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Quotes of the Day:
"We, the representatives of 20,000,000 united people of Korea, hereby proclaim the independence of Korea and the liberty of the Korean people. This Proclamation stands in witness to the equality of all nations, and we pass it on to our posterity as their inalienable right."
- From the Korean Declaration of Independence, 1919
"Guerrilla warfare is defined in [Special Regulation] 320-5-1 as operations carried out by small independent forces, generally in the rear of the enemy, with the objective of harassing, delaying and disrupting military operations of the enemy. The term is sometimes limited to the military operations and tactics of small forces whose objective is to inflict causalities and damage upon the enemy rather than to seize or defend terrain; these operations are characterized by the extensive use of surprise and emphasis on avoidance of causalities. The term….includes organized and directed passive resistance, espionage, assassination, sabotage and propaganda, and in some cases, ordinary combat. Guerrilla warfare is ordinarily carried on by irregular, or partisan forces; however regular forces which have been cut off behind enemy lines or which have infiltrated into the enemy rear areas may use guerrilla tactics."
– FM 31-21, Organization and Conduct of Guerrilla Warfare (October 1951)
"To meet the challenges of UW support to social movements or social revolution, a deeper understanding of the dynamics of civil resistance and how UW can be conducted through such subversive (and often nonviolent) movements is required."
– By Joseph L. Votel, Charles T. Cleveland, Charles T. Connett, and Will Irwin
1. Remarks by President Biden Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of D-Day | Collevile-sur-Mer, France
2. Remarks by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III Commemorating 80 Years Since D-Day (As Delivered)
3. Reagan at Pointe du Hoc, 40 Years Later
4. On D-Day, from cynicism to hope: Reconnecting with the soul of America
5. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 6, 2024
6. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, June 6, 2024
7. U.S. Confronts Failures as Terrorism Spreads in West Africa
8. Opinion | ‘Short of war,’ China’s gray zone strategy on Taiwan is gathering in intensity
9. First Principles for Ensuring American AI Leadership
10. GAO Report on U.S. Funding for Ukraine
11. The Good, the Bad, or the Ugly? Lessons from History on Ukraine’s Russian Paramilitary Legionnaires
12. What to Make of Biden’s Latest Promise to Defend Taiwan
13. Why Would Anyone Want to Run the World?
14. China leg up on US for Cambodia's military loyalty
15. China's surging presence reshapes a thawing Arctic
16. 6 months after fatal V-22 crash, an Air Force Osprey squadron in Japan prepares to fly again
17. China Is 'Aggressively Recruiting' Pilots from the US and NATO Countries, Intelligence Agencies Warn
18. No First Use: Threatening Alliance Cohesion, Assurance, and Non-Proliferation
19. Clausewitz, Theory, and Ending the Ukraine War
20. Taiwan Needs Weapons and Training Now, Not 2027 or 2030
21. US Seeks Nuclear Microreactor Prototype to Power Army Bases
22. US Orders Modified Hero Loitering Munitions for Special Operations
23. How to Think About Politics
1. Remarks by President Biden Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of D-Day | Collevile-sur-Mer, France
Remarks by President Biden Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of D-Day | Collevile-sur-Mer, France | The White House
whitehouse.gov · by The White House · June 6, 2024
Normandy American Cemetery
Colleville-sur-Mer, France
2:01 P.M. CEST
THE PRESIDENT: The hour had nearly come. Monday, June 5th, 1944.
The evil of (inaudible) Third Reich was devastating the world. Nazi Germany had subjugated the once-free nations of Europe through brute force, lies, and twisted ideology of racial superiority.
Millions of Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Millions of others killed by bombs, bullets, bloody warfare.
Hitler and those with him thought democracies were weak, that the future belonged to dictators.
Here, on the coast of Normandy, the battle between freedom and tyranny would be joined. Here, on that June morning, the testing was at hand.
President Macron, Mrs. Macron, Secretary Austin, Secretary Blinken, distinguished guests. Most of all, our honored veterans, who met that test to the ages — a test of ages to that moment 80 years ago — 80 years ago today. (Applause.)
On behalf of the American people and as Commander-in-Chief, it’s the highest honor to be able to salute you here in Normandy once more — all of you. God love you. (Applause.)
Winston Churchill called what happened here, quote, “the greatest, most complicated operation ever,” end of quote.
After years of planning, Operation Overlord was ready to launch just as soon as the weather turned. Across the choppy Eng- — choppy Eng- — English Channel, the Supreme Commander of the Allies, Dwight D. Eisenhower, waited. The largest force ever of its kind, built by 12 nations — men, guns, planes, naval craft of every description — waited. The world, captive and free, waited.
Finally, Eisenhower’s forecasters said there was a window in the weather. It would open briefly on Tuesday the 6th of June.
The general weighed the options and gave the order: At dawn, the Allies would strike. The “Great Crusade” to free Europe from tyranny would begin.
That night, General Eisenhower drove to the English town of Newbury to visit paratroopers of the 101st Airborne. They were men from all over America. It was estimated that 80 percent of them would be killed within hours. That was the estimate. But they were brave, they were resolute, and they were ready.
One soldier told General Eisenhower, quote, “Don’t worry, sor- — sir. The 101st is on the job. Everything will be taken care of.” That’s what he said.
And because of their courage and their resolve, because of the courage and resolve of their allies, it was taken care of.
From the sea and sky, nearly 160,000 Allied troops descended on Normandy. Many, to state the obvious, never came home. Many survived that “longest day,” kept on fighting for months until victory was finally won. And a few, a noble band of brothers, are here with us today.
Kenneth Blaine Smith is here. On that day, under heavy artillery fire, he operated a range finder and radar on the first American ship to arrive at Normandy’s coast, providing direct gunfire support for the Rangers scaling the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc on their daring mission to take out the German batteries.
Bob Gibson is here. He landed on Utah Beach about 10 hours after the invasion began. Bullets flying everywhere. Tracers lighting up the sky. Bob drove an M4 tractor with an anti-aircraft gun mounted on top, providing critical protection for the infantry against the German air force. On that day and for many days after, he continued.
Ben Miller is here. A medic with the 82nd Airborne. At 3:00 a.m. on June 6th, he and 13 other medics flew over the Channel in a rickety glider. Its wings were ripped off by giant poles that the Germans buried halfway in the ground to stop them from landing. They crashed, but they survived. And they did their duty: dragging injured soldiers to safety, treating wounds, saving lives while the battle raged.
Every soldier who stormed the beach, who dropped by parachute or landed by glider; every sailor who manned the thousands of ships and landing craft; every aviator who destroyed German-controlled air fields, bridges, and railroads — all — all were backed by other brave Americans, including hundreds of thousands of people of color and women who courageously served despite unjust limitations on what they could do for their nation.
Louis Brown is here. Part of the “Red Ball Express,” a truck convoy made up mostly of African American drivers. They landed at Normandy in the wake of D-Day. They rushed supplies to the rapidly advancing frontlines.
Woody Woodhouse is here. Members of the legendary Tuskegee Airmen, who flew over 15,000 sorties during the war.
Marjorie Stone is here. She enlisted in the women’s branch of the Naval Reserve, became an aircraft mechanic, spent the war keeping American planes and pilots in the air.
Theirs has always been the story of America. Just walk the rows of this cemetery, as I have. Nearly 10,000 heroes buried side by side, officers and enlisted, immigrants and native-born. Different races, different faiths, but all Americans. All served with honor when America and the world needed them most.
Millions back home did their part as well. From coast to coast, Americans found countless ways to pitch in. They understood our democracy is only as strong as all of us make it, together.
The men who fought here became heroes not because they were the strongest or toughest or were fiercest — although they were — but because they were given an audacious mission knowing — every one of them knew the probability of dying was real, but they did it anyway. They knew, beyond any doubt, there are things that are worth fighting and dying for.
Freedom is worth it. Democracy is worth it. America is worth it. The world is worth it — then, now, and always.
The war in Europe didn’t end for another 11 months. But here the tide turned in our favor. Here we proved the forces of liberty are stronger than the forces of conquest. Here we proved that the ideals of our democracy are stronger than any army or combination of armies in the entire world.
We proved something else here as well: the unbreakable unity of the Allies.
Here with us are men who served alongside the Americans that day, wearing different flags on their arms but fighting with the same courage, for the same purpose.
What the Allies did together 80 years ago far surpassed anything we could have done on our own. It was a powerful illustration of how alliances — real alliances — make us stronger — a lesson that I pray we Americans never forget.
Together, we won the war. We rebuilt Europe, including our former enemies. It was an investment in what became shared and a prosperous future.
We established NATO, the greatest military alliance in the history of the world. And over time — (applause) — you got it; it is — and over time, we brought more nations into NATO — the NATO Alliance, including the newest members: Finland and Sweden. (Applause.)
Today, NATO stands at 32 countries strong. And NATO is more united than ever and even more prepared to keep the peace, deter aggression, defend freedom all around the world.
America has invested in our alliances and forged new ones — not simply out of altruism but out of our own self-interest as well.
America’s unique ability to bring countries together is an un- — undeniable source of our strength and our power. Isolationism was not the answer 80 years ago, and it is not the answer today. (Applause.)
We know the dark forces that these heroes fought against 80 years ago. They never fade. Aggression and greed, the desire to dominate and control, to change borders by force — these are perennial. And the struggle between a dictatorship and freedom is unending.
Here, in Europe, we see one stark example. Ukraine has been invaded by a tyrant bent on domination.
Ukrainians are fighting with extraordinary courage, suffering great losses, but never backing down. (Applause.)
They’ve inflicted on the Russian aggressors — they’ve suffered tremendous losses, Russia. The numbers are staggering — 350,000 Russian troops dead or wounded. Nearly 1 million people have left Russia because they can no longer see a future in Russia.
The United States and NATO and a coalition of more than 50 countries standing strong with Ukraine. We will not walk away — (applause) — because if we do, Ukraine will be subjugated.
And it will not end there. Ukraine’s neighbors will be threatened. All of Europe will be threatened.
And make no mistake, the autocrats of the world are watching closely to see what happens in Ukraine, to see if we let this illegal aggression go unchecked. We cannot let that happen.
To surrender to bullies, to bow down to dictators is simply unthinkable. (Applause.) Were we to do that, it means we’d be forgetting what happened here on these hallowed beaches.
Make no mistake: We will not bow down. We will not forget.
Let me end with this. History tells us freedom is not free. If you want to know the price of freedom, come here to Normandy. Come to Normandy and look. Go to the other cemeteries in Europe where our fallen heroes rest. Go back home to Arlington Cemetery.
Tomorrow, I will pay respects at Pointe du Hoc. Go there as well and remember: The price of unchecked tyranny is the blood of the young and the brave.
In their generation, in their hour of trial, the Allied forces of D-Day did their duty. Now the question for us is: In our hour of trial, will we do ours?
We’re living in a time when democracy is more at risk across the world than at any point since the end of the World War Two — since these beaches were stormed in 1944.
Now, we have to ask ourselves: Will we stand against tyranny, against evil, against crushing brutality of the iron fist?
Will we stand for freedom? Will we defend democracy? Will we stand together? (Applause.)
My answer is yes. And it only can be yes. (Applause.)
We’re not far off from the time when the last living voices of those who fought and bled on D-Day will no longer be with us. So, we have a special obligation. We cannot let what happened here be lost in the silence of the years to come. We must remember it, must honor it, and live it.
And we must remember: The fact that they were heroes here that day does not absolve us from what we have to do today.
Democracy is never guaranteed. Every generation must preserve it, defend it, and fight for it. That’s the test of the ages.
In memory of those who fought here, died here, literally saved the world here, let us be worthy of their sacrifice. Let us be the generation that when history is written about our time — in 10, 20, 30, 50, 80 years from now — it will be said: When the moment came, we met the moment. We stood strong. Our alliances were made stronger. And we saved democracy in our time as well.
Thank you very much.
And may God bless you all. And may God protect our troops.
Thank you. (Applause.)
2:17 P.M. CEST
whitehouse.gov · by The White House · June 6, 2024
2. Remarks by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III Commemorating 80 Years Since D-Day (As Delivered)
Remarks by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III Commemorating 80 Years Since D-Day (As Delivered)
June 6, 2024
As Delivered by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III
NORMANDY AMERICAN CEMETERY, Colleville-sur-Mer, France
https://www.defense.gov/News/Speeches/Speech/Article/3798811/remarks-by-secretary-of-defense-lloyd-j-austin-iii-commemorating-80-years-since/
President Biden, Dr. Biden, President Macron, Mrs. Macron, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, and above all, the veterans of World War II: I am honored to stand again at this hallowed place.
We bow our heads to remember the more than 9,000 U.S. and Allied soldiers killed or wounded on D-Day by Hitler's forces.
On behalf of the United States Department of Defense, I am here to give thanks—inadequate as that word may be.
Eighty years later, we thank the young Americans who took the beaches, who helped liberate France, and who helped free this continent from Nazi tyranny. We thank every Allied warrior who fought for freedom on June 6, 1944. And we thank the American and Allied veterans who have rallied once more on the shores of Normandy.
Victors of D-Day: we are humbled by your presence.
The young Americans who fought through the clamor and the chaos on D-Day have grown old, or left us. And whenever a veteran of D-Day is gathered to his Maker in the fullness of time, after a long life lived in freedom, he wins a final victory over Hitler.
You helped defeat what Churchill called "a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime." And you laid the foundation for a more just, free, and decent world.
Together with our Allies, we built peace out of war—a hard-headed peace, a peace renewed by constant commitment, a peace forged by the generation that won the bloodiest war in human history.
And so our gratitude must never fade. Our memories must never dim. And our resolve must never fail.
We still seek a world where aggression is a sin, and where human rights are sacred, and where all people can live in freedom.
And so we must rally again to defend the open, postwar world of rules, rights, and responsibilities.
Those rules protect us. Those rights define us. And those responsibilities summon us once more.
At this hinge in history, we must again stand firm against aggression and tyranny.
And as I said here last year: If the troops of the world's democracies could risk their lives for freedom then, surely the citizens of the world's democracies can risk our comfort for freedom now.
So let us again uphold the spirit of D-Day. Let us again defend the principles that the Allied armies carried. And let us again thank the heroes of D-Day who kept freedom alive for us all.
[Applause]
You saved the world.
[Applause]
You saved the world. And we must only defend it.
Gentlemen: we salute you.
[Secretary Austin turns and salutes the World War II veterans; audience applauds]
May God bless the American and Allied troops who fought here. May God bless the United States of America. And may God bless all who cherish human freedom.
Thank you.
[Applause]
3. Reagan at Pointe du Hoc, 40 Years Later
Excerpts:
It was one of the tensest moments of the Cold War.
Reagan hated nuclear weapons but believed progress couldn’t be wrung from the Russians with words and pleas. More was needed, a show of determination.
He understood the pressure the political leaders of the West were under, and at Pointe du Hoc he was telling them, between the lines: Hold firm and we will succeed.
That’s why he spoke at such length of all the Allied armies at D-Day, not only the Americans. It’s why he paid tribute to those armies’ valor—to remind current leaders what their ancestors had done. It’s why he talked about “the unity of the Allies.” “They rebuilt a new Europe together.”
He was saying: I know the pressure you’re under for backing me, but hold on. They pretty much did. And in the end the decisions of 1983 and ’84 led to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed in 1987 by Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, a turning point in the Cold War.
If you hear that speech, be moved by the Rangers who climbed those cliffs and the country that sent them there. Care that Ronald Reagan became the first public person to capture and laud the greatest generation, but delicately, because it was his generation and he couldn’t self-valorize. (Yes, a sweeter time.) But he was telling the young: That guy you call grandpa, see him in a new way. See his whole generation for who they were.
And hear, too, a message that echoes down the generations: Good people with a great cause must stand together, grab that rope and climb, no matter what fire.
Reagan at Pointe du Hoc, 40 Years Later
June 1984 was a tense and dangerous time in the Cold War, but domestic politics were sweeter than today.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/reagan-at-pointe-du-hoc-40-years-later-f0c5a7f9?mod=latest_headlines
By Peggy Noonan
Follow
June 6, 2024 5:10 pm ET
President Ronald Reagan delivers a speech commemorating the 40th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, France, June 6, 1984. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Simi Valley, Calif.
I was to write on something else this week but an event in California sent me back in time. Friends of Ronald Reagan gathered to mark the 40th anniversary of his speeches at Normandy (June 6, 1984), and the 20th anniversary of his death (June 5, 2004). The dates remind me that Reagan first burst on the American political scene with his “A Time for Choosing” speech in 1964, and announced to the nation that he was suffering from Alzheimer’s in 1994. Somehow years ending in 4 marked significant occurrences in his life. Because I have been reading a biography of Carl Jung, I wonder if this might be an expression of synchronicity, in which circumstances that seem meaningfully related have no obvious causal connection.
Many of those who worked or got their start in Reagan’s White House came—Haley Barbour, Condoleezza Rice—and others traveled far to show respect, including Carol Thatcher, daughter of Margaret, and Ben Mulroney, son of Brian. Historians came.
Prime Ministers Thatcher of Britain and Mulroney of Canada, Reagan, Pope John Paul II—that quartet did great work together, for the benefit of humanity.
We at the Reagan Library felt there was a time when politics was sweeter, when big things got said in gentle ways, when geniality was a virtue and not a political faux pas. That time included the summer of ’84 and a day in Normandy. To have been able to work on the president’s remarks there was a privilege, and the past few days reminded me of a comment Reagan made in conversation. Now and then at night, relaxing in the White House, he’d channel-surf and come upon a movie he’d starred in 40 years before. He’d have the oddest sensation—he said it was like seeing a son you’d forgotten you had. I thought of it because in the library’s materials to mark the anniversaries I saw pictures of myself in meetings with him 40 years ago, and thought: the daughter I forgot I had.
We felt, and feel, that Ronald Reagan was the last unambiguously successful American president. He walked in, in January 1981, saying he would do two big and unlikely things, one domestic and one in foreign affairs, and walked out in January 1989 having done them. He revitalized the U.S. economy after decades of drift and demoralization, and he defeated the Soviet Union, the Berlin Wall falling months after he left the presidency. He did a third thing he hadn’t promised. He changed the mood of the country. We’d been depressed since JFK’s assassination and Vietnam, since Nixon and Watergate. Reagan said no, we aren’t a spent force, we aren’t incapable, we’ve got all this energy and brains. We’ve got this, he said. We did.
When presidencies are huge they are clear and you don’t have to finagle around with vague or technical language to cite their achievements.
To the D-Day speech at Pointe du Hoc. There’s something I always want to say about it.
The speech was a plain-faced one. It was about what it was about, the valor shown 40 years before by the young men of Operation Overlord who, by taking the Normandy beaches, seized back the Continent of Europe.
But there was a speech within the speech, and that had to do with more-current struggles.
Reagan wished to laud the reunited U.S. Rangers before him, so he simply described what they’d done: “At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs.” Their mission was one of the hardest of the invasion, to climb the cliffs to take out enemy guns.
“And the American Rangers began to climb.” They shot rope ladders, pulled themselves up. “When one Ranger fell, another would take his place.” Two hundred twenty five Rangers had come there. “After two days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms.”
“Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there. These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs.”
The “boys,” in the front rows, began to weep. They had never in 40 years been spoken of in that way, their achievement described by an American president, who told all the world what they’d done. Nancy Reagan and others, as they looked at them, were moved, and their eyes filled. Reagan couldn’t show what he was feeling, he had to continue. But afterward, in the Oval Office, he told me of an old Ranger who, before the ceremony, saw some young U.S. Rangers re-enacting the climb, and the old vet joined in and made it to the top. Reagan’s eyes shined: “Boy, that was something.”
The speech within the speech was about the crisis going on as Reagan spoke. The Western alliance was falling apart. Its political leaders were under severe pressure at home. British, West German and Italian peace movements had risen and gained influence in 1982 and 1983, pushing to stop the U.S.-Soviet arms race. The Soviets had placed SS-20 missiles in Eastern Europe. In response, in late 1983, the U.S. put Pershing II and cruise missiles in Western Europe. Arms talks continued but went nowhere, and the Soviets often walked out. In New York, a million antinuclear protesters had marched from Central Park to the United Nations. In Bonn, hundreds of thousands protesters took to the streets in what police called the largest demonstration since the end of the war.
It was one of the tensest moments of the Cold War.
Reagan hated nuclear weapons but believed progress couldn’t be wrung from the Russians with words and pleas. More was needed, a show of determination.
He understood the pressure the political leaders of the West were under, and at Pointe du Hoc he was telling them, between the lines: Hold firm and we will succeed.
That’s why he spoke at such length of all the Allied armies at D-Day, not only the Americans. It’s why he paid tribute to those armies’ valor—to remind current leaders what their ancestors had done. It’s why he talked about “the unity of the Allies.” “They rebuilt a new Europe together.”
He was saying: I know the pressure you’re under for backing me, but hold on. They pretty much did. And in the end the decisions of 1983 and ’84 led to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed in 1987 by Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, a turning point in the Cold War.
If you hear that speech, be moved by the Rangers who climbed those cliffs and the country that sent them there. Care that Ronald Reagan became the first public person to capture and laud the greatest generation, but delicately, because it was his generation and he couldn’t self-valorize. (Yes, a sweeter time.) But he was telling the young: That guy you call grandpa, see him in a new way. See his whole generation for who they were.
And hear, too, a message that echoes down the generations: Good people with a great cause must stand together, grab that rope and climb, no matter what fire.
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Wonder Land: In 1986, Sen. Joe Biden mocked as ‘reckless’ Ronald Reagan's 'Strategic Defense Initiative,' a program to counter the ballistic missile threat. Israel ran with it, creating the 'Iron Dome' missile-defense system—the hero of Iran’s April 13 bombardment. Images: Bloomberg News/C-Span/Bettmann Archive Composite: Mark Kelly
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4. On D-Day, from cynicism to hope: Reconnecting with the soul of America
Very much worth the time to read and reflect on this. I was fortunate to catch his speech delivered live yesterday. I do not know him but he really impressed me.
On D-Day, from cynicism to hope: Reconnecting with the soul of America
BY CHARLES K. DJOU, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 06/06/24 7:30 AM ET
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4702019-on-d-day-from-cynicism-to-hope-reconnecting-with-the-soul-of-america/?utm
As wars rage and the 2024 U.S. presidential election rapidly approaches, anxieties and emotions are high. A recent Brookings report found that less than half of Americans hold an optimistic worldview. The majority either actively disagree or are uncertain that “the world is mostly full of good people.”
This cynical and politically divided narrative runs counter to the fundamental values of our nation and is detrimental to the American soul. Today, it is up to us to reverse this alarming trend.
