Quotes of the Day:

“You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.” 

- Robert A. Heinlein

“There is nothing more fruitful than ignorance in action.” 

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” 

- Ray Bradbury

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment , August 31, 2023

2. Ukraine tells critics of slow counteroffensive to 'shut up'

3. Learning from Russia’s war on Ukraine by John Nagl

4. The War in Winter 2023 – The Coming Ukrainian and Russian Winter Campaigns by Mick Ryan

5. Soldiers, Marines from Kabul evac awarded Presidential Unit Citation

6. With a Village Recaptured, Ukraine Takes the Next Step in Its Counteroffensive

7. Dollars Deployed: How the Weaponization of the U.S. Financial System Contributed to Afghanistan’s Collapse

8. Zelenskyy says Ukraine has developed a long-range weapon, a day after a strike deep inside Russia

9. Opinion | Covid is back. A fruitless national freakout shouldn’t come with it.

10. Why the new covid variant is not cause for concern — yet

11. As Ukraine’s Fight Falters, It Gets Even Harder to Talk About Negotiations

12. Moment Of Drone Strike That Destroyed Russian Il-76s Seen In Infrared Image

13. Analysis | Amid a wave of West African coups, France faces a reckoning

14. Philippines stands up to Beijing in South China sea tussle

15. How Japan Can Make Itself America’s Best Ally By Hal Brands

16. The US Military Is Getting Smaller, Cheaper and Smarter By James Stavridis

17. Ukrainians complete training on Abrams tanks as Kyiv makes battlefield gains

18. China's new national map has set off a wave of protests. Why?

19. Opinion | An Army Special Operations probe sheds light on misogyny in the military

20. How Ukraine’s deep battle is preparing the ground for success

21. The flames of Russian dissent

22. Factors Influencing Strategy: The Objective-Narrative Nexus

23. Beware of Pentagon techno-enthusiasm

24. The Pentagon’s Replicator effort to counter China is the right call

25. US drone swarm program could redefine modern war

26. What Tolstoy Can Teach Us About Geopolitics by Robert D. Kaplan

27. Special Operators Essential for National Strategy

28. How Russian Globalized the War in Ukraine

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment , August 31, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-august-31-2023

Key Takeaways:

• Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations near Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on August 31 and reportedly advanced in both sectors of the front.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky highlighted Ukraine’s domestic production of long-range missiles on August 31, likely as part of a coordinated Ukrainian campaign promoting increased Ukrainian strike capabilities against Russian deep rear areas.
• Russian authorities arrested a notable fringe ultranationalist Russian milblogger on accusations of discrediting the Russian military, likely as part of centralized efforts to silence some critical milblogger voices without prompting a general backlash.
• Russian military authorities allegedly ordered the detention of three Russian milbloggers who have recently criticized the Russian MoD – a move that sparked a backlash in only a small corner of the Russian information space.
• Imprisoned Russian ultranationalist Igor Girkin and his associates conducted likely futile political maneuvers intended to coalesce into a coherent and meaningful political opposition group.
• Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line and unsuccessfully counterattacked in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on August 31.
• Russian occupation authorities continue to forcibly deport Ukrainian children to Russia and Russify Ukrainian youth.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, AUGUST 31, 2023

Aug 31, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

Grace Mappes, Riley Bailey, Christina Harward, Angelica Evans, and Mason Clark

August 31, 2023, 6:15 pm ET 

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

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 1:30pm ET on August 31. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the September 1 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations near Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on August 31 and reportedly advanced in both sectors of the front. The Ukrainian General Staff and Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar reported that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in the Bakhmut and Melitopol (western Zaporizhia Oblast) directions and achieved unspecified success in the direction of Novodanylivka-Novoprokopivka (5km to 13km south of Orikhiv) in western Zaporizhia Oblast.[1] Malyar also stated that Ukrainian forces achieved unspecified success in the Bakhmut direction.[2] Ukrainian Chief of the Main Directorate of Missile Forces and Artillery and Unmanned Systems of the General Staff Brigadier General Serhiy Baranov stated that Ukrainian forces have reached parity in counterbattery capabilities with Russian forces.[3] Baranov stated that NATO-provided artillery systems with ranges of 30km to 40km allow Ukrainian forces to destroy Russian artillery systems and force Russian forces to move their artillery further from the frontline.[4] Ukrainian officials previously made statements in late July indicating that Ukraine’s interdiction campaign is successfully degrading Russian counterbattery capabilities.[5] Russian sources have repeatedly expressed concerns since mid-July over the lack of Russian counterbattery artillery capabilities, particularly in southern Ukraine.[6]

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky highlighted Ukraine’s domestic production of long-range missiles on August 31, likely as part of a coordinated Ukrainian campaign promoting increased Ukrainian strike capabilities against Russian deep rear areas. Zelensky stated that a Ukrainian-produced long-range weapon successfully hit a target 700 kilometers away, but did not provide further details about the strike or the weapon.[7] Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov previously stated on August 26 that a new but unspecified Ukrainian-made missile struck a Russian S-400 air defense system in Crimea on August 23, and Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Head Major General Kyrylo Budanov stated on August 24 that Ukrainian forces have the ability to strike any part of occupied Crimea.[8]

Russian authorities arrested a notable fringe ultranationalist Russian milblogger on accusations of discrediting the Russian military, likely as part of centralized efforts to silence some critical milblogger voices without prompting a general backlash. Russian authorities arrested Andrei Kurshin, who reportedly runs the Telegram channel “Moscow Calling,” on August 31 but did not specify what content Kurshin posted that prompted the charges.[9] The “Moscow Calling” channel routinely criticizes Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and notably commonly attacks many aspects of Russia’s military conduct of the war in Ukraine while supporting the ultranationalist goals underpinning the war itself. The wider Russian ultranationalist information space welcomed Kurshin’s arrest and noted that he routinely discredited the Russian military by mocking Russian military deaths and writing ”vile” thoughts about the Russian war effort.[10] ”Moscow Calling” also regularly supports imprisoned Russian ultranationalist Igor Girkin, likely generating further Kremlin opposition towards Kurshin.[11] Elements of the wider Russian ultranationalist community revealed Kurshin's previously anonymous identity in April after he joked about the assassination of Russian milblogger Maksim Fomin (Vladlen Tatarsky), and at the time milbloggers called on Russian authorities to punish Kurshin for fostering anti-government attitudes online.[12] Kurshin and Girkin’s arrests suggest that the Kremlin may be arresting prominent ultranationalist voices that the wider community largely reviles to avoid backlash as the Kremlin intensifies its effort to increase its long-term control over the Russian information space.[13] Kurshin’s arrest does not necessarily portend wider repression of more mainstream Russian milbloggers. Milblogger reactions, including those who have been outright critical of the Russian military leadership, additionally suggest that the milblogger community has been and is willing to establish unofficial guidelines for what is permissible criticism of the war and the Russian leadership. The Kremlin likely benefits from and encourages this self-policing, to a certain degree, among milbloggers - tolerating some criticism while cultivating key milbloggers and seeking to silence particularly critical voices.  

Russian military authorities allegedly ordered the detention of three Russian milbloggers who have recently criticized the Russian MoD – a move that sparked a backlash in only a small corner of the Russian information space. Russian milbloggers claimed that the commander of the 205th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade (49th Combined Arms Army, Southern Military District) and possibly a high-level Russian military official ordered Russian Military Counterintelligence to detain the three Russian milbloggers who have recently been critical of the Russian MoD’s handling of issues within the 205th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade.[14] Reactions to the detention orders were largely isolated to the small community that has been perpetuating discussions about the 205th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade since August 25, indicating that the Russian MoD is likely choosing targets whose punishment will not have significant repercussions in the Russian information space and this discussion is unlikely to last in the wider milblogger space.[15]

Imprisoned Russian ultranationalist Igor Girkin and his associates conducted likely futile political maneuvers intended to coalesce into a coherent and meaningful political opposition group. Girkin announced on August 31 that he intends to run for president in the 2024 Russian presidential elections, but primarily used the announcement to reiterate his longstanding critiques of Russian President Vladimir Putin.[16] Girkin’s theoretical “campaign” will have little to no impact and should not be construed as a direct political threat to the Kremlin. Girkin criticized Putin for being an ineffective military leader, failing to remove inept senior officials, and for prioritizing rich billionaires and longtime friends over the needs of Russia - all of which are longstanding rhetorical points from Girkin.[17] Girkin’s announcement is not a serious presidential bid (and the Kremlin will not allow it to be one) but rather an attempt to bring attention to Girkin’s imprisonment, his longtime criticisms of Putin, and his attempts to form a political movement. Kirill Fedorov, member of the Girkin-run Angry Patriots Club, stated that Girkin’s presidential announcement is a surprise and that the Angry Patriots Club had previously decided against Girkin or other members participating in the coming electoral cycle after Girkin’s arrest, and did not discuss the possibility of Girkin running for president during a recent meeting.[18] The Russian Movement in Support of Strelkov (Igor Girkin) announced on August 30 that it formed the ”Russian Strelkov Movement” and unanimously elected Girkin as its head, one of many recent political announcements likely aimed at preventing the movement from fracturing without Girkin's leadership and voice to hold the movement together.[19] Girkin’s August 31 announcement prompted limited reactions in the Russian ultranationalist information space that largely centered around confusion, sarcastic support, and criticism of the alleged presidential bid due to Girkin‘s and Russia‘s current political situations.[20] Prior announcements about the formation of political movements from Girkin’s associates have not resulted in any significant reaction, and the Angry Patriots Club is likely desperate to maintain relevance and cohesion with Girkin imprisoned.[21]

Key Takeaways:

• Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations near Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on August 31 and reportedly advanced in both sectors of the front.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky highlighted Ukraine’s domestic production of long-range missiles on August 31, likely as part of a coordinated Ukrainian campaign promoting increased Ukrainian strike capabilities against Russian deep rear areas.
• Russian authorities arrested a notable fringe ultranationalist Russian milblogger on accusations of discrediting the Russian military, likely as part of centralized efforts to silence some critical milblogger voices without prompting a general backlash.
• Russian military authorities allegedly ordered the detention of three Russian milbloggers who have recently criticized the Russian MoD – a move that sparked a backlash in only a small corner of the Russian information space.
• Imprisoned Russian ultranationalist Igor Girkin and his associates conducted likely futile political maneuvers intended to coalesce into a coherent and meaningful political opposition group.
• Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line and unsuccessfully counterattacked in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on August 31.
• Russian occupation authorities continue to forcibly deport Ukrainian children to Russia and Russify Ukrainian youth.

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

• Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
• Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Activities in Russian-occupied areas

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on August 31 but did not make any confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff and Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Novoyehorivka (16km southwest of Svatove) and Bilohorivka (13km south of Kreminna).[22] A Russian milblogger also claimed that Russian forces with air and artillery support conducted offensive operations near Novoyehorivka and Bilohorivka, but did not specify an outcome.[23] Ukrainian Eastern Grouping of Forces Spokesperson Ilya Yevlash stated that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked Ukrainian positions near the Serebryanske forest area (10km southwest of Kreminna).[24] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces are intensifying offensive operations near Synkivka (8km northeast of Kupyansk) and in the direction of Petropavlivka (7km east of Kupyansk) and Kyslivka (20km southeast of Kupyansk).[25] A Russian news aggregator claimed that Russian forces advanced near Synkivka and Petropavlivka, although ISW has not observed visual confirmation of this claim.[26]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued ground attacks along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on August 31 but did not advance. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian assaults in the Kupyansk direction and near Serhiivka (12km southwest of Svatove), Novoyehorivka, Dibrova (7km southwest of Kreminna), Yampolivka (17km west of Kreminna), and the Serebryanske forest area.[27]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations near Bakhmut on August 31 and reportedly advanced.  The Ukrainian General Staff and Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar reported that Ukrainian forces continue to conduct offensive operations south of Bakhmut and that Ukrainian forces achieved unspecified success in the Bakhmut direction.[28] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Bohdanivka (6km northwest of Bakhmut), Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut), and Mayorske (17km south of Bakhmut).[29] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked in Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut) and are counterattacking on the Klishchiivka-Kurdyumivka line (up to 13km southwest of Bakhmut).[30] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces attack Russian positions near Klishchiivka daily.[31]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations and reportedly advanced on August 31. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Klishchiivka and Kurdyumivka.[32] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces are continuing to improve their positions near Klishchiivka and captured several heights near the settlement.[33]  A Russian news aggregator claimed that Russian forces pushed Ukrainian forces back several kilometers and regained lost positions near Klishchiivka, but ISW has not yet observed visual confirmation of this claim.[34] A Russian advance of this scale would likely generate wide coverage from Russian milbloggers, which ISW has not observed. Russian sources recently claimed similarly exaggerated Russian advances without visual evidence along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line to portray Ukrainian counteroffensives as a failure, and some Russian sources may be trying to replicate similar claims in the Bakhmut direction.[35] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces conducted offensive operations near Klishchiivka, Kurdyumivka, Ozaryanivka (14km south of Bakhmut), and Bohdanivka.[36]

The Russian MoD claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Avdiivka on August 31.[37]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line but did not make any claimed or confirmed advances on August 31. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Marinka (directly west of Donetsk City) and Novomykhailivka (10km southwest of Donetsk City).[38] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Marinka.[39] The milblogger also claimed that Russian forces attacked near Novomykhailivka, but did not specify an outcome.[40]

Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations along the administrative border between Donetsk and Zaporizhia oblasts on August 31 but did not advance. Russian Eastern Grouping of Forces Spokesperson Oleg Chekhov claimed that Russian forces repelled a Ukrainian assault near Pryyutne (15km southwest of Velyka Novosilka).[41] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations near Urozhaine (9km south of Velyka Novosilka) and Staromayorske (9km south of Velyka Novosilka).[42]

Russian forces unsuccessfully counterattacked in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on August 31. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults near Staromayorske.[43]

Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast and reportedly advanced on August 31. Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar and the Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in the Melitopol (western Zaporizhia Oblast) direction and achieved unspecified success in the direction of Novodanylivka-Novoprokopivka (5km to 13km south of Orikhiv).[44] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported that Russian forces repelled five Ukrainian assaults near Verbove (18km southwest of Orikhiv).[45] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces, including elements of the 7th Guards Airborne (VDV) Division, repelled two Ukrainian assault groups that attempted to break through Russian defenses to the northwestern outskirts of Verbove.[46] Several Russian sources described these Ukrainian assaults as reconnaissance-in-force operations.[47] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces have advanced closer to the western outskirts of Verbove but still have not penetrated the series of prepared Russian defensive positions immediately west of the settlement.[48]  Other milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces advanced in an unspecified forest area near Robotyne (10km south of Orikhiv) but maintained that Russian forces still hold positions in the southern part of the settlement.[49] Another milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces bypassed Robotyne and attacked in the direction of Novoprokopivka.[50] Russian milbloggers claimed that “rested units” and VDV elements have reinforced Russian defenses in the area, likely referring to the recent arrival of elements of the 76th VDV Division from the Kreminna area in Luhansk Oblast.[51] A Russian milblogger claimed that the current composition of the Russian multi-echeloned defensive layer does not allow Russian forces to conduct counterattacks against the flanks of Ukrainian advances as quickly as they could when defending further northwest of their current positions.[52]

Russian forces conducted limited unsuccessful counterattacks in western Zaporizhia Oblast on August 31. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive actions near Verbove.[53]

Russian milbloggers claimed on August 31 that Russian forces continue attempts to establish positions on islands in the Dnipro River delta while Ukrainian forces continue limited activity in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast. A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces are attempting to capture a foothold on Nestryha island southwest of Kherson City and may have succeeded in doing so.[54] The milblogger claimed that Russian forces maintain control over Bilohrudyi and Mali Bilohrudyi islands (up to 7km southwest of Kherson City).[55] Russian milbloggers also claimed that small Ukrainian groups continue to operate on the left bank near the Antonivsky bridge and are continuing efforts to gain a foothold northeast of Pidstepne (17km east of Kherson City).[56]

The Russian MoD claimed that Russian air defenses intercepted a Ukrainian missile targeting Russian rear positions in occupied Crimea on the evening of August 30.[57] Russian milbloggers claimed instead that Russian forces intercepted a Ukrainian drone near Feodosia (98km from Simferopol).[58] Geolocated footage published on August 30 shows an explosion near a substation in the vicinity of Feodosia.[59]

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

The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) is attempting to mitigate severe personnel shortages. Russian MVD Spokesperson Irina Volk promoted an August 4 decree that raises maximum age limits and other requirements on August 31 likely to encourage recruitment.[60] The decree increases the maximum age limit for those seeking to enter the MVD from 35-40 years to 50-55 years depending on the position, abolishes a requirement to obtain a personal guarantee to enter service, abolishes probationary periods for new employees with prior military or special service, and allows those declared medically unfit for service to continue to serve in a modified capacity.[61] The Russian MVD has previously reported on efforts to recruit more personnel amid additional reporting that employees are leaving the MVD due to corruption, poor payment, and acting as gendarmerie (military forces functioning as civilian law enforcement) likely in occupied Ukraine.[62]

The Russian National Guard (Rosgvardia) is reportedly forming a new formation to operate in Ukraine. A Russian milblogger posted a recruitment advertisement on August 31 calling for volunteers for a new unit “as part of the 116th ODON,” which will reportedly have heavy military equipment and operate in Ukraine.[63] While the post is unclear, it likely refers to a new element intended to deploy to Ukraine subordinated to the existing “Dzherzhinsky” ODON (Separate Operational Division), which traditionally acts as the key Rosgvardia internal security force in Moscow and protects important state facilities in wartime. The ODON does not have the numerical designation “116th,” and this number most likely refers to a new battalion to be attached to this unit. However, the advertisement lists the military unit number (войсковая часть) of the recruiting unit as 3641, likely that of Rosgvardia’s 21st Separate Operational Brigade. The exact structure and composition of the intended unit is unclear. The post advertises a lump-sum payment of 195,000 rubles ($2,039), monthly salaries of 40-50,000 rubles ($418-522), and payments of 200,000 rubles ($2,091) for deployment.[64]

Wagner Group-affiliated sources continue efforts to keep Wagner prominent in the information space and portray Wagner as maintaining its ability to conduct international operations. A Wagner-affiliated milblogger posted footage on August 31 claiming to show Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin in Africa in late August 2023 before his death on August 23.[65] Prigozhin ironically dismissed speculation about Wagner operations in the video and reassured that everything would be fine.[66]

Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian citizens into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Russian occupation authorities continue to forcibly deport Ukrainian children to Russia and Russify Ukrainian youth. The Kherson Oblast occupation administration amplified a claim on August 31 that 18 Ukrainian children from occupied Kherson Oblast left for Novgorod Oblast, Russia under a children’s summer camp scheme.[67] Russian Presidential Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova reported that Russian authorities are opening youth centers in occupied Donbas as part of the “Teenagers of Russia” program, likely to support efforts to promote Russian identity and values among Ukrainian youth.[68]

Ukrainian partisans reportedly conducted an arson campaign in occupied Mariupol. Ukrainian Mariupol Mayoral Advisor Petro Andryushchenko reported on August 31 that Mariupol partisans destroyed four Russian military vehicles as part of a successful arson campaign against Russian military assets.[69]

Significant activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks and Wagner Group activity in Belarus)

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko dismissed Western concerns about Wagner’s presence in Belarus during a Belarusian Security Council meeting on August 31. Lukashenko claimed that Poland and the Baltic states accused Belarus of “mythical aggressive intentions” that have never and could never exist.[70] Lukashenko attempted to justify the Wagner Group’s presence in Belarus by erroneously drawing parallels with foreign servicemen in Poland and the Baltic states.[71]

Belarusian forces will reportedly train in Russia over the next month. The Belarusian Ministry of Defense (MoD) stated on August 31 that Union State instructors will train servicemen from the Belarusian 120th Separate Guards Mechanized Brigade at a combat training center in Russia over the next month.[72]

ISW will continue to report daily observed Russian and Belarusian military activity in Belarus as part of ongoing Kremlin efforts to increase their control over Belarus and other Russian actions in Belarus.

Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.

2. Ukraine tells critics of slow counteroffensive to 'shut up'

We are all damn good armchair quarterbacks. But in today's world of information all operations are going to be assessed, analyzed, and yes, criticized. There is no way to stop the criticism so perhaps it is necessary to figure out how to exploit the criticism and use it.

Ukraine tells critics of slow counteroffensive to 'shut up'

Reuters · by Tom Balmforth

• Summary
• Troops fighting through heavy minefields
• NATO chief says 'need to trust' Ukrainian commanders
• Ukraine has stepped up drone attacks on Russia

KYIV, Aug 31 (Reuters) - Ukraine told critics of the pace of its three-month-old counteroffensive to "shut up" on Thursday, the sharpest signal yet of Kyiv's frustration at leaks from Western officials who say its forces are advancing too slowly.

Since launching a much vaunted counteroffensive using many billions of dollars of Western military equipment, Ukraine has recaptured more than a dozen villages but has yet to penetrate Russia's main defences.

Stories in the New York Times, Washington Post and other news organisations last week quoted U.S. and other Western officials as suggesting the offensive was falling short of expectations. Some faulted Ukraine's strategy, including accusing it of concentrating its forces in the wrong places.

Moscow says the Ukrainian campaign has already failed. Ukrainian commanders say they are moving slowly on purpose, degrading Russia's defences and logistics to reduce losses when they finally attack at full strength.

"Criticising the slow pace of (the) counteroffensive equals ... spitting into the face of (the) Ukrainian soldier who sacrifices his life every day, moving forward and liberating one kilometre of Ukrainian soil after another," Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told reporters on Thursday.

"I would recommend all critics to shut up, come to Ukraine and try to liberate one square centimetre by themselves," he said at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Spain.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told CNN that Ukrainian commanders deserved the benefit of the doubt.

"Ukrainians have exceeded expectations again and again," he said. "We need to trust them. We advise, we help, we support. But... it is the Ukrainians that have to make those decisions."

DEFENSIVE LINES

After months of fighting their way through heavy minefields, Ukraine's forces have finally reached the main Russian defensive lines in recent days, south of the village of Robotyne which they captured last week in Western Zaporizhzhia region.

They are now advancing between the nearby villages of Novopokropivka and Verbove, looking for a way around the anti-tank ditches and rows of concrete pyramids known as dragon's teeth that form Russia's main fortifications visible from space.

A breakthrough would provide the first test of Russia's deeper defences, which Ukraine hopes will be more vulnerable and less heavily mined than areas its troops have traversed so far.

A Ukrainian commander in the area told Reuters last week that his men had breached the most difficult line, reaching less heavily defended areas, and now expected to advance more quickly. Reuters could not independently verify this.

Kyiv rarely gives details of its offensive operations.

In a statement on Thursday, Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar reported unspecified successes near Novopokropivka, without giving details.

She also said Ukrainian forces were advancing near Bakhmut, in the east, the only city Russia captured in its own offensive earlier this year. Heavy battles were engulfing villages south of the city, she said.

Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine's ground forces, reported a "positive dynamic" near Bakhmut.

DRONE ATTACKS WITHIN RUSSIA

Ukraine has also stepped up drone attacks on targets deep within Russia and in Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine.

Russia's Defence Ministry said it had destroyed a new Ukrainian drone over the Bryansk region in southern Russia.

It had earlier reported overnight drone attacks in Bryansk and said it had shot down a missile fired on Crimea, occupied and annexed by Russia in 2014.

The previous night, Moscow reported attempted Ukrainian drone strikes in six Russian regions, including one that caused a huge fire at a military air base in Pskov in northern Russia, damaging several giant military transport planes on the tarmac.

