Quotes of the Day:
What a society gets in its armed forces is exactly what it asks for, no more and no less. What it asks for tends to be a reflection of what it is. When a country looks at its fighting forces it is looking at a mirror: if the mirror is a true one the face that it sees will be its own.
— General Sir John Hackett, The Profession of Arms
An age builds up cities: an hour can destroy them.
— Seneca
Three men behind the enemy are worth 50 in front of him.
— Frederick The Great
1. The Irony of Misinformation: USIA Myths Block Enduring Solutions
2. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JULY 6 (Putin's War)
3. After Criticism, Army Reinstates High School Diploma Requirement as Recruitment Plummets
4. The next wolf warriors: China readies new generation of tough diplomats
5. War, protest and spiking prices: How spiraling inflation is setting the world on fire
6. Relative Weakness: The Secret to Understanding Irregular Warfare
7. Let’s Use Chicago Rules to Beat Russia
8. China: MI5 and FBI heads warn of ‘immense’ threat
9. The Great Global Rearmament
10. The West Must Isolate Iran
11. The Chinese Communist Party’s overseas influence operations seek to alter the Xinjiang narrative
12. Ukraine raises flag on recaptured island as Russia consolidates gains in east
13. Zelensky says Western artillery that Ukraine has received "started working very powerfully"
14. We Want to Rebuild U.S. Relations With China
15. Opinion | Biden’s Ukraine strategy risks prolonging a violent stalemate
16. Non-NATO Sources of Soviet and Russian Arms for Ukraine
17. U.S. must lead in shaping the future of the world
18. Mystery Cargo (Iran and Venezuela)
19. Ukraine is losing and the West is to blame
20. FDD | War Has Consequences: 20-Year Scars of The Second Intifada
21. Russian and Ukrainian Forces Prepare for Next Phase of Battle for Donbas
22. Russia Taking 'Operational Pause' in Ukraine, Analysts Say
23. Roll with hemp? Army seeks info about cannabis camo for snipers, scouts
1. The Irony of Misinformation: USIA Myths Block Enduring Solutions
This is a must read for any practitioners of Public Diplomacy, Psychological Operations, and any form of influence operations. It is especially useful for all those who think the answer to our problems is to reestablish the USIA.
But as Matt Armstrong has counseled me many times, although there is no silver bullet, the only way we can be effective at strategic influence is with leadership from the highest level and he and Dr. Paul counsel us all with this conclusion:
The United States stands to learn from the failures of the USIA—which was ultimately an agency born out of trying to work around, rather than through, how it conducts foreign affairs. To be successful, a new organization or agency would have the backing of a supportive White House and engaged Secretary of State, which would grant it the necessary authority to conduct activities, coordinate across government agencies, and foster private initiatives big and small, just as IIA did during its short life.
The Irony of Misinformation: USIA Myths Block Enduring Solutions
19fortyfive.com · by ByDr. Christopher Paul and Matt Armstrong · July 6, 2022
“There is no question today that the policies and actions of the US are often misunderstood and misrepresented abroad.” Secretary of State George C. Marshall spoke those words before Congress in 1947, and yet they are just as true—possibly even truer—today, as major U.S.-competitors have built up well-funded and organized entities that constantly mislead audiences about U.S. policies and motives. Russia, for example, uses its global state-run media, such as RT and Sputnik, as well as hordes of paid internet trolls; it leverages ideological and profit-minded fellow travelers to unleash a “firehose of falsehood” that undermines the credibility of all news sources; all while promoting narratives that favor the Russian state. China has the equivalent of an entire military service—the strategic support force—devoted to information warfare, and a huge government entity, the United Front Works Department, that coordinates China’s international exchanges and outreach, it also works to shape international public opinion of China.
Unlike these competitors, the United States government has failed to institutionalize the importance of information in foreign policy. The United States lacks formalized leadership structures to tackle these information issues head-on, just as it lacks a central organization to coordinate activities to understand, inform, and influence foreign audiences. These are longstanding gaps, readily acknowledged in the policy analytic community since at least 2001, and discussed at length throughout the first decade of the 21st century. And yet, these gaps persist today.
Among the persistent calls for improvement in U.S. information efforts is one to bring back the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), which was dismantled in 1999 But these calls miss an important point—USIA was disestablished for a reason: it was a marginalized agency, limited by design, separated from foreign policy, denied access to the National Security Council in 1969 by then-National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, relentlessly attacked by Sen. J. William Fulbright for years (he opposed its creation and tried to kill the agency in 1972), and, thus hobbled, proved itself of questionable effectiveness as it limped into its final decades.
USIA never had the leadership role or the level of integration with American foreign policy that modern proponents imagine it did, and that contemporary levels of information competition and conflict demand. Further, the agency was not charged with countering foreign propaganda, the mission which motivates many of the demands for a new USIA; the best, and mostly forgotten example of such an effort was the short-lived Active Measures Working Group, which was formed in 1981 to counter Soviet propaganda.
What about the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), formerly the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which operated under USIA until 1999, when it became an independent agency? Is that the right model for integrating information in foreign policy? The USAGM’s operations target countries relevant to U.S. national security and that lack a free press due to censorship (such as North Korea, Russia, and China), that are historically vulnerable (like Ukraine), or lack a foundation of professional news media (like Indonesia) or resources (like much of Latin America). USAGM’s networks—Voice of America, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, and others—do not, by law and on purpose, operate in or target democratic countries with a vibrant commercial press, which is the case for most of Europe. The USAGM is a surrogate news and information service to information-poor audiences providing content not just in the local vernacular, but based on their perspective, often with reporters from the area, often risking their lives in the pursuit of local journalism to inform and empower audiences. But the USAGM’s power, its credibility—the backbone of which is its relationship with its audiences—would be at real risk if it were no longer operating separate from policy, if it were suddenly subject to micromanagement from policymakers and operatives across the other international information and engagement portfolios.
A better historical model for an agency that could fulfil the needs of our information-starved foreign policy space is USIA’s short-lived predecessor, the International Information Administration (IIA). Formed in 1952 by Secretary of State Dean Acheson as a semi-autonomous operation within the State Department, the purpose of IIA was to streamline the management, budgeting, integration, and accountability of the government’s overseas information and engagement programs. To give an idea of the scale, it was considerable: IIA included half of the State Department’s personnel and more than 40% of the department’s budget. During its short existence, IIA benefited from being integrated with the foreign policy apparatus. IIA chaired an interagency coordinating committee that included the State Department, CIA, the Defense Department, and the Mutual Security Agency, positioning it to help an increasingly complex government with consistency between words and deeds. The IIA Administrator reported directly to a Secretary of State who appreciated the importance of information to policy. The Administrator managed a portfolio broader than USIA’s and with direct lines of authority into the State Department and across the field, owned the department’s relevant relationships with interagency partners, and operated with a broader interpretation of “information” that included personal interactions abroad.
In addition to the educational and cultural exchanges that were under IIA—but were prevented from moving to USIA—the agency was charged with direct and indirect support for building local civil capacity abroad, facilitating foreign engagements with U.S. experts in diverse fields such as agriculture and census taking, public health and transportation, virtually none of which were later included in USIA’s portfolio. One such IIA engagement saw a rural education expert sent to Turkey, resulting in the Turkish government sending 50 of its teachers to the U.S. for training. IIA also actively supported private foundations, community groups, and book and music publishers to tell America’s story abroad. Overseas, the IIA empowered and protected staff in the field, so they could be agile while maintaining unity of policy, objectives, and voice with Washington across programs.
Though the agency met little resistance within the State Department, and its efforts appeared to be working, the IIA project ended after little more than a year, with the arrival of new administration that did not believe in its mission. The department’s “lack of enthusiasm and imagination” and the “bureaucratic elephantiasis” that led Acheson to create IIA now motivated the Eisenhower administration to move some— but not all— of the IIA out of the State Department and form USIA, resulting in a 40% reduction of the State Department’s personnel. Instead of fixing the State Department, the White House created a new agency. Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, was all too happy to be rid of the broader information and engagement mission he considered a distraction from the department’s focus on traditional diplomacy. As if to underline its quiet demise, information about the IIA and its brief but largely successful history has never been organized and made available by the U.S. government.
Ultimately, what formed in its wake—the USIA—was the result of bureaucratic reshuffling and unfulfilled promises that resulted in an organization with fewer authorities and less integration than what it replaced. The Rockefeller Committee on Government Organization urged consolidation based on what IIA already was; the Jackson committee largely restated IIA’s current structure and focus to push out ownership of local programs to the field and recommending elevating IIA within the State Department; the Advisory Commission on Information reversed its support for keeping the broad programs within the State Department and instead recommended a Cabinet-level agency largely based on inaction by both the White House and Congress in addressing leadership issues.
The unkept promise underpinning the USIA model was the intent to forge “a closer link between operations and strategy planning” with a cabinet-level position. In actual execution, USIA fell out of step with the original proposals with a portfolio smaller than IIA’s, a smaller toolbox, and no longer having a seat at the tables of policy planning, execution, or coordination. Whereas IIA’s role was integrated with the State Department, the proposed leadership role for USIA teed up a conflict with the department that was never resolved and later produced the fuzzy term “public diplomacy” in an attempt to elevate and distinguish the mission of a struggling USIA from the State Department’s responsibility for diplomacy. The reality was that USIA never gained a cabinet seat, and it did not have institutionalized reach across foreign policy making and execution at the State Department nor among its interagency partners. The USIA never owned, managed, or directed the breadth and depth of programs or had control in the field abroad that IIA had. The result was the formalized segregation of information from policy.
Another step away from the vision realized in IIA is the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, created in 1999 with the closure of USIA. Though the Under Secretary is notionally the successor of the USIA Director, the office has never wielded the same level of authorities in the department or with interagency partners as USIA, let alone IIA. What operational leadership the Under Secretary did wield, like the Bureau of International Information Programs, a formerly massive remnant of
USIA damaged from years of mismanagement, was integrated into the renamed Bureau of Global Public Affairs, an office that never truly reported to the Under Secretary; went its own way, like the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs which has rejected the leadership of the Under Secretary since the Obama administration; or, was brittle and inconsistent. The Global Engagement Center is not part of the Under Secretary’s portfolio, and arguably was created because of the absence of effective leadership from that quarter. Reflecting successive administrations’ lack of interest in this position, it has been vacant more than four of every ten days since its creation: 37% of the Bush administration, 22% of the Obama administration, 93% of the Trump administration, and 100% of the Biden administration. While an empowered Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs could be part of a solution, twenty years of neglect is hard to overcome.
Based on this history, we might offer two possible solutions. First, the United States could choose to fix some of the cultural and bureaucratic problems in the State Department and resurrect an organization similar to the former IIA headed by a renamed Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. As a second alternative, the U.S. could choose to establish an independent cabinet-level agency with the same vision and mission.
The same core ideas that brought the IIA into being might serve as inspiration for this new organization or agency, structured to coordinate the U.S. government’s information efforts. This organization or agency could have a clearly defined mission of conducting and integrating informational activities supporting foreign policy—including perhaps identifying, anticipating, and responding to foreign malign influence, disinformation, and gaps in the availability of information. The new organization or agency might also be the operational and organizational home for information capabilities not well integrated elsewhere, for instance, such as the functions of the office of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, the Global Engagement Center, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, and have direct access to the State Department’s public affairs staff on the ground as both USIA and IIA did.
The United States stands to learn from the failures of the USIA—which was ultimately an agency born out of trying to work around, rather than through, how it conducts foreign affairs. To be successful, a new organization or agency would have the backing of a supportive White House and engaged Secretary of State, which would grant it the necessary authority to conduct activities, coordinate across government agencies, and foster private initiatives big and small, just as IIA did during its short life.
Dr. Christopher Paul is a senior social scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. Matt Armstrong is a former Governor on the Broadcasting Board of Governors, now the US Agency for Global Media, and is pursuing a PhD on political warfare at King’s College London (and was recently sanctioned by Russia). Both have studied public diplomacy, strategic communication, information operations, and other terms for topics related to leveraging information power as part of foreign policy for almost 20 years. The views expressed here are their own.
19fortyfive.com · by ByDr. Christopher Paul and Matt Armstrong · July 6, 2022
2. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JULY 6 (Putin's War)
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JULY 6
Kateryna Stepanenko, Karolina Hird, George Barros, Grace Mappes, and Frederick W. Kagan
July 6, 6:00 pm 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.
There were no claimed or assessed Russian territorial gains in Ukraine on July 6 for the first time in 133 days of war, supporting ISW’s assessment that Russian forces have largely initiated an operational pause.[1] The Russian Defense Ministry claimed territorial gains every day from the start of the war but has not claimed any new territory or ground force movements since completing the encirclement of Lysychansk on July 3.[2] However, Russian forces still conducted limited and unsuccessful ground assaults across all axes on July 6.[3] Such attempts are consistent with a Russian operational pause, which does not imply or require the complete cessation of active hostilities. It means, in this case, that Russian forces will likely confine themselves to relatively small-scale offensive actions as they attempt to set conditions for more significant offensive operations and rebuild the combat power needed to attempt those more ambitious undertakings.
The Kremlin continued to set conditions for the crypto-mobilization of the Russian economy in anticipation of protracted operations in Ukraine. The Russian State Duma adopted the third and final reading of a law introduced by the cabinet of ministers on June 30 that will allow the Russian government to oversee and regulate labor relations in Russian enterprises (both state and privately-owned).[4] This law, as ISW has previously reported, will allow government officials to recall workers from personal vacations, reschedule time off without employee consent, and require employees to work weekends, holidays, and nights. These measures allow the Kremlin to take much more direct control of most aspects of the Russian economy, including suspending rights and protections some workers would normally have.[5] The law must still be sent to the Federation Council before it reaches Russian President Vladimir Putin and is officially published, but the Kremlin is likely seeking to use the law to leverage domestic labor to maximize economic output and prepare for protracted operations in Ukraine.[6] Russia’s largest lead production plant reportedly stopped production on July 6 due to the almost-total halt of Russian metallurgical exports, and the Kremlin will likely continue to take measures to codify economic mobilization to offset or mitigate the effects of sanctions and the war on essential industries.[7]
Key Takeaways
- The Russian Ministry of Defense has not claimed any territorial gains since July 3, supporting the assessment that Russian forces are conducting an operational pause while still engaging in limited ground attacks to set conditions for more significant offensive operations.
- The Kremlin continues to prepare for a protracted war by setting conditions for crypto-mobilization of the economy and largely initiating an operational pause in Ukraine.
- Russian forces conducted offensive operations northwest and east of Slovyansk.
- Russian forces continued efforts to push westward toward Siversk from the Luhansk-Donetsk oblast border.
- Russian forces continued attempts to advance toward Bakhmut from the south.
- Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks north of Kharkiv City.
- Russian forces conducted unsuccessful ground assaults in northwestern Kherson Oblast.
- Ukrainian forces may be setting conditions for a counteroffensive toward Kherson City.
- Russian forces may be forming a new military unit in Mulino, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast.
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 three 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 continued offensive operations southeast of Izyum and west of Lyman toward Slovyansk on July 6. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attempted to advance from Dovhenke to Mazanivka, about 20 km northwest of Slovyansk along the Kharkiv-Donetsk Oblast border.[8] The UK Ministry of Defense noted that Russian forces have likely advanced 5 km toward Slovyansk along the E40 highway and are now within 16 km north of Slovyansk itself, which is consistent with ISW’s current control-of-terrain assessments.[9] NASA Fire Information for Resource Management (FIRMS) data also shows a cluster of fires around Raihorodok, indicating that Russian forces are likely continuing to conduct strikes east of Slovyansk to set conditions for westward advances from the Lyman area.[10]
[Source: NASA Fire Information for Resource Management data for the Raihorodok area on July 6]
Russian forces continued offensive operations toward Siversk from west of Lysychansk and the Luhansk Oblast border on July 6. Luhansk Oblast Administration Head Serhiy Haidai stated that Russian and Ukrainian troops continue to fight near Lysychansk along the Luhansk Oblast border.[11] The Ukrainian General Staff also stated that Russian forces unsuccessfully fought around Spirne (15 km southeast of Siversk), Verkhnokamyanske (5 km east of Siversk), Hryhorvika (10km northeast of Siversk), and Bilohorivka (15 km northeast of Siversk).[12] Russian forces reportedly conducted artillery and air strikes south of Siversk around Zvanivka, Vesele, and Vyimka.[13] NASA FIRMS data confirms these reports and shows fires near the Luhansk-Donetsk Oblast border to the south and east of Siversk on July 6.
[Source: NASA Fire Information for Resource Management Data for the Siversk area on July 6]
Russian forces continued ground attacks south of Bakhmut on July 6. The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Ukrainian troops repelled attempted Russian advances in the direction of Myronivka-Luhanske, Holmivskyi-Novoluhanske, and Vershyna, all south of Bakhmut and near the critical E40 or T0513 highways that run north into Bakhmut.[14] Residents of Bakhmut observed direct Russian artillery strikes on the city, indicating that Russian forces are continuing to set conditions to launch an assault on the city itself.[15]
Russian forces in the Donetsk City area continued to fire on Ukrainian positions along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line of contact but did not make any confirmed advances on July 6.[16]
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 continued attempting limited ground assaults north of Kharkiv City on July 6. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled a Russian assault in the direction of Kozacha Lopan-Sosnivka.[17] Russian Telegram channel Rybar claimed that fighting is ongoing west of Sosnivka and in Svitlychne (8 km southwest of Sosnivka), as well as in Pytomnyk, 20 km north of Kharkiv City.[18] Russian forces continued air and artillery strikes on Ukrainian force concentrations and military and civilian infrastructure in Kharkiv City and the surrounding settlements.[19] The Derhachi City Council reported that Russian forces shelled Derhachi with incendiary munitions.[20] Russian forces shelled Derhachi, Mala Danylivka, Prudyanka, and Slatyne along the T2117 highway and Pytomnyk on the E105 highway to Kharkiv City.[21]
Supporting Effort #2—Southern Axis (Russian objective: Defend Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts against Ukrainian counterattacks)
Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations in northwestern Kherson Oblast and are continuing to fire artillery throughout the Southern Axis to repel Ukrainian counteroffensives. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces stopped Russian assaults in the direction of Lozove, on the eastern bank of the Inhulets River and the Kherson-Mykolaiv Oblast border.[22] FIRMS’ remotely sensed data showed a high number of fires along the Kherson-Mykolaiv and Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border. Geolocated footage showed Ukrainian and Russian forces engaged in artillery fire near Snihurivka and Andriivka on the Kherson-Mykolaiv Oblast border.[23] The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command added that Russian forces launched missile strikes on residential infrastructure in Nechayane (approximately 33 km west of Mykolaiv City), but Russian Telegram channels claimed that Russian missiles struck Ukrainian positions.[24]
[Source: NASA Fire Information for Resource Management Data for Kherson-Mykolaiv and Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border for July 6]
[Source: NASA Fire Information for Resource Management Data for Zaporizhia Oblast for July 6]
Ukrainian forces continue to set conditions for a counteroffensive on Kherson City. Geolocated satellite imagery showed that Ukrainian forces struck Russian positions around the Kherson City International Airport in the Chornobaivka area.[25] Kherson Oblast Administration Head Serhiy Khlan reported that Ukrainian forces also struck a Russian ammunition depot in Kherson City’s railway station on July 5.[26] Ukrainian Advisor to the Internal Affairs Minister Anton Gerashchenko published social media footage showing that Russian forces installed countermeasures against precision-guided munitions around the Kerch Bridge.[27]
Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)
Russian forces began accumulating military equipment at the 1st Guards Tank Army training ground in Mulino, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, likely to support the formation of a new military unit. Ukraine’s Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) observed Russian military vehicles (presumably taken out of storage) heading towards Mulino over the past few weeks.[28] CIT added that an unnamed Russian military source claimed that Russian military commanders are forming a 3rd Army Corps in Mulino, but it is unclear if the Russians are creating a 3rd Corps within the Russian Ground Forces proper or integrating the new unit with existing LNR and DNR 1st and 2nd Army Corps or some other organization.[29] The Russian Ground Forces command structure does not currently have a regular corps echelon--it retains isolated corps associated with some fleets and in Kaliningrad. CIT noted that such evidence supports former Kyiv Oblast Administration Head Oleksandr Pavlyuk’s reports that Russian forces are forming a 15,500-person-strong 3rd Army Corps within the Western Military District (WMD).[30] ISW cannot independently verify CIT or Pavlyuk’s statements, but Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu had previously announced plans to create 12 new WMD units of unspecified echelon on May 20.[31]
Russian forces continue to face personnel generation and covert mobilization challenges. Director of Rochan Consulting Konrad Muzyka cited Finnish outlet Yle, which noted that the Russian army has sent at least one battalion tactical group (BTG) from the 80th Arctic Motorized Rifle Brigade (previously stationed close to the Finnish border in Alakurtti) to support the invasion of Ukraine.[32] The satellite imagery showed that Russian forces have withdrawn 100 military vehicles in May from Alakurtti and roughly 700 servicemen left the base in mid-May.[33] The 80th Arctic Motorized Rifle Brigade was reportedly the last northern brigade to enter the Russian war in Ukraine.[34] Pro-Kremlin media outlets announced the deployment of a new volunteer battalion from the Republic of Bashkortostan (north of Kazakhstan) to Donbas on July 6.[35] The Russian organization “Veterans of the Marine Corps and Special Forces of the Navy” announced the creation of the battalion at the end of May and noted that servicemen received a month of training before deployment.[36] A month is likely not enough time to sufficiently prepare the battalion for frontline hostilities in Donbas. The Republic of Bashkortostan and the Russian Defense Ministry financially incentivized servicemen by offering 200,000 rubles for signing the military contract and 2,000 rubles for every day served.[37] Russian outlet Baza also reported that three unknown assailants conducted an unspecified attack on the 488th Motorized Rifle Regiment of the 20th Combined Arms Army military unit in Klintsy, Bryansk Oblast, likely in protest of Russian covert mobilization practices.[38]
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 authorities continued to take measures to extend administrative control of occupied areas of Ukraine on July 6. The Russian-backed head of the Kharkiv Oblast occupation administration, Vitaly Ganchev, claimed that Russian forces control approximately 20% of Kharkiv Oblast and that Russian authorities intend to create four occupational districts in Kharkiv Oblast—the Izyum, Kupyansk, Vovchansk, and Kharkiv districts.[39] Ganchev also claimed that residents of occupied Kharkiv Oblast are voicing a widespread desire for Russian citizenship and inquiring about Russian passports.[40] Ukraine’s Kherson Oblast head Serhiy Khlan, however, indicated that Russian authorities will likely struggle to impose effective “passportization” measures in occupied Kherson Oblast, problems that will likely also apply to other areas of Ukraine.[41] Khlan stated that even if Russian authorities distribute 200 passports per day, with no days off, they will only distribute 6,000 passports in one month, which amounts to a small portion of the entire population living in occupied Kherson. Khlan also remarked that the majority of those waiting in queues for Russian passports are pensioners. This is notable because of recent reports that Russian authorities in Kherson instituted ruble payments for pensioners and that receiving pensions is contingent on holding a Russian passport.[42] Russian authorities will likely continue to struggle to effectively carry out “passportization” and rely heavily on coercing residents of occupied areas into Russian citizenship.
