Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“Education isn’t something you can finish.”

- Isaac Asimov

“You meet saints everywhere. They can be anywhere. They are people behaving decently in an indecent society.”

- Kurt Vonnegut

“It is usually futile to try to talk facts… to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.”

- Thomas Sowell

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JULY 25 (Putin's War)

2. Nuclear Experts Question Possible Effects Of Chinese Cell Towers On U.S. Missile Silos

3. Condemning the Chinese Communist Party Is Not Enough

4. Want more capable military partners? Empower and promote Foreign Area Officers.

5. Pelosi’s Reported Taiwan Plans Spark High-Stakes Diplomatic Battle

6. Did war help societies become bigger and more complex?

7. Getting Ready for a Long War with China: Dynamics of Protracted Conflict in the Western Pacific

8. The Dark Scenario: Ukraine's Military Can’t Beat Russia and Collapses

9. NATO Is a Luxury Good the United States Doesn’t Need

10. Russia Strikes School, Civilian Buildings as It Presses Ukraine Bombardment

11. The Iran Nuclear Deal’s Convulsive Death

12. Biden blunders on refugees

13. Russia says it wants to end Ukraine's `unacceptable regime'

14. A Russian Defeat in Ukraine Could Save Taiwan

15. U.S. Officials Grow More Concerned About Potential Action by China on Taiwan

16. Exclusive: US and Taliban make progress on Afghan reserves, but big gaps remain

17. Federal Reserve and Senate Republicans spar over allegations of Chinese influence

18. Taiwan holds drills amid Pelosi visit concern, China tension

19. Tulsi Gabbard, Rand Paul placed on list of Russian propagandists by Ukraine

20. Ukraine destroys 50 Russian ammunition depots with U.S.-supplied HIMARS

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JULY 25 (Putin's War)

Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-july-25

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JULY 25

Jul 25, 2022 - Press ISW

understandingwar.org

Karolina Hird, Kateryna Stepanenko, Katherine Lawlor, Layne Philipson, and Frederick W. Kagan

July 25, 8:00pm ET

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

Russian forces made marginal territorial gains south of Bakhmut on July 25 but are largely suffering from the same fundamental limitations that previously prevented them from rapidly gaining substantial ground during offensive operations in Luhansk Oblast. Geolocated social media footage from July 25 shows that troops of the Wagner Group Private Military Company (PMC) have advanced into Novoluhanske and Russian and Ukrainian sources noted that Russian forces are taking control of the territory of the Vuhledar Power Plant on the northern edge of Novoluhanske, likely as a result of a controlled Ukrainian withdrawal from the area.[1]

Russian Telegram channels began reporting on Russian attempts to advance on Novoluhanske as early as May 25, which means that Russian troops have been unsuccessfully attacking this single location for two months.[2] Novoluhanske is neither a large settlement nor is it characterized by particularly challenging terrain, yet Russian forces have impaled themselves on it for weeks.

The capture of Novoluhanske and the Vuhledar Power Plant will not generate an advantageous salient along which Russian troops will be able to advance northwards towards Bakhmut. The Russian campaign to seize the Severodonetsk-Lysychansk area benefitted from the fact that they had already created a salient with those two cities near its apex. They were able continually to press on the flanks of Ukrainian defensive positions until they had secured Severodonetsk. They struggled after that to take advantage of the fact that Lysychansk remained at the apex of a salient until they managed to break out from Popasna to the south and drive northward. Siversk is currently the town closest to the apex of the remaining salient, and Russian forces have struggled to advance against it. The Russian seizure of Novoluhanske and the Vuhledar Power Plant, on the other hand, flattens the Ukrainian defensive line rather than perpetuating a salient, thereby limiting the advantage the occupation of those areas gives to the Russian forces.

The operations around Novoluhanske indicate that Russian forces are suffering the same limitations in terms of their ability to effectively use battlefield geometry (such as the creation of effective salients) to their advantage, which is exacerbated by the extreme difficulty Russian forces regularly have capturing small and relatively insignificant bits of terrain over weeks or months of fighting. These limitations will grow as Russian units continually degrade themselves during assaults on small villages. Russian forces are unlikely to be able to effectively leverage the capture of Novoluhanske to take Bakhmut, and the continual tactical and operational limitations they are facing on the battlefield will likely contribute to the culmination of the offensive in Donbas before capturing Bakhmut, Slovyansk, or any other major city in Donetsk Oblast.

Key Takeaways

Russian forces made marginal gains south of Bakhmut but are unlikely to be able to effectively leverage these advances to take full control of Bakhmut itself.
Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks north of Kharkiv City, east of Siversk, and east of Bakhmut.
Russian forces are continuing to fortify and strengthen positions in Zaporizhia and Kherson Oblasts in anticipation of Ukrainian counteroffensives.
Ukrainian forces are continuing to strike Russian strongholds along the Southern Axis.
Russian forces continued to withdraw military equipment from storage in Omsk and face challenges with repairing damaged combat vehicles.
Russian occupation officials are continuing to set conditions for the annexation of occupied territories to the Russian Federation and to extend administrative control of occupied areas of Ukraine.

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

Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and two supporting efforts);
Subordinate Main Effort—Encirclement of Ukrainian Troops in the Cauldron between Izyum and Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts
Supporting Effort 1—Kharkiv City
Supporting Effort 2—Southern Axis
Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
Activities in Russian-occupied Areas

Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

Subordinate Main Effort—Southern Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk Oblasts (Russian objective: Encircle Ukrainian forces in Eastern Ukraine and capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks northwest of Slovyansk and shelled settlements to the southeast and southwest of Izyum on July 25. The Ukrainian General Staff noted that the Russian grouping in this area is focusing on replenishing manpower and equipment losses.[3] Russian forces shelled Bohorodychne, Dibrovne, Dolyna, Adamivka, and Mazanivka to the southeast of Izyum and Barvinkove, and Karnaukhiva to the southwest of Izyum in the Barvinkove direction.[4] Russian forces also conducted missile and artillery strikes on Kramatorsk, 10km south of Slovyansk.[5]

Russian forces continued unsuccessful ground assaults east of Siversk on July 25. Ukrainian sources reported that Russian troops failed to advance on Ivano-Darivka (about 10km southeast of Siversk) from Berestove and Verkhnokamyanka.[6] Russian forces reportedly continued ground attacks around Spirne (15km southeast of Siversk) and Verkhnokamyanske (5km due east of Siversk) and conducted air and artillery attacks around Siversk to support ongoing ground attacks.[7]

Russian forces made incremental advances south of Bakhmut on July 25. Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Deputy Internal Minister Vitaly Kiselev posted footage of Wagner Group mercenaries in front of the sign at the entrance of Novoluhanske, roughly 25km southeast of the outskirts of Bakhmut, which indicates that Russian troops have advanced into Novoluhanske.[8] Several Russian sources additionally claimed that Russian forces are actively clearing the territory of the Vuhledar Power Plant, which lies on the northern edge of Novoluhanske.[9] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces had ”partial success” on the territory of the Vuhledar Power Plant, which may indicate that Ukrainian troops conducted a controlled withdrawal from the plant.[10] A Russian war correspondent reporting for the Russian Federal News Agency (FAN) stated that Ukrainian forces can only withdraw to the northwest of Novoluhanske to Semihirya, further suggesting that Ukrainian forces are engaging in a deliberate and controlled withdrawal from the territory of the power plant.[11] Russian forces also continued fighting around Novoluhanske in Vershyna and Myronivskyi.[12]

Russian forces additionally continued limited ground attacks to the east of Bakhmut. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces failed to advance from Klynove to occupied positions in Pokrovske.[13] Russian Telegram channels claimed that Russian forces are fighting northeast of Bakhmut around Bakhmutske and Soledar in order to advance southwest on Bakhmut from Soledar.[14]

Russian forces did not make any confirmed ground attacks around Donetsk City and continued artillery strikes along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City frontline.[15]

Supporting Effort #1—Kharkiv City (Russian objective: Defend ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Izyum and prevent Ukrainian forces from reaching the Russian border)

Russian forces conducted a limited ground assault north of Kharkiv City on July 25.[16] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces suffered losses when attempting an unsuccessful ground assault from Tsupivka to Dementiivka.[17] Russian forces continued conducting combat operations in an effort to maintain occupied positions and prevent Ukrainian forces from advancing toward the international border.[18] Russian forces conducted airstrikes on Petrivka, Prudyanka, and Yavirske and launched tube and rocket artillery strikes on Kharkiv City and settlements to the north, northeast, and southeast on July 25.[19]

Supporting Effort #2—Southern Axis (Russian objective: Defend Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts against Ukrainian counterattacks)

Russian forces continued to fortify their positions in Zaporizhia and Kherson Oblasts in preparations for Ukrainian counteroffensives. Zaporizhia Oblast Military Administration Head Oleksandr Starukh reported that Russian forces are digging trenches on the territory of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) and hiding military equipment in residential neighborhoods.[20] Enerhodar City Administration Head Dmytro Orlov added that Russian forces are continuing to use defensive positions around the Zaporizhzhia NPP to shell settlements in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.[21] The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) noted that Russian forces also partially restored the work of a concrete plant in Melitopol to strengthen defensive lines and firing positions and rebuild an airfield in the city.[22] The GUR specified that Russian attempts to rebuild the airfield will require at least 21 to 28 days and will not likely make it fully operational. Ukrainian sources published footage of Russian forces reportedly transferring tanks and armored personnel carriers via settlements south and north of Melitopol, likely in the Kherson Oblast direction.[23] Advisor to the Kherson Oblast Military Administration Serhiy Khlan reported that Russian forces are attempting to patch the Antonivskyy Bridge but are unlikely to restore its capacity to transport heavy military equipment.[24] Geolocated footage also showed Russian forces building a pontoon bridge over the Inhulets River near Darivka, approximately 17km northeast of Kherson City.[25]

Russian forces continued to launch air, missile, and artillery strikes along the Kherson Oblast administrative border, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, and Mykolaiv City on July 25.[26] Russian forces reportedly fired six missiles at Mykolaiv City and settlements in its vicinity.[27] The Ukrainian General Staff noted that Russian forces are also increasingly conducting aerial reconnaissance in the region.[28]

Ukrainian forces reportedly continued to strike Russian strongholds on the Southern Axis on July 24 and July 25. The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command reported that Ukrainian forces destroyed an observation and command post of the Russian 785th Separate Special Unit of the Rosgvardia and two ammunition depots in unspecified localities.[29] Ukrainian assault aircraft and helicopters reportedly struck three Russian strongholds in Beryslavskyi and Khersonskyi districts, and Russian Telegram channel Rybar claimed reports of Ukrainian artillery strikes on the Kherson City outskirts, but ISW cannot independently confirm either report.[30] Social media footage showed smoke surrounding Russian trains in Novooleksivka in southeastern Kherson Oblast, but the cause of the smoke and the level of damage to the trains is unclear.[31]

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

Russian forces continued to withdraw additional military equipment to commit to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Satellite imagery showed that Russian forces withdrew 60 units of 2S7 Pion howitzers from storage at the 9th Arsenal in Omsk, Russia as of July 18.[32] Satellite imagery previously showed that the arsenal had 170 howitzers in early April and 135 in early June. The UK Defense Ministry also reported that Russian forces are continuing to face challenges in repairing combat vehicles as witnessed by at least 300 damaged vehicles (main battle tanks, armored personnel carriers, and support trucks) at the refit and refurbishment facility near Barvinok, Belgorod Oblast.[33]

The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported that Russian forces began covert mobilization of medics across Russia to treat the growing number of wounded servicemen.[34] The GUR noted that Russian forces are specifically mobilizing surgical personnel and intend to deploy other medical staff to work on the frontlines and in occupied cities in Donbas. The GUR added that Russian forces also established mobile medical clinics in occupied settlements of Donetsk Oblast where they reportedly coerce residents to donate blood for Russian troops.

Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of occupied areas; set conditions for potential annexation into the Russian Federation or some other future political arrangement of Moscow’s choosing)

Russian occupation officials continued setting conditions to falsify annexation referenda in occupied Ukrainian territories to annex those territories into Russia, likely around mid-September. Radio Liberty published a Russian document entitled "Strategy for the Preparation and Holding of the Referendum on the Accession of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) to the Russian Federation” on July 25, citing unspecified Ukrainian intelligence sources.[35] The document details Russian preparations to hold faux referenda in the DNR in order to annex the DNR directly into Russia.

The document claims that Russian occupation officials hope to portray a 70% participation rate and a 70% approval rate in the falsified DNR referendum. Occupation authorities based their calculations on the population for the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, but the document incongruously notes that only one-third of Donetsk civilians remain in Russian-occupied areas—occupation forces may struggle to calculate plausible participation or approval numbers for their sham plebiscite. This mismatch between the actual population of Russian-occupied Donetsk Oblast and the numbers used to calculate the referendum totals demonstrates that the Kremlin has long planned to occupy and annex the entirety of Donetsk Oblast. The document may have been written before the Russian offensive stalled. Alternatively, the Kremlin may still believe that Russian forces will conquer the rest of Donetsk—the degraded state of their forces and the scope of Ukrainian fortifications along the current frontlines suggest that Russian forces are very unlikely to secure the oblast before the fall. Russian reports continue to suggest that the Kremlin is planning to hold faux referenda across occupied Ukraine around September 11.[36] Their ongoing military failures could lead the Kremlin to postpone the annexation referenda in Donetsk or across occupied Ukrainian oblasts.

The leaked document also included instructions on using long-lasting ink as a “voter’s mark” to prevent double-voting in the elections, a low-tech solution that could be easily circumvented if occupation authorities decide to physically stuff ballot boxes rather than simply announce their desired results after the sham plebiscite. The “voter’s mark” could also be used to identify and target Ukrainian civilians in occupied areas who refuse to participate in the sham election. In a most dangerous scenario, occupation authorities could add fingerprinting and biometric registration to the “voter’s mark” process, creating a biometric database of civilians in occupied Donetsk that could later be used to identify and disrupt opposition groups and partisan networks in occupied territories.

Separately, Russian occupation officials continued their efforts to force Ukrainian civilians in occupied territories to register for Russian passports and to use the ruble on July 25. Prominent Russian milbloggers claimed that occupation officials have begun issuing Russian-style birth certificates for children born in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast, a precursor to registering those children for Russian passports if their families hope to leave the oblast.[37] The Russian-appointed head of the Zaporizhia Occupation Administration, Yevheny Balitsky, claimed that as of July 25, there are 12 total passport and documentation offices in Zaporizhia Oblast and that over 18,000 people have signed up for Russian passports in the oblast.[38] The Russian-appointed head of the Kherson Occupation Administration, Kirill Stremousov, said on July 25 that his administration will gradually withdraw the Ukrainian hryvnia from circulation and replace it with the Russian ruble.[39] Russian milblogger Boris Rozhin claimed on July 25 that occupation officials will provide rubles as part of pensions, salaries, and benefits, driving down the hryvnia’s exchange rate over time.[40] The passportization and rubleization of occupied territories are components of the broader Russian campaign to degrade Ukrainian governance capabilities and Ukrainian identity in occupied areas even if Ukrainian forces are able to recapture them.

[22] https://gur dot gov.ua/content/okupanty-namahaiutsia-vidnovyty-aerodrom-v-melitopoli-za-dopomohoiu-mistsevoho-zavodu-z-vyrobnytstva-betonu.html

[34] https://gur dot gov.ua/content/rosiiski-shpytali-ne-zdatni-vporatysia-z-naiavnoiu-kilkistiu-poranenykh-okupantiv-v-rf-provodytsia-mobilizatsiia-medychnoho-personalu.html

[35] https://www.radiosvoboda dot org/a/news-donetsk-referendum-rosiya/31958421.html

[39] https://tass dot ru/ekonomika/15299285?utm_source=google.com&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=google.com&utm_referrer=google.com

understandingwar.org

2. Nuclear Experts Question Possible Effects Of Chinese Cell Towers On U.S. Missile Silos

Excerpts:

Exactly how China fits in with suspicions of espionage directed against these facilities is open to question, at least until U.S. intelligence agencies provide hard evidence of such activity having taken place. Nevertheless, there’s now a long track record of allegations against Beijing, specifically relating to American ICBMs. Here, again, the true scale of the risk should be looked at carefully, as Stephen Schwartz observes:

“Even if, for the sake of argument, China could somehow compromise the entire ICBM fleet and prevent or delay its use, we have eight Ohio class ballistic missile submarines based in the Pacific Ocean carrying 160 Trident II D5/LE SLBMs armed with four to five warheads apiece that could still obliterate China. (And it's worth noting that while some of our ICBMs may indeed target China, we're highly unlikely to use them to do that in anything but the most extreme circumstances — i.e., all-out nuclear war — for the simple reason that they would have to overfly Russia first to reach China, which would be incredibly provocative and dangerous.)”

Of course, only a couple of these submarines are on deterrent patrol in the Pacific and the Atlantic at any given time, but America's submarine-based second strike deterrent is extremely robust, and this is in addition to the bomber of the triad, that is far more flexible but less survivable. Still, the Pentagon does not see it quite this way. The ICBMs are of the highest strategic priority, and any potential security threat to them is taken extremely seriously.

Whatever the truth of the latest allegations, recent developments suggest that the U.S. is pursuing somewhat of a more transparent approach when it comes to releasing details of suspected Chinese intelligence efforts on U.S. soil. With that in mind, there could well be more accounts of similar Chinese activities directed against ICBMs and other U.S. military infrastructure coming in the future.

Nuclear Experts Question Possible Effects Of Chinese Cell Towers On U.S. Missile Silos

The intel community is reportedly worried about Chinese cell tower gear near nuclear missile silos, but experts don’t necessarily agree with the claims.

THOMAS NEWDICK

JUL 25, 2022 4:48 PM

thedrive.com · by Thomas Newdick · July 25, 2022

Chinese-made electronics equipment officially installed close to U.S. military bases could threaten communications links vital to the Pentagon’s land-based nuclear deterrent forces, according to a recent CNN report. The latest findings have apparently caused a significant degree of alarm in the FBI and, furthermore, suggest that these kinds of issues involving Chinese technology are becoming a growing concern.

CNN’s report, by Katie Bo Lillis, draws upon an FBI investigation looking in particular at the use of equipment made by Chinese firm Huawei. This investigation has been driven by a spike in Chinese espionage activities in the United States in recent years and has resulted in what the article describes as a “frenzy of counterintelligence activity by the FBI and other federal agencies.”

The investigation, the report contends, has been running since at least 2017 and has looked into Chinese land purchases close to sensitive U.S. facilities, more traditional spy rings, and Chinese surveillance devices alleged to have been planted near U.S. military and government infrastructure.

Of particular interest, and concern is the FBI’s supposed discovery of Huawei equipment located on cell towers in proximity to U.S. military bases in the rural Midwest. CNN says it has spoken to “more than a dozen” sources familiar with the matter, including current and former national security officials. They confirmed that the equipment “was capable of capturing and disrupting highly restricted Defense Department communications.”

Map showing the areas of the six Minuteman missile wings on the central and northern Great Plains. The areas in black denote deactivated missile wings, the areas in red denote the three remaining active missile wings. National Park Service

Most critically, those communications reportedly include those used by U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), responsible for the country’s nuclear weapons. In the Midwest, the command’s facilities include extensive intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) fields in Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, and Wyoming.

