded mid-country village of Pazigyi into a hellish chaos. Fighter jets and helicopters hovered overhead, unleashing a merciless barrage of bombs and gunfire on a gathering of villagers below. Hundreds of bodies were strewn across the area, leaving the whole nation reeling in shock and pain. But the atrocities did not end. Another round of aerial gunfire continued the slaughter, targeting rescue workers and destroying evidence.

This tragedy is far from an isolated incident. In the two and a half years since the coup, the military has killed thousands of civilians, detained tens of thousands — including senior elected officials, such as State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi — demolished thousands of homes in arson attacks and launched hundreds of air strikes against civilian targets. Both the majority Bamar-populated central plain and minority ethnic areas are targets for having resisted the generals’ attempts to retake power against the people’s will.

While resistance to the military takeover began with peaceful protests in spring 2021, it soon turned to armed defense against the generals’ violent response. The popular movement to restore civilian rule quickly transformed into a nationwide revolution to forge a new path toward an inclusive federal democratic nation free of military control — a goal that has eluded Burma since its early days of independence in 1948.

With the turn to armed self-defense, several powerful ethnic armed organizations joined forces with young people across the country to help them form and train People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) aimed at protecting civilians from the military and overthrowing the junta.

The Armed Opposition to the Junta Is Advancing

The NUG's Ministry of Defense, at the center of the armed resistance, collaborates closely with the two largest ethnic armed organizations fighting the junta, the, Kachin Independence Army and Karen National Union. We have established a Joint Central Command, and we are working in strategic partnership with at least eight other ethnic armed organizations — including the Karenni and Chin — to coordinate military operations and commands. We have successfully developed a deeper understanding and strengthened cooperation with other ethnic armed organizations that have been engaged in the fight against the military and actively supporting the resistance movement.

The PDFs and their alliance with long-standing ethnic armed organizations are a testament to the resilience and resolve of the Myanmar people in their fight for democracy and freedom in defiance of the overwhelming air power and resources of the Myanmar military.

Most importantly, this unprecedented unity means there is a window of opportunity for victory. The junta’s terrorist tactics are failing on all fronts, military and political. For them, it has become an existential battle. For us, this is our last, best chance at seeing a future for Myanmar free from the darkness and cancerous tumor that is the military.

Together, with the support and participation of the public, we are advancing. The National Unity Government’s PDFs, with the support and participation of the public, have effectively established their presence in numerous rural areas of the country, particularly in Sagaing and Magway Regions of central Myanmar, home to the majority Burman ethnic group and considered to be the heartland of the country with historical, strategic and socio-economic importance.

In a similar vein, ethnic armed organizations are exerting stronger and more effective governance over their traditional territories and expanding their spheres of control. Combined, NUG and ethnic organizations control at least half of the country’s territory as the coup leader General Min Aung Hlaing himself has admitted.

Sharing a common enemy in military rule and the common goal of building a federal democracy under civilian governance, the entire nation is committed firmly to achieving success. The people of Myanmar march with one voice and united effort.

In doing so, Myanmar people working as domestic help in foreign countries regularly contribute their entire salaries to our revolution. Elderly mothers from upper Myanmar are donating their last pair of earrings, even as their lands are set ablaze by the junta. In self-defense, we rose up armed with nothing but homemade Tumi guns and whatever we could scrounge together from scrap metal. Despite facing the junta’s automatic weapons and the latest fighter jets from Russia, we have them on the ropes. Just as Kyiv prepares to launch a counteroffensive to retake lost territory, the people of Myanmar fight for every inch of land stolen by the junta.

Myanmar’s Struggle — and Ukraine’s

But a swift victory will require the support and assistance of the international community and in this, we cannot compare ourselves to Ukrainians. We have received very little in the way of materiel support. A mere 1 percent of the aid going to Ukraine would prove instrumental in the Myanmar revolution’s ability to achieve a decisive victory in a matter of months instead of the years-long struggle we face against such lopsided combat power.

The current resistance movement is unique in Myanmar’s history and worthy of international support. With our pan-ethnic unity of purpose, unwavering belief in democracy and commitment to the cause, this is the best — and perhaps last — chance, after seven decades of unending war, to bring peace, democracy and freedom to Myanmar.

Regardless of the support we get from the international community, the Myanmar people will not waver in their determined struggle against the military dictatorship. However, if international support reinforces the struggle, the will of the people is sure to triumph over the military dictatorship in a shorter time span, leading to a swifter emergence of a peaceful federal democratic union and the restoration of stability in both the country and the region.

usip.org

21. The Choice the Philippines Didn’t Want to Make

Be careful what you wish for.

Excerpts:

“In hindsight,” Rommel Jude Ong, a former vice commander of the Philippine navy, told me, “the vacuum created by the loss of Subic and Clark provided opportunities for China to take over.”

The Philippines backtracked. It signed a Visiting Forces Agreement with the U.S. in 1998, allowing U.S. forces to come and go from temporary stints on Philippine bases, rather than operating from bases of their own, so as not to run counter to the 1991 vote. The groups that had opposed the U.S. bases had splintered by this time, and a challenge to the agreement in the country’s Supreme Court failed.

The Choice the Philippines Didn’t Want to Make

Thirty-two years ago, the departure of American troops from the archipelago symbolized the end of colonialism. Today, their return seems like the least bad option.

