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Quotes of the Day:
“Never reply when you’re angry. Never make a promise when you’re happy. Never make a decision when you’re sad.”
- Thomas Shelby, the character of Peaky Blinders
“Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche
"We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think."
- Buddha
1. Ceremony Pays Homage to Special Ops Command
2. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, AUGUST 30 (Putin's War)
3. Inside the Shadow Evacuation of Kabul
4. Do Not Trust Your Gut: How to Improve Strategists’ Decision Making
5. Army grounds entire CH-47 Chinook helicopter fleet over engine fires
6. AirLand redux? Early lessons from Ukraine
7. Shaking the Dungeon: James Baldwin and the Strategies of Subversion and Surveillance
8. Ukraine Tries to Make Southern Offensive a Turning Point in War
9. Ukraine lures Russian missiles with decoys of U.S. rocket system
10. Nuclear inspectors are in Ukraine for a high-stakes visit to the Zaporizhzhia plant.
11. Taiwan forces fire at drones flying over island near China
12. China's Xi pushes forward to third term despite mounting crises
13. FDD | Russia Continues Meddling in the Balkans
14. Opinion | Now the real work to end hostage-taking and wrongful detentions begins
15. FDD | Turkey’s Latest Move to Undermine NATO
16. FDD | A New Iran Deal Would Empower Palestinian Islamic Jihad
17. At SOCOM Change of Command, Nods to Afghanistan, Future in Indo-Pacific
18. Army JAG with vendetta tried contacting Russian embassy: prosecutors
19. Opinion | Plans to prevent civilian casualties leave crucial questions unanswered
20. The Grand Race for Techno-Security Leadership
21. The enemy gets a vote: The forever war and future war after Afghanistan by Joesph Felter
22. Issues related to responding to foreign language influence activities in the U.S.
23. Into the gray zone
24. Here’s What Biden’s New National Security Strategy Should Say
25. A Frontline Shadow Economy: Ukrainian Units Swap Tanks and Artillery
1. Ceremony Pays Homage to Special Ops Command
Congratulations to Special Forces General Bryan Fenton. Thank you to Ranger General Richard Clarke for a job well done.
Ceremony Pays Homage to Special Ops Command
defense.gov · by JIM GARAMONE
While it was a change of command ceremony for Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, today, the real stars of the ceremony were the men and women of the command who serve as the point of the spear around the world.
Change of Command
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, participate in the change of command ceremony for U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., Aug. 30, 2022. Army Gen. Richard D. Clarke relinquished command to Army Gen. Bryan P. Fenton.
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Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III; Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Army Gen. Richard D. Clarke, the outgoing commander; and Army Gen. Brian Fenton, the incoming commander, all concentrated on the people of the command and what the U.S. owes to its "silent warriors."
All this comes from "special operations truths" – a code promulgated in the 1980s — with the first truth being that "humans are more important than hardware."
"I know that your SOF [special operations forces] truths are unique to this command, but they also drive at something that's fundamental to our entire military," Austin said during the change of command ceremony. "It's this: The United States has the strongest fighting force in the world, and it's not because we have superior weapons — although we do. It is not because we have better tactics — although we have those, too. Ladies and gentlemen, we are the world's strongest fighting force because our people and the values that our people stand for are far and beyond what everybody else brings to the table.
Command Change
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, participate in the change of command ceremony for U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., Aug. 30, 2022. Army Gen. Richard D. Clarke relinquished command to Army Gen. Bryan P. Fenton.
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"Our strength is our people," he continued. "And at Socom, I'm proud of the way that you prove that every single day."
Milley – a special operator himself – also emphasized this, saying the change of command ceremony really is about people. "Socom, as we know, creates and develops the most elite forces from across the joint force and integrates their skills into all the domains of space, cyber, air, land, maritime and subsurface," he said. "Socom provides globally integrated capabilities for every geographic combatant command, and this capability is not something that you can create very quickly. There are no shortcuts."
He said the U.S. Special Operations Command is "the world's most credible and capable force." These forces work to further U.S. goals and values, and they work alongside allies and partners around the world to ensure peace and give enemies pause, he said.
Preparing Equipment
Service members with the 10th Special Forces Group and members of the Croatian Special Forces from Croatian Special Operations Forces Command prepare equipment for military free fall jumps prior to boarding a U.S. Air Force MC-130J Commando II assigned to the 352d Special Operations Wing near Udbina, Croatia, July 21, 2022. The MFF was part of a Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET), which included members of the U.S. Air Force’s 352d Special Operations Wing, the U.S. Army’s 1st Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) and the Croatian Special Forces. JCET allows U.S. service members to train at the operational and tactical echelon as a combined, joint force with SOF setting the conditions for larger operations.
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The command has more than 5,000 troops deployed in 80 countries. Socom personnel were among the first in Afghanistan and led efforts to take down the Islamic State.
The general said the U.S. Special Operations Command is "always at the intersection where freedom meets fear. Special operations forces are always at the point of the spear. They are literally at the edge of liberty. Our enemies around the world take note of what our operators do; it gives them pause. It changes their calculus."
Loading Equipment
An Air Force loadmaster signals to service members loading equipment during training in Udbina, Croatia, July 19, 2022. U.S. and Croatian special operations forces trained together to increase interoperability at the tactical level.
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The sacrifices these special operators make is amazing, he said. "These men and women execute some of the nation's most complex and dangerous missions that most will never hear about," Milley said. "They do it at night; they do it in horrible weather. They do it against fanatical enemies, and they are risking it all on every objective in the bloody crucible of ground combat. Sometimes, you may hear about the mission or what they accomplished, and oftentimes you never will. They don't do these missions for glory. They do it for you. They do it for us. They do it for America. And they do these missions consistently and routinely without complaint."
Austin noted the ceremony occurred on the one-year anniversary of the end of the war in Afghanistan – a conflict where special operators played an outsized role. "I remain enormously proud of the U.S. military's professionalism and bravery over 20 years of war, proud of the work our NATO allies and partners who supported our hope for a better future for the Afghan people, and proud of this command’s relentless fight doing what only … special operators can do," the secretary said. "It was [the] quiet professionals of Socom who were among the first on the ground in Afghanistan in 2001. And when I led troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and served as a Centcom [U.S. Central Command] commander, I relied on special operators and support teams for your skill, for your precision, and for your bold determination to confront any threat anytime."
1:18:12
Special operators must remain vigilant, the secretary said. They are changing the focus to today's security environment, where China is the pacing threat for the U.S. military and Russian President Vladimir Putin continues an unjust and unprovoked war on neighboring Ukraine.
Terrorists are still a threat, as well, and special operators cannot put away the skills they learned through the costly battles of the past 20 years, Austin said.
defense.gov · by JIM GARAMONE
2. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, AUGUST 30 (Putin's War)
Maps/graphics: https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-august-30
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, AUGUST 30
understandingwar.org
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, August 30
Kateryna Stepanenko, Karolina Hird, George Barros, Grace Mappes, and Frederick W. Kagan
August 30, 10:30 pm ET
Click here to see ISW's interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
Ukrainian forces began striking Russian pontoon ferries across the Dnipro River on August 29, which is consistent with the start of the Ukrainian counteroffensive. The effects of destroying ferries will likely be more ephemeral than those of putting bridges out of commission, so attacking them makes sense in conjunction with active ground operations. Ukrainian military officials confirmed that Ukrainian forces destroyed a Russian pontoon-ferry crossing in Lvove, approximately 16km west of Nova Kakhovka on the right bank of the Dnipro River on August 29.[1] Ukrainian and Russian sources have also reported that Ukrainian forces struck a pontoon crossing constructed out of barges near the Antonivsky Road Bridge.[2]
Ukrainian forces have long undertaken efforts to destroy Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) prior to the announcement of the counteroffensive operation, which likely indicates that Ukrainian forces are committed to a long-term effort - composed of both strikes and ground assaults. Ukrainian strikes on Russian GLOCs disrupt the Russians’ ability to supply and reinforce their positions with manpower and equipment, which will assist Ukrainian ground counteroffensives. Satellite imagery shows that Russian forces are continuing to use ferries to transfer a limited amount of military equipment daily via the Dnipro River.[3]
The Ukrainian counteroffensive is thus a cohesive process that will require some time to correctly execute. The Kremlin will likely exploit the lack of immediate victory over Kherson City or Ukrainian operational silence on the progress of the Ukrainian counteroffensive to misrepresent Ukrainian efforts as failing and to undermine public confidence in its prospects.
Russian forces are continuing to react and adjust their positions throughout southern Ukraine, likely both as a response to the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive and in preparation for broader Ukrainian counter-offensives further east. Russian forces are continuing to transfer large convoys of military equipment from Crimea and Melitopol.[4] Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov also noted that Russian forces have opened up around five military bases and barracks in Melitopol and will likely continue to prepare defenses around Melitopol given its strategically vital GLOCs between Rostov Oblast and southern Ukraine.[5] The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command reported that Russian forces in Kherson Oblast are attempting to conduct rotations of troops, likely in an effort to reinforce some vulnerable positions.[6]
The Ukrainian counteroffensive is likely driving Russian redeployment and reprioritization throughout the theater. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces are reinforcing the grouping of forces operating west of Donetsk City area with elements of the Central Military District (CMD).[7] ISW has previously identified that CMD units, under the command of the CMD Commander Colonel General Aleksandr Lapin, operated in the Lysychansk-Siversk area and recently concluded an operational pause in mid-August.[8] The movement of CMD units to Donetsk City area further suggests that Russian forces are deprioritizing the Siversk advance in favor of attempting to sustain momentum around the Donetsk City area. ISW has previously reported that Russian advances around Avdiivka and the western Donetsk City area have effectively culminated following Russian limited breakthroughs around the Butivka Coal Mine ventilation shaft.[9] The redeployment suggests that the Russian command has recognized that it cannot pursue more than one offensive operation at a time.
The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Russian forces are deploying elements of the newly-formed 3rd Army Corps, which is at least in part composed of inexperienced volunteers, to reinforce neglected Russian positions in Kharkiv and Zaporizhia Oblasts.[10] The deployment of the 3rd Army Corps may indicate that Russian forces seek to recoup combat power for use in offensive operations around Donetsk City or defensive operations in Kherson by replacing experienced troops with raw and poorly trained volunteer units.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is likely setting conditions for the coerced cultural assimilation of displaced Ukrainians in Russia to erase their Ukrainian cultural identity. Head of the Russian Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs, Igor Barinov, spoke about the creation of “adaptation centers” for “migrants” living in Russia with Putin on August 29. [11] Barinov stated that with Putin’s permission and support, the Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs is working on programs in unspecified pilot regions to ensure that “migrants” to Russia know and respect Russian traditions, customs, and laws to prevent “migrants” from experiencing “social isolation” in Russia.[12] Barinov claimed that there is a risk of ethnic minorities in Russia forming enclaves that will exacerbate ethnic crime within Russia, and that “adaptation centers” would be an effective tool in maintaining the stability of migrant communities.[13] Russian outlet Vot Tak amplified statements made by Russian migration expert Alexander Verkhovsky that such programs should structure themselves as something between refugee camps and vocational training centers for migrants.[14] Verkhovsky also noted that over 3.5 million displaced Ukrainians have entered Russia since the full-scale invasion began on February 24.[15] Many displaced Ukrainians in Russia are not in Russia voluntarily, and the Russian government has forcefully transferred at least 1,000 children from Mariupol to Russia.[16] The forcible transfer of children of one group to another “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” is a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.[17]
The creation of so-called social adaptation programs in Russia would add a social dimension to the legal frameworks through which Putin likely seeks to forcibly culturally assimilate Ukrainians into the Russian Federation. As ISW previously reported on August 29, Putin signed two decrees on August 27 in a purported effort to assist stateless peoples and migrants from Ukraine to indefinitely live and work in the Russian Federation with certain social payments allocated to those who left Ukraine following February 18.[18] Russian Security Council Chairman Dmitry Medvedev also stated that Russia will begin working on a bill in September for the condition of entry, exit, and stay in Russia for foreigners.[19] Putin’s decrees and the bill alluded to by Medvedev are likely meant to set conditions for migrants from Ukraine to remain in Russia permanently, thus essentially forming the backbone of an extended campaign to at population transfer between Ukraine and Russia with the purpose of Russifying Ukraine. Programs at so-called adaptation centers would likely serve as a form of cultural reprogramming to erase Ukrainian cultural identity from displaced Ukrainian who either fled to Russia or were deported by Russian authorities.
Key Takeaways
- Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations with ground assaults and strikes against Russian GLOCs across the Dnipro River. Ukrainian forces made gains on the ground and have begun striking pontoon ferries across the river.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin is likely setting legal and social conditions for the coerced cultural assimilation of displaced Ukrainians in Russia to erase their Ukrainian cultural identity.
- Russian forces conducted a limited ground attack north of Kharkiv City.
- Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks southwest of Izyum, south of Bakhmut, and near the western outskirts of Donetsk City.
- Russian forces conducted a limited ground attack in northern Kherson Oblast.
- An anonymous senior US military official stated that the US believes that Russia is firing artillery from positions around and in the vicinity of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
- Russian occupation authorities are continuing efforts to forcibly-integrate schools in occupied Ukraine into the Russian educational system and extending methods of social control.
- Russian forces are continuing to move military equipment into Crimea.
- Russian federal subjects (regions) are continuing to recruit and deploy volunteer battalions.
- Russian occupation authorities are taking measures to forcibly-integrate Ukrainian schools into the Russian education space in preparation for the approaching school year.
Ukrainian Counteroffensives (Ukrainian efforts to liberate Russian-occupied territories)
Ukrainian military officials stated that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is ongoing in Kherson Oblast but did confirm any Ukrainian advances due to operational security measures as of August 30.[20] Kherson Oblast Head Yaroslav Yanushevich stated that Ukrainian forces are continuing to prioritize the destruction of Russian ammunition depots, command posts, and force concentration areas alongside conducting ground maneuvers. Geolocated footage showed that Ukrainian forces have entered Arkhanhelske on the eastern bank of the Inhulets River and south of the Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border.[21] The geolocation can further corroborate the CNN report from August 29 which reported that Ukrainian forces liberated Arkhanhelske on the first day of Ukraine’s counteroffensive operation.[22] Other evidence supports CNN’s report. Ukrainian military officials previously stated that the Donetsk People’s Republic’s (DNR) forcefully mobilized 109th Regiment fled an unspecified area in Kherson Oblast on August 29.[23] The DNR deployed the 109th Regiment to Arkhanhelske and other settlements along the Inhulets River and Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border in late July.[24] All this evidence further indicates that Ukrainian forces have advanced to Arkhanhelske[25]
Ukrainian forces intensified their strikes against Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs), ammunition depots, and strongholds through northern and central Kherson Oblast on August 30. The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command reported on August 30 that Ukrainian forces continued to strike the Antonivsky road and railway bridges over the Dnipro River and the Darivka Bridge over the Inhulets River.[26] Russian and Ukrainian social media users uploaded footage that shows the aftermath of the Ukrainian strikes on the Antonivsky Road Bridge.[27] The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command also reported that Ukrainian aviation struck Russian forces and concentration points in Kyselivka and Kortyrka, along the frontline in Kherson Oblast.[28] Russian Telegram channels published the video of a smoke plume in Nova Kakhovka reportedly around the area of the Novokahovka Electromechanic Plant (south of the Kakhovka Bridge), though ISW cannot verify the cause or the precise location of the explosion.[29] Russian-appointed officials claimed that Ukrainian HIMARS strikes damaged residential areas in Nova Kakhovka, but ISW cannot verify this claim.[30] Social media footage also showed a smoke plume accompanied by audible explosions in Tavriisk (east Nova Kakhovka), and some social media users reported the activation of Russian air-defense systems.[31] Ukrainian forces also likely struck Beryslav, approximately 10km northeast of Nova Kakhovka and Oleshky, on the left bank of the Dnipro River.[32] Russian and Ukrainian Telegram channels also reported explosions in Kherson City and Chornobaivka throughout the day.[33]
Ukrainian partisans likely engaged in combat with Russian forces in Kherson City on August 30. Geolocated social media footage from the Tavriiskyi microdistrict in northern Kherson City featured audible small fire in the distance.[34] Russian war correspondent Mikhail Andronik claimed that Russian security forces found an enclave of “Ukrainian militants” armed with small arms and improvised explosive devices in the Tavriiskyi microdistrict and noted that there was a shootout in the area.[35] Russian sources additionally claimed that Russian forces destroyed a Ukrainian reconnaissance group in Kherson City, though it is unlikely that an unsupported Ukrainian reconnaissance element maneuvered from Ukrainian-controlled territory over 10 kilometers through Russian-controlled territory all the way to Kherson City.[36]
The Russian Defense Ministry and Russian sources continued to claim Russian victory over the Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kherson Oblast, likely in an effort to exploit Ukraine's operational silence. The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that Russian forces defeated a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the Mykolaiv-Kryvyi Rih direction on August 29 and killed over 1,200 Ukrainian servicemen.[37] Russian Telegram channels reshared footage of two damaged Polish T-72 tanks and two trucks reportedly in the Vysokopillya-Potomkyne area near the Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border, as evidence of successful Russian defenses.[38] Russian sources did not provide imagery to corroborate Russian battle damage claims. Russian-appointed Kherson Oblast Administration Head Kiril Stremeusov claimed that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is the “start of the liberation of the Russian city of Mykolaiv,” in a recording that Stremeusov made from the safety of Vozonezh Oblast, Russia.[39] Russian sources are continuing to misreport ongoing Ukrainian attacks against Russian GLOCs in Kherson Oblast. The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that Russian air defense systems intercepted 44 HIMARS rockets on Kherson City, Nova Kakhovka, Antonivsky Bridge, and Khakovka Hydroelectric Power Plant (HPP).[40] These claims are likely false given the lack of evidence of Russian air defense successfully intercepting a HIMARS rocket and the numerous documented explosions and strikes throughout northern and central Kherson Oblast on August 30. Russian sources will continue to misrepresent the Ukrainian counteroffensive to undermine the operation and portray it as ineffective in the international information space to erode public support for Ukraine.
Russian milbloggers and war correspondents continued to report on the progress of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in at least three directions, however, ISW cannot independently verify their claims. Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces seized Ternovi Pody, while Russian forces repelled Ukrainian advances in Pravdyne and Oleksandrivka (all situated northwest and west of Kherson City).[41] Milbloggers said that they could not confirm reports of Ukrainian breakthroughs in Myrne about 23km west of Kherson City and claimed that fighting is ongoing in Soldatske (about 27km due northwest of Kherson City). Some milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces are fighting near Snihurvika and the area near the Ukrainian bridgehead over Inhulets River.[42] Many of the milbloggers are reposting identical reports to amplify specific messages. Milbloggers’ reports about ongoing combat in southern Ukraine contradict the Russian Defense Ministry’s claims about a complete Russian victory over the Ukrainian counteroffensive.
We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because those activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.
- Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and two supporting efforts);
- Russian Subordinate Main Effort—Encirclement of Ukrainian Troops in the Cauldron between Izyum and Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts
- Russian Supporting Effort 1—Kharkiv City
- Russian Supporting Effort 2—Southern Axis
- Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
- Activities in Russian-occupied Areas
Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine
Russian Subordinate Main Effort—Southern Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk Oblasts (Russian objective: Encircle Ukrainian forces in Eastern Ukraine and capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
Russian forces conducted a limited ground attack southwest of Izyum on August 30. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops unsuccessfully attempted to advance in the direction of Shnurky, about 30km south of Izyum and northwest of Slovyansk near the Kharkiv-Donetsk Oblast border.[43] Russian forces additionally continued air, artillery, and MLRS attacks along the Izyum-Slovyansk line and struck Husarivka, Krasnopillya, Dolyna, Bohorodychne, Virnopillya, and multiple other settlements near the Kharkiv-Donetsk Oblast border.[44]
Russian forces did not conduct any ground attacks towards Siversk on August 30 and shelled Siversk and surrounding settlements.[45]
Russian forces conducted a series of limited ground attacks south of Bakhmut on August 30. Russian troops have likely advanced into Kodema, 13km southeast of Bakhmut. The Ukrainian General Staff noted that Russian troops are trying to consolidate control of Kodema from multiple directions and that fighting is continuing in the area of the settlement.[46] Russian sources state that Russian forces have not yet fully cleared Kodema as of August 30, however.[47] Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Commander Eduard Basurin claimed that Ukrainian forces launched a localized counterattack in Kodema on August 30, which indicates that Russian forces are holding parts of the settlement which are under active contestation.[48] Several Russian milbloggers amplified claims that Russian troops are fighting to fully consolidate control of the entirety of Kodema and use this position to launch attacks northward onto Bakhmut. The Ukrainian General Staff additionally reported that Russian troops are attempting to push towards Bakhmut from further south in the Horlivka area and attempted to advance from around Zaitseve (20km south of Bakhmut) and Shumy (23km southwest of Bakhmut).[49] Russian forces continued to strike Bakhmut and its environs with tanks and tube and rocket artillery to support ongoing ground operations.[50]
Russian forces continued ground attacks near the western outskirts of Donetsk City on August 30. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops attempted to advance on Opytne (about 5km northwest of the outskirts of Donetsk City), Pervomaiske (12km northwest of the outskirts of Donetsk City), and Krasnohorivka (15km west of the outskirts of Donetsk City).[51] Russian troops also continued efforts to advance on Avdiivka and conducted mortar and artillery strikes on and around Avdiivka.[52] Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks southwest of Donetsk City and August 30 and continued shelling Ukrainian positions between Donetsk City and the Zaporizhia Oblast border.[53]
Supporting Effort #1—Kharkiv City (Russian objective: Defend ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Izyum and prevent Ukrainian forces from reaching the Russian border)
Russian forces conducted a limited ground attack north of Kharkiv City on August 30. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted a ground assault near Udy, 32km north of Kharkiv City.[54] Russian forces struck the center of Kharkiv City and continued tube and rocket artillery strikes on the surrounding settlements.[55]
Supporting Effort #2—Southern Axis (Russian objective: Defend Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts against Ukrainian counterattacks)
Russian forces conducted a limited ground attack on the Kherson-Mykolaiv Oblast front line on August 30. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces withdrew after an attempted ground assault towards Potomkyne, south of Kryvyi Rih on the T2207 highway.[56] Russian forces struck Mykolaiv City with 16 S-300 missiles and conducted airstrikes and S-300 strikes on the Bashtanka District, northeast of Mykolaiv City on the H11 highway on August 29.[57] Russian forces conducted UAV reconnaissance near Davydiv Brid, Snihurivka, Pravdyne, and Velyke Artakove, all northwest of Kherson City on the front line on August 30.[58] Russian forces continued firing on settlements along the line of contact.[59]
Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground assaults in Zaporizhia Oblast on August 30. The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces struck Kryvyi Rih and Dnipro City, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, and Veselyanka, Zaporizhia Oblast. [60] Russian forces also struck Zaporizhia City with rocket artillery.[61]Russian forces struck settlements across the Dnipro River from Enerhodar, including Nikopol, Chervonohryhorivka, and Marhanets.[62] Russian forces continued shelling settlements along the line of contact.[63]
An anonymous senior US military official said on August 29 that the US believes that Russia is firing artillery from positions around and in the vicinity of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP).[64] The senior US military official said that the US also believes that Ukrainian forces are actively taking measures to avoid striking the ZNPP to mitigate the risk of disaster.[65] The Ukrainian General Staff explicitly reported that Russian forces are performing artillery strikes from positions around the ZNPP, and ISW previously reported on satellite imagery showing Russian military equipment apparently sheltering under ZNPP infrastructure close to a reactor vessel.[66]
Ukrainian sources stated that Russian forces shelled the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) corridor to the ZNPP on August 30, one day before the IAEA delegation is set to arrive at the ZNPP.[67] Head of the Zaporizhia Oblast occupation administration Yevheny Balitsky stated that the IAEA delegation is welcome to the ZNPP grounds and said the occupation administration will provide the IAEA with alleged proof of Ukrainian forces striking the plant.[68] Russian sources accused Ukrainian forces of shelling the area around the ZNPP and flying four UAVs over the ZNPP on August 30, which the Russian Defense Ministry (MoD) claimed damaged a radioactive waste containment building after Russian air defenses shot them down.[69]
Russian forces are continuing to transport more military equipment into Crimea, likely to reinforce Russian forces in Kherson Oblast. Geolocated footage shows Russian forces transporting tanks, trucks, and armored vehicles in Krasnodar Krai towards Crimea.[70] More geolocated footage shows Russian trucks, a tank, and a Tigr vehicle at the Dzhankoy Rail Station in Crimea, possibly transported by rail from Russia.[71]
Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)
Russian federal subjects (regions) are continuing to recruit and deploy volunteer battalions. Oryol Oblast Governor Aleksandr Klychkov posted a recruitment reminder for the “Yermolov” volunteer battalion and the 3rd Army Corps and stated that the first batch of volunteers from Oryol Oblast have already been deployed to the frontline.[72] Primorsky Krai Deputy Chairman Dmitry Mariza reported that the separate repair and restoration ”Arsenievsky” volunteer battalion deployed from Primorye to Donbas on August 29.[73] ISW previously reported on the formation of this battalion on August 22, and its deployment to Ukraine within one week of its formation supports ISW’s assessment that volunteer battalions are deploying to Ukraine severely understrength and poorly trained. [74]A local Primorsky Krai outlet also reported that Primorsky Krai is continuing recruitment efforts for volunteers for unspecified Pacific Fleet elements (likely naval infantry), the 83rd Separate Airborne Brigade, and unspecified elements of the Eastern Military District’s 5th Combined Arms Army.[75]
The Kremlin is continuing measures to compensate for combat losses and low domestic willingness to volunteer for service in Ukraine. Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported that Russians in central and southeastern Russia are increasingly refusing to volunteer for combat in Ukraine so the Kremlin is turning to covert mobilization among private military companies (PMC).[76] The GUR reported that the 4,500-5,000 PMC mercenaries currently operating in Ukraine are frontline assault troops, confirming ISW’s prior assessment that Wagner PMC forces are acting as the Kremlin’s preferred strike groups in Ukraine.[77] GUR reported that this increasing reliance on PMC forces stems from residents of central and southeastern Russia, areas that disproportionately suffer high combat losses, becoming increasingly unwilling to volunteer for service amid high Russian combat losses.[78][79]
Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of occupied areas; set conditions for potential annexation into the Russian Federation or some other future political arrangement of Moscow’s choosing)
Russian occupation authorities are continuing to take measures to forcibly-integrate Ukrainian schools into the Russian education space in preparation for the approaching school year which begins on September 1. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on August 30 that Russian occupation authorities in Nova Kakhovka, Kherson Oblast, are promising to pay Ukrainian families 2,000 rubles ($33) per child who attends a Russian-run school.[80] Russian magazine Rodina reported that they presented a textbook named “Donbas - The Heart of Russia” to secondary and higher schools in occupied Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts in order to ensure that children in Donbas learn from the “right textbooks.”[81] The Russian-backed governor of Sevastopol, Crimea, stated that Russian and occupation administrators are providing Russian textbooks, literature, and educational material to schools in Melitopol.[82] Similar Russian organizations and political organs have recently focused on disseminating Russian curricula into occupied Ukraine, likely as part of extended campaigns to Russify social infrastructure in occupied areas of Ukraine. [83]
Russian authorities will likely struggle to sustain substantial enrollment in Russian schools throughout occupied areas of Ukraine despite attempts at financial coercion and the provision of Russian educational materiel to occupied areas. The Ukrainian Resistance Center noted on August 29 that the number of families with children who are leaving occupied territories through Russian-controlled checkpoints has increased significantly over the past week, largely due to the imminently approaching school year.[84] Efforts to forcibly integrate occupied territories into the Russian educational sphere may contribute to internal tensions and pressure against occupation regimes.
Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.
[11] https://tass dot ru/obschestvo/15587135; https://t.me/kommunist/8901
[12] https://tass dot ru/obschestvo/15587135; https://t.me/kommunist/8901
[13] http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/69223
[15] https://vot-takdot tv/novosti/30-08-2022-tsentry-dlya-migrantov/; http... ru/20220826/inostrantsy-1812328599.html; http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/69223
[18] https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-ass... http://publication dot pravo.gov.ru/Document/View/0001202208270002?index=2&rangeSize=1
[19] https://ria dot ru/20220826/inostrantsy-1812328599.html
[36] https://topwar dot ru/201021-ukrainskuju-drg-blokirovali-i-likvidirovali-v-odnom-iz-rajonov-hersona.html; https://t.me/rybar/37905;
[72] https://newtimes dot ru/articles/detail/220379; https://t.me/Klychkov_Andrey/243; https://newtimes dot ru/articles/detail/220379; https://www dot infoorel.ru/news/informaciya-dlya-kontraktnikov-3-go-armeyskogo-korpusa.html?PHPSESSID=7q9tmnhcuvehiikauoe4e9teu4
[73] http://amurpress dot ru/primorye/34754/
[74] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... kommersant.ru/doc/5524219
[75] http://amurpress dot ru/primorye/34754/
[76] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/rosiia-namahaietsia-kompensuvaty-boiovi-vtraty-prykhovanoiu-mobilizatsiieiu-ta-naimantsiamy-pryvatnykh-viiskovykh-kompanii.html
[77] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/rosiia-namahaietsia-kompensuvaty-boiovi-vtraty-prykhovanoiu-mobilizatsiieiu-ta-naimantsiamy-pryvatnykh-viiskovykh-kompanii.html; https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-ass...
[78] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/rosiia-namahaietsia-kompensuvaty-boiovi-vtraty-prykhovanoiu-mobilizatsiieiu-ta-naimantsiamy-pryvatnykh-viiskovykh-kompanii.html
[79] https://donpress dot com/news/27-08-2022-vmesto-kosmosa-roskosmos-teper-otpravlyaet-na-specialnuyu-voennuyu-operaciyu-v
[80] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2022/08/30/v-novij-kahovczi-rosiyany-obiczyayut-vyplatyty-2-tys-rubliv-za-kozhnu-dytynu-yaka-pogodytsya-na-navchannya-v-okupaczijnyh-shkolah/
[84] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2022/08/29/ukrayinski-batky-masovo-vyvozyat-svoyih-ditej-z-tot-pered-pochatkom-rosijskogo-navchalnogo-roku/
understandingwar.org
3. Inside the Shadow Evacuation of Kabul
Great Americans trying to do great things for their fellow human beings.
Photos at the link: https://www.wired.com/story/inside-shadow-evacuation-kabul-afghanistan/
Inside the Shadow Evacuation of Kabul
In the last two weeks of the war, an ad hoc team armed with group chats, QR codes, and satellite maps launched a mad dash to save imperiled Afghan allies.
MICHAEL VENUTOLO-MANTOVANI
BACKCHANNEL
AUG 30, 2022 6:00 AM
Wired · by Condé Nast · August 30, 2022
At 11:12 pm on August 15, 2021, Worth Parker’s phone pinged with a message. Sir. I hope you are well, it began. By any chance do you know any Marines who are on the ground right now?
Parker did not. He was in his bed in Wilmington, North Carolina, 7,200 miles from “the ground” of Kabul, having retired from the United States Marines six weeks earlier. He was trying to stay as disconnected as possible, even shutting off notifications to all of his apps. But, as a self-described “49-year-old Luddite,” he’d accidentally left Facebook turned on. The message continued:
My brother, who was an interpreter with the Special Mission Wing, and my father, who used to be the fixed wing aircraft squadron commander until he retired and then he worked for an American defense contracting company as an advisor, are stuck in Kabul. Of course, my and my brother’s enlistment in the US military make them even bigger targets. I tried all the official channels but no one is responding.
The note was from Jason Essazay. A native of Mazar-i-Sharif, Essazay had watched US troops arrive in Afghanistan in 2001 when he was 12, and he had spent the first eight years of his adulthood working with them as an interpreter and fixer. Alongside American special operators, he had engaged the Taliban in dozens of gunfights and survived three IED attacks, the last of which hospitalized him for a month. In 2014, after two years on the waiting list, he acquired a Special Immigrant Visa. He left his family behind, settled in Houston, and for 18 months worked at a gas station, then a Walmart, then a steel plant, before joining the Marine Reserves.
