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Quotes of the Day:
“Nothing is so weak and unstable as a reputation for power which is not based on one’s own strength.”
– Tacitus
"Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul - and sings the tunes without the words - and never stops at all."
– Emily Dickinson
"Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing."
–Theodore Roosevelt
1. Ukraine General’s Plan Surprised the Russians—and His Own Troops
2. How in-house tech and soldier tinkering is changing the Army
3. Biden Administration Rejects Plan to Send Americans to Ukraine to Maintain F-16s
4. Mongolia obliged to arrest Putin if he visits, International Criminal Court says
5. Putin to visit Mongolia despite ICC arrest warrant
6. A Cease-Fire Deal Now Would Be a Victory for Israel By Graham Allison and Amos Yadlin
7. ‘Who blinks first?’ Why Putin still hasn’t driven Ukraine out of Russia
8. From Kabul to keel laying: Afghan immigrants find new careers at US shipyards
9. The Rise, Decline, and Possible Resurrection of China’s Confucius Institutes
10. Former analyst decries CIA politicization of intelligence, new levels of activism under Biden
11. American Stockholm syndrome: When politics becomes psychological warfare
12. Green Berets storm building after hacking its Wi-Fi
13. 7 US troops hurt in raid that killed 15 ISIS fighters
14. The Army's 75th Ranger Regiment 'Lead the Way' For a Reason: They are Unstoppable
15. Why the Nuclear Revolution Matters in an Era of Emerging Great Power Competition
16. U. S. Army chaplains continue to boost readiness, after 249 years
17. SOF 2050: Transformative Impact of Biology, Biotechnology, and Medicine Technology on Special Operations Forces
18. What Price Are Americans Prepared to Pay for Defending Taiwan?
19. The Pentagon Papers: Deception And Bad Strategy in Vietnam
20. Why Trump’s Arlington Debacle Is So Serious
1. Ukraine General’s Plan Surprised the Russians—and His Own Troops
The ultimate test or success of OPSEC is when you can surprise your own troops (only said half in jest).
A general who can act ‘unusually, suddenly’
Ukraine General’s Plan Surprised the Russians—and His Own Troops
Gen. Oleksandr Syrskiy learned from Ukraine’s previous counteroffensive and kept its Russian incursion a secret
https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/ukraine-general-oleksandr-syrskiy-russia-kursk-incursion-32965fb9?mod=hp_lead_pos7
By James MarsonFollow
Updated Aug. 31, 2024 12:02 am ET
SUMY, Ukraine—Ukraine’s top military commander gathered senior officers for a secret meeting in late July where he disclosed an audacious plan to revive the country’s flagging war effort.
Ukraine’s army, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskiy told them, would turn the tables on Moscow by launching the first large-scale invasion of Russia since World War II.
One attendee, a senior officer from the 61st Mechanized Brigade, said his initial reaction was shock.
“Where are we going?” Lt. Col. Artem Kholodkevych recalled thinking.
The brazen operation also stunned Russia when it launched on Aug. 6, overrunning weak border defenses and quickly seizing around 100 towns and villages in Russia’s Kursk region. The invasion embarrassed Russian President Vladimir Putin, raised Ukrainians’ morale after a year of grinding defensive war, and showed the U.S. and other backers that Ukraine still has plenty of fight in it.
“We exploded the myth that Russia is an invincible country,” Kholodkevych said in an interview. “We did something that no one has done for 80 years.”
Lt. Col. Artem Kholodkevych, a senior officer from the 61st Mechanized Brigade, was initially shocked by the plan to invade Russia. Photo: Emanuele Satolli for WSJ
The operation has brought a brighter spotlight on its architect, Syrskiy. The 59-year-old career military officer faced a challenging proposition when he took over in February. He was replacing a popular predecessor, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhniy, and since then has sought largely to manage a war of attrition against a much larger foe.
Ukrainian incursion into Russia
Ukrainian advances near Kursk region
Russian forces
Kyiv
KURSK
REGION
Kursk
Rylsk
RUSSIA
Sudzha
Sumy
UKRAINE
20 miles
20 km
Note: As of Aug. 28
Source: Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project
Andrew Barnett/WSJ
The incursion has, for now, upended the narrative of the war, putting Ukraine back on the offensive. But the success of the operation will ultimately be determined by whether it leads to lasting gains, or greater losses, on the battlefield—or yields political dividends that bring more military support from the U.S. and its allies or strengthen Ukraine’s position in any future peace negotiations.
Now in its fourth week, the incursion is continuing to make gains even as Russia has sent reinforcements. At least 2,000 Russian troops are hemmed in against a river, where repeated attempts to relieve them using pontoon bridges have failed, according to Ukrainian soldiers.
Some military strategists and soldiers have questioned the Kursk operation, saying Syrskiy is committing precious reserves of manpower and equipment to a new front while Russia is taking advantage of Ukraine’s threadbare defensive lines on the eastern front to press forward. Russia has withdrawn several thousand troops from Ukraine in response to the incursion, but has intensified assaults on its main target, Pokrovsk, a critical logistics hub for Ukrainian operations in the east.
Others have praised the move, saying that Ukraine needed to play a joker to change the momentum of a war.
Ukraine couldn’t afford simply to keep trying to buy time by throwing more men into defensive lines, said retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe. “Nobody has enough resources to do everything,” he said. “You are constantly having to make decisions about priorities, where to accept risk.”
A vehicle-recovery team from Ukraine’s 22nd Mechanized Brigade, which took part in the surprise incursion this month into Russia. Photo: Emanuele Satolli for WSJ (2)
The operation is also a bold gambit for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was trapped between a slow but relentless advance by Russia, which wants to take control of Ukraine, and the West’s unwillingness to provide sufficient weaponry to reverse Russian gains.
“He saw that only one actor can change the status quo,” said Mick Ryan, a military strategist and retired major general in the Australian Army. “It’s risky but audacious.”
Zelensky said Tuesday he is planning to travel to the U.S. in September to present a peace plan that has been spurred, in part, by the positive dynamic of the invasion.
A general who can act ‘unusually, suddenly’
Syrskiy, a fitness buff with a passion for military history, had an ambiguous reputation among Ukrainian soldiers. His stern, clipped style contrasts with his predecessor, who would pose for selfies and flash V signs for victory.
Syrskiy led the defense of Kyiv that repelled Russia’s assault in early 2022, and a successful counteroffensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region that autumn. But some blamed him for heavy losses in the defense of the eastern city of Bakhmut, which Russia captured in May 2023 after months of brutal fighting.
The Kursk operation has won the general plaudits for its planning, secrecy and speed. Analysts and Ukrainian officers said Syrskiy had evidently drawn conclusions from Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive during the summer of 2023, when Ukraine consulted with the U.S. and other Western partners, deployed newly formed brigades and telegraphed its plans with videos and public comments.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Gen. Oleksandr Syrskiy during a trip to the Kharkiv region in November. Photo: Efrem Lukatsky/Associated Press
Only a small number of senior officers took part in the meetings, led by Syrskiy, to thrash out detailed plans for the incursion. Syrskiy tapped battle-hardened units, such as the 80th and 82nd Air Assault Brigades, to lead the incursion and didn’t inform the U.S. of plans.
While last year’s counteroffensive assaulted Russia’s strongest fortifications in the south, this time Syrskiy picked a target that Moscow had assumed was untouchable and left weakly defended primarily by conscripts.
“The strong point of Syrskiy is that he is a general who can act unusually, suddenly, unexpectedly for the enemy,” said Serhiy Cherevatiy, Syrskiy’s former communications adviser. “He knows we don’t have parity and can’t go head-to-head, so he uses cunning and any advantage we have.”
Photo: Svet Jacqueline for WSJ
Daily life goes on in Sumy, Ukraine, despite the increased threat from Russia after Ukraine invaded the nearby Kursk region. Photo: Emanuele Satolli for WSJ
Breaking through Russian lines, cutting off troops
Before Syrskiy’s July meeting with senior officers from units selected for the operation, troops from the 61st Brigade had spent months training in the east for what officers assumed would be another defensive engagement. Even after the general’s disclosure that they would be going into Russia, Kholodkevych, a senior officer in the brigade, thought it might simply be a bluff, meant to deceive the Russians.
The transfer of the 61st Brigade from the east was accompanied by a disinformation campaign indicating they were headed for Vovchansk, a northern city under assault since May, when Russia launched its own cross-border incursion.
Instead, the brigade was in the second wave of Ukrainian troops into Kursk on Aug. 7. As assault troops on fast-moving armored vehicles drove deeper into Russia avoiding head-on assaults in towns and villages, the 61st mopped up pockets of soldiers cut off by the quick advance.
The rapid operation bears similarities to Syrskiy’s Kharkiv offensive, which took advantage of Russian weak points to break through their lines, cut off troops and take back swaths of territory.
Now, Ukraine is taking advantage of Russian unpreparedness to strike deeper into the rear, creating what Zelensky has called a buffer zone to impede Russian military operations against Ukraine. Kyiv’s forces are still taking more prisoners to add to a pool that Ukraine hopes to trade for its own people detained in Russia.
Ukraine is using new tactics and equipment to gain an upper hand where Russian defenses are weaker, including using small explosive drones to strike down helicopters and Russian surveillance drones.
Ukrainian soldiers heading to Russia from Sumy earlier this month. Photo: Svet Jacqueline for WSJ
The commander of a drone unit, call sign Aristarkh, said that was allowing Ukrainian artillery to move more freely and hit more targets as the threat of discovery is lower. Aristarkh’s teams operate strike drones with a range of 30 miles that can drop aerial bombs on high-value targets such as artillery guns.
Russia has a total of 30,000 troops in the area to counter the offensive, Syrskiy said Tuesday, some of them transferred from Ukraine.
Still, Syrskiy said Russia wasn’t redeploying troops from the Pokrovsk front to Kursk, as Ukraine had hoped it would, and is instead not strengthening its forces there.
That has provoked complaints from soldiers in the east that their defensive efforts have been starved in favor of the Kursk offensive.
Hodges, the retired U.S. Army Europe commander, said that is a risk that Syrskiy and his advisers will have foreseen and decided it was worth taking.
“This is not about a popularity contest,” he said. “It’s about achieving strategic effect, which means you have to accept risk in other areas.”
Ukraine is using new tactics to gain an upper hand where Russian defenses are weaker. Photo: Emanuele Satolli for WSJ
Oksana Grytsenko and Ievgeniia Sivorka contributed to this article.
Write to James Marson at james.marson@wsj.com
Appeared in the August 31, 2024, print edition as 'General’s Plan Surprised Troops'.
2. How in-house tech and soldier tinkering is changing the Army
One of the things I am noticing in today's effort of transforming in contact that is different than the transition to AirLand battle and the "Big 5" of new Army weapons systems is that today the big five (whatever they may be) are going to fall into the categories of electronic warfare, cyber, software, communications, precision fires, unmanned aerial systems. The last two of these may be somewhat akin to the weapons systems of the Big 5 of yesteryear but they are dependent on the critical capabilities of EW, cyber, software, and communications. At first I thought about emulating the SOF truth that humans are more important than hardware and say software is more important than hardware. In today's world you may have hardware that can operate without humans but in order to operate effectively it must have advanced software.
And I think the emphasis on software makes it easier to conduct "in house and soldier tinkering". because soldiers' ideas can be put into effect more rapidly than changing hardware. Then again, my observation could be off base.
How in-house tech and soldier tinkering is changing the ArmyBy Todd South
Aug 29, 2024, 11:10 AM
Soldiers from the 2nd Mobile Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division exit a CH-47 Chinook into the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Johnson, Louisiana, this month. (Staff Sgt. Joshua Joyner/U.S. Army)
FORT JOHNSON, Louisiana – A new Army-made software application is allowing soldiers to identify a target and send a fire mission in under a minute when it used to take 15 minutes. Those same soldiers have rigged cheap drones with a cheap, off-the-shelf circuit board and sensor to make electronic decoys of their command posts, throwing enemy fires off target.
This brave new world in Army electronic warfare was on display recently during the 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division’s rotation this month at the Joint Readiness Training Center here.
The U.S. military in general, from the Pentagon to each service branch, is prioritizing such capabilities, both how to use artificial intelligence and drones and how to defend against an enemy using the same technology.
During the 101′s recent rotation, soldiers used a new app called “Shrike,” which identifies targets with minimal information and spits out a ready-to-go, call-for-fire mission.
The app is the brainchild of the Army Software Factory within Army Futures Command, featuring software that uses an artificial intelligence capability mounted on any fielded drone. Each drone’s small circuit board draws on a large-language model backbone.
Soldiers flew the drone with the attached device and software over their enemy’s motor pool to scan their adversary’s vehicles.
Once data has been processed, a subsequent flight can identify a netted and camouflaged vehicle from an exposed wheel, bumper or part of a windshield and recognize what kind of vehicle it is, said Maj. Gen. Brett Sylvia, 101st Airborne Division commander.
RELATED
This system may allow small Army teams to probe 1,000 targets per hourOne goal of using the Maven targeting system is for a team of 20 or fewer to be able to identify and strike 1,000 targets per hour.
By Todd South
The program then generates a call-for-fire mission automatically for the human user to approve or disapprove.
But the application has another layer.
Once the fire mission is complete, the drone can scan the area immediately, conduct a battle damage assessment and generate another fire mission to destroy the target, Sylvia said.
The Army standard is five to eight minutes to identify and get rounds on target in a traditional fire mission, though some take as long as 15 minutes, the two-star said, but 101st soldiers using this software have done so in less than a minute.
More tech tricks are in the toolkit of soldiers headed to training and deployment as part of the Army’s Transformation in Contact, an effort focused on injecting five years’ worth of modernization into three separate brigade combat teams, including brigades from the 101st, the 25th Infantry Division and the 10th Mountain Division.
The Army’s professional opposition force, or “enemy” troops, in combat training center rotations such as the one here use homemade sensors to detect an electromagnetic “reading” or “snapshot” of the Army units they fight.
During this August rotation, the 101st took some notes and brought their own sensors, drones and even homemade decoys. Soldiers took $30 circuit boards and used them as decoys to mimic electronic signatures with fake names such as “command post laptop” or “Garmin smartwatch,” tricking the adversary into thinking that what they’re scanning is an actual headquarters.
In one of the first fights, soldiers mimicked the electronic signature of their own command post using these decoys and placed the decoys in the opposite direction of their actual command post.
The trick worked.
“The enemy spent 50% of their artillery against the dirt, where we had those decoys,” 2nd Brigade commander Col. James Stultz told reporters here.
The brigade brought 250 such decoys with it on its 500-mile air assault from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, down to Louisiana for the training, he said.
And even in new-era training, the enemy learns too, pushing the soldiers to play a kind of cat-and-mouse game with the enemy’s reconnaissance drones.
During the first week of the exercise, an enemy drone locked onto the brigade’s mobile, Humvee-based command post.
Soldiers with the brigade set up a kind of invisible “net” of counter-drone defense gear and tried to lure the enemy drone into the “net” using their command post as bait.
The colonel said they didn’t trap the drone, but the soldiers did manage to shake the drone off the Humvee’s tail and avoid a strike that would have taken out the headquarters.
About Todd South
Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.
3. Biden Administration Rejects Plan to Send Americans to Ukraine to Maintain F-16s
Still willing to let Ukraine fight Russia to the last Ukrainian?
As counterintuitive as it may seem, If we want to stay out of war then we must do all we can to enable our friends, partners, and allies to effectively fight theirs. Sometimes that includes direct advice and assistance.
Of course domestic politics takes precedence so there is no way we could do so at this time.