By Timothy McLaughlin

The Atlantic · by Timothy McLaughlin · June 16, 2023

On September 16, 1991, Senator Wigberto Tañada gave a soaring speech on the floor of the Philippine senate. The country’s president, Corazon Aquino, was proposing to sign a new military-base treaty with the United States. As the treaty came before the senate, lawmakers had “the awesome task of severing the last remaining shackles of colonialism in our motherland, the U.S. military bases,” Tañada said. “The sight of the last American warplane flying out of our skies, the last American battleship disappearing from our horizon, and the last American soldier being airlifted from our soil should inspire us to greater heights of achievement.”

Twelve senators voted against the treaty, dooming it by a single ballot. Socorro Diokno, an activist who led the Anti-Bases Coalition at the time, told me that she was astonished by the outcome. “This was a fight that was begun by my great-grandfather,” she said, “and I was lucky enough to be part of it and in the thick of it when it finally ended, when we finally won.”

The United States had maintained a military presence in the Philippines since 1898. But by the time of the senate vote, Manila and Washington were squabbling over payments for the bases, whose usefulness was in question as the Cold War waned and President George H. W. Bush sought to deepen relations with China. In the Philippines, a popular uprising had ousted the American-backed dictator Ferdinand Marcos just five years earlier, and nationalist sentiment was still high.

“From the American end, it was a withdrawal,” Walden Bellow, an academic and a former congressman in the Philippines, told me. “From the Philippines’ end, it was that we kicked them out.”

Thirty-two years later, there is no talk of reestablishing U.S. bases, but more American troops have returned to Philippine soil. On a scorching stretch of beach along the South China Sea in April, U.S. military reservists from Mississippi hunted target drones out of the air with Stinger missiles and heavy machine guns. Artillery fire pounded a warship floating offshore in a mock attack. Farther north, on a far-flung island just over 100 miles from Taiwan, hundreds of U.S. troops simulated securing control of what would be a key maritime transit point in the case of a conflict with Beijing.

Read: The price of being principled in the Philippines

President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., the son of the ousted dictator, has reinvigorated his country’s alliance with the United States as a buttress against actual and anticipated Chinese aggression. Ships from the Chinese coast guard and navy regularly harass Philippine forces and fishermen, and Beijing has asserted expansive claims in the South China Sea. Unfettered by an international tribunal’s 2016 ruling in Manila’s favor, China is placing military installations on several islands it built in the contested waters.

This year, the United States and the Philippines reached an agreement giving U.S. forces access to four bases in the Philippines in addition to the ones they can already use. The joint military exercises in April, an annual tradition, were the largest in history between the two countries. Two months earlier, Marcos had summoned China’s ambassador to complain about maritime harassment by a Chinese naval vessel, then four days later delivered a warning that the Philippines was facing “heightened geopolitical tensions that do not conform to our ideals of peace” and that the Philippines “will not lose an inch of its territory.”

For the moment, at least, the need for a counterweight against China seems to have overridden the vexed history between the Philippines and the United States—one in which the people of the Philippines have held Washington responsible for colonial oppression, aiding a dictator, and the excesses of its troops.

The United States took control of the Philippines in 1898, as a victor’s bounty in the Spanish-American War, and established military bases there starting in the early 1900s. The colony gained independence after World War II but signed an agreement in 1947 that granted the United States a 99-year lease on a range of military and naval facilities. The countries later signed a mutual-defense treaty that cemented their alliance.

Ferdinand Marcos, a staunch anti-communist and skilled lawyer, was elected president in 1965. He entranced crowds with his rhetorical power and governed democratically at first. But within 10 years he had imposed martial law, and his rule descended into human-rights abuses and kleptocracy.

Still, during the Cold War, Washington viewed Marcos as a bulwark against the spread of communism, and the U.S. bases as essential to keeping the threat at bay.

“There was a belief deeply held in the Reagan administration that we had to stick with our friends, and Marcos was a friend,” Stephen Bosworth, who was the American ambassador to Manila in the late 1980s, said in an oral-history project recounting his post in the Philippines.

Marcos’s chief political rival, Benigno Simeon Aquino Jr., was brazenly assassinated in 1983, but even then, Ronald Reagan insisted that the U.S. should offer constructive criticism of the Philippines’ rulers rather than, as one contemporaneous news story paraphrased the president, “throwing them to the wolves and then facing a communist power in the Pacific.” The position became untenable, however, as the country’s economy staggered and opposition coalesced in response to Aquino’s killing. In February 1986, Aquino’s wife, Corazon, won a presidential election, and mass protests that would come to be known as the People Power Revolution foiled Marcos in his desperate attempt to cling to power.

Bosworth had the task of telling Marcos that he had lost U.S. support. “With that,” Bosworth said, “we had removed the sign of heaven from him, the mandate of heaven. He was done.”

Read: China could soon be the dominant power in Asia

The Marcos family and its large entourage of cronies, carrying bags laden with stolen wealth, diamonds tucked into their children’s diapers, lifted off from the U.S.-controlled Clark Air Base on February 26, 1986. They went first to Guam and then to Hawaii, where the fiery orator who had ruled the Philippines for 20 years would die in ignominious exile within four years.

