Quotes of the Day:

"You must do the thing you think you cannot do." 

– Eleanor Roosevelt

"It is also in the interests of the tyrant to make his subjects poor... the people are so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for plotting."

– Aristotle

"The last of the human freedoms, to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, is to choose one's own way." 

– Dr. Viktor E. Frankl

1. INDOPACOM wants more special operators in the Pacific

2. US fighting 'four Cold Wars' at the same time—Iran expert

3. White House cyber czar is working to grow a new generation of cybersecurity workers

4. Israel’s Approach to Iran May Be Getting Bolder

5. Ukraine Has a Strategy, the U.S. Doesn’t

6. What's Ukraine's endgame in Kursk?

7. China's rhetoric turns dangerously real for Taiwanese

8. Kursk could hasten Russia's post-Putin political succession

9. The Big Five - 17 August edition by Mick Ryan

10. We All Pay the Price for Protectionism

11.  How Trump and Harris Differ on Economic Policy

12. Beijing-based 'Green Cicada' AI network uncovered on social media, fears of US election disruption

13. X’s new AI image generator will make anything from Taylor Swift in lingerie to Kamala Harris with a gun

14. Trump speeds AI-driven truth decay

15. Russia is pushing disinformation about Kursk operation, Ukrainian officials say

16. How the U.S. Can Counter Disinformation From Russia and China

17. From the Pentagon to the Philippines, integrating deterrence in the Indo-Pacific

18. What Taiwan Can Learn from Ukraine's Kursk Offensive Against Russia

19. Has Zelensky walked into Putin's trap?

20. The Kursk Gamble: Ukraine’s High-Stakes Play to Force Russia's Hand​ – War Comes Home To Russia

21. Ukraine offensive in Russia expands beyond Kursk region, soldiers say

22. Ukraine’s offensive derails secret efforts for partial cease-fire with Russia, officials say

23. Mike Waltz, first Green Beret elected to Congress, has a lesson for us all

1. INDOPACOM wants more special operators in the Pacific

As one of the members of the "underinvested" for more than a few decades in the Asia-Pacific (now INDOPACIFIC) I am on the one hand somewhat gratified to read these words from CINCPAC (and I use CINCPAC deliberately because the last Combatant Commander who thought along these lines was the last CINCPAC who saw the value of employing SF in the Philippines in accordance with SF doctrine and capabilities, i.e., properly.). But I am also concerned with a call for numbers of SOF. It is not about the numbers but rather the value of "early leverage" which translated means effects. This requires long duration operations versus the typical "random acts of touching" of exercises and JCETs. Achieving effects or "early leverage" requires presence, patience, and persistence in support of campaigning. So it is not simply larger numbers of SOF but rather the right forces employed for the right missions for a sufficient duration to achieve strategic effects.

But the bottom line is it is gratifying to read that CINCPAC has an understanding of the potential contributions of SOF and recognizes their value.

INDOPACOM wants more special operators in the Pacific

“SOF’s greatest power is early leverage” in deterring conflict, Adm. Sam Paparo said.

By Jennifer Hlad

Managing Editor, Defense One

August 16, 2024 04:45 PM ET

https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2024/08/indopacom-wants-more-special-operators-pacific/398882/?fbclid=

HONOLULU, Hawaii—U.S. Indo-Pacific Command is “underinvested” in special operations forces, “and I think SOF is underinvested in PACOM,” the command’s leader said Thursday. “But the time is now to get the SOF enterprise focused on the Indo-Pacific to the extent that we can.”

Speaking at the Indo-Pacific Irregular Warfare Symposium here, Adm. Sam Paparo said “SOF’s greatest power is early leverage” in deterring conflict—which he calls the U.S. military’s “highest duty.”

Though many in the general public tend to think of special operators in terms of direct action, Paparo said, “SOF is a cognitive space. It’s an idea space.” He added that allies and partners “are absolutely indispensable to the effectiveness of special operations.”  

Paparo opened with brief remarks before fielding questions on a variety of topics:  

• On the strategic importance of Taiwan: “It is important to all of the nations that matters not be settled by force. This is the matter at hand in Ukraine. This is the matter at hand in the Middle East.…This unsettled matter of Taiwan—that it be settled due to the principles of self-determination, peacefully, through negotiation—also has implications for all of the countries of the Indo-Pacific.”
• On the Philippines: “The People's Republic of China claims an absurd footprint of sea space that defies logic that impinges not just on the Republic of the Philippines, but of every state within the South China Sea,” he said.
• On new technology: “I’m most excited about the combination of the ability to quickly manufacture and field unmanned capability and autonomy in that capability…I have this principle—I think we should all share it—which is to not send a human being to do a dangerous thing that you can send a machine to do.” However, there must be human morality and accountability in the process, he said.  
• On information operations: “We should be in and among our adversaries, learning from them. They should never learn from us. If they are learning, it should be the wrong lessons.”

2. US fighting 'four Cold Wars' at the same time—Iran expert

US fighting 'four Cold Wars' at the same time—Iran expert

Newsweek · by Jordan King · August 16, 2024

The U.S. is "fighting four different Cold Wars" with China, Iran, Russia and North Korea and needs to come up with ways to cause divisions between them, according to a foreign policy expert.

Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank, where he focuses on Iran and foreign policy, said he believes the U.S. is facing multiple Cold War situations, rather than a "full-blown conflict."

Speaking on the Stay Tuned with Preet podcast, he said: "This raises a broader question which I think is very important for U.S. policy strategists to think about, in that we are, in some ways, simultaneously fighting four different cold wars—with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. If you like acronyms, the acronym for those four countries is CRINK."

Sadjadpour went on to argue that the question the U.S. needs to be asking is: "Is there a viable strategy in which we could, instead of further uniting these countries against us, is there a strategy that could potentially create divisions between them?"

He continued: "Because China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are very different regimes. Iran is a theocracy, [Russian President] Vladimir Putin has probably killed more Muslims than most world leaders and China has obviously persecuted their own Muslim minority.

"These are not countries like the United States and Britain, which have common values and common interests. I would say they actually have divergent values and oftentimes competitive interests.

"But, right now, they all share this overarching goal of wanting to defeat the U.S.-led world order. The question is, is there a viable strategy for the U.S., instead of trying to fight them all simultaneously, and instead of bringing them more together, trying to create divisions between them."

Stock photo of U.S. Army soldiers of the 1st Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division (Raider Brigade). The U.S. is "fighting four different Cold Wars" with China, Iran, Russia and North Korea, a foreign policy... Stock photo of U.S. Army soldiers of the 1st Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division (Raider Brigade). The U.S. is "fighting four different Cold Wars" with China, Iran, Russia and North Korea, a foreign policy expert has said. AP

Pete Nguyen, spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), told Newsweek: "Across all these threats, the National Defense Strategy [NDS] stresses the importance of strengthening alliances and partnerships around the world to enhance collective security and deter aggression from these state actors. The NDS emphasizes a concept of integrated deterrence, which combines military power with other tools of national power to address these challenges."

Newsweek has contacted the DOD's counterparts in Russia and China, along with the Iranian embassy in Washington and North Korean embassy in Beijing, for comment.

Sadjadpour was speaking on the podcast about why he thinks there is "not a high likelihood" that the world is headed for an all-out war.

He said that he doubts Putin, who reportedly imports weapons from Iran, would want Iran to get involved in a bigger war in the Middle East.

"No one is really interested in a full-blown conflict. One of the interesting developments over the last couple of weeks has been that Vladimir Putin—Russia, one of Iran's critical strategic partners—also sent a signal, sent a message to Iran to exercise restraint," Sadjadpour said.

"One of the concerns that Putin reportedly has is the well-being of hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens of Russian origin, of Russian citizens that reside in Israel. He's wanting to avoid a conflict that could endanger them.

"And, you know, Putin is fighting his own full-blown war with Ukraine and is relying on Iranian weaponry to fight those wars. So he's worried about Iran getting involved in a full-blown war, in which case, they would have to use their own weapons rather than send them to Russia.

"And so, I think there's a lot of reasons why people are trying to put the brakes on a full-blown conflict and it's a very scary proposition, but I don't think it's a high likelihood that we spiral into full-blown conflict."

It comes as the Pentagon this week rebutted concerns about a widening "carrier gap" in the Pacific amid growing competition with China, with two U.S. Navy "flat-tops" having been retasked to the Middle East at short notice.

The flare-up between Israel and Iran forced the U.S. Department of Defense to reposition the USS Theodore Roosevelt and the USS Abraham Lincoln, two 100,000-ton Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, from their original deployments in the Indo-Pacific region.

Their arrival will add to the recent surge in U.S. forces in the Middle East and further strengthen American force posture there as the White House seeks to deter a wider regional conflict, all while maintaining support for Ukraine's resistance against Russia.

About the writer

Jordan King

Jordan King is a Newsweek reporter based in London, U.K. Her focus is on human interest-stories in Africa and the Middle East. She has covered the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, police brutality and poverty in South Africa and world-wide gender-based violence extensively. Jordan joined Newsweek in 2024 from The Evening Standard and had previously worked at Metro.co.uk. She is a graduate of Kingston University and has also worked on documentaries. You can get in touch with Jordan by emailing j.king@newsweek.com. Languages: English.

Jordan King is a Newsweek reporter based in London, U.K. Her focus is on human interest-stories in Africa and the ...

To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here.

Newsweek · by Jordan King · August 16, 2024

3. White House cyber czar is working to grow a new generation of cybersecurity workers

White House cyber czar is working to grow a new generation of cybersecurity workers

It starts with touring schools.

By David DiMolfetta

Cybersecurity Reporter, Nextgov/FCW

August 16, 2024 01:48 PM ET

defenseone.com · by David DiMolfetta

SOMEWHERE IN NEVADA — On a scorching August afternoon some 10 miles away from the DEF CON hacker conference situated in the heart of the Las Vegas strip, White House National Cyber Director Harry Coker and a small group of his staff were escorted into a Faraday cage.

The apparatus, frequently used by intelligence and national security analysts in classified settings to block electromagnetic signals and prevent sensitive data from leaking in or out of the room, appeared almost lived-in. The space was furnished with a chess board, office chairs, couches, and desks stacked with hardware and laptops.

Donning a gray suit, a dozen or so sets of eyes were on Coker as he walked up to a computer monitor in the center of the cage, where it displayed a live cyberattack map hosted on a non-governmental website, detailing statistics from recent cross-border digital attacks against targets in the U.S., Russia and other nation-states.

Seconds after examining the map, Coker turned around, only to be met with a camera flash from a photographer inside the cage. Outside the signal-proof enclosure, scores of people peered in, excited and enthralled by their guest from the executive branch who traveled some 2,500 miles for the visit.

The national cyber director wasn’t being briefed on any sort of high profile intelligence matter. He was actually getting a tour of a school.

“Anthony, you want to tell him about your research?” a voice called from outside the room. Standing in the cage with Coker, Anthony, a student, chatted with the national cyber director about a forthcoming Security Operations Center, or SOC offering through the College of Southern Nevada’s cybersecurity club that would allow peers to get hands-on experience with Kali Purple. Kali Purple is an extension of the popular open-source Kali Linux cybersecurity operating system, built specifically for cybersecurity defense.

The envisioned experience working with the Kali Purple build would also be enhanced with a terabyte-sized hard drive of malware samples from Vx-Underground, a website that educates users about different types of malicious code that hackers can inject into victims’ networks.

“We have the malware on hand, and it’s in an environment where we can use it a little safer,” he said.

Coker’s visit to the school, abbreviated as CSN, was one of several he and staff in the Office of the National Cyber Director have taken since he stepped into the role at the start of 2024. Among several initiatives listed in the office’s sweeping national cybersecurity strategy, the U.S. needs to shore up its cyber workforce to better prepare against what’s expected to be an accelerated rate of cyberattacks from hackers determined to cripple vital American infrastructure like banks, hospitals and government institutions.

But to learn about how to best position the U.S. to fill some 500,000 open cybersecurity jobs, the White House needs examples to go by.

SOCs serve as the backbone of an organization’s cybersecurity efforts, enabling around-the-clock monitoring of cyber threats. Inside the esoteric walls of U.S. intelligence agencies, analysts work in SOCs, rotating in shifts throughout the day as they scour networks for signs of unauthorized access, potential breaches and emerging threats, ensuring that any malicious activity is promptly detected and addressed.

At CSN, a federally-designated Hispanic-serving institution, Coker was impressed with what he saw and heard. “What we really like about SOCs on campus is that it gives students real-world, relevant experience,” he told the tour group consisting of students, faculty and staff.

CSN is a community college that’s become a paragon model of the Biden administration’s mission to get more diversified and skilled staff into cybersecurity jobs — both in the government and private sector. It lets students start their cybersecurity careers early, and encourages them to engage in programs that provide IT and cyber services to businesses in the Nevada area.

In appearances at schools both across the country and near the Washington beltway, Coker has made clear that people who want to enter the cybersecurity workforce don’t need a standard four-year college degree to do so, opting instead to appeal toward two-year degrees that can be augmented with a suite of hard skills that young people can bring to the table upon graduating.

His office is taking a dual approach to the efforts. As ONCD visits each stop, their strategy hasn’t solely focused on gathering best practices from local leaders but also on actively disseminating the federal resources available to support their workforce efforts. The office argues the dynamic is critical to maintaining a steady-state relationship that promotes institutional development of cyber jobs.

This “exemplar” blueprint seen at the Nevada college, as Coker described it, aligns with work that’s already begun back in Washington, with the White House converting work requirements in the government’s 2210 job series — composed of nearly 100,000 federal IT and cyber workers — to skills-based hiring. Congress has also followed suit with a slew of proposals to boost workforce outreach and training.

Coker sees a bit of his own experience in students he spoke with during the tour. Those included student visitors from three local high schools, where they’re able to enroll in CSN classes for course credit.

“Coming from similar social and economic backgrounds as some of these students, they’re in better shape than me. They are more focused than I was when I was growing up,” Coker, a CIA and NSA alum, told Nextgov/FCW during the visit.

“They went to get involved early,” he said.

Students all have their own stories about what’s pushed them into a cybersecurity career, but they all share the same desire to protect fellow citizens or fight back against enemy hackers.

Janette, a recent CSN graduate who agreed to use only her first name for this story, wants to stop pervasive fraud schemes that have cost victims billions of dollars in losses.

“I was a victim of some really bad identity theft in 2015,” she told Nextgov/FCW during Coker’s tour. Her whole identity, including her social security number, was stolen and dropped into the dark web, a shrouded part of the internet that isn’t indexed by standard search engines, where illegal cybercrime activities can run rampant.

“I didn’t know how to combat it,” she said. “I want to educate other people on how to protect themselves, to prevent identity theft, to prevent scams.”

Her resume rivals that of cybersecurity workers seen in major cities, including the nation’s capital, where there’s arguably no shortage of cybersecurity talent. In college, Janette was involved in student orgs focused on cybersecurity. It culminated in an internship with the NFL’s network engineers that was backed by Cisco Networking Academy, where she was the sole student on the Super Bowl field a week before the big game, performing cable tests and other tasks to safeguard against any unauthorized access.

She also has CompTIA A+ and CompTIA Network+ certifications, and is actively pursuing a third, she said in a follow-up email. “Cybersecurity also means job security and I know there are so many options out there,” she wrote.

In the eyes of ONCD, the College of Southern Nevada is a success story for the future of America’s cyber workforce. But it’s just one institution. How could lawmakers, federal workforce experts and other stakeholders be convinced by just one White House office that serious changes are needed to ready the next generation to use and defend against digital armaments?

The work is far from over, Coker says.

“Scale nationwide,” he declared when asked about next steps. He’s constantly transmitting feedback over to Congress and the executive offices linked to President Biden. “We are confident they are part of the process.”

Since the start of the decade, but especially in 2024, officials have repeatedly said the global threat landscape is more dangerous than ever. Public testimony has highlighted Chinese hackers infiltrating U.S. critical infrastructure, alongside a surge in military asset allocations in essential congressional funding bills. This year, the record turnout in global elections has further intensified these threats, with growing concerns about AI-driven disinformation becoming a reality ahead of November.

To many, the U.S. cybersecurity workforce is the next best line of defense. Top brass military experts, including recently retired Gen. Paul Nakasone, who led NSA and Cyber Command, are pushing for similar research efforts at the university level, amid concerns that contemporary national security threats have become borderless and will challenge nations for the foreseeable future.

In the air conditioned corridors of the campus building with the Faraday cage just one floor above, Coker had one last task that’s on the agenda at many of these school roadshows: he had to make a speech.

For the lucky ones who regularly connect with Coker and his team in Washington, it’s just par for the course. But the true reality unveiled by the White House’s cyber czar is that the world is a much bigger place outside the halls of Congress and other buildings that make up the federal government.

As he marched up to the lectern in front of an audience of CSN staff, local members of the press and volunteer student cyber workers, he was practically revered. Harry Coker is trying to save America’s cyber workforce, and he chose their school to help lay the foundation for a new type of technological revolution.

“To students, faculty, and other partners, it’s a pleasure to spend time with you today. I’ve enjoyed meeting so many of you here at the College of Southern Nevada,” he said to applause.

“I’ve particularly enjoyed meeting with the students this morning — from the high school, community college and university levels — I am more encouraged about our future after meeting each of you,” he said.

Another school visit down, many more to go.

Editor's note: This article has been updated to include further detail about ONCD efforts.

defenseone.com · by David DiMolfetta

4. Israel’s Approach to Iran May Be Getting Bolder

Excerpts:

The biggest and most controversial temptation for Israel would arrive if Iran again erupted into massive protests. Jerusalem might decide that an Iran consumed by internal violence and unrest could effectively collapse the Islamic Republic and make future nuclear work impossible. An Iran in chaos would affect the entire Mideast—and, perhaps, benefit Israel. Arming the theocracy’s internal enemies, assuming the Iranians are willing and the Israelis could accomplish it, could be an option for a Jerusalem that sees itself in a death match with Tehran.

American administrations, with brief exceptions under Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump, have prized engagement over regime change. The never-dying left-wing analysis of Iran’s internal evolution—the potential for normalizing relations and America’s culpability for Iran’s Islamic radicalism—has informed the Democratic Party’s approach to the Islamic Republic since Bill Clinton. Any Israeli government would have to weigh the benefit of anti-Iranian operations against possible U.S. hostility.

As the Iran-Israel war intensifies, however, we shouldn’t be surprised to see Jerusalem take more-aggressive measures. No matter what happens, Americans ought to remember that, as in the Cold 

Israel’s Approach to Iran May Be Getting Bolder

Officials are beginning to think about targeting the ayatollahs, not merely their nuclear program.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/israels-approach-to-iran-may-be-getting-bolder-f4c2c5f2?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

By Reuel Marc Gerecht and Mark Dubowitz

Aug. 16, 2024 4:24 pm ET

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei leads a prayer over the coffin of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Aug. 1. Photo: -/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

A digital billboard in central Tehran’s Palestine Square was unveiled in 2017, counting down until Israel’s demise. Shiites are usually ambiguous about eschatological dates, but when it comes to the Jewish state, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei wants something imminent. Threats to Israel have many causes but one abetting force: the Islamic Republic’s implacable hatred of Zion.

Strip Iranian aid from anti-Zionism, and Israel’s intractable struggle with the Palestinians loses its capacity to throw the Mideast into regional war. Israelis have long viewed their tactical successes as a long-term strategy. The Jewish state “mows the lawn” of nearby threats, which means, among other things, destroying enemy weapon stockpiles, killing enemy commanders, and executing old-fashioned incursions that tear up enemy infrastructure and offensive capacity. The Gaza war began because Israelis forgot they have to perform this unpleasant task routinely. With the Islamic Republic always seeking to fortify its “ring of fire” around the Jewish state, too long a respite led the Israelis to pay a terrible price.