While Ukraine rarely comments directly on specific attacks inside Russia, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy appeared to boast of the Pskov attack twice on Thursday.

"The results of our weaponry -- new Ukrainian weaponry -- 700 km away," he said in his nightly video address. "And the task is to do more."

Ukraine's Western allies generally forbid Kyiv from using weapons they supply to attack Russian territory, but say Ukraine has a right to attacks military targets with its own weapons.

The assaults in recent weeks, including several on central Moscow over the past month, have brought the war home to many Russians for the first time after 18 months during which Russia has subjected Ukraine to countrywide air strikes.

Russia is also facing the aftermath of a mutiny two months ago by Wagner, a private army that had formed the main attack force of its own winter offensive earlier this year. Wagner's leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and his main lieutenants were killed in an air crash last week.

The Kremlin has denied that it was behind the crash. President Vladimir Putin had called Prigozhin's mutiny treason but had promised not to punish him for it.

On Thursday, Prigozhin's right-hand man, Dmitry Utkin, a neo-Nazi former military intelligence officer whose call-sign Wagner gave the mercenary force its name, was buried at a cemetery near Moscow under guard of Russian military police. Prigozhin was buried near St Petersburg on Tuesday.

Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Alex Richardson and Cynthia Osterman

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Acquire Licensing Rights, opens new tab

Reuters · by Tom Balmforth

3. Learning from Russia’s war on Ukraine by John Nagl

Excerpts:

But the closer you are to a war, the more indelible and accurate the lessons. That’s why I felt so fortunate to spend a week at a NATO conference at the Polish Naval Academy in Gdynia, Poland, hearing from Ukrainians firsthand.

The Ukrainians gave presentations on the road to war, violations of the laws of war, the role of intelligence in the Ukrainian war, maneuver, fire support, special forces, air defense, the naval war — 20 briefs in all. Like their American and NATO counterparts, the Ukrainians were largely current or former military officers, many with PhD’s, all serious students of the very serious business of warfare.

It is impossible for me to overstate the importance of the information the Ukrainians provided. The purpose of the conference was to seed professional military education institutions across the United States and all the other NATO countries with knowledge fresh from the Ukrainian battlefields.

Learning from Russia’s war on Ukraine

militarytimes.com · by John A. Nagl · September 1, 2023

For the past year here at the U.S. Army War College, we have dug into lessons America should learn from the war in Ukraine. We got some right, but hearing directly from Ukrainians at a NATO conference in Poland this past July revealed just how urgent it is that the U.S. military rapidly prepare itself for large-scale combat against enemies who fight very differently than the insurgents and terrorists we have fought for the past two decades.

In the peaceful remove of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, we came up with many applications of U.S. doctrine that seem to be working in the Ukrainian war. Those include multi-domain operations, the idea that to win in modern war you must combine operations in air, land, sea, space, and cyber.

Then there’s mission command, in which commanders tell their subordinates their intent and trust their junior leaders to determine how to accomplish it — something Ukraine has done well, and Russia has botched. Also key: the principle of protection, with twists to accommodate new enemy capabilities like ubiquitous surveillance and attack capabilities of drone aircraft and sea vessels.

Ukraine’s experience appeared to prove that large static concentrations of forces are artillery- and missile-magnets in the war with Russia, which the U.S. would surely find in a similar conflict with Russia or China, meaning we’d have to do away with the recent American tradition of large stadium-style command posts. (Insurgents tended not to have missile batteries.)

But the closer you are to a war, the more indelible and accurate the lessons. That’s why I felt so fortunate to spend a week at a NATO conference at the Polish Naval Academy in Gdynia, Poland, hearing from Ukrainians firsthand.

The Ukrainians gave presentations on the road to war, violations of the laws of war, the role of intelligence in the Ukrainian war, maneuver, fire support, special forces, air defense, the naval war — 20 briefs in all. Like their American and NATO counterparts, the Ukrainians were largely current or former military officers, many with PhD’s, all serious students of the very serious business of warfare.

It is impossible for me to overstate the importance of the information the Ukrainians provided. The purpose of the conference was to seed professional military education institutions across the United States and all the other NATO countries with knowledge fresh from the Ukrainian battlefields.

The last three days of the conference were spent in working groups of NATO representatives paired with Ukrainians to write lessons plans to be taught this coming year at our academies, staff colleges, and war colleges. The conference produced a book of lessons learned that will be shared across NATO’s 31 countries to help them prepare for future war.

Ukrainian soldiers and civilians are paying for these lessons in blood. By sharing these hard-earned lessons of war, Ukrainian military professionals are helping our military get ready for future wars that will inevitably come. The Ukrainians, even if they sometimes had to speak to us through interpreters, were incredibly generous and open in sharing what they had learned, including (for instance) body camera footage of close combat against Wagner Group operators. They withheld only information about future combat operations for obvious reasons of operational security.

It is no exaggeration to state that by sharing this knowledge from their war, Ukrainians are saving the blood of American soldiers in future wars. We could ask no more from a democratic ally that is fighting a totalitarian regime with extraordinary success, and who ask from us only more ammunition and more weapons with which to liberate their unjustly occupied free nation. The support we give them today will save American troops’ lives in days and years to come.

Glory — and gratitude — to Ukraine!

John Nagl, a veteran of both Iraq wars, is Professor of Warfighting Studies at the U.S. Army War College. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

4. The War in Winter 2023 – The Coming Ukrainian and Russian Winter Campaigns by Mick Ryan

Long read.

Excerpts:

This will be the third winter of the war in Ukraine since the large-scale invasion by Russia in February 2022. It will be the tenth winter overall since the war began in 2014. As such, both sides have significant contemporary experience of conducting military operations during winter. This is added to their large historical experience of winter warfare.

Given the war won’t stop for winter, but will alter in tempo, what might we expect in the coming months?

The War in Winter 2023

The Coming Ukrainian and Russian Winter Campaigns

https://mickryan.substack.com/p/the-war-in-winter-2023?utm

MICK RYAN

AUG 31, 2023

∙ PAID

Image: @GlasnostGone

In a 28 August 2023 update, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy referred to preparations for the coming winter. These preparations by the Ukrainians are certain to have been underway for some time.

One thing about planning staffs in just about every military institution is that they are often involved in planning for multiple events over different time frames at once. It is likely that some initial planning for this winter was conducted in parallel to that for the ongoing Ukrainian offensives. There is a linkage between these campaigns, and therefore planning will probably have been conducted concurrently for the ongoing Ukrainian offensive and the coming winter campaign.

Forecasts for winter this year are predicting similar temperatures and precipitation levels as last winter. So, expect some cold weather, some wet weather, some overcast weather and some mud. All of these have an impact on the planning for, and execution of, military operations as well as humanitarian support to the millions of displaced Ukrainian citizens.

This will be the third winter of the war in Ukraine since the large-scale invasion by Russia in February 2022. It will be the tenth winter overall since the war began in 2014. As such, both sides have significant contemporary experience of conducting military operations during winter. This is added to their large historical experience of winter warfare.

Given the war won’t stop for winter, but will alter in tempo, what might we expect in the coming months?

A Ukrainian Winter Campaign

The Ukrainian Winter campaign will probably have three strategic objectives.

First, it will want to project a sense of progress to Ukraine’s supporters. Ukraine retains the strategic initiative, which they have wrested from the Russians through their battlefield operations and longer range strike operations this year. Therefore, diplomatic activity to retain support for Ukraine, and prevent pointless peace initiatives, and continue the flow of equipment and munitions will be an important element of the Ukrainian winter campaign.

Second, Ukraine will want to sustain at least some of the momentum they have generated with ground, air and maritime operations 2023. Clearly this will depend on the battlefield situation in a couple of months, and the levels of stockholdings for key military consumables such as artillery munitions, fuel, precision munitions, and engineer equipment. Ukraine will not want a stasis to emerge over winter that can be leveraged by Russia to negotiate a ceasefire.

Third, Ukraine will want to ensure its people are able to endure the cold, bitter winter conditions. This humanitarian imperative becomes even more stark given that Russia might again conduct strikes against civilian infrastructure this winter to make life miserable for Ukrainians and put political pressure on Zelenskyy’s government.

What does achieving these strategic objectives look like in practice?

The armed forces of Ukraine have the strategic initiative in this war. There is no way that they will want to waste their momentum over the colder months. As such, we should expect Ukraine to conduct ground attacks where they find weaknesses in Russian defences. Concurrently, they will probably continue their strikes against operational level targets such as logistics nodes, electronic warfare and naval systems, Russian transport infrastructure as well as command and control facilities. It will be aiming to break down as much of the Russian operational system as possible before spring next year.

Now that Ukraine has the capacity to undertake strategic strikes against targets in occupied Crimea and Russia, these are likely to be sustained or accelerated in tempo over winter (weather permitting). The sophistication of these attacks was demonstrated again this week, with attacks during the evening of 29 August 2023 on the Russian Pskov airbase and the SILICON EL microelectronics plant in Bryansk, Russia, as well as attacks in Kaluga oblast, Ryazan oblast, Russian-occupied Crimea, and Oryol oblast.

The kind of strategic targets that Ukraine attacks in Russia will continue to expand, although the Ukrainian government has a careful balancing act to achieve in this regard. The strikes should have military utility, or achieve a political impact, while avoiding civilian casualties or upsetting Ukrainian supporters in the West.

Ukraine has been able normalize these strategic strikes on Russia without Russia escalating the war. It should result in an acceleration and expansion of military aid to Ukraine. As Max Boot has recently pointed out:

The Ukrainian drone strikes inside Russia should relieve exaggerated fears about the consequences of crossing Putin’s supposed red lines. Providing more aid to Ukraine won’t significantly raise the risk of a wider war — but it could shorten the existing conflict.

Winter will also be used for the wide array of intelligence collection and logistic preparations necessary for military operations in 2024. It is an opportunity for maintenance (notwithstanding some ongoing operations) as well as to conduct additional collective training to build the effective combat teams, battle groups, formations and headquarters staffs needed for the coming year.

We can also expect the Ukrainians to take stock, and possibly make changes to their leadership, organisations, C2 and other aspects of their force structure based on lessons from 2023. I have written elsewhere that the Ukrainians have proven to be better than the Russians at tactical and institutional adaptation in this war. They will be using this adaptive, learning culture to ensure they are prepared for 2024.

Ukraine will continue and evolve its global strategic influence campaign over the winter months. This has been an integral part of Ukraine’s approach to telling its stories, gaining military, humanitarian and economic support and degrading Russian morale from the beginning of the war.

Politically, President Zelenskyy will be working hard during the winter months to retain western support for his nation. He appreciates how vital American aid is and will be making every effort ensure his message cuts through the lead up to the craziness of the 2024 U.S. Presidential election campaigns. While he is doing this, he will be fighting Russian misinformation operations, and the efforts of Russia’s useful idiots in the American polity, who will be seeking to convince Americans and Europeans that their support for Ukraine is wasted.

Zelenskyy will also be working hard to ensure that Ukrainians are supported through the winter, and that humanitarian aid is prioritized and gets through to the people who need it. Many Ukrainians are either displaced from their homes, or living in damaged residences, making them more vulnerable to the ravages of winter.

Finally, the Ukrainian President and his key diplomats will be trying over winter to head off half-baked peace initiatives which might emerge during the winter. This will be a priority in the coming months to ensure Ukraine isn’t forced into negotiating when they can still defeat the Russians on the battlefield.

Image generated by Microsoft Bing Image Creator

The Russians in Winter 2023

From a Russian perspective, the Russian commander General Gerasimov will want to consolidate key enablers like logistics, fires and command and control over winter to ensure they are survivable (the Ukrainians are good at finding and killing these), and to also ensure that he will have the right assets in the appropriate parts of the Ukraine (and Russia) for his 2024 operations. 

Gerasimov is the longest-lived Russian commander in Ukraine, and still retains the confidence of Putin (at least publicly). Depending on how much progress Ukraine makes in the south over the coming weeks (I expect a lot more), and how many senior officers Ukraine eliminates, Gerasimov might also want to review the command and leadership of the Russian forces in Ukraine. There has already been a mini purge in the wake of the Prigozhin mutiny. Gerasimov might feel he has breathing space over winter to shuffle the deck with his commanders to keep them focused on the battlefield and not worrying about the direction of the war, or Gerasimov’s performance.

Winter is also an opportunity for Gerasimov to finalize his plans for the campaigns he will conduct in 2024. Just as he did at the beginning of 2023, he might want to begin the new year with a bang and commence offensive activity in January 2024. While this will depend on the weather, he will be under pressure. He was placed in command by Putin to secure more territory in the Ukrainian oblasts annexed in 2022. He will be thinking through his priorities for these offensives, their sequencing, where to use his few remaining experienced units as well as mobilized troops, and the shaping activities that will be required well in advance of his 2024 offensives. And he will be stockpiling stores and ammunition for these campaigns.

But at the same time, Gerasimov also knows that a higher strategic priority is to ‘not lose’. Putin’s theory of victory is to have Ukrainian supporters tire of the war and reduce their support. In the meantime, Gerasimov has to keep his Army viable and defend his ground, regardless of the outcomes of the current Ukrainian offensives in the east and south.

Gerasimov will want to continue his strategic strike campaign against targets in Ukraine. Two targets are likely to be prioritized.

First, civilian infrastructure, particularly that related to power and heating. Degradation of Ukrainian morale over winter will remain an objective of the Russian leadership.

Second, Ukrainian supply depots, particularly those that stock artillery munitions and precision munitions for aircraft and ground launch systems. Russia will want to minimize Ukraine’s ability to conduct a winter strike campaign and hinder its stockpiling for 2024 offensives in the east and south.

However, Ukraine’s air defence system has continued to improve in coverage and in its ability to intercept Russian missiles and drones since last winter. Coupled with Russia’s ability to only produce about 100 missiles per month with ranges exceeding 500km (see this recent ISW report for more on this), it is unlikely they will be able to undertake massed strikes for any significant length of time.

A final element that will be important over winter will be Russia’s strategic influence campaign. Foreign Minister Lavrov will be continuing his efforts to ensure those who are on the fence about the war stay there. Perhaps more importantly, Russian misinformation campaigns will be honed and focussed on the US Presidential election year. The Russians already detect a weakening of support among in US electorate for supporting Ukraine. And they understand that there are important votes coming up in the U.S. Congress on aid to Ukraine which they wish to influence.

Russian information operations personnel will be investing heavily in shaping perceptions and assisting ‘anti-Ukraine’ candidates in 2024. Some good resources on Russian influence operations can be found here, here and here.

Winter ‘Battlegrounds’

In my 10 June post about the Ukrainian offensives, I described important ‘battlegrounds’ in the wider Ukrainian 2023 campaign. These expanded upon in my 2 August campaign update. It is worth exploring key ‘battlegrounds’ through the lens of the coming winter.

Logistic and Transport Hubs. The battle for logistic and transport hubs will continue during the winter as a key part of Ukrainian and Russian operational strikes. As part of their ‘deep battle’ activities, both sides will seek to seize or strike seize, key locations that will provide a hub for transport and the logistics. This will further hinder winter maneuver and degrade the capacity for operations in the Spring of 2024.  

Seizing the Initiative. Both sides will want to go into their winter campaigns with tactical and operational momentum. At the moment, Ukraine has the initiative in the east and south. Russia is building momentum in the north east with a large force, which will remain a dangerous threat into winter. Neither side will want to see their momentum bleed away over winter. At the same time, having committed nearly all their combat forces this year, both sides will want to reconstitute operational reserves for their campaigns in 2024.

The Adaptation Battle. The subject of how both sides have adapted during the war has been a key theme of my writing about the war in Ukraine since February 2022. There are multiple examples of adaptation – from tactical to strategic levels – by both sides in this war. In the Ukrainian offensives so far, there is an example of tactical adaptation which Ukraine starting to use dismounted, distributed minefield breaching instead of heavy, mounted breach operations. Operationally, the Ukrainians appear to be adapting their main effort between the east and the south.

The Ukrainians, who have been clever strategists and tacticians throughout this war, might also take the advice of the Finns from the Winter War. As this excellent article at War on the Rocks explores, Finland found that it was “not sufficient to adapt to a harsh geography. Rather, the goal should be to develop new forms of operational art that enable one to leverage that same geography against an ill-adapted foe.”

At the same time, the Russians have also been adapting, particularly with their use of fixed defences in the south, and in their tactics to blend the employment of elite formations alongside (and more dispensable) mobilised forces. Most recently, the Russian Army has issued new doctrine on countering Ukraine’s assault tactics being employed in southern and eastern Ukraine.

Winter is likely to see further adaptations by both sides.

The Attrition Battle. The fight to out-produce one’s enemy adversary, and turn materiel into battlefield capacity at a faster and greater rate over a longer period of time, is an important element for both sides in this war. This is a war of industrial systems, with Russia, the U.S. and Europe beginning to step up production of munitions and other equipment. That said, many would offer that the pace of this is still too slow in the West.

While consumption rates of key war materiel may reduce over winter, production and stockpiling will be crucial to the preparations for 2024. Both sides will do this. At the same time they will be undertaking operations to find and destroy the stockpiles of their enemy.

The Strategic Influence Fight. This topic has been explored in the sections on Ukrainian and Russian winter operations above. That said, the key strategic messages from Russia over winter will be that they are willing to keep fighting for as long as it takes, and that Western nations are wasting their time and resources supporting Ukraine.

For Ukraine, key strategic messages will be that they have used Western support effectively to make progress in 2023, and that long-term support - and strategic patience - is an important defeat mechanism to overcome Putin’s ‘long war’ theory of victory.

Image: Odesa Journal

The Colder Months Ahead

The coldest months in Ukraine are normally between November and March. Temperatures drop below zero, and it is also a period of precipitation (rain and snow) and shorter daylight hours.

Cross country mobility becomes difficult because of mud. Wheeled vehicles in particular struggle in cold and boggy conditions, and this will have an impact on the logistic support for both sides. Tracked vehicles, however, have better mobility in such conditions, although they too can be mired in mud. Winter months can sap the energy from soldiers faster than in warmer conditions. Winter preparations to protect soldiers and preserve combat power will be ongoing.

Concealment of equipment, soldiers, supply dumps and headquarters in winter is challenging. Foliage disappears, and the darker colours that military vehicles are painted makes them stand out against the white of snow. The heat of humans and equipment stands is more pronounced, easily detected by the advanced thermal sensors which are pervasive on the modern battlefield. At the same time, flying during winter can be more challenging for both crewed and autonomous aerial vehicles.

Despite these difficulties, we might expect more surprises over the coming months. A central aspect of warfare in general, and this war in particular, is the continuous effort by all sides to generate advantage over their enemy. Both Ukraine and Russia will be looking for ways to gain territory, attrit the capacity of the other side and to degrade its morale. We are likely to see some creative and surprising actions. Both sides are capable of this.

Preparing for Winter and the Spring Offensives to Follow

In October last year, I wrote the following in an article for the Sydney Morning Herald about the 2022 winter:

There is a final salutary lesson when making comparisons between Ukraine in 2022 and Finland in 1939. The Winter War of 1939-1940 was actually the beginning of a longer conflict between Finland and the Soviet Union. Known as The Continuation War, this conflict lasted until September 1944 and resulted in more than 1 million dead, wounded and missing between the belligerents.

Unfortunately, we are now indeed in a ‘long war’.

The winter of 2022 was followed by a large scale Russian offensive, which gained little ground. Subsequently, Ukraine launched its 2023 offensives, which has made progress in the south and the east (with more to come), as well as on the maritime front. It has also implemented a strategic strike campaign against a variety of political and military targets in Russia. 

These efforts, when added to the Kharkiv and Kherson offensives of 2022, have placed Ukraine in a better position strategically now than it was in at the same time last year.

However, the war is by no means won for Ukraine. And, with an array of political challenges coming in 2024, and continuing shortfalls in material assistance, the Ukrainians will need to employ their full panoply of diplomacy, influence, intelligence and warfighting skills to sustain operations over winter while preparing for the inevitable campaigns for 2024.

5. Soldiers, Marines from Kabul evac awarded Presidential Unit Citation

Soldiers, Marines from Kabul evac awarded Presidential Unit Citation

militarytimes.com · by Davis Winkie · August 31, 2023

Editor’s note: This story was updated on Aug. 31, 2023 at 6:14 p.m. EST with additional information from Navy public affairs.

Two years ago, the fall of Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, to the Taliban sparked one of the largest humanitarian operations in U.S. military history. In two weeks, troops helped evacuate more than 124,000 civilians through the airport there, despite a fragile truce with their former Taliban foes and a deadly suicide attack that killed a soldier, a Navy corpsman and 11 Marines.

The Defense Department announced Thursday that many of the soldiers and Marines who were there at the two-decade war’s close will receive the Presidential Unit Citation for their collective courage. The Presidential Unit Citation, the nation’s highest unit award, is presented for shared “exceptional heroism” roughly equivalent to that required for an individual award of the Distinguished Service Cross or Navy Cross.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III said the following units received the honor, and troops from them who participated in the evacuation may permanently wear the decoration:

• 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit,
• Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force-Crisis Response-Central Command,
• Joint Task Force 82 of the 82nd Airborne Division and its supporting units.

The award covers non-82nd Airborne forces on the ground that came under then-division commander Lt. Gen. Chris Donahue’s control at the airport, such as the National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 194th Armor and elements of the 10th Mountain Division already deployed to Afghanistan that fell back to the airport during the withdrawal.

According to a statement from Army public affairs, “select elements” from the following units that took part in the operation will receive the award: Headquarters, 82nd Airborne Division; 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division; 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division; 1st Attack Battalion, 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade; 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division; 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division; DIVARTY, 82nd Airborne Division; 82nd Sustainment Brigade; 16th Military Police Brigade; 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade; 50th Expeditionary Signal Battalion, 35th Signal Brigade; 1st Battalion, 101st Field Artillery Regiment, Massachusetts National Guard; 319th Ordnance Company, Washington Army National Guard; 1st Battalion, 194th Armored Regiment, Minnesota National Guard; 249th Engineer Battalion, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; USA Network Enterprise Center, Qatar; 160th Special Operation Aviation Regiment; 8th Psychological Operation Group; 95th Civil Affairs Brigade; and U.S. Army Special Operations Command.

According to the award citation for Navy and Marine units, a copy of which was provided to Military Times, the following subordinate units under the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit will be awarded the Presidential Unit Citation: the command element for the 24th MEU; Battalion Landing Team, 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment; Combat Logistics Battalion 24; Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 162.

For the Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force, the subordinate receiving the PUC are: the Special MAGTAF command element; 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment; Combat Logistics Battalion 21; Marine Wing Support Squadron 373; Marine Aerial Refueller Squadrons 352 and 234; and Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 364.

Additionally, those who served with Marine Operations Group Central-Forward on the mission will be eligible for the PUC.

Air Force flying units that supported the evacuation, including the National Guard’s 105th Airlift Wing, already received lower-degree unit awards. The service’s 621st Contingency Response Group received a Gallant Unit Citation. It’s not clear if those awards were upgraded — Air Force public affairs referred questions to Austin’s office, which did not immediately release a detailed list of covered units.

In a statement announcing the award, Austin praised the service members’ heroism “in the midst of the pandemic and in the teeth of danger.”

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth struck a similar note in her statement.

“The Soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division and Joint Task Force 82 (JTF-82) demonstrated heroic discipline and courage during the execution of the non-combatant evacuation operations in support of Operation Allies Refuge,” the Army’s top civilian said. “The bravery of the Soldiers on the ground and the dedication of those who supported every evacuation flight exemplify the ideals of service with honor and compassion.”