The movement to eject the U.S. military in 1991 linked the presence of American bases to Marcos’s abusive rule. Diokno and her colleagues at the Anti-Bases Coalition held that without American support, Marcos would never have stayed in power as long as he did. Then the U.S. had allowed him safe passage and a haven abroad, rather than forcing him to face justice in the Philippines. This history had a personal dimension for Diokno. The Marcos administration had imprisoned her father, a former justice secretary and a senator, for nearly two years.

The American military presence was objectionable to many in the Philippines on its own terms as well. A sex trade catering to U.S. servicemen, euphemistically referred to as an '”entertainment industry,” flourished around the bases. In Olongapo, the city near U.S. Naval Base Subic Bay, dozens of bars and thousands of women served young American men. The U.S. military helped create a debaucherous playground for sex tourists—“the bargain hunters, freaks, pedophiles, psychopaths, creeps, and crackpots” who were lured “by brochures that promise ‘anything goes at Olongapo,’” a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune wrote in a 1989 dispatch from the town.

Tens of thousands of children fathered by U.S. servicemen were left behind when the men rotated out of the country. AIDS broke out among sex workers. Horrific incidents of underage prostitution regularly caught the attention of the media. Nearby cities were often violent and lawless. The shootings and frequent base break-ins were startling. “Holy shit,” Lee Badman, who served at Clark Air Base in the late 1980s with the U.S. Air Force, told me he remembered thinking when he arrived. “This is a hostile place when it was supposed to be peacetime.”

Still, Badman remembers his posting to the Philippines fondly. Monsoon rains and touts hawking souvenirs were wholly new to a young man from small-town America. He explored the airfield cut from the jade-colored jungle on his bicycle, awed by the scenery and sheer size of the facility. A huge, highly secretive listening station known as the Elephant Cage sat far out on the base, marking “the end of civilization,” he said. Beyond it stretched even more dense forest and the foothills of the Zambales Mountains.

Mount Pinuatubo, a volcano only nine miles from Clark Air Base, exploded on June 15, 1991. The ash cloud rose 28 miles into the air. Pyroclastic flows, surging avalanches of hot volcanic gas and fire, barreled down its slopes. A powerful typhoon moved ashore at the same time. Heavy rain mixed with ash, creating a blanket of wet sediment that collapsed the roofs of homes and buildings. Clark Air Base was wrecked.

Frank Wisner arrived in Manila to serve as U.S. ambassador to the Philippines shortly after the eruption. The anti-bases campaign was at its height, and Clark was in no condition for American forces to return. But the United States wasn’t ready to relinquish its presence at Subic Bay, which remained important for the 7th Fleet roving the Pacific.

“We worked like hell. I campaigned for it,” Wisner told me recently. “I went all over the country. I marched.” The effort was unsuccessful.

Wisner flew to Washington after the senate vote, hoping to rally support for a last-minute fix, but found little interest in an expensive basing agreement thousands of miles from home as the threats from the Cold War faded. In a meeting at the White House, Wisner told me, President Bush “made it clear his heart wasn’t in it either.” In late November 1991, Wisner received the crisply folded American flag that had flown over Clark, once America’s largest overseas military base. The last American warship sailed out of Subic a year later.

In the years that immediately followed, the Philippine navy had sporadic run-ins with Chinese poachers fishing illegally in Philippine waters. In the mid-1990s, the Chinese began building structures that appeared to be small huts on Mischief Reef, about 129 nautical miles from Palawan island and within the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines. The Philippine government protested, but Beijing brushed its objections aside. There was little understanding at the time of the breadth and speed with which China would build up its military forces and position itself to dominate the South China Sea.

“In hindsight,” Rommel Jude Ong, a former vice commander of the Philippine navy, told me, “the vacuum created by the loss of Subic and Clark provided opportunities for China to take over.”

The Philippines backtracked. It signed a Visiting Forces Agreement with the U.S. in 1998, allowing U.S. forces to come and go from temporary stints on Philippine bases, rather than operating from bases of their own, so as not to run counter to the 1991 vote. The groups that had opposed the U.S. bases had splintered by this time, and a challenge to the agreement in the country’s Supreme Court failed.

“It was very disappointing,” Diokno told me.

Maritime tensions with China were continuing to build. In 2012, Chinese ships moved into the waters around Scarborough Shoal, a rocky atoll that sits roughly 120 nautical miles west of the Philippine island of Luzon in the South China Sea. After a tense standoff with Philippine forces, Beijing effectively took control of the shoal and has held on to it ever since. Later that year, Xi Jinping became China’s president and stepped up Beijing’s militarization activities in the South China Sea, despite pledging during a White House visit not to do so.

The Philippines looked to the United States for support, and in 2014, the two countries signed the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, a 10-year security pact allowing a larger U.S. military presence in the country. Within months, questions about the power imbalance between the U.S. and the Philippines again arose. A U.S. Marine taking part in joint exercises murdered Jennifer Laude, a transgender Filipina. Authorities discovered her strangled, her head pushed into a toilet in an Olongapo motel.