Essazay and Parker had been in touch only briefly, a year earlier, when Parker edited a blog post Essazay wrote for the tactical fitness brand Soflete, about how yoga and jiujitsu helped him cope with PTSD and the culture shock of living in America. Now Parker was Essazay’s last resort as he attempted to rescue his family from the Taliban, which had taken Kabul hours earlier.
Parker was sure there was little he could do. After 27 years of service, he had spent the first 45 days of his retirement trying to wash the Marines, and Afghanistan, out of his system. He had just returned from a monthlong cross-country RV trip with his 10-year-old daughter, after missing her birth and many birthdays. He was neglecting his regular fitness routine and letting his gray beard grow out. More than anything, he was trying to shed the title Lieutenant Colonel and become simply Worth.
Parker apologized, promised he’d do what he could, wished Essazay luck, and said to keep him updated. Then he fell asleep.
In April 2021, President Joe Biden announced that he would honor the deal struck during the Trump administration and complete the full withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan by September 11. The 20-year war, America’s longest, cost the lives of 2,325 US soldiers and over $2 trillion, stretching across four presidential administrations. In all, more than 176,000 people were killed, including nearly 50,000 Afghan civilians.
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At the time of Biden’s announcement, some 2,500 US troops remained in Afghanistan, and several thousand American civilians and contractors lived and worked in the country. Meanwhile, about 81,000 Afghans who had worked with the US military during the war had pending applications for Special Immigrant Visas.
The family would first have to get through a Taliban checkpoint, the message warned. This could go to shit. But they have a chance. Get them here in an hour. The message was 90 minutes old.
By early summer, Biden had set the official evacuation deadline for August 31. The Taliban inched closer to Kabul, capturing surrounding cities, regions, and entire provinces with relative ease. On August 10, a US intelligence report estimated the Taliban would take the capital within one to three months. Five days later, Kabul fell.
The city’s airport, Hamid Karzai International, immediately became one of the only escape routes out of the country. Within hours, thousands of people flooded its gates. Most were turned away, lacking the necessary papers. Many were tear-gassed. And several died after being crushed in a human stampede. Footage of two Afghans clinging to a departing US Air Force C-17 cargo plane and then falling to their deaths quickly spread across the globe. They were later identified as a 24-year-old dentist and a 17-year-old player on Afghanistan’s national youth soccer team and became symbols of the most chaotic evacuation since the fall of Saigon.
The night after Kabul fell, Parker was reading about the unfolding bedlam when he saw mention of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which was flying 160 of its troops from Kuwait to Kabul to assist with the evacuation. The unit happened to be commanded by Parker’s old friend Colonel Eric Cloutier. Suddenly, Parker had boots on the ground. He sent Essazay another Facebook message, telling him to send the names of his family members and any location data he had. About an hour later, Essazay responded with the names of his two brothers and his parents and their address in downtown Kabul, and Parker forwarded the info to a subordinate of Cloutier’s. He warned Essazay not to get his hopes up.
A day passed. On August 17, two weeks before the evacuation deadline, Parker drove west across North Carolina to a friend’s cabin in the Appalachian Mountains, where he planned to spend a few days hiking, scouting deer, and fly-fishing. By the time he reached the mountains, Tropical Storm Fred had descended. The rain was so heavy Parker could barely see through the windshield of his black Tacoma. When he arrived at the cabin, the power had been knocked out. He was disconnected from the outside world.
Around 10:30 that night, he was sitting on the front porch when the power flickered back on and his phone began to ping with Facebook notifications. His Marine contact in Kabul had been telling him where to send the Essazays. One of the final messages ordered urgent action: Get your people’s family to the airport now.
The message instructed them to head to the airport’s East Gate, make sure that no one else was with them, and give a password to marines manning the gate. The family would first have to get through a Taliban checkpoint, the message warned. This could go to shit. But they have a chance. Get them here in an hour. The message was 90 minutes old.
Illustration: Alicia Tatone
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Certain it was too late, Parker called Essazay, who told his family to leave everything behind, not even packing a change of clothes, which might reveal that they were trying to flee. Knowing the Taliban wouldn’t search women, the family duct-taped some $13,000 in cash to Essazay’s mother’s body, hidden beneath her dress. Essazay instructed them to wipe their phones, including the messages with his instructions. Anything linking them to American forces could get them killed. “But if you stay home,” Essazay told his parents, “you’re going to die.”
Over the next few hours, as the family headed along seven congested miles toward the airport, Essazay and Parker shared Facebook messages. Essazay worked from a Middle Eastern café in Houston that stayed open until 4 am, drinking black tea as he relayed his family’s movements. Other regulars occasionally stopped their chess and card games to crowd behind his laptop. Parker, sitting on his friend’s couch in Appalachia, kept his marine contact in Kabul abreast.
The family arrived at the Taliban checkpoint and told the guards they were taking their elderly matriarch to the hospital. They were allowed to pass. By 1 am US Eastern time, two and a half hours after the original window had closed, they arrived at the gate. Essazay’s brother Omar pushed through the crowd to reach the marines manning the gate, insisting that his family was supposed to get through and telling the guards that his brother was a US Marine. When they tried to turn him away, he supplied the name of Parker’s contact inside the airport, and the password he’d been given.
Waiting for a response, Parker recognized a long-dormant feeling. It was the closest he’d come to the exhilaration and exhaustion of combat since the years he had spent in the real thing. As the rain continued to pound the mountainside cabin, Essazay sent Parker one final message.
They are in. Semper Fi, sir.
19 Days Left
On August 12, three days before Essazay contacted Parker, Joe Saboe had just returned from a family snorkeling vacation in Hawaii. He was coaching soccer practice in Denver when his cell phone rang. It was his brother Dan in Phoenix, asking if he could help a friend and his family escape Afghanistan.
Dan explained that Abasin Hidai, a mutual friend of his and his wife, had returned to Afghanistan to help rebuild his country. Now he and his family were trapped. Worse, Hidai had worked as a water engineer with the US Army, and his brother had served on Afghanistan’s National Security Council. If they didn’t leave, they feared, the Taliban would soon kill them. Hidai, who had started the visa process years earlier, had no luck reaching the American embassy. He was desperately calling, texting, and emailing every person he knew with any connection to the US military.
Saboe, then 36, had been out of the Army a full seven years. He describes his tenure as a soldier as thoroughly workaday: ROTC at Georgetown; then a 2009 deployment in Iraq as an infantry officer, where for one year he helped build schools and hunt proto-ISIS insurgents; and finally teaching ROTC students back home before getting out in 2014. He got his master’s in education at Stanford and moved to Denver, where he was running a workforce education startup, coaching elite youth soccer, and raising two daughters with his wife.
Saboe’s phone rang—the family was calling on FaceTime. All nine of them, including four children under 10, were pinned down in a ditch no deeper than 18 inches, barely a dozen yards from the gate, bullets cracking over their heads.
Listening to his younger brother, Saboe was reminded of the end of his rotation in Mosul, where he was among the last troops to leave the city before it fell to ISIS. He thought of the Iraqi friends he’d made, many of whom had to flee the country. He feared the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul would be even more swift and brutal, and that all the work some 800,000 American soldiers had done in the country over the past 20 years might have been in vain. But he figured there was nothing he could do. He’d never even been to Afghanistan.
Still, that evening Saboe tried the closest thing to a Noncombatant Evacuation Operations tool he had: Facebook. He posted a note to his 1,400 friends that began, “Hey State Department, DOD, or politico friends—need your help urgently.” Without naming him, he explained Hidai’s predicament and asked anyone who might have “helpful information or a firm, strong lead” to respond.
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By the following morning, Friday, Saboe’s post had received 32 sad-face and hugging-heart emoji, but also one direct message from an ROTC buddy he hadn’t talked to in nearly 20 years.
Call me, the message said. I am trying to get one out too.
The friend, who was still in the Army, working at the Pentagon, laid out a plan. He told Saboe to write a letter saying that Hidai and his family would come live with Saboe and his family in Denver, have it notarized, and send it to the American embassy in Kabul. After a quick discussion with his wife, Saboe wrote the letter. He walked two doors down, where his neighbor, a lawyer, notarized it, and then he sent it to the embassy via the fax number on the agency’s website. He also called someone at the embassy he had reached through a shared Georgetown connection. The person assured Saboe that Hidai would be receiving a call within the hour. A return fax never came, and the embassy never called. When Kabul fell on Sunday, US staff at the embassy shredded documents, lowered the American flag, and were airlifted out of the country.
Later on Friday, however, Saboe received another Facebook message, this time from a marine who was at the airport. The marine said the Hidais should head to the North Gate as soon as possible. Saboe relayed the information to Hidai, but as the family hid all their documents beneath Hidai’s wife’s clothes and prepared to rush from their home, Saboe got a message telling him to abort. Word had quickly spread that the gate was open, and now hardly anyone was making it through the crowd. Saboe had no choice but to tell the Hidais to sit tight and hope another opportunity to leave might come before the deadline dropped or the Taliban found them.
17 Days Left
Meanwhile, Saboe started hearing from several veterans across the country who’d seen his Facebook post. They were all in their thirties, each trying to get a single contact to safety. By Saturday, August 14, the day before Kabul fell, Saboe decided to link all nine of them in a WhatsApp group, where they could share what they were hearing and relay it back to the people they were trying to help. They posted furtively snapped pictures of the ever-changing and growing number of Taliban checkpoints, sent to them by families and military contacts scattered around the city. Soon, they had a relatively reliable picture of what was happening in real time. Several members of the group had gone into tech after the military, and they started building a detailed map using annotated images from Google Maps and Google Earth, updating it nearly hourly to reflect the movements of the Taliban and the airport’s access points. To mitigate confusion between similar or identical last names, they also assigned each potential evacuee or family of evacuees a “chalk number”—a term dating to World War II, when Allied paratroopers had their flight numbers placed on their backs in chalk. The Hidais were Chalk-0001.
As the operation formed, Saboe began working late into the night from his home office, directly below his 11-year-old daughter’s bedroom. Around 2 am Denver time on August 16, midday in Kabul, Saboe’s phone pinged with a message: Chalk-0028—a family of four—had successfully made it through the North Gate. He immediately texted another family, Chalk-0021, to head there. Minutes later, his phone rang—the family was calling on FaceTime. All nine of them, including four children under 10, were pinned down in a ditch no deeper than 18 inches, barely a dozen yards from the gate, bullets cracking over their heads. The Taliban were killing anyone that moved.
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While the horror unfolded on Saboe’s phone, his wife, Nichole, sat huddled in the corner, listening to the children’s screams, the muzzle blasts, and a woman asking Saboe if he was trying to get them killed. Amid the shouting, he gathered a few details about their location, quickly cross-checked it on Google Earth, and determined that the Taliban were firing from a factory across the road. He told them to stay in the ditch and lie flat, face down. The call went on for nearly 90 minutes, Saboe doing his best to keep them safe while bracing himself to witness their deaths via FaceTime. Eventually, the bullets stopped. The Taliban seemed to have moved on. Surrounded by dead bodies, the family made their way home. Hours later, as his pounding heart finally settled, Saboe lay in bed wondering if he was doing the right thing.
The following day, the family approached another gate, only to return home again after being caught in a stampede that left the mother with a dislocated shoulder and two of the children and their grandmother with broken bones. Finally, on August 18, a friend in St. Louis named Zac Martin, who had served with Saboe in Iraq, returned from his day job in electric utility sales and secured the family a van that would be driven by a Special Forces operator. The van boarded a few miles from the airport and drove the family straight through Abbey Gate, where Chalk-0021 eventually boarded a cargo plane. They’ve since settled in Virginia. Meanwhile, Chalk-0001, the Hidais, remained trapped.
The number of potential evacuees was also ballooning. Saboe had received a call from Jim Webb, a reporter for The Military Times who was writing a story about the efforts of Saboe’s growing team. When asked what his group was called, Saboe fumbled for a moment, before blurting out “Team America.” Webb asked if there was an email to which people could send requests for help and tips, so Dan Saboe created a Gmail account on the fly. The story was published the following morning, August 17. At the time, Saboe’s group had 128 people on its list of potential evacuees. Within a day, teamamericaafghanevac@gmail.com had received over a thousand emails from Americans looking to volunteer and Afghans looking for help escaping. Saboe decided to take the next two weeks off work.
13 Days Left
On the morning of August 18, once his family had cleared Afghanistan airspace on their way to Qatar, Jason Essazay publicly thanked Worth Parker for helping them escape, tagging Parker in a Facebook post he shared with his 1,200 friends. Parker’s Facebook messages quickly began to fill with urgent requests for help from Afghans in and around Kabul. He was overwhelmed and, as most of them lacked the proper paperwork to board a flight, largely unable to help.
Later that day, while heading home from the mountains, Parker started receiving voicemails from other Afghan interpreters and fixers, asking if he knew anyone who could help. His phone number had leaked. Driving down I-40, memories of the months he had spent living alongside Afghans walloped him: watching hours of mindless TV with them after a long night supporting combat operations; his first deployment to Bagram Air Field when his daughter was born and the locals showered him with gifts to bring home to her, including a colorful velvet dress covered in tiny bits of mirrored glass.
As the silence continued, a sleepless Saboe pressed for an update. 12:54 am: Hi Abasin—are you all okay? 1:42 am: Hi Abasin— did you all make it through the checkpoint? 2:53 am: Hi Abasin, are you in?
Parker began calling people across his large network of high-ranking military officials to see if there was anything that could be done to get more people out. By early evening, he was back home and on a Zoom call with Army Lieutenant Colonel Doug Livermore, the national director of external communications for the Special Forces Association; Fred “Doom” Dummar, a retired Special Forces colonel; Anil D’Souza, a former Marine officer; and Mick Mulroy, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense and retired CIA paramilitary officer. They too had been getting dozens of panicked requests from Afghans.
The group began to map out their connections, and within a couple of days they’d grown to nearly 30 members. Mostly retired and over 50, they named themselves the Graybeards. Soon the bulk of Parker’s days were spent trying to proselytize their work on Facebook and to the press before getting on the group’s nightly Zoom call. By 10 pm US Eastern time, Afghanistan, nine and a half hours ahead, would begin to light up. Parker and his teammates would work until 3 or 4 am trying to get Afghans through the airport gates, mediating between them and US personnel on the ground as Parker had done with the Essazays. Not 50 days into his long-awaited retirement, Parker apologized to his wife, Katy, and their daughter for deploying yet again, this time to the back of their home in Wilmington.
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No one seems to remember who said it first, but someone suggested their nascent operation resembled a digital version of the Allied evacuation from the beaches of northern France in World War II. They christened themselves Task Force Dunkirk. Yet despite their collected résumés and hundreds of combined years running high-level combat and intelligence ops, they were unable to help on the ground in Kabul as much as they would have liked. Their connections were, in a way, too high up.
11 Days Left
On August 20, in a rare moment of downtime, Parker read Jim Webb’s Military Times story, which Webb had emailed him a few days earlier. He replied to Webb, asking for Saboe’s number. In Lieutenant Colonel Parker’s mind, he was going to call Saboe, the young millennial captain, flash his résumé, mention Doom Dummar and Mick Mulroy and all of Task Force Dunkirk’s sterling bona fides, and enlist Team America to support Dunkirk. On the other end of the call, Saboe remained guarded. Since Team America’s Gmail account had gone public, amid thousands of authentic cries for help they’d received dozens of scams. A socialite from Tampa falsely claimed to be an American ambassador. One person called himself The Russian Mercenary and claimed he could travel to Kabul and evacuate Afghans on Team America’s behalf, for a fee. Even members of the Taliban were reaching out.
But almost immediately, Parker realized Team America’s group was comically more tech savvy than the Graybeards. Saboe showed Parker the infrastructure Team America had built on Slack, with channels like #legal-resources-questions, where volunteers could quickly triage inquiries about immigration law and visa issues, and #resettlement, where they could discuss how to assist Afghans who had made their way to the US. He showed him the WhatsApp groups designated for each family and the growing database of Afghans that the team had put in a Google Sheet to organize the entire operation. Rows and columns were color-coded corresponding to a family’s documentation status. With one look, a Team America volunteer could determine whether a group was “gate-ready” or whether they’d be turned away.
Parker decided it was time to reject the chain of command that had been drilled into him from the minute he joined the Marines. By the end of the call, he had pledged Task Force Dunkirk’s services in direct support of Team America. Saboe realized he suddenly had some of the best-connected people in the US military and intelligence worlds at his disposal.
8 Days Left
Still, the Taliban were adding checkpoints to clog nearly every artery to the airport, and the crowds at every gate were unrelenting. Team America kept getting calls from Afghans who’d spent days making their way toward an escape, running out of food and water along the way, only to get tear-gassed or trampled yards from the gate. Task Force Dunkirk kept getting calls from commanders of the 18- and 19-year-old marines guarding the gates, saying they had no idea who they were supposed to pull from the sea of people.
Boiling with frustration one afternoon, Saboe left his desk and sat in the closet. When he looked up, he noticed the coat hangers dangling above him and remembered something he’d learned as a freshman ROTC cadet, a safety measure dating back to at least the Revolutionary War—simple code words, objects, or devices that silently indicate who’s on the same team in a hostile environment. The military calls them “near recognition signals.” He ran the idea by Mick Mulroy, the former CIA paramilitary officer, who said that coat hangers wouldn’t be readily visible among the masses. Besides, flailing a wire hanger in front of a bunch of marines with M27 rifles wouldn’t likely produce the desired result. The signal also needed to be distinct and impossible for anyone to copy on the spot. Seven days before the evacuation deadline, they started with red scarves.
To stay a step ahead of the Taliban, Team America changed the near recognition signal almost daily. Six days before the deadline, it was pomegranates. Five, the Minnesota Vikings’ logo, loaded onto the evacuees’ phones. Four, the letters “PJ” written in fluorescent green.
Abasin Hidai and his family were among the first to use the near recognition signal. Early on the afternoon of August 24, Team America texted Hidai to bring his family and a red scarf to meet a Special Forces operator at a location across the city. But by the time they’d arrived, so had the Taliban, which opened fire on their group, forcing them to run back home. Later that night, Team America arranged another meeting point, less than a mile from the North Gate, where another operator would be waiting for Hidai to wave his scarf. At 8:29 pm Denver time, Hidai texted the Chalk-0001 WhatsApp group. I have met Abu, he wrote, using the operator’s nom de guerre. We are together.
Team America now sent Hidai a second signal to flash to marines as the operator escorted the family to the gate—a text image with the word KING PIN. Then the group chat went silent. The gate was often a communications dead zone—the military had started jamming devices to prevent remote-controlled IED blasts. As the silence continued, a sleepless Saboe pressed for an update.
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12:54 am: Hi Abasin—are you all okay?
1:42 am: Hi Abasin— did you all make it through the checkpoint?
2:53 am: Hi Abasin, are you in?
At 4:13 am, Saboe’s phone pinged with a message. Hello everyone. A bundle of thanks. I got in with the group. Love u all.
To stay a step ahead of the Taliban, Team America changed the near recognition signal almost daily. Six days before the deadline, it was pomegranates. Five, the Minnesota Vikings’ logo, loaded onto the evacuees’ phones. Four, another text image, the letters “PJ” written in fluorescent green. While Team America set and shared the signal to the evacuees in their Slack and WhatsApp groups, Task Force Dunkirk shared it with the soldiers on the ground. Consulting their crowdsourced map, Team America would then determine a specific location to send evacuees, often in the middle of the night, frequently in a sewage canal not far from the airport. Special Forces soldiers would meet them there, confirm the signal, cross-check their identifying documents against the information Team America had provided, and lead them through a gate as covertly as possible.
Saboe asked for help on Facebook and LinkedIn, no military experience required. Team America soon swelled to more than 200 volunteers—neighbors, parents of kids he coached, his wife, his dad, even his 12th-grade English teacher.
Then another Team America volunteer had an idea for further protection: Give each Afghan a digital fingerprint. Travis Boudreau, who served with Saboe in Iraq and is now a logistics executive at a Big Tech company, realized that assigning each of the thousands of potential evacuees a unique QR code would immediately remove human error from the equation. Team America began scheduling buses to be loaded miles from the airport, outside the Taliban’s purview. Each passenger had to present a QR code, which was printed discreetly within larger images of various objects and animals, invisible to the human eye. Then the bus would safely drive them through the gates.
Illustration: Alicia Tatone
The Final Week
What had started a few days earlier with Saboe taking a phone call from his brother on a soccer field now bordered on an organized military operation. But the number of Afghans pleading for help was growing exponentially, and the group was hugely overstretched. A $2 trillion, generation-long war was ending with Saboe posting free classifieds to Facebook and LinkedIn, asking for help, no military experience required. Volunteers had to personally know someone in the group, and—because phishing scams from Russia, China, and possibly the Taliban kept flooding the inbox—no foreign nationals were allowed. Team America soon swelled from 30 to more than 200 volunteers, nearly two-thirds of whom had never served in the military. They were Saboe’s neighbors, former classmates and coworkers, parents of the kids he coached soccer for, his wife, his dad, even his 12th-grade English teacher.
New members spent their first day learning to be case managers for individual families. While veterans were given the option to become Battle Captains, who managed the movements of Afghans in Kabul, civilians were tasked with managing the growing inbox, which in the final days was flooding with thousands of emails every hour. Trainees learned the rules for fielding emails: Only take in information; don’t click on anything. They were warned about what potential evacuees might send: a photo of someone’s father after he’d been shot in the head, a video of someone’s brother being shoved into the trunk of a car before it sped off.
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As Parker spoke to CNN, CBS News, and The New York Times, evangelizing Team America’s work, word spread wide. The San Francisco–based collaboration software company Airtable reached out, and within two days had custom-built a cloud-based database to help streamline Team America’s process. Now case managers could more easily add gigabytes of photos and sort through different fields—green card status, say, or number of people in an individual family—in ways they were unable to with a Google Sheet. They could also share comprehensive data with the special operators on the ground. The Raleigh, North Carolina–based authentication firm Rownd got involved too, providing Afghans with a widget that allowed them to redact all of their data from Airtable at the press of a button before they reached a Taliban checkpoint, where their phones would assuredly be searched. Once they’d made it through, they could easily toggle back on, letting Team America know they were still awaiting help. Rownd CEO Robert Thelen, a veteran, became one of Team America’s chief technology officers. Because it wasn’t tax season, all 75 on staff at the St. Louis–based accounting firm Hauk Kruse & Associates joined as case managers for the final days, applying their skills at scrubbing W-2s and 1099s to scrubbing passports and green cards.
As high-tech as Team America had become, escapes also often came down to luck. A few days before the deadline, Saboe got a call from Anil D’Souza, one of the Graybeards, who explained that a woman named Sumaia and her 3-year-old son were trying to get out and reunite with her husband, Raz, a former marine interpreter who had obtained a Special Immigrant Visa in 2015 and was now a truck driver in Wisconsin. Saboe contacted her and learned that she wasn’t far from a location where a marine working with Team America was meeting other Afghans to escort them through the gates. Sumaia would have to get there quickly.
Because she neither had time to go pack nor buy that day’s near recognition signal, a blue pen light, Saboe asked her to snap and send a selfie. He noticed a bright green folder protruding from her backpack and decided to make that her signal, which he relayed to the marine. And because she spoke only Dari, Saboe also recruited his wife’s friend, a fluent speaker, to call Sumaia and teach her how to pronounce one name in English that would serve as a password.
Sumaia waded some 150 meters through thick, knee-deep sewage, while Raz’s brother, who was also hoping to escape, carried his nephew on his shoulders. About an hour in, she’d become too cold to continue and they climbed out, missing the meetup time. Then she realized she’d lost her phone in the canal. Two hours passed as they lost their way in the crowd. The marine happened to be walking by when, across the canal, amid the sea of people, his eyes spotted a bright green folder, and a boy perched atop a pair of shoulders.
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The marine crossed the canal and asked Sumaia who she was looking for.
“Pete,” she said.
Sumaia and her son eventually made their way to Wisconsin, reuniting with Raz. They were Chalk-0361. However, as the uncle was on Team America’s list and didn’t have any documents with him, he had to say goodbye at the sewage canal. He remains in hiding with most of his family.
For every plane that boarded, Team America heard from many more Afghans looking to find one of the final flights out. Outside the gates, the melee turned deadlier when, five days before the deadline, a suicide bomb detonated at Abbey Gate, killing 11 marines, an Army soldier, a Navy corpsman, and 170 Afghan civilians. In response, US troops began welding the gates shut. Then, early on August 30, Saboe got a call from a high-ranking military official, with a heads-up: There would be no flights out on August 31. “You’re not getting the last 24,” the person said.
At 11:59 pm on August 30, Kabul time, a C-17 cargo plane cleared the runway. The final transport was gone. Team America sent texts to dozens of Afghans who’d made their way toward the gates, urging them to leave and go into hiding. Zac Martin got a call from a former interpreter now living in the Pacific Northwest; nine members of his family had made it a few yards from the gate. “They all fucking dead,” he screamed. Saboe called an all-hands, thanked everyone for their work, and advised them, for their own mental health, to look away from what was about to come. For those who didn’t get out, it was going to be very bad. There was sobbing on the Zoom call. In two weeks, Team America and Task Force Dunkirk had gotten just shy of 500 people out of Kabul. Over 30,000 Afghans remained in their database.
Aftermath
Team America spent most of September dark, with volunteers returning to the lives they’d put on near complete hold. By the end of the evacuation, Saboe had been working on the project 20 hours a day—taking calls on the toilet; coordinating movements with Afghans while dropping his daughters off on their first days of school; and running an ever-growing, multinational operation from his home office. In the weeks after, he wasn’t sleeping, his speech was slurred, his patience nonexistent. He seethed as he watched President Biden tout the “extraordinary success” of the American withdrawal from Kabul, knowing so many were left behind and watching his team’s database continue to expand.
Some of the Afghans reaching out to Team America were in grave and immediate danger. In late September, one frantically messaged his case manager while members of the Taliban pounded on his door, asking if he should kill his wife and kids before committing suicide so that they would at least be spared further abuse. The case manager pleaded with him not to do it. The man was carted off and beaten badly before being returned to his family. His fate remains unknown. Many other hopeful evacuees simply went dark.
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The group wasn’t sure if it would resume operations. But as the pleas for help kept coming in, and with evacuations by the State Department at a virtual standstill since August 30, Team America decided to come back online in October. That month, through a connection with one of the Graybeards, they began meeting twice a week with officials from the State Department. The team’s crowdsourced database, far superior to the hodgepodge of Excel sheets the government was working with, essentially became the State Department’s de facto data set. Team America provided the names, photos, and visa-approval paperwork of the Afghans who were most ready to be evacuated. State would then give the group’s case managers the date when each person would have a seat on a transport out of Kabul.
Among them was Zia. Born and raised in Wardak, three hours east of Kabul, Zia (who asked that WIRED use only his first name) had worked with US forces as a logistics and IT specialist and applied for a Special Immigrant Visa in 2018. In January 2021, the US Embassy in Kabul assigned him an interview for July, then bumped it to early August. He traveled to the capital and got his visa, but as he was searching for a flight out for his wife, his younger sister, and himself, Kabul fell to the Taliban. He couldn’t find a flight or reach anyone in the US before August 31.
For months, Zia and his family moved from one relative’s home to another, spending most of their days locked inside. He stared out of windows, taking note of anyone approaching the house. He looked online for people who could help and found many purported volunteer evacuation organizations. He’d heard that some might be traps set by the Taliban, but he figured he had no choice but to try. He filled out more than 50 forms.
On October 30, Zia received an email from Tracey Meschberger Gifford, a Team America case manager in Colorado, asking for his passport number. He sent his number, his wife’s, and his 15-year-old sister’s. A few days later, Gifford wrote back, asking for a photo of Zia holding his open passport against his chest. Fearing that he might be falling for a Taliban ruse, he consulted with his family. Send the photo, they told him. On November 15, Zia got another email informing him that the three of them would have seats on a flight from Kabul to Qatar on November 27.
It wasn’t until he was added to a WhatsApp group chat and saw the +1 country code denoting an American phone number that Zia believed they might truly get out. On November 25, someone on the group chat told him to keep an eye out for another number—Afghan this time—of a person who would be asking Zia to bring them the three passports. The sun sets early in November in Kabul, which gave Zia ample time to move under cover of night to bring the passports to the designated drop point and then to retrieve them the next day. A subsequent message told him that his family would be on a flight the following day.
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Before heading to the airport, Zia’s wife strapped everyone’s documents to her bare stomach. They made it through the checkpoint, then the gate, and boarded a flight to Qatar, then to New Jersey. They settled in the Denver area in February.
In November 2021, Saboe received an official memo from the deputy chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency, thanking him for Team America’s work. It read, in part, “The way of warfare will never be the same. And even more so for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.” In January, Saboe stepped down from his role leading the team to return his attention to his company and his family. Still he keeps his eyes and ears on the group, continues a friendship with Zia, and in August his family had the Hidais over for qubuli pulao, the national dish of Afghanistan, days after the one-year anniversary of their escape.
Some 30 regular volunteers keep Team America running. Many are like Katherine Schuette, a former military intelligence officer who, after her day job in human resources, opens Airtable, where each entry is a life trying to find a way out, many of them in hiding. This spring, the group hit a late-era high when 37 Afghans boarded a single flight out of Kabul, thanks to information from their database. Some weeks, they get zero people out. In many ways, it’s now easier for Afghans with the requisite paperwork to get through Taliban checkpoints and board a plane bound for safer places. But the work is slow. An operation in which things changed in minutes and often seconds now works on a timeline of months, even years. It has become, as one Team America case manager called it, a “tyranny of paper,” where the proper documentation is more valuable than any safe house or near recognition signal.
To date, Team America and Task Force Dunkirk have gotten more than 1,500 Afghans safely out of Kabul. Schuette estimates that an additional 2,000 might eventually, via a green card status or Special Immigrant Visa, be able to board a flight to America and be marked “Mission Complete,” as five of Zac Martin’s former interpreter’s family now are. (The other four are still alive, it turns out, and still in the database.) In total, that is 5 percent of the Team America database. Some 65,000 other people—all of them hoping to escape a country where starvation is rampant, the economy has collapsed, and schools are closed to the vast majority of girls—will likely remain on the lists forever. It can be hard, the case managers say, to come home from work, open Airtable, and see the unending rows of names. Instead, they try to focus on a single row at a time and remind themselves of the motto Worth Parker and Task Force Dunkirk used as their rallying cry during the mad dash last August: “Just one more.”
Let us know what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor at mail@wired.com.
Wired · by Condé Nast · August 30, 2022
4. Do Not Trust Your Gut: How to Improve Strategists’ Decision Making
Worthy of reading, studying, and reflecting upon.
I think most of us are guilty of "Fundamental attribution error." I know I am.
Excerpts:
Fundamental attribution error is a term that suffers from a confusing name but is nevertheless a common cognitive pitfall. It refers to an individual’s tendency to attribute another’s actions to something fundamental about that person, like their background, while attributing one’s own behavior to factors beyond one’s control.[21] Fundamental attribution error is partially about assigning blame, but it is also the tendency to ascribe to others what one may be less likely to attribute to oneself. Writing about this bias, the CIA noted that it occurs when the behavior of others is attributed to some fixed nature, while claiming that one’s own behavior is a function of the situation in which he or she finds themself.[22] President George W. Bush once said, “Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples, while judging ourselves by our best intentions.”[23] This hints at the hypocrisy inherent in fundamental attribution. One may observe fundamental attribution error in action when one interprets another’s behavior by heavily weighting personal characteristics like where someone else is from, their social class, gender, etc., and lightly weighting situational factors.[24] Unacknowledged fundamental attribution errors may warp a strategist’s understanding of the situation they face and delay attention to the correct problem.