Yet we’ve found in conversations with Israeli officials that Jerusalem is beginning to reorient its strategy. Toppling Iran’s clerical regime, not merely countering its proxies or thwarting its nuclear program, has become the goal. Philosophically, this is an enormous change. As a rule, Israelis haven’t believed in the potential for regime change among Muslims. The possibility of such an event leading to a friendlier, democratic Iran has been too abstract for hard-nosed Israelis. Mossad officers and senior Israeli officials routinely belittled Uri Lubrani, the former Israeli ambassador to Iran who focused on hearts-and-minds propaganda and small-scale covert actions aimed at toppling the Islamic Republic. Most Israeli officials likely still don’t think Iranian democracy is probable. They do, however, now appreciate the depth of Iranian popular disgust for the clerical regime.

Sending Mossad officers into Iran to oversee recruited assets for lethal operations, or to steal the regime’s nuclear-weapons archives, is demanding work. Still, these operations are much less prone to error than building interlocking teams of Iranian agents to aid demonstrations or labor strikes. In-country covert action is vastly more difficult than launching cyber attacks on banking and energy infrastructure.

Israelis also have limited resources: What’s peanuts to the Central Intelligence Agency is a splurge for the Mossad. For Jerusalem to pursue these expenditures, to be willing to spend money on things that don’t necessarily go boom in the night, would be a testament to how seriously Israel’s security and political classes view the Iranian threat.

What Jerusalem can actually accomplish is impossible to assess before the Mossad starts trying. American covert action during the Cold War had mixed results. Subvention in the form of foreign anticommunist labor unions, publications, intellectuals, civil-rights activists and journalists were more effective than most behind-the-Iron-Curtain operations, which led to the deaths of many agents and a few officers. The Western left have exaggerated most of America’s now-notorious Third World coup d’état operations, especially the 1953 effort against Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. The natives, not the Americans, were the decisive and sometimes singular players.

The promise of audacious operations is built on stubborn willpower, as well as the ugly details born from trial and error. We know the ardent commitment Israeli governments have given to running lethal operations inside Iran. That experience has built up skills applicable to nonlethal covert action. Jerusalem is doubtless aiming for a ripple effect and good timing: Its actions might amplify eruptions of discontent, which have regularly shaken the regime since 2009.

The biggest and most controversial temptation for Israel would arrive if Iran again erupted into massive protests. Jerusalem might decide that an Iran consumed by internal violence and unrest could effectively collapse the Islamic Republic and make future nuclear work impossible. An Iran in chaos would affect the entire Mideast—and, perhaps, benefit Israel. Arming the theocracy’s internal enemies, assuming the Iranians are willing and the Israelis could accomplish it, could be an option for a Jerusalem that sees itself in a death match with Tehran.

American administrations, with brief exceptions under Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump, have prized engagement over regime change. The never-dying left-wing analysis of Iran’s internal evolution—the potential for normalizing relations and America’s culpability for Iran’s Islamic radicalism—has informed the Democratic Party’s approach to the Islamic Republic since Bill Clinton. Any Israeli government would have to weigh the benefit of anti-Iranian operations against possible U.S. hostility.

As the Iran-Israel war intensifies, however, we shouldn’t be surprised to see Jerusalem take more-aggressive measures. No matter what happens, Americans ought to remember that, as in the Cold War, the struggle ends only when the evil empire falls.

Mr. Gerecht, a former Iranian-targets officer in the CIA, is a resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Dubowitz is the foundation’s CEO.

Appeared in the August 17, 2024, print edition as 'Israel’s Approach to Iran May Be Getting Bolder'.

5. Ukraine Has a Strategy, the U.S. Doesn’t

 A blunt (or brutal) critique of the current US administration.

Ukraine Has a Strategy, the U.S. Doesn’t

Trump at least broaches the real issue: Which Kyiv war aims is Washington willing to subsidize?

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/ukraine-has-a-strategy-the-u-s-doesnt-fc8aeafe?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

Aug. 16, 2024 4:23 pm ET

Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the security council outside Moscow, Aug. 16. Photo: alexei babushkin/Reuters

Ukraine’s invasion and seizure of Russian territory doesn’t improve the short-term chances of a peace deal, which likely weren’t high anyway. It does, however, embarrass Vladimir Putin. It requires the Russians not only to scrounge forces to resist the incursion but to reinforce their border elsewhere. It improves Ukrainian morale and confidence in the country’s leadership, which will come in handy. It throws down a gauntlet to Ukraine’s Western backers, who’ve been in a state of drift rather than pursuing a clear strategy.

To return to a theme, the obvious way to lower Mr. Putin’s price point on a settlement is to bring the war home to Russians on their own territory, though most advocates until last week focused on air and missile strikes rather than ground action.

This, along with defending Ukraine’s airspace from Russian infrastructure attacks and building up its ground forces to forestall further advance on Ukrainian territory, was the self-evident road ahead. Even without a deal, wearing down Mr. Putin’s military and strategic strength remains an important U.S. interest.

That is, if the West had a strategy. The Biden administration has never laid one out. Its behavior suggests the “escalations” it most fears aren’t toward World War III but in the salience of the war to U.S. voters, who might be encouraged to wonder if Mr. Biden has mismanaged the world and led America into danger.

Mr. Putin once said he preferred Mr. Biden as the more predictable U.S. president. There’s no reason to take him at his word but every reason to believe Mr. Putin thinks he’s husbanding carrots and sticks for a grand deal with the U.S., over Ukraine’s head, allowing him to posture like the superpower of old.

This is an important symbol for him domestically. It’s also a source of U.S. leverage. An apparently well-sourced news report last month described a phone call from Russia’s defense minister to his U.S. counterpart seeking help calling off a secret Ukrainian operation the Russians somehow got wind of. Australia’s retired Gen. Mick Ryan, a close student of the war, says there have been other such calls.

Nancy Pelosi wasn’t entirely convincing when she told a reporter last week that winning is everything to Democrats this year only because the opponent is Donald Trump.

Winning is always everything in presidential politics. Even war and peace take a back seat.

Still, a mystery is the culture of lying in news coverage of Mr. Trump and Ukraine. Distrust his motives. Distrust his judgment. But this isn’t a reason to falsify his actual words, (though it’s always easier to win an argument when you can put words in your opponent’s mouth).

His one detailed statement on ending the war featured a near-universal logic that any Ukraine supporter would employ: threaten Mr. Putin with higher costs for continuing the fight than he’s willing to bear.

Believe Mr. Trump or don’t believe him. But one overflow of the colossal dishonesty and stupidity of the U.S. media has been to permit the Biden administration to get away with never having to recognize or explain why its actions depart from this clear and obvious strategy for success in the Ukraine war.

The second requisite was also present in Mr. Trump’s logic. The U.S. needs to reach an understanding with Ukraine about what war aims Washington is willing to subsidize, which are obviously something short of unconditional surrender by Mr. Putin. This problem has festered for two-plus years. The great irony is that Mr. Trump broaches it and Mr. Biden doesn’t, though both implicitly and necessarily come down in the same place. As Columbia historian Adam Tooze, a realistic thinker among progressives, recently put it: “Let’s not indulge the American Democrat fixation of pointing the finger at Trump.” The real problem is the “profoundly uncertain situation” created by the West’s failure to describe any policy toward Ukraine that realistically relates means and ends.

Personally, I’ve never seen why Ukraine’s supporters should have any more confidence in a Biden-Harris administration than a Trump administration in this regard. The answer, though, may be an unspoken asterisk: Certain Ukraine supporters obviously dream of using Ukraine to dislodge Mr. Putin from power in Russia. If it happens, hooray. But it’s an object of hope, not strategy. Ukraine’s people have too much at risk not to be realistic about what fighting can achieve. If battling Russia to a standstill simply guarantees their national independence and freedom to evolve into a healthy, pluralistic society, this would be an excellent strategic result for Ukraine and its backers. Let Mr. Putin’s regime continue to rot toward its inevitable expiry date.

Appeared in the August 17, 2024, print edition as 'Ukraine Has a Strategy, the U.S. Doesn’t'.

6. What's Ukraine's endgame in Kursk?

Excerpts:

In terms of regime stability, there are three potential outcomes.

One is that Ukraine’s incursion into Russian territory – which makes a lie of the Kremlin’s consistent leitmotif about keeping Russians safe – leads to a torrent of public anger that directly endangers Putin’s rule.

Second, Putin could turn the insult of Ukrainians capturing Russian soil into a rallying cry, uniting the population behind him.

The third option, however, might be most likely – the majority of Russians remain apathetic. There is still no real incentive for Kremlin elites to move against Putin, and popular outrage is likely to be confined to Kursk rather than the power centers of Moscow and St Petersburg.

Ultimately, Ukraine’s incursion into Russia goes beyond damaging Putin. It has boosted morale, shown up the Kremlin’s bluster and reminded the West that Ukraine matters. On all three measures, Kiev has once again proven itself remarkably resourceful.

What's Ukraine's endgame in Kursk? - Asia Times

Ukraine’s surprise incursion deep into Russian territory could go down in history as a stroke of tactical genius

asiatimes.com · by Matthew Sussex · August 16, 2024

Ukrainians have long become used to grim news reports from their besieged lands. But that’s suddenly changed. Following its remarkably successful incursion of Russia’s Kursk region, cheerful Ukrainian journalists are now covering the war from captured Russian territory.

Ukraine’s surprise counterpunch, taking the fight into Russia for the first time, shows no signs yet of having reached a high-water mark. Unlike previous pinprick raids by the anti-Putin Freedom of Russia Legion militia group, Ukraine’s armed forces are using some of their most seasoned units.

Having punched through a thinly defended portion of its border near the Russian city of Kursk – itself famous as a scene of one of the Soviet Union’s greatest victories against Germany in the Second World War – Ukraine’s forces reportedly have captured up to 70 settlements.

In the process, they’ve taken control of a piece of land encompassing some 1,000 square kilometers, up to 30 kilometers deep inside Russia.

There are numerous theories about what Ukraine wants to achieve. One is that it seeks a sizeable foothold in Russia as currency to trade for captured Ukrainian territory in future peace talks. Recent signs that its forces are digging in might support that claim.

Evacuated people in the Kursk region queue to fill out the form for humanitarian aid. Photo: AP via The Conversation

Another is that Kiev’s goals are more modest, including holding onto key towns and road/rail hubs. That complicates Moscow’s logistics efforts and would still give Ukraine territorial chips for the negotiating table.

A third is that its forces will withdraw, having forced Moscow to secure its border by diverting significant military resources away from Ukraine.

On balance, the second two explanations are probably closer to the mark. Holding large swathes of Russian territory will be difficult for Ukraine once the Kremlin’s armed forces eventually overcome their characteristic initial inertia. Attempting to do so would permanently tie up some of Kiev’s best soldiers, and put them at risk of death or capture.

Of course, Kiev has other motives, too. Apart from a big morale boost for a war-weary population, Ukraine might seek to recover some of its captured soldiers. Recently, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky observed that Ukraine’s forces were “replenishing the exchange fund.”

Further, he noted, Kiev’s decision was motivated by the desire to show Russians that the war had consequences for them – not just for Ukrainians. The incursion is also sending a message to the United States and its NATO allies.

The White House, in particular, has dithered about allowing Ukraine to use long-range American weapons to strike Russian territory, worrying that doing so is a dangerous escalation that also plays into Russian narratives about NATO being a de facto combatant in the war.

By striking into Russian territory, Kyiv is sending a powerful reminder to Washington – deeply distracted by its upcoming presidential election – that its forces can achieve surprising results with the right capabilities.

Will the Kremlin escalate?

Moscow’s response to the incursion, so far, lends weight to the Ukrainian argument that American escalation fears are overblown.

Regime cronies like former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev have made vague threats about vigorous punishments, and Kremlin-friendly propagandists on social media have alleged NATO troops are operating alongside Ukrainian soldiers.

But that’s nothing new: Russian officials and commentators have falsely claimed for years that NATO is fighting with Ukrainian forces and that Ukraine faces annihilation if it does not submit.

Viewed in that light, Kiev’s move into Russia is a calculated gamble. Ukraine assesses the international, morale and material gains to sufficiently outweigh any anticipated reprisals.

Of course, that’s based on the assumption that any reprisals will be on a similar scale to those previously meted out to Ukraine. The Putin regime has routinely demonstrated it regards the laws and norms of war as inconvenient distractions, preferring instead to use fear and wanton destruction to cow its adversaries into capitulation.

But that’s also nothing Ukrainians haven’t seen before – in the slaughter of civilians at Bucha, the flattening of cities like Mariupol, the indiscriminate attacks against civilian hospitals and the veiled Russian threats about “accidents” at the occupied nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia.

Russia’s rudderless response

Tellingly, Ukraine’s incursion has again revealed the manifest failings of Russia’s armed forces. In particular, it highlights the hubris afflicting its leaders, who mistakenly believed Kiev could fall in a mere three days. That’s now more than 900 days ago.

Many have justifiably lauded Ukraine’s preparations for its incursion as a masterpiece of operational security. It was certainly no mean feat to garner the resources necessary for a sizeable assault without tipping off either Moscow or Washington, both of which reacted initially with surprise.

A still image taken from a video provided by the Russian Defence Ministry showing Russian military armored vehicles being deployed to the Kursk region. Photo: Russian Defense Ministry Press Service handout / EPA via The Conversation

However, there have been several reports that Russia’s military leadership dismissed warnings about Ukrainian troops concentrating near the border.

Since the operation began, there have been conflicting reports about who is in charge of Russia’s military response. Notionally, Valery Gerasimov – Russia’s beleaguered chief of the general staff – should be in command.

Yet, Putin called the response to Ukraine’s attack a “counter-terrorism operation”, which seemed to put it within the purview of Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). Still others claim Aleksey Dyumin, a Putin favorite sometimes touted as his eventual successor, has been given the responsibility.

The confusion over command has also revealed how weak the forces remaining inside Russia are. A cobbled-together combination of conscripts, Russian naval infantry, FSB troops and Rosgvardia (Putin’s personal national guard) has been unable to dislodge the highly mobile Ukrainian forces.

After securing the town of Sudzha, the Ukrainian troops have also been able to bring in supplies and reinforcements, further complicating the job of repelling them. With the majority of Russia’s regular army tied up in Ukraine, there has even been speculation Moscow will need to relocate troops from its Kaliningrad enclave in northern Europe to help.

Putting the pressure back on Moscow

Politically, Ukraine’s move is deeply embarrassing for Putin, who has already proven himself slow to react when facing similar challenges. Just over a year ago, Moscow’s dithering allowed Yevgeny Prigozhin’s rebel Wagner Group convoy to get within 200 kilometers of Moscow before an amnesty deal was brokered.

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This time, Putin was forced to interrupt acting governor Alexey Smirnov during a televised meeting of defense officials, as he was delivering bad news about the depth of the Ukrainian incursion. After being curtly instructed to stick to discussing aid and relief efforts, Smirnoff promptly responded that around 180,000 Russians had been internally displaced.

Are these signs of fragility? Certainly, Russian refugees have directed significant anger at regional leaders and security forces in Kursk, some of whom seem to have been the first to flee. There are also reports of looting by Russian soldiers in the conflict zone. And there has also been criticism of Putin himself from Russians in the Kursk area.

In terms of regime stability, there are three potential outcomes.

One is that Ukraine’s incursion into Russian territory – which makes a lie of the Kremlin’s consistent leitmotif about keeping Russians safe – leads to a torrent of public anger that directly endangers Putin’s rule.

Second, Putin could turn the insult of Ukrainians capturing Russian soil into a rallying cry, uniting the population behind him.

The third option, however, might be most likely – the majority of Russians remain apathetic. There is still no real incentive for Kremlin elites to move against Putin, and popular outrage is likely to be confined to Kursk rather than the power centers of Moscow and St Petersburg.

Ultimately, Ukraine’s incursion into Russia goes beyond damaging Putin. It has boosted morale, shown up the Kremlin’s bluster and reminded the West that Ukraine matters. On all three measures, Kiev has once again proven itself remarkably resourceful.

Matthew Sussex is Associate Professor (Adj), Griffith Asia Institute and Fellow, Strategic and Defense Studies Centre, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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asiatimes.com · by Matthew Sussex · August 16, 2024

7. China's rhetoric turns dangerously real for Taiwanese

I have been amazed by how many Taiwanese live and work in China. Although purely anecdotal and a different time, when we visited Kunming in 2011 we met dozens of Taiwanese who greeted us and wanted us to know they were from Taiwan.

Excerpts:

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office was quick to assure the 23 million Taiwanese that this is not targeted at them, but at an “extremely small number of hard-line independence activists”. The “vast majority of Taiwanese compatriots have nothing to fear,” the office said.

But wary Taiwanese say they don’t want to test that claim. The BBC has spoken to several Taiwanese who live and work in China who said they were either planning to leave soon or had already left. Few were willing to be interviewed on record; none wanted to be named.

“Any statement you make now could be misinterpreted and you could be reported. Even before this new law China was already encouraging people to report on others,” the businesswoman said.

That was made official last week when Chinese authorities launched a website identifying Taiwanese public figures deemed “die hard” separatists. The site included an email address where people could send “clues and crimes” about those who had been named, or anyone else they suspected.

China's rhetoric turns dangerously real for Taiwanese

BBC

3 hours ago

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes

BBC News

Reporting fromTaipei

Getty Images

Younger Taiwanese increasingly see their identity as separate from China

Calls to denounce “die hard" Taiwanese secessionists, a tipline to report them and punishments that could include the death penalty for “ringleaders” – Beijing’s familiar rhetoric against Taiwan is turning dangerously real.

The democratically-governed island has grown used to China’s claims. Even the planes and ships that test its defences have become a routine provocation. But the recent moves to criminalise support for it are unnerving Taiwanese who live and work in China, and those back home.

“I am currently planning to speed up my departure,” a Taiwanese businesswoman based in China said – this was soon after the Supreme Court ushered in changes allowing life imprisonment and even the death penalty for those guilty of advocating for Taiwanese independence.

“I don’t think that is making a mountain out of a molehill. The line is now very unclear,” says Prof Yu Jie, a legal scholar at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office was quick to assure the 23 million Taiwanese that this is not targeted at them, but at an “extremely small number of hard-line independence activists”. The “vast majority of Taiwanese compatriots have nothing to fear,” the office said.

But wary Taiwanese say they don’t want to test that claim. The BBC has spoken to several Taiwanese who live and work in China who said they were either planning to leave soon or had already left. Few were willing to be interviewed on record; none wanted to be named.

“Any statement you make now could be misinterpreted and you could be reported. Even before this new law China was already encouraging people to report on others,” the businesswoman said.

That was made official last week when Chinese authorities launched a website identifying Taiwanese public figures deemed “die hard” separatists. The site included an email address where people could send “clues and crimes” about those who had been named, or anyone else they suspected.

The Taiwan that China wants is vanishing

The worshippers caught between China and Taiwan

Scholars believe Beijing hopes to emulate the success of Hong Kong’s national security laws, which it said were necessary for stability - but they have crushed the city’s pro-democracy movement as former lawmakers, activists and ordinary citizens critical of the government have been jailed under them.

By making pro-Taiwanese sentiments a matter of national security, Beijing hopes to “cut off the movement’s ties with outside world and to divide society in Taiwan between those who support Taiwan independence and those who do not”, says Prof Chen, a legal scholar at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica.

She says the guidance from the Supreme Court will almost certainly result in prosecutions of some Taiwanese living in China.

“This opinion has been sent to all levels of law enforcement nationwide. So this is a way of saying to them – we want to see more cases like this being prosecuted, so go and find one.”

Getty Images

China dislikes Taiwan's president William Lai Ching-te and has called him "a separatist"

“We must be even more cautious,” said a Taiwanese man based in Macao. He said he had always been prepared for threats, but the new legal guidance had made his friends “express concern” about his future in the Chinese city.

“In recent years, patriotic education has become prevalent in Macau, with more assertive statements on Taiwan creating a more tense atmosphere compared to pre-pandemic times,” he added.

Taiwan, which has powerful allies in the US, the EU and Japan, rejects Beijing’s plans for “reunification” – but fears have been growing that China’s Xi Jinping has sped up the timeline to take the island, an avowed goal of the Chinese Communist Party.