Yet Manila largely tolerated and even welcomed the military relationship until President Rodrigo Duterte took office in 2016. Duterte insisted that the Philippines was no match for its powerful neighbor, and that it was better to court investment than to antagonize China. He flattered Beijing and made a show of his independence from Washington, regularly lambasting the United States and then-President Barack Obama. He even threatened to scrap the Visiting Forces Agreement, but then abruptly did an about-face. The relationship between the U.S. and Philippine militaries was, Ong told me, “the only reason the alliance survived.”

I visited the old Clark facility during the Duterte period, in 2019. The veterans’ cemetery was immaculate, its brilliant-white headstones almost fluorescent in the afternoon sun. Other parts of the old air base had been swallowed by the jungle. Some of the bars were still open. They were relics of the heyday of the 1980s, the walls filled with military memorabilia of long-departed units and photos of young airmen sporting ringer tees and mustaches, their arms slung around Filipina women. The American patrons the bars now drew were a considerably older crowd, mostly retirees in blue-and-yellow veterans’ hats sipping from bottles of San Miguel beer.

Read: A U.S. ally is turning to China to ‘build, build, build’

Government officials at the time were abuzz over anticipated Chinese investment, which they said would help develop the area into a business hub and woo residents sick of the congestion and stifling crush of life in Manila. And Chinese investment did flow into the Philippines during Duterte’s tenure—particularly into the pockets of those close to the president. But many of the large-scale, Chinese-backed projects his administration promised never materialized. The $2 billion industrial park that was to provide hundreds of jobs at Clark was one such phantasm.

As U.S. troops left the Philippines in 1991, the Marcos family returned from Hawaii and set about rehabilitating its dynasty through a sustained campaign of historical revisionism. The effort paid off handsomely last year, when Bongbong Marcos was elected president. Joe Biden was one of the first world leaders to call the new president after his victory.

Marcos came to office with scant public record of a foreign policy. But his priorities became clear in short order, as he abandoned what Victor Andres Manhit, the founder of Stratbase ADR Institute, a think tank in the Philippines, described to me as Duterte’s “appeasement policy towards China” in favor of stronger ties with the United States and other maritime powers, such as Japan and Australia. Wendy Sherman, a high-ranking U.S. State Department official, jetted to Manila to meet Marcos even before he was sworn in. Marcos announced the expansion of the 2014 security agreement, granting U.S. forces access to four more bases in addition to the five it already uses. Two of the new ones are close to Taiwan.

The Balikatan Exercises have been held annually for years, but the scale and scope of the 2023 events were meant to send a warning to China. On the beach of San Antonio, in Zambales, hundreds of soldiers trudged through powdery sand, manning heavy weapons and logistical equipment. U.S. Marines sweltered in rows of tents lined up just off the beach. Military helicopters and V-22 Osprey, a hybrid aircraft, passed overhead. Counterparts from the Philippines and Australia worked alongside the American soldiers.

Toward the end of the week-long exercises, target drones meant to mimic competitors’ hardware launched from the beach and buzzed just offshore. A burst from a .50-caliber machine gun sent one nose-diving into the South China Sea. Another was eviscerated by a Stinger missile. (A different Stinger plopped into the sea, an apparent dud. “Obviously not what we were looking for,” an Army major quipped.) Later, at another site, a set of American Patriot missiles ripped through the air. Members of the 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment, a newly formed group designed specifically for fighting in the Pacific island chains, performed sensing and intelligence operations for the exercises, its very existence a testament to the priority Washington now places on the region’s security.

Read: China’s plan to buy influence and undermine democracy

The exercises concluded with a mock attack on a 1940s warship anchored eight nautical miles offshore in the direction of Scarborough Shoal. Having served in World War II before being transferred to the Philippine navy, the ship had been “built to take some punches,” a Marine public-affairs officer told me. And it did.

Marcos looked on from an observation tower alongside the U.S. ambassador and military brass. A barrage of artillery hammered the ship, its repercussions setting off car alarms and sending billows of smoke rolling down the beach. Attack helicopters shot at the ship, and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, like those supplied to Ukraine, fired on it. Marcos, the first Philippine president to watch the exercises in more than a decade, peered through a pair of binoculars at the display. Even as the exercises were happening, a Chinese coast guard ship offshore blocked a Philippine patrol vessel, nearly hitting it.

Marcos eventually descended from his perch and sped off in a convoy of black SUVs, kicking up a cloud of dust. Days later, he arrived in Washington, where Biden briefly reminisced about Marcos visiting the White House as a child with his father while Reagan was in office.

Such memories don’t cast a particularly warm glow for many in the Philippines, despite worries about Chinese designs. Senator Risa Hontiveros, a Marcos critic who backed his progressive challenger in the last election, told The Philippine Star in November that she fears her country will soon find itself “choosing between our former colonial master and one that wants to be the new regional or global colonial master.”

Diokno, the anti-bases advocate, expressed a similar frustration. The aspiration in 1991 was for the Philippines to stand on its own. But “we have done nothing to defend ourselves from foreign aggressors. Why do you think China can do this to us?” she said of Chinese ships’ harassment of Filipino fishing and coast-guard vessels.

“Because we are nobody; we don’t do anything. We have had since 1991 to do this and we have done nothing but rely on the U.S.”