In 2019, it was reported that Huawei cellphone towers were located close to Malmstrom Air Force Base in central Montana, which is home to more than 100 silos for Minuteman III ICBMs. Subsequent reports suggest that the primary area of inquiry are the towers stretching along Interstate 25 in Colorado and Montana, as well as into Nebraska.

A launch facility operated by Malmstrom Air Force Base in 2017. The 583rd Missile Maintenance Squadron, part of Air Force Materiel Command, completed programmed depot maintenance on a launch facility at Malmstrom, a first-ever for the intercontinental ballistic missile weapons system. U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Delia Marchick

The following year, there were reports that towers close to ICBM silos in Nebraska could be vulnerable to Chinese espionage.

It’s not immediately clear how the equipment might be used against the U.S. military. However, “capturing and disrupting” indicates that the FBI consider that the Chinese would not only be able to intercept or even spoof highly classified communications but also interfere with them. This might include jamming these channels to close them down, or it could possibly involve more sophisticated techniques, such as sending false signals. However, the credibility of these scenarios has been questioned by some. James Acton, co-director of the Carnegie Nuclear Policy Program, observes that cell phones operate at very different frequencies compared with the U.S. military communications they would be expected to jam.

Eduardo Rojas, head of the radio spectrum lab at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida, told CNN that listening in on military communications was “feasible.” He added: “It’s not technically hard to make a device that complies with the FCC that listens to nonpublic bands but then is quietly waiting for some activation trigger to listen to other bands.”

Speaking to Reuters, an unnamed individual said to be familiar with the matter pointed to concerns that China would be able to “obtain sensitive data on military drills and the readiness status of bases and personnel.”

However, it’s unclear to what degree Chinese intelligence would actually be able to decipher the encrypted messages used by USSTRATCOM for transmitting sensitive data. There is also the fact, raised by Stephen Schwartz, a nonresident senior fellow at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, that the command primarily relies upon secure, underground landlines for its communications, providing an altogether more rugged and resilient network.

Schwartz told The War Zone: “With regard to the ICBMs, it doesn't seem entirely credible to me for the reasons I laid out in my thread over the weekend. Whatever's on those cellphone towers isn't going to intercept let alone disrupt the primary underground landlines the ICBM force relies upon. Could they interfere with the backup radio and satellite communications systems? I'm no expert in that so … maybe? But, again, those channels are only utilized if the underground lines become unavailable, and that's only likely to happen in a nuclear war or, I suppose, a massive cyberattack.”

As well as eavesdropping over the cellphone networks, the FBI has reportedly been investigating the appearance of high-definition surveillance cameras, also mounted on towers, and used to provide live streams for weather and traffic information. According to anonymous officials, there has been concern that these could be used for monitoring the movements of U.S. military vehicles in broadly the same areas, along Interstate 25.

A convoy of 741st Missile Security Forces Squadron vehicles from Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana, rolls down a dirt road during a training exercise in 2014. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Jason Wiese

Schwartz continued: “You might get some quasi-open-source intelligence from the tower-mounted cameras — like seeing in real time the large trucks used to occasionally remove or replace missiles before and after periodic flight tests, the armored convoys used to transport nuclear warheads to and from the base, when launch crews arrive or depart for work, or when maintenance teams are on site at the silos (meaning the missile would be unavailable for use for a period of at least several hours).”

“But given that there are 400 Minuteman IIIs on 24/7 alert scattered across thousands of square miles in five states, knowing that a handful are unavailable for use doesn't much alter the threat calculus if they start flying toward you. The only potentially-significant threat I can see is that the equipment on the towers could enable someone to monitor the movements of everyone using or in proximity to (pinging) the cellphone network, including Air Force personnel and civilian contractors operating and maintaining the ICBMs. With that data, you could learn who works where and on what shifts, what routes they drive, where they live, whom else they know, and what local businesses they frequent. That digital data could then possibly be used to identify, recruit, or compromise selected individuals with access to secret information about the ICBMs or nuclear war plans in general. But that's not what the report says is most concerning to the FBI and other security professionals.”

An unarmed Minuteman III ICBM shoots out of the silo during an operational test launch at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. U.S. Air Force photo courtesy of 30th Space Wing Public Affairs

As it stands, we also don’t have any evidence so far that China was shown to actually be using the equipment in question for any kinds of nefarious purposes, although that remains possible. But meanwhile, it's clear that intelligence officials are dealing with China’s ability to intercept and disrupt the flow of classified U.S. data.

For its part, the Chinese government “strongly denies” any espionage against the United States, according to CNN.

Meanwhile, Huawei told the news channel that its equipment is not able to intercept any Pentagon communications. The firm also said that all its technology in the United States is first tested and approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

This, however, is refuted by different sources who spoke to CNN, including one former FBI official who is familiar with details of the investigation. Of the Huawei equipment, that official said: “This gets into some of the most sensitive things we do. It would impact our ability for essentially command and control with the nuclear triad. That goes into the ‘BFD’ category.”

Of course, if that’s true, and the cell tower equipment does allow eavesdropping on USSTRATCOM communications, it would presumably mean that China was similarly able to covertly hoover up data from multiple other military and commercial channels, providing they were within range. In the past, Huawei has been accused of monitoring cellphone calls around the world, including in Australia. In the Netherlands, meanwhile, the company was alleged to have potentially gained access to conversations by the then prime minister.

When the United Kingdom planned to have Huawei build its 5G infrastructure, the U.S. declared that this could put British sovereignty at risk and led to one U.S. senator warning that the U.K.’s decision could block future deployments of U.S. Air Force F-35 stealth fighters to the country. In the end, the United Kingdom reversed its decision.

A U.S. Air Force F-35 assigned to the 34th Fighter Squadron approaches a KC-10 Extender to receive fuel over Poland, February 24, 2022. The F-35, originally from Hill Air Force Base, Utah, was forward deployed to NATO’s eastern flank to support NATO’s Enhanced Air Policing mission. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Joseph Barron

While the latest investigation was ongoing, the U.S. government was already taking action to prevent potential espionage, with Huawei at the center of this. As that firm began to be seen increasingly as a potential threat to national security, U.S. regulators stepped in. Since then, Huawei has been repeatedly implicated in U.S. investigations, with successive trade restrictions having been placed on the company in recent years.

In 2019, actions included blacklisting Huawei (together with another Chinese firm, ZTE), preventing U.S. communications firms from buying their equipment using federal subsidies that are intended to promote cell services in rural areas.

A year later, further measures came into place with the aim of removing cellular technology produced by Huawei and ZTE from communications networks in rural areas of the United States. This measure stalled, however, with the affected telecom companies have yet to receive the federal reimbursement money they had been expecting. In all, some 24,000 pieces of communications equipment were affected.

Cell phone tower in Holmes Beach, Florida. Yvesmayrand/Wikimedia Commons

Under the Biden administration, national security officials have continued to cast a critical eye over the role played by Huawei within U.S. communications infrastructure. This investigation is ongoing but could ultimately lead to a ruling that demands U.S. telecom carriers remove Huawei equipment from their networks.

Whatever the reality of China’s ability to listen in on or interfere with USSTRATCOM and other critical communications, the fact that the latest investigation is now in the open reflects a new approach to Beijing’s presumed espionage tactics. According to FBI Director Christopher Wray, U.S. intelligence officials open a new China counterintelligence investigation every 12 hours, not including cyber theft, which is judged to be an even bigger issue.

The Chinese operate “a bigger hacking program than that of every other major nation combined and have stolen more of Americans’ personal and corporate data than every nation combined,” Wray said.

And although evidence of Chinese espionage via Huawei technology atop cellphone towers hasn’t been provided, investigators are apparently particularly suspicious about the way that these systems have proliferated in certain areas. These are not only close to U.S. military bases but are also areas where their installation is judged to be unprofitable for Huawei.

It’s notable that there have, in the recent past, been other concerns that the U.S. Air Force’s ICBM facilities in the Midwest have been vulnerable to espionage by foreign powers.

This has included investigations into how Chinese companies may be buying up land close to these areas. According to CNN, this has led to at least one instance of a proposed commercial sale being shut down, after it became clear that the land in question was “near highly sensitive military testing installations in Utah .” Similar worries emerged when it became clear that a former Chinese People’s Liberation Army general owns 200 square miles of land adjacent to Laughlin Air Base in Texas.

Meanwhile, Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota, which was previously home to ICBMs, and now supports other Air Force assets, including RQ-4 Global Hawk reconnaissance drones, has recently been at the center of different Chinese-related concerns. A corn milling plant that was planned to be built nearby by the Chinese Fufeng Group has come under scrutiny due to what some have speculated could be an espionage risk. Now, the future of that project will be determined by a U.S. government review.

In the past, The War Zone has also looked deeply into the flurry of reports of formations of drones received by law enforcement agencies in numerous rural counties in eastern Colorado and adjacent areas of Nebraska and Kansas. The ‘mystery drone’ incident led to concerns expressed by at least two U.S. senators as well as Colorado’s governor and state public safety agency.

At the center of these reports were F.E. Warren and the 90th Security Forces Group regarding the spate of drone sightings. The 90th Security Forces Group provides security both for F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming and the 150 Minuteman III ICBMs operated by the 90th Missile Wing.

U.S. Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten, the then U.S. Strategic Command commander, and members of his staff depart a 37th Helicopter Squadron UH-1N Huey near a missile alert facility on the F.E. Warren Air Force Base missile complex, in 2017. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Christopher Ruano

Mapping the complex wireless communications networks in and around the ICBM fields was one theory as to what the drones could have been doing, if indeed they existed as so many witnesses claimed.

Despite their efforts, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was unable to determine the origin of the flying formations of drones reported by many credible witnesses in December 2019 and January 2020.

The critical importance of the ICBM fields to the strategic posture of the United States cannot be downplayed and, with that in mind, it’s not entirely surprising that these areas are subject to a higher level of scrutiny in regards to potential espionage or unexplained events.

Exactly how China fits in with suspicions of espionage directed against these facilities is open to question, at least until U.S. intelligence agencies provide hard evidence of such activity having taken place. Nevertheless, there’s now a long track record of allegations against Beijing, specifically relating to American ICBMs. Here, again, the true scale of the risk should be looked at carefully, as Stephen Schwartz observes:

“Even if, for the sake of argument, China could somehow compromise the entire ICBM fleet and prevent or delay its use, we have eight Ohio class ballistic missile submarines based in the Pacific Ocean carrying 160 Trident II D5/LE SLBMs armed with four to five warheads apiece that could still obliterate China. (And it's worth noting that while some of our ICBMs may indeed target China, we're highly unlikely to use them to do that in anything but the most extreme circumstances — i.e., all-out nuclear war — for the simple reason that they would have to overfly Russia first to reach China, which would be incredibly provocative and dangerous.)”

Of course, only a couple of these submarines are on deterrent patrol in the Pacific and the Atlantic at any given time, but America's submarine-based second strike deterrent is extremely robust, and this is in addition to the bomber of the triad, that is far more flexible but less survivable. Still, the Pentagon does not see it quite this way. The ICBMs are of the highest strategic priority, and any potential security threat to them is taken extremely seriously.

Whatever the truth of the latest allegations, recent developments suggest that the U.S. is pursuing somewhat of a more transparent approach when it comes to releasing details of suspected Chinese intelligence efforts on U.S. soil. With that in mind, there could well be more accounts of similar Chinese activities directed against ICBMs and other U.S. military infrastructure coming in the future.

Contact the author: thomas@thedrive.com

thedrive.com · by Thomas Newdick · July 25, 2022

3. Condemning the Chinese Communist Party Is Not Enough

Excerpts:

Moreover, if the United States—after decades of disappointment—still aspires to see democratic change in China, it is also difficult to see how merely condemning the CCP regime and minimizing interaction with it could advance that goal. The fact that U.S. engagement has not liberalized China—regardless of whether that was its purpose—does not mean that it can’t. Indeed, the CCP’s persistent fear that engagement might change China should be sufficient reason to sustain it.

This is why mere condemnation of the CCP regime, however justifiable, will have limited utility and success in either liberalizing China or yielding other strategic benefits for the United States. Washington can and should continue to censure Beijing when it engages in horrendous activities and exceeds or violates international norms in its behavior. The United States should also continue bolstering its capabilities and strategies to vigorously resist, deter, and counter Beijing’s offensive actions and agenda. But this must be accompanied by pragmatic and persistent efforts to engage with CCP leaders in pursuit of the full range of material U.S. interests and American security and prosperity. This should also include concerted efforts to better and more accurately understand the Chinese mindset.

Such an approach will inevitably be very difficult and will involve risks and costs. But any alternative approach—especially one that focuses exclusively on competition, confrontation, and condemnation—would probably entail even greater risks and costs and offer little chance of success in reversing the downward spiral in U.S.-China relations.

Condemning the Chinese Communist Party Is Not Enough

Mere condemnation of the CCP regime, however justifiable, will have limited utility and success in either liberalizing China or yielding other strategic benefits for the United States.

The National Interest · by Paul Heer · July 25, 2022

Earlier this month I asserted that U.S. “engagement” with China, contrary to much recent commentary, was not based on false premises and remains a viable and even necessary component of U.S. policy toward the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime in Beijing. Among the responses to that article were some vehement attacks on my judgement, integrity, and loyalty to the United States. I was accused in particular of rarely if ever acknowledging the horrific nature of the CCP, and I was advised that my credibility depended on my willingness to publicly condemn it.

I have always been ready to do so. The CCP is a repugnant regime, and it appears to have become even more so over the past two decades in spite and even in defiance of U.S. engagement with it. Whether from authoritarian instincts or deep insecurities, it has engaged in horrific violations of human rights: harsh and sometimes brutal crackdowns on any form of dissidence or public unrest; arbitrary exercise of “rule by law”; oppressive media controls; pervasive monitoring and surveillance of everyday life for Chinese citizens; enforcement of a totalitarian “zero-COVID” policy; routine suppression of religious freedoms; credible reports of torture, forced labor, sterilization, and “organ harvesting” among prisoners; ruthless social control policies in Tibet and Xinjiang, including de facto concentration camps apparently aimed at anesthetizing Islam among the Uyghurs; and a tight clampdown on civil rights and freedom of expression in Hong Kong. I condemn all of these actions.

Outside China, the CCP and its operatives engage in activities aimed at extending its jurisdiction to critics of the regime abroad, including surveillance and intimidation of overseas Chinese (even foreign nationals) suspected of disloyalty to the “mother country.” Beijing’s even more extensive “influence operations” abroad—including in the United States—often go far beyond acceptable public diplomacy to include “corrupt and coercive” efforts to advance Beijing’s interests or recruit agents of influence, sometimes in violation of local laws. China also conducts a wide range of covert operations that include industrial espionage and cyber activities aimed at stealing trade, technology, and government secrets.

In the economic realm, Beijing routinely engages globally in a wide range of unfair and sometimes mercenary or predatory trade practices. It also uses economic levers coercively in pursuit of its interests, or to punish other countries that Beijing perceives as challenging those interests. Moreover, much of its economic engagement abroad facilitates or employs corrupt business practices, and often at the expense of promoting good governance, environmental protection, and nonproliferation. Indeed, to the extent that Beijing seeks to “export” elements of its system, its global engagement facilitates autocracy in other countries and sometimes empowers it by providing like-minded regimes with the tools and tactics of social control.

In the diplomatic realm, Beijing’s representatives often conduct themselves with arrogance, belligerence, or duplicity—hence the characterization of “wolf warrior” diplomacy. Moreover, Chinese diplomacy routinely excuses or implicitly endorses belligerence and/or human rights abuses by other countries, most recently Russia’s monstrous invasion of Ukraine. Beijing’s global activities are clearly aimed in part at undermining U.S. influence and credibility—and the cohesion of the U.S. alliance network—and at expanding the influence and appeal of China’s authoritarian socialist system at the expense of American democracy and values.

In the security realm, China has increasingly conducted coercive and even aggressive behavior in pursuit of its sovereignty claims, both in the maritime realm in the East and South China Seas, and in its land border dispute with India. Many of these activities have been in violation of international law, or of widely accepted principles of freedom of navigation. Beijing’s behavior toward Taiwan in particular has grown increasingly coercive and threatening, fueling fears of war in the Taiwan Strait.

This compilation only skims the surface of China’s multi-pronged global challenge to the United States, and the inherent ruthlessness of the CCP leadership. In short, Beijing is governed by an abominable regime that apparently will stop at nothing in its pursuit of total control domestically and maximal power and influence globally. It thus merits rebuke and denunciation.

So why do I not articulate this more often and as a matter of course? Because it is too easy, rarely productive, and—for those reasons—not cathartic. The CCP regime certainly merits “naming and shaming” for a wide range of reprehensible behaviors, especially in the realm of human rights and in standards of international conduct. And sometimes public censure can lead Beijing to alter or calibrate its actions, especially if the criticism is broad and multilateral. But given the CCP’s tough façade, visceral commitment to its principles (such as they are), and calculus of its international leverage, this usually succeeds only on the margins.

Moreover, simply confronting CCP leaders with protests against Chinese behavior risks replicating Beijing’s own tendency to deliver lists of grievances and demands to other countries—as was reflected earlier this month in Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s meetings with his American and Australian counterparts. Some observers interpreted Wang’s behavior as Beijing merely posturing for the Chinese domestic audience, with no real intention of improving U.S.-China or China-Australia relations. But Washington’s diplomatic interactions with Beijing are often perceived the same way by Chinese leaders—and perhaps by other countries as well. And focusing exclusively on China’s objectionable activities, however warranted, bypasses—either intentionally or otherwise—acknowledgement of the U.S. side of the equation. The inconvenient truth is that Washington shares some accountability for U.S.-China bilateral tensions, and thus bears some responsibility for taking steps to improve the relationship.

In addition, rote condemnation of Chinese behavior often sidesteps examination of why the CCP regime acts the way it does, which is crucial to developing constructive ways of responding to and shaping that behavior. Some commentators assert that it is simply “in its nature” for the CCP to behave the way it does. There is certainly truth in this, inasmuch as the CCP carries all the baggage of a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist authoritarian party, with its combination of megalomania, neuralgia, and paranoia. But Chinese leadership actions also have other domestic and international drivers, due to China’s unique historical circumstances and the current volatile international security environment—which is attributable in part to what CCP leaders accurately refer to as global “changes unseen in a century.” Washington could benefit from a better understanding of the Chinese mindset through the exercise of some “strategic empathy”—but such an approach is often equated with “sympathy” and is thus preemptively rejected.

Dismissing the Chinese perspective as anathema forecloses any potential for mutual understanding and constructive relations. But that appears to be the judgment and even the preference of critics of engagement with Beijing. They advocate renunciation and abandonment of engagement on the grounds that it has not only failed to transform the CCP and China to our liking but has probably facilitated the regime’s accumulation of wealth and power and influence at the expense of the United States—and thus helped Beijing to advance its authoritarian agenda. In this view, China cannot be shaped in a positive direction, so Washington should stop trying because it is only empowering a nemesis that poses an existential threat to America.

But what is the alternative to engagement, and what are its objectives? Does it have a greater chance of success in advancing American interests and security? What is the basis for judging that it does? It is difficult to see how the plethora of U.S. strategic interests that have long been pursued through reciprocal interaction with Beijing will be advanced if that process is suspended. In this regard, another inconvenient truth is that China’s international leverage relative to the United States has substantially increased over the past generation, so it cannot be ignored or isolated or deemed unacceptable as an interlocutor.