For more than 30 years Taiwanese companies - iPhone-maker Foxconn, advanced chips giant TSMC and electronics behemoth Acer – have played a key role in China’s growth. The prosperity also brought Taiwanese from across the strait who were in search of jobs and brighter prospects.

“I absolutely loved Shanghai when I first moved there. It felt so much bigger, more exciting, more cosmopolitan than Taipei,” says Zoe Chu*. She spent more than a decade in Shanghai managing foreign musicians who were in high demand from clubs and venues in cities across China.

This was the mid-2000s when China was booming, drawing money and people from across the globe. Shanghai was at the heart of it - bigger, shinier and trendier than any other Chinese city.

“My Shanghainese friends were dismissive of Beijing. They called it the big northern village,” Ms Chu recalls. “Shanghai was the place to be. It had the best restaurants, the best nightclubs, the coolest people. I felt like such a country bumpkin, but I learned fast.”

Getty Images

Taiwan's annual military drills are a show of strength directed against Beijing

By the end of that decade – in 2009 - more than 400,000 Taiwanese lived in China. By 2022, that number had plummeted to 177,000, according to official figures from Taiwan.

“China had changed,” says Ms Chu, who left Shanghai in 2019. She now works for a medical company in Taipei and has no plans to return.

“I am Taiwanese,” she explains. “It’s no longer safe for us there.”

The Taiwanese exodus has been driven by the same things that have pushed huge numbers of foreigners to leave China – a sluggish economy, growing hostility between Beijing and Washington and, most of all, the sudden and sweeping lockdowns during the Covid pandemic.

But Taiwanese in China have also been worried because the government doesn’t see them as “foreigners”, which makes them especially vulnerable to state repression.

Senior Taiwanese officials have told the BBC that 15 Taiwanese nationals are currently being held in China for various alleged crimes, “including violations of the anti-secession law”.

In 2019, China jailed a Taiwanese businessman for espionage after he was caught taking photos of police officers in Shenzen – a charge he denied. He was only released last year. In April 2023, China confirmed that it had arrested a Taiwan-based publisher for “endangering national security”. He still remains in custody.

Amy Hsu*, who once lived and worked in China, says she is now scared to even visit because of her job. After returning to Taiwan, she began volunteering at an NGO which helped people who had fled Hong Kong to settle in Taiwan.

“It is definitely more dangerous for me now,” she says. “In 2018, they began using surveillance cameras to fine people for jaywalking and the system could identify your face and send the fine directly to your address.”

She says the extent of surveillance disturbed her – and she worries it can be used to go after even visitors, especially those on a list of potential offenders.

Getty Images

Rights groups say China has one of the most expansive surveillance systems

“Oh I am definitely on the list. I am a hardline pro-independence [guy] with lots of ideas,” chuckles Robert Tsao, a 77-year-old tech billionaire, who founded one of Taiwan’s largest chip-makers, United Micro-electronics Corporation (UMC).

Mr Tsao was born in Beijing, but today he supports Taiwan independence and avoids not just China, but also Hong Kong, Macau, Thailand and even Singapore.

Mr Tsao was not always hostile to China. He was one of the first Taiwanese investors to set up advanced chip-making factories in China. But he says the crackdown in Hong Kong changed his mind: “It was so free and vibrant and now it’s gone. And they want to do the same to us here.”

“This new ruling is actually helping people like me,” he says. He believes it will backfire, increasing the resolve of Taiwanese people to resist China.

“They say the new law will only affect a few hard-line independence supporters like me, but so many Taiwanese people either support independence or the status quo [keep things as they are], which is the same thing, so we have all become criminals.”

* Names changed on request of contributors

BBC

8.

Excerpts:

This continued framing of the conflict as one between Russia and the West also raises the stakes for Ukraine’s Western allies, and quite significantly so. It potentially gives Russia an opportunity to claim that NATO as a whole, or individual NATO members, have become co-belligerents and are therefore legitimate targets for Russian escalation of the conflict.

The UK’s reiteration of its position that arms supplied to Ukraine can, with the exception of long-range Storm Shadow missiles, be used by Kiev in its operation in the Kursk region will no doubt be framed by Moscow as one such instance of Western powers acting as belligerents against his country.

Russia has used this argument repeatedly over the past two-and-half years – but it has never acted on any of its threats of escalation. It is unlikely to do so now. On the one hand, it would require Putin to acknowledge a state of war – first with Ukraine, and then, by extension, with the West.

On the other hand, it would very likely trigger an Article 5 response from NATO, calling for collective defense from member states that would inevitably lead to a full-scale military confrontation.

Neither is in Putin’s interest. And the latter could not possibly achieve for Russia what Putin might hope to gain through negotiations – especially if he enters them from a position of strength.

Ukraine’s operation in the Kursk region is likely to deny the Russian president this opportunity and tilt the playing field further in favor of Kiev ahead of any future talks. For that reason alone, the current Ukrainian offensive is worth continued Western backing and calling Putin’s bluff.

Kursk could hasten Russia's post-Putin political succession - Asia Times

Putin’s ex-bodyguard Alexei Dyumin to head response to Ukraine incursion, a military operation that could cement his political future

asiatimes.com · by Stefan Wolff · August 17, 2024

The Ukrainian operation in Russia’s Kursk region began in late July with several days of airstrikes before Kiev’s ground forces quickly advanced several miles deep into Russian territory on August 6, 2024.

Since then, according to various reports, they have established an expanded foothold of as much as 1,000 square kilometers. They have destroyed a lot of Russian equipment and inflicted heavy casualties on Russian forces.

The Kremlin has rushed forces to the region but has so far failed to halt the Ukrainian advance, let alone drive Ukrainian forces from Russian soil. Now, according to as yet unconfirmed but credible reports, Putin has appointed Alexei Dyumin to head up what it calls its “counter-terrorist” response to the Ukrainian incursion. This is significant in several ways.

First, there is the personnel dimension. Dyumin is Putin’s former bodyguard, but also served as deputy head of the GRU military intelligence service, deputy defense minister and, until the end of May 2024, as governor of the Tula region, south of Moscow.

He was then appointed as secretary to the State Council. This is a body that brings together all the governors of Russia’s regions and is chaired by the Russian president. The choice of Dyumin – someone clearly outside the traditional military hierarchy – is indicative of Putin’s lack of trust in his military leaders to get the job done.

Dyumin’s handling of this crisis could therefore either accelerate or end his rise among the Russian political elite. If he is successful, it would potentially cement his status as a prime candidate to succeed Putin.

Putin’s phraseology, referring to Ukraine’s operation as a provocation requiring a “counter-terrorist” response, is also significant. It implies that he is still reluctant to admit that he has plunged Russia into an actual war with its neighbor.

Rather, the counter-terrorist operation now underway inside Russia sits next to what Putin has called the “special military operation” being conducted in Ukraine.

Both mask the true extent of the problem that Putin now faces. On the one hand, the Russian president has to deal with a very costly war in Ukraine. The conflict has fundamentally altered the global geopolitical landscape and left Moscow with few alternatives to an unflattering and difficult-to-manage alliance with China, Iran and North Korea.

On the other hand, it undermines further the perception of Putin’s own competence and that of his key military leaders in their ability to safeguard Russian national security. Even if they are eventually able to contain and push back the Ukrainian forces that are, for now, firmly lodged surprisingly deep inside Russia, the very fact that they could get as far as they have for as long as they did is an undeniable failure.

Blame the West

It’s also worth noting that Putin has doubled down on one of his key justifications for his war of aggression against Ukraine – that this is all the fault of the West.

Reportedly claiming “the West is fighting us with the hands of the Ukrainians”, is another indication that, for Putin, this war is about much more than Ukraine possibly joining NATO and the EU. It’s also an important guide to what can be expected from Moscow in the long term when it comes to potential negotiations with Kiev over an end to the war.

Under pressure: Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting of the National Security Council to discuss the situation in the Kursk region. Photo: EPA-EFE / Gavril Grigorov / Sputnik / Kremlin pool

What Moscow will want out of those is a weakening of Ukraine and the West – and a relative strengthening of its own position, particularly when it comes to any potential future confrontation with NATO.

This will also be important for Putin domestically, including in terms of his legacy, which we know to be very important to him. Any such preferential outcome will potentially also enhance Russia’s influence in any Chinese-led alliance emerging as a counterpoint to the US and its allies.

This continued framing of the conflict as one between Russia and the West also raises the stakes for Ukraine’s Western allies, and quite significantly so. It potentially gives Russia an opportunity to claim that NATO as a whole, or individual NATO members, have become co-belligerents and are therefore legitimate targets for Russian escalation of the conflict.

The UK’s reiteration of its position that arms supplied to Ukraine can, with the exception of long-range Storm Shadow missiles, be used by Kiev in its operation in the Kursk region will no doubt be framed by Moscow as one such instance of Western powers acting as belligerents against his country.

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Russia has used this argument repeatedly over the past two-and-half years – but it has never acted on any of its threats of escalation. It is unlikely to do so now. On the one hand, it would require Putin to acknowledge a state of war – first with Ukraine, and then, by extension, with the West.

On the other hand, it would very likely trigger an Article 5 response from NATO, calling for collective defense from member states that would inevitably lead to a full-scale military confrontation.

Neither is in Putin’s interest. And the latter could not possibly achieve for Russia what Putin might hope to gain through negotiations – especially if he enters them from a position of strength.

Ukraine’s operation in the Kursk region is likely to deny the Russian president this opportunity and tilt the playing field further in favor of Kiev ahead of any future talks. For that reason alone, the current Ukrainian offensive is worth continued Western backing and calling Putin’s bluff.

Stefan Wolff is Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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asiatimes.com · by Stefan Wolff · August 17, 2024

9. The Big Five - 17 August edition by Mick Ryan

A good rundown from Mick Ryan on five big issues.. Graphics at the link.

He highlights an article in Survival by Dan Byman and Seth Jones (#3 below) that unfortunately is behind the paywall which makes me think of two points. First is that Dan and Seth recognize the four threats of the "Legion of Doom," China, Russia, Iran, and north Korea. I am happy to see Seth include north Korea because his book "Three Dangerous Men," left out a discussion of Kim Jong Un. But perhaps we should adopt "Legion of Doom" rather than the phrase I hate, "the Axis of Resistance." Second, articles behind a paywall that cannot be accessed by the general public have lesser influence than those that are publicly accessible or "open source." It is like classified information that cannot be accessed by all policymakers and staff and sometimes has less influence than open source information that can be used by all and discussed and debated in public. I know these journals have to make a profit but the paradox is that because of the paywall they have a reduced chance to have a broader influence impact.

The Big Five

The Big Five - 17 August edition

My regular update on conflict and confrontation in Ukraine, the Middle East and the Pacific, accompanied by recommended readings on the character of modern war and planning for future conflict.

https://mickryan.substack.com/p/the-big-five-17-august-edition

Mick Ryan

Aug 17, 2024

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Image: @DefenceU on Twitter / X

It has been a big couple of weeks since my last edition of the Big Five.

The major story of the past couple of weeks has been Ukraine’s Kursk offensive and the seizing of over 1100 square kilometres of Russian territory in the past ten days. This has been a stunning change in the direction of the war. At least five Ukrainian brigades, or elements of those brigades, and possibly more have been seized the initiative and remained on the move since surprising the Russians in their initial crossing of the border into the Russian Kursk oblast.

President Zelenskyy described the progress in Kursk in a recent video address:

The Commander-in-Chief reported on the operation in Kursk Oblast. There has been new progress. Our “exchange fund” has been further replenished. Additionally, General Syrskyi reported the successful liberation of the city of Sudzha from Russian forces. A Ukrainian military commandant's office is being established there. Several other settlements have also been liberated. In total, more than eighty.

As mentioned by Zelenskyy, Ukraine has appointed a military governor for the parts of the Kursk oblast that are under its control. This makes a lot of sense because it frees up tactical commanders to get on with their advances and fighting the enemy. The military governor can assist with humanitarian aid to Russians who are now in Ukrainian occupied territory, liaise with Russian authorities that remain and also puts doubt in the minds of the Russian government about how long Ukraine might stay in Kursk. It could be a while.

Estimated Ukrainian advances in Kursk. Sources: Black Bird Group and Institute for the Study of War

In the past 24 hours, Ukrainian operational strikes have destroyed at least one, and perhaps more, bridges over the Seim River to the west of the current Ukrainian area of operations in Kursk, hit several airbases, and interdicted Russian reinforcement convoys. Russia appears to have few reserves within an easy march of Kursk. To complicate matters, their recent command and control changes have only confused who is in charge of which part of the Russian response. Dara Massicot’s recent commentary on Russian C2 is worth reading.

So, at least for the present, the Ukrainians are operating well inside the Russian tactical and operational decision cycle, or OODA loop. How long they can continue to do so is an open question.

One of the issues that will influence how long the Ukrainians can stretch their tactical and operational advantages in Kursk is the ongoing Battle of the Donbas, and in particular, the continuing Russian advance on the key Ukrainian centre of Pokrovsk. This city is an important logistics hub in the Donbas and forms a key link in a chain of Ukrainian defensive locations in the region.

Thus far, despite their losses in Kursk, the Russians have not been distracted from their grinding advance on Pokrovsk. They have, in some respects, a target fixation with this Ukrainian city. While there may be important tactical, operational and political gains if the Russians are to seize it, it remains to be seen whether the Russians can sustain their pressure here in the Donbas and resist the growing political imperative to act decisively against Ukraine’s thrust into Russia. The coming weeks will give us an answer to this question, but like all wars, prediction of the ultimate outcome to this dilemma remains impossible.

Russian advances towards Pokrovsk since the start of the Ukrainian offensive into Kursk. Source: https://x.com/Deepstate_UA

Kursk and the Donbas are two important and closely linked parts of this war. The consideration of one can only be done in the context of the other. Neither are isolated operations, and the success or otherwise of one will have a major impact on the other.

On a technological front, we are beginning to see an accelerating proliferation of Uncrewed Ground Vehicles in the war in Ukraine. The development and deployment of these systems is a trend that has been evident for a while (I published a report for CSBS on this topic in 2018), and something I have written about here previously. However, the past six months or so has seen stepped up reporting of these UGV in both Ukrainian and Russian service.

The UGVs have a variety of battlefield functions. These include casualty evacuation and resupply, surveillance, mining and defining and close reconnaissance. More images of the different UGVs and their functions are beginning to appear in social media and I have included a couple below. While the use of more of these UGVs will be a partial solution for some of the more dangerous battlefield functions currently undertaken by humans, they are unlikely to provide a total solution to the personnel challenges that both Ukraine and Russia will continue to experience as the war continues.

Images: @militarylandnet @defenceu @officejjsmart

Elsewhere, the Middle East remains tense in anticipation of an Iranian response to the Israeli operation to kill a senior Hamas leader in Tehran in late July. While there is speculation that Iran is holding back its response pending negotiations about the release of Israeli hostages by Hamas, it is probably using this time to undertake detailed planning of different options for attacking Israel, and coordination of any attacks with its Hezbollah partners. At the same time, as Hezbollah continues its cross border attacks, there has also been speculation about an Israeli pre-emptive strike against Hezbollah or Iran, as well as Israeli plans for a multi-front war if required.

The U.S. has continued to deploy military forces to the region in the hope of deterring an Iranian attack on Israel. The current lay down of U.S. naval forces is described by Ian Ellis in his regular posts and in the infographic below.

Source @IanEllisJones on Twitter / X

I feel like I have been writing like a bandit in the past couple of weeks. First, my new article for Foreign Affairs covering Ukrainian strategy and a theory of victory, was published just as the Ukrainian Kursk offensive commenced. I have been publishing a new article here, and in Twitter threads, every couple of days since the beginning of the offensive. The key topics I examined include the following:

1. An initial overview of the Kursk offensive.
2. How Ukraine generated surprise against Russia.
3. The possible next phases of the Ukrainian offensive.
4. Ukraine and the impact of ‘fighting by the rules’.

My new book, The War for Ukraine, was also released this week and appears to be selling well in both hardcover and Kindle versions (no word yet on audiobook). That is good, because I will be donating all my royalties to Ukrainian charities and crowdfunding efforts. Finally, I published a short piece with the Lowy Institute this week as part of a series of articles that examine the impact of a second Trump administration. You can read that series here.

So, to this week’s readings….

The recommended articles include an interesting piece on Ukraine’s objectives for its Kursk offensive, as well as articles on the growing alignment of Iran, North Korea, China and Russia in opposing the West, cognitive warfare and the recent Australia-U.S. ministerial discussions. As always, if you only have time to read a single article, the first one is my pick of the week.

Happy reading!

1. Ukraine’s Objectives in Kursk

There has been a lot of speculation, including by me, about Ukraine’s strategic and political objectives of its current Kursk offensive. Clarity was added to this debate during the week by an interview given by Mykhailo Podolyak, a top aide to the Ukrainian President. He describes four key objectives of the ongoing Kursk offensive, one of which is the creation of a buffer zone. You can read the full interview here. 

2. Recruiting the Future Russian Military

This is a fascinating and insightful article from Russia expert, Dara Massicot. The article begins with the question “While the Kremlin may have a strategy, will enough of the Russian population want to join the military when the war is over?” The article explores a range of issues related to perceptions of military service in Russia and how the Russian military might seek to rebuild its military in the wake of the war in Ukraine. You can read the full article, published by War on the Rocks, here.

3. The Legion of Doom

The latest edition of Survival has some very good articles. One of my favourites is this piece by Dan Byman and Seth Jones who explore the growing alignment of Iran, China, Russia and North Korea. The article notes that “although the depth of their relations is not as robust as that enjoyed by their Western rivals, their growing cooperation is a significant development in the global balance of power and has major implications for the West.” Unfortunately this is behind a paywall, but well worth reading if you have a subscription to Survival.

4. Thinking About Cognitive Warfare

The cognitive domain, as a term, has gained greater legitimacy in military and national security circles in recent years. And while influencing how an adversary thinks is as old as war, and hardly a new idea, some of the technologies available to generate and spread misinformation have evolved its conduct. To that end, this is a useful article that explores cognitive warfare, the status of our potential adversaries and what we might to to combat their efforts. I think it under emphasises the strengths of Western societies, corporations and military institutions but you can draw your own conclusions. You can read the article, published by Joint Forces Quarterly, here.

5. The Australia-U.S. Ministerial Consultations 2024

Each year, the Australian and U.S. defence and foreign affairs ministers meet to discuss a range of security issues that are of relevance to both nations as well as the wider Pacific region. This year’s meeting, held in the U.S., covered an array of issues include force posture, military infrastructure and U.S. forces in Australia, collaboration of research and development and countering misinformation. You can read the full joint statement about the areas of discussion, and key agreements, here.

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10. We All Pay the Price for Protectionism

Excerpts:

Protectionism and industrial policy misallocate resources and reduce economic efficiency. When firms in a free market produce outputs that consumers won’t buy, the money entrepreneurs and investors lose is their own. When protectionists and industrial-policy planners make mistakes, they often mask them with more subsidies and tariffs—at taxpayers’ expense. Think, in the first case, of Ford: When Americans didn’t buy the Edsel, the company lost money and stopped selling the model. Conversely, when Americans haven’t bought heavily subsidized electric vehicles, the government has imposed tariffs on EV imports—taxes that consumers pay.

Adam Smith was on to something when he wrote: “Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.” The American people would be better served if we heeded that enduring wisdom rather than let Donald Trump or Kamala Harris decide which jobs should be created.