Biden Administration Rejects Plan to Send Americans to Ukraine to Maintain F-16s
European countries are expected to step in to pay for maintenance and personnel to support the American-made aircraft and other weapons
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/white-house-rejects-plan-to-send-americans-to-ukraine-to-maintain-f-16s-34fa1967?mod=latest_headlines
By Gordon Lubold
Follow and Alexander Ward
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Updated Aug. 30, 2024 6:52 pm ET
Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, left, and Oleksandr Lytvynenko, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, next to an F-16 in an undisclosed location in Ukraine in August. Photo: valentyn ogirenko/Reuters
WASHINGTON—The Biden administration has rejected a military proposal to send American contractors to Ukraine to maintain Western military equipment, including F-16 jet fighters, over concerns about safety, U.S. officials say.
The debate over sending American civilians to a country battling Russian forces to help maintain Western equipment has been ongoing since the early days of the war, but has recently become more critical with the long-awaited arrival of F-16s in Ukraine. The first six of a promised 80 F-16s jets arrived in Ukraine at the end of July.
The National Security Council looked at the proposal for sending civilian contractors into Ukraine to maintain F-16 jet fighters and other military weaponry, but the intelligence community and others deemed it too risky for now, officials familiar with the discussion said. Instead, the hope is that European countries will take on more—and perhaps all—of the responsibility for maintaining the F-16s.
“The intelligence community raised concerns over the prospect of Russia targeting American contractors in Ukraine,” according to a U.S. official.
A Ukrainian tank crew performing maintenance on a U.S. Abrams tank in eastern Ukraine. Photo: Joseph Sywenkyj for WSJ
The administration hasn’t ruled out sending American contractors to Ukraine in the future, but they aren’t expected to go there soon.
“This is something we are considering but have made no decisions,” said Sean Savett, principal spokesman for the National Security Council, said in a statement, regarding a proposal to send American contractors into Ukraine.
On Monday, Ukraine lost its first F-16 during a Russian missile barrage. Ukrainian and U.S. officials haven’t disclosed the cause of the crash, which killed a prominent pilot, and an investigation is under way.
The American-designed aircraft remains one of the U.S. Air Force’s most iconic jet fighters and requires highly skilled maintenance and other support, including hours of service for every hour of flight time. Dozens of support personnel typically work on each fighter.
While the Pentagon has said that it hopes that the Ukrainians can maintain the F-16s, all countries, including the U.S., rely to some extent on private companies and their personnel to help service the complex jet fighters.
President Biden, led by his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, was concerned the Defense Department lacked adequate plans to respond should American contractors come under attack. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Maintenance of the warplanes could prove crucial for Ukraine’s defense of its territory. Kyiv hopes the F-16s can prevent Russia from owning the skies and shoot down missiles launched at military and civilian infrastructure. Without civilian contractors servicing the planes—such as repairing and replacing parts—Ukraine will struggle to keep the Western-provided planes operational.
But the U.S. has been loath to send personnel into Ukraine over safety concerns. A small contingent of diplomats, military service members and other government contractors are assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv.
The Biden administration’s reluctance to send U.S. contractors to Ukraine to service American and other Western equipment reflects the larger debate over U.S. involvement in the war there. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, the White House has held off on sending specific weapons to Ukraine over concerns of Russian escalation, only to allow those systems to go later.
It appears, however, that having the Defense Department send civilians to maintain U.S.-made equipment is still a red line.
The son of Ukrainian F-16 pilot Oleksiy Mes, who died in an air crash this week, holds a photo of his father at a farewell ceremony in Shepetivka, western Ukraine, on Thursday. Photo: Libkos/Getty Images
While some officials inside the Pentagon had expressed support for sending American contractors to do maintenance, President Biden, led by his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, was concerned the Defense Department lacked adequate plans to respond should those people come under attack.
“We haven’t made any decisions and we’ve been clear that we are not sending any U.S. troops into the fight into Ukraine, but there are no Defense Department contractors performing work in Ukraine,” a Pentagon official said.
Ukraine is expected to receive a mix of older and upgraded F-16s from the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and Belgium.
A senior Dutch military officer confirmed that the Netherlands will pay for a private contract between a civilian maintenance company and the Ukrainian Air Force to support the F-16s.
“We support the Ukrainian government financially to make those contracts with private partners to see if they can hold the aircraft up and running in the future,” said Gen. Onno Eichelsheim, the chief of defense for the Netherlands, speaking to reporters in Washington on Wednesday.
The Ukrainians have struggled to maintain other U.S.-provided weapons, such as the Abrams tank. Much of the maintenance is done either with Ukrainians video-teleconferencing with repair experts abroad, or the equipment is shipped out of the country for repair, contributing to delays in getting the weapons back in operation.
Daniel Michaels and Lara Seligman contributed to this article.
4. Mongolia obliged to arrest Putin if he visits, International Criminal Court says
I am no international law expert (even if I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express one time), but this seems to put Mongolia in a real bind, at least politically and diplomatically if not legally.
Or is this a way to solve Putin's War in Ukraine and have him arrested and sent to the Hague? What a gutsy move. What would happen if Mongolia actually arrested him? The blowback could be immense. But I am afraid Mongolia could be putting itself in a tight spot.
Mongolia obliged to arrest Putin if he visits, International Criminal Court says
BBC
Mongolia obliged to arrest Putin if he visits - ICC
2 hours ago
Sofia Ferreira Santos
BBC News
Reuters
Mongolian officials "have the obligation" to arrest Vladimir Putin if he visits the country next week, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has said.
The trip, expected to happen on Tuesday, will be the first time the Russian leader has visited an ICC member nation since the court ordered his arrest in March 2023.
The court alleges Mr Putin is responsible for war crimes, saying he failed to stop the unlawful deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia since the conflict began.
Despite officials in Ukraine demanding that Mongolia arrest Mr Putin once he arrives in the country, the Kremlin said it had "no worries" about the visit.
"We have an excellent rapport with our partners from Mongolia," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow.
"Of course, all aspects of the President’s visit have been carefully prepared."
Dr Fadi el-Abdallah, a spokesperson for the ICC, told the BBC on Friday that the court relies on its States Parties - including Mongolia - to "execute its decisions".
He said Mongolia, like other ICC signatories, has the "obligation to cooperate". This includes complying with arrest warrants such as the one the court issued for Mr Putin's arrest in 2023.
The court alleged the Russian president is responsible for war crimes, focusing on the unlawful deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia. It has also issued a warrant for the arrest of Russia's commissioner for children's rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, for the same crimes.
It said the crimes were committed in Ukraine from 24 February 2022 - when Russia launched its full-scale invasion.
Moscow has previously denied the allegations and labelled the warrants as "outrageous".
Dr Abdallah said ICC judges will look into cases of "non-cooperation" by its signatories and inform the Assembly of States Parties, which may "take any measure it deems appropriate".
The ICC has no powers to arrest suspects, and can only exercise jurisdiction within its member countries.
Ukraine's foreign ministry said it hoped Mongolia was "aware of the fact that Vladimir Putin is a war criminal" and called on the country's authorities to arrest the Russian leader and hand him over to prosecutors at The Hague, the seat of the ICC in the Netherlands.
Last year, Mr Putin cancelled a visit to a summit in South Africa following the ICC warrant for his arrest.
As a signatory to the court, South Africa should detain suspects in its territory, but President Ramaphosa warned Russia would see this as a declaration of war.
Mr Ramaphosa said the decision for the Russian leader to not attend was "mutual".
The BBC has contacted the Mongolian Embassy for a comment.
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War in Ukraine
Russia
International Criminal Court
Vladimir Putin
Ukraine
BBC
5. Putin to visit Mongolia despite ICC arrest warrant
It does not seem like this is an important visit. Is it a test? Is he trying to undermine the rules based international order? Is he trying to separate Mongolia and undermine its "third neighbor" policy (reaching out beyond its only two neighbors of China and Russia).
Excerpts:
Oleksandr Merezhko, the head of foreign relations committee in the Ukrainian parliament, suggested that Ukraine start negotiations with Mongolia to convince it to execute the arrest warrant. "If these negotiations do not lead to the desired result, then you can turn to the Assembly of the participating states, which should be held at the end of this year, he said in a Facebook post.
The ICC, based in The Hague, has 124 members around the world. Russia and the U.S. are not members.
“Mongolia would be defying its international obligations as an ICC member if it allows Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit without arresting him," said Maria Elena Vignoli, international justice senior counsel at Human Rights Watch. "Welcoming Putin, an ICC fugitive, would not only be an affront to the many victims of Russian forces’ crimes, but also undermine the crucial principle that no one, no matter how powerful, is above the law," she said.
"The Mongolian government has a chance to demonstrate its commitment to justice for international crimes and the ICC by denying him entry or arresting him if he enters the country," Vignoli said.
Putin's planned visit is at the invitation of Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh, the Kremlin said. He will attend celebrations of the 85th anniversary of the joint victory of the Soviet and Mongolian forces over the Japanese on the Khalkhin Gol River.
Putin to visit Mongolia despite ICC arrest warrant
Politico · by Ketrin Jochecová · August 31, 2024
- News
- Politics
Ukraine urges Mongolian government to execute warrant against Russian leader.
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It will be Putin's first trip to an ICC member country since the court issued an arrest warrant for the Russian president last year. | Pool photo by Gavriil Grigorov/AFP via Getty Images
August 31, 2024 2:13 pm CET
By
Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to pay an official visit to Mongolia next week despite the country being a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has issued an arrest warrant for the Russian leader over war crimes.
Putin will travel to Mongolia on Sept. 3, according to the Kremlin. Mongolia's foreign ministry announced the visit on its website, saying the Putin will meet with the country's prime minister and the speaker of the parliament.
It will be Putin's first trip to an ICC member country since the court issued the arrest warrant for the Russian president last year over the forced transfer of children to Russia after Moscow’s all-out invasion of Ukraine. Under the Rome Statute governing the court, member countries are obliged to act on ICC arrest warrants if the subject is on their territory.
Moscow said it wasn't concerned about the possibility of Putin being arrested in Mongolia.
"There are no worries; we have a great dialogue with our friends from Mongolia," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. "All aspects of the visit were carefully prepared."
The Ukrainian government called on Mongolia to execute the ICC warrant against Putin during his visit to the country.
Kyiv "hopes Mongolia understands that Putin is a war criminal," the Ukrainian foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday. "We call on the Mongolian authorities to execute the mandatory international arrest warrant and hand over Putin" to the ICC, it said.
"The kidnapping of Ukrainian children is only one of the many crimes for which Putin and the rest of the military-political leadership of the Russian Federation must face justice,” the ministry said.
Oleksandr Merezhko, the head of foreign relations committee in the Ukrainian parliament, suggested that Ukraine start negotiations with Mongolia to convince it to execute the arrest warrant. "If these negotiations do not lead to the desired result, then you can turn to the Assembly of the participating states, which should be held at the end of this year, he said in a Facebook post.
The ICC, based in The Hague, has 124 members around the world. Russia and the U.S. are not members.
“Mongolia would be defying its international obligations as an ICC member if it allows Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit without arresting him," said Maria Elena Vignoli, international justice senior counsel at Human Rights Watch. "Welcoming Putin, an ICC fugitive, would not only be an affront to the many victims of Russian forces’ crimes, but also undermine the crucial principle that no one, no matter how powerful, is above the law," she said.
"The Mongolian government has a chance to demonstrate its commitment to justice for international crimes and the ICC by denying him entry or arresting him if he enters the country," Vignoli said.
Putin's planned visit is at the invitation of Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh, the Kremlin said. He will attend celebrations of the 85th anniversary of the joint victory of the Soviet and Mongolian forces over the Japanese on the Khalkhin Gol River.
POLITICO reached out to Mongolian authorities for a comment.
Veronika Melkozerova contributed reporting.
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Politico · by Ketrin Jochecová · August 31, 2024
6. A Cease-Fire Deal Now Would Be a Victory for Israel By Graham Allison and Amos Yadlin
Excerpts:
After his failure to do so in the three months since Biden outlined his current plan, why is there any reason to hope that Netanyahu will choose the victory on offer now? He is, first and foremost, a brilliant political animal who knows how to survive, which has enabled him to become the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history. He should recognize that rather than continuing down the road to ultimate defeat for himself and his country, it is in his interest to accept the first stage of the deal now, bringing home the hostages in exchange for a 6-week cease-fire—and take his chances that as other pieces on the chessboard move in response, his options will improve.
The Knesset is on recess until October 27, which means that the two far-right blocs that have threatened to abandon and thus destroy Netanyahu’s coalition would be unable to do so for almost two months. If the first-stage cease-fire were to break down, prompting IDF forces to renew fighting in Gaza, those parties would likely rejoin Netanyahu’s coalition. But if the deal succeeded in dampening regional tensions (ensuring that neither Hezbollah nor Tehran opts for further retaliation), brought Israeli hostages home, and allowed normalization with Saudi Arabia to proceed, Netanyahu’s standing in the polls could be strong enough for him to declare victory and call another election that he would have a good chance of winning. (The approaching U.S. presidential election adds another variable that could open new options for Netanyahu.)
Israel has always been, and will remain for the foreseeable future, an embattled nation. As former Prime Minister David Ben Gurion wisely stressed, the country’s “fate depends on two things: its strength and its righteousness.” He recognized that without a strong and effective defense against the threats that surround it, Israel would be erased from the map. Yet he also recognized the necessity of upholding the values of justice and freedom that are the foundation of Israel’s identity and legitimacy as a Jewish democratic state.
Whatever peace Israel is able to make with the seven million Palestinians with whom it shares the land from the river to the sea, as well as the hundreds of millions of other Arabs and Muslims that live in the region, will always be an armed peace. But Israel cannot survive if it is engaged in endless, unwinnable wars with its neighbors—especially while facing the possible existential threat of a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic of Iran. Its survival requires not just a powerful deterrent but also a willingness to create political conditions under which its neighbors will find living with Israel preferable to fighting it. The choice facing Netanyahu today is ultimately a choice about taking a major step toward that future.
A Cease-Fire Deal Now Would Be a Victory for Israel
It Is Time for Netanyahu to Take Yes for an Answer
Foreign Affairs · by Graham Allison and Amos Yadlin · August 30, 2024
As U.S. negotiators press for an agreement between Israel and Hamas that would exchange hostages for a cease-fire before events ignite a wider war, will Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accept what could be a historic strategic victory for Israel?
Had any of Israel’s 13 previous prime ministers been in office today, there is no doubt that she or he would have accepted the deal that Israel designed and the United States proposed at the end of May. Indeed, if Israel’s negotiating team—led by the national security barons whose colleagues are on the front lines of this war—were the deciders, they would have accepted the terms of any of the deals that have emerged from the last three rounds of negotiations. These barons have been making it abundantly clear for months now that the deal on the table is the best strategic and moral option for Israel. These senior officials include David Barnea, the head of Israel’s foreign intelligence service, the Mossad; Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s internal security forces, the Shin Bet; Herzi Halevi, the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)); and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
By demanding more at each point in this process, Netanyahu has succeeded in extracting more from Hamas. The American “final plan” that Secretary of State Antony Blinken brought to the Middle East last week accepted much of what Netanyahu had been holding out for. That deal would begin with a six-week cease-fire, an exchange of a significant number of Israeli hostages for an even greater number of Palestinians in Israeli prisons, and Israel’s withdrawal from populated parts of the Gaza Strip. It would then lead to negotiations about a permanent cease-fire, full Israeli withdrawal, and the reconstruction of Gaza. Netanyahu told Blinken he would accept at least the first phase of the deal—before reversing course and telling his negotiators that he would not. Meanwhile, Israel’s recent preemptive strike on Hezbollah in Lebanon demonstrated its superior intelligence, its superior capabilities to attack (which enabled the destruction of 6,000 rockets and launchers), and its superior defenses (which limited damage within Israel from Hezbollah’s response to one chicken coop), strengthening Israel’s deterrent.