Moreover, if the United States—after decades of disappointment—still aspires to see democratic change in China, it is also difficult to see how merely condemning the CCP regime and minimizing interaction with it could advance that goal. The fact that U.S. engagement has not liberalized China—regardless of whether that was its purpose—does not mean that it can’t. Indeed, the CCP’s persistent fear that engagement might change China should be sufficient reason to sustain it.

This is why mere condemnation of the CCP regime, however justifiable, will have limited utility and success in either liberalizing China or yielding other strategic benefits for the United States. Washington can and should continue to censure Beijing when it engages in horrendous activities and exceeds or violates international norms in its behavior. The United States should also continue bolstering its capabilities and strategies to vigorously resist, deter, and counter Beijing’s offensive actions and agenda. But this must be accompanied by pragmatic and persistent efforts to engage with CCP leaders in pursuit of the full range of material U.S. interests and American security and prosperity. This should also include concerted efforts to better and more accurately understand the Chinese mindset.

Such an approach will inevitably be very difficult and will involve risks and costs. But any alternative approach—especially one that focuses exclusively on competition, confrontation, and condemnation—would probably entail even greater risks and costs and offer little chance of success in reversing the downward spiral in U.S.-China relations.

Paul Heer is a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for the National Interest and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He served as National Intelligence Officer for East Asia from 2007 to 2015. He is the author of Mr. X and the Pacific: George F. Kennan and American Policy in East Asia (Cornell University Press, 2018).

4. Want more capable military partners? Empower and promote Foreign Area Officers.

When I was the SF branch chief I recommended sustaining the "operational FAOs" - e.g., those who shifted between basic branch assignments and FAO assignments. They maintain tactical and operational expertise in warfighting while developing relationships and understanding in designated countries. Sustaining their tactical and operational capabilities makes them proficient in being able to advise and assist partner nations. Serving in basic branch assignments keeps them well grounded in current doctrine, TTPs, and campaign planning (depending on the level of assignment). but the decision two decades ago was to single track FAOs and forgo the operational rotational aspect.

We also need to bring back military assistance and advisory groups (MAAGs). See the work of Robert Kellebrew:

The Left-Hand Side of the Spectrum

Ambassadors and Advisors in Future U.S. Strategy

https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/the-left-hand-side-of-the-spectrum-ambassadors-and-advisors-in-future-u-s-strategy

Want more capable military partners? Empower and promote Foreign Area Officers. - Breaking Defense

"DoD is considering a plan to cut all but four general officer SDO-DATT positions around the world by the end of this year," warns Jonathan Lord of CNAS.

breakingdefense.com · by Jonathan Lord · July 25, 2022

Approximately 170 U.S. Army Foreign Area Officers and distinguished visitors met at the inaugural European FAO Symposium in 2020. (DVIDS)

Driven by a Congressional requirement, the Defense Department plans to cut a number of general officer roles in the coming year. In this new op-ed, Jonathan Lord of the Center for a New American Security argues that the department risks making those cuts in the wrong place — by disproportionately hurting those rare foreign relations experts who have climbed the ladder inside the Pentagon.

The National Defense Strategy (NDS) emphasizes the need to continually strengthen and reinvigorate US partnerships and alliances. To succeed, the strategy implicitly requires US security assistance and cooperation to extend beyond the simple sale and delivery of hardware to partner militaries. Security cooperation must result in the development of lasting and sustainable military partner capacity — otherwise, the US military will perpetually be required to back-stop failing partner-militaries, diverting funds and effort from recovering readiness and lethality and preparing for future conflict in priority theaters.

Those engaging in security cooperation on behalf of Washington must be able to develop diplomatic and military relationships with foreign political and military leaders to have influence, drive often-necessary security sector reform, and advise and assist partner militaries in planning and procuring military training and equipment that meets security needs in a sustainable way. Embassy-based security cooperation offices (SCOs) struggle with these tasks under normal conditions. We have seen time and again what this looks like when it goes wrong: When defense ministries in need of reform are left to their own devices, institutional weakness and corruption ultimately produces hollow armies. In but one notable example, the United States spent billions of dollars to train and equip the Iraqi Security Forces, only for them to collapse before ISIS in 2014, requiring US military intervention that continues to this day.

To complete this challenging mission, which requires focusing partners on less-tangible, yet crucial aspects of military development (training, sustainment, logistics, planning, etc.), the Department of Defense should leverage the servicemembers best able to perform the job: Foreign Area Officers (FAOs), the only military professionals trained to perform defense ministry-level engagement and development with foreign allies and partners.

Unfortunately, at the very moment when FAOs should see increasing leadership roles in the department, critical defense diplomacy, general officer billets are facing the chopping block in a short-sighted decision by DoD leadership. The Pentagon, and the US as a whole, will be weaker for it.

Although FAOs spend as many as two decades of a full 30-year career performing this critical mission, very few of these officers are promoted into senior roles at the Pentagon, Combatant Command staffs, or general officer Senior Defense Official-Defense Attaché (SDO-DATT) roles in US embassies, where they can best manage and shape the United States’ bilateral security partnerships. To ensure that US security cooperation and security assistance makes a strategic and lasting impact, it is time for the Pentagon to begin a push to empower and promote FAOs into these positions of critical engagement with partner nations.

The FAO training and career path is designed to build the necessary knowledge, skills, and experience to represent the United States as SDO-DATTs in US diplomatic missions around the world. US Army FAOs are typically selected as senior Captains, having completed a successful assignment as a company commander, which identifies them as high-performing and makes their next promotion assured. FAOs then undergo three to five years of additional training and education: foreign language training at the Defense Language Institute, a one-year “internship” at a foreign embassy or other overseas location, a master’s degree from a graduate school with a validated graduate degree program, Command and General Staff College, Joint Military Attaché School, and the Security Cooperation Officer Course. FAOs are purpose-built for developing rapport with allies and partners and to assist them in creating capable and sustainable militaries that are interoperable with our own. However, because the military services have a tendency to prioritize and embrace officers from their core branches, FAOs are often overlooked for senior leadership and general officer roles in favor of officers with more traditional service backgrounds, like Air Force fighter pilots and Army combat arms officers. As a result, it is rare for a FAO to surpass the rank of O-6 — a Colonel in the Army, Air Force and Marines, or a Captain in the Navy.

While the DoD should be looking for ways to promote and empower FAOs, currently, the Pentagon is moving in the wrong direction. Not only has the military done nothing to promote FAOs into key roles, but to comply with past defense legislation reducing the number of general and flag officer billets across the military, DoD is considering a plan to cut all but four general officer SDO-DATT positions around the world by the end of this year.

While this legislation was meant to reduce the number of generals and admirals within what Congress considered to be a bloated Pentagon bureaucracy, the military services reflexively protected their own and recommended the cuts be taken elsewhere. By accepting the recommendations of the military services, which are unable to see beyond their internal priorities and cultures, the Pentagon is inadvertently undermining a core tenet of the NDS and a foundational leg of this administration’s foreign policy: the strengthening of partnerships and alliances.

In addition to the SDO-DATTs, the United States Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority (USSC) is slated for demotion as well. That job is currently filled by a three-star Army general who has played a crucial role in working with both Ramallah and Jerusalem, following the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. The shuttle diplomacy required to tamp down tensions and coordinate security operations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority can only be successfully accomplished by a US military officer with the status and credibility to influence the most senior Israeli and Palestinian security officials. Dropping a field-grade officer into that role like an Army colonel or Navy captain is a recipe for failure, and the President’s recent trip to the region demonstrates that the stakes are just too high.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin should rethink the plan to downgrade these critical defense diplomacy positions, and the law provides him the offramp to due so. Section 501 of the Fiscal Year 2017 NDAA, which legislated the cuts, also includes a waiver authority for the secretary to preserve billets beyond the total allowed if it is in the national security interest. Instead of cutting the positions critical to defense diplomacy, the secretary should exercise the waiver, restore them, and direct the service chiefs to assign them to the servicemembers best trained to get the job done: FAOs.

In March 2021, Austin laid out his three priorities in his guidance to the force: “defending the nation, taking care of our people, and succeeding through teamwork.” By preserving these general officer positions that are critical to US partnerships and alliances, and by staffing them with FAOs, he would serve all three.

Jonathan Lord is the Senior Fellow and Director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. He previously served as a Professional Staff Member on the House Armed Services Committee, Iraq Country Director in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and as a Political-Military Analyst in the Department of Defense.

breakingdefense.com · by Jonathan Lord · July 25, 2022

5. Pelosi’s Reported Taiwan Plans Spark High-Stakes Diplomatic Battle

The paradox.

+Once you've taken a public stand you know is right, never back down; anything less than a rock-hard stance will let your enemies nibble you to death."

- L. Neil Smith

Pelosi’s Reported Taiwan Plans Spark High-Stakes Diplomatic Battle

China’s government fears looking weak if the visit happens; the Biden administration fears looking weak if it doesn’t.

thediplomat.com · by Shannon Tiezzi · July 26, 2022

Representative Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, is at the center of a diplomatic firestorm amid reports that she is planning to travel to Taiwan next month.

Financial Times broke the story that Pelosi is looking to travel to Taiwan in August, making up for an April trip that had to be cancelled when Pelosi contracted COVID-19. “Six people familiar with the situation said Pelosi would take a delegation to Taiwan in August,” FT’s Demetri Sevastopulo and Kathrin Hille wrote. The trip would be part of a broader visit to Asia that will also include stops in Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

There has been no official confirmation of the trip as yet. Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said “it had not received any information about a planned visit to Taiwan by Pelosi,” according to Taiwan’s Central News Agency. The ministry added that “it always welcomes the visit of American congresspersons to the country.”

In response to an emailed inquiry from The Diplomat, Taiwan’s de facto embassy in the United States, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, said, “We have no further information to share at this time.”

Pelosi also refused to comment on reports about the trip, telling reporters on July 21, “I don’t ever discuss my travel plans… it’s a security issue.”

The saga took a dramatic turn on July 22, when U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters that the U.S. military thinks such a trip is “not a good idea right now.”

According to Politico, “White House and Defense Department officials have already been quietly relaying the risks of a potential trip to Pelosi’s office.” But with Biden’s public warning, the dispute is now happening in plain sight.

Responding to questions from reporters, Pelosi suggested that Biden’s comments stemmed from a fear that “our plane would get shot down or something like that by the Chinese. I don’t know exactly… I haven’t heard it from the President.”

Pelosi added more generally that “it’s important for us to show support for Taiwan,” while emphasizing that “none of us has ever said we’re for independence when it comes to Taiwan. That’s up to Taiwan to decide.”

Amid the apparent disagreement between the White House and Pelosi’s office, questions have turned to what potential actions China might take in response.

Asked about a potential Pelosi trip in a press conference on July 25, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian responded, “The Chinese side has repeatedly made clear to the U.S. side our serious concern over Speaker Pelosi’s potential visit to Taiwan and our firm opposition to the visit.”

Zhao added, “We are fully prepared for any eventuality. If the U.S. side insists on making the visit, the Chinese side will take firm and strong measures to safeguard our sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

That is fairly boilerplate language from China on Taiwan-U.S. interactions, and typically there is little to no concrete reaction from Beijing after such visits. However, this time may be different, if reports are accurate that China is warning more strenuously than normal against Pelosi’s trip. The Washington Post’s Josh Rogin, for instance, wrote that “administration officials tell me that they have particular cause for concern right now. China, they say, is planning a potentially destabilizing response.”

There’s certainly reason to suggest Beijing would feel forced into a strong response. China’s political elites are jockeying for position ahead of the once-every-five-years Party Congress. Xi Jinping, currently seeking a precedent-breaking third term as Communist Party leader, cannot afford to be seen as weak on Taiwan.

More broadly, China’s government has already been increasing the volume on its warnings about U.S. engagement with Taiwan, concerned by a gradual uptick in the frequency and scope of such exchanges. At the Shangri-La Dialogue in June, Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe devoted the bulk of his remarks to strident warnings about China’s resolve on Taiwan.

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“If anyone dares to secede Taiwan from China – let me be clear – we will not hesitate to fight,” Wei said. “We will fight at all costs and we will fight to the very end.”

Most recently, Chinese officials have begun answering the Biden administration’s calls for “guardrails” in the China-U.S. relationship by pointing to previous U.S. commitments on Taiwan.

“The ‘guardrails’ for China-U.S. relationship already exists — the three China-U.S. joint communiqués,” a Foreign Ministry spokesperson declared on July 7. “…The U.S. needs to abide by the provisions in the joint communiqués and the commitments it has made to China.”

If the United States moves forward with yet another precedent-setting trip to Taiwan, Beijing may well feel that its warnings are having no effect – and see a need to up the ante.

The Global Times, long a mouthpiece for nationalistic sentiments in China, said Pelosi’s visit would be a “strategic level provocation” and urged China “to make its determination clear and show its strengths, and let the U.S. side decide to avoid a crisis.” In other words, the pressure is on for Xi to issue strident warnings – and back them up if the visit goes ahead.

On the other hand, the Biden administration is now coming under political pressure to ensure the trip does occur.

Republican Senator Ben Sasse made it very clear that he would see a decision to postpone Pelosi’s trip as “feebleness.”

“Speaker Pelosi should go to Taiwan and President Biden should make it abundantly clear to Chairman Xi that there’s not a damn thing the Chinese Communist Party can do about it,” he said in a statement. “No more feebleness and self-deterrence. This is very simple: Taiwan is an ally and the Speaker of the House of Representatives should meet with the Taiwanese men and women who stare down the threat of Communist China.”

Other Republicans have also spoken out urging Pelosi to carry on the trip, suggesting that if the trip is cancelled it would be tantamount to capitulating to Beijing. Now a high-stakes political game is underway, and either Beijing or Washington is set to swallow a very public embarrassment at a politically sensitive moment.

The current imbroglio is exactly why U.S. congressional visits to Taiwan are generally not publicized in advance. In November 2021, for example, four U.S. senators and two representatives visited Taiwan. As Brian Hioe noted for The Diplomat at the time, “[T]he names of the visiting politicians were not initially confirmed by the Tsai administration, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs only issued its formal press release about the visit on November 15. This was several days after the delegation had already left.”

Likewise, a visit by three other U.S. senators in June 2021 was not announced in advance. In both cases, the U.S. legislators were traveling on board a U.S. military plane during broader tours of Asia before making their previously unpublicized stops in Taiwan. Those are exactly the circumstances under which Pelosi would reportedly take a congressional delegation to Taiwan in August.

The key difference is that Pelosi’s planned trip is now incredibly public, which dramatically raises the pressure on China’s government to do something to stop it. And China’s strident warnings increase calls for the Biden administration – itself facing a difficult midterm test this November – not to give in to Beijing’s pressure.

Biden and Xi are expected to hold virtual talks in the next week. Pelosi’s potential Taiwan trip will certainly be high on the agenda. Ultimately, however, Pelosi – not the White House – will make the decision on whether to travel or not.

thediplomat.com · by Shannon Tiezzi · July 26, 2022

6. Did war help societies become bigger and more complex?

Excerpts:

On top of all that, Turchin’s statistical model is not foolproof. His conflict-related variables, for instance, fail to explain the rise of the Inca Empire, which managed to encompass a large territory and complicated government structure despite having neither iron weapons nor horses. They did, however, have a domesticated transport animal in the form of a llama. The taming and riding of lamas, the authors speculate, could have given the Incas an edge over other societies in South America, allowing them to grow as large and prosperous as they did.

It’s not that Turchin and his team do not think variables like agriculture, religion, or economy do not contribute to social complexity. Instead, they feel that these variables alone are not sufficient to explain the exponential growth of civilizations that took place over the past 10,000 years. They also suggest that the importance of war to that process need not be interpreted as a bad thing. “The crucial ingredient in this evolution,” explains the aforementioned story from Science, “was competition (…) not violence.”

Did war help societies become bigger and more complex?

Big Think · by Tim Brinkhof

Using data collected from ancient civilizations across the world, researchers identified the most significant factors in human development. War came out on top.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

About 10,000 years ago, civilization began to develop at an exponential rate. Scholars have often explained this growth through two broad theories, one focusing on agriculture and the other on conflict. This year, researchers looked at statistics of ancient empires to determine which of the two was more important.

If you were to plot the development of human civilization — defined by population size as well as economic and cultural output, among other factors — you would find that development is not linear but exponential. For tens of thousands of years, people lived in the same basic social organization. But then, around 10,000 years ago, everything changed: In a small period of time, hunter-gatherers settled into villages. Those villages then grew into cities, those cities into kingdoms, and those kingdoms into nation-states.

Scholars of various academic disciplines — including history, economics, and sociology — have long searched for the root cause of this development. Currently, they are divided between two theories: one functionalist, the other based on conflict. The functionalist theory, which emerged in the 1960s, focuses on a society’s ability to navigate organizational challenges, like the provision of public goods. According to this theory, trade, healthcare, irrigation systems, and, above all, agriculture were the key factors that allowed civilization to evolve into its current form.

Conflict theory, which is much older than its functionalist counterpart, takes a different approach. It is concerned not with a society’s ability to solve problems related to food supply and public health, but its ability to fight internal and external threats in the forms of class struggle or war. Conflict theory is based on biology; just as the evolution of animal species is governed by that of their predators, so too is the sociological development of any given society kept in check by the military might of its closest enemies.

People often see agriculture as the driving force of human development. But is that true? (Credit: Ayie7791 / Wikipedia)

While scholars view agriculture as crucial to sociological development, they often don’t know what to make of war. “The majority of archaeologists are against the warfare theory,” Peter Turchin, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, told Science. “Nobody likes this ugly idea because obviously warfare is a horrible thing, and we don’t like to think it can have any positive effects.” Undeterred by this widespread bias, Turchin has spent much of his career researching the historical significance of war, including military technology.

Earlier this year, Turchin put together an international team of researchers to find the most important factors in the rise of Earth’s oldest empires. The results of their study, published in the academic journal Science Advances on June 24, suggest that war — specifically, the use of cavalries and iron weapons — was just as, if not more, important than agriculture. This conclusion tosses a wrench into the functionalist framework, though not everyone is convinced.

History in numbers

The origins and purpose of war has usually been studied by artists and philosophers — people who work through experience and logic. Turchin prefers to use data. Raw, concrete, and empirical data. The data for this study was pulled from Seshat: Global History Databank, a digital resource that compiles numerical entries on more than 400 societies. These range from basic details, such as population size and agricultural production, to highly specific metrics, like whether the society in question employed full-time bureaucrats.

Think of the Seshat databank as world history distilled into numbers. From this point, Turchin and his team constructed a complicated but fairly straightforward statistical analysis. They chose social complexity (defined by population size, social hierarchy, and specialization of governance) as their dependent variable and tested its relationship to 17 independent variables. One of these variables was the provision of public goods, which in turn was aggregated from other and smaller variables, like the presence or absence of water supply systems, bridges, and storage sites.

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Some of the independent variables, like the one described above, were formulated to test the functionalist hypothesis. Others, like the sophistication and variety of military technologies used by a society, evaluate conflict theory. Another conflict-related variable is the variety and sophistication of a society’s means to defend itself, defined by the amount of resources invested in things like weapons and armor. The role of this variable, according to the study, is to reflect the “cooperative investment in strengthening the group’s military preparedness and effectiveness in the face of existential threats.”

Cavalry seems to have played a particularly important role in human development. (Credit: Hayton of Coricos / Wikipedia)

Two variables were found to have a particularly strong correlation with social complexity. The longer a society practiced agriculture, the more likely it was to become socially complex. The same went for military technology, especially the use of mounted combat and iron weapons. Conventional historians had already suspected as much, but now their words are reinforced with statistics. According to Turchin’s study, cavalry increased the maximum size of civilizations by one order of magnitude, from 100,000 to 3,000,000 square kilometers.