3. After Criticism, Army Reinstates High School Diploma Requirement as Recruitment Plummets
Oops. Misfire. Redo.
After Criticism, Army Reinstates High School Diploma Requirement as Recruitment Plummets
Service leaders offered to welcome more applicants without degrees, amid the “most challenging” recruiting environment since the Vietnam War.
Army recruits need to have a high school diploma after all. Some of them, at least.
After briefly signaling they would waive the minimum education requirement for “a limited number” of recruits, Army leaders have reversed course and reinstated the need for a high school diploma or GED, an Army spokesman said Tuesday.
The service on June 23 began allowing people to enlist in the regular Army without a high school diploma or GED, as long as they scored 50 or higher on the military’s entrance test, called the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB, and met all the other standard enlistment criteria, said a spokesman for U.S. Army Recruiting Command, which posted additional details in a press release. The service said it wanted to consider candidates who may have a reason for not completing their education, such as “caring for a terminally ill family member.”
The change was short-lived. Army officials reinstated the education requirement one week later. The reversal was first reported by Military.com, citing an internal memo. On Tuesday, Army spokesman Matt Leonard confirmed that the policy change was suspended, but could not provide any additional information.
The Army, which is the U.S. military’s largest service branch, is struggling to attract qualified candidates at a rate that has alarmed top generals. According to Defense Department data, only 23 percent of 17- to 24-year-old Americans are eligible to enlist without a waiver of some kind, down from 29 percent in recent years, an Army spokesman said in an email. Only 9 percent of those are willing to join the military, the lowest share in 15 years.
In March, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said recruiting challenges were behind the reduction in the Army’s maximum number of soldiers Congress authorizes it to keep, a figure known as “end strength,” in the fiscal 2023 budget request. Last year he told Congress the service needed to grow, but he said he now is focused on meeting standards.
“We’re in a war for talent and the secretary [of the Army] and I want to have a high quality Army. To me, quality is more important than quantity,” McConville said during a meeting with reporters.
Dropping the high school diploma requirement for some recruits was just the most recent attempt by Army leaders to increase recruiting numbers, said Thomas Spoehr, a retired Army lieutenant general and director of the Center for National Defense at The Heritage Foundation. The Army has already changed its tattoo policy, reduced some minimum contract lengths, and increased bonuses, he said. Last month, one bonus was bumped up from $25,000 to $35,000 for going to basic training within 45 days after signing a four-year contract, according to a press release.
“I mean this is almost like the last thing they had to try and change, in order to try and change the trajectory of their 2022 recruiting program. So, not surprised to see them try this,” he said.
Attaining a GED or high school diploma isn’t so much about a recruit’s education as much as it is used as a reliable predictor of whether they will complete their initial enlistment, Spoehr said, which means without this milestone in a recruit’s background, the Army would only have been trading one problem for another.
“That gets you more people in the front end, but then you lose them—you will lose a higher percentage due to attrition. And attrition is already a pretty significant factor in the Army,” he said.
A 2020 RAND study found that the Army had the highest attrition rate among the military services at 29.7 percent after the first 36 months of service.
Spoehr is glad for the Army’s reversal, which he believes happened because of the amount of public comment and ridicule they received. He doubts they would have recruited a significant amount of eligible people.
So far, Pentagon officials have not publicly detailed why they believe recruitment is so rapidly plummeting. Over the past 20 years since the start of the post-9/11 wars, the Army has tried a variety of gimmicks and bonuses to reach its end strength goal. Historically, military recruitment tends to rise when jobs and the economy are down. But other factors such as race, economic status, the likelihood of combat danger, the rise of the private tech job sector, politics, and the reemergence to post-pandemic life have all challenged recruiters. During the height of the unpopular Iraq War, recruitment was falling so fast, especially among some minority groups, that Army recruiters lowered required ASVAB scores and allowed waivers for some recruits with low scores or other demerits, including minor criminal offenses. “In 2006, nearly one in five incoming soldiers did not have high school diplomas,” the Boston Globe reported in 2007.
An Army Recruiting Command fact sheet reviewing fiscal 2021 statistics described the current environment is the “most challenging labor market since the inception of the all-volunteer force,” which was created after the Vietnam War. About 71 percent of youth in America do not qualify for U.S. military service for several reasons, including obesity, misconduct, and aptitude. In fiscal year 2021, 94.2 percent of regular Army recruits had a high school diploma, with the remainder having a GED or state equivalent. About 62.2 percent scored above 50 on the ASVAB, just barely meeting the Defense Department’s requirement that at least 60 percent of the Army’s recruits do so.
Additionally, the Army has already kicked out more than 1,000 active duty soldiers for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine, and tens of thousands of unvaccinated Reserve and National Guard members will not be able to participate in drills or training after not meeting the vaccination deadline at the end of June.
So far this year the Army has achieved almost 40 percent of its enlisted recruiting goal for fiscal year 2022, the Army spokesman said in an email, without providing specifics about what that goal is. Most of the service’s recruiting goals are met within the fourth quarter of the year, he said, after high school graduations have passed.
“Everyone I talk to says that 2023 is gonna be worse still, and on and on,” Spoehr said. “So there's no, like, pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. They’re gonna have to adapt their methods in order to survive.”
4. The next wolf warriors: China readies new generation of tough diplomats
The next wolf warriors: China readies new generation of tough diplomats
As party congress looms, Xi Jinping set to replace foreign policy leadership
RICHARD MCGREGOR and NEIL THOMAS, contributing writers
JULY 6, 2022 06:13 JST
Xi Jinping is expected to win a third five-year term at a Chinese Communist Party conclave in Beijing later this year, a mark of the Chinese leader's ruthless determination to upend retirement conventions and rule for life.
In foreign policy, a very different story will unfold, with the country's two most senior diplomats preparing to step down in what will be the largest turnover of top personnel in the sector for decades.
After nine years as China's top diplomat, the 72-year-old Yang Jiechi is set to leave the Politburo and his post as director of the general office of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission (CFAC) at the 20th party congress, likely to convene in October or November.
If Xi makes himself the only exception to retirement norms, Wang Yi, the 68-year-old foreign minister and China's No. 2 diplomat, will also step down. His tenure ends in March, when state positions turn over at the country's annual legislative session.
Wang has been foreign minister for 10 years and state councilor responsible for foreign affairs for the past five. Yang was foreign minister for six years before Wang, then served half a decade in the higher-ranking state councilor role, before entering the Politburo five years ago. Collectively, they have a quarter-century of experience in top positions.
Their likely departure in the space of a few months gives Xi the chance to promote a new generation of foreign policy leaders. The choices he makes will underline his global priorities and give up-and-coming diplomats a template for the type of work that wins professional reward.
Both veterans of the Foreign Ministry, Yang and Wang were no slouches at so-called ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy - capable of responding aggressively when foreigners criticized Beijing. But they rose through the ranks during a more conciliatory time in Chinese diplomacy.
Yang is a fluent English speaker who studied at the London School of Economics and sent his daughter to Yale University. He built his career as a US specialist, befriending ex-president George H.W. Bush during a trip to Tibet in 1977 and working to defuse bilateral tensions as China’s ambassador to Washington during George W. Bush’s first term.
Wang, nicknamed the “silver fox” by Chinese media for his suave good looks, is a Japan expert with a superior command of the language and experience as Chinese ambassador to Tokyo in the mid-2000s. While maintaining a stern public line whenever China’s regional rival offended Beijing, leaked cables reveal him on one occasion telling US diplomats that he was willing to negotiate a “soft landing” that gave Japan “face.”
But the younger breed of diplomats coming up through the ranks -- epitomized by Zhao Lijian, a ministry spokesman who is the most prominent of the "wolf warriors" -- are from different stock.
Zhao Lijian is the most prominent of China's so-called "wolf warrior" breed of diplomats. © Kyodo
The phrase comes from a Chinese box office hit of the same name about patriotic soldiers who fight evil foreign mercenaries overseas.
Whereas Yang and Wang spent the early years of their careers representing a much weaker China, younger diplomats, like the hero in the "Wolf Warrior" film, have grown up in a country that is richer, more powerful and brimming with confidence.
A brave new era
The replacements for Yang and Wang, whomever they might be, will be seasoned diplomats. But along with a new batch of deputy ministers and assistant ministers, they will be taking charge of an unapologetic, assertive system.
Their diplomacy, both under pressure from Xi, but also driven by their own generational instincts, will be tailored accordingly. Last year Xi told party cadres they must "dare to struggle" and "defend the country's sovereignty, security and development interests with an unprecedented quality of willpower."
Since 1949, Chinese foreign policy has passed through distinctive stages -- a partnership with the old Soviet Union, a period of revolutionary self-reliance after Mao Zedong fell out with Nikita Khrushchev, then a quasi-alliance with the United States against the Soviets in the 1970s and 1980s.
After the 1989 Tiananmen protests and the Soviet collapse, several decades of economic reform and frenetic growth, turbocharged by Beijing joining the World Trade Organization in 2001, helped keep a lid on simmering tensions with the U.S. and much of the West. During this period, Beijing largely abided by Deng Xiaoping's famous dictum -- for China to "hide its strength and bide its time."
Those days are well and truly over. Xi rejected "hide and bide" in favor of "striving for achievement." Beijing and Washington are now engaged in an all-out, multi-spectrum competition. China has global interests and a global agenda to go with them, backed by a rapidly expanding military.
Beijing has discarded Deng Xiaoping's famous dictum for China to "hide its strength and bide its time" in favor of Xi Jinping's call to "broaden our comprehensive national power." © Reuters
Xi has not been shy about setting out China's ambitions. In a speech in 2020, he said China should "broaden our comprehensive national power ... and lay the foundation for a future where we will win the initiative and have the dominant position."
Xi tells officials they must adopt a "fighting spirit" to protect China's core national interests now that "the world is experiencing changes unseen in a century."
Events like Brexit, Donald Trump's presidency and early Western mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic convinced him to declare in 2020 a "profound adjustment in the international balance of power" -- the party's boldest judgment yet about China's geopolitical advantage.
Xi's belief in a more favorable external environment led him to elevate nationalist political goals in foreign policy ahead of economic pragmatism and Western cooperation. China's economic heft, he believed, would enable it to withstand foreign pushback.
The Foreign Ministry brings its own history, culture, and baggage to this triumphant narrative, one that is stoked constantly by Xi and his legion of cheerleaders in the official media. At the party's centenary last year, Xi proclaimed that "the Chinese people must absolutely never allow any foreign forces to bully, oppress or enslave us."
Indelibly associated with China's historical weakness and capitulation, Chinese diplomats would sometimes receive calcium tablets in the mail, a way of telling them to grow a stronger spine to stand up to foreigners.
In response to such suspicions, Chinese diplomats behaved undiplomatically long before people branded them "wolf warriors," says Bloomberg's Peter Martin, and not just because they felt a need to overcompensate for perceptions of past weakness.
In his 2021 book on the ministry, "China's Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy," Martin says it is also because "they are unable to extricate themselves from the constraints of a secretive, paranoid political system."
"While their actions can sometimes seem aggressive, even bizarre, from the outside," Martin wrote, "they make perfect sense when seen from a domestic perspective."
Seven up, eight down
In any analysis of elite politics in China, humility is essential. It is perilous to predict personnel changes in an organization as opaque as the Chinese Communist Party, especially as the choices of Beijing's next top diplomats are likely in the hands of a single person.
Although Xi appears willing to break retirement norms to prolong his own rule, the leadership reshuffle at the last party congress suggests that Politburo members will be held to a "seven up, eight down" rule that was introduced in 2002.
In other words, a cadre aged 67 or younger can win an appointment or serve another five-year term on the party's elite decision-making body, while anyone 68 or older must retire.
Yang's replacement in the Politburo should by rights go to his No. 2, the foreign minister, but Wang's long tenure means he has also hit retirement age.
A dominant Xi could in theory ignore convention and elevate Wang to the Politburo. The case for doing so is simple enough. With a war raging in Europe and tensions escalating in the Indo-Pacific, Wang has unparalleled diplomatic experience and contacts around the world.
Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi, flanking Xi, have a combined quarter-century of experience in top positions. © Reuters
Yet, while Wang is a faithful servant, he is not close to Xi, and elevating him would mean pouring political capital into a system that Xi is already forcing to bend to his demand for a precedent-defying third term.
Xi might be growing wary of further rocking the boat, given the rising challenges he faces with his signature zero-COVID policy and the accompanying downward pressure on China's growth outlook.
Alternatively, Xi could ax Yang's position from the Politburo altogether -- China went 15 years without a foreign policy representative on the body before Yang was elevated in 2017.
But such a decision would seem at odds with Xi's efforts to strengthen the standing of the foreign affairs bureaucracy within the party, and with China's own expanding diplomatic agenda. Wang is the first foreign minister to simultaneously serve as a state councilor since legendary diplomat Qian Qichen did so in the 1990s.
Toughening up
Beijing's foreign policy has changed substantially since Xi came to power in late 2012. China is more assertive and unyielding, and more willing to engage in frontal diplomatic confrontations with the U.S. and its allies, something previous leaders shied away from.
From Xi's perspective, the achievements have been substantial. For example, Beijing has launched the Belt and Road Initiative, a $1 trillion infrastructure drive endorsed by over 140 countries that enhances China's role in global investment, trade and standards-setting.
Under Xi, Beijing has also hardened its position on territorial rows, including with more military exercises around Taiwan and in the East China Sea. In the South China Sea, it has constructed several artificial islands to use as military bases.
Under Xi, Beijing has hardened its position on territorial rows and used military exercises around Taiwan and in the East China Sea to make its point. © Xinhua/AP
Beijing has increasingly deployed economic coercion to punish countries over political disagreements, including against South Korea and Australia, two of Washington's closest regional allies.
Xi has also not hesitated to sanction politicians, institutions, companies and imports from the U.S. and European countries in retaliation for government actions over trade, human rights cases and Taiwan. He does not seem to care that unfavorable views of China have hit historic highs in many Western countries as well as in Japan and South Korea, according to the Pew Research Center.
Although Xi has dictated foreign policy, Yang and Wang provide advice on international affairs and have executed his ambitious and at times confrontational agenda with the skill that their years of experience on the front lines of global diplomacy afford.
Inside the system, the Foreign Ministry has also been subjected to greater scrutiny by the party apparatus, in line with Xi's commitment to "coordinate the domestic and the international" and "improve the party's leadership system for foreign affairs."
In 2019, a deputy director of the party's personnel agency, the Organization Department, Qi Yu, was made the foreign ministry's party secretary, an unprecedented move that put a Xi loyalist with no diplomatic experience in charge of the ministry's internal politics.
Though the significance of this appointment was little understood outside the country, insiders were in no doubt: It was an unmistakable signal that Xi wants the party center to exercise more control over China's foreign policy and grant promotions on the basis of loyalty to Xi's political vision.
The Foreign Ministry also was not spared from Xi's anti-corruption drive, a clean-out conducted by internal party organs. The most senior official to be snared was Zhang Kunsheng, an assistant foreign minister, who was detained in 2015.
Yang's possible successors
Neither Yang nor Wang has a clear successor, but top-level personnel moves in recent months suggest Xi will use the party congress and the turnover in government positions to clean house. The two likeliest cadres to replace them already appear to have been sidelined.
Based on seniority, Yang's most likely heir was Song Tao, who until early June served as the ministerial-level director of the party's International Liaison Department (ILD), which manages exchanges with over 500 foreign political parties.
Xi has bolstered Beijing's focus on party-to-party diplomacy under the ILD as a complement to traditional state-to-state diplomacy. He sees party diplomacy as a more direct way to influence foreign elites and boost China's political and ideological influence abroad.
At 67, Song is just young enough to fill a Politburo seat and has invaluable personal connections with Xi, having worked under him in Fujian Province during the 1980s and 1990s.
Song is also one of the few foreign policy leaders with ministerial rank, a rung below Politburo members on the party's administrative ladder. But in late June he was reassigned to China's political consultative body, a transfer that usually indicates impending retirement.
At the Hanoi ASEAN summit in 2010, Yang Jiechi tells Southeast Asian nations that "China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that's just a fact." © EPA/Jiji
Perhaps the most senior diplomat left in contention for Yang's role is Liu Jieyi, the minister-level director of the State Council's Taiwan Affairs Office. Like Song, he is one of the 200-odd voting members of the party's Central Committee.
Liu turns 65 in December, within Politburo age norms. He also boasts an impressive diplomatic resume. He was formerly China's ambassador to the United Nations an ILD deputy director, and an assistant foreign minister.
Earlier in his career he worked at China's U.N. missions in New York and Geneva and led the foreign ministry bureaus focused on arms control, international institutions and the United States. He can speak English, French and Spanish.
Promoting Liu from the Taiwan portfolio to top diplomat would be a strong sign that Xi believes cross-strait relations are worsening and require firmer top-level control and defter management. Washington's rising support for Taipei, and Taiwan's increasing autonomy, could push Beijing to use more forceful means to promote its goal of unification.
Song Tao and Liu Jieyi were the likeliest candidates to replace Yang and Wang before being sidelined. (Source photos by Reuters)
Due to Liu's extensive experience working in multilateral institutions, his elevation would also highlight Xi's mission to mobilize developing countries to defend Beijing from Western criticism and advance China's authoritarian influence in international rules, norms and organizations.
If Liu does not succeed Yang, or if Yang's position is dropped from the Politburo, then he would be a strong pick for a State Councilor role or to become the next foreign minister.
Who will be the next Wang?
There is a larger and more uncertain slate of candidates to replace Wang Yi as foreign minister. Liu, for example, held the same position Wang did before leading the ministry, as head of the Taiwan office, but would also be the oldest, first-time foreign minister in the history of the People's Republic.
Since 1982, every foreign minister served previously as a deputy foreign minister, worked in Beijing immediately before being selected and was 62 or younger upon taking office. If these conditions hold, the three current deputies are top contenders.
The race blew open in June when Beijing sidelined Le Yucheng, a Russia specialist who was Wang's top deputy and heir apparent, through a surprise lateral move to the National Radio and Television Administration.
Le has been a prominent voice for Beijing, doing media interviews to criticize U.S. foreign policy and defending "wolf warrior" diplomacy as necessary to defend China's "interests and dignity."
Le's appointment, as a Russian speaker rather than a traditional America hand, would have reinforced Xi's pivot toward Moscow as a strategic counterweight to the U.S., which Beijing believes is trying to turn the world against China.
Le's Russia expertise should have held him in good stead at a moment when the two countries and their leaders are joined at the hip. Although no reason was given for his move, some commentators said Le was blamed for Beijing's initially stumbling response to Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine in February.
Ma Zhaoxu, 58, might be Wang's likeliest successor as he is now the top-ranking deputy. Ma recently served as China's representative to the U.N. in New York and Geneva, following an ambassadorship in Australia and earlier postings to the European Union, the United Kingdom and the U.N.
Ma, like Liu, is one of Beijing's most experienced multilateral diplomats, and his promotion would reinforce Xi's drive to enhance China's power to shape global institutions and their positions on issues like climate change, development priorities and territorial claims.
Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng, left; Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu; Xie Feng, commissioner of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hong Kong; and ambassador to Turkey Deng Li. (Source photos by Reuters).