Fundamental Attribution Error in the Korean War
The way that some American political leaders evaluated U.S. and Chinese actions during the Korean War provides an example of how the fundamental attribution error can cloud a strategist’s judgment. In October 1950, U.N. forces had recovered from North Korea’s summer surprise attack. As they began their advance north, the U.S.-led U.N. coalition had a tricky geopolitical needle to thread. How could they defeat North Korea without drawing China into the conflict?
Do Not Trust Your Gut: How to Improve Strategists’ Decision Making
James M. Davitch August 31, 2022
thestrategybridge.org · August 31, 2022
Earlier this year, The Strategy Bridge asked civilian and military students around the world to participate in our sixth annual student writing contest on the subject of strategy.
Now, we are pleased to present one of the Third Place winners from James M. Davitch, a Ph.D. student at Virginia Tech University.
Introduction
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Military strategists often make decisions based on instinct and emotion rather than careful deliberation. However, as Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow explains, most humans do as well because of mental limitations called cognitive biases.[1] Kahneman argues the mind’s tendency to make snap decisions rather than to proceed with caution can inhibit effective judgment. Cognitive biases may cause strategists to overlook salient yet inconvenient information and waste time pursuing solutions to the wrong problems. Unfortunately, the list of known cognitive biases is extensive and growing.[2] Faced with an overwhelming number of challenges to decision making, a strategist might question whether some biases are harmful specifically in a military planning environment and if there are any techniques to address them. This essay argues that, yes, some specific biases may directly affect military planning. Further, it argues that while there are historical examples of their negative influence, they can be mitigated through certain techniques.[3]
Each section below focuses on one of four cognitive limitations. The essay will describe each bias, relate it to an example in military history, and conclude with steps to mitigate it. This essay illustrates through historical analogies why confirmation bias, fundamental attribution error, anchoring bias, and representative bias are detrimental to a military strategist’s decision-making process.[4] These biases can cause strategists to privilege facts that confirm previously held beliefs, automatically attribute nefarious motivations to others’ actions, fixate on initial information, and draw incorrect associations between dissimilar events. Examples from the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Korean War, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and World War I provide historical context for these cognitive limitations. The mitigation steps include engaging in active open mindedness, empathy, consideration of the opposite, and the so-called “what if” technique. The common theme throughout the mitigation steps in this essay is that strategists would benefit from exercising patience and intellectual humility in their deliberations.
System 1 versus System 2
The recommendations described in this essay draw heavily on behavioral psychology research, especially Kahneman’s description of how the brain makes decisions. Kahneman presents a struggle in the mind between two modes of thinking that he calls System 1 and System 2. During System 1 thinking, the mind operates “automatically and quickly, with little or no effort.”[5] Most of the time this process works well enough, allowing one to proceed without a second thought. The cognitive process often fails, however, when System 1 suggests intuitive answers to complicated questions. This is because in System 1 thinking, one’s mind is prone to take shortcuts that sacrifice mental rigor for expediency. Most of the time these shortcuts, which behavioral psychologists call biases and heuristics, are innocuous and involve low stakes decision making where instinctive judgment suffices. However, when evaluating possibilities during strategic planning for military operations, one’s instinctive judgment, laden with unconscious biases, may be detrimental.
Kahneman contrasts System 1 with its mental partner, System 2. System 2 “allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it.”[6] System 2 thinking requires focus, and because it is often easier to make a snap decision than it is to concentrate, the mind sacrifices System 2 in favor of System 1 most of the time.[7] For the strategist that means most of the decisions one makes resemble knee-jerk reflexes rather than carefully considered conclusions. In the parlance of behavioral psychology, humans often privilege their intuitive judgment in conditions of uncertainty. Put differently, a strategist may tend to trust their gut (i.e., system 1), even in situations where they probably should not. While junior strategists are liable to this weakness, perhaps counterintuitively, seniority and experience increase this tendency. A large body of literature shows the mixture of authority and overconfidence can result in an even more toxic combination for decision making because senior strategists may possess the influence junior strategists lack.[8]
As an additional complication, there is no way to switch off System 1. It constantly, though unconsciously, suggests answers to deal with the many decisions one makes every day. Most of the time, for routine decision making, this is perfectly fine. However, when complexity increases, one is more prone to fall into cognitive traps that can lead to poor outcomes. Therefore, part of mitigating these problems involves slowing down one’s decision making to engage the thoughtfulness inherent in System 2 and resisting the easy answer offered by System 1. Unfortunately for the military strategist, doing so is much easier said than done, especially with respect to confirmation bias.
Confirmation Bias
Human minds crave order, and they try to minimize the discomfort of uncertainty by suggesting ways to make sense of chaos and disorder. One of the ways they do this is by encouraging us to accept information that confirms preexisting views or ideas. Oftentimes one sees what one wants to see, frequently to the exclusion of other relevant factors like a valid-but-contradictory viewpoint.[9] This is called confirmation bias, and it can be problematic when it leads strategists to expend less mental effort on a problem or question than it warrants (i.e., when the strategist impulsively accepts the System 1 answer). The deleterious effects of confirmation bias may alter a strategist’s perception of reality, leading to neglect of the fundamental problem one must address.
Confirmation bias in the Cuban Missile Crisis
Unfortunately, examples of confirmation bias abound in military history. One instance occurred prior to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the United States failed to respond to the introduction of Soviet military equipment in Cuba.[10] On September 19, 1962, the Central Intelligence Agency stated it was not likely the Soviet Union would put nuclear missiles on the island.[11] In October, less than a month later, analysis of pictures taken from U-2 reconnaissance aircraft showed the Soviet Union had done exactly that.[12] However, the October surveillance photos were not the first piece of evidence that Russia was militarizing Cuba. Some parts of the U.S. intelligence community had observed dozens of shipments of conventional weapons and military personnel preceding the delivery of nuclear weapons and predating the October photo analysis.[13] Confirmation bias contributed to analysts’ neglect of the deployment of conventional weapons and the surprise of U.S. national security enterprise at the deployment of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles.[14]
The fear inspired by the Cuban Missile Crisis (Bettmann/Corbis)
Throughout 1962, the Soviet government repeatedly denied any desire to militarize Cuba. The Soviet foreign minister privately assured President Kennedy that Soviet Premier Khrushchev would not do anything to complicate American domestic matters before the congressional elections in November. Secretary of State Dean Rusk believed what the Soviet Union was saying, publicly and in private.[15]
The lack of overhead imagery complicated the problem.[16] On August 29, 1962, a U-2 overflew Cuba, and subsequent imagery analysis revealed defensive weapons (i.e., surface-to-air missiles) and probably Soviet personnel, but no offensive missiles on the ground.[17] It would take six more weeks for the next U-2 to fly over Cuba. When it did, on 14 October, it was too late.
The August U-2 photos showing defensive weapons, combined with Moscow’s repeated declarations, resulted in a confirmation bias to believe that no nuclear buildup was forthcoming. In his memoirs, presidential adviser Clark Clifford wrote that the state of mind within the intelligence community rejected the possibility of offensive missiles in Cuba.[18] Though there were some who argued otherwise, including the director of the CIA, by and large the U.S. intelligence community believed what it wanted to believe and privileged evidence which supported that belief.
How to Mitigate Confirmation Bias
Since people often seek and readily accept confirming evidence for beliefs they already hold, the trick to dealing with confirmation bias is to actively seek out disconfirming evidence. Humans want to believe what they think is true is actually true. So, the strategist must convince his or her mind to un-believe it.
The first step, as with most cognitive debiasing strategies, is to simply slow down. Many times, military professionals are in a rush to judgment, mainly to fix a problem and move on to the next. However, to prevent confirmation bias a good technique is to consciously delay one’s decision and ask what it would take for the opposite viewpoint to be true. The next step is to exercise humility and acknowledge there may be other points of view worth considering before reaching a final verdict. This method is a part of a larger concept called active open-mindedness.
Actively open-minded thinking refers to the consideration of all evidence prior to a decision.[19] The main problem confirmation bias presents is that when evaluating evidence, one may only consider the evidence one wants to believe is true. Therefore, strategists should flip the evidence on its head and try to disprove it—asking, for example, “What would it take to disprove what I believe to be true?” Even better, one can ask what evidence would be necessary to prove the assessment wrong. This line of questioning is a useful technique when evaluating someone else’s claim or assessment and can minimize the effects of overconfidence. “What evidence would you have to see to make you change your mind?”[20] This allows strategists to remain open to alternative possibilities, which is important when dealing with other biases like the fundamental attribution error.
Fundamental Attribution Error
Fundamental attribution error is a term that suffers from a confusing name but is nevertheless a common cognitive pitfall. It refers to an individual’s tendency to attribute another’s actions to something fundamental about that person, like their background, while attributing one’s own behavior to factors beyond one’s control.[21] Fundamental attribution error is partially about assigning blame, but it is also the tendency to ascribe to others what one may be less likely to attribute to oneself. Writing about this bias, the CIA noted that it occurs when the behavior of others is attributed to some fixed nature, while claiming that one’s own behavior is a function of the situation in which he or she finds themself.[22] President George W. Bush once said, “Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples, while judging ourselves by our best intentions.”[23] This hints at the hypocrisy inherent in fundamental attribution. One may observe fundamental attribution error in action when one interprets another’s behavior by heavily weighting personal characteristics like where someone else is from, their social class, gender, etc., and lightly weighting situational factors.[24] Unacknowledged fundamental attribution errors may warp a strategist’s understanding of the situation they face and delay attention to the correct problem.
Fundamental Attribution Error in the Korean War
The way that some American political leaders evaluated U.S. and Chinese actions during the Korean War provides an example of how the fundamental attribution error can cloud a strategist’s judgment. In October 1950, U.N. forces had recovered from North Korea’s summer surprise attack. As they began their advance north, the U.S.-led U.N. coalition had a tricky geopolitical needle to thread. How could they defeat North Korea without drawing China into the conflict?
U.S. President Harry Truman at his desk in the Oval Office with Secretary of State Dean Acheson, 1950 (National Archives)
However, not all members of President Truman’s cabinet felt there was a risk of alarming Beijing. Secretary of State Dean Acheson felt there was little danger of provoking China because, from his perspective, America’s intentions were benign. Said Acheson, "No possible shred of evidence could have existed in the minds of the Chinese Communists about the non-threatening intentions of the forces of the United Nations.”[25] While the U.S. felt its decisions were nonthreatening, that is not how they were interpreted in Beijing.[26]
Therefore, it was with astonishment that some in the U.S. government received news in late October 1950 that Chinese forces had covertly crossed the Yalu River and attacked U.N. forces. Senior leaders in Washington were, “incapable of interpreting the Chinese intervention as a reaction to a threat. Instead, the Americans interpreted the Chinese reaction as an expression of fundamental hostility toward the United States.”[27] John Lewis Gaddis notes the Chinese leadership likely viewed advancing Allied forces as a threat to their regime. Fundamental attribution error in this case, manifested itself in the U.S.’s appraisal of the Chinese response as a hostile one, rather than one borne of the situation (i.e., the U.N. force’s advance towards the Chinese border). The initial U.S. judgment of China as congenitally hostile and a belligerent actor, and its appraisal of its own actions as benign and righteous, may have colored subsequent interactions and prolonged the stalemate until the 1953 armistice.[28]
How to Mitigate Fundamental Attribution Error
Fighting fundamental attribution error is about exercising a sense of understanding and subordinating arrogance to take the other side’s point of view into consideration. Thus, it is beneficial for the strategist to operate in System 2, because System 1 is rarely empathetic. Like mitigating confirmation bias, one can attempt to overcome fundamental attribution error by considering others’ viewpoints as well as alternative explanations for observed evidence. The human mind often does not because it is easier to rush to a judgment.
An important consequence of fundamental attribution error is how it affects one’s ability to evaluate the adversary. As described in joint doctrine, understanding the adversary is a crucial step in planning military operations.[29] Doing this analytical task well allows the military strategist to intelligently predict what the adversary is going to do next. Improperly evaluating the adversary’s point of view can lead to an inaccurate estimate of possible enemy courses of action.[30] Additionally, as Kahneman writes, “If people are often poorly equipped to explain the behavior of their adversaries, they are also bad at understanding how they appear to others.”[31] This echoes the contention of Robert Jervis that “[i]t is rare for actors to realize that what matters in sending a message is not how you would understand it, but how others will understand it.”[32]
With fundamental attribution error, the Golden Rule is a good guide—treat others how you would like to be treated. A software researcher in Silicon Valley put it this way:
Me ten years ago, on seeing a poorly designed interface, “Wow, what idiot designed this?’
Me, today, “What constraints were the team coping with that made this design seem like the best possible solution?” Empathy trumps fundamental attribution errors.”[33]
Anchoring Bias
Anchoring bias, or the anchoring effect, refers to the human tendency to attribute outsized influence to the first piece of information one encounters. That information then has the propensity to influence subsequent estimates and discussions.[34] For example, military budgeting can suffer from anchoring bias as discussions about future fiscal requirements sometimes begin from the previous year’s figure (the anchor point) rather than from the need or requirement. For instance, if the budget is known to be ~$700 million, that figure itself has power in anchoring conversations about future budgets. Discussions then become fixated on the $700 million figure and about how much to add or subtract from it, rather than about warfighting requirements. Sometimes this is a logical method for thinking about the future, but not when the anchor or reference point stifles creative thinking about alternative solutions.
Psychologists have found that specialization in a particular area may make this cognitive bias more pronounced. Based on their research of those in certain professions who possessed a great deal of expertise, Northcraft and Neale showed that “expertise in the subject matter does not seem to mitigate anchoring to any significant extent.”[35] Thus, the anchoring effect may have deleterious effects on military strategists especially susceptible to this bias precisely because of their deep subject matter expertise.
Anchoring Bias in Operation Iraqi Freedom
Major Blair Williams wrote in a 2010 edition of Military Review that U.S. military planners were slow to adjust to changing realities after the onset of fighting in Iraq during the mid-2000s. Despite warnings prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom that the planned number of ground forces in Iraq was too low, the average number of U.S. troops from 2003 to mid-2007 remained around 138,000.[36] Historians such as Andrew Bacevich believe Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was attempting to execute a military design concept called the Revolution in Military Affairs whereby the U.S. would fight conflicts and prevail by virtue of technological superiority rather than mass. Troop numbers did not increase until President Bush surged forces in 2007. Despite Iraq being on the verge of a civil war throughout the middle part of the 2000s, decision makers were tied to their initial estimate of the necessary number of ground troops. Thus, military and civilian defense professionals are no exception to the reality that people who are experts in a field can fall victim to the effects of the anchoring bias. Major Williams summarized the situation by stating, “The anchoring phenomenon kept the value closer to the initial value than it should have been.”[37]
U.S. troops pull down a statue of Saddam Hussein in central Baghdad (Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)
The insidiousness of each of these biases stems from the fact that their presence is not mutually exclusive, but rather additive in their effect. Once people are anchored to a particular figure, it may make an organization susceptible to the effects of confirmation bias where one may accept information more readily that conforms to previously held beliefs. For example, Gordon and Trainor noted the White House believed the manpower requirement for Iraq’s post-conflict stability operations would be minimal because Iraqis would, “do the work of Phase IV themselves.”[38] Therefore, intelligence analysis and assessments supporting the light footprint planning assumption confirmed the White House’s existing inclination to avoid nation building.[39] The low troop figure provided a permission structure for accepting evidence that confirmed the existing bias and anchored subsequent planning assumptions. Likewise, Jervis described several instances of this phenomenon during the prelude to the 2003 Iraq War regarding confirmation bias and White House decision making.[40] Since anchoring and confirmation bias can be mutually reinforcing, it is imperative that strategists, especially those faced with planning amidst the fog and friction of war, learn techniques to mitigate their effects.
How to Mitigate Anchoring Bias
System 1 tries to create a world that justifies why the anchor number is correct. It tries to make one’s perception true so the brain can deal with the next issue. The first step to mitigate the brain’s inclination to anchor on the first figure it encounters is to, again, slow down. After the strategist has successfully fought the urge to accept the suggestions of System 1, he or she can begin to consider the opposite.
The consider-the-opposite strategy works exactly like it sounds. Individuals are induced to contemplate the possible outcomes at odds with their prevailing belief. The means can vary, but one study found that by employing explicit instructions test subjects were able to retrain their thought process to avoid rash judgments.[41] In a strategy team, it may be effective for the team leader to set the expectation that subordinate team members will show the results of their consider-the-opposite methodology. This technique is designed to fight the brain’s desire to make something seem true by forcing one to consider alternatives or alternative explanations. Multiple studies have shown that test subjects who consciously consider the opposite are less susceptible to the anchoring bias because they take the time to consider the possibility of the opposite outcome.[42] A strategy to consider the opposite may “disrupt the fast heuristic processing of System 1 and activate System 2, which requires more cognitive efforts and information elaboration.”[43] The consider-the-opposite strategy helps to render the initial anchoring figure irrelevant—because it often is.
Representative Bias
Representative bias might more aptly be called the deja vu bias, and it is a close cousin of another heuristic Kahneman calls availability bias. A key feature of both biases is the tendency to associate a new event with previous occurrences that seem analogous. This bias, just like the others this essay discussed, is the brain’s attempt to quickly categorize new information. In this instance, System 1 tries to rapidly search for instances similar to a present situation. It can be comforting when one associates uncertainty with a familiar situation because it suggests that similar tools may be used to address it. Problems arise when the circumstances at hand are unlike previous situations, despite the System 1 suggestion to treat them as the same.[44]
Representative Bias in World War I
While World War I is replete with examples of poor judgment, the case study of the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s mobilization for war is especially notable. This is primarily because of its military chief of staff’s failure to adequately predict and prepare for war with Russia. Instead, he relied on his recent memory of past experiences as a guide for the future. Austro-Hungarian field marshal and chief of the general staff, Count Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, demonstrated, perhaps, the most spectacular failure of leadership in the entirety of the war. According to Mark Grotelueschen, Conrad failed for two reasons: he failed to plan for the right war and, once engaged, he failed to fight the war effectively.[45] This example will only focus on his pre-war mistakes.
Franz Graf Conrad von Hötzendorf, Austro-Hungarian general, Chief of the General Staff of the Austro-Hungarian Army (Hermann Torggler/Wikimedia)
Prior to World War I, Austria-Hungary had challenges with two countries on its borders: Russia and Serbia. However, the former represented a much larger and more lethal threat to the Habsburg Empire than the latter. Conrad was the chief strategist of the war plans that were devised to deal with both countries. However, Conrad never tasked his subordinates to create a plan to fight both countries at the same time, which is exactly what Austria-Hungary required in 1914. Therefore, while separate war plans existed at the start of the war, no combined plan did. Nevertheless, Conrad repeatedly pushed civilian politicians in the Austro-Hungarian empire for war, specifically against Serbia, despite the likelihood that Russia would intervene on Serbia’s behalf. His bellicosity stemmed partially from outdated mobilization estimates—he thought it would take Russia too long to prepare for war. Conrad failed primarily because he was unable to separate his perception of the situation (that Russia would take too long to mobilize) from the reality that Russia would enter the war quickly and in force. His susceptibility to representative bias—the inability to effectively judge the situation based on likely probabilities—contributed to the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s eventual demise.
How to Mitigate Representative Bias
In 2009, the Central Intelligence Agency produced a tradecraft primer designed to improve intelligence analysis for the agency and other similar intelligence organizations. This handbook provides a host of structured analytic techniques that, if used properly, may improve one’s ability to “challenge judgments, identify mental mindsets, stimulate creativity, and manage uncertainty” to “wrestle with difficult questions.”[46] Some have argued the structured analytic techniques have not been rigorously tested and others have tried to suggest ways for doing so.[47,48] Nevertheless, there is merit to some of the methods that provide individuals with approaches for engaging with uncertainty more deliberately.
One technique called what-if analysis may be very helpful for strategists dealing with representative bias.[49] The what-if technique suggests that one should start with the end state and then attempt to provide the logical pathway that led to that conclusion. Representative bias may be prevalent when one uses past experiences as a guide for the present. By thinking backwards, what-if analysis allows one to avoid letting the past influence the present and instead accept a future condition as a given. Then one can apply analytical thinking to identify why hypothetical events in an imagined future transpired the way they did.
If Conrad had applied more humility in the face of uncertainty and what-if analysis to the problem at hand, he might have considered both the best- and worst-case outcomes. For Conrad, and the Austro-Hungarians, the best-case outcome could have been the future Conrad wanted—a war with either Russia or Serbia but not both. He might have then considered the events that led to a worst-case scenario, the scenario which ultimately occurred. If he had engaged in a more critical, open-minded approach to strategic decision making, he may have then observed that the worst-case scenario was a much more likely eventuality and that his personal opinion, clouded by representative bias, was in error.
Conclusion
Human brains operate mostly on autopilot, and the cognitive biases employed to live life often inhibit the ability to make good decisions. In low stakes situations, like deciding what to eat or what to wear, the negative impacts of cognitive biases are negligible. But in the military—where the stakes are often higher and effective decision making can mean the difference between mission success and failure—the consequences of cognitive biases corrupting decision making can be calamitous.
This essay described how confirmation bias, fundamental attribution error, anchoring bias, and representative bias are detrimental to a military strategist’s cognitive process. It argued that they can cause strategists to privilege facts that confirm one’s beliefs, automatically attribute nefarious motivations to others’ actions, fixate on initial information, and draw incorrect associations between dissimilar events. The essay used examples from the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Korean War, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and World War I to provide a historical context. Through these vignettes and many others, one may appreciate how some of the most consequential military events hinged on the influence of unconscious biases during critical junctures.
Effective decision making in complex environments is incredibly challenging even without the limitations that humans bring via System 1 thinking. To avoid undermining the decision-making process and compounding the difficulty, it may be useful for strategists to employ the critical thinking techniques described above. These methods—including engaging in active open mindedness, empathy, consideration of the opposite, and the what-if technique—are derived from decades of behavioral psychology research. They may help mitigate cognitive bias and allow one’s brain to transition from System 1 to System 2 when the situation requires.
Engaging in System 2 thinking mainly requires two things, the ability to slow down one’s rush to judgment and the subordination of one’s pride to acknowledge that their instinctive answer may not be correct. Thus, critical thought can benefit from both patience and intellectual humility. Military strategists should thoughtfully consider their cognitive limitations as well as the range of possible outcomes in pursuit of political goals and in support of civilian leaders. Strategists who devote attention to thinking about thinking and learning from the mistakes of the past may improve their ability to plan for the future.
James M. Davitch is an officer in the U.S. Air Force and a PhD candidate at Virginia Tech’s School of Public and International Affairs. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of the U.S. Air Force, The Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
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Header Image: Cognition, Memory, and Psychology (Allan Ajifo/Flikr)
Notes:
[1] Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, fast and slow. Macmillan, 2011.
[2] The mid-2010s saw a gradual increase in the use of terms like “metacognition” and mental shortcuts like “confirmation bias” that Kahneman helped popularize (see Google n-gram graphic: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=metacognition%2Cconfirmation+bias&year_start=1960&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3). Suddenly, talk of biases seemed ubiquitous, especially in business journals and magazines. Perhaps the high-water mark came in 2017 when the media company, “Visual Capitalist” created a daunting graphic depicting 188 individual cognitive biases. See the infographic here: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/all-188-cognitive-biases.html
[3] Many other biases can also negatively influence a strategist’s judgment; however, they are beyond the scope of this paper. The author concedes that other biases were likely present and effected decision making during each of the historical examples described. Further, the essay does not imply that the biases described were the root cause of the failures in the historical examples, rather they were likely one amidst a mélange of contributing factors.
[4] This argument aligns with research conducted on intelligence analysis that aimed to help mitigate bias through virtual learning environments. In 2014, an organization called the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) attempted to study what IARPA determined were the most harmful biases to analysts as a part of their “Sirius” research program. The biases included the four that this essay explores (confirmation bias, fundamental attribution error, anchoring bias, and representativeness bias) as well as the blind spot bias and projection bias. For more information, see https://www.iarpa.gov/index.php/research-programs/sirius/baa
[5] For example, when confronted with a simple math problem such as “What is 1+1?” the mind instantly generates the number “2.”
[6] Ibid, 22. If system 1 and 2 were personified, system 1 would be the laid-back happy-go-lucky character always looking for the easy answer. The system 2 character would be more uptight, always second-guessing system 1’s judgement.
[7] Ibid, 26.
[8] See Raugh (2019) for a quantitative study on the effects of military institutional tendencies and habits on military officer critical thinking abilities. Raugh concludes, “Military leaders, such as senior commissioned officers with 20 or more years of service, are especially prone to these institutional habits and tendencies and thus negatively affected by them.” Raugh, David. "Superforecasting or SNAFU: The Forecasting Ability of the US Military Officer." (2019). See also Dane, Erik, and Michael G. Pratt. "Exploring intuition and its role in managerial decision making." Academy of management review 32, no. 1 (2007): 33-54; Akinci, Cinla, and Eugene Sadler‐Smith. "Intuition in management research: A historical review." International Journal of Management Reviews 14, no. 1 (2012): 104-122; Hodgkinson, Gerard P., Eugene Sadler-Smith, Lisa A. Burke, Guy Claxton, and Paul R. Sparrow. "Intuition in organizations: Implications for strategic management." Long range planning 42, no. 3 (2009): 277-297.
[9] Kahneman’s acronym that he uses to describe this tendency is “WYSIATI” which stands for “What You See Is All There Is.” The problem with the mind’s tendency to engage in WYSIATI is that it neglects to consider that there are significant considerations that the mind does not see. Sometimes this is called negative evidence. Relatedly, the term “disconfirmation bias” describes the situation when one rejects information that does not conform to what one may want to hear, even when presented with valid evidence to the contrary.
[10] Partially due to the “photo gap,” Joseph Caddell calls the imagery analysis showing nuclear missiles in Cuba a near-failure rather than an intelligence success. He also highlights the lack of multi-intelligence discipline fusion, the inefficiency of the intelligence cycle, and the prevalence of disinformation operations that continue even today as barriers to intelligence collection and analysis. See Caddell, Joseph. "Discovering Soviet Missiles in Cuba: How Intelligence Collection Relates to Analysis and Policy." War on the Rocks (2017).
[11] Sherman Kent wrote a defense of his organization’s rationale and explained why it led to an incorrect assessment. See https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol51no3/revisiting-sherman-kent2019s-defense-of-snie-85-3-62.html
[12] In fact, archival documents later showed that Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev had decided to send the weapons as early as May 1962. See Allison, Graham T., "Essence of decision." (1999), page 202.
[13] Rumors of the Soviet build-up were hardly private or kept within intelligence community circles. For example, in an effort to pressure democrats in congress as well as the White House, Senator Kenneth Keating made a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate on August 31, 1962, warning about “rocket bases” in Cuba. White, Mark. The Cuban missile crisis. Springer, 1995, page 107
[14] May and Zelikow’s transcription of the ExComm meetings in their book, The Kennedy Tapes provides a fascinating insight into executive level strategic decision making. They relate how President Kennedy’s National Security Advisor, McGeorge Bundy relayed the news of the Soviet missiles to the president at 9 a.m. on October 16th. See May, Ernest R., and Philip Zelikow, eds. The Kennedy tapes: Inside the White House during the Cuban missile crisis. WW Norton & Company, 2002, page 31. However, on national television just three days prior, Bundy stated, “I think there is no present likelihood that that Cubans and the Cuban government and the Soviet government would in combination attempt to install a major offensive capability.” See Garthoff, Raymond. Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis: Revised to Include New Revelations from Soviet & Cuban Sources. Brookings Institution Press, 2011, page 34.
[15] Allison, Graham T., and Allison Graham. "Essence of decision." (1999), page 203.
[16] Photographs taken from aircraft cameras was not as common during the Cuban Missile Crisis as it is in battlefield military operations today. Satellite photography, which first began operation only a year prior, was even rarer and somewhat less reliable. See Caddell Jr, Joseph W. "Corona over Cuba: The Missile Crisis and the Early Limitations of Satellite Imagery Intelligence." Intelligence and National Security 31, no. 3 (2016): page 416-438.
[17] Tension exists within the political science literature regarding the idea that weapons can actually be offensive or defensive. This tweet thread by Paul Poast provides a very good summary of the debate: https://twitter.com/ProfPaulPoast/status/1365671660024721411?s=20&t=hJc7E0Cg1dJge3nFYpNF7Q
[18] Clifford, Clark M., and Richard C. Holbrooke. Counsel to the president: A memoir. Random House Incorporated, 1991.
[19] Haran, Uriel. “The Role of Actively Open-Minded Thinking in Information Acquisition, Accuracy, and Calibration.” Judgment and Decision Making 8, no. 3 (May 2013): pages 188–201. https://doi.org/http://journal.sjdm.org/13/13124a/jdm13124a.pdf.
[20] Overconfidence is its own barrier to critical thinking and plays into many of the other biases listed in this essay. See Moore, Don A., and Paul J. Healy. "The trouble with overconfidence." Psychological review 115, no. 2 (2008): 502.
[21] Healy, Patrick. “Fundamental Attribution Error: What It Is & How to Avoid It.” Harvard Business School Online. Harvard Business School, June 8, 2017. https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/the-fundamental-attribution-error.
[22] https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/Tradecraft%20Primer-apr09.pdf
[23] Abt, Parker. "National Liberation Movements and Increasing Humanitarian Law Compliance." Cornell International Affairs Review 12, no. 2 (2019): page 111.
[24] See also Gilbert, Daniel T. "Thinking lightly about others: Automatic components of the social inference process." (1989).
[25] Kahneman, Daniel, and Jonathan Renshon. "Why Hawks Win." Foreign Policy, no. 158 (2007): pages 34-38.
[26] This is an example of failing to adequately appreciate how one’s actions can translate to others; however, this type of episode is hardly confined to the Cold War. Jackson (2019) shows a vivid an example of how perceptions and misperceptions on the Korean peninsula almost led to conflict in 2017. See Jackson, Van. On the Brink: Trump, Kim, and the Threat of Nuclear War. Cambridge University Press, 2019.
[27] Kahneman and Renshon. "Hawks," page 34. Emphasis added.
[28] See also Fettweis (2018) for a discussion of how the U.S.’s views of itself have historically been incongruent with other states’ views of U.S. behavior. Fettweis, Christopher. "Psychology of a Superpower." In Psychology of a Superpower. Columbia University Press, 2018.
[29] “Evaluate the adversary” is the third step in the Joint Intelligence Preparation of the Operational Environment process. See page I-17 here https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Doctrine/pubs/jp2_0.pdf
[30] See also the political psychology of Robert Jervis, especially The Logic of Images (1989) for a description of how, on an international level, governments attempt to control their image through signals and indices.
[31] Kahneman and Renshon. "Hawks," page 35.
[32] Jervis, Robert. "Perception and misperception in international politics." In Perception and Misperception in International Politics. Princeton University Press, 2017, page 187.
[33] https://twitter.com/uxresearch/status/1079148047257395200
[34] Kahneman relates a story explaining how he and his research partner, Amos Tversky, observed the anchoring effect during their studies. They created a wheel of numbers that was rigged to only stop at 10 or 65. Their research subjects spun the wheel and were then asked to write down the number where it stopped which, naturally, would be either 10 or 65. Then the students were asked what the percentage of African countries was within the United Nations. Obviously, spinning the wheel provides nothing that would assist someone with such a specific question and the student subjects should have considered the numbers 10 or 65 irrelevant. However, they did not. Kahneman notes, “The average estimates of those who saw 10 and 65 were 25% and 45%, respectively.” People’s estimates were anchored to the original number they saw on the “wheel of fortune,” even though it was irrelevant. See Kahneman, Thinking, fast and slow, page 118.
[35] The authors presented to professional real estate agents, who should have been familiar with estimates of various property values, several initial listing prices. The agents that received higher listing prices reported higher estimates of the property’s value in comparison to the agents that were anchored to lower initial listing prices. Northcraft, Gregory B., and Margaret A. Neale. "Experts, amateurs, and real estate: An anchoring-and-adjustment perspective on property pricing decisions." Organizational behavior and human decision processes 39, no. 1 (1987): 84-97.