This pattern emerges across the world, and is even repeated at certain points of history. When Spanish colonizers brought horses into North America during the 16th century, the average size of native American civilizations increased just as it had in Eurasia centuries ago. Chief among these civilizations was the Comanche Empire, which ruled over the Great Plains as well as parts of Texas and Mexico. Unlike in Eurasia, the so-called “cavalry revolution” did not come to full fruition because it was soon overtaken by another technological innovation: gunpowder.

The role of war, questioned

While Turchin’s study has received a lot of attention from the academic community, not everyone is equally convinced. William Taylor, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, told Science.org that he agrees horses were “an agent of social change.” At the same time, he reminds readers that archeologists are still unsure when people first began riding them, and that, as such, the variable may produce a large margin of error when applied to civilizations of the distant past.

Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, a professor of anthropology and human behavioral ecology at the University of California, Davis, also has a bone to pick with the study. Talking to the same publication, she applauded Turchin and his team for “taking an innovative, macrolevel, quantitative approach to history.” But can we really feel confident claiming that variables like cavalry had a noteworthy impact on social complexity when said complexity did not emerge until 300 to 400 years after cavalry became widespread?

The study’s shortcomings are also addressed by the authors. Focusing purely on social complexity, they evidently failed to consider a society’s cultural or even economic complexity. This is no trivial matter, as expressing human development in terms of social relations only means turning a blind eye to the people of sub-Saharan, the Americas, and the Pacific islands — people who lived in communities that, though small in numbers and lacking vertical hierarchical organization, were nonetheless sophisticated in their own right.

Turchin’s model failed to explain the rise of the Incas in Peru. (Credit: freestock.ca / Wikipedia)

On top of all that, Turchin’s statistical model is not foolproof. His conflict-related variables, for instance, fail to explain the rise of the Inca Empire, which managed to encompass a large territory and complicated government structure despite having neither iron weapons nor horses. They did, however, have a domesticated transport animal in the form of a llama. The taming and riding of lamas, the authors speculate, could have given the Incas an edge over other societies in South America, allowing them to grow as large and prosperous as they did.

It’s not that Turchin and his team do not think variables like agriculture, religion, or economy do not contribute to social complexity. Instead, they feel that these variables alone are not sufficient to explain the exponential growth of civilizations that took place over the past 10,000 years. They also suggest that the importance of war to that process need not be interpreted as a bad thing. “The crucial ingredient in this evolution,” explains the aforementioned story from Science, “was competition (…) not violence.”

Big Think · by Tim Brinkhof

7. Getting Ready for a Long War with China: Dynamics of Protracted Conflict in the Western Pacific

The 26 page report can be downloaded here: https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Getting-Ready-for-a-Long-War-with-China-Dynamics-of-Protracted-Conflict-in-the-Western-Pacific.pdf?x91208

Summary and key points below.

Getting Ready for a Long War with China: Dynamics of Protracted Conflict in the Western Pacific

American Enterprise Institute

FOREIGN AND DEFENSE POLICY ASIA DEFENSE

July 25, 2022

Hal Brands

Senior Fellow

https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/getting-ready-for-a-long-war-with-china-dynamics-of-protracted-conflict-in-the-western-pacific/?utm_source=pocket_mylist

Key Points

The United States may be planning for the wrong sort of war with China. A Sino-American conflict is likely to be long rather than short; it is likely to sprawl geographically rather than remain confined to the Taiwan Strait.
Most modern great-power clashes have been long wars, lasting months or years rather than days or weeks. And as great-power wars go long, they frequently get bigger, messier, and harder to untangle.
A Sino-American war would feature far higher risks of conventional and nuclear escalation than many observers recognize.
A protracted war in the western Pacific would present the United States with severe challenges—and some unexpected opportunities. American officials must begin to think through six key issues: endurance, resilience, coercion, termination, exploitation, and continuation.

Read the PDF.

Executive Summary

The United States may be preparing for the wrong kind of war with China. Much of America’s planning for a potential war with China appears to hinge on an assumption that the war would be short and localized. Yet most modern great-power clashes have been long wars, lasting months or years rather than days or weeks. And as great-power wars go long, they frequently get bigger, messier, and harder to untangle.

A Sino-American war that occurs in the coming years would most likely fit this pattern. Such a conflict is likely to be long, rather than short; it would probably sprawl geographically rather than remaining confined to the Taiwan Strait. It would feature far higher risks of nuclear escalation than many observers recognize and present the United States with severe challenges of warfighting and war termination.

History has often punished countries that expect to fight short, decisive wars but end up in long, sprawling ones. So the United States needs to get ready for a protracted war with China.

Read the full report.

8. The Dark Scenario: Ukraine's Military Can’t Beat Russia and Collapses

"Moriarity" and more negative waves.

This is the second in a series of three assessments of the possible outcomes of the Russia/Ukraine war between now and the end of 2022. In the first installment, we looked at the chances of a stalemate and a partial Russian victory. In this latest analysis, we look at the possibilities of either a total Russian victory or a total Ukrainian victory. Between the two prospects, this analysis reveals that Moscow has a chance of defeating Ukraine while Kyiv has virtually no chance of defeating Russia.

The War in Ukraine Could End Quite Badly for Kyiv:

Ukraine War Scenario Three (Collapse of Ukrainian Army & Total Russian Victory)

Ukraine War Scenario Four (Ukrainian Victory)

The Dark Scenario: Ukraine's Military Can’t Beat Russia and Collapses

19fortyfive.com · by ByDaniel Davis · July 25, 2022

The War in Ukraine Could End Quite Badly for Kyiv: Last Wednesday, U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Brown said the United States was now considering sending American fighter planes to Ukraine to join its war against Russia. The CIA Director estimated as many as 60,000 Russians had been killed or wounded since February. Though many things seem to be trending against Moscow, for very practical reasons – of which few Westerners are aware – Russia has a plausible chance of winning its war against Ukraine, while Kyiv has virtually no such path.

This is the second in a series of three assessments of the possible outcomes of the Russia/Ukraine war between now and the end of 2022. In the first installment, we looked at the chances of a stalemate and a partial Russian victory. In this latest analysis, we look at the possibilities of either a total Russian victory or a total Ukrainian victory. Between the two prospects, this analysis reveals that Moscow has a chance of defeating Ukraine while Kyiv has virtually no chance of defeating Russia.

Ukraine War Scenario Three (Collapse of Ukrainian Army & Total Russian Victory)

Few in the West have considered this potential outcome, mainly because it is too unpalatable and painful to contemplate. Yet the conditions on the ground are such that it is not an unrealistic possibility.

In this scenario, Russia continues its relentless and methodical march through the northern shoulder of the Donbas battle, first completing the elimination of the north-to-south defensive line running through Seversk-Soledar-Bahkmut, and then continuing west to capture Slovyansk and Kramatorsk. Following the capture of those cities, the most likely next target would be Kharkiv, which Moscow would then be able to invest from the south, east, and north. Putin’s forces would then likely close off the western approaches to the city, cutting it off from any reinforcements or supplies from Kyiv, and then as they did in Mariupol, methodically begin pulverizing the parts of the city from which Ukrainian defenders fight.

Russia’s most significant accomplishment in this phase of operations won’t be the physical capture of territory as much as it will be the decimation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces as a coherent entity. Ukraine has been suffering upwards of 1,000 total casualties per day in the Donbas since mid-April, after losing thousands of their best fighters in the battle for Mariupol. Most of these losses have been to their most experienced and toughest fighters.

Replacements that have continued to come in often do not have even the most rudimentary of training; one study by the Modern War Institute estimated that “just 20 percent (of the Ukrainian personnel in replacement units sent to the front) had even fired a weapon before heading to combat.” As more of the original contingent of trained personnel are killed or wounded, the remaining force of inexperience and insufficiently trained troops will be at increased risk of collapse.

The reason: success or failure in modern combat rests not just on having trained individual soldiers and proper volumes of the right kit, but on having experienced and well-trained units. I cannot overstate the harm done to the Ukrainian Army in the loss of its troops – especially the tactical leaders at platoon, company, and battalion levels – since the war started last February, nor on the harm this loss has done to Ukraine’s ability to mount a credible counter-offensive threat. While it’s not optimal for replacements to be taught basic combat skills at the front, those that survive can become quite capable.

But training a military organization at company or battalion level to fight as a team requires considerable training, over months, and even that must start with experiences sergeants, lieutenants, and captains. You can’t “create” experienced leaders, they have to be grown over time, and there is no shortcut for creating them. Thus, the more Ukraine loses their experience troops in leadership positions, the less capable their overall force will be, no mater how many BTGs they eventually fill with new personnel.

Marines with Romeo Battery, 5th Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 7, fire rockets from a M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) on Camp Leatherneck, Helmand province, Afghanistan, June 1, 2013. Marines with 5/11 are deployed to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

(U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Anthony L. Ortiz / Released)

The risk in this scenario is that at some point, the fabric of the UAF becomes too fragile to sustain its fight, and Russian forces could eventually rain enough artillery, rocket, and air strikes down on the Ukrainian troops that the integrity of their overall capacity breaks. If that happens, it is possible that Russian mobile troops could force a breakthrough and get into the Ukrainian rear areas, decimating Ukraine’s ability to sustain combat operations. If they get hit badly enough, their force in an entire region could collapse.

For this scene to play out, that implies the Russian military retains enough trained and equipped armored forces to maintain the relentless volume of artillery fire as well as tank units that can conduct the exploitation operation. If the Russian losses pile up faster than they can be replaced by qualified and trained units from elsewhere in Russia, then the scenario described in Option One becomes likely and Putin’s troops will be forced to settle in for a stalemate.

The risk to the Ukrainian government and viability of the state, however, goes up to dangerous highs if Putin is able to maintain sufficient force, equipment, and logistics to press the UAF to the point of breaking. As more time passes, it becomes increasingly irrelevant how many howitzers or rocket launchers the West gives Kyiv, because if this scenario manifests itself, there won’t be enough of a Ukrainian force remaining to adequately employ them.

Ukraine War Scenario Four (Ukrainian Victory)

Many in the West talk about a win for Kyiv. Retired U.S. Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, for example, argues that if the West “stick together through this year,” he believes the war “will be over.” Zelensky and other senior officials routinely claim they will eventually win back all their territory, including Crimea. But there is virtually no foundation upon which to base such hopes. For that to change, Ukraine would have to reverse many imbalances and add capacity that doesn’t presently exist.

First, Kyiv would have to acquire a substantial number of top NATO-caliber air defense systems that have both short-range and long-range capacity, denying Russian fighters and bombers the ability to attack targets in Ukraine on the front lines, as well as from deep in Russian territory.

Second, Zelensky’s forces would have to continue to hold Russian troops at bay in the Donbas or at least prevent the loss of Kharkiv and Odesa, while simultaneously building an offensive ground capacity either in the safety of friendly nations or in secure parts of western Ukraine (I have previously covered in detail exactly what Ukraine would have to produce to form a viable offensive capacity). This requirement includes possession of thousands of armored vehicles, tanks, and howitzers, as well as over 100,000 additional troops.

Third, Ukraine would need to secure firm commitments from Western countries to produce and reliably ship routine volumes of small arms ammunition, large quantities of artillery shells, and enough food and water to sustain an army on the march. Relatedly, the would need the internal transport capacity in the form of a fleet of wheeled vehicles to ensure all the supplies could be transported from the western border of Ukraine to the frontlines.

U.S. Army Soldiers assigned to 2-11 Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, conduct field artillery training on Warrior Base, New Mexico Range, Demilitarized Zone, Republic of Korea, March 15, 2015. The training was a part of joint training exercise Foal Eagle 2015 between the U.S. and Republic of Korea (ROK) Armies. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Steven Hitchcock/Released)

And fourth, Kyiv would have to provide a credible offensive capacity in the air. There is presently talk of the U.S. Air Force providing United States fighter aircraft, but Soviet-era MiGs could be brought into action more quickly. Once this entire force has been assembled, it would have to be prepared to uproot a Russian force that would almost certainly have spent weeks if not months preparing elaborate defensive works and minefields. If the current Russian offensive stalls and a stalemate is achieved, Russian troops will begin to dig in and prepare for the Ukrainian offensive. There are many challenges to this potential scenario.

Ukraine has already lost breath-taking portions of its trained and experience force. Even if Kyiv recruited 100,000 men, they would not be able to recreate the training and experience of its unit level officers and sergeants it has lost to date; it is enormously difficult to maneuver entire formations without significant presence of trained leaders at the tactical level. Fielding the comprehensive equipment set might be an even bigger challenge.

To produce the necessary quantities of kit needed for Ukraine’s offensive, many NATO countries would have to surrender significant amounts of its best, frontline tanks, howitzers, armored personnel carriers, scores of fighter jets, and substantial quantities of high-quality air defense systems. Without all these capabilities, there is no chance Ukraine could conduct a counteroffensive of sufficient power to uproot Russian forces from the conquered territories. To date, no country has come close to even offering, much less producing, the gear Zelensky’s troops would need.

Until all of these deficiencies have been resolved, it is virtually impossible to talk about a possible counteroffensive to drive Russia from Ukrainian soil. If Kyiv tries to cut corners, gets only part of the kit needed, or fills its formations with inadequately trained troops, the chances they die in combat and fail to drive Russia out is high.

Conclusion

It would take a country the size of Ukraine the better part of a decade and a massive level of support from friendly nations to recover from the devastation the Ukraine military has already suffered. The idea that the UAF – or the armed forces of any nation on earth – can recover from the level of destruction they’ve suffered to date and rebuild the strength necessary to drive an invader out while at the same time fighting an existential battle, is flatly unrealistic.

Russia continues to take severe losses itself. Putin’s forces are not immune to the consequences of losing trained and experienced personnel, but as previously noted, Russia has millions more men from which to draw new conscripts and hundreds of thousands of other active troops that can be repurposed to ground combat. It is by no means guaranteed that Russia would be able to achieve total victory over Ukraine, but the fundamentals are present to give the idea some chance of success. For Ukraine, however, there is minuscule chance of winning and a higher probability of failure if they try to launch an offensive.

An unemotional assessment of this war would lead to the conclusion that the Ukrainian political leadership should seek the best-negotiated settlement it could get now, while it still has complete control of Kharkiv, Odesa, and most of Donetsk Oblast – and before another significant city is turned to rubble and tens of thousands more of its citizens killed or wounded. But war is not an unemotional endeavor, and Zelensky has to make choices that are anguishing and very much filled with emotion.

No one can make these decisions but the people and leaders of Ukraine. But as this assessment reveals, the options for a Ukrainian military victory are likely to continue dwindling with the passing of time.

Now a 1945 Contributing Editor, Daniel L. Davis is a Senior Fellow for Defense Priorities and a former Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army who deployed into combat zones four times. He is the author of “The Eleventh Hour in 2020 America.” Follow him @DanielLDavis

19fortyfive.com · by ByDaniel Davis · July 25, 2022

9. NATO Is a Luxury Good the United States Doesn’t Need

Excerpts:

Some of us might argue that lubricating U.S. operations in the greater Middle East after 9/11 was a bad thing—given that the missions themselves were mostly bad. The United States squandered $8 trillion, thousands of lives, and almost two decades of attention in Iraq and Afghanistan. Anything that made that easier should be tallied as a debit, not a credit.

But there’s a bigger problem. NATO isn’t about pandemic response or anti-piracy. It has no capabilities, no authority, and no fitness for these purposes. NATO is an old-fashioned military alliance. However big a problem migration or disinformation may be, the alliance wasn’t designed and still isn’t tailored for dealing with them.

These problems aren’t just missing from the North Atlantic Treaty; they appear only as marketing in more recent official documents, including NATO’s just-issued Strategic Concept. NATO is sold—and sells itself—as many things, but it is, by treaty and by the structure of its bureaucracy, a military alliance dedicated to the security of its members.

NATO Is a Luxury Good the United States Doesn’t Need

Foreign Policy · by Justin Logan · July 23, 2022

Argument

An expert's point of view on a current event.

Europe is capable of defending itself.

By Justin Logan, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

U.S. soldiers stand in front of a parked howitzer during a NATO exercise in Grafenwoehr, Germany, on July 20.

U.S. soldiers stand in front of a parked howitzer during a NATO exercise in Grafenwoehr, Germany, on July 20. Christof Stache/AFP via Getty Images

For decades, the most widely held belief in the Washington foreign-policy establishment has been that NATO is tremendously valuable to the United States. As former U.S. diplomat William Burns wrote in his memoir, even the expansion of the alliance “stayed on autopilot as a matter of U.S. policy, long after its fundamental assumptions should have been reassessed. Commitments originally meant to reflect interests morphed into interests themselves.” Being a NATO skeptic in Washington is like being a middle-aged white guy at a Bad Bunny concert. On both counts, take it from me: You feel out of place.

As Burns suggests, one thing that happens with unexamined consensus is that arguments in its favor fail to be sharpened by contact with their opponents. Kathleen J. McInnis has thankfully stepped into the breach, offering Foreign Policy readers an argument that Americans still need NATO.

Her essay argues forcefully that NATO is the taproot of the “enormous economic prosperity and freedom” that Americans enjoy. Not only prosperity and freedom, though: Providing security for Europeans “allows the United States to set the international security agenda,” enhances U.S. credibility in Asia, helped facilitate Washington’s post-9/11 wars, helps handle “anti-piracy missions off the Horn of Africa … China, climate change, and advanced disruptive technologies” in addition to “disinformation operations, pandemic response, migration, and terrorism.”

Whew.

Some of us might argue that lubricating U.S. operations in the greater Middle East after 9/11 was a bad thing—given that the missions themselves were mostly bad. The United States squandered $8 trillion, thousands of lives, and almost two decades of attention in Iraq and Afghanistan. Anything that made that easier should be tallied as a debit, not a credit.

But there’s a bigger problem. NATO isn’t about pandemic response or anti-piracy. It has no capabilities, no authority, and no fitness for these purposes. NATO is an old-fashioned military alliance. However big a problem migration or disinformation may be, the alliance wasn’t designed and still isn’t tailored for dealing with them.

These problems aren’t just missing from the North Atlantic Treaty; they appear only as marketing in more recent official documents, including NATO’s just-issued Strategic Concept. NATO is sold—and sells itself—as many things, but it is, by treaty and by the structure of its bureaucracy, a military alliance dedicated to the security of its members.

Given NATO’s origins as a military alliance aimed at deterring Soviet aggression, we should ask ourselves: With the Soviets out and the Germans down, why did the United States struggle so mightily to stay in after the Cold War? The answer is simple: NATO is, and always has been, a vehicle for maintaining the United States as the dominant security player in Europe. That there were sharper disagreements about this idea in the 1950s than there are today speaks volumes about the lack of debate in today’s Washington.

Even the Rand Corp. report that McInnis cites in support of the idea of “defense in depth” in Europe remarks that U.S. leaders only adopted the concept grudgingly out of fear that “U.S. allies were too weak to contain the Soviet Union on their own.” As that report observes, the four divisions Congress agreed to send to Germany in 1950 “were not intended to remain there indefinitely; instead, the U.S. troops were to be withdrawn when Western Europe had recovered sufficiently to field its own conventional deterrent.”