The Navy and Marine Corps’ top leader, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro, lauded his troops’ “unparalleled” courage and bravery.

Relatively few organizations have received the Presidential Unit Citation for actions in Afghanistan. Some previous awardees for the war include special operations units from the initial invasion, an Army airborne battalion that fought in Kunar and Nuristan provinces in 2007, an 82nd Airborne Division battalion that helped British troops retake a town in 2007, units from a Marine Corps-led push into Marjah in 2010, an Army Ranger battalion for its fighting in 2010, and an Army brigade that cleared no-go zones in the Helmand heartland in 2010-2011.

About Davis Winkie

Davis Winkie is a senior reporter covering the Army. He focuses on investigations, personnel concerns and military justice. Davis, also a Guard veteran, was a finalist in the 2023 Livingston Awards for his work with The Texas Tribune investigating the National Guard's border missions. He studied history at Vanderbilt and UNC-Chapel Hill.

6. With a Village Recaptured, Ukraine Takes the Next Step in Its Counteroffensive

Excerpts:

On Thursday, the 46th Brigade said its soldiers had reached the western part of Verbove, though it underlined that there were much more difficult fights ahead.

“The battles will be for heights farther south and southwest,” the brigade said. The brigade cautioned against “hype” since even if it can punch through the next defensive line, Russia has still more ahead.

As they aim to push forward, Ukrainian forces also have to defend against Russian efforts to propel them back again.

“Russia is constantly counterattacking, conducting an active defense,” the brigade said, adding that “our month of battles has shown that the enemy is not going to give up the captured lands — there is a lot of work ahead.”

With a Village Recaptured, Ukraine Takes the Next Step in Its Counteroffensive

By Marc Santora, Constant Méheut and Eric Schmitt

Reporting from Odesa, Ukraine, London, and Washington.

The New York Times · by Eric Schmitt · September 1, 2023

After penetrating Russian defenses to retake the village of Robotyne, Ukrainian forces have pushed the fight a few miles east, but formidable obstacles lie ahead.

A Ukrainian soldier looking at a destroyed Ukrainian tank near the village of Robotyne last week.Credit...Viacheslav Ratynskyi/Reuters

Reporting from Odesa, Ukraine, London, and Washington.

Aug. 31, 2023

After piercing a daunting line of Russian defenses around the southern village of Robotyne, Ukrainian forces are now seeking to take the next step in their arduous counteroffensive, waging a fierce battle a few miles farther to the east, according to Ukrainian military commanders and U.S. officials.

The intense fighting on Thursday comes amid weeks of brutal battles that have resulted in small but significant advances that Ukrainian forces are trying to exploit, with the broader goal of driving a wedge into the so-called land bridge between Russia and occupied Crimea, which is vital to the Russian military’s supply routes.

The Ukrainian 46th Brigade, which is participating in the fighting in the area, said that its assault units were attacking Russian positions near the village of Verbove, nine miles east of Robotyne.

The move toward Verbove is notable because it shows that Ukraine is confident enough in its hold on Robotyne that it believes its troops can try to press forward.

U.S. officials on Thursday confirmed that Ukrainian forces had punched through a major line of Russian defenses around Robotyne and were engaged in fighting near Verbove.

Even such small advances are significant, American officials said, because they have generated the first real Ukrainian momentum in weeks and pushed their artillery and missiles a bit closer to strike deeper into Russian-held territory at Moscow’s troops, supplies and transportation networks.

A senior Western military official said the Ukrainian advances, while noteworthy, do not yet represent a major operational breakthrough. But they provide a morale boost for both Ukrainian troops and public sentiment, and demonstrate real progress to the United States and other allies that have provided Ukraine with billions of dollars in arms and equipment, the official said.

Western analysts noted that several other defensive lines converge around Verbove, which could slow or stall the advance.

Ukrainian military officials themselves have warned not to expect rapid progress, with every bit of ground retaken exacting a toll on their troops. And as Ukrainian forces look to push south toward the Sea of Azov, there are still miles of formidable Russian defenses ahead — including mines, tank traps, fortified trenches, concrete pill boxes and sniper nests.

On Thursday, the 46th Brigade said its soldiers had reached the western part of Verbove, though it underlined that there were much more difficult fights ahead.

“The battles will be for heights farther south and southwest,” the brigade said. The brigade cautioned against “hype” since even if it can punch through the next defensive line, Russia has still more ahead.

As they aim to push forward, Ukrainian forces also have to defend against Russian efforts to propel them back again.

“Russia is constantly counterattacking, conducting an active defense,” the brigade said, adding that “our month of battles has shown that the enemy is not going to give up the captured lands — there is a lot of work ahead.”

Ukrainian soldiers from the 22nd Mechanized Brigade firing a self-propelled howitzer at targets in direction of the city of Bakhmut on Monday.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said in its latest analysis that geolocated combat footage published on Wednesday showed that Ukrainian forces had advanced to the northwestern outskirts of Verbove, though the extent of those advances and control over these positions remained unclear.

If Ukraine can hold the ground it recently reclaimed, its forces would be in a position to apply pressure on Russian supply routes running through the city of Tokmak, about 15 miles to the south.

Just as important as the Ukrainian advance, military analysts said, is the Russian reaction to the headway. It is not clear how many reserve soldiers Russia can bring to this sector of the front without creating weaknesses the Ukrainians can exploit elsewhere.

“The Ukrainians are gradually gaining ground, which means that they are pushing the Russians back, and they can break through some of these well-fortified areas,” Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general, told CNN on Wednesday, noting that “Ukrainians have exceeded expectations again and again.”

Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, offered an example of the difficulty of the battle during a meeting of diplomats in France on Wednesday. After the units spent more than two months engaged in a grueling campaign to break the Russian lines around Robotyne, their fighting capability was exhausted, he said.

The local commander asked for permission to restructure the attack force there, choosing 31 soldiers considered to be deeply motivated. A third of these had no combat experience, he said.

To recapture Robotyne, these selected soldiers first had to take a tree line outside the village.

“It’s in these plantations, invisible on maps, that the greatest tragedies and heroism of the war take place,” Mr. Kuleba said. “So our unit drove the Russians out of there and held the position for two days until reinforcements arrived.”

Ukrainian soldiers at their positions on the front line near the village of Robotyne last week.Credit...Viacheslav Ratynskyi/Reuters

The soldiers then had to walk some six miles through fields laden with mines to reach the village itself.

“They only had time to catch their breath briefly and immediately stormed the fortified Russian positions, drove the enemy out and held out until the main forces arrived,” Mr. Kuleba said.

Over the course of 40 days, he said, this unit conducted six assaults and two reconnaissance missions. Seven of the soldiers were wounded, he said, including one who stepped on a mine.

“The work of this group made it possible for an entire brigade to attack Robotyne and liberate it after weeks of assaults,” he said. “After securing its flanks, we open the way to Tokmak and, ultimately, Melitopol and the border with Crimea.”

According to American officials, Russian attack helicopters that stymied advancing Ukrainian tanks and armored personnel carriers earlier in the three-month-old offensive have been more effectively countered recently by Ukrainian troops firing Stinger antiaircraft missiles. And cluster munitions provided by the Pentagon have also effectively attacked Russian troops caught out in the open, these officials said.

Still, military analysts said on Thursday that Ukraine has had to tap into forces for this assault phase near Robotyne that commanders had initially planned to keep in reserve, including units equipped with dozens of U.S. Army Stryker combat vehicles.

A big concern for Ukrainian commanders now is whether they will have enough combat power left to exploit breaches in the formidable Russian minefields and other defenses, and then widen those holes in the lines as they continue to push south toward their ultimate goal.

Marc Santora reported from Odesa, Ukraine, Constant Méheut from London, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

Marc Santora has been reporting from Ukraine since the beginning of the war with Russia. He was previously based in London as an international news editor focused on breaking news events and earlier the bureau chief for East and Central Europe, based in Warsaw. He has also reported extensively from Iraq and Africa. More about Marc Santora

Constant Méheut has covered France from the Paris bureau of The Times since 2020. More about Constant Méheut

Eric Schmitt is a senior writer who has traveled the world covering terrorism and national security. He was also the Pentagon correspondent. A member of the Times staff since 1983, he has shared four Pulitzer Prizes. More about Eric Schmitt

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Ukraine Regains Village And Its Soldiers’ Morale

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The New York Times · by Eric Schmitt · September 1, 2023

7. Dollars Deployed: How the Weaponization of the U.S. Financial System Contributed to Afghanistan’s Collapse

Conclusion:

When it comes to the United States, Afghanistan serves as an example where the attempt to weaponize money has proven ineffective. Military programs aimed at winning “hearts and minds” largely failed. As has been extensively argued, blurring the line between the distinct roles of military operations and humanitarian efforts is seriously counterproductive and undermines the genuine nature of humanitarian aid. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the Congress’ oversight body for the U.S. development aid in Afghanistan, had some success. However, for future U.S. interventions, such a body must have buy-in within the administration, be vested with broad authority, and have relevant structure and ample resources to investigate and oversee both developmental and military expenditures.

Dollars Deployed: How the Weaponization of the U.S. Financial System Contributed to Afghanistan’s Collapse

justsecurity.org · by Timor Sharan · August 31, 2023

August 31, 2023

The collapse of the Afghan government to the Taliban and subsequent U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 marked the failure of two decades of fighting to root out terrorism and stabilize the country. In the aftermath of that disaster, the United States was quick to blame corrupt Afghan politicians for the Taliban’s return to power.

This narrative, however, misleadingly shifts the attention away from the root causes of the collapse and the failure of the United States to defeat the Taliban. The U.S. military’s strategy of using its financial might as a “weapons system” in the global “war on terror” contributed significantly to its own military failure and to the Afghan Republic’s downfall. By infusing billions of dollars into purchasing security and securing allegiances of local elites, media, civil society, and communities, the United States inadvertently created an ecosystem ripe for rampant corruption on an unprecedented scale.

The United States has a checkered past when it comes to military intervention and corruption. This pattern is notable in places such as South Vietnam, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Drawing crucial insights from the U.S. military’s approach and the resulting pervasive corruption encountered in Afghanistan, it becomes imperative that we heed these lessons. Now, more than ever, these lessons must resonate in the context of contemporary challenges, notably in Ukraine and other comparable scenarios.

Weaponizing the Financial System

From the outset, the U.S. approach to the war in Afghanistan was to employ its financial might to secure quick gains. General David Petraeus, the U.S. Armed Forces Commander in Afghanistan and principal architect of the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy, wrote in 2008 that the military should employ money as a “weapons system” to be used as “ammunition” to undermine the enemy’s financial resources and secure the loyalty of the political elite. Believing that this approach had worked in Iraq, Petraeus emphasized the need to pump substantial amounts of money into Afghanistan’s polity and economy through diverse programs to win “hearts and minds” of local actors. An official military handbook was then published, explicitly encouraging army commanders to leverage money and military contracts to curry favor with local actors and gain influence.

In the years that followed, international spending and monetary resources became the principal instrument of military power in Afghanistan, taking precedence over direct engagement with the adversary. Indeed, U.S. financial spending eclipsed a staggering 2.3 trillion dollars in Afghanistan over the course of two decades. With little due diligence, effective oversight, or accountability, most of U.S. spending on the war was extravagant, irresponsible, and counterproductive to efforts to stabilize the country and root out terrorism.

The United States’ and its allies’ massive military spending and contracts contributed significantly to already existing corruption in Afghanistan. U.S. military contracts, like the Host Nation Trucking (HNT) agreement — a $2.16 billion contract providing logistical support to NATO — morphed into a mechanism for wielding money as a weapon in rewarding warlords and political elites for security and safety of its logistical supplies. International military spending and aid became the biggest creditors of “rent” for Afghanistan, by large margins. U.S. money permeated all levels of Afghan polity and society, perpetuating an environment conducive to embezzlement, fraud, and favoritism.

Over the years, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) — established in 2008 to provide the U.S. Congress with independent and objective oversight of aid for reconstruction programs — has produced some damning reports on U.S. aid expenditures, excluding military-run programmes and contracting, during this period. An October 2020 SIGAR report published a year before the Afghan government’s collapse estimated that, since the start of the war, the United States had lost a staggering $19 billion in development programs due to waste, fraud, and abuse.

The unprecedented scale and heightened level of corruption witnessed in post-2001 Afghanistan must primarily be attributed to the substantial military expenditure and allocation of development aid by the United States and its allies. As succinctly put by a western journalist, Matthieu Aikins, working in Afghanistan since 2001, “The pervasive web of corruption…has expanded with each bullet fired and meal consumed by soldiers and development workers deployed during the surge.” At the peak of the American military engagement from 2009 to 2012, it had over 800 small, medium, and large military bases scattered around the country serving 120,000 U.S. troops, excluding contractors.

Instead of winning “hearts of minds,” military spending exacerbated socio-economic disparities and divisions within Afghan society. While south and southeast Afghanistan — where most of the insurgency war was concentrated – received substantial aid, more secure areas, including the Central Highlands, received little to nothing. Indeed, many of the poorer areas of rural Afghanistan received only sporadic international aid, primarily in the form of subsistence assistance such as cooking oil or wheat. The message behind this disparity in aid was clear: violence pays off. International aid and U.S. military programs to win hearts and minds further created perverse incentives to sustain violence at the local level — from airline companies and transport and insurance companies to some local communities. An internal Afghan government report found that an Afghan airline was paying the Taliban to deliberately kidnap and harass passengers heading to Taliban provinces to create fear and thereby ensure full-capacity flights. While some became exceptionally rich, the majority of Afghans were anguished in the grip of poverty and adversity. In 2021, after two decades of military intervention and expenditure worth hundreds of billions of dollars, Afghanistan’s poverty rate stood at 55 percent, while the unemployment rate was 24 percent.

Consolidating a Criminal State and a Kleptocracy for Hire

The United States came to perceive the Afghan state and its elites, including those in civil society, media, and business, as clients in its pursuit of the war on terror. The weaponization of money meant that some of the worst human rights abusers, criminals, and narcotics traffickers became Washington’s partners-in-crime who willingly did the United States’ bidding in advancing its agenda. The magic wand of international money cast a mesmerizing spell over the Afghan state and its political and economic elites. Afghan non-governmental organizations, the media, and political elites unintentionally become entangled in the intricate ecosystem created by American financial flows.

U.S. money and contracts enriched and empowered warlords and infamous militia commanders, who channeled some of these proceeds to the Taliban and local tribes as protection money to deter attacks on NATO convoys. By some estimates, 10 percent of what the United States and its allies spent in Afghanistan went to the Taliban, who then recruited more fighters from poor communities.

U.S. money fashioned the emergence of a “criminal state” as it empowered and enriched a criminal business elite — many of whom were American military subcontractors — along with warlords and predatory elites who seized Afghanistan’s important financial and trade sectors and political institutions. It created a fertile ground for private profiteering, marked by criminality, illicit extortion, and corruption — elements that came to define the operational rules within the Afghan polity. By 2010, an entrenched “kleptocratic class” emerged who had amassed fortunes by associating with and controlling international security and aid assistance, as well as exploiting global offshore and tax haven systems. The convergence of a criminal business network with warlords and a political class centered in Kabul effectively resulted in state capture.

The Kabul Bank crisis of 2010 exposed the depth of state capture in Afghanistan. Due to fraud, embezzlement, and mismanagement by bank managers, the bank lost $900 million. It was the prime channel for processing the $1.5 billion payrolls for the Afghan security forces and hundreds of thousands of government employees. The bank was considered too big to fail, so it was bailed out by U.S. taxpayer money. Investigations revealed that the bank began as a Ponzi scheme for the Afghan kleptocratic class. Almost all the key Afghan elites and criminal networks had a share in the collapsed Kabul Bank, including then-President Hamid Karzai’s brother and his first vice-president.

By 2019, at least two-thirds of Afghan parliamentarians, including the speaker, deputy speakers, and the Head of the House Committee (except for one), had either questionable direct involvement in the illicit economy or were linked to it through family members. Notably, over 40 parliamentary members were implicated in unlawful activities related to mining sector extraction. The security ministries, which the American military and embassy held huge influence over through money and appointments, were thoroughly captured by corrupt officials — most of whom were American subcontractors. An assessment I conducted in 2019 on the Ministry of Interior revealed how the ministry had become a “honeycomb” for a particular faction of Afghan political elites hailing from a particular province, utilizing it as a conduit for extortion and intimidation against their adversaries.

The Hollowing Out of the Afghan State

The ill-conceived U.S. strategy of weaponizing its money in the war on terror ultimately undermined the mission it sought to achieve — the establishment of robust Afghan state institutions, democratization, and financial independence. Continued corruption over the years became pervasive and ultimately led to a hollowing out of state institutions, including key security institutions. In 2020, in its assessment of four southern provinces, SIGAR found that between 50% to 70% of personnel that were supposed to be stationed at police facilities and checkpoints were “ghost officers” — deceased officers, while commanding officers and generals collected their paychecks. Their salaries and military logistical allowances were siphoned off by corrupt generals and local officials.

By 2013, corruption had become the biggest existential threat to the Afghan Republic, far more than the threat of the Taliban. As General John Allen warned in his testimony before the U.S. Senate in 2014, seven years before the Republic’s collapse, “For too long, we focused our attention solely on the Taliban…They are an annoyance compared to the scope and the magnitude of corruption with which you must contend.” In spite of the warning, U.S. administrations and officials appeared content to continue with the status quo and let the conflict drift onward. As one analyst succinctly put it, they “avoided accountability and dodged reprisals that could have changed the outcome or shortened the conflict. Instead, they chose to bury their mistakes and let the war drift.”

The weaponization of money allowed Afghan political leaders to evade responsibility. In the pursuit of immediate goals, the United States and Afghan elites regrettably sidelined the longer-term imperative of fostering a resilient state structure through comprehensive state-building, yielding a landscape of unstable power centers and elites rather than a cohesive national framework. While presenting the façade and narrative of democratization and women’s rights for its domestic and international consumption, the U.S. sacrificed institutionalization and democratization, as well as the endeavor to combat corruption and uphold justice in the pursuit of political stability and order. Robust institutions capable of upholding the principles of the rule of law, justice, effective governance, and sustainable economic growth did not flourish. Subsequently, the reform-minded liberal forces seeking to establish a more open and inclusive society were disempowered. Trust between the Afghan elites — as well as the historically prominent jihadi-political organizations that sprung to fight the Soviet Union invasion — and society eroded, and the legitimacy of the state was undermined, which the Taliban was able to exploit.

The Collapse of the Republic and Lessons for Others

The collapse of the Afghan Republic did not emerge from nowhere. It was not months but years in the making, gradual and, most damningly, written over every wall. It was rooted in the last two decades of flawed U.S. military engagement, especially its strategy of using money as a weapon. The February 2020, U.S.-Taliban deal became the watershed moment. When it became apparent that the United States would finally exit and the supply of patronage and contracts would drastically be reduced, if not fully pulled off, panic set in among the kleptocratic elites. In other words, when that weapon system was threatened with disarmament, the entire political order collapsed like an “empire of mud,” disintegrating rapidly. The existing fragile political order among Afghan elites and competing centers of power fragmented, alliances were disrupted as local commanders and political clients shifted their allegiance to the Taliban. In May and June 2021, the Afghan army lost one-quarter of the country’s districts to the Taliban, and by mid-July the fall of provinces occurred in rapid succession, one after another.

Evidently, the United States was never the committed partner it claimed to be; its objectives and strategies constantly shifted, sending confusing messages to the Afghan political class and the general population. The veteran U.S. diplomat, Ryan Crocker, described the deal as equivalent to “full surrender.” The deal was essentially a “hasty exit,” which set the terms of full American troop withdrawal from Afghanistan by May 2021. In exchange, the Taliban committed to not harboring or supporting international terrorist groups in Afghanistan. Many Afghans continue to question whether the United States simply jumped ship at the last minute, enabling the Taliban takeover in return for certain backchannel guarantees, inked in the secret annex documents of the 2020 Doha Agreement.

The insights drawn from the U.S. military involvement and assistance offer valuable lessons applicable to different contexts such as Ukraine, undergoing analogous aid and support from the United States. Today, Ukraine depends almost entirely on the Western financial aid and the supply of weaponry. The prospects ahead appear considerably bleak for the authorities in Kyiv and their supporters.

The U.S. and European provision of billions of dollars in aid and arms to Ukraine necessitates proactive measures from both donors and recipients. In particular, Ukrainian leaders must implement stringent oversight mechanisms to enhance transparency and accountability, enabling them to assume greater control over the strategic allocation of funds. Doing so will not only sustain broader political backing but ensure broader legitimacy of the war effort.

While international assistance can exert a compelling allure, it is imperative for the recipient country to retain a firm grip on the direction and ownership of the war. Striving for less external dependency invariably proves more advantageous, and setting up effective oversight mechanisms with adequate power and resources to monitor the flows and use of money is key.

When it comes to the United States, Afghanistan serves as an example where the attempt to weaponize money has proven ineffective. Military programs aimed at winning “hearts and minds” largely failed. As has been extensively argued, blurring the line between the distinct roles of military operations and humanitarian efforts is seriously counterproductive and undermines the genuine nature of humanitarian aid. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the Congress’ oversight body for the U.S. development aid in Afghanistan, had some success. However, for future U.S. interventions, such a body must have buy-in within the administration, be vested with broad authority, and have relevant structure and ample resources to investigate and oversee both developmental and military expenditures.

IMAGE: Men watch as an armed Taliban security personnel rides a vehicle convoy during a parade near the US embassy in Kabul on August 15, 2023, as the Taliban celebrates the second anniversary of their takeover. (Photo by WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images)

justsecurity.org · by Timor Sharan · August 31, 2023

8. Zelenskyy says Ukraine has developed a long-range weapon, a day after a strike deep inside Russia

Zelenskyy says Ukraine has developed a long-range weapon, a day after a strike deep inside Russia

AP · by Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year] · August 31, 2023

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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday his country has developed a weapon that hit a target 700 kilometers (400 miles) away, in an apparent reference to the previous day’s strike on an airport in western Russia.

Zelenskyy said on his Telegram channel the weapon was produced by Ukraine’s Ministry of Strategic Industries but gave no other details.

On Wednesday, a four-hour wave of drones that Moscow blamed on Ukraine hit an airport near Russia’s border with Estonia and Latvia, damaging four Il-76 military transport planes, according to local reports.

The airport is in Russia’s Pskov region, about 700 kilometers (400 miles) north of the Ukrainian border.

In all, six Russian regions were targeted in the barrage amid the 18-month war.

The Associated Press was unable to determine whether the drones were launched from Ukraine or inside Russia.

Kyiv officials normally neither claim nor deny responsibility for attacks on Russian soil, though they sometimes refer obliquely to them. Zelenskyy’s remark was the clearest hint that Ukraine was behind the strike.

The attack forced the closure of Pskov airport, though it reopened Thursday, according to Russian transport officials.

Another drone intercepted overnight near Moscow resulted in flight delays at several airports around the Russian capital, officials said Thursday. No injuries were reported.

Russian news agency Interfax reported, meanwhile, that security services killed two people and detained five members of a Ukrainian sabotage group in the Bryansk border region on Wednesday.

The apparent Ukrainian drones reaching deep into Russia and cross-border sabotage missions are part of Kyiv’s efforts to heap domestic pressure on the Kremlin, militarily and politically. Meantime, a Ukrainian counteroffensive launched in June is chipping away at some parts of the front line, Kyiv officials claim.

Ukraine is aiming to “erode Russian morale and increase pressure on its commanders,” the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think tank, said in an assessment.