Despite a typically calm demeanor, Ma has shown a flair for brusque diplomacy. After Beijing imprisoned the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo for his democracy activism, Ma argued in 2010 that "there are no dissidents in China."
The ascendancy of a diplomat like Ma would bring a foreign minister experienced with the West, which, combined with Le's effective demotion, might suggest a degree of caution from Xi about increasingly tense relations with the United States and its allies.
For all of China's outward confidence, Xi knows China needs Western technology and markets, at least for the time being.
The two other deputies are Xie Feng, 58, and Deng Li, 57. Xie worked under Yang at China's U.S. embassy before heading Beijing's missions to Indonesia and Hong Kong. Deng is a Middle East and North Africa expert who was most recently ambassador to Turkey.
Outsider options
Xi's surprisingly robust adherence to personnel norms at the last party congress makes a current deputy seem a likely pick. But he could still opt for a less-credentialed foreign policy hand who has worked more directly under his leadership in top party institutions.
The top outsider is Liu Haixing, 59, a deputy director in the office of the National Security Commission, a top-level body that Xi created to coordinate Beijing's response to domestic and foreign threats.
Liu, like Xi, is the "princeling" son of a high official. His father was a deputy foreign minister in the 1980s, which perhaps helped Liu's own career in the ministry, where he was previously an assistant minister.
Another dark horse is Deng Hongbo, 57, a Yang protege who serves as his deputy in the CFAC office. He is a U.S. specialist who spent eight years last decade as China's No. 2 in Washington, after a stint as ambassador to Kenya and the U.N. Office in Nairobi.
Promoting Liu Haixing, or perhaps Deng Hongbo, to lead the foreign ministry would emphasize in the strongest possible terms that serving Xi and his agenda is the only thing that matters for China's diplomats.
Hua Chunying rose to prominence in 2019 with an essay that said some Chinese diplomats "lack fighting spirit." © Reuters
Xi is also likely to broadcast his support for more assertive Chinese diplomacy by promoting leading "wolf warriors" such as Zhao Lijian and his boss Hua Chunying, who rose to prominence in 2019 with an essay that said some Chinese diplomats "lack fighting spirit."
It is true, as Peter Martin points out in his book, that Chinese diplomats have always had a touch of the "wolf warrior" about them, though in the past their fangs were usually displayed behind closed doors.
In 2010, Yang Jiechi notoriously lectured Southeast Asian nations at the Hanoi ASEAN summit, reminding them that "China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that's just a fact."
Yang on numerous occasions has yelled in private at the Japanese for not showing sufficient remorse for their past invasions of China. But in Alaska early last year, with the cameras rolling, and to great applause at home, he lectured Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, about the failings of American democracy and foreign policy.
In 2016 in Ottawa, Wang Yi tells a Canadian journalist who asked him about human rights that her "irresponsible" question was "full of arrogance" and "prejudice." © AP
Wang Yi has form as well. In 2016 in Ottawa he exploded at a Canadian journalist who asked him about human rights, saying her "irresponsible" question was "full of arrogance" and "prejudice."
Such assertiveness is now likely the norm rather than the exception in Chinese diplomacy.
Challenges on the horizon
China's new crop of diplomatic leaders will likely lean into China's relations with Russia and its push for leadership in the non-Western world, a stance that will inevitably ratchet up strategic competition with the U.S. and its allies.
They will intensify Beijing's defense of its political model and territorial claims and increasingly use the country's growing economic clout as a coercive tool of foreign policy.
Even the fiercest of wolf warriors, however, remain beholden to guidance from Xi.
The truest indicator of Xi's thinking will come in the authoritative report he delivers on the first day of the party congress, a message that will come wrapped in layers of ideological jargon but will signal the overall direction of foreign policy for the next five years.
The most recent guide to policy direction came in November, when the party issued a highly authoritative "history resolution," a rare document that entrenched Xi's leadership and pointed to continued diplomatic assertiveness.
In Alaska in 2021 and with the cameras rolling, Yang Jiechi lectures Anthony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, about the failings of American democracy and foreign policy, earning great applause back home. © Reuters
It noted "unprecedented external risks" but said China "must not be misguided or intimidated" by foreign opposition as "making compromises to achieve one's aim can only lead to more humiliating circumstances."
The document specifically celebrates Xi's actions on Hong Kong, Taiwan, Xinjiang and Tibet, and in "territorial waters," a strong sign that Beijing will continue to ignore foreign criticism and push its contested policies.
Xi's report could also signal a more explicitly ideological turn in Chinese foreign policy, as the resolution says the party under Xi has "caused a major shift in favor of socialism in the worldwide historical evolution" and in the "contest" with capitalism.
These directions all suggest Beijing will lean further into the strategic competition between China and the West, which could in turn produce more balancing and decoupling away from China, putting greater strain on the Chinese economy and its long-term growth.
In the worst-case scenario, tensions could boil over into an Indo-Pacific war. Xi would need a skilled foreign policy team to handle that.
Richard McGregor is a senior fellow at the Lowy Institute in Sydney.
Neil Thomas is a China analyst at Eurasia Group in Washington DC.
5. War, protest and spiking prices: How spiraling inflation is setting the world on fire
This article makes me wonder: Are we going to see a different kind of "World War III?" Rather than the allies versus the axis will we see a meltdown in the developing world and the global south while developed countries suffer from internal political divisions that break them apart?
Learn, adapt, anticipate. What are we anticipating?
War, protest and spiking prices: How spiraling inflation is setting the world on fire
As the Ukraine War rages on, driving up the cost of fuel and food, high prices have sparked unrest around the world.
Deputy Global Editor
July 6, 2022
This is just a partial snapshot of what happened in June: In Zimbabwe, striking nurses and doctors brought state-run hospitals to a standstill for almost a week; in Ecuador, angry protesters paralyzed the capital, Quito, attacking government buildings and clashing with police; next door, in Peru and also in Argentina, truckers went on strike; and on the other side of the world, opposition parties held protest marches across Pakistan, while in nearby Sri Lanka, a popular uprising that has already unseated the patriarch of the country’s most powerful political family as prime minister continues unabated.
In each case, the protesters — Sri Lankan students, Zimbabwean nurses, Indigenous groups in Ecuador — were demanding action to deal with spiraling prices. Welcome, in other words, to the season of inflation unrest.
“There is real, real pain. People are suffering,” Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, one of Sri Lanka’s leading political commentators and the executive director of the Colombo-based Center for Policy Alternatives, told Grid, talking about the situation in his country. “That is very visible in the popular protests we have seen.”
To be sure, in each case, there are important local factors at play. As Grid has previously reported, in Sri Lanka, a mountain of foreign debt has crushed a fragile domestic economy. In Zimbabwe, healthcare workers, who came out to demand higher wages, saw their pay crash precipitously when the local currency collapsed in 2019. In Ecuador, in addition to calling for action to contain soaring fuel prices, protest leaders also demanded action on a variety of other fronts, including calls for right-wing President Guillermo Lasso to introduce curbs on mining projects.
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But rising prices are — despite the vast distances separating these and other countries where ordinary people have taken to the streets — a common thread, as significant swathes of the world experience inflationary spikes in the aftermath of the pandemic.
The pain is being felt worldwide — in less well-off, emerging and developed economies. Inflation in the U.S. is at a 40-year high; as Grid has reported, ordinary consumers are seeing prices go up everywhere, in energy, in food and in housing. On the other side of the Atlantic, prices are also rising across the eurozone and in the U.K.; Britain’s former leader Gordon Brown recently said inflation was a “global problem that needs a global solution.” In Ireland, the government is looking at ways of stepping up public spending to help ease the pressure on an increasingly discontented population, after thousands took to the streets to protest against an inflationary surge not seen since the 1980s.
“This is definitely a global problem,” Kimberley Sperrfechter, an economist at the London-based economic consultancy Capital Economics, told Grid. “You see, for example, inflation not just in emerging markets, but also in the U.S., the U.K., in the eurozone at record highs. This is something that was already materializing last year,” as the world began emerging from the pandemic, which, among other things, widened inequalities.
And then, Sperrfechter pointed out, came the war in Ukraine.
The Russia factor
The invasion of Ukraine has added fuel to the inflationary fire, driving up food and fuel prices globally. “It exacerbated the problem,” Sperrfechter said.
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As Grid has reported, Russia and Ukraine are central to the world’s food supply, the starting point, in fact, in the supply chain that brings basics such as wheat, barely and sunflower oil to places as far afield as Egypt, Lebanon, Thailand and Indonesia.
With war blocking critical supply routes in the Black Sea, the cost of these essentials has gone through the roof. Compared with January, wheat prices, for example, are more than a third higher, according to the latest World Bank figures.
The impact on food prices has already sparked unrest.
Protests in Chile in late March were driven by demands for an increase in food subsidies. In Iraq, there were protests in the south of the country earlier this year amid sharp increases in the price of cooking oil and flour.
Over in Tunisia — the cradle of the Arab Spring protests — people have taken to the streets as the government has been forced to raise the prices of certain staples, including milk and eggs. Among the pressures on authorities there: the impact of the Ukraine War on global food prices, which have hit the country’s already shaky public finances, so much so that it is seeking a financial lifeline from the International Monetary Fund.
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Sri Lanka, too, is seeking an IMF bailout; again, the spiraling cost of food has made the needs of the government ever more urgent. The country’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe acknowledged in a recent interview that while many of the island nation’s problems were of “its own making,” the Ukraine conflict had made things harder. “The Ukraine crisis has impacted our … economic contraction,” he told the Associated Press. “I think by the end of the year, you could see the impact in other countries.”
Already, the impact has led to some broad political changes. Colombia, for example, elected its first leftist leader this year, against the backdrop of sky-high inflation: Analysts expect prices to vault 9 percent this year, three times the target set by the country’s central bank. Controlling rampant price rises is among the top items on President-elect Gustavo Petro’s to-do list.
Experts worldwide worry that situation could worsen in the coming months. “If people can’t feed their children and families, then the politics unsettles,” David Beasley, the head of the U.N.’s World Food Programme, told CNN earlier this year.
Fuel prices have also been affected by the Ukraine War and have been feeding into the cost of goods and services worldwide. Here, again, the reason is clear when you look at Moscow’s influence in the energy market: Russia is third only to Saudi Arabia and the U.S. when it comes to producing oil. And sanctions on the Kremlin have raised concerns about global supplies, driving up the cost of oil.
Another less obvious but no less consequential fallout: the impact of the conflict on the global fertilizer market. Russia is the world’s largest exporter of fertilizers, supplies of which have been affected in the aftermath of its invasion — again, pushing up food prices and already triggering unrest. Case in point: Peru. Last year, Russia accounted for 70 percent of the fertilizers used by Peru, according to figures compiled by Bloomberg. A drop-off in supplies in recent months has fanned inflation, which climbed to its highest levels in 24 years in April. It is also raising concerns beyond Peru: In 2020, Peru exported almost $3 billion worth of agricultural products to the U.S., for example. Those supplies are now in question.
And as the war continues, the situation is likely only to worsen. “Food, fuel and fertilizer prices are skyrocketing. Supply chains are being disrupted. And the costs and delays of transportation of imported goods — when available — are at record levels,” the U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned in March, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine. “All of this is hitting the poorest the hardest and planting the seeds for political instability and unrest around the globe.”
The warnings have only become more urgent with the passage of time. “It’s going to take months and months, and maybe two years to bring inflation back down,” the head of the World Bank, David Malpass, told CBS in late June, adding: “A lot of the world is shutting down for lack of fertilizer. And then those shortages of crops will last for multiple years.”
The final straw
This instability comes as the world haltingly recovers from the ravages of the covid-19 pandemic. A key factor here is the reopening of the world: Historically, pandemics have, overall, led to a drop in unrest. That’s what happened with covid-19, according to data gathered by economists at the International Monetary Fund.
With the caveat that measuring social unrest globally is hard at the best of times, they keep an eye on what is happening around the world with a tracker that records media mentions of words associated with unrest across 130 countries. Called the Reported Social Unrest Index, it recently neared its highest levels since the onset of the covid pandemic.
“When a pandemic such as the latest one ends, we should expect unrest to rise again,” Philip Barrett, an economist at the IMF, told Grid. “Interestingly, epidemics seem to be different from other natural disasters like floods, storms, earthquakes etc., where unrest typically does not fall as in pandemics. We think that this hints at a mechanism — that being in large crowds is particularly unappealing when there is a dangerous communicable disease circulating.”
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Barrett highlights four major drivers behind unrest. Leading the list, unsurprisingly: local, country-specific factors. Next, whether or not a nearby country has seen similar upheavals. Then, in the present context, the impact of the pandemic, followed by the impact of inflation.
“The impact of prices of food and fuel, which have spiked dramatically on account of the war in Ukraine,” Barrett told Grid, “this will undoubtedly put pressure on the budgets of families in countries where affected staples — wheat and corn perhaps most obviously — are a large part of expenditure.”
Rising food and fuel prices have, Sperrfechter of Capital Economics told Grid, acted like a “spark,” inflaming tensions that were already building up in the aftermath of the pandemic. “It is has acted like a spark that has set everything off,” she said, “It is one factor of many, but it is like the final straw.”
A telling sign came from the international insurer Allianz, which last month warned businesses to brace themselves for civil unrest as prices of basic goods spiral, saying: “Civil unrest increasingly represents a more critical exposure for many companies than terrorism.”
Projections from Verisk Maplecroft, an insurance risk-tracking firm, are also pessimistic: They cite, among other factors, food security as a driver of unrest, forecasting that 75 countries were likely to see an increase in protests by late 2022. “Although much of the deterioration will likely be concentrated in frontier and emerging markets, it is unlikely any region will be fully excluded from this trend,” their analysts warn.
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The rising cost of living is already beginning to sour what economists call consumer sentiment — or how ordinary people are feeling. Internationally, the financial services firm Deloitte said its tracker of global worries about rising prices showed that, in May, 75 percent of people worldwide were concerned about how much dearer everyday purchases were becoming, compared with 66 percent back in September 2021.
Dig into the numbers, and it is clear that in some places, the concern is near universal. In Spain, where consumer inflation recently touched record highs, Deloitte said 88 percent of people were worried about rising prices.
And there doesn’t appear to be any end in sight, at least not in the near term — international prices rises are expected to average around 6.7 percent this year, which is more than double the average of 2.9 percent recorded between 2010 and 2020, according to the U.N.
Action for now is concentrated on limiting the pain. In Hungary, certain gas stations have imposed limits on the amount of fuel that can be purchased by motorists. Egypt has put in place a ceiling on the price of unsubsidized bread. Mexico has moved to cap food prices.
But when will things get better? “It hard to predict, but one concern is definitely that the war [in Ukraine] continues to go on, and commodity prices remain high,” Sperrfechter, from Capital Economics, told Grid. “That is probably one of the biggest concerns.”
Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this article.
6. Relative Weakness: The Secret to Understanding Irregular Warfare
Relative Weakness: The Secret to Understanding Irregular Warfare
By Dr. Douglas A. Borer and Dr. Shannon C. Houck
Irregular warfare is an approach to peer-to-peer competition that Congressional legislators and civilian policymakers must better understand. Irregular warfare is how the Taliban drove the Western Alliance out of Afghanistan, and it is how Ukraine is presently checking Russia’s invasion of its territory. As these cases show, in the year 2022, the weak have won (and can win) wars. Knowing how to fight from a position of relative weakness is the true secret to understanding irregular warfare.
One essential requirement is confessional. The United States is often weak, but it is usually unwilling to recognize, let alone admit, its common weaknesses. For instance, in Afghanistan (and subsequently in Iraq), the US went to war with a belief that inside every Afghan was an American waiting to jump out. All we had to do is show up, remove their bad leaders, show them how liberal democracy works, provide economic and technical aid, and they would all commit themselves to giving up the old ways of sorting things out and resolve conflict through peaceful means (Note: a commitment to peaceful conflict resolution is the primary requirement for a working democracy). It didn’t happen. Bottom line: Naïve western egocentrism contributed to war loss in Afghanistan, and nearly did so in Iraq. We need to stop thinking this way or we will lose more wars than we win.
Fortunately for Ukraine and its friends, Vladimir Putin showed the same wrong-headed egocentrism when he decided to invade. Putin believed inside every Ukrainian was a Russian waiting to jump out. This may have been true with some Ukrainians after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, but after 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea, the Ukrainians literally dug-in in the Donbas and started fighting the Russians. American military advisors, mostly Green Berets from the 10th SF Group, were authorized to conduct Foreign Internal Defense (FID). FID included training Ukrainian units in the science and art of guerrilla warfare, which is the oldest form of irregular warfare. At its essence, guerrilla war boils down to a weak actor gaining a temporary force advantage in tactical situations in which they can “get in, destroy the enemy, seize some useful gear, and get out” before the opponent can bring sufficient counterforce to bear. This is accomplished in part because of “home-field advantage,” meaning the Ukrainians know the terrain (both rural and urban) better than the Russians. FID also included many NATO allies providing advanced lethal aid and training to the Ukrainians (Turkish drones, British and American anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, and the like). As such, before the invasion, even though on paper the Ukraine appeared much weaker than the Russians, in truth it fielded a more capable fight force than Putin ever imagined.
Adding to the miscalculation, Putin and his regime overestimated the readiness of their own forces, which are performing like amateurs in the field. What is the primary source of this military ineptitude? The answer stares the Russian elite in the mirror each morning. Putin is corrupt, the oligarchs are corrupt, and so is nearly everyone in the state system, including the officer corps. If you are not on the take, you are unreliable and useless to those who are. You can’t become a Russian General Officer without being corrupt. This happens because militaries prepare for war by repeatedly training with weapons and equipment and by conducting military exercises to practice what they might experience in wartime. Endemic corruption eats away at these critical activities, usually in the theft of expendables: fuel, food, spare parts, and even ammunition. On paper Russian Army units are well-trained and equipped. Their readiness reports are fraudulent. You can’t train up to standard if half the fuel for your vehicles has been redirected into the pockets of corrupt commanders. Spare parts are ordered and paid for, but never installed. Food and ammunition are sold on the black market. Old tires rot on the wheel as new tires are turned into bitcoin. The result is obvious: the Russians cannot conduct effective operations that require advanced combined arms maneuver warfare. About the only thing the Russian Army is marginally good at is lobbing artillery onto fixed targets at a distance. Unfortunately, they have a lot of long-range guns and plenty of ammo, despite the corruption.
Will Russia lose the war in Ukraine? Maybe. Its initial attack was based on the traditional strategic concept of “center-of-gravity.” Destroy the critical nodes: dismantle the enemy’s forces and take its capital city, and its ability to resist will collapse. This approach worked for the US in Iraq in 2003. But neither of those things happened in Ukraine because of Russians’ overconfidence bias: they overestimated their offensive prowess and vastly underestimated the Ukrainians’ staunch defense. The Kremlin has now shifted to a more limited goal of seizing territory in the East but doing so cannot succeed if the Ukrainians are willing to continue the fight and are assisted with the means of doing so by external supporters. Thus, this fight comes down to a mix of capability and will. Who has the advantage?
The long history of irregular warfare shows a final important element in cases where the weak win wars: superior leadership. Leaders are effective to the degree they are like their followers. No other world leader represents their people more than President Volodymyr Zelensky does for Ukrainians. His self-shot videos from the streets of Kyiv convey commitment and loyalty to the cause. Zelensky wears military-green t-shirts, he looks exhausted, all the while he and his family remain in harm’s way. He illustrates everything that it means to be Ukrainian right now. Zelensky’s message to his people is clear: he is fighting alongside them. Contrast this with how former President of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani reacted when Taliban fighters closed in on Kabul. Ghani simply fled (allegedly with bags of cash). It is indeed an act of extraordinary leadership to remain alongside one’s people during the most vulnerable times. In the case of Zelensky, his brazenness has unified Ukrainians.
It certainly helps that Zelensky is charismatic, but let’s not forget that Putin is too. But unlike Putin, Zelensky has galvanized support from the international community. His speeches imploring NATO and world leaders for help convey emotion, history, humor, and are strategically tailored to each target audience. These efforts demonstrate an understanding of foundational principles of influence – a cornerstone of irregular warfare – and have contributed to widespread public support for Ukraine and invasion. Iconic landmarks project blue and yellow to show their solidarity for Ukraine, while a long list of companies and everyday citizens lend support monetarily, often in innovative ways. Meanwhile, Russian athletes have been banned from competition, businesses are cutting ties, and bars are pouring Russian vodka down the drains.
Psychology teaches us that few things unite people more than having a common goal, and perhaps more importantly, a common enemy. We should be careful not to underestimate the power of this factor in the current conflict. Social identification is essential for group cohesion and effective mobilization in stressful circumstances. This is demonstrated in experimental studies (i.e., see the Stanford Prison Experiment) and in real-world cases of resistance (i.e., Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Germany; summarized here). In this way, Ukraine may not actually be the underdog in this fight.
Where Ukraine holds the psychological advantage in a willing people eager to fight back, Russia commands its people to fight. Putin’s authoritarianism requires unwavering loyalty from a populace that must trust the state without questioning what it says or does. It punishes dissent. In Russia’s restricted information environment, liberal media outlets are silenced, and thousands of Russian protesters arrested. This kind of coerced compliance can achieve consensus in the short term but may ultimately backfire in the form of psychological reactance and mistrust (an effect researchers call information contamination). Moreover, urging conformity lends itself to groupthink and in turn non-optimal decision-making. The US encountered this hard lesson during the Bay of Pigs fiasco and Russia may be learning it right now.