Western Europe had recovered sufficiently to field its own conventional deterrent less than a decade later. By 1959, a memo described U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower as lamenting: “The Europeans now attempt to consider this deployment as a permanent and definite commitment. We are carrying practically the whole weight of the strategic deterrent force, also conducting space activities, and atomic programs. We paid for most of the infrastructure, and maintain large air and naval forces as well as six divisions. He thinks the Europeans are close to ‘making a sucker out of Uncle Sam’; so long as they could prove a need for emergency help, that was one thing. But that time has passed.”

Does the United States need to remain the main provider of security in Europe forever? Recent developments in Europe, spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, suggest it doesn’t. Germany’s Zeitenwende—officially translated as “watershed” but something more like “new era”—was almost unthinkable six months ago. Berlin didn’t just cancel the Nord Stream 2 pipeline (analysts had worried it might not) but also established a 100 billion euro ($107 billion) fund to bolster its defense and committed itself thereafter to spending 2 percent of its GDP on defense. Poland and several other states made similar pledges to increase spending.

But as political scientist Barry Posen remarked at a recent Cato Institute panel, there is reason to worry these pledges won’t materialize. The United States has rushed into the breach, sending 20,000 additional U.S. troops to Europe to reassure NATO allies. The downside of reassurance is that when you reassure enough, your allies are likely to believe you and may not step up and do more for their own defense. It seems likely that the Europeans, confident behind Captain America’s shield, will go back to business as usual in Europe. For example, as Jennifer Lind’s work on Japan shows, Japan did relatively more for its own defense only when it feared the United States might do less. In this case, the Russian invasion of Ukraine provided shock therapy for European threat assessments. Restoring the United States as Europe’s pacifier may restore indifference and inaction.

In 2022, U.S. allies are not too weak to contain Russia on their own. They simply refuse to do so out of the well-founded belief that the United States will do so for them, and accordingly their people would benefit from spending their own tax dollars on domestic priorities.

The United States cannot maintain its role as the cornerstone of European security while successfully competing with a growing China forever. And the cheap-riding that afflicts the U.S. alliance in Europe also addles its alliances in Asia.

Panegyrics to the trans-Atlantic community are still in vogue in Washington because they are seen as cheap. They aren’t. Resource constraints are beginning to bite. The defense budget, already bloated at $847 billion, is not headed to $1 trillion and above anytime soon. Maintaining U.S. domination of the European security scene is a luxury good the United States doesn’t need in 2022. The United States fought two wars to prevent a European hegemon from emerging in the 20th century. There is no potential European hegemon on or even over the horizon at the present. For all Russia’s bluster, it’s struggling to take even part of a much smaller, poorer neighbor—let alone hold it. It’s time to take the win.

For those reasons, advocates of NATO as a permanent alliance should probably start thinking about Plan B, not advertising the alliance as a cure-all for problems including climate change, piracy, and disinformation. Europe is rich and strong enough to defend itself. But the Europeans won’t do so unless the United States stops doing it for them.

Justin Logan is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

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The NATO flag

Why Americans Still Need NATO

The alliance is one of the best bargains in geopolitics.

Foreign Policy · by Justin Logan · July 23, 2022

10. Russia Strikes School, Civilian Buildings as It Presses Ukraine Bombardment

Photos at the link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-strikes-school-civilian-buildings-as-it-presses-ukraine-bombardment-11658748170

Russia Strikes School, Civilian Buildings as It Presses Ukraine Bombardment

Kremlin calls on Ukraine to resume grain shipments, despite attack on port of Odessa over the weekend

By Vivian SalamaFollow

and Evan GershkovichFollow

Updated July 25, 2022 2:52 pm ET

KYIV, Ukraine—Russian strikes continued in Ukraine as the Kremlin called on Kyiv to resume shipments of grain despite a Russian missile attack over the weekend that risked derailing a key deal aimed at easing a blockade on Ukraine’s ports.

Russian forces struck a school and other civilian buildings in the northeastern Kharkiv region, said Gov. Oleh Sinegubov, adding that people were trapped under rubble. Shellings were also reported in the southern Mykolaiv and eastern Dnipropetrovsk regions, as well as the hard-hit Donbas area.

Russia’s advances in eastern Ukraine have been slowed by Ukrainian forces’ effective use of Himars rocket systems and other Western-supplied arms, which have made it much harder for Moscow to solidify its occupation in some regions.

Firefighters search through the debris of a building destroyed by bombing in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine.

PHOTO: NACHO DOCE/REUTERS

A Ukrainian describing a Russian missile attack on Mykolaiv last week that destroyed houses and injured residents.

PHOTO: SERHII KOROVAYNY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

On Monday, Russian-backed separatist officials in the eastern Luhansk region, which Russia claimed control over earlier this month, said Ukrainian forces had targeted the city of Alchevsk overnight with five rockets shot from Himars systems.

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Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said Monday that Ukrainian forces had destroyed 50 Russian ammunition depots using the long-range Himars systems since they acquired them from the U.S. last month. “This cuts their [Russian] logistical chains and takes away their ability to conduct active fighting and cover our armed forces with heavy shelling,” he said in televised comments.

As Russia has sought to regain territory in Kharkiv and Mykolaiv, Ukraine has been preparing a counteroffensive in the Russian-controlled Kherson region, whose capital Moscow captured in the early stages of the conflict.

Russia on Saturday launched a missile attack on Ukraine’s critical grain-exporting port of Odessa hours after signing an international agreement to ease its blockade of the Black Sea coastline and allow for the safe transport of grain and other foodstuffs necessary to alleviate a looming global food crisis.

Residents of Mykolaiv collect cleaning water from a water station.

PHOTO: SERHII KOROVAYNY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Mykolaiv‘s water supply was damaged during shellings by Russian forces.

PHOTO: SERHII KOROVAYNY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The strike appeared to violate the terms of the United Nations-brokered agreement signed by Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul on Friday, which stipulated that both countries would refrain from attacking port facilities or civilian ships used for grain transport, according to a copy of the agreement viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The Kremlin said the strike targeted military infrastructure.

“This is in no way related to the infrastructure that is used to fulfill the agreements and export grain. Therefore, this cannot and should not affect the start of the shipment process,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.

Speaking later Monday during a visit to the Republic of Congo, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, “There is nothing in the obligations that Russia assumed” that would prevent it from “destroying military infrastructure.”

Ukrainian officials have vowed to continue efforts to export grain that has been piling up in silos along its shores since Russia invaded.

“We continue technical preparations to launch the export of agricultural products from our ports,” Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said following Saturday’s attack. “We will not back down from our goal of unlocking seaports.”

The attack immediately drew global condemnation from officials who questioned Moscow’s commitment to the agreement and willingness to help ease food shortages that are affecting millions of people around the world.

Residents of the town of Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region inspected a house on Monday following an overnight strike.

PHOTO: ANATOLII STEPANOV/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the attack “casts serious doubt” on the credibility of Russia’s interest in easing its blockade.

Mr. Peskov on Monday urged for assessments of the deal to be withheld until shipments begin.

As Ukraine prepares to resume grain exports, new questions were raised Monday about Europe’s ability to sock away enough gas for the winter. Russian state-owned energy producer Gazprom PJSC said that natural-gas exports through the vital Nord Stream pipeline to Germany will drop to about a fifth of the pipe’s capacity—to 20% from 40%—blaming problems with a turbine. The reduction is expected to take effect Wednesday.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that sanctions threatened to force Gazprom to reduce flows further than it already had, and Germany announced a set of new measures to save gas. European government officials and companies say Moscow is cutting supplies to pressure Europe’s economy and encourage leaders to backtrack on military and financial support for Kyiv.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed his first deputy secretary for the National Security and Defense Council, Ruslan Demchenko, according to a statement from his office on Monday. Mr. Demchenko’s removal follows the purge of a series of top security and intelligence officials by the Ukrainian leader in recent days over alleged failures to weed out Russian sympathizers and spies at the heart of his government.

In 2010, Mr. Demchenko lobbied for ratification of the so-called Kharkiv Pact, through which Ukraine agreed to extend the stay of the Russian Black Sea fleet on the Crimean Peninsula. Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.

Mr. Zelensky also said that he would appoint Viktor Oleksandrovych Khorenko as the new commander of the Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, replacing Gen. Grigoriy Galagan. The decree released on the president’s website offered no explanation for the change.

Corrections & Amplifications

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited the Republic of Congo. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said he visited the Democratic Republic of Congo. (Corrected on July 25)

Write to Vivian Salama at vivian.salama@wsj.com and Evan Gershkovich at evan.gershkovich@wsj.com

11. The Iran Nuclear Deal’s Convulsive Death

Excerpts:

If the U.S. is going to develop an effective response to this combination of strategic threats, our political leaders will have to move beyond finger pointing and blame games over the fate of the JCPOA. Republicans can say justly that Mr. Obama’s decision to sign something as consequential and controversial as the Iran nuclear deal without the bipartisan support needed to get a treaty ratified in the Senate was a historic mistake. Democrats can reasonably riposte that Mr. Trump’s unilateral withdrawal made everything worse. Such matters can be left to the historians. The question before us now is not who was right in 2015 or 2018. It is what we do next.

Mr. Biden has repeatedly said that allowing Iran to build nuclear weapons is not an option. If his administration fails to hold that line, the consequences for American power in the Middle East and globally would be profound and perhaps irreversible. If America attacks Iranian nuclear facilities and finds itself stuck in yet another Middle Eastern quagmire, the effects at home and abroad will also be dire. China and Russia would take advantage of America’s Middle East preoccupation to make trouble elsewhere, and U.S. public opinion would be further polarized.

Few presidents have faced policy choices this tough or consequential. It’s understandable if not commendable that the administration postponed the day of reckoning for so long, but as the dead-cat stink intensifies, Mr. Biden is coming closer to the greatest test of his career.

The Iran Nuclear Deal’s Convulsive Death

Biden will face a test like no other as Putin and Xi see America’s global power faltering.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-iran-deals-convulsive-death-jcpoa-biden-middle-east-negotiations-russia-china-taiwan-11658774914

By Walter Russell MeadFollow

July 25, 2022 6:27 pm ET

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, and President Biden at a NATO summit in Madrid, June 29.

Photo: Susan Walsh/Associated Press

No matter what you call it, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—JCPOA for short or “Iran nuclear deal” for convenience—is in trouble. Since Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of Barack Obama’s agreement that ended economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for temporary limits on Iran’s nuclear activities, the deal has been the Schrödinger’s cat of diplomacy—sealed in a box, neither dead nor alive but in some indeterminate state.

These days, however, the stench from the box is getting harder to ignore. As Iran approaches the nuclear threshold, the saga seems to be moving toward a close.

In December Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that “what we will not allow is for Iran to, in effect, tread water at talks, while at the same time advancing its program.” Iran was not deterred and has been merrily treading water and advancing its nuclear program ever since. Last week Britain’s intelligence chief told reporters that Iran had decided to reject America’s terms for re-entering the deal, though it was happy to let negotiations drag on. Last week the International Atomic Energy Agency’s head, Rafael Grossi, said that Iran’s nuclear program is “galloping ahead.”

Even the most optimistic Washington insiders are losing hope. In lead negotiator Robert Malley’s words, “You can’t revive a dead corpse.”

One reason for letting talks drag on inconclusively for so long is the unappetizing consequences of admitting their failure. The definitive end of the Iran deal would almost certainly force the administration to choose between accepting a nuclear-armed Iran and initiating a confrontation likely to culminate in another American war in the Middle East. Both courses of action entail unpredictable but large risks and costs. Avoiding this ugly choice has, understandably, been the Biden administration’s central goal in the region.

Unfortunately, time wasn’t on President Biden’s side. The Iran negotiations have moved toward failure as America’s international position grew less secure, and today the deal’s impending collapse is part of a global crisis of American power. With Russian missiles raining down on Odessa and China threatening massive consequences if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi goes to Taiwan, the administration is already grappling with an international situation far graver than anything it expected or prepared for. Whatever their long-term concerns about a nuclear Iran, both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin seem more interested in stiffening Iran’s commitment to the anti-American alliance than in facilitating an agreement that would reduce the pressure on a beleaguered American president.

Americans need to see Iran’s nuclear push in a global context. The crisis with Tehran comes at an extremely beneficial moment for Russia and China. Our opponents hope that simultaneous geopolitical crises in Europe, the Middle East and East Asia will overwhelm a dazed and weary America. As the economic consequences of those crises ripple through the U.S. and global economies, the revisionists hope that America’s cohesion at home and alliances abroad will weaken as the threats grow. To prevent that, Team Biden needs to restore a sense of deterrence and caution to adversaries who have enjoyed a long run of success.

If the U.S. is going to develop an effective response to this combination of strategic threats, our political leaders will have to move beyond finger pointing and blame games over the fate of the JCPOA. Republicans can say justly that Mr. Obama’s decision to sign something as consequential and controversial as the Iran nuclear deal without the bipartisan support needed to get a treaty ratified in the Senate was a historic mistake. Democrats can reasonably riposte that Mr. Trump’s unilateral withdrawal made everything worse. Such matters can be left to the historians. The question before us now is not who was right in 2015 or 2018. It is what we do next.

Mr. Biden has repeatedly said that allowing Iran to build nuclear weapons is not an option. If his administration fails to hold that line, the consequences for American power in the Middle East and globally would be profound and perhaps irreversible. If America attacks Iranian nuclear facilities and finds itself stuck in yet another Middle Eastern quagmire, the effects at home and abroad will also be dire. China and Russia would take advantage of America’s Middle East preoccupation to make trouble elsewhere, and U.S. public opinion would be further polarized.

Few presidents have faced policy choices this tough or consequential. It’s understandable if not commendable that the administration postponed the day of reckoning for so long, but as the dead-cat stink intensifies, Mr. Biden is coming closer to the greatest test of his career.

Appeared in the July 26, 2022, print edition as 'The Iran Deal’s Convulsive Death.'

12. Biden blunders on refugees

Excerpts:

With an acute refugee crisis already underway, coupled with a food scarcity predicted to hit next year, the time has come for a shift in global refugee policies. UNRWA sits at the top of the list of agencies that divert funds from needy refugees worldwide.

Donors from the Arab world have reportedly curtailed support to UNRWA in recent years, even before the Ukraine crisis. So have Britain and Austria. The result has been a scramble at the U.N. to make up the shortfall — without giving thought to why there’s a shortfall in the first place. In fact, the message is unmistakable: The world’s confidence in this agency has fallen.

For now, the damage is done. Biden is not likely to reverse course. In fact, his allocation of funds to UNRWA looks like he is doubling down on this controversial policy. His own State Department recently hired Elizabeth Campbell , formerly UNRWA’s Washington lobbyist who notoriously helped disseminate bigoted education lessons to Palestinians via agency textbooks.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has already highlighted what the United Nations can’t do: It has little to deter Vladimir Putin’s war machine. But the U.N. can and should continue to coordinate refugee relief; it’s an area in which it has demonstrated relative competence. As the Ukrainian refugee crisis worsens, the Biden administration should conduct a review of its refugee assistance policies, with an eye toward optimizing them. Congress can play an important role in spurring this oversight. Better efficiency is urgently needed. So is purging hate and vitriol. This should not inhibit assistance to the refugees who need America’s help the most. Neither should it mean an end to assistance programs that support Palestinians. But it should prompt a long-overdue review of the efficacy of the refugee initiatives America supports, with the goal of much-needed change.

Biden blunders on refugees

Washington Examiner · by Jonathan Schanzer · July 22, 2022

JULY 21, 2022 11:00 PM

JONATHAN SCHANZER

& ASAF ROMIROWSKY

President Joe Biden earned deserved modest praise for his visit to Israel and Saudi Arabia last week, restoring confidence in core Middle East alliances. But the president made at least one major misstep: He pledged $201 million to the corrupt and bloated United Nations Relief and Works Agency, a step back into the failed policies of the past on a trip dedicated to continuing the forward progress made in the region in recent years.

Biden’s move was wildly out of step with the current global refugee crisis, sparked by Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine in February of this year. Nearly half a year later, the epicenter of the world’s refugee crisis today is unquestionably in Europe. UNRWA, by contrast, serves only a small segment of the Middle East. In fact, UNRWA is the only agency dedicated to serving one specific refugee population. For seven decades, the Palestinians have received special treatment, while the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees is tasked with handling every other refugee problem on the planet. Worse, UNRWA has adopted the unjustifiable policy of recognizing the descendants of the original refugees from the 1948-1949 war with Israel. This means that the agency’s roster of dependents continues to grow each year, even as the number of original refugees continues to shrink because of their aging population. In other words, UNRWA has ensured that the services will always be needed; the agency that originally had no more than 715,000 refugees from the first Arab-Israeli war now has 7 million clients. Under the current policy, that list will only grow.

Biden’s support for UNRWA is also odd given that the agency has been under fire in recent years owing to credible allegations of corruption, mismanagement, and extremism, to name a few. A recent study on agency textbooks just validated again the shocking extent of the antisemitism found in the materials that Palestinian students are required to learn.

It gets worse. The agency has a bloated roster of employees. Its payroll is a whopping 30,000 or more. And UNRWA has been increasingly infiltrated by members of radical groups, primarily the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group that runs the Gaza Strip. Terrorists are believed to hold jobs as teachers and administrators within the agency’s bureaucracy, thanks to poor vetting and oversight procedures. Hamas has cynically wielded UNRWA facilities as shields to protect its underground commando tunnels that were deliberately built beneath or alongside the agency’s buildings. Hamas and other militant groups have a history of firing unguided rockets at Israel from sites adjacent to UNRWA buildings for similar reasons. It’s a practice commonly known as “human shields,” which is recognized as a war crime in the United States and the U.N., among others.

Supporting an organization so deeply beset with problems is a glaring misallocation of American and United Nations resources at any time. But it’s especially egregious when those resources are sorely needed elsewhere as the refugee crisis in Ukraine spirals out of control.

By one conservative estimate, 7 million Ukrainians are internally displaced as a result of the war. No fewer than 5 million refugees have already fled Ukraine. The U.N. predicts a total of approximately 8.35 million refugees by the end of this year. According to one British House of Commons report on Ukraine, “29% of Ukraine’s 44 million population (12.8 million people) have been forcibly displaced within the country or beyond it. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said it is the fastest growing refugee crisis since World War II.”

Poland, Moldova, Hungary, and Slovakia are among the front-line states in this crisis. They will need significant international assistance to absorb the massive numbers of refugees streaming across their borders. The president’s decision to throw more money at UNRWA is downright bizarre in this context.

A responsible policy would be to divert some of these resources, if not most of them, to the escalating refugee crisis gripping Europe.

Throwing good money after bad at the U.N. is nothing new, of course. The massive refugee crisis stemming from the civil war in Syria should have prompted a shift in policy. The same goes for the internal displacement of Yemenis from that country’s civil war, prompted primarily by the Iran-backed Houthi terrorist groups. But those crises may soon pale in comparison to the misery from the war in Ukraine.

With an acute refugee crisis already underway, coupled with a food scarcity predicted to hit next year, the time has come for a shift in global refugee policies. UNRWA sits at the top of the list of agencies that divert funds from needy refugees worldwide.

Donors from the Arab world have reportedly curtailed support to UNRWA in recent years, even before the Ukraine crisis. So have Britain and Austria. The result has been a scramble at the U.N. to make up the shortfall — without giving thought to why there’s a shortfall in the first place. In fact, the message is unmistakable: The world’s confidence in this agency has fallen.