The strategy is “to bring Russian forces to a tipping point where combat power and morale may begin to break,” the IISS said in the analysis late Wednesday.

___

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

AP · by Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year] · August 31, 2023

9. Opinion | Covid is back. A fruitless national freakout shouldn’t come with it.

Opinion | Covid is back. A fruitless national freakout shouldn’t come with it.

Contributing columnist

August 31, 2023 at 2:51 p.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Ramesh Ponnuru · August 31, 2023

The coronavirus is spreading nationally again. It has hit my family over the past couple of weeks, although my own case was mild. I’m hoping that if there’s another flare-up of the covid-19 wars in our politics, it will be mild, too.

Here and there you can see people saying that all of us need to retrieve our masks, and others vowing that they will never submit to mandates and lockdowns. But this debate seems useful only for inflaming our social and political divisions. We’re not going to return to social distancing or shut down schools.

That’s partly because the current coronavirus numbers are still much lower than previous peaks. Yet even if the numbers rise considerably, the public is not going to accept restrictive coronavirus mitigation measures again, regardless of what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or other public health authorities say.

Throughout the coronavirus ordeal, edicts from on high have always mattered less than their supporters and opponents have thought. In 2020, consumer activity started to plunge before shelter-in-place orders came down. Research indicated that legal restrictions drove only 7 percent of the reduction. Traffic declined most in places with the most covid deaths rather than the most draconian policies. Some evidence suggests that use of masks, too, was more influenced by perceptions of the severity of the virus and the costs and benefits of masking than by mandates.

The primacy of individuals’ voluntary decisions is what makes the credibility of public health authorities so important. Even when their guidance is sound, its effectiveness depends on its persuasiveness. And we have reason to believe that the public will give such guidance a more skeptical hearing now than it did in 2020. Trust in the CDC fell during the pandemic, judging from multiple polls.

You don’t have to be anti-vaccination or think that covid was a hoax (it has killed more than 1.1 million Americans) to believe that the CDC earned that decline. Its guidance on social distancing — first six feet, then three — was arbitrary. It exaggerated the likelihood of outdoor transmission of the virus. Its guidance on masking lagged behind the evidence. And its approach to covid generally reflected a degree of risk aversion that not all reasonably health-conscious people share: the same risk aversion that leads the CDC to recommend against consuming rare and medium-rare steak. No matter how low caseloads have fallen, the CDC has never quit recommending masking on planes, trains, buses and subways.

It is fair, then, to conclude that public health advice should be taken with a grain of salt, even if it means exceeding the CDC’s absurdly low guidelines on sodium intake.

There was one great exception to the rule that voluntary decisions, rather than government policies, drove the reduction in social interactions during the pandemic. It was the government that shut down public schools and kept them closed into the fall and even beyond. But that exception is likely to make people even more suspicious of heavy-handed pandemic-mitigation policies. School shutdowns are increasingly recognized across the political spectrum to have been both unnecessary and disastrous for student achievement.

New outbreaks of the coronavirus continue to pose special risks for people who are immunocompromised. The fact that the public has no appetite for repeating the anti-covid strategies of previous years doesn’t mean we should abandon all efforts at containing the spread of the virus. We should, for example, invest in improving ventilation, which should have been a higher priority when the pandemic first hit. But we should also accept that most people are not going to accept a substantial change in our way of life as a response to this discrete problem.

Among the influential people who have changed their minds about lockdowns is Donald Trump. As president, he slammed governors who had, in his view, lifted restrictions too early. He said he had “total” authority over the question. Now he says that “covid tyrants” — “bad people,” “sick people” — are plotting a comeback but that “WE WILL NOT COMPLY.”

He’s right that we wouldn’t. That’s why we don’t need to freak out about the prospect of a covid tyranny, any more than we should overreact to rising caseloads.

The Washington Post · by Ramesh Ponnuru · August 31, 2023

10. Why the new covid variant is not cause for concern — yet

Opinion | The Checkup With Dr. Wen: Why the new covid variant is not cause for concern — yet

Contributing columnist

August 31, 2023 at 4:30 p.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Leana S. Wen · August 31, 2023

You’re reading The Checkup With Dr. Wen, a newsletter on how to navigate covid-19 and other public health challenges. Click here to get the full newsletter in your inbox, including answers to reader questions and a summary of new scientific research.

Scientists have raised alarms in recent weeks about a new, highly mutated coronavirus variant that might evade the protection of existing immune defenses. The variant, an offshoot of omicron named BA.2.86, requires careful attention by public health experts. But just like the summer uptick in coronavirus cases, it is not yet cause for concern for most Americans.

It’s not at all surprising that new variants are constantly emerging. As we have seen throughout the pandemic, when viruses replicate, they acquire mutations.

Whether a new set of mutations has public health consequences hinges on three key questions: Does it cause more severe disease? Will immunity through prior infection and vaccination protect against it? And is it more transmissible than currently dominant variants?

On the first question, there are too few cases of BA.2.86 to know whether people infected with it will become sicker than those who contract other omicron descendants. The good news is that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expects existing treatments — specifically antiviral pills Paxlovid and molnupiravir and remdesivir injection — to be effective against the new variant. These are crucial tools that dramatically reduce the chance of being hospitalized or dying because of covid-19.

The second question is what’s most worrying to scientists. The genetic sequence of BA.2.86 has more than 30 amino acid differences compared with the BA.2 subvariant it evolved from. It also has significant deviation from the XBB.1.5 subvariant, which has been the dominant variant throughout much of 2023 and is the target of the new booster that’s on track to be released in late September.

Will the new booster be as effective against BA.2.86 as it is against XBB.1.5 and other currently circulating variants? No one knows the answer to this yet, but the number of mutations and where they are located are prompting urgent laboratory studies.

These studies will examine whether the potential immune evasiveness affects protection against infection or severe disease. This is a significant distinction. It might be the case that prior immunity is not as protective against infection, meaning that people who previously contracted the virus could be more susceptible to reinfection, as would those who are up to date with their vaccines. But far more important is whether individuals with immunity against prior variants remain well-protected against severe disease.

When omicron arrived, researchers quickly realized that people who contracted earlier coronavirus variants, such as alpha and delta, were being reinfected and that vaccine effectiveness against infection was much lower for omicron than during earlier surges. But existing immunity was still a good shield against severe disease.

If BA.2.86 follows a similar trajectory to the emergence of omicron, the negative public health impact would be blunted, especially because the availability of antivirals that further reduce disease severity is far greater than during the omicron surge in late 2021 and early 2022.

At that time, omicron caused great societal disruption. The main reason for this is its high degree of transmissibility. Herein lies the third crucial question, for which we also don’t yet know the answer: Is BA.2.86 so highly contagious that it will outcompete other variants?

Based on what we’ve seen thus far, this does not appear to be the case. There have been very few BA.2.86 cases detected to date, including a small number reported in the United States. Even if it is more immune-evasive, this new variant won’t have a meaningful impact unless it becomes more prevalent and displaces other variants.

None of this is meant to downplay the potential significance of this highly mutated offshoot. If BA.2.86 ends up increasing as a proportion of total cases and the worst-case scenarios about its immune evasiveness end up being true, a change in strategy will be needed. That includes a discussion of whether the new booster shot should be reconfigured to take this variant into account.

Those vulnerable to severe disease from covid-19 should continue to take precautions — not necessarily to avoid the small possibility of contracting this variant but to reduce their chance of becoming ill from the dominant variants. Vulnerable people should discuss with their health-care providers the optimal timing of the booster and be sure to have a plan for antiviral treatment if they become ill.

For now, though, most Americans do not need to change their daily lives. This is not the moment to bring back government-mandated mask requirements and other broad public health restrictions. Those measures should be reserved for a true emergency, which we currently do not have.

The Washington Post · by Leana S. Wen · August 31, 2023

11. As Ukraine’s Fight Falters, It Gets Even Harder to Talk About Negotiations

Breakthroughs, slow progress, or faltering?

As Ukraine’s Fight Falters, It Gets Even Harder to Talk About Negotiations

By Steven Erlanger

Reporting from Berlin

Sept. 1, 2023, 5:03 a.m. ET

The New York Times · by Steven Erlanger · September 1, 2023

Discussion of a negotiated Plan B, should Ukraine fail to win a total victory, has become more unseemly than ever and is now nearly a taboo, say those who have tried.

Soldiers with the 110th Separate Mechanized Brigade after firing a DANA, a wheeled 152-millimeter self-propelled artillery gun, at a Russian target in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine on Aug. 26.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

Reporting from Berlin

Sept. 1, 2023, 5:03 a.m. ET

Stian Jenssen, the chief of staff to the secretary general of NATO, recently had his knuckles rapped when he commented on possible options for an end to the war in Ukraine that did not envision a complete Russian defeat.

“I’m not saying it has to be like this, but I think that a solution could be for Ukraine to give up territory and get NATO membership in return,” he said during a panel discussion in Norway, according to the country’s VG newspaper. He also said that “it must be up to Ukraine to decide when and on what terms they want to negotiate,” which is NATO’s standard line.

But the damage was done. The remarks provoked an angry condemnation from the Ukrainians; a clarification from his boss, Jens Stoltenberg; and ultimately an apology from Mr. Jenssen.

The contretemps, say some analysts who have been similarly chastised, reflects a closing down of public discussion on options for Ukraine just at a moment when imaginative diplomacy is most needed, they say.

Western allies and Ukrainians themselves had hung much hope on a counteroffensive that might change the balance on the battlefield, expose Russian vulnerability and soften Moscow up for a negotiated end to the fighting, which has stretched on for a year and half.

Even the most sanguine of Ukraine’s backers did not predict that Ukraine would push Russian occupiers fully out of the country, an outcome that appears increasingly distant in light of the modest gains of the counteroffensive so far.

The conditions on the battlefield raise the question of what might be done off it, these officials and analysts say, even if neither side appears open at the moment to talks. Others fear that too open a conversation may be interpreted by Moscow as a weakening of resolve.

Stian Jenssen, left, the chief of staff to the secretary general of NATO, talks with a colleague during the informal meeting of NATO ministers of foreign affairs in 2022.

But given that even President Biden says the war is likely to end in negotiations, Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, believes there should be a serious debate in any democracy about how to get there.

Yet he, too, has also been criticized for suggesting that the interests of Washington and Kyiv do not always coincide and that it is important to talk to Russia about a negotiated outcome.

“There is a broad and increasingly widespread sense that what we’re doing now isn’t working, but not much of an idea of what to do next, and not a big openness to discuss it, which is how you come up with one,” he said. “The lack of success hasn’t opened up the political space for an open discussion of alternatives.”

“We’re a bit stuck,” he said.

With the counteroffensive going so slowly, and American defense and intelligence officials beginning to blame the Ukrainians, Western governments are feeling more vulnerable after providing so much equipment and raising hopes, said Charles A. Kupchan, a professor at Georgetown University and a former American official.

The American hope, he said, was that the counteroffensive would succeed in threatening the Russian position in Crimea, which would put Ukraine in a stronger negotiating position. That has not happened. “So the political atmosphere has tightened,” he said, “and overall there is still a political taboo about a hardheaded conversation about the endgame.”

Mr. Kupchan knows of what he speaks. He and Richard N. Haass, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote a piece in Foreign Affairs in April, urging Washington and its allies to come up with “a plan for getting from the battlefield to the negotiating table,” and were widely criticized for doing so.

That criticism worsened considerably when the two men, together with Thomas E. Graham, a former American diplomat in Moscow, had private conversations with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, to explore the possibility of negotiations.

When the fact of those conversations leaked, there was a major outcry. While the three men have agreed not to discuss what was said, the reaction was telling, Mr. Kupchan said.

“Any open discussion of a Plan B is politically fraught, as Mr. Jenssen found out the hard way, as do we who try to articulate possible Plan B’s,” he said. “We get a storm of criticism and abuse. What was somewhat taboo is now highly taboo.”

If the counteroffensive is not going well, now would be the time to explore alternatives, he said. Instead, he suggested, Mr. Stoltenberg and others were simply doubling down on slogans like supporting Ukraine “as long as it takes.”

Ukrainian Army soldiers with the 22nd Mechanized Brigade unloading munitions from the back of a truck in the Donbas region of Ukraine on Aug. 28.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

Of course negotiations require two sides to talk, and right now neither President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia nor President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine are ready to negotiate anything.

Mr. Putin’s forces seem to be holding their defensive lines, and most analysts suggest he thinks that the West will tire of supporting Ukraine. He may also hope that Donald J. Trump returns to the White House.

Mr. Trump has promised to stop U.S. support for Ukraine and finish the war in a day. Even if he is not re-elected, he could be a strong voice in pushing the Republican Party to limit its support for Kyiv.

But it is also not clear that Mr. Zelensky, after so much Ukrainian sacrifice, would feel politically able to negotiate even if Russia were pushed back to its positions when the war started, in February 2022.

“No one has a good sense of anyone’s war aims that are in the realm of the realistic,” Mr. Kupchan said. “But no one has tried to find out, either, which is a problem.”

German officials are eager for a negotiated solution and are talking about how Russia might be brought to the negotiating table, but are only doing so in private and with trusted think tank specialists, said Jana Puglierin, director of the Berlin office of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“They understand that they can’t push Ukraine in any way, because Russia will smell weakness,” she said.

Still, there is a desire in Berlin as in Washington that the war not continue indefinitely, she said, in part because political willingness for indefinite military and financial support for Ukraine is already beginning to wane, especially among those on the right and far-right, who are gaining ground.

But for many others, the suggestion of a negotiated solution or a Plan B is too early and even immoral, said Constanze Stelzenmüller of the Brookings Institution. Mr. Putin shown no interest in talking, but the younger generation of officials around him are, if anything, even harder line, she said, citing a piece in Foreign Affairs by Tatiana Stanovaya.

“So anyone who wants to articulate a Plan B with these people on the other side is facing a significant burden of proof question,” she said. “Putin has said a lot of times he won’t negotiate except on his own terms, which are Ukraine’s obliteration. There is no lack of clarity there.”

Any credible Plan B would have to come from the key non-Western powers — like China, India, South Africa and Indonesia — that Russia is depending upon telling Moscow it must negotiate.

“These are the countries Putin is betting on,” she said. “It’s nothing we can say or do or offer.”

Eagerness from Paris or Berlin to negotiate too early will simply embolden Mr. Putin to manipulate that zeal, divide the West and seek concessions from Ukraine, said Ulrich Speck, a German analyst.

“Moving to diplomacy is both our strength and weakness,” he said. “We’re great at compromise and coalition, but that requires basic agreement on norms and goals. The shock of Ukraine is that this simply doesn’t exist on the other side.”

Steven Erlanger is The Times’s chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe, based in Berlin. He previously reported from Brussels, London, Paris, Jerusalem, Berlin, Prague, Belgrade, Washington, Moscow and Bangkok. More about Steven Erlanger

The New York Times · by Steven Erlanger · September 1, 2023

12. Moment Of Drone Strike That Destroyed Russian Il-76s Seen In Infrared Image

Photos and imagery at the link: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/moment-of-drone-attack-that-destroyed-il-76s-at-russian-base-seen-in-infrared-image

Moment Of Drone Strike That Destroyed Russian Il-76s Seen In Infrared Image

New satellite imagery shows two Il-76s were totally destroyed and two others damaged in the drone attack on Kresty Air Base.

BY

HOWARD ALTMAN

|

PUBLISHED AUG 31, 2023 6:08 PM EDT

thedrive.com · by Howard Altman · August 31, 2023

New satellite images obtained by The War Zone show that at least two Il-76 Candid heavy cargo aircraft were destroyed and two others damaged in a drone attack on Kresty Air Base in Pskov Oblast during the overnight hours of Aug. 29. We also obtained a infrared camera image that shows one of the aircraft the moment it was attacked.

The post-attack images from Planet Labs show the charred remains of two Candids and two that appear to display damage to the top of their fuselages at the midpoint of the aircraft where the wings are attached.

AnotherA Russian IL-76 Candid transport jet seen destroyed during a Ukrainian drone attack on Kresty Air Base in Pskov, Russia. PHOTO © 2023 PLANET LABS INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION

Another fully burned out Il-76 is seen at the base. PHOTO © 2023 PLANET LABS INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION

To the south, two Candids are seen with damage to the exact same area, atop their fuselage to the rear of the wing spar/box. PHOTO © 2023 PLANET LABS INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION

The base seen in an image taken on August 31st, mid day. The images above were pulled from this photo. The fuel farm at the base remains intact. PHOTO © 2023 PLANET LABS INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION

Early this morning, we reviewed another set of images of the base that obscured much of its aircraft parking areas. Still, two the south, the two Il-76s were seen with damage to their upper fuselages. Those aircraft have since been toward out to the adjacent taxiway.

We compared these images to ones we obtained from Aug. 16, which proved the scorch-like marks are indeed unique as no airlifters on the sprawling base had anything like them days prior to the attack.

Two Russian IL-76 Candid transport jets show damage where the wings meet the fuselage during a Ukrainian drone attack on Kresty Air Base in Pskov, Russia. This is the image taken earlier this morning that had cloud cover obscuring much of the base. PHOTO © 2023 PLANET LABS INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION

The top of the aircraft is where the cargo jets’ fuel tanks and a critical section of the wing spar are located. Those sections of the aircraft were specifically targeted by the drones, which were launched from inside Russia, Ukrainian Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Defense Intelligence Directorate (GUR), told The War Zone exclusively Thursday.

“We are working from the territory of Russia,” Budanov told us, though he would not specify whether the attack was carried out by GUR personnel or Russian partisans. He also declined to say what kind of drones were used or how many.

The images also back up what Budanov told us about the extent of the damage caused during the attack.

In his battle damage assessment of the aircraft, Budanov told us that “two were destroyed and two were seriously damaged.”

We also obtained a screen capture from an infrared camera video feed from one of the drones used in the attack. The image, provided by a GUR source, shows the immediate result of one of the strikes, hitting in the same spot where two of the Candids show damage. Fuel onboard may have been a factor with the other two burning out completely, but we can assumed the same critical area was targeted.

An image of an Il-76 being attacked by a Ukrainian drone at the Kresty Air Base in Pskov, Russia. (GUR image)

The infrared image would mean these were likely bomblets dropped from a drone or drones under local man-in-the-loop control unless the source of the image was acting as an observation drone to record the strike, which seems unlikely. This would fit Budanov's comments that this was a strike launched inside Russia, likely very near the base, and not one using long-range autonomous drones. The video from which the still we obtained was captured looks like the drone had dropped one of the bomblets.

This successful attack raises additional questions about Russian force protection defenses and its ability to counter drone operations over its domestic airbase facilities. After an attack last month on the Stoltsy-2 Air Base inside Russia, GUR spokesman Andrii Yusov told us it was carried out on the GUR's behest by people inside Russia. Later, Russian officials ordered increased patrols around that base, searching for collaborators and any equipment that they could use.

Unconfirmed reports shortly after this latest drone attack suggested that up to 20 drones may have targeted the base, as part of a large-scale and complex series of drone attacks across Russia.

Shortly after the operation, vivid videos emerged showing huge flames at the base and at least one aircraft ablaze.

It's possible another reason why this base and its transports were targeted was that the defensive posture was not as robust as that seen at Russian bomber bases, which have come under repeated attack, or other installations that support kinetic operations.

The Il-76s are the backbone of Russia’s military aviation lift, playing a role similar to that of U.S. Air Force C-17s. Budanov told us that GUR specifically targeted these aircraft because they were in working order and are being used to “transport military cargo and paratroopers from the Airborne Division.”

“The airbase is home to the 334th Military Transport Aviation Regiment — or 334 VTAP in its Russian abbreviation — which has been operating the Il-76 from here since 1979. The base is thought to operate up to around 20 Il-76s. If claims that four of the transports were damaged are accurate, that would represent a significant portion of the resident fleet.”

There are a total of about 100 operational Il-76s in the entire Russian Air Force.

A Russian Aerospace Forces Il-76MD lands at Kresty Air Base. Igor Dvurekov/Wikimedia Commons

The Oryx open-source tracking group, based on the same images, is now listing two Candids at the base destroyed and two as “damaged beyond economical repair.” Considering the limitations of commercial satellite imagery, The War Zone cannot ascertain if the two damaged airframes are salvageable or not.

Kresty Air Base is located about 430 miles northwest of the Ukrainian border, near Estonia. (Google Earth image)

How big a hit this attack puts on Russia’s abililty to deliver cargo and troops by air remains to be seen, but it is a good bet that Ukraine will continue such attacks as it take the war into Russia.

Update 6:26 P.M. Eastern:

Images purporting to be air defenses being activated at or near the Kresty Air Base in Pskov Oblast in the past hour or so are emerging on social media, including one posted by the regional governor on his Telegram channel

“In the Krestov area, observers at one of the airspace control posts found a single unidentified object in the sky,” Mikhail Vedernikov said. “In the video, measures to neutralize it. There are no consequences on earth. Details later.”

There is no mention of the attack on the Russian Defense Ministry (MoD) Telegram channel and no immediate response by Ukrainian officials. Given that these videos were posted at night and in the fog of war, it may be several hours, once the sun comes up, until we get more solid details.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

thedrive.com · by Howard Altman · August 31, 2023

13. Analysis | Amid a wave of West African coups, France faces a reckoning

Analysis | Amid a wave of West African coups, France faces a reckoning

Columnist

September 1, 2023 at 12:00 a.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Ishaan Tharoor · September 1, 2023

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In West Africa, the dominoes keep falling. Barely more than a month has passed since the presidential guard in Niger toppled the country’s democratically elected government, triggering a tense standoff between a usurping junta and the international community. Then, this week, the top brass in Gabon unseated the country’s long-ruling President Ali Bongo in the wake of a controversial election. The ouster of the Gabonese president, who is currently believed to be under house arrest, marked the seventh coup in the region in the space of three years — including putsches in Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea. The wave of military coups has led to widespread hand-wringing that a form of political “contagion” risks destabilizing a whole swath of the African continent.

“My fear has been confirmed in Gabon that copycats will start doing the same thing until it is stopped,” Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who chairs ECOWAS, West Africa’s main regional body, said Thursday.

There are many contextual differences between the various putsches, but they share an apparent and inescapable common denominator: the prevalence of anti-French sentiment driving a rejection of the political status quo. In much of West Africa — and in all the countries in the region that experienced these recent anti-democratic takeovers — France is the old colonial power. The juntas that have swept aside the previous regimes have weaponized resentment of Paris’s deep and complicated imperial legacy, much to the opportunistic glee of Russia, which has offered both rhetorical and, in some instances, substantive support to the coup-plotting regimes.

That was the case in Burkina Faso and Mali, where French peacekeepers were compelled to withdraw after the juntas made it clear their presence was unwanted. And in Niger, long the centerpiece of France’s counterterrorism efforts in the restive Sahel, anti-French rhetoric abounds. On Thursday, the country’s junta ordered police to expel the French ambassador — a move officials in Paris, which only recognizes the authority of ousted President Mohamed Bazoum, said they did not consider legitimate.

For French President Emmanuel Macron, the situation must be particularly vexing. Over multiple visits to Africa during his time in office, he has delivered speech after speech hailing the advent of a new relationship with the continent, one that would dispel the weighty baggage of the past. In 2017, in the capital of Burkina Faso, Macron called on a renewal of “partnerships” with the region, expressing hopes to invest in the education and aspirations of the continent’s youths. Half a year ago, during a trip that included a stop in Gabon, Macron declared that “the days of la Françafrique are well and truly over” — an implicit reference to a long history of France prioritizing its commercial interests and backing unsavory regimes in its former colonies.