At this point, what more is Netanyahu waiting for? As strategic analysts, we typically focus on structural factors and are cautious about exaggerating the role played by individuals. But at this point, if Netanyahu continues rejecting an agreement that everyone except Hamas’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, has accepted, the only conclusion will be that the sole insurmountable obstacle to a cease-fire that brings Israel’s hostages home is Netanyahu’s fear of the personal consequences for himself. Netanyahu worries that the end of war in Gaza will lead to the collapse of the coalition supporting him in Israel’s Knesset, triggering new elections that he fears he will lose. He also knows that after the war comes a reckoning: in a deeply ingrained Israeli tradition, a commission of independent individuals will be ruthlessly realistic in apportioning blame for the failure to prevent Hamas’s attacks on October 7, the greatest national security failure in Israeli history. The current heads of Israel’s national security agencies have publicly acknowledged their responsibility and culpability and anticipate harsh judgments. But Netanyahu—the individual who did the most to allow Hamas to grow to its monstrous size—has been silent about his role.
WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY
A number of factors have created the current window of opportunity for Israel. First, it has defeated Hamas. Although the military campaign has gone on longer and been deadlier than it need have been, Hamas has lost most of its military leadership and more than half of its fighters and, assuming Israel has learned the right lessons, is no longer able to mount anything like the assault of October 7.
Second, U.S. President Joe Biden and his administration have stood shoulder to shoulder with Israel, providing arms, ammunition, and diplomatic cover in the United Nations and elsewhere. As Gallant rightly stated, Biden’s deployment of U.S. forces to the region to deter Iran is the single largest instance of U.S. military aid to Israel since the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Facing challenges from a rising China in Asia and a Russia that is intensifying its war against Ukraine in Europe, the current U.S. surge to the Middle East cannot be sustained indefinitely.
Third, despite the tragic loss of life caused by Israel’s war in Gaza, the transformation under way in the most important Arab nations in the Middle East crystallized on April 13, when a U.S.-coordinated multinational air defense array defeated the largest missile, rocket, and drone attack in history. Of the more than 300 weapons launched by Iran and an additional 150 unleashed by its proxies, none hit their targets. Israel’s surgical response on April 19 destroyed Iran’s most advanced air defense system, threatened Iran’s nuclear facility, and demonstrated Iran’s vulnerability. Increasingly, the Arab nations of the region, chief among them Saudi Arabia, are coming to see Iran as a greater threat to their security than Israel. When the war in Gaza is over, Saudi Arabia, the guardian of the two holy sites of Islam, is now prepared to enter into an Abraham Accords-like agreement with the United States and Israel, recognizing the state of Israel and establishing normal diplomatic relations within the framework of U.S. security guarantees for Saudi Arabia.
Finally, Israeli deterrence, which collapsed on October 7 and in the early months of war in Gaza, has been gradually restored—indeed, strengthened. Successful operations that eliminated the heads of the military wings of Hamas and Hezbollah (Mohammad Deif and Fuad Shukr), the strike on Houthi targets in the port of Hodeidah in Yemen, the successful destruction of tunnels and other routes for arms transfers along the so-called Philadelphi Corridor between Egypt and Gaza, the assassination of the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, the strikes on and successful active defense against Hezbollah—all have demonstrated Israel’s commitment to and capability of maintaining superior deterrence.
From this position of strength, an Israeli prime minister who cared more about his country’s security than his own could deliver a speech to the people of Israel:
“Israel has proven its strength and righteousness. I am leading the nation on the path to victory. Hamas in Gaza is defeated and has paid a very heavy price for the crimes of October 7. The heads of its terror armies and Hezbollah's have been eliminated, once again proving that there is no hiding place beyond our watchful eye and no place too far for our long arm. After ten months, the goals of the war have been realized. Hamas has been dismantled as an organized military arm and functioning government and cannot repeat October 7. Therefore, we are signing a hostage deal that will bring our captives home and our fallen to a proper burial in Israel.
This is the end of the war, but not the end of the campaign. I have reached an agreement with the United States that any rearmament of Hamas will be a recognized justification for Israel to renew the fighting in Gaza. I hope that the cessation of the war in Gaza will stop the fighting in the north, but we will not shy away from war if it is forced upon us by a significant response or ongoing attacks from Hezbollah and Iran. Now we are giving diplomacy a chance—to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1701, pushing Hezbollah north of the Litani River. Here too, I agreed with the United States that if the resolution is not implemented, we will receive full support for deploying the IDF to push the Shiite terrorist organization away from the northern border and to weaken its capabilities threatening Israel.
At the same time, I am advancing a historic agreement with Saudi Arabia that will come into effect immediately after the U.S. elections with bipartisan support from Democrats and Republicans. Together, we will focus on the main goal I have been speaking about for 20 years: stopping Iran’s nuclear armament and weakening the terrorist arms of Tehran and its proxies in the Middle East.’’
IF NOT PEACE, THEN WHAT?
Unfortunately, rather than declaring a victory that would allow Israelis and Americans to welcome home the hostages now dying in Hamas tunnels, Netanyahu has fallen into the trap laid by Hamas and its patron Iran. If he cannot accept victory now, he will continue down the road to strategic failure.
Netanyahu’s pursuit of “total victory” would mean continuing the war in Gaza at the price of neglecting adversaries on other fronts that now pose a greater threat to Israel than Hamas does. Continuation of the current operations in Gaza will not lead to the destruction of Hamas but will drag Israel into a prolonged and costly anti-guerrilla war and simultaneous escalation in other arenas. Hostages will continue to die in Hamas tunnels; Israel’s economy will continue to deteriorate; its status in the world will continue falling to new lows; and the legal battle in international courts will intensify. In effect, the "total victory" strategy serves Iran’s purpose: bogging Israel down in an unwinnable war of attrition in several arenas at once until it exhausts itself.
This path will also lead Israel into sharper conflict with the Biden administration, which is losing patience with Israel’s failure to follow through on commitments made as part of a jointly crafted hostage deal. Washington recognizes that the pursuit of an elusive "total victory" in Gaza will likely provoke a larger regional war that could necessitate American intervention, the last thing the administration needs in the final weeks before the November 5 U.S. presidential election.
A regional war may not be what Netanyahu intends, but it is where his actions, and inactions, are leading. The prolonged war in Gaza is fueling conflicts in six other arenas—Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Yemen—that could spark the outbreak of a multifront regional war. Such an outcome is Sinwar’s (and his Iranian patrons’) dream: war in Gaza igniting and uniting those six other fronts, creating a ring of fire around Israel that causes it to collapse from within. Israel has no viable strategy for such a scenario. Moreover, the tensions and violations within Israel itself, the most important front of all, are escalating daily: from failures to enforce the law, including resistance to drafting military-age Orthodox Jews and attempts to undermine the judiciary, to breaches of IDF bases and extremist violence against Palestinians.
Israel cannot survive if it is engaged in endless, unwinnable wars with its neighbors.
Historically, Israel has understood that wars of attrition undermine its strength (decisive power) and highlight its weakness (endurance). It must return to its proven security doctrine: short wars on enemy territory, victory in every campaign, superpower support from the United States, a regional coalition to counterbalance the extremist axis, and concentration on nation-building, economic recovery, and the overall Zionist enterprise. This strategy requires the defeat of adversaries and the removal of the threats they pose in a sequenced, prioritized manner.
What divides the prime minister from his negotiators? What specific terms in the agreement for a cease-fire in Gaza and exchange of prisoners are Israel’s national security barons prepared to accept that Netanyahu is not? The main difference is over the withdrawal of the IDF from Gaza. Since Israeli troops first entered Gaza in response to the October 7 attack, they have constructed and fortified two corridors to prevent Hamas from importing arms from Egypt or moving arms between areas in Gaza: the Philadelphi Corridor along the border between Egypt and Gaza and the Netzarim Corridor, which separates Rafah and the rest of southern Gaza from the north. Both are under constant surveillance by Israeli intelligence and patrol by IDF troops. The heads of the Mossad, the Shin Bet, and the IDF, as well as Halevi and Gallant, have all agreed that Israel could withdraw from the two corridors without compromising its security. Yet Netanyahu rejects this consensus. At a recent Sunday meeting of the government, tensions became so heated that at one point the prime minister reportedly accused his negotiators of being “weaklings.” In a weekly meeting with the families of hostages, he has repeated that Israel would not leave either the Philadelphi or Netzarim Corridors.
One possibility is that Washington would insist that this deal represents a take-it-or-leave-it offer for both Israel and Hamas. For Netanyahu, this would be a win-win scenario: if Sinwar takes the deal, it would bring all the benefits for Israel mentioned above. If Sinwar rejects it—a very real possibility—Netanyahu would emerge with reinforced U.S. support for continued action against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
ISRAEL’S UNCERTAIN FUTURE
After his failure to do so in the three months since Biden outlined his current plan, why is there any reason to hope that Netanyahu will choose the victory on offer now? He is, first and foremost, a brilliant political animal who knows how to survive, which has enabled him to become the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history. He should recognize that rather than continuing down the road to ultimate defeat for himself and his country, it is in his interest to accept the first stage of the deal now, bringing home the hostages in exchange for a 6-week cease-fire—and take his chances that as other pieces on the chessboard move in response, his options will improve.
The Knesset is on recess until October 27, which means that the two far-right blocs that have threatened to abandon and thus destroy Netanyahu’s coalition would be unable to do so for almost two months. If the first-stage cease-fire were to break down, prompting IDF forces to renew fighting in Gaza, those parties would likely rejoin Netanyahu’s coalition. But if the deal succeeded in dampening regional tensions (ensuring that neither Hezbollah nor Tehran opts for further retaliation), brought Israeli hostages home, and allowed normalization with Saudi Arabia to proceed, Netanyahu’s standing in the polls could be strong enough for him to declare victory and call another election that he would have a good chance of winning. (The approaching U.S. presidential election adds another variable that could open new options for Netanyahu.)
Israel has always been, and will remain for the foreseeable future, an embattled nation. As former Prime Minister David Ben Gurion wisely stressed, the country’s “fate depends on two things: its strength and its righteousness.” He recognized that without a strong and effective defense against the threats that surround it, Israel would be erased from the map. Yet he also recognized the necessity of upholding the values of justice and freedom that are the foundation of Israel’s identity and legitimacy as a Jewish democratic state.
Whatever peace Israel is able to make with the seven million Palestinians with whom it shares the land from the river to the sea, as well as the hundreds of millions of other Arabs and Muslims that live in the region, will always be an armed peace. But Israel cannot survive if it is engaged in endless, unwinnable wars with its neighbors—especially while facing the possible existential threat of a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic of Iran. Its survival requires not just a powerful deterrent but also a willingness to create political conditions under which its neighbors will find living with Israel preferable to fighting it. The choice facing Netanyahu today is ultimately a choice about taking a major step toward that future.
- GRAHAM ALLISON is Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard University.
- AMOS YADLIN is a retired Major General in the Israeli Air Force and served as the head of Israel’s Defense Intelligence from 2006 to 2010. He is Founder and President of MIND Israel, a consulting firm.
Foreign Affairs · by Graham Allison and Amos Yadlin · August 30, 2024
7. Kursk incursion a 'clever' operation that makes Putin look 'sort of weak:' Polish Air Force chief
"Sort of?"
One thing I would like to see is all the military models that would analyze the correlation of force and relative combat power to determine the outcome of a Ukrainian attack on Kursk. We should be analyzing the Kursk attack to see if our models are valid.
Kursk incursion a 'clever' operation that makes Putin look 'sort of weak:' Polish Air Force chief - Breaking Defense
As the US watches warily, Maj. Gen. Ireneusz Nowak told Breaking Defense that Kyiv's move "spoiled totally the perception of President Putin as a strong leader."
breakingdefense.com · by Michael Marrow · August 30, 2024
Ukrainian soldier of the assault battalion walks on the empty street of town on August 16, 2024 in Sudzha, Russia. (Photo by Taras Ibragimov/Suspilne Ukraine/JSC “UA:PBC”/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
FORT WORTH, Texas — Ukraine’s Eastern European neighbor Poland strongly supports Kyiv’s surprise incursion into Russian territory, a leading Polish military official said, describing the operation as a “clever move” that also undercuts Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I am very satisfied that Ukraine took an offensive posture right now,” Maj. Gen. Ireneusz Nowak, the general inspector of the Polish Air Force, told Breaking Defense Wednesday. “We all know that there is a very difficult situation in the Donbas region where Russia, President Putin is pressing hard to [get] the Ukrainians to step back.”
Kyiv caught much of the world, apparently including close Western allies like the US, by surprise when Ukrainian forces mounted their own offensive into Russian territory on Aug. 6, advancing quickly into the Kursk region. Officials have said the offensive so far has captured hundreds of square miles of territory and several villages, as well as scores of surrendering Russian troops.
While the offensive’s reach so far pales in comparison to the large swathes of Ukrainian territory seized by Russia since the war began, Nowak observed that the move complicates Moscow’s strategy and is an embarrassment to Putin.
“That was, I would say, a very clever move, and that was quite bright strategic thinking,” Nowak said, speaking on the sidelines of an unveiling ceremony for Poland’s first F-35. “And I support that idea a lot, because that gives not only strategic or operational dilemmas for the Russian Federation, but also that spoiled totally the perception of President Putin as a strong leader. So now he looks like a sort of weak, unpredictable leader who is not dealing well with the situation.
“So we support that, and we’ll be supporting that,” he added.
The operation has put the West in somewhat of an awkward position, given that the Biden administration has sought to restrain Kyiv from striking into Russia with US-donated weapons. Washington has eased some of those limitations recently to allow cross-border strikes, but restrictions remain on longer-range targets deep within Russia.
Ukrainian officials continue to urge the Biden administration to further relax the policy, which the White House implemented as a measure to prevent escalation. Moscow has rattled the nuclear saber throughout the conflict, and Putin, weeks before Ukraine’s surprise attack, specifically discussed unleashing the world’s largest nuclear stockpile in response to threats to Russia’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Speaking at a summit of intelligence officials on Wednesday in Washington, CIA Deputy Director David Cohen said that while “the significance remains to be seen,” the new Ukrainian offensive would cause problems for the Russians.
Though Kyiv does not appear to have plans to attempt to annex the territory like Russia has in eastern Ukraine, Cohen said it still aims to hold it for some time, likely meaning a counterattack by the Russians is inevitable. As Ukraine is “building defenses”, it’s a fight that Cohen said would be “difficult” for Russia.
More broadly, Cohen noted that the operation seemed to contradict some of Putin’s own calculations, including the idea that the war would continually shift in Moscow’s favor as Russia grinds down Ukrainian resistance and as the potential for Western support wanes.
“Putin is going to have to face not only the fact that there’s a front line now within Russian territory… he has to deal with the reverberations back in his own society that they have lost a piece of Russian territory,” Cohen said. “And I think that has the potential to change the dynamic a little bit going forward.”
Lee Ferran in Washington contributed to this story
breakingdefense.com · by Michael Marrow · August 30, 2024
8. From Kabul to keel laying: Afghan immigrants find new careers at US shipyards
If Americans will not take jobs to build our ships it is fortunate that we have immigrants who are willing to do so.
Excerpts (which perhaps explains why more Americans are not seeking work in shipyards).:
In the beginning, Noori didn’t think he’d stick with the job. He questioned whether he’d enjoy working in the bustling, noisy environment of the shipyard, exposed to bad weather and potential hazards. However, Noori quickly found that his curious, detail-oriented nature made him a good fit for the quality assurance job, and grew to “really like” the process of surveying the ship, measuring each part to ensure it meets specifications, he said.
“Now I think I found that career for myself,” he said.
From Kabul to keel laying: Afghan immigrants find new careers at US shipyards - Breaking Defense
breakingdefense.com · by Valerie Insinna · August 29, 2024
A graphic showing a ship welder and the flag of Afghanistan. (Breaking Defense graphic, original images via Getty)
WASHINGTON — In 2020, as the Taliban was on the rise, Rafiullah Noori and his family uprooted from Afghanistan seeking a safer, more promising future in Northern Virginia. But Noori’s hopes for getting a college education were quickly crushed by the COVID-19 pandemic and economic realities, and he found himself delivering food for DoorDash.