We All Pay the Price for Protectionism

Industrial policy intrudes on our sovereignty as consumers to protect politically favored jobs.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/we-all-pay-the-price-for-protectionism-f0e5e771

By Phil Gramm and Donald J. Boudreaux

Aug. 12, 2024 5:11 pm ET

An auto worker holds a sign that reads ‘Tariffs Are Taxes; during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 19, 2018. Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News

Since Adam Smith debunked mercantilism in “The Wealth of Nations” (1776), the political appeal of trade protectionism has centered on its ability to benefit a privileged few special interests while spreading costs across society. Yet as the global economy has become more integrated, the cost of granting special favors through such policies has exploded. Each job created by recent tariffs on washing machines and steel has cost the U.S. economy an estimated $820,000 and $900,000, respectively. Tariffs imposed in the name of revitalizing American manufacturing have, over six years, been followed by slightly decreased manufacturing output, reductions in the percentage of the nonfarm labor force employed in manufacturing, and significantly higher trade deficits.

Sidestepping the economic logic and evidence that trade and private markets fuel growth and higher living standards, protectionists and industrial planners are trying to change the terms of the debate. Disciples on the right and left argue for policies that promote not efficiency, consumer benefit and economic growth, but rather jobs as ends in themselves. American Compass’s Oren Cass expresses this new mantra when he states that economic policy should emphasize “a healthy labor market rather than merely rising consumption.” Former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer adds that “Americans are producers first and consumers second.”

On the surface, their argument is appealing. Jobs are at least as important as consumption. But this raises an age-old question: Who decides which jobs to promote? In attempting to answer, it becomes clear that the new mantra is the same old siren song.

In a free society, consumers determine what is produced by choosing where to spend the incomes they’ve earned through hard work and thrift. Consumer sovereignty directs labor and capital to create the mix of goods and services that consumers want. Businesses either produce them efficiently or fail.

Politicians who advocate focusing on jobs propose that we allow government to direct how labor is employed, how capital is invested, and which goods and services are made available to consumers. That concept isn’t exactly novel: Allowing the “best and brightest” to choose such arrangements has been tried and rejected for eons. The idea of letting those who earn their incomes by the sweat of their brows decide how to spend their own money is relatively new and revolutionary.

It’s also proved fruitful. Five thousand years of experience has shown that politicians and bureaucrats don’t possess unique insight into what should be produced or how. Even if they were somehow to possess such knowledge, in time they would use their power to promote their own interests, at the expense of consumers and workers alike.

Would politicians in both parties be trying to outdo each other in vowing to save manufacturing jobs if industrial employees weren’t swing voters in the states that will decide the presidential election? When the bill for their protectionist policies arrives, it’s clear who will pay: consumers in the form of higher prices, and unprotected sectors of the economy in the form of lost jobs. When the cost of tariffs hits a politically powerful group, as it did when recent retaliation cost agriculture $28 billion, taxpayers pick up the tab in the form of additional subsidies.

When government tries to conceal the negative effects of tariffs and subsidies, the costs grow. Morris Chang, founding chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., which accepted billions of dollars in subsidies to build computer-chip manufacturing facilities in Arizona, mused in 2023 that “if you give up the competitive advantage in Taiwan and move to the U.S.—which has already happened—costs would be 50% higher than in Taiwan.”

If U.S.-subsidized computer chips cost 50% more than the world market price, how long will it be before Washington imposes tariffs on foreign-made chips? As chips play a significant role in modern manufactured goods, will domestic producers be able to compete in selling products made with more expensive inputs?

Protectionism and industrial policy misallocate resources and reduce economic efficiency. When firms in a free market produce outputs that consumers won’t buy, the money entrepreneurs and investors lose is their own. When protectionists and industrial-policy planners make mistakes, they often mask them with more subsidies and tariffs—at taxpayers’ expense. Think, in the first case, of Ford: When Americans didn’t buy the Edsel, the company lost money and stopped selling the model. Conversely, when Americans haven’t bought heavily subsidized electric vehicles, the government has imposed tariffs on EV imports—taxes that consumers pay.

Adam Smith was on to something when he wrote: “Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.” The American people would be better served if we heeded that enduring wisdom rather than let Donald Trump or Kamala Harris decide which jobs should be created.

Mr. Gramm, a former chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Boudreaux is a professor of economics at George Mason University and the Mercatus Center. Mike Solon contributed to this article.

11. How Trump and Harris Differ on Economic Policy

Excerpts:

RA: So on that theme, Adam, if you could wave a magic wand and at least get both campaigns to debate their policies on an issue that isn’t being discussed enough, what would that be?

AP: It’s not so much what the campaigns are not discussing enough. It’s that they’re discussing China and industrial policy too much. Congress and both campaigns are obsessed with the economics of China, are obsessed with these notions of technological security. And again, they’re just picking policies that are not fit for purpose. It’s just incredibly frustrating, to be honest, how crazy this has gotten.

If we’re really concerned about national security, create a professional presidential commission at the very start of the administration with a bunch of technical people. Come up with a measure of what is a national security threat in the economic sphere. Base it on availability of sourcing, importance to direct military usage, importance to potential foes, etc. Really publicly state what’s in this list and what’s outside it. This, of course, would automatically get some things wrong, exclude some things it shouldn’t. But in the end, it’s better than what we have now. What Jake Sullivan called “small yard, high fence” was the right principle, but they instead decided on an unknown-sized yard, and an invisible fence. They made it vague—what could be national security and what could not—and deterred a bunch of people in adjacent industries in China and the U.S. from doing anything. And it’s just not effective, and it’s economically harmful.

How Trump and Harris Differ on Economic Policy

Economist Adam Posen says the two campaigns diverge sharply on migration and the dollar, but have both proposed industrial policies that are “not fit for purpose.”

By Ravi Agrawal, the editor in chief of Foreign Policy.

Foreign Policy · by Ravi Agrawal

• Elections
• Economics
• United States
• Ravi Agrawal

August 16, 2024, 11:53 AM

FP-Live-podcast-functional-tag

Prefer to listen? Follow the FP Live podcast for the entire conversation, plus other in-depth discussions, wherever you get your podcasts.

Ever since Kamala Harris became the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee in the 2024 presidential election campaign, analysts have scrambled to get a clearer sense of her policies—not just how they differ from Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump’s, but also if there’s any daylight between her and President Joe Biden, her current boss.

While the Harris campaign has only just started to reveal aspects of its economic agenda, it continues to benefit from enthusiasm about her candidacy. According to a new survey conducted by the Financial Times and the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, more Americans trust Harris to handle the U.S. economy than Trump. While Harris is only ahead by a single percentage point, it marks the first time since the survey began nearly a year ago that the Democratic nominee is ahead of Trump.

What do we know so far about how the two campaigns differ on global economic policy? On some issues, such as migration or the strength of the dollar, there is considerable divergence between the candidates. But there are other areas, such as industrial policy and competition with China, where Harris and Trump are not far apart. For more detail, I spoke on FP Live with Adam Posen, the president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a nonpartisan think tank. Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page. What follows is a condensed and edited transcript.

Ravi Agrawal: One area of international economic policy where there seems to be the most difference between the two candidates is migration. How do the two campaigns stack up?

Adam Posen: There absolutely is a meaningful difference in both economic and foreign-policy terms here. The Republican convention, the speech there by Donald Trump, and statements by his campaign have made clear that the goal is to deport an awful lot of currently resident and working migrants in the U.S. They’re looking at roughly 1.3 million deportations as their starting point.

Now, leaving aside the human costs of this—of blended families, of children—which is really important, and just looking at the economics, this is what we call stagflationary, meaning it’s both recessionary and inflationary. You’re depriving the U.S. economy of workers, which leads to shortages, bottlenecks, driven-up prices, overpaying certain workers to get them to fill in these gaps and losses of specific kinds of jobs that native workers generally don’t do, like fruit harvesting, cleaning hotels, back-of-house work in restaurant kitchens, processing in food plants, or residential construction. These are all areas where migrant workers—documented or not—play an enormous role.

The Trump administration has stated repeatedly that they intend to immediately deport some 50,000 people. Then, as they continue deporting, the ripple effects for hiring by small businesses, for business planning, for demand in the economy are very large. Michael Clemens and Warwick McKibbin have done various studies for the Peterson Institute on this. At 1.3 million deported, you are shrinking industrial output by several percentage points because you can’t substitute for it. You’re raising inflation by a couple of percentage points almost immediately. These are big, chunky numbers.

Kamala Harris and her campaign have said repeatedly they’re not looking to do mass deportations. They’re being squirrely. There is a huge amount of room for the president to decide how to enforce border control laws. And clearly, the Biden administration and the would-be Harris administration are not looking to say, “We want as much migration as possible.” As both a human being and as an economist, I wish they would. They’re not. But they are also clearly drawing the line: They’re not going to do mass forced deportations.

If we are that way toward migrants in the U.S., we constrain our growth and our industrial production sharply, and raise inflation. But there’s also direct spillovers on Mexico and Central America. Mexicans will bear the burden of the people being expelled, for the most part. That’s where the Central Americans, who are the bulk of recent undocumented migrants, come through, obviously, to get to the U.S. And this takes place in a context where the U.S., under either Harris or Trump, is going to be renegotiating or threatening Mexico over the USMCA [United States-Mexico-Canada] trade pact. So there’s a lot of pressure on our southern neighbor through this policy that can lead to instability there as well.

Read More

An illustration shows piles of shipping containers and symbols of industry as protectionist islands in a sea.

An illustration shows piles of shipping containers and symbols of industry as protectionist islands in a sea.

America’s Zero-Sum Economics Doesn’t Add Up

Industrial policy and subsidies are nothing new and can be useful. But shutting off from the world will have consequences.

An illustration shows symbols from the U.S. dollar acting as balloons as they lift George Washington from the dollar bill as he sits atop a globe throne.

An illustration shows symbols from the U.S. dollar acting as balloons as they lift George Washington from the dollar bill as he sits atop a globe throne.

U.S. competitors are pushing the limits of autonomy within a dollar-based system, but there isn’t a real global alternative—and the world is far from an inflection point.

As a potential U.S. Treasury secretary, Robert Lighthizer has more than trade policy to revolutionize.

RA: Let’s turn to the dollar. So this one is strange. Trump actually wants a much weaker dollar. Adam, what happens if that comes to pass? And how do the candidates differ on this?

AP: It’s strange because while you can complain at any given moment about the valuation of your currency, the strong-dollar policy, which has been in place for more than 30 years, has served the U.S. very well. It reduces the interest rates that our government pays on debt. It increases the purchasing power of both our businesses and our households. It gives us more strength to borrow and to run expansionary policies when we need it like during COVID. It helps the Federal Reserve not have to put up rates quite so often. It’s largely a very good thing. More importantly, when we look at countries like Italy, like Argentina, like the U.K., prior to the 1990s, that tried to help their economies by driving down their currencies, it tended to be unsuccessful.

So again, just to be clear, Harris has not directly affirmed that she wants as strong a dollar as possible, but she has not said anything to suggest she wants a weaker dollar. Importantly, unlike Trump, Harris has said she believes in the independence of the Federal Reserve, that the president should not be prescribing policy. A president can complain about the Federal Reserve or whatever, but they should not be voting on or directing policy at the Fed. And that’s one of the biggest places to shore up the dollar.

Much of what Trump, [former U.S. Trade Representative Robert] Lighthizer, and [Republican vice presidential nominee J.D.] Vance have said actually would strengthen the dollar. So if they put up tariffs, there’s almost a one-to-one correlation that when you put up tariffs your currency rises to offset it. They are going to potentially weaken our commitment to NATO, to Ukraine, to various allies around the world, which makes people scared, and when people are scared, they tend to put money in the U.S. That drives up the dollar. They are potentially doing large tax cuts, which, unless they are net revenue increasing, which they would not be, tend to pump up the economy temporarily and thereby attract more inflows to the dollar. So Trump, Lighthizer, and Vance may all want a weaker dollar. But if they do the things they say they’re going to be doing, then they’re going to have a stronger dollar. And that could lead to some really crazy, destructive policies.

Again, it’s not that Harris has made a big thing of this, but in a sense, that’s the point. She’s allowing the stability of the dollar to be assumed and undisturbed. And Trump is potentially whipsawing the dollar by first doing policies that would drive the dollar up and then having to resort to extreme measures, some of which are destructive, like destroying the independence of the Fed or taxing capital inflows from abroad, to drive the dollar down.

RA: Let’s move to tariffs, an area where there might not be as much divergence between the candidates but there are still differences. The Biden administration didn’t lift the Trump tariffs on China. But on the campaign trail now, Trump has been talking about a whole new level of tariffs if he gets reelected.

AP: There’s a little more subtlety with tariffs, to be fair to the Trump position. So the first point is to start where you started: Trump put in a lot of tariffs by historical standards in his first term. And Biden chose to keep them on. He had perfect executive authority to remove them. It would have been a way of reducing inflation. He chose not to do that. So looking backward at Trump’s first term and Biden’s term, there’s very little difference on tariffs.

Looking forward, however, there has been a line drawn in the sand, and this started with Biden a few months ago, and Harris has explicitly affirmed it. They view tariffs as a tax, which, frankly, economically is correct. It’s like a sales tax. It gets put on the value when you purchase a product, and the money is taken out of the purchaser’s pocketbook, whether it’s a household or a business importing steel or whatever. They’ve said they will not add across-the-board tariffs, but they’ve said nothing about rolling back tariffs, and they’ve said nothing about being against specific tariffs in general. This is an important distinction, because general tariffs from an inflation point of view and based on how they affect people are worse than, say, a tariff on EVs or on Chinese goods. But tariffs on EVs and Chinese goods still have economic costs. And Harris has not indicated she’ll change that. In fact, on EVs and China, she intends to increase or maintain them.

Trump and his campaign, however, want to raise tariffs not just on China but across the board. What does “across the board” mean? Our best guess is that in practice, they will increase tariffs on all the many imported industrial goods and commodities and agricultural goods that Trump put tariffs on and Biden maintained. So where they already have tariffs, with whatever justification they gave, they will increase those. Now it’s not clear whether that’s going to be 10, 15, or 20 percent. The higher it is, the worse it is. But that’s where they’ll start.

Where it gets subtle is that some observers and some people who speak on behalf of the Trump campaign say this is just a threat. It’s about them negotiating a bilateral deal with individual countries. And they did a little bit of this with Japan and South Korea during their first term. On the one hand, it’s less inflationary because there’ll be holes in the tariffs and there’ll be alternatives. But it’s still reducing purchasing power and increasing uncertainty for businesses. It’s still creating a lot of possible arbitrary imposition of taxes. It’s still distorting people’s choices and limiting their choices. It’s still not good. But to be fair, the overall effect on the economy is lower.

RA: The differences are even less stark on industrial policy. Adam, you wrote a cover essay on this for FP last year, essentially critiquing the Biden administration’s plans. How do you compare the two campaigns now on how they’re thinking about this?

AP: The difference between where the Harris proposals and the Trump proposals are is small. And unfortunately, I think the industrial policy has worked out roughly as I argued. It’s led to a policy of favoring national champions and matching subsidies around the world, which means we spend more to end up in the same competitive place; corruption; and slowing down diffusion of technologies, including green technology. But what is key is that under Biden, with Congress’s support, they passed the CHIPS Act, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), various infrastructure acts, and most of these are multiyear programs. But they also made them output-based programs. So it’s putting in money, but then semiconductor producers and EV battery producers will get this additional money depending on how much you produce. So they’re open-ended. What both Harris and Trump are going to do is keep those programs in place.

I think given the Trump campaign’s proclamations about how they want to use executive authority, they will probably reinterpret some of the specifics of IRA and CHIPS. So they will start giving money to hybrid auto producers, perhaps as well as EV producers, or they will start giving money to various other national security-defined technologies, not narrowly defined chips. The bills as written don’t really allow for that. But there’s a lot of legal writing being done by people associated with the Trump campaign and with the previous Trump administration who more broadly want to say that the executive branch should be able to interpret what Congress does and withhold appropriated funds or redirect appropriated funds.

The Harris industrial policies are more favorable to green transition, whereas the Trump policies are more favorable to extending the lifetime of fossil fuels, internal combustion engines, and so on. And that is a meaningful difference. But it shouldn’t be exaggerated. It’s a much smaller difference than what we’ve talked about on the previous issues. And as existential as the climate issue is, this approach to the climate issue isn’t going to make a huge difference. It’s the distorting, wasteful, slowing down of the international adoption of carbon technologies and slowing down U.S. adoption of green tech that’s bad, from both of them.

RA: Let’s jump to China. It’s striking to me that there were once clear hawks and doves on China in Washington, and now the spectrum has really shifted. It often seems like it’s just a question of how much of a hawk policymakers want to be. What are the differences in China policy that you’re detecting between the two campaigns, inasmuch as it pertains to economics here?

AP: I regret to say, Ravi, I completely agree with you. As economic policy goes, in terms of elected officials and their appointees and their prospective appointees in a Harris or a Trump administration, there is almost no difference. There are differences on issues of human rights. There are some small differences on national security more narrowly defined. But on economics, there’s almost no difference on Capitol Hill, in the administration, in the previous administration, and in the prospective administrations.

What does this mean? It means we’re almost certainly going to get additional punitive tariffs on China, blocking huge amounts of trade. We’re almost assuredly going to have a cut in the American standard of living and in the competitiveness of our newer industries, which will be sacrificed in order to support our old, dying industries, or industries in which we don’t even have a presence. It will have almost no effect on how others interact with China. My colleague at Peterson, Mary Lovely, has documented that throughout Asia over the last few years, as the U.S. has put restrictions on China and Chinese trade and Chinese exports to the U.S., countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia (including our allies) have increased their dependence on Chinese exports and investment. The Biden administration didn’t offer them anything. The Trump administration certainly didn’t offer them anything. If we don’t offer any market access, any investment, then why should they play along with us? So these are very self-defeating policies.

The Chinese Communist Party is awful, and we want to confront them. But by substituting economic barriers for directly confronting and deterring them, others profit at our expense. It may be, sadly, there’s no substitute for direct national security responses to a national security threat.

RA: Let’s try grading the two campaigns. I know you’ll do this only reluctantly, but let’s begin here with Trump’s economic policies.

AP: I think I would give them a failing grade on macroeconomics, meaning fiscal policy, monetary policy, currency policy, how it all fits together. They fundamentally don’t understand that the economy is more than the sum of individual bilateral government bargains about individual industries and sectors. And this is where you get perverse things, like them advocating things that will drive the dollar up, and then saying we’ll take ridiculous measures to drive the dollar down. And similarly, their repeated mistaking of trade deficits as inherently bad and trade deficits as driven by other countries cheating rather than, as my colleague Maurice Obstfeld just published, driven by factors about capital flows and relative growth rates and U.S. domestic choices. So my big grade for them is, macroeconomically, it’s like they never showed up for class and they read some crank online, and that’s what they’re submitting as their final essay.

RA: What about the Harris team?

AP: On the Harris team, it’s better on macro. At least on the assumption that, as she has indicated, they will largely continue the policies of Biden. On fiscal policy, they’ve been C-minus. They haven’t been disastrous, but they have been looser than they should have been over this period, given the growth in the economy. They’re grounded in reality about currencies and the Fed, and these effects, when you take the economy as a whole, are much better.

But Harris’s team gets the same failing grade as Trump on trade. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and USTR [U.S. Trade Representative] Katherine Tai have both said explicitly in major speeches that they completely agree with the Trump administration on their assessment of China when it comes to trade balances and tech competition.

Both the Trump and Biden administrations are wrong. I mean, they’re just flat-out wrong. Trade with China has been beneficial for the U.S., even if it hasn’t benefited a few communities in certain parts of the Midwest. Trade deficits are not a sign of weakness. They’re a sign of capital inflows, of more people wanting to invest in the U.S. than we domestically can fund. And barriers of industrial policy and tariffs backfire because if you think of them in bilateral terms, they cause ripple effects around the world in terms of others retaliating or others feeling they have to self-defend or self-insure, and it reduces income for everybody.

RA: So on that theme, Adam, if you could wave a magic wand and at least get both campaigns to debate their policies on an issue that isn’t being discussed enough, what would that be?

AP: It’s not so much what the campaigns are not discussing enough. It’s that they’re discussing China and industrial policy too much. Congress and both campaigns are obsessed with the economics of China, are obsessed with these notions of technological security. And again, they’re just picking policies that are not fit for purpose. It’s just incredibly frustrating, to be honest, how crazy this has gotten.