For now, the damage is done. Biden is not likely to reverse course. In fact, his allocation of funds to UNRWA looks like he is doubling down on this controversial policy. His own State Department recently hired Elizabeth Campbell , formerly UNRWA’s Washington lobbyist who notoriously helped disseminate bigoted education lessons to Palestinians via agency textbooks.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has already highlighted what the United Nations can’t do: It has little to deter Vladimir Putin’s war machine. But the U.N. can and should continue to coordinate refugee relief; it’s an area in which it has demonstrated relative competence. As the Ukrainian refugee crisis worsens, the Biden administration should conduct a review of its refugee assistance policies, with an eye toward optimizing them. Congress can play an important role in spurring this oversight. Better efficiency is urgently needed. So is purging hate and vitriol. This should not inhibit assistance to the refugees who need America’s help the most. Neither should it mean an end to assistance programs that support Palestinians. But it should prompt a long-overdue review of the efficacy of the refugee initiatives America supports, with the goal of much-needed change.

Asaf Romirowsky is executive director at Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. Jonathan Schanzer is senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Washington Examiner · by Jonathan Schanzer · July 22, 2022

13. Russia says it wants to end Ukraine's `unacceptable regime'

The quiet part out loud? Russia wants all of Ukraine.

Russia says it wants to end Ukraine's `unacceptable regime'

AP · by SUSIE BLANN · July 25, 2022

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia’s top diplomat said Moscow’s overarching goal in Ukraine is to free its people from its “unacceptable regime,” expressing the Kremlin’s war aims in some of the bluntest terms yet as its forces pummel the country with artillery barrages and airstrikes.

The remark from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov comes amid Ukraine’s efforts to resume grain exports from its Black Sea ports —something that would help ease global food shortages — under a new deal tested by a Russian strike on Odesa over the weekend.

“We are determined to help the people of eastern Ukraine to liberate themselves from the burden of this absolutely unacceptable regime,” Lavrov said at an Arab League summit in Cairo late Sunday, referring to Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy’s government.

Apparently suggesting that Moscow’s war aims extend beyond Ukraine’s industrial Donbas region in the east, Lavrov said: “We will certainly help the Ukrainian people to get rid of the regime, which is absolutely anti-people and anti-historical.”

Lavrov’s comments followed his warning last week that Russia plans to retain control over broader areas beyond eastern Ukraine, including the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in the south, and will make more gains elsewhere.

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His remarks contrasted with the Kremlin’s line early in the war, when it repeatedly emphasized that Russia wasn’t seeking to overthrow Zelenskyy’s government, even as Moscow’s troops closed in on Kyiv. Russia later retreated from around the capital and turned its attention to capturing the Donbas. The war is now in its sixth month.

Last week, Russia and Ukraine signed agreements aimed at clearing the way for the shipment of millions of tons of desperately needed Ukrainian grain, as well as the export of Russian grain and fertilizer.

Ukraine’s deputy infrastructure minister, Yury Vaskov, said the first shipment of grain is planned for this week.

While Russia faced accusations that the weekend attack on the port of Odesa amounted to reneging on the deal, Moscow insisted the strike would not affect grain deliveries.

During a visit to the Republic of Congo on Monday, Lavrov repeated the Russian claim that the attack targeted a Ukrainian naval vessel and a depot containing Western-supplied anti-ship missiles. He said the grain agreements do not prevent Russia from attacking military targets.

In other developments:

— Russia’s gas giant Gazprom said it would further reduce the flow of natural gas through a major pipeline to Europe to 20% of capacity, citing equipment repairs. The move heightened fears that Russia is trying to pressure and divide Europe over its support for Ukraine at a time when countries are trying to build up their supplies of gas for the winter.

Zelenskyy accused Moscow of “gas blackmail,” saying, “All this is done by Russia deliberately to make it as difficult as possible for Europeans to prepare for winter.”

— Ukraine’s presidential office said Monday at least two civilians were killed and 10 wounded in Russian shelling over the preceding 24 hours. In the Kharkiv region, workers searched for people believed trapped under the rubble after 12 rockets hit the town of Chuhuiv before dawn, damaging a cultural center, school and other infrastructure, authorities said.

Kharkiv Gov. Oleh Sinyehubov said: “It looks like a deadly lottery when no one knows where the next strike will come.”

— Ukraine charged two former cabinet ministers with high treason over their role in extending Moscow’s lease on a navy base in Crimea in 2010. Prosecutors said Oleksandr Lavrynovych and Kostyantyn Hryshchenko conspired with then-President Viktor Yanukovych to rush a treaty through parliament granting Moscow a 25-year extension, leaving Crimea vulnerable to Russian aggression.

— Russia said it thwarted an attempt by Ukrainian intelligence to bribe Russian military pilots to turn their planes over to Ukraine. In a video released by Russia’s main security agency, a man purported to be a Ukrainian intelligence officer offered a pilot $2 million to surrender his plane during a mission over Ukraine. The Russian claims couldn’t be independently verified.

AP · by SUSIE BLANN · July 25, 2022

14. A Russian Defeat in Ukraine Could Save Taiwan

Unless China's arrogance is such that it believes it will not make the same mistakes as Russia or that it is militarily, ecomicially, and politically superior to Russia and would not meet the same fate as Russia.

Side note: Sullivan is a child of Top Gun and Red Dawn. (I feel pretty old as I think of Sullivan as one of those "young people")

Excerpts:

Goldberg: Let me just do one last follow-up on this. And again, referring back to some of your writing and your thoughts from previous years. One of your worries has been that there’s no common story in America that young people, especially, perhaps, at the base of the Democratic Party, feel is positive, that America has a positive role to play in the world.

Sullivan: The starting-off point for the piece that I wrote in The Atlantic that Jeff is shamelessly plugging was that I grew up as a child of the 1980s, of Top Gun and Red Dawn and the Miracle on Ice. And before I came into government, I was teaching students whose touchstone for American foreign policy was the Iraq War and Abu Ghraib and Edward Snowden. And they would look at me like, “What are you talking about, man?” as I would wax lyrical. But I think a couple of things about that generation. One is that there actually is a way to energize and galvanize young people around the United States being a leader on solving the food crisis or the climate crisis and so forth. We need to keep at that. And I do agree with you that the invasion of Ukraine has also crystallized this idea that there is an example of a direct attack on freedom and what it means for people to stand up and fight for freedom.

And I think that has reverberated through the United States in ways that have now left the front pages, but is still there in the mix in a real way. And I think it allows us to have a different kind of conversation going forward about what the United States can do to try to be a force for good, because the military conflict people are talking about today is not the U.S.’s wars of the last 20 years. It’s Russia’s war of aggression that the United States is working with the free world to fight against. And I do think it is a platform upon which to build a national conversation, especially with young people, about the question of America’s purpose and power in the world.

A Russian Defeat in Ukraine Could Save Taiwan

In a wide-ranging conversation, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan talks about how Putin’s invasion has gone wrong, a fraught meeting with the Saudi crown prince, and the upcoming anniversary of the Afghanistan withdrawal.

By Jeffrey Goldberg

The Atlantic · by Jeffrey Goldberg · July 25, 2022

Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, told me at the Aspen Security Forum on Friday that he worries China may be learning the wrong lessons from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Many people assume that China, observing Russia’s inability to conquer Ukraine, might be newly hesitant to invade Taiwan: “Hey, maybe we should completely rethink this” is the thought that Sullivan hopes enters Chinese minds. “But the thinking could also be How do we do it better than [Russia] if we had to do it?” Sullivan said.

It is both Sullivan’s job and his natural inclination to worry, but in our conversation, he did note that Russia’s inability to have its way in Ukraine has been enormously consequential for the West. “Russia was not able to achieve the basic strategic objectives that President [Vladimir] Putin set out, which were to seize the capital city of Kyiv and to end Ukraine as a going concern,” he said. “And instead the Ukrainians won the battle of Kyiv. They beat Russia back from Kharkiv. They stopped Russia from being able to make a bum’s rush to Odesa. And they essentially stymied the Russian effort to get beyond a swath of territory in the south and east of the country. And now we’re in a circumstance in which Russia is facing significant difficulties constituting the kind of force necessary for them to achieve their objectives.”

Our conversation at the security forum, a three-and-a-half-day Burning Man for the national-security set, sponsored by the Aspen Security Group, was held before an audience that included three former national security advisers—Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, and Tom Donilon. Sullivan could not have found this particularly relaxing, but he provided thought-provoking answers about subjects as varied as strategic ambiguity and American exceptionalism, and parried questions about the hardest subjects he confronts, including the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan and U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia. On Afghanistan, he said, in advance of the first anniversary next month of the American withdrawal, “It had to come to an end.”

What follows is a transcript of our conversation, edited by me for concision and clarity:

Jeffrey Goldberg: Let’s talk about the Middle East trip, specifically about the most controversial aspect of this trip, the meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. President Biden called him a pariah earlier, and now he went to meet him. Was it a mistake to call him a pariah?

Jake Sullivan: I think what’s interesting about the way that this has been covered is that time seemed to stop between this debate comment made in October of 2019, and the president traveling to Saudi Arabia in July of 2022. A lot happened in between.

When President Biden came into office, he made a fundamental strategic judgment that we were going to recalibrate, but not rupture, our relationship with Saudi Arabia. And so this wasn’t a decision that he made in the weeks leading up to this trip. This is a decision he made by taking a sober look at the world as we saw it coming into office. And yes, that means reversing the prior administration’s blank-check policy. It did mean cutting off offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia and really pushing hard to help get what is now a fragile but extended truce, the longest period of peace that we’ve seen in Yemen in seven years. A year ago, we were talking about Yemen as the worst humanitarian catastrophe on the planet, with thousands of civilians dying from violence and starvation. And now we have had three, going on four, months of fragile, but real, cessation of hostilities. And he also said all along that he was going to ensure that human rights would be a critical part of the agenda. And right at the top of the meeting with the crown prince, he raised the issue—both the direct issue of Jamal Khashoggi and his brutal and grisly murder and the broader issue of human rights as well. He let the crown prince know exactly where America stood.

Goldberg: But the Saudis have already been denying what took place in the meeting. Why did they deny what the president said vis-à-vis Khashoggi?

Sullivan: Well, I would characterize it a little bit differently. The Saudi ambassador was quoted saying Joe Biden raised the issue. He raised it up top. He was direct about it. The Saudis made no bones about that fact. Actually, they also put out what the crown prince’s response was with respect to how he raised a series of issues related to U.S. foreign policy over the past few years. So I don’t really accept the premise of the question.

And I think if you look at our major strategic objectives in the Middle East relative to stability and peace—whether it’s to do with Yemen, or Iraq’s integration into the region, or Israel’s integration into the region, whether it’s to do with the free flow of energy and sufficient energy supplies to protect the global economy, whether it’s to do with these countries betting on the United States, and not another outside power, when it comes to the future of technology and 5G—you go down the list, and the actual outcomes of this meeting were not just a bunch of words. There are real commitments for us to work together on these issues, but I’m not going to tell an unalloyed positive story about it, because we do have real and deep concerns that the president expressed to the crown prince directly about actions both past and present.

Goldberg: Are you confident now that MBS won’t do this again? Won’t go after critics, dissidents, the way he went after Khashoggi?

Sullivan: You know, the night that President Biden did his extended meeting with King Salman, first, and then the crown prince, he actually came out and did a press conference … and in the question and answer session, he was asked this exact question. He was asked, “Can you promise us that this won’t happen again?” And the president—it’s worth looking at his response. It was very human. It was very direct. It was very Joe Biden. He said, “Of course, I can’t make a promise about what someone else is going to do. I can only make a promise about what the United States is going to do. And I made clear, in no uncertain terms, what would transpire in the event that anything like this happened again.” I can’t characterize my level of confidence about what another country will choose to do in the future.

Goldberg: Because I’m a masochist, I’ll try one more time. You have direct exposure to very fascinating world leaders. We’ll talk about some others as well. I’m asking what you think about MBS. Do you think that he is the unstable, authoritarian, thin-skinned dictator that The Washington Post and others well beyond The Washington Post believe, or do you think he’s capable of growth? We’re trying to understand this because this guy could be running Saudi Arabia for 50 years.

Sullivan: So I will say that I have made it a point to reserve my personal opinions about other world leaders. That is something that shouldn’t factor into U.S. foreign policy in a significant way. And so I’m afraid that I’ll keep my own counsel in terms of answering that question. Sorry.

Goldberg: You’ll write it for The Atlantic eventually.

Sullivan: Exactly.

Goldberg: Let’s talk about Ukraine. Give us your analysis of Russia’s campaign to date, where you’ve been surprised, where you’re not surprised, and maybe you could talk about what you and the president would consider what success looks like? What conditions would have to be obtained for you to feel like the West has gotten the better of this situation?

Sullivan: I have to acknowledge up front that it was the assessment of the American intelligence community—who did just a masterful job of ferreting out, describing, and then disseminating what the Russian plans were—but it was their judgment that Russia would be significantly more capable and significantly more successful on the battlefield taking territory. And in fact, Russia was not able to achieve the basic strategic objectives that President Putin set out, which were to seize the capital city of Kyiv and to end Ukraine as a going concern. And instead the Ukrainians won the battle of Kyiv. They beat Russia back from Kharkiv. They stopped Russia from being able to make a bum’s rush to Odesa. And they essentially stymied the Russian effort to get beyond a swath of territory in the south and east of the country.

And now we’re in a circumstance in which Russia is facing significant difficulties constituting the kind of force necessary for them to achieve their objectives, which have not fundamentally changed. But the gap between their capabilities and Putin’s objectives has grown with each passing month. And this is a credit to the bravery and skill of the Ukrainian military, the resilience of the Ukrainian people, the leadership of Ukraine’s president and those around him who galvanized international support in the early weeks and months. And it’s also a credit to the fact that we have provided an enormous amount of sophisticated weaponry and training on that weaponry to give Ukraine the capability to achieve those military successes against the Russian army.

Now, from the point of view of what we see as success: We want to see a sovereign independent, viable Ukraine that emerges proudly from this and can repel any future Russian aggression. What exactly are the terms of any diplomacy—and President [Volodymyr] Zelensky himself has said that diplomacy is ultimately going to have to be part of the resolution of this—that is for the Ukrainians to determine. For us, our job is to put the Ukrainians on the strongest possible footing on the battlefield so that they are in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.

Beyond that, we have two further objectives. One, to ensure that Putin is stymied in his goal to weaken and divide the West. And I believe that he has so far gotten the exact opposite of what he sought, which is a more purposeful, more united, more determined, and more capable NATO alliance than at any point in modern memory. And I also believe that we have staying power, despite what a lot of people are raising questions about.

They raised those questions six months ago, and we proved them wrong. They raise them today; I believe we will prove them wrong. And second, it is our strategic objective to ensure that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not a strategic success for Putin, but that it is a strategic failure for him. That means both that he be denied his objectives in Ukraine, and that Russia pay a longer-term price in terms of the elements of its national power, so that the lesson that goes forth to would-be aggressors elsewhere is that if you try things like this, it comes at a cost that is not worth bearing.

Goldberg: Let’s talk about your efforts to help Ukraine win on the battlefield. Obviously you’re supplying a huge number of weapons. But the Ukrainian criticism is that the U.S. is not supplying enough, and fast enough.

Sullivan: I accept that if I were sitting where my counterpart or President Zelensky were sitting, I’d be doing exactly what they’re doing. I’d be asking for more, faster. Who wouldn’t? That’s their job. Our job is to provide everything we can that is specifically targeted to the military objectives they’re trying to pursue; that is sustainable from the point of view of their capacity to absorb it into their military; that is sustainable from the point of view of us being able to train them up on systems that are highly sophisticated and need to be used and maintained effectively; and that brings along the entire alliance as well.

Do I believe that we have undersupplied the Ukrainian military? I do not. I believe that the speed, scope, and scale of military assistance to Ukraine is an absolute testament to the logistical capacity of the U.S. military and, honestly, to the surprising political capacity of the U.S. Congress to come together on a bipartisan basis and put forward the resources to get this done. We have moved billions of dollars of equipment at what, any kind of reasonable historical analysis would say, is lightning speed. And we will continue to do so.

There are certain capabilities the president has said he is not prepared to provide. One of them is long-range missiles that have a range of 300 kilometers, because he does believe that while a key goal of the United States is to support and defend Ukraine, another key goal is to ensure that we do not end up in a circumstance where we are heading down the road towards a third world war. And so for systems like that, the president has said, “I’m prepared to give you sophisticated precision guided munitions for these HIMARS that have been used to great effect, but I’m not going to give the long-range missiles.”

Goldberg: How worried are you about the American people’s staying power on this issue? Granted, there are no American troops involved, but we do have a short attention span. Do you worry about criticism that we’re spending billions and millions of dollars to support Ukraine and not spending it here?

Sullivan: It’s my job to worry. So I worry about literally everything. I worry about my answer to this question. So, yes, I guess I worry, but in a way that’s sort of not saying anything at all. But fundamentally, no, and I think it’s very important for Putin to understand what exactly he’s up against. Congress passed a $40 billion package for Ukraine, of which a substantial amount remains. And we are working on a month-by-month basis to move weapons at a pace, as I said before, that the Ukrainians can actually absorb and get out onto the battlefield with trained personnel to deploy them.

I strongly believe that there will be bipartisan support in the Congress to re-up those resources, should it become necessary. Does that mean that there is the same level of intensity in the American public as there was in the early weeks of the war? Is it on TV 24/7? No. But is the reservoir of support in this country, as translated into the Congress and the executive branch, deep and sustainable from the point of view of doing whatever it takes for, as the president has said, as long as it takes? Yes.

Goldberg: How worried are you about the physical safety of President Zelensky now?

Sullivan: I thought I’d coached you with the previous question, not to start with “how worried are you?” Because my answer is “worried.”

Goldberg: Jake, as you know, I’m uncoachable. But how about when compared with where you guys were on this issue in February?

Sullivan: This is a leader in wartime dealing with an enemy in Russia that is ruthless, brutal, and capable of just about anything. So it is a concern. President Zelensky takes the precautions you would expect to protect himself, to protect continuity of government in Ukraine. And we are trying to help and facilitate that in any way that we can.

Goldberg: A question that comes up, in terms of supplying Ukraine with weapons necessary for its defense, is that you’re also trying to buttress Taiwan with many of the same kinds of weapons. This goes to the issue of the “porcupine strategy.” Is Taiwan ready right now to repel a Chinese attack?

Sullivan: One of the things I’ve learned a lot about in the last 18 months is every form of artillery, munition, coastal defense system, naval mine that is produced on Mother Earth, not just American systems, but European systems and so forth. And there are longer-term questions about ensuring that the American defense industrial base, and the defense industrial base of our allies, can sustain the kind of security assistance that we are going to need in Ukraine, as well as Taiwan, as well as for ourselves, to ensure that we are maintaining a proper level of deterrent. That is going to require increased investment, increased workforce development, increased emphasis on supply chains, to ensure that components are not being cannibalized and that all of the necessary types of systems, especially munitions, are getting created in sufficient numbers.

I believe that particularly under the leadership of Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks, we have a good strategy. There are some overlaps between the systems for Ukraine and the systems for Taiwan. There are also some big differences because the nature of the contingency, or the conflict, would be quite different from land war in Europe and a potential contingency across the Taiwan Strait. So it’s not a one-for-one trade-off between those two, except for with certain types of capabilities. With respect to the porcupine strategy, one of the things that the United States has tried to do over multiple administrations, but that we have accelerated dramatically over the course of the past 18 months, is to try to ensure that in our defense and security relationship with Taiwan, we are focused on those capabilities that are going to be most useful in the kinds of contingencies we can expect, and not just rely on systems that they’ve had around for a very long time.