Looking ahead, the outcome of this war may come down to the decisions of a country born from the crucible of irregular warfare: the Peoples Republic of China. Since its founding in 1949, China has brutally repressed internal dissent, so its leaders see the world much as Putin does. However, unlike Russia, China has largely avoided embroiling itself in other people’s wars. It may be tempted to back Putin, but if China is honest, it may realize that Russia’s Achilles’ heel – corruption – permeates the readiness of its own military forces.
About the Author(s)
7. Let’s Use Chicago Rules to Beat Russia
Perhaps we could also apply Chicago rules to the mafia-like crime family cult known as the Kim family regime as well.
Excerpts:
A nascent coalition of powers is, however, willing to take Russia seriously and has the muscle to thwart her while bringing less resolute European states along. The Eastern European and Baltic states, with Poland in the lead, know Russian tyranny firsthand, and are ready to stand up to it; the Scandinavian states, in particular Finland and Norway, are almost as intent; the English-speaking external powers, including the United Kingdom and Canada, are similarly alive and determined. It is to this core group that American statecraft must look.
The British chief of the General Staff recently described the Ukraine crisis as a 1937 moment for the West. It was an acute historical comparison. In that year the Sino-Japanese war began, setting the stage for World War II. In that year the West had before it choices that could have avoided the horrors of a far worse conflict, but it ducked.
To their credit, in the current moment, Western leaders are performing far better than did their counterparts 85 years ago—but not yet well enough. We’re dealing with Capone, and while, like Eliot Ness, we need to stay within the constraints of law and basic decency, we also need to apply Chicago rules.
Let’s Use Chicago Rules to Beat Russia
Why the U.S. adversary is a lot like Al Capone
Carl von Clausewitz observed in his classic On War that “the maximum use of force is by no means incompatible with the simultaneous use of the intellect.” That means, in part, acting thoughtfully but with the utmost effort, understanding that war is more bar fight than chess game. Or, to put it in the simpler words of Jim Malone, Eliot Ness’s counselor in The Untouchables, “You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way! And that’s how you get Capone.”
Al Capone is an apt analogy for what the West confronts in Russia: a particularly noxious mix of Mafia mentality, hypernationalist ideology, and totalitarian technique. Elegance is not the Russian way, and it cannot be our way. This is the light in which one should measure the accomplishments of NATO’s recent gathering in Madrid.
The tangible efforts that Western leaders announced were impressive in many respects, particularly the commitments to provide Ukraine with nearly 500 artillery systems, 600 tanks, hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition, and more. The question, as always, is whether these will be delivered as swiftly as they can be absorbed, and whether the United States and its allies are “leading the target” by putting in place now the infrastructure to prepare Ukraine for the weapons it will require and hopefully receive one, two, or six months from now, and for training the large forces it must mobilize.
The United States made some incremental additional commitments of forces to Europe, including two destroyers for a naval base in Spain. The policy declarations were important as well: a decision to expand by an order of magnitude NATO’s high-readiness forces; a formal recognition of the challenge (NATO avoided for now the word threat) posed by China; and an agreement to welcome Finnish and Swedish applications to join the alliance.
But these moves, beneficial as they may be, only partly meet the needs of the moment. Time and again Ukraine has demonstrated its ability to absorb high-end military hardware and deploy it quickly and effectively. This seems to be the case with HIMARS, the mobile rocket systems that are extremely accurate, and with which Ukrainian forces seem to be already hitting Russian ammunition dumps and military headquarters. Instead of the promised eight, the Ukrainians need 80, and work should be happening now to scale up transfers of these and like weapons as fast as possible.
What the Biden administration still struggles with is the ultimate purpose of Western assistance to Ukraine. At his press conference, the president said that the United States and its allies would not “allow Ukraine to be defeated.” That is the wrong objective. It should be, rather, to ensure Russia’s defeat—the thwarting of its aims to conquer yet more of Ukrainian territory, the smashing of its armed forces, and the doing of both in a convincing, public, and, yes, therefore humiliating way. Chicago rules, in other words.
In the same way, the administration is wrong to titrate arms out of a misguided desire to avoid provoking Russian escalation or enabling the Ukrainians to do too much. The West is in a moment of military-industrial crisis; it should be taking concrete measures to ramp up industrial mobilization, with the goal of equipping Ukraine to the maximum while rearming the expanding forces of a newly awakened NATO.
Even as Western allies counter Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, they must also meet the broader and longer-term threat that Russia poses to the eastern members of NATO, particularly the Baltic states.
The Western allies will not invade Russia, nor will they overthrow its regime directly—one day, hopefully, Russians will do that. Putin is motivated by imperial fantasies of imitating Peter the Great and other, even less savory Russian leaders. And Putin’s successor, should the Russian leader die or become incapacitated while in office, will likely be no better. For evidence of that, one need only consult the ravings of key advisers such as Nikolai Patrushev. If and when the battles cease in Ukraine, Russia’s intentions to expand and subjugate its neighbors will remain.
The good news here is that if one sets aside misleading memories of World War II and the Cold War, and disregards the ominous mutterings of experts who exaggerated Russian capacity before the war, then it becomes obvious that Russia is a weak state.
Russia’s GDP is less than that of South Korea. Its leadership is afraid to openly mobilize its middle class, so it refuses to declare war and send young men from Moscow and St. Petersburg to the slaughterhouse that is the Donbas. Its generals are, for the most part, incompetent, which is why purges of them continue. It is scraping the bottom of its manpower barrel and so raises to absurd heights the age level of potential service members. Corruption and indiscipline have rotted out its maintenance and low-level leadership. What it has is Cold War–era stockpiles of weapons and munitions (and those are huge, but finite); some pockets of excellence, for example its railroad units; and utter disregard for human life throughout the chain of command.
Even so, a mangy, myopic, and rabid bear is still a dangerous beast. That’s why beating Russian forces in Ukraine is not enough. The West must impose upon Russia sanctions intended not, as the current ones are, to punish, but rather to enfeeble (Chicago rules, again). The plummeting of Russian car production is an example of a basic fact, which is that Russian production depends, more than one might think, on access to Western chips, machine tools, and special materials. However the Ukraine war ends, permanently or temporarily, the West needs to settle into a comprehensive sanctions regime that will weaken Russia’s economy in the long haul and throttle its ability to rearm on a large scale when the shooting stops.
NATO expansion should assist in this process. The alliance will soon in all likelihood have Sweden and Finland as full members. They have real and potential capacity (Finland more the former, Sweden more the latter) and serious political leadership. But a NATO of 32 members will be even more unwieldy than what we now have.
The solution—which cannot be publicly declared—is a NATO-within-NATO. Germany, France, and Italy have the largest economies in the European Union and in theory should carry the most weight in European-security decision making as well. But they cannot. Germany, the proverbial Hamlet of nations, is fatally compromised by its unwillingness and inability to make good on military commitments, and its recent sordid past in enabling Russia’s growth and stranglehold on European energy supplies. France is domestically torn, while the overweening vanity of its presidents makes it difficult for them to get a receptive hearing from lesser mortals. Italy, as ever, produces statesmen on occasion, but not statesmanship.
A nascent coalition of powers is, however, willing to take Russia seriously and has the muscle to thwart her while bringing less resolute European states along. The Eastern European and Baltic states, with Poland in the lead, know Russian tyranny firsthand, and are ready to stand up to it; the Scandinavian states, in particular Finland and Norway, are almost as intent; the English-speaking external powers, including the United Kingdom and Canada, are similarly alive and determined. It is to this core group that American statecraft must look.
The British chief of the General Staff recently described the Ukraine crisis as a 1937 moment for the West. It was an acute historical comparison. In that year the Sino-Japanese war began, setting the stage for World War II. In that year the West had before it choices that could have avoided the horrors of a far worse conflict, but it ducked.
To their credit, in the current moment, Western leaders are performing far better than did their counterparts 85 years ago—but not yet well enough. We’re dealing with Capone, and while, like Eliot Ness, we need to stay within the constraints of law and basic decency, we also need to apply Chicago rules.
8. China: MI5 and FBI heads warn of ‘immense’ threat
Excerpts:
Wray said China was drawing "all sorts of lessons" from the conflict in Ukraine. This included trying to insulate themselves from any future sanctions of the type that have hit Russia. If China did invade Taiwan, the economic disruption would be much greater than that seen this year, he said, with western investments in China becoming "hostages" and supply chains disrupted.
"I don't have any reason to think their interest in Taiwan has abated in any fashion," the FBI director told journalists after the speech.
The MI5 head said new legislation would help to deal with the threat but the UK also needed to become a "harder target" by ensuring that all parts of society were more aware of the risks. He said that reform of the visa system had seen over 50 students linked to the Chinese military leaving the UK.
"China has for far too long counted on being everybody's second-highest priority," Wray said, adding: "They are not flying under the radar anymore."
China: MI5 and FBI heads warn of ‘immense’ threat
By Gordon Corera
Security correspondent, BBC News
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Image source, UK pool via ITN
Image caption,
MI5 head Ken McCallum (left) and FBI director Christopher Wray (right) made an unprecedented joint appearance in London
The heads of UK and US security services have made an unprecedented joint appearance to warn of the threat from China.
FBI director Christopher Wray said China was the "biggest long-term threat to our economic and national security" and had interfered in politics, including recent elections.
MI5 head Ken McCallum said his service had more than doubled its work against Chinese activity in the last three years and would be doubling it again.
MI5 is now running seven times as many investigations related to activities of the Chinese Communist Party compared to 2018, he added.
The FBI's Wray warned that if China was to forcibly take Taiwan it would "represent one of the most horrific business disruptions the world has ever seen".
The first ever joint public appearance by the two directors came at MI5 headquarters in Thames House, London.
McCallum also said the challenge posed by the Chinese Communist Party was "game-changing", while Wray called it "immense" and "breath-taking".
Wray warned the audience - which included chief executives of businesses and senior figures from universities - that the Chinese government was "set on stealing your technology" using a range of tools.
He said it posed "an even more serious threat to western businesses than even many sophisticated businesspeople realised". He cited cases in which people linked to Chinese companies out in rural America had been digging up genetically modified seeds which would have cost them billions of dollars and nearly a decade to develop themselves.
He also said China deployed cyber espionage to "cheat and steal on a massive scale", with a hacking programme larger than that of every other major country combined.
The MI5 head said intelligence about cyber threats had been shared with 37 countries and that in May a sophisticated threat against aerospace had been disrupted.
Image source, Getty Images
Image caption,
Both men warned that China was drawing lessons from the Russian invasion of Ukraine
McCallum also pointed to a series of examples linked to China. These included a British aviation expert who had received an approach online and had been offered an attractive employment opportunity. He travelled to China twice to be "wined and dined" before being asked for technical information on military aircraft by a company which was actually a front for Chinese intelligence officers.
"That's where we stepped in," said McCallum. He also said one engineering firm had been approached by a Chinese company which led to its technology being taken before the deal was then called off, forcing the company, Smith's Harlow, to go into administration in 2020.
And he pointed to the interference alert issued by Parliament in January about the activities of Christine Lee. He said these types of operations aimed to amplify pro-Chinese communist party voices and silence those that questioned its authority. "It needs to be challenged," the MI5 head said.
In the US, the FBI director said the Chinese government had directly interfered in a congressional election in New York this spring because they did not want a candidate who was a critic and former protester at Tiananmen Square to be elected.
They had done so, he said, by hiring a private investigator to dig up derogatory information. When they could not find anything, he said there had been an effort to manufacture a controversy using a sex worker before even suggesting staging a car accident.
Wray said China was drawing "all sorts of lessons" from the conflict in Ukraine. This included trying to insulate themselves from any future sanctions of the type that have hit Russia. If China did invade Taiwan, the economic disruption would be much greater than that seen this year, he said, with western investments in China becoming "hostages" and supply chains disrupted.
"I don't have any reason to think their interest in Taiwan has abated in any fashion," the FBI director told journalists after the speech.
The MI5 head said new legislation would help to deal with the threat but the UK also needed to become a "harder target" by ensuring that all parts of society were more aware of the risks. He said that reform of the visa system had seen over 50 students linked to the Chinese military leaving the UK.
"China has for far too long counted on being everybody's second-highest priority," Wray said, adding: "They are not flying under the radar anymore."
More on this story
9. The Great Global Rearmament
Treasuries are not bottomless (unless you control the reserve currency - but overextending could result in loss of control of the reserve currency).
Excerpts:
Countries can, of course, spend on initiatives while still spending on their armed forces. But treasuries are not bottomless. Governments have accumulated unprecedented levels of debt to weather the pandemic and to cover the costs of Russia’s invasion. Although the benefits of both military and social expenditures are immediate, states must be aware that high and rising debt could ultimately crowd out other future expenditures. The International Monetary Fund has already warned about this dangerous potential, stating that “highly indebted governments will be hardest hit” by interest rate increases and that “in the end, the impact will be most sharply felt by those households that can least afford it.”
That means there are real tradeoffs, ones that states will need to weigh wisely as they address the world’s problems. They are facing two great crises: a security crisis amplified by the war in Ukraine, and an anthropogenic environmental disaster. They are also reckoning with myriad other challenges, such as income inequality, food insecurity, and a global lack of access to health care. These problems all compete for the same finite pot of financial resources, and the war in Ukraine, catastrophic as it is, cannot obscure them. That’s especially true for the climate crisis, which poses the most critical challenge humankind has ever faced and demands increasing attention. States may need to bolster their forces to address the threat posed by Russia, but excessive arming can worsen a cycle of insecurity while taking resources that could instead be better spent elsewhere. Governments, then, should think long and hard before enacting packages that would increase military spending.
The Great Global Rearmament
Ukraine and the Dangerous Rise in Military Spending
July 7, 2022
Foreign Affairs · by Nan Tian, Diego Lopes da Silva, and Alexandra Marksteiner · July 7, 2022
In the days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a host of countries announced momentous hikes in military spending. Canada and the United States both released plans for new military expenditures. So did Australia. So far, 29 European states have pledged more than a combined $209 billion in new defense funding—a figure that will almost certainly rise. The European Commission has declared that “investments will be needed to replenish the depleted stocks of military equipment,” and Josep Borrell, the EU’s top foreign policy official, has called for the bloc “to spend together, more, and better” on its armed forces.
These recent increases have been spurred by the war, but they build on an existing trend. Beginning in 1999, global military spending started to rise as the world left behind the optimistic outlook that characterized the years following the end of the Cold War. Starting in 2000, for instance, Russia spent heavily in an attempt to recover the Soviet Union’s lost military might. The United States gradually increased defense expenditures after September 11. Europe’s military spending stayed stagnant for longer, but many of the continent’s countries began modernization and expansion campaigns after Moscow annexed Crimea. And over the past 30 years, China has increased military spending more than any other country. Before Russia invaded Ukraine, global military spending had already reached what is at least a post-Cold War high of $2.1 trillion, up from $1.2 trillion in 1999 and $1.7 trillion in 1989. (There is not reliable data on global military expenditures from before 1989.) Today, with the various announced spending hikes, it likely to surpass $2.3 trillion.
In the wake of Russia’s invasion, it is easy to see these increases as necessary. But the belief that expanding defense budgets will necessarily help safeguard the world is both flawed and dangerous. Rather than deterring violence, rising military spending can contribute to a more fraught and explosive international system. It does this while diverting resources from other critical priorities, such as improving health care, preventing starvation, and fighting the climate crisis. These issues are just as important to the world’s security as is stopping Russian aggression. But states must better balance the short-term military security crisis with long-term human security challenges if they have any hope of addressing the latter.
MAD MONEY
A considerable proportion of the world’s wealth is allocated to militaries. In 2021, 2.2 percent of the planet’s GDP was spent on armed forces, or $268 per capita—more than double the $118 per capita in 1999. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that cost is set to rise even more.
The surge in spending has been particularly pronounced in Europe. The continent slashed defense expenditures after the Soviet Union collapsed, and spending remained stagnant for decades after, but once Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, it began steadily rearming. That year, NATO allies endorsed the Defense Investment Pledge, which called on each member to dedicate two percent of its GDP to the military, and European military spending increased by 25 percent over the following seven years. Since then, the number of European NATO allies that met the two percent threshold rose from two to eight.
Now, spending is growing further. Denmark currently spends 1.4 percent of its GDP on the military, but it is expected to increase spending to two percent of GDP by 2033. In the words of Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, “historic times call for historic decisions.” Belgium, too, intends to fulfill NATO’s two percent of GDP guideline by roughly doubling its current figure of $5.9 billion. The Netherlands, which allocates 1.4 percent of its GDP to the military, plans to almost immediately reach NATO’s two percent target by adding $5.2 billion to the armed forces this year.
Poland is dramatically raising military spending, in part to double the number of its troops.
The increases are so expansive that they include even countries that have long been wary of military power. On February 27, for example, Germany announced plans to create a special fund worth $104 billion to strengthen its military, which it will use to finance several large-scale procurement projects (including the acquisition of F-35 combat aircraft from the United States). Sweden has long been neutral, but it is now poised to join NATO and boost armed forces spending to two percent of its GDP. To do so, the Swedish government will raise military expenditures by almost 60 percent.
Even the few states that have already fulfilled NATO’s Defense Investment Pledge are in the process of further arming. Poland plans to raise military spending from 2.1 percent to three percent, starting in 2023. The hike is expected to cover a major expansion of the Polish military, including doubling the number of its troops. Fellow NATO ally Romania currently spends two percent of its GDP on the armed forces, but starting next year, the military budget will balloon to 2.5 percent of GDP. And since February, Washington has increased its spending by a staggering $90 billion, both to send military aid to Ukraine (which it has offered in greater quantities than has any other donor) and to bolster its own armed forces.
The United States’ new expenditures are especially notable. The country has long been the world’s largest military spender, and the extra appropriations build on years of increased funding. U.S. military expenditures have risen by approximately 40 percent over the past two decades, driven first by the war on terrorism and now by growing geopolitical competition with China and Russia. The new money is partially going to troops, but it largely consists of costly and lengthy arms acquisition projects and research and development efforts. The Obama administration, for instance, launched a $1.2 trillion initiative to modernize U.S. nuclear weapons. The initiative, which was unveiled in 2010, is expected to continue until 2046.
UP THE ANTE
The United States and its allies aren’t the only countries ramping up military spending. One of Vladimir Putin’s main political goals has been to reverse the post–Cold War cuts to Moscow’s forces, and since his election in 2000, Russia has initiated three state armament programs. As a result, the country’s military spending has risen almost nonstop. Indeed, Russia was one of the few European countries that did not cut military spending in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Instead, after waging a 12-day war against Georgia, it set up new funding to modernize 70 percent of its military equipment by the end of 2020.
Ultimately, Russia didn’t meet this ambitious timeline. A combination of harsh Western sanctions (implemented after Moscow annexed Crimea) and falling oil prices forced the Kremlin to trim the military budget in 2017 and 2018. But as the economy stabilized, Russia again began increasing defense spending. In 2021 alone, as Russia amassed troops along the Ukrainian border, the country’s military spending increased by 2.9 percent and reached $65.9 billion—equivalent to 4.1 percent of the country’s GDP.
But even Russia’s expenditures look small when compared with China’s. After the 1995–96 Taiwan Strait crisis—when China lobbed missiles at the strait but was forced to stop when the U.S. Navy sailed powerful ships through the area—Beijing began an extensive military modernization program. Chinese defense spending increased by ten percent on average every year for the next two decades, and the country’s now 27 uninterrupted years of increased military spending make for the longest such stretch for any state in the world. Chinese military expenditures reached $293 billion last year.
Even Russia’s military expenditures look small when compared with China’s.
Beijing shows no signs of stopping. Chinese President Xi Jinping has stated that his long-term ambition is to narrow the gap between the People’s Liberation Army and what Beijing calls “the world’s leading militaries”—a phrase widely assumed to refer to the U.S. armed forces. Xi’s objective is to achieve the “complete modernization” of the PLA by 2035 and to make China’s armed forces into a “world-class military” by 2049.
China’s buildup has, in turn, prompted nearby countries to spend more on their own forces. Despite a deep reluctance to seriously finance its armed forces, Japan increased its military spending by 7.3 percent last year, the highest annual increase since 1972. Australia recently entered into the AUKUS trilateral security agreement with the United Kingdom and the United States, a deal that will supply Canberra with eight nuclear-powered submarines at an estimated cost of over $100 billion. It is just one of many upgrades that Australia is making to its military in response to China’s growing assertiveness.
BUYER BEWARE
In the West, one of the main justifications for increased military spending is deterrence. As Russian troops slowly take more Ukrainian territory, and as China continues to threaten its neighbors, policymakers in the United States, Asia, and Europe have all argued that they need to credibly deter Beijing and Moscow from starting new conflicts or fueling tensions. “You have to be able to fight to not have to fight,” Christian Lindner, Germany’s finance minister and an architect of the country’s new military fund, said in 2022.