Now more than ever, Americans need to be reminded that our shared values far outweigh our differences. We must seek out opportunities to connect with our history and the principles of freedom and democracy that bind us to emerge from this moment stronger and more unified as a nation.
Americans need strong physical reminders of the good at the heart of our nation. That is at the core of our mission at the American Battle Monuments Commission. Our sites and educational programs represent the unique and valuable American spirit that has bound our great nation for centuries, through moments of triumph and tragedy.
No event better encapsulates this triumph and tragedy than D-Day — a turning point in World War II that led the Allied forces toward victory 80 years ago, albeit at a great human cost. On somber anniversaries like this, as we remember the brave service members who fought and died for our American values, today’s infighting and division seems insignificant.
We are in a difficult moment, but Americans still by and large believe in the principles of our nation. A recent AP-NORC poll found that about nine in 10 U.S. adults believe that fundamental freedoms, such as the right to vote, the right to equal protection under the law and the right to privacy are extremely important or very important to the United States’s identity as a nation. In addition, about 70 percent believe that democracy is a fundamentally good system. But only 30 percent believe that our current democracy is functioning well.
Cynicism and despair are easy. It takes courage and determination to have faith and rise to the values our country represents. Visiting ABMC’s 26 cemeteries and 31 memorials around the globe allows us to remember what binds us and reminds us of the courage of those who came before us. In so doing, we deepen our own convictions.
In times of deep division, some may want to give up or believe that America’s best days are behind us. This is when it is especially important that they visit ABMC’s sites, utilize our lesson plans, and seek out new ways to connect with American history. Doing so reminds us why we are American and calls to mind all that we have to be proud of. These sites represent the best of American values — what principles we are willing to fight and die for when we are unified in purpose.
My hope in encouraging Americans to take an active role in our nation’s history and visit our sites is that Americans leave with a renewed sense of hope and confidence in the American experiment. I hope that, fundamentally, this experiment is grounded in good intentions of working toward liberty and justice for all. These values are not guaranteed, which is why they must be appreciated and defended.
I recognize that America is not a perfect nation. There have been painful aspects of American history. There have been dark and difficult days. But what we do after those days, and how we choose to memorialize and move forward, defines us.
The ABMC and the work that we do are examples of America at its finest. These memorials, cemeteries and commemoration ceremonies are physical reflections of the best of our nation. We help define the goodness that America represents in her best moments, like D-Day. These sites set all around the world give that definition in a physical, palpable way, with each marble cross and Star of David. One cannot come away from these sites without being rejuvenated in the American spirit.
It is easy to forget the cost of these freedoms. We often take them for granted as we become absorbed in scrolling social media, going to our jobs and managing our daily lives. But beneath it all is the unifying spirit and hope that the American experiment continues to represent.
If we lose touch with that spirit, then we risk being defined by the division and cynicism of the moment. Today, all Americans have a choice. Which do you prefer?
Charles K. Djou, a former member of Congress who represented Hawaii, was appointed as secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission by President Biden in May 2022. An Afghanistan war veteran, Djou served for over 20 years in the U.S. Army Reserve, achieving the rank of colonel.
5. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 6, 2024
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 6, 2024
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-6-2024
Key Takeaways:
- Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to repackage longstanding, tired threats about direct confrontation with the West by claiming that Russian will provide long-range strike capabilities to unspecified actors for strikes against the West. Putin's threat aims to influence Western decision-making about Ukraine's ability to strike military targets within Russia using Western-provided weapons but notably does not threaten escalation in Ukraine or through direct confrontation, suggesting that the Kremlin may be adjusting to select Western perceptions about the credibility of such Russian threats.
- Russian naval vessels will make a port call in Cuba on June 12–17, likely as part of a larger effort to invoke the historical memory of the Cuban Missile Crisis as part of Russia’s reflexive control campaign to encourage US self-deterrence.
- Putin inadvertently indicated on June 5 that Russian forces may be suffering roughly 20,000 monthly casualties in Ukraine, which, if accurate, would be roughly equal to or just below the number of new personnel that Russia reportedly generates per month.
- Limitations on Western capabilities to train partner pilots on F-16 fighter jets are reportedly creating bottlenecks that will affect Ukraine's ability to effectively field F-16s in the future.
- French authorities are investigating multiple recent pro-Russian sabotage and societal influence operations in France amid continued Russian hybrid war measures against NATO states and France aimed at weakening support for Ukraine.
- The Russian Investigative Committee announced the arrest of a French citizen on June 6 following the early June arrest in France.
- Ukrainian forces struck an oil refinery in Rostov Oblast and reportedly struck an oil depot in Belgorod Oblast on the night of June 5 to 6.
- Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada Committee on Human Rights, Deoccupation, and Reintegration Deputy Chairperson Ruslan Horbenko estimated that the Ukrainian military will recruit roughly 120,000 personnel in 2024, although the apparent slow arrival of Western security assistance will likely limit Ukraine's ability to sufficiently provision and equip these forces at scale in the near-term.
- Russian and Taliban officials expressed interest in bilateral cooperation, indicating that Russia will likely soon delist the Taliban as a prohibited organization in Russia.
- Russian forces recently advanced within Vovchansk, southeast of Kupyansk, northeast of Siversk, northwest of Avdiivka, south of Velyka Novosilka, and near Krynky.
- Russia's continued demographic crisis will present long-term constraints on human capital within Russia.
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 Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.
6. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, June 6, 2024
Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, June 6, 2024
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/israel%E2%80%93hamas-war-iran-updates
Key Takeaways:
- Iranian Presidential Elections: Iranian hardline officials are continuing to try to promote an electoral consensus among hardliners ahead of the June 28 presidential election as part of an effort to avoid infighting between hardliners that could provide an opening for a moderate victory.
- Ceasefire Negotiations: Hamas reportedly said that it will reject the Israeli ceasefire proposal, arguing that the proposal does not ensure a permanent end to hostilities. Hamas will continue to reject proposals until it secures a “permanent ceasefire.” Hamas does not acknowledge the legitimacy of any permanent ceasefire and has repeatedly said that any ceasefire is temporary until Hamas destroys Israel.
- Gaza Strip: An Israeli official said that Hamas is avoiding direct battles with Israeli forces, preferring to ambush the IDF and using improvised explosive devices against Israeli forces
- Yemen: The Houthis claimed on June 6 that they conducted a combined operation targeting Israel with Iranian-backed Iraqi militias as part of their effort to impose an unofficial blockade. This blockade is unlikely to be successful, given that the Houthis have so far been unable to successfully attack Israeli shipping in the Mediterranean at a sufficient rate to impact imports or exports from Mediterranean ports.
- Iraq: Iranian-backed Iraqi militias reportedly set a 40-day deadline for the Iraqi prime minister to expel US forces from Iraq.
- West Bank: Palestinian fighters are likely maintaining at least one vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) manufacturing cell northeast of Tubas. Palestinian militias in Tubas may be collaborating to assemble and deploy these VBIEDs, given the significant amount of resources and expertise required to manufacture a VBIED.
7. U.S. Confronts Failures as Terrorism Spreads in West Africa
Excerpts:
Unless defense, diplomacy and development programs are integrated and sufficiently financed, it’s like “sprinkling fairy dust around,” said Virginia E. Palmer, the U.S. ambassador to Ghana and a seasoned diplomat with previous postings in Malawi, South Africa, Kenya and Zimbabwe, as well as a stint in the State Department’s counterterrorism office in Washington.
As the United States reformulates its approach, officials say one overriding objective comes through: Stay engaged. That may involve building relationships with new partners or — at some time in the future — rebuilding ties with former ones.
Capt. Scott P. Fentress, a member of the Navy SEALs who is director of operations for U.S. Special Operations forces on the continent, summed it up this way: “Trust is earned, and we’ve learned throughout Africa, particularly West Africa, that trust is hard to earn.”
U.S. Confronts Failures as Terrorism Spreads in West Africa
American and French forces have been ordered out of several countries after a series of coups.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/07/us/politics/us-terrorism-west-africa.html
By Eric Schmitt and Ruth Maclean
Eric Schmitt reported from Takoradi and Accra, Ghana, and has covered U.S. military operations in Africa for three decades. Ruth Maclean reported from Dakar, Senegal.
In the shadow of the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States rushed troops and military aid to a swath of West Africa to help French forces stop the spread of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
More than a decade later, and with hundreds of millions of dollars in security assistance spent, that regional counterterrorism effort has largely failed.
Groups that have declared allegiance to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State are on the march. Military coups have toppled civilian-led governments in Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso and Niger. The new leaders have ordered American and French troops out, and in some cases invited Russian mercenaries in to take their place.
As the United States withdraws 1,000 military personnel from Niger and shutters a $110 million air base there by September, American officials are scrambling to work with a new set of countries in coastal West Africa to battle a violent extremist insurgency that they perceive is steadily seeping south.
“Of course, it’s frustrating,” Christopher P. Maier, the Pentagon’s top official for special operations policy, said in an interview. “Our general desire to promote democratic governments and having healthy governance there has not gone particularly well.”
The U.S. military has had more success training local counterterrorism troops, Mr. Maier said, although some participated in the recent military takeovers. But, he added, “it’s disappointing when we’ve invested in that relationship and then we’re asked to depart.”
U.S. officials say they are retooling their approach to combat an insurgency that is rooted in local, not global, concerns. Competition for land, exclusion from politics and other local grievances have swelled the ranks of the militants, more than any particular commitment to extremist ideology.
Instead of relying on big bases and a permanent military presence, officials say that the strategy will focus more on well-financed initiatives that include security, governance and development — paying for soldier training as well as for new electrification or water projects.
This kind of holistic approach has been tried before with limited success, and U.S. officials and independent West Africa specialists say it faces steep hurdles now.
The map highlights Accra and Daboya, in Ghana, Bamako and Timbuktu in Mali, and Agadez in Niger. The countries Benin, Chad, Ivory Coast and Togo are also featured.
300 MILES
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By The New York Times
An American diplomat in the region said that West African governments should share the blame, because some of those partners were more interested in staying in power than in fighting terrorism. “It didn’t work, it’s obvious,” said the diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment of allies. “But this notion that we deployed, it didn’t work, therefore it’s our fault — I don’t buy that.”
Some say the foreigners never really understood the conflict. “To be able to help, you have to really know the root of the problem,” said Demba Kanté, a corporate lawyer in Bamako, Mali’s capital. “They were positioned almost everywhere on Malian soil and collecting their salaries, and we were still facing problems.”
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American counterterrorism efforts in West Africa have largely failed.Credit...Francis Kokoroko for The New York Times
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A revamped U.S. approach could rely less on a permanent military presence and more on well-financed initiatives that weave together security, governance and development.Credit...Francis Kokoroko for The New York Times
As they assess the setbacks and retool their strategy, U.S. officials are also keeping a wary eye on two global rivals: China and Russia.
More on U.S. Armed Forces
China overtook the United States as Africa’s biggest bilateral trade partner over a decade ago, its investments largely focused on minerals key to the global energy transition. Russia has become the preferred security partner for a number of African countries that formerly welcomed American assistance, creating what many experts see as a Cold War-style competition.
“We’ve done a lot of things well on the tactical level, including the training of special forces, but they weren’t connected to a larger strategy,” said J. Peter Pham, a former special U.S. envoy to the Sahel, the vast, semiarid region south of the Sahara where U.S. counterterrorism efforts have been focused.
Mr. Pham pointed to an ambitious $450 million U.S. electrification project in Burkina Faso that was paused in 2022 after the nation’s military staged a coup. “We need to have an integrated strategy, otherwise it’s building sand castles at the edge of the beach,” he said.
Developing that strategy will be difficult. Washington policymakers are consumed with crises, particularly in Gaza and Ukraine. Meantime, Al Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates are metastasizing throughout the region, according to U.N. and U.S. intelligence assessments.
“What keeps me up at night is the number of very capable foreign terrorist organizations that see this,” Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware and an Africa specialist, said at a hearing last month.
Mali: A crisis spirals
Mali was the first country in the Sahel to be destabilized by jihadists and rebels.
It was in the wake of the 2011 civil war in Libya, to the northeast. Well-armed Malian rebels who had defended the Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi returned home when he was killed and started a rebellion. Emboldened by the chaos, Islamist groups began seizing urban centers like the ancient desert city of Timbuktu.
France intervened in 2013, pushing the jihadists out of northern cities. Many Malians viewed the mission as a success.
Then came a much bigger intervention led by the French that pulled in other European countries and the United States, and that expanded to neighboring countries in pursuit of jihadists.
The crisis spiraled, even as France killed more and more fighters. The armed groups ran rampage in the countryside, causing millions to flee their homes. Thousands of foreign forces in air-conditioned vehicles trundled through the Sahelian steppe, trying to take out terrorist leaders. But that steppe became no safer.
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French soldiers during a mission to combat Islamist extremists in Mali near the border with Niger in February 2020.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times
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Security forces celebrating one day after a military coup in Bamako, Mali, in August 2020.Credit...Associated Press
France and the United States acknowledged that the governments they were working with were widely viewed locally as corrupt and partly responsible for the insecurity, according to Alexander Thurston, a scholar of Islam and African politics at the University of Cincinnati. But they worked closely with them anyway.
“That’s a weird kind of contradiction to get into, in my view — to be reliant upon the people that you’re implying are the problem,” Mr. Thurston said.
And as the insurgency mushroomed, people began to blame the foreign forces.
When, one by one, the governments in the region fell over the past four years, the new juntas found criticism of their military partners was easy to exploit for political gain. Then, they threw out the foreign troops as well as thousands of U.N. peacekeepers.
The “flashy scenarios” that local soldiers are trained to deal with during the annual Pentagon-sponsored Flintlock counterterrorism exercise illustrate the yawning gap between how American special operations commanders see the conflict and the reality that what they are facing is “an insurgency driven by poor herders in some of the most remote parts of the world,” Mr. Thurston said. Much of the training focuses on urban terrorism, storming buildings, rescuing hostages.
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Pentagon-sponsored counterterrorism exercises train local soldiers to deal with “flashy scenarios” like urban terrorism.Credit...Francis Kokoroko for The New York Times
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The trainings, focused on storming buildings and rescuing hostages, are not aligned with the reality of insurgents in the Sahel.Credit...Francis Kokoroko for The New York Times
The West has long been seen as projecting its own problems onto the Sahel, said Ornella Moderan, a Geneva-based researcher and policy adviser focused on politics and security in West Africa. Initially it was obsessed with migration.
Now, she noted, there is a Western “insistence on reading everything through the Russian lens.”
The United States should stop focusing on trying to come up with a “better offer” than the Russians, Ms. Moderan said.
“What is a better offer from the perspective of military juntas in the current situation?” she asked. “It’s an offer that insists less on human rights than Russia does — which means not at all. It’s an offer that insists less on the rule of law, less on democracy, and it’s an offer that provides more in terms of weapons systems, in terms of remote warfare systems.”
The best approach for the West, Ms. Moderan said, is to ignore whether Russia is there or not, keep communication channels open and wait for an opportunity to re-engage with countries like Mali if and when they sour on Moscow’s influence.
Niger: The highs and lows
It was in Niger, an impoverished nation of 25 million people that is nearly twice the size of Texas, where four American soldiers, along with four Nigerien troops and an interpreter, were killed in an ambush in 2017.
After that, American commandos stayed well behind the front lines, working from command centers to help Nigerien officers grapple with intelligence, logistics, artillery and other aspects of big operations.
Those local counterterrorism forces trained by the United States and France put a dent in terrorist activity, using intelligence gleaned from MQ-9 Reaper surveillance drones flying from the sprawling air base in Agadez, in the country’s north.
Terrorist attacks against civilians decreased by nearly 50 percent in 2023 from the previous year, analysts said.
After the military takeover in Niger last July, however, the United States suspended most security assistance and information sharing. Terrorist groups stepped up attacks on Nigerien troops. Last October, at least 29 Nigerien soldiers were killed in an attack carried out by jihadist militants in the country’s west. A week earlier, a dozen died in the southwest.
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The $110 million U.S. military base in Agadez, Niger.Credit...Carmen Abd Ali for The New York Times
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The United States said it would withdraw 1,000 military personnel from Niger and shutter the air base there by September.Credit...Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times
The junta leaders began to turn toward Russia for security and to Iran for a possible deal on its uranium reserves, U.S. officials said. American diplomats and military officials protested this spring and criticized the military government for failing to map out a path to return to democracy. The junta accused the Americans of talking down to them.
The junta’s message has been: “‘We don’t want anyone from the West to come in here and tell us who we can do business with,’” Gen. Michael E. Langley, the head of the Pentagon’s Africa Command, said in an interview. “I’m seeing this across the Sahel. Our narrative is still, Hey, we’re here to help.”
The military takeover in Niger upended years of Western counterterrorism efforts in West Africa.
For civilians in the Sahel, security has gotten markedly worse since the juntas took power. In recent months, unlawful killings and grave violations against children have risen sharply, according to the U.N.
“The challenges plaguing the Sahel are so overwhelming that it’s not exactly clear how much the U.S. can help,” said Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at the Soufan Group, a security consulting firm based in New York.
“The Sahel sits at the nexus of some of the world’s most pressing challenges, from climate change to ‘youth bulges’ — significant swaths of young people who are unemployed,” Mr. Clarke said. “These issues feed into the growth of violent extremist organizations.”
Ghana: A new focus
American and Ghanaian officials fear that Ghana could be next.
Terrorist groups have been pushing south and staging attacks in Ghana’s coastal neighbors, Togo, Benin and Ivory Coast. A majority of Ghana’s 34 million inhabitants are Christian. Muslims make up a large share in the country’s poorer north.
That Africa Command conducted three overlapping military exercises, including Flintlock, in Ghana in the past few weeks underscores how much Washington is pinning its security hopes on coastal West Africa.
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Some 1,300 special operations forces from nearly 30 countries participated in the annual counterterrorism exercise this month.Credit...Francis Kokoroko for The New York Times
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In the Gulf of Guinea, commandos seized terrorist leaders aboard an Italian frigate in a mock maritime raid.Credit...Francis Kokoroko for The New York Times
Some 1,300 special operations forces from nearly 30 countries participated in the annual Flintlock counterterrorism exercise in May. In Daboya, Ghana, about four hours from the border with Burkina Faso, Spanish trainers helped Mauritanian troops hone their marksmanship skills. Ghanaian police worked with Dutch trainers on securing terrorist suspects. In the Gulf of Guinea, Ghanaian, Libyan and Tunisian commandos roped down from assault helicopters to seize stand-in terrorist leaders aboard an Italian frigate in a mock maritime raid.
Brig. Gen. Kweku Dankwa Hagan, a senior Ghanaian Army officer, said Ghana and its neighbors shared intelligence on militants’ activities and had agreed to conduct joint patrols in border areas.
“If they strike Ghana, it will shake our democracy,” General Hagan said in an interview in Accra, Ghana’s capital. “We are poised to ensure that given the mandate given the armed forces, we protect our country from external aggressors.”
The Biden administration is offering help in other ways under the Global Fragility Act, a 10-year plan to blunt the spread of terrorism and violent extremism in the coastal West African nations and other countries.
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Special forces from Tunisia, Libya and Italy took part in the training exercises in northern Ghana.Credit...Francis Kokoroko for The New York Times
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American officials stressed that defense, diplomacy and development programs needed to work in tandem to create stability in the region.Credit...Francis Kokoroko for The New York Times
The act finances a range of initiatives, including conflict-resolution programs to help settle disputes among chiefs and local community service projects like new police stations or solar-powered security lighting.
Unless defense, diplomacy and development programs are integrated and sufficiently financed, it’s like “sprinkling fairy dust around,” said Virginia E. Palmer, the U.S. ambassador to Ghana and a seasoned diplomat with previous postings in Malawi, South Africa, Kenya and Zimbabwe, as well as a stint in the State Department’s counterterrorism office in Washington.
As the United States reformulates its approach, officials say one overriding objective comes through: Stay engaged. That may involve building relationships with new partners or — at some time in the future — rebuilding ties with former ones.
Capt. Scott P. Fentress, a member of the Navy SEALs who is director of operations for U.S. Special Operations forces on the continent, summed it up this way: “Trust is earned, and we’ve learned throughout Africa, particularly West Africa, that trust is hard to earn.”
Mamadou Tapily contributed reporting from Bamako, Mali.
Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times, focusing on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism issues overseas, topics he has reported on for more than three decades. More about Eric Schmitt
Ruth Maclean is the West Africa bureau chief for The Times, covering 25 countries including Nigeria, Congo, the countries in the Sahel region as well as Central Africa. More about Ruth Maclean
8. Opinion | ‘Short of war,’ China’s gray zone strategy on Taiwan is gathering in intensity
Mr. Rudd seems to say China can walk and chew gum at the same time (e.g., gray zone activities and major military operations) with the implied question of "Can we?"
Excerpts:
With Taiwan, however, there appears to be a growing intensity across the full range of “gray zone” activities. And those are likely to increase as the DPP settles in for another term, and Beijing’s preferred political partner on Taiwan (Kuomintang, or KMT) looks at the prospect of a cumulative 12 years in opposition.
An embrace of gray zone agitation does not mean China has suspended its efforts to build the military capabilities necessary to take Taiwan by overwhelming military force. Those efforts continue.
And there is no inconsistency between China pursuing these two approaches in tandem. China’s political strategy for unification with Taiwan has always had a fundamental military component. Indeed, these two approaches are entirely compatible if their cumulative effect is to reduce Taipei’s deterrence and war fighting capabilities, as well as its political, social and economic resilience.
Deterring China from launching military action against Taiwan is the cornerstone of a U.S. and allied strategy for preserving the status quo and the wider geostrategic stability of the Indo-Pacific region. The question that arises for all of us, however, is how to also deter China’s emerging menu of measures that remain “short of war” and “short of invasion” but that share the same political objective, which is to force Taipei to capitulate.
Opinion | ‘Short of war,’ China’s gray zone strategy on Taiwan is gathering in intensity
The West must strongly deter — without foreclosing a future reconciliation between Taipei and Beijing.
By Kevin Rudd
Updated June 6, 2024 at 6:45 p.m. EDT|Published June 6, 2024 at 5:30 p.m. EDT
The Washington Post · by Kevin Rudd · June 6, 2024
Kevin Rudd is Australia’s ambassador to the United States and was previously prime minister and foreign minister. This is an edited extract of a speech delivered Thursday at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu. The speech is a personal reflection in his capacity as a China scholar and not as an official representative of the Australian government.
The central question for our time, if we are to avoid war across the Taiwan Strait, is to understand how Chinese President Xi Jinping actually interprets the deterrence strategies of the United States, Taiwan itself, and U.S. allies and strategic partners.
What strategy is China now embarking upon, short of preparation for an actual invasion, to achieve its political objectives in relation to Taiwan? And what is the role of deterrence in responding to such a strategy?