[36] See Bacevich, America’s War for the Greater Middle East, p 318, endnote 31.
[37] Williams, “Heuristics and Biases in Military Decision Making.” page 48.
[38] Gordon, Michael R., and Bernard E. Trainor. Cobra II: The inside story of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Vintage, 2006. p 142. See also Ricks, Thomas E. Fiasco: The American military adventure in Iraq. Penguin UK, 2007 and Bolan, Christopher J. Risk in American foreign military interventions. Georgetown University, 2009.
[39] See Hafner’s discussion about how intelligence related to the Chalabi plan fed confirmation bias in the White House. Hafner, Ferdinand. Cognitive Biases and Structural Failures in United States Foreign Policy: Explaining Decision-Making Dissonance in Phase IV Policy and Plans for Iraq. Naval Postgraduate School Monterey, CA, 2007.
[40] Jervis 1, Robert. "Reports, politics, and intelligence failures: The case of Iraq." Journal of strategic studies 29, no. 1 (2006): 3-52. See pages 24-27 for the author’s discussion of the mix of biases that clouded the judgement of political leaders during the WMD search years of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
[41] See Lord, Charles G., Mark R. Lepper, and Elizabeth Preston. "Considering the opposite: a corrective strategy for social judgment." Journal of personality and social psychology 47, no. 6 (1984): page 1231.
[42] Lee, Yu-Hao, et al. "Training anchoring and representativeness bias mitigation through a digital game." Simulation & Gaming 47.6 (2016): pages 751-779.
[43] Mussweiler, Strack, and Pfeiffer (2000) argue their findings suggest that “making people aware of anchoring, and motivating its avoidance, can be successful at mitigating the anchoring effect.”
[44] See also Neustadt and May (1988) for a very useful description of why incorrectly associating previous experiences that seem similar present circumstances and yield suboptimal prescriptions. Neustadt, Richard E., and R. Ernest. "May, Thinking in Time: The Uses of Decision-Makers." (1986).
[45] Add to that his tendency to routinely blame others for his failures. See Groteluscuen’s chapter on Conrad in Blackham (2022). Blackham, Jeremy. The Worst Military Leaders in History. Reaktion Books, 2022.
[46] See “CIA Tradecaft Primer.” https://www.cia.gov/static/955180a45afe3f5013772c313b16face/Tradecraft-Primer-apr09.pdf
[47] Welton Chang, Elissabeth Berdini, David R. Mandel & Philip E. Tetlock (2018) Restructuring structured analytic techniques in intelligence, Intelligence and National Security, 33:3, pages 337-356.
[48] Folker, Robert D., and Joint Military Intelligence College. “Intelligence Analysis in Theater Joint Intelligence Centers: An Experiment in Applying Structured Methods.” Washington, D.C.: Joint Military Intelligence College, 2000. Print. Occasional Paper (Joint Military Intelligence College (U.S.)); No. 7.
[49] See also “Uncertainty in the Information Supply Chain” in which Dr. Monica Tremblay advocates for the use of “What If” analysis to alleviate the effect of representative bias on decision making in an information environment. See Tremblay, Monica Chiarini, "Uncertainty in the information supply chain: Integrating multiple health care data sources" (2007). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/2387
thestrategybridge.org · August 31, 2022
5. Army grounds entire CH-47 Chinook helicopter fleet over engine fires
Ouch. This is the best helicopter in the world (in my non-expert opinion)
Army grounds entire CH-47 Chinook helicopter fleet over engine fires
armytimes.com · by Davis Winkie · August 31, 2022
The Army has grounded the entirety of its CH-47 Chinook helicopter fleet “out of an abundance of caution” after an undisclosed number of recent engine fires, the service confirmed Tuesday evening.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the move to shut down the Boeing-made fleet. No deaths or injuries occurred due to the fires.
In a statement emailed to Army Times, Army spokesperson Cynthia Smith attributed the issue to fuel leaks. She indicated that the service has “identified the root cause” of the leaks and “is implementing corrective measures to resolve this issue.”
Engine manufacturer Honeywell International told Army Times in a statement that the leaks were due to faulty aftermarket O-rings that weren’t produced by the company.
“In full coordination with the U.S. Army, Honeywell helped discover that O-rings not meeting Honeywell design specifications had been installed in some T55 engines during routine and scheduled maintenance at an Army Depot,” the statement said. “It is believed these suspect O-Rings have been identified and isolated.”
Smith’s statement tried to downplay the scope of the problem, declaring that “some aircraft may not require corrective measures and may soon return to normal flight operations.” Army officials did not respond to questions from Army Times about the repair timeline or its potential impact on training and operations.
The Army spokesperson did not specify how many aircraft had caught fire and how many required corrective maintenance. According to the Wall Street Journal, service officials have identified at least 70 aircraft with the faulty part out of the Army’s approximately 400 Chinooks.
While a joint team of Honeywell and Army engineers identified the engine problem, it’s not clear when they realized they needed to look for it.
A July aviation safety bulletin published by the service’s Combat Readiness Center highlighted an incident where a hovering Chinook had to land and use its fire suppression system to address “a small active fire near the aft portion of the No. 2 engine.” Army Times previously covered CRC officials’ efforts and process for reconstructing accidents.
Smith added that the grounding was meant to “ensure our aircraft remain safe and airworthy.”
About Davis Winkie
Davis Winkie is a senior reporter covering the Army, specializing in accountability reporting, personnel issues and military justice. He joined Military Times in 2020. Davis studied history at Vanderbilt University and UNC-Chapel Hill, writing a master's thesis about how the Cold War-era Defense Department influenced Hollywood's WWII movies.
5. AirLand redux? Early lessons from Ukraine
De6p, close, and rear. It is a good thing it is an Air Force officer talking about an Army Air Corps. I just hope he is not excommunicated from the Air Force for doing so. But seriously, I think he is on to something (not the Army Air Corps specifically but the unified command he is describing).
Excerpt:
The US military and its allies must reimagine their deep-fight capabilities. The US Army today controls surface-to-air missiles, drones below group-five classification—similar in size and capability to the MQ-1 Predator or larger—and long-range fires. The Navy provides similar extended capabilities for the maritime environment. In future combat, the FSCL may well be a thing of the past, replaced by long-range fires and the Joint Fires Cell owning the targeting mission with the Air Operations Center wholly in a supporting air-management role. Embedded airmen training and operating regularly in these forces must be incentivized for airspace control and other related fields. New constructs for battle management moving away from service culture-specific dogmas must guide the planning, acquisitions, and joint doctrine development process. The alternative might be either making the US Army Air Corps great again with a combined anti-aircraft, combat aviation, and drone force under one unified command for the deep battle, or worse—the prospect adversaries will exploit the airland seam and end the US dominance of the close-air fight.
AirLand redux? Early lessons from Ukraine
atlanticcouncil.org · byMichael P. Kreuzer · August 30, 2022
By Michael P. Kreuzer
The war in Ukraine signals a return, with a vengeance, of the hider-finder game of air warfare, both for airspace superiority and to exploit the air for battlespace effects. Against what appeared at the onset to be a resurgent great power seeking to overwhelm a significantly weaker neighbor, Ukraine has relied on airpower, modern system tactics and training, and passion to at least level the playing field against the Russian onslaught to enable them to readily evade (‘hide’) from conventional force attacks and Russian air defense sensors while more efficiently finding conventional military targets. Though the war is far from over, it has already yielded numerous lessons that airpower advocates and joint-minded leaders should apply to other conflicts. Counter-land drone tactics and greater reliance on coordinated fires from multiple domains suggest that significant challenges are ahead for military operations. Long-simmering US doctrinal feuds that the US military has largely sidelined during the war on terrorism need to be directly addressed now in order to anticipate the future battlespace.
Drone paths diverge
The US Air Force’s precision-targeting model posits that airpower is a game-changer in war because it can bypass fielded forces and directly attack an adversary’s “vital centers,” in some cases by “cutting off the head of the snake” through targeting an enemy’s leadership. US drone operations have been guided by this model of targeting, as medium-altitude, long-endurance drones with precision munitions and reachback intelligence have provided a capability almost uniquely suited to the US military and its strategy in the war on terrorism.
Other states have attempted to emulate this model, in most cases with untested results outside US coalition efforts. In Iraq, the US military’s attempt to build a drone fleet capable of taking over coalition intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions ended largely in failure. International regimes such as the Missile Technology Control Regime have historically limited the capabilities that the United States could apply to the war in Iraq, and what could be transferred could never be used effectively. Though early fears of drone diffusion focused on the US model becoming widespread and human targeting becoming more normalized, in practice few nations have adopted the US model for strategic airpower. Instead, most nations practice a more operational-level air-support-to-land operations model, for which a wholly different construct of drone warfare is emerging.
Drones in Ukraine exemplify this second model of air support to ground operations as a deep fight strike asset targeting tank columns, troop formations, and other military assets beyond the reach and visual range of ground forces. This builds on lessons learned from the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, where the TB2 and other systems significantly shifted the balance of power in what had, to that point, been an indecisive conflict played out in several acts. Today these drones are increasingly backed by networked systems for resilience and battlefield capabilities, but their targets remain traditional military targets (equipment and formations) rather than precise leadership targets requiring an elaborate find-fix-finish engagement process.
The hider-finder game accelerates
Drones, loitering munitions, and long-range rocket-propelled artillery have proven invaluable in aiding the Ukrainian military in prosecuting the war against the vastly larger Russian military. Ukraine is effectively exploiting the seam between traditional “fast-mover” manned airpower and land-domain assets—slower, lower-altitude and short-range air assets such as helicopters. These weapons are potent operational force multipliers for modern militaries, and even for adaptive small units, from conventional military forces to terrorist entities. This seam is most likely a fleeting opportunity, as Russian counter-unmanned aerial system (UAS) capabilities have expanded and degraded the effectiveness of Ukrainian drones during the conflict.
Innovation, and war, begets counter innovation. This pattern has dominated air warfare from its inception. The bomber will always get through, until it is thwarted by radar and surface-to-air missiles. Stealth beats radar, so concealment and dispersal of targets, increased standoff missile ranges, and exploration of future counter stealth detection offsets fifth-generation advantages. Contrary to some early claims, Ukraine and other recent conflicts continue to demonstrate that the revolutionary potential of many of these technologies has been exaggerated. Rather than a situation where airpower dominates the deep fight, the friction of war at the airland seam has grown, even though the seam itself may be disappearing with new technology.
The fire support coordination line (FSCL) gets blurrier
For much of the Cold War and through the 1991 Gulf War, US soldiers and airmen faced sharp divisions over the meaning and interpretation of the FSCL. For airmen it was a demarcation line dividing areas of operations (AO) between air force targeting and army artillery targeting. The air component-controlled air interdiction and strategic attack, the land component controlled close air support, and the FSCL was the planning line that divided the air and land. For soldiers it merely represented the range of artillery and the limit of their internal fires deconfliction.
To a degree, the US Air Force and Army overcame doctrinal disagreements in the 1990s, with the Army recognizing that “deep battle” is not simply support for the close fight and the Air Force increasing its focus on air interdiction, but soldiers and airmen still retain different attitudes about this doctrinal shift. Many airmen saw the Army yielding to the Air Force vision in the 1990s, with the Air Force solely conceding the line did not explicitly serve as an AO boundary, but rather a measure to “facilitate the expeditious engagement of targets of opportunity beyond the coordinating measure.” A truce between the Army and Air Force over this issue has lasted largely because US operations since 1991 have largely occurred where only a close fight dynamic was required for counterinsurgency, leaving the Joint Task Force’s fire control element to manage virtually all targeting.
This works in conflicts largely without an FSCL, but in future fights the Air Force’s desire to be the central coordinating agent for the deep fight may reignite the 1990s’ debates. Even in the early transition to large-scale land occupation of Afghanistan in 2002, sharp divisions between the air and land components of the US military over planning and execution were abundant. The growth of multiservice drones, missiles, and rocket-propelled artillery, the historic pressure of ground commanders to extend the FSCL, and Air Force leaders’ contention that they can more efficiently and more economically execute long-range precision-strike missions than other components of the US military, are likely to pose challenges to future operations. A new force-employment model for the deep fight, beyond basic coordination measures between air and land/maritime components—one that accounts for drones, missiles, and rockets that fall in the seam of classic airland operations—should be a priority for Joint Doctrine moving forward.
Recommendations
The US Air Force prides itself in the knowledge that no US soldier has been lost to an enemy air attack since April 15, 1953. But in the era of small, low-altitude drones and increasingly potent standoff missiles and rockets, how relevant might that fact be in the future, and who ultimately bears responsibility for protecting ground forces from such threats? If the war in Ukraine thus far teaches anything, it is that the basic Cold War idea of AirLand Battle was largely correct—an integrated airland, modern system army could thwart a significantly larger nonmodern system for a period of time and set the terms of battle, dramatically slowing the advance and creating a window for reinforcement. The change since the 1980s is primarily the growth of long-range-fires capabilities, as well as the diminished signatures and support infrastructure required for longer-range missiles and tactical aircraft.
The US military and its allies must reimagine their deep-fight capabilities. The US Army today controls surface-to-air missiles, drones below group-five classification—similar in size and capability to the MQ-1 Predator or larger—and long-range fires. The Navy provides similar extended capabilities for the maritime environment. In future combat, the FSCL may well be a thing of the past, replaced by long-range fires and the Joint Fires Cell owning the targeting mission with the Air Operations Center wholly in a supporting air-management role. Embedded airmen training and operating regularly in these forces must be incentivized for airspace control and other related fields. New constructs for battle management moving away from service culture-specific dogmas must guide the planning, acquisitions, and joint doctrine development process. The alternative might be either making the US Army Air Corps great again with a combined anti-aircraft, combat aviation, and drone force under one unified command for the deep battle, or worse—the prospect adversaries will exploit the airland seam and end the US dominance of the close-air fight.
***
Michael P. Kreuzer is the Chair of the Department of International Security at the USAF Air Command and Staff College and a career US Air Force officer. He holds a PhD in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University. All views and opinions are his own and do not represent the US Department of Defense or the US Air Force.
Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, shapes the debate around the greatest military challenges facing the United States and its allies, and creates forward-looking assessments of the trends, technologies, and concepts that will define the future of warfare.
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atlanticcouncil.org · August 30, 2022
7. Shaking the Dungeon: James Baldwin and the Strategies of Subversion and Surveillance
A fascinating read of some of our history.
An interesting excerpt here. I am sure some can draw parallels to the current day. Change communism to radical right and radical left extremism (though we still need to be on the lookout for the scourge of communism)
Excerpts:
...Through their public outreach programs and relationships with media organizations, law enforcement distributed information on potential subversives to American citizens, supported by content from the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Handbook for Americans.[32] These attempts to educate and influence the public are evident in programs like the FBI’s “AMERICA” campaign, which encouraged civilians that “patriotism was everybody’s job” and to:
Alert yourself—learn the true nature of communism.
Make civic programs for social improvement.
Exercise your right to vote; elect representatives of integrity.
Respect human dignity—communism and individual rights cannot coexist.
Inform yourself; know your country—it’s history, traditions, and heritage.
Combat public apathy toward communism—indifference can be fatal.
Attack bigotry and prejudice wherever they appear; justice for all is the bulwark of Democracy.[33]
Shaking the Dungeon: James Baldwin and the Strategies of Subversion and Surveillance
Ryan Reynolds August 30, 2022
thestrategybridge.org · August 30, 2022
Earlier this year, The Strategy Bridge asked civilian and military students around the world to participate in our sixth annual student writing contest on the subject of strategy.
Now, we are pleased to present the Second Place winner from Ryan Reynolds, a student at Mississippi State University.
“God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water, the fire next time!” In 1963, James Baldwin, a queer Black author from Harlem, closed his essay “Down at the Cross” with this passage, which sought to capture the increasing social strain in the United States during the 1960s. In his essay, Baldwin stressed that if Black Americans and their white allies failed to “end their racial nightmare” and “change the history of the world,” they risked fulfilling this allegorical prophecy.[1] Baldwin’s work and activism underscored the social and political methods of waging a revolution through subversion and civic mobilization strategies while at the same time not engaging in excessive violence. Literature reflects the cultural realities of those writing it, and Baldwin wielded his prose as a strategic tool to connect the seemingly unconnected and undermine the American social and political structure in pursuit of a cause. The subsequent reactions to Baldwin’s work from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice encapsulated the dynamic of Cold War-era fears around revolutionary warfare. Perceived domestic revolutionaries like James Baldwin within the civil rights movement and their ties, whether supposed or real, to the Communist Party were seen by law enforcement as a threat that necessitated the development and implementation of unconventional warfare strategies for use on American citizens.
James Baldwin (Ulf Andersen/Getty)
While all wars are political in nature, revolutionary wars occur within a state rather than among rival states and center on either generating or preventing a political and social upheaval of the established order. Central to a revolutionary war is the notion of “the cause,” typically a set of political, economic, and social grievances which foster the belief that the established order is illegitimate or unjust. In the 20th century, revolutionary warfare most often occurred in states undergoing post-war decolonization, in societies with an oppressive political regime, or in those states and societies undergoing ideological shifts caused by religious or communist beliefs.[2] While the bloody revolutions in Russia, China, Vietnam, Algeria, and Cuba are vivid in historical memory, revolutionary warfare does not have to devolve into a violent civil war. Revolutions can be violent and/or non-violent. In instances when open violence is not strategically viable or is ideologically opposed, revolutionaries must employ other means to accomplish their political objectives. For many civil rights activists in the United States, political mobilization and establishing a moral authority served as the most effective means of accomplishing their cause of equity and equality in Jim Crow America. Attaining these means was difficult and required that civil rights leaders construct a national strategy that established their moral high ground in the eyes of the American public and the world and emphasized the legal political processes of change available to citizens in the United States.
James Baldwin assisted in cultivating a national strategy for the civil rights movement, and his abilities as an author and strategist embodied what the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz calls “genius.” In focusing on the concept of genius, Clausewitz sought to create a method of analysis that highlighted whether a leader possessed strength of mind, creativity, and a suitable temperament to manage the military and political objectives of a war. Genius underscored a commander’s creativity and resolve, consisting of “a harmonious combination of elements” that allowed leaders to control their passions and make reasoned decisions.[3] However, the importance of genius and other strategic concepts employed by military theorists extends beyond the battlefield; creative, reasoned decision-making is essential to strategic development in pursuit of any political objective. Warfare is shaped by political objectives, as Clausewitz noted when he penned, “If war is part of policy, policy will determine its character.”[4] Leaders in the American civil rights movement had to define the character of their struggle and confront the problem of how a group of revolutionaries would attain a political objective without an army. Baldwin provided an answer and employed his creativity and imagination to create pieces of literature that assisted in furthering the revolutionary political objectives of civil rights activists. His writing personified what Clausewitz and other military theorists call coup d’oeil. Baldwin’s ability to connect the ostensibly unconnected characterizes the definition of coup d’oeil outlined in Clausewitz’s On War, expressed as a profound intellect and a “quick recognition of a truth that the mind would ordinarily miss or perceive only after long study and reflection.”[5] Because strategic concepts are not limited to traditional interstate conflict, and due to the diverse nature of revolutionary movements, looking at the literature of James Baldwin through the lens of strategy reveals the qualities of genius and coup d’oeil present in his character. Baldwin’s words helped wage what Martin Luther King Jr. dubbed the “Negro Revolution” by emphasizing the righteousness of their cause and placing Black Americans in the global Cold War context of decolonization.[6]
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Baldwin emphasized the importance of moral authority and political legitimacy over violence in his 1963 collection of essays, The Fire Next Time. Baldwin connected the Black experience in the United States with broader decolonization movements occurring overseas, stating that “the word ‘independence’ in Africa and the word ‘integration’ here are almost equally meaningless; that is, Europe has not yet left Africa, and black men here are not yet free.”[7] While Baldwin repeatedly used words like “freedom” and believed Americans were “living in an age of revolution,” he balked at direct violence or establishing an independent Black nation in North America.[8] Commenting on the Nation of Islam’s goals in 1962 regarding land acquisition as reparations for slave labor, specifically in the southern states, Baldwin believed the organization pursued a “fantasy.” The United States, argued the Harlem native, “would never surrender this territory” unless they “were to be reduced as a world power” in a manner similar to the decline of the British Empire. As it was, post-war American power had not declined, and Baldwin recognized that “white people of the United States and Canada” would not “maroon themselves” on a hostile continent facing an “aggressive” Black and Latin American South, a “non-white East,” and a “powerless” Western Europe. Furthermore, Baldwin understood that open violence only invited and legitimized the use of the American military and believed that any long-term armed struggle would fail due to the relatively small and fractured Black population. Instead, the author declared that Black activists should “not hesitate to utilize—or, indeed to exacerbate—the social and spiritual discontent that reigns” within the United States.[9]
When commenting on popular uprisings, Clausewitz remarked they should be “nebulous and elusive; its resistance should never materialize as a concrete body, otherwise the enemy can direct sufficient force at its core, crush it, and take many prisoners.” Instead, the uprising should focus on where the enemy is most “vulnerable to its strongest blows.” While Clausewitz was a Prussian officer reflecting on warfare in the nineteenth century, his writing and theories apply to twentieth-century forms of unconventional warfare and revolutionary movements. Indeed, Clausewitz observed that war is a psychological and social endeavor, and the political architecture of a state varies depending on the given time and place of the social and political environment.[10] While the strength of the U.S military rendered victory in open combat unlikely, the American state was susceptible to political and psychological warfare.
While giving a speech at the Tenth Annual Bill of Rights Dinner in New York City in December of 1963, Baldwin stated that the Freedom March in August represented 250,000 Americans who wanted a “redress of grievances.” Those Black Americans wanted to “tell the country of their troubles and tell the troubles of our country” to the world. Baldwin claimed he never feared Russia, China, or Cuba but was “terrified of this country.”[11] In The Fire Next Time, he wrote that because American power was predicated on fear, noting “they had the judges, the juries,” and “the shotguns,” it was a “criminal power to be feared but not respected, and to be outwitted in any way whatever.”[12] Though not realized through a simple process, the political and legal structure in the United States allowed for radical, even revolutionary, change through existing political mechanisms. Baldwin’s vision to utilize and exacerbate domestic discontent were forms of psychological and political subversion that sought to highlight Jim Crow America’s political illegitimacy and gain Black Americans the political power to bring about revolutionary change. Subversion is one of three interrelated fields of unconventional warfare outlined in FM 100-5, Field Service Regulations Operations. In 1963, the same year Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time was released, FM 100-5 defined unconventional warfare as military operations conducted by mainly local personnel within an enemy’s sphere of influence to further military, political, or economic objectives, often integrated with “economic, political, and psychological warfare.” The Army recognized the increased role of unconventional warfare during the Cold War and noted the ideological nature of the conflict necessitated making the “cold war struggle for influence over the minds” of people a “key element” of military operations.[13] The operational environment for unconventional activity is diverse and politically sensitive, with large-scale irregular mobilization and operations often originating from historical exploitation, desires for national independence, or political corruption.[14] Writing extensively on the global realities shaping American policy and the strategic uses of history, Baldwin demonstrated that he was fully aware of the American history of exploitation and the Cold War dynamic centered on winning minds.
Baldwin’s comprehension of the Cold War political climate allowed his writing to simultaneously help subvert the established order and mobilize a biracial political coalition. When writing on the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, Baldwin remarked that most Black Americans did not believe the “immense concession would ever have been made if it had not been for the competition of the Cold War.” Regarding decolonization, Baldwin believed that “political reasons” drove Africans to interact with the “descendants of her former masters.” Had Brown and decolonization been a result of “justice or love,” they would have happened sooner. However, “were it not for the realities of power in this difficult era,” integration and independence “might very well not have occurred yet.”[15] Baldwin viewed the 1960s as a moment in time that provided an opportunity for Black Americans to gain their freedom in a manner that considered the peace and capitalized on global political realities. An armed uprising and guerrilla campaign would only ensure long-term violence and uncertainty. He argued that Americans need only look to Cuba or Vietnam to see that when oppressed people change their situation through violence, they are “menaced more than ever by the vacuum that succeeds all violent upheavals.” Baldwin wrote, “we should certainly know by now that it is one thing to overthrow a dictator or repel an invader and quite another thing really to achieve a revolution.”[16] While Baldwin hinted at and acknowledged the possibility of violence in public interviews and noted Black Americans hoarded weapons in the case of “unavoidable bloody conflict,” it was often designed to generate political leverage at home and abroad to encourage those stuck in the middle to act. He implored the U.S to solve the “social and moral chaos” surrounding the denial of Black freedom or face the possibility of armed resistance.[17]
Understanding the power he wielded as an author, Baldwin told a crowd of people in Oakland, CA, “I’m a writer in a revolutionary situation. I do what I do. I know what I have.”[18] Baldwin used the political corruption of Jim Crow in addition to the contemporary and historical subjugation and exploitation of Black Americans in the United States as a psychological weapon. The author viewed many white Americans as “innocent” people “trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.” Baldwin sought to win the contest over the minds of Americans and “release” white people through his prose. In acknowledgment that support of civil rights placed white Americans “in danger” of losing their identity, Baldwin called them his brothers and “countrymen” and wrote, “if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.”[19] At the 1963 Bill of Rights Dinner in New York, Baldwin told the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee members that “apathy allows thousands of people in the deep South to perish” and “not only negroes.” The “real victim is the poor white man who does these things because he was told generations ago to do them.”[20]
While Baldwin advocated on numerous occasions for national work stoppages and labor strikes as forms of economic warfare, he knew economic pressure did not equal political power. In 1964, Baldwin told the West German magazine, Der Spiegel, that only power could change Black living conditions. Moreover, while Black Americans possessed economic strength, which Baldwin called a “negative power,” true strength in America stemmed from the vote.[21] Baldwin’s rhetoric ran contrary to prominent leaders among the Black Muslim Movement in the early 1960s, including Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X. Baldwin felt that what made the Nation of Islam and the Muslim Movement popular among Black men was their ability to “articulate the suffering” in the Black community, a suffering “which has been in this country so long denied” by white Americans. Baldwin felt that Malcolm X’s authority stemmed from his “articulateness and ability to corroborate the reality of Black Americans and show them they really exist.” While Baldwin admittedly stated that he “was delighted” to see white policemen stand afraid of Black men for the first time during a Muslim speaking engagement in Harlem, he rejected the Black Muslim Movement as strategically unrealistic and criticized their constructed history and restrictive ideology.[22] In their placement of Black Americans above others in their beliefs, the Muslim Movement created a “false morale” that would “break down in a moment of crisis.”[23]
Baldwin understood how Black men who remained “trapped, disinherited, and despised, in a nation that has kept him in bondage for nearly four hundred years and is still unable to recognize him as a human being” could be drawn to such restrictive and vengeful thinking. He believed that articulating the history of oppression and violence felt by Black Americans, as equals, and in a language white people understood, better served the Black community.[24] Baldwin concluded that “no tyranny is blind to the hint of insurrection” and that a biracial coalition was critical to establishing a “moral authority” for equality, not superiority. Baldwin sought to employ the same articulateness that drew people to Malcolm X to create this coalition. Only moral authority and genuine political alliances would grant the Black community legitimate political power to enact change, while violence would invite military intervention the U.S. could portray as legitimate.[25]
Baldwin’s ability to articulate, give meaning to, and impart the suffering and anger of Black Americans inspired readers of all ethnic backgrounds to mobilize for civil rights. However, while Baldwin’s work inspired mobilization efforts among activists, his efforts produced a different response from law enforcement officials. The police response to James Baldwin underscored how deeply American law enforcement officers perceived the author as a strategic threat to American security interests during the 1960s. The FBI’s strategies of surveillance and counterintelligence paralleled Army doctrine concerning combating revolutionary movements and insurgents without applying overt military force. Indeed, on multiple occasions during the 1950s and 1960s, soldiers from Army intelligence worked with the FBI on possible civil disturbances centered around civil rights.[26] Strategically, the literature of James Baldwin and the operations conducted by COINTELPRO, the FBI’s counterintelligence program, represent how unequal powers engaged in irregular operations relative to their respective ends and means.
The FBI, Department of Justice, and Secret Service labeled Baldwin a dissident and threat to American security and integrated him into increasingly militarized police operations. The Bureau’s approach to combating subversion paralleled the Army’s strategy on unconventional warfare outlined in FM 100-5, which stated that as an ideological struggle expands, commanders should place the strategic emphasis “on counterintelligence measures” and on “increasing the scope of psychological warfare operations.”[27] The emphasis on establishing moral authority and questioning the legal legitimacy of Jim Crow America made civil rights an ideological struggle. In that vein, the FBI expanded its domestic surveillance and intelligence operations in the 1960s to disrupt perceived revolutionary activity. The Bureau employed “counter-irreguler operations” outlined in Army doctrine that detailed the use of propaganda, fear tactics, covert surveillance and intelligence gathering.[28] Director J. Edgar Hoover’s 1967 report on Internal Security, distributed to twenty-two field offices across America, stressed that the objective of the Bureau’s intelligence program was to “expose, disrupt, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalists, groupings, and hate-type organizations.” Hoover’s report specifically separated purported Black nationalists from FBI investigations into the Communist Party of the United States, noting that activists like James Baldwin were “known perverts” and had a “propensity for violence and civil disorder.”[29] The focus on Black political movements paralleled Army doctrine, which stated that such strategies were most effective when limited force was necessary, and officers could target “selected portions of the enemy’s economy or specific political factions.”[30]
Surveillance on Baldwin began well before Hoover’s report in 1967. The FBI feared Baldwin’s writing could serve as a psychological, moral, and political weapon against American security interests. The dichotomy of understanding surrounding the political purpose of Baldwin’s literature is striking. While Baldwin viewed his work as a means of destroying a politically illegitimate system predicated on oppression, the FBI and Department of Justice saw only a threat to American internal security. Their justifications for surveillance and counterintelligence remained couched in anti-communist rhetoric and fears of communist revolution that permeated every level of American strategy during the Cold War. While the Army’s manual touched on the importance of cultural literacy as a form of specialized training for officers, the FBI and Department of Justice emphasized awareness of cultural productions.[31] In the Extremist Intelligence Section of the FBI’s Intelligence Division, Inspector G.C. Moore requested and read numerous books that he and others believed could threaten American interests well into the 1970s. Moore used the information gleaned from these books to help create an FBI catalog of texts similar to the House of Un-American Activities’ (HUAC) “Guide to Subversive Organizations and Publications.” Through their public outreach programs and relationships with media organizations, law enforcement distributed information on potential subversives to American citizens, supported by content from the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Handbook for Americans.[32] These attempts to educate and influence the public are evident in programs like the FBI’s “AMERICA” campaign, which encouraged civilians that “patriotism was everybody’s job” and to:
Alert yourself—learn the true nature of communism.
Make civic programs for social improvement.
Exercise your right to vote; elect representatives of integrity.
Respect human dignity—communism and individual rights cannot coexist.
Inform yourself; know your country—it’s history, traditions, and heritage.
Combat public apathy toward communism—indifference can be fatal.