Undoubtedly, governments are responsible for providing security to their people, but deterrence is tricky and can have an unintended consequence. When one state rearms, it leads rival states to feel less secure, and the result can be an upward spiral of military spending, modernization, and expansion—in short, an arms race. The AUKUS arrangement is perhaps the clearest example of how armament can beget more armament. Had China not worked to expand its military’s reach, which it may be doing to challenge the United States’ presence in the region, it’s unlikely that Australia would have sought nuclear-powered submarines.
But even without an action-reaction arms race, rising military spending has costs. Blunting and bracing for climate change and fixing food instability will not be cheap, and the more money countries spend on their forces, the more difficult it will be to solve these human security challenges. On June 30, for instance, the United Kingdom’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy announced that to finance military aid to Ukraine, it was “surrendering” some climate and foreign aid funds. The opportunity costs are especially frustrating given that, in some cases, funding a human welfare initiative would require a fraction of current military spending. A joint analysis by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, and the World Food Program estimated that it would take $265 billion per year between now and 2030 to successfully end world hunger. This may seem like a lot, but it’s just 12 percent of the world’s 2021 military spending.
To finance military assistance to Ukraine, the United Kingdom is redirecting some climate and foreign aid funds.
Countries can, of course, spend on initiatives while still spending on their armed forces. But treasuries are not bottomless. Governments have accumulated unprecedented levels of debt to weather the pandemic and to cover the costs of Russia’s invasion. Although the benefits of both military and social expenditures are immediate, states must be aware that high and rising debt could ultimately crowd out other future expenditures. The International Monetary Fund has already warned about this dangerous potential, stating that “highly indebted governments will be hardest hit” by interest rate increases and that “in the end, the impact will be most sharply felt by those households that can least afford it.”
That means there are real tradeoffs, ones that states will need to weigh wisely as they address the world’s problems. They are facing two great crises: a security crisis amplified by the war in Ukraine, and an anthropogenic environmental disaster. They are also reckoning with myriad other challenges, such as income inequality, food insecurity, and a global lack of access to health care. These problems all compete for the same finite pot of financial resources, and the war in Ukraine, catastrophic as it is, cannot obscure them. That’s especially true for the climate crisis, which poses the most critical challenge humankind has ever faced and demands increasing attention. States may need to bolster their forces to address the threat posed by Russia, but excessive arming can worsen a cycle of insecurity while taking resources that could instead be better spent elsewhere. Governments, then, should think long and hard before enacting packages that would increase military spending.
Foreign Affairs · by Nan Tian, Diego Lopes da Silva, and Alexandra Marksteiner · July 7, 2022
10. The West Must Isolate Iran
Excerpts:
While Reagan helped affirm Iran’s calculation that hostage-taking works, his tenure also provides insight into alternate responses. While Carter aides argued persistence of diplomacy convinced Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini to release the hostages, in 1981, former Kissinger aide Peter Rodman observed in the Washington Quarterly that this was backwards. What actually changed Khomeini’s calculus was the isolation the Islamic Republic suffered in the wake of the hostage seizure. With time, that isolation became too great to bear.
It is time to replicate that isolation. All Western embassies in Tehran should close. At best, they have become hostages-in-waiting. The United States and Europe can provide visa services from Dubai. Likewise, all European countries should send Iranian diplomats home. Maximum pressure should resume. Until Iranian authorities learn that the cost for hostage-taking is impoverishment and isolation, then they will simply continue a strategy that has proven lucrative and diplomatically rewarding.
The West Must Isolate Iran
Iranian security forces reportedly arrested Giles Whitaker and a number of other diplomats and foreigners on espionage charges. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said the group violated a prohibited zone close to an area where the Iranian military was testing missiles. The IRGC evidently missed the irony of justifying their arrest in Whitaker’s alleged collection of soil samples. Thirty-three years ago, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein arrested (and subsequently executed) British-Iranian journalist Farzad Bazoft on similar charges. That incident led to the West’s abandonment of the fiction that Saddam was somehow moderate.
Iran’s arrest of diplomats was predictable. For more than forty years, Iranian authorities have flouted treaties governing protection of diplomats and diplomatic property. The United States cannot dismiss the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy as the action of a radical fringe. Masoumeh Ebtekar, spokeswoman of the hostage-takers served as vice president of Iran under both Mohammad Khatami and Hassan Rouhani, both of whom many Western diplomats considered moderates. Far from apologizing for the embassy seizure, she has continued to justify it.
Simply put, the Islamic Republic glorifies hostage-taking and continues the practice because it works. For Tehran, hostage-taking is a profitable exercise. The Obama administration paid over $400 million in cash—by some accounts more than $1 billion—to win the release of Americans imprisoned in the country. President Obama denied that money was a ransom. “We do not pay ransom. We didn’t here. And we don’t—we won’t in the future—precisely because if we did, then we would start encouraging Americans to be targeted,” he said. The was spin. The IRGC understood the cash was ransom. “Taking this much money back was in return for the release of the American spies,” Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naghdi, commander of the paramilitary Basij, said, a claim the Iranian press repeated over subsequent weeks.
Nor was Obama the only one to pay cash for hostages. President Jimmy Carter caved to Iranian extortion with the 1981 Algiers Accords. During Ronald Reagan’s campaign, his team criticized Carter for negotiating under fire, but then did the exact same thing. Beginning in the middle of the 1980s, Iranian proxies in Lebanon began kidnapping Americans. The root of President Ronald Reagan’s arms-for-hostages scheme was an attempt to ransom these citizens. On January 17, 1986, Reagan signed an order authorizing the sale of missiles to Iran. Under terms negotiated by senior national security aides, Tehran would order Hezbollah and other proxy groups to release American hostages as soon as Iranian authorities received the weapons. At first it seemed to work. Iran let many Americans go—at least those whom Hezbollah had not tortured to death—but as soon as intermediaries delivered the last batch of missiles, Hezbollah simply took more Americans hostage.
For Iranian leaders today, the only difference between diplomats and academics or journalists is that diplomats bring a higher price. And the only difference between hardliners and so-called reformers is that the former seize the hostage while the latter act as their agents to negotiate a good price to sustain the regime.
While Reagan helped affirm Iran’s calculation that hostage-taking works, his tenure also provides insight into alternate responses. While Carter aides argued persistence of diplomacy convinced Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini to release the hostages, in 1981, former Kissinger aide Peter Rodman observed in the Washington Quarterly that this was backwards. What actually changed Khomeini’s calculus was the isolation the Islamic Republic suffered in the wake of the hostage seizure. With time, that isolation became too great to bear.
It is time to replicate that isolation. All Western embassies in Tehran should close. At best, they have become hostages-in-waiting. The United States and Europe can provide visa services from Dubai. Likewise, all European countries should send Iranian diplomats home. Maximum pressure should resume. Until Iranian authorities learn that the cost for hostage-taking is impoverishment and isolation, then they will simply continue a strategy that has proven lucrative and diplomatically rewarding.
Expert Biography – Now a 1945 Contributing Editor, Dr. Michael Rubin is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Dr. Rubin is the author, coauthor, and coeditor of several books exploring diplomacy, Iranian history, Arab culture, Kurdish studies, and Shi’ite politics, including “Seven Pillars: What Really Causes Instability in the Middle East?” (AEI Press, 2019); “Kurdistan Rising” (AEI Press, 2016); “Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes” (Encounter Books, 2014); and “Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos” (Palgrave, 2005).
11. The Chinese Communist Party’s overseas influence operations seek to alter the Xinjiang narrative
Excerpts:
Despite its abstruse nature, the party’s influence operations can be highly effective, especially when they go unnoticed and operate in a conducive environment. In countries where public scrutiny is possible because of, for example, a strong media and research community, the corrupting and corrosive nature of the CCP’s influence operations can be exposed, and short-term impacts can be counteracted if governments have set up appropriate operational and policy mechanisms to deal with such surveillance and foreign interference. Yet, in countries where democratic protections and transparency are lacking, such activities can quickly alter public opinion, exporting the CCP’s repression overseas and undermining domestic sovereignty.
The global rollback of open societies and democratic institutions leaves more dark shadows for the CCP’s united front agents to operate in and fewer opportunities to expose their pernicious effects. Under Xi, the CCP has doubled down on united front work and shown a willingness to properly resource its vast network so it can adapt and evolve in light of past successes and failures.
Our recommendations for policymakers, researchers and civil society includes a call for governments, law enforcement and civil society groups to more actively disrupt the CCP’s ability to interfere in sovereign countries and co-opt ethnic Chinese community groups and individuals through countermeasures such as enhanced public transparency, legislative reform, capacity building and law enforcement. Transparency is the best weapon for safeguarding the ability of citizens of all backgrounds to engage in public life free from outside interference and counteracting the hazards of the CCP’s united front system.
The Chinese Communist Party’s overseas influence operations seek to alter the Xinjiang narrative | The Strategist
Over the last decade the free world has watched the Chinese government’s brutal crackdown in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region with growing alarm. Its use of mass extrajudicial interment, intrusive surveillance and coercive brainwashing has fundamentally altered the human and physical geography of the region and its indigenous Uyghur population. Yet the complex ways in which the Chinese Communist Party is exporting this repression abroad have received less attention.
More than a million people with connections to Xinjiang now live in countries such as Kazakhstan, Turkey and Australia. This diasporic community is dominated by Uyghurs and other indigenous peoples but also includes a small group from the Han ethnic majority who formerly lived in or have links to Xinjiang. Many of these Han are part of the Xinjiang Construction and Production Corps, or Bingtuan for short, which settled millions of Han in Xinjiang and colonised the region in the name of the CCP.
Collectively, the Xinjiang diaspora is referred to as ‘overseas Chinese from Xinjiang’ by the Chinese government, regardless of their distinct identities as the colonised Uyghurs and the Han colonisers, or their cultural connections to the Uyghur homeland. By claiming to speak on behalf of ‘Xinjiang’ and its people, these CCP-aligned community organisations can neutralise—even silence—genuine criticisms of CCP policies in the region, while sowing fear, confusion and division not only in the Xinjiang diaspora but throughout the wider community. They actively foster a climate of plausible deniability that can cause foreign governments, politicians, corporate entities and civil society groups to ignore or discount the crimes against humanity being committed by the CCP in Xinjiang.
The Xinjiang diaspora is scattered widely across the world and its members are active targets of the Chinese government’s vast united front system: a complex network of decentralised party, state and civil society entities responsible for influencing people outside the CCP. United front work seeks to advance the CCP’s agenda, both domestically and abroad, by winning over friends and neutralising enemies. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping, united front work has increased in size, scope and strategic ambition.
The Chinese government and its united front agents are actively monitoring and harassing Uyghurs and other individuals and groups critical of its agenda. Amid this climate of intimidation, some overseas community groups with close ties to the CCP’s united front apparatuses are actively whitewashing the human rights abuses in the Uyghur homeland and even openly praising the party’s policies.
The CCP is also systematically collecting information on members of the Xinjiang diaspora and creating databases that could strengthen the party’s overseas surveillance and interference work. Party officials in Xinjiang have been building such databases—of former and current Xinjiang residents with overseas connections—since 1997. They collect detailed personal information, including ‘political inclinations and attitudes towards the motherland’ and ‘the methods and consequences of the efforts by hostile foreign forces to co-opt this group’, and then use that information to develop and influence strategies.
In our new report we present four case studies to pull back the veil on the activities of Xinjiang-linked community organisations in Canada, Australia, Central Asia and Turkey, and their ties to the CCP’s united front system. The full extent of their activities requires additional research and public transparency, and any policy responses will need to respond dynamically to the specifics of each situation. However, the starting point must be a more nuanced understanding of the CCP’s united front system: its aims, tactics, operations and global footprint.
Take the example of the South Australian Xinjiang Association in Adelaide. This small Han-dominated community organisation has strong backing from the China’s diplomatic mission and, until recently, local Australian politicians, who have openly praised the group for its contributions to Australian multiculturalism. The group regularly co-opts Uyghur cultural traditions (clothing, food, music) at their public events and claim to represent the diversity of both Xinjiang and Australian society despite the objections of Adelaide’s large Uyghur community—many of whom have relatives who’ve disappeared inside the dystopian ‘re-education’ system in Xinjiang.
Former presidents of the SA Xinjiang Association, Irena Zhang (far left) and Genargi Xia (far right) with South Australian MLC Jing Lee (second from right) and the Chinese Consul-General in Adelaide He Lanjing at an event welcoming the consul-general to Australia in December 2018 (source).
The group’s founder, Irena Zhang (Zhang Yanxia), has been involved with a prominent united front organisation, the Australian Council for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification of China, which has come under intense scrutiny for foreign interference activities in recent years. On the CCP’s treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, Zhang reportedly told a local newspaper: ‘In my opinion, I don’t think they are being mistreated.’
Another of the group’s former presidents, Genargi Xia (Xia Guanjun), has served as an overseas member for at least two united front bodies while its current president, Vivian Lim (Nian Wei), claims: ‘Xinjiang is a place where multiple ethnic groups lived since ancient times, where diverse cultures fuse and intersection…an environment where the sons and daughter of all ethnic groups coexist in mutual respect and harmony.’
Nominally independent community organisations like the SA Xinjiang Association are powerful resources in Beijing’s ongoing efforts to reshape the global narrative on Xinjiang, and they are making inroads. Look at the way some international leaders, including UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet and Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev have recently echoed some of the CCP’s talking points on Xinjiang. We have plenty of examples of how the CCP is influencing—even corrupting and capturing—political elites abroad while seeking to ultimately control diaspora groups regardless of their nationality or political disposition.
Community groups like the SA Xinjiang Association may not be immediately recognisable as aligned with the CCP and its united front system. But our research demonstrates how the CCP actively cultivates these organisations and its leaders as conduits for advancing the party’s agenda abroad and, in turn, relegating or even silencing the voices of Uyghurs and other critics of its policies in Xinjiang. Their activities can mislead the public and could amount to foreign interference if properly exposed.
The CCP’s united front system employs a range of methods and tactics depending on local circumstances. In free and open countries, such as Australia and Canada, it exploits democratic institutions, civic participation and multiculturalism to create the false impression that Xinjiang is not that dissimilar to these societies and amplifies pro-CCP voices and narratives. In less open societies, such as Turkey, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, it exploits business and cultural links while leveraging the growing economic dependency of these countries on China.
Despite its abstruse nature, the party’s influence operations can be highly effective, especially when they go unnoticed and operate in a conducive environment. In countries where public scrutiny is possible because of, for example, a strong media and research community, the corrupting and corrosive nature of the CCP’s influence operations can be exposed, and short-term impacts can be counteracted if governments have set up appropriate operational and policy mechanisms to deal with such surveillance and foreign interference. Yet, in countries where democratic protections and transparency are lacking, such activities can quickly alter public opinion, exporting the CCP’s repression overseas and undermining domestic sovereignty.
The global rollback of open societies and democratic institutions leaves more dark shadows for the CCP’s united front agents to operate in and fewer opportunities to expose their pernicious effects. Under Xi, the CCP has doubled down on united front work and shown a willingness to properly resource its vast network so it can adapt and evolve in light of past successes and failures.
Our recommendations for policymakers, researchers and civil society includes a call for governments, law enforcement and civil society groups to more actively disrupt the CCP’s ability to interfere in sovereign countries and co-opt ethnic Chinese community groups and individuals through countermeasures such as enhanced public transparency, legislative reform, capacity building and law enforcement. Transparency is the best weapon for safeguarding the ability of citizens of all backgrounds to engage in public life free from outside interference and counteracting the hazards of the CCP’s united front system.
12. Ukraine raises flag on recaptured island as Russia consolidates gains in east
Small victories. But every one is important.
Ukraine raises flag on recaptured island as Russia consolidates gains in east
- Summary
- Ukraine hoists flag on recaptured Black Sea island
- Russia carries out air strike on island
- Russia consolidates gains in eastern Ukraine
- Shells and probes defences of new territory it seeks
KYIV, July 7 (Reuters) - Ukrainian forces raised their national flag on a recaptured Black Sea island on Thursday in a symbol of defiance against Moscow, but Russian forces consolidated gains in eastern Ukraine and probed the defences of potential new targets.
Moscow responded to the flag-raising ceremony fast. It said one of its warplanes had struck Snake Island shortly afterwards and destroyed part of the Ukrainian detachment there.
The tiny island, located about 140 km (90 miles) south of the Ukrainian port of Odesa, is strategically important as it guards sea lanes. Russia abandoned it at the end of June in what it said was a gesture of goodwill - a victory for Ukraine that Kyiv hoped could loosen Moscow's blockade of Ukrainian ports.
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Images released by Ukraine's interior ministry on Thursday showed three Ukrainian soldiers raising the blue and yellow national flag on a patch of ground on Snake Island next to the remains of a flattened building.
"Glory to Ukrainian soldiers," the ministry said on Twitter.
Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian president's chief of staff, suggested the moment was one that would be repeated across Ukraine in the coming months.
"The flag of Ukraine is on Snake Island. Ahead of us are many more such videos from Ukrainian cities that are currently under temporary occupation," he wrote on Telegram.
Russia's missile strike on the island's new residents had caused significant damage to its dock, Odesa regional administration spokesman Serhiy Bratchuk said.
Bratchuk said a further two Russian missiles had hit and destroyed two grain stores in his region containing 35 tons of grain.
In Moscow, the Russian defence ministry said several Ukrainian troops had landed on the island before dawn and taken pictures with the flag.
"An aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces immediately launched a strike with high-precision missiles on Snake Island, as a result of which part of the Ukrainian military personnel was destroyed," ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said.
Snake Island became a symbol of Ukraine's refusal to bend to Russia's will early in the war after Ukrainian forces stationed there delivered a salty riposte when asked by the commander of a Russian ship to surrender.
'OPERATIONAL PAUSE?'
Russian forces in eastern Ukraine meanwhile kept up pressure on Ukrainian troops trying to hold the line along the northern borders of the Donetsk region, in preparation for an anticipated wider new offensive against it.
After taking the city of Lysychansk on Sunday and effectively cementing their total control of Ukraine's Luhansk region, Moscow has made clear it is planning to capture parts of the neighbouring Donetsk region which it has not yet seized. Kyiv still controls some large cities.
Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko, who has complained of intense Russian shelling in recent days, wrote on Telegram that seven civilians had been killed by Russia in the region over the last 24 hours.
Reuters could not independently verify his assertion and Russia's defence ministry says it does not target civilians and uses high precision weapons to eliminate military threats.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said Russian forces were moving more units into the Luhansk region in order to consolidate Moscow's control there.
Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday that fighting was underway on the northern border between the Luhansk and Donetsk regions as Russian forces tried to make new inroads.
But after Russian President Vladimir Putin said he wanted troops involved in capturing the Luhansk region to rest, a full offensive has yet to materialise.
The U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War said Russia did not appear to have taken any new territory since its capture of Lysychank on Sunday.
It assessed that "Russian forces are conducting an operational pause while still engaging in limited ground attacks to set conditions for more significant offensive operations".
Putin launched his invasion on Feb. 24, calling it a "special military operation", to demilitarise Ukraine, root out what he said were dangerous nationalists and protect Russian speakers in that country.
Ukraine and its allies say Russia launched an imperial-style land grab, starting the biggest conflict in Europe since World War Two.
After failing to seize the capital Kyiv early, Russia is now waging a war of attrition for Ukraine's Donbas region which comprises the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
Russia says it wants to wrest control of the eastern and heavily industrial region on behalf of Moscow-backed separatists in two self-proclaimed people’s republics.
Ukraine has repeatedly pleaded with the West to send more weapons to end a conflict that has killed thousands, displaced millions, and flattened cities.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video message that his forces now had some of what they needed.
"At last, Western artillery has started to work powerfully, the weapons we are getting from our partners. And their accuracy is exactly what is needed," he said.
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Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Michael Perry and Andrew Osborn; Editing by Angus MacSwan
13. Zelensky says Western artillery that Ukraine has received "started working very powerfully"
The Ukrinaians seem to be making very good use of the four (yes only 4) HIMARS systems that the US has provided. I wish we could have US artillerymen forward observing their operations to learn from the Ukrainians. My guess is they are developing new TTPs/doctrine that could be invaluable to us.
Note the security operations to support and protect the system.
I also wonder how they are spotting Russian targets. Forward observers with eyes on? Drone/UAS? SIGINT? Other imagery and targeting capabilities?
But most important is to see how grateful the Ukrainaians are for these systems. Now let's get them more since they are using them to such good effect.
Zelensky says Western artillery that Ukraine has received "started working very powerfully"
From CNN's Karen Smith
(Volodymyr Zelensky/Facebook)
Speaking in his nightly address, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said the Western artillery they have received “started working very powerfully” on Wednesday.
“Its accuracy is exactly as needed. Our defenders inflict very noticeable strikes on depots and other spots that are important for the logistics of the occupiers. And this significantly reduces the offensive potential of the Russian army. The losses of the occupiers will only increase every week, as will the difficulty of supplying them,” Zelensky said.
14. We Want to Rebuild U.S. Relations With China
We Want to Rebuild U.S. Relations With China
WSJ · by Maurice R. Greenberg
Frank talks between business leaders can help restore trust.
By
Maurice R. Greenberg
July 6, 2022 6:39 pm ET
Secretary of State Antony Blinken outlines U.S. China strategy in a speech at George Washington University in Washington, May 26.