The key to understanding Beijing’s red line on Taiwan’s political status is China’s fear that Taiwan will become an independent state, and be recognized by the international community as such, thereby destroying the possibility of unification with the mainland.
This, in turn, is based on Beijing’s insistence that any political dialogue between Taiwan and the mainland must be based on the “1992 Consensus” — an ambiguous arrangement broadly based on the principle of “one China,” albeit with differing interpretations of what that means to each side.
Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), in government since 2016, has opposed the “one China” element within the 1992 Consensus. As a result, Beijing has rejected all official dialogue with Taiwanese administrations since the party came to power. The DPP has argued that Taiwan was already independent and so had no need formally to declare it. President Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan’s president from 2016 to 2024, took this concept further — continuing to reject the 1992 Consensus, while refining the Democratic Progressive Party’s position on Taiwan’s political status as one committed to “maintaining the status quo.” This position has been reiterated by the new DPP President William Lai who took office last month.
But Beijing is increasingly making it plain to foreign interlocutors that this stance is not sufficient. Far from being relieved that the DPP has stepped back from the brink of any formal declaration of independence, Beijing is signaling loud and clear that its political objective remains to force Taiwan into negotiations on its preferred “one country, two systems” model that it has used for Hong Kong.
Beijing might well be in the process of concluding that Taiwan thinking of itself as de facto autonomous, with the international community on much the same page, will become further entrenched — and irreversible. As time begins to run out (from China’s perspective), we will begin to see a change in Chinese strategy toward the “Taiwan problem.” Indeed, we are already seeing it, with China increasingly availing itself of a multidimensional “gray zone” strategy over the past 18 months or so, a strategy aimed at applying new forms of pressure on Taiwanese and international public opinion to force Taipei to the negotiating table.
Prominent analysts have described the gray zone strategy as seeking “economic, military, diplomatic, or political gains without eliciting a costly and direct response from an opponent.” Others have described it as a “short of war” approach — a combination of political, military, diplomatic, economic and cyber measures where the objective is to achieve a psychological, attitudinal and then behavioral change on the part of Taiwanese public and political opinion.
These measures include intensifying political assaults by Beijing to delegitimize Taiwanese political leaders opposed to unification. They also involve military assets: naval, air, coast guard and other intrusions across the median line, Taiwan’s 24-mile contiguous zone and in and around Taiwan’s offshore islands, are meant to show the Taiwanese that their administration is incapable of defending Taipei’s claims to sovereignty. They also entail punitive economic measures (well short of a blockade) aimed at impeding Taiwanese trade, investment and other national income, to demonstrate to apolitical Taiwanese voters Taipei’s vulnerability.
During her tenure, Tsai already pointed to mounting cyber intrusions into Taiwan’s economic and communications infrastructure, again with the intention of demonstrating to the Taiwanese people the acute vulnerability of their systems to an integrated cyberattack.
For China watchers, there are some similarities in Beijing’s “short of war” strategies that have already been tried in the South and East China Seas, and those being tried on Taiwan. Japan has seen this with the intensity of People’s Liberation Army Air Force sorties around Senkaku-Diaoyu Dao. We have also seen China assert nonlethal coercive actions in relation to the Second Thomas Shoal and the Philippines.
With Taiwan, however, there appears to be a growing intensity across the full range of “gray zone” activities. And those are likely to increase as the DPP settles in for another term, and Beijing’s preferred political partner on Taiwan (Kuomintang, or KMT) looks at the prospect of a cumulative 12 years in opposition.
An embrace of gray zone agitation does not mean China has suspended its efforts to build the military capabilities necessary to take Taiwan by overwhelming military force. Those efforts continue.
And there is no inconsistency between China pursuing these two approaches in tandem. China’s political strategy for unification with Taiwan has always had a fundamental military component. Indeed, these two approaches are entirely compatible if their cumulative effect is to reduce Taipei’s deterrence and war fighting capabilities, as well as its political, social and economic resilience.
Deterring China from launching military action against Taiwan is the cornerstone of a U.S. and allied strategy for preserving the status quo and the wider geostrategic stability of the Indo-Pacific region. The question that arises for all of us, however, is how to also deter China’s emerging menu of measures that remain “short of war” and “short of invasion” but that share the same political objective, which is to force Taipei to capitulate.
Governments across the region and the world will increasingly be required to draw a clear linkage between identifiable gray zone actions on the one hand and a series of calibrated policy responses on the other. The alternative is no response at all — which presumably is Beijing’s current expectation.
In the future, the Taiwanese might choose to engage in a fresh round of negotiations with Beijing on easing cross-strait tensions, new forms of economic cooperation and new approaches to the political relationship between them.
Indeed, all our interests would be served by breaking the 1992 Consensus impasse so that effective dialogue can recommence after nearly a decade of silence. Silence accentuates tension; talking can reduce it. As Winston Churchill famously reminded us, it’s always better to “jaw, jaw than war, war.”
But there is a difference between a voluntary, agreed approach to negotiations, as opposed to a coerced one.
For Beijing, reassurance that Taipei and its international partners will sustain the status quo on Taiwan’s future political status is essential for strategic stability. But with Xi’s evident frustration at Taiwan’s continuing autonomy, reassurance alone will not be sufficient.
It needs to be part of a much wider equation of integrated deterrence that will command all our efforts for the decade ahead if we are to successfully preserve the peace.
The Washington Post · by Kevin Rudd · June 6, 2024
9. First Principles for Ensuring American AI Leadership
Excerpts:
Innovation and Openness
Principled Leadership
Strategic Public-Private Collaborations
Balanced Global Engagement
The urgency for the United States and its allies to embed these principles into their policy frameworks is critical. This is not just about staying ahead in the race; it is about defining the future of AI in terms of security, prosperity, and democratic values in the face of competition from countries, particularly China. The decisions we make now will determine what values underpin the next several decades in technology and geopolitical leadership.
First Principles for Ensuring American AI Leadership
By Joseph F. Dunford & Frances Townsend , Michael Morell
June 06, 2024
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/06/06/first_principles_for_ensuring_american_ai_leadership_1036340.html
The United States and China are locked in a high-stakes competition for global technological leadership. Central to this contest is artificial intelligence (AI), a domain not merely of public interest but of profound strategic importance. AI holds the potential to redefine national security paradigms, fuel economic engines, and propel the influence of democratic – or authoritarian – principles across the globe, depending on which country wins the tech race.
As AI has catapulted into the limelight, divergent approaches to its governance have crystallized. To date, the United States, alongside nations such as the UK and Canada, has advocated for a framework of voluntary and adaptable standards designed alongside key allies and industry leaders. This approach aims not only to harness AI’s transformative potential but also to mitigate its risks through collaborative engagement.
On the other hand, the European Union (EU), with its rushed enactment of the EU AI Act, and China, with its authoritarian conventions, chart an alternate course that prioritizes control and regulation.
These distinct paths highlight a fundamental question: How can the United States maintain its AI leadership and ensure its dynamic and open approach to AI becomes the prevailing global norm?
To navigate this complex landscape, we propose four “First Principles” to ensure American AI leadership: innovation and openness, principled leadership, strategic public-private collaborations, and balanced global engagement.
Innovation and Openness
AI progress hinges on fostering an innovation-friendly environment. Yet, the influx of AI legislation at the state level, with approximately 50 AI-related bills introduced weekly, combined with federal policymakers’ zeal for regulating emerging technologies, are hurdles for U.S. companies in the race to out-innovate their global rivals. Recommended steps to prevent any significant AI risks without hampering innovation include: streamlining research and development, creating regulatory sandboxes for risk-free experimentation, and boosting AI adoption incentives. Encouraging a broad spectrum of AI models, including open-source ones, can lower research barriers and diminish costs for innovators and small business. Furthermore, it’s imperative for policymakers to “security proof“ AI-centered legislation to safeguard against any unintended consequences foreign adversaries could exploit.
Principled Leadership
Given the connection between technological innovation and geopolitical power, the quest for AI leadership must prioritize American principles and values. While we do not always get it right, America’s private sector companies, guided by values of openness and security, stand in sharp contrast to rival foreign organizations which are oftentimes state run and act as an extension of their authoritarian governments. The stakes get even higher as AI becomes increasingly integral to critical sectors, such as healthcare, biotechnology, and national security. Already it underpins technology offerings used to streamline repetitive tasks, facilitate clinical trials for life-saving medicines, thwart cyberattacks, and optimize supply chain logistics. Helping private sector companies who prioritize openness scale their operations globally allows policymakers to steer technological development towards a future that aligns with democratic values and human rights.
Strategic Public-Private Collaborations
Empowering the private sector with a dynamic environment akin to the one that fueled the internet’s growth in the 1990s can keep America in the driver’s seat for the next technological wave driven by AI. The rapid pace of AI development will outpace a government’s capacity to regulate, making partnerships between public agencies and private tech companies essential. These collaborations, best exemplified by the U.S. AI Safety Institute (USAISI), combine government goals with private sector innovation and resources. Such partnerships are key to maintaining the U.S.'s competitive edge and standards in AI globally.
Balanced Global Engagement
Technology’s reach knows no borders, making international cooperation essential. Successful frameworks, such as the Hiroshima AI Process borne out of the G7 Summit in 2023, demonstrate the power of collective action in promoting responsible AI development and usage. Such multilateral efforts should serve as a model for future endeavors, ensuring that AI serves collective prosperity and security. One important avenue for this work is through export controls. Export controls are vital, but, if overly restrictive, could hinder Western companies from partnering globally and accessing international talent and markets. Conversely, a risk-based regulatory approach for sensitive areas, namely national security or healthcare would help ensure AI global governance strikes a balance between risk management and technology breakthroughs.
The urgency for the United States and its allies to embed these principles into their policy frameworks is critical. This is not just about staying ahead in the race; it is about defining the future of AI in terms of security, prosperity, and democratic values in the face of competition from countries, particularly China. The decisions we make now will determine what values underpin the next several decades in technology and geopolitical leadership.
General Joseph F. Dunford Jr. is the 19th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Frances F. Townsend is former White House counterterrorism and homeland security adviser. Michael J. Morell is former deputy director and acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). All serve as AEP national security advisory board members.
10. GAO Report on U.S. Funding for Ukraine
The 26 page report can be downloaded here: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24731462/ukraine-status-and-use-of-supplemental-us-funding-as-of-first-quarter-fiscal-year-2024-gao-24-107232.pdf
GAO Report on U.S. Funding for Ukraine
https://news.usni.org/2024/06/04/gao-report-on-u-s-funding-for-ukraine
U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE STAFF
JUNE 4, 2024 11:44 AM
The following is the May 30, 2024, UKRAINE: Status and Use of Supplemental U.S. Funding, as of First Quarter, Fiscal Year 2024.
From the report
Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine has caused tremendous loss of life, created a humanitarian crisis, threatened democracy, and exacerbated global challenges such as food insecurity. In response to these devastating consequences, Congress has appropriated more than $174 billion under five Ukraine supplemental appropriations acts. About $113.4 billion was appropriated in fiscal years 2022 and 2023 under four initial Ukraine supplemental appropriations acts (Ukraine acts).
The majority of these funds were specified for the U.S. response to the Ukraine crisis and some of the funds were for other purposes. Some of these funds have expired and some remain available for future use.
Division M of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023, included a provision for us to conduct oversight of the assistance provided in the Ukraine acts. This report is part of a series of reports that we have underway evaluating U.S. agencies’ implementation of these funds. This includes the Departments of Defense (DOD), State, Health and Human Services (HHS), and Energy (DOE).
This review focuses on the funds appropriated in the four Ukraine acts from 2022. Specifically, this report examines the status of Ukraine supplemental funding obligated and disbursed by 12 agencies as well as the types of activities this funding supports. This report includes supplemental funds used to support the U.S. response to the Ukraine crisis and for other purposes.
- As of December 31, 2023, of the approximately $113.4 billion appropriated in the Ukraine acts, U.S. agencies had obligated about $101.2 billion and disbursed about $67.5 billion.
- Of the approximately $62.3 billion provided to DOD, it had obligated about $52.3 billion, such as for procuring missiles, ammunition, and combat vehicles for Ukraine and to replace U.S. stocks. In its own reporting, DOD combines this formal obligated amount with internal informal commitments to convey its financial commitments.
- Of the approximately $46.1 billion provided to State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the two agencies had obligated about $44.4 billion, such as to support the Ukrainian government’s civilian budget—including salaries for first responders, health workers, and educators.
- Of the approximately $3.4 billion provided to HHS, it had obligated about $3.1 billion, such as in grants for supporting Ukrainian refugees settling in the U.S.
The Ukraine acts appropriated approximately $113.4 billion in fiscal years 2022 and 2023 for a wide range of purposes to be carried out by U.S. agencies.
11. The Good, the Bad, or the Ugly? Lessons from History on Ukraine’s Russian Paramilitary Legionnaires
Excerpts:
While the meat grinder continues to take its toll, the integration of pro-Ukrainian Russian volunteers will remain a complex and politically sensitive matter, analogous to the Galvanized Yankees. By drawing upon these lessons from history, Ukraine can endeavor to exert more pressure on the demoralized troops within the Russian Army. “We value everyone’s life and call on Russian soldiers and officers to come over to our side,” declared a May 2024 Telegram post by the Sibir Battalion. “Many of your colleagues have already made the right choice. . . . Join us and come over to the side of truth.”
However, when dealing the competing ideologies and worldviews underpinning the Freedom of Russia Legion, the Russian Volunteer Corps, and the Sibir Battalion, one must as: Whose truth? The military and political advantage offered by these Russian nationals is of little consequence if outweighed by the risks their employment entails.
The Good, the Bad, or the Ugly? Lessons from History on Ukraine’s Russian Paramilitary Legionnaires - Modern War Institute
mwi.westpoint.edu · by Kyle Nappi · June 7, 2024
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Among the combat forces fighting for Ukraine against Russia are three units distinguished by a particular feature. They are not composed of Ukrainians, but Russian nationals, fighting against their home country’s forces in all-volunteer units with varying degrees of formal ties to Ukraine’s military and intelligence apparatus. Currently, several thousand Russians are estimated to comprise the three units—the Freedom of Russia Legion, the Russian Volunteer Corps, and the Sibir Battalion. “They’re no longer just a ‘group’, now they’re a force,” the chief of Ukrainian military intelligence remarked in a March 2024 interview. “They’re good warriors. . . . We’re going to try and help them as much as we can.”
A closer look into these units reveals their force-multiplier functions, particularly on the digital battlefield. They have even undertaken cross-border raids onto Russian soil. However, these groups are not a panacea to stave off Moscow’s nationalist imperialism nor bridge transatlantic disunity, as they present inherent risks. Thus, Kyiv would be well advised to learn from past cases in which defectors, deserters, and even former prisoners of war were employed on the battlefield—cases like that of the Galvanized Yankees.
Gray to Blue
Though it might seem radical at first glance, the US Army’s recruitment of Confederate prisoners of war did not appear as an unreasonable proposition by the winter of 1863–64, as thousands of Federal troops neared the end of their three-year voluntary enlistment. Widespread conscription laws (and controversial exemptions) sparked riots throughout many northern cities. President Abraham Lincoln’s reelection remained uncertain as his political opposition sought peace with the Confederacy. Combined with prolonged indecision from Lincoln’s War Department, several Federal prison commanders became emboldened to tacitly recruit Confederates troops—pejoratively dubbed “Galvanized Yankees”—into US Army regiments.
The first instance of Confederate prisoners of war joining the Union manifested at Camp Douglas near Chicago in March 1862. There, more than two hundred Irish-born Confederate volunteers, captured weeks earlier at the Battle of Fort Donelson, volunteered for the US Army. The vestigial roots of this and subsequent ad hoc enlistments arose from the often stalled, unsystematic, and chronically troubled prisoner exchanges between Federal and Confederate forces—and the fact that the US government did not recognize the Confederacy. “If there was no Confederate States of America,” historian and novelist Dee Brown postulated, “then a captured Confederate soldier was not committing an act of treason if he took an oath of allegiance to the United States.”
Legal nuances aside, another driver arose from overcrowded Union prisons, partially caused by the influx of rebel deserters. By August 1863, the Union’s commissary-general of prisoners, Colonel William Hoffman—once a prisoner of war himself, exchanged after 555 days of Confederate internment—petitioned Secretary of War Edwin Stanton for a standardized system on the treatment of Confederate deserters. “It would be attended with much inconvenience and expense to hold them as prisoners of war until an inquiry could be made in each case,” Hoffman argued. “To parole them places them in a very doubtful position,” he added, “in which they certainly are not for us and may be against us.” The same month, the Confederacy offered a general pardon to known deserters and those absent without leave. This matter also proved taxing for the Union’s battlefield commanders. One major general reported Confederate deserters concealed in wooded hills “who preferred to live as outlaws rather than risk the chance of being returned to the rebel army,” further arguing that “these men would of necessity become guerrillas and give infinite trouble not only to us, but to the inhabitants of the country.”
Lessons from the Galvanized Yankees
This obscure chapter of American Civil War history offers enduring lessons of how individuals from a warring opponent can fight against their home nation—and what pitfalls to avoid. However, two important issues warrant note.
First, foreign nationals from the country on the opposite side of a conflict—including former enemy combatants—acting as paramilitary legionnaires differs from more traditional category of foreign legionnaires. Today, more than thirty countries include legionnaires within their armed forces, and both side of the war in Ukraine make use of foreign troops. Kyiv claims its International Legion numbers around twenty thousand troops of more than fifty nationalities (though the total number is likely lower). On the other side of the front lines, with promises of high pay and Russian citizenship, Moscow’s leaders have recruited foreign legionnaires from, among other countries, Cuba, Nepal, and Sierra Leone, as well as forcibly impressing migrants from Central Asia and Ukrainians within annexed territories. Second, notwithstanding the passing of time since the American Civil War, some lessons are timeless, especially against the backdrop of the Russo-Ukrainian War.
Lesson 1: Recruiting former enemy combatants requires careful case-by-case security consideration, especially when arming them.
Each of these detained rebels had their motivation for joining the Union side: desperation to avoid imprisonment, disillusionment with the Confederacy’s cause, or simply a determination to survive. As Lincoln’s War Department remained indecisive on the matter and lower-echelon US Army commanders took matters into their own hands, the screening process was initially the discretion of the prison commander or guards. More widespread gray-to-blue conversions arose after the War Department standardized its review criteria and President Lincoln gave his endorsement. Confederates willing to aid the Union war effort, the commissary-general of prisoners instructed, “may be permitted to do so when the examining officer is satisfied of the applicant’s good faith and that the facts of the case are represented.”
Case-by-case depositions generally sought three criteria before agreeing to recruit ex-Confederates for the Union:
First, reliable proof that the applicant escaped from impressed military service. “There are a great many of the rebel prisoners in this prison who are willing and anxious to enlist,” one Illinois prison commander noted to the commissary-general of prisoners. “Many of them have been conscripted in the rebel service and are now anxious to be avenged for the wrongs done them.” Suspicious eyes did not escape such applicants. “Many prisoners of war will doubtless endeavor to claim to be deserters with a view of escaping from confinement,” the commissary-general of prisoners cautioned one Ohio prison commander. “Let it be clearly understood that death is the penalty for the violation of the oath [of allegiance].”
Second, compelling narratives from applicants swept away by vicious influence. Some rebels recounted the allure of secession in 1861, aptly summarized by one US Army captain: “They eagerly embraced a cause promising to disrupt the established commercial and social status of the country, having in any change, hope of possible advantage and fear of nothing worse than their then present position.”
Finally, loyalist acquaintances to attest to the applicant’s character. In some instances, rebels cited preceding generations who resided in northern states before finally settling in what became the Confederacy. Significantly, a high percentage of Galvanized Yankees hailed from the Upper South, where Unionist sentiment thrived strongest.
Lesson 2: Former enemy combatants are not always interchangeable and cannot necessarily perform the same tasks. However, mutually beneficial goals can foster effective partnerships.
The US Army raised six infantry regiments of Galvanized Yankees between January 1864 and May 1865. An estimated five to six thousand Confederates took the oath of allegiance and served under the command of US Army officers. However, this did not fully alleviate concerns of ex-rebels turning against the Union, disintegrating under a new chain of command, or deserting in hopes of earning enlistment signing bounties from other units. “The most determined men against us would be the first to enlist for the sake of money,” General Ulysses S. Grant cautioned War Secretary Edwin Stanton in February 1865.
Uneasy about sending these ex-Confederates back to the front lines—potentially against their former comrades and where they risked death if captured—the Union dispatched these newly minted bluecoats to the Great Plains. Here, their freedom was buffered by a limitless horizon and autonomy was checked by desolation. In the view of some Union commanders, this infusion of manpower could maintain balance in the West while the war in the East wound down. Among other tasks, these soldiers manned desolate frontier outposts, guarded supply wagon convoys, conducted reconnaissance scouting missions, rebuilt stretches of severed telegraph line, and quelled Native American uprisings.
Very significantly, the Galvanized Yankees demonstrated that Northerners and Southerners could peacefully coexist and work together, guarding surveying parties for the Union Pacific Railroad, protecting northwestern commerce and emigration, provisioning frontier garrisons for harsh winters, and restoring mail service from the Missouri River to California. Recruited and marshalled during the struggle between the North and South, the Galvanized Yankees helped keep the East and West together, thus offering a glimpse of a postbellum United States. By November 1866, the last of these ex-Confederates mustered out of service. The desertion rate (~13 percent) among these troops roughly similar to that of other Federal units.
What Does This Mean for the Present-Day Ukrainian Battlefield?
With these lessons in mind, it is clear that Kyiv’s leaders would do well to outline the parameters, set clear expectations, and assign responsibilities for a measured and security-conscious screening and integration framework for Russian nationals seeking to join Ukraine’s war effort. Incidentally, the same is required to manage the integration challenges within Ukraine’s International Legion of foreign volunteers. The scale of the task of screening and integration—and its importance—is a function of the makeup of each of the three paramilitary units in question.
The Freedom of Russia Legion (FRL), formed in March 2022, is, as its website describes, a unit “officially recognized by the Defense Forces of Ukraine” that comprises three types of Russian volunteers: expatriates residing in Ukraine, anti-Kremlin critics who fled the Motherland and journeyed to Ukraine, and former prisoners of war. “If not us, then who?” opined one of the group’s volunteers in a March 2024 interview. “Someone has to do the dirty work.” Among the FRL’s objectives are deposing Russia’s Vladimir Putin, forcing Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine, and establishing a free, peaceful, and prosperous Russia. “Our strength lies in repentance and recognition of the evil we are doing.” The FRL’s military infrastructure purportedly includes its own command headquarters, assault troops, artillery, unmanned aerial vehicles, and an active digital footprint and spokesperson.
The Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC), formed several months after the FRL in August 2022, is, as its website describes, “a military-political organization” unaffiliated with the Ukrainian Armed Forces, whose ranks also comprise Russian expatriates residing in Ukraine, former military prisoners of war, mercenaries, and barrier troops. “I wanted to make up for my past mistakes,” one former Wagner Group member said in an April 2024 interview. “[Yevgeny Prigozhin] asked us to join the fight and defend our homeland. He said there are Nazis and Americans in Ukraine, that children were being killed.” The RVC’s ideology is, as two Russian journalists wrote in Foreign Affairs, a complicated matter. “It promotes a non-imperialist but an ethnonationalist agenda, opposing Russia’s aggression in Ukraine but favoring a Russian national state on Russian territories that are exclusively populated by ethnic Russians.” As its commander, Denis “White Rex” Kapustin, mused in an April 2024 interview, “We’re the bad guys but fighting really evil guys.”
Finally, the Sibir Battalion—the most recently formed of the three units, emerging in October 2023—is an officially recognized component of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and its ranks do not include former Russian combatants. Rather, it comprises anti-Putin members of ethnic minorities (such as the Buryats, Tuvans, and Yakuts) from Russia’s economically and socially marginalized far east, which also accounts for a disproportionately large number of Russian military draftees. “I am only here because that’s the only option Putin gave us,” remarked one volunteer while another added, “People live unfairly. . . . All the money goes only to Moscow.”
Despite these three units receiving European Parliament commendation, the usage of Russian volunteers presents a two-fold challenge for Kyiv. First, it must account for individuals who view recruitment with Ukraine as a means advance their own nefarious ideologies and agendas, which Putin can leverage for his de-Nazification pretext for war. Political reformation manifestos, in particular, may undercut Ukraine’s larger psychological warfare tenets, anchored upon successful emotional appeals. Second, it must figure out how to establish trust between Ukrainian troops and Russian volunteers, particularly given the historically turbulent disposition of the latter’s behavior. One Ukrainian Armed Forces instructor described the relationship in positive terms: “We are brothers in arms; we go into fighting together. If I had the slightest doubt about them, I couldn’t do that.” And yet Russian volunteers “are being thoroughly watched,” as the Kyiv Independent reported. The balance between trust and security is a difficult one to strike.
Drawing upon the US Army’s approach when deploying the Galvanized Yankees, Ukraine must carefully weigh the risks of the FRL, the RVC, and the Sibir Battalion in combat roles. Unlike Geneva Convention Article 52 and the protections presumed for Ukraine’s foreign legionnaires, the uncertain protections of pro-Ukrainian armed Russian nationals raises questions. Notwithstanding Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s guarantees for surrendering Russian troops, Ukraine would do well to explore noncombat roles for FRL, RVC, and Sibir forces. Whereby the Galvanized Yankees were deployed to the vast Great Plains, perhaps the theater of war most commensurate for pro-Ukrainian Russian volunteers is the vast digital battlefield. “Russian volunteer battalions fighting alongside Ukrainians are an aspect of the war which may make little direct difference on the front line,” writes one Chatham House scholar, adding “but it will have a disproportionate impact in terms of information activities, morale and influence on Russia’s population and its leadership.”
Indeed, the pro-Ukrainian Russian volunteers have shaken Moscow’s leadership, as evidenced by their reactions. Parliamentary amendments and legal rulings decree Russians nationals captured fighting for (or attempting to join or collaborate with) pro-Ukrainian paramilitary units (deemed, “terrorist organizations”) face imprisonment—or worse. “We will punish them without any statute of limitations, wherever they may be located,” Putin publicly declared this spring. Citing the Russian Liberation Army—an armed foreign legion of the Third Reich comprising Soviet prisoners of war, deserters, and anticommunist émigrés under the command of former Soviet General Andrey Vlasov—Putin further invokes the memory of the Great Patriotic War, denouncing Russians currently fighting for Ukraine as “Vlasovites.” The Kremlin’s fixation on vengeance in these cases is notorious, exemplified by the February 2024 assassination of Maxim Kuzminov, the twenty-eight-year-old Russian pilot who famously defected in his Mi-8 helicopter in August 2023.
While the meat grinder continues to take its toll, the integration of pro-Ukrainian Russian volunteers will remain a complex and politically sensitive matter, analogous to the Galvanized Yankees. By drawing upon these lessons from history, Ukraine can endeavor to exert more pressure on the demoralized troops within the Russian Army. “We value everyone’s life and call on Russian soldiers and officers to come over to our side,” declared a May 2024 Telegram post by the Sibir Battalion. “Many of your colleagues have already made the right choice. . . . Join us and come over to the side of truth.”
However, when dealing the competing ideologies and worldviews underpinning the Freedom of Russia Legion, the Russian Volunteer Corps, and the Sibir Battalion, one must as: Whose truth? The military and political advantage offered by these Russian nationals is of little consequence if outweighed by the risks their employment entails.
Kyle Nappi is a national security specialist with experience advising the US Department of Defense and intelligence community. A descendent of Galvanized Yankees, he has interviewed nearly five thousand Allied and Axis combatants from World War II—including many foreign legionnaires on the Eastern Front—to further understand and document the human condition in war and conflict.
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 credit: Freedom of Russia Legion, via Wikimedia Commons
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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Kyle Nappi · June 7, 2024
12. What to Make of Biden’s Latest Promise to Defend Taiwan
Excerpts:
China’s uncompromising foreign policy and cross-strait approaches have heightened tensions with the United States. Though Washington is not, for the time being, abandoning strategic ambiguity on Taiwan, Beijing’s increasing bellicosity will likely push U.S. policymakers toward greater clarity regardless of who wins the White House in November. China should therefore recognize the counterproductive consequences of its actions.
What to Make of Biden’s Latest Promise to Defend Taiwan
thediplomat.com
A range of intertwined international and domestic factors are driving Washington’s current policy toward the Taiwan Strait.
By Dean P. Chen
June 07, 2024
U.S. President Joe Biden delivers the commencement address for the U.S. Military Academy class of 2024, in West Point, New York, May 25, 2024.
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U.S. President Joe Biden has reiterated, on multiple different occasions, that his administration would respond militarily if Taiwan was attacked by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Biden publicly made that pledge on at least six occasions: August 2021, October 2021, May 2022, September 2022, and twice in May of this year, once at the commencement address of West Point and the other during an interview with TIME magazine.
“The U.S. is standing up for peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” the president said at West Point on May 25. He added pointedly, “I’ve always been willing to use force when required to protect our nation, our allies, our core interests.”
On May 28, when asked by the TIME interviewers to clarify his military defense statement of the democratic island, he replied: “It would depend on the circumstances. You know… I’ve made clear to [Chinese President] Xi Jinping that we agree with – we signed on to previous presidents going way back – to the policy of, that, it is we are not seeking independence for Taiwan nor will we, in fact, not defend Taiwan if they if, if China unilaterally tries to change the status. And so we’re continuing to supply capacity. And, and we’ve been in consultation with our allies in the region.”
Prompted by the interviewer, Biden agreed that he was “not ruling out using U.S. military force,” but “there’s a distinction between deploying on the ground, air power, and naval power, etc.”
Biden administration officials have consistently noted that the United States’ Taiwan Strait policy remains unchanged, notwithstanding Beijing’s stern warning against “sending any wrong signal” to Taiwan “separatist forces.” As I previously explained, Biden’s repeated assertion on this issue does not pose any major contradiction to Washington’s longstanding One China policy or strategic ambiguity framework, which is guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, three China-U.S. Joint Communiqués, and the Six Assurances to Taiwan. These documents have neither committed nor precluded the United States from intervening militarily to support Taiwan’s defense against a Chinese aggression. Biden himself has also declined to provide specifics on how exactly the U.S. military would get involved in such a belligerent situation.
While competing intensely with China is compatible with U.S. national interests, Xi’s more consolidated alignment with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, unabated menacing behaviors toward Taiwan, and U.S. electoral politics also factor into Biden’s recent comments on the defense of the island democracy. Intricate relations between international and domestic determinants drive Washington’s foreign policy toward the Taiwan Strait.
First, Xi Jinping has upped the ante on its increasingly confrontational stance toward the United States by deepening ties with aggressive autocracies like Russia, North Korea, and Iran in the so-called “axis of upheaval.” Xi and Putin have warmly embraced each other as both countries view the U.S. as their predominant adversary. Both champion what they call the “democratization of international relations” – essentially the erosion of U.S. dominance and the empowering of nonaligned countries and rogue states to coalesce around their common grievances toward the West.
The latest Putin-Xi meeting in China in May yielded a 7,000-word joint statement on the “Deepening of the Comprehensive Partnership and Strategic Cooperation Entering a New Era,” in which they criticized the United States for still upholding a “Cold War” mentality guided by “the logic of bloc confrontation.” Though the Chinese leader has refrained from fully endorsing Russia’s war on Ukraine, Beijing supports the “efforts of the Russian side to ensure security and stability.”
For his part, Putin has reaffirmed Russia’s full backing of China’s claims over Taiwan, as Xi is preparing for an eventual military unification campaign to take over Taiwan if all other means fail. Both China and Russia are already joining each other in military and naval exercises near the seas of Taiwan, elevating the prospect of these two nuclear powers’ closer strategic cooperation in a future contingency across the Taiwan Strait. Accordingly, it would be in the United States’ national interest to respond firmly on Taiwan’s security.
Second, the inaugural address given by Taiwan’s new president, Lai Ching-te, on May 20, 2024 vexed Beijing, which has long held a hostile and skeptical attitude toward Lai and his predecessor, Tsai Ing-wen. Both are members of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The election of Lai this January worried the Chinese tremendously, given his more vocal support of Taiwan’s separation from China. Yet, to calm the tensions, he has promised to continue sustaining Tsai’s balanced and measured cross-strait policy approach, stressing that he will “neither yield nor provoke, and maintain the cross-strait status-quo,” based on principles of reciprocity and dignity.
In his inauguration speech, Lai called for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to “pursue peace and mutual prosperity,” beginning from the resumption of bilateral tourism and student study exchanges. He pledged to adhere to the Republic of China’s constitutional system to carry out his duties (the ROC is Taiwan’s formal name).
Lai’s multiple mentions of the ROC (using the term “ROC” nine times and “ROC-Taiwan” three times) may be interpreted as a conciliatory gesture toward China, because the ROC constitutional system itself embodies the “One China” principle. Nevertheless, one area in his speech that likely caused Beijing’s resentment was Lai’s persistent use of the word “China” instead of “the mainland” or “the other side of the strait” (the latter designations bear a tacit acknowledgement that both Taiwan and China are parts of the same nation). The new president has also emphasized that the ROC has its own “sovereignty”; therefore, neither the ROC nor the PRC are “subordinate to each other.”
As a result, China slammed Lai as “disgraceful” and denounced him for openly embracing a “two-states theory.” Beijing then launched large-scale military combat drills encircling Taiwan immediately after the inauguration as a show of “strong punishment.” While Chinese military maneuvers and coercive incursions are nothing new and have escalated over the past several years, this latest iteration once again illustrates Beijing’s intransigence. The Biden administration rebuffed Beijing for using a “normal, routine, and democratic transition as an excuse for military provocations.”
Finally, domestic politics matters. The increasingly competitive presidential race between Biden and Donald Trump has made pushing back on China a highly significant issue for the campaign. In contrast to Biden, Trump has declined to offer a clear response on what he would do if Beijing launches a military offensive on Taiwan, because giving a precise answer would undercut his negotiating abilities. Congressional Republicans have generally agreed, however, that Trump would continue the United States’ strong bipartisan support for Taiwan. Biden, now struggling in a neck-and-neck race with his GOP rival, may feel the imperative to underscore his backing of Taiwan to further showcase his internationalist foreign policy credentials while differentiating from Trump’s seemingly transactional and unilateral nationalism.
China’s uncompromising foreign policy and cross-strait approaches have heightened tensions with the United States. Though Washington is not, for the time being, abandoning strategic ambiguity on Taiwan, Beijing’s increasing bellicosity will likely push U.S. policymakers toward greater clarity regardless of who wins the White House in November. China should therefore recognize the counterproductive consequences of its actions.
Authors
Guest Author
Dean P. Chen
Dean P. Chen, Ph.D., is a professor of Political Science at Ramapo College of New Jersey.
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thediplomat.com
13. Why Would Anyone Want to Run the World?
is an alternate question: "Can anyone run the world?"
I think we should also emphasize the Fitzgerald quote - it applies to different contexts from grand strategy to politics.
Excerpts:
Radchenko’s book challenges, as well, the study of grand strategy. That field has long loved binaries: ends versus means, aspirations versus capabilities, planning versus improvisation, hopes versus fears, even foxes versus hedgehogs. The unofficial motto of the Yale Grand Strategy program has long been F. Scott Fitzgerald’s claim that the sign of a first-rate intelligence is “the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” But what if it’s three?
The Cold War didn’t end history, but it did remove whatever benefits might have remained in fighting another world war.
What Radchenko shows is that the demands of revolution, security, and legitimacy were equally compelling for Soviet leaders during the Cold War. The first two they could balance with roughly predictable results, but not the third. For it lay beyond their remit: the “strong” were not always able to do what they wanted, to paraphrase Thucydides, and the “weak” found many ways to resist instruction, thereby retaining the right to decide things for themselves.
Should we conclude from this, then, that autocracies find retaining legitimacy more difficult than do democracies? It would be reassuring to think so, were it not for the particular questions lodged, like malevolent matryoshka dolls, within this larger one. How was it that ancient Athens, arguably the world’s first democracy, turned out to be its last for the next two millennia? Why did the American founders see themselves as establishing not a democracy but a republican empire? Didn’t the Americans, during the century named for them, also have, like the Soviet Union, an ideology they sought to export? How many recipients of instructions given then respect them now? And finally, do political processes within the United States reliably produce agile, adaptive leadership?
Good books, whatever their subject, provide mirrors in which we see ourselves, often with disconcerting results. To Run the World more than meets that standard. It’s not just a major reconsideration of Cold War history but also an admonition to any country—or to any ruler of a country—foolish enough to try turning its title into an agenda for action.
Why Would Anyone Want to Run the World?
The Warnings in Cold War History
July/August 2024
Published on June 7, 2024
Foreign Affairs · by On Grand Strategy · June 7, 2024
Netflix viewers got an introduction, this spring, to a famous physics experiment: the three-body problem. A magnetized pendulum suspended above two fixed magnets will swing between them predictably. A third magnet, however, randomizes the motion, not because the laws of physics have been repealed, but because the forces involved are too intricate to measure. The only way to “model” them is to relate their history. That’s what Netflix did in dramatizing the Chinese writer Liu Cixin’s science-fiction classic, The Three-Body Problem: a planet light years from earth falls within the gravitational attraction of three suns. It’s no spoiler to say that the results, for earth, are not auspicious.
Sergey Radchenko, a historian at Johns Hopkins University, comes from the East Asian island of Sakhalin, a good place from which to detect geopolitical gravitations. His first book bore the appropriate title Two Suns in the Heavens: The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962–1967. His second, Unwanted Visionaries: The Soviet Failure in Asia at the End of the Cold War, extended his analysis through the 1980s. Now, with To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power, Radchenko seeks to refocus recent scholarship, which has sought to “decenter” the history of that conflict, back on the superpowers for which it was originally known.
Previous accounts of the Soviet Union’s Cold War emphasized bipolarities: Marxist-Leninist ideology versus Russian nationalism in the “orthodox-revisionist” debates among historians half a century ago; then the revolution-versus-imperialism paradigm advanced by the expatriate scholars Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov in the 1990s. “Decenterists” have since added a third polarity, contrasting the relative stability of the superpowers’ “long peace” with persistent violence among their surrogates elsewhere. Cold War history has therefore become, in this sense, its own three-body problem. How can we begin pulling it back together and, if possible, extract lessons for the future?
Theory, Radchenko acknowledges, won’t help: it privileges parsimony as a path to predictability but too often confirms what’s obvious while oversimplifying what’s not. That leaves, as an alternative, narration. But narration requires archives for validation, and access to archives seems unlikely in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, a regime not known for transparency.
History, however, is full of surprises. One is what Radchenko describes as a “deluge” of Cold War–era documents, released over the past decade, from Soviet government and Communist Party archives, as well as from the personal papers of Kremlin leaders. Radchenko doesn’t try to explain why this has happened; he’s content instead to make the most of the opportunity it presents to “know” Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, and their associates at a “very personal level.” It’s like being a “psychological counselor,” he writes, “in a session with a client who tells the same stories over and over again to reveal the underlying passions and fears.”
HOME AND AWAY
So what, from that vantage point, can one learn? Radchenko’s most significant finding is how great the gap was between the ideology on which the Soviet Union was founded, on the one hand, and the topography on which it sought to impose its authority, on the other. “What the Soviets saw as their ‘legitimate’ interests,” he writes, “were often not seen as particularly ‘legitimate’ by anybody else, leading to a kind of ontological insecurity on the Soviet part that was compensated for by hubris and aggression.”
Take, for example, Joseph Stalin’s simultaneous commitment to world revolution and to securing the state he ran. The Soviet Union, he believed, deserved a place of honor in international affairs as the first nation to have aligned itself with the class struggle, the previously hidden driver of modern history. Its security, however, required brutalities: agricultural collectivization, indiscriminate purges, exorbitant wartime sacrifices. The difficulty here, Radchenko points out, is that unilateral imposition secures neither honor nor safety: respect, if genuine, can arise only by consent. That left Stalin seeking to enhance the Soviet Union’s external reputation without compromising its internal safety while maintaining, in both domains, its and his own legitimacy. In short, a three-body problem.
Radchenko defines legitimacy as satisfaction with things as they are, and there are various ways of obtaining it. Marlon Brando, in The Godfather, spoke softly but left a horse head, when needed, on selected bedsheets: offers followed that recipients couldn’t refuse. Stalin was capable of such efficiencies, but only within realms he fully controlled. Beyond these, his preference was to convene bosses like mafia dons dividing up territories—hence his expectation at the World War II conferences in Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam that his U.S. and British counterparts would acknowledge Soviet authority over half of Europe. But Stalin saw this, Radchenko argues, as only a temporary arrangement. The Anglo-Americans, being predatory capitalists, would soon go to war with one another, Stalin believed, leaving Europeans not yet within the Soviet sphere to voluntarily choose communist parties to lead them, in close correspondence with Moscow’s wishes.
When that didn’t happen—when Moscow’s legitimacy beyond Stalin’s authority failed to take root—he had only improvisation to fall back on: indecisiveness in responding to the Marshall Plan, a Czechoslovak coup that alarmed more than intimidated those who witnessed it, an unsuccessful blockade of Berlin from which he had to back down, and a botched campaign to displace Tito’s communist regime in Yugoslavia, the only one in Europe with homegrown legitimacy. That’s how the Soviet leader earned an honor he wouldn’t have wanted: he, more than anyone else, deserves recognition for having founded NATO in 1949. Legitimacy was the wild card, the disrupter, the third sun in the Stalinist Cold War firmament.
CALLING THEIR BLUFF
Stalin, a Europeanist, had no plans, Radchenko emphasizes, for “turning the world red.” Nikita Khrushchev was more ambitious. “National liberation” movements in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East would, he thought, look to the Soviet Union for leadership, if it could free itself from Stalinist repression while achieving more rapid economic development than capitalism had so far accomplished. Meanwhile, Mao Zedong’s establishment of a “people’s republic” in China more than compensated for communism’s setbacks in central and western Europe. Khrushchev wasn’t content, however, with these favorable portents. He wanted to speed things up, and that made him personally, in pursuit of his particular vision of legitimacy, his own wild card.
Khrushchev began the process with his 1956 “secret speech” denouncing Stalin to the 20th Party Congress. Because he’d failed to prepare anyone for it, the address became a “wound-up spring”—Radchenko’s apt characterization—which, when released, caused consternation at home; revolts in Poland and Hungary; disillusionment among French, Italian, and even Scandinavian communists; and deep distrust within the mind of Mao, who had only begun, with Stalin safely dead, to regard him as a role model. International communism did indeed go global, but in such a manner as to immediately fragment itself.
Harol Bustos
The successful Sputnik satellite launch of 1957 might have reversed these losses had Khrushchev not tried to make it a panacea. If the Soviet Union could send satellites into orbit, he reasoned, then why not refrigerators into kitchens? Why shouldn’t a socialist planned economy outproduce capitalist rivals in all respects?
Few goods of any kind appeared in communist households, however, a disappointment especially evident in East Germany, within which the postwar settlement had left the conspicuous capitalist enclave of West Berlin. Khrushchev tried resolving the situation with rockets: he would terminate Western rights in the city and enforce the restriction with threats of nuclear war. American spy planes and satellite photography, however, revealed that the Soviet military had not produced missiles “like sausages” as Khrushchev had unwisely bragged.
With his bluff called, Khrushchev allowed the East Germans the humiliation of a wall around West Berlin, then authorized the atmospheric test of an unusably gigantic thermonuclear bomb, and finally quietly—but not quietly enough—dispatched missiles armed with nuclear warheads to Fidel Castro’s Cuba, the only communist outpost in the Western Hemisphere, all in an effort to regain global respect by threatening global annihilation. Fed up with such risk-taking, Khrushchev’s Kremlin colleagues deposed him in October 1964, leaving Leonid Brezhnev to gradually consolidate the power he would hold longer than any Soviet leader apart from Stalin himself.
LEGITIMACY AND ITS DISCONTENTS
Brezhnev was stolid, soothing, and, until his health began to fail in the mid-1970s, reassuringly steady. That has faded him for most historians, who prefer writing about more colorful characters, but hints of revisionism have begun to appear: Zubok’s 2007 book, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War From Stalin to Gorbachev, gives Brezhnev almost the status of U.S. President Richard Nixon, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and West German Chancellor Willy Brandt as an architect of détente. How, though, could such an implied acceptance of international stability coexist with the expectation, which Brezhnev never repudiated, that “proletarians” in all countries would eventually rise up?
Through sharing legitimacies, Radchenko suggests, the most important of which was that the superpowers both feared a nuclear apocalypse. The Cold War didn’t end history, but it did remove whatever benefits might have remained in fighting another world war. Despite an overwhelming U.S. advantage in nuclear weapons at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, neither side was willing to risk using them against the other. Brezhnev’s role, through the rest of the 1960s, was to replace Khrushchev’s bluffs with actual capabilities, thereby creating a balance in strategic weaponry that made possible the arms limitation agreements of the 1970s. Quests for legitimacy, in this instance, converged compatibly.
A second convergence had to do with the demarcation of boundaries: Cold War competition would continue in some areas, but not in others. Brezhnev made it clear that the Soviet Union would still support “wars of national liberation” in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, while the Americans, less explicitly, committed themselves to waging what might be called “wars of containment” in those same regions. Meanwhile, the status quo that divided Europe would remain in place.