The Atlantic · by Timothy McLaughlin · June 16, 2023

22. Philippine Congress Set to Approve Expanded U.S. Base Deal as China Expands Claims, Ambassador Says

Philippine Congress Set to Approve Expanded U.S. Base Deal as China Expands Claims, Ambassador Says - USNI News

news.usni.org · by John Grady · June 15, 2023

Philippine Sailors assigned to Naval Special Operations Units and U.S. Naval Special Warfare operators perform a bilateral over the beach training exercise in El Nido, Palawan, Philippines during Balikatan 23, April 26, 2023. US Navy Photo

China’s persistent expansion into the South China Sea is the most concerning security concern for the Philippines as its congress is set to approve an expanded basing deal with the U.S., Manila’s ambassador to Washington said on Thursday.

“We’re more concerned about our big neighbor to the north,” Philippines ambassador to the U.S. Jose Manuel Romualdez said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“We’re not going to give one inch of our territory,” Romualdez said. China continues to ignore an international tribunal’s ruling against its territorial claims in the South China Sea.

He expected the Philippine Congress to approve an extension of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, or EDCA, that grants the United States access to four more sites for operations. Negotiations over use, equipment to be stationed there and fees are underway.

In May in Washington, Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos said: “We have made it very clear [to the Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang], the bases we have opened up under the original [the 2014 Extended Defense Cooperation Agreement] with the United States is really because of the effects of climate change.”

China condemned the new sites, saying they threaten the peace and stability of the Indo-Pacific and are aimed directly at Beijing.

On Thursday, Romualdez added that the Philippines is committed to modernizing its armed forces. Manila believes these steps “contribute to deterrence and are bumping up our defense posture.” While welcoming support from other nations in this program, “we will not let any other country tell us” how to do what best fits Philippine needs.

In the latest move to bolster Manila’s maritime security, the U.S. is transferring four patrol boats to the Philippines that will likely get used for maritime interdiction and search and rescue.

A Chinese frigate nearly collided with a Philippine Coast Guard cutter in late April when it and a companion cutter were on patrol near the contested Spratly Islands. Beijing has built artificial islands for civilian and military use in the Spratlys, which Vietnam also claims.

“We need to have peace and security” to allow the Philippines’ economy and other countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ [ASEAN] economies to develop and grow, he said.

Romuldaez said Manila wants to be a leader in ASEAN by spurring regional economic growth. He acknowledged that China, which is an ASEAN member, remains the Philippines’ largest trading partner and said it had no quarrel with Beijing in those matters.

He noted several times in the discussion that the U.S. is its sole treaty alliance partner, but that Manila is working on shared security issues with like-minded nations such as Japan and Australia.

“What’s driving these changes [in American military posture in the region] is China,” said Zack Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

“Countries are feeling threatened” by China’s aggressive behavior against other large trading partners, like Australia, India, Japan and self-governing Taiwan. Beijing has targeted Australia economically with tariffs and embargoes and Taiwan militarily by repeatedly probing defenses, and interfering in domestic politics in the Solomon Islands, Malaysia and other Pacific nations. China has also interfered in the domestic politics of the Solomon Islands, Malaysia and other Pacific nations.

Lindsey Ford, the Pentagon’s deputy assistant secretary for South Asia and Southeast Asia, took sharp exception to a question over whether America’s expanding network of partners had set off an arms race with China.

“The United States military has been forward and present in the Indo-Pacific for decades,” she said. The reason for a shift in force positioning, like converting the 12th Marine Regiment to the 12th Marine Littoral Regiment and the rotating fighter and bomber formations going to Australia, is the changing security environment.

“We’re responding to that demand signal” from treaty allies and partners. She pointed to expanded military exercises with the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia as examples of how others value U.S. training military presence.

Cooper and Ford both pointed out the benefits nations are already receiving from an expanded network for maritime awareness in controlling fisheries and secure mineral deposits.

In opening remarks, Ford said the administration has actively sought to build “action-oriented security networks,” not a NATO-like “one size fits all” structure for Indo-Pacific stability.

While succeeding in security matters, economic development and trade are areas where the administration’s efforts in the Indo-Pacific are falling short, said Cooper. While “political Washington,” his term, concentrates its regional support on competing against China militarily, nations there are looking for American engagement in broader issues like an investment.

“We are ready to talk to everyone,” Romualdez added.

Related

news.usni.org · by John Grady · June 15, 2023

23. What happens in Crimea will determine Taiwan’s fate

Excerpts:

In the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, the United States would be compelled to prioritize the defense of Taiwan due to its heightened strategic value. Hence, it becomes crucial for the United States to motivate its European allies to assume a more prominent role in protecting against Russian aggression.

Encouragingly, recent developments indicate a positive trend, exemplified by Germany’s recent announcement of its largest aid package to Ukraine yet – nearly US$3 billion.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stated, “This Russian war against Ukraine and against the entire free Europe began with Crimea and must end with Crimea – with its liberation.”

But the importance of the war ending in Crimea extends beyond today’s Europe. It will serve as a cautionary reminder in the face of future acts of aggression that, in the long term, the democratic world will band together no matter how long it takes to defeat authoritarian aggression.

A quicker end to the war with a complete restoration of international order, serves as the best deterrent to China’s Taiwan ambitions.

What happens in Crimea will determine Taiwan’s fate

Ending the war in Crimea with a complete restoration of international order is the best deterrent against a China invasion of Taiwan

asiatimes.com · by David Kirichenko · June 15, 2023

The 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea had far-reaching implications for global politics – demonstrating that it is still possible for countries to get away with redrawing borders through aggression.