Photo: Eric Lee/Bloomberg News
The deteriorating state of affairs between the U.S. and China has destabilized the most important bilateral relationship in the world. Many Chinese companies do business in the U.S., as do American companies in China, across all sectors. Hundreds of billions of dollars in goods and services are exchanged annually that present tremendous benefits to both economies.
We should build on that. It is in our national interest, now more than ever, to do all we can to improve U.S.-China relations. My company was founded by Cornelius Vander Starr, an American businessman, in Shanghai more than 100 years ago. I understand that opposing worldviews make attempts to establish a constructive dialogue difficult, but given what is at stake, it only makes sense to try.
Business leaders from both countries can achieve positive outcomes despite their differences. Recognizing this, we have established a small group of senior U.S. business and policy leaders who have experience in China and share the view that we would be better served by having a more constructive relationship with China. We are confident that like-minded people in China would embrace the opportunity to work together to find solutions. Our new group will help foster a measured but frank exchange between the U.S. and Chinese governments on issues of mutual concern.
The U.S. and China have a long history of collaboration dating to before World War II. When the People’s Republic of China reopened to the world, the U.S. extended favorable trade terms to foster China’s economic growth, becoming one of China’s biggest trading partners, which we continue to be today. Until recent years, bilateral channels allowed for government-to-government interaction on many levels, as well as the opportunity for business, policy and academic leaders from both countries to meet and exchange ideas. After these channels were eliminated during the Trump administration, our differences increased, as did the level of mistrust.
I was encouraged to hear Secretary of State Antony Blinken say in his first major speech on U.S.-China relations that the Biden administration stands ready to increase direct communication with Beijing. That will require not only a willing response from the Chinese and a genuine commitment to proceed in good faith but also resurrection of the bilateral mechanisms of exchange that existed for decades. Our new group aims to help rebuild those channels and re-establish a constructive bilateral dialogue based on mutual respect and understanding.
Mr. Greenberg is chairman and CEO of C.V. Starr & Co.
Our founding members include the following:
- Maurice R. Greenberg, Chairman and CEO, C.V. Starr & Co.
- Craig Allen, president, U.S. China Business Council
- Max Baucus, former U.S. ambassador to China
- William Cohen, former secretary of defense
- Thomas Donohue, former president and CEO, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
- William Ford, chairman and CEO, General Atlantic
- Dan Glaser, president and CEO, Marsh McLennan
- John Hamre, President and CEO, Center for Strategic and International Studies
- Carla Hills, former U.S. trade representative
- Ken Langone, co-founder, The Home Depot Inc.
- Joseph Lieberman, former U.S. Senator
- Stephen Orlins, president, National Committee on U.S. China Relations
- Stapleton Roy, former U.S. diplomat specializing in Asian Affairs
- Frances Townsend, former U.S. homeland security adviser
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the July 7, 2022, print edition as 'We Want to Rebuild U.S.-China Relations.'
15. Opinion | Biden’s Ukraine strategy risks prolonging a violent stalemate
Excerpts:
All wars end with a negotiation, when one or both sides are exhausted enough to seek an end to the fighting. What’s clear is that neither Ukraine nor Russia is at this point of exhaustion yet. But the longer the war goes on, the more pressure mounts on Western economies and the greater the devastation and suffering of Ukrainians.
“Urgency is very important,” Risch said. “This has got to be done before the world looks the other way.”
By dragging its feet on giving Zelensky the weapons he is asking for, the United States risks ensuring that the stalemate persists, which ultimately redounds to Putin’s benefit. The Biden administration underestimated Ukrainian forces in the first stage of the war. It must not repeat the same mistake now.
Opinion | Biden’s Ukraine strategy risks prolonging a violent stalemate
The Biden administration deserves credit for giving Ukraine massive amounts of help and rallying European allies to the cause. At the same time, concerns are rising that President Biden’s risk-averse strategy amounts to giving Kyiv just enough weapons to maintain a violent stalemate but not to win the war. Winter is coming, and if Russia controls large chunks of Ukrainian territory when the Donbas region freezes over, Putin’s gains will become harder, if not impossible, to roll back in the spring.
While U.S. and European leaders were huddling in Spain, Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking Republican James E. Risch (Idaho) was in Ukraine, touring the country. He was escorted by Ukrainian forces because the State Department refused to provide him security once he crossed the Ukrainian border. He met with Volodymyr Zelensky at the Ukrainian president’s office in Kyiv, and came away with the conclusion that the current U.S. strategy has not properly adjusted to the latest phase of the fighting.
Russian forces are pummeling Ukrainian civilian and military targets in the Donbas with their superior artillery. Ukrainian forces are fighting back valiantly, but they are still not receiving enough of the weapons that might give them the advantage — including long-range air defenses, longer-range artillery, heavy armor and fighter planes. The White House process of trying to parse which weapons would be “escalatory” is a recipe for a stalemate, Risch told me in an interview.
“If you are just giving weapons to fight to a stalemate, that’s not a good situation and that has consequences,” he said. “We need to be in or out. And if we are in, we need to give them what they need to win.”
Risch’s concerns about the slow pace of the Biden administration’s Ukraine weapons program are shared by some of his leading colleagues on the other side of the aisle, including House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.).
In Madrid, Biden promised that the United States and Europe will support Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression “as long as it takes.” But he didn’t say that he would give Ukraine the means to shorten that timeline. Even though the United States has pledged billions to support Ukraine’s military, only a fraction of those resources have arrived, leaving the Ukrainian military badly outgunned in the Donbas.
Privately, several administration officials told me that the delays are not a result of any problem with the actual delivery of weapons. The core problem is the protracted hand-wringing inside the Biden policy team over each weapons decision. Risch said this is caused by a misguided concern that if Putin starts to lose badly, he might escalate further.
“As a result of that [the White House is] taking the middle path. And the middle path is the wrong path here,” he said. “They can win this, but they can’t do it themselves. They will provide the fight if we provide the weapons.”
The Biden team insists that Zelensky is in the lead, and that the U.S. strategy is to give Ukraine the means to have the upper hand whenever a peace negotiation takes place.
“President Zelensky, he gets to determine how victory is decided and when and on what terms,” the National Security Council’s coordinator for communications, John Kirby, told Fox News Sunday. “And [what] we’re going to do is continue to make sure that can succeed on the battlefield so that he can succeed at the table.”
But at the current pace of support, the stalemate is only likely to persist — a recipe for endless war, destruction and human suffering. Zelensky reportedly told the NATO leaders Ukraine needs to push back Russian forces within months, not years. This week, he unveiled a recovery plan that calls for $750 billion in international investment and support. What will that tab be if the war goes on another year, or another five years?
All wars end with a negotiation, when one or both sides are exhausted enough to seek an end to the fighting. What’s clear is that neither Ukraine nor Russia is at this point of exhaustion yet. But the longer the war goes on, the more pressure mounts on Western economies and the greater the devastation and suffering of Ukrainians.
“Urgency is very important,” Risch said. “This has got to be done before the world looks the other way.”
By dragging its feet on giving Zelensky the weapons he is asking for, the United States risks ensuring that the stalemate persists, which ultimately redounds to Putin’s benefit. The Biden administration underestimated Ukrainian forces in the first stage of the war. It must not repeat the same mistake now.
16. Non-NATO Sources of Soviet and Russian Arms for Ukraine
Non-NATO Sources of Soviet and Russian Arms for Ukraine
July 6, 2022
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has evolved into a war of attrition, with both sides taking heavy casualties in what is becoming a protracted conflict. Ukrainian forces find themselves out-gunned in a pitched artillery duel in the country’s east and south, which has allowed Russian forces to creep forward as they seek to conquer the rest of Ukraine’s Donbas region. To stem Russia’s advances and potentially enable a counteroffensive to retake Ukrainian territory in the coming months, Kyiv will need sustained military aid from the West, particularly artillery and other heavy weaponry.
While Western systems such as HIMARS rocket artillery are arriving on the battlefield, the Ukrainian military still predominantly operates Soviet-made artillery and armored vehicles and remains overwhelmingly dependent on Soviet-made manned aircraft and air defenses (beyond MANPADS). Kyiv is warning that its forces are now running out of Soviet-standard artillery munitions, which Ukrainian industry is currently unable to supply. At the same time, NATO members have reportedly almost exhausted their own expendable stocks of Soviet-standard ammunition used by the Ukrainian military. While Washington and its allies should continue working to transition Ukraine to NATO-standard equipment, this transition will take time given logistical and training hurdles and the large number of legacy systems that require replacement. Ukraine’s need to equip additional brigades of mobilized personnel compounds this challenge. Thus the Ukrainian military will likely remain at least partially dependent on Soviet-standard equipment for the foreseeable future.
The West, therefore, needs to find untapped sources of Soviet- and Russian-made materiel, particularly artillery, munitions, and armored vehicles, even as it ramps up deliveries of NATO-standard systems. Although Washington has scoured the stocks of NATO allies and the Pentagon has explored other potential options, an exhaustive search focusing on non-NATO countries reveals a robust supply of untapped Soviet- and Russian-made arms (and their attendant spare parts and ammunition) that Washington could help Kyiv expeditiously acquire.
Many of these countries may be willing to transfer weapons to Ukraine, especially if Washington, working with allies and partners, provides the donor country with appropriate inducements. This could include backfilling the donor countries through future arms sales, equipment swaps, or other means; offering various diplomatic, economic, or military incentives; or simply purchasing the weapons and sending them to Ukraine. These agreements do not necessarily have to be accompanied by public announcements. And indeed, some countries may prefer to keep their assistance out of the spotlight.
To aid in the effort, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) has compiled a dataset identifying over 6,300 relevant systems held by select non-NATO countries, focusing on those nations most likely to agree to transfer arms to Ukraine. The dataset draws on The Military Balance 2021, an open-source database of worldwide military capabilities published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
17. U.S. must lead in shaping the future of the world
Excerpts:
The less-bad alternative is to recommit to the goals we fought for in World War II and the Cold War: Defeating totalitarian imperialists or at least frustrating their grand ambitions.
That means continuing to help Ukrainians defend themselves by sending them the materiel they should have received after the 2014 Russian invasion and prior to this year’s invasion. Had we done that, Mr. Putin might have been deterred.
It’s also essential to help Taiwan become a “porcupine” — difficult for Xi to ingest as he did Hong Kong in violation of international law and with virtual impunity.
We need to strengthen our military and our defense alliances. We must insist that our partners bear much more of the burden than they are currently. American leadership is indispensable — one hopes they recognize that. But America cannot serve indefinitely as our friends’ Praetorian Guard. One hopes they recognize that, too.
In summary: Standing up to tyrants is very much in the American national interest. If we do so successfully, other nations will benefit. But that’s not altruism.
U.S. must lead in shaping the future of the world
Either we do it or our enemies do it
OPINION:
Altruism is a virtue. But altruism is not a serious basis for foreign policy. So, if you support Ukraine’s resistance to Russian conquest only because it’s a David-vs.-Goliath struggle you’re a good person. But you’re not thinking seriously about foreign policy.
To think seriously about foreign policy, you need to ask: What is in the American national interest?
To answer, imagine the world Americans and other free people can shape, and contrast that with the world the Americans’ enemies want to shape. Consider not only yourself but also your children and grandchildren. And remember: This is a binary choice.
On that basis, would the failure of Vladimir Putin’s attempt to conquer Ukraine be in the American national interest?
Absolutely.
A smattering of history helps inform this debate. For centuries, empires subjugated smaller and weaker nations. Sometimes empires aligned. Sometimes they clashed.
World War I brought the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Russian Empire fell, too, but was soon reconstituted as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
World War II led to the collapse not only of the Third Reich, the Japanese Empire and the Italian Empire, but also, within a few years, of the British, French and other European empires.
America, the most powerful post-war nation, embarked upon a noble experiment: We would establish a community of nations, optimistically named the United Nations. Members would embrace “fundamental human rights.” They would agree to settle conflicts through diplomacy rather than armed conflict. They would pledge to abide by international laws. They would impose consequences on those who undermined this “rules-based order.”
For several decades, this arrangement was reasonably successful, one reason the Soviet-American competition known as the Cold War did not become overheated.
Then, in 1991, the hammer-and-sickle flag lowered for the last time over the Kremlin. Nine years later, a resentful and revanchist Vladimir Putin came to power.
Ten years later, former President Bill Clinton brought the People’s Republic China into the World Trade Organization, based on the bipartisan belief that if a country becomes wealthy, its rulers will become moderate — stakeholders in the rules-based order.
Early on, Richard Bernstein and Ross H. Munro saw that this was a delusion. In their aptly named 1997 book, “The Coming Conflict with China,” they quoted Chinese Gen. Mi Zhenyu saying of the U.S., “for a relatively long time it will be absolutely necessary that we quietly nurse our sense of vengeance. … We must conceal our abilities and bide our time.”
Today, China’s ruler, Xi Jinping, is subverting the U.N. and other international organizations, persecuting China’s ethnic and religious minorities, bullying China’s neighbors, and threatening Taiwan.
In February, days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Xi formalized an alliance with Mr. Putin.
In March, Mr. Putin said: “The struggle we are waging is a struggle for our sovereignty.” What does he think limits Russia’s sovereignty? The rules-based order.
Last month, Mr. Putin observed that Peter the Great, the 18th-century Russian czar, had not been bound by foreigners’ rules. “You might think he was fighting with Sweden, seizing their lands,” Mr. Putin said, referring to the 21-year-long Great Northern War Peter launched to expand Russia’s territory. “But he seized nothing; he reclaimed it!”
Mr. Putin added that while “not one European country” recognized Russia’s claim to that territory at the time — including the swampy delta on which Peter would build St. Petersburg — all do now. “It seems it has fallen to us, too, to reclaim and strengthen,” Mr. Putin concluded, referring to the war he is waging against Ukraine.
Why should Americans care?
For one, if Mr. Putin swallows Ukraine, he is likely to attack other former Russian/Soviet possessions, including several of America’s NATO allies whose independence we have pledged to defend.
Isolationists on both the left and the right will say (or just imply): “NATO was a mistake! Withdraw from it! Let Putin have Europe! Let Xi have Asia! Let Iran’s ruling ayatollahs and the other jihadis have the Middle East! Why should we worry about quarrels in faraway lands between peoples of whom we know nothing?
The answer: Because if we do not, it will mean the end of what we have called — not without justification — the Free World. The United States will become an isolated island in a vast ocean dominated by despotic empires expanding through the threat and/or application of brute force.
Our freedom and prosperity will diminish — slowly if we’re lucky, quickly if we’re not. Our children and our grandchildren will not thank us for this inheritance.
The less-bad alternative is to recommit to the goals we fought for in World War II and the Cold War: Defeating totalitarian imperialists or at least frustrating their grand ambitions.
That means continuing to help Ukrainians defend themselves by sending them the materiel they should have received after the 2014 Russian invasion and prior to this year’s invasion. Had we done that, Mr. Putin might have been deterred.
It’s also essential to help Taiwan become a “porcupine” — difficult for Xi to ingest as he did Hong Kong in violation of international law and with virtual impunity.
We need to strengthen our military and our defense alliances. We must insist that our partners bear much more of the burden than they are currently. American leadership is indispensable — one hopes they recognize that. But America cannot serve indefinitely as our friends’ Praetorian Guard. One hopes they recognize that, too.
In summary: Standing up to tyrants is very much in the American national interest. If we do so successfully, other nations will benefit. But that’s not altruism.
• Clifford D. May is the founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a columnist for the Washington Times.
18. Mystery Cargo (Iran and Venezuela)
Excerpts:
The senior officials who were on board the grounded aircraft may hold invaluable information—and the U.S. should use this crisis as an opportunity to try to interview them, not just obtain the content of their electronic devices, to learn more about Iran-Venezuela ongoing cooperation and logistical operations.
Public statements warning companies—Conviasa, Fars Air Qeshm and Mahan Air are all under U.S. sanctions—would strengthen the resolve of both authorities and private entities not to do any further business with Emtrasur, which, as a subsidiary of Conviasa, is automatically under U.S. sanctions. Such steps would ensure the grounded aircraft never leaves Buenos Aires—a heavy blow to an operation that presently relies on one aircraft only.
The U.S. could of course take matters one step further and seek forfeiture of the aircraft, much like it has done in recent months for vessels carrying Iranian oil. With numerous civil lawsuits and judgments in the U.S. seeking damages for victims of terror from Iran, the plane could easily be seized and sold.
As we write, the aircraft tango continues with many questions but no definitive answers so far.
It’s one to watch though. An Iranian cargo flying a Venezuelan flag and operated by a senior IRGC official formerly in charge of weapons’ logistics in Syria is sitting on the runway in Buenos Aires. What could go wrong?
Mystery Cargo
Senior Iranian and Venezuelan officials are traveling around the world on a cargo plane. Argentina detained them. But what are they up to?
Jul 6
(Photo by Sebastian Bosero/AFP/Getty Images.)
On May 10, Paraguayan prosecutor Marcelo Pecci was murdered on a Colombian beach by hired assassins. As a high-profile member of the Office of Public Prosecution, he led Paraguay’s antinarcotics, corruption, organized crime, and terrorism finance investigations, prosecuting the most powerful criminal networks in his country. That included Hezbollah networks, which made him a target for the terror group as well as the powerful crime syndicates he sought to dismantle.
Three day later, a Boeing 747 cargo plane registered with Venezuelan airline Emtrasur made its way from Caracas to Ciudad Del Este, Paraguay, in the Tri-Border Area (TBA) of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. There was no cargo on board, but the 18-member crew of seven Iranians and 11 Venezuelans included Gholamreza Ghasemi, a board member, shareholder, and manager of the U.S. sanctioned Iranian airline Fars Air Qeshm, the former chairman of Iran Naft Air (later renamed Karun Airlines) and, reportedly, a senior member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC. Ghasemi is a regime stalwart, not just a seasoned pilot, and since 2017, his airline, Fars Air Qeshm has been ferrying weapons and other military equipment to Damascus on behalf of the IRGC’s Quds Force. That a senior member of the IRGC in charge of such a sensitive logistical operation would be suddenly tasked to fly an empty cargo across the world is odd. What was he doing in Ciudad Del Este?
Before we answer that question, some background on Iran’s involvement in Latin America is helpful. Exporting the Islamic revolution has been a key goal of the Iranian regime ever since it toppled the shah in 1979. Latin America became an early target because Iran’s clerical leadership viewed the region as a fertile ground for the spread of anti-American ideology. During the past four decades, Iran has patiently pursued the goal of spreading its message across the Western Hemisphere and leveraged the resulting support in pursuit of its political goals.
To expand its influence, Iran has developed a dual track based on soft and hard power. Its soft power approach relies on a missionary network built on mosques, cultural centers, educational institutions, media outlets, and publishing houses, which it has sustained with both itinerant and resident clerics either from Iran or trained in Iran. This network has run in parallel with official diplomatic relations managed through embassies and other bilateral contacts, including intelligence and military cooperation. It has thrived both in countries whose governments, like the Maduro regime in Venezuela, are allies of Iran, and in places like Colombia where the government is closely aligned with the United States. But it is thanks to Venezuela in particular, that Iran has achieved staying power. The two countries, on the strength of a shared antagonism against the United States and the Western, liberal, rule-based international order, have deepened their cooperation over the past two decades, with their goals of turning Washington’s regional allies into adversaries at the forefront of their efforts. These efforts have included an air bridge between the two countries—outwardly, an innocuous air link for passengers and cargo to travel, but in fact a way to evade sanctions and to ferry intelligence officials, senior regime members, weapons and illicitly mined gold. These flights rarely if ever have a commercial logic. They are instrumentalities of the state to advance the two regimes’ goals of gaining influence in the region at the expense of the U.S. and its allies.
Cargo planes carry significant loads of merchandise, travel constantly, and usually remain on the ground just enough to refuel, offload and load merchandise. Crews are small—typically two to four members—and stops are short. According to Paraguayan officials’ statements to the media, the plane was initially authorized to stay on the ground for eight hours—ample time to inspect the plane and its cargo, load the aircraft, refuel, and leave. Instead, the crew spent three nights in Ciudad Del Este—a money laundering center used by nearly every crime syndicate on earth—and then left for Aruba, on May 16, with a miserly cargo of Paraguayan-manufactured cigarettes worth $750,000—likely less than the flight cost. Did Ghasemi just come to Paraguay to grab a smoke?
And why stay so long? Did they meet anyone? Was it a coincidence that an Iranian official visited the TBA—whence likely came the order to kill Pecci—only days after his murder? Or was there a connection? Although the members of the hit team were Colombians and one Venezuelan, the assassination order and payment likely came from Paraguay. Hezbollah, whose TBA financiers Pecci had investigated, jailed, and extradited, are among the suspects. Paraguayan authorities knew in advance the composition of the crew. They should have taken basic precautions, including surveillance and intel gathering. Yet nothing happened. No one followed the crew to watch their movements and document their meetings.