A third priority, for Brezhnev, was personal diplomacy. Khrushchev relished the recognition that came with his 1959 visit to the United States, but neither he nor Stalin tried to build long-term relationships with American or other Western leaders. Brezhnev, however, pursued Nixon almost as relentlessly as a stalker does a star, even as the president escalated military operations in Vietnam in 1972 and then sank into the Watergate swamps of 1973–74. Images of the two relaxing at Nixon’s San Clemente residence, admiring the Pacific while in shirtsleeves with feet propped up and drinks within reach, were a high point for Brezhnev, if not for the international proletarian revolution.
Shadows on a poster of Joseph Stalin in Volgograd, Russia, May 2011
Sergey Karpov / Reuters
And yet legitimacies, Radchenko shows, could be a double-edged sword. Demarcations didn’t always diminish temptations, as when Nixon and Kissinger forced the Soviets out of the Middle East after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, or when Brezhnev took advantage, two years later, of the Americans’ defeat in Vietnam to expand Soviet activities in eastern and southern Africa. Third parties could upset equilibriums by switching sides, as the Chinese spectacularly did when they welcomed Nixon to Beijing in 1972, or by shaming superpower patrons for insufficient militancy, a proficiency the Cubans deployed against the Soviets in Africa in the years that followed.
Leadership, too, posed legitimacy problems. Presidential campaigns became permanent in the United States after Watergate, leaving little time and too much visibility for reflections, rectifications, and reassessments. Meanwhile, the absence of criticism and hence accountability in the Soviet Union required keeping Brezhnev in power until the day he died, a process hardly conducive to agility or adaptivity. These difficulties opened the way for Ronald Reagan, in his 1980 presidential campaign and during his first years in office, to question the legitimacy of the Cold War itself: if the purpose of détente had been not to end that conflict but to institutionalize it, was that the best that the competitors could do?
That brings Radchenko to the last Soviet leader, who so suspended himself between legitimacies that the end of his career coincided with the end of his country. Mikhail Gorbachev set out to reform his regime in such a way as to convince Europeans to welcome its membership among them, Americans to regard it as a partner in securing world order, and the world itself to acknowledge his own personal preeminence as, in Radchenko’s words, “strategist-in-chief for change.”
The first whiffs of perestroika, however, set off a “dash for the West” among former Soviet satellites, which saw far more clearly than Gorbachev that fulfilling his mission would mean their liberation. That withholding of legitimacy in his own neighborhood denied Gorbachev the much wider legitimacy he had hoped to obtain. Witnessing this, the non-Russian republics of the Soviet Union saw no reason themselves to remain within it, as ultimately, under Boris Yeltsin, did the Russian republic itself. Having delegitimized himself on all fronts, Gorbachev wound up, Radchenko somewhat rudely reminds us, making a Pizza Hut commercial in 1997. To be fair, he was the only Nobel Peace Prize winner to do so.
DISTANT MIRRORS
So is To Run the World, as Radchenko acknowledges in his introduction, “dangerously thin on theory”? For anyone in search of clockwork predictability, the answer is surely yes. But if one seeks patterns—the recognition of similarities across time, space, and scale—then this book has the potential to significantly revise not only how historians think about the Soviet Union but also the much longer sweep of Russian history that has now unexpectedly produced, in Putin, a new tsar.
For what Putin appears to want is a new legitimacy based on much older ones: not the ideological rigidities of Marxism-Leninism, but the murkier and more malleable legacies of tsarist imperialism, Russian nationalism, and an almost medieval religious orthodoxy. Where the Soviet Union fits within this frame—a post-Soviet history that echoes pre-Soviet history—remains to be determined, but by emphasizing legitimacy, Radchenko has pointed the way. “The sources of Soviet ambitions,” he concludes, “are not specifically Soviet but both precede and postdate the Soviet Union.” Putin’s ambitions aren’t likely to be much different.
Radchenko’s book challenges, as well, the study of grand strategy. That field has long loved binaries: ends versus means, aspirations versus capabilities, planning versus improvisation, hopes versus fears, even foxes versus hedgehogs. The unofficial motto of the Yale Grand Strategy program has long been F. Scott Fitzgerald’s claim that the sign of a first-rate intelligence is “the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” But what if it’s three?
The Cold War didn’t end history, but it did remove whatever benefits might have remained in fighting another world war.
What Radchenko shows is that the demands of revolution, security, and legitimacy were equally compelling for Soviet leaders during the Cold War. The first two they could balance with roughly predictable results, but not the third. For it lay beyond their remit: the “strong” were not always able to do what they wanted, to paraphrase Thucydides, and the “weak” found many ways to resist instruction, thereby retaining the right to decide things for themselves.
Should we conclude from this, then, that autocracies find retaining legitimacy more difficult than do democracies? It would be reassuring to think so, were it not for the particular questions lodged, like malevolent matryoshka dolls, within this larger one. How was it that ancient Athens, arguably the world’s first democracy, turned out to be its last for the next two millennia? Why did the American founders see themselves as establishing not a democracy but a republican empire? Didn’t the Americans, during the century named for them, also have, like the Soviet Union, an ideology they sought to export? How many recipients of instructions given then respect them now? And finally, do political processes within the United States reliably produce agile, adaptive leadership?
Good books, whatever their subject, provide mirrors in which we see ourselves, often with disconcerting results. To Run the World more than meets that standard. It’s not just a major reconsideration of Cold War history but also an admonition to any country—or to any ruler of a country—foolish enough to try turning its title into an agenda for action.
Foreign Affairs · by On Grand Strategy · June 7, 2024
14. China leg up on US for Cambodia's military loyalty
Excerpts:
Beijing’s military exercises with Phnom Penh mean “increased military presence and surveillance, potential flashpoints for conflict, and a heightened state of alert among regional nations. This rivalry could also impact regional trade routes and economic stability,” Sophal Ear said.
“Numerous US defense contractors have produced operational combat robot dogs, and the US military has been actively evaluating these systems,” Etcheson said in an interview.
“I see the recent display in Cambodia by China as an attempt to show that they are keeping pace with the technological advancement of their rival [US] power,” Etcheson said.
China’s expanding influence in Cambodia may protect Phnom Penh from Washington and other critics.
“China has become the Cambodian regime’s guarantee against interference from the West’s insistence on compliance with international law and a measure of respect for human rights,” said Rich Garella, an American former press secretary for Cambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy.
“The regime is sacrificing its sovereignty and becoming a vassal state of China, as it was for centuries in the past,” Garella said in an interview.
China leg up on US for Cambodia's military loyalty - Asia Times
China-Cambodia Golden Dragon exercises unleashed Beijing’s killer robodogs while US still hopes to play on new premier’s days at West Point
asiatimes.com · by Richard S Ehrlich · June 7, 2024
BANGKOK – The US and China are taking turns wooing Cambodia’s West Point-educated prime minister with guns, money and friendship but the Chinese are scoring most of the rewards.
Just as Beijing’s biggest military exercise in Cambodia was ending, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived in Phnom Penh to offer military assistance and mend the often rough diplomatic relations between the two former wartime enemies.
Austin met Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Manet and Defense Minister Tea Seiha during his one-day stop on June 4, after attending a Singapore defense forum where he met his Chinese counterpart, Admiral Dong Jun.
Coincidentally, Hun Manet was the US Military Academy at West Point’s first Cambodian cadet in 1999, 24 years after Austin graduated from there in 1975.
That may have smoothed the way for their talks which likely included Beijing’s military advances in Cambodia amid the smoldering rivalry along the Gulf of Thailand, which is used by China’s Navy and the US 7th Fleet’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
The US is also concerned with Cambodia’s alleged human rights abuses and crackdown on political and press freedoms, and plans by Phnom Penh and Beijing to dig a canal from the Mekong River to the Gulf of Thailand.
Hun Manet was blatantly boosted into power last year by his authoritarian father, former prime minister Hun Sen, who consistently welcomed China’s increase in Cambodia’s economic, diplomatic and military affairs.
China’s May 16-30 Golden Dragon 2024 military exercises in Cambodia were “the first since Hun Manet became prime minister, indicating that he is continuing to expand his father’s embrace of China,” said Craig Etcheson, an author and researcher about Cambodian.
In a stunning display during the exercises, China let loose their robot dogs of war, shooting machine guns mounted on their backs.
The 15-day Golden Dragon 2024 exercises were led by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Southern Theater Command in guiding Beijing’s closest ally in Southeast Asia, the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces.
Joint drills maneuvered through Cambodia’s central Kampong Chhnang province at a training base with forests and mountains, and in the Gulf of Thailand off Cambodia’s coastal Preah Sihanouk province.
China and Cambodia flex their wares at joint Golden Dragon exercises. Image: Handout
Golden Dragon included “more than 1,300 Cambodian troops, more than 700 Chinese troops, three large warships, and 11 Cambodian warships,” said Cambodian Major General Thong Solimo.
Maneuvers also involved two helicopters and nearly 70 armored vehicles and tanks, accompanied by weaponized robot dogs. Chinese-led live-fire exercises also performed anti-terrorism and rescue operations.
Cambodians learned how to use “Chinese sniper rifles” including “the QBU-191, the latest precision rifle in service with the PLA,” China’s Communist Party-run Global Times reported.
Phnom Penh agreed to host Beijing’s first Golden Dragon in 2016 after canceling US-Cambodian Angkor Sentinel military exercises. Much of the Chinese weaponry and equipment arrived by sea, unloaded at Cambodia’s Sihanoukville Port along the gulf.
“We can definitely say that the US-China rivalry has spread to the Gulf of Thailand,” said Paul Chambers, a Naresuan University lecturer on security and politics in Thailand and Cambodia.
He pointed to Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base, which has recently received Chinese financing to expand along the gulf.
Ream can be used by Chinese and some international shipping but Washington fears Cambodia could eventually allow Chinese warships to base there, heightening tensions in the Gulf of Thailand, which opens to the internationally disputed South China Sea.
“With China able to use Ream for its naval military vessels, and Dara Sakor [a private airfield in Cambodia leased to Chinese] for its air force, Cambodia has become a key geopolitical chess piece of Beijing in Southeast Asia,” Chambers said in an interview.
“Yes, the US-China rivalry has extended to the Gulf of Thailand,” said Arizona State University associate professor Sophal Ear, who researches Cambodia’s politics.
“Thailand’s military relationship with the US is built on decades of established alliances, joint exercises and strategic partnerships,” he said.
Thailand annually conducts large-scale military exercises with the Pentagon and routinely allows the US Navy to dock at facilities along the shallow Gulf of Thailand.
For example, in April, the nuclear-powered Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, armed with missile launchers, docked at Thailand’s Laem Chabang port near Bangkok, a routine that began in 2018 in the US 7th Fleet’s area.
“We are here to make sure we are ready to respond to any crisis in the area,” Carrier Strike Group Nine Commander, Rear Admiral Christopher Alexander, said after docking.
“We are here to deter aggression,” he said, accompanied by the USS Theodore Roosevelt’s more than 80 warplanes, including anti-submarine aircraft, strike fighters and planes equipped with electronic countermeasures.
The aircraft carrier, powered by two nuclear reactors, brought 5,000 crew members from San Diego, California, bolstering the US Pacific Fleet in the Indo-Pacific region.
“Tasked with maintaining open sea lanes of trade and communications, USS Theodore Roosevelt is capable of projecting air superiority to all points of the globe,” the US Navy said on its website.
In Cambodia meanwhile, China’s low-slung, flat-backed robot dogs became a big hit during the joint military exercises.
In online photographs and videos posted by participants, grinning Chinese and Cambodian uniformed troops cluster around a robodog which is armed with a heavy black machine gun bolted onto the quadruped’s flat back.
A Chinese officer holds a CD-sized, black box with two short, protruding antennae, resembling a Wi-Fi router, remotely controlling the robot. When the crouching machine slowly stands up, several Cambodian officers back away, laughing nervously until it achieves a four-legged standing canine position.
Video from one robot dog’s front camera shows the robodog maneuvering through a makeshift maze of green netting and scaffolding. Two accompanying Cambodian soldiers aim their assault rifles into the maze, ready to advance alongside the machine.
The robot dog exits the green maze and, backed by Cambodian armored personnel carriers, stalks across flat dry land blasting its weapon, causing black smoke to jettison from its barrel.
The mounted machine gun displays a curved magazine for bullets and a trigger, enabling the gun to be taken off the robodog if a human wants to shoot it. Lettering on the robot dog’s gray surface identifies it as “B1 Unitree.”
Unitree Robotics is “a Chinese startup that has been developing its own line of robot dogs since 2016,” reported Cyberguy.com, a site for computer news.
Source: NBC
“Unitree’s latest product is the B2, a sleek and powerful robot that can run faster, jump higher and carry more weight than its predecessor, the B1,” it reported.
The B2 has two high-definition optical cameras, a pair of depth-sensing cameras, and a Lidar [Light Detection and Ranging] remote sensing module that provides it with a 360-degree view of its surroundings.
A B2 robot dog’s energy comes from a swappable, lithium battery, boosting its speed to nearly 20 feet per second, twice as fast as the B1. The robot can function autonomously after programming or by remote control and is shown climbing stairs, and remaining balanced while walking across obstacles.
Robodogs speak Chinese through a speaker and can hear via a microphone, allowing them “to communicate with humans and other robots,” Cyberguy said.
The B2 is a “brand new intelligent species” that can walk for five hours carrying an 18-pound load, said Unitree Robotics, based in Hangzhou near Shanghai, China. The B2’s “control and perception” has a “standard configuration: Intel Core i5 Platform Function, Intel Core i7 User Development,” it said on Unitree’s website.
“Unitree B2 continues to evolve every day with the acceleration of AI,” Unitree told 20,000 followers on X.
Futurism, a New York-based website reporting technological developments, described the “terrifying gun-toting robodogs” as “a dystopian vision of what the future of warfare could look like.
“Last year, the Pentagon announced that the US Army is considering arming remote-controlled robot dogs with state-of-the-art rifles as part of its plan to ‘explore the realm of the possible’ in the future of combat,” Futurism reported.
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“A US-based military contractor called Ghost Robotics has already showed off such a robot dog, outfitted with a long-distance rifle,” it said.
China’s mechanical deadly dogs performing in Cambodia intrigued analysts.
“While the display of robotic dogs is more a demonstration of technological capability than a direct threat, it does signify China’s advancements in military technology,” Sophal Ear said in an interview.
“The US should take note of these developments, as part of the broader context of China’s growing military capabilities and innovation in unmanned systems and AI-driven warfare technologies.”
Beijing’s military exercises with Phnom Penh mean “increased military presence and surveillance, potential flashpoints for conflict, and a heightened state of alert among regional nations. This rivalry could also impact regional trade routes and economic stability,” Sophal Ear said.
“Numerous US defense contractors have produced operational combat robot dogs, and the US military has been actively evaluating these systems,” Etcheson said in an interview.
“I see the recent display in Cambodia by China as an attempt to show that they are keeping pace with the technological advancement of their rival [US] power,” Etcheson said.
China’s expanding influence in Cambodia may protect Phnom Penh from Washington and other critics.
“China has become the Cambodian regime’s guarantee against interference from the West’s insistence on compliance with international law and a measure of respect for human rights,” said Rich Garella, an American former press secretary for Cambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy.
“The regime is sacrificing its sovereignty and becoming a vassal state of China, as it was for centuries in the past,” Garella said in an interview.
Richard S Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based American foreign correspondent reporting from Asia since 1978, and winner of Columbia University’s Foreign Correspondents’ Award. Excerpts from his two new nonfiction books, “Rituals. Killers. Wars. & Sex. — Tibet, India, Nepal, Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka & New York” and “Apocalyptic Tribes, Smugglers & Freaks” are available here.
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asiatimes.com · by Richard S Ehrlich · June 7, 2024
15. China's surging presence reshapes a thawing Arctic
Excerpts:
What does this mean for Arctic states?
Simply put, the need to invest in Arctic science is critical as new players are becoming increasingly dominant when it comes to research about the region.
The presence of Arctic states in scientific publications is declining. That means important knowledge is escaping Arctic nations, and scientific priorities are increasingly reflecting the interests of foreign nations located outside the region.
Countries like China are conducting scientific research without involving scientists from other countries. This is ominous since science is supposed to be an open, transparent and collaborative enterprise — not exactly hallmarks of the Chinese regime.
Investing in scientific research on the central Arctic Ocean is particularly important since rules and legal regimes that will apply there will largely be guided by a fulsome scientific understanding of the region.
China's surging presence reshapes a thawing Arctic - Asia Times
China’s Arctic-related research has accelerated in recent years, raising eyebrows in the West about Beijing’s ambitions for the fast-changing region
asiatimes.com · by Mathieu Landriault · June 7, 2024
Scientists are playing a significant role in the Arctic region, helping to educate the world about its unique ecosystem along with the ongoing geopolitical positioning by Arctic and non-Arctic states.
Scientific research has been central in helping determine the boundaries of the continental shelf in the Arctic region to establish which states can exploit any natural resources found in the area. Arctic states are spending millions trying to document their territorial claims.
The scientific data has been presented to experts at the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, who have then issued their recommendations to states in an effort to ascertain who owns what.
Scientific research in polar regions has also been used by non-Arctic states like China, India and South Korea to vie for observer status on the Arctic Council, the primary forum of cooperation in the region.
Furthermore, the sustained presence of China, India and the United Kingdom in Svalbard — a territory in the high Arctic under Norwegian sovereignty but open to scientists from countries that are parties to the Svalbard Treaty — is the most obvious illustration of this interest by non-Arctic states in the region.
Global attention on the Arctic has intensified amid global warming, particularly since 2007. China is among the countries that have received the most amount of attention for its interest in the Arctic.
Its emergence as a global superpower, its impressive development of polar technology — including icebreakers — and its creation of an official Arctic policy have raised eyebrows about China’s Arctic ambitions.
Chinese activity in the region has focused on the central Arctic Ocean, which is considered international waters beyond any state’s jurisdiction. This allows non-Arctic states like China to become more engaged than they can in the rest of the Arctic.
China has signed and ratified an international agreement that prohibits commercial fisheries in these waters until at least 2037. Science is at the heart of this moratorium — scientists assess if sizeable fish stocks can be harvested from these waters and if so, they help develop sustainability guidelines to ensure the abundance of these stocks.
As China prepares to embark on its 14th annual Arctic expedition this summer, it’s important to understand how Chinese scientific research is evolving in the region.
The midnight sun shines over ice-covered waters near Resolute Bay as a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker makes its way through. Photo: The Canadian Press via The Conversation /Jonathan Hayward
China’s Arctic science
The rise of China since the early 2000s as a major Arctic science producer has continued well into the 2020s. Using Web of Science — a bibliometric database used to measure, evaluate and track scientific research — we can see the growing presence of Chinese scientists publishing on the Arctic region.
Published scientific research on the Arctic Ocean by nations. China’s is in orange, and has increased steadily over 24 years. Grapnhic: Mathieu Landriault
There’s been a five-fold increase of Chinese scientists in the percentage of total scientific articles on the Arctic from 2000 to 2024. This increase has occurred concurrently with a significant decrease in the proportion of scientists from the United States, and to a lesser extent Canada, publishing on the topic.
As we look for areas of particular focus within the Arctic Ocean, two locations stand out: the central Arctic Ocean and Gakkel Ridge, a mountainous formation on the sea floor.
Increased Chinese scientific publications on both topics are the result of its annual Arctic expeditions. For the central Arctic Ocean, the increase is eightfold (from 1% to 8%) and sixfold for Gakkel Ridge (from 2% to 12%).
Screenshot
Both the central Arctic Ocean and Gakkel Ridge are critical to Chinese geopolitical interests. For the central Arctic, the potential establishment of a regional fisheries management organization is central to China’s scientific research, which aims to gather additional knowledge about this little-known ecosystem.
Lifting the moratorium on commercial fisheries in the central Arctic Ocean is dependent on establishing sustainable guidelines to ensure the long-term health and survival of fish stocks in this area.
The Gakkel Ridge possesses hydrothermal vents that could contain vast amounts of critical minerals. This part of the sea floor has been contested, with Russia arguing it’s a continuation of its continental mass.
Some have speculated that part of the Gakkel Ridge could become a site of mineral exploitation by non-Arctic states, including China. As of the first half of the 2020s, China is now the fourth country generating the most knowledge on this part of the Arctic region.
Little Western involvement
This scientific research is produced in a peculiar fashion, with little engagement with Western publications and scientists.
According to Scopus, a database encompassing scientific articles, 45% of articles by Chinese scientists on the Central Arctic Ocean are published in outlets run or sponsored by Chinese research institutes, especially the Chinese Society for Oceanography and the Polar Research Institute of China.
This corresponds to similar findings by researchers Mayline Strouk of the University of Edinburgh and Marion Maisonobe of University Paris Cité. They have determined that China, as well as other non-Arctic states like India and South Korea, has pursued an approach of scientific autonomy, limiting any collaboration with scientists from other countries.
That’s also reflected in the authorship of scientific papers. About 65% of articles published by a Chinese author on the central Arctic Ocean from 2010 to May 2024 were authored solely by Chinese researchers, with no co-authorship or participation from non-Chinese researchers.
A minority of articles were written by a multinational team of scientists that included one Chinese author, indicating that Chinese scientists did not seek to involve non-Chinese researchers in their work.
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This was the case even before some Western countries like Canada restricted some areas of scientific cooperation with Chinese scientists. This number is particularly high considering China participated in the Mosaic Expedition alongside scientists from 19 other countries in 2019.
The expedition generated a wealth of knowledge and insights as the research vessel remained for a whole year in the central Arctic Ocean, immobilized by a thick ice cover. This multi-national endeavor didn’t result in any changes to Chinese Arctic scientific research, which remained mostly authored only by Chinese scientists for Chinese-run publications.
Implications for Arctic states
What does this mean for Arctic states?
Simply put, the need to invest in Arctic science is critical as new players are becoming increasingly dominant when it comes to research about the region.
The presence of Arctic states in scientific publications is declining. That means important knowledge is escaping Arctic nations, and scientific priorities are increasingly reflecting the interests of foreign nations located outside the region.
Countries like China are conducting scientific research without involving scientists from other countries. This is ominous since science is supposed to be an open, transparent and collaborative enterprise — not exactly hallmarks of the Chinese regime.
Investing in scientific research on the central Arctic Ocean is particularly important since rules and legal regimes that will apply there will largely be guided by a fulsome scientific understanding of the region.
Mathieu Landriault is Adjunct professor, École nationale d’administration publique, École nationale d’administration publique (ENAP)
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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asiatimes.com · by Mathieu Landriault · June 7, 2024
16. 6 months after fatal V-22 crash, an Air Force Osprey squadron in Japan prepares to fly again
A long time without this vital SOF airlift capability in theater.