Macron also pointed to a concrete shift in security strategy, laying out how French forces deployed in the region would now exclusively operate alongside local forces. “We have reached the end of a cycle of French history in which military questions held preeminence in Africa,” he said in the Gabonese capital, Libreville, another expression of his desire to change the atmosphere in relations with the African states.

On Monday, as tensions continued to mount over what to do about the Nigerien junta, Macron spoke to a gathering of French diplomats and lamented the “epidemic” of coups roiling the region. For that reason, he argued, his government had to defend Niger’s fledgling democracy. Less than 48 hours later, the coup in Gabon took place. The putschists justified their move as a response to a disputed election this past weekend that saw Bongo, whose family has been in power for more than half a century, claim a new mandate.

A British pollster working in Gabon told reporters that Bongo was on path to a clear, if modest, victory. But the firm also noted the prevalence of a strikingly anti-French attitude in Gabon across all age groups, with the exception of the country’s pro-Paris upper class.

Gabon, in theory, has little in common with Niger. The latter is one of the poorest nations in the world; the former, buoyed by oil wealth, is among the richest per capita countries in Africa, though much of those riches are concentrated among a coterie of political and economic elites.

“The putsch in Gabon has further weakened France’s position in its old African stomping grounds, even if the situation is different in this Central African country, ruled for over five decades by the Bongo family,” reported Le Monde, a leading French daily. “Paris wants to believe that the soldiers behind the coup do not share the anti-French rhetoric of their Nigerien counterparts.”

But France is deeply associated with the entrenched status quo of the Bongo dynasty and the alleged corruption that underpinned its rule. This legacy of accommodation throughout West Africa, including support to earlier coup-plotters and juntas, undercuts Macron’s political convictions and advocacy of democratic order.

“France’s tight post-independence links to local elites, and its past willingness to act as a regional gendarme to prop up leaders, bound up its fortunes in theirs,” noted the Economist. For that reason, it added, “the failures of unpopular rulers today, to reduce poverty or curb violence, are readily blamed on their proximity to France.”

In some ways, France is an easy scapegoat for cynical army men. But, argued Michael Shurkin of the Atlantic Council, “whether this anti-French sentiment is fair or not is entirely beside the point. Ties with France have now become a kiss of death for African governments.”

Decades of Western-led development projects have also proved largely ineffectual. “The problem for France and its Western allies, including the US, is that their enormous aid programmes — some $2 billion a year in development assistance to Niger alone — have not made them any more popular,” the French Algerian journalist Nabila Ramdani wrote in an op-ed. “Massive youth unemployment and an illiteracy rate of 60 per cent are just some of the endemic problems that are blamed on former colonial masters and their associates.”

For some onlookers, the events of recent weeks offer a rude awakening. A clutch of center-right lawmakers in the French Parliament wrote a letter to Macron in August, urging him to reconsider France’s role in Africa as its clout wanes. “Today, the Françafrique of yesterday is replaced by military Russafrique, by economic Chinafrique or diplomatic Americafrique,” they said, lamenting how “Africa, a friendly continent, no longer seems to understand France, and is increasingly contesting its role and its presence.”

Some analysts wonder whether its worth it for France to maintain its footprint at all. It’s no longer the dominant economic player in the region — in Gabon, for example, China has supplanted it as the biggest trading partner — and is operating in a crowded geopolitical field that includes world powers such as the United States, Russia, China, Turkey and others. “Pulling out of Africa would, to some degree, diminish France’s global stature, but the reality is that France — much like Britain — has plenty of strengths and, frankly, other priorities that better reflect its interests,” Shurkin wrote.

The Washington Post · by Ishaan Tharoor · September 1, 2023

14. Philippines stands up to Beijing in South China sea tussle

David and Goliath.

Excerpts:

"It's getting harder each year," Mr Atay says. "How could we work properly when we're afraid? We can't focus on fishing so we just stay on the island where we Filipinos are allowed."

These communities are determined to keep their heads down during these territorial disputes. But their future may depend on any outcome.

That future was once dependant on wind and tide. Now it will depend on the resolve of world leaders.

Philippines stands up to Beijing in South China sea tussle

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Image caption,

Standoffs in the South China Sea are growing between the Philippines and China

By Laura Bicker

Asia Pacific correspondent

"We're scared of China," fisherman Benjo Atay says as wind and rain batter his small bamboo boat on the island of Palawan in the Philippines.

He shouts orders at his young crew, most of them family, as they haul on ropes to navigate out of the port. They are already bathed in salt water and sweat - but it is not the weather that frightens them.

"The Chinese ships circle us and shadow us," he says. "When we are anchored... they would force us to leave. They would get rid of us."

The Philippines is at the centre of a tense territorial standoff with Beijing in the South China Sea.

It is among several countries that have protested against a map issued by China this week which reiterated its claim to over 90% of the sea.

Where previously Manila may have softly whimpered at China's actions to block its ships, its voice has now soared to a roar, emboldened by support from Washington and its allies.

"We are worried [about rising tensions], of course, but that doesn't daunt us," said Jonathan E Malaya, the assistant director general of the Philippines National Security Council.

In recent months, the Philippines has given the US access to key military bases, hosted the largest-ever joint military drills between the two countries, and repeatedly called out Beijing's aggression in the South China Sea. Even as Philippine and Chinese coastguards engage in a now-familiar cat-and-mouse game on the disputed waters, Manila has announced plans to train fishermen to protect their territory out at sea.

The message is clear. "If you are a Filipino, whether in government or [the] private sector, regardless of your politics, defending and making excuses for China's aggressive behaviour should deem you unpatriotic, and a traitor to the Philippines and to our people," Jay Tarriela, a spokesperson for the coastguard in the West Philippine Sea wrote on social media.

China's claims, which extend to all of the South China Sea, rival not just the Philippines but also Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei. These are not new but they are getting louder - and dicier.

The latest episode revolves around the remote Ayungin shoal that lies more than 620 miles (998km) from mainland China's southernmost shore, and around 120 miles from Palawan island.

Image caption,

The Sierra Madre is beached on the Ayungin Shoal

Chinese vessels have used water cannon and lasers to deter the Philippine coastguard from getting close to the shoal in the last six months. The boats were carrying essential water and food to troops aboard a rusting warship - named Sierra Madre - that Manila intentionally grounded on a reef in their waters. It was a determined and calculated move to try to keep a presence on the shoal.

This is territory the Philippines won in an international court in 2016, after a tribunal said Beijing's sweeping claim to sovereignty over most of the South China Sea had no legal basis.

These are lucrative fishing grounds and access to the shoal also means access to nearby Reed Bank, which has significant reserves of oil and natural gas.

Seemingly undeterred by Chinese might, the Philippines tried again to send supplies to its troops on the Sierra Madre - this time, they said they were successful.

"It really is a David versus Goliath issue," Mr Malaya said. "But just like David, we will continue to pound and double down on the need to protect the resources which are important for the future of the Philippines."

• The paradise islands caught in the US-China crosshairs
• Cat-and-mouse chase with China in hotly contested sea

But Beijing does not see it that way. It claims the Sierra Madre is violating its sovereignty. A Chinese coastguard statement described its actions to use a water cannon on the Filipino vessel as "professional and restrained".

Manila said it tried to use a hotline it set up with China to defuse the situation, but no-one answered the phone.

"We would like to resolve this issue," said Mr Malaya, but admitted that "progress is slow and there is, at present, no meeting of the minds".

Unlike his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, who sought to court, rather than criticise, China, President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos has shifted closer to Washington.

He has also made each spat with Beijing in the South China Sea public. If the Philippine coastguard struggles to re-supply the grounded ship on Ayungin shoal, it is televised. Crucially, the US is not too far away.

Image source, Getty Images

Image caption,

President Marcos with US President Joe Biden during a visit to the White House in May

China's "aggressive behaviour" in the South China Sea must be challenged and checked, the commander of the US Navy's Seventh Fleet said earlier this week.

Vice Admiral Karl Thomas assured Manila it had US backing in the face of "shared challenges" in the region. "My forces are out here for a reason," he told Reuters news agency. "You have to challenge people I would say operating in a grey zone. When they're taking a little bit more and more and pushing you, you've got to push back, you have to sail and operate."

Beijing responded by accusing the US of distorting the facts and sowing discord to "project power".

Washington was once ambiguous about Beijing's actions in the South China Sea, and some nations in this region are still never sure they can trust its message of support. A change of administration can also mean a change of heart.

But for now the US is demonstrating that it will show up for its allies in Asia. And it's not just the US that has been showing up in the South China Sea.

Last week, the US, Japan and Australia held joint drills with the Philippines, which Tokyo's ambassador to Manila described as a "significant moment of defence". Forces from Australia and the Philippines also took part in the largest-ever military exercises held between the two nations, which included a mock beach landing and air assault manoeuvres near the South China Sea.

Nowhere else do so many nations come so close to a rival force, which raises fears of a miscalculation during these sea skirmishes.

Image source, BBC / Virma Simonette

Image caption,

Benjo Atay says he is scared to fish in the waters that have been like a second home

For Manila, allied help also comes with the risk of escalating the dispute. But that is a risk Palawan's fishermen may not be willing to take.

The Philippine Army Chief of Staff, Romeo Brawner, recently said they plan to recruit fishermen as reservists and train them. The regional officer for the Kalayaan Palawan Farmers and Fisherfolks Association, Larry Hugo, laughed when the BBC asked him if he knew many fishermen prepared to join such a militia.

"No, no, we don't want to join," he said. "It's hard if China would detect us. Fishermen from here will be targeted. The Chinese are becoming more aggressive. They've increased in numbers too."

Mr Malaya from the Philippines National Security Council says the Chinese are also using hundreds of fishing vessels near the Ayungin shoal, which are in effect militia vessels.

"They are instruments of Chinese power, they are part of the military apparatus of China. They serve to intimidate and harass our fishermen in the area," he added.

Beijing, however, denies that such a militia exists.

Whether it does or not, Benjo Atay says he is not prepared to even risk sailing near those waters, let alone fight.

He has fished near Ayungin shoal since he was 14. It is named after the near-endangered fish endemic to the Philippines, well-known to families living off a tight budget.

There was a time when, for months, he and other fishermen from the scattered islands near Palawan sailed close to Chinese boats in the same waters.

Now in his 30s, Mr Atay's concern for the crew's safety outweighs the lure of a significant catch.

"I don't think we will go back there. We are really scared. They might fire their water cannon. Of course, we just have a wooden boat. We're really afraid of going back there."

Image source, BBC / Virma Simonette

Image caption,

The coastal communities of Palawan depend on fishing for their livelihoods

The crystal-clear turquoise seas and white sands of Palawan are idyllic. But to survive here, if you do not fish, you do not eat.

For generations, the people of this island have carved out communities from rocky bays and sandy shores: single-room homes with corrugated iron roofs where babies sleep in hammocks strung across the kitchen.

A storm has grounded most of the boats, so some venture out on foot into the shallows to wade with nets and buckets for shellfish. Others are using the time to repair boats and nets.

The children have a day off school and battle on a makeshift basketball court surrounded by the resting upturned boats. Some of them say they want to be professional basketball players, but when asked if they want to be fishermen, the answer is a resounding yes.

"It's getting harder each year," Mr Atay says. "How could we work properly when we're afraid? We can't focus on fishing so we just stay on the island where we Filipinos are allowed."

These communities are determined to keep their heads down during these territorial disputes. But their future may depend on any outcome.

That future was once dependant on wind and tide. Now it will depend on the resolve of world leaders.

Related Topics

• Asia
• Philippines
• China-US relations

BBC · by Menu

15. How Japan Can Make Itself America’s Best Ally By Hal Brands

Excerpts:

As always, there are challenges. The officials I spoke to believe it would be nearly impossible to stay out of a conflict over Taiwan, located less than 100 miles from Japan’s southwestern islands. But Tokyo has not made firm commitments about what it would do in case of war, for fear of running ahead of public opinion. Japan has also shied away from putting nuclear issues on the agenda of its trilateral discussions with Seoul and Washington, even though the difficulties of deterring China and North Korea get more daunting as those countries’ arsenals grow.

Japanese officials voiced their own gripes about US policy, from the lack of a meaningful US trade policy in the Indo-Pacific, to the protectionist content of the Inflation Reduction Act, to the prospect — which came up in nearly every conversation — of Trump’s return to the presidency.

Yet some of the biggest challenges are to be found in Tokyo, where the Japanese government is still developing the institutional infrastructure of a serious power. The country’s cyber defenses and information security remain too weak, as demonstrated by a massive Chinese intrusion in 2020. The SDF is still trying to clarify and streamline command and control of its own troops — let alone figure out how to operate more seamlessly with the Pentagon.

More than at any time since 1945, Washington and the world need a strong, confident Japan. Tokyo’s ability to take on the big strategic questions it hasn’t answered, and to tackle the more mundane requirements of effective policy, will determine how much of its geopolitical potential it fulfills.

How Japan Can Make Itself America’s Best Ally

Tokyo is boosting military spending and its diplomatic profile but still needs to be firmer in standing up to China.

By Hal Brands

August 31, 2023 at 5:00 PM EDT

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-08-31/japan-can-be-america-s-best-global-ally-against-china-russia?utm=true&sref=hhjZtX76

Two years ago, I wrote that Japan would be to the US in the 21st century what Britain was in the 20th — America’s single most important ally, whose cooperation is indispensable on the biggest issues confronting the democratic world. After a recent trip to Japan, where I met with government officials and leading policy analysts, I’m all the more convinced this is the case. Japan is entering a new era of global ambition and influence — provided it can get past some significant hang-ups and challenges that stand in the way.

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I arrived in Tokyo following a landmark diplomatic event: The first-ever summit of US, South Korean and Japanese leaders, at Camp David in Maryland. That meeting produced commitments to cooperate on issues ranging from missile defense to supply chains. It marked a watershed — albeit a tenuous one — in a Japan-South Korea relationship long marred by historical hostility.

No one in Tokyo disputed that primary credit goes to South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who has taken great political risk to put World War II-era disputes to rest. Nonetheless, it is Japan that offers the most striking example of a US ally whose statecraft is being transformed by a more threatening world.

In the past year, Japan revolutionized its defense policy by moving to nearly double military outlays over a five-year period. Tokyo is buying longer-range missiles to strike targets within North Korea or China; its Self-Defense Forces are expanding their presence in the archipelago’s islands closest to Taiwan, in preparation for a possible clash with China.

There was a grim seriousness about the officials I met with: Few in Tokyo require convincing that the danger of conflict with China is rising fast. Yet more military power isn’t Tokyo’s sole contribution to the free world.

Under former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan took the lead in reviving the Quad — a four-way partnership involving Japan, Australia, India and the US — to prevent the Western Pacific from becoming what he called “Lake Beijing.” It salvaged the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, an ocean-spanning trade pact meant to counter Chinese influence, after former President Donald Trump withdrew the US from that accord.

Under current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Japan is deepening relations with countries from South Korea to Australia, while expanding its defense diplomacy with Southeast Asia. Washington and Tokyo cooperated to restrict Beijing’s access to high-end semiconductors; their attention is now turning to other sectors, such as renewable energy and biotechnology, in which the democracies must hasten their own innovation while retarding China’s.

Japan’s horizons aren’t just regional, but global: Tokyo is supporting Ukraine and sanctioning Russia, implicitly breaking its custom of avoiding simultaneous tensions with Moscow and Beijing. Meanwhile, Japan has long been a leading provider of global development assistance, and its diplomats are helping the US, UK and other advanced democracies coordinate the engagement of an often-ambivalent global south. As a result, the US-Japan alliance is thriving. As one US diplomat remarked, the primary problem is there are so many opportunities to pursue.

In some ways, Japan’s centrality isn’t surprising. As China’s longtime rival, it has little choice but to resist Beijing’s hegemony: Many in Tokyo’s security establishment see the contest as little short of existential. Japan’s geographic location, technological sophistication, wealth, military potential and democratic values give it unique importance to the US contest with Beijing.

What makes these recent moves more notable is that they have required breaking with the self-constraint Tokyo practiced for much of the post-World War II period, and embracing a bolder statecraft that brings Japan’s power into alignment with its potential.

That shift is easier in a region, and a world, still largely pacified by America — an active Japan might seem more threatening if not tied so closely to Washington. Japanese power, in turn, looks increasingly essential to preserving an order the US cannot sustain alone.

As always, there are challenges. The officials I spoke to believe it would be nearly impossible to stay out of a conflict over Taiwan, located less than 100 miles from Japan’s southwestern islands. But Tokyo has not made firm commitments about what it would do in case of war, for fear of running ahead of public opinion. Japan has also shied away from putting nuclear issues on the agenda of its trilateral discussions with Seoul and Washington, even though the difficulties of deterring China and North Korea get more daunting as those countries’ arsenals grow.

Japanese officials voiced their own gripes about US policy, from the lack of a meaningful US trade policy in the Indo-Pacific, to the protectionist content of the Inflation Reduction Act, to the prospect — which came up in nearly every conversation — of Trump’s return to the presidency.

Yet some of the biggest challenges are to be found in Tokyo, where the Japanese government is still developing the institutional infrastructure of a serious power. The country’s cyber defenses and information security remain too weak, as demonstrated by a massive Chinese intrusion in 2020. The SDF is still trying to clarify and streamline command and control of its own troops — let alone figure out how to operate more seamlessly with the Pentagon.

More than at any time since 1945, Washington and the world need a strong, confident Japan. Tokyo’s ability to take on the big strategic questions it hasn’t answered, and to tackle the more mundane requirements of effective policy, will determine how much of its geopolitical potential it fulfills.

More From Hal Brands at Bloomberg Opinion:

• US, Japan and Australia Can Aid Taiwan With Words, Not War
• Trump's Campaign Is Already Shaping Global Affairs
• Senator Blocking US-Australia Submarine Deal Has a Good Point

Want more Bloomberg Opinion? OPIN <GO>. Or subscribe to our daily newsletter.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:

Hal Brands at Hal.Brands@jhu.edu

To contact the editor responsible for this story:

Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.net

Hal Brands is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. The Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, he is co-author of "Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China" and a member of the State Department's Foreign Affairs Policy Board. He is a senior adviser to Macro Advisory Partners.

16.  The US Military Is Getting Smaller, Cheaper and Smarter By James Stavridis

Excerpts;

Both books provide a vision of how US forces will need to change. A key is merging the efforts of special forces, cyberweapons and swarms of unmanned vehicles along with a number of traditional platforms. Some of the military’s top people have been giving this a lot of thought already; two that come to mind are General Dave Berger, who just retired as commandant of the Marine Corps, and Admiral John Aquilino, head of the Indo-Pacific Command. General Chris Cavoli, my latest successor as supreme allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, has been intensively studying the success of the Ukrainian military in neutralizing Russian offensives.

How would Replicator work on the battlefield? The initial step might be mobilizing two separate swarms of small, unmanned vehicles. The first group, numbering in the tens of thousands, would be focused on surveillance and reconnaissance, sending back uncountable millions of data bits to form a precise targeting picture. Second, the battlespace would be turned over to hundreds or thousands of vehicles large enough to accommodate payloads of explosives. Working alongside them would be drones carrying out cyberattacks to blind the enemy, effectively “cloaking” our own forces while destroying an enemy’s fighting ability.

This concept could be relevant in the heavens as well. As the new Space Force comes online, it should be working with the traditional services to refine a role for Replicator in space. Instead of relying on enormous, vastly expensive communications satellites, it might make sense to use cheap satellite swarms with linkages to each other and to ground stations.

Finally, much of the communications linkage between all aspects will be done through artificial intelligence. The ability to process billions of data inputs instantaneously, then compare the size, shape, location and connectivity of each individual element, sounds like science fiction, right? Yet that future is closer than most realize. Replicator is not science fiction at all.

The US Military Is Getting Smaller, Cheaper and Smarter

A new drone-swarm initiative called Replicator will use low-cost technology to counter China’s massive arms buildup.

By James Stavridis

September 1, 2023 at 7:00 AM EDT

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-09-01/pentagon-building-killer-drone-swarms-for-possible-war-against-china?re_source=postr_story_0&sref=hhjZtX76

In Eric Frank Russell’s classic 1957 science fiction novel Wasp, an interplanetary war is ultimately decided by the use of individual killers operating behind enemy lines, each of which can “sting” with vicious power. In more recent novels — Ghost Fleet, by Peter Singer and August Cole, and my own 2034: A Novel of the Next World War, co-written with Elliot Ackerman — a conflict between China and the US features the use of small clouds of wasp-like unmanned vehicles.

Now the US Defense Department has committed to turning fiction into reality. Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks announced a plan to create thousands of autonomous unmanned systems over the next two years to compete with China — which is already moving ahead of us. Called “Replicator,” the program will “galvanize progress in the too-slow shift of US military innovation to leverage platforms that are small, smart, cheap and many,” said Hicks.

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The basic ideas are simple and solid. First, given that China is building military capacity — ships, aircraft, sensors, missiles — at a rate the US is unlikely to match, we need to not just innovate but to create the right kinds of high-tech systems. Second, mass swarms of small, unmanned vehicles can be swiftly assembled, fielded and integrated into the fight — we are seeing Ukrainian troops do that on the battlefield today.

More generally, the Replicator concept is something many warfighters have long advocated: shifting away from huge, expensive, vulnerable platforms (aircraft carriers, large planes, satellites) toward lighter, cheaper, more nimble systems.

All sounds about right in theory. But how, in real life, can the initiative be put in place quickly to deter China from its aggressive claims in the South China Sea and Taiwan?

First, we need to recognize the scale of the resources required. The necessary dollar amounts — perhaps in the single billions — are a drop in the bucket compared to funding going toward big, expensive weaponry in the $850 billion defense budget. But the shift won’t happen overnight. Even relatively small amounts of money and manpower cannot be apportioned by a giant on-and-off switch, wherein we suddenly stop funding the big platforms and pour resources into Replicator. It’s more like a rheostat: Payments can gradually be dialed toward the new and the many, away from the old and the few.

Just as important, the heads of the Pentagon’s 11 combatant commands need to find a way to work seamlessly with the individual services. There will be many hard-fought battles between the traditionalists and those reformers pushing for Replicator.

To understand the urgency, again look to fiction. A powerful set piece that opens Ghost Fleet includes swarming unmanned vehicles used to overwhelm US defenses, particularly in Hawaii. In 2034, China uses a clever combination of cyberwarfare and stealth to destroy older, lumbering naval platforms in the South China Sea. In both books, the wakeup call comes very late in the game for the US military.

Both books provide a vision of how US forces will need to change. A key is merging the efforts of special forces, cyberweapons and swarms of unmanned vehicles along with a number of traditional platforms. Some of the military’s top people have been giving this a lot of thought already; two that come to mind are General Dave Berger, who just retired as commandant of the Marine Corps, and Admiral John Aquilino, head of the Indo-Pacific Command. General Chris Cavoli, my latest successor as supreme allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, has been intensively studying the success of the Ukrainian military in neutralizing Russian offensives.

How would Replicator work on the battlefield? The initial step might be mobilizing two separate swarms of small, unmanned vehicles. The first group, numbering in the tens of thousands, would be focused on surveillance and reconnaissance, sending back uncountable millions of data bits to form a precise targeting picture. Second, the battlespace would be turned over to hundreds or thousands of vehicles large enough to accommodate payloads of explosives. Working alongside them would be drones carrying out cyberattacks to blind the enemy, effectively “cloaking” our own forces while destroying an enemy’s fighting ability.

This concept could be relevant in the heavens as well. As the new Space Force comes online, it should be working with the traditional services to refine a role for Replicator in space. Instead of relying on enormous, vastly expensive communications satellites, it might make sense to use cheap satellite swarms with linkages to each other and to ground stations.