Among the multiple plausible explanations for this flight, the most compelling one, so far, is that the Iranian-Venezuela cargo joint venture is, in fact, a cover for important regime figures to move across the globe and spend time on the ground at each destination, while posing as crew members. This is historically consistent with the air traffic between the two countries. Yet, in the past, messages, payments, instructions, and operations involved lower-level emissaries, operatives, and relied more heavily on networks already on the ground. The Emtrasur cargo flights are an escalation, if proven to be a cover. They also coincide with an uptick in Iranian activity in Latin America and deepening cooperation with Venezuela and other likeminded, anti-American regimes such as Cuba and Nicaragua. The Biden administration needs to watch this case closely, step up its cooperation with regional allies, and help them understand, as well as disrupt, this joint venture.
It is something the United States should care about. Yet so far, there appears to have been little interest from the administration.
The seizure.
Had it not been for Paraguay, we may still have no clue about what a senior Iranian was up to in the TBA so soon after Pecci was murdered. But events took an unexpected twist three weeks later, when the same plane landed in Buenos Aires, got grounded, and became engulfed in a controversy that is part drama, part mystery, and part political tango. We still do not know what a large crew of Venezuelans and Iranians is doing flying a Boeing 747 around the world. We can guess from available evidence that it is not a benign commercial enterprise. Just as the Ciudad Del Este flight coincided with a high-profile murder, its subsequent travel to Argentina coincided with revelations that Hezbollah, Iran’s terror proxy, was plotting to assassinate an Argentinian Lebanese columnist and outspoken critic of Iran. Casual coincidence again or causal correlation?
Initially, it seemed there was little that Argentina would or could do to investigate the plane. The current government is hardly enthusiastic about a diplomatic crisis with Iran and Venezuela, as it views both countries as neither adversaries or enemies. But some agencies inside the system thought otherwise.
Argentina, after all, has a checkered history with Iran. Twice, in 1992 and 1994, Iranian terror plots brought death and destruction into the heart of Buenos Aires. Years of cover-ups and government interference have hampered the course of justice, but everyone knows that Iran is behind the death of more than 200 Argentinians and that the murderers found logistical support, financing, sanctuary, and an escape route in the TBA. The still-unresolved 2015 murder of Argentinian prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who had documented the Iranian connection to the 1994 attack and was about to expose government complicity in the cover-up, added fuel to the fire. Those who wished Nisman away are now back in power. But not all of Argentina’s bureaucracy finds it normal that a joint venture between Iran’s IRGC and elements of Venezuela’s military and intelligence service can come and go as it pleases, no questions asked.
To these agencies, the appearance of a large Iranian-Venezuelan crew disembarking the plane—this time, it was 14 Venezuelans and five Iranians—triggered enough alarm bells to launch an initial investigation. Much like the flight to Paraguay, this was hardly a lucrative trip, but initial inspections conducted on June 7 did not raise red flags. The plane’s cargo just contained Volkswagen auto parts brought for a local VW plant.
Unsure whether the plane was Venezuelan or Iranian, local jet fuel providers feared U.S. sanctions and refused to resupply it. Without enough fuel to return to Caracas, on June 8, the aircraft headed to Uruguay for a refueling stopover, but as soon as it reached cruising altitude, Uruguayan authorities closed their airspace. With the plane back in Buenos Aires, those within the system who nurtured suspicions now had their chance. And for the last three weeks, the aircraft has been grounded in Buenos Aires, unable to leave.
Meanwhile, no one has definitive answers. What was a senior IRGC official doing posing as a cargo aircraft captain up and down Latin America? Who are the other crew members? Were they there to plan a terror attack? Connect with local networks? Gather intelligence? Bring resources to allies? Meet friendly politicians? Finance covert activities? Procure illicit technology?
The aircraft and the crew.
The aircraft, until recently owned by Iran’s sanctioned airline, Mahan Air, was transferred to Conviasa’s subsidiary, Emtrasur, in November 2021. Media reports about that aircraft transfer indicated that it would be operated by an Iranian crew from Mahan Air. After the plane was grounded, Mahan Air washed its hands of the situation, claiming the Venezuelan operator, Emtrasur, now owned the plane. But an Argentinian aviation expert promptly published evidence that Mahan had leased, not sold the aircraft, to Emtrasur.
The B747 was transferred to Minsk, Belarus, on January 24, 2022, painted over and then handed to Conviasa. Since then, it mostly traveled between Iran and Venezuela (with technical stopovers in Belgrade), although it ventured as far as Hong Kong and Myanmar, Karachi, and Moscow, and flew to Cuba and Nicaragua a few times. Many of these destinations coincide with recent routes also covered by Fars Air Qeshm and many of these flights appear to be political, rather than commercial in nature.
Given the above, is this a Venezuelan aircraft operated by Iranian pilots, or is it an Iranian aircraft with a Venezuelan paint job? There are good reasons for asking. From the spring of 2020 until late last year, all cargo flights between Tehran and Caracas were operated by Mahan Air first, then Fars Air Qeshm, and then by Venezuela’s Conviasa. Fars Air Qeshm seemed to oversee the cargo operation. Yet two things happened. First, Fars Air Qeshm discontinued its flights after multiple technical stopovers at different locations were apparently made impossible by diplomatic interference. And second, since February, Fars Air Qeshm’s only operating Boeing 747 (it has two, but one is undergoing maintenance) has been flying the Tehran-Moscow route, alongside new destinations such as New Delhi and Macau, with increasing frequency. It is possible that the transfer of an old Boeing to Emtrasur (last operated by Mahan Air in October 2019 for domestic flights) was designed to overcome these two operational obstacles while creating plausible deniability for the aircraft and its crew.
If the plane is any clue, the crew is an even bigger giveaway that official denials of any wrongdoing by its operator, Emtrasur, are hollow.
We already mentioned the aircraft’s captain, Gholamreza Ghasemi. To send a company senior executive around the world to deliver cargo is a bit like having Jeff Bezos drive Amazon Prime delivery trucks. It makes no sense. And Ghasemi is not the only crew member to raise eyebrows.
The crew in Ciudad Del Este included at least three more pilots—two from Mahan Air and a Venezuelan formerly employed with Avior airlines, a private carrier implicated in a fraud scheme. The Venezuelan and four others on the flight are members of Venezuela’s Bolivarian armed forces, including Cornelio Antonio Trujillo Candor, who participated in the failed 1992 Hugo Chavez-led coup against the then-democratic government of Venezuela. The CFO of Emtrasur, Mario José Arraga Urdaneta, was also on board.
Another Venezuelan on board is José Gregorio Garcia Contreras. Official Venezuelan employment records, obtained through the open-source commercial platform Sayari Analytics, show Garcia Contreras as an employee of Conviasa. But Venezuelan immigration records for Garcia Contreras and passenger lists from three Conviasa flights between Caracas and Tehran, all from October 2020—which the author obtained from an Argentinian confidential source—suggest Garcia Contreras is no ordinary flight attendant.
In June 2020, Garcia Contreras began flying long haul trips, mostly between Venezuela and Iran or Venezuela and Russia. He was on a Tehran-bound flight on October 2, 2020, for example, alongside the aforementioned Trujillo Candor, an Iranian pilot from Mahan Air who around the same time was reportedly piloting Conviasa flights in Latin America, and, most importantly, IRGC’s Quds Forces official, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, who from 2006 to 2010 was Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad and since October 2021 is Iran’s special representative to Afghanistan. The plane, despite its size, carried only 27 passengers.
Records from two more flights obtained by the author show Garcia Contreras flying back to Venezuela on October 5, alongside Trujillo Candor, then Syria’s ambassador to Venezuela, Wael Deirki, and 26 other passengers. Garcia Contreras flew home from Tehran, again, on October 31, with another Mahan Air pilot on board, who also was reportedly flying Conviasa aircraft in Latin America, on a flight carrying a total of 24 passengers.
These are small numbers for a long-haul, intercontinental commercial flight that can easily carry more than 200 people. And the individuals identified on these flights are senior regime officials or pilots of an airline Iran has used for two decades to carry out covert operations and illicit procurement. If Garcia Contreras and his colleagues are crew members, they appear, like their Iranian counterparts, to be entrusted with special flights, not ordinary commercial passenger and cargo ones.
Argentinian opposition is now claiming the crew is part of a secret operation, agreed between the Maduro regime in Venezuela and Argentina’s vice-President, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, to establish a covert cyber intelligence cell, run by Venezuelan military cyber defense officers (likely with Iranian support) to spy on the opposition and run disinformation campaigns. Time will tell whether this is true. What is beyond doubt is this: The crew is a cover. The cargo is a pretext. The mission is what needs to be uncovered.
Conclusion: What’s next and what should Washington do.
Throughout the entire cargo plane ordeal, one player has been missing: Washington. To be sure, the U.S. ambassador to Argentina expressed the embassy’s concern about the plane in the only public statement made on the affair. Little else has transpired.
There is much more that the Biden administration can do. Multiple electronic devices seized by the Argentinians that are now being forensically examined could contain precious information about the nature of the operation Iran and Venezuela are currently running. The provision of technical support and translators could speed up the investigation and shed more light on the affair.
The senior officials who were on board the grounded aircraft may hold invaluable information—and the U.S. should use this crisis as an opportunity to try to interview them, not just obtain the content of their electronic devices, to learn more about Iran-Venezuela ongoing cooperation and logistical operations.
Public statements warning companies—Conviasa, Fars Air Qeshm and Mahan Air are all under U.S. sanctions—would strengthen the resolve of both authorities and private entities not to do any further business with Emtrasur, which, as a subsidiary of Conviasa, is automatically under U.S. sanctions. Such steps would ensure the grounded aircraft never leaves Buenos Aires—a heavy blow to an operation that presently relies on one aircraft only.
The U.S. could of course take matters one step further and seek forfeiture of the aircraft, much like it has done in recent months for vessels carrying Iranian oil. With numerous civil lawsuits and judgments in the U.S. seeking damages for victims of terror from Iran, the plane could easily be seized and sold.
As we write, the aircraft tango continues with many questions but no definitive answers so far.
It’s one to watch though. An Iranian cargo flying a Venezuelan flag and operated by a senior IRGC official formerly in charge of weapons’ logistics in Syria is sitting on the runway in Buenos Aires. What could go wrong?
Emanuele Ottolenghi is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a non-partisan research institution based in Washington D.C.
19. Ukraine is losing and the West is to blame
Negative waves, man.
Maybe the answer is to provide more weapons to Ukraine to impose strategically meaningful costs on Russia.
Ukraine is losing and the West is to blame
Western weapons have helped Ukraine hold the line but are not enough to impose strategically meaningful costs on Russia’s leaders
For a few weeks, I’ve been in Kiev, partly as a visiting fellow at leading Ukrainian think tank the Transatlantic Dialogue Center. Kiev is an astonishingly elegant and beautiful city; a premier league European capital.
The regular air raid warnings delivered on your phone, as well as by the baleful second world war-style sirens, are largely ignored now – despite the occasional missile strike.
Cafes and restaurants are open and largely busy. It was in one of the latter that I met a senior Ukrainian government official who had contacted me, expressing approval for something I had said in the international media.
“You know, don’t you, that this time next year, a Russian soldier could be sitting right where you are,” he said after a brusque introduction. “We are losing this war.”
He is right. There were the great victories at Kiev, Chernihiv and Kharkhiv. But with setbacks in Donetsk and Luhansk, the appalling realization is sinking in that this is likely to be a very bloody war, lasting years.
The recent NATO summit stated that it would assist member states “adequately” in providing support to Ukraine, while recognizing each member’s “specific situation” – presumably the specific situation of some countries being unwilling to contribute usefully to the defense of Ukraine.
Assistance in the form of weaponry is still carefully enumerated, itemized and counted – doing Russian intelligence officers’ jobs for them, by giving them often precise information as to the numbers and capabilities of the weapons provided by donors.
All that notwithstanding, Western weapons have helped Ukraine hold the line, and are likely to continue to do so. They will, however, be unable to impose strategically meaningful costs on Russia’s leaders.
A destroyed Russian tank in Ukraine. The massive armored losses of the early stages of the campaign are now a thing of the past. Image: Twitter
For Ukraine, as for Russia, the key strategic front is in the south. Retaking Kherson – the ancient city on the Black Sea coast that Russia seems to be planning to annex as part of its scheme to “return Russian land” – would be a real blow to the Kremlin. Ukrainian forces entering Crimea, a short tank ride from Kherson, would send the message: “This is what strategic defeat looks like.”
So to attempt this would make sense both militarily and politically. But Ukraine’s problem, as matters stand, is that it lacks the combat power to be certain of success. The trend of weapons supply is nowhere near what will be required to ensure the recovery of Ukrainian lands and a consequent end to this war – by negotiation, or decision of arms.
Some weeks ago, the US stated as its aim that Russia is “weakened to the degree it can’t do the kind of things it has done in invading Ukraine.” That is all very well, but the problem is the means by which the west has chosen to achieve this – long-term attrition, rather than decisive defeat.
Wanted: greater firepower
What the West calls its “arsenal of democracy” is open – but barely. Serious doubt hangs over whether the US is serious about its war aims. The question is: does the US want Ukrainians to win, or does it want them to bleed for years?
No units of the US armed forces need to be depleted. All of this equipment was, by the way, specifically designed to destroy the equipment the Russians now deploy. Biden’s pledge to “stick with Ukraine as long as it takes” has something of a double-edged feel.
Without a step-change in the delivery of weapons, “as long as it takes” – a phrase we’ve heard before from western leaders concerning Iraq and Afghanistan – might indicate a very long time indeed. There is of course, sadly, the possibility of Western boredom with a long war setting in first.
Preparations must begin for a move from drip-feeding weapon systems in single figures towards numbers in the hundreds. Ukraine also requires an extensive and systematic regime to form and train brigades capable of imposing that really heavy strategic cost upon Putin. No such system of mass “training-and-equipping” seems to be planned.
Ukrainian soldiers use a launcher with US-made Javelin missiles during military exercises in Donetsk region, Ukraine, on December 23, 2021. Photo: Ukranian Defense Ministry Press Service
Back in Kiev, a colleague’s partner Sergiy (until February in product design) was deployed to the Donetsk region two weeks ago. He now lives in a bunker near the frontline. His group is armed with ancient Soviet gear and ammunition for their weapons is running out
Since deployment, two of Sergiy’s units have been killed. As matters stand, at best he will be doing these deployments for years as the rest of the world becomes bored, NATO bolsters its borders, and the West provides a trickle of weapons.
In 1941, Nazi officers enjoyed their leave passes in Paris – but not London – as Winston Churchill spoke the words: “Give us the tools and we’ll finish the job.” Like those Germans, Russian officers could yet enjoy Ukraine’s beautiful capital.
All that is stopping them are Ukrainian soldiers and their still mostly outdated tools.
20. FDD | War Has Consequences: 20-Year Scars of The Second Intifada
Excerpts:
Each one of these wars was preceded by bellicose rhetoric from the Arab side and almost unbridled enthusiasm for a fight, with few if any dissenting voices. Each ended in a catastrophic defeat and with the memory of the pre-war ecstasy completely effaced, replaced with a feeling of victimhood and a genuine memory of having come under unprovoked attack.
And here we are, twenty years after the third catastrophe. It is gutting to realize that in 2000 there were no significant dissenting voices to the Palestinians’ decision to refuse peace with Israel and instead launch a violent campaign of suicidal terrorism, where suicide was not just a means, but something of a metaphor for the whole endeavor. It’s depressing to realize that even now, two decades after the climax of that campaign, there is still no significant voice – not even an unpopular voice of dissent – to articulate why, or even that, it was a mistake.
And it is maddening that in the broader community of pro-Palestinian activism in the West, this view is simply non-existent.
Quite the opposite: The idea that the final defeat of Israel is near if we just wish for it hard enough has never had more purchase on the pro-Palestinian intellectual discourse. With each glossy new report accusing Israel of being an inherently criminal enterprise; with each gushing proclamation of the “new” idea of a possible one-state solution (which is neither a solution, nor new, nor possible), the path to liberation grows longer and more treacherous.
July 6, 2022 | State of Tel Aviv
FDD | War Has Consequences: 20-Year Scars of The Second Intifada
fdd.org · by Shany Mor Adjunct Fellow · July 6, 2022
This is not just a question of psychology, though it is that too. The dramatic events of those weeks left lessons to be learned for both sides, and as with all such dramas, some lessons have been overlearned. Beyond that, however, there was an irreversible change in the positions of the sides. Options for a political settlement that might still have existed before Passover 2002 and the aftermath permanently disappeared into a new reality. And rather different options that were not considered beforehand, both for a negotiated settlement and a modus vivendi in the absence of diplomacy, suddenly became conceivable.
This year, too, the Passover holiday coincided with yet another of the periodic escalations of violence between Israelis and Palestinians. The attacks themselves, as well as the whole vocabulary of the conflict, show just how deep the scars of Passover 2002 are. The different course of events thus far in 2022 is instructive too, in its own way, in demonstrating just how much was and was not learned from the traumas of twenty years back.
I. THE GLOOM BEFORE THE STORM: THE SECOND INTIFADA
The months leading up to Passover 2002 were the bloodiest Israelis had experienced on the home front since the 1948 war. In March 2002 alone, more than 100 Israelis were killed in suicide bombings; hundreds more were injured.
Sitting at a café, riding a bus, walking through an outdoor market — everyday tasks became imbued with a feeling of danger. You made bargains with yourself about what times you would go out, where might be the safest place to sit, or whether the day after an attack was the best time or the worst time to face the danger again.
Everyone came to know the sound of explosions, and if not explosions, then at least sirens. One or two could just be a heart attack or car accident. Three or more meant you grabbed your phone and started calling your friends, your parents, anyone with whom you might have had an unresolved argument earlier in the week. Are you ok? I think something happened.
Hardcore ideologues and cranks had simple solutions, but for most people there was an overwhelming feeling of desolation and gloom. Nothing, it seemed, could be done.
The consensus that a military offensive would be folly was not just the ramblings of mushy leftists and peaceniks. It was by and large the consensus of nearly all the experts in Israel and abroad. Any operation, it was argued, would result in hundreds of casualties to Israeli forces. It would not have the support of the United States or other major powers. It would leave in its wake hundreds if not thousands of civilian casualties. And, most importantly, it simply would not work. Every dead terrorist would spawn three new ones, increasing the sense of grievance and rage that was supposedly fueling the violence to begin with.
A quirk in the domestic political situation also gave the government a lot of breathing room to pursue its strategic patience. The right-wing Ariel Sharon had been directly elected as PM in a stunning landslide in 2001 (63-37%), but without a new parliament being elected. It was the only such election held in Israel’s history under an electoral law that has since been cancelled.
We know today, with hindsight, that many of these premises turned out to be false. But it is worth recalling that the arguments made were robust and accepted as being largely true back then. If Israel had embarked on a major military offensive in response to the wave of suicide bombings it had been dealing with throughout 2001, it is very likely that hundreds of soldiers would have been killed, that the U.S. would have opposed the operation, and that its success would have been limited.
But in those months of relentless suicide bombings, the IDF was making preparations. Beginning in October 2001, there were several small incursions into Area A of the West Bank, the parts that under the Oslo Accords were supposed to be under the exclusive control of the Palestinian Authority. Military tactics were honed and operational lessons were learned.
On the diplomatic front conditions were also evolving. The 9/11 attacks made any association with terrorism a liability. In the initial months after September 11, 2001, the Bush administration reached out to Arafat’s Palestinian Authority in order to shore up its credibility in the Arab world as it was embarking on its “war on terror.”
But then in January 2002, Israeli forces intercepted the Karine A, a ship laden with Iranian weapons en route to Gaza (then still under the control of Arafat’s Palestinian Authority). The Bush Administration was outraged, and Arafat’s lies to the President in a one-on-one call about the shipment only made matters worse for him. Arafat, who over the previous decade had grown accustomed to the status of an accepted world leader, would never again have an open line to the White House.
Thus, as a new wave of suicide bombings began in February 2022 – a month after the Karine A incident – Israeli leaders re-assessed their opportunity to respond militarily. The public could not withstand the relentless attacks on civilians, the IDF was readier than it had been before, and the Americans were more favorably disposed to Israeli action.
A quirk in the domestic political situation also gave the government a lot of breathing room to pursue its strategic patience. The right-wing Ariel Sharon had been directly elected as PM in a stunning landslide in 2001 (63-37%), but without a new parliament being elected. It was the only such election held in Israel’s history under an electoral law that has since been cancelled. Sharon came into office and inherited the Parliament that had swept in with the more left-wing Ehud Barak’s victory in 1999. The only way for Sharon to form a government was to keep Labor on board and have a broad-based national unity government, with leading dove Shimon Peres as his Foreign Minister. The lack of an effective opposition gave the government breathing room in a crisis that otherwise may have led to rash action.
II. THE TIPPING POINT
By the time of the Passover Massacre, it seemed there was little left that could shock the Israeli public. A year earlier 21 young Israelis, mostly teenage girls, were murdered outside a nightclub in Tel Aviv in a suicide bombing. Such attacks had become commonplace and were launched in pizzerias, on buses, throughout city centers. And as Passover approached at the end of March 2002, the pace had picked up to nearly one every two days.
And yet something about that night’s deadly attack felt different. Perhaps it was the death toll, at 30, higher than in any other such attack. Perhaps it was that a third of the victims were Holocaust survivors. Perhaps it was the holiday itself that imbued it with such gravity — Jews gathering as Jews with families to celebrate deliverance from bondage into freedom. Whatever it was, a limit had been breached, and it was obvious to all that the response would be qualitatively different than anything which preceded it.