Attack bigotry and prejudice wherever they appear; justice for all is the bulwark of Democracy.[33]
In October of 1963, a memorandum created by Special Agent F.J. Baumgardner in the FBI’s New York Domestic Intelligence Program expressed severe concerns over Baldwin’s writings on power, revolution, and the calls for biracial cooperation in building a new American nation.[34] Baumgardner perceived Baldwin’s work as a call to arms for Black Americans, to, as he put it, “force whites to stop fleeing from reality” and change the living conditions for Black communities. In December of 1963, eleven months after the release of The Fire Next Time, the Special Agent in Charge of the New York Field Office sent a memo to Director Hoover naming Baldwin a “dangerous individual who could be expected to commit acts inimical to the national defense and public safety of the United States,” and recommended adding the author to the FBI Security Index.[35]
Soon after, the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division officially classified James Baldwin as a “native born communist.” Three years later, the Department of Justice followed suit and called Baldwin a “subversive communist” who expressed “strong anti-U.S. sentiment.” The Department of Justice supported this classification of Baldwin by suggesting he showed “evidence of emotional instability and irrationality” and noted the results of other investigations, stating the author was “believed by the FBI and the Secret Service to be a potentially violent threat.”[36] Though a guerrilla force never appeared in the United States during the 1960s, the fears on the part of law enforcement that one could manifest at any point remained, as did concern that authors like Baldwin could make armed guerrillas appear legitimate. In June of 1964, the FBI expressed concern that Baldwin’s paperback book sales were expected to be “5-10 times higher” than the hardcover versions that had sold over a million copies. The FBI’s concern was rooted in the belief that the less expensive paperback version would make his writing more accessible in stores and libraries across the country.[37] The FBI and Department of Justice repeatedly referenced Baldwin’s skills as an author and the boon his speeches and writings could be to furthering revolutionary movements and ideology. The Bureau’s Intelligence Division worked with the U.S. Information Agency and private media to edit or remove portions of Baldwin’s speeches prior to broadcast over the radio and television.[38]
The association between law enforcement and American media emphasized the importance of “the increasing effectiveness of mass media communication” in the unconventional warfare strategy outlined in FM 100-5.[39] Additionally, the Department of Justice and FBI encouraged American media outlets to mention and publish William F. Buckley Jr.’s intellectual counterattack. Buckley, an Ivy-League-trained intellectual and founder of the conservative National Review, portrayed Baldwin as a communist radical who “despised” God, sought the “absolute surrender” of white America, and for white Americans to “renounce their civilization” and “give their power to the negroes.”[40] Buckley’s rhetoric of surrender and loss of civilization emphasized the importance of psychological operations in an ideological war. In a nod to The Fire Next Time, Buckley accused Baldwin of throwing around “apocalyptic statements” and “threats” of fire whenever Americans disagreed with his “poetical locution” concerning “the delinquencies of white people in this country.” Buckley branded Baldwin and others like him “America haters” and likened them to socialist revolutionaries like Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. Buckley believed Baldwin was more of a threat to the “negroes in America than anything George Wallace ever said or did” and deserved to be “ghettoized in the corners of fanaticism.”[41] The two intellectuals debated each other at the University of Cambridge in 1965. Baldwin received a standing ovation after stating that by age six, he knew the flag to which he pledged allegiance every morning in school did not return the favor. He won the public debate, 540 to 160.[42]
William F. Buckley Jr. and James Baldwin (The New York Times)
The efforts to connect Baldwin to America’s global war on communism granted the FBI the autonomy to engage in extralegal and illegal operations under the guise of national security. The New York field office engaged in extensive personal and home surveillance of Baldwin. Agents masquerading as salespeople and American Express employees broke into his apartment and harassed his neighbors. They detailed his reading habits, professional associations, friendships, sexual activity, and noted any direct or indirect connection with Communist Party members to justify continued surveillance. The Bureau reported to the Department of Justice when Baldwin’s work appeared in subversive publications like the China Daily News or Freedomways. The latter, published by New York-based Freedomways Associates Incorporated, was a “quarterly review of the Negro freedom movement” and identified by the HUAC as one of the subversive publications believed to have been established by the Communist Party of the United States.[43] After the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Act in 1964 and 1965 respectively, the FBI labeled Baldwin an “international agent” of the Black Panthers and used the Bureau’s international attachés to conduct surveillance on him while he traveled through Turkey, Italy, and France.[44] In 1966, Baldwin spoke in Rome at an anti-war march and vigil. A Department of Justice report claimed the Italian Communist Party supported the vigil where Baldwin spoke to 15,000 Italians and informed the crowd that he was there to “tell them something only American Negroes know. Western interests were responsible for events in South Africa and the Cuban ‘aggression.’”[45] While in Paris, the attaché expressed concern about Baldwin’s connections with known communists in Europe, including the Cuban Ambassador to France and fellow celebrated author, Alejo Carpentier.[46]
At the 1968 World Council of Churches meeting in Uppsala, Sweden, organizers invited Baldwin to speak as a replacement for Martin Luther King Jr. after his assassination. Baldwin spoke on the potential for church power to aid in amending “racial injustices” worldwide and defended Black Power leader and former Chairmen of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Stokeley Carmichael. Baldwin stated that black power meant nothing more or less than the “self-determination of peoples” and that Carmichael was “not nearly as dangerous as many of the people who govern in my poor country.”[47] An article published by the New York Daily News reported on Baldwin’s same speech. The article observed his support for black power and focused on the comments he made surrounding African decolonization, that he “trembles for all white children facing a time when the third world may settle a long and bloody bill.”[48] During an appearance on David Frost’s television program in 1970, Baldwin claimed that the U.S. government had killed “hundreds of young Black men” in recent years and that every American who stood idly by was complicit and should be “headed to the gas chamber.” An anonymous letter to the FBI from a viewer summarized the widespread reaction to Baldwin’s recent claims and noted a “distinction” between civil rights and having the “license” to say volatile things and attack innocent Americans.[49] With the rise of the Black Power and anti-war movements, coupled with the passage of civil rights legislation which many white Americans felt resolved the issues of racial discrimination, the widespread support for Baldwin began to wane.
While Baldwin’s words did him no favors in the court of public opinion, there was a cultural gap between white and Black Americans about legal equality and legitimate equity. Many white Americans did not comprehend the inequity the Black community felt. Nor did they place the Black experience within the broader transnational context of decolonization. When white Americans read and heard Baldwin’s words, it is not difficult to see how many felt threatened. Furthermore, much of the FBI and Department of Justice’s strategy revolved around controlling the narrative and winning the minds of the American public. After all, a “concrete program” of civil affairs and psychological warfare designed to “win popular support” of a local populace while “isolating the irregular elements from these sources of support” were critical to unconventional warfare strategies in the 1960s.[50] By 1970, the FBI and Department of Justice had operated a campaign designed to discredit Baldwin for seven years. Many white Americans began to see James Baldwin and civil rights organizations as increasingly militant and a public danger. In 1971 Baldwin penned an open letter of support to Angela Davis, a Black Panther member and activist whom Richard Nixon called a “dangerous terrorist” in 1970, following her perceived connection to an armed invasion of a California courthouse.[51] Baldwin’s public support of Black Power and his continued writings and media appearances that emphasized revolution confirmed to many white Americans what the FBI and Department of Justice had asserted all along. Baldwin was not only a threat, but he openly supported apparent terrorists like the Black Panthers and Angela Davis.
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While the strategic uses of literature and cultural productions lay at the heart of this examination, the connection between James Baldwin and the militarization of American policing holds significant implications surrounding historical studies of domestic Cold War grand strategy. In American political and legal tradition, domestic threats to national security fall under the purview of law enforcement institutions. The Posse Comitatus Act, the Delimitations Agreement, and the Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments limit using federal military forces as domestic police forces unless authorized by law or in open violation of the Insurrection Act. The civil rights movement was a national movement with transnational ties to decolonization and actively pursued legitimacy for its cause. In his 1972 novel No Name in the Street, Baldwin stressed the civil rights link to Africa and connected Black Americans with the bloody Algerian struggle for independence. Stating that he was a “member of the American colony” and the fact that he had never seen Algeria, nor had many Algerians seen Harlem, did not change the truth that they were both “victims of history.”[52] Observing civil rights activists through the lens of Cold War national security concerns makes the rise of a federal militarized police force in the United States appear logical, necessary, and socially acceptable. The United States, while engaged in a global ideological conflict with the Soviet Union, could ill afford any stains on its national reputation. America could not claim to stand for global democracy yet consistently deploy its military to suppress domestic civil unrest and constitutionally protected political movements. Nor could the federal government allow individual states to openly dismiss federal mandates or jeopardize American foreign policy objectives.[53] An expanded, integrated, and largely autonomous law enforcement network provided the federal government a mechanism to ensure domestic security and stability without the visible and consistent use of military force. By 1972, the FBI Academy at Quantico was the most extensive training facility for specialized law enforcement globally.[54] The Cold War emphasis on national security granted law enforcement the license to develop and implement unconventional warfare strategies into the types of extralegal methods of policing used on Americans like James Baldwin. These strategies evolved into future approaches recognizable in counter-terrorism operations, the War on Drugs, and the Global War on Terror.
Ryan Reynolds is a Ph.D. candidate at Mississippi State University’s Department of History. His research centers on grand strategy, irregular warfare, and American cultural and political movements. His dissertation focuses on domestic strategy during the Cold War and examines the militarization of American society and federal policing policies through the lens of popular culture in the 1960s.
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Header Image: Hands on Prison Bars (University of Georgia)
Notes:
[1] James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time: First Vintage International Edition (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 105.
[2] John Shy and Thomas Collier, “Revolutionary War” found in Peter Paret, Gordon Alexander Craig, and Felix Gilbert eds. Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, (Princeton University Press, 1986), 817.
[3] Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 100-102.
[4] Ibid, 606.
[5] Ibid, 102.
[6] Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can’t Wait, (New York: Signet Classics, 1964), 2.
[7] Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 87-88.
[8] Ibid, 91.
[9] Ibid, 74-75.
[10] Clausewitz, On War, 5-6; 481.
[11] Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Government Memorandum on Internal Security and the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, File Number 100-384660, December 16, 1963.
[12] Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 23.
[13] United States Army, FM 100-5 Field Service Regulations Operations, Department of the Army Field Manual, (Department of the Army: Washington D.C., 19 February 1962), 127.
[14] Ibid, 137.
[15] Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 87.
[16] Ibid, 90.
[17] UPI, “Race War Foreseen by James Baldwin,” New York Times, July 28, 1964.
[18] Department of Justice, 1968 Annual Report on James Arthur Baldwin, Security Matters, File Number 100-146553.
[19] Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 8-9.
[20] Excerpts from the speech are annotated in the FBI’s United States Government Memorandum on Internal Security and the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, number 100-384660, December 16, 1963.
[21] Federal Bureau of Investigation, Memo from the Special Agent in Charge (SAC), New York to the Director of the FBI, titled James Arthur Baldwin, Security Matter, December 18, 1963; UPI, “Race War Foreseen by James Baldwin,” New York Times July 28, 1964.
[22] Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 46-47.
[23] Television interview with Kenneth Clark in 1963; Also quoted in Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Government Memorandum, From M.A. Jones, Chief of Research in the FBI Crime Research Division to Deke Deloac,h the former Associate Director of the FBI, June 7, 1963.
[24] Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 73.
[25] “Race War Foreseen by James Baldwin;” FBI Crime Research Division Memo.
[26] Paul J. Scheips, The Role of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Disorders, 1945-1992, (Washington D.C., Center of Military Studies, United States Army, 2012), 123-124, 214.
[27] FM 100-5, 127-128.
[28] Ibid, 139.
[29] Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Memorandum on Internal Security relating to COINTELPRO activities on Black Nationalist and Hate Groups, J. Edgar Hoover, File Number 100-448006, August 25, 1967; Hoover refers to Baldwin as a “known pervert” in a United States Memorandum titled To Mr. DeLoach from M.A. Jones, dated July 20, 1964.
[30] FM 100-5, 128
[31] Ibid, 145-146.
[32] Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Government Memorandum on Internal Security and the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, File Number 100-384660, December 16, 1963.
[33] J. Edgar Hoover, J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI propaganda leaflet on AMERICA” attacked communism and called on common citizens to be alert and defend America. Located in Mississippi State University Special Collections. Also cited in the author’s previous work, “American Kolkhoz: Christian Socialism, Communal Farms, and the American South,” Southern Historian, (Fall 2021): 22-38.
[34] Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Government Memorandum on The Fire Next Time sent to W.C Sullivan from F.J. Baumgardner, dated October 3, 1963.
[35] Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Arthur Baldwin, Security Matter, Memorandum from the Special Agent in Charge (SAC), New York to the Director of the FBI, December 18, 1963.
[36] Department of Justice, United States Department of Justice File Regarding James Baldwin, constructed by Edward F. Uzzell, File Number, 100-146553, April 13, 1966.
[37] Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Memorandum, Information Concerning James Arthur Baldwin, to Mr. DeLoach from M.A. Jones, dated June 22, 1964.
[38] FBI and DOJ communications teletype, From the New York office to Director, September 19, 1963.
[39] FM 100-5, 128.
[40] William F. Buckley Jr, “Baldwins Call to Color Blindness,” New York Journal-American, June 14, 1963.
[41] William F. Buckley Jr, “ The Baldwin Syndrome,” The Washington Daily News, June 23, 1965.
[42] For more on Buckley and the National Review, see Nicole Hemmer’s Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). Gabrielle Bellot, “The Famous Baldwin-Buckley Debate Still Matters Today,” The Atlantic published 12/2/2019. See also Nicholas Buccola’s The Fire Is upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America, (Princeton University Press, 2019).
[43] Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Arthur Baldwin, Security Matter, confidential profile of James Baldwin created by Special Agent Robert E. Bowe of the New York Field Office for the Secret Service, file number 62-108763. The report notes that Freedomways self described themselves as the quarterly devoted to the freedom movement.
[44] Federal Bureau of Investigation, Report on James Baldwin’s Overseas Travel, submitted by the Bureau’s Legal Attache in Rome, File Number 62-108763, December 20, 1966.
[45] Department of Justice, United States Department of Justice file regarding James Baldwin, constructed by Edward F. Uzzell, File Number 100-146553, April 13, 1966.
[46] FBI Report on James Baldwin’s Overseas Travel, submitted by the Bureau’s Legal Attache in Rome, File Number 62-108763, December 20, 1966.
[47] Quote is pulled from an oral recording of Baldwin’s speech at Uppsala in a panel titled “White Racism or World Community,” stored at the Presbyterian Historical Society and can be accessed here https://www.history.pcusa.org/blog/2017/07/james-baldwin-uppsala.
[48] Associated Press, “Catholic Council Time Put in Future Tense,” New York Daily News, July 8, 1968; 1968 DOJ Report, 100-146553 titled James Arthur Baldwin, Security Matters.
[49] Department of Justice, 1971 Annual Report on James Arthur Baldwin, Security Matters, File Number 100-146553.
[50] FM 100-5, 139-140.
[51] Bettina Aptheker, The Morning Breaks: The Trial of Angela Davis Second Edition, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), XI; Baldwin’s letter “For You, Sister Angela,” was quoted in the magazine Peoples World on February 22, 1971.
[52] James Baldwin, No Name in the Street (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), 41.
[53] For more on the intersection of civil rights and American foreign policy see Mary Dudziak’s Cold War Civil Rights, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).
[54] “Crime and Corruption Across America, 1972-1988,” pulled from the FBI website, https://www.fbi.gov/history/brief-history/crime-and-corruption-across-america.
thestrategybridge.org · August 30, 2022
8. Ukraine Tries to Make Southern Offensive a Turning Point in War
Ukraine Tries to Make Southern Offensive a Turning Point in War
Kyiv looks to prove its forces can retake territory and push out entrenched Russian troops
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-tries-to-make-southern-offensive-a-turning-point-in-war-11661890321?mod=hp_lead_pos7&utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dfn-ebb&SToverlay=2002c2d9-c344-4bbb-8610-e5794efcfa7d
By James MarsonFollow, Matthew LuxmooreFollow and Ian LovettFollow
Aug. 30, 2022 4:12 pm ET
MYKOLAIV, Ukraine—After a crescendo of long-range strikes on Russian military facilities and bridges in the dark of night early Monday, Ukrainian forces launched a southern offensive with attacks along the front lines.
Ukrainian armor crashed over the Inhulets River and established a bridgehead, the main gains that Kyiv has made in two days of fighting.
Whether Ukraine can capitalize on its initial thrust and retake territory in its south that Russia seized at the start of its invasion will go a long way to shape the next phase of the war.
Area controlled by Russia
UKRAINE
Mykolaiv
Inhulets River
Dnipro River
Kherson
UKRAINE
Area of detail
CRIMEA
Source: Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute's Critical Threats Project (areas of control)
After repelling the Russians from the outskirts of Kyiv in the spring, Ukraine had been slowly losing ground in the east in the face of intensive shelling and airstrikes. But after all but halting the Russians there, Ukraine sought to cut off enemy forces on the western bank of the Dnipro River in the south by using precise, long-range rockets provided by the U.S. to strike bridges and military facilities.
Russia has indicated it wants to annex the lands it holds in Ukraine’s south and has sought to play down the Ukrainian assault.
Further Ukrainian gains would boost national morale and show the country’s military and financial backers in the West, who are facing a winter of economic troubles, that Ukraine’s military can halt the Russians and also take back territory.
“Not only would this be their first substantial offensive, it would be a demonstration to the West that they should continue supporting Ukraine to fully push the Russians out of their territory,” said retired Australian Army Maj. Gen. Mick Ryan.
A warning sign marks a minefield that surrounds a skate park in Mykolaiv, Ukraine.
PHOTO: JOSEPH SYWENKYJ FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
A Ukrainian advance would also be crucial for residents of occupied areas holding out hope that Ukraine will liberate their towns.
“I think the political dimensions of this offensive are as important as the military ones,” Gen. Ryan said.
Ukrainian officials have cautioned against excessive optimism. They say the offensive will be slow and grinding.
“This will be a tough fight for the Ukrainians,” said Gen. Ryan. “Offensive operations are hard to coordinate and support, compared to defensive operations.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he wants to retake Kherson, the only regional capital Russia captured since launching its invasion on Feb. 24. That would give Ukraine a gateway for attacks on Crimea, which Russia seized in 2014.
‘The political dimensions of this offensive are as important as the military ones’
— Retired Australian Army Maj. Gen. Mick Ryan
The southern offensive is the latest sign that Ukraine is seeking to seize the initiative. Ukrainian sabotage groups this month struck an air base and ammunition depot in Crimea, which acts as a rear base for Russian forces in the south of Ukraine. They were the first major strikes there and sent many Russians fleeing to the mainland while Ukrainians celebrated.
“Ukrainians can sense that momentum is shifting in their favor,” said retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe. “This will make it much more feasible for Ukraine’s supporters, as well as Ukrainians, to envision the recovery of Ukraine. It will continue to remove the idea that Russian victory is inevitable.”
Thousands of Russian troops on the western bank of the Dnipro River are now all but trapped, with Ukraine saying it had damaged bridges across the river sufficiently to prevent any heavy vehicles from crossing.
“They haven’t been properly resupplied,” said Gen. Hodges. “Their chances of getting out of there are not good.”
Residents collect water on Tuesday in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv.
PHOTO: JOSEPH SYWENKYJ FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Ukraine is well aware of the importance of the offensive. The military has restricted access for reporters to the front lines and demanded that officials, media and semiofficial propagandists hold their tongues.
Ukrainian officials say little more than that things are going to plan. They have long said they don’t have sufficient armor and troops to mount a broad, overwhelming offensive.
Instead, they wanted to cut off the Russian troops from their supplies and now are seeking to destroy them piece by piece.
Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian defense minister, played down the significance of Monday’s events, saying it is a continuation of operations that had been taking place for weeks.
“I can’t say that something has dramatically changed,” he said. “They are slowly pushing forward.”
Still, he said, “we’re destroying their capacity to hold territory.”
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A National Guard soldier manning a checkpoint south of Mykolaiv, some 10 miles from the front line, said Ukraine has been wary of launching ground offensives because of the size of Russia’s forces. He said strikes on Mykolaiv, long a target of Russian missiles, had stepped up in the past two days.
“They’re trying to get their revenge, wherever they can and against whomever they can,” he said.
Residents of Mykolaiv on Tuesday also noted a rise in the number of Russian rocket and artillery strikes since Ukraine’s counteroffensive was announced.
Natalia Kirtenko, a 64-year-old retiree, was gathering water at a public well south of the city center on Tuesday evening when explosions rang out in the distance.
She said the increase in attacks on Mykolaiv has given people hope that the battlefield balance will shift. “At least we know this means our guys are moving forward,” she said. “So our mood has improved.”
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Play video: Ukraine Marks Subdued Independence Day as World Shows Solidarity
People walked among destroyed Russian tanks on display in Kyiv as Ukraine marked the country’s Independence Day and six months since the start of the war. President Zelensky said Russian missiles struck a train station and house in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday that killed at least 22 people. Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka/Associated Press
Daniel Michaels contributed to this article.
Write to James Marson at james.marson@wsj.com, Matthew Luxmoore at Matthew.Luxmoore@wsj.com and Ian Lovett at ian.lovett@wsj.com
9. Ukraine lures Russian missiles with decoys of U.S. rocket system
And I thought the ghost or phantom army and wooden mockups of WWII were obsolete. Perhaps we should be mass producing these mockups. We should have about 10 for each system (a lot cheaper!). Some of the best innovation (or the use of historical lessons) is conducted during war. Necessity is the mother of invention is not a cliche.
"All warfare is based on deception" or so said a dead Chinese general (who may never have really lived - probably another deception operation).
Photos at the link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/30/ukraine-russia-himars-decoy-artillery/
Ukraine lures Russian missiles with decoys of U.S. rocket system
The Washington Post · by John Hudson · August 30, 2022
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine may be outgunned but in the latest sign it is not yet outfoxed, a fleet of decoys resembling advanced U.S. rocket systems has tricked Russian forces into wasting expensive long-range cruise missiles on dummy targets, according to interviews with senior U.S. and Ukrainian officials and photographs of the replicas reviewed by The Washington Post.
The Ukrainian decoys are made out of wood but can be indistinguishable from an artillery battery through the lens of Russian drones, which transmit their locations to naval cruise missile carriers in the Black Sea.
“When the UAVs see the battery, it’s like a VIP target,” said a senior Ukrainian official, referring to unmanned aerial vehicles encountering long-range artillery replicas.
After a few weeks in the field, the decoys drew at least 10 Kalibr cruise missiles, an initial success that led Ukraine to expand the production of the replicas for broader use, said the senior Ukrainian official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters.
The use of rocket system decoys, which has not been reported previously, is one of many asymmetrical tactics Ukraine’s armed forces have adopted to fight back against a bigger and better-equipped invading enemy. In recent weeks, Kyiv’s operatives have blown up rail and electricity lines in occupied Russian territory, detonated explosives inside Russian arms depots and assassinated suspected collaborators.
The destruction of Ukrainian replicas may partially account for Russia’s unusually boastful battle damage assessments on Western artillery, particularly the U.S.-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS.
“They’ve claimed to have hit more HIMARS than we have even sent,” one U.S. diplomat observed.
The lengths at which Ukraine has gone to protect Western-supplied rocket systems underscore their importance on the battlefield.
The systems are credited with blunting Russia’s advance in the east and south by giving Ukraine the ability to strike from 50 miles away, laying waste to hundreds of high-valued Russian targets, including supply lines, arms depots and logistic and support hubs, U.S. defense officials say.
Last month, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu ordered his generals to prioritize the destruction of the long-range artillery systems after they struck key Russian supply lines.
Nearly every week, Shoigu and other Russian defense officials announce new successful strikes on Western-supplied rocket systems, including the lighter-weight U.S.-made HIMARS.
Earlier this month, a Pentagon spokesman categorically denied Russia’s claims, declaring all U.S.-provided HIMARS accounted for.
“We are aware of these latest claims by Minister Shoigu, and they are again patently false,” said Todd Breasseale, the Pentagon’s acting spokesman. “What is happening, however, is that the Ukrainians are employing with devastating accuracy and effectiveness each of the fully accounted for precision missile systems.”
The Pentagon says it has provided 16 HIMARS to Ukraine since the start of the war. U.S. allies have provided M270 rocket systems that have a similar functionality. It was not possible to independently verify how many are still operational or how many, if any, were destroyed.
The Russian habit of embellishing battlefield performance is hardly new, but experts say the decoys probably account for a dramatic disconnect.
“If the Russians think they hit a HIMARS, they will claim they hit a HIMARS,” said George Barros, a military researcher at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank. “Russian forces very well may be overstating their battle damage assessments after hitting HIMAR decoys.”
Using decoys for deception has a long history for militaries in the East and West.
The Russians call the tactics of disguise and trickery “maskirovka,” which has involved the procurement of inflatable MiG-31 fighter jets and mock S-300 missile systems among other tools. Slobodan Milosevic’s Yugoslav forces used mock tanks and dummy targets against NATO forces during the Kosovo conflict. Allied powers during World War II used decoy equipment and fake signals intelligence to try to misdirect German forces ahead of the Allied invasion of Normandy.
For Ukraine, battlefield advantages of decoys are twofold, military analysts said.
In a protracted artillery war, finding ways to degrade and deplete Russia’s larger arsenal of rockets and missiles is critical for Ukraine’s smaller army.
U.S. defense officials say Russia’s stockpile of precision-guided missiles has been running low, and U.S. export controls on microchips are making it “a lot harder” for Russia to replenish those munitions, Colin Kahl, undersecretary of defense for policy, said earlier this month.
“A Kalibr missile launched at a fake HIMARS target in a field is a missile that can’t be used against a Ukrainian city,” said Rob Lee, a military analyst at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
Another advantage of decoys is they could force Russians to take precautions and move their ammunition depots and command and control nodes farther from the front lines — beyond the anticipated range of the HIMARS.
“Such a reorganization would degrade the Russians’ ability to mass artillery fires — a tactic they’ve relied on to make gains in eastern Ukraine,” Barros said.
The challenges that lay ahead for Ukraine’s military remain daunting. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree last week to increase the size of Russia’s armed forces to 2.04 million from 1.9 million, in a move analysts said indicated a determination to keep fighting.
U.S. officials estimate Russia has lost up to 80,000 troops, but Ukrainian forces have acknowledged losing 100 to 200 troops per day as the country braces for one of its coldest winters in decades.
In describing the country’s replicas, the Ukrainian official said his military had no choice but to resort to unconventional tactics in fending off a bigger adversary. “A small Soviet army cannot beat a big Soviet army,” the official said. “We need to fight asymmetrically.”
The Washington Post · by John Hudson · August 30, 2022
10. Nuclear inspectors are in Ukraine for a high-stakes visit to the Zaporizhzhia plant.
This is quite a situation. It makes me wonder about the 24 nuclear power plants in South Korea.
Nuclear inspectors are in Ukraine for a high-stakes visit to the Zaporizhzhia plant.
nytimes.com · August 30, 2022
A photo provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Service shows President Volodymyr Zelensky meeting Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Kyiv.Credit...Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Via Reuters
KYIV, Ukraine — A team of international nuclear inspectors was in Ukraine on Tuesday as part of a risky trip to assess the safety of a nuclear power plant that has been repeatedly struck by artillery shells, hoping to provide the world a first impartial glimpse of the threat.
The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which is the first in the history of civilian nuclear power where active reactors have been imperiled by military conflict, is controlled by Russian troops but operated by Ukrainian engineers.
Conditions at the site, which was shrouded in smoke on Monday from wildfires touched off by combat nearby, have been unraveling for weeks. An image released Monday by a commercial satellite company showed blackened holes punched by artillery in the roof of one building.
Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency had arrived in Ukraine, Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs, said on Twitter, and the agency’s director general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, met in Kyiv with President Volodymyr Zelensky. The I.A.E.A. mission to the plant is among the most complicated ever for the agency, which has also worked in Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
A person familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security matters, said the arrangements for the mission were complex and subject to change, but that the team might reach the plant as soon as Wednesday.
To reach the plant, inspectors must cross a front line in the active war in southern Ukraine. Neither side has announced cease-fires for the visit.
The plant lies near the site of artillery duels between the Russian and Ukrainian armies, which are firing at one another across the Dnipro River, the broad waterway in central Ukraine that marks the front.
Employees who fled to Ukrainian-controlled territory have said that Russian soldiers have parked armored vehicles in two machine rooms near reactors. Ukrainian officials have called for the immediate withdrawal from the plant of Russian troops, who they say are using it to stage artillery attacks while Ukraine cannot fire back without risking a radiation release. Russia blames Ukraine for shelling the plant.
The U.S. government on Monday called for a controlled shutdown of the two remaining active reactors, said the spokesman for the National Security Council, John F. Kirby. The United States has also called for the demilitarization of the area around the plant, to reduce the risk of a radiation release. “A nuclear power plant is not the appropriate location for combat operations,” Mr. Kirby said, adding that cycling down the active reactors was “the safest option.”
Fighting continued to rage near the plant. Rockets struck the Ukrainian-controlled town of Nikopol overnight, hitting a bus station, shops and a children’s library, Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday. Nikopol lies on the western bank of a reservoir formed by the dammed Dnipro; the Zaporizhzhia plant is on the eastern bank.
nytimes.com · August 30, 2022
11. Taiwan forces fire at drones flying over island near China
Taiwan forces fire at drones flying over island near China
AP · by TAIPEI · August 31, 2022
Taiwan’s military fired warning shots at drones from China flying over its outposts just off the Chinese coastline, underscoring heightened tensions and the self-ruled island’s resolve to respond to new provocations.
Taiwan’s forces said in a statement that troops took the action on Tuesday after drones were found hovering over the Kinmen island group. Dadan, one of the islands where a drone was spotted, lies roughly 15 kilometers (9 miles) off the Chinese coast.
The statement Wednesday referred to the unmanned aerial vehicles as being of “civilian use,” but gave no other details. It said the drones returned to the nearby Chinese city of Xiamen after the shots were fired. Taiwan previously fired only flares as warnings.
The incident comes amid heightened tensions after China fired missiles into the sea and sent planes and ships across the dividing line in the Taiwan Strait earlier this month. It followed angry rhetoric from Beijing over a trip to Taiwan by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the highest-ranking U.S. dignitary to visit the island in 25 years.
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China claims Taiwan as its own territory and its recent actions have been viewed as a rehearsal of a possible blockade or invasion. China’s drills brought strong condemnation from Taiwan’s chief ally, the U.S., along with fellow regional democracies such as Australia and Japan. Some of China’s missiles early in August fell into nearby Japan’s exclusive economic zone.
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Taiwan maintains control over a range of islands in the Kinmen and Matsu groups in the Taiwan Strait, a relic of the effort by Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists to maintain a foothold on the mainland after being driven out by Mao Zedong’s Communists amid civil war in 1949.
Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said China’s actions failed to intimidate the island’s 23 million people, saying they had only hardened support for the armed forces and the status quo of de-facto independence.
Officials said anti-drone defenses were being strengthened, part of a 12.9% increase in the Defense Ministry’s annual budget next year. The government is planning to spend an additional 47.5 billion New Taiwan dollars ($1.6 billion), for a total of 415.1 billion NTD ($13.8 billion) for the year.
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The U.S. is also reportedly preparing to approve a $1.1 billion defense package for Taiwan that would include anti-ship and air-to-air missiles to be used to repel potential Chinese invasion attempt.
Following the Chinese drills, the U.S. sailed two warships through the Taiwan Strait, which China has sought to designate as its sovereign waters. Foreign delegations from the U.S., Japan and European nations have continued to arrive to lend Taipei diplomatic and economic support.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey is currently visiting Taiwan to discuss production of semiconductors, the critical chips that are used in everyday electronics and have become a battleground in the technology competition between the U.S. and China.
Ducey is seeking to woo suppliers for the new $12 billion Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (TSMC) plant being built in his state.
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The governor is also visiting tech powerhouse South Korea, and in a statement on his official website said his aim was to take these relationships to the next level - to strengthen them, expand them and ensure they remain mutually beneficial.”
Last week, the Indiana governor visited Taiwan on a similar mission.
Taiwanese Air Force pilots have also trained at Luke Air Force Base outside Phoenix for more than 25 years, an indication of continuing U.S. support for Taiwan’s defense despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties.
Taiwan produces more than half the global supply of high-end processor chips. China’s firing of missiles during its exercises disrupted shipping and air traffic, and highlighted the possibility that chip exports might be interrupted.
Reacting to Ducey’s visit, China on Wednesday reaffirmed its opposition to any official contacts between the U.S. and Taiwan. That was a further reminder of the Communist Party’s refusal to acknowledge the separation of powers within the U.S. government and the right of American local officials to operate independently of the administration.