Although the international community condemned the annexation, imposing economic sanctions on Russia, the sanctions neither restored Crimea to Ukraine nor deterred Russia from invading again in 2022.

The People’s Republic of China has long considered resolving “the Taiwan question” crucial. China’s leader Xi Jinping has stated that the absorption of Taiwan, even if it requires force, is key to his plan to “rejuvenate the Chinese nation.”

China’s leaders closely watch the situation in Ukraine, seeing it as a test of American determination and the unity of Western alliances. China also sees the potential for a prolonged conflict in Europe as a distraction for the West. As Russia’s war in Ukraine continues, it consumes American resources and attention.

If Russia ultimately maintains control over newly annexed Ukrainian territory, that may embolden China in its ambitions to annex Taiwan by force. The threat of sanctions may not be enough to deter Beijing: Policymakers in China may also anticipate that the economic dependence of other countries on China could mitigate the severity of these consequences, and some Chinese officials believe they can evade US-led sanctions.

It is therefore crucial that Ukraine’s supporters in the West send a decisive message, and send it now.

Before the 2022 invasion there was little faith that Crimea could be restored to Ukraine, and that possibility remains an open question in the ongoing conflict.

Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin meet in 2018. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken previously stated that a Ukrainian effort to retake Crimea would be a red line for Putin, but there has been a shift in his stance, as he asserts that there will be no “just” or “durable” peace unless Ukraine’s territorial integrity is restored.

A Biden administration official even told members of Congress in December 2022 that Ukraine had the military capability to take back Crimea. Retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges of the US Army said there was growing belief that Ukraine’s military would successfully regain control of Crimea by August 2023.

The United Kingdom has recently supplied Ukraine with multiple “Storm Shadow” cruise missiles, significantly bolstering the nation’s long-range strike capabilities.

Furthermore, French President Emmanuel Macron has committed to providing Kiev with the SCALP-EG missile, similar to the Storm Shadow, with a range of up to 155 miles (249.4 kilometers.)

This advanced weaponry holds the potential to target strategic locations, including the Kerch Strait Bridge – a crucial land link between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, serving as a vital supply route for Russian forces amid the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Despite apprehensions on the part of certain Western leaders regarding Putin’s designation of Crimea as a “red line,” the region remains under relentless assault from Ukrainian forces.

The recent introduction of advanced, extended-range munitions from the United States is poised to escalate further the barrage on military targets. With Russia hurriedly constructing defensive trenches in Crimea, it became evident that Moscow was profoundly worried about the region’s susceptibility to a potential Ukrainian invasion.

Last September, Putin declared Kherson part of Russia, despite lacking full control. Putin declared that Russia would use “all the forces and means at their disposal” to “protect” this newly acquired territory.

However, Ukraine showed little concern and, within 40 days, Russia abandoned Kherson’s capital city. Putin’s annexation justification was based on a staged poll, claiming it represented the will of the people, much like the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

In a recent statement, former French president François Hollande highlighted the notion that a triumphant Ukraine, symbolized by the withdrawal of Russian forces from Donbas and potentially even Crimea, would effectively discourage Russia and China from pursuing imperialistic ambitions against their neighbors. The defeat of Putin would not only signify the abandonment of such temptations but also serve as a resolute message that aggressive actions will not yield favorable outcomes.

However, if Ukraine falls short of reclaiming its original borders from 2014 and if it can only restore its pre-February 2022 borders, China may interpret that as showing the West’s insufficient commitment to reestablishing the international order.

People rallied outside the Russian representative office in downtown Taipeiduring the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine last year. Photo: CNA / Screengrab

The recently appointed special envoy of China for the Russo-Ukrainian conflict has emphasized an immediate cease-fire. This proposal entails granting Russia control over the currently occupied regions of Ukraine. Such an outcome would embolden Russia further.

Consequently, a Russian triumph would deliver a disheartening message to the world and set an alarming precedent for the Chinese, offering them encouragement in their own ambitions.

The provision of essential weaponry to Ukraine in a timely manner, enabling the restoration of its internationally recognized borders, holds significant importance for both the United States and Europe. Failure to expedite this support inadvertently benefits China, by diverting attention and resources away from Taiwan

In the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, the United States would be compelled to prioritize the defense of Taiwan due to its heightened strategic value. Hence, it becomes crucial for the United States to motivate its European allies to assume a more prominent role in protecting against Russian aggression.

Encouragingly, recent developments indicate a positive trend, exemplified by Germany’s recent announcement of its largest aid package to Ukraine yet – nearly US$3 billion.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stated, “This Russian war against Ukraine and against the entire free Europe began with Crimea and must end with Crimea – with its liberation.”

But the importance of the war ending in Crimea extends beyond today’s Europe. It will serve as a cautionary reminder in the face of future acts of aggression that, in the long term, the democratic world will band together no matter how long it takes to defeat authoritarian aggression.

A quicker end to the war with a complete restoration of international order, serves as the best deterrent to China’s Taiwan ambitions.