A lot of people talk about whether China is learning lessons from Ukraine. Of course they are. And some of those lessons are concerning. But not as many people ask, “Is Taiwan learning lessons from Ukraine?” You can bet they are. They’re learning lessons about citizen mobilization and territorial defense. They’re learning lessons about information warfare. And they’re learning lessons about how to prepare for a potential contingency involving China, and they’re working rapidly at that.

Goldberg: Could you just pause on something you said a moment ago. What are the lessons that China is learning from the Russian invasion of Ukraine that most concern you?

Sullivan: Well, I think that you can look at what Russia has done in Ukraine and see that a much bigger military has gone after a much smaller neighbor with a much smaller military, and yet has not achieved its objectives, and say, Hey, maybe we should completely rethink this. But the thinking could also be How do we do it better than [Russia] if we had to do it? I’m not predicting anything.

Goldberg: If the West wins in Ukraine, you think China no longer contemplates invading Taiwan?

Sullivan: It’s never as simple as that, this question of credibility in one part of the world translating absolutely to decisions in another part of the world. But do I think it would have an impact? Yes. And I do think that part of our objective in Ukraine has to be to show strength, resilience, staying power, canniness, capability, because this will have some impact on our ability to effectively deter others elsewhere.

Goldberg: The president is known on occasion for making off-the-cuff statements that then raise the question, do they represent policy? The president has said, I believe three times, that the U.S. will come to Taiwan’s defense in the case of an attack. Is that formal U.S. policy?

Sullivan: The president said in Japan that our policy has not changed, that we maintain a policy of strategic ambiguity, and we do. And when it comes to Taiwan generally, every administration’s Taiwan policy, both its declaratory policy and its actual policy, have contained multitudes—many different sentences that you look at collectively and say, how do those all fit together? But somehow that ambiguity, that creative tension within the policy, has allowed us to maintain peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait for multiple decades across multiple administrations. So the direct answer to your question is no, as the president himself has said, our policy has not changed, and we maintain a policy of strategic ambiguity.

Goldberg: I’m periodically reminded that you were a debater when you elevate strategic incoherence into a policy.

Sullivan: Well, people often put the word strategic before something as a way of making it sound good. Strategic patience kind of means that we don’t quite know what we’re doing, but we’re going to be strategic about waiting awhile to figure it out. And strategic ambiguity means we don’t want to be super-clear, so strategically we’re going to be ambiguous. But this is not just true in international affairs; it’s true in many different realms of human life. I wouldn’t call it incoherence, but I would say ambiguity has to be a feature of strategy in certain contexts, particularly very complex concepts. And yes, I will defend that idea, conceptually.

Goldberg: Let’s go to Afghanistan for a minute. We’re coming up on the anniversary of the withdrawal. I was rereading a piece you wrote—and I suggest everyone read this, and not for self-interested reasons—a very interesting piece in The Atlantic in the beginning of 2019, on, among other things, the case for an enlightened sort of American exceptionalism. In the course of that piece you wrote that “the purpose of American foreign policy is to defend and protect the American way of life.” I was thinking about that line in light of Afghanistan, the withdrawal, the closing of girls’ schools, the suppression of women, and so on. And I’m wondering if you could talk about any regrets that you may have about what happened and the consequences for some of the most vulnerable people in Afghanistan.

Sullivan: Look, I just gave an answer about strategic ambiguity, very kind of abstract, high-minded stuff. But I think your question about Afghanistan is a good reminder, and it’s something I try to remind myself every day. And I know that Tom and Condi and Steve probably did the same when they were in the job. This is a human job. And the decisions we make have impacts on human beings. And that is something that is never lost on me. And I’m one of those human beings; it has an impact on me. And when I see the closing of girls’ schools, I think that is a horrible thing. And watching the images of the withdrawal was obviously painful, and difficult. But I believe that the president’s fundamental judgment, which was that after 20 years of war in Afghanistan, choosing a course to intensify our engagement, go back to war with the Taliban, lose more American life over more years, could not be justified on the basis of trying to sustain what we had done in Afghanistan. It had to come to an end.

There are human consequences to that, and we have an obligation to try to deal with this through means other than the deployment of large numbers of U.S. forces, the same way we try to alleviate similar kinds of grievous atrocities and repressive policies the world over without going to war. That includes a range of tools that we have, and that doesn’t mean we succeed in every case. And obviously the situation in Afghanistan, particularly when it comes to issues like girls being able to go to school, is not where we want it to be. But at the end of the day, the president’s view was that we cannot stay at war indefinitely, with the United States fighting and dying to try to hold Kabul and other significant cities in that country. And it would mean bearing some human costs to not do that. But those are the tough judgments the president has to make. And one year later, I think the president feels that the decision that he made was the right decision for the American people and the right decision for how we can position ourselves to be the best and most effective contributor to the global public good, across a range of issues involving a range of geographies.

Goldberg: Didn’t the late-stage American involvement in Afghanistan show that small numbers of troops could actually create a kind of backbone for the rest of the country? I mean, you didn’t have that many troops in Kabul, outside of Kabul in the months, even years, leading up to the withdrawal.

Sullivan: That’s absolutely correct. And why was that? Why were we able to draw down to such a small number of forces and why were they able to operate with relative safety? It’s because the previous administration struck an agreement with the Taliban, and that agreement said, “We’ll stop attacking you. You can draw down your forces and you need to leave by May 1, 2021. You need to leave.” That was the policy and the agreement, and whether we would’ve negotiated that same agreement or not is another question. That was the agreement that President Biden inherited when he came into office. So his choice on May 2 was not to keep 2,500 troops in peace in Afghanistan and everything will be just fine. That is a fanciful concept. His choice was to go back to war with the Taliban—where we would’ve had to flow in more forces and increase our level of involvement in the country and increase the exposure of those troops to death and injury—or draw down, follow through on the agreement the previous administration made. This idea that we could just sustainably stay there indefinitely at basically no cost is the kind of counterfactual that people can sit around and talk about, but at the end of the day, it was not the reality that the president confronted when he had to make this very hard decision.

Goldberg: There are many other subjects, regions, we could talk about, Iran among them, but I’d rather ask you in our few remaining minutes to talk about this role: What have you have you learned about the realities, the difficulties of enacting, to borrow a word, a coherent, idealistic, expansive American foreign policy?

Sullivan: Well, one thing I’ve learned is what a supply chain is. I say that kind of lightly, but it is remarkable how the very notion of supply-chain resilience was simply not a central topic of conversation in the national-security space before COVID. Now it implicates everything, from our capacity to lead on the industries of the future, like EV batteries, to our ability to continue supplying Ukraine with 155 ammunition or GMLRs, to our ability to ensure that China doesn’t actually dominate a massive tract of the global economy through buying up not only rare earth minerals, but many other types of important minerals from the Americas, Africa, and elsewhere.

This administration has made a major push to try to catch up.

Goldberg: Talk about America’s role in the world post–Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Sullivan: We were just at a NATO summit in which Finland and Sweden were invited to join. Two historically neutral countries that the president began reaching out to last fall. Within 24 hours of them going out and making their historic announcements in their capitals, their request was “Can we come to the United States and stand with Joe Biden, stand with the American president?” We have a lot of challenges here at home and plenty of challenges that keep me up at night abroad, but the basic attributes and capacity of the United States, our value proposition in the world, is profound today, and it will be profound 10 years from now. I truly believe that.

And I think a little bit of what we all collectively need to think about is how confidence is a commodity. It’s something we have to nurture and display. And one of the things that Russia-Ukraine has done for the U.S. and U.S. foreign policy is that it has not just positioned us to lead the Western alliance in the Euro-Atlantic region, but it’s had global reverberations. Countries around the world are looking at what the United States, NATO, the G7, have done in response, and have said, “Wow, that is a group of countries led by the United States with genuine capacity and that should be taken note of.”

Goldberg: Let me just do one last follow-up on this. And again, referring back to some of your writing and your thoughts from previous years. One of your worries has been that there’s no common story in America that young people, especially, perhaps, at the base of the Democratic Party, feel is positive, that America has a positive role to play in the world.

Sullivan: The starting-off point for the piece that I wrote in The Atlantic that Jeff is shamelessly plugging was that I grew up as a child of the 1980s, of Top Gun and Red Dawn and the Miracle on Ice. And before I came into government, I was teaching students whose touchstone for American foreign policy was the Iraq War and Abu Ghraib and Edward Snowden. And they would look at me like, “What are you talking about, man?” as I would wax lyrical. But I think a couple of things about that generation. One is that there actually is a way to energize and galvanize young people around the United States being a leader on solving the food crisis or the climate crisis and so forth. We need to keep at that. And I do agree with you that the invasion of Ukraine has also crystallized this idea that there is an example of a direct attack on freedom and what it means for people to stand up and fight for freedom.

And I think that has reverberated through the United States in ways that have now left the front pages, but is still there in the mix in a real way. And I think it allows us to have a different kind of conversation going forward about what the United States can do to try to be a force for good, because the military conflict people are talking about today is not the U.S.’s wars of the last 20 years. It’s Russia’s war of aggression that the United States is working with the free world to fight against. And I do think it is a platform upon which to build a national conversation, especially with young people, about the question of America’s purpose and power in the world.

The Atlantic · by Jeffrey Goldberg · July 25, 2022

15. U.S. Officials Grow More Concerned About Potential Action by China on Taiwan

Learn, adapt, and anticipate.

Excerpts:

“A big part of why China worries about what the U.S. does is because we open up space for others,” Mr. Kanapathy said. “And that’s what China really worries about the most — more legitimacy for the Taiwanese government in the international community.”

Some analysts say there are less risky ways to demonstrate support for Taiwan. Washington could send a top military officer, for example, or sign a bilateral trade agreement, which could help the island reduce its economic reliance on China.

U.S. military officials say a sea-and-air invasion of Taiwan would be difficult for the People’s Liberation Army to pull off today. If China did move earlier than expected against Taiwan, it could do so piecemeal, perhaps by first invoking their recent declaration on the status of the Taiwan Strait and conducting a limited operation to gauge Washington’s reaction. Another theory is that Beijing might try to seize an outer island close to China’s coast.

American officials say it is unlikely that the Chinese government has decided what operation, if any, to carry out. But it is a subject being regularly simulated and war-gamed in Washington.

U.S. Officials Grow More Concerned About Potential Action by China on Taiwan

The New York Times · by Amy Qin · July 25, 2022

The Biden administration is watching for any moves by China to close off the Taiwan Strait, and they would prefer that Nancy Pelosi cancel her planned trip.

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July 25, 2022, 7:00 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration has grown increasingly anxious this summer about China’s statements and actions regarding Taiwan, with some officials fearing that Chinese leaders might try to move against the self-governing island over the next year and a half — perhaps by trying to cut off access to all or part of the Taiwan Strait, through which U.S. naval ships regularly pass.

The internal worries have sharpened in recent days, as the administration quietly works to try to dissuade House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from going through with a proposed visit to Taiwan next month, U.S. officials say. Ms. Pelosi, Democrat of California, would be the first speaker to visit Taiwan since 1997, and the Chinese government has repeatedly denounced her reported plans and threatened retaliation.

U.S. officials see a greater risk of conflict and miscalculation over Ms. Pelosi’s trip as President Xi Jinping of China and other Communist Party leaders prepare in the coming weeks for an important political meeting in which Mr. Xi is expected to extend his rule.

Chinese officials have strongly asserted this summer that no part of the Taiwan Strait can be considered international waters, contrary to the views of the United States and other nations. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said in June that “China has sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the Taiwan Strait.”

American officials do not know whether China plans to enforce that claim. But Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, who is close to President Biden and deals with the administration often on issues involving Taiwan, said “there is a lot of attention being paid” to what lessons China, its military and Mr. Xi might be learning from events in Ukraine.

“And one school of thought is that the lesson is ‘go early and go strong’ before there is time to strengthen Taiwan’s defenses,” Mr. Coons said in an interview on Sunday. “And we may be heading to an earlier confrontation — more a squeeze than an invasion — than we thought.”

Chinese officials are aware that Biden administration officials, also applying lessons learned from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, are trying to shape their weapons sales to Taiwan to turn the democratic island into what some call a “porcupine” — bristling with enough effective armaments and defense systems to deter Chinese leaders from trying to attack it.

U.S. officials say they are not aware of any specific piece of intelligence indicating the Chinese leadership has decided to move soon on Taiwan. But analysts inside and outside the U.S. government are studying to determine what might be the optimal time for China to take bolder actions to undermine Taiwan and the United States.

A central question is what top Chinese officials think of the evolving strengths of the Chinese military relative to those of Taiwan, the United States and regional U.S. allies that include Japan and South Korea.

Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week that the Chinese military’s behavior in the Asia-Pacific region was “significantly more and noticeably more aggressive.”

Chinese officials have denounced a steady stream of visits by senior U.S. officials to Taiwan, which Beijing sees as being akin to formal diplomatic engagement with the island. Ms. Pelosi had planned to visit in April but postponed after her aides said she had tested positive for the coronavirus.

The Biden administration has tried to dissuade House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from going through with her proposed visit to Taiwan.Credit...Anna Rose Layden for The New York Times

“If the United States insists on going ahead, China will take firm and resolute measures to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and the U.S. will be responsible for all of the serious consequences,” Zhao Lijian, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, said at a regularly scheduled media briefing on Monday.

U.S. officials said the planning for Ms. Pelosi’s trip was moving ahead despite the rising furor over it.

Exclusive: US and Taliban make progress on Afghan reserves, but big gaps remain

Reuters · by Charlotte Greenfield

KABUL/WASHINGTON, July 26 (Reuters) - U.S. and Taliban officials have exchanged proposals for the release of billions of dollars from Afghan central bank reserves held abroad into a trust fund, three sources familiar with the talks said, offering a hint of progress in efforts to ease Afghanistan's economic crisis.

Significant differences between the sides remain, however, according to two of the sources, including the Taliban's refusal to replace the bank's top political appointees, one of whom is under U.S. sanctions as are several of the movement's leaders.

Some experts said such a move would help restore confidence in the institution by insulating it from interference by the Islamist militant group that seized power a year ago but which foreign governments do not recognise.

Freeing up cash may not solve all of Afghanistan's financial troubles, but it would provide relief for a country hit by a slump in foreign aid, persistent drought and an earthquake in June that killed 1,000 people. Millions of Afghans are facing a second winter without enough to eat.

While the Taliban do not reject the concept of a trust fund, they oppose a U.S. proposal for third-party control of the fund that would hold and disburse returned reserves, said a Taliban government source who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The United States has been in talks with Switzerland and other parties on the creation of a mechanism that would include the trust fund, disbursements from which would be decided with the help of an international board, according to a U.S. source who also declined to be named in order to discuss the matter.

A possible model could be the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund, a World Bank-administered fund created to get donations of foreign development assistance to Kabul, the U.S. source added.

"No agreement has been reached yet," said Shah Mehrabi, an Afghan-American economics professor who is on the Afghan central bank's supreme council.

The U.S. State Department and Switzerland's Federal Department of Foreign Affairs declined to comment; the Afghan central bank did not respond to requests for comment.

Some $9 billion in reserves have been held outside Afghanistan, including $7 billion in the United States, since the Taliban overran Kabul last August as U.S.-led forces withdrew after 20 years of fighting the militants.

Foreign governments and rights groups have accused the Taliban of human rights abuses including extrajudicial killings during and after the insurgency, and the movement has curtailed women's freedoms since regaining power.

The international community wants the group to improve its record on women's and other rights before officially recognising it.

The Taliban have promised to investigate alleged killings and say they are working to secure Afghans' rights to education and free speech within the parameters of Islamic law.

'POSITIVE MOVE'

At talks in Doha last month, the Taliban submitted to U.S. officials their response to the U.S. proposal for a mechanism to free up Afghan assets, said Mehrabi, the Taliban official and a senior diplomat.

Experts cautioned that releasing funds would bring only temporary relief and new revenue streams were needed to replace direct foreign aid that financed 70 percent of the government budget before it was halted after the Taliban takeover.

But the exchange of proposals was seen by some as a glimmer of hope that a system can be created that allows for the release of Afghan central bank funds while ensuring they are not accessed by the Taliban.

Negotiations on the assets and other issues faltered after Washington cancelled meetings in Doha in March when the Taliban reneged on their promise to open girls' high schools. read more

"It is a positive move overall," that the Taliban did not reject the U.S. proposal, said Mehrabi, who added that he had not seen the Taliban counter-offer.

The Taliban official said the group was open to allowing a State Department-appointed contractor to monitor Afghanistan's central bank compliance with anti-money laundering standards, and that monitoring experts would be able to go to Afghanistan.

But the Taliban were concerned the U.S. idea could create a parallel central banking structure, the official added, and were not prepared to remove top political appointees including deputy governor Noor Ahmad Agha, who is under U.S. terrorism sanctions.

The U.S. source denied the proposed trust fund would amount to a parallel central bank.

INITIAL TRANCHE

Negotiations have focused on an initial release of $3.5 billion that U.S. President Joe Biden ordered set aside "for the benefit of the Afghan people" out of $7 billion in Afghan reserves held by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The other $3.5 billion is being contested in lawsuits against the Taliban stemming from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, but courts could decide to release those funds too.

U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Tom West in February said funds set aside by Biden potentially could be used to recapitalize a reformed central bank and the paralyzed banking system.

Afghanistan's economy went into freefall after the Taliban takeover, with the central bank's foreign-held reserves frozen, Washington and other donors halting aid and the United States ending deliveries of hard currency.

The banking sector all but collapsed and the national currency, the Afghani, plummeted.

The World Bank says it has strengthened, although shortages of dollars and Afghanis persist. High unemployment and soaring prices, fuelled by drought, the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, worsened a humanitarian crisis.

Experts said releasing foreign-held funds to the central bank would help it stem the crisis.

"You need a central bank regulating the value of the currency, regulating prices, ensuring liquidity for imports ... this is not optional. People won't eat," said Graeme Smith, a senior consultant for the International Crisis Group.

Additional reporting by Michael Shields in Zurich; Editing by Mike Collett-White

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Reuters · by Charlotte Greenfield

17. Federal Reserve and Senate Republicans spar over allegations of Chinese influence

Should be no surprise.

Excerpts:

The report also reveals for the first time that a 2015 Federal Reserve counterintelligence analysis identified 13 "persons of interest" working for the bank that investigators determined raised troubling concerns about their ties to the Chinese government.

But the Fed is now disputing its own findings from 2015, according to the committee, arguing that its original analysis drew conclusions about Fed employees "that may lack factual support" and ultimately could not be substantiated.

And Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell pushed back on the report's findings in a strongly worded letter sent on Monday to top committee Republican, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio.

Federal Reserve and Senate Republicans spar over allegations of Chinese influence

CNN · by Katie Bo Lillis, CNN

Washington (CNN)Senate Republicans are sparring with the Federal Reserve over what the GOP lawmakers say has been a gross failure by the Fed to combat Chinese efforts to gain influence there.

Minority staff from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee issued a report on Tuesday morning detailing five "case studies" of individuals whose conduct and connections to Chinese academic and state institutions they described as a potential concern. The individual employees -- four of whom are current employees, according to a committee aide -- are not identified by name.

The report also reveals for the first time that a 2015 Federal Reserve counterintelligence analysis identified 13 "persons of interest" working for the bank that investigators determined raised troubling concerns about their ties to the Chinese government.