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“We urge the relevant parties in the U.S. to ... stop any forms of official contacts with Taiwan, and refrain from sending wrong signals to the Taiwan independence forces,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a daily briefing.
“China will take strong measures to resolutely safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Zhao said.
AP · by TAIPEI · August 31, 2022
12. China's Xi pushes forward to third term despite mounting crises
I would think he might want to think twice about staying in power with all these crises and just take his retirement and go to a villa. But I guess power is a narcotic. (note sarcasm)
China's Xi pushes forward to third term despite mounting crises
CNN · by Analysis by Nectar Gan, CNN
A version of this story appeared in CNN's Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country's rise and how it impacts the world. Sign up here.
Hong Kong (CNN)The countdown to Xi Jinping's expected coronation has officially started.
In 47 days, China's ruling Communist Party will hold its 20th National Congress, at which Xi is widely expected to extend his hold on power for another five years -- a move that would cement his status as the country's most powerful leader in decades.
The congress will begin in Beijing on October 16 at a "critical time" for the country, the party's 25-member Politburo announced Tuesday, adding that preparations were "progressing smoothly."
That start date is in line with tradition -- in recent decades, the party has always held its congresses between September and November. The highly choreographed affairs usually last about a week, bringing together some 2,000 delegates from across the country in a show of unity and legitimacy.
But this year's congress is anything but conventional.
Read More
Xi, who has consolidated enormous power since taking office a decade ago, is widely expected to seek an unprecedented third term as China's top leader, breaking with convention set by his predecessors since the early 1990s.
It's a plan years in the making, ever since Xi removed the presidential term limits from the country's constitution in 2018. But for an authoritarian leader obsessed with stability, the months leading up to it haven't exactly been a smooth ride.
Xi's insistence on a zero-Covid policy has seen cities across China imposing strict lockdowns to stamp out infections -- an attempt that appears increasingly futile in the face of the highly infectious Omicron variant.
Xi's China is closing to the world. And it isn't just about borders
Its often ruthless and chaotic enforcement -- as seen during a two-month lockdown in the financial hub of Shanghai -- has sparked waves of public outcry, with many growing increasingly frustrated with the unending restrictions on their daily life.
The zero-tolerance approach has also crippled economic growth -- long a source of legitimacy for the party. Youth unemployment has surged to a record high of 20%, while a rural banking scandal and a spiraling property crisis have sparked large protests.
Diplomatically, Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a "no-limits" friendship between the two countries weeks before Moscow launched its war on Ukraine. Beijing's refusal to recognize -- let alone condemn -- the invasion has further strained its fraying ties with the United States, Europe and much of the developed world.
The political headwinds have fueled intense speculation about Xi's authority in some quarters of the overseas China-watching community, with some questioning his prospects of securing a third term.
But experts well-versed in elite Chinese politics said claims about threats to Xi's grip on power are massively overblown. Since coming to power, Xi has waged a sweeping anti-corruption crackdown to purge opponents, silence dissent and instill loyalty. He has revamped and secured a firm grip over the military, and other critical levers of power.
"Very often, when there are challenges, it's not necessarily bad for the supreme leader at all," said Dali Yang, a political scientist at the University of Chicago. "In fact, authoritarian leaders like Xi thrive on challenges -- and often use such crises to enhance their power."
Yang cited Xi's ability to fill important positions of power with his trusted aides -- from the domestic security apparatus to the propaganda front and leadership roles at key provinces -- as signs the top leader is firmly in control.
Xi Jinping set out to save the Communist Party. But critics say he made himself its biggest threat
The latest announcement on the party congress is a sign that Xi has straightened out decisions on personnel arrangements and political paths, according to Deng Yuwen, a former editor of a Communist Party newspaper who now lives in the United States.
"I don't think there is any question that Xi Jinping's term will be extended," Deng said in his YouTube commentary show. "The confirmation of the start date of the 20th Party Congress shows the die is cast, and any opposition to Xi is powerless to change the situation."
The official announcement on the congress is scant on details, but it offered clues on the agenda, vowing to make solid progress in the pursuit of "common prosperity," advance party building and promote "a community with a shared future for mankind" -- all catchphrases put forward by Xi.
"Xi wants to leave his political legacy at the 20th Party Congress, and these three will be the key themes at the meeting, as well as the political lines to be laid out after the congress," Deng said.
Holding the congress in mid-October also leaves some buffer time for Xi to attend major international events in November, such as the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia. "Xi hasn't left the country for nearly three years, and it has had a very negative impact on China's diplomacy," Deng said.
As for the Chinese public, many have paid little attention to the party congresses in the past -- they have no say in the country's political leadership transition, or the making of major policies.
But this year, for those who are getting increasingly impatient and frustrated with the endless lockdowns and Covid testing, news of the congress' start date has come as a long-awaited relief.
"There are a lot of people who are eagerly waiting for this Party Congress to happen, (because) they hope there could be a shift in the way that China is dealing with Covid," Yang said.
But when -- and how -- that will happen is still anyone's guess.
CNN · by Analysis by Nectar Gan, CNN
13. FDD | Russia Continues Meddling in the Balkans
Excerpt:
Moscow does not need to roll into Kosovo with tanks to achieve its objectives. By sowing chaos, a renewed Serbia-Kosovo escalation would continue to undermine regional stability, allow Putin to distract Europe from his war in Ukraine, and allow Serbia to continue to balance itself between Moscow, Washington and Brussels. But, if the West acts now, it can hinder this game plan.
FDD | Russia Continues Meddling in the Balkans
fdd.org · by Ivana Stradner Advisor · August 30, 2022
On August 26, Serbia and Kosovo signed an agreement settling a dispute over the movement of citizens across their borders after more than a month of high tensions. Josep Borrell, European Union (EU) foreign policy chief, enthusiastically tweeted: “We have a deal.” However, it is too early to celebrate this agreement as a victory.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin continues to undermine stability in the region via its well-known hybrid warfare efforts. It is high time that Western powers wake up to the threat that the Balkans pose to their security. An ounce of prevention may very well prove to be worth a pound (or several) of cure.
In July, demonstrations along Kosovo’s northern border escalated sharply. Tensions were high, with Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić announcing that Kosovo would attack Serbia before October 1.
Protests erupted following a law requiring Serbs living in Kosovo to switch their license plates from Serbian to Kosovan. Kosovo’s government also declared that anyone with a Serbian passport or other formal ID must acquire another document to enter the country. Both laws were supposed to go into place on August 1, but since the protests, Kosovo’s government postponed the start date to September 1.
Power play
Russia’s goal in the Balkans is to “escalate to de-escalate” and position itself as the sole mediator. This plan accomplishes two goals – strengthening Moscow’s standing in the region, while giving Russian President Vladimir Putin leverage over Western powers who don’t want violence to spiral further.
At the same time, Vučić’s goal is simply to remain in power. Chaos in the region would allow him to frame himself as a source of stability in the Balkans, giving the West no option other than to support him. He is notorious for his balancing strategy between Russia and the West in to strengthen his position.
When Vučić agreed to abolish exit/entry documents for Kosovan ID holders this weekend to please the West, he also took a concrete step to satisfy Moscow by cancelling an upcoming international LGBT EuroPride event in September. This provided a concession to thousands of religious conservative protestors who marched and demanded the event’s cancellation to protect Serbian “traditional values.”
Serbia’s decision to abolish entry/exit documents for Kosovo ID holders is the direct result of NATO demonstrating its resolve in the region. In August, NATO increased its peacekeeping troops in northern Kosovo and sent a clear signal that it would be ready to intervene in the event of further escalation. Last week, two U.S. B-52s conducted low approach flyovers over North Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro and Croatia. Vučić is no fool – he knows that Serbia is surrounded by NATO members, whose combined military strength greatly outmatch Serbia’s.
Before the agreement was signed, Russia and Serbia had been using information operations to set conditions for further escalations in the Balkans. Russian media has painted the conflict between Serbia and Kosovo as a Western attempt to open another front for the war in Ukraine, and the same outlets portray the conflict as another Western attempt to infiltrate Serbia. Despite Vučić’s statement against the likelihood of Russian military bases in Serbia, Russian media has continued to push the narrative that such bases are feasible.
When the U.S. government said that it is time to forget the narrative that “Kosovo is Serbia” and start saying that “Kosovo and Serbia are actually Europe,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova responded “Never.”
Believe her when she says it. For The Kremlin, Kosovo is not about some romanticized Slavic Brotherhood or the Serbian monasteries located there. By keeping Kosovo locked in a frozen conflict, Putin can use it to negotiate with the West in the United Nations Security Council as a “precedent” for Crimea, and to control Moscow’s far-right proxy groups in Serbia.
How the West must respond
The agreement over identity documents is a step in the right direction, but Russia and Serbia can heat up this frozen conflict again when it suits their interests. To counteract these efforts, the West must counter Russian information operations that are run via local media, blogs and social media. NATO previously sent a specialized counter-hybrid warfare support team to Montenegro to deter Russian hybrid attacks, and they should send the team back to the region to counter Russian information operations.
Executive Order 14033, signed by President Joe Biden in June 2021, allows the U.S. to authorize sanctions against persons who are involved in corruption activities or who undermine security or democracy in the Western Balkans. For American sanctions to fully work, the EU should join this effort.
Moscow does not need to roll into Kosovo with tanks to achieve its objectives. By sowing chaos, a renewed Serbia-Kosovo escalation would continue to undermine regional stability, allow Putin to distract Europe from his war in Ukraine, and allow Serbia to continue to balance itself between Moscow, Washington and Brussels. But, if the West acts now, it can hinder this game plan.
Dr. Ivana Stradner is an advisor to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Research Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. She lectures on international law, international institutions, and international security. Follow her on Twitter @ivanastradner. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Ivana Stradner Advisor · August 30, 2022
14. Opinion | Now the real work to end hostage-taking and wrongful detentions begins
A real challenge for Roger Carstens. Can hostage taking really be deterred?
Excerpt:
“When I see the secretary in the hallway, the first thing you’d think he’s going to ask me about are the active cases,” Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, (SPEHA) told me. “Instead, he usually says, ‘Hey, Roger, how is that deterrence effort going?’ This is personal to him.”
Opinion | Now the real work to end hostage-taking and wrongful detentions begins
The Washington Post · by Jason Rezaian · August 30, 2022
President Biden’s decision last month to declare a national emergency over hostage-taking by foreign actors represented a long-overdue acknowledgement of a fast-rising threat. Now the quest for effective deterrents is on, but there are no easy answers. The real work to craft effective policies that keep Americans safe is just beginning.
“We are committed to stopping those who use detention for gain, placing this practice in the dustbin of history once and for all,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an email.
Just this month, the White House and State Department have called for the release of U.S. nationals wrongfully detained by the governments of Rwanda, Syria, Russia and Iran. The new public position is part of efforts to bolster and underscore international norms against hostage-taking and wrongful detention, which senior State Department staff say is a “personal priority” for Blinken.
“When I see the secretary in the hallway, the first thing you’d think he’s going to ask me about are the active cases,” Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, (SPEHA) told me. “Instead, he usually says, ‘Hey, Roger, how is that deterrence effort going?’ This is personal to him.”
Despite criticism that the pace of hostage recovery during the Biden administration has been slow, one fact is clear: More resources are being poured into combating this problem than ever before.
From that clarity have come greater awareness of the issue among the general public and more accurate reporting in the media — in this sad endeavor, those are both wins.
At the same time, senior officials have admitted a rise in the number of cases being presented to them that don’t fit the criteria. Recently, the National Security Council held a call with journalists to explain how a wrongful-detention determination is made.
When President Biden issued the executive order, many people assumed it was an attempt to address the detention of WNBA superstar Brittney Griner. Then when Blinken said the U.S. government had made a significant proposal to Russia to free Griner and fellow American Paul Whelan, some observers opined that the releases were imminent.
The reality is that no release is a done deal until it happens. As I caution families who have loved ones being held hostage abroad, these cases are a marathon, not a sprint, and cultivating effective deterrents will take time.
“If we do it well, it may take 10, 15, 20 years. But there's a time, conceivably, that we actually put SPEHA out of business,” Carstens said. “They can go ahead and disband this whole thing.”
While such optimistic predictions provide little solace to American families currently living through a hostage nightmare, consider how long humanity has dealt with this form of abuse based solely on one’s nationality.
“You read the Bible, Herodotus, Xenophon. They all talk about nation-states taking prisoners and then leveraging them against their opponents,” Carstens told me. “We have a chance to take something that’s been going on for 4,500 years and put it to rest.”
Biden’s executive order increased sanctioning powers for targeting officials and individuals deemed to benefit from a government taking Americans hostage; by design, the order casts a wide, if somewhat vague, net.
“Part of combatting this threat over the longer-term will be to raise the costs for those who engage in this practice,” Blinken wrote in his email. “To that end, we are working with our partners to cultivate bold and collaborative measures to dissuade and deter any government or regime that thinks it will benefit from locking up an American for leverage.”
Next month’s United Nations General Assembly will provide the first test. Will officials from governments holding Americans hostage be granted visas to attend? Will any of them face repercussions for the criminal activities of their states?
“It can and it should change state-to-state relations, when governments engage in this sort of practice,” Joshua Geltzer, deputy assistant to the president and deputy homeland security adviser, told me.
For far too long, the U.S. government and its allies have chosen not to let hostage-taking disrupt bilateral relations with countries that do it. But those attitudes are evolving to reflect the growing severity of the threat.
Ending hostage-taking is going to take resolve, creativity and bold political will. For too long, diplomats have tried to secure releases in ways that don’t rock the boat. In reality, though, these are serial crimes that require a different set of skills than most traditional diplomats possess.
The success of any deterrence effort will also require broad buy-in from nongovernmental seats of influence. To that end, the U.S. government should discourage businesses, sports leagues, the entertainment industry and others from investing in countries that take hostages.
Biden has a historic opportunity to tackle this challenge and has committed to doing so. If he chooses not to act boldly, though, it will get much worse.
Look inside the life of a family whose husband and father is held hostage in Iran. Post Opinions’ new short film shows the ordeal to free him:
The Washington Post · by Jason Rezaian · August 30, 2022
15. FDD | Turkey’s Latest Move to Undermine NATO
FDD | Turkey’s Latest Move to Undermine NATO
That it’s considering buying additional missile systems from Russia highlights continued challenges for the United States and its NATO allies.
Bradley Bowman
CMPP Senior Director
Sinan Ciddi
Nonresident Senior Fellow
fdd.org · by Bradley Bowman CMPP Senior Director · August 30, 2022
Turkey is at again, a NATO ally not acting like one. It’s admittedly not exactly new behavior for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, but the actions over the last two weeks have been particularly troubling.
As of publication, Turkey is among a small number of allies that still has not ratified the accession of Finland and Sweden to the alliance. The U.S. Senate voted 95-1 to add the two Nordic countries, but Erdoğan has slow-rolled the process to score domestic political points in advance of elections.
A week ago, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu reportedly suggested Ankara would drop its request for new American F-16 fighter aircraft if their provision is contingent on a commitment from Turkey not to employ those aircraft for “unauthorized territorial overflights of Greece,” a key congressional demand. It hardly seems unreasonable to ask one NATO ally to refrain from such acts of aggression targeting another NATO ally.
The previous Friday, U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo called his counterpart in Ankara to discuss Turkey’s economic relationship with Russia and how the latter was using Turkey to evade sanctions.
But the most concerning development comes from Russian state news agency TASS, which reported on August 16 that Russia and Turkey had signed “a contract … to deliver a second regiment of the S-400 [surface-to-air] missile system to Turkey,” attributing the claim to the head of Russia’s Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation, Dmitry Shugayev.
The S-400 is an advanced mobile, surface-to-air missile system capable of shooting down aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, and many kinds of missiles. As a Russian-developed system, it is specifically designed to target allied aircraft.
Seemingly caught by surprise, Turkish government sources were quick to deny a new deal had been signed. “The purchase of a second batch was included in the original plan and the related contract,” a Turkish defense official said, referring to a 2017 deal under which Turkey purchased one S-400 regiment from Russia, with an option to buy another. Negotiations on the second regiment have dragged on for years, with little apparent progress. “The process is ongoing and there are no new agreements,” the Turkish official said.
Regardless, that NATO ally Turkey is still considering acquiring additional S-400s from Russia, the leading threat to the alliance, is deeply disappointing and highlights the continued challenges for the United States and its NATO allies in developing a prudent policy toward Turkey.
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which has killed or injured tens of thousands of Ukrainians and displaced millions more, shows his continued willingness to use military force to redraw international borders in Europe. That sort of might-makes-right model was an essential cause of two world wars on the continent last century. If unchecked, Putin’s impulse presents a serious challenge to American, Turkish, and NATO security interests.
A Turkish decision to acquire more S-400s would sow further division between Turkey and its NATO allies at a time when alliance unity is more important than ever—something surely not lost on the Kremlin. Indeed, Ankara’s purchase of its first S-400 regiment is perhaps the most tangible example of the Erdoğan government’s general drift toward Russia.
But the adverse consequences associated with Ankara’s acquisition of the S-400 extend far beyond geopolitics. The acquisition also creates a host of genuine problems for the United States military and for the broader NATO alliance.
Consider what happened with Turkey and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft, a next-generation aircraft that American and allied aviators will fly for decades to come.
The United States plans to eventually procure more than 2,400 F-35s and is actively fielding three variants of the aircraft to the U.S. Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy. Turkey was one of eight allied countries that initially participated in the F-35 program, playing a prominent role in producing parts for the aircraft.
Washington repeatedly warned that purchasing the Russian S-400 missile system would result in Turkey’s expulsion from the F-35 program, since co-locating the two systems would have enabled Moscow to gain valuable intelligence helpful for detecting and shooting down F-35s. Yet Turkey went ahead with the S-400 acquisition anyway, leaving the United States no choice but to evict Turkey from the F-35 program in 2019 before it procured the aircraft.
Unfortunately, the negative military consequences of Ankara’s S-400 deal don’t end there. The S-400 also can’t integrate with NATO air and missile defense systems, so Turkey’s purchase undermined NATO efforts to strengthen its air and missile defenses along the alliance’s eastern flank—a project that has taken on new urgency following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Bolstering the alliance’s defense posture in eastern Europe is a wise and necessary pursuit. But many of the new units and assets in the region lack sufficient air and missile defenses and would be vulnerable in a conflict with Russia. The Pentagon and others understand this problem, but fixing it is easier said than done given finite resources and the time required to procure additional air and missile defense capabilities. “Air and missile defense always was and remains my biggest concern for U.S. capabilities in Europe,” said retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, former commander of United States Army Europe, in a recent podcast hosted by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
To mitigate those challenges and to strengthen the capabilities of new assets once fielded, the Pentagon is eager to link U.S. air and missile defense “sensors and shooters” with those of allies and partners to systematically strengthen situational awareness and intercept capabilities. Instead of contributing to that architecture, Turkey’s past and potentially future S-400 purchases undercut the integration effort and create additional problems that reduce deterrence and redound to Moscow’s benefit. It could even increase the chances for NATO fratricide in a future conflict.
This helps explain why Putin has been so eager to sell the S-400 abroad, particularly to countries aligned or allied with the United States. It stokes tension and division between Washington and the country purchasing the system, generates revenue for Moscow, strengthens its defense industrial base, constrains U.S. security cooperation with the recipient country, and creates a host of practical military problems for the United States.
Little wonder then that TASS was so eager to suggest Turkey is procuring the second regiment of S-400s.
So, what’s the path forward in dealing with Turkey?
That depends on whether we think Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is an anomaly in Turkey or a sign of the new normal there. Will Turkey return to a more traditional foreign policy vis-à-vis NATO and the United States post-Erdoğan? Or is Turkey durably changed, and must we now accept that Ankara will not be a reliable ally for years to come?
The truth is that no one knows for sure.
What we do know is that an effective policy prescription depends on a good diagnosis of the current reality—and the only diagnosis that facts support is that Erdoğan continues to be an ally who doesn’t act like one.
John Hardie, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, contributed to this article.
Bradley Bowman is the senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former U.S. Army helicopter pilot and advisor to members of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees. Twitter: @Brad_L_Bowman.
Dr. Sinan Ciddi is nonresident senior fellow at FDD and an expert on Turkish domestic politics and foreign policy. He serves as an associate professor of security studies at Marine Corps University and an adjunct associate professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Twitter: @SinanCiddi. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Bradley Bowman CMPP Senior Director · August 30, 2022
16. FDD | A New Iran Deal Would Empower Palestinian Islamic Jihad
FDD | A New Iran Deal Would Empower Palestinian Islamic Jihad
fdd.org · August 30, 2022
Iran would receive approximately $275 billion in sanctions relief during the first year of a new nuclear deal and more than $1 trillion by 2030, according to an FDD analysis. If past is prologue, a significant portion of these funds would likely flow to Iranian-supported terror organizations in the region, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), based in Gaza and the West Bank. In the year after the implementation of the original 2015 nuclear accord, Iran’s military budget increased by 90 percent, enabling the regime to shower its regional proxies, including PIJ, with additional resources.
Expert Analysis
“Palestinian Islamic Jihad is an arm of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Khamenei and the IRGC are fanatically devoted to weaponizing Palestinian terror groups to destroy Israel while brutalizing Iranians at home.” – Mark Dubowitz, FDD Chief Executive
Israel Recently Fought a War With PIJ
In August, the Israel Defense Forces launched Operation Breaking Dawn to preempt attacks by PIJ, which the United States has designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization since 1997. During the 66 hours of fighting, Palestinian militants launched over a thousand rockets at Israeli targets, while millions of Israelis took refuge in bomb shelters.
PIJ Profile
Founded in 1981, PIJ is the second-largest militant group in Gaza after Hamas. Like Hamas, PIJ seeks Israel’s destruction. But unlike Hamas, PIJ does not participate in the Palestinian political process or provide social services to Palestinians in Gaza. In the 1990s and again during the Second Intifada from 2000 to 2005, PIJ targeted Israeli civilians with suicide bombings, including the Netanya mall bombing in 2005, which killed five Israelis and wounded 50.
Although PIJ is Sunni, it took inspiration from the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which the terror group views as a model for the creation of a Palestinian state. PIJ’s founder, Fathi Shikaki, published a book expressing support for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeinei, the founding father and first supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Israel killed Shikaki in 1995.
Iranian Support for PIJ
Since the early 1990s, Iran has provided PIJ with financial and military support, including small arms, rockets, and explosive-laden unmanned aerial vehicles. In 2019, PIJ Secretary General Ziad al-Nakhaleh said, “The resistance is capable of crushing the Zionist cities with over 1,000 rockets a day for months.”
According to the State Department’s 2020 Country Reports on Terrorism, “PIJ receives financial assistance and training primarily from Iran. PIJ has partnered with Iran- and Syria-sponsored Hizballah to carry out joint operations.”
At the onset of the recent fighting between PIJ and Israel, Nakhaleh was visiting Iran, where he met with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and General Hossein Salami, the commander of the IRGC.
IRGC-Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani’s Support for PIJ
In 2021, Nakhaleh said Qassem Soleimani—when he was serving as commander of Quds Force, the IRGC’s expeditionary arm—had “traveled to various countries, made plans, and set up guidelines to deliver” missiles and other weapons to the Gaza Strip. “And indeed, these weapons were delivered [to the Gaza Strip]. I can say that the missiles that [Soleimani] delivered to the Gaza Strip were the ones used to attack Tel Aviv.” Soleimani was killed in a U.S. drone strike in January 2020 in Baghdad, Iraq.
Related FDD Analysis
fdd.org · August 30, 2022
17. At SOCOM Change of Command, Nods to Afghanistan, Future in Indo-Pacific
Frankly speaking, for decades SOF (like many) has considered PACOM an "economy of force theater" that was a distraction from the main efforts in CENTCOM, AFRICOM, SOUTHCOM, and EUCOM. It will be interesting to see a real Asia-Pacific focus in Tampa. General Fenton is the right man to do that.
At SOCOM Change of Command, Nods to Afghanistan, Future in Indo-Pacific
https://www.airforcemag.com/at-socom-change-of-command-nods-to-afghanistan-future-in-indo-pacific/?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dfn-ebb&SToverlay=2002c2d9-c344-4bbb-8610-e5794efcfa7d
Aug. 30, 2022 | By Greg Hadley
Pentagon leaders sought to balance both the past and future of U.S. Special Operations Command on Aug. 30 as Army Gen. Bryan P. Fenton succeeded Army Gen. Richard D. Clark in a ceremony at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla.
One year to the day since the end of the U.S.’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, the proceedings were marked by reflections on nearly two decades of conflict in the Middle East, conflict that SOCOM often played a key role in.
“It was the quiet professionals of SOCOM who were among the first on the ground in Afghanistan in 2001,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said. “And when I led troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and served as the CENTCOM commander, I relied on special operators and support teams for your skill, for your precision, and for your bold determination to confront any threat anytime.”
Clarke, along with Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley, made particular reference to the ISIS suicide bombing that killed 13 service members Aug. 26, 2021, in Kabul, Afghanistan, during the withdrawal’s final days.
“One year ago last week, Army Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss, one of our special operators, lost his life in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan. He was the last member of this command to lose their life in combat,” Clarke said. “When I had the honor of officiating the funeral at Arlington for Ryan, his family told me this: ‘Ryan genuinely loved serving this country. He started his service in the 82nd Airborne Division, but he especially wanted to strive to come and loved serving in our special operations forces.’”
At the same time, Clarke, Austin, and Milley all spoke of the department’s ongoing shift in focus toward great power competition and how it will affect the combatant command.
“The way we fought wars for the last 20 years is not the same way we’re going to fight wars in the future,” Milley said. “The special operations maxim of ‘The human is more important than the hardware’ will always be true. But we must arm our operators with the right equipment. We must arm them with the right intelligence. We must arm them with the right sensor fusion and data analytics. We must arm them with the right relationships and partners. And right now we are at an inflection point, a historical inflection point.”
In particular, Austin touted Fenton’s “extensive experience in the Indo-Pacific” as leaders continue to emphasize competition with China as the U.S.’s pacing threat.
Fenton, who previously served as commander of Joint Special Operations Command, was also “the first Special Operations officer to serve as a deputy commander at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command,” Austin noted.
Clarke told Fenton, “With a depth of experience in the Indo-Pacific, you’re already poised for our most pressing security challenges.”
China and the Indo-Pacific won’t be the only areas of concern, however. Fenton noted in his first remarks as SOCOM commander that Russia remains a priority—and over-the-horizon operations to counter terrorist threats in the Middle East will keep the command busy in that part of the world as well.
“Your special operations forces are ever more ready … ready to counter persistent threats from terrorist organizations and other actors like Iran, ready to respond rapidly to crisis when called,” Fenton said.
18. Army JAG with vendetta tried contacting Russian embassy: prosecutors
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Army JAG with vendetta tried contacting Russian embassy: prosecutors
armytimes.com · by Irene Loewenson · August 30, 2022
A former Army Ranger turned judge advocate was arrested Aug. 12 in Arkansas for threatening two women who knew of his attempts to contact the Russian embassy in Washington and delete Army records, according to an unsealed criminal complaint.
The FBI agent who authored the complaint indicated that the soldier may have contacted the Russians after he became “disgruntled” with the Army, though there’s no indication from court records that the Kremlin took the advance seriously.
Manfredo Madrigal III, 36, allegedly attempted to remove the National Security Law Primer training module from the computer system at the Army Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School in Charlottesville, Virginia, on the night spanning Feb. 6 and 7.
He filmed himself deleting the interactive module, according to the affidavit filed in support of the complaint against him. Then he sent the video to a former romantic partner identified in court filings as Victim 1, who also a JAG officer.
“You guys decide you’re going [to] throw me to the wayside, no, I don’t think so… You aren’t going to take my knowledge and use it against me… You have nothing,” he said in the video, concluding the last sentence with an expletive-laden phrase, according to the affidavit.
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The affidavit did not make clear why Madrigal was upset. But it is possible he was reacting to his impending discharge from the Army for not disclosing a prior arrest for a DUI.
That same night, per the affidavit, he texted Victim 1, “Ya, Russia has reached out to me,” and told her in a voicemail that he was “going to Russia tomorrow.” He texted her on Feb. 17, “The Russians in DC reached out to me, they would like to know what I know.”
Phone records show that Madrigal received no incoming calls from the Russian embassy, the affidavit says. But he did make an outgoing call to the embassy in the early hours of Feb. 7 that lasted two and a half minutes.
He later claimed to the FBI that the Russian embassy had contacted him in late January or early February asking him for information about the war in Ukraine.
An FBI agent who investigated the case cast doubt on Madrigal’s account.
“I assess it would be highly irregular and improbable for a representative of a hostile foreign government to make an unsolicited, ‘cold-call’ to a United States Government employee to seek intelligence of value,” FBI Special Agent Matthew Rader wrote in the affidavit.
“I also know from previous counterintelligence investigations that when United States Government employees have become disgruntled with their employer or the actions of the United States that some have attempted to contact hostile foreign intelligence services at diplomatic establishments, such as a foreign embassy in the United States and overseas, to volunteer information of value,” Rader added.
The Russian embassy did not respond to a request for comment made by Army Times.
In the paperwork he filed while being discharged from the Army in February, Madrigal claimed to have had no contact with a foreign national while assigned to the JAG School, according to the affidavit.
Madrigal allegedly threatened Victim 1 and another former romantic partner, identified as Victim 2. Court records indicate Madrigal was pressuring at least one of them to keep quiet about his attempted contact with Russia and his deletion of the JAG training module.
Madrigal told Victim 1 he was bad-mouthing her to her superiors, sent her a photo of an assault rifle and emailed her sexually explicit photos of her taken without her consent, the affidavit alleges. He also allegedly logged into her online fertility tracker without her consent to keep tabs on her sexual activity, and mocked her for a negative pregnancy test recorded there.
In the days before the FBI interviewed Victim 2 in May, the affidavit says, Madrigal pressured her to lie about his alleged wrongdoing.
Victim 2 told the FBI in August that Madrigal had choked her, placed guns out in the open at her home and falsely informed her employer that she used drugs. According to Victim 2, he told her, “I could f***ing kill you if I wanted to.”
Madrigal was arrested on Aug. 9, during a fight with Victim 2 over her dogs at her home in Harrison, Arkansas, where they were residing together. Victim 2 told local police that Madrigal had smashed a wine bottle and held a gun to her head. Madrigal was then transported to federal custody to face charges of cyberstalking Victim 1.
Madrigal graduated from the University of Kansas Law School in 2019 before being assigned to the JAG School in Charlottesville. Before that, he was an enlisted soldier in various units, including the 75th Ranger Regiment and the 82nd Airborne Division. He served multiple combat tours, according to the affidavit.
A lawyer for Madrigal, David Benowitz, did not respond to a request for comment made by Army Times.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Virginia is prosecuting the case.
About Irene Loewenson
Irene Loewenson is an editorial fellow at Military Times and Defense News. A native New Yorker, she is a recent graduate of Williams College, where she was the editor-in-chief of the student newspaper.
19. Opinion | Plans to prevent civilian casualties leave crucial questions unanswered
As someone remarked ,we constrain US forces more than the Law of War does.
Excerpts:
For example, it remains unclear how Pentagon officials and military commanders would be held to account for past or future violations of policy that result in civilian deaths that could have been avoided. Similarly, while the plan outlines condolence payments and other means by which the military can respond to unwarranted or unintentional civilian casualties, it does not address the fact that the Pentagon has balked at responding effectively in the aftermath of recent attacks that killed civilians. A prominent recent example was the botched drone strike that left 10 Afghan civilians dead, including seven children, last August amid the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Kabul. Despite detailed reporting about the unjustified casualties, not a dime has been paid by the U.S. government to survivors or relatives.If past is prologue, the Pentagon has its work cut out.
Now, at least, it will be operating from a stronger playbook.