David Kirichenko (davishjr@gmail.com) is a freelance journalist and an editor at Euromaidan Press. He tweets @DVKirichenko. This article was originally published by Pacific Forum and is republished with permission.

asiatimes.com · by David Kirichenko · June 15, 2023

​24. US deals huge blow to China as it builds new military base on pivotal island

Papua New Guinea.

US deals huge blow to China as it builds new military base on pivotal island

the-express.com · by Matthew Dooley · June 15, 2023

A new agreement could offer America pivotal staging grounds to launch troops and warships from the South Pacific if a conflict were to erupt with China.

14:21 ET, Thu, Jun 15, 2023 | UPDATED: 15:09 ET, Thu, Jun 15, 2023

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Taiwan's Foreign Minister warns what could happen if China is not stopped

A new security deal will see the US station troops and warships in Papua New Guinea (PNG), adding a pivotal force to take on China should tensions over Taiwan spiral into conflict.

The 15-year pact adds the country to a growing list of alliances in the region with the aim of hemming in Beijing’s influence.

Last month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed the deal in Port Moresby - the capital of the nearly 180,000 square mile country in the South Pacific.

Sitting just north of Australia, it could offer the military a crucial staging ground in a potential fight against China.

“We’re deeply invested in the Indo-Pacific because our planet’s future is being written here,” Blinken said at the deal’s signing.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed the deal with Papua New Guinea. (Image: GETTY)

According to details of the deal revealed this week, Washington would have “unimpeded” access to “pre-position equipment, supplies and materiel” at certain bases while gaining “exclusive access” to some areas where development and construction could be carried out.

The deal comes on the heels of Beijing’s own security pact with the Solomon Islands - something which set off alarm bells in Washington.

That deal could pave the way for Chinese troops and warships positioned just 1,200 miles from the Australian coast. The Solomon Islands are due east of PNG.

Other Asia-Pacific nations have been opening their doors to Washington following increased tension with China, particularly over territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

The Philippines gave the US the go-ahead to expand military access to the north and west to face potential flashpoints there.

PNG gives the US another staging point for a fight against China. (Image: GETTY)

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Meanwhile, the US has begun talks with Japan about having Tokyo host a new multifunction army unit that would handle long-range strikes, air defense, intelligence, cyberwarfare, electronic warfare and logistics support, according to reporting by Nikkei Asia.

James Marape, PNG’s prime minister, said the deal “secures our national interests” in “becoming a robust economy in this part of the world”.

However, he faces growing domestic opposition that the deal could drag the island nation into a potential war between the US and China.

Former PNG prime minister Peter O’Neill slammed the deal, saying: “America is doing it for the protection of their own national interest, we all understand the geopolitics happening within our region.”

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China South China Sea Taiwan

the-express.com · by Matthew Dooley · June 15, 2023

25. A Drawn-Out Ukraine War Should Not Change U.S. Strategy

Excerpts:

Although sequencing is still the best strategy for the United States, protraction of the war does suggest that Washington will need to refine its strategy over time. A longer war argues for the United States to provide more powerful weapons to Ukraine in order to bring the war to a conclusion and give Kyiv a credible deterrent. The costs of a longer war argue even more for European allies to step up their own military preparations and carry a much larger share of the burden of supporting Ukraine. And it argues for shifting NATO’s center of gravity eastward, including by placing permanent military infrastructure in eastern allies’ territory and expanding participation in the nuclear-sharing program.

Underlying all of this is the need to use the current window wisely: to prepare for and thereby hopefully avoid a catastrophic war with China. That Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine much sooner than Chinese President Xi Jinping was ready to move against Taiwan represents the greatest strategic opportunity for the West in decades. Just imagine if the two despots’ timetables had been aligned. The United States should exploit the opportunity it has been presented by Putin’s barbaric folly to the fullest, for as long as it goes on. That was a sound strategy at the start of the war, and it remains a sound strategy today.

A Drawn-Out Ukraine War Should Not Change U.S. Strategy

It’s in Washington’s interest to make the best possible use of Moscow’s barbaric folly.

By A. Wess Mitchell, a principal at The Marathon Initiative and a former assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia.

Foreign Policy · by A. Wess Mitchell · June 14, 2023

On Feb. 23, 2022—the day before Russia attacked Ukraine—I wrote in Foreign Policy that if an invasion were to occur, it would represent a strategic opportunity for the United States to sequence the China and Russia threats. By supporting Kyiv against Moscow, I argued, the United States had a chance to deal decisively with the weaker of its two big-power adversaries before the stronger of the pair was ready for a full-scale challenge.

A year and a half later, there are growing concerns that this logic no longer makes sense. The longer the war goes on, the greater the costs to the United States, not only in money and armaments but in attention and resources not going to the Indo-Pacific, including to the defense of Taiwan. Some voices in the Biden administration appear to be worried that if the ongoing counteroffensive gets bogged down, U.S. voters will balk at the prospect of extending U.S. support for Ukraine.

At the root of these concerns is a strategic premise: that protracted U.S. support for Ukraine erodes the effectiveness of sequencing. It’s not hard to see the reasoning: The longer a great power puts effort toward Object A, the less bandwidth it has for Object B—and the less ready it will be to handle the latter when it becomes necessary. Resources and political will are not infinite, and geography imposes real limits, even in the 21st century.