Noori, then 20 years old, was desperate to find more stable work when one of his friends told him about the Accelerated Training in Defense Manufacturing program, a US Navy-funded training effort in Danville, Va., aimed at teaching adult students the manufacturing skills in high demand by the shipbuilding industry — especially the beleaguered submarine industrial base.
Four years later, he’s helping to build the National Security Multi-Mission Vessel, clocking in at Philly Shipyard every morning to do quality control for ships that will be used to train future merchant marine officers.
For Noori, whose father worked at the US embassy in Kabul, the opportunity allowed him to build what he called a “real career.”
“This industry changed my life,” he told Breaking Defense. (Breaking Defense is using a pseudonym for Noori at his request, as his extended family remains in Afghanistan.)
Noori is one of a handful of Afghan immigrants who have found a new life in the shipbuilding industry following the United States’ exit from Afghanistan and subsequent Taliban takeover of the country three years ago.
Afghan immigrants “have embraced patriotism and support for America, and often have done so with some significant personal risk,” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., told Breaking Defense. “The fact that they’ve come here to start this new chapter in the US, and have decided, ‘Hey, look, I’ve been serving the security needs of the United States. Why don’t I continue to do that in a new way?’
“It’s enormously gratifying, and I think it’s a little bit of an indication of the fact that our defense industrial base is being creative and innovative.”
It’s also an injection of new blood into the shipbuilding industry at a time where it’s sorely needed. After years of consolidation and amid the retirement of its experienced workforce, the shipbuilding sector is starving for blue-collar talent to build new submarines and surface vessels in hot demand by the US Navy, US Coast Guard and the Maritime Administration.
Recruiting from the Afghan community is hardly a comprehensive solution for an industry that needs to hire tens of thousands of workers. But advocates see it as a potential path forward for the shipbuilding sector, both to help ease the labor shortage now and for the model it could provide for other immigrant groups in the future.
“This group of people don’t have anything and are coming here, that is a great motivation for somebody to learn a skill and do the best they can for their families,” Michael Giantomaso, Philly Shipyard’s manager of human relations, said of the Afghans looking for opportunities in shipbuilding. “All of our ancestors were immigrants at one point. And when you come over, you’ve got to start by learning a skill.”
Small Numbers, Big Potential
Noori found a job at Philly Shipyard through one of two programs that are a small but intriguing portion of a larger multi-million dollar jobs campaign by the Navy and shipbuilding industry.(Philly Shipyard doesn’t build Navy warships, but the shipyard has been of interest to Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro as he has emphasized the importance of both naval and commercial shipbuilding.)
Noori attended a sixteen-week training program at the Virginia-based Accelerated Training in Defense Manufacturing (ATDM) institute, which has special resources in place for Afghan students in addition to the broader program. There’s also Philly Shipyard’s apprenticeship program, which recently started recruiting Afghans to take part in its latest class.
Neither ATDM or the Philly Shipyard programs were purpose-built for Afghan immigrants, but both have deliberately sought out Afghan participants. According to Rob Gorham, founder and chief executive of the nonprofit BlueForge Alliance, that’s because these programs see a chance to bolster numbers at shipbuilders and their supply chain while at the same time providing job opportunities to a population that may have previously worked to advance American interests during the Global War on Terror — often endangering their own lives or those of their loved ones in the process.
BlueForge Alliance, which is based in Texas, works as lead integrator for Navy and industry efforts to boost the submarine industrial base. The group said in a statement that it closely oversees the Philly Shipyard’s apprenticeship program, awarding funding in partnership with the US Navy that assisted in the hiring of Afghan apprentices and expanding current class sizes.
The numbers are still small. Afghan immigrants — like Noori, a graduate of ATDM — make up a miniscule portion of the overwhelmingly American group of students at the institute, said ATDM director Debra Holley. Of the 614 total people who have graduated the program since 2021, only 26 are Afghan immigrants and only 14 have moved into the shipbuilding industry. Only one Afghan participant is currently enrolled in the current session, running from August to December 2024.
Meanwhile, Philly Shipyard began recruiting Afghans as part of its most recent apprenticeship class, which started late 2023 and runs for three years total, said Giantomaso, who helps manage the apprenticeship program. BlueForge said seven Afghan immigrants were hired in the current cohort, and are currently undergoing their first year in the program.
Those numbers hardly put a dent into the amount of employees needed to reconstitute the submarine industrial base over the next 10 years — a requirement estimated to include about 100,000 blue-collar workers at General Dynamics Electric Boat and HII, the two main yards that produce submarines, as well as an additional 17,000 employees throughout the supply chain.
Other shipbuilders are also in the midst of a hiring spree, with Austal in January 2023 announcing plans to hire 1,200 workers over 18 months, according to Alabama news outlet AL.com.
But Gorham argued that, given shipbuilders’ recruitment challenges, the small success of introducing several dozen Afghan immigrants to the shipbuilding industry should be celebrated alongside other workforce development initiatives that attracted 10,000 new workers over the past year.
“We are literally competing with fast food. There are signs on some of these fast food restaurants that say, ‘Hey, come work for me and I’ll pay you 50 grand,’” Gorham said.
U.S. Air Force loadmasters and pilots assigned to the 816th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, load passengers aboard a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III in support of the Afghanistan evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA), Afghanistan, Aug. 24, 2021. (U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Donald R. Allen)
New Skills For a New Start
While China has expanded its shipbuilding industrial base, public and private shipyards in the United States have weathered fluctuations in defense spending as well as an overall decline in commercial shipbuilding that has led to a contraction in the shipbuilding industrial base, the Pentagon said in its national defense industrial strategy released earlier this year.
Those conditions have resulted in a shipbuilding workforce that isn’t sized to meet current demands, particularly the submarine industrial base, which “requires unique skill sets and extensive training — such as nuclear welding — that is proving difficult to acquire,” the Pentagon said in the strategy. As of fiscal year 2022, the Navy was about 1,200 workers short at its public shipyards.
Training initiatives like ATDM and Philly Shipyard’s apprenticeship program provide interested candidates a way to break into the shipbuilding industry without having to pay for technical training out of pocket.
Ahmad was a journalist working for publications like Voice of America and the Associated Press before he said he was forced to leave Afghanistan in September 2021 after the Taliban took control of the country. Like Noori, he ended up attending ATDM after his arrival in the US. (Breaking Defense is using a pseudonym for Ahmad at his request, as his family remains in Afghanistan.)
For him, ATDM provided a way to learn a trade — in his case, additive manufacturing — without having to worry about how to pay for housing or transportation expenses.
Most of the Afghans who have gone through the program are former members of the Afghan military or have worked closely with the US military or government, said Ahmad, who now works for ATDM as an interpreter and liaison for Afghan students currently going through the program.
Beyond seeking new skills that can lead to stable, well-paying employment, “they really want to serve this country as well,” he said. “There are some [former] students who have been working for SIB [submarine industrial base] companies for more than two years. …They’re really happy.”
Beyond additive manufacturing, students can learn trades such as machining, welding and quality control — the course Noori took — and also receive training on soft skills such as resume building and job interviews.
ATDM, which will train 576 people in 2024, aims to scale up its throughput to a thousand students a year by 2026, Holley said. About 86 percent of students finish the program, and 91 percent of the latest class of graduates found jobs in the shipbuilding industry, mostly with companies deeper in the supply chain rather than prime contractors like Electric Boat or HII.
However, it’s difficult to scale up Afghan participation in the program in part because of strict requirements that program participants be either US citizens or have a permanent work visa, Holley said.
Language is another barrier: While all participants are required to know English, Afghan students may not be familiar with manufacturing terminology, including some words that may not have a direct translation in their native Farsi. Ahmad has translated technical manuals and instructional videos into Farsi to help Afghan students pick up manufacturing skills more efficiently, but most Afghan students are still coming into the program with little to no experience in the trades they are learning.
Overall, Holley said ATDM has been successful at helping its Afghan graduates find careers in the shipbuilding industry, “It just takes a little more matching and talking with the companies about what their citizenship status is, what job openings they have — just a little more finesse.”
At Philly Shipyard, Giantomaso noted that Afghan workers in the program are already receiving union pay and benefits as they learn one of five disciplines: shipbuilding, welding, outfitting, machine operation and maintenance.
The company is hopeful that, if its first cohort of Afghan apprentices is able to get through the program and begin working their way through up the ladder, they can help recruit new prospects from among their families, friends and neighbors and make the shipbuilding industry more attractive to the Afghan diaspora, Giantomaso said.
Around 100 Afghan candidates had expressed interest in the program last year, but an overwhelming majority dropped out during the recruitment phase after touring a ship and observing working conditions where employees are subjected to an outdoor industrial environment.
“That doesn’t mean we’re not going to try it again,” he said.
A petroleum tanker stands while being built at the Aker Philadelphia Shipyard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., on Tuesday, June 19, 2012. The shipyard, the largest manufacturing business in Philadelphia, employs up to 1,200 workers and generates $230 million annually to the regional economy, according to their website. Photographer: Bradley C. Bower/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Opening The Spigot
With the United States in dire need of workers, several top officials on Capitol Hill and within the Navy have asked: Why not build a new manufacturing corps from the millions of people hoping to immigrate to America?
In April, Del Toro, the Navy’s top civilian, called on lawmakers to “open up the spigot on legal immigration” to allow blue-collar workers to move to the United States and take shipbuilding jobs, according to Janes.
The idea has also been bolstered by Rep. Adam Smith — the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee — who said during an American Enterprise Institute event in May that the United States is “overwhelmed with the sheer volume of people who are coming at our borders” while it faces a “massive workforce shortage” in certain industries.
“What could we possibly do here that might help address those two issues? We can issue some work visas and we can bring some people in and train them to work in a variety of different areas,” Smith said, adding that the “defense industrial base and shipbuilding [is a] pretty good place to start, because there’s a huge need and that’s part of the reason that we’re falling behind.”
Speaking to Breaking Defense this week, Kaine said he agreed that the United States needs broad workforce-based immigration reform to meet American labor needs not only in the realm of shipbuilding, but also in areas such as agriculture, health care, hospitality and other construction and manufacturing trades.
“The refusal to do that will start to be a real choke point on American productivity,” he said.
Just as ATDM could be a model for other shipbuilding workforce development programs, Kaine posited that its outreach to immigrants could also be duplicated for the thousands of Ukrainian humanitarian parolees who were admitted to the United States after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“They’re passionate about protecting Ukrainian democracy, and they have a gratitude that the US is trying to do that,” Kaine said. “That could be a really good source for potential workers.”
With training from ATDM, finding employment was no problem for Noori, who said he was given a job offer from Philly Shipyard shortly before his graduation from the institute in May 2023. He began work at the shipyard two months later — a start date he intentionally prolonged so that he could go back to Afghanistan for his brother’s wedding.
In the beginning, Noori didn’t think he’d stick with the job. He questioned whether he’d enjoy working in the bustling, noisy environment of the shipyard, exposed to bad weather and potential hazards. However, Noori quickly found that his curious, detail-oriented nature made him a good fit for the quality assurance job, and grew to “really like” the process of surveying the ship, measuring each part to ensure it meets specifications, he said.
“Now I think I found that career for myself,” he said.
breakingdefense.com · by Valerie Insinna · August 29, 2024
9. The Rise, Decline, and Possible Resurrection of China’s Confucius Institutes
In response to this question: "Can they rebrand and rise again under very different circumstances?"
Only if we are allowed to establish "Lincoln Institutes" throughout all of China (and Tibet).
The Rise, Decline, and Possible Resurrection of China’s Confucius Institutes
thediplomat.com
CIs grew rapidly in the early years, thanks to a favorable geopolitical environment toward China. Can they rebrand and rise again under very different circumstances?
By Si-yuan Li and Kenneth King
August 24, 2024
In this Oct. 22, 2015, file photo, Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks as he attends the opening of the UCL Institute of Education Confucius Institute annual conference in London, the United Kingdom.
Credit: AP Photo/Alastair Grant
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This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Confucius Institute – established by the Chinese government to promote the Chinese language, culture, and a positive image of China globally. Confucius Institutes rapidly expanded to more than 500 centers across 160 countries in little over a decade, becoming a central component of China’s international language and culture promotion (ILCP) strategy.
Yet their development has not been unchallenged. Over the past decade, Confucius Institutes have faced setbacks, most notably in the United States, where at least 100 have closed. These closures led to a major overhaul of the management structure of Confucius Institutes in June 2020, when the Chinese International Education Foundation (CIEF) was established as the effective brand holder, while the former headquarters was dissolved and replaced by the Centre for Language Education and Cooperation (CLEC). These changes marked a shift toward decentralization.
The initial rapid growth of Confucius Institutes was attributable to the favorable geopolitical environment toward China during the early years of the initiative. Under President Hu Jintao, China adopted a diplomatic philosophy of “tao guang yang hui” (hiding capabilities and keeping a low profile), emphasizing soft power as a means for its peaceful rise.
Confucius Institutes were intended as a bridge to reinforce friendship and cooperation between China and the world, with the project benefiting from substantial financial and human resources provided by the Chinese government. Its joint venture model – which involved partnerships between Chinese universities and host universities – allowed Confucius Institutes to be integrated within local academic institutions, utilizing their existing facilities and resources while attracting substantial funding from China. This model facilitated the rapid establishment of Confucius Institutes, particularly in Western countries, where China sought to improve relations and foster cooperation despite differing political ideologies.
Internationally, the rise of China and its growing influence created a demand for knowledge about China and the Chinese language. This was particularly evident in the United States in the early 2000s, when the two countries enjoyed relatively good relations. The rapid expansion of Confucius Institutes was widely seen as a reflection of China’s growing soft power during this period, with the initiative providing an avenue for promoting Chinese culture and language and offering institutions a chance to partner with Chinese universities.
Partly because of this dramatic expansion, however, Confucius Institutes faced increasing scrutiny and criticism, particularly in the U.S. Some critics argued that the project served as a tool for Chinese propaganda, raising concerns over academic freedom and the potential for political influence. This occurred as China’s rise had begun to shift the power balance between China and the West, resulting in an increasingly hardline approach toward China in Washington.
Under the Obama administration (2009-2017), the U.S. strategic “pivot” to Asia aimed at balancing against or containing China, and marked the beginning of a more critical stance toward Confucius Institutes. In 2012, for example, a U.S. Department of State directive led to the temporary expulsion of Chinese teachers in Confucius Institutes over visa issues, signaling growing unease within the administration about Confucius Institutes in U.S. universities.
Under the Trump administration (2017-2021), this scrutiny dramatically intensified, resulting in a wave of Confucius Institute closures across the United States. The mechanism that the Trump administration used to shut down Confucius Institutes was principally the threat of withdrawal of federal funding from universities. For example, a Confucius Institute’s former oversight committee member at one U.S. university explained to the authors how the passing of an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) in 2019 forced U.S. universities to make a choice between substantial federal funding and China’s smaller Confucius Institute funding.
The committee member explained that in order to receive U.S. federal funding, “the University would need a waiver to prove that no federal funding would support Chinese language instruction, but this was challenging because funding is often fungible.” The committee member added, “Government grants typically cover the overhead of entire university. Separating the funding to ensure that none of it benefited the CI [Confucius Institute] posed difficulties.”
The committee member further explained how “there was no established process for waivers, which could take years to resolve. Consequently, [funding agencies] decided to stop accepting grant applications from any institutions with a CI until new procedures were established.”