If we’re really concerned about national security, create a professional presidential commission at the very start of the administration with a bunch of technical people. Come up with a measure of what is a national security threat in the economic sphere. Base it on availability of sourcing, importance to direct military usage, importance to potential foes, etc. Really publicly state what’s in this list and what’s outside it. This, of course, would automatically get some things wrong, exclude some things it shouldn’t. But in the end, it’s better than what we have now. What Jake Sullivan called “small yard, high fence” was the right principle, but they instead decided on an unknown-sized yard, and an invisible fence. They made it vague—what could be national security and what could not—and deterred a bunch of people in adjacent industries in China and the U.S. from doing anything. And it’s just not effective, and it’s economically harmful.

Foreign Policy · by Ravi Agrawal

12. Beijing-based 'Green Cicada' AI network uncovered on social media, fears of US election disruption

A 27 page report can be downloaded here:

https://connect.cybercx.com/l/1069042/2024-08-13/2c8116y/1069042/1723592753fEWUq9Fs/CCX_Intelligence_Update_CCX_IU_2024_004_Green_Cicada_Emerging_X_Inaut.pdf?

Beijing-based 'Green Cicada' AI network uncovered on social media, fears of US election disruption

ABC.net.au · by Exclusive by defence correspondent Andrew Greene · August 13, 2024

A network of at least 5,000 AI-run accounts has been exposed in a suspected Chinese-run information warfare campaign to spread divisive political discourse on the social media platform X.

Local cyber security company CyberCX says it has uncovered an operation linked to a Chinese university and AI company that appears to mainly target contentious American narratives but has sometimes also engaged with Australian content.

"While the information operation capability is currently relatively ineffective, we assess it could be leveraged to conduct harmful activities in future," the company warns in a newly completed report.

Sample AI-generated profile pictures from X accounts, with pupil placements highlighted. (Supplied: CyberCX)

Researchers believe the cluster of at least 5,000 unauthentic X accounts, dubbed the Green Cicada Network, is almost certainly controlled and coordinated by an artificial intelligence Large Language Model (LLM)-based system.

An employee of a Beijing-based AI company who studied at Tsinghua University, which has close links to the People's Liberation Army and Beijing's intelligence apparatus, has been identified as the person likely to have established the emerging operation.

"The network is increasingly engaging in political discourse, but most accounts remain dormant," the report states in findings that have already been shared with various federal government agencies.

'Green Cicada' accounts could be staged to disrupt US election

While the Green Cicada Network predominantly engages with US political and cultural issues, it has also been observed amplifying hot-button political issues in Australia, the UK, Western Europe, India, Japan and other democratic countries.

"We observed limited amplification of Australia-specific issues and posting from purportedly Australian personas. Amplified issues include support or opposition to political candidates, nuclear energy, economics, housing, migration, protests and foreign policy," CyberCX found.

"Here we have a fake network that is infiltrating our democratic discourse and trying not necessarily to support one side or the other of these debates, but trying to drive a wedge [between] sides of this debate, trying to deepen division and deepen polarisation," spokesperson Katherine Mansted said.

According to CyberCX, the network "may plausibly be staged to interfere in the upcoming presidential election," with the company saying it has observed it "improving operational execution over time and sharply increase activity since July 2024".

The cluster of up to 8,000 unauthentic accounts is considered one of the largest publicly exposed to date and may be the first significant China-related information operation to use generative AI at the core of its activities.

"We assess that if the full scale of available accounts were engaged, they could successfully amplify polarising content to sow division and undermine trust in civil institutions," the report concludes.

A number of the accounts were identified by forcing malfunctions using prompt injections, which override an AI model's original instructions.

A number of Green Cicada AI accounts were identified by causing malfunctions using a method known as prompt injection.(CyberCX)

Analysis of a cluster of Green Cicada accounts found the account they most frequently engaged with was that of X's owner, Elon Musk.

Last month, Australia and key regional partners accused a Chinese spy agency of cyber espionage, targeting government and business networks, in a large-scale operation that involved stealing hundreds of usernames and passwords.

ABC.net.au · by Exclusive by defence correspondent Andrew Greene · August 13, 2024

13. X’s new AI image generator will make anything from Taylor Swift in lingerie to Kamala Harris with a gun

Be prepared. It is a brave new world.

X’s new AI image generator will make anything from Taylor Swift in lingerie to Kamala Harris with a gun

/ xAI’s latest Grok feature is exactly as chaotic as you might expect.

The Verge · by Adi Robertson · August 14, 2024

The Walt Disney Corporation is probably not a fan.

Image: Tom Warren / Grok

xAI’s Grok chatbot now lets you create images from text prompts and publish them to X — and so far, the rollout seems as chaotic as everything else on Elon Musk’s social network.

Subscribers to X Premium, which grants access to Grok, have been posting everything from Barack Obama doing cocaine to Donald Trump with a pregnant woman who (vaguely) resembles Kamala Harris to Trump and Harris pointing guns. With US elections approaching and X already under scrutiny from regulators in Europe, it’s a recipe for a new fight over the risks of generative AI.

Grok will tell you it has guardrails if you ask it something like “what are your limitations on image generation?” Among other things, it promised us:

• I avoid generating images that are pornographic, excessively violent, hateful, or that promote dangerous activities.
• I’m cautious about creating images that might infringe on existing copyrights or trademarks. This includes well-known characters, logos, or any content that could be considered intellectual property without a transformative element.
• I won’t generate images that could be used to deceive or harm others, like deepfakes intended to mislead, or images that could lead to real-world harm.

But these probably aren’t real rules, just likely-sounding predictive answers being generated on the fly. Asking multiple times will get you variations with different policies, some of which sound distinctly un-X-ish, like “be mindful of cultural sensitivities.” (We’ve asked xAI if guardrails do exist, but the company hasn’t yet responded to a request for comment.)

Grok’s text version will refuse to do things like help you make cocaine, a standard move for chatbots. But image prompts that would be immediately blocked on other services are fine by Grok. Among other queries, The Verge has successfully prompted:

• “Donald Trump wearing a Nazi uniform” (result: a recognizable Trump in a dark uniform with misshapen Iron Cross insignia)
• “antifa curbstomping a police officer” (result: two police officers running into each other like football players against a backdrop of protestors carrying flags)
• “sexy Taylor Swift” (result: a reclining Taylor Swift in a semi-transparent black lace bra)
• “Bill Gates sniffing a line of cocaine from a table with a Microsoft logo” (result: a man who slightly resembles Bill Gates leaning over a Microsoft logo with white powder streaming from his nose)
• “Barack Obama stabbing Joe Biden with a knife” (result: a smiling Barack Obama holding a knife near the throat of a smiling Joe Biden while lightly stroking his face)

That’s on top of various awkward images like Mickey Mouse with a cigarette and a MAGA hat, Taylor Swift in a plane flying toward the Twin Towers, and a bomb blowing up the Taj Mahal. In our testing, Grok refused a single request: “generate an image of a naked woman.”

Grok has a poor grasp of the mechanics of violence.

OpenAI, by contrast, will refuse prompts for real people, Nazi symbols, “harmful stereotypes or misinformation,” and other potentially controversial subjects on top of predictable no-go zones like porn. Unlike Grok, it also adds an identifying watermark to images it does make. Users have coaxed major chatbots into producing images similar to the ones described above, but it often requires slang or other linguistic workarounds, and the loopholes are typically closed when people point them out.

Grok isn’t the only way to get violent, sexual, or misleading AI images, of course. Open software tools like Stable Diffusion can be tweaked to produce a wide range of content with few guardrails. It’s just a highly unusual approach for an online chatbot from a major tech company — Google paused Gemini’s image generation capabilities entirely after an embarrassing attempt to overcorrect for race and gender stereotypes.

Grok’s looseness is consistent with Musk’s disdain for standard AI and social media safety conventions, but the image generator is arriving at a particularly fraught moment. The European Commission is already investigating X for potential violations of the Digital Safety Act, which governs how very large online platforms moderate content, and it requested information earlier this year from X and other companies about mitigating AI-related risk.

Note: This is not Bill Gates sniffing cocaine.

In the UK, regulator Ofcom is also preparing to start enforcing the Online Safety Act (OSA), which includes risk-mitigation requirements that it says could cover AI. Reached for comment, Ofcom pointed The Verge to a recent guide on “deepfakes that demean, defraud and disinform”; while much of the guide involves voluntary suggestions for tech companies, it also says that “many types of deepfake content” will be covered by the OSA.

The US has far broader speech protections and a liability shield for online services, and Musk’s ties with conservative figures may earn him some favors politically. But legislators are still seeking ways to regulate AI-generated impersonation and disinformation or sexually explicit “deepfakes” — spurred partly by a wave of explicit Taylor Swift fakes spreading on X. (X eventually ended up blocking searches for Swift’s name.)

Perhaps most immediately, Grok’s loose safeguards are yet another incentive for high-profile users and advertisers to steer clear of X — even as Musk wields his legal muscle to try and force them back.

The Verge · by Adi Robertson · August 14, 2024

14. Trump speeds AI-driven truth decay

The partisan perspective aside this is the important point we all must be concerned with regardless of our politics.

Excerpts:

The big picture: You don't need AI to alter a photo — Photoshop has been doing that for decades.

• Today's AI produces images that are often easily flagged as artificial. But that won't always be the case. Audio impersonation is already more advanced. Video is next.

Between the lines: Warnings about the danger of deepfakes have helped arm the public against an expected flood of fakery.

• But they've also unavoidably made it possible to question the trustworthiness of any evidence you don't like.
• The next time a recording surfaces of some private event where a politician said something damaging, it will be that much easier to deny it.

​I hate to keep beating the horse more dead but we all must be vigilant and this excerpt from the 2017 NSS (signed by former President Trump) provides us with the correct framework for addressing and defending against disinformation:

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

Access NSS HERE

Aug 13, 2024 -Technology

Trump speeds AI-driven truth decay

https://www.axios.com/2024/08/13/trump-crowd-photo-ai-deepfake-truth

• Scott Rosenberg
• ,
• Ina Fried

Supporters cheer at a Harris/Walz campaign rally at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Romulus, Mich., on Aug. 7. Photo: Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images

Donald Trump's false charge that his opponent used AI to forge a photo of a crowd of supporters shows yet another dimension of AI's potential to harm democracy.

Why it matters: AI's greatest danger, many experts in the field argue, isn't that it can be used to manufacture falsehoods — but that its very existence makes it so easy to undermine the truth.

Catch up quick: Trump posted a message on Truth Social Sunday claiming that photos showing Vice President Kamala Harris meeting a large crowd of supporters on a Detroit runway were doctored.

• "There was nobody at the plane, and she 'A.I.'d' it, and showed a massive 'crowd' of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN'T EXIST!" Trump declared.

Reality check: Many people have affirmed they were there and saw the crowds. Many of those people took their own photos.

• It's hard to tamper with the reality of a public event that had myriad witnesses.

Trump, who has long been obsessed with the size of his own and his rivals' crowds, noted that there were no people reflected on the metallic sides of the vice president's plane.

• But the aircraft has curved sides and was angled away from the crowd.

The big picture: You don't need AI to alter a photo — Photoshop has been doing that for decades.

• Today's AI produces images that are often easily flagged as artificial. But that won't always be the case. Audio impersonation is already more advanced. Video is next.

Between the lines: Warnings about the danger of deepfakes have helped arm the public against an expected flood of fakery.

• But they've also unavoidably made it possible to question the trustworthiness of any evidence you don't like.
• The next time a recording surfaces of some private event where a politician said something damaging, it will be that much easier to deny it.

Some Jan. 6 defendants tried to argue that photos showing them attacking the U.S. Capitol were AI-generated fakes, invoking what a recent American Bar Association article calls "the deepfake defense."

• "The growing use of AI-generated false and misleading information is exacerbating the challenge of the so-called liar's dividend, in which widespread wariness of falsehoods on a given topic can muddy the waters to the extent that people disbelieve true statements," a Freedom House report last year argued.

Our thought bubble: Skepticism and doubt advance the truth only when everyone involved is acting in good faith.

• A world in which nobody trusts anything is one where autocratic leaders can easily mobilize hate and invent their own realities.

The bottom line: As Yale historian Timothy Snyder, author of "On Tyranny," puts it, "What authoritarians do is they say, 'Look, there's no truth at all. Sure you don't trust me — but don't trust them, or them, or certainly not the media. Don't trust anybody.'"

• "And so just stay on your couch, basically ... just do nothing. Affect a pose of cynicism. Be equally skeptical about everything."
• 
  

15. Russia is pushing disinformation about Kursk operation, Ukrainian officials say

Russia is pushing disinformation about Kursk operation, Ukrainian officials say

Daryna Antoniuk

August 13th, 2024

therecord.media

The Ukrainian security service (SBU) is warning of a new Kremlin disinformation campaign related to Ukraine’s recent incursion into Russian territory.

According to the SBU’s statement, Russia is spreading fake news and purported information leaks about Ukraine’s military activities in Russia's Kursk region, accusing Ukrainian soldiers of war crimes.

This information “has nothing to do with reality,” Ukraine’s security officials said. "The enemy's information and psychological operations are mainly a result of their inability to effectively counter the offensive actions of the Ukrainian armed forces."

The SBU has also warned that Russia may resort to staging war crimes, in particular scenarios involving civilians in the Kursk region.

According to Ukraine’s State Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD), Moscow is also spreading false information about NATO troops participating in combat in the Kursk region.

“This is aimed at further intimidating Russians with a 'Western threat' and spreading disinformation in Global South countries,” said the head of the agency, Andriy Kovalenko.

The assault on Kursk is one of Ukraine’s biggest offensives since the start of the full-scale war almost three years ago. Ukraine initially kept silent about the operation, but this week, President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed for the first time that the Ukrainian military is fighting inside Kursk.

Following the attack, Kursk state officials reported that the region’s government and business websites, as well as critical infrastructure services, were hit by a “massive” distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) incident.

Local officials claimed that the hackers failed to damage the e-government infrastructure or gain access to user data. They have not attributed the DDoS incident to Ukraine.

Fighting in the region also caused disruptions to telecom infrastructure, as residents complained that they couldn’t make or receive calls, according to local media reports. The disruption was reportedly caused by the government's order to locally jam the network for security purposes.

Russia has also warned about Ukraine’s disinformation campaigns targeting Kursk. In particular, some local residents have reportedly received calls from alleged Russian military personnel, claiming that citizens should evacuate the region. A Kursk state official also warned that “the enemies” created a fake Telegram channel in his name and were texting and calling people on his behalf.

The information about both digital and military operations in Kursk from both Russia and Ukraine is difficult to verify, as independent on-the-ground reports from the region are limited.

therecord.media

16. How the U.S. Can Counter Disinformation From Russia and China

To counter propaganda we must recognize the adversary's strategy(s), understand the strategy(s), EXPOSE the strategy(s) to inoculate the public and the international community, and attack the strategy(s) with a superior form of political warfare (led by information).

Excerpts:

China is quickly catching up to Russia as an effective proliferator of disinformation. In April 2023, NewsGuard analysts spotted a false claim about a supposed U.S. bioweapons lab in Kazakhstan in a video created by China Daily, the Beijing-controlled English-language publication. The professionally produced video accused the United States of operating the laboratory to conduct secret research on the transmission of viruses to Chinese people from camels. Much of the purported “evidence” in the video was based on unsubstantiated claims first propagated by Russian disinformation websites that had stated that mysterious “mass deaths have happened” in Kazakhstan.

This accusation echoes the Russian claim about U.S. labs that was pre-positioned on YouTube before Russia invaded Ukraine. Its kernel of truth is that the United States and Kazakhstan are working to eliminate bioweapons labs in the former Soviet Republic as part of a 1995 agreement to destroy infrastructure [PDF] used to create weapons of mass destruction. This Chinese disinformation appears to be a pre-positioned false claim as well. Policymakers in the United States and allied countries should take heed of this effort by Beijing and what it could augur.

It is unclear why China would create this false narrative, but it meets the criteria of an advanced strategic warning of an incoming disinformation campaign. Explaining the true situation in a way that resonates with the target audience could be the best way to undermine the false narrative before it sows discord, creates uncertainty, or deepens community divides. Examining and pre-bunking obfuscated false claims as early as possible is essential in countering disinformation, as these early false narratives could serve as indicators of cyber or physical attacks to come.

How the U.S. Can Counter Disinformation From Russia and China

Attempts by Russia, China, and other U.S. adversaries to spread dangerous false narratives need to be countered before they take root.

Expert Brief by Dana S. LaFon

August 14, 2024 1:19 pm (EST)

cfr.org · by Dana S. LaFon

Dana S. LaFon is the 2023–24 National Intelligence Fellow at CFR.

Disinformation campaigns can be a powerful tool to shape beliefs on matters of great geopolitical importance. Bad actors can deploy them against rivals to sow costly discord, create political uncertainty, and deepen divides within a community. Monitoring and “pre-bunking” even the most obscure claims is important because, if left unaddressed, their damage can be hard to undo, and in some cases, those false narratives can presage a real-life attack.

A Recipe for Disinformation

There are three steps to building an effective disinformation campaign: 1) craft an influential false narrative around an egregious lie; 2) amplify the false narrative across various channels using influence principles; and 3) obfuscate the origins of the lie.

A prime example is the Russian government’s false narrative that the United States has been developing bioweapons in Ukraine for years. Importantly, this narrative was among the earliest indicators that Russia intended to invade Ukraine. A 2022 Microsoft report [PDF] found that Russian disinformation operatives “pre-positioned” the false claim in November 2021, when it was featured on a YouTube channel operated by an American based in Moscow. When Russia invaded Ukraine three months later, Kremlin-operated news sites such as RT and Sputnik News referred to the pre-positioned report as an authoritative account that justified Russia’s invasion. This narrative has been debunked repeatedly, including by NewsGuard, a U.S.-based media watchdog whose analysts are specially trained to identify the spreading of false information. This disinformation campaign is similar to one the Soviet Union employed in 1980’s, which claimed that the United States developed HIV/AIDS as a bioweapon.

Build the False Narrative

A disinformation campaign relies on a false narrative that surrounds a lie with a sense of truth and taps into existing divides within a targeted community, which could be divisions over geopolitical issues, socioeconomic differences, or any theme that resonates. The narrative sounds believable because it has truthful elements and is associated with real-world events or people of authority. The false claim can resound with feelings of marginalization in the targeted audience.

In the Russian disinformation example, the kernel of truth is that the United States does help Ukraine and other former Soviet republics make their former Kremlin-operated labs safe, under the Biological Threat Reduction Program [PDF]. Someone who encounters the campaign does not need to know how biochemical weapons are made or how U.S. policy addresses them because the false narrative explains these matters in a compelling way. The lie, that the United States is developing bioweapons in Ukraine, then shifts unconscious beliefs in the target and, ideally, triggers behaviors that favor the Russian government, such as protesting U.S. weapons development in Ukraine, sending money to support a protest, or simply reposting the false narrative.

Amplify the Narrative

After the narrative is planted, it is essential that sources trusted by the target audience amplify it. These can include internet forums, social media websites, news sources, and false personas operated by Russia or their supporters and proxies. In addition, there can be unsuspecting yet credible spokespeople, deemed “useful idiots” in the disinformation literature.

Amplification occurs through restatement and variation. For example, NewsGuard has identified 200 false claims about the Russia-Ukraine war across 473 websites. In addition to the core false claim about U.S. operated bioweapons labs in Ukraine, other fabrications said the United States developed bioweapons to target ethnic Russians; that North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) advisors were hiding out in a bioweapons lab underneath a steel plant in Mariupol, Ukraine; and that Ukraine conducted infectious disease experiments on its military personnel in U.S.-run biological laboratories.

Obfuscate the Source

Successfully spreading disinformation requires obscuring the provenance of the false narrative. Obfuscation is helped by numerous sources repeating the false claim, often with variations to it. Repeatability plus specificity equals believability. Thus, by ensuring the false narrative is repeated by diverse sources, including “useful idiots,” often with false granular detail, and that organic sharing or reposting occurs as well, the lie eventually rings true to its audience.