That weekend, 20,000 reservists received emergency call-up orders. In a country normally wracked with infighting, there was a brief, determined, grim agreement about the necessity of a large military offensive.
The Israeli response was not, however, supported by an international consensus. Protests against Israel erupted in all the major western capitals though, notably, there were few if any protests against the Palestinian suicide bombings.
The US was nearly alone then in defending Israel’s right to self-defense. European condemnations were swift and occasionally severe. The European Parliament passed a non-binding resolution calling for sanctions against Israel.
International media coverage of the operation was overwhelmingly negative and certain that the operation could never achieve its goals of ending the wave of terrorism targeting Israeli civilians. Major global NGOs, mobilized only a few months before at the UN’s infamous Durban Conference to dedicate their work to fighting Israeli “apartheid” and “war crimes,” issued reports employing language never used for even the worst human rights violators. The two standard tropes that accompany discussion of any Israeli military operation — Israel is harming a holy site! Israel has committed an atrocity! — were both rolled out this time.
There was never a moral or professional reckoning among the media outlets and NGOs about the fabricated reports of massacres. And the pattern of reporting which relies on a demonic archetype of Israelis, scheming, plotting, killing, covering up, was repeated again in Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon four years later, again in Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza three years after that, and again ever since.
News reporting focused on three major events, none of which related to attacks on Israelis. The first was the IDF’s breach of Arafat’s Mukataa compound in Ramallah. Western “peace activists” later broke through to serve as human shields in the compound. In the entirety of the Second Intifada, it bears noting, no peace activists ever came to serve as human shields on Israeli buses.
The second was at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where dozens of wanted terrorists had taken refuge, secure in the knowledge that Israel wouldn’t harm such a holy Christian site. The IDF surrounded the Church and left only after five weeks when an agreement was reached that saw most of the wanted men deported. Tellingly, this was reported at the time as an “Israeli siege” of a Christian holy site, leading to some rather explicitly antisemitic imagery in the European press.
The third locus of combat that caught the world’s attention was, of course, the Jenin refugee camp, site of a pitched battle between the IDF and assorted Palestinian militant factions. It was the site of one of the only tactical successes Palestinian forces had against the IDF, when booby-trapped houses exploded on an invading force and killed thirteen Israeli soldiers. It was soon after that rumors that the IDF had conducted a “massacre” in Jenin began.
For more than two weeks, the news of the “massacre” dominated foreign press coverage, especially in Britain. “Firsthand” accounts spoke of entire families wiped out, of the stench of bodies buried under rubble, and of active efforts by the Israelis to cover it up.
After more than a fortnight of hysteria, it became clear that there was no massacre at all. All the dead in the battle were accounted for. There were 23 Israeli soldiers and 52 Palestinians, the bulk of whom were combatants.
There was never a moral or professional reckoning among the media outlets and NGOs about the fabricated reports of massacres. And the pattern of reporting which relies on a demonic archetype of Israelis, scheming, plotting, killing, covering up, was repeated again in Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon four years later, again in Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza three years after that, and again ever since.
III. FOR ISRAELIS, A BITTER DISILLUSIONMENT
The 1993 Oslo Accords were pitched to Israelis with a double promise. They would improve the security of Israel, battered by decades of terrorism. And if that first promise remained unfulfilled – even after Israel recognized the PLO and carried out the staged withdrawals from the Gaza Strip and West Bank as called for in the Agreements – then the whole world would see who the bad guys really were and stand by Israel.
Neither promise was realized and each disappointment left deep scars on the Israeli psyche.
The scars of the first broken promise are the most visible and measurable. Almost immediately after the Accords were signed, the number of attacks against Israeli civilians went up rather than down. Then came the suicide bombings. There was a brief lull in the years 1998 and 1999, but by 2000, with the outbreak of the Second Intifada, Israelis experienced violent attacks with an unprecedented intensity and frequency.
The effect on public opinion was stark. On the one hand, an enormous skepticism emerged about peace with the Palestinians. On the other, there was a growing wariness about the utility of the occupation.
This is what opened the way for a right-wing leader like Ariel Sharon to eventually undertake a large military offensive as well as a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip (and four settlements in the northern West Bank) in 2005.
The scars of the second broken promise aren’t as visible, but they run much deeper and, if anything, weigh even more heavily on Israeli thinking. Israelis still obsessively pay attention to global public opinion, but the broad center of Israeli politics no longer is moved by expectations of global support.
It was a sobering experience. There has, in the last twenty years, emerged among the Israeli Left a healthy cynicism about the motivations of much of what passes for “criticism of Israel,” as well as about how much that “criticism” can be an argument for or against any policy.
The two disappointments together may have eviscerated the old pro-Oslo Left electorally, but they have also rendered the policy debate in Israel altogether more mature. Israel will take the steps it needs to protect its security and long-term viability, but not because of a fantasy of pacific intentions from its enemies or the accusations of its critics, but because it will be the strategically and morally right thing to do.
In later years, slowly, gradually, without any announcement or fanfare, the Intifada receded into memory, and life returned to a kind of normalcy. Security checks at restaurants and event halls became cursory and then disappeared altogether, as did fences around sidewalk cafes.
But the lessons of the two broken promises would not be forgotten.
With the outbreak of the Second Intifada, Israelis experienced violent attacks with an unprecedented intensity and frequency. The effect on public opinion was stark. On the one hand, an enormous skepticism emerged about peace with the Palestinians. On the other, there was a growing wariness about the utility of the occupation.
IV. FOR PALESTINIANS, A DELAYED RECKONING
The Palestinians, too, took some time to understand the meaning of the events of that spring. By that point, the Intifada was already well into its second year, and it was clear even then that it was a costly affair. It was also clear that statehood, which could have been achieved in final status talks in 2000, had been put off indefinitely.
It would take a few years for the Palestinians to understand the magnitude of their defeat. By the end of 2002, the IDF was operating freely throughout the West Bank, including in Area A. A massive fence was soon under construction, making access to Israel more difficult and reversing decades of economic integration between Israelis and West Bank Palestinians. By the end of 2004, Arafat was dead (from illness) and most of the leaders of various militant groups were either dead (by assassination) or in prison.
The rejection of statehood and descent into suicidal violence had yielded absolutely nothing positive for the Palestinian cause. Oslo had brought them the first ever Palestinian Arab self-rule and government. Palestinian passports were issued as were Palestinian postage stamps. An international airport was built and operated in the Gaza Strip. An armed force, referred to technically as a “police” force, was established under Palestinian control. Diplomatic legations opened in both Ramallah and Gaza City (a small number of these even called themselves “consulates” and “embassies”). Elections were held in the West Bank and Gaza, and even East Jerusalem Palestinians were allowed to participate, despite East Jerusalem not being in the territory allotted to the Palestinian Authority. International investment and development aid were showered on the Palestinians at a per capita rate unseen anywhere else in the world.
These were not just the symbolic trappings of statehood. They led, in fact, to final status talks at which statehood was offered in exchange for a full peace with Israel — and rejected.
V. WAR HAS CONSEQUENCES
History does not spread evenly across a surface. It has periods of plodding stability and bursts of irrevocable change. The bleak reality of Palestinian politics is mostly the outcome of three very different Arab-Israeli wars which broke out in 1947, 1967 and 2000.
The first was a year-long total war between two national communities, fought village by village and town by town, whose belligerents included militias, guerrillas and eventually standing armies. The second, in 1967, was a rapid war between modern, conventional armies across three fronts fought, for the most part, distant from civilian populations. And the third, beginning in 2000, was a long struggle between assorted militias and civilians as well as the armed forces of a state-in-the-making and an occupying army.
Each one of these wars was preceded by bellicose rhetoric from the Arab side and almost unbridled enthusiasm for a fight, with few if any dissenting voices. Each ended in a catastrophic defeat and with the memory of the pre-war ecstasy completely effaced, replaced with a feeling of victimhood and a genuine memory of having come under unprovoked attack.
And here we are, twenty years after the third catastrophe. It is gutting to realize that in 2000 there were no significant dissenting voices to the Palestinians’ decision to refuse peace with Israel and instead launch a violent campaign of suicidal terrorism, where suicide was not just a means, but something of a metaphor for the whole endeavor. It’s depressing to realize that even now, two decades after the climax of that campaign, there is still no significant voice – not even an unpopular voice of dissent – to articulate why, or even that, it was a mistake.
And it is maddening that in the broader community of pro-Palestinian activism in the West, this view is simply non-existent.
Quite the opposite: The idea that the final defeat of Israel is near if we just wish for it hard enough has never had more purchase on the pro-Palestinian intellectual discourse. With each glossy new report accusing Israel of being an inherently criminal enterprise; with each gushing proclamation of the “new” idea of a possible one-state solution (which is neither a solution, nor new, nor possible), the path to liberation grows longer and more treacherous.
Shany Mor is an Adjunct Fellow at FDD, a Fellow at the Institute for Liberty & Responsibility at Reichman University and a former Director for Foreign Policy on Israel’s National Security Council. Follow him on Twitter at @ShMMor. FDD is a nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Shany Mor Adjunct Fellow · July 6, 2022
21. Russian and Ukrainian Forces Prepare for Next Phase of Battle for Donbas
Photos and video at the link.
Russian and Ukrainian Forces Prepare for Next Phase of Battle for Donbas
Moscow sets its sights on the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine after its army captured the last major city in Luhansk
Updated July 6, 2022 1:56 pm ET
After capturing the city of Lysychansk over the weekend, Russian forces are turning their sights to parts of the Donetsk region that remain under Ukrainian control, including the cities of Slovyansk and Bakhmut.
The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said Russian troops were seeking to strengthen their tactical positions on the Slovyansk front, firing on the area near the towns of Krasnopillya and Bohorodychne using mortars, rockets and other artillery.
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Russia fomented a rebellion in Donbas in 2014, carving out two Kremlin-run statelets in parts of the region, after annexing Crimea from Ukraine the same year. Russia is now seeking to take full control of Donbas.
Western countries are steadily increasing their military support for Ukraine’s armed forces, sending more advanced artillery systems, among other weapons. But Ukraine’s government has pressed the U.S. and its European allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to send more weapons faster, to help its defenders to cope with Russia’s advantage in firepower and ammunition.
Smoke rose after shelling in Donetsk, Ukraine, on Wednesday. Russian troops have made slow but steady territorial gains in eastern Ukraine.
PHOTO: ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO/REUTERS
Ukrainian servicemen at their position near the front line in the Kharkiv region, Ukraine, on Tuesday.
PHOTO: ANDRII MARIENKO/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Russian troops have made slow but steady territorial gains in eastern Ukraine in recent weeks, relying on intensive artillery bombardments of Ukrainian troops’ positions. The Ukrainian defenders have sought to inflict losses on Russian forces before withdrawing to deeper defensive lines in the region.
Both sides are widely believed to have suffered heavy casualties in the battle for Donbas, which has become one of the bloodiest battles between two states in Europe since World War II.
Serhiy Haidai, the governor of the Luhansk region, said Ukrainian troops were holding Russian forces back at the border between Luhansk and Donetsk, and had thwarted Russia’s efforts to cut off the highway between the cities of Lysychansk and Bakhmut. “Under the pressure of our defenders, the enemy was forced to retreat,” Mr. Haidai said.
Russian shelling has killed at least five civilians in the Donetsk region since Tuesday, including one in Slovyansk and two in Avdiivka, said Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the region’s military administration.
The U.K.’s Defense Ministry said Russian forces were about 16 kilometers, 10 miles, north of Slovyansk. “There is a realistic possibility that the battle for Slovyansk will be the next key contest in the struggle for the Donbas,” the ministry said in its daily intelligence update.
Residents of the Ukrainian city of Slovyansk and neighboring towns waited for buses to be evacuated to the city of Dnipro, Ukraine, on Wednesday.
PHOTO: MIGUEL MEDINA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
A building damaged by shelling in Kyiv. NATO countries are seeking to boost Ukraine’s military capability in the face of Russian attacks.
PHOTO: EMANUELE SATOLLI FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The arrival in June of U.S. High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or Himars, has strengthened Ukrainian troops’ hand by enabling them to target Russian weapons and ammunition depots far behind the front line. In an interview, Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said nine mobile Himars and similar rocket-launch systems donated by the U.S. and its allies are now operating inside Ukraine.
NATO countries are also seeking to boost Ukraine’s military capability through training. U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said the first rotation of Ukrainian soldiers had recently arrived in Britain, where they will undertake courses for several weeks including weapons training, battlefield first aid, patrol tactics and training on the law of armed conflict.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address on Tuesday that his government was seeking to procure modern antimissile systems to protect cities and towns behind the front line that have been frequently targeted by Russia.
“This is a maximum task for our state—to provide basic security for Ukrainians,” Mr. Zelensky said. “But the fulfillment of this task depends not only on us, but also on the understanding of our fundamental needs by our partners.”
Why Russian Tanks Are Exploding in Ukraine
Why Russian Tanks Are Exploding in Ukraine
Play video: Why Russian Tanks Are Exploding in Ukraine
Many Russian tanks have a design feature that leads to an explosion and blows off the top. The ongoing war in Ukraine has put this vulnerability and the future of one of the world’s most popular tanks, the T-72, on public display. Photo: Genya Savilov/Agence France-Presse
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday its forces were continuing to strike Ukrainian cities across the country, including Kharkiv and Mykolaiv.
A security guard at a university building in Kharkiv was killed in Russian shelling of the city on Tuesday night, according to the regional prosecutor’s office. Two Russian missiles fired from the Black Sea toward the southern port city of Mykolaiv were shot down, Ukrainian air force officials said.
At a conference in Switzerland this week to discuss plans for rebuilding Ukraine, the country’s prime minister Denys Shmyhal said Russia had inflicted more than $100 billion worth of damage on the country’s infrastructure.
Mr. Zelensky told the conference via video link that huge investment would be needed for Ukraine’s reconstruction. Some 80,000 buildings, including 2,102 educational institutions and 799 hospitals and other medical facilities have been destroyed or damaged in the four months since Russia invaded, he said.
A destroyed building in Borodyanka, Ukraine, near Kyiv. Some 80,000 buildings have been damaged or obliterated in the war, according to Ukrainian officials.
PHOTO: EMANUELE SATOLLI FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin on Wednesday surveyed the damage caused by the war in Ukraine. “It is difficult to comprehend the devastation and inhumanity of Russia’s attacks on Irpin, Borodyanka and Bucha,” he said on Twitter. It’s “clear how important it is for women and children to get to Ireland to escape trauma and brutality.”
U.S. officials, meanwhile, are looking to put pressure on Russia to allow a freer flow of grain from Ukraine via the Black Sea when diplomats representing the world’s 20 leading economies gather this week on the Indonesian island of Bali. The U.S. has said that Russia has seized Ukrainian ports and blockaded others, including Odessa, but the Kremlin has said that Ukraine is free to ship grain from its ports.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to meet with his counterparts on Friday and Saturday—while avoiding Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, U.S. officials said. Mr. Lavrov is under U.S. sanctions.
Alan Cullison contributed to this article.
22. Russia Taking 'Operational Pause' in Ukraine, Analysts Say
Russia Taking 'Operational Pause' in Ukraine, Analysts Say
military.com · by 7 Jul 2022 Associated Press | By Maria Grazia Murru and Olexsandr Stashevskyi · July 7, 2022
KYIV, Ukraine — Foreign analysts say Russia may be temporarily easing its offensive in Ukraine as the Russian military attempts to reassemble its forces for a renewed assault.
On Wednesday, Russian forces made no claimed or assessed territorial gains in Ukraine “for the first time in 133 days of war,” according to the Institute for the Study of War. The think tank based in Washington suggested that Moscow may be taking an “operational pause” that does not entail "the complete cessation of active hostilities."
“Russian forces will likely confine themselves to relatively small-scale offensive actions as they attempt to set conditions for more significant offensive operations and rebuild the combat power needed to attempt those more ambitious undertakings,” the institute said.
A Thursday statement from Russia’s Defense Ministry seemed to confirm that assessment. It said Russian military units involved in combat in Ukraine were given time to rest.
“The units that performed combat missions during the special military operation are taking measures to recover their combat capabilities. The servicemen are given the opportunity to rest, receive letters and parcels from home,” read the statement, quoted by Russian state news agency Tass.
Ukraine’s presidential office said in its Thursday morning update that cities and villages in seven Ukrainian regions were shelled in the past day. Most of the civilian deaths occurred in Donetsk province, where fighting is ongoing. Seven civilians were killed there, including a child, the presidential office said.
Ten cities and villages came under shelling in Donetsk, and 35 buildings were destroyed, including a school, a vocational college and a hospital, officials said.
Donetsk is part of the Donbas, a mostly Russian-speaking industrial area where Ukraine’s most experienced soldiers are concentrated. Pro-Russian separatists have fought Ukrainian forces and controlled much of the Donbas for eight years. Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized the independence of two self-proclaimed republics there just before Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.
Putin on Monday claimed victory in Luhansk, the other province constituting the Donbas, after Ukrainian forces withdrew from the last city they controlled there. The governor of Luhansk, Serhiy Haidai, denied Wednesday that the Russians had completely captured the province.
In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, a boarding school was hit, but no one was injured. The Kharkiv region, which lies along the border with Russia, is under daily shelling, and two civilians were killed there over the past 24 hours.
The Ukrainian military said Thursday that Russian forces also carried out shelling and helicopter strikes in the Sumy region in the northeast.
Even as the fighting continued, the British Defense Ministry said it thinks Russia's military is “reconstituting” its forces. A ministry intelligence assessment issued Thursday said the heavy shelling along the front line in Donetsk is likely intended to secure previous Russian gains.
The British ministry noted a new law under consideration by the Russian parliament to give the government special economic powers amid the war.
The law would allow “Russia to avoid acknowledging it is engaged in a war or its failure to overcome Ukraine’s military that was outnumbered and outgunned,” the ministry said.
As fighting continued in the east, Ukraine's Foreign Ministry said it summoned the Turkish ambassador in Kyiv Thursday over what it described as the theft of Ukrainian grain by a Russian ship.
The Russian ship Zhibek Zholy was allowed to leave Turkey's Black Sea coast after Turkish authorities briefly detained it at Ukraine's request. Ukraine summoned the ambassador to complain about the “unacceptable situation.”
Turkey, with its Bosporus Strait, is a key transit route for shipping out of the Black Sea. Ukraine has sought to pressure Ankara to stop Russian shipments of its grain, a vital source of revenue.
___
Jon Gambrell in Lviv, Ukraine, and Cara Anna in Kharkiv, Ukraine, contributed to this story.
military.com · by 7 Jul 2022 Associated Press | By Maria Grazia Murru and Olexsandr Stashevskyi · July 7, 2022
23. Roll with hemp? Army seeks info about cannabis camo for snipers, scouts
Not the Onion or the Duffelblog but I am sure we will be reading about this at one of those websites soon.
But seriously-
Excerpts:
The Improved Ghillie System is the Army’s effort to meet the camouflage needs of its sniper force. Ghillie suits are typically weathered with mud, sand, water or whatever else is necessary to help snipers blend into the environment.
The program calls for “amendable camouflage materials” such as hemp that can be used to change the appearance of the sniper, the Army announcement said.
Such fibers will help conceal the sniper and scout, allowing them to remain undetected when they are close to enemy forces, the Army request for information stated.
Roll with hemp? Army seeks info about cannabis camo for snipers, scouts
Sniper School students participate in the ghillie wash, which is designed to test the strength and durability of the suits as well as weather them. The Army is now considering whether hemp could add to the ghillie suit’s camouflage properties. (Patrick Albright/U.S. Army)
The Army wants to learn more about the possible camouflage benefits of hemp, a product derived from cannabis that could help better conceal its snipers from enemy forces.
In a request for information issued last week, the service said it is interested in how hemp yarn could be used to “break up the snipers’ outline.”
The Army’s uniform office said the request for information does not constitute a formal solicitation for proposals and will not directly lead to any contract awards. The request is focused on how to use 400,000 yards of hemp as well as jute yarn.
While hemp is legal in the U.S., the Defense Department still prohibits the use of hemp-derived products for consumption by troops because some contain THC, the active element in marijuana, and could trigger a positive drug test.
However, the Defense Department doesn’t prohibit the use of durable goods containing hemp, such as rope or clothing.
The Improved Ghillie System is the Army’s effort to meet the camouflage needs of its sniper force. Ghillie suits are typically weathered with mud, sand, water or whatever else is necessary to help snipers blend into the environment.
The program calls for “amendable camouflage materials” such as hemp that can be used to change the appearance of the sniper, the Army announcement said.
Such fibers will help conceal the sniper and scout, allowing them to remain undetected when they are close to enemy forces, the Army request for information stated.
The Hemp Foundation, an industry advocacy group, says the fabric could help the military meet many of its uniform needs when it comes to durability and staying dry.
“It impedes the growth of mold and mildew, keeping the clothes odorless. Of course, cotton is also good when it comes to breathability, but hemp is a clear winner overall,” according to a 2020 assessment by the organization on potential military uses of hemp.
While hemp can be abrasive in raw form, it is as soft as any other fabric after processing, the foundation said.
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