The outcome was often the closure of the Confucius Institute. The committee member stated, “…Considering the University’s significant stake in such grants, compared with the much smaller Chinese funding for the CI, this price was deemed too high. Therefore, the committee agreed to close down the CI. Even though the focus seemed limited to the language itself, the objective was to ultimately shut down the CIs.”
Under the Biden administration, similar policies on Confucius Institutes have continued to be enforced, including under the NDAA (2021), the Innovation and Competition Act (2021), and the Confucius Act (2021). Clearly, for higher education institutions in the United States that hosted a Confucius Institute, closing the institute was often an easier solution than lengthy rule-checking or applying for waivers. Following on from the U.S. lead, countries such as Australia, Germany, India, Japan, and the U.K. have all launched reviews or imposed pressure on Confucius Institutes. Meanwhile, Confucius Institutes in the developing world, India aside, have continued to develop robustly during the period of China’s rise.
In response to the growing challenge to Confucius Institutes, particularly in the United States, China has undertaken a major overhaul of its ILCP strategy since mid-2020, signaling a shift toward decentralization in three aspects.
Administratively, the CIEF, the CLEC, and other similar initiatives such as ChinesePlus and the China Center for International People-to-People Exchange (CCIPE), have been established to share the former responsibilities of the Confucius Institute headquarters.
Politically, there has been an effort to disassociate the new management system of the Confucius Institute from the Chinese central government, resulting in the diminished official political status of the new ILCP initiatives. Financially, compared to the centralized fiscal role assigned to the former Confucius Institute headquarters in China’s previous ILCP strategy, at least five decentralized sources of funding for revamped Confucius Institutes can be identified: the CIEF, a Chinese partner, a local partner, the CLEC, and income from individual Confucius Institutes.
The outcome of this new strategy, however, remains uncertain. It has, so far, not significantly altered critics’ perception of Confucius Institutes. It has also caused confusion and resistance within the Confucius Institute administrative system, while additionally complicating funding arrangements and casting doubts on the funding capability of the CIEF.
While decentralization may have reduced the scrutiny and criticism previously directed at Confucius Institutes, it has not fully resolved the broader issues of trust and suspicion that have emerged between China and the West, particularly in the United States.
The evolving story of Confucius Institutes from a positive global symbol of China’s soft power to a contested initiative highlights the challenges of promoting cultural diplomacy in a complex, ever-changing, and sometimes hostile international environment. The future success of the Confucius Institute and China’s revised ILCP strategy will depend on broader geopolitical dynamics and the ability of China to rebuild trust and cooperation with the United States.
In this sense, the decades-long involvement with China by Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz – since he taught in China in the late 1980s – raises the possibility that the outlook could still alter somewhat. A victory for the Harris-Walz campaign in the U.S. election in November might begin to change the China narrative in ways that could help in the rebuilding of the United States’ more than 100 lost Confucius Institutes.
This article is based on the findings of a research paper published in The Pacific Review; an international relations journal covering the interactions of the countries of the Asia-Pacific.
Authors
Guest Author
Si-yuan Li
Si-yuan Li is a researcher at Northwest University in Xi’an, China. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Leeds, focusing on the role of Confucius Institutes in China-Africa relations.
Guest Author
Kenneth King
Kenneth King is emeritus professor in the School of Education and in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh.
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thediplomat.com
10. Former analyst decries CIA politicization of intelligence, new levels of activism under Biden
A very serious allegation. I look forward to reading comments from others with experience in the CIA and the IC more broadly.
Former analyst decries CIA politicization of intelligence, new levels of activism under Biden
washingtontimes.com · by Bill Gertz
By - The Washington Times - Friday, August 30, 2024
Politicization of intelligence at the CIA reached new levels of activism under President Biden, according to an academic analysis of recent political influence within the agency.
John A. Gentry, a former CIA analyst who has written extensively on the topic, stated in a recent journal article that the problem accelerated during the Trump administration when current and former intelligence officials worked to undermine Mr. Trump and his presidency through leaks and public statements.
Mr. Gentry compared current politicization at the CIA to three past periods: the debate over the Vietnam War, the Reagan administration in the 1980s and the George W. Bush administration in 2003 and 2004.
“In summary, the recent wave was much larger, lasted longer, and differed qualitatively in important ways from earlier episodes,” Mr. Gentry wrote in the current issue of the journal Comparative Strategy. “The overt activism of the Trump years receded soon after President Biden, … but the re-engineered CIA culture remains untouched. It simply is now quiet. Indeed, Biden’s actions seem to have strengthened it appreciably.”
Political activism by current and former CIA employees has shocked many American intelligence officers and people generally, he said.
Overt, intelligence-rationalized partisanship was quietly opposed by many professional intelligence officers but applauded by others who regarded it as a needed counter to Mr. Trump and his policies, Mr. Gentry said.
Former President Barack Obama was blamed by the former CIA analyst for setting in motion the current politicization through personnel diversity policies that Mr. Gentry said favored race and gender considerations over merit. The CIA under John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also faced criticism for allegedly promoting political activism among spies and analysts.
Past politicization included “cooking the books” for intelligence analysis to alter policies, and politicians who twisted intelligence to influence policy.
The current activism involves a stronger version of the first type, with intelligence critics invoking their credentials to rationalize partisan policy advocacy, that Mr. Gentry says violates the traditional approach of apolitical intelligence.
“The Obama/Clapper/Brennan strategy of politicizing the [intelligence community], as part of the broader, publicly stated program to change the federal workforce and the country, successfully altered both the demography and the organizational culture of CIA in politically significant ways,” Mr. Gentry wrote. “In sharp contrast, all previous senior [intelligence] leaders sought to keep the agencies apolitical, meaning they strenuously opposed the kind of politicization that Obama and his subordinates promoted.”
President Biden then “re-energized and expanded Obama-era personnel polices throughout the federal government by issuing a series of aggressive executive orders to push an expanded ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ agenda,” he said.
Mr. Gentry said the era when an apolitical CIA served all presidents impartially is over: “Whatever may occur in the future, it is now clear that the CIA is a radically different agency than the one that served the country generally well for many decades before 2011.”
• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.
Copyright © 2024 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
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washingtontimes.com · by Bill Gertz
11. American Stockholm syndrome: When politics becomes psychological warfare
A provocative essay with an interesting "thesis."
I need to reflect on this some more.
Excerpts:
Stockholm syndrome traditionally describes a condition in which hostages develop a psychological bond with their captors, often to the point of defending them. This bond arises from a survival instinct, where the captive’s dependence on the captor for life-or-death decisions leads to misplaced trust and loyalty. The new variant, however, operates on a different axis — one of informational dependency and psychological manipulation through repeated exposure to false or misleading narratives, coupled with a lack of critical thinking and intellectual curiosity.
Misinformation refers to false information spread regardless of intent to mislead, while disinformation is deliberately deceptive. Both forms have proliferated in the digital age, exacerbated by social media platforms and biased news outlets. These platforms use sophisticated algorithms to curate content that reinforces existing beliefs, creating echo chambers where falsehoods can thrive unchallenged. In this environment, individuals often find themselves emotionally and intellectually captive to the sources of their information.
Several psychological mechanisms explain why misinformation can have such a powerful grip on individuals.
American Stockholm syndrome: When politics becomes psychological warfare
by Richard Carmona, opinion contributor - 08/31/24 11:00 AM ET
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4855545-stockholm-syndrome-psychological-warfare-disinformation/
This op-ed is part of The Hill’s “How to Fix America” series exploring solutions to some of the country’s most pressing problems.
Many years ago, when I was a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier in combat, we used covert dissemination of disinformation to disrupt our adversaries or even cause them to align with U.S. interests. These psychological operations or psyops techniques, when used effectively, can become invisible weapons by mobilizing civil unrest and undermining trust in organizational structures.
Decades later, as the U.S. surgeon general, I began to notice these psychological warfare techniques being used increasingly on an unsuspecting U.S. electorate by domestic political operators attempting to capture their political allegiance. Now, the seeds of this psychological warfare have germinated and grown, threatening the security of our fragile, ever evolving democracy.
In recent years, a new variant of Stockholm syndrome has emerged — one that doesn’t involve physical captivity but mental ensnarement through misinformation and disinformation, spread through tabloid media, online platforms and cable news.
This modern phenomenon is not confined to a single hostage but has spread like a contagion, dividing families, communities and even the nation. The relentless spread of misinformation has fostered a form of cognitive captivity that perpetuates political divisions despite overwhelming evidence that should unify people.
Stockholm syndrome traditionally describes a condition in which hostages develop a psychological bond with their captors, often to the point of defending them. This bond arises from a survival instinct, where the captive’s dependence on the captor for life-or-death decisions leads to misplaced trust and loyalty. The new variant, however, operates on a different axis — one of informational dependency and psychological manipulation through repeated exposure to false or misleading narratives, coupled with a lack of critical thinking and intellectual curiosity.
Misinformation refers to false information spread regardless of intent to mislead, while disinformation is deliberately deceptive. Both forms have proliferated in the digital age, exacerbated by social media platforms and biased news outlets. These platforms use sophisticated algorithms to curate content that reinforces existing beliefs, creating echo chambers where falsehoods can thrive unchallenged. In this environment, individuals often find themselves emotionally and intellectually captive to the sources of their information.
Several psychological mechanisms explain why misinformation can have such a powerful grip on individuals.
Confirmation bias, for instance, leads people to seek out information that confirms their preexisting beliefs and ignore evidence that contradicts them. Cognitive dissonance, the mental discomfort experienced when confronted with conflicting information, often results in people doubling down on their beliefs rather than accepting inconvenient truths.
Moreover, misinformation often preys on emotional triggers such as fear, anger and a sense of belonging. Fear-mongering content can make individuals feel threatened, leading them to cling more tightly to their beliefs and to those who promulgate and or share them. This creates a psychological safety net akin to the emotional bonds formed in traditional Stockholm syndrome, where the captives defend the captors who they believe are protecting them from harm.
The impact of this new variant of Stockholm syndrome on American politics is profound. Despite clear and compelling evidence debunking various falsehoods — such as misinformation about election integrity, vaccine efficacy or climate change — large segments of the population remain entrenched in their misguided, and sometimes toxic, views.
This divide is not just about differing opinions but about conflicting realities, where facts are secondary to the narratives people have been conditioned to believe. Politicians and media personalities who traffic in misinformation exploit these psychological vulnerabilities, further entrenching divisions. They become the captors in this modern-day syndrome, and their followers — the captives — often vehemently defend them against criticism, and facts. This dynamic erodes the foundation of democratic discourse, which relies on a shared understanding and commitment to truth and reality.
Addressing this new variant of Stockholm syndrome requires a multifaceted approach. First, media literacy must be prioritized in education to equip individuals with critical thinking skills, which are needed to discern credible information from falsehoods. Schools and community programs can play a pivotal role in teaching people how to identify and challenge misinformation.
Second, social media platforms and tech companies must take greater responsibility for the content they disseminate. This includes improving algorithms to promote credible sources and fact-checking information as well as providing clear warning about misinformation.
Third, fostering open dialogue and empathy can help bridge the divide. Encouraging conversations that are respectful and rooted in genuine desire to understand different perspectives can weaken the emotional bonds that fuel misinformation-driven divisions.
Finally, leaders and influencers must commit to truth and transparency, setting a standard that prioritizes facts over misdirecting narratives. When political figures and media personalities model integrity and accountability, they can help dismantle the psychological chains of misinformation.
This new variant of Stockholm syndrome poses a significant challenge to our democracy and our nation’s unity and collective health. By understanding the psychological mechanisms at play and implementing strategies to combat them, we can begin to heal the divides that have been fueled by false narratives.
It is a collective effort that requires commitment from individuals, educators, tech companies and leaders to prioritize truth and foster a culture of informed and empathetic discourse. Only then can we hope to break free from the cognitive captivity that is polarizing our nation.
Richard Carmona, MD, MPH, FACS, the 17th surgeon general of the United States, is a Distinguished Laureate Professor at the University of Arizona.
Tags Disinformation misinformation Politics Psychological warfare Stockholm syndrome
12. Green Berets storm building after hacking its Wi-Fi
Green Berets storm building after hacking its Wi-Fi
Relax, it's just a drill. This time at least.
theregister.com · by Iain Thomson Fri 30 Aug 2024 // 21:00 UTC
US Army Special Forces, aka the Green Berets, have been demonstrating their hacking chops in the recent Swift Response 24 military exercises in May, the military has now confirmed.
The elite team, one of whose remits is unconventional warfare, includes Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA), highly trained, mature soldiers with intensively honed skills. These now include hacking, as the military demonstrated with a target building near Skillingaryd in Sweden stormed by members of the 10th Special Forces Group.
"What this allows us to do is target an objective, use the signaling equipment to gain access to any Wi-Fi networks originating at the target, and then monitor activity from that location for a period of time," an identity-protected ODA team member explained.
“It’s a very useful tool for us, because it gives us another set of eyes and helps to paint a clearer picture of our objective.”
Prepping the way for an attack. Source: Sgt. 1st Class Tim Beery - Click to enlarge
The building in question was scanned using an unnamed remote access device (RAD) to identify the Wi-Fi networks running its security systems from what looks like an undercover van. After cracking the password, the team moved around the network, shutting off CCTV cameras, opening secured doors, and disabling other security systems.
In the second phase of the attack, another team parachuted in seven miles from the target, reconnoitered the area, entered the now unsecured building, and left "signal jamming equipment to clear any trace of the attack." Judging from the released photos, they also left a laptop behind playing Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up; just because you're an elite trooper doesn't mean you can't have a sense of humor.
The laptop on the left appears to be rickrolling Green Berets-style. Source: Sgt. 1st Class Tim Beery - Click to enlarge
“In a real-world situation, this would allow us to gain information in a way that we haven’t always had,” explained the commander of the digital ODA team. “If we have a specific target or objective we need to reach, we now have the capability to glean critical information in a way that is undetectable if we do our jobs right."
While the war in Ukraine has shown the much-expanded use of drones in the field, much of the hacking operations have been carried out behind the lines. At last year's Black Hat conference, CISA director Jen Easterly detailed how Russia's attempt to cripple Ukraine electronically had largely failed, thanks to help from the US and others, but this is one of the first times we've seen front-line hacking.
Youtube Video
Swift Response 24 is part of a larger NATO training session designed to demonstrate how the alliance will work together in the event of an attack on a member state, and it's the first time that new members of the defensive alliance - Finland and Sweden - have taken part in operations.
It's one of the largest such drills in years, using more than 17,000 US and 23,000 multinational service members, and sends a pretty clear signal to countries such as Russia that NATO stands ready in case of an attack. ®
theregister.com · by Iain Thomson Fri 30 Aug 2024 // 21:00 UTC
13. 7 US troops hurt in raid that killed 15 ISIS fighters
7 US troops hurt in raid that killed 15 ISIS fighters
American and Iraqi forces carried out the early morning raid targeting ISIS leaders in western Iraq.
Nicholas Slayton
Posted on Aug 31, 2024 11:39 AM EDT
3 minute read
taskandpurpose.com · by Nicholas Slayton
American and Iraqi forces killed more than a dozen ISIS fighters in a raid this week targeting leaders of the terrorist group. The operation, done early in the morning on Aug. 29, killed 15 ISIS fighters, according to U.S. Central Command, but seven American service members were injured as well, according to reports.
The operation was done in western Iraq, according to CENTCOM, and the joint American and Iraqi force took on ISIS fighters armed with “numerous weapons, grenades, and explosive ‘suicide’ belts,” although the U.S. did not say how many total ISIS fighters were engaged. No civilians were reported injured in the raid.
“This operation targeted ISIS leaders to disrupt and degrade ISIS’ ability to plan, organize, and conduct attacks against Iraqi civilians, as well as U.S. citizens, allies, and partners throughout the region and beyond,” CENTCOM said in its statement.