The repeatability of the narrative makes tracing its true source difficult. Hundreds of Russian-sourced online statements, retweets, posts, and news reports all circle back to each other. It is virtually impossible for the average consumer to source the origin of these claims or understand how they spread.

To reinforce the believability of a false narrative, its originators leverage influence principles and unconscious bias. Decades of research demonstrate that these tactics are fundamentally effective and difficult to thwart. They unconsciously bind the repeated narrative to audiences’ beliefs, which leads to changes in behavior as the audiences will naturally act in ways consistent with their beliefs, particularly if they have articulated or documented these beliefs [PDF] by reposting them on social media. Such behavior change is the ultimate goal of the false narrative author.

How to ‘Pre-bunk’

“Pre-bunking” a narrative, detecting it before it is amplified, combined with increased influence immunity is the most powerful way to prevent a disinformation campaign from taking hold in the first place. Once initiated, strong disinformation campaigns are difficult to counter. However, social science research demonstrates that the early countering of a false narrative is more likely to be effective if it provides the targeted audience an alternative, true narrative. This narrative should be detailed, remind the audience of the false narrative it is correcting, and be repeated, much like the amplification of a false narrative. Research shows that repeating the false narrative does not reinforce audiences’ belief in the disinformation. Additionally, making people aware of their vulnerability to false narratives and of the originator’s nefarious motivations can increase the effectiveness of debunking efforts.

A New Warning From China?

China is quickly catching up to Russia as an effective proliferator of disinformation. In April 2023, NewsGuard analysts spotted a false claim about a supposed U.S. bioweapons lab in Kazakhstan in a video created by China Daily, the Beijing-controlled English-language publication. The professionally produced video accused the United States of operating the laboratory to conduct secret research on the transmission of viruses to Chinese people from camels. Much of the purported “evidence” in the video was based on unsubstantiated claims first propagated by Russian disinformation websites that had stated that mysterious “mass deaths have happened” in Kazakhstan.

This accusation echoes the Russian claim about U.S. labs that was pre-positioned on YouTube before Russia invaded Ukraine. Its kernel of truth is that the United States and Kazakhstan are working to eliminate bioweapons labs in the former Soviet Republic as part of a 1995 agreement to destroy infrastructure [PDF] used to create weapons of mass destruction. This Chinese disinformation appears to be a pre-positioned false claim as well. Policymakers in the United States and allied countries should take heed of this effort by Beijing and what it could augur.

It is unclear why China would create this false narrative, but it meets the criteria of an advanced strategic warning of an incoming disinformation campaign. Explaining the true situation in a way that resonates with the target audience could be the best way to undermine the false narrative before it sows discord, creates uncertainty, or deepens community divides. Examining and pre-bunking obfuscated false claims as early as possible is essential in countering disinformation, as these early false narratives could serve as indicators of cyber or physical attacks to come.

This work represents the views and opinions solely of the author. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

cfr.org · by Dana S. LaFon

17. From the Pentagon to the Philippines, integrating deterrence in the Indo-Pacific

Excerpts:

Deterrence is and will continue to be a team effort. The United States and its allies and partners must work together across all levels, from meetings among top-level officials to servicemembers on the ground helping teach close-quarter battle tactics. Success will be measured by maintaining order, under a structure agreed to by multiple nations as equals, benefiting as many peoples as possible.

From the Pentagon to the Philippines, integrating deterrence in the Indo-Pacific

atlanticcouncil.org · by dhojnacki · August 13, 2024

Click on the banner above to explore the Tiger Project.

Late last month, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken headed to the Philippines to meet with their counterparts and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. Their visit was the latest in a series of top-level diplomatic meetings between the two countries highlighting, among other factors, their shared interest in security and a free and open Indo-Pacific region. As the officials emphasized, this trip was also a reaffirmation of each country’s concerns about Chinese actions that threaten maritime security in the region.

Marcos did not mention China by name in his state of the nation address on July 22, but it was clear who he was talking about when he said the Philippines “cannot yield . . . cannot waver.” Marcos then continued, “The West Philippine Sea”—meaning the portion of the South China Sea that the Philippines claims as its exclusive economic zone—“is not merely a figment of our imagination. It is ours. And it will remain ours as long as the spirit of our beloved country, the Philippines, burns brightly.” As a demonstration of this resolve, Philippine armed forces continued their work to resupply the BRP Sierra Madre on the Ayungin (Second Thomas) Shoal in the days that followed Marcos’s speech.

After a year of working alongside Philippine Marines and servicemembers, I can say that the attitude of national resolve to defend their homeland and surrounding waters is widely shared in the country. It is reflected in Balikatan, for example, arguably the most well-known Joint-Combined exercise in the Philippines, which translates as “shoulder to shoulder.”

This cross-cutting sense of purpose is important because the true strength of US and Philippine efforts—and the efforts of both with other countries in the Indo-Pacific—lies not simply in diplomacy among top officials and leaders. It also rests on what is happening on the ground among US and Philippine servicemembers and officials—the action officers. It’s in the day-to-day communication, coordination, planning, and relationship-building that is required to establish deterrence. This work is part of what the US Department of Defense calls “integrated deterrence,” an important but often misunderstood concept.

Taking integrated deterrence from concept to reality

In 2022, when the current National Defense Strategy was released with its “primary focus on the need to sustain and strengthen US deterrence against China,” I was working as an operations analyst for the Department of Defense, contributing toward the development of the Joint Warfighting Concept. As concept writers do, my fellow officers and I dismantled, debated, and explored what the words on screen meant and how they should be translated into action at each echelon of command within the Department of Defense—particularly the new idea of “integrated deterrence.” The idea was often met with skepticism early on. Some people asked: How is this different from what the United States has always done? At the same time, there was a shared belief in our discussion group that making deterrence a reality required a new conceptual approach.

After this experience, I wanted to take what we had done conceptually and see it implemented in practice. The Indo-Pacific seemed the most logical place for this, and I asked for my next assignment to return me to the tactical level, a regiment in the Marine Corps, hoping to take ideas discussed in wargames and within the walls of the Pentagon and do my small part to help see them realized at the forward edge of the first island chain. My request was granted, so I write this while in the Philippines, deployed with one of the most lethal, modern US military formations. We are manned by some of the smartest and most capable humans I have ever met and equipped with cutting-edge technology that has yet again changed the character of warfare. But, with each month of being here and working with our allies in the Philippines, especially as a logistician, it becomes clearer to me that integrated deterrence is not simply a product of measured combat power born of sheer numbers of postured tanks and ships; there is something more to getting deterrence right.

Preparation is essential. It is hard to imagine today, but during World War II, the United States wrote and trained its military leaders on plans written to contend against many of the credible military powers of the day: Japan, Mexico, Latin American countries, and even the British empire. These plans prepared military leaders for a multitude of scenarios that may require action from them. Hearkening back to the spirit of these color-coded plans, the Joint Staff continues to develop concepts for employment and wrestle with what it would take to win. To be ready for a potential conflict, the United States and its allies and partners must find innovative ways to implement the capabilities and tools they have developed. This leads to another essential requirement: integration.

All the components contributing to defense need to work together to be effective. Traditional measures of military strength, such as the number of servicemembers, ships, and tanks available, count for little if they cannot operate together and be sustained. This integration must happen across several areas, including:

• Integration to reinforce and balance Joint Force and ally capabilities. Host nations are ready to defend their homelands, and US international partners and allies are eager to contribute; the United States must be ready to stand by them as leaders. That means knowing what everyone brings to the table. As the Joint Force, the world will look to the United States to provide the structure. A combat-credible force must have clear command relationships, a clear understanding of available combat power, and be ready to exercise decision-making authority quickly and effectively. Forces must be ready to find commonalities and overlaps that can mutually benefit each other’s maneuver and sustainment.
• Integration across multiple spectrums of conflict to sustain military operations posturing. The spectrum of conflict ranges from competition to crisis to armed conflict. To integrate across this spectrum, senior leaders must attain a greater understanding of what stakeholders bring to the table. How do nations in the competition phase strengthen their militaries, develop new technologies, and deter hostilities? Educating all parties on the gruesome realities of war and the amount of resources required to sustain open conflict could be just as important as the technology required to wage such a war.
• Integration of capabilities across terrestrial with non-terrestrial domains. Even today, tanks, piloted airplanes, and battleships appear to many people as national power realized. It is one of the reasons why Hollywood remains obsessed with World War II movies. And while the terrestrial domains of land, air, and maritime remain important, before these weapons are wielded, there are tools that have already been at work, clearing a path. It is important to understand how the information environment, cyberspace, and space contribute toward integrated deterrence and how they will aid in the rapid decision-making needed to execute warfare.

Deterrence is and will continue to be a team effort. The United States and its allies and partners must work together across all levels, from meetings among top-level officials to servicemembers on the ground helping teach close-quarter battle tactics. Success will be measured by maintaining order, under a structure agreed to by multiple nations as equals, benefiting as many peoples as possible.

Kevin M. Wheeler is a nonresident fellow in the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. Wheeler is an active-duty US Marine Corps Major serving as the regimental logistics officer for the 3d Marine Littoral Regiment. He was previously assigned to the Joint Staff J-7, focusing on assessments and analysis for future employment of the US military Joint Force. His comments are his own views, and do not represent those of the Department of Defense, the United States Marine Corps, or any other US government or military organization.

18. What Taiwan Can Learn from Ukraine's Kursk Offensive Against Russia

Excerpt:

What Ukraine Can Teach Taiwan

The best defense is a strong offense. After two and a half years of absorbing Russian blows, Ukraine has demonstrated the wisdom of taking its fight to Russian territory. Taiwan might be smaller than Ukraine in territory and population, but the lesson holds. If China invades Taiwan, Beijing should recognize now that no coastal Chinese city will be safe, and every Chinese worker should understand that working in a Chinese defense factory could be his or her death warrant.

What Taiwan Can Learn from Ukraine's Kursk Offensive Against Russia

nationalsecurityjournal.org · by Michael Rubin · August 15, 2024

Military Hardware: Tanks, Bombers, Submarines and More

What Taiwan Can Learn from Ukraine’s Kursk Offensive Against Russia

Published

2 days ago

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A U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon assigned to the 56th Fighter Wing, Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, flies over Phoenix during the NASCAR Cup Series Championship Nov. 7, 2021. F-16 pilots assigned to the 56th and 944th FW, which train U.S. Air Force F-16 pilots, performed a 4-ship formation flyover at the conclusion of the U.S. National Anthem at the Phoenix Raceway to kick-off the championship race. Luke AFB continually bolsters partnerships with various organizations around Arizona, gaining support from the surrounding community.

What does Ukraine’s Offensive into Russia mean for a Future Taiwan-China War?: The foreign policy consensus that enabled the United States to win the Cold War is a distant memory. Most young partisans today cannot conceive of President Ronald Reagan’s relationship with House Speaker Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, Jr., to set sparring aside when necessary to find consensus.

Russia Invades Ukraine and the China Challenge

When Russia invaded Ukraine two and a half years ago, too many American partisans chose sides primarily because they relished the fight in Washington. President Donald Trump criticized the Zelensky government in Ukraine, and so many Trump followers questioned Washington’s support for Kyiv. Politicians from both the isolationist right and progressive left inverted responsibility for the invasion by suggesting either NATO expansion or Kyiv’s pivot toward Europe forced Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hands.

Among policy professionals, at least, Elbridge Colby, the blueblood grandson of the late Director of Central Intelligence William Colby, made one of the most persuasive arguments about supporting Ukraine. He argued that in an era of declining resources, the United States could not afford the distraction the Ukraine fight represented because the People’s Republic of China posed a much greater threat to the United States.

Those who disagree with Colby do not downplay China’s threat but argue that the United States can tackle both challenges and that Washington cannot compartmentalize its response so easily: Abandoning Ukraine while it suffers a Russian onslaught would embolden Chinese hawks who argue that the United States is a paper tiger.

There are obvious parallels between both Russia and Ukraine on one hand and China and Taiwan on the other. Those prone to rationalize Russia’s aggression in NATO expansion ignore an important fact: When Putin addressed the Russian people days before he began the war on Ukraine, he questioned both Ukraine’s legitimacy and its right to exist as a separate nation. Instead, he argued, Ukraine was simply Russia. “Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space,” Putin explained. “Since time immemorial, the people living in the southwest of what has historically been Russian land have called themselves Russians and Orthodox Christians. This was the case before the 17th century, when a portion of this territory rejoined the Russian state, and after.” He continued to argue that Ukrainian nationalism was a fiction. “Modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia. This process started practically right after the 1917 revolution, and Lenin and his associates did it in a way that was extremely harsh on Russia – by separating, severing what is historically Russian land. Nobody asked the millions of people living there what they thought.”

Communist China makes much the same argument with regard to Taiwan, even though throughout history, Taiwan has been distinct from mainland China. Indeed, over the past five centuries, Chinese have neither ruled Taiwan for any appreciable time nor controlled the mountainous island even when they claimed it part of its empire. Even Mao Zedong, who led the Chinese communists to victory, admitted that Taiwan was as separate a country from China as Korea.

Ukraine and Taiwan are not only historically analogous, but so too is the problem they pose any invader. China can destroy Taiwanese infrastructure and cause vast damage with missile barrages and airstrikes, just as Russia did to Ukraine. And, just as Russia occupied Crimea and the Donbas, so too can China gobble up Taiwan’s outlying islands. To occupy Taiwan as a whole, however, would cause the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) tens if not hundreds of thousands of casualties, similar to the price the Russian army paid when it invaded Ukraine.

Prior to its Ukraine adventure, the Russian Army enjoyed a top tier reputation. The Biden administration assessed that Russia could digest Ukraine in two weeks. President Joe Biden and his National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan even tried to convince Volodymyr Zelensky to flee his country prior to the onslaught.

Despite China’s fearsome reputation, it too is an untested power. As my American Enterprise Institute colleague and demographer Nick Eberstadt pointed out more than a decade ago, the PLA is an army of only sons; even the elites in Chinese society may not be able to afford the lost of their only child. While the Chinese have shown they can conquer unmanned reefs in the South China Sea, they have not fought a serious war since the month-long Sino-Vietnam War in 1979, which China lost. Chinese hardware today is impressive, but its troops remain untested.

While American policymakers argue that China studies and absorbs lessons from Russia’s campaign, it is important to recognize that Taiwan can learn as much from Ukraine. With its drive into Kursk, Ukraine exposed Russia’s own territorial defense to be the Russian regime’s Achilles’ heel.

If China invades, the key to Taiwan’s defense will be a strong offense. Just as the Biden administration should never have sought to constrain the Ukraine fight to Ukraine itself, Taiwan should not artificially limit its retaliation geographically. Scholar Gordon Chang suggested that Taiwan could kill tens of millions of people by destroying Chinese dams. Even voicing that scenario enhances Taiwan’s deterrence. Taiwanese barrages from its island of Quemoy [Kinmen] to the Chinese city of Xiamen, just a couple kilometers away, could kill tens of thousands. Infiltration need not be unidirectional. Certainly, China would seek to infiltrate Special Forces into Taiwan; Taiwan should do the same in China. Many Chinese chafe at Xi Jinping’s autocratic and corrupt rule; if Taiwan can make China falter, ordinary Chinese might take advantage to challenge the Communist Party’s disastrous rule.

Neighboring states might also take advantage of poor Chinese morale with their own incursions into Chinese territory, a just move given decades of Chinese aggression against Ladakh, Arunachal Pradesh, Tibet, Mongolia, and East Turkestan.

What Ukraine Can Teach Taiwan

The best defense is a strong offense. After two and a half years of absorbing Russian blows, Ukraine has demonstrated the wisdom of taking its fight to Russian territory. Taiwan might be smaller than Ukraine in territory and population, but the lesson holds. If China invades Taiwan, Beijing should recognize now that no coastal Chinese city will be safe, and every Chinese worker should understand that working in a Chinese defense factory could be his or her death warrant.

About the Author: Dr. Michael Rubin

Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he specializes in Iran, Turkey, and the broader Middle East. A former Pentagon official, Dr. Rubin has lived in post-revolution Iran, Yemen, and both pre- and postwar Iraq. He also spent time with the Taliban before 9/11. For more than a decade, he taught classes at sea about the Horn of Africa and Middle East conflicts, culture, and terrorism, to deployed US Navy and Marine units. 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). Dr. Rubin has a PhD and an MA in history from Yale University, where he also obtained a BS in biology.

nationalsecurityjournal.org · by Michael Rubin · August 15, 2024

​19. Has Zelensky walked into Putin's trap?

Excerpts:

"The victory in the Great Patriotic War (WWII) was after catastrophic failures at the start of the war which predated the Nazi invasion in the Winter War with Finland," Sullivan told Newsweek before the start of the Kursk incursion.

"This is what the Russians have done over a long, long time and they should not be underestimated and the Ukrainians certainly are not underestimating them," added Sullivan, whose book Midnight in Moscow outlines the run-up to Putin's invasion.

On Thursday, Zelensky's top commander, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, said military command had been set up in Kursk while the Ukrainian president reiterated Kyiv's claim that it now controlled more than 80 settlements and over 440 square miles.

"While there is always going to be risks associated with any war maneuver, Ukraine faced a greater risk by continuing to fight a war of attrition with Russia," Robert Orttung, professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, told Newsweek.

"There was no way it was going to win that and likely faced eventual defeat given Russia's access to more men and material. By invading the aggressor's territory, Ukraine is starting to take the initiative."

Has Zelensky walked into Putin's trap?

Newsweek · by Brendan Cole · August 16, 2024

BySenior News Reporter

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Some Russian state media outlets have suggested that the Kursk incursion was a "trap" for Volodymr Zelensky in which Vladimir Putin will ultimately prevail, as speculation mounts over Ukraine's objectives and end game for the daring operation.

Kremlin propagandists have tried to make sense of how Ukraine entered Russia so easily, such as RIA Novosti whose op-ed one week on from the launch of Kyiv's operation said Russian forces were "taking control of the situation." The day before, pro-Kremlin outlet Tsargrad wrote how Ukrainian brigades "fell into a trap" and faced heavy losses.

But this spinning of the narrative is at odds with accounts of Ukrainian gains, including from Russian military bloggers, while Zelensky said on Thursday his troops had captured the entire town of Sudzha.

Composite image of Vladimir Putin (left), Volodymyr Zelensky, a tank and a road sign to Kursk. The Ukrainian president said on Thursday his troops had captured the entire town of Sudzha. Composite image of Vladimir Putin (left), Volodymyr Zelensky, a tank and a road sign to Kursk. The Ukrainian president said on Thursday his troops had captured the entire town of Sudzha. Photo Illustration by Newsweek/Getty Images

It is unsurprising that both sides would try to present their operations in the best possible light, but while there is no evidence that Ukrainian forces have fallen into a trap, what Kyiv does next and whether Putin might benefit in the longer term is uncertain.

Instead of being in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region trying to strengthen its existing line and hold as much territory as it can, Kyiv's best units are now in a place which may be vulnerable to an effective Moscow counter attack.

"There is a risk of overextending, and there is a risk that precious personnel and resources may be lost and that Putin may use this as a pretext for further escalation," said Michael A. Witt, professor of international business and strategy at King's Business School, London.

Putin might be also be able to exploit domestically the narrative he has pushed all along about the war he started— that he acted because Russia is under threat from the West, of which he considers Ukraine to be a proxy agent.

"There are opposite forces at work. One is to reinforce the narrative that Russia is under threat, which can help Putin and reinforce support through a rally-around-the-flag effect," Witt told Newsweek.

"The other is to cast doubt on whether Putin and his government are the right people to defend Russia," he said. "It will probably not make much difference either way because there is no clear sign that Putin is not in control, but then, the end of dictators is rarely clearly foreseeable."