6 months after fatal V-22 crash, an Air Force Osprey squadron in Japan prepares to fly again - Breaking Defense
“It's our vocation to go fly this thing,” said 21st Special Operations Squadron commander Lt. Col. Matt Davis in his first interview since a V-22 crash killed eight servicemembers in November.
breakingdefense.com · by Valerie Insinna · June 6, 2024
Four CV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft assigned to the 353rd Special Operations Group Detachment 1 fly above Tokyo, Japan, April 5, 2018. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Joseph Pick)
YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — Six months after a tragic V-22 Osprey crash off the coast of Japan resulted in the deaths of eight US Air Force special operators, the surviving members of the 21st Special Operations Squadron are getting back to work ahead of a return to flight sometime this year.
The Pentagon in March greenlit a plan that would allow the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps to slowly restart V-22 flight operations, paving the way for the Osprey to return to the skies following the Nov. 29 mishap and subsequent grounding.
The 21st Special Operations Squadron (SOS) located at Yokota Air Base, Japan — which was home to six of the airmen killed in the crash — has yet to restart CV-22 flights, and there is no exact timetable to do so, 21st SOS Commander Lt. Col. Matt Davis told Breaking Defense in his first interview since the November mishap.
However, a group of six members from both the 21st SOS and the 753rd Special Operations Aircraft Maintenance Squadron (SOAMXS), which maintains the five CV-22 Ospreys assigned to the unit, stressed to Breaking Defense that they are ready to see the CV-22 back in action and have no concerns about the safety of the aircraft.
“They’re confident in the decision making from our higher headquarters and the Joint Program Office,” said Lt. Col. Eric Cranford, commander of the 753th SOAMXS. Those leaders “are looking at 750,000 flight hours of history and making data driven decisions. That gives me, as a commander, comfort in our technical order changes to, say, do ‘XYZ’ instead of ‘ABC.’”
While the Navy and Marine Corps have been quick to restart V-22 flight operations, flying shortly after the return to flight criteria was announced, the Air Force has moved more slowly. As of May 29, several Ospreys at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico have begun flying operations focusing on rebuilding crew currency in the aircraft, Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) spokesperson Lt. Col. Rebecca Heyse told Breaking Defense. Japanese and US Marine Corps V-22s resumed flight operations in Japan in March.
US military officials from AFSOC, the service’s contingent that operates its CV-22 variant, and the V-22 Joint Program Office have not disclosed the exact course of action units will take to return the Osprey to flight. However, in March, AFSOC Commander Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind laid out the basics of a three-pronged approach that starts with ground simulator training, integrating new safety controls and protocols and reviewing maintenance records. (Bauernfeind has since been tapped to lead the Air Force Academy.)
The second phase involves a “multi-month program” for aircrews and maintainers to regain “basic mission currency,” before moving to the final phase where operations will be fully resumed, Bauernfeind said.
For the two squadrons at Yokota, some of that work has already started. The 21st SOS is running its ground-based V-22 simulator twice a day, five times per week, with aircrews moving through a “pretty rigorous program” focused on emergency procedures, Davis said.
Meanwhile, the maintainers of the 753rd are using the time that would normally be spent fixing aircraft to add training tasks during phased inspections of the CV-22s, an in-depth analysis of the tiltrotor that occurs after a scheduled period of time. For instance, maintainers — especially the new members of the squadron, who joined in recent months — will pull out and re-install different parts in order to practice skills they would normally be doing as part of their job.
“Just like any other specialty, there’s going to be some muscle atrophy,” Cranford said, adding that when the 21st restarts flight operations, it will be his job to ensure that his airmen can keep up with the maintenance demands of the aircraft and to advocate for more maintenance time between flights, if needed.
“That’s really what it’s going to be, is taking it day by day, doing the temperature check and making sure our folks are in the right headspace,” he said.
Both Davis and Cranford were careful not to put a timeline on any future activities associated with the CV-22 return to flight, noting that their priority is to ensure that aircrew and maintainers feel confident and mentally resilient enough to restart operations.
“Emotions come in different waves,” Davis said. “It’s a very personal experience — loss, grief and everything goes along with that. So that aspect of return-to-fly has been a central focus for all of us.”
A line of CV-22 Ospreys on display at Yokota Air Base, Japan on May 24, 2024. (Valerie Insinna/Breaking Defense)
But aircrew and maintainers are showing signs that they’re eager to get back to work. For instance, Davis said pilots are fighting over the opportunity to do low-rung tasks typically performed by squadron members with little seniority, such as ground runs, where a pilot starts up an aircraft to allow maintainers to check the performance of its engines and systems.
“It’s our vocation to go fly this thing,” Davis said. “I jumped on a ground run the other day just so I could go turn rotors and fire everything up and see the screens queued up.”
Davis wasn’t the only one who expressed excitement about the return to flight.
“People want to come back and work on this thing,” said Tech Sgt. Richard Bassett, a CV-22 flightline expediter with the 753rd. “Maybe not because the aircraft is super easy, and every day is super awesome, but because the people here are super awesome.”
For the two squadrons, the next major milestone is a functional check flight: a short, basic flight where the V-22 will take off and fly close to the base. Davis said he had already called dibs on piloting that first sortie, but wasn’t willing to estimate when it would occur.
“It’s going to happen when it happens,” he said.
‘Color was coming back’
For the 21st SOS, the ongoing road back to restart CV-22 operations has been uniquely difficult.
The special operations community at Yokota is small, and members of the 21st and 753rd repeatedly stressed that both squadrons are especially close-knit, in part because they are geographically separated from the rest of the 353rd Special Operations Wing, which is based at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa.
Many members of the two squadrons have built years-long friendships with the airmen who were killed, leaving them to deal with the grief of losing brothers-in-arms in the wake of the November crash.
“Most everybody joins special ops because we want to do things, we want to be the one who helps. The hardest thing for some of us was to seek help for a little bit,” Davis said. “The trick was, like, obviously utilizing everything that was made available to us and understanding that not being okay for a short period of time is okay. Just don’t stay like that.”
In the dark weeks following the mishap, members of the 21st and 753rd recalled receiving an outpouring of support. Mental health resources, which included an operational psychologist specially trained to treat servicemembers who have undergone trauma, along with a mental health team from Cannon Air Force Base, were made available on a 24/7 basis.
Chaplains and first sergeants — who ensure leaders are aware of issues impacting the morale of a unit and advocate on behalf of personnel — offered counseling and other assistance to airmen who needed help, and military spouses from other units brought in home-cooked lunches on an almost daily basis, members of the 21st and 753rd recalled.
There was no pressure from above to get back to work, and airmen were given the space to grieve in their own way, Cranford and Davis said. Some airmen played cards to relax, others held conversations in small groups, while others wanted to keep as busy as possible.
“I had airmen within two, three days of the incident coming to me and saying ‘Sir, can I just [go to work]? That’s my therapy. Can I just go tinker?’ You know what, if that’s your therapy, you do you,” he said. “One guy, I gave him my chief’s office, and he painted for nine hours and came out with a phenomenal memorial painting.”
By the third week, the shadow surrounding the squadrons had started to lift, with people finally able to laugh at shared memories of the airmen who died in the accident, members from the two squadrons said.
“It was kind of like, color was coming back to our organization,” said Senior Master Sgt. Jesse Heckart, the 21st SOS senior enlisted leader.
A Return To Flight
AFSOC has not revealed the root cause of the November crash, which is still under investigation. Officials have acknowledged a component failure occurred on the CV-22 involved in the accident, but have not ruled out other potential factors that may have contributed to the mishap.
“We have high confidence that we understand what component failed, and how it failed. I think what we are still working on is the why and so that is still in the hands of the investigation,” Marine Corps Col. Brian Taylor, the program manager in the Pentagon’s V-22 Joint Program Office, told reporters in March.
The investigation is currently in its “final stages” and will be publicly released after the aircrew’s families have been briefed, Heyse, the AFSOC spokesperson. AFSOC declined to provide further comment on the component that failed. (It is possible more information will come out during a House Oversight Committee hearing on V-22 safety scheduled for June 12.)
Outside the base, questions about the safety record of the Osprey remain prevalent among the Japanese public.
Demonstrations where protesters carried “NO OSPREY” signs proliferated after the November crash and, after the Pentagon announced the restart of V-22 operations, Japanese newspapers questioned whether the return to flight occurred too soon. (At a happy hour in Tokyo in mid-May, one Japanese journalist asked this reporter whether the Osprey was truly safe, expressing his own doubts.)
The residents of Fussa — the city that borders Yokota’s main gate — “are concerned for the safety since there has not been been sufficient explanation provided on the cause of the accident and the measures to be taken,” a spokesman for the city’s base affairs division told Stars and Stripes in May.
A line of community members wait to view a static display CV-22 Osprey assigned to the 353rd Special Operations Wing, Kadena Air Base, during the 2024 Japanese-American Friendship Festival at Yokota Air Base, Japan, May 19, 2024. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Tristan Truesdell)
Davis said the 21st SOS and 753rd SOAMXS aren’t fazed by the outside political drama, pointing to the crowd of Japanese aviation enthusiasts who crowded around the V-22 during Yokota’s annual Friendship Festival held on May 19, showering pilots and maintainers with requests for photos.
What would he say to members of the public who point to V-22 accidents throughout its history and say that the Osprey is too dangerous to fly?
At this question, Davis tells a story: In late 2018, he was deployed to Yokota to help stand up the 21st SOS, which formally came online in 2019. One morning, he was sitting at the Dunkin Donuts eating breakfast when he saw on the news that an F/A-18 had collided with the KC-130J refueling it during a mission off the coast of Japan.
Within two hours, Davis was flying to Iwakuni on a CV-22 tasked with locating the downed aircrew of the two planes — the same type of search and rescue mission that would occur five years later to find the fallen members of the 21st SOS.
“We searched almost literally night and day for 14 days at distances that nothing else airborne could go,” he said. “That’s important. When it comes down to it, we can do things that others can’t.”
breakingdefense.com · by Valerie Insinna · June 6, 2024
17. China Is 'Aggressively Recruiting' Pilots from the US and NATO Countries, Intelligence Agencies Warn
Is this an indication that China has a training problem? They must import foreign trainers?
Do they not have sufficient expertise to develop their own training cadre?
For all the high tech and advanced weapons systems the most important capability for any military is training.
Excerpt:
"To overcome their shortcomings, China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) has been aggressively recruiting Western military talent to train their aviators, using private firms around the globe that conceal their PLA ties and offer recruits exorbitant salaries," Michael Casey, the director of ODNI's National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said in a statement. "Recent actions by Western governments have impacted these operations, but PLA recruitment efforts continue to evolve in response."
China Is 'Aggressively Recruiting' Pilots from the US and NATO Countries, Intelligence Agencies Warn
military.com · by Thomas Novelly · June 6, 2024
American intelligence agencies are warning that China is working hard to recruit American military pilots, as well as aviators from NATO and ally countries, as tensions continue to rise in the Pacific.
The warning about China's recruiting methods came in a bulletin published Wednesday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, along with Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom -- countries that share intelligence with one another frequently.
"To overcome their shortcomings, China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) has been aggressively recruiting Western military talent to train their aviators, using private firms around the globe that conceal their PLA ties and offer recruits exorbitant salaries," Michael Casey, the director of ODNI's National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said in a statement. "Recent actions by Western governments have impacted these operations, but PLA recruitment efforts continue to evolve in response."
Private companies located in South Africa and China are working to hire former fighter pilots from a variety of Western nations in hopes of gaining insight into their methods and skills, and then pass it along to the PLA air force and navy pilots, the bulletin said.
"The PLA wants the skills and expertise of these individuals to make its own military air operations more capable while gaining insight into Western air tactics, techniques and procedures," the bulletin reads.
The most targeted jobs have been military pilots, flight engineers and air operations center personnel.
U.S. officials have responded by putting commercial restrictions on several companies, namely
the Test Flying Academy of South Africa (TFASA), Beijing China Aviation Technology Co. (BCAT), Stratos and others. There have also been additional legal and regulation updates outlawing former military members from engaging in employment with China after they leave the ranks.
There have been warnings in recent months about the People's Liberation Army targeting veterans at professional events, on professional social networking sites, and through other avenues.
In September, an Air Force official told Military.com at an Air and Space Forces Association conference in Maryland that "hundreds" of service members and allies are likely being targeted by the efforts.
An Air Force news release at that time warned veterans to be skeptical of "seemingly innocuous business deals or tech partnerships" that could "gradually pull them into covert activities that serve the interests of the Chinese government."
"These opportunities may be advertised on typical job listings or professional networking sites, such as LinkedIn or Indeed, and targeted head-hunting emails are being sent directly to the inboxes of individuals with desired skill sets," the Air Force said at that time.
Those who are contacted for such jobs are encouraged to reach out to their service branches' investigative office or the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
military.com · by Thomas Novelly · June 6, 2024
18. No First Use: Threatening Alliance Cohesion, Assurance, and Non-Proliferation
Download the10 page report at this link: https://nipp.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/IS-588.pdf
No First Use: Threatening Alliance Cohesion, Assurance, and Non-Proliferation
By
Michaela Dodge and Keith B. Payne, No First Use: Threatening Alliance Cohesion, Assurance, and Non-Proliferation, No. 588, June 6, 2024
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/06/07/no_first_use_threatening_alliance_cohesion_assurance_and_non-proliferation_1036507.html?mc_cid=86a18a30e5&mc_eid=70bf478f36
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No First Use: Threatening Alliance Cohesion, Assurance, and Non-Proliferation
Dr. Michaela Dodge
Dr. Michaela Dodge is a Research Scholar at the National Institute for Public Policy.
Dr. Keith B. Payne
Dr. Keith B. Payne is a co-founder of the National Institute for Public Policy, professor emeritus at the Graduate School of Defense and Strategic Studies, Missouri State University, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and former Senior Advisor to the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Introduction
The U.S. extended nuclear deterrent is underpinned by the deterrent threat option to escalate to nuclear first use in the event of otherwise unstoppable aggression against an ally. For decades, major allies have testified as to the critical importance they attach to this nuclear escalation threat behind the U.S. extended nuclear deterrent. It is a key reason, allies insist, that they are able to stand back from pursuing their own national possession of nuclear weapons—and thus a key to U.S. nuclear non-proliferation goals. It is no overstatement to conclude that, for decades, the U.S. extended deterrent, including the nuclear escalation option, have been essential to the cohesion of U.S. alliances and the relative success of nuclear non-proliferation.[1]
Episodic U.S. initiatives to move to no first use (NFU) or “sole purpose” nuclear weapon policies—that would preclude U.S. nuclear employment in response to anything other than an opponent’s nuclear attack—would directly contradict the traditional U.S. extended nuclear deterrent commitment to allies. These initiatives are a prime example of how the U.S. pursuit of arms control goals can unintentionally undermine the keys to alliance cohesion—extended nuclear deterrence and the assurance of allies. U.S. allies have consistently expressed sharp, substantive opposition to U.S. proposals for an NFU or “sole purpose” nuclear policy—two different titles for essentially the same policy constraint on U.S. deterrent strategies, i.e., precluding a U.S. nuclear response to an opponent’s non-nuclear attack, including an opponent’s chemical or biological weapons (CBW) attack.[2]
Despite this consistent, enduring allied opposition and a deteriorating national security environment, recent U.S. presidential administrations continue to signal their enthusiasm for an NFU or “sole purpose” policy in an effort to showcase their commitment to reducing the number and role of nuclear weapons. For example, coincident with Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s most recent three-day visit in China, Assistant Secretary of State Mallory Stewart reportedly declared with seeming enthusiasm that the United States “is open to considering a proposal by China that nuclear weapons states negotiate a treaty on the no-first use (NFU) of nuclear weapons.”[3] This renewed signaling by the Biden Administration of interest in NFU is only the latest in Washington’s expressions of interest in an NFU policy, and will likely again be followed by strong allied pushback. This cycle has been repeated numerous times over the past five decades. As a recent academic study of the subject rightly concluded, “The question of whether the United States should adopt an NFU pledge has arisen repeatedly in debates of declaratory policy and is likely to recur…”[4]
Various administrations’ efforts to move toward an NFU policy in contradiction of the U.S. nuclear umbrella for allies typically have been supported by some members of Congress who have proposed laws articulating their own version of the NFU or “sole purpose” policy.[5] Washington’s continuing initiatives to adopt such an arms control policy that allies expressly and repeatedly oppose, based on their serious and understandable concerns about its degrading effect on the credibility of the U.S. extended deterrent, contribute to growing allied questioning of U.S. credibility as a guarantor of their security.
Ironically, perhaps, Washington’s numerous arms control forays toward an NFU policy contribute to allied doubts about extended deterrence and undermine U.S. efforts to assure allies regarding their security position. In short, Washington’s repeated moves in the direction of an NFU policy fan allied fears about U.S. extended deterrence credibility that, in turn, undermine U.S. efforts to sustain allied cohesion and non-proliferation goals. Rather than recognizing this problem and finally curtailing its initiatives to advance an NFU policy, or spending the enormous resources needed to provide a plausible alternative to the traditional U.S. nuclear escalation threat backstopping extended deterrence, Washington continually disturbs allies with its repeated NFU forays—only to stand back following equally-repeated allied pushback.
19. Clausewitz, Theory, and Ending the Ukraine War
Conclusion
A quick end to the Russia-Ukraine War is unlikely. The challenges of ending wars, particularly if neither opponent is prostrate, are particularly deep in the current situation. An unpredictable event or series of events could occur, producing a sudden willingness to make peace in one or both combatants, but such is unlikely. We must, as Clausewitz tells us, emphasize the probabilities over the possibilities.[lviii] The probability is war until Putin dies, Ukraine is defeated, or the Russian military breaks as it did in 1917. Ukraine’s defeat is possible—but becomes probable if its Western supporters cease or curtail aid and Ukraine continues refusing to fully mobilize its manpower. The defeat of Russia’s military is possible (though perhaps not probable) because of poor leadership, weak training, and meat-grinder tactics; its manpower and equipment reserves make this difficult. Ukraine proved with its 2022 counteroffensive a sufficiently weakened Russian army is susceptible to battlefield defeats. But as Ukraine proved in 2024, such an offensive is not easily repeated against a prepared Russia when one doesn’t control the air. The situation does not leave one hopeful.
Clausewitz, Theory, and Ending the Ukraine War - Military Strategy Magazine
Donald Stoker, Michael W. Campbell - National Defense University, Washington DC
militarystrategymagazine.com
Introduction
Perhaps the greatest weakness in strategic thinking and the relative literature is planning how to end a war, particularly before launching it. In some respects, this nearly universal historical failure is understandable. The overwhelming pressure of fighting a war often inhibits nations from seriously considering how to end it.[i] Clausewitz noted the importance of this issue, especially when a war is becoming increasingly bloody. The last sentence here is key:
Theory, therefore, demands that at the outset of a war its character and scope should be determined on the basis of the political probabilities. The closer these political probabilities drive war toward the absolute, the more the belligerent states are involved and drawn in to its vortex, the clearer appear the connections between its separate actions, and the more imperative the need not to take the first step without considering the last.[ii]
But what would Clausewitz, and some additional theories, say about this most complicated of tasks: ending a war, particularly the war in Ukraine?
The Problem: Planning A War’s End
Sometimes war is thrust upon you with no chance to plan for its termination before it begins—which was Ukraine’s case when Russia escalated its war in 2022—or you are simply too weak to see a way out—a description of Ukraine’s situation vis-à-vis Russia from 2014-2022. This is especially true for smaller powers forced to defend themselves from larger ones, which also describes the Russia-Ukraine War. In such cases, tough resistance can provide time for the situation to change. Such was Finland’s case in the face of the 1939 Soviet invasion. Hard fighting preserved Finland’s independence.[iii] The fierceness of Ukraine’s resistance since 2022 bought Kyiv time to gather strength internally and abroad, wore down the Russian army, and provided room for a 2023 counteroffensive.
But this doesn’t mean one achieves the peace they want. In 1940, the Finns journeyed to Moscow hoping to negotiate, but received no choice but to sign—unchanged—a treaty drafted by the Soviets.[iv] The 2022 Ukrainian counteroffensive liberated much Ukrainian territory but didn’t inflict decisive defeat upon Russia’s military or deliver Kyiv’s aims.
How To End A War
Those facing the perplexing task of ending any war must keep in the forefront of their minds these three critical questions:
- What is being sought politically?
- How far must or should one go militarily to achieve this?
- Who will maintain the peace settlement, and how?[v]
The number of factors in play around each of these ideas is simply overwhelming, this complexity demands systematic analysis. Moreover, these issues are inextricably intertwined. This is not a checklist. The forces related to all three work simultaneously.
1. What Is Being Sought Politically?
We start here because this is what the war is about, and it is an objective basis for analysis. Clausewitz shows that all wars are fought either for regime change (what we call an unlimited aim), or something less (a limited aim). He notes: “The ultimate object is the preservation of one’s own state and the defeat of the enemy’s; again in brief, the intended peace treaty, which will resolve the conflict and result in a common settlement.”[vi]
The Political Aim and The Value of the Object
Clausewitz insists upon understanding the political aim or aims of the combatants and the value each places upon their respective objects, or aims. He wrote: “Since war is not an act of senseless passion but is controlled by its political object, the value of the object must determine the sacrifices to be made for it in magnitude and also in duration. Once the expenditure of the effort exceeds the value of the political object, the object must be renounced and peace must follow.”[vii]
Putin’s words and deeds make his aims clear: the destruction of an independent Ukraine and its assimilation into Russia. Russia’s military setbacks haven’t diminished Putin’s unlimited war aims because he places the highest value on conquering Ukraine, which he views as essential to restoring Russia and preserving his regime.[viii] In 2005, Putin decried the Soviet Union’s breakup as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”[ix] In seeking to reverse this, Putin has long focused on discrediting Ukrainian sovereignty and laying claim to its territory. He told US President George W. Bush in 2008: “Ukraine is not a real country” and pressed Russian claims to Ukrainian territory in a 2021 historical essay and again in a speech on the eve of his 2022 full-scale invasion.[x]
Putin’s February 2024 comments that the war “is our fate; it is a matter of life and death,” reflects his belief in the historical necessity of Russia’s possession of Ukraine for it to survive as a great power.[xi] It may also demonstrate his paranoia about losing power. Putin publicly claimed in February 2024 that the West is “bent on destroying Russia.”[xii] This view is buttressed by his conviction that Washington backed Chechen rebels, engineered “Color Revolutions” on Russia’s periphery, and sponsored a 2014 far-right “coup” deposing his Ukrainian proxy Viktor Yanukovich.[xiii] Likewise, Yevgeny Prigozhin’s short-lived march on Moscow in the summer 2023 and the failure of his underlings to speak out in his defense presented Putin with a potent reminder of the fragility of his regime, should Russian forces fail in Ukraine.[xiv]
Ukraine’s aims are also clear. Kyiv wants to maintain its independence and territorial integrity. The first requires defending the state against Russian attacks, and the second offensive action to recover lost territory. The first demands steady and consistent military defense. The second will require successful and sustained offensives. Beyond the military challenges, which are discussed below, are the political difficulties Ukraine could face from its supporting partners. If Ukraine succeeds in recovering the territory it held in January 2022 (not 2014), it will encounter immense pressure from the US and Europe to seek peace and accept the pre-2022 de facto border with Russia. Zelensky consistently rejects any territorial concessions, but his partners, who supply much of Ukraine’s arms and munitions, will disagree.[xv]
Western observers, however, underestimate the depth of Zelensky’s resistance to significant territorial concessions. [xvi] Doing so—considering Russia’s brutal war and rapid assimilation of occupied territories—would leave millions of Ukrainians at Moscow’s mercy.[xvii] Putin’s abrogating ceasefire agreements with Chechnya, Georgia, and Ukraine would give any Ukrainian leader pause about striking this Faustian bargain. [xviii] As Clausewitz observed, time accrues to the defender, suggesting that Kyiv’s prospects for recovering lost territories would soon fade if it backed such a deal.[xix] Conversely, an emboldened Putin would find himself in a strong position to attack a rump Ukraine from its former territories after exploiting the ceasefire to refit his forces.