CENTCOM, as it often does in these types of announcements, was vague on specifics of the operation. However, Iraqi security forces shared some details in their own statement. The mission involved airstrikes followed by an “airborne operation” in the Anbar Province. 14 ISIS members, including an unspecified number of “important leaders” were killed, the Iraqi military said on X.
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The Associated Press, citing an unnamed defense official, reported that seven American troops were injured during the raid, five in combat and two in falls. All are stable, the official told the Associated Press. Neither CENTCOM or the Iraqi military mentioned American injuries during the operation.
Despite forcing ISIS from its last urban base in Baghouz, Syria in 2019, ISIS remains active in the Middle East and abroad, and the United States and its partner forces regularly carry out airstrikes or raids on its operatives. Even in the face of continued pressure, ISIS has increased the rate of its attacks in Iraq and Syria; the number of terror attacks in the first half of 2024 was higher than the total number of incidents in 2023. CENTCOM has said it estimates approximately 2,500 ISIS fighters are active in the region. American and partner forces have launched more than 200 raids so far this year against ISIS, as part of Operation Inherent Resolve.
The latest on Task & Purpose
Contributing Editor
Nicholas Slayton is a Contributing Editor for Task & Purpose. In addition to covering breaking news, he writes about history, shipwrecks, and the military’s hunt for unidentified anomalous phenomenon (formerly known as UFOs). He currently runs the Task & Purpose West Coast Bureau from Los Angeles.
14. The Army's 75th Ranger Regiment 'Lead the Way' For a Reason: They are Unstoppable
The Army's 75th Ranger Regiment 'Lead the Way' For a Reason: They are Unstoppable
The National Interest · by Stavros Atlamazoglou · August 31, 2024
Summary and Key Points: The 75th Ranger Regiment is the U.S. military's premier light infantry special operations unit, known for its rapid response capabilities and elite status within the armed forces.
-Divided into three line battalions and a special purpose battalion, the Regiment has evolved from a supporting role to leading high-value missions during the Global War on Terror.
-While graduates of the U.S. Army Ranger School earn the Ranger Tab and can call themselves "Rangers," only those who pass the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program (RASP) and serve in the 75th Ranger Regiment wear the Tan beret and are considered part of this elite unit.
Inside the 75th Ranger Regiment: America’s Elite Rapid Response Unit
“Rangers lead the way.”
That is the motto of the U.S. Rangers. And perhaps it is best personified in the 75th Ranger Regiment.
The 75th Ranger Regiment
Considered the best light infantry special operations unit in the world, the 75th Ranger Regiment forms part of the U.S. military’s tip of the spear.
Divided into three line battalions and one special purpose battalion, the 75th Ranger Regiment is America’s 911 unit in the event of a contingency. One line battalion is always on call and can respond anywhere in the world in a few hours.
During the Global War on Terror (GWOT), the 75th Ranger Regiment changed its identity. Before the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the 75th Ranger Regiment was treated as the redheaded step child of the special operations community. Seldom alone and with a side role in major operations, the 75th Ranger Regiment was relegated to capturing airfields or pulling security for Delta Force, the Army’s tier 1 special missions unit.
But the demands of the conflict and the expanded counterterrorism role of the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) during the GWOT conflicts meant that everyone had to step up their game. And that included the Rangers. Before long, the 75th Ranger Regiment was running missions on its own and against very high value targets. Indeed, targets that only a few years before would be the purview of Delta Force or SEAL Team Six.
A Word About Rangers
There is a common misunderstanding around the title “Ranger.”
Everyone who has graduated from the U.S. Army Ranger School gains the privilege of calling himself or herself (women have started graduating from the course) a “Ranger.” Ranger School is the premier leadership course in the Army, and most combat arms officers and many non-commissioned officers go there to receive the coveted Ranger Tab.
The 62-day course is so effective in developing good leadership skills through extreme physical hardship and food and sleep deprivation that other services, including the Marine Corps and Navy, are known to send a select number of their troops. Indeed, it is not uncommon for Ranger School graduates to lose 20 and 30 lbs during the course.
However, it does not mean that these Rangers serve on the 75th Ranger Regiment. As a separate, and special operations, unit the 75th Ranger Regiment holds its own selection program. The current version is called the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program (RASP), and all prospective members of the Regiment need to pass it regardless of their rank. Moreover, to hold any sort of leadership position in the 75th Ranger Regiment, a commando needs to graduate from the Ranger School.
So, there are Ranger-qualified troops who have graduated from the Ranger School and wear the coveted Ranger Tab spread through the Army (and some of the other services). And there are also Rangers who serve in the 75th Ranger Regiment and wear the coveted Tan beret, and a good portion of them have also graduated from the Ranger School. Both can be called Rangers, but it is not exactly the same.
About the Author
Stavros Atlamazoglou is a seasoned defense journalist specializing in special operations and a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ). He holds a BA from the Johns Hopkins University and an MA from the Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). His work has been featured in Business Insider, Sandboxx, and SOFREP.
Image Credit: Creative Commons.
15. Why the Nuclear Revolution Matters in an Era of Emerging Great Power Competition
Perhaps not. But perhaps another way to ask the question: can wars be won with the support of nuclear weapons properly employed?
Is this a valid conclusion? I look forward to reading responses from nuclear experts and those who know nuclear weapons employment theory.
Conclusion:
The advancements in nuclear weapons technology do not alter the material reality of nuclear weapons or eradicate the “possibility of annihilation.” Hence, nuclear weapons states will continue to be averse to risking nuclear escalation. As China and Russia strive to challenge the United States for global predominance, the underpinning principle of the nuclear revolution will become ever more salient: nuclear wars cannot be won, and therefore should not be fought.
Why the Nuclear Revolution Matters in an Era of Emerging Great Power Competition
thediplomat.com
Amid intensifying competition between China, Russia, and the U.S., it bears repeating: Nuclear wars cannot be won.
By Alex Alfirraz Scheers
August 31, 2024
The nuclear weapon test Bravo (yield 15 Mt) on Bikini Atoll, Mar. 1, 1954. The test was part of Operation Castle.
Credit: U.S. Department of Energy
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The increasing polarization of international politics indicates that the future will be characterized by an intensification of conflicts. And, as the tensions intensify between the world’s two largest nuclear weapons states, Russia and the United States, and potential nuclear near peer, China, the underpinning principle of the nuclear revolution theory will only grow in salience: nuclear wars cannot be won, and therefore should not be fought.
However, the return of great power competition has also galvanized skeptics of the nuclear revolution theory, who reject the logic and tenability of nuclear deterrence and advocate instead for nuclear superiority and a shift toward war-winning nuclear postures.
An understanding of nuclear deterrence, as engendered by the nuclear revolution theory, is critical in preserving peace and strategic stability. States may choose to pursue superiority, but this article argues that the nuclear revolution theory can more adeptly provide the requisite insights for policymakers and scholars alike to better navigate the challenges inherent in the return of great power competition between China, Russia, and the United States.
Nuclear deterrence can be defined as the threat of nuclear retaliation against an adversary for an attack on a state’s vital interests, thereby imposing costs that would significantly outweigh any potential gains. The material reality of nuclear weapons – that is, their limitless destructive potential – informs the principle that nuclear wars cannot be won. Bernard Brodie stated in 1946 that “the factor of increase of destructive efficiency is so great that there arises at once the strong presumption that the experience of the past concerning eventual adjustment might just as well be thrown out the window.”
In other words, pre-nuclear age major power war strategy became obsolete with the advent of nuclear weapons. Whereas once superiority in the size and breadth of forces had a decisive effect on warfighting, in the nuclear age the size of a nuclear weapons state’s forces is of less significance.
Nuclear superiority is of secondary importance with regards to nuclear deterrence, as even states with small nuclear forces can inspire restraint in larger nuclear weapons states. Because all it takes is for one nuclear weapon to penetrate a state’s defenses to cause unacceptable levels of damage, the battlefield and political utility of nuclear weapons in a nuclear war-fighting scenario is limited. As Susan Martin put it: “Nuclear warfighting is not a strategy for survival.” This irrefutable reality will remain important in understanding the geopolitical dynamics of the future. Indeed, this outlook is collectively echoed by the five nuclear weapons states recognized in the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
A key concept informing this logic is Robert Jervis’ nuclear danger, which argues that the risk of nuclear war, rather than the nuclear balance of forces, reinforces the value of deterrence. To quote Jervis: “Since having more nuclear weapons or more nuclear options than the adversary cannot provide much assistance in terminating war, this posture should not provide a great peacetime advantage.”
This dynamic was observable in South Asia, when Pakistani forces crossed the Line of Control into India-controlled parts of contested Kashmir in 1999 (commonly known as the Kargil War). Instead of waging all-out war, India restrained from retaliating with nuclear force despite its advantage over Pakistan. Concomitantly, while Pakistan also possessed the capability to credibly retaliate with nuclear force, the Kargil War eventually de-escalated, and a reversion to crisis stability was achieved.
Because nuclear war would yield no victors, nuclear powers historically loathe to wage direct war against each other. The Cold War provides compelling evidence for this assertion. The Cuban Missile Crisis, arguably the closest the Soviet Union and the United States came to fighting a nuclear war, eventually ended in compromise between the superpowers. The resulting decision to undertake confidence-building measures, such as establishing a direct hotline between the states’ leaders, is emblematic of the aversion both the USSR and the U.S. had toward risking nuclear war.
Additionally, questions over whether new nuclear weapons states will emerge persist, with Iran touted by many as being on the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons. An emerging security dilemma in East Asia suggests that a new nuclear weapons state is a distinct and imminent possibility. But, as Kenneth Waltz stated, “History has shown that where nuclear capabilities emerge, so, too, does stability.”
Indeed, in an era of re-emerging major power competition, the deterrent utility of nuclear weapons bodes well for the future of stability. Additionally, as the nuclear balance of forces plays a limited role in the effectiveness of nuclear deterrence, new nuclear weapons states need only possess a credible minimum deterrence capability to protect their vital interests.
The rising tensions in East Asia bring the concept of nuclear danger and the irrelevance of superiority into sharp focus. China’s nuclear capability is roughly 10 times smaller than the United States’, yet nuclear deterrence in East Asia remains stable. The Cuban Missile Crisis, the Kargil War, and an understanding of nuclear revolution theorists’ arguments regarding the material reality of nuclear weapons reinforce the idea that superiority is not required for nuclear weapons to have an effective deterrent effect.
Indeed, superiority is not the decisive factor in crisis de-escalation; rather, it is the possibility of nuclear retaliation that inspires restraint. That over 50 nuclear threats were made in the 20 years following the end of the Cold War, with none of them resulting in all-out war, is testament to the deterrent value of nuclear weapons and to the restraint the reality of deterrence imposes. This pattern suggests that the next 20 years could be no different, if superiority is not pursued.
However, if superiority is asymmetrically pursued by a nuclear weapons state, this would not give them an advantage. Instead, it would precipitate an inconclusive arms race, intensifying tensions and plunging the global security landscape into an indefinite state of danger and instability.
In recent years, prominent advocates of U.S. nuclear superiority – among Matthew Kroenig, Daryl Press, and Keir Lieber – have highlighted that technological advancements have eroded nuclear deterrence, arguing that U.S. nuclear strategy should reorient toward adopting a war-winning posture. The data compiled by Lieber and Press is compelling: “In 1985 a US intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) had only about a 54 percent chance of destroying a missile silo… in 2017 that figure exceeds 74 percent. The improvement in submarine-launched weapons is starker: from 9 percent to 80 percent.”
Nevertheless, the idea that improvements in the qualitative capabilities of nuclear weapons should warrant such drastic changes in strategy ignores the historic deterrent value and utility of nuclear weapons.
In their theses, Lieber and Press advocated for the United States to conduct a disarming first-strike, which would have a devastating effect on stability. “Today,” they wrote, “the United States stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy vis-à-vis its plausible great power adversaries. For the first time in decades, it could conceivably disarm the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a nuclear first strike.”
A perfect first-strike, however, relies on an improbable best-case scenario for the nuclear aggressor. To discount any potential margin of error or miscalculation is imprudent, even with the most accurate intelligence and delivery systems.
Furthermore, as recent developments in international politics demonstrate, alliances between nuclear weapons states such as China, North Korea, and Russia, would exponentially increase the number of counterforce targets required for a disarming first strike to be successful. This undermines Lieber and Press’ logic of a new counterforce strategy, as outlined in their book “The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution.” In this new multipolar nuclear age, such shifts to the kinds of nuclear postures advocated by Lieber and Press would compromise the survivability of U.S. nuclear forces and make the United States less secure.
Any U.S. leader who would contemplate adopting Lieber and Press’ nuclear strategic prescriptions would risk jeopardizing U.S. vital interests in the process. As Kenneth Waltz poignantly stated: “Wars start more easily because the uncertainties of their outcomes make it easier to entertain illusions of victory. Contemplating war when the use of nuclear weapons is possible focuses one’s attention not on the probability of victory but on the possibility of annihilation.”
However, concepts such as nuclear deterrence and nuclear danger will continue to provide a strategic roadmap for policymakers and scholars alike. Nuclear weapons have served most effectively as a deterrent, preventing nuclear powers from engaging one another in direct conflict. “Nuclear weapons,” wrote Waltz, “dissuade states from going to war.” The historical evidence demonstrates that the reality of nuclear deterrence has facilitated peace and stability. Therefore, calls for a change in U.S. nuclear strategy, from one of strategic deterrence to one of offensive nuclear warfighting, are misguided. Thus, the role nuclear weapons must play in the future of international politics is as a strategic deterrent, securing vital interests, preventing conflicts, and dissuading acts of aggression between nuclear weapons states.
The advancements in nuclear weapons technology do not alter the material reality of nuclear weapons or eradicate the “possibility of annihilation.” Hence, nuclear weapons states will continue to be averse to risking nuclear escalation. As China and Russia strive to challenge the United States for global predominance, the underpinning principle of the nuclear revolution will become ever more salient: nuclear wars cannot be won, and therefore should not be fought.
An abridged version of this article was published by the Royal United Services Institute.
Authors
Guest Author
Alex Alfirraz Scheers
Alex Alfirraz Scheers holds a diploma in Politics and History from the Open University, a bachelor’s degree in War Studies and History from King’s College London, and a master's degree in National Security Studies from King’s College London. He has held research positions at the Henry Jackson Society and the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, and his articles have been published in the Times of Israel and the Royal United Services Institute.
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16. U. S. Army chaplains continue to boost readiness, after 249 years
Hooah. I have always been bullish on our Chaplain Corps as I have been very fortunate to serve with great Chaplains and Chaplain's Assistants such as Chaplain (BG) Jack Stummee and SGM El Kevin Sar.
U. S. Army chaplains continue to boost readiness, after 249 years :: FORT BELVOIR
home.army.mil
U. S. Army chaplains continue to boost readiness, after 249 years
8/30/24, 2:15 PM
Chaplain (Brig. Gen.) Jack J. Stumme, U.S. Army Deputy Chief of Chaplains, addresses Fort Belvoir chaplains on the 249th anniversary of the Army Chaplain Corps at Woodlawn Chapel, July 19 (Photo Credit: Paul Lara)
U. S. Army chaplains continue to boost readiness, after 249 years
For the U.S. Army to fight and win the nation’s wars, its team must remain fit and ready to respond.
This country’s founders realized that a core component of that was spiritual fitness, according to Chaplain (Brig. Gen.) Jack J. Stumme, U.S. Army Deputy Chief of Chaplains, who addressed the gathering at Fort Belvoir to celebrate the anniversary of the Chaplain Corps, July 19.
During the event, chaplains from around the Military District of Washington gathered at Woodlawn Chapel to discuss their history, celebrate their accomplishments, and cut their anniversary cake.
“We’re glad to be here for 249 years,” Stumme said. “It’s about both physical and spiritual fitness, because physical training is important, but it doesn’t give me a purpose for ‘why’. What gives me the why is the spiritual keel within me that guides my life, that connects me to the Army Values, that reminds me that I have a task and purpose. It’s bigger than myself. I’m connected.”