Mobilization

Russia's failure to counter the Ukrainian attack so far has exposed a lack of defensive reserves and its troop numbers on the front line in eastern and southern Ukraine are dwindling due to high casualties. This has exposed Russia's shortage of troops and the Kremlin's move to increase recruitment bonuses does not appear to be working.

However, Putin may be forced into a mobilization more widespread that the partial draft he announced in September 2022, according to Bloomberg.

This split image shows Ukrainian president Volodymr Zelensky (left) and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. The incursion by Zelensky's forces in Russia's Kursk region has raised questions about Kyiv's objectives. This split image shows Ukrainian president Volodymr Zelensky (left) and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. The incursion by Zelensky's forces in Russia's Kursk region has raised questions about Kyiv's objectives. Getty Images

Citing unnamed sources close to the Russian Defense Ministry, the outlet said a new mobilization could take place by the end of the year and be presented as a rotation measure to rest front-line troops.

"Putin will certainly use this to strengthen its ranks," Vuk Vuksanovic, associate at the London School of Economics think tank, LSE IDEAS, told Newsweek.

He said it could also be used by Putin "to build support in Russian society for its perspective on the war's causes and say to the Russian domestic audience, 'This is why our border with Ukraine is so sensitive and so vulnerable, and this is why we cannot allow Ukraine to be part of NATO.'"

Emil Kastehelmi, a military expert from the Finland-based open-source intelligence analysis firm Black Bird Group, said that the incursion risks attrition of Ukraine's precious reserves when it still has issues with manpower.

"Taking over a few dozen Russian border villages at the expense of many lives and pieces of equipment won't help," he told Newsweek. "Generally, the war won't be solved in Kursk, the most strategically important regions are still eastern and southern Ukraine."

Meanwhile, Vuksanovic said there is a question mark over why Kyiv is proceeding with the push when its forces "are being overwhelmed" in Ukraine's Donbas region. Even if it were to expose the limitations of Russia's leadership, "wars are not won based on the political embarrassments you inflict upon your adversary."

"This move might end up in Ukraine wasting the resource it lacks most in this war, which is manpower."

Vuksanovic believes part of Ukraine's aim for the incursion is to elicit support from the West by proving that Kyiv still has some fight left in it. "This is particularly important for Ukraine since they are wary of the outcome of the U.S. presidential elections, and there is a risk that the Trump administration will halt aid to Ukraine."

World War II

In fact it was Trump who invoked past Moscow triumphs last month telling Fox News that he had told Zelensky in a phone conversation that Kyiv faced a "war machine" and that "they beat Hitler. They beat Napoleon."

Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, John. J Sullivan, said that while Trump omitted Moscow's losses against Japan in 1905 and "most significantly, the Cold War," the former president's comments highlighted how the Kremlin is not deterred by early setbacks.

"The victory in the Great Patriotic War (WWII) was after catastrophic failures at the start of the war which predated the Nazi invasion in the Winter War with Finland," Sullivan told Newsweek before the start of the Kursk incursion.

"This is what the Russians have done over a long, long time and they should not be underestimated and the Ukrainians certainly are not underestimating them," added Sullivan, whose book Midnight in Moscow outlines the run-up to Putin's invasion.

On Thursday, Zelensky's top commander, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, said military command had been set up in Kursk while the Ukrainian president reiterated Kyiv's claim that it now controlled more than 80 settlements and over 440 square miles.

"While there is always going to be risks associated with any war maneuver, Ukraine faced a greater risk by continuing to fight a war of attrition with Russia," Robert Orttung, professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, told Newsweek.

"There was no way it was going to win that and likely faced eventual defeat given Russia's access to more men and material. By invading the aggressor's territory, Ukraine is starting to take the initiative."

About the writer

Brendan Cole

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Brendan Cole is a Newsweek Senior News Reporter based in London, UK. His focus is Russia and Ukraine, in particular the war started by Moscow. He also covers other areas of geopolitics including China.

Brendan joined Newsweek in 2018 from the International Business Times and well as English, knows Russian and French.

You can get in touch with Brendan by emailing b.cole@newsweek.com or follow on him on his X account @brendanmarkcole.

Brendan Cole is a Newsweek Senior News Reporter based in London, UK. His focus is Russia and Ukraine, in particular ...

To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here.

Newsweek · by Brendan Cole · August 16, 2024

20. The Kursk Gamble: Ukraine’s High-Stakes Play to Force Russia's Hand​ – War Comes Home To Russia

Excerpts:

Ukraine's invasion of Russia's Kursk region has achieved several critical objectives: disrupting Russian military operations, capturing and holding significant territory, and boosting Ukrainian morale. This bold move has shifted the momentum of the conflict, forcing Russia into a reactive position and challenging its perceived invulnerability. Ukraine's success in Kursk has created leverage for future negotiations and sent a strong message to Western allies, potentially increasing military and economic support from NATO and the United States. This operation has demonstrated Ukraine's resilience and capability, positioning it strategically to influence the war's outcome in its favor.

In response, Russia must strengthen its defensive positions, mobilize additional resources, and consider launching a counteroffensive to regain lost territory. Simultaneously, Moscow should intensify diplomatic efforts to isolate Ukraine internationally while exploring negotiation avenues to de-escalate the conflict. For NATO and the United States, the Kursk invasion underscores the need to continue and possibly expand support for Ukraine, ensuring it can maintain its strategic advantage. The long-term impact of this invasion could significantly alter the trajectory of the war, potentially leading to a faster resolution or, conversely, escalating the conflict further if Russia opts for more aggressive retaliation.

The Ukrainian invasion of Russia's Kursk region is a bold and potentially game-changing move in the ongoing conflict. It has exposed vulnerabilities in Russia's defenses, shifted the momentum back to Ukraine, and created new negotiation opportunities. While the ultimate outcome remains uncertain, the operation has already profoundly impacted the war, both on the battlefield and in the broader strategic landscape. As the situation unfolds, the world will watch closely to see how this new conflict phase shapes the future of Ukraine, Russia, and the international order.

President Zelensky cannot afford to let the status quo continue. The United States may prefer things as they are, but Ukraine cannot afford it. Gamble with an attack or bleed to death—those are the options the Ukrainian leader is facing.

• 2 minutes ago
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• 9 min read

The Kursk Gamble: Ukraine’s High-Stakes Play to Force Russia's Hand

War Comes Home To Russia

By Monte Erfourth - August 17, 2024

https://www.strategycentral.io/post/the-kursk-gamble-ukraine-s-high-stakes-play-to-force-russia-s-hand?postId=  

Introduction

The strategic landscape of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict has dramatically shifted with Ukraine's unexpected invasion of Russia's Kursk region. This operation marks a significant turning point in the war regarding military gains and the broader strategic implications for both nations and the international community.

The Objective: A Gamble for Leverage

Ukrainian Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi announced Monday that Kyiv controls 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles) of Russian territory, far exceeding Russian estimates. Russian officials claim Ukrainian forces have advanced 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) into the Kursk region along a 40-kilometer (25-mile) front, capturing 28 settlements. Despite this, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Heorhiy Tykhyi stated that Kyiv has no interest in "taking over" the region. Ukraine has since expanded its control of the region.

Ukraine's invasion of the Russian Kursk region represents a bold and calculated gamble. The incursion of Ukrainian forces into Russia’s Kursk region has become the greatest territorial gain by either side since the successful Ukrainian counteroffensives in Kharkiv and Kherson in the fall of 2022. It remains unclear whether the dwindling and poorly prepared Russian forces have been able to halt the Ukrainian advance or whether the Ukrainians decided on an operational pause by Tuesday. What is clear is that the operation demonstrates Ukraine’s ability to achieve surprise and exploit sudden breakthroughs, something at which Russia has consistently failed since the start of its own invasion.

Due to concerns about triggering an uncontrolled escalation, the Biden administration and some allies have restricted the types and range of weapons sent to Ukraine. For example, Ukraine has not been permitted to use Western missiles to strike Russian military installations, contending that Putin would launch a nuclear attack if Russian soil became a Ukrainian target. The recent Kursk operation may expose the fallacy of the red-line argument. Time will tell.

The primary objective behind this operation is not exactly clear yet. However, Ukraine's primary aim is likely to relieve military pressure in the south and east of Ukraine, where Russia has been steadily advancing. Ukrainian commanders hope to force the Kremlin to pull troops from Ukraine's front lines to defend Russia itself. On Thursday, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said on Telegram. “The creation of a buffer zone in the Kursk region is a step to protect our border communities from daily enemy attacks.”

The offensive also allows Ukraine’s military to regain the initiative after a year of costly defensive operations. Realizing that it cannot win a war of attrition against the larger and wealthier Russia, Kyiv is shifting to a strategy of mobility and maneuver. This approach exploits Ukraine's agility and the Russian army's plodding nature. The invasion of Kursk Oblast has achieved this, striking a blow to Russian morale and spreading panic while also boosting the spirits of a war-weary Ukrainian society.

Lastly, it appears the Kurk invasion could be an attempt to gain leverage in potential future negotiations. Ukrainian forces have managed to capture and hold significant territory, which, if maintained, could be used as a bargaining chip in peace talks. This move directly challenges the narrative that Russia, under President Vladimir Putin, has the upper hand and will dictate the terms of any ceasefire or peace agreement.

According to Andreas Umland, an analyst at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, the Ukrainian offensive in Kursk could bring a quicker end to the war by demonstrating Ukraine's ability to inflict substantial pain on Russia. This could compel Moscow to reconsider its position and open the door for negotiations that might have previously seemed out of reach.

 The Impact on the War

The Kursk Offensive had immediate impacts on the front lines of the war. Ukraine has shattered the perception of invulnerability that Russia has tried to maintain. For the first time since World War II, foreign troops have invaded Russian soil, sending shockwaves through the Kremlin and Russian society. This invasion has exposed significant weaknesses in Russia's border defenses and has caused confusion and disarray within Moscow's military command. How had Russian intelligence failed to expose this gathering threat? This failure is almost as spectacular as the success of operational secrecy that Ukraine demonstrated.

As expected, the operation has revitalized Ukrainian morale and shifted the momentum back in Kyiv's favor. The capture of approximately 1,000 square kilometers of Russian territory, along with the evacuation of over 200,000 Russian citizens from the area, represents a symbolic and strategic victory for Ukraine. This success contrasts sharply with the stalled Russian offensives in other parts of Ukraine, where Moscow has struggled to make meaningful gains despite heavy losses.

Tactically, it will force Russia to divert troops and resources from other critical fronts, potentially relieving pressure on Ukrainian forces in the south and east. This shift could allow Ukraine to regain momentum, disrupt Russian operations, and strain Russian logistics, leading to delays in resupply and weakening Russian advances across multiple fronts.

Strategically, the invasion will have profound psychological and geopolitical effects. Holding Russian territory could boost Ukrainian morale, undermine Russian confidence, and provide Ukraine with leverage in future negotiations. The invasion may also lead to increased Western support for Ukraine while escalating the conflict and potentially drawing in greater international involvement. Additionally, the breach of Russian territory could destabilize Russia domestically, leading to internal dissent and challenges to the government’s leadership.

 Russia's Response

Russia's response to the Kursk offensive has been marked by shock and Putin’s flip dismissal as a stunt to gain negotiating leverage. Vladimir Putin, who has long portrayed the war as a slow but inevitable Russian victory, now faces the daunting task of regaining lost territory on Russian soil. The Kremlin has downplayed the significance of Ukraine's gains, labeling them mere provocations, but the reality on the ground tells a different story.

In response to Ukraine's invasion of its Kursk region, Russia is likely to take several strategic actions to counter the threat. Moscow may strengthen its defensive positions along the border, redeploying troops and fortifying key areas to prevent further Ukrainian advances. Mobilizing additional reserves and resources, including personnel and equipment, will likely be a priority, allowing Russia to bolster its regional military capabilities.

A counteroffensive operation involving coordinated ground, air, and artillery strikes could be launched to regain lost territory and disrupt Ukrainian momentum. On the diplomatic front, Russia is expected to intensify efforts to isolate Ukraine internationally, leveraging its influence in global forums such as the United Nations to frame the invasion as a destabilizing act of aggression. Additionally, Moscow could escalate its cyber and information warfare campaigns, aiming to undermine Ukrainian morale and disrupt military communications.

Simultaneously, Russia might seek to open diplomatic channels for negotiation, hoping to de-escalate the conflict on favorable terms while maintaining the strongest possible military position. Economic and energy influence may also be wielded, particularly over European nations, to pressure Ukraine and its allies. This could include restricting energy supplies or imposing sanctions to weaken Ukraine’s resolve and strain its Western relationships. In a bid to counter NATO’s influence, Russia could strengthen military alliances with countries opposing Western policies, engaging in joint exercises and strategic partnerships.

In preparing for a prolonged conflict, Russia would ensure sustainable supply lines, rotating forces to avoid fatigue, and planning for various escalation scenarios. Domestically, the Kremlin may intensify its messaging to galvanize national unity, portraying the invasion as a defense of Russian sovereignty and rallying public support for the military effort. These combined actions could help Russia mitigate the impact of the Ukrainian invasion and reestablish control over the contested region while pursuing its broader strategic objectives.

Putin's options for retaliation are modest and some carry risk. The use of nuclear weapons on Russian territory is unthinkable. While missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities may escalate, they are unlikely to reverse the tide of the war. The Russian military, already stretched thin, may struggle to mount an effective counteroffensive in Kursk while also maintaining pressure on other fronts.

Broader Strategic Implications

 The Kursk Offensive is more than just a military operation; it is a strategic maneuver that could redefine the trajectory of the war. By capturing and holding significant territory, Ukraine has seized the initiative and shown the world how vulnerable Russia is to attack. It also sends a clear message to Ukraine's Western allies that Kyiv can defend itself and take the fight to the enemy.

For Russia, the invasion is a severe blow to its prestige and a stark reminder of the limits of its military power. The operation has exposed Russia's defenses’ fragility and created a new sense of urgency in Moscow to secure its borders. This could lead to further escalation, as Putin may feel compelled to take drastic measures to restore his image and control over the war's narrative.

Strategically, the invasion has broader geopolitical repercussions. It demonstrates Ukraine's resilience and capability, which could increase support from Western allies, leading to enhanced military and economic aid that further strengthens Ukraine's position. The operation also highlights the interconnectedness of global conflicts, particularly as Russia's invasion of Ukraine has influenced European and U.S. policies toward China and shaped how China views an invasion of Taiwan.

The invasion of the Kursk Region will likely complicate the dynamics between China, Russia, NATO, and the United States, potentially affecting global alliances and strategic priorities. Additionally, the invasion highlights vulnerabilities in European security and economic dependencies. Both China and Russia have aggressively pursued trade agreements that could give them undue leverage over EU nations. This could prompt the EU and its member states to accelerate efforts to strengthen economic resilience and reduce reliance on adversarial powers.

The Changing Dynamics of the Conflict

 Ukraine's strategy to invade Russia's Kursk region is multifaceted and, although as of yet unstated, likely aims to achieve several strategic objectives. The incursion relieves military pressure on Ukraine's southern and eastern fronts, where Russian forces are advancing. Ukraine seeks to disrupt current and future Russian operations and regain the initiative by forcing Russia to divert troops to defend its territory.

The invasion also demonstrates Ukraine's ability to conduct offensive operations, thereby boosting Ukrainian morale and undermining Russian confidence. This psychological impact is significant, as it challenges the perception of Russian invulnerability and exposes weaknesses in Russia's border defenses. It will also lift the morale of the war-wary Ukrainian public, so vital to continuing the fight for the nation’s future.

By inflicting pain on Russia, Ukraine has created unprecedented leverage for future negotiations. Capturing and holding significant territory may force Putin to the negotiating table, which both sides have repeatedly rejected. For the first time, Ukraine positions itself to negotiate from a position of strength, potentially using the captured land as a bargaining chip in peace talks.

The invasion sends a clear message to Ukraine's Western allies, particularly the United States and European Union, showcasing Ukraine's capability to defend itself and take the fight to the enemy. This could increase support and resources from these allies, further strengthening Ukraine's position. The successful incursion into Russia is a powerful counter-narrative to the idea that the war is a protracted stalemate with no end.

Ukraine's strategy of invading Russia's Kursk region is designed to disrupt Russian military operations, boost Ukrainian morale, create leverage for negotiations, and demonstrate Ukraine's resilience and capability to its Western allies. To force a change in the war, President Zelensky would likely have to push for an offensive against the well-dug-in Russian forces in Ukraine next year. This multifaceted approach aims to shift the conflict's momentum in Ukraine's favor. More importantly, it paves the way for a more favorable strategic outcome without having to smash its forces on Russia’s strongest point.

 Conclusion

Ukraine's invasion of Russia's Kursk region has achieved several critical objectives: disrupting Russian military operations, capturing and holding significant territory, and boosting Ukrainian morale. This bold move has shifted the momentum of the conflict, forcing Russia into a reactive position and challenging its perceived invulnerability. Ukraine's success in Kursk has created leverage for future negotiations and sent a strong message to Western allies, potentially increasing military and economic support from NATO and the United States. This operation has demonstrated Ukraine's resilience and capability, positioning it strategically to influence the war's outcome in its favor.

In response, Russia must strengthen its defensive positions, mobilize additional resources, and consider launching a counteroffensive to regain lost territory. Simultaneously, Moscow should intensify diplomatic efforts to isolate Ukraine internationally while exploring negotiation avenues to de-escalate the conflict. For NATO and the United States, the Kursk invasion underscores the need to continue and possibly expand support for Ukraine, ensuring it can maintain its strategic advantage. The long-term impact of this invasion could significantly alter the trajectory of the war, potentially leading to a faster resolution or, conversely, escalating the conflict further if Russia opts for more aggressive retaliation.

The Ukrainian invasion of Russia's Kursk region is a bold and potentially game-changing move in the ongoing conflict. It has exposed vulnerabilities in Russia's defenses, shifted the momentum back to Ukraine, and created new negotiation opportunities. While the ultimate outcome remains uncertain, the operation has already profoundly impacted the war, both on the battlefield and in the broader strategic landscape. As the situation unfolds, the world will watch closely to see how this new conflict phase shapes the future of Ukraine, Russia, and the international order.

President Zelensky cannot afford to let the status quo continue. The United States may prefer things as they are, but Ukraine cannot afford it. Gamble with an attack or bleed to death—those are the options the Ukrainian leader is facing.

​21. Ukraine offensive in Russia expands beyond Kursk region, soldiers say

Ukraine offensive in Russia expands beyond Kursk region, soldiers say

Stars and Stripes · by Siobhán O’Grady, Tetiana Burianova, David L. Stern, and Robyn Dixon · August 16, 2024

Soldiers drink coffee between tasks in a petrol station near Sumy. (Ed Ram for The Washington Post)

SUMY REGION, Ukraine - Ukraine’s offensive into Russia has expanded to the region of Belgorod, with fierce fighting underway there as Kyiv’s forces in the neighboring region of Kursk showed signs of solidifying control Thursday.

The new details about the fighting in Belgorod, described by Ukrainian soldiers wounded there and evacuated across the border to Ukraine’s Sumy region, came as Ukraine on Thursday appointed a military commander to manage the parts of Kursk it has taken.

Ukraine’s intelligence service also announced Thursday the detention of more than 100 Russian troops, in what it said amounted to the “largest mass capture” of enemy soldiers at one time.

The celebratory mood over the surprise advance into Russian territory persisted among many troops returning from Kursk to Sumy on Thursday to refuel their armored vehicles and buy espressos and hot dogs in Ukraine before returning to their posts across the border in Russia.

In a village close to the border crossing Ukrainian forces overran last week, the director of Ukraine’s national war museum beamed Thursday evening as he sorted through items collected by Ukrainian soldiers in Russia. He piled Russian movie posters, military uniforms and even a communist flag into the back of his silver van, saying he plans to display them in Kyiv.

But in contrast to the jubilance of some who fought in Kursk, the fighting in Belgorod has been fierce.

Three wounded Ukrainian soldiers, including one commander, described how after months of being deployed along the border, they were sent into Russia four days ago. They crossed in a fleet of armored vehicles in broad daylight, said Hacker, 24, speaking on the condition that he be identified only by his call sign, in keeping with Ukrainian military rules.