2. How Far Must Or Should One Go Militarily?
When trying to deduce the proper use of military power for ending a war one must—as always—keep the political aim or aims being sought firmly in mind. As Clausewitz tells us, this is the basis for analysis and all else flows from here.[xx] There are, of course, many routes to victory, and Clausewitz draws a useful list of options for using military power to end a war:
- destruction of the enemy’s forces
- the conquest of his territory
- a temporary occupation or invasion
- projects with an immediate political purpose
- passively awaiting the enemy’s attacks.
“Any one of these,” he insists, “may be used to overcome the enemy’s will: the choice depends on circumstances.” Moreover, the personalities of leaders and their personal relations add infinite further possibilities for achieving the political aim.[xxi]
a. First, the “Destruction of the Enemy’s Forces”
Clausewitz’s first option is “the destruction of the enemy’s forces.” Some so-called “limited war” literature argues against this.[xxii] But that is a self-imposed constraint ignoring the realities of warfare, history, and human nature. Recent generations of Western political and military leaders often fail to realize destroying the enemy forces is often the prerequisite for victory and achieving the political aim.
Though Ukraine seeks a limited aim (something less than regime change), and Russia an unlimited aim (regime change), both have tried to achieve victory by destroying the enemy’s forces, particularly Russia, which initially gambled on annihilating Ukraine’s army, failed miserably, and wrecked its own.[xxiii] The Ukrainians seem to have recently adopted a defensive attrition strategy in the hopes of wearing down Russia’s will or military forces, perhaps both. Currently, each lacks the power to fatally injure the enemy’s forces. This could change if Russia mobilizes further or Western support for Ukraine lessens or ends, or if Ukraine receives aircraft and ground defenses enabling Kyiv to gain control of the air.
Clausewitz writes that when using military force, it may not be possible to completely overthrow the enemy. In discussing his “culminating point” he warns one can go too far: “Thus the superiority one has or gains in war is only the means and not the end; it must be risked for the sake of the end. But one must know the point to which it can be carried in order not to overshoot the target; otherwise instead of gaining new advantages, one will disgrace oneself.” Clausewitz, when discussing “the culminating point of victory,” warns: “Even if one tries to destroy the enemy completely, one must accept the fact that every step gained may weaken one’s superiority.”[xxiv] Moreover, going too far “would not merely be a useless effort which could not add to success. It would in fact be a damaging one, which would lead to a reaction; and experience goes to show that such reactions have completely disproportionate effects.”[xxv]
There are few better historical examples of what Clausewitz wrote above than military events in Ukraine in 2022-2023. Russia invaded, underestimating its opponent and its own ability to execute its plans. It lacked the strength to achieve its operational, strategic, and political aims, became overextended militarily (Russia passed the culminating point), had to surrender some gains, and fell victim to a Ukrainian counterattack forcing Russia to cede much of its gains.
Drastically increasing forces can affect the enemy politically by giving opportunities to enemy leaders who want peace or convince the enemy leaders to make peace. Gradually increasing forces or violence doesn’t usually produce a shift toward peace. These are more easily absorbed or countered. However, a minor increase in military force might—indirectly—produce change over time via battlefield victory or produce a military stalemate that convinces the enemy to make peace.[xxvi]
And it is here where both Ukraine, Russia, and the Western nations supporting Ukraine have erred. At the war’s outbreak, Zelensky declared a general mobilization, banning all Ukrainian men between 18 and 60 from leaving the country. But the draft age remained at 27 until April 3, 2024. Ukraine’s parliament passed legislation lowering eligibility to 25 in May 2023, but Zelensky delayed its signing in hopes it wouldn’t be needed.[xxvii] Ukraine should have immediately lowered its draft age to 18 and built a larger army. This would have been difficult but possessing more forces for its 2023 offensive would have meant a better chance of dealing the Russian army a decisive blow. Russia failed similarly by initially committing insufficient forces and sporadically mobilizing since. Ukraine’s Western supporters failed in sending arms and equipment quickly enough when it became clear Ukraine wouldn’t immediately succumb.
b. Second, “the Conquest of His Territory”
Clausewitz advised:
Even when we cannot hope to defeat the enemy totally, a direct and positive aim still is possible: the occupation of part of his territory. The point of such a conquest is to reduce his national resources. We thus reduce his fighting strength and increase our own. As a result we fight the war partly at his expense. At the peace negotiations, moreover, we will have a concrete asset in hand, which we can either keep or trade for other advantages.[xxviii]
One may not be able to immediately make newly captured territory reduce the costs of waging the war, but it certainly provides a bargaining chip for peace negotiations.
Russia has seized substantial amounts of Ukrainian territory, but Putin isn’t interested in using any as bargaining chips, though he has tapped it for resources and military manpower. For Putin, controlling territory is the war’s point. The Ukrainians feel similarly and are unwilling to allow Russia to keep any seized land. Until one or both sides are willing to bend here, or the army or government of the other collapses, there is little hope for peace.
c. Third, “a Temporary Occupation or Invasion”
The US temporarily occupied Mexico City in 1848 to force an end to the war.[xxix] But currently, barring some strange events, this seems not applicable to the Russia-Ukraine War. Ukraine could conceivably take a piece of Russia, temporarily emboldening Kyiv and embarrassing Putin. Russia could score a dramatic coup-de-main against Ukraine, but this would further convince Putin of the correctness of his actions.
d. Fourth, “Projects with an Immediate Political Purpose”
Action against Putin by internal groups à la Prigozhin would be the ultimate “project with an immediate political purpose.” Putin’s death or the fall of his regime could end Russian expansionism. But it also might not. This would depend upon who and what followed. Zelensky could also die or be killed, but in democratic states fighting existential wars, the change of political leader doesn’t usually produce an alteration of the political aim as the formulation of aims is not generally determined by a single individual. When US President Franklin Roosevelt died in 1945 and was replaced by Harry Truman, the US aim of “Unconditional Surrender” of the Axis powers remained.
e. Fifth, “Passively Awaiting the Enemy’s Attacks”
This means fighting a defensive war to hold one’s possessions. At the end of the Russo–Japanese War (1904-1905), both sides awaited one another’s attacks. Japan had exhausted its army, and its military leaders considered further advances disastrous. The Russians were pouring in reinforcements and many Russian leaders still wanted to fight. But Russia also suffered from what became the failed 1905 Revolution and needed forces for internal security.[xxx] Tough negotiations for peace followed.
Awaiting the enemy’s attacks is an option for both Moscow and Kyiv, but these are routes for a long, bloody, war where neither is likely to achieve its current political aims. Ukraine cannot clear all its territory by only fighting defensively. Russia can’t conquer Ukraine without offensive action.
3. Who Will Maintain The Peace Settlement, And How?
Clausewitz cautions: “Lastly, even the ultimate outcome of war is not always to be regarded as final. The defeated state often considers the outcome merely as a transitory evil, for which a remedy may still be found in political conditions at some later date.”[xxxi] The 1954 Geneva Accords and the 1961 agreement to neutralize Laos provide examples. The North Vietnamese Communists signed but never intended to abide by the terms.[xxxii] Some agreements ending wars are temporary expedients.
Also, one must consider the differences in ending wars fought for limited and unlimited aims. Some argue it’s easier to enforce terms such as disarmament by overthrowing the regime and heavily occupying the defeated, thus creating a more stable post-war environment.[xxxiii] Sir Basil Liddell Hart argued that a negotiated peace to which the combatants have not been forced to conform because their power has been destroyed and in which they freely participate (he sees something like the eighteenth-century model) is easier to maintain, and the signatories more likely to keep the terms because they have agreed to them. If terms are forced upon them, they are more likely to feel no obligation to maintain them.[xxxiv] Both of these observations are correct. Every peacemaking situation is as unique as every war making one. The variables and their weights are distinctive to each event. Successful peacemaking may require as much creativity as successful warfighting.
Making A Peace Work
Deciding when to end the fighting can be difficult, some argue it can end too soon. Theorist Edward Luttwak says “an unpleasant truth often overlooked is that although war is a great evil, it does have a great virtue: it can resolve political conflicts and lead to peace. This can happen when all belligerents become exhausted or when one wins decisively. Either way the key is that fighting must continue until a resolution is reached.” He adds that in our present era conflicts among less powerful states are often stopped “before they could burn themselves out and establish the preconditions for lasting settlement.”[xxxv] The problem, of course, is what this may mean. It is entirely possible that Western support, Ukrainian will, Russian manpower, and the high value Putin places upon achieving his political aims, will ensure this war continues for years. Neither Russia nor Ukraine have produced serious signs of bending on their aims.
One can face a situation where it is impossible to secure a peace even after winning militarily. In his examination of the problems terminating a future Russia-NATO war in the Baltic States, one investigating a scenario where NATO drives out the Russians, Lukas Milevski shows NATO’s inability to convince nuclear-armed Russia to make peace. “Russia would be thwarted,” he notes, “but not defeated and there would be no politically acceptable way of using military force to coerce Russia into acquiescing to defeat.”[xxxvi] Does this also describe Russia’s current war?
There are two factors critical to making a peace work: 1) a formal treaty; and 2) clear and enforceable terms. It would be foolish, though, to assume these are silver bullets and the only things to consider. This is the ideal, but peacemaking is more difficult when a state fights for a limited political aim (Ukraine’s case), because here, usually, one hasn’t completely disarmed the opponent; nor is the opponent necessarily prostrate and forced to accept whatever peace is dictated, something unlikely in Russia’s case.
A Formal Treaty: Problems and Promises
Clausewitz writes: “The ultimate object is the preservation of one’s own state and the defeat of the enemy’s; again in brief, the intended peace treaty, which will resolve the conflict and result in a common settlement.”[xxxvii] But getting here is exceptionally hard. One key to securing a lasting peace is a formal settlement. Done properly, this removes ambiguity. One strength of the Second World War’s settlement was the Allied insistence on formal acts of surrender from Italy, Germany, and Japan, agreements arranged by official representatives of both sides.
Ideally, one of the things a peace agreement should do is resolve the problems producing the war. Some consider this the best route to a lasting peace, but such treaties are rare since the end of the Second World War.[xxxviii] Even the victorious parties didn’t agree what caused the First World War. To France, it was German aggression; to Britain, the collapse of Europe’s balance of power; to the US, it was secret treaties. This multiplied the peacemaking problems.[xxxix] Coalition partners should sort out their differences early.
Machiavelli wrote: “If one wants to find out if a peace settlement is stable or secure, one has among other things to figure out who is dissatisfied with that settlement, and what can grow out of such dissatisfaction.”[xl] Historian Michael Howard said, “a war, fought for whatever reason, that does not aim at a solution which takes into account the fears, the interests and, not least, the honour of the defeated peoples is unlikely to decide anything for very long.”[xli] Ending wars with several powers usually means concluding several treaties.
An armistice or ceasefire that stops the fighting isn’t the same as a settlement concluding the war. Unless the agreement to stop the fighting has a time limit, an armistice can become a de facto settlement. Such agreements can make it easy to restart hostilities and almost always lack official political acceptance of their permanence, even if continuing for decades.[xlii] The 1953 Korean War “settlement” is an armistice not a peace agreement. One must remember this distinction. An armistice isn’t preferred but is sometimes what’s possible.
Western observers advocating negotiations between Russia and Ukraine generally underestimate the value each places on their respective political aims. This is particularly true regarding assessments of Putin. His deep-seated desire to conquer and assimilate Ukraine, in turn, makes it harder for Kyiv to abandon territories to Russia for the undoubtedly false hope of surviving as a rump state with a revanchist and emboldened Russian neighbor. As the conflict grinds into its third year, this value continues to rise for the leaders on both sides, as do the stakes of defeat.
Enforcing the Terms
One analyst says of treaties: “If either belligerent expected that the other would not honor the agreement, it is improbable that they would accept the agreement in the first place.”[xliii] This provides room for hope. However enforcing treaty terms can be more difficult than securing them. One challenge is the defeated not accepting the agreement’s articles. When Prussia made peace with Napoleon in 1807, it ignored the military restrictions placed upon it and mounted clandestine efforts to improve its military status in which Clausewitz participated.[xliv] Germany cheated extensively on the 1919 Versailles Treaty.
The time for enforcing disarmament clauses and other terms is limited because states start to wriggle out of them. Moreover, the victors and the members of the international community lose interest, become distracted by more important matters, and hinder enforcement because they begin to regard the victor poorly. The victor’s insistence upon enforcement can see it deemed a threat to peace. This strange dichotomy creates an argument for the victor making a quick peace and the defeated pursuing delay, depending upon their situations. There is also the opposite enforcement problem: those signing up for the job refuse to bear the burden. Only four of the twenty-seven signatories of the 1919 Versailles agreements did their part as enforcers during the 1923 Ruhr occupation.[xlv]
Other problems abound. Geography can affect enforcement because of the proximity of the defeated to the victors. After the First World War, distance and the Atlantic Ocean allowed the US to ignore a revisionist and revanchist Germany; France could not.[xlvi] Disputes over postwar territorial control also weaken settlements. One scholar insists “Territory is the only variable that significantly affects the risk of recurrent conflict.”[xlvii] This point is particularly applicable to the Ukraine War. Ukraine is vastly more interested in maintaining its territorial integrity than the US and Western Europe. Kyiv shows no signs of bending here.
Numerous ways exist to enforce treaty terms, but most of what statesmen have done to resolve issues of both war and peace have made the world less stable and produced war, not peace.[xlviii] Structures need to be built to protect everyone’s rights.[xlix] This is difficult. Monitoring with external groups is common but deciding upon monitors is tough because of suspicions. Occupation or peacekeeping forces are options but come with their own problems. Reconciliation is the ideal.[l] The history and the emotions behind the problem make achieving this difficult. Securing this between Ukraine and Russia is a monumental task.
Victory in the war does not always mean peace, which could be Ukraine’s fate when one considers the nature of Putin’s regime. Democratic Israel’s victories over its generally authoritarian neighbors kept the state alive but didn’t bring peace. Some in the democratic West resent its success and survival.[li]
One thing sometimes necessary for maintaining the peace is rebuilding the other state. Historically, this has proven difficult. One author noted that in cases since 1898 where the mission was completed or ended, the US and UN succeeded only 48 percent of the time. Analysts and practitioners neither understand nor agree upon how to produce success. The literature suggests different approaches: liberalization first, or building institutions first, or providing security first. Some argue for finding the right sequence; others believe sequencing a myth because every situation is different.[lii] Since the Second World War, achieving security and stability in a nation has only been possible in states capable of doing it themselves.[liii]
Demilitarized zones can help guarantee peace, especially if big enough to keep forces separated, such as the ones established in the Golan Heights between Israel and Syria, and between North and South Korea.[liv] Some believe “mechanisms such as demilitarized zones, monitoring, and arms-control limitations are not merely effective in mitigating security fears arising from commitment problems; because such mechanisms increase the costs of returning to war, they generally increase the contact zone and thereby enhance the robustness of the settlement.”[lv]
There can be problems securing the peace if one doesn’t make clear to a defeated state’s population that its leaders have lost the war. This can have unfortunate consequences, especially if the defeated state is revanchist. After the First World War, the victorious Allies didn’t make this clear.[lvi] But one may need to ensure the defeated opponent isn’t humiliated; this can cause bitterness and make securing the peace more difficult. After the fall of Napoleon in 1815, Clausewitz was part of the Prussian occupation force in France. He participated in Prussian forced requisitions of goods and material and criticized punitive actions. He believed the British more intelligent in their peacemaking because they behaved with generosity and thought the Prussians bad winners.[lvii]
There is little chance of much of this being relevant to the Ukraine-Russia War while Putin holds power. But as a thought experiment, assume a negotiated settlement preserving Ukraine’s independence in some form while Putin still rules. Who would enforce the terms? Western powers would undoubtedly insist upon a UN peacekeeping force on the common border, one Russia would refuse, especially if it included NATO forces. Both Russia and Ukraine would demand the other disarm in some respects. This would be easily monitored in Ukraine and cheated upon incessantly in Russia. Subsequent widespread Russian subversion of Ukrainian elections, media, business, and government would ensue, despite promises to the contrary. Any reparations Russia agreed to would be ignored; only a handful of the kidnapped Ukrainian children and adults would be returned, despite Moscow’s promises. One quickly sees the problems. With Putin in charge, any peace between Russia and Ukraine will be nearly impossible to enforce. More importantly, in Moscow’s eyes, it will be very temporary, a mere breathing spell. And the next time, Russia would be better prepared.
Conclusion
A quick end to the Russia-Ukraine War is unlikely. The challenges of ending wars, particularly if neither opponent is prostrate, are particularly deep in the current situation. An unpredictable event or series of events could occur, producing a sudden willingness to make peace in one or both combatants, but such is unlikely. We must, as Clausewitz tells us, emphasize the probabilities over the possibilities.[lviii] The probability is war until Putin dies, Ukraine is defeated, or the Russian military breaks as it did in 1917. Ukraine’s defeat is possible—but becomes probable if its Western supporters cease or curtail aid and Ukraine continues refusing to fully mobilize its manpower. The defeat of Russia’s military is possible (though perhaps not probable) because of poor leadership, weak training, and meat-grinder tactics; its manpower and equipment reserves make this difficult. Ukraine proved with its 2022 counteroffensive a sufficiently weakened Russian army is susceptible to battlefield defeats. But as Ukraine proved in 2024, such an offensive is not easily repeated against a prepared Russia when one doesn’t control the air. The situation does not leave one hopeful.
References
[i] Charles Iklé, Every War Must End, (Harper & Row, 1987), 2.
[ii] Emphasis added, Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter Paret, trans. and eds. (Princeton University Press, 1984), 584.
[iii] Iklé, Every War Must End, 2.
[iv] Paul Pillar, Negotiating Peace: War Termination as a Bargaining Process (Princeton University Press, 1983), 53.
[v] This three-point analysis was initially developed by Professor Bradford Lee of the US Naval War College.
[vi] Clausewitz, On War, 69, 484.
[vii] Clausewitz, On War, 92.
[viii] Dmytro Natalukha, Alina Polyakova, Daniel Fried, Angela Stent, and Samuel Charap, “Should Ukraine Negotiate with Russia?” Foreign Affairs (July 19, 2023), 11.
[ix] “Did Vladimir Putin call the breakup of the USSR 'the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century?’” PolitiFact, (March 3, 2014), https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2014.
[x] Natalukha, et al, “Should Ukraine Negotiate with Russia?”
[xi] AFP, “Putin Says Ukraine Matter of Life and Death for Russia,” Barrons, February 18, 2024, www.barrons.com.
[xii] Vladimir Isachenkov, “Putin Warns West That Sending Troops to Ukraine Risks ‘Tragic’ Global Nuclear War,” AP, February 29, 2024, pbs.org.
[xiii] Max Fisher, “Read Putin’s Speech and His Case for War in Ukraine,” The New York Times, February 24, 2022.
Lucy Minicozi-Wheeland, “To Understand the Future of a Ceasefire in Ukraine, Look to Georgia,” The Cipher Brief, February 28, 2024.
[xiv] “The Wagner uprising: 24 hours that shook Russia,” The Guardian, June 25, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/25/.
[xv] “Zelenskyy warns Russia has penetrated US politics, invites Trump to Ukraine,” Politico, April 9, 2024, www.politico.com/news/2024/04/09/zelenskyy-invites-trump-ukraine-russia-00151310,
[xvi] “Zelenskyy warns Russia has penetrated US politics, invites Trump to Ukraine,” Politico, April 9, 2024, www.politico.com/news/2024/04/09/zelenskyy-invites-trump-ukraine-russia-00151310,
[xvii] David Lewis, “The Quiet Transformation of Occupied Ukraine,” Foreign Affairs (January 18, 2024), 1
[xviii] Minicozi-Wheeland, “To Understand the Future of a Ceasefire in Ukraine, Look to Georgia”; Maksymilian Czuperski, John Herbst, Eliot Higgins, Alina Polyakova, and Damon Wilson, “Hiding in Plain Sight: Putin’s War in Ukraine,” The Atlantic Council, October 15, 2015; Salome Asatiani, “Chechnya: Why Did 1997 Peace Agreement Fail? RFE, May 11, 2007.
[xix] Clausewitz, On War, 484.
[xx] Clausewitz, On War, 579
[xxi] The italics in the original have been removed, Clausewitz, On War, 94.
[xxii] John C. Garnett, “Limited War,” in John Baylis Ken Booth, John Garnett, and Phil Williams, Contemporary Strategy: Theories and Policies, (Holmes & Meier, 1982) 125-26.
[xxiii] See the excellent RUSI report: Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi, Jack Watling, Oleksandr V. Danylyuk, and Nick Reynolds, “Preliminary Lessons in Conventional Warfighting from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: February-July 2022,” RUSI (London: RUSI, 2022).
[xxiv] Clausewitz, On War, 528, 566-573, espec. 570.
[xxv] Clausewitz, On War, 570.
[xxvi] Iklé, Every War Must End, 55-56.
[xxvii] Andrew E. Kramer, “Zelensky Lowers Ukraine’s Draft Age, Risking Political Backlash,” The New York Times, April 3, 2024.
[xxviii] Clausewitz, On War, 161.