Opinion | Plans to prevent civilian casualties leave crucial questions unanswered
The Washington Post · by Editorial Board · August 30, 2022
Only a country indifferent to its moral standing on the world stage, or convinced it can neutralize even the most shocking offenses with a disinformation blitz, can comfortably ignore mass civilian casualties caused by its military forces. Russia’s contempt for the lives of Ukrainian noncombatants is plain for the world to see; it might take decades for the Kremlin to rehabilitate the country’s reputation. The United States can afford no such fallout from its future military engagements if it is to maintain its international stature, or live up to its own ideals.
Mindful of that, and of the toll in civilian deaths and injuries caused by U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere this century, the Pentagon last week announced sweeping new policies and procedures designed to contain civilian casualties in future military actions and, crucially, promote transparency where there has been too little in the past.
The undertaking to devise the new measures, at least nine months in the making, is on its own a long-delayed acknowledgment that this country has failed in recent conflicts to face up to the scale of what is antiseptically known as collateral damage. The resulting directive issued by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is, at least on paper, impressively detailed and far-reaching. It seeks to shake up the military’s decision-making mechanism and culture itself by embedding officials responsible for limiting civilian casualties within command structures. Of some 150 personnel who would be earmarked for the initiative, 30 would be detailed to a new Pentagon office focusing exclusively on training and analysis aimed at protecting civilians in both air and drone strikes against terrorist targets as well as large-scale military operations in a hypothetical war against a powerful adversary.
Those steps would add policy heft and bureaucratic muscle to the nation’s long-standing stated commitment to sparing the lives of noncombatants to the extent possible. They would advance the overarching goal of aligning the country’s conduct with its values in a context of state-sponsored violence, where the goal is exceptionally difficult to achieve.
The test will be in the implementation. In that regard, Mr. Austin’s rollout, notwithstanding its reams of detail describing new best practices and reporting mechanisms, leaves some crucial questions unanswered.
For example, it remains unclear how Pentagon officials and military commanders would be held to account for past or future violations of policy that result in civilian deaths that could have been avoided. Similarly, while the plan outlines condolence payments and other means by which the military can respond to unwarranted or unintentional civilian casualties, it does not address the fact that the Pentagon has balked at responding effectively in the aftermath of recent attacks that killed civilians. A prominent recent example was the botched drone strike that left 10 Afghan civilians dead, including seven children, last August amid the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Kabul. Despite detailed reporting about the unjustified casualties, not a dime has been paid by the U.S. government to survivors or relatives.
If past is prologue, the Pentagon has its work cut out. Now, at least, it will be operating from a stronger playbook.
The Washington Post · by Editorial Board · August 30, 2022
20. The Grand Race for Techno-Security Leadership
Conclusion
The U.S. techno-security system in the opening years of the 2020s remains much stronger and more innovative than its Chinese counterpart. This dominance is being steadily eroded, however, by U.S. institutional sclerosis, far-reaching global technological changes, and China’s intensive pace of techno-security development. Revitalizing key components of the U.S. techno-security system, especially public-private partnerships and engagement with global partners, will allow the United States to retain its global leadership edge over the long-term, although the gap with China will continue to shrink. The United States will need to undertake more transformative reforms to stay well ahead. Much will also depend on how serious the United States is about dealing with the long-term Chinese techno-security challenge to its national security and global leadership role given numerous competing domestic and international demands.
For China, the revamping of the techno-security state under Xi has seen the gap steadily close with the United States — but even more significant structural changes will be required to successfully transition from catching up to gaining parity or even leading. More effective coordination between the state and market mechanisms will be essential. Allowing hybridization — greater military-civil fusion — to be fully implemented will also be a vital step. The enhancement of the centralized top-down coordination model will be especially important in the race for the development of emerging core technologies as active early state intervention can play a more effective and decisive role than bottom-up market support. The Chinese techno-security state will need to address these key deficiencies if it is to mount a realistic challenge against the United States for long-term global techno-security leadership.
The Grand Race for Techno-Security Leadership - War on the Rocks
TAI MING CHEUNG AND THOMAS G. MAHNKEN
warontherocks.com · by Tai Ming Cheung · August 31, 2022
In the perilous race between the United States and China for dominance of the global technological and security commons, the recent passage of the CHIPS and Science Act adds a powerful and much-needed instrument in the U.S. arsenal to revitalize its ageing techno-security system. But China is constantly upgrading and expanding its toolbox, often in a far grander and expansive manner, such as with the introduction of highly ambitious long-term science, technology, and innovation plans in the past year. The scale, pace, and cost in this ratcheting up of efforts by Washington and Beijing to fortify their techno-security establishments looks set to far eclipse what took place between the United States and Soviet Union in the late 20th century. This is because the gap between the United States and China in economic and human resources and technological capabilities is much narrower than between the United States and Soviet Union.
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Nowhere are the battle lines more clearly drawn than in the techno-security sphere. Central to the Sino-American rivalry are two different models of industrial and technological innovation in defense: China’s state-led top-down approach and the U.S. market-driven bottom-up system. Which of them will ultimately prevail will depend on how capable, robust, and adept they are in meeting the challenge of rapid and disruptive change. There is the need for a net assessment of the two countries’ techno-security systems, including their ability to innovate and field military capabilities.
The U.S. and Chinese techno-security systems are designed, configured, and operated differently from each other. The U.S. techno-security system is anchored in a deeply held anti-statist ethos that emphasizes limited government and an expansive leading role for the private sector, even though the U.S. government has at times exerted a powerful influence in shaping the techno-security ecosystem. By contrast, although pro-market forces have played a vital role in China’s economic development, its techno-security system is overwhelmingly statist with the party-state dominating ownership, control, and management. Since the end of the 20th century, the Chinese party-state has thrown its weight behind a focused program of innovation aimed at blunting the ability of the United States to defend its interests in the Western Pacific, and at closing the gap between U.S. and Chinese defense technology more broadly. Indeed, according to the deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, China has been acquiring new weapons five times faster than United States. As a result, the United States now faces a series of increasingly unfavorable military balances in the Western Pacific and beyond. In order to regain momentum in the competition with China, the United States will need to unleash the power of its own unique approach to defense innovation by revitalizing public-private partnerships and deepening engagement with allies.
Since the 1990s, China has undertaken a concerted effort to transform itself from a struggling technological laggard to a leading global innovator. Defense innovation has been at the forefront of Beijing’s effort, and China has made impressive strides in pace, scale, and quality of output. At the outset of the reform drive in the mid-to-late 1990s, the Chinese defense science, technology, and innovation system was in a spiraling decline and could only produce outdated foreign-derived weapons. By the second half of the 2010s, select pockets of excellence within the defense innovation system began to turn out advanced armaments such as stealthy fighter aircraft and large-sized aircraft carriers and the strike planes that fly off their decks. Today there is concern that Beijing could steal a march on the West when it comes to cutting-edge fields of innovation, such as quantum and artificial intelligence.
Threat Perception, Challenges, and Innovation
China’s governing elite has been focused upon competing with the United States for several decades. Deepening concerns about the external security environment since the late 1990s, and especially the threat posed by the United States, have motivated Chinese efforts to innovate. Beijing has used the perception of threats posed by Washington as a catalyst to both deploy weapons and ramp up techno-security capabilities more broadly. Such perceptions have only grown more dire and expansive under Xi Jinping and serve to both motivate and focus the development of Chinese industrial and technological innovation in defense.
By contrast, the United States has only recently begun to focus on the challenge posed by China. As China ramped up its efforts at innovation and military modernization from the beginning of the 2000s, U.S. assessments of these efforts were that they posed little strategic threat as Chinese capabilities were far behind U.S. levels. Indeed, while Beijing was focused on Washington, the United States was preoccupied by the Global War on Terror and threats emanating from the Middle East after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Although both the Bush and Obama administrations expressed concern about the growth of Chinese military power, it was not until the Trump administration that documents such as the National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy spoke openly about the challenge posed by China and made great power competition the foremost priority. The Biden administration views China as “our most consequential strategic competitor and the pacing challenge” in its defense planning. Although today there is general consensus on the need to counter its aim to become a high-technology superpower, action has lagged rhetoric.
China’s State-Led, Top-Down Approach to Innovation
Centralized top-down coordination has been instrumental to many if not most of China’s signature strategic technological achievements, from nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to the manned space program and high-performance computers. This top-down approach has been governed by a central planning system that relies on directly enforced administrative controls from state and party agencies and the use of penalties to ensure compliance by enterprises, research institutes, and other actors. Although there has been some relaxation and rollback of this pervasive state control in the post-1978 reform era, state planning, management, and intervention remain extensive because the techno-security ecosystem continues to be overwhelmingly under state ownership.
The Chinese authorities have sought to spur innovation by placing strategic bets on a hybrid approach to innovation and by seeking to promote domestic innovation. First, in the second half of the 2010s, China began to lay the foundations of a robust and expansive military-civil fusion framework. Beijing seems to hope that it will be able to tap civilian sources of innovation as extensively as the United States within the next decade or so. Although the approach has yet to make a significant impact on Chinese innovation, and the structural barriers to realizing this goal are high, Xi’s active leadership of the military-civil fusion initiative means the prospects for success are good.
Second, in another long-term big bet, Beijing is increasingly focused on self-reliance and broadening from foreign absorption of technology to emphasizing original, indigenous innovation. That having been said, a key and intentionally designed limitation of this model is that it can only manage a select number of high priority strategic and defense-related projects. Gaining access to and leveraging foreign technology and knowledge will continue to be an essential feature for the foreseeable future. Techno-nationalist dependence is a well-proven low-risk, high-reward development strategy and provides a safeguard, whereas the forging of an original innovation capacity is a long-term high-risk endeavor.
The U.S. Market-Driven, Bottom-Up Approach to Innovation
Whereas China has adopted a state-led, top-down approach to defense innovation, traditionally the United States has succeeded under a market-driven, bottom-up approach. The relationship between the state and market flourished during the Cold War, and this was a leading factor contributing to the success of the U.S. techno-security system over its counterpart in the Soviet Union. However, in the post-Cold War era, and especially in the 21st century, the traditional strengths of the U.S. techno-security system have not aged well. Three factors in particular are worth considering.
First, the mutually rewarding partnership between the public and private sectors has historically been an important driver of U.S. performance. The public-private relationship has, however, become strained in the 21st century. All too often, the views of those in the defense industry have been greeted with suspicion, and an adversarial narrative between government and industry has grown more prominent in recent years. This threatens to turn this pillar of strength into a source of weakness. Whereas Beijing aspires to military-civil fusion, the U.S. government often holds the defense industry at arm’s length. Whereas there has been much talk in recent years about the need to embrace innovation, such talk has often not been matched by action. The fact that complaints that the Defense Innovation Unit, which was founded to speed new technology to the field, took shortcuts in hiring and contracting were sufficient to derail the candidacy of the unit’s director to serve as undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment illustrate the government’s schizophrenia on the topic.
Two trends in particular have contributed to the erosion of public-private partnerships in the United States. First, the defense acquisition system has become increasingly rigid and risk averse. It gives corporations few incentives to take the sort of risks that are crucial to innovation. The system also discourages firms from quickly fixing problems with known or promising solutions. The system is so expansive and complex as to defy reform. Moreover, the Defense Department is increasingly isolated from large portions of the most innovative and thriving commercial sectors of the economy. It should not be surprising that, according to former Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Mike Griffin, it takes the Defense Department 16 years to deliver an idea to operational capability, whereas it is claimed that China can sometimes do it in less than seven years — although a careful select analysis of Chinese programs shows that this is not the case.
Second, the U.S. techno-security system is struggling to have its voice heard in guiding innovation, as its once-dominant position as the biggest source of investment in research and development has eroded. The U.S. Department of Defense at the beginning of the 2020s accounts for a mere 3.6 percent of global research and development outlays, compared to 36 percent at its height in 1960.
Moreover, the Pentagon has gone from being a first adopter of technologies to being increasingly an investor in technology research. This means that many technologies originate in the civilian sphere and are subsequently — and often belatedly — adapted for defense and dual-use applications. While this is cost-efficient and allows access to a more extensive pool of innovation, the U.S. techno-security system risks becoming a follower rather than a leader unless it steps up to fill the gaps in defense-specific areas where the commercial sector is reluctant or unable to participate.
If these trends persist, the U.S. techno-security system could find its influence and place in the U.S. innovation system increasingly marginalized. This is already happening in the corporate sector. By the second half of the 2010s, the top five U.S. technology companies such as Google, Amazon, and Apple spent 10 times more annually on research and development than the top five U.S. defense prime contractors including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon. This growing imbalance in the public-private relationship could lead firms to decide that doing business with the techno-security system is not sufficiently lucrative and encourage them to focus instead on more profitable commercial markets domestically and internationally, including in China. Reinvigorating the public-private relationship will be critical in any effort by the United States to credibly compete against China over the long term.
Collaboration with Global Partners Is Increasingly Necessary
As the world’s most advanced techno-security power, the United States has been the dominant exporter of advanced technology, knowledge, and industrial products in both the military and civilian spheres. The possession of a comprehensive world-class science and technology base, especially in the defense technological arena, has meant that the United States has traditionally had little appetite to acquire foreign technology or know-how. This sense of industrial and technological superiority led to a fierce and enduring techno-nationalist ideology and posture in which the United States viewed itself as head and shoulders above the rest of the world.
But the global technological landscape has changed rapidly in the 21st century with the advent of a diverse array of emerging technologies, many of which have defense and dual-use applications. With its shrinking overall share of global research and development investment, the United States has found that it is increasingly difficult and costly to keep abreast of technological advances in all the key domains, which has made collaboration with foreign partners increasingly attractive and necessary. This cooperation is taking place in areas such as 5G, quantum computing, and communications — areas where China has been especially active and is vying for global leadership. But techno-nationalist primacy has been deeply entrenched within the institutional culture of the U.S. techno-security system for so long that a fundamental shift toward a more collaborative techno-globalist approach is likely to encounter entrenched resistance and will take time to effectively implement.
There have been occasional attempts to establish the foundations of a more globalist-oriented techno-security approach. The formation of the security compact known as ‘AUKUS’ (Australia, United Kingdom, and United States) in 2021 — centered on advanced defense and dual-use capabilities — is the most recent and promising opportunity for the rise of a U.S. globalist-oriented techno-security regime.
One area in which the United States has been able to pursue a more collaborative partnership with foreign allies is in controlling the spread of sensitive technologies. To respond to the technological challenges of the Soviet Union and Japan in the 20th century, the United States established a number of institutional frameworks to control the flow of technologies and know-how to these countries, especially the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls. These regimes worked effectively in their own spheres, but the integrated civil-military challenge posed by China requires the U.S. government to develop a more robust and whole-of-government approach than the ad hoc and underdeveloped intra-agency process that currently exists.
The United States has been revamping these legacy regimes through incremental reforms such as the 2018 Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act and a revamped export control regime. Nonetheless, there is still a gaping hole in the dual-use and strategic emerging high-technology domains that requires a new, wholly dedicated institutional mechanism that can respond more effectively and deal with this arena.
Conclusion
The U.S. techno-security system in the opening years of the 2020s remains much stronger and more innovative than its Chinese counterpart. This dominance is being steadily eroded, however, by U.S. institutional sclerosis, far-reaching global technological changes, and China’s intensive pace of techno-security development. Revitalizing key components of the U.S. techno-security system, especially public-private partnerships and engagement with global partners, will allow the United States to retain its global leadership edge over the long-term, although the gap with China will continue to shrink. The United States will need to undertake more transformative reforms to stay well ahead. Much will also depend on how serious the United States is about dealing with the long-term Chinese techno-security challenge to its national security and global leadership role given numerous competing domestic and international demands.
For China, the revamping of the techno-security state under Xi has seen the gap steadily close with the United States — but even more significant structural changes will be required to successfully transition from catching up to gaining parity or even leading. More effective coordination between the state and market mechanisms will be essential. Allowing hybridization — greater military-civil fusion — to be fully implemented will also be a vital step. The enhancement of the centralized top-down coordination model will be especially important in the race for the development of emerging core technologies as active early state intervention can play a more effective and decisive role than bottom-up market support. The Chinese techno-security state will need to address these key deficiencies if it is to mount a realistic challenge against the United States for long-term global techno-security leadership.
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Tai Ming Cheung is director of the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and a professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California San Diego. Thomas G. Mahnken is president and CEO of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and a senior research professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Brandon Woods
Commentary
warontherocks.com · by Tai Ming Cheung · August 31, 2022
21. The enemy gets a vote: The forever war and future war after Afghanistan by Joesph Felter
The enemy gets a vote: The forever war and future war after Afghanistan
BY JOSEPH FELTER, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 08/30/22 9:00 AM ET
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL
The Hill · · August 30, 2022
One year ago today, at one minute before midnight in Kabul, a U.S. Air Force C-17 cargo plane lifted off the tarmac of Hamid Karzai International Airport with the acting U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and our last remaining troops on board, marking the end of America’s nearly 20-year military presence in the war-torn country. President Biden, in an address from the White House the following day, stated with finality, “My fellow Americans, the war in Afghanistan is now over.” He justified his decision to withdraw by stating, “I refuse to continue a war that was no longer in the service of the vital interests of our people.”
But America’s longest war is not over and cannot be terminated unilaterally. Our enemies get a vote. Terrorist groups such as al Qaeda will exploit the more favorable conditions in Afghanistan that a return of Taliban rule provides and continue to seek out ways to do us and others harm. It remains in our vital national interests to protect the homeland from international terrorist attacks, and in our important interests to help defend our allies and partners such as NATO and India from such attacks.
The war against Islamic extremists with global reach continues and we are obliged to wage this struggle from a much less advantageous position. Beyond undermining our ability to interdict terrorist threats, America is less prepared for contingencies and deterrence in future conflict with our strategic competitors and other rivals.
The “war” before America’s withdrawal
At the beginning of 2021, Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller, commander of NATO’s Resolute Support Mission, led an effective economy-of-force effort with 2,500 U.S. military forces — less than 7 percent the size of the New York Police Department — along with twice that number of NATO and partner forces. With this modest force and robust presence of civilian contractors, U.S. and coalition forces were able to keep the Afghan air force flying, the Afghan army with the combat enablers and support it needed to remain in the field, and maintain critical intelligence networks and surveillance capabilities.
Although tenuous, the capabilities and conditions sustained by this U.S.-led military presence prevented Kabul and major population centers from falling to the Taliban and made it possible for the elected — albeit, corrupt — Afghan government to survive. U.S. and NATO forces provided this critical support to our Afghan partners from secure bases and did not operate “outside the wire.” Significantly, no U.S. casualties were suffered in the 15 months prior to the deadly Kabul airport bombing in America’s final week.
The “war” today
When the U.S. forces left, our NATO allies and partners were also forced to withdraw, along with the civilian contractors performing critical maintenance and sustainment roles in Afghanistan. The well-developed intelligence networks across the country largely collapsed. Conditions in Afghanistan are reverting to the dark days circa 2001. Al Qaeda had been largely decimated over the past 20 years but has new opportunities to reconstitute in a Taliban-led Afghanistan. We are now obliged to interdict future terrorist threats emanating from this region by conducting comparatively much less responsive “over-the-horizon counter-terrorism operations” launched from distant bases, with increasingly degraded intelligence capabilities. These come at a significant cost, with the U.S. now shouldering 100 percent of the burden formerly shared by our NATO allies and partners.
The next war
President Biden emphasized in his post-U.S. withdrawal address, “And there’s nothing China or Russia would rather have, would want more in this competition, than the United States to be bogged down another decade in Afghanistan.” This statement would have been more compelling if the U.S. commitment were not what it actually was in 2021 but closer to the high-water mark reached in late 2010, when 100,000 troops were deployed to support resource-intensive, population-centric counterinsurgency operations. Over 500 Americans were killed in action that year.
The reality is that in this era of competition and strategic rivalry among great powers, both China and Russia — along with Iran and others — applauded the departure of U.S. troops last year. Consider the potential deterrent and operational value of preventing the total collapse of even a highly flawed elected government and maintaining a de facto U.S. and NATO base like Bagram Airfield in a country bordering China, Iran, Pakistan and three former Soviet republics now on Russia’s southern flank. The return on investment of a relatively modest commitment of troops and combat enablers will far exceed the costs of maintaining them. Our biggest strategic regrets in leaving Afghanistan are likely yet to come.
Despite leaving government, Anthony Fauci ain’t going anywhere Mikhail Gorbachev’s was a truly great revolution
But perhaps the most damaging outcome of America’s abrupt and chaotic departure is the body blow taken by our reputation as a reliable partner. The memory of America deserting tens of thousands of Afghans who risked their lives and those of their families to support our cause, and withdrawing literally overnight without consulting and coordinating with our closest allies — who also made significant sacrifices in blood and treasure — will be enduring. This precedent certainly will influence the calculus of Russia’s Vladmir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and other world leaders who share a different vision for the future of the region and beyond.
As we face growing global challenges, we will be forced for decades to reckon with the cost to our global credibility resulting from our surrender in Afghanistan. America is better than this, and we must be better than this going forward. Never again.
Joseph Felter is a former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and retired Army Special Forces officer who served in Afghanistan. He is a Hoover Institution research fellow at Stanford University. Follow him on Twitter @JoeFelter.
The Hill · by Zach Schonfeld · August 30, 2022
22. Issues related to responding to foreign language influence activities in the U.S.
Issues related to responding to foreign language influence activities in the U.S.
A primer to understanding the Smith-Mundt Act's intent and relevance to a current issue
mountainrunner.substack.com · by Matt Armstrong
A recent opinion piece published by the Wall Street Journal rightly sought to raise the issue of adversarial nations engaging audiences abroad. The author, Dr. Seth Kaplan of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, discussed Beijing’s use of Chinese language(s) operations – radio, TV, newspapers, social media – to influence the diaspora and suggested these methods would be used to influence upcoming midterm elections in the U.S. Whether there is proof or not, it is wise to anticipate Beijing leveraging their access. As I wrote in my Questions for the Record following my testimony before a House committee on July 29, “it is reasonable to assume the Chinese government will promote narratives through a variety of methods to obstruct, confuse, or diminish our interests when such interests [conflict] with theirs.”
There are not-insignificant issues with Dr. Kaplan’s article, however, to be addressed and discussed. He is right that Beijing has done well in expanding its reach while marginalizing alternative voices and viewpoints. This is a problem related to Chinese political warfare / gray zone activities outside the U.S. as much as it is a valid concern inside the U.S., the latter being the author’s focus.
Issues of access to content in their home language or the languages of their parents or their heritage, the author makes some passing – “flippant” is a word I used in an email discussion this post is drawn from – suggestions that need examination. The author, after having spent the majority of his allowed space describing the problem, subsequently tosses out suggestions without an ounce of context, unpacking, analysis, or consideration. Below is some of the necessary context, unpacking, and analysis for the reader’s consideration, and for consideration by Congress and the Executive Branch.
For the most part, my comments apply to this paragraph:
Washington must work to ensure Chinese-speaking Americans have access to a free media during the upcoming midterm elections and beyond. The U.S. government should require entities to disclose their ownership structures and financial relationship with any Chinese or United Front organization—and insist that those under party influence either be sold off or shut down. The U.S. should also subsidize independent alternatives and syndicated content from outlets such as Radio Free Asia, China Digital Times and BBC Chinese.
There are two enormous asks in the second and third sentences that have potentially significant second- and third-order effects to be managed. In the second sentence, “…to disclose their ownership…” is likely a reference to the Foreign Agent Registration Act. The author goes beyond demanding registration and exposure but effectively demands the closure of these outlets. While this may sound desirable and sensible, there are a host of issues involved here, including First Amendment issues, bargaining opportunities to demand reciprocity to restrict (or allow) Chinese government media access to the U.S. equal to U.S. government media access to China (such as Voice of America and Radio Free Asia), our opportunities for shaming techniques to highlight Beijing’s duplicity and hypocrisy (such as the Chinese government’s use TikTok & Twitter abroad while banning it at home), and a host of other issues and opportunities smarter and more clever people are already thinking about.
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In the third sentence, we have this loaded statement: “The U.S. should also subsidize independent alternatives and syndicated content from outlets such as Radio Free Asia, China Digital Times and BBC Chinese.” Based on the context of the article, it appears Dr. Kaplan is suggesting that Radio Free Asia is an “independent alternative” and that the U.S. government should “subsidize” its distribution inside the U.S. This suggests the author isn’t aware that Radio Free Asia is 100% funded by the US government. (While RFA’s charter permits private funding to supplement the money appropriated by Congress, all of which is funneled through the parent organization, the US Agency for Global Media, there is little to no, and likely zero, practical private funding here. As an aside, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty still has a non-profit organization that was, and can be used again, to receive monies sent in by Americans to fund its operations abroad.) I have to believe the author is aware of Voice of America operations in China and the failure to mention VOA indicates the author’s effort to bury the U.S. government angle even as he mentions BBC Chinese, a government operation.
I used the word flippant earlier because the target audience here is “Chinese-speaking Americans.” There is a big deal that requires a really interesting and long overdue discussion that could only have been left out through ignorance. I’ll admit I’m a bit aggressive here, but, seriously, leaving significant issues unaddressed doesn’t make them irrelevant or merely minor bumps in the road. The intentional targeting of Americans, Chinese-speaking or otherwise, is probably why the author chose to ignore VOA and pretend RFA is an “independent” operation. Targeting “Chinese-speaking Americans” is still targeting the U.S. market.
On its face, this would seem to violate the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948. But wait, the modern “firewall” concept is directly derived from Senator J. William Fulbright’s attempt to kill the radio operations of VOA, Radio Free Europe, and Radio Liberty in the 1960s and marginalize USIA more broadly, if not shutter it completely, an agency he previously declared should only have existed for only a few years. In 1972, he successfully amended the Smith-Mundt Act to substantially inhibit access to USIA and RFE and RL (VOA being under USIA) content while also changing USIA’s authorization to one year, both facts Fulbright biographers leave out. In 1985, another Senator sought to close the “loopholes” of Fulbright’s amendment, which furthered the modern interpretation of Smith-Mundt being this godawful firewall. In 2013, an amendment to Smith-Mundt Act sought to unravel the negative effects of the Fulbright-Zorinsky amendments so U.S. domestic press could request and reuse VOA and RFA, for example, materials. Prior to that, most requests to access these materials was answered with a “no” though there was no punishment or other recourse for the media or academic or other private actors from accessing and reusing this content. (See my write-up of a similar situation to the author’s case from 2009: Censoring the Voice of America: Why is it OK to broadcast terrorist propaganda but not taxpayer-funded media reports?) Ironically, at about the same time Zorinsky’s amendment led a US federal court to rule USIA material was so unfit for Americans that it was exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests, Congress defanged FARA and removed the requirement to label the source on foreign government materials, which the author below seeks to return.
Let’s set aside that U.S. media and private actors may now freely access VOA and RFA content produced for Mandarin and Cantonese audiences (the content is primarily in the former with the latter reduced by budget cuts, but my information is dated) and reuse it as they wish. (The only limitation on reuse was whether the VOA or RFA had licensed content from, say, the AP or AFP or other news services, as the license did not include distribution in the U.S. market, thus someone redistributing such content with licensed material would have to attest they had a valid license for the U.S. market from the appropriate commercial news service.)
The author wants to have RFA, a government-funded operator, intentionally seek out audiences in the U.S. (I’d use the term “target,” but I will go with a lighter touch.) A distinction is required here as the specific case raised by Dr. Kaplan did not violate the original Smith-Mundt Act as it was worded before Fulbright tried to kill the information activities he felt inflamed tensions with an otherwise peaceful Russia. Domestic access to these materials was desired by Congress and by the State Department, which owned the operations authorized by the Smith-Mundt Act, to increase oversight. (Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were established under separate authorities; there was a short-lived Radio Free Asia in 1951-55 under the same structure of RFE and RL. Today’s RFA was established in 1996 and is, like the since merged RFE/RL and VOA, understood to operate under the Smith-Mundt umbrella of authorities.) This means the author’s suggestion of encouraging syndicated content is already possible at no charge with regard to VOA and RFA (while allowing for the licensing of commercial content included in materials as noted above). BBC has a different licensing structure and likely requires a licensing fee in contrast to USG content being inherently free. It is worth noting that RFA has historically been problematically reticent in encouraging the development of private media – which RFA saw as competition – whereas VOA has historically and aggressively supported the development and growth of potential competitors in the interest of increasing access to professional journalism and accurate information, a model VOA was executed across Asia and Latin America to great effect.
With the syndication issue addressed, at least with respect to RFA and VOA (the BBC with its different model that doesn’t inherently seek to produce competitors nor fundamentally has the U.S.’s media goal of closing its doors when local capabilities are found to be adequate), we can now look at the non-compete clause that is the real “don’t target Americans” provision in the original (and current) legislation.
Section 502 of Public Law 80-402 (the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948), now 22 USC 1462, stated that the government “shall reduce such Government information activities whenever corresponding private information dissemination is found to be adequate; (2) that nothing in this Act shall be construed to give the Department a monopoly in the production or sponsorship on the air of short-wave broadcasting programs, or a monopoly in any other medium of information.” (See one of my discussions of this here: No, the US Agency for Global Media does not compete with US commercial media.)
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The argument can be made, as the author lays out with his extensive evidence (though I’m not in a position to evaluate the strength of his evidence), that there is a severe lack of “corresponding private information” to Beijing’s operations. Further, such “private information,” a term in the Smith-Mundt Act that included commercial and non-profit operations alike, is very clearly not adequate in the area of “Chinese-speaking” (Mandarin or otherwise) peoples in the U.S. Further, any such promotion of these materials, whether for VOA or RFA, to this/these linguistic demarcated market(s) would not create a monopoly. Section 502 was the contemporary embodiment of the true lesson drawn from the Nazi’s domestic propaganda, which was successful partly because of the elimination of alternative voices and not merely the availability of the content, an issue Dr. Kaplan raises with Beijing’s operations.
Returning to the author’s suggestion to “subsidize independent alternatives and syndicated content,” beyond the points discussed above and leaving aside the Informational Media Guarantee program, an amendment to the Smith-Mundt Act made through the European Recovery Program legislation to reduce barriers to U.S. producers reaching foreign markets, the original intent of Congress was to maximize the utilization of private media in foreign information operations. The relevant language here was Section 1005 of the original Smith-Mundt Act, today 22 USC 1437, which required the operations “to utilize, to the maximum extent practicable, the services and facilities of private agencies, including existing American press, publishing, radio, motion picture, and other agencies, through contractual arrangements or otherwise.”
Section 1005 – or today’s 22 USC 1437, which the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act specifically called out – was and is an important feature to both encourage domestic capacity – important to Dr. Kaplan’s argument and to reduce what was then seen as an unfair competitive advantage due to the government’s deep pockets to hire the limited number of Americans fluent in the relevant foreign languages. This was also intended to reduce government expenses (ie appropriations) under the assumption that private organizations could produce content more cheaply than the government.
The emphasis on using private content quickly went awry after a severe lack of oversight by the government became apparent. In 1948, about three-quarters of VOA’s content was outsourced. This was until the “Know North America” debacle, a Spanish language series developed by NBC for the State Department and broadcast over VOA in 1948 that was a true disaster. This remains an option that fits with Dr. Kaplan’s suggestion, though this option will take actual leadership, accountability, and backstopping by senior leadership to implement and implement effectively, especially in the face of expected political opportunism by opponents. There is already a minefield in this area with Falun Gong and its Epoch Times that wield substantial influence and push their ideas on how these activities should be run, which may not align with U.S. interests, regardless of which party is in the White House.