The Chaplain Corps was officially established shortly after the formation of the Continental Army. On July 29, 1775, the Second Continental Congress authorized the appointment of chaplains to serve with the Continental Army, recognizing the essential role of spiritual support for soldiers during the Revolutionary War.
The decision to include chaplains in the Army reflected the deep religious convictions of the time and the belief that spiritual well-being was critical to maintaining morale and discipline among the troops, according to Richard Duncan, author of “Chaplains of the Revolutionary War: Black-Robed American Warriors.”
Since its founding, the Chaplain Corps has expanded its mission and adapted to the changing needs of the Army. While the Corps began with a primary focus on Christian services, it has grown to include chaplains from a diverse array of religious traditions, reflecting the increasingly inclusive nature of Army enlistment, and the Nation it serves.
Today, the Chaplain Corps is committed to supporting the faith of all service members, regardless of their
faith tradition.
Chaplain (Brig. Gen.) Jack J. Stumme, U.S. Army Deputy Chief of Chaplains, serves lunch at Fort Belvoir's Woodlawn Chapel, at a ceremony celebrating the 249th anniversary of the Army Chaplain Corps, July 19. (Photo Credit: Paul Lara)
Sgt. Maj. Meaghan Simmons, Chaplain Corps Regimental Sergeant Major, said that we’re all born spiritual, and then later learn religion, so the Army provides chaplains from all different religions.
“We value the diversity that we have in the Chaplain Corps and being able to meet people right where they are and connecting with them,” Simmons said. “We can get Soldiers to God and God to Soldiers.”
The role of chaplains has also evolved to encompass not only religious services but also a broader range of pastoral care and counseling services. Chaplains provide crucial support to Soldiers dealing with the stresses of military life, including deployments, combat, and the challenges of separation from family. They also play a key role in ethical decision-making, advising commanders on matters of morality and ethics in military operations.
Fort Belvoir Ch. (Lt. Col.) Chad Davis said that being an Army chaplain meant he could just go and get on a convoy, any time he wished, which left him with many warm memories about serving people on cold mornings in the mountains.
“I get on the back of a Bradley and just go,” he said. “The commander wants the chaplain to be out where the Soldiers are doing what soldiers do, and I couldn't ask for a better job than eating cold breakfast on the hood of a Humvee as the sun comes up with the Soldiers out there who are suffering, and I'm suffering right along with them,” Davis said, adding proudly that “this is the best job in America.”
“I got the All-Access Pass, and it gets me into the room with the private and the general,” he added. “It's just humbling that we get to talk to everybody and have this blanket acceptance from the vast majority before they've even met us. We get all the benefits of being a soldier and more ministry than I could have ever imagined.”
Paul Lara, Fort Belvoir Public Affairs
17. SOF 2050: Transformative Impact of Biology, Biotechnology, and Medicine Technology on Special Operations Forces
SOF 2050: Transformative Impact of Biology, Biotechnology, and Medicine Technology on Special Operations Forces
https://www.strategycentral.io/post/sof-2050-transformative-impact-of-biology-biotechnology-and-medicine-technology-on-special-operat
As we look toward the future, the role of Special Operations Forces (SOF) in modern warfare is rapidly evolving. By 2050, advancements in biology, biotechnology, and medicine are poised to revolutionize the capabilities of these elite units, significantly enhancing their effectiveness in an increasingly complex security environment. This article delves into current technology trends, anticipated developments by 2050, and the implications for SOF.
Current Technology Trends in Biology and Biotechnology
One of the most significant trends in biotechnology is the development of advanced biomaterials and their applications in medical care. These innovative materials can be engineered to interact with biological systems, leading to improved treatment options for injuries and trauma. For example, bioengineered materials that promote faster healing or reduce infection rates are already being explored. By 2050, we may see these technologies integrated into SOF medical protocols, allowing for more effective treatment of combat-related injuries.
Today, wearable technology has made significant strides in health monitoring, with devices like fitness trackers and smartwatches are becoming commonplace. In the military context, these technologies are being adapted for real-time health monitoring of personnel. By 2050, we can expect advanced wearable biotech, such as smart textiles embedded with sensors that track vital signs, fatigue levels, and environmental conditions and help individuals optimize their physical and cognitive abilities. This data will provide commanders with critical insights into the health and readiness of their troops, enabling more effective mission planning and execution.
The concept of personalized medicine, which tailors medical treatments to an individual’s genetic makeup, is gaining traction in healthcare. For SOF, this could mean the development of customized medical interventions that optimize recovery protocols and enhance resilience. By leveraging genetic information, SOF personnel could receive targeted treatments for injuries and illnesses, significantly improving their operational effectiveness.
Anticipated Developments by 2050
By 2050, we can anticipate significant advancements in human performance enhancement through innovative medical technologies. These innovations may lead to soldiers with superior endurance, strength, and resilience, allowing them to operate effectively in extreme conditions and endure prolonged missions. The potential for creating "super soldiers" raises both exciting possibilities and ethical questions about the nature of warfare. Even if the U.S. has ethical issues with this, certain adversaries may not.
Additionally, the future of wearable technology will likely see the fulsome integration of artificial intelligence (AI) for predictive health analytics. Imagine soldiers equipped with smart textiles that not only monitor their health but also analyze data in real-time to predict fatigue or potential injuries. This capability could revolutionize how SOF units prepare for and execute missions, ensuring that personnel are always operating at peak performance.
Finally, Advancements in telemedicine and remote diagnostics are expected to transform the medical landscape for SOF. By 2050, on-field medical technologies may allow for immediate treatment of injuries through telehealth consultations with specialists. The “golden hour” could be replaced by the “golden 10 minutes” or less. This capability would enable SOF personnel to receive expert medical advice in near real-time, ensuring they get the best possible care, even in the most challenging environments. Additionally, portable diagnostic tools could facilitate rapid assessments of injuries, leading to quicker and more effective treatment decisions.
The "So What" for SOF
The integration of biotechnology into SOF operations will provide substantial operational advantages. Enhanced physical and cognitive capabilities will enable personnel to respond more effectively to emerging threats, whether in state-on-state conflicts or unconventional warfare scenarios. The ability to monitor health in real-time and receive personalized medical care will further enhance mission effectiveness and soldier survivability.
However, these advancements also raise important ethical considerations. The enhancement of human capabilities through innovative medical technologies poses questions about consent, autonomy, and the definition of a soldier. As the line between human and machine blurs, it will be essential to establish guidelines and policies to address these challenges and ensure that ethical standards are upheld.
The implications of biotechnology for U.S. military strategy and global power dynamics are profound. As other nations also invest in these technologies, the U.S. must leverage its advancements to maintain a competitive edge. SOF's ability to adapt to and integrate these innovations will be crucial in shaping the future of warfare and ensuring national security.
Conclusion
As we approach 2050, the impact of biology, biotechnology, and medicine on Special Operations Forces will be transformative. By embracing these advancements, the U.S. can enhance the capabilities of its elite units and navigate the complexities of an evolving security landscape. Continued investment in research and development will be essential to harness the full potential of these technologies, ensuring that SOF remains at the forefront of military innovation. The future of warfare is on the horizon, and SOF must be prepared to lead the way.
18.
Some people profoundly disagree with the subtitle of Doug Bandow's essay.
What Price Are Americans Prepared to Pay for Defending Taiwan?
Taiwan is profoundly important to China, but less so to the U.S.
The American Conservative · by Doug Bandow · August 29, 2024
American policymakers appear set on war. The only question is against whom. Alas, they apparently believe the more, the merrier.
Washington continues to aid Ukraine, which is increasingly striking within Russia and recently grabbed Russian territory around Kursk, site of a historic World War II battle. Moscow just launched a flurry of missile and drone strikes on Ukraine. Israel and Hezbollah recently traded blows, and Iran continues to threaten retaliatory attacks on Israel, with American units on station to defend the latter. The U.S. Navy is battling Yemen’s Ansar Allah (the Houthis). In Asia the Pentagon garrisons South Korea, patrols the Asia-Pacific, and threatens China over Taiwan.
This all comes naturally to Americans who grew up in a world in which the United States deployed the world’s most powerful military. Washington’s influence was constrained during the Cold War, but its relative power grew dramatically in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse. National ego took over. “What we say goes,” declared President George H.W. Bush. His successors have acted accordingly, determined to run the world, as President Joe Biden put it. Yet who outside of Washington would commend Uncle Sam for the job that he has done?
The problem is not just ostentatious failure. It is possible disaster. The Russo–Ukrainian war is dangerous enough. Allied policymakers and commentators appear to have concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin is little more than a paper tiger, unwilling to escalate despite Ukrainian strikes on and incursions in Russian territory. Nevertheless, Moscow still appears to be winning, advancing in the Donbas and biding its time before dealing with seemingly isolated Ukrainian troops around Kursk. If Putin comes to believe Russia is losing, he might choose to escalate and risk bringing the U.S. and NATO into the war.
The danger of conflict with the PRC over Taiwan is even greater. Consider war with a great power that is greatly increasing its military outlays while already possessing significant conventional capabilities, the world’s second-best navy, a formidable missile force, and an expanding nuclear arsenal. Imagine fighting thousands of miles away over territory less than 100 miles off China’s coast. All while U.S. allies could choose to remain neutral rather become permanent enemies of the giant next door.
From the outside Washington appears to be filled with Sturm und Drang over the great issues facing America. But these policy battles are mostly for show. There is little disagreement over whether U.S. policymakers should run the world. Rather, they fight over who among them should run the world. That’s why Washington launched a proxy war against nuclear-armed Russia in Europe. And why Uncle Sam showered Israel and Saudi Arabia with weapons to kill tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza and Yemen respectively. It’s also why the virtually unanimous view in Washington is that the U.S. should be prepared to go to war with the People’s Republic of China if it attacks Taiwan.
Over the latter there is virtually no debate. Yet consider the consequences. Start with economics. If conflict erupts in Northeast Asia and surrounding waters, regional trade could collapse. If Washington and Beijing targeted each other’s maritime commerce, the conflict would spread worldwide. There would be massive trade, financial, and industrial shocks, the latter intensified by Taiwan’s outsize role in the world’s production of semiconductor chips. Bloomberg Economics figures that a simple blockade would be expensive for all: “For China, the U.S., and the world as a whole, GDP in the first year would be down 8.9%, 3.3% and 5% respectively.” The price tag for a shooting war could run “around $10 trillion, equal to about 10% of global GDP—dwarfing the blow from the war in Ukraine, Covid pandemic and Global Financial Crisis.”
Lost commerce would pale compared to other costs. Observed the Brookings Institution’s Michael O’Hanlon: “World War III could not be ruled out, and the survival of the human race might even be on the line.” Never has there been a full-scale conflict between two nuclear powers. Although the Soviet Union and U.S. fought “limited” conflicts in Afghanistan, Korea, and Vietnam, and India and Pakistan swatted each other conventionally over Kashmir, it would be foolish to assume that Beijing and Washington could keep a battle over Taiwan similarly restrained.
First, the interest involved, control over Taiwan, is more important for the PRC than the U.S. Even students otherwise critical of the Beijing government for its intrusive censorship, laborious demands, and other oppressive controls insist that the island republic is part of China. One reason is deeply emotional, the belief that reversing Taiwan’s detachment by Japan in 1895 would complete the PRC’s recovery from the “century of humiliation” at the hands of others. Another is security: no country, including the U.S. (remember the Cuban Missile Crisis!) will tolerate its great rival maintaining a military base but a few score miles offshore. For China more than the U.S., failure would not be an option.
Second, Beijing would enjoy a significant geographic advantage, able to use mainland bases for operations against Taiwan and surrounding waters. This would force Washington to target the Chinese homeland, which the PRC would almost certainly see as an escalation requiring a response. The latter could include attacks on U.S. facilities in Guam and the Commonwealth of Mariana Islands, Okinawa and elsewhere in Japan, and even in Hawaii. It would be difficult for Washington not to escalate in return. Perhaps good sense would prevail. Yet the American and Soviet peoples barely avoided catastrophe in the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the U.S. played the role of China today. It would be foolish to tempt fate twice.
Third, the political price of failure in the PRC would be high, likely much higher than in the U.S. Despite Xi Jinping’s dominant position, initiating a failed war would allow his disparate foes to coalesce against him. Thus, he would be more likely to double down and escalate, daring Washington to match, than to retreat. If he fell, his successors probably would rearm and prepare for a rematch, like Germany after World War I, rather than accept the loss and go peacefully into the sunset. Defending Taiwan would require eternal vigilance and permanent militarization of the Asia-Pacific by the U.S.
Such a commitment could not easily be sold to the American public. Whatever the PRC’s ambitions, conquering the U.S. is not one. The issue between Washington and Beijing is domination of the Asia-Pacific, the PRC’s home, not security of the Americas, about which Americans are most concerned.
Taiwan has no direct relationship to this nation’s defense. At most, control over islands close to China would inhibit its naval operations. However, Washington should not go to war today because it might want to go to war in the future. Nor would doing so be worthwhile. The United States Navy War College’s Jonathan D. Caverley dismissed the security justification for war:
Taiwan is a small, 90-mile-wide island just off China’s vast coast. If it became a fully armed Chinese province, the difference in military power between Beijing and Washington would barely shift. China already possesses formidable space, land, air, sea, and cyber systems designed to detect and destroy U.S. and allied naval and air platforms far from the mainland. It does not need the island to menace the United States. Taiwan would give China a new place to base its systems, but the advantages that come from putting its weapons on the island versus the mainland are marginal.
Caverley also warned that direct American defense of Taiwan “would provide Beijing with the chance to destroy many American ships, planes, and troops in terrain favorable to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The U.S. military would likely come away greatly weakened, even if it ultimately prevailed.” If Washington and Beijing are fated to struggle over global dominance, then the former should look beyond the Taiwan Strait, argued Caverley: “Beijing is better positioned to quickly reconstitute its regional forces, meaning it could press on more easily.” He prefers a strategy of “loading [Taiwan] up with drones, mines, and other relatively inexpensive defensive weapons, turning it into what military planners call a ‘porcupine’ that China would struggle to digest,” with only limited direct support.
Other arguments for war are similarly unpersuasive. Would failing to defend Taiwan ruin U.S. credibility, especially with Washington’s Asian allies? Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea all have defense treaties with the U.S., the purpose of which is to provide a formal legal guarantee. The U.S. formally ended its Taiwan treaty in agreeing to mutual recognition with the PRC. Washington has no obligation to go to war for Taipei, which America’s treaty allies surely understand.
War would not save the Taiwanese semiconductor chip industry, since the factories would be turned into rubble, either by Chinese or American bombs. The solution to the West’s vulnerability to Taiwan’s stranglehold over the market is spreading production more broadly, the objective of the 2022 CHIPS Act. (The legislation probably will fail to achieve its ends, but is still a better approach than war with China.) There also are humanitarian interests at stake, but they are not sufficient for Americans to risk global and nuclear war. Especially since Washington is ever ready to kill civilians promiscuously, often through authoritarian allies and sometimes directly.
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Perhaps the best argument for threatening to battle the PRC over Taiwan is as a bluff to deter the former from attacking the latter. Nevertheless, pretending might make conflict more likely. Such a threat would suggest the existence of the kind of cooperative military relationship that Beijing fears and encourage China to preempt U.S. forces if it decided on war. If Washington did not back up its threats, then its credibility would be badly damaged.
There are no easy answers if the PRC attempts to reclaim Taiwan. In June Donald Trump declared: “Taiwan should pay us for defense. You know, we’re no different than an insurance company.” The Taiwanese certainly should pay for their own defense. The U.S., however, can support Taipei without going to war—selling weapons to the latter now and organizing allied states to isolate the PRC economically if Beijing strikes. Washington should seek to prevent a war, but not enter into one if it starts.