[xxix] Joseph G. Dawson, “The US War with Mexico,” in Mathew Moten, ed., Between War and Peace: How America Ends its War (Free Press, 2012), 89-90, 99.
[xxx] Denis Warner and Peggy Warner, The Tide at Sunrise (Routledge, 2004), 527; William C. Fuller, Jr., Strategy and Power in Russia, 1600-1914 (The Free Press, 1992), 404.
[xxxi] Clausewitz, On War, 80.
[xxxii] Paul Seabury, “Provisionality and Finality,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 392 (November 1970), 100.
[xxxiii] Martin S. Alexander and John F. V. Keiger, “Limiting Arms, Enforcing Limits: International Inspections and the Challenges of Compellance in Germany Post-1919, Iraq Post-1991” Journal of Strategic Studies, 29:2 (August 2006 [online]), 387; Suzanne Werner, “The Precarious Nature of Peace: Resolving the Issues, Enforcing the Settlement, and Renegotiating the Terms,” American Journal of Political Science, 43:3 (July 1999), 927-28.
[xxxiv] B. H. Liddell Hart, Revolution in Warfare (Yale University Press, 1947), 44-45.
[xxxv] Edward Luttwak quoted in Michael J. Mazaar, “The Folly of ‘Asymmetric’ War,” The Washington Quarterly (July 2008), 43.
[xxxvi] Lukas Milevski, The West’s East: Contemporary Baltic Defense in Strategic Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2018), 147-170.
[xxxvii] Clausewitz, On War, 484.
[xxxviii] Virginia Page Fortna, “Scraps of Paper? Agreements and the Durability of Peace,” International Organizations, No. 57 (Spring 2003), 363.
[xxxix] Michael S. Neiberg, “To End All Wars? A Case Study in Conflict Termination in World War I,” in J. Boone Bartholomees, Jr., ed., US Army War College Guide to National Security Issues: National Security Policy and Strategy, 5th edn. (Carlisle Barracks, PA: SSI, 2012), 2:344.
[xl] Letter to Francesco Vettori, August 10, 1513, in Marco Cesa, ed., Machiavelli on International Relations (Oxford University Press, 2014), 129.
[xli] Colin S. Gray, Defining and Achieving Decisive Victory (Carlisle: SSI, 2002), 12.
[xlii] Quincy Wright, “How Hostilities Have Ended: Peace Treaties and Alternatives,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 392 (November 1970), 56-57.
[xliii] Suzanne Werner, “The Precarious Nature of Peace: Resolving the Issues, Enforcing the Settlement, and Renegotiating the Terms,” American Journal of Political Science, 43:3, (July 1999), 917.
[xliv] Donald Stoker, Clausewitz: His Life and Work (Oxford University Press, 2014), 94.
[xlv] Alexander and Keiger, “Limiting Arms,” 361-64, 386.
[xlvi] Alexander and Keiger, “Limiting Arms,” 359, 386.
[xlvii] Werner, “The Precarious Nature of Peace,” 924.
[xlviii] Quincy Wright, A Study of War, 2nd edn. (University of Chicago Press, 1965), 1332.
[xlix] Lecture delivered under Chatham House Rules.
[l] Iklé, Every War Must End, 11.
[li] An example: Edward Luttwak, On the Meaning of Victory: Essays on Strategy (Simon and Schuster, 1986), 291.
[lii] Paul D. Miller, Armed State Building: Confronting State Failure, 1898-2012 (Cornell University Press, 2013), 2, 8-9.
[liii] Anthony Cordesmann, Creeping Incrementalism: US Strategy in Iraq and Syria from 2011-2015 (CSIS, 2015), 4.
[liv] Virginia Page Fortna, “Scraps of Paper? Agreements and the Durability of Peace,” International Organization, 57 (Spring 2003), 357.
[lv] Suzanne Werner and Amy Yuen, “Making and Keeping Peace,” International Organization, 59:2 (Spring 2005),263.
[lvi] Alexander and Keiger, “Limiting Arms,” 355.
[lvii] Stoker, Clausewitz, 252-53.
[lviii] Clausewitz, On War, book 1.
militarystrategymagazine.com
20. Taiwan Needs Weapons and Training Now, Not 2027 or 2030
I think China might meltdown over these recommendations.
Excerpts:
Air-to Air, Anti-Ship, Surface-Air, and Interceptor Missiles
Minimum 13 Aircraft Carrier Navy, Air Wings, and Drones
Joint Exercises, State Partnership Program, and Basic Training
Finally, the U.S. needs to supplement Taiwan basic training capacity, by replicating the equivalent of for example Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island or San Diego, each producing up to 20,000 Marines annually. This needs to happen before 2027, not after, as demonstrated by the late training in Ukraine just to meet attrition.
These last policies are the most difficult because unlike procurement, it requires Taiwan to commit to its own defense. The island is divided, there is a passive fear of antagonizing China, denial that war will not happen, that they are too valuable to the world, or that everyone respects their right to exist.
China has said they will invade. Their history mandates unification. It’s probably too little, too late to deter, and 2027 if not sooner is the best chance China will ever have – and so it will.
Taiwan Needs Weapons and Training Now, Not 2027 or 2030
By Matt Quan
June 07, 2024
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/06/07/taiwan_needs_weapons_and_training_now_not_2027_or_2030_1036586.html?mc_cid=86a18a30e5&mc_eid=70bf478f36
Taiwan needs weapons and training now, not in 2027, 2030, or a disingenuous timeline. China has repeatedly stated that it is willing to use force to take Taiwan, and that it will be ready by 2027.
Wars in Ukraine and Israel reveal significant shortfalls in weapons procurement and expenditures, which were already deficient for the deterrence and defense of Taiwan against China. It is no longer about cost, but time and years of production.
Air-to Air, Anti-Ship, Surface-Air, and Interceptor Missiles
Iran’s drone and missile attack on Israel in April 2024 was successfully thwarted but required the expenditure of approximately 300 counter munitions from the U.S., UK, France, Israel and others. Additionally, since October 2023, a coalition of U.S. and European allies has been defending Israel against Iranian backed Houthi attacks against Israel and shipping in the Red Sea.
A week later the Navy requested an additional $1 billion to replenish its weapon expenditures, especially SM-3 ballistic missile interceptors, and another $1 billion in emergency procurement. Congress then flipped and rushed to pass three supplemental bills for Ukraine, Israel, and the Pacific, that had been waiting for a vote for months. Cross-referencing with Department of Defense budget documents reveals the severity of the situation.
$1 billion is the equivalent of a year’s procurement of SM-3s in 2023. 300 targets intercepted are similar to the number of AIM-120 air-to-air missiles annually for either the Navy or Air Force or combined a year of AIM-9Xs. Similarly, Lockheed and Raytheon have announced double and quadruple annual production of PAC-3 PATRIOT missile interceptors.
Prior to the now multiple wars, AIM-120, PAC-3, SM-3 and other procurement was for normal training and sustainment, and all come from the same three facilities. Not potential wars in the Pacific, on top of Europe and the Middle East.
The majority of the Pacific aid package passed by Congress was allocated to AUKUS development, procurement, and construction. The deterrence and defense of Taiwan against China requires even more.
Minimum 13 Aircraft Carrier Navy, Air Wings, and Drones
The U.S. must expand the fleet to at least 13 aircraft carriers and build 13 combat air wings, funding to extend the retirement of the Nimitz-class aircraft carriers through 2030. The current fleet is 11, in various cycles of maintenance, training, and operations. A war with China could realistically result in at least two damaged, reducing the fleet to nine. Shipyard capacity and replacement delays mean they’ll likely never return to service, as demonstrated by the economic loss of the USS Bonhomme Richard in 2020.
This applies to the air wings as well, which particularly the pilots likely won’t be replaced. The Navy and Air Force needs to fund combat drones to just meet attrition. The Department of Defense must stop proposing cuts every year to the F-35s, F-22s, F-15Cs, F-15E/EXs, EA-18Gs, and E-3s required to deter and defend Taiwan against China.
Win, lose, draw, or doesn’t happen; the expansion of China’s military or any change in the balance of power, increases the risk and requirements for conflict in the Indian Ocean in the 2030s.
Joint Exercises, State Partnership Program, and Basic Training
The U.S. and its allies must expand training and exercises with Taiwan’s entire military. Exercises are the foundation of security cooperation, and are the difference between isolated militaries, and those with experience in operations.
It also reveals deficiencies that need to be corrected, which is why training cannot be limited to select units that invariably become vectors of prestige, not capability or capacity. To paraphrase Mao Zedong’s “On Guerilla Warfare”, doctrinally it is impossible for a military to all be special.
Additionally, Taiwan needs to join the State Partnership Program, where countries are partnered with states and the National Guard for regular exchanges and relationships.
Finally, the U.S. needs to supplement Taiwan basic training capacity, by replicating the equivalent of for example Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island or San Diego, each producing up to 20,000 Marines annually. This needs to happen before 2027, not after, as demonstrated by the late training in Ukraine just to meet attrition.
These last policies are the most difficult because unlike procurement, it requires Taiwan to commit to its own defense. The island is divided, there is a passive fear of antagonizing China, denial that war will not happen, that they are too valuable to the world, or that everyone respects their right to exist.
China has said they will invade. Their history mandates unification. It’s probably too little, too late to deter, and 2027 if not sooner is the best chance China will ever have – and so it will.
Matt Quan is a U.S. Air Force veteran and was previously assigned to the Secretary of the Air Force, International Affairs at the Pentagon.
21. US Seeks Nuclear Microreactor Prototype to Power Army Bases
US Seeks Nuclear Microreactor Prototype to Power Army Bases
thedefensepost.com · by Rojoef Manuel · June 7, 2024
The US Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) has opened a commercial solicitation for a nuclear microreactor prototype capability to power US Army bases.
The Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations (ANPI) program seeks a new, full-lifecycle power plant that will generate and distribute electricity across in-country army sites by the end of the decade.
Under the notice, the DIU requires industry partners to plan the design, construction, operation, demonstration, and management of potential microreactors.
The resulting solutions should follow standards set by the US Army Regulatory Authority and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission throughout the technology’s operability.
Designers may submit one or more approaches inclusive of associated procedures, policies, and processes to the agency.
Selected proposals will be eligible for sole-sourced, follow-on contracts and production agreements for continued procurement until the end of the reactor’s lifecycle.
Requirements
The DIU wrote that the ANPI nuclear microreactor prototype should have a 20 percent less Uranium-235 requirement, and meet 100 percent of critical load requirements from 3 to 10 megawatts of electrical power.
The prototype should also be controlled within an army base only, and have integration features with other local infrastructure, operations centers, and maintenance systems.
It should have a commercial shore power connection and an alternative independent backup source that doesn’t utilize remote or wireless operation.
The ANPI reactor will encompass less than 5 acres (2 hectares) at an army installation, with its corresponding protected area not exceeding 540 feet (165 meters) in diameter.
Additionally, the plant’s irradiated core material should be removed from the base within five years of a contract’s completion or termination.
Energy Resilience by 2030
In its announcement, the DIU highlighted the vulnerability of existing military base power sources to modern threats and how to alleviate corresponding gaps.
“Currently, the US Army is reliant on off-site electricity providers … to conduct its globe-spanning missions in air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace,” the DIU said. “This energy dependence creates mission risks due to disruptions from extreme weather and cybersecurity attacks.”
“While current renewable energy solutions, such as wind and solar energy are carbon-free, they are intermittent, and require battery storage or other solutions to mitigate the intermittency.”
“Therefore, the Army is seeking a novel approach using recent advances in the nuclear industry that can provide continuous/reliable power regardless of weather conditions to 1) maintain military mission continuity and 2) comply with Congressional mandate under the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act to provide its critical missions with a goal of 99.9 percent reliable energy by 2030.”
thedefensepost.com · by Rojoef Manuel · June 7, 2024
22. US Orders Modified Hero Loitering Munitions for Special Operations
US Orders Modified Hero Loitering Munitions for Special Operations
thedefensepost.com · by Joe Saballa · June 6, 2024
Israel’s UVision has received a $74-million contract to deliver a modified version of its Hero-120 loitering munition to the US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM).
Called the Hero-120SF, the variant will include various enhancements, such as advanced guidance systems and improved payload capacity.
The weapon will also boast increased flexibility to enable seamless deployment from various USSOCOM platforms.
The company did not disclose the exact number of loitering munitions to be delivered, but reports indicated that the amount was less than 200 systems.
In addition to the anti-tank weapons, UVision will supply munitions, spare parts, and equipment training.
The company will partner with Maryland-based defense firm Mistral Inc. to fulfill the contract.
Work is expected to be completed by 2029.
About the Hero-120
Details about the Hero-120SF are currently limited, but the base Hero-120 carries a 4.5-kilogram (10-pound) warhead for carrying out heavy strikes against tanks, armored vehicles, and other heavily-armored targets.
It has a range of 60 kilometers (37 miles) and an endurance of up to 60 minutes.
According to UVision, the Hero-120 is designed to operate independently, or without the need to rely on fire support or intelligence gathering platforms.
It also has a very low signature and can be easily launched from a protected, hidden position to enable maximum safety for operators.
“This significant contract … underscores the commitment of both UVision and Mistral to provide cutting-edge technology and operational expertise to safeguard US national security,” UVision chairman Major General (Ret.) Avi Mizrachi said.
Production of the Hero-120SF will take place at UVision facilities in Virginia.
thedefensepost.com · by Joe Saballa · June 6, 2024
23. How to Think About Politics
And something to reflect on over the weekend. A personal story I found interesting.
How to Think About Politics
https://damonlinker.substack.com/p/how-i-learned-to-think-about-politics?utm
Reflections on my political education—and on an especially important teacher
DAMON LINKER
JUN 07, 2024
∙ PAID
Supporters of former US President Donald Trump hold signs and flags as they show their support for the Republican 2024 presidential candidate during a "Caravan for Trump" demonstration in West Palm Beach, Florida, on June 2, 2024. (Photo by GIORGIO VIERA/AFP via Getty Images)
If you subscribed to this Substack because you want to understand the antiliberal right, you really need to read Mark Lilla’s latest essay, titled “The Tower and the Sewer,” in the New York Review of Books. (It’s currently behind a paywall at the NYRB, but you can find a PDF of it at Lilla’s website.) A wide-ranging review covering several recent books by Patrick Deneen, Sohrab Ahmari, and Adrian Vermeule, the essay is a tour de force that places these writers in broad historical context, situates them in the contemporary American right, and combines generosity toward the psychological and spiritual struggles that animate their thinking with nuanced (and occasionally severe) criticism of it.
Those who know me well will not be surprised by this strong plug. Lilla is my teacher and friend stretching back more than three decades. So take my praise with several grains of salt if you wish. On the other hand, if you’re here reading my posts and consider them worth your time, there’s a good chance you’ll find Lilla’s work valuable, too. Beyond the quotable plaudits I’ve offered above, I’m going to devote this post to explaining why.
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Two Levels of Education
The more I reflect with distance on my intellectual autobiography, the more I can see that my education in political ideas has taken place on two levels.
The first level is about objective facts: Who was Plato? What (and how) did he write? What were his political and philosophical views? What have scholars made of these views down through the centuries and millennia? Now repeat for Thucydides, Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, and so forth, on down through the medieval, early modern, and modern thinkers of Western civilization.
This is education as prep for a comprehensive doctoral examination. I was extremely good at it. My mind has all sorts of defects, but I excel at grasping the Big Picture—of ideas and how they interact with each other, and then telling fairly accurate and elegant stories about how it all fits together.
But there’s another side to education in political ideas, one that was a much bigger challenge for me. That is the subjective side—the side that involves one’s individual reception of and response to ideas. What is my personal stance toward what I’ve read? How will it change me and the way I think and act in the world?
Some students are the equivalent of color blind or tone deaf when it comes to this subjective dimension of education. They can learn or memorize anything, but their souls remain unstirred by it all. I’m the opposite. When I was young, it seemed like everything I read was an invitation to take a leap or fall down blinded on the road to Damascus.
Now, I don’t want to give readers the impression I was running around in grad school like some holy fool, organizing protests or proselytizing on street corners. For complicated psychological reasons, I was also inclined to keep my spiritual yearnings and ecstasies largely to myself. But they were there, in my soul, which was surging and seething with longing and violently clashing promises of total fulfillment.
First I’d follow my teachers at Michigan State University in being a true-believing Straussian. Next, my Straussian convictions would melt into an aching love of Martin Heidegger, whom I studied in class and whose voluminous writings and lectures I devoured, volume by repetitive volume, in the library and at home. Then I would begin to doubt my enthusiasm and find myself drifting back to the skeptical liberalism in which I was raised, only now fortified with years of additional reading. But eventually this would leave me feeling dissatisfied and craving a more comprehensive vision—which is when I would pick up the writings of G.W.F. Hegel, finding in them a compelling, historicist account of liberal ideas, institutions, and social life. Though it usually wouldn’t take much longer than a month or so of trying to make sense of Hegel before Straussian criticisms of historicism would penetrate my mind, sending me back into the fold held open by my teachers.
Round and round I went, repeating this cycle multiple times, converting (or wanting to convert) from one holistic outlook on the human condition to the next, but never sitting still and affirming any of them for any length of time.
My lunge forward to a new position as soon as one collapsed was all on me. But why did the conversions never stick in the first place? The answer to that could be found further back in my education.
Lessons Learned in Letters
Before transferring to Michigan State to study with Straussians, I had earned an MA in history at New York University, where I started taking classes with Mark Lilla. Soon after I began showing up at his office hours to talk in greater detail about the reading, we developed a rapport. He could tell I was smart and had learned enough as an undergrad history major at Ithaca College to hold my own in his graduate courses. But he could also tell that political ideas mattered to me in a deep, spiritual sense. That made me the kind of student he loved to teach. But it also meant I required that second, subjective level of education. This isn’t anything we ever discussed explicitly. But years later it became clear to me that this is precisely what he was providing in our ongoing correspondence once I’d departed NYU for MSU.
It was in this correspondence that I would share what I was learning in my political theory courses and sometimes talk about how seductive I found the Straussian take on various thinkers, along with its philosophically powerful indictment of modernity. Or how I thought Heidegger might be right about an awful lot, while also wondering (with a slight air of disdain and condescension) how liberal skeptics (like Lilla himself) could defend themselves against the existential sledgehammer of fundamental ontology. Or how I had been a fool when I had recently dismissed liberalism. Or how Hegel’s account of liberalism really was the only kind a philosophically serious thinker could possibly affirm (unless this thinker began listening to the Straussian critics again….).
As the excellent teacher he was (and close friend he was becoming), Lilla would listen to me as I poured my soul into these letters and emails. And then he would offer advice. Here’s some of what he said:
- Look long and hard before making a leap you’re likely to regret.
- Remember your earlier studies of intellectual history and the patterns you saw in the past—the enthusiasms, the mistakes, the regrets.
- Keep in mind that political ideas are conjured in the minds of flesh-and-blood human beings, with psychological hopes, longings, blind spots, loves, and hates of their own, shaping their thought in complicated subterranean and often revealing ways.
- Remember the example of Socrates—the man who wrote nothing, who led no political movements, who posed questions instead of providing answers, and who combined an erotic longing for ultimate truths with ironic detachment toward the unexamined pieties that prevailed among his fellow citizens of ancient Athens.
That advice, offered bit by bit down through the years of my graduate studies and beyond, at first did little more than fuel recurring doubts about each successive constellation of ideas with which I became enamored, driving me to a moment of negation that left me reaching for the next promise of fulfillment. But eventually, those doubts became something more—an enriching subjective education in how to engage with political ideas, teaching me how to immerse myself in them—to inhabit them—without losing myself (and above all, my critical judgment). Anthropologists use the term “participant observation” to describe something akin to this approach to studying foreign cultures and ways of life. Lilla provided me with an education in how to achieve it in political theory.
(I learned years later that my teacher had come to his own ironic skepticism in part through a youthful experience of religious conversion and deconversion. Unfortunately, his hard-won lessons hadn’t yet penetrated far enough into my soul to keep me from making my own ill-advised conversion to Catholicism when I was 31 years old. But that’s a story for another day.)
Knowledge and Self-Knowledge
I could recommend any number of essays or books as an entry point to Mark Lilla’s thinking about politics, religion, philosophy, psychology, and literature. His 2001 collection of essays, The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics, is a favorite. As is the book he will be publishing later this year: Ignorance and Bliss: On Wanting Not to Know. I’ll be sure to write something about it when it appears.
And then there’s the essay that’s the occasion for this post. It’s filled with insights and wisdom about the figures he’s writing about. But my favorite passage occurs early on, before he’s turned to Deneen, Ahmari, or Vermeule, when he’s discussing improvement in journalistic coverage and scholarly study of the intellectual right in recent years. While conceding that our understanding of right-wing thinkers and movements is better than it used to be, he thinks we could be doing better still.
Keeping up with trends is not the same as understanding what they signify. What so often seems lacking in our reporting is alertness to the psychodynamics of ideological commitment. The great political novelists of the past—Dostoevsky, Conrad, Thomas Mann—created protagonists who make coherent ideological arguments that other characters engage with seriously but that also reveal something significant about their psychological makeup. (A classic example is the intellectual jousting of Lodovico Settembrini and Leo Naphta in The Magic Mountain.) These authors wrote the way good psychoanalysts practice their art in the consulting room. Analysts do not dismiss the reasons we give for what we feel and believe, which might contain a good deal of truth. They are not just waiting for the gotcha moment when our “real”—that is, base—motives appear and our stated reasons can be dismissed (a common excuse for not paying attention to the right). They look at us through two different lenses: as inquiring creatures who sometimes find the truth, and as self-deceiving creatures whose searches are willfully incomplete, revealingly repetitive, emotionally charged, and often self-undermining. That is the skill required to begin understanding the leading ideological movements of our time, especially those on the right.
When I read a paragraph like that—even now, after reading and talking to Lilla about such topics for 33 years—I feel a quickening in my soul. It’s no longer a desire to make a leap into the dark or into ersatz certainty or completion. It’s an excited longing to understand my fellow human beings as well as myself, and to do so by way of reflecting on how they (and I) think about, wrestle with, and strive to answer the ultimate questions of human life.
Those who’ve been with me here from the start might recall what I wrote in my launch post for “Eyes on the Right” about the need for empathy—for thinking ourselves into the outlook and mindset of those who have rejected liberalism and thrown themselves into right-populist politics. Now you know where I got that ambition, and the conviction of its importance. I got it from a teacher who taught me long ago that to understand political ideas, we must also understand ourselves.
Which may just be another way of saying that the old Delphic injunction—Know Thyself!—was correct in implying that self-knowledge is an essential element of knowledge, wisdom, and truth. Among so many other things, Mark Lilla taught me that lesson—and for that, as for so much else, I am and always will remain deeply grateful.
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
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