Finally, much of the communications linkage between all aspects will be done through artificial intelligence. The ability to process billions of data inputs instantaneously, then compare the size, shape, location and connectivity of each individual element, sounds like science fiction, right? Yet that future is closer than most realize. Replicator is not science fiction at all.

More From Bloomberg Opinion:

• Canada Should Invest in Nuclear Submarines: James Stavridis
• Europe Is Pledging Ukraine Weapons It Can’t Make: Max Hastings
• Do Oppenheimer’s Warnings About Nuclear Weapons Apply to AI?: Hal Brands

Want more Bloomberg Opinion? Terminal readers head to OPIN <GO>. Or subscribe to our daily newsletter .

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:

James Stavridis at jstavridis@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:

Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.net

James Stavridis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A retired U.S. Navy admiral, former supreme allied commander of NATO, and dean emeritus of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, he is vice chairman of global affairs at the Carlyle Group. He is on the boards of American Water Works, Fortinet, PreVeil, NFP, Ankura Consulting Group, Titan Holdings, Michael Baker and Neuberger Berman, and has advised Shield Capital, a firm that invests in the cybersecurity sector.

17. Ukrainians complete training on Abrams tanks as Kyiv makes battlefield gains

Ukrainians complete training on Abrams tanks as Kyiv makes battlefield gains

Politico

Ten of 31 promised U.S. tanks are expected to arrive in the country by mid-September.

The news comes as U.S. and Ukrainian officials said that Ukraine had penetrated Russia’s main defensive line for the first time in the country’s southeast, raising their hopes that Ukraine may be able to begin retaking significant territory. | Sergey Bobok/AFP/Getty Images

08/31/2023 03:44 PM EDT

A group of Ukrainian soldiers have completed a training program on U.S. M1 Abrams tanks, a lethal new weapon officials hope can help Kyiv break through Russia’s entrenched defenses.

Around 200 Ukrainians have practiced on trainer tanks at U.S. Army training areas in Germany, said spokesperson Col. Martin O’Donnell. The soldiers recently completed one of the last phases of the program, a combined arms, battalion force-on-force exercise at Hohenfels Training Area.

The soldiers are working to ensure they stay proficient on the tanks at Grafenwoehr Army base in Germany until the tanks are ready for the battlefield, O’Donnell said.

Ukraine is slated to receive the first ten of 31 promised Abrams tanks in mid-September, according to a Defense Department official and another person familiar with the discussions, who like others interviewed for this story was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive plans. Western officials hope the arrival of the tanks will give Kyiv’s forces the edge they need to push through Russia’s fierce defenses in their grueling counteroffensive.

Ten of the 70-ton tanks are currently in Germany undergoing final refurbishments, said the DOD official. Once that is complete, they will be shipped to Ukraine.

“The U.S. is committed to expedite delivery of the 31 tanks to Ukraine by the fall,” said O’Donnell. He declined to provide a specific timeline.

The news comes as U.S. and Ukrainian officials said that Ukraine had penetrated Russia’s main defensive line for the first time in the country’s southeast, raising their hopes that Ukraine may be able to begin retaking significant territory. Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley spoke Thursday with his Ukrainian counterpart, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, to discuss the war, according to a press release from Milley’s office.

A second Defense Department official cautioned that while the move marks a “tangible success” in Ukraine’s so far slow-moving counteroffensive, it should not be seen as a “big breakthrough.” Russian forces remain entrenched along a 600-mile front line, and Ukraine’s soldiers must force their way through fields laden with mines and hand-dug foxholes.

U.S. officials hope that the Abrams tanks, when they do arrive, can help give Ukraine an edge as it struggles to retake territory.

“Tanks are very important, both to the defense and the offense,” said Milley in June. “Upgraded modern tanks, the training that goes with it, the ability to use them, will be fundamental to Ukrainian success.”

The Abrams is “one hell of an armored vehicle,” said a third DOD official. But “it’s not a silver bullet. Ultimately, it’s Ukraine’s determination to break through that matters most.”

The Abrams tanks are part of a force of roughly 300 tanks pledged by Western allies, including Leopard 2 tanks from Spain and Germany, Challenger tanks from the UK, and light Leclerc tanks from France.

Paul McLeary contributed to this report.

POLITICO

Politico

18. China's new national map has set off a wave of protests. Why?

Excerpts:

The national map is an annual production that could be released any time, and China knows well that its claims are contentious, even though they are not new.

It seems significant, then, that Beijing chose to release the map on the heels of a late August meeting of the BRICS nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -- and just before China is to participate in top-level meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Group of 20 rich and developing nations.

...

In releasing the map now, Beijing is widely seen as signaling it has no intention of backing down on any of its claims and is making sure that its positions are fresh in the minds of other countries in the region.

China's new national map has set off a wave of protests. Why?

AP · by Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year] · September 1, 2023

Share

BANGKOK (AP) — China has upset many countries in the Asia-Pacific region with its release of a new official map that lays claim to most of the South China Sea, as well as to contested parts of India and Russia, and official objections continue to mount. What is the map, and why is it upsetting people so much?

WHAT IS CHINA CLAIMING?

China’s Ministry of Natural Resources released the new “standard” national map on Monday, part of what it has called an ongoing effort to eliminate “problem maps.” In it, China clearly shows its so-called nine-dash line, demarcating what it considers its maritime border, claiming almost the entirety of the South China Sea. The current, and other recent iterations of the annual map, include a 10th dash to the east of Taiwan.

In the far northeastern corner of China on the border with Russia, it shows Bolshoy Ussuriysky Island, an island at the confluence of the Amur and Ussuri rivers, as Chinese territory, even though the countries signed an agreement nearly 20 years ago to split the island.

Along the southern border with India, it shows Arunachal Pradesh and the Doklam Plateau, over which China and India have long feuded, clearly within Chinese borders, along with Aksai Chin in the western section that China controls but India still claims.

HOW HAVE COUNTRIES REACTED?

China’s longstanding claims in the South China Sea have brought it into tense standoffs with Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines, all of which have competing claims. China and India fought a war over their border in 1962, and the disputed boundary has led to a three-year standoff between tens of thousands of Indian and Chinese soldiers in the Ladakh area. A clash three years ago in the region killed 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese.

After the release of the map, India fired back first, saying China’s claims have no basis. Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said “such steps by the Chinese side only complicate the resolution of the boundary question.” It lodged a formal complaint on Tuesday through diplomatic channels.

Malaysia then rejected China’s “unilateral claims” and added that the map is “not binding” to the country. Vietnam, Taiwan, Indonesia and the Philippines have since followed suit.

Vietnam said the claims violate its sovereignty over the Paracel and Spratly islands and jurisdiction over its waters and should be considered void because they violate the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Illustrating how provocative the nine-dash line is considered by Hanoi, Vietnam in July banned the popular “Barbie” movie because it includes a view of a map showing the disputed Chinese claims.

The self-governed island of Taiwan, which China claims as its own, also rejects the nine-dash line and Beijing’s South China Sea claims.

The territorial claims at times lead to direct confrontation. A little more than a week ago, Philippine boats breached a Chinese coast guard blockade in a disputed area of the South China Sea to deliver supplies to Filipino forces guarding a contested shoal.

In its response to the map, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs cited a 2016 ruling by an arbitration tribunal in The Hague under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea that largely invalidated China’s claim to virtually the entire South China Sea and upheld the Philippines’ control over resources in a 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone.

Russia, for which Chinese support in its war against Ukraine has been critical, has not yet responded.

WHAT DOES CHINA SAY?

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin sidestepped questions Thursday about specifics of the nine-dash line and why China has been using a 10th dash in recent years, telling reporters only that “China’s stance on the South China Sea is consistent and clear.”

He also didn’t directly address the protests over the map, saying that the update was “routine practice every year” with the aim of providing standard maps and to “educate the public to use maps in accordance with rules.”

“We hope that the relevant sides can see it in an objective and rational way,” he said.

WHY NOW?

The national map is an annual production that could be released any time, and China knows well that its claims are contentious, even though they are not new.

It seems significant, then, that Beijing chose to release the map on the heels of a late August meeting of the BRICS nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -- and just before China is to participate in top-level meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Group of 20 rich and developing nations.

At the BRICS meetings, the China-Russia relationship was broadly seen as strengthened as the group voted in favor of a proposal pushed by Beijing and Moscow to invite Iran and Saudi Arabia, along with four other countries, to join. On the sidelines, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping even talked about their disputed border, agreeing to intensify efforts to de-escalate tensions.

Most of the governments with which China has disputes in the South China Sea are ASEAN members, and India is hosting the G20 talks.

In releasing the map now, Beijing is widely seen as signaling it has no intention of backing down on any of its claims and is making sure that its positions are fresh in the minds of other countries in the region.

AP · by Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year] · September 1, 2023

19. Opinion | An Army Special Operations probe sheds light on misogyny in the military

A very critical OpEd that concludes on a positive note.

Conclusion:

Women have fought and died for this country alongside men for centuries. The gender bias and abuse still alive within the military are a disservice to the country, but with transparency and targeted efforts that the Army’s Special Operations Command is modeling for the rest, the armed forces can be transformed.

Opinion | An Army Special Operations probe sheds light on misogyny in the military

The Washington Post · by Editorial Board · August 31, 2023

Nearly eight years ago, the United States opened up all military combat roles to women, clearing a pathway for female service members to join the most elite military forces. But even before the first women qualified to become part of the revered Green Berets or 75th Ranger Regiment, thousands worked in noncombat roles dating as far back as the Revolutionary War. During the war in Afghanistan, women deployed, and one died, working alongside the Green Berets and Army Rangers.

Still, gender biases, and at times outright misogyny, pervade all levels of the Special Operations forces, according to a recent report by the Army Special Operations Command, which aimed to discover what challenges its 2,300 female service members encounter. In response to a survey, one senior enlisted man wrote that women requesting to go to Special Forces don’t do so to capitalize on career opportunities but to look for “a husband, boyfriend or attention.” Another anonymous senior enlisted man said it is “ridiculous” to think women can perform most jobs at the same physical, mental and emotional levels as men. Some threatened to retire before working on a team with a woman. These comments, alas, are not outliers. The report concludes they reflect the sexist mentality of many male soldiers.

Gender integration has long been a problem for the military at large, and the Special Operations forces deserve commendation for taking the lead in investigating and extinguishing these divisions. Especially as the Army begins to increasingly rely upon Special Forces, ensuring they are fair and nondiscriminatory spaces will be vital as the branch continues to face recruitment challenges.

Yet gender bias makes life in the Special Forces unnecessarily difficult for women. Many men wrote they feared that having both men and women on combat teams would anger their wives and degrade team unity. Yet other countries that have integrated teams have not documented difficulties with unit cohesion, and studies in the business sector show that gender-diverse teams make better decisions up to 73 percent of the time.

Particularly troubling is the culture of fear and harassment researchers documented within the Special Forces. Women at multiple military bases reported that other soldiers would bang on their doors in the middle of the night. Soldiers said the master key would be given to anyone who asked without question, and one woman said a male soldier used the key to access her room and leave a pair of high-heel combat boots. A senior female officer told the research team that she works to get her soldiers out of the barracks because they are not safe there.

Female soldiers describe a system that crushes attempts to report cases of sexual harassment. Researchers conducted 48 focus groups. In one, a woman said her officer in charge warned that if she filed a report, it would become how she would “be known throughout the regiment” and admonished her to “quit being a little girl.” Another said she was told her complaint would go nowhere because the offender was “cool” with the higher-ups. Women from one unit were particularly reluctant to discuss sexual harassment reporting experiences, but after some sessions, one participant approached a researcher alone in the bathroom and said she was told “not to rat on anyone during these interviews.”

Focus group participants acknowledged previous or ongoing sexual harassment. Yet only 30 percent of female soldiers reported sexual harassment as a challenge in the researchers’ survey, a number that shocked most women in the small group discussions. Considering the conditions in which women serve, many are likely afraid to speak out.

Women have fought and died for this country alongside men for centuries. The gender bias and abuse still alive within the military are a disservice to the country, but with transparency and targeted efforts that the Army’s Special Operations Command is modeling for the rest, the armed forces can be transformed.

The Washington Post · by Editorial Board · August 31, 2023

20. How Ukraine’s deep battle is preparing the ground for success

Excerpts:

Success with the deep battle has only become more important given the pace of the close battle, where Russia’s defences have driven Ukraine to abandon a ‘blitzkrieg’ approach in the counter-offensive after taking losses, including Leopard 2 tanks and Bradley armoured fighting vehicles. A more dismounted operation has since pushed back Russian forces in some sectors, but not at the pace many hoped for in the effort’s early days.

Ukraine is clearly aiming for the deep battle – combined with repeated attacks along the lengthy front line – to bring Russian forces to a tipping point where combat power and morale may begin to break. To achieve this, the deep battle is stretching Russia’s supply lines, making it more challenging for Moscow to reinforce front-line troops with ammunition and other needed items, and hindering its ability to easily bring new formations into the fight to open new fronts.

31st August 2023

How Ukraine’s deep battle is preparing the ground for success

b​y Ben Barry

https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/military-balance/2023/08/how-ukraines-deep-battle-is-preparing-the-ground-for-success/?mc_cid=c6300f881d

Ukraine’s slow progress in its counter-offensive has frustrated some defence officials in the United States and Germany, but that may overlook the much less reported, yet no less significant, effort that Kyiv is devoting to its deep battle.

This blog was first published on the Military Balance+ on 24 August 2023

There is more to Ukraine’s counter-offensive than many people appreciate.

There is much reporting and commentary on the ground attacks against Russian front-line defences. Recent Western media reports suggest that Ukraine’s slow progress with its counter-offensive has frustrated some unnamed defence officials in the United States and Germany. But this attention overlooks the much less reported, though no less significant, effort that Kyiv is devoting to its deep battle. Those efforts – conducted at long range, over a protracted timescale, against adversary elements not engaged in the close battle – may set Ukraine’s forces up for breakout success or at least to significantly diminish Russia’s combat power.

While Ukrainian forces have been inching forward in the close battle, pushing through Russian defensive belts that combine linear trench systems, extensive minefields and anti-tank obstacles, Kyiv has also been relentlessly pursuing attacks on a multitude of targets at distance, spanning from the Donbas to Crimea to Moscow. Kyiv probably calculates that these attacks will erode Russian morale and increase pressure on its commanders, while also weakening the enemy’s forces by disrupting their command, control, supply and movement.

What’s unfolding

To carry out the deep battle, Ukraine is drawing on a range of Western-provided and home-grown equipment. Those include strikes by rocket artillery, including precision munitions, such as GPS-guided M982 Excalibur shells provided by the United States, and guided-rockets, including those fired from HIMARS launchers. More recently, Ukraine has used United Kingdom-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles to attack Russian ammunition dumps and bridges. Ukraine has also modified S-200 Gammon air defence missiles into surface-to-surface rockets to strike targets at range; Moscow claims to have shot down at least some of them.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian partisans and special forces have conducted bombings and assassinated pro-Russian officials far behind enemy lines. Some special forces recently made a foray into Crimea, raising the nation’s flag in the Russian-occupied territory to mark Ukraine’s Independence Day.

The attacks on Russian-occupied Crimea and in the Black Sea, where Ukraine has deployed uninhabited vessels to successfully target the Black Sea Fleet, are complemented by deeper attacks into Russia itself. These include a range of drone strikes, sabotage and incursions by proxy forces.

Signs of success

Ukraine’s deep battle campaign has shown signs of success in disrupting both Russian military operations and the country’s daily routines. Ukrainian military chief General Valery Zaluzhny has said that attacks on Russia itself are designed to undermine the country’s ‘sense of impunity’ as Kyiv aims to heap political duress on Moscow to augment the military pressure from the counter-offensive.

Repeated drone attacks on Moscow have struck buildings and temporarily halted flight operations at airports serving the Russian capital. Attacks like these, or those on the Soltsy-2 air base south of St. Petersburg where a Tupolev Tu-22M bomber was destroyed, offer more than psychological effects. They may force Russia to redeploy air defence systems away from Ukraine and drive Russia’s air force to operate from further behind the front line.

Operationally more relevant, though, are attacks on Russian logistic nodes crucial to its forces in southern Ukraine. Supplies for these forces can flow from Crimea, but Ukraine has successfully degraded vital infrastructure, such as bridges into Southern Ukraine and across the Kerch Strait, through missiles and uninhabited boat attacks. The alternative route is the M14 road to Kerson that travels through Mariupol and Melitopol, Ukraine does not need to capture this road to disrupt it as a supply line but might choose to do so by capturing Russian territory that would act as a springboard for long-range artillery rockets, underscoring how close and deep battle can support each other.

Combined effect

Success with the deep battle has only become more important given the pace of the close battle, where Russia’s defences have driven Ukraine to abandon a ‘blitzkrieg’ approach in the counter-offensive after taking losses, including Leopard 2 tanks and Bradley armoured fighting vehicles. A more dismounted operation has since pushed back Russian forces in some sectors, but not at the pace many hoped for in the effort’s early days.

Ukraine is clearly aiming for the deep battle – combined with repeated attacks along the lengthy front line – to bring Russian forces to a tipping point where combat power and morale may begin to break. To achieve this, the deep battle is stretching Russia’s supply lines, making it more challenging for Moscow to reinforce front-line troops with ammunition and other needed items, and hindering its ability to easily bring new formations into the fight to open new fronts.

Author

• 
  
• Ben Barry
• Senior Fellow for Land Warfare
• ABOUT BEN

21. The flames of Russian dissent

Excerpts:

If Western leaders want Putin out of Ukraine, empowering the people of Ukraine (e.g. sending munitions and other aid) is necessary, but not sufficient. The only way to get Putin out of Ukraine is to empower the people of Russia.

How does that happen? Through the voices of journalists like Marina Ovsyannikova and Vladimir Kara-Murza; through Russian celebrities like Oxxxymiron, Russia’s most famous rapper; through athletes like soccer player Fedor Smolov and tennis player Andrey Rublev; and through everyday people like furnace stoker Vladimir Rumyantsev.

Civil society in Russia exists, although it is rightly fearful of the government — just as government leaders fear civil society. Over the coming months, before Russia’s March 2024 election, we’ll see Putin increasingly attempting to craft a winning narrative of strength — an attempt to convince the Russian people that they need him to protect the country. 

This is classic dictatorship — create a common enemy to unite the people behind you. Putin told the Russian people that the invasion was a necessary action to prevent “hostilities against our country.” He told Russian media in February that Western countries are trying to take control of Russia’s raw materials. “I do not even know if such an ethnic group as the Russian people will be able to survive in the form in which it exists today,” he said.

If the free people of the world support Russian civil society — the institutions and leaders who support democracy and liberty and freedom of speech and free press and fair elections — and if each of us as individuals supports Russian civil society in our media, social media and politics, then Putin will either change his policies or lose power.

The flames of Russian dissent

BY GARY M. SHIFFMAN, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 08/31/23 7:30 AM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4179563-the-flames-of-russian-dissent/?utm

Even if he didn’t order the killing of Yevgeny Prigozhin, Russian President Vladimir Putin has plenty to gain if the Russian people believe that he did. On June 23, Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner Group private military company, led his forces in the seizure of the Russian Southern Military District Headquarters, en route to Moscow from Ukraine. He was largely unopposed, engaging in a minimal amount of violence. He eventually called off the coup attempt, but he sent a chilling signal to Putin’s inner circle that the Russian president’s position was tenuous. 

Six weeks later, Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, declared that democratic elections have become an unnecessary “costly bureaucracy” since “Mr. Putin will be re-elected next year with more than 90% of the vote.” Two weeks after that statement, and two months after his aborted coup, Prigozhin is dead via a fiery plane crash. 

Recent events in Moscow betray deep insecurities. With elections in about six months, Putin and his loyalists may fear he’s losing the Russian people’s support. Putin may also be losing his loyalists. Prigozhin’s untimely death sends the right message for Putin: challenge me and you will lose.

Since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, thousands of Russians have gathered in the streets in protest. Authorities have responded with mass detentions and police brutality. In 2022, more than 21,000 Russian antiwar activists were penalized with fines or prison time, according to Amnesty International. In articles published in The Hill last March, April and November, I pointed out that Putin’s greatest threat comes from inside the state — the Russian people themselves. Putin’s recent actions continue to reinforce this point. Prigozhin was a loyalist, gained positions of trust, and then turned against the autocrat.

Shortly after the invasion, Putin signed a law criminalizing independent war reporting and any public opposition to the war, according to Human Rights Watch. Journalists are not even allowed to call it a “war” or an “invasion”; instead, they must use the phrase “special military operation.” 

These don’t seem like the actions of a leader who is confident that 90 percent of his people support him. Putin is engaging in textbook tyranny.

Here’s one example: Vladimir Rumyantsev lived, until very recently, in Vologda, 500 kilometers north of Moscow. He held jobs as a trolleybus driver, a factory worker, and most recently as a furnace stoker. In his spare time, he launched his own amateur radio show from his apartment. He liked to play classical music from old Soviet archives, with a signal so weak it only reached the nearby apartment buildings. 

Following the invasion of Ukraine, he began commenting on the war on his channel. He now resides in a Russian prison. A confident and strong leader does not imprison a poor furnace stoker who has an amateur radio show. 

Putin fears the Russian street and his generals. Dictators lose power in one of two ways: the people get organized enough to overthrow, or a trusted member of the inner circle takes the leader out of power. Putin has faced both of these challenges this year. In 2024, he must face a public election. This is an element in the foreign policy debate that needs far more attention. 

If Western leaders want Putin out of Ukraine, empowering the people of Ukraine (e.g. sending munitions and other aid) is necessary, but not sufficient. The only way to get Putin out of Ukraine is to empower the people of Russia.

How does that happen? Through the voices of journalists like Marina Ovsyannikova and Vladimir Kara-Murza; through Russian celebrities like Oxxxymiron, Russia’s most famous rapper; through athletes like soccer player Fedor Smolov and tennis player Andrey Rublev; and through everyday people like furnace stoker Vladimir Rumyantsev.

Civil society in Russia exists, although it is rightly fearful of the government — just as government leaders fear civil society. Over the coming months, before Russia’s March 2024 election, we’ll see Putin increasingly attempting to craft a winning narrative of strength — an attempt to convince the Russian people that they need him to protect the country. 

This is classic dictatorship — create a common enemy to unite the people behind you. Putin told the Russian people that the invasion was a necessary action to prevent “hostilities against our country.” He told Russian media in February that Western countries are trying to take control of Russia’s raw materials. “I do not even know if such an ethnic group as the Russian people will be able to survive in the form in which it exists today,” he said.

If the free people of the world support Russian civil society — the institutions and leaders who support democracy and liberty and freedom of speech and free press and fair elections — and if each of us as individuals supports Russian civil society in our media, social media and politics, then Putin will either change his policies or lose power.

Gary M. Shiffman is an economist and Gulf War veteran. He has traveled the trans-Siberian railroad and covered Russia while serving in the Pentagon. He is the founder of two technology companies, Giant Oak and Consilient, and author of “The Economics of Violence: How Behavioral Science Can Transform our View of Crime, Insurgency, and Terrorism.”

22. Factors Influencing Strategy: The Objective-Narrative Nexus

Conclusion:

Strategy must evolve with the changing environment of war, and this means strategic thinking must consider the power derived from the nexus of clear objectives and a unified narrative. Commanders and their staff cannot afford to dismiss political considerations in warfare or great power competition. They must think of objective and narrative as tools for the design of campaigns, be they security force assistance or large scale combat operations.