So far there has been little serious debate over pressing issues in the presidential race. Few questions are more important than: For what would the candidates go to war? Taiwan would be a good place to start this conversation.
The American Conservative · by Doug Bandow · August 29, 2024
19. The Pentagon Papers: Deception And Bad Strategy in Vietnam
Bad strategy?
I thought Vo Nguyen Giap' s Dau Tranh was pretty good strategy except that it was north Vietnamese strategy issued to defeat us (note sarcasm - though I do think Dau Tranh objectively a brilliant (and common sense) strategy)
Excerpts:
The Pentagon Papers' revelations had far-reaching implications for U.S. foreign policy and public trust in government. They led to a more cautious approach in future conflicts and a reassessment of the strategies used to combat communism during the Cold War. Ultimately, the legacy of the Pentagon Papers underscores the importance of transparency, accountability, and a clear strategy in any military engagement, lessons that remain relevant today.
Bottom Line – Bad strategy and lies are a deadly mix. The results of pursuing a large-scale fight in Vietnam were catastrophic for America, the Allies, and Vietnam in loss of life:
Graphics at the link.
The Pentagon Papers: Deception And Bad Strategy in Vietnam
Strategy Central
By Monte Erfourth – August 31, 2024https://www.strategycentral.io/post/the-pentagon-papers-deception-and-bad-strategy-in-vietnam
Introduction
The "Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force," commonly known as the Pentagon Papers, offers a candid look at how the United States government escalated its efforts in Vietnam. The report, commissioned in 1967 by then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, was intended as a comprehensive and secret study of U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. However, it became a historical document of government deception when it was leaked to the press in 1971, revealing that the U.S. government had used questionable justifications for its involvement in Vietnam, intentionally misled the public about the progress of the war, and lacked clear objectives for its military engagement. This essay explores how the Pentagon Papers exposed these troubling aspects, implicating key figures such as McNamara and President Lyndon B. Johnson. It discusses the broader implications for American foreign policy and public trust.
A Pattern Of Misleading
The Pentagon Papers detail how the United States gradually escalated its involvement in Vietnam, starting with financial and military support for the French colonial government during the First Indochina War. After France's defeat in 1954, the U.S. stepped in to support the newly established government of South Vietnam against the communist North Vietnamese regime led by Ho Chi Minh. Initially, American involvement was limited to providing military advisors and financial aid. However, as the communist insurgency in the South, known as the Viet Cong, gained momentum, the U.S. began to increase its military presence. The report reveals that the U.S. continued to escalate its military efforts despite early assessments indicating the conflict was unwinnable under existing conditions. By 1965, President Johnson had authorized the deployment of combat troops, marking a significant escalation from a supporting role to direct military involvement.
A central theme of the Pentagon Papers is the use of questionable justifications by the U.S. government to escalate its involvement in Vietnam. The most infamous example is the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964, where North Vietnamese patrol boats allegedly attacked U.S. Navy destroyers. The Johnson administration presented this incident as unprovoked aggression, leading Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. This resolution gave the President broad authority to use military force in Vietnam without a formal declaration of war. However, the Pentagon Papers reveal that the administration had already planned to escalate U.S. involvement and that the evidence of the attacks was questionable at best. Subsequent investigations showed that the second reported attack likely never occurred. This manipulation of events demonstrates how the U.S. government used misleading information to justify military action and deceive Congress and the American public about the nature and scope of U.S. involvement.
The Pentagon Papers also expose how the Johnson administration, notably President Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, actively misled the public about the war's progress. Publicly, officials were optimistic, claiming victory was within reach and that U.S. efforts succeeded in containing communism in Southeast Asia. However, internal documents revealed a starkly different picture. The U.S. military and intelligence reports painted a grim picture of the war's prospects, citing mounting casualties, ineffective South Vietnamese forces, and an unrelenting enemy. McNamara, who had privately expressed doubts about the war's feasibility, continued publicly endorsing escalation and presenting a false narrative of progress. This dissonance between public statements and private assessments reflects a deliberate strategy to maintain public support for the war effort, even as reality deteriorated.
No Strategic Objectives – Bogus Escalation
One of the most shocking revelations of the Pentagon Papers is the lack of clear objectives guiding U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The documents reveal that successive administrations, from Harry Truman to Lyndon Johnson, had little consensus on what a successful outcome in Vietnam would look like. The primary justification was the containment of communism, embodied in the domino theory—the belief that if one country in Southeast Asia fell to communism, others would follow. However, the Pentagon Papers show that U.S. policymakers were divided on the feasibility of this strategy and the costs associated with achieving it. The lack of clear, attainable objectives led to an inconsistent and often contradictory policy approach, further undermining the U.S. effort and leading to a prolonged conflict with no clear end.
Robert McNamara, who served as Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, played a central role in escalating U.S. involvement in Vietnam and the subsequent cover-up of the war's failures. The Pentagon Papers highlight McNamara's pivotal role in shaping U.S. policy in Vietnam. He often advocated for increased military involvement despite his growing private doubts about the war's chances of success.
McNamara commissioned the Pentagon Papers study in part because he feared that future generations would not understand the rationale behind the U.S. government's decisions. However, he was also complicit in withholding information from the public and presenting an overly optimistic picture of the war. President Johnson was also deeply involved in the deception, repeatedly telling the American people that the U.S. was winning the war and that there was a light at the end of the tunnel, even when his advisors warned of a potential quagmire. The actions of McNamara and Johnson reflect a broader pattern of deception and manipulation that defined U.S. policy in Vietnam.
Bad Strategic Theory
The release of the Pentagon Papers had profound implications for U.S. strategy in Southeast Asia and the broader Cold War context. The exposure of the government's deception and lack of a coherent strategy in Vietnam severely undermined the credibility of the domino theory, which had been a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s. The theory posited that if Vietnam fell to communist control, it would trigger a chain reaction across Southeast Asia, leading neighboring countries to also succumb, much like a row of falling dominos. This idea was rooted in the fear of the spread of communism, which was perceived as a monolithic threat orchestrated by the Soviet Union and China.
After the fall of Saigon in 1975, while Laos and Cambodia did experience communist takeovers, the anticipated widespread domino effect did not materialize across Southeast Asia. Countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia did not fall to communism, suggesting that the theory's predictive power was limited. Critics argue that the theory oversimplified the region's complex political and cultural dynamics, failing to account for the unique circumstances of each country. The lack of a widespread communist takeover after the Vietnam War suggests that the theory was more of a strategic rationale than a reliable predictor of geopolitical outcomes.
If the war in Vietnam was not winnable and the cost was too high, it called into question the entire premise of containing communism through military intervention. The Pentagon Papers also prompted a reevaluation of U.S. strategy in Southeast Asia and other parts of the world, leading to a more cautious approach in future conflicts and a shift towards détente with the Soviet Union and China. The revelations further fueled the anti-war movement in the United States and intensified public and congressional scrutiny of U.S. foreign policy decisions.
The Erosion of Trust
The long-term impact of the Pentagon Papers on American society and government cannot be overstated. The revelations of deception and manipulation eroded public trust in the government, contributing to a broader crisis of confidence that would manifest in various ways throughout the 1970s. The Watergate scandal, which unfolded shortly after the release of the Pentagon Papers, further compounded this distrust as Americans became increasingly skeptical of their leaders and institutions. The legacy of the Pentagon Papers also profoundly impacted the relationship between the government and the media. The Nixon administration's attempts to suppress the publication of the Pentagon Papers led to a landmark Supreme Court case, New York Times Co. v. United States, reaffirming the importance of a free press in holding the government accountable. This case set a precedent for greater transparency and strengthened the role of investigative journalism in American democracy.
Conclusion
The "Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force," or the Pentagon Papers, is a sobering reminder of how government deception and lack of clear objectives can lead to disastrous consequences. The documents reveal a pattern of escalation, manipulation, and obfuscation that characterized U.S. involvement in Vietnam and exposed the flawed rationale behind the war. The actions of key figures such as Robert McNamara and President Lyndon B. Johnson, who were deeply involved in the escalation and subsequent cover-up, reflect the broader challenges of maintaining public support for a war that lacked a clear path to victory.
Key Revelations:
- Escalation of Conflict: The papers disclosed that the U.S. government had systematically escalated its involvement in Vietnam, often without the full knowledge or consent of Congress. This included covert operations and bombing campaigns in neighboring countries like Laos and Cambodia, which were not publicly acknowledged at the time.
- Misleading the Public: The documents revealed that successive administrations, from Truman to Johnson, had misled the American public about the scale and nature of U.S. involvement. Public statements often contradicted the internal assessments, which were far more pessimistic about the war's progress and prospects for success.
- Questionable Justifications: The Pentagon Papers showed that the rationale for U.S. involvement was often based on flawed assumptions and that the government was aware of the improbability of achieving a decisive military victory.
- Lack of Clear Objectives: The documents highlighted a lack of clear strategic objectives, with policymakers often divided on the ultimate goals of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
The Pentagon Papers' revelations had far-reaching implications for U.S. foreign policy and public trust in government. They led to a more cautious approach in future conflicts and a reassessment of the strategies used to combat communism during the Cold War. Ultimately, the legacy of the Pentagon Papers underscores the importance of transparency, accountability, and a clear strategy in any military engagement, lessons that remain relevant today.
Bottom Line – Bad strategy and lies are a deadly mix. The results of pursuing a large-scale fight in Vietnam were catastrophic for America, the Allies, and Vietnam in loss of life:
End Notes
· "Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of United States Decisionmaking on Vietnam." New York Times, 1971.
· McNamara, Robert S., and Brian VanDeMark. "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam." New York: Times Books, 1995.
· Karnow, Stanley. "Vietnam: A History." New York: Viking Press, 1983.
· Sheehan, Neil. "A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam." New York: Random House, 1988.
· New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971).
· Herring, George C. "America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975." New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002.
· Ellsberg, Daniel. "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers." New York: Viking Press, 2002.
20. Why Trump’s Arlington Debacle Is So Serious
To really honor our fallen and their fallimes I think the best thing to do is just stop talking about it. What is done is done. Actions speak for themselves and we should just not dishonor our fallen and their families any more. This is the last I will post about this.
Why Trump’s Arlington Debacle Is So Serious
The former president violated one of America’s most sacred places.
The Atlantic · by Michael Powell · August 30, 2024
The section of Arlington National Cemetery that Donald Trump visited on Monday is both the liveliest and the most achingly sad part of the grand military graveyard, set aside for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Section 60, young widows can be seen using clippers and scissors to groom the grass around their husbands’ tombstones as lots of children run about.
Karen Meredith knows the saddest acre in America only too well. The California resident’s son, First Lieutenant Kenneth Ballard, was the fourth generation of her family to serve as an Army officer. He was killed in Najaf, Iraq, in 2004, and laid to rest in Section 60. She puts flowers on his gravesite every Memorial Day. “It’s not a number, not a headstone,” she told me. “He was my only child.”
The sections of Arlington holding Civil War and World War I dead have a lonely and austere beauty. Not Section 60, where the atmosphere is sanctified but not somber—too many kids, Meredith recalled from her visits to her son’s burial site. “We laugh, we pop champagne. I have met men who served under him and they speak of him with such respect. And to think that this man”—she was referring to Trump—“came here and put his thumb up—”
She fell silent for a moment on the telephone, taking a gulp of air. “I’m trying not to cry.”
For Trump, defiling what is sacred in our civic culture borders on a pastime. Peacefully transferring power to the next president; treating political adversaries with at least rudimentary grace; honoring those soldiers wounded and disfigured in service of our country—Trump long ago walked roughshod over all these norms. Before he tried to overturn a national election, he mocked his opponents in the crudest terms and demeaned dead soldiers as “suckers.”
Read: Trump calls Americans killed in war “suckers” and “losers”
But the former president outdid himself this week, when he attended a wreath-laying ceremony honoring 13 American soldiers killed in a suicide bombing in Kabul during the final havoc-marked hours of the American withdrawal. Trump laid three wreaths and put hand over heart; that is a time-honored privilege of presidents. Trump, as is his wont, went further. He walked to a burial site in Section 60 and posed with the family of a fallen soldier, grinning broadly and giving a thumbs up for his campaign photographer and videographer.
Few spaces in the United States join the sacred and the secular to more moving effect than Arlington National Cemetery, 624 acres set on a bluff overlooking the Potomac River and our nation’s capital. More than 400,000 veterans and their dependents have been laid to rest here, among them nearly 400 Medal of Honor recipients. Rows of matching white tombstones stretch to the end of sight.
A cemetery employee politely attempted to stop the campaign staff from filming in Section 60. Taking campaign photos and videos at gravesites is expressly forbidden under federal law. The Trump entourage, according to a subsequent statement by the U.S. Army, which oversees the cemetery, “abruptly pushed” her aside.
Trump’s campaign soon posted a video on TikTok, overlaid with Trump’s narration: “We didn’t lose one person in 18 months. And then they”—the Biden administration—“took over, that disaster of leaving Afghanistan.”
Trump was unsurprisingly not telling the truth; 11 soldiers were killed in Afghanistan in his last year in office, and his administration had itself negotiated the withdrawal. But such fabrications are incidental sins compared to what came next. A top Trump adviser, Chris LaCivita, and campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung talked to reporters and savaged the employee who had tried to stop the entourage. Cheung referred to her as “an unnamed individual, clearly suffering a mental health episode.” LaCivita declared her a “despicable individual” who ought to be fired.
There was, of course, another way to handle this mistake. Governor Spencer Cox of Utah had accompanied Trump to the cemetery, and his campaign emailed out photos of the governor and the former president there. When challenged, Cox did what is foreign to Trump: He apologized. “You are correct,” Cox replied to a person criticizing the event on the social-media platform X, adding, “It did not go through the proper channels and should not have been sent. My campaign will be sending out an apology.”
Read: Trump dishonors fallen soldiers again
This was not a judgment call, or a minor violation of obscure bureaucratic boilerplate. In the regulations governing visitors and behavior at Arlington National Cemetery, many paragraphs lay out what behavior is acceptable and what is not. These read not as suggestions but as commandments. Memorial services are intended to honor the fallen, the regulations note, with a rough eloquence: “Partisan activities are inappropriate in Arlington National Cemetery, due to its role as a shrine to all the honored dead of the Armed Forces of the United States and out of respect for the men and women buried there and for their families.”
As the clamor of revulsion swelled this week, LaCivita did not back off. On Wednesday, the Trump adviser posted a photo of Trump at Arlington Cemetery on the social-media site X and added these words: “The Photo that shook the world and reminded America who the real Commander in Chief is …August 26th 2024 ..Mark the day @KamalaHarris and weak @JoeBiden.”
The Army, which is historically loath to enter politics, issued a rare statement yesterday rebuking the Trump campaign, noting that ceremony participants “had been made aware” of relevant federal laws “prohibiting political activities”and that the employee “acted with professionalism.” The Army said it “considers this matter closed” because the cemetery employee declined to press charges.
Meanwhile, an unrepentant Trump team kept stoking the controversy. Yesterday, LaCivita posted another photo of Trump at Arlington and added this: “Reposting this hoping to trigger the hacks at @SecArmy”—the Army secretary’s office.
It had the quality of middle-school graffiti, suggesting that Trump viewed the controversy as but another chance to mock his critics before moving on to the next outrage. For grieving families with loved ones buried in Section 60, moving on is not so easy.
How old, I asked Meredith, was your son at the time of his death? “He was 26,” she replied. “He did not have time to live. I didn’t get to dance at his wedding. I didn’t get to play with grandkids.”
This week, all she could do was call out a crude and self-regarding 78-year-old man for failing, in that most sacred of American places, to comport himself with even the roughest facsimile of dignity.
The Atlantic · by Michael Powell · August 30, 2024
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