But sequencing remains the best strategy for the United States to handle the two-front challenge from China and Russia. Helping Ukraine to defeat Russia by ejecting it from its territory is the best way to pursue such a strategy—for two reasons.

First, a protracted war hurts Russia more than it hurts the United States. The whole point of a proxy war is to weaken a rival without the cost and risk that would come as a result of direct confrontation. It’s especially valuable against Russia because it’s the weaker of the United States’ two big rivals and because it’s a large continental power constantly tempted to expand at the expense of its neighbors. This combination of weakness and temptation is the Kremlin’s Achilles’s heel: As a large land empire with vulnerable frontiers, Russia is continually pulled into conflicts beyond its ability to manage. Britain exploited this problem in an earlier era—for example, by supporting Japan in its 1904 war against Russia, an example of a successful proxy war that effectively evicted Russia from the Far East. Similarly, the United States exploited the Kremlin’s quandary by supporting Afghanistan’s mujahedeen against a decaying Soviet empire in the 1980s.

Lest anyone misconstrue this argument: The point is not that Washington should try to extend the war and prolong the bloodshed. Rather, it’s that it is in the U.S. interest to check Russian aggression wherever it occurs. Even if Russia had won a decisive victory early on, it would have been in the U.S. interest to arm and abet a Ukrainian insurgency. Had Kyiv chosen to pursue neutrality early in the conflict, it would still have been in the U.S. interest to turn Ukraine into a heavily fortified redoubt capable of defeating renewed Russian aggression. And even if the war now lasts longer than anyone hoped, it’s still in the U.S. interest to continue imposing the steepest possible costs on Moscow.

It’s worth mentioning here that a similar approach will not necessarily be effective with respect to China. Unlike in the large land areas of Eastern Europe, an aggressive move in a maritime environment may be harder to counter with proxy methods. Indeed, a protracted war could work to Beijing’s advantage in a Taiwan scenario: A fight in the waters around the island is likely to require costly sea and air platforms that are not as readily disseminated as anti-tank missiles and artillery shells; involve a populace that is not as culturally or historically inured to bitter self-defense as the Ukrainians; and occur in a compressed island geography that, for all the ruggedness of its mountains, lacks the scale to sustain an insurgency over a long period.

All of which is to say: If a major war involving one of the United States’ big rivals was going to break out early in the 21st century, it’s better that it was with Russia than with China.

Second, the war in Ukraine has not been accompanied by a shortening of the strategic window in which China is likely to be ready to make a military move against Taiwan. To be sure, there are good reasons for Washington to believe that Beijing wants to do that as soon as it is able. But the best information the United States has suggests that China still needs anywhere between two and five years to be ready for a cross-strait assault. If anything, by demonstrating the difficulties of taking territory in a modern war environment, Russia’s failures in Ukraine may have led Chinese leaders to decide that they need more time to prepare. In the meantime, the war has had a galvanizing effect in accelerating the U.S. military’s accumulation of vital stocks and overall preparedness for war—not to mention prompting greater defense seriousness among U.S. allies in Europe and Asia.

Finally, a shift away from a sequencing strategy would carry risks of its own. Over the past year and a half, the United States has made a major, sustained political, military, and economic investment in Ukraine’s success on and off the battlefield. It has sent more than $113 billion in aid, shifted tens of thousands of troops to the European theater, and made the rallying of international allies behind the Ukrainian cause the centerpiece of U.S. global strategy.

A commitment of this scope makes the United States’ credibility as a great power intimately bound up in what happens in Ukraine. The reputational dimension is all the more important as the U.S. involvement in Ukraine comes on the heels of the Biden administration’s chaotic departure from Afghanistan. A sudden shift of U.S. resources to Asia would call into question Washington’s ability to pursue what it has publicly identified as its top objective abroad. The worst of all worlds would be if the United States reduced aid to Ukraine on a scale that allowed Russia to gain ground there and emboldened China to launch an attack on Taiwan.

None of this is to say that there aren’t real military trade-offs between the two theaters. There are. But they can be intelligently managed and are outweighed by multiple strategic benefits. These include inflicting a major blow on one of the United States’ two rivals, exposing U.S. military-technological and armaments production deficiencies in a real-world setting rather than a tabletop one, and drawing lessons from the battlefield for a future conflict in Asia.

Although sequencing is still the best strategy for the United States, protraction of the war does suggest that Washington will need to refine its strategy over time. A longer war argues for the United States to provide more powerful weapons to Ukraine in order to bring the war to a conclusion and give Kyiv a credible deterrent. The costs of a longer war argue even more for European allies to step up their own military preparations and carry a much larger share of the burden of supporting Ukraine. And it argues for shifting NATO’s center of gravity eastward, including by placing permanent military infrastructure in eastern allies’ territory and expanding participation in the nuclear-sharing program.

Underlying all of this is the need to use the current window wisely: to prepare for and thereby hopefully avoid a catastrophic war with China. That Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine much sooner than Chinese President Xi Jinping was ready to move against Taiwan represents the greatest strategic opportunity for the West in decades. Just imagine if the two despots’ timetables had been aligned. The United States should exploit the opportunity it has been presented by Putin’s barbaric folly to the fullest, for as long as it goes on. That was a sound strategy at the start of the war, and it remains a sound strategy today.

Foreign Policy · by A. Wess Mitchell · June 14, 2023

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De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com