Policymakers must not only agree on the unified narrative. They must be able to incorporate bottom-up narratives as well. There are multiple historical examples showing the benefits of the objective-narrative nexus and how strategists and operational commanders leveraged its power with great effect. Russia’s failure to subjugate Ukraine provides the most recent example of a lack of clear objectives and disparate and shifting narratives producing a logic of failure. U.S. Army doctrine has to prepare itself for warfare in the 21st century. The addition of objective and narrative as elements of operational art, the bridge between strategy and tactics, would be a welcome step toward comparative advantage in competition and conflict.

Factors Influencing Strategy: The Objective-Narrative Nexus

thestrategybridge.org · August 31, 2023

Earlier this year, The Strategy Bridge asked civilian and military students around the world to participate in our seventh annual student writing contest on the subject of strategy.

Now, we are pleased to present one of the Third Place winners from Marshall McGurk, a recent graduate of the U.S. Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies.

“We are all here. Our military is here, citizens are here. We are all here defending our independence, our state, and it will be so further. Glory to our defenders, glory to Ukraine!”[1] With those impassioned words, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, flanked by his Prime Minister and party leaders around a cell-phone screen, galvanized his country and sent a message of defiance to the world on the first night of Russia’s invasion. At the time of this writing, Ukraine has met the call of President Zelenskyy’s words. Russia and President Vladimir Putin remain unable to overthrow the Zelenskyy government or gain control of the Ukrainian state.

While 20th-century leaders used mediums such as radio and television addresses, President Zelenskyy leveraged the power of smartphones to film the speech and promulgate it into the 24-hour news cycle through social media dissemination. The narrative stands well with the day of infamy speech by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on December 8, 1941, or President George W. Bush’s impromptu bullhorn address at the World Trade Center site.[2]

The address gave not only the Ukrainian people, but Zelenskyy’s military commanders at all echelons clear objectives and a unified narrative to rally around, focused on the defeat of Russian forces and defense of Ukraine’s sovereignty. Ukraine has maintained its objectives and unified narrative since the outset of the war, leveraging the power inherent in the objective-narrative nexus to its advantage. The United States should look to Ukraine’s use of the objective-narrative nexus as a benchmark example as it competes with the pacing challenge of the People’s Republic of China, Russian aggression in Europe and Africa, and the states of Iran and North Korea.

In an age of global, near-real-time telecommunications technology fraught with disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation, it is vital that strategists, operational planners, and tacticians understand the importance and ramifications of the absence of clear objectives and a unified narrative during operations. Mitigation and protection strategies alone are not enough to counter adversary narratives or attempts to discredit U.S. narratives. As such, it is necessary to update military doctrine, mainly operational art—the bridge between strategy and tactics—to account for the elements of objective, unified narrative, and the resultant nexus. The goal of this paper is to show how important the objective-narrative nexus is to strategy, provide recommendations for military doctrine, and provide historical precedent for the appropriate use or misuse of objective and unified narrative.

Terms of Reference and Assumptions

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There are two key terms and two assumptions to frame the argument. First, strategy, as defined by naval officer and theorist J.C. Wylie, is “a plan of action designed in order to achieve some end; a purpose together with a system of measures for its accomplishment.”[3] This definition provides sufficient boundaries for the additions of objective and narrative. The “end” constitutes the objective, and “narrative” is inclusive of purpose and how that purpose is communicated. Second, U.S. Army doctrine defines operational art as “the design of campaigns and operations by integrating ends, ways, and means, while accounting for risk.”[4] It is the bridge between strategy and tactics, arranging tactical actions and incorporating outcomes to achieve strategic goals.

This paper assumes the U.S. Congress will not declare war—something it has not done since December 1941. Authorizations for the use of military force will remain the status quo. As a result, certain authorities, permissions, or funding streams will be unavailable to joint, department, and theater command staffs. This assumption does not impact the necessity of objective or unified narrative, as both are vital in competition or in limited crises. This paper acknowledges that authorizations for the use of military force limit resources and concepts that might be viable in a declared war.

The second assumption is that while there are multiple definitions of operational art—nearly a dozen across a cursory literature review—the U.S. Army’s definition of operational art will remain constant through 2040. Furthermore, including objective, unified narrative, and the objective-narrative nexus does not interfere with the future operating concept for the U.S. Army of 2040 and henceforth can be considered as recommended additions to the concept. This assumption accepts the validity of the operational level of war, as well as the tactical and strategic levels in accordance with U.S. Army Field Manual (FM) 3-0, Operations. Arguments concerning the validity of the operational level of war are not considered here.

Strategy and Revisions To Operational Art

The nine elements of operational art—end state and conditions, center of gravity, decisive points, lines of operations and lines of effort, tempo, phasing and transitions, culmination, operational reach, basing, and risk—are tools used by commanders and staffs to “help understand an operational environment and visualize and describe their approach to conducting an operation.”[5] They are not imperatives, and therefore all are not necessary for success, but effective commanders seek to apply a majority to achieve victory and continue operations. Proper employment of operational art ensures tactical actions are arranged and resourced to meet strategic objectives. The elements must be revised if they are expected to be relevant in support of U.S. strategy now and in 2040.

The first revision concerns the end state and conditions. The end state is “a set of desired future conditions the commander wants to exist when an operation ends.”[6] It is a confusing and ill-advised term. The singular end state of a military operation is a set of desired conditions, plural, that are likely outside of a commander’s control.

Furthermore, the term end state does not account for the complexity within a system, a common issue during experiments about logics of failure.[7] Consider a combatant command during this present age of great power competition and integrated deterrence. At what point does a combatant command achieve an end state when it is constantly in a state of competition? Multiple attempts at the same end states may not result in the desired future conditions, and, as recent history shows, plans become emergent based on the complex system of unforeseen events such as a global pandemic.

A more specific and usable term is objective, “the clearly defined, decisive, and attainable goal toward which every operation is directed.”[8] A clear, concise, specific objective or set of objectives helps planners avoid unclear goals or negative goals that add to the fog and friction of military activities.[9] Sets of objectives can be nested across services and domains, as well as synchronize various elements of national power, thereby enabling integrated deterrence.[10]

Each member of a team, be it the joint force commander or the squad leader, should know what the objective is for a given operation and their roles and missions within them. This does not mean commanders, their staff, and soldiers disregard the conditions for those objectives. Rather, a return to the term objective, instead of end state, allows units to respond to problems presented by the environment and adversary and incorporate resultant outcomes, instead of pursuing nebulous end states that are desired but may well be unattainable.

The second proposed revision is to add the term narrative into the elements of operational art. In a growing age where altered photos, video, and speech are the norm for spreading disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation, the need for a clear narrative for all forms of military operations is paramount. Strategists should be aware of the power available when connecting the stated objective with a coherent, unified narrative, and leverage that objective-narrative nexus for comparative advantage. This nexus also ensures the integrated and coordinated use of information-related capabilities throughout military operations, be they joint training or combat.[11] Operational planners will focus their efforts on clarifying and maintaining the objective while units at all echelons will know why they are fighting, what they are fighting for, and take their own initiative to spread the narrative.

The revisions to operational art are thus: remove the uncertain element of end state and replace it with the element of objective; add in the element of narrative, defined in joint doctrine is an “overarching expression of context and desired results;”[12] and revise strategy and operational doctrine to acknowledge the objective-narrative nexus and the resultant power therein. An example definition of the objective-narrative nexus could read something like this:

The objective of the operation must be clearly tied with the narrative of that objective, and the narrative must consistently and clearly state the goal of the endeavor. There is power of will and spirit in the objective-narrative nexus that must be known and leveraged by all, whether in competition, crisis, or conflict. The narrative should be known at all echelons, where a unified narrative improves morale, reinforces the purpose of the objective, and the ways in which the objective will be accomplished.

Adding in the elements of objective and unified narrative will improve the theory of operational art and refine it for 21st century warfare.

Historical Precedent

The objective-narrative nexus is not new in warfare. Carl von Clausewitz in On War qualifies the moral elements as “among the most important in war.”[13] He goes on to describe how the elements create a spirit throughout the war closely aligned with the will that leads an army.[14] Furthermore, Clausewitz posits that the source of the army’s spirit comes from “frequent exertions of the army to the utmost limits of its strength.”[15] This growth and reinforcement of spirit comes from the exhortations of clear objectives and a unified narrative. Clausewitz saw the power of objective and unified narrative in Napoleon’s Grande Armée and the lack of it in his native Prussian forces. Soldiers, be they rifleman or corps logisticians, must know what they are fighting for and what they will tell those who question the worthiness of the endeavor.

Successful U.S. military campaigns leverage the power of the objective-narrative nexus. The Vicksburg Campaign of 1862-1863 began with the primary objective of opening the Mississippi River for Union control, along with the freedom of action to exercise judgment and initiative.[16] This led into the narrative of the campaign and the narrative for the unconditional surrender terms of the Vicksburg garrison. Another example stems from the limited war aims of President Polk and the subsequent limited operational plans of General Winfield Scott during the Mexican-American War.[17] The objective for expelling Iraqi forces from Kuwait was clear and aligned with narratives set forth from President George H.W. Bush from 1990 to 1991 and resulted in rapid termination of the conflict once Iraqi forces left Kuwait.

President George H.W. Bush meets with General Norman Schwarzkopf, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell to discuss the Gulf crisis on August 15, 1990. (Gary Cameron/Reuters)

Perfection in strategy is impossible, and the U.S. experience during the Vietnam war abounds with unclear objectives, narratives that were disbelieved, and chaos instead of power at the objective-narrative nexus. Incurring casualties at an average rate of over 100 killed in action per week over muddled, misunderstood, and unachievable objectives cannot save even the best of narratives.[18] Future histories of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may likely uncover missed opportunities to clarify objectives and maintain unified narratives.

A compelling example of the lack of the objective-narrative nexus comes from Russia’s side during the current Russia-Ukraine war. Since February 2022, Russia’s narrative has changed multiple times, covering everything from a war against fascism, defense of the Russian diaspora, and a war of unification.[19] This change in narrative has forced changes in Russia’s objectives so often that they are stalemated in eastern Ukraine and Crimea, unable to achieve their lofty and ever shifting goals. At the operational level, Russian troops may not maintain their spirit to do their utmost because they likely do not know for which objective or narrative they are fighting. Furthermore, international states and their citizens are less apt to believe Russia’s talking points, especially when such confusing and perhaps false narratives come through official state channels.

Unofficial channels such as internet and video blogs or chats such as Telegram also play an important role in echoing the narrative of a state during a crisis. Caveat emptor applies, as unofficial information operations groups supporting either side can dominate global social media and news platforms by willfully or unwittingly disseminating unverified or fake content.[20] Adversaries using unofficial sources to spread the narrative is nothing new, though; Al-Qaeda and ISIS used unofficial sources to spread scenes of violence and terror by filming and distributing public burnings, beheadings, and suicide bombings. U.S. strategists and operational planners should learn from our adversaries and seek to incorporate unofficial channels throughout the range of information-related capabilities.

Conclusion

Strategy must evolve with the changing environment of war, and this means strategic thinking must consider the power derived from the nexus of clear objectives and a unified narrative. Commanders and their staff cannot afford to dismiss political considerations in warfare or great power competition. They must think of objective and narrative as tools for the design of campaigns, be they security force assistance or large scale combat operations.

Policymakers must not only agree on the unified narrative. They must be able to incorporate bottom-up narratives as well. There are multiple historical examples showing the benefits of the objective-narrative nexus and how strategists and operational commanders leveraged its power with great effect. Russia’s failure to subjugate Ukraine provides the most recent example of a lack of clear objectives and disparate and shifting narratives producing a logic of failure. U.S. Army doctrine has to prepare itself for warfare in the 21st century. The addition of objective and narrative as elements of operational art, the bridge between strategy and tactics, would be a welcome step toward comparative advantage in competition and conflict.

Marshall McGurk is an Army officer and recent graduate of the Advanced Military Studies Program, School of Advanced Military Studies, academic year 2022-2023. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

The Strategy Bridge is read, respected, and referenced across the worldwide national security community—in conversation, education, and professional and academic discourse.

Thank you for being a part of The Strategy Bridge community. Together, we can #BuildTheBridge.

Header Image: Signals from the Negotiations, Kyiv, Ukraine, 2022 (Україна).

Notes:

[1] USA TODAY, “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Shares a Message from Kyiv | USA Today.” 25 Feb. 2022, video, 00:46, https://youtu.be/tLv9IqcoNe8.

[2] UVA Miller Center, “December 8, 1941: Address to Congress Requesting a Declaration of War” UVA Miller Center: Presidential Speeches. Accessed 19 April 2023. https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/december-8-1941-address-congress-requesting-declaration-war, and FOX 35 Orlando, “George W. Bush’s bullhorn speech still echoes, ‘I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you’” 11 September 2019, video, 1:40, https://youtu.be/zi2SNFnfMjk.

[3] J.C. Wylie, Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1989), 14.

[4] US Department of the Army, Field Manual (FM) 3-0, Operations (Washington, DC: Government Publishing Office, 2022), 3-1.

[5] US Department of the Army, Army Doctrinal Publication (ADP) 3-0, Operations (Washington, DC: Government Publishing Office, 2019), 2-5–2-6.

[6] ADP 3-0, Operations. 2-6.

[7] Dietrich Dörner, The Logic of Failure (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1996), 38-39.

[8] US Department of the Army, Field Manual (FM) 1-02.1, Operational Terms (Washington, DC: Government Publishing Office, 2021), 1-72.

[9] Dörner, The Logic of Failure, 52-53.

[10] The White House, National Security Strategy: October 2022 (Washington DC, 2022), 22, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Biden-Harris-Administrations-National-Security-Strategy-10.2022.pdf. It is notable that the National Security Strategy speaks multiple times about achieved objectives and desired objectives, instead of end states.

[11] FM 1-02.1, Operational Terms, 1-52. FM 1-02.1 defines information operations as “the integrated employment, during military operations, of information-related capabilities in concert with other lines of operation to influence, disrupt, corrupt, or usurp the decision-making of adversaries and potential adversaries while protecting our own.” Army doctrine defines misinformation but not disinformation or malinformation. See FM 1-02.1 Operational Terms, 1-67.

[12] Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Doctrine Note (JDN) 2-13 Commander’s Communication Synchronization (Washington DC: Government Publishing Office, 2013), III-9.

[13] Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf Everyman’s Library, 1993), 216.

[14] Clausewitz, On War, 216-217.

[15] Clausewitz, On War, 221.

[16] Donald Stoker, The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 209-210.

[17] Timothy D. Johnson, A Gallant Little Army: The Mexico City Campaign (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2007), 16.

[18] William F. Owen, “The Tactics Gap: Why We Wrestle With The Basics.” Military Operations, Vol 2, Issue 1. Winter 2014, 17-19, https://www.tjomo.com/article/the-tactics-gap-why-we-wrestle-with-the-basics/.

[19] Al-Jazeera, “‘No other option’: Excerpts of Putin’s speech declaring war.” Al-Jazeera>News>Russia-Ukraine war. Accessed 03 April 2023. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/24/putins-speech-declaring-war-on-ukraine-translated-excerpts.

[20] Amanda Seitz and David Klepper, “Propaganda, fake videos of Ukraine invasion bombard users.” APNews, February 24, 2022, accessed June 3, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-technology-europe-media-social-media-80f729025396abf9ad9e4e9d0b4f5ece.

thestrategybridge.org · August 31, 2023

​23. Beware of Pentagon techno-enthusiasm

Excerpts:

But in the quest to change how the Pentagon does business it will be important to be humble about the likely effectiveness of swarms of drones; unpiloted vehicles in the air, on land, and at sea; and AI-driven decision-making systems that can dramatically shorten the “kill chain” from a decision to attack to the arrival of a weapon on its intended target. And it is also necessary to acknowledge that implementing this effort to change how America arms itself for potential conflicts will involve a sharp political clash with Congress over the fates of aircraft carriers, piloted aircraft, and traditional armored vehicles—weapons that provide jobs and incomes in the districts and states of members with the most sway over the size and shape of the Pentagon budget.

...

All of the above suggests that it doesn’t make sense to rush towards the sort of new techno-revolution advocated by Hicks in her NDIA speech without adequate assessment and testing. Most importantly of all, plans to win a war with China must take second place to political and diplomatic initiatives to set rules of the road that make a conflict between Washington and Beijing less likely.

Technological enthusiasm is not a strategy. And without the proper political and diplomatic context, a surge towards capabilities like swarms of drones that can destroy thousands of targets in China on short notice are more likely to accelerate a dangerous arms race than deter a potentially catastrophic conflict.

Beware of Pentagon techno-enthusiasm

defenseone.com · by William D. Hartung

In this 2019 photo, the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment operates a swarm of 40 drones during a mock battle at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California. U.S. Army / Pv2 James Newsome

A massive new drone effort, while laudable in its quest for simpler weapons, does not come without strings attached.

By William D. Hartung

Senior Research Fellow, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft

August 31, 2023 06:00 AM ET

As Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks announced to the world at this week’s meeting of the National Defense Industrial Association, the Pentagon is bullish on a new approach to the challenge posed by China, as embodied in the “Replicator” initiative, which involves “helping us to overcome the PRC’s biggest advantage, which is mass…More ships. More missiles. More people.”

Hicks went on to outline the key thrust of the new approach: “To stay ahead, we’re going to create a new state of the art—just as America has before—leveraging attritable, autonomous systems in all domains—which are less expensive, put fewer people in the line of fire and can be changed, updated or improved with substantially shorter lead times.” On the face of it, this seems like a better bet than building ever-more-complex systems that take decades to develop and deploy, are extremely difficult to maintain, and are in some cases far more expensive than the systems adversaries can use to counter them.

But in the quest to change how the Pentagon does business it will be important to be humble about the likely effectiveness of swarms of drones; unpiloted vehicles in the air, on land, and at sea; and AI-driven decision-making systems that can dramatically shorten the “kill chain” from a decision to attack to the arrival of a weapon on its intended target. And it is also necessary to acknowledge that implementing this effort to change how America arms itself for potential conflicts will involve a sharp political clash with Congress over the fates of aircraft carriers, piloted aircraft, and traditional armored vehicles—weapons that provide jobs and incomes in the districts and states of members with the most sway over the size and shape of the Pentagon budget.

Even what may seem like the seminal example of “revolutionary” technologies in warfare—Operation Desert Storm, the 1991 U.S. response to Iraq’s invasion of neighboring Kuwait—involved exaggerated claims of battlefield precision that were only corrected after detailed after-action analyses. As longtime Pentagon critic and defense expert Winslow Wheeler has noted, a post-war Government Accountability Office analysis found that it took many more munitions to destroy key targets than the Pentagon and arms makers had originally asserted. Success rates of key systems like the F-117 stealth aircraft, the Tomahawk land attack missile, and laser-guided bombs were found to be considerably lower than claimed—in some cases, stunningly lower. For example, the GAO’s analysis of Tomahawk use in Desert Storm found that only about half of those missiles launched in that war arrived at their targets. And the agency went on to note that “[o]thers arrived at the designated target area, but impacted so far away from the aimpoint as to only create a crater.”

To cite another telling example, “the claim by DOD and contractors of a one-target, one-bomb capability for laser-guided munitions was not demonstrated in the air campaign where, on average, 11 tons of guided and 44 tons of unguided munitions were delivered on each successfully destroyed target.” That was good enough to defeat a relatively poorly armed adversary, but it was not the performance of the miracle weapons originally advertised. Equally importantly, these capabilities and later refinements were not sufficient to win wars against adversaries with no air forces or significant air defense systems in either Iraq or Afghanistan. War is about far more than having the best bombs and communications systems. If this kind of advantage can be developed vis-a-vis China, it is unlikely to be decisive.

Part of the push for a new generation of weapons and control mechanisms is based on the purported success of drones in the war in Ukraine. But it’s too early to fully evaluate the performance of these systems, or to assess their relevance to a potential conflict with China – a war between nuclear-armed powers that could be an unprecedented disaster for all concerned, drones or no drones.

All of the above suggests that it doesn’t make sense to rush towards the sort of new techno-revolution advocated by Hicks in her NDIA speech without adequate assessment and testing. Most importantly of all, plans to win a war with China must take second place to political and diplomatic initiatives to set rules of the road that make a conflict between Washington and Beijing less likely.

Technological enthusiasm is not a strategy. And without the proper political and diplomatic context, a surge towards capabilities like swarms of drones that can destroy thousands of targets in China on short notice are more likely to accelerate a dangerous arms race than deter a potentially catastrophic conflict.

William D. Hartung is a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

24. The Pentagon’s Replicator effort to counter China is the right call

The Pentagon’s Replicator effort to counter China is the right call

Defense News · by Alex Plitsas · August 31, 2023

This week, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks announced a new and important initiative, named Replicator, which is designed to “field attritable autonomous systems at scale of multiple thousands, in multiple domains, within the next 18-to-24 months.” The initiative is specifically designed to help counter China’s growing military power. Some of those versed in the Pentagon acquisition bureaucracy took to social media following the announcement to express their doubts about the initiative due to the size, scale and timeline. Their concerns are rooted in bureaucratic tradition and an aversion to change — and they couldn’t be more wrong.

This is not the first time in the past few decades that the Pentagon has embarked on an aggressive acquisition initiative to meet a strategic threat. Last month, I had the privilege to meet some of the engineers and workers who assembled and built my mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle, or MRAP, that I was issued during the Iraq War in 2008. These vehicles were designed and rapidly manufactured and deployed to the war zones to counter the No. 1 killer of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan: improvised explosive devices, commonly referred to as roadside bombs, which the Pentagon had declared a weapon of strategic influence.

The team building the MRAPs worked 120-hour weeks during the height of production to meet the demand. If they had delayed even two weeks, I and another dozen soldiers I know personally would not be here today. There are thousands of others who can say the same.

The fielding of MRAPs and electronic warfare equipment was reactionary, as it happened in response to an ongoing conflict. In the case of Replicator, the initiative is proactive and meant to mitigate a growing gap in military capability in order to help deter conflict. This tells us a few things.

The Pentagon as an institution is a creature of habit where change and challenges to established bureaucratic processes can be met by open hostility. I watched this happen when then-Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter created the Strategic Capabilities Office. This initiative would not be necessary in the time frame in which it was announced unless the threat of conflict or the need to reestablish deterrence was acute and exceeded the time frame of normal acquisition processes. To put it plainly, the adversary gets a say about when things happen, and China’s timeline for the deployment of military capabilities that will tip the balance of power and erode deterrence is far shorter than our acquisition cycle.

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was lampooned for his response to a question posed by a U.S. service member overseas about the need for up-armored vehicles. Rumsfeld said: “You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want.” In this case, the Pentagon appears to be trying to get ahead of growing tensions and capability gaps by rapidly fielding systems needed to restore or reinforce deterrence.

This bold initiative is one that should be embraced by each of the armed services. It is a chance to reset the playing field and the clock in the hopes of deterring conflict, which have been eroded over the past decade and a half.

The Russian invasion and subsequent war in Ukraine has shown what autonomous and unmanned systems can do in combat. Much of it has been improvised, and yet produced strategic effects, such as the unmanned naval surface drones that have been used by Ukraine to attack ships in Russia’s Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Sevastopol as well as the Kerch Bridge that serves as the main logistics and resupply corridor for Russian forces in Crimea. That is in addition to all of the UAVs used against targets in both Ukraine and Russia. These technologies will continue to evolve and improve over time.