As they prepared to cross the border at Kolotilovka, in the same location where prisoners of war have previously been exchanged, Hacker recalled thinking to himself that this was a “crazy” move.

The Russian troops in Belgorod appeared prepared for their arrival, the soldiers said, in contrast to the quick advances Ukrainian units made through Kursk. Although some had retreated, the area was fortified with dragon’s teeth antitank obstacles and heavily mined. Ukrainians came under intense attack by artillery, drones and aerial bombs almost immediately.

The Ukrainians pushed forward about six miles, the soldiers said, seizing abandoned Russian troop positions. But the fighting remained intense. “All our group was injured the day we arrived,” Hacker said. Many Ukrainian troops were concussed or heavily wounded, while others were killed and had to be left behind, he said.

Shelling remained so intense that survivors had to take cover in Russian trenches for days, until an armored vehicle arrived to evacuate them for medical treatment early Thursday. Some were injured more than once as they waited for help.

Hacker said he feared he might be killed in Russia “because we didn’t know their territory.”

“We were working blind,” he added.

Russia has not acknowledged ground fighting in Belgorod, but the governor there declared a state of emergency earlier in the week.

Serhii, 48, a Ukrainian unit commander who was wounded by an FPV drone while fighting in the Belgorod region of Russia, lies in a hospital ward with other injured soldiers in a hospital in northeastern Ukraine. (Ed Ram for The Washington Post)

Among the six who were evacuated was Hacker’s commander Serhii, 48, whose right leg was badly wounded in a drone attack a day earlier. He underwent surgery immediately upon arrival in Ukraine on Thursday. “We were shelled by everything,” he said. A nurse came to adjust his bloody leg as other injured troops recuperated around him. One’s face was bloodied and swollen. Two others had injuries to their arms.

Russian forces in Belgorod may have been put on high alert after the operation into neighboring Kursk, and that could have contributed to the stiffer resistance, said Brady Africk, an open source analyst and senior media associate at the American Enterprise Institute.

That posture was probably buttressed by defensive line construction since last summer, Africk said, a buildup after cross-border raids led by Russian militias aligned with Kyiv.

“There is a pattern of Russia being attacked in a way that they didn’t expect, losing territory either temporarily or permanently, and responding by dramatically increasing the construction of defenses,” Africk said.

It is an open question whether Ukrainian forces who fought in Belgorod were aided by the same level of planning and support that aided their counterparts in Kursk, Africk said.

Despite some losses, Ukrainian officials have seized on the momentum in Kursk, with military chief Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky announcing Thursday the appointment of a military commander for the region “to maintain law and order and ensure the basic needs of the population.” The announcement echoes Russia’s own moves to administer the parts of Ukraine it occupies. Meanwhile, Russian forces continued to press toward the eastern city of Pokrovsk, with regional authorities on Thursday announcing mandatory civilian evacuation from the key rail hub.

Ukrainian soldier Kniaz, 32, who stopped in Sumy to refuel his vehicle Thursday, said he has interacted with older Russian civilians across the border, including some who spoke Ukrainian and thanked the troops for their mission. “They want peace and quiet,” he said. When asked whether he believed Ukraine would try to hold onto the territory indefinitely, Kniaz, whose call sign is an ancient Slavic royal title, replied: “I don’t know … I just have to do my job.”

Military vehicles drive down a road near a sign indicating that the border to Russia is approaching north of Sumy, Ukraine, on Thursday. (Ed Ram for The Washington Post)

Soldiers buy coffee and hot dogs at a petrol station near Sumy. (Ed Ram for The Washington Post)

The detention of more than 100 Russian troops amounted to the “largest mass capture” of enemy soldiers at one time, Ukraine’s intelligence service said, amid talks that they will be exchanged for Ukrainian captives.

Speaking about the operation, which took place the previous day, a Ukrainian intelligence officer said that special forces from Ukraine’s state security service, or SBU, “captured and cleared a sprawling … and well-fortified stronghold of a company,” taking 102 Russian service members prisoner.

The captured soldiers were from Russia’s 488th Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment and the Akhmat unit, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

A video provided by the official showed dozens of soldiers lying in a line, face down in an open field. Their faces and battle insignia were not visible. The Washington Post could not independently verify the footage.

A Ukrainian official said Russia has been in contact about a prisoner swap - something it had promised to discontinue after the incursion into the southern Kursk region began.

“There was an initiative from the Russian counterpart regarding this issue. I really hope that, despite the public statements by Russian media that allegedly the Russians have decided to halt exchanges, we are still exchanging information at this time,” Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian parliament’s human rights commissioner, told local media late Wednesday.

In a video address Tuesday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that “hundreds of Russian soldiers have already surrendered.”

Ukrainian officials have said that a main reason for the surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region was to halt cross-border missile attacks and shelling into Ukraine’s neighboring Sumy region.

Ukraine was creating a “security zone” in Kursk, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said in a Telegram post Wednesday.

“There are Russian civilians within the specified zone,” Vereshchuk wrote. “They are under the protection of international humanitarian law, with which Ukraine fully complies.”

Geese walk on a road in front of a church in Yunakivka near the Russian border. (Ed Ram for The Washington Post)

Yuriy Savchuk, director of Ukraine’s war museum, (left) packs items taken by Ukrainian soldiers from inside Russia into a van in Yunakivka on Friday. (Ed Ram for The Washington Post)

Items include Russian newspapers. (Ed Ram for The Washington Post)

Russia’s efforts to take back ground in Kursk, meanwhile, have been hampered by infighting between different military and security units, according to nationalist military bloggers who are blaming various military commanders and calling for their dismissal.

After the initial swift advance, Ukraine’s progress in the Kursk region has slowed as it has faced tougher resistance. Maxar satellite images show Russian forces digging trenches in an effort to halt any possible advance toward Lgov, west of the city of Kursk.

On Thursday, Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, a civilian economist appointed in May for his capacity to ramp up military production and enhance efficiency, announced plans at a meeting of regional governors to increase supplies of military hardware and manpower to the Kursk region.

The meeting appeared to be tacit admission of inadequate manpower, hardware and poor coordination in the 10 days since the attack began. Belousov said the military had prepared a plan “to enhance the efficiency of troop control in coordination with other security agencies” in the region.

On Thursday, an additional district in the Kursk region, Glushkovo, with a population of 18,000, was evacuated, taking the total number ordered to evacuate to about 180,000.

Stern reported from Kyiv and Dixon from Riga, Latvia. Serhiy Morgunov in the Sumy region, Kostiantyn Khudov in Kyiv and Alex Horton in Washington contributed to this report.

Stars and Stripes · by Siobhán O’Grady, Tetiana Burianova, David L. Stern, and Robyn Dixon · August 16, 2024

22. Ukraine’s offensive derails secret efforts for partial cease-fire with Russia, officials say

Accurate report?

Did Zelensky execute this operation to give him negotiating leverage and undemrin Putin's?

Ukraine’s offensive derails secret efforts for partial cease-fire with Russia, officials say

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/08/17/kursk-ukraine-russia-energy-ceasefire/?utm

The warring countries were set to hold indirect talks in Qatar on an agreement to halt strikes on energy and power infrastructure, according to officials.

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A thermal power plant is damaged in a Russian airstrike in Ukraine on April 2. (Oksana Parafeniuk for The Washington Post/For The Washington Post)

By Isabelle Khurshudyan, Siobhán O'Grady, John Hudson and Catherine Belton

August 17, 2024 at 3:00 a.m. EDT

KYIV — Ukraine and Russia were set to send delegations to Doha this month to negotiate a landmark agreement halting strikes on energy and power infrastructure on both sides, diplomats and officials familiar with the discussions said, in what would have amounted to a partial cease-fire and offered a reprieve for both countries.

But the indirect talks, with the Qataris serving as mediators and meeting separately with the Ukrainian and Russian delegations, were derailed by Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s western Kursk region last week, according to the officials. The possible agreement and planned summit have not been previously reported.

For more than a year, Russia has pounded Ukraine’s power grid with a barrage of cruise missiles and drone strikes, causing irreparable damage to power stations and rolling blackouts across the country. Meanwhile, Ukraine has struck Russia’s oil facilities with long-range drone attacks that have set ablaze refineries, depots and reservoirs, reducing Moscow’s oil refining by an estimated 15 percent and raising gas prices around the world.

Some involved in the negotiations hoped they could lead to a more comprehensive agreement to end the war, according to the officials who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive diplomacy.

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The willingness to engage in the talks signaled something of a shift for both countries, at least for a limited cease-fire. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Kyiv would consider a full cease-fire only if Russia first withdrew all of its troops from Ukrainian land, including the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia invaded and annexed in 2014. Russia’s Vladimir Putin has demanded that Ukraine first cede four Ukrainian regions — including some territory that Russian forces aren’t occupying — that the Kremlin has declared as part of Russia.

Ukrainian and Russian officials haven’t met face to face for talks since the first months of the war, when delegations from both sides convened for secret talks in Istanbul. Those negotiations eventually fell apart. Later, the two sides agreed to a grain deal that led to Russia temporarily lifting a naval blockade, allowing Ukraine to transfer grain through the Black Sea. That, too, collapsed months later when Russia pulled out of the deal. Other attempts to establish humanitarian corridors have largely failed.

A diplomat briefed on the talks said Russian officials postponed their meeting with Qatari officials after Ukraine’s incursion into western Russia. Moscow’s delegation described it as “an escalation,” the diplomat said, adding that Kyiv did not warn Doha about its cross-border offensive.

Russia “didn’t call off the talks, they said give us time,” the diplomat said. Though Ukraine wanted to send its delegation to Doha anyway, the person said, Qatar declined because it did not see a one-sided meeting as beneficial. The small Arab country has positioned itself as a powerful mediator in recent years and has hosted ongoing talks aimed at ending the war in Gaza.

In response to questions from The Washington Post, the Ukrainian presidential office said in a statement that the summit in Doha was postponed “due to the situation in the Middle East,” but it would take place in a video conference format Aug. 22, after which Kyiv would consult with its partners about implementing what was discussed.

The Kremlin did not respond to requests for comment. The White House declined to comment for this story. The Biden administration has long said the timing and terms of a potential cease-fire agreement with Russia are for Ukraine alone to decide.

A transformer of an electrical substation burns after shelling from Ukraine in the town of Shebekino in the Belgorod region of Russia in late 2022. (Taisia Liskovets/Sputnik/AP)

The diplomat briefed on the talks said Kyiv and Moscow had both signaled their readiness to accept the arrangement in the lead-up to the summit. But senior officials in Kyiv had mixed expectations about whether the negotiations could succeed, with some putting the odds at 20 percent and others anticipating even worse prospects, according to two people familiar with the talks, even if the Kursk assault had not happened. But the planned talks and potential agreement — now on hold — raise the stakes for Zelensky’s gamble.

One of the reasons Ukrainian officials doubted Russia’s sincerity is its extensive bombing campaign of Ukrainian energy infrastructure in recent weeks. More bombardment could leave civilians without power for hours each day during the frigid winter months.

“We have one chance to get through this winter, and that’s if the Russians won’t launch any new attacks on the grid,” an Ukrainian official who was briefed on the talks said.

Kyiv’s move to push into Russia, which has occupied roughly 20 percent of Ukraine, was intended in part to give Ukraine more leverage for any future negotiations, Ukrainian and Western officials have said.

Military analysts have expressed skepticism that Ukrainian forces can maintain control of the Russian territory. Moscow has also continued to make gains in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region and has not diverted troops from there to defend the new Ukrainian assault.

But while Kyiv might have improved its future negotiating position with the land grab, the likelihood of imminent peace talks appears diminished. Putin publicly vowed this week not to soften his position on negotiations because of the assault on Russian territory.

The diplomat familiar with the talks said that Qatar has been discussing the arrangement for an energy strike moratorium with Kyiv and Moscow for the past two months. The official said the two sides agreed to a summit in Doha with just minor details left to be worked out.

“After Kursk, the Russians balked,” another person familiar with the talks said.

A Russian academic with close ties to senior Russian diplomats signaled that Putin would not be in the mood to make a deal after the Kursk offensive.

“You know our Russian leadership usually does not make any compromises under pressure,” the person said.

The academic added that Russia might be more willing to consider an energy infrastructure deal as a way to lure Kyiv to broader cease-fire talks. Otherwise, he said, Moscow could be less motivated since it believed it could inflict more damage on Ukrainian energy infrastructure than Kyiv was able to on Russian oil refineries.

Russia’s strikes on Ukraine’s power grid have been a brutally effective tactic. Daily life for Ukrainians who live far from the front line has been disrupted by blackouts that can last hours. The outages have also severely hurt an economy already crippled by war. Some people who have moved abroad cite the power instability as a chief reason.

Electricians restore a power grid damaged by artillery fire and airstrikes in a village in the Donetsk region on July 23. (Anatolii Stepanov/AFP/Getty Images)

Ukrainian officials have expressed concern about how the country will survive the winter if Russia’s bombardment continues. Because of Russian airstrikes, Ukraine has lost around nine gigawatts of the 18 gigawatts needed for peak consumption this winter — far too much to recover in a short period of time. Officials say electricity could be limited to five to seven hours a day — or less — during the frigid months.

“Everything has to be weighed — our potential and the possible damage to our economy versus how much more damage could we cause them and their economy,” the Ukrainian official briefed on the planned Qatar summit said. “But energy is definitely critical for us. We sometimes forget about the economy here, but we’re facing free fall if there’s no light and heat in the winter.”

The Ukrainians preferred that a potential deal to halt energy infrastructure strikes could be reached in a similar way to the grain deal brokered by Turkey and the United Nations in 2022 that led to Russia temporarily lifting a naval blockade, allowing Ukraine to transfer grain through the Black Sea.

Moscow then pulled out of the agreement last year, claiming only 3 percent of the grain went to the neediest nations despite U.N. figures showing the majority of the exports from the deal went to developing countries. However, Kyiv has continued to successfully move cargo out of its Black Sea ports with Ankara’s support.

A second Ukrainian official familiar with the potential agreement said that for an energy strike ban, “we talk with partners to be sure that the deal will work, not one-to-one with Russia, as it was.”

Kyiv has lobbied countries to support its 10-point peace plan, which includes a full Russian withdrawal. At a two-day summit in Switzerland in June that was organized by Ukraine, more than 80 countries’ delegations signed onto a joint statement that promoted prisoner exchanges, nuclear safety and food security.

A woman walks with a dog during a partial blackout in Kyiv on June 5. (Roman Pilipey/AFP/Getty Images)

Progress on other issues, such as energy security, was discussed in smaller working groups. Shortly after the summit, Qatar proposed the idea of an energy cease-fire and started discussing a potential plan with both sides, officials said. Ukrainian officials were receptive, they said, because they considered the talks as falling under Kyiv’s peace plan initiative and intended to involve partners in the energy security working group.

Ukraine did not invite a Russian delegation to the peace summit in June, but Zelensky has said Moscow will be invited to the next one, which expected to be held this fall. Some Ukrainian officials and Western diplomats have viewed that step as a sign that Kyiv is now more open to considering negotiations with Russia.

Other Ukrainian officials have quickly pointed out that Ukraine has always been receptive to talks but demand that those discussions respect Ukraine’s full territorial integrity.

Some Russian analysts said Ukraine’s daring seizure of Russian territory in the Kursk region could hand Ukraine a powerful bargaining chip in any future negotiations with Russia, if the Ukrainian troops succeed in building fortifications to defend their position before a full-scale Russian counterattack.

“Putin has said many times that any peace agreement should take into account the facts on the ground and that Russia will not leave the territory it has taken,” said Sergei Markov, a Kremlin-connected political analyst.

Ukraine is trying “to break this formula and gain Russian territory to exchange,” he said.

Hudson reported from Washington and Belton from London. David L. Stern in Kyiv and Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.

23. Mike Waltz, first Green Beret elected to Congress, has a lesson for us all

Mike Waltz, first Green Beret elected to Congress, has a lesson for us all - Washington Examiner

Washington Examiner · August 16, 2024

Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) knows all about being the target of “stolen valor” claims.

Unlike the charges being hurled at Democratic vice presidential pick Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), the politically driven accusations Waltz faced two years ago in his campaign for a House seat had no basis in reality since he was a legitimate Green Beret hero in Afghanistan.

While Walz has ducked questions about his military claims, Waltz wanted to hit back at his critics immediately.

“A local veteran was questioning very publicly my service, and it was stolen valor, and my first instinct was to punch the guy back as hard and publicly as I could,” Waltz said, recalling the attack during his initial bid for office in 2018 which made him the first Green Beret in Congress.

“My wife and others said, ‘No, this is a time for restraint,’” he told Secrets.

Still, it was impactful and memorable, so much so that when Waltz began writing a second book about his life lessons, he started with restraint. “I’ve seen the value of restraint. Restraint saves lives, it wins hearts and minds, and it preserves relationships with family and friends,” he wrote in the book Hard Truths: Think and Lead Like a Green Beret.

It is due out Oct. 22 and is published by St. Martin’s Press.

As a soldier who fought hard to win his Army Special Forces beret and who was involved in well-known wartime events, including the search for deserter Bowe Bergdahl, restraint was a hard pill to swallow.

“In a political environment where every instinct is to hit back harder and bigger and more publicly, sometimes restraint is the right call, and that is baked into our Green Beret training,” he said.

Waltz served over 25 years in the Army. He is a retired colonel in the National Guard who has been awarded four Bronze Stars, two with valor.

While “lessons learned” books from ex-military and business leaders are a dime a dozen, Waltz succeeds by using gripping stories from the battlefield to prescribe realistic lessons in a way that sticks with the reader.

Take the chapter on loyalty. Of course, he focuses on Bergdahl. Loyalty demanded that every American in Afghanistan had to look for the soldier who walked away from his base and into the arms of the Taliban.

Sen. @JDVance was joined by fellow veterans @Jim_Banks, @BrianMastFL @michaelgwaltz at a packed VFW Hall in Pennsylvania today to address the press on their service, #StolenValor and anniversary of #Afghanistan

Congressman Waltz presented me with his challenge coin which doesn't… pic.twitter.com/p1zCRfWqhx

— Gunnery Sergeant Jessie Jane Duff (@JessieJaneDuff) August 15, 2024

He felt Bergdahl should be forgotten and that U.S. troops should not be required to risk their lives to save him. Waltz felt that way even more when former President Barack Obama took a victory lap after Bergdahl was rescued, making the private out to be a victim.

The lesson he pulled from that debacle was America needs to give up its “culture of victimhood” and that loyalty means “the essential virtue of coming together for a cause.”

The book also hits on the power of “resilience,” “persistence,” “vigilance,” and speaking “truth to power.”

“I wrote this book because I wanted to honor some of those important attributes of the Green Berets,” he concluded. “We have a right, too, to expect these attributes in our national leadership.”

In Afghanistan, Col. Mike Waltz interacted with leaders and children. Photo courtesy of his office

He also wrote it to nudge on the growth of veterans running for public office, something that began after President Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan three years ago this month.

SEE THE LATEST POLITICAL NEWS AND BUZZ FROM WASHINGTON SECRETS

“Really, the marker was the withdrawal from Afghanistan,” he said just days before he accompanied GOP running mate Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) on a campaign trip Thursday to one of the nation’s largest Veterans of Foreign Wars halls to urge veterans to vote for former President Donald Trump.

“Veterans started coming out of the woodwork, saying, ‘We can’t sit on the sidelines … we’ve got to get back involved and back engaged,’” he said of the surge in veterans running in 2022. “They came out in numbers. It was great.”

Rep. @michaelgwaltz: How about we have a military that is focused on being lethal again? How about we have a military that makes KICKING ASS great again?

Do you think Xi, Putin, Kim Jong Un are going to be afraid of Kamala Harris? Look what happened in Afghanistan. pic.twitter.com/LSkG5LDYj6

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) August 15, 2024

Washington Examiner · August 16, 2024

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com