While I appreciate the details above would not fit into an opinion piece, I hope I showed that some suggestions, whether their substance is intentionally or unintentionally obfuscated, require substantial discussions that are long overdue, yet to take place, and generally subjected to incredible (and deeply ironic) disinformation and misinformation.
mountainrunner.substack.com · by Matt Armstrong
23. Into the gray zone
Into the gray zone
mountainrunner.substack.com · by Matt Armstrong
“Gray zone” is a popular label for various adversarial activities, specifically those activities “in the space between peace and war.” The term has been around for many years and is often considered to be—and is often used as—a replacement for the term political warfare. The problem with political warfare, of course, is the word warfare and the resulting reaction by some that “we don’t do ‘warfare’ and thus political warfare isn’t our job.” Political warfare was, however, more palatable than psychological warfare which, for example, was in the draft report from a special joint Senate and House Smith-Mundt Committee’s delegation that toured 22 European countries in 1947 but disappeared from the final copy made public: “The United States Information Service is truly the voice of America and the means of clarifying opinion of the world concerning us. Its objective is fivefold… (5) be a ready instrument of psychological warfare when required.”
Terms matter, and not just because they inherently have different meanings to different audiences at different times. Terms may also assign responsibilities just as they may be used to punt responsibilities to someone else. Public diplomacy, for example, has always been confusing because it was purposefully applied to the activities of an agency and not to specific methods or outcomes, which continues to cause confusion long after that agency went disappeared. Hybrid warfare may be discussed in a similar way as it seems to be military-focused and intended to lay claim on an enhanced role for the military.
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On July 28, 2022, I testified before a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee: the Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, Central Asia, and Nonproliferation. The title of the hearing was “Countering Gray Zone Coercion in the Indo-Pacific.” The focus, of course, was China. I was asked to participate along with Dr. David Shullman of The Atlantic Council and Elisabeth Braw of the American Enterprise Institute.
There was a twist as I was already away from home and on holiday when I was asked to testify. It seems the hearing came together quickly as I was asked the week before to participate (one witness was still unknown and the third was still tentative). I was hesitant as I had just arrived in Boston from Switzerland and was about to travel to Los Angeles for a few days to see family. Relevant here is that after LA (with plenty of driving for school visits for the daughter, visiting family, going with the kids to a K-Pop concert, etc.), the kids and I (picked up the son in Boston and the daughter in LA) flew to Hawaii (where the wife joined us) and I would be on Maui for the day of the hearing. It is a six-hour time difference and the hearing was scheduled for 10a DC time, though it was moved to 9:30a. The conversation with the committee’s staff convinced me this would be a good idea as I wanted to see HFAC have a more substantial involvement in these issues, which would be a big change from my perspective over the past 15 years or so that I have been paying attention to this stuff. The last-minute ask and the knowledge I was already on holiday did cause the Chairman to graciously allow me to submit my written testimony after the normal deadline of 48 hours before the hearing. As I had not planned on needing a blazer, let alone testifying before Congress, I borrowed a coat and shirt from my brother-in-law when I was in Los Angeles for a few days.
My prepared testimony is included below. In the hearing itself, I’m pretty sure my lack of sleep – three hours of broken sleep – impaired me a bit.
The short amount of sleep is because I did not finish my prepared testimony until 11:45p (Maui time) the night before. I emailed it, went to bed, and was up at 2:50a to get ready and walk to a small conference room made available for me by the hotel before the 3:30a start of the hearing. The hearing ended at 5:40a, wherein I returned to the room, prepared for my months-long planned ride up Haleakalā, departed at 6:10a in a car to the start point (to save time to get back earlier to be with the family), and started pedaling near the climb’s start at 6:40a. (I found the climb actually quite easy at only 6% – I do live and ride in Switzerland – but the lack of sleep and stress began to set in as I neared the Ranger Station, so I decided to keep the ride fun and didn’t need to bury myself, so I refilled the bottles at the Ranger’s tap and pointed the bike down. It was a 50mi ride with 7,000’ of climbing, but that’s misleading as nearly all of the climbing was in the first 25mi.)
A comment on the hearing
I will restrict my comment on the hearing to repeating my closing message, which I had repeated in different forms in several of my earlier answers. That message was there are several areas directly within the responsibility of the committee that require their immediate attention and yet they are ignoring these areas for what must be perceived as more exciting topics, most if not all are at the periphery of their mandate, if not beyond. In the “lightning round” – my term for the one-minute closing statement – which for me started at about 1:37:20, I repeated again the importance of the committee looking at the non-military options.
…one topic that I think is obvious but yet we have left aside here is that if we’re seeking non-military solutions, we need to be looking at the State Department, and that [is] within the purview of this committee. We need to be looking at how is the State Department operating in this space. How is it not operating, how ineffective or effective is it. And, that includes looking at the number of FSOs – Foreign Service Officers – and civil service [officers] that are there.
And, if this is a so-called Information War, looking at the information officers that are there at State and the very few number of them – the public diplomacy officers – and the challenges of leadership. There is a quote in my written testimony [from] a senior public diplomacy official recently telling researchers that “it’s vitally important to hide the work of public diplomacy the US citizens in order to protect [the public diplomacy] mission,” which I think is absurd and I would hope that the committee would as well. So, taking a look at the activities and the lack of support [of] resources, the understaffing, and the marginalization of the “public diplomacy activities”… so looking at this – within your direct purview – I think would be tremendously helpful in building our capacity to respond in this space proactively which is urgent as well as reactively, which is tremendously important as well.
Below is my prepared testimony as submitted. I’m not entirely sure it is coherent as there was no one available to check it before I hit send.
Testimony of Matt Armstrong
Former Governor, Broadcasting Board of Governors
Before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, Central Asia, and Nonproliferation
July 28, 2022
Chairman Bera, Ranking Member Chabot, and distinguished members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me to speak today. The subject of this hearing is important, and I am humbled that you asked me to participate in the discussion. It is my sincere hope that the conversations that brought about this hearing continue beyond the introduction of any bill as the current situation has been and will continue to be the “new” normal and will thus require this Committee’s persistent attention.
Let me start with a reminder that the “gray zone” idea at the heart of today’s hearing is neither new nor unexpected. We have been here before and this Committee, many decades ago, played a substantial and positive role in setting up a response to these kinds of activities, a fact ironically buried by decades of misinformation and disinformation.
As a framing device, gray zone is than hybrid warfare, which is centered on combat and the Defense Department. It is also better than information warfare which, considering information is a munition, evokes dangerously selective means, methods, and objectives. No term is perfect and considering the common understanding of the “gray zone” is the space between peace and war, or traditional uniform combat, this framing inherently separates peace into something else. However, it is the peace that others seek to disrupt, it is a starting point, and it is a place we must proactively defend.
Personally, I prefer to the term political warfare, though I acknowledge the term is not palatable to some, including this Committee, for understandable reasons. Political warfare includes all measures short of war. It is not mere rivalry or competition, but the expression of power for hostile intent through discrete, subversive, or overt means short of open combat onto another. Whereas gray zone tells us where along a spectrum between war and peace activities take place, political warfare tells us why.
Regardless of the term, these methods, sometimes updated through new technologies, are reused because they are relatively inexpensive, especially compared to the destruction wrought by combat, more enduring than open invasion, and refinable through successive iterations of effort. Whether intentionally or incidentally, these activities exploit our defective escalation ladders, the thresholds of which are distorted from over-reliance on dissuasion through the threat of waging combat. The result on our side is confusion, questioning, grasping, tactical responses to strategic threats, and being constantly reactionary.
This Committee participated in supporting establishing international organizations to further this peace and to proactively resist various malicious gray zone activities. Some of those organizations have since been subverted against us and against their original purpose.
Personally, I find it more important and interesting that this Committee helped introduce the basic legislation that provides the authorities required to respond to gray zone activities. I am referring to a bill introduced by a former Member of this Committee, Karl Mundt of South Dakota. Introduced on January 24, 1945, it was signed into law three years and three days later as the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and one of the Congress’s first legislative responses to Russia’s gray zone activities.
The month before Mundt introduced his bill, the State Department acknowledged the importance of public opinion, both foreign and domestic, to foreign policy by establishing the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs in December 1944.[1] The assistant secretary, Archibald MacLeish, received Mundt’s bill and sought to discuss it with Mundt “not only as a Member of Congress, whom even Dean Acheson holds in awe but as a man with a long, practical experience in education.” Just weeks earlier, MacLeish commissioned an internal inquiry into whether the government needed a post-war international information program. Six months later, the final report opened with this statement:
“The adequacy with which the United States as a society is portrayed to the other peoples of the world is a matter of concern to the American people and their Government… Modern international relations lie between peoples, not merely governments… International information activities are integral to the conduct of foreign policy.”
Mundt’s bill was initially to exchange elementary and high school teachers, but it was expanded to include broader educational, technical, scientific, and cultural exchanges, funding individuals, institutions, and agencies across the U.S. government. It was also expanded to include a broad range of information programs.
Secretary of State James Byrnes had this to say in 1946 while voicing his ardent support for the information programs to be authorized by Mundt’s bill:
I am convinced an information program can contribute to our security just as can an army, a navy, and an air force; and that it can make its contribution in a manner that is vastly preferable to the threat or the use of force, and at infinitely less expense.
Secretary of State George Marshall, who succeeded Byrnes, was also an ardent supporter of the Mundt bill and traveled to the Hill several times lobbying for the bill’s passage. In one public hearing, Marshall had this to say about the bill:
There is no question today that the policies and actions of the United States are often misunderstood and misrepresented abroad. The facts about the United States are withheld or falsified and our motives are distorted. Our actions do not always speak for themselves unless the people of other countries have some understanding of the peaceful intention of our people… [T]here are countries of the world where understanding American can best be advanced by sending a few governmental advisers, or by bringing students to the United States, or by training in our Department of Agriculture or our Weather Bureau a few foreign technicians, or by a combination of these activities. Such activities provide opportunity for contacts which develop lasting impressions of the United States.
It is important to note that the Congress neither suggested nor intended programs authorized by the pending Mundt bill or the later Smith-Mundt Act should be anywhere but in the State Department. My colleague Dr. Chris Paul and I recently wrote on how the State Department ultimately rejected this role, causing Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Marshall’s successor, to form the International Information Administration (IIA) within State. We also tell how this organization was soon fragmented to create a lesser entity with fewer authorities and lacked direct integration with foreign policy making, coordination, and execution. This entity was named the U.S. Information Agency.[2]
Equally important is that none of the discussions in this Committee or the whole Congress ever suggested preventing Americans from seeing or hearing the international information programs authorized by the Smith-Mundt Act. This modern notion is the direct product of questions about the effectiveness of USIA as an independent agency from the State Department, which caused the adoption of the label “public diplomacy” to apply to USIA’s programs and Senator J. William Fulbright’s attacks on USIA in the 1960s that culminated in his 1972 amendment to the Smith-Mundt Act to purposefully isolate USIA.
Our international information programs were never to be censored from the American public. Doing so blocks direct participation by the public and across the government, appreciation of the importance of this engagement by the public and across government, and oversight across the legislative and executive branch as well as by the press and the public. It was never to be unfit for Americans to read, hear, or know the details of. It was never to be partitioned from policy. These problems manifest in a myriad of ways, including a senior official who “very earnestly instructed” a team of researchers “that it’s vitally important to hide the work of PD from US citizens in order to protect its mission.” This is a subject this Committee may want to investigate. Know that this Committee, like the rest of the Congress, has a previously established entity to provide you such oversight and advice on necessary changes that should have uncovered and reported to you the above sentiment, which is broadly and historically accepted, previously. This would be the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, authorized by the Smith-Mundt Act by an amendment to Mundt’s bill by Congressman Everett Dirksen.
The entrenched segregation – both conceptually and bureaucratically – remains today. One visible measure of dysfunction is the vacancy of the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Since the office was established in 1999, administrations have repeatedly failed to consider this office for what it notionally is: the chief international information operations officer for our foreign policy. Since it was established, the office has been without a Senate confirmed under secretary four of every ten days, including 37% of the Bush administration, 22% of the Obama administration, 93% of the Trump administration, and 100% of the Biden administration.
Less visible is the shortage of Foreign Service Officers, a problem from well more than 2016. Further, if we are in an oft-labeled “information war,” why is the State Department not calling for more staff clearly in this space, the public diplomacy officers?
Telling America’s story abroad is not a simple activity of simply hurling unfiltered information abroad. It is usually more about the target audience than about us. It requires understanding what they should know, why, and how to tell the story. Sometimes the story can be subtle. For example, describing how an American pays a speeding ticket or registers to vote may seem boring just as telling the story of a U.S. city declaring bankruptcy may seem self-defeating, but these types of stories convey massive unspoken information in corrupt and authoritarian countries.
Some of this work is done by the U.S. Agency for Global Media. And this agency does a lot of work in the Indo-Pacific through the Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, and the internet freedom programs. Chris Paul and I discussed USAGM’s role in our recent paper, a role that should be better supported and accepted for both its value and its limits:
The USAGM’s operations target countries relevant to U.S. national security and that lack a free press due to censorship (such as North Korea, Russia, and China), that are historically vulnerable (like Ukraine), or lack a foundation of professional news media (like Indonesia) or resources (like much of Latin America). USAGM’s networks—Voice of America, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, and others—do not, by law and on purpose, operate in or target democratic countries with a vibrant commercial press, which is the case for most of Europe. The USAGM is a surrogate news and information service to information-poor audiences providing content not just in the local vernacular, but based on their perspective, often with reporters from the area, often risking their lives in the pursuit of local journalism to inform and empower audiences. But the USAGM’s power, its credibility—the backbone of which is its relationship with its audiences—would be at real risk if it were no longer operating separate from policy, if it were suddenly subject to micromanagement from policymakers and operatives across the other international information and engagement portfolios.[3]
An area of discussion for this Committee may be to look at the lack of reciprocity in specific areas. For example, VOA is permitted only one bureau and only two reporters in China. A second bureau in Shanghai was promised, but the authorities refuse to follow through. Contrast that with Beijing’s operations across the U.S.
We have largely abandoned defending the peace out of complacency and consistently undermine our ability to engage across the gray zone. We have placed too many eggs in the basket of dissuasion through the threat of combat.[4] This militarization of our foreign policy creates easy opportunity for exploitation by our adversaries, hence our meeting today.
I often open my articles with quotes from 60 – 80 years ago. This is not just because the statement is relevant but also as a not-so-subtle reminder that history rhymes and what we are dealing with today is not a new as some might argue.
My conclusion takes the form of three quotes. The first is from 1953 and comes from the former IIA Administrator, Dr. Wilson Compton:
We are not really trying to win the cold war. We are putting our faith in arms and armaments to enable us to win another war should war come. Probably we can. But winning a hot war which leaves a cold war unwon will not win very much for very long.
The second quote is from Karl Mundt in 1962, when he was a Senator:
We train and prepare our military people for the war which we are not fighting and which we hope will never come, but we fail to train our own citizens and our representatives abroad to operate in the cold war — the only war which we are presently fighting.
My last quote is from 1961 and Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut:
So long as we remain amateurs in the critical field of political warfare, the billions of dollars we annually spend on defense and foreign aid will provide us with a diminishing measure of protection.
I look forward to your questions. Thank you.
[1] Originally called the Assistant Secretary of State for Public and Cultural Relations, the office was renamed in 1946 to this title.
[2] https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/07/the-irony-of-misinformation-usia-myths-block-enduring-solutions/
[3] https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/07/the-irony-of-misinformation-usia-myths-block-enduring-solutions/
[4] The defectiveness of the DIME construct – Diplomacy, Information, Military, Economic – to describe elements of national power is a separate discussion. A better framing is Political, Psychologic, Combat, and Economic, which can be discussed separately.
Here is a pic immediately before the start of the hearing. My sartorial was intentional.
And here are three pics from the ride, the first two on the way up and the third taken on the way down. The second pic has West Maui visible in the distance. It was a good day for a bike ride.
Thanks for reading Arming for the War We're In! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
mountainrunner.substack.com · by Matt Armstrong
24. Here’s What Biden’s New National Security Strategy Should Say
A hypothetical question: If you are Republican or otherwise not a supporter of President Biden's administration do you try to faithfully execute the national security strategy? Should you? Or should you oppose it or try to make it fail for partisan goals?
Conclusion:
In releasing the new strategy, the Biden administration has an opportunity to take stock and change course. Indeed, there are ample precedents of other Democratic administrations making such a pivot amid geostrategic shifts. In 1950, President Harry Truman and Congress reacted to the shock of the Korean War by doubling the defense budget, which brought to an end the post-World War II shrinking of U.S. forces. In 1979, the Carter administration underwent a similar transformation: Spurred by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and other geopolitical challenges, President Jimmy Carter ended a failed strategy of accommodation with Moscow and began a sustained boost of U.S. defense spending, which eventually put the Soviets back on their heels. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine should serve as such a wake-up moment for Biden. By producing an NSS that reinvigorates U.S. power and deterrence, the Biden administration has the opportunity to set America on a course to prevail in the geopolitical competition that will determine the future of the United States and the world.
Here’s What Biden’s New National Security Strategy Should Say
Foreign Policy · by Gabriel Scheinmann · August 31, 2022
An expert's point of view on a current event.
Tossed and rewritten after Russia invaded Ukraine, the document still hasn’t been released.
By Gabriel Scheinmann, the executive director of the Alexander Hamilton Society.
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks before signing the agreement for Finland and Sweden to join NATO at the White House in Washington on Aug. 9.
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks before signing the agreement for Finland and Sweden to join NATO at the White House in Washington on Aug. 9. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
After a long wait, the Biden administration may finally release the new U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) this fall. Originally scheduled for publication late last year, the document was withheld as Russian war preparations on Ukraine’s borders intensified. The invasion and its fallout then presented Washington with a new strategic situation, requiring the document to be rewritten. Its absence has left many wondering about the administration’s strategic objectives, priorities, and plans to achieve them.
The Biden administration laid out its initial impulses on national security in its Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, published shortly after the new team moved into the White House in early 2021. That document prescribed a heavy dose of cooperation with other powers—including the United States’ adversaries. Beijing and Moscow were presented as partners on such issues as climate change, nonproliferation, arms control, public health, and economic stability.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s unleashing of the biggest European war since 1945—as well as his Chinese counterpart’s declaration of “no limits” support—laid the administration’s ideas and intentions to waste. It is critical, therefore, that the new NSS adapts to the new reality and sets Washington on a different course to prevail in the increasingly direct geopolitical competition with Moscow and Beijing. A successful approach to the challenges posed by these adversarial regimes must involve a global strategy to counter threats, not merely manage crises as they pop up. This includes, most importantly, a substantial increase in U.S. defense spending.
After a long wait, the Biden administration may finally release the new U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) this fall. Originally scheduled for publication late last year, the document was withheld as Russian war preparations on Ukraine’s borders intensified. The invasion and its fallout then presented Washington with a new strategic situation, requiring the document to be rewritten. Its absence has left many wondering about the administration’s strategic objectives, priorities, and plans to achieve them.
The Biden administration laid out its initial impulses on national security in its Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, published shortly after the new team moved into the White House in early 2021. That document prescribed a heavy dose of cooperation with other powers—including the United States’ adversaries. Beijing and Moscow were presented as partners on such issues as climate change, nonproliferation, arms control, public health, and economic stability.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s unleashing of the biggest European war since 1945—as well as his Chinese counterpart’s declaration of “no limits” support—laid the administration’s ideas and intentions to waste. It is critical, therefore, that the new NSS adapts to the new reality and sets Washington on a different course to prevail in the increasingly direct geopolitical competition with Moscow and Beijing. A successful approach to the challenges posed by these adversarial regimes must involve a global strategy to counter threats, not merely manage crises as they pop up. This includes, most importantly, a substantial increase in U.S. defense spending.
A serious strategy would begin by recognizing that the post-Cold War era is over. Beijing and Moscow have thrust a new cold war on Washington and its allies, despite the West’s best efforts to embrace these two powers as partners. The new NSS must end this unrealistic and naive approach.
If the United States is to win this long-term competition and reckon with its inability to deter Russia—and potentially China—from invading their neighbors, the Biden administration must provide immediate, real, and sustained increases in the U.S. defense budget. Washington’s allies and friends should of course be encouraged to do the same. As a percentage of GDP, U.S. defense spending is at one of the lowest levels since World War II. It’s not enough for Congress to top up Biden’s budgets, as it has done. Even achieving the lowest level of Cold War-era spending of 4.5 percent of GDP, as former National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster and I suggested in Foreign Policy—let alone spending 5 percent, as incoming Republican Senate Armed Services Committee leader Roger Wicker has proposed—would require a roughly 50 percent increase or more of the budget. Hard power is not the relic of a bygone era but the foundation of any successful attempt to win what Biden rightly calls “the competition of the 21st century.”
The new NSS should clearly recognize that helping Ukraine defeat Russia is not only the strategic priority in Europe but also a key front in deterring China.
A suitable strategy would recognize that China is the primary threat to the United States. To deter China from the use of force against Taiwan or its other neighbors, the United States must urgently arm its allies and partners (like it is now, belatedly, doing in Ukraine), as well as bolster its own deterrent capabilities. Should China attack Taiwan, U.S. and allied forces must be capable of quickly reinforcing the island and rapidly attriting China’s attacking of naval and air assets. This hinges on U.S. investment in areas that would allow Washington to quickly counter Beijing’s navy. It also requires expanding integrated joint and combined operations capability, forward basing, economic integration, and multilateral engagement through organizations like the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad)—a U.S. quasi-alliance with Australia, India, and Japan. As the Cold War has taught us, success means deterring an attack, not merely responding to one after it occurs.
This isn’t only about defense. Deterring China and Russia in the military sphere will ensure—not undermine, as some contend—the preconditions for broad, shared economic prosperity at home.
The United States and its allies must stop facilitating the growth of Chinese and Russian economic power—and must enhance their own instead. The United States cannot continue to enable China’s economic and technological rise—both absolute and relative—and simultaneously meet the challenge of a long-term competition. The first priority must be to end those forms of engagement that mostly advance Beijing’s national security goals and economic strength while weakening Washington’s. This will require a strategic, selective economic decoupling from China. From restructuring supply chains to reshoring production of high-end manufactured products to better monitoring and regulation of technology and capital flows, the NSS must make reducing the economic leverage held by America’s adversaries a priority. Europe’s extreme energy dependence on Russia—which Putin is now turning against countries supporting Ukraine—demonstrates where that leverage leads.
The Chinese leadership is paying close attention to the war in Ukraine. The new NSS should clearly recognize that helping the Ukrainians defeat Russia is not only the immediate strategic priority in Europe but also a key front in deterring and weakening China—which has made it abundantly clear that it seeks global, not merely regional, power and influence. As part of its Europe strategy, the administration should make sure NATO allies, such as Germany, follow through on their new commitments to spend the NATO minimum of 2 percent of GDP on defense—and support them as they enhance Europe’s defense. The NSS should also commit Washington to help Europe diversify energy supplies and turn away from its dependence on Russia.
While the United States no longer relies on the Middle East for energy, many of America’s allies and partners still do. In tandem with increasing U.S. energy production and export capacity, the NSS should prioritize cooperating with major Arab oil producers to undercut Russian energy blackmail against Europe and use China’s energy vulnerabilities to weaken it. Biden’s pledges to turn Saudi Arabia into a “pariah” and consign fossil fuels to history created a chasm between the United States and its major Arab energy-producing partners—a chasm that helped fuse the Saudi-Russian oil cartel and create an opening for China. Building on the Abraham Accords and other regional groupings, a smart NSS would recognize and respond to the growing security cooperation between China, Russia, and Iran. This week’s news of a Russian-Iranian oil swap to bust Western sanctions is a case in point. The administration should abandon any effort to use a nuclear agreement with Tehran to reintegrate Iranian oil into the marketplace, which would only finance the regime’s continued assaults—and lead America’s Arab partners to hedge against U.S. credibility by seeking better relations with Russia and China. U.S. presence and leadership in the Middle East is essential to—not a distraction from—geopolitical competition with Beijing and Moscow.
In releasing the new strategy, the Biden administration has an opportunity to take stock and change course. Indeed, there are ample precedents of other Democratic administrations making such a pivot amid geostrategic shifts. In 1950, President Harry Truman and Congress reacted to the shock of the Korean War by doubling the defense budget, which brought to an end the post-World War II shrinking of U.S. forces. In 1979, the Carter administration underwent a similar transformation: Spurred by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and other geopolitical challenges, President Jimmy Carter ended a failed strategy of accommodation with Moscow and began a sustained boost of U.S. defense spending, which eventually put the Soviets back on their heels. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine should serve as such a wake-up moment for Biden. By producing an NSS that reinvigorates U.S. power and deterrence, the Biden administration has the opportunity to set America on a course to prevail in the geopolitical competition that will determine the future of the United States and the world.
Paul Lettow contributed to this article.
Gabriel Scheinmann is the executive director of the Alexander Hamilton Society and co-chairs, with Paul Lettow, the Forum for American Leadership’s strategic planning working group. Twitter: @GabeScheinmann
25. A Frontline Shadow Economy: Ukrainian Units Swap Tanks and Artillery
A unique kind of "war economy."
A Frontline Shadow Economy: Ukrainian Units Swap Tanks and Artillery
By Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Natalia YermakPhotographs by Tyler Hicks
Aug. 30, 2022
nytimes.com · August 30, 2022
Repairing a captured Russian armored personnel carrier in the Donetsk region of Ukraine this month.
Most of the bartering involves items captured from Russian troops, which are exchanged for urgently needed supplies. “Let’s just call it a simplification of bureaucracy,” one soldier said.
DONETSK REGION, Ukraine — The Ukrainian sergeant slid the captured Russian rocket launcher into the center of a small room. He was pleased. The weapon was practically brand-new. It had been built in 2020, and its thermobaric warhead was deadly against troops and armored vehicles.
But the sergeant, nicknamed Zmei, had no plans to fire it at advancing Russian soldiers or at a tank trying to burst through his unit’s front line in eastern Ukraine.
Instead, he was going to use it as a bargaining chip.
Within the 93rd Mechanized Brigade, Zmei was not just a lowly sergeant. He was the brigade’s point man for a wartime bartering system among Ukrainian forces. Prevalent along the front line, the exchange operates like a kind of shadow economy, soldiers say, in which units acquire weapons or equipment and trade them for supplies they need urgently.
“Usually, the trades are done really fast,” Zmei said last week during an interview in Ukraine’s mineral-rich Donbas region, where the 93rd is now stationed. “Let’s just call it a simplification of bureaucracy.”
Despite the influx of Western weapons and equipment in recent months, the Ukrainian military still relies heavily on arms and vehicles captured from their better-equipped Russian foe for the matériel needed to wage war; much of Ukraine’s aging Soviet-era arsenal is either destroyed, worn down or lacks ammunition.
Ukrainian forces firing a howitzer toward a Russian position in Donetsk this month. Items captured from Russian forces are known as “trophies.”
That has left Ukrainian soldiers scrounging the battlefield for essentials as their own supply lines are strained. And the relatively small numbers of big-ticket foreign weapons, such as the American-made M777 howitzer, are thinly spread on the sprawling 1,500-mile front.
“We have hopes for Kyiv,” said Fedir, one of the brigade’s supply sergeants and an understudy of Zmei, referring to military commanders in the capital. “But we rely on ourselves. We aren’t trying to just sit and wait like idiots until Kyiv sends us something.”
To protect against reprisals, Zmei, Fedir and others interviewed for this article requested that only their given names or nicknames be used.
The Ukrainian military did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the equipment exchanges.
Capturing Russian items has become increasingly difficult as the war moves into a more static phase, with Russia’s grinding artillery war forcing Ukrainians to slowly retreat in the east, while trying to regain territory in the south. That has created even higher demand for items traded in the soldiers’ underground exchange.
Such was the case in early May, when the 93rd — a renowned unit that had fought in almost every major battle of the war — was operating around the Russian-occupied city of Izium. Zmei, who before the war owned a small publishing house that specialized in dark fantasy novels, received an innocuous text message from a nearby Ukrainian commander.
“Hi,” the message read. “Listen, here’s the thing, we have a needless tank, a T-72 a bit damaged.”
“And we’d exchange it for something nice,” the commander added.
The commander’s requests were modest: a transport truck and a couple of sniper rifles in return for the Russian trophy tank. But Zmei told his customer, “This is too few things for a tank, write down what else you need.” The commander responded that he had plenty of tanks and wanted only the items requested.
When the commander mentioned all the tanks in his unit’s possession, Zmei sensed an opportunity to expand the trade. He wanted more tanks, and noted that the 93rd had foreign-supplied anti-tank missiles and U.S. portable surface-to-air missile systems available for a swap.
“Can get the launchers for a Stinger, NLAWs, various large stuff for a trade — and a lot of that,” Zmei said, referring to some of the Western weapons, which cost tens of thousands of dollars apiece.
Of the more than half-dozen soldiers interviewed for this article, most said that this underground economy was driven by the need to survive. Sometimes, they said, that meant circumventing a clumsy bureaucracy.
Although soldiers said that they were supposed to send captured equipment up the supply chain back to Kyiv, they noted that there was little effort to investigate the underground exchanges, let alone punish anyone for doing it.
Western governments, having provided billions of dollars of military equipment, have pressed Ukraine to safeguard against possible corruption in the distribution process, but so far there have been no documented cases of weapons ending up in the hands of anyone apart from other Ukrainian units.
But even keeping the transfer of weapons unofficial can cause problems.
Matt Schroeder, an analyst at the Small Arms Survey, a research organization, said that informal transfers of matériel between units “could undermine stockpile management procedures,” but that “such transfers are not, in themselves, indicative of trafficking or leakage.”
Sitting near the turret of a captured Russian T-80 tank, a Ukrainian soldier named Alex explained that sending captured equipment back to Kyiv for official accounting was problematic.
“There is no guarantee that we’re going to get it back anytime soon,” he said. “We try to do it mostly ourselves.”
A former software engineer from Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, Alex is a celebrity in the 93rd. His captured tank, nicknamed Bunny, with him in command, destroyed several Russian armored vehicles around Izium and the northeastern city of Sumy earlier in the war, Ukrainian commanders said.
But now the tank is far from the front and awaiting a turret repair. An important part for that work was recently acquired by trading a 120-millimeter mortar and a heavy machine gun with another unit, Alex said.
Just as he was speaking, a captured Russian armored personnel carrier rolled into the repair bay. It parked behind a barely running Ukrainian armored vehicle that one soldier joked had probably participated in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Alex is waiting for his own kind of repairs. He was shot in the right leg during a patrol in May. The bullet shattered his femur.
He and several other Ukrainian soldiers had been on a reconnaissance patrol in the gray zone — the area between Russian and Ukrainian front lines — when he was hit. The mission had carried two objectives, he said: to find Russian positions and to find abandoned equipment.
“We are losing tanks,” Alex said. “If this war goes the distance, sooner or later we’ll be out of Soviet equipment and other Soviet tanks, so we will have to switch to something else.”
Near his subterranean headquarters not far from the front line, Alex’s battalion commander, Bogdan, described the severity of his unit’s situation. The sound of incoming and outgoing artillery echoed in the fields beyond.
“It’s no better in other battalions,” he added.
Bogdan’s unit of around 700 troops had arrived to replace Ukrainian forces worn down by casualties and equipment loss. Now, after six months of acting like a “firefighter” by rushing from one frontline hot spot to the next, his troops were facing a similar fate.
“We are losing a lot of men,” Bogdan said. “We can’t cope with their artillery. This, and airstrikes, are big problems.”
Asked about sophisticated, Western-supplied weapons that government officials say will be the big difference-maker, he said that in his brigade, “nobody has foreign equipment,” adding, “We have a great many questions as to where it goes.”
Those questions have fallen on a 28-year-old Ukrainian soldier who goes by the name of Michael. He lives in a small rundown single-story house several miles from the front line. An infantry soldier by trade, he is currently Bogdan’s supply officer.
A Krab unit commander named Andriy said that his howitzers were not available for trade, though he might consider a swap if offered a French self-propelled artillery piece in exchange.
The 93rd currently only possesses old Soviet-era artillery pieces that have worn out barrels and are low on ammunition.
“I have to go and buy everything and trade things, and bring it all here,” Michael said.
“So what’s going on is a personal initiative,” he said. “You’re taking the risk, it’s criminal. Nobody will thank you. It’s a thankless job.”
nytimes.com · August 30, 2022
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
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Phone: 202-573-8647
email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
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