But the Fed is now disputing its own findings from 2015, according to the committee, arguing that its original analysis drew conclusions about Fed employees "that may lack factual support" and ultimately could not be substantiated.

And Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell pushed back on the report's findings in a strongly worded letter sent on Monday to top committee Republican, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio.

"We are deeply troubled by what we believe to be the report's unfair, unsubstantiated, and unverified insinuations about particular individual staff members," Powell wrote.

CNN Exclusive: FBI investigation determined Chinese-made Huawei equipment could disrupt US nuclear arsenal communications

Republican committee staff based the report's findings on the 2015 counterintelligence analysis and a classified FBI report detailing the threat, according to a GOP committee aide. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.

The ultimately murky nature of the report's findings hint at some of the difficulties federal authorities have faced in separating out espionage from legitimate relationships between Chinese and US academia and business.

Many of the individuals cited in the report were identified based on their connections to Chinese entities viewed by investigators as potentially problematic, including Chinese academic organizations associated with China's so-called Thousand Talents program -- a lucrative overseas Chinese recruitment effort that became a focus for the Justice Department during the Trump administration as it sought to uncover US-based academics who might be stealing research or other intellectual property.

But amid allegations of xenophobia, racial profiling and executive overreach -- and after some of its high-profile prosecutions fell apart -- the Biden administration this year shut down the investigative initiative that had homed in on Thousand Talents.

According to the Senate report, Federal Reserve officials told the committee earlier this month that in 2015, the Fed became "concerned ... that there were organized efforts by foreign governments, some with economic and strategic interests at odds with those of the U.S., to solicit Federal Reserve researchers, typically by requesting that they enter into compensated contractual relationships." At the time, Fed investigators referred to the 13 "persons of interest" -- who worked at eight of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks -- as the "P-Network."

Although the Fed is now disputing "many of its own prior findings," according to the report, committee Republicans believe that emails, travel itineraries and employment contracts support the Fed's original 2015 counterintelligence analysis.

A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington condemned the report's findings in a statement on Monday.

"The remarks of the relevant US congressmen are full of Cold War zero-sum thinking and ideological prejudice," Liu Pengyu said. "The cooperation between China and the US in economic, financial and other fields is open and aboveboard. The US should take off its colored glasses and stop disrupting local and non-governmental exchanges between the two countries."

The findings

The Senate committee minority report claims that "China has used a variety of tactics to recruit U.S.-based economists to provide China with knowledge and intellectual capital in exchange for monetary gain and other benefits."

Despite that, the committee's Republican investigators say the Fed has since failed to adequately combat the threat that it identified in 2015, in part thanks to poor coordination with federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies and in part thanks to "a lack of internal counterintelligence competency."

In his letter to Portman, Powell also pushed back on those assertions.

"We ... have robust policies, protections, and controls in place to safeguard all confidential and sensitive information and to ensure the integrity of our workforce," Powell wrote. "We are confident that Federal Reserve staff understand their obligations and are committed to maintaining both the confidentiality of sensitive information and the integrity of our workforce."

Top US general says China's military has become more aggressive to US over last 5 years

According to the committee's minority, the Federal Reserve began prohibiting its employees from accepting any compensation from China or other countries of concern after the panel raised concerns.

"However, the Federal Reserve still has limited approval requirements for international collaborations or prohibitions on participating in a talent recruitment plan," the committee Republicans wrote.

"Left unchecked, these gaps continue to present China with an open avenue to disrupt the integrity of the American financial system, jeopardizing U.S. national security."

Powell argued that international collaboration is an important -- and encouraged -- part of the Fed's mission, "with the aim of deepening and broadening our understanding of critical issues."

"We encourage and support staff participation in multilateral organizations, and sponsor conferences together with other central banks," he wrote, adding that "information security considerations also shape this engagement."

The five 'case studies'

The report details the interactions of five Fed employees.

In one instance, a Federal Reserve employee was allegedly forcibly detained on four separate occasions during a 2019 trip to Shanghai. According to the report, "Chinese officials threatened the individual's family unless the individual provided them with economic information and assistance, allegedly tapped the employee's phones and computers, and copied the contact information of other Federal Reserve officials from the individual's WeChat account." These officials then allegedly threatened the employee with imprisonment in an effort to get him to sign a letter stating he would not discuss the interactions with anyone.

On two of the four occasions, according to the report, Chinese officials interrogated the employee about his position at the bank and told him "that he must cooperate with the Chinese government and share sensitive non-public economic data to which he has access as a [Federal Reserve] economist" and "advise senior [Chinese] government officials on sensitive economic issues."

China's response to Pelosi's potential Taiwan visit could be 'unprecedented' but military conflict unlikely, experts say

Federal Reserve officials told committee staff that they reported the incident to both the FBI and the Department of State after they were alerted to it by the employee, but "neither the FBI nor State Department advised the Federal Reserve regarding what to do to prevent and mitigate these incidents going forward." CNN has reached out to both the FBI and the State Department for comment.

In 2019, the Fed ultimately issued a general warning to all economists preparing to travel to China, according to the report.

Another employee "with sensitive access to Federal Reserve Board data provided modeling code to a Chinese university with ties to" China's central bank in 2018, the report alleges. The report alleges that this person maintains "longstanding ties" to China's central bank, has encouraged the Federal Reserve Bank where he works to deepen its relationship with the People's Bank of China, and has used WeChat to communicate directly with officials with the central bank to coordinate visits and assist with "developing predictive models."

"These and other actions taken by [this employee] because of these relationships raise concerns about actual or apparent foreign influence," the report states.

That individual "maintains access to sensitive [Federal Reserve Bank] information" in his or her current role as "a top economist," the report notes.

Yet a third employee was "observed communicating with Chinese State Council affiliated research center [and] assisting Chinese Government news agencies with publications," according to the report. Federal Reserve public affairs officials were kept out of the loop, Senate investigators said.

US Navy destroyer enters Chinese-claimed waters for third time in a week

One of the five employees is no longer employed at the Fed, but the report does not disclose the circumstances of the person's departure. The report says only that the employee "maintained close connections with Chinese universities known to be active in talent recruitment plans" and that the person's browsing history "showed a particular interest in Chinese President Xi Jinping, as well as articles relating to individuals arrested for economic espionage." According to the report, a keystroke capture showed that the employee was using "Xijinping as a website password."

Still another employee -- not part of the five cases detailed in the report -- "attempted to transfer large volumes of data from the Federal Reserve to an external site in at least two separate instances," according to the report.

CNN's Matt Egan contributed to this report.

CNN · by Katie Bo Lillis, CNN

18. Taiwan holds drills amid Pelosi visit concern, China tension

Think of how Xi's domestic political situation may influence the Chinese response:

Excerpts:

Xi is meanwhile seeking a third five-year term as party leader at a congress later this year and needs to show he is in charge amid a slowing economy and a public backlash against his “zero-COVID” policy.

Overall, the situation appears to be more serious than in 1995-96, said Bonnie Glaser, director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

“If the Chinese want to demonstrate resolve they have many ways to do so,” Glaser said.

China doesn’t want to create a “crisis for crisis’ sake,” but could try to use the possibility of a Pelosi visit to advance its agenda, said Oriana Skylar Mastro, an expert on Chinese military affairs and foreign policy at Stanford University.

China might take the opportunity to test out capabilities through a large-scale amphibious exercise, which it would justify as a response to an “aggressive move” by the U.S., Mastro said.

“So I think they’ll use it as an opportunity to make advances that could be problematic, but [which] they wanted to do anyway regardless of the Pelosi visit,” she said.

Taiwan holds drills amid Pelosi visit concern, China tension

militarytimes.com · by The Associated Press · July 25, 2022

BEIJING — Taiwan’s capital staged air raid drills Monday and its military mobilized for routine defense exercises, coinciding with concerns over a forceful Chinese response to a possible visit to the island by U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

While there was no direct link between China’s renewed threats and Taiwan’s defensive moves, they underscore the possibility of a renewed crisis in the Taiwan Strait, considered a potential hotspot for conflict that could envelop the entire region.

Air raid sirens were sounded in the capital Taipei and the military was holding its annual multi-day Han Kuang drills, including joint air and sea exercises and the mobilization of tanks and troops.

In Taipei, police directed people to shelters when a siren went off shortly after lunchtime. Streets emptied and shops closed.

Taiwanese people take cover inside of a basement shelter during the Wanan air raid drill, in Taipei, Taiwan, Monday, July 25, 2022. (Chiang Ying-ying/AP)

“In recent years, Chinese military planes have frequently harassed Taiwan, and the war between Russia and Ukraine broke out in February this year,” Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je told reporters, referencing concerns that a similar conflict could break out in East Asia. “All these things make us understand the importance of being vigilant in times of peace and we need to be prepared if there is war.”

Pelosi has not confirmed when, or even if, she will visit, but President Joe Biden last week told reporters that U.S. military officials believed such a trip was “not a good idea.” Administration officials are believed to be critical of a possible trip, both for the problematic timing and the lack of coordination with the White House.

China’s authoritarian ruling Communist Party considers democratic, self-ruling Taiwan its own territory, to be annexed by force if necessary, and regularly advertises that threat by staging military exercises and flying warplanes into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone or across the center line of the 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait.

Ukraine

China stages military exercises as US lawmakers visit Taiwan

China said its military staged exercises Friday to reinforce its threat to use force to bring Taiwan under its control, as U.S. lawmakers visited the island.

Beijing says those actions are aimed at deterring advocates of the island’s formal independence and foreign allies — principally the U.S. — from interfering, more than 70 years after the sides split amid civil war. Surveys routinely show that Taiwan’s 23 million people reject China’s assertions that the island is a Chinese province that has strayed and must be brought under Beijing’s control.

Pelosi, long a sharp critic of Beijing, is second in line to the White House. She is viewed as a Biden proxy by China, which demands members of Congress follow the commitments made by previous administrations.

Taiwan is among the few issues that enjoys broad bipartisan support among lawmakers and within the administration, with Biden stating earlier this year that the U.S. would defend Taiwan if it came under attack.

U.S. law requires Washington provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself and treat all threats to the island as matters of “grave concern,” but remains ambiguous on whether it would commit forces in response to an attack from China.

Though the sides lack formal diplomatic ties, the U.S. is Taiwan’s chief provider of outside defense assistance and political support, in a reflection of its desire to limit China’s growing influence and maintain a robust American presence in the Western Pacific.

During a visit to Indonesia on Sunday, U.S. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Chinese military has become significantly more aggressive and dangerous over the past five years.

Milley’s Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng, told him in a call earlier this month that Beijing had “no room for compromise” on issues such as Taiwan.

China

China fully militarized isles, Indo-Pacific commander says

The efforts were part of China’s flexing its military muscle, U.S. Indo-Pacific commander Adm. John C. Aquilino said.

On Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said Beijing had repeatedly expressed its “solemn position” over a potential visit by Pelosi, who would be the highest-ranking U.S. elected official to visit Taiwan since 1997.

“We are fully prepared,” Zhao told reporters at a daily briefing. “If the U.S. is bent on going its own way, China will take firm and strong measures to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

China has not said what specific actions it would take, although speculation has centered on a new round of threatening military exercises or even an attempt to prevent Pelosi’s plane from landing by declaring a no-fly zone over Taiwan.

“If the U.S. is determined to make [a visit] happen, they know China will take unprecedented tough measures and the U.S. must make military preparations,” said Shi Yinhong, an international relations expert at Beijing’s Renmin University.

“Expect huffing and puffing, maybe some fire-breathing, military posturing, and perhaps economic punishment of Taiwan,” said Michael Mazza, a defense and China expert at the American Enterprise Institute.

The timing of a Pelosi visit, which could happen sometime in early August, is especially sensitive, hinging on multiple factors. Among them is the anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army — the military branch of the ruling Communist Party — which falls on Aug. 1, a date used to stoke nationalism and rally the troops.

Chinese leaders are also under pressure from hardline nationalist forces within the party ranks.

That harkens back to the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1995 and 1996, when China held exercises and launched missiles into waters north and south of the island in response to a U.S. visit by the island’s then-president Lee Teng-hui. The U.S. responded by dispatching two aircraft carrier battle groups to the area, a move that helped spur China’s massive military upgrading in the years since that has radically changed the balance of power in Asia.

Xi is meanwhile seeking a third five-year term as party leader at a congress later this year and needs to show he is in charge amid a slowing economy and a public backlash against his “zero-COVID” policy.

Overall, the situation appears to be more serious than in 1995-96, said Bonnie Glaser, director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

“If the Chinese want to demonstrate resolve they have many ways to do so,” Glaser said.

China doesn’t want to create a “crisis for crisis’ sake,” but could try to use the possibility of a Pelosi visit to advance its agenda, said Oriana Skylar Mastro, an expert on Chinese military affairs and foreign policy at Stanford University.

China might take the opportunity to test out capabilities through a large-scale amphibious exercise, which it would justify as a response to an “aggressive move” by the U.S., Mastro said.

“So I think they’ll use it as an opportunity to make advances that could be problematic, but [which] they wanted to do anyway regardless of the Pelosi visit,” she said.

Associated Press writer Huizhong Wu and videographer Johnson Lai contributed to this report from Taipei, Taiwan.

19. Tulsi Gabbard, Rand Paul placed on list of Russian propagandists by Ukraine

Tulsi Gabbard, Rand Paul placed on list of Russian propagandists by Ukraine

Newsweek · by Giulia Carbonaro · July 26, 2022

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and former Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard have been listed by Ukraine among a number of American politicians, academics and activists Kyiv claims have promoted "Russian propaganda."

The list was compiled by the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation, founded in 2021 by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to study the impact of Russian disinformation. The center is part of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council.

The list—which also includes retired U.S. Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor, military strategist Edward Luttwak, political scientist John Mearsheimer and journalist Glenn Greenwald—does not explain what the consequences are for those who Ukraine clearly considers responsible for promoting the Kremlin's line. But it offers explanations for inclusion on the list.

In April, Paul said President Joe Biden provoked Russia to invade its neighbor by advocating Ukraine's entrance into NATO.

In this combination photo Senator Rand Paul, left, leaves the U.S. Capitol on June 23, 2022 and former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard speaks at a rally at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. on June 23, 2022. Paul and Gabbard have been included in a list of "Russian propagandists" by Ukraine. Getty

He also said: "You could also argue the countries they've attacked were part of Russia. Or part of the Soviet Union."

Paul was immediately rebuked for this by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who said Russia was not justified in invading Ukraine.

Former Rep. Gabbard said that the U.S. had provoked Putin for many years and that there are 25 dangerous biolabs in Ukraine that could release deadly pathogens.

The former representative has been accused of of lending credibility to Russian propaganda.

There are 25+ US-funded biolabs in Ukraine which if breached would release & spread deadly pathogens to US/world. We must take action now to prevent disaster. US/Russia/Ukraine/NATO/UN/EU must implement a ceasefire now around these labs until they’re secured & pathogens destroyed pic.twitter.com/dhDTH5smIG

— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) March 13, 2022

The biolab claims have also been supported by Greenwald, who Ukraine says didn't want the U.S. to help Ukraine to avoid provoking Russia into a nuclear war.

Macgregor is listed as having said that the Russian army was highly skilled and "invincible," while Mearsheimer is on Ukraine's blacklist for having said NATO provoked Vladimir Putin into war.

Luttwak is listed as having given support to holding referendums in the breakaway Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Newsweek has contacted Paul, Gabbard, Macgregor, Mearsheimer, Greenwald and Luttwak for comment.

Greenwald told UnHerd that the list was "standard McCarthyite idiocy." Mearsheimer told the news site he was disappointed with being listed as a Russian propagandist, while he defended his claim that the war was provoked by the U.S. wanting to accept Ukraine into NATO.

Luttwak also objected to the label of Russian propagandist. Talking to UnHerd, he said he was not "exactly Putin's most faithful agent," saying he has argued for Western powers to send weapons to Ukraine since "day one of the war."

As well as U.S. citizens, the list of "Russian propagandists" includes political figures, experts and public figures from Germany, Switzerland, Brazil, Poland and France.

Other Americans on the list are: political and business advisor Harlan Ullman, author Paul Pillar, economists Jeffrey Sachs and Steve Hanke, political analyst Brian Berletic, academics Patrick Basham and Clifford Kiracofe, former army officer David Payne, ex-diplomat Michael Springmann, retired intelligence officer Scott Ritter, finance specialist Jason Ross, businessman Mike Callicrate, politicians Geoff Young and Diane Sare, journalists Caleb Maupin and Tony Magliano, retired business consultant George Koo, Republican former Senate staffer Jim Jatras, former CIA officer Ray McGovern, former Virginia State Senator Richard Black and political analyst Graham Fuller.

Newsweek · by Giulia Carbonaro · July 26, 2022

20. Ukraine destroys 50 Russian ammunition depots with U.S.-supplied HIMARS

Ukraine destroys 50 Russian ammunition depots with U.S.-supplied HIMARS

Newsweek · by Andrew Stanton · July 25, 2022

Ukraine said Monday its military used U.S.-supplied HIMARS rocket systems to destroy 50 Russian ammunition depots, as the weapon continues to bolster Ukrainian forces in their fighting against Russia's military.

The announcement comes as the Russia-Ukraine war enters its fifth month. Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion on February 24, hoping for a quick, decisive victory over Ukraine and "liberation" of its eastern Donbas region. But the Ukrainian military has met the Russians with a stronger than expected response while receiving extensive military support from the West. Western weapons, including HIMARS, have been credited with helping Ukraine withstand Russia's much larger forces.

Speaking Monday on national television, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said HIMARS, or High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, are having a growing impact on his country's resistance against the Russians, Reuters reported.

"This cuts their logistical chains and takes away their ability to conduct active fighting and cover our armed forces with heavy shelling," he said.

Ukraine recently used U.S.-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems to destroy 50 Russian ammunition depots. Above, a U.S. HIMARS launcher vehicle in Morocco on June 9, 2021. FADEL SENNA/AFP via Getty Images

He added that Ukraine has conducted "precise" strikes on several bridges, apparently referring to river crossings in Kherson, a region occupied by the Russians.

What Are HIMARS?

HIMARS have emerged as a key weapon in the Russia-Ukraine war by giving a significant boost to Ukraine's military.

The rocket systems provide "lethal" close and long-range precision rockets and missile fire support for forces and can be used in any weather or at any time of the day, according to the U.S. military. They can achieve a range of up to 70 kilometers—about 43 miles—and help to "quickly enhance combat effectiveness."

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced last Wednesday that the U.S. would send four more HIMARS to Ukraine, whose government has praised the systems for their effectiveness. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday that the weapons have helped to "speed up the liberation" of Ukraine.

U.S. military experts have also noted the significance of Ukraine's use of HIMARS. Retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, a former commander of U.S. Army Europe and the Seventh Army, tweeted Saturday about the importance of HIMARS to Ukraine. "As for HIMARS - w/ fewer rounds, greater range, precision accuracy - it's a game changer," he wrote.

As Russian military losses continue to grow, a senior U.S. official told reporters last week that Ukraine had used the HIMARS to take out more than 100 "high value" Russian targets.

Serhiy Haidai, the governor of Ukraine's Luhansk region, told Newsweek earlier this month that the Russians have been in "panic mode" ever since the U.S. began supplying Ukraine with HIMARS.

Newsweek reached out to Russia's Foreign Affairs Ministry for comment.

Newsweek · by Andrew Stanton · July 25, 2022

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If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

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