The United States cannot allow the gap in military capabilities and technologies compared to China to grow and expect strategic deterrence to hold. A significant and rapid investment in attritable unmanned autonomous systems is a good start, and the initiative announced by Deputy Defense Secretary Hicks should be embraced and supported by executive departments and agencies as well as by Capitol Hill.

This initiative is not a panacea for the growing military threat posed by China, but it wasn’t designed to be. More will be needed in order to mitigate the threat and deter conflict, but this is a good place to start. The Department of Defense has risen to the occasion many times in the past. This is another opportunity to do the same and hopefully prevent future conflict in doing so.

Alex Plitsas is a nonresident senior fellow with the N7 Initiative, a partnership between the Atlantic Council think tank and the Jeffrey M. Talpins Foundation. He is also a principal and industry director for aerospace and defense as well as high-tech electronics at Providence Consulting Group.

25. US drone swarm program could redefine modern war

I doubt that autonomous lethal systems can be effectively banned. The only nations that would abide by the ban would be those that support the international rules based order. I am sure the axis of authoritarians will develop and exploit the capabilities regardless of international law.

Excerpts:

At the same time, drone swarms pose significant ethical and legal challenges. Irving Lachow, in a February 2017 Bulletin of Atomic Scientists article, argues that public concern regarding the risks of lethal autonomous weapon systems, especially swarms, is exaggerated.

Lachow says while these systems can learn and evolve, their programming strictly dictates their behavior and ensuring their compliance with international humanitarian law is complex. He notes that defensive swarms may be the only adequate protection against attacking swarms, leading to a potential drone arms race.

Lachow says that the ultimate question is whether lethal autonomous weapon systems should be banned, regulated or allowed without restraint, but points out difficult questions regarding when a ban should occur, how it should be applied, and who will enforce it.

He notes that if regulation is the path forward, similar questions arise about what regulations should be applied, who will decide on them and what the consequences should be for violators.

US drone swarm program could redefine modern war

US Replicator program targets China with AI-driven autonomous drones while raising the possibility of a drone arms race

asiatimes.com · by Gabriel Honrada · September 1, 2023

The US has just unveiled an ambitious program that aims to field massive numbers of drones to overwhelm potential adversaries through the sheer mass of numbers. Such a program may be a game-changer in great power competition, which raises the possibility of large-scale industrial wars of attrition.

Late last month, multiple media outlets reported that the US Department of Defense (DOD) had unveiled the so-called Replicator Program to rapidly advance the fielding of attritable autonomous platforms in air, land and sea domains.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks announced this as a strategic move to counter China’s rising military capabilities, emphasizing its significance in a potential conflict over Taiwan with an aggressive 18-to-24-month timeline for deployment.

The Replicator program aims to mass-produce low-cost autonomous drones and establish a scalable, rapid technological development process. The Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (PIU) will oversee the effort, working with defense and non-traditional tech companies to expedite development. The project could also include a large-diameter unmanned undersea vehicle program with the US Navy.

Recent advancements in AI, mesh networks and grand networking capabilities have enabled operationalizing the scheme. These technologies will facilitate the platforms’ autonomous, decentralized functioning, even in limited bandwidth conditions. The Replicator aims to serve as a resilient distributed system, offering the advantage of quicker deployment closer to the tactical edge compared to traditional systems.

The Replicator program envisions a shift towards human-operated systems working in concert with autonomous systems and emphasizes ethics and compliance with laws of armed conflict.

It aims to mitigate concerns around the use of autonomous systems in combat, which could significantly influence the future of global conflict and defense technologies while raising critical academic and policy questions.

The US is advancing multiple autonomous drone initiatives that align closely with the objectives of the Replicator to revolutionize future warfare capabilities.

In August 2023, Asia Times reported on tests conducted by the US Air Force on the XQ-58A Valkyrie drone that aimed to showcase its advanced autonomous capabilities in air combat scenarios.

The XQ-58 Valkyrie drone is using AI to gain a combat edge. Image: Twitter

The drone was launched from Eglin Air Base in Florida and successfully carried out aerial combat tasks using AI-driven software. The tests were conducted as part of a more significant effort to develop and mature autonomous capabilities that rely on AI-driven algorithms. These capabilities are now being moved from laboratory environments to operational settings.

The USAF Research Laboratory developed the algorithms used in the tests as part of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program, a critical aspect of the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) modernization initiative.

The tests also established a multi-layer safety framework, solving a tactically relevant challenge during airborne operations that could accelerate the development of drone swarms.

In February 2023, Asia Times reported on the US Autonomous Multi-Domain Adaptive Swarms-of-Swarms (AMASS) project. The project aims to create autonomous drone swarms launched from sea, air, and land to overpower an adversary’s air defenses.

The project’s goal is to develop the ability to command thousands of autonomous drones to destroy an enemy’s defenses, including air defenses, artillery, missile launchers, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms.

The AMASS project explores using swarms-of-swarms to conduct military operations in highly contested environments with low-cost swarms equipped with diverse sensors and kinetic and non-kinetic effectors. The AMASS project award is expected to be given to a single private contractor.

These developments underscore the potential tactical and operational advantages of drone swarms, enabling the development of new operational concepts.

In a March 2021 Forbes article, David Hambling mentions that one of the standout features that make drone swarms so formidable in combat is their decentralized operation, letting them adapt on the fly. Hambling notes that drone swarms can perform diverse roles such as surveillance or direct assault, with their coordination enhancing their killing power and resilience against countermeasures.

He notes that drone swarms fit into modern warfighting concepts but pose challenges for existing defense systems due to their complexity and adaptability. The goal is to overwhelm the enemy with weapons and sensor platforms, but today’s systems are not built for this.

Furthermore, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) “Mosaic Warfare” operational concept aims to overwhelm adversaries by deploying a highly complex, decentralized and adaptive force composed of various weapon and sensor platforms designed to operate synergistically across multiple domains, thereby turning complexity into an asymmetric advantage.

Mosaic Warfare can be used in a ground battle by sending an unmanned aerial vehicle or ground robot ahead of the main battle force. The robot can spot an enemy tank and relay its coordinates to a non-line-of-sight strike system in the rear. Including aircraft makes it more complex and can overwhelm the opponent’s decision-making.

Mosaic Warfare in the maritime domain adds complexity as it involves air, land, sea and undersea environments. Combatant commanders must mix and match assets across services while expendability is critical. However, creating these systems within systems requires linking them together, which poses significant challenges.

Those projects and emerging operational concepts may tie into more extensive use of drone swarm strategies for a decisive effect in a potential Taiwan Strait crisis.

In May 2022, Asia Times reported that the US Air Force tested autonomous drone swarms in simulations to defend Taiwan from a possible Chinese invasion. The RAND Corporation’s David Ochmanek emphasized the limited time available to the US and its allies to respond during an invasion.

The simulations revealed that drone swarms using a distributed laser data-sharing network were crucial in ensuring a US victory by potentially overcoming China’s anti-access/area denial capabilities.

Autonomous drone swarms could work with stealthy manned platforms such as F-35 and F-22 to hit Chinese warships, aircraft and missile batteries. The networked drones would increase situational awareness and target acquisition capabilities while flooding enemy radar scopes with multiple targets.

However, there are concerns regarding the maturity of the technology and potential vulnerabilities such as Russian and Chinese electronic warfare capabilities, cyberattacks and bandwidth limitations.

Counter-drone technology research and operation efforts are helping to prepare for the potential threat of drone swarms. Photo: Lockheed Martin

At the same time, drone swarms pose significant ethical and legal challenges. Irving Lachow, in a February 2017 Bulletin of Atomic Scientists article, argues that public concern regarding the risks of lethal autonomous weapon systems, especially swarms, is exaggerated.

Lachow says while these systems can learn and evolve, their programming strictly dictates their behavior and ensuring their compliance with international humanitarian law is complex. He notes that defensive swarms may be the only adequate protection against attacking swarms, leading to a potential drone arms race.

Lachow says that the ultimate question is whether lethal autonomous weapon systems should be banned, regulated or allowed without restraint, but points out difficult questions regarding when a ban should occur, how it should be applied, and who will enforce it.

He notes that if regulation is the path forward, similar questions arise about what regulations should be applied, who will decide on them and what the consequences should be for violators.

Related

asiatimes.com · by Gabriel Honrada · September 1, 2023

26. What Tolstoy Can Teach Us About Geopolitics by Robert D. Kaplan

Very much worth reading.

Excerpt:

Conventional wisdom relies on linear thinking, that is, on the continuation of current trendlines. But great events are often great because they manifest zigs and zags. One of the ultimate follies of conventional wisdom that I am aware of was the fantastically grand buildings designed as the administrative heart of British India by Sir Edwin Lutyens in New Delhi, which were all constructed in the interwar years with the implied assumption of eternal colonial rule. Yet the British empire in India came crashing down just a few years later.

What Tolstoy Can Teach Us About Geopolitics

BY ROBERT D. KAPLAN AUGUST 31, 2023 11:59 AM EDT

Kaplan is the author of The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy, from the Mediterranean to China

TIME · by Robert D. Kaplan · August 31, 2023

The geopolitical world teeters on the brink. To understand it, nothing is more necessary than a profound imagination. And that brings to mind Leo Tolstoy.

In War and Peace, Tolstoy writes that Count Fyodor Rastopchin, a general and statesman, “had known for a long time that Moscow would be abandoned, but had known it only with his reason, while with all his soul he had not believed it, and he was not transported in imagination into that new situation.” Rastopchin in this particular case had a prescient intellect. But because he could not vividly picture in his mind the fall of Moscow to Napoleon and the subsequent abandonment of the city by its inhabitants, he was helpless when it actually happened. Reason and analysis are not enough, as I have learned in over four decades as a foreign correspondent and geopolitical analyst. True clairvoyance, if such a thing is even possible, is really about a powerful imagination, which is essentially literary.

Pearl Harbor, 9/11, the rapid fall of Kabul, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the aborted march on Moscow by Wagner mercenaries, and Vladimir Putin’s likely retaliatory assassination of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin were all, at least in a theoretical and analytical sense, somewhat predictable by experts beforehand. But they were also unimaginable, so we were all caught by surprise. Knowing something and actually believing it can be two different things. The best example I know concerning this category of mistake happens to be my own. I knew and even warned that Iraq was an artificial state, perhaps prone to chaos. Nevertheless, my problem was that while Iraq’s tyranny was something I had vividly experienced on the ground there during several visits in the 1980s, Iraq’s chaos was something I could only know theoretically until I returned to Iraq in 2004 and 2005 embedded with the U. S. military. Thus, in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, burdened by my awful memories of Iraq under Saddam Hussein, but unable to actually imagine the Iraqi anarchy that I had speculated about, I supported the Iraq War, and, in the manner of Tolstoy’s Count Rastopchin, I would soon find myself in my own eyes “ridiculous, with no ground under his [my] feet.” (All quotes from Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky's translation of War and Peace.)

One of the many things I learned the hard way from Iraq was that simply because you cannot specifically imagine an occurrence or situation doesn’t mean it won’t happen. This sounds obvious but it is not. What is now unimaginable in Russia, Iran, and quite a number of other places may in fact come to pass in the coming months or years. This is because not only is the Russian regime weak and increasingly unstable, but so are quite a few other regimes. We live at a time of tired authoritarian systems that are just as likely to give way to chaos as to democracy; if not to new forms of authoritarianism. The old question of the political philosophers, from Aristotle to Hobbes, is once again upon us: How to build new systems of order without succumbing to tyranny? Because this is such a messy, at times impossible, enterprise, we must prepare for dramatic surprises. As Tolstoy intimates, great events are the summation of phenomena that, because they are so complex and numerous, and also involve the Shakespearean passions of human beings, remain “inaccessible to the human mind.” And what makes them even more incomprehensible, according to Tolstoy, is that the “intrigues, aims, and desires” of the historical actors often lead to outcomes different from what they intended.

As I write, Russia is at a crossroads, a place where it has not been for 70 years when Stalin died. Then the fate of the whole Soviet empire was in question, as the East European satellite states were all subservient to the Kremlin. Predicting that Nikita Khrushchev would triumph and lead the empire to gradual de-Stalinization was certainly not obvious beforehand. Now we are again talking about the fate of the Russian empire, with its various minorities and spheres of influence stretching east to the Pacific and south to the Middle East, not to mention its effect on Europe. The difficulty in prediction—what necessitates a Tolstoyan imagination in the first place—is that Russia has historically been a weakly institutionalized state, especially when compared to China, a very different authoritarian behemoth with thousands of years of bureaucratic history behind it. Putin has accumulated more power than any Kremlin leader since Stalin, and yet behind—and beyond— that façade may lie an utter void. State collapse, a shaky collective leadership, civil war, liberal democracy, a new dictator even more nationalist than Putin, or Putin himself growing into a true totalitarian tyrant may all be real possibilities. Russia at some point could actually become a low calorie version of the former Yugoslavia. Indeed, throughout the 1980s experts speculated openly about the uncertain future of post-Tito Yugoslavia. But all were, nevertheless, shocked by the ethnic war and collapse of the federation that followed in the 1990s. Neither should we be shocked by a complete disintegration of the Russian empire, with warfare across the breadth of the supercontinent, a rump and unstable Russia left to cause Europe a permanent nightmare, and Chinese power expanded deep into Eurasia; or conversely, an economic collapse inside China itself that leads to social upheaval. Nobody should think any of this can’t happen.

Iran represents another tired, teetering regime of great consequence, with far-flung ethnic regions, that could affect areas well beyond its own borders. The Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, is 84 and in ill health. His succession could be problematic. Iran has already faced widespread political unrest against the regime in 2009, 2019, and 2022, not to mention other simmering revolts. The regime’s base of support is exceedingly narrow. As has been said, the situation is like a group of North Koreans governing a country of South Koreans. Like Russia, anything is possible. Before the Shah fell in 1979 it was impossible to truly imagine a regime other than his, despite the warnings of many experts about his low popularity. After he fell, for decades it became impossible to imagine any regime beyond that of the ayatollahs. But just last fall, in the midst of massive anti-regime protests ignited by the violent death of a woman, Mahsa Amini, while in the custody of the so-called morality police for incorrectly wearing the hijab, it suddenly became possible to vividly imagine a new Iran.

And with a new Iran, over time there could even be a new Iraq. Iraq’s weakness and extreme instability as a democracy in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion in 2003 has been to a significant extent a function of political interference and intrigue from Iran. But were that situation ever to end, and were Iran to turn inward to address its myriad of political and economic problems in advance of joining the global community, Iraq could stabilize and dramatically transform before our eyes. One’s entire image of a country and its politics, as well as one’s expectations about its future, can turn on a dime, which should make us embrace Tolstoy with his complex interplay of unintended historical fate and human agency, and make us wary of the conventional wisdom.

Conventional wisdom relies on linear thinking, that is, on the continuation of current trendlines. But great events are often great because they manifest zigs and zags. One of the ultimate follies of conventional wisdom that I am aware of was the fantastically grand buildings designed as the administrative heart of British India by Sir Edwin Lutyens in New Delhi, which were all constructed in the interwar years with the implied assumption of eternal colonial rule. Yet the British empire in India came crashing down just a few years later.

The same might be true of a number of Arab dictatorships. To assume that the failure of the Arab Spring automatically means continued autocracy is another example of linear thinking. While expecting new democratic outcomes might be fanciful, individual autocracies might weaken into a number of competing factions, in which case various groups in society might be consulted more on policy. Such consultative regimes already function in the royal systems of Oman, Jordan, and Morocco. Even the more rigid autocracies of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states feature consultation with elements of their populations. Change will have to come in one form or another. After almost a decade in power, the military regime of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi already seems exhausted and near a dead end, unable to generate the level of economic growth and entrepreneurship demanded by a growing and youthful population. With Egypt’s underground water table diminishing and its access to upstream Nile water potentially threatened by Ethiopia’s Renaissance Dam, Egypt (as well as Pakistan) are examples of hard regimes that hang on desperately to power in the face of an increasingly hostile natural environment.

Climate change that disrupts agricultural cycles, coupled with information technology advancing at warp speed, is simply going to unravel political systems across the globe that cannot measure up. It is getting increasingly harder to be a dictator these days, even as the weakness or absence of bureaucratic institutions make democratic change problematic in many countries. The future is more mysterious than ever.

The poet John Keats urged us to be “content with half knowledge,” which echoes Tolstoy’s observation that much of what will happen in international affairs remains “inaccessible to the human mind.” But neither should we lose hope. As Keats wrote,

And other spirits…are standing apart

Upon the forehead of the age to come;

These, these will give the world another heart,

And other pulses. Hear ye not the hum

Of mighty workings? –

Listen awhile ye nations, and be dumb.

TIME · by Robert D. Kaplan · August 31, 2023

27.  Special Operators Essential for National Strategy

Excerpts:

A successful and sustained U.S. irregular warfare strategy will be an essential element of an effective response. Therefore, Congress is considering a provision to authorize the secretary of defense to provide support to foreign forces, irregular forces, groups, or individuals engaged in supporting or facilitating ongoing and authorized irregular warfare operations by U.S. Special Operations Forces.

In the larger context, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low intensity conflict and the leader of U.S. Special Operations Command are focused on ensuring operators are well-prepared for current and future challenges, and they have coalesced the community around three shared priorities: strengthen our force and families; succeed for the nation; and modernize for the future — or “People. Win. Transform.”

To do so, Special Operations Forces will need to rapidly develop and scale new capabilities relevant to today’s strategic competition just as they quickly scaled counterterrorism and counter-insurgency capabilities over the preceding decades.

Special Operators Essential for National Strategy

nationaldefensemagazine.org

8/30/2023

By Michael Bayer

Defense Dept. photo

As we head into a very busy fall season, please pause for a moment to turn your thoughts to our military and their families, especially those deployed around the world protecting our freedom, values and way of life.

Both directly and through our alliances and partnerships around the world, they are deterring tyranny and aggression, and your team at the National Defense Industrial Association remains awed by their committed service.

This month, Congress returns to complete a very full legislative agenda, and NDIA is focused on supporting timely completion of on-time appropriations for the entire federal government. The stakes are high for the Defense Department. Under the recently passed Fiscal Responsibility Act, colloquially referred to as the debt ceiling deal, all appropriations bills must be completed before Jan. 1, or all federal departments and agencies will lose one percent of their funding.

Budget instability, including continuing resolutions, continue to wreak havoc on warfighters and member companies working so hard to support them, and we are committed to educating government stakeholders and the public about the challenges caused by this dysfunction.

Service members and their families deserve better, as do the companies in the defense industrial base that are investing and working to ensure the armed forces have the capabilities, platforms and services they need to effectively defer aggression and to protect the homeland.

The House and Senate will also start negotiating the final Fiscal Year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA. Among the many important provisions, the association is focused on the resolution of extending waivers for streamlined acquisition of defense stocks related to Ukraine and authorizations of additional munitions eligible for multi-year procurement contracts.

These provisions are important, because the illegal and unjust invasion of Ukraine has illuminated production limitations and supply chain challenges that prevent companies in the defense industrial base from quickly accelerating the manufacturing of weapons systems and munitions.

Since the end of the Cold War, the Defense Department has shifted — along with the rest of the U.S. economy — to a “just in time” mindset which has resulted in industrial production capacity that cannot surge quickly during a crisis.

William LaPlante, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, is focused on this very challenge. We strongly support his three priority lines of effort for the acquisition and sustainment community: increase U.S. capabilities and production; renew emphasis on allies and partners, especially in the areas of co-production and co-development; and focus development of acquisition strategies and asymmetric technological capabilities to effectively deter near-peer competitors.

In addition, based on the lessons learned from the conflict being waged in Ukraine, he is also emphasizing the importance of realistic training and sustainment requirements during the development phase of systems and platforms. He is challenging the acquisition community to ensure these systems and platforms are both deployable and sustainable during deployments and conflicts.

In addition, earlier this year he established the Joint Production Acceleration Cell as a direct report. He has charged it with building enduring industrial production capacity, resiliency and surge capability for key defense weapon systems and supplies. The purpose is to shift the department from a crisis-management, reactive posture, to one that proactively and continuously analyzes and identifies opportunities to optimize production capacity, resiliency and surge ability. While the cell is initially focused on munitions, the intention is to expand to weapons systems and suppliers.

Another area of congressional focus regarding the conflict in Ukraine is the role of irregular warfare. Peer and near-peer competitors are avoiding direct confrontation with the United States and instead are focusing on conducting sophisticated proxy conflicts and accelerating disinformation and propaganda campaigns. During this decisive decade of global competition, the strategic environment is rapidly shifting to overcome these evolving geopolitical, technological and operational challenges.

A successful and sustained U.S. irregular warfare strategy will be an essential element of an effective response. Therefore, Congress is considering a provision to authorize the secretary of defense to provide support to foreign forces, irregular forces, groups, or individuals engaged in supporting or facilitating ongoing and authorized irregular warfare operations by U.S. Special Operations Forces.

In the larger context, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low intensity conflict and the leader of U.S. Special Operations Command are focused on ensuring operators are well-prepared for current and future challenges, and they have coalesced the community around three shared priorities: strengthen our force and families; succeed for the nation; and modernize for the future — or “People. Win. Transform.”

To do so, Special Operations Forces will need to rapidly develop and scale new capabilities relevant to today’s strategic competition just as they quickly scaled counterterrorism and counter-insurgency capabilities over the preceding decades.

Special Operations Forces are a strategic competitive advantage for the nation, and we are grateful for their service and sacrifices, which have been significant and sustained. I therefore strongly encourage you to join us for the 34th Annual SO/LIC Symposium on Oct. 30-31, at the JW Marriott Washington, D.C.

The focus of the symposium is on special operations priorities and capability requirements in an era of great power competition. Our service members and their families need you. Our member companies welcome you. Join us! ND

Michael Bayer is NDIA board chair and president and CEO of Dumbarton Strategies.

nationaldefensemagazine.org

​28. How Russian Globalized the War in Ukraine

Excerpts:

Effective support for Ukraine demands a policymaking imagination that extends beyond Europe. Ukraine’s well-being runs through global networks, which Russia—confronted with constraints on the battlefield—seeks to disrupt and damage. The Kremlin’s ultimate goal is clear: strangling the Ukrainian economy, society, and state by whatever means necessary. Moral scruples, appeals, and accusations will not deter Putin. Instead, it is essential to preserve Ukraine’s integration into the global economy, which Russia is deliberately attempting to degrade.

The United States’ most immediate challenge is food security. While energy’s geopolitical significance has long been recognized, with the U.S. government calibrated to handle energy contingencies, it is important to invest in similar interagency mechanisms for food security. These efforts—helping countries like Ukraine protect their commercial grain industry, supplying food where it is urgently needed, and increasing the grain available to global markets—could rally global support behind Ukraine more effectively than abstract arguments about international order or the merits of the UN Charter.

Over the past two decades, Moscow’s foreign policy decisions have often caught U.S. policymakers off guard, whether it was the 2008 invasion of Georgia, the annexation of Crimea, or meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Yet the U.S. government correctly anticipated Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late 2021, acting decisively to complicate the Kremlin’s plans. Washington should now understand that Moscow is geared up for a long war over the future of both Ukraine and the international order and that it will use global levers of power and influence to hurt Ukraine and the West. The effects of Russia’s actions will not be trivial. Nor will the Kremlin’s ruthlessness necessarily turn non-Western countries against Russia. The sooner U.S. policymakers appreciate the global dimensions of the war in Ukraine, the sooner they may be able to engineer the failure of Russia’s designs for Ukraine.

How Russian Globalized the War in Ukraine

The Kremlin’s Pressure-Point Strategy to Undermine the West

By Michael Kimmage and Hanna Notte

September 1, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Michael Kimmage and Hanna Notte · September 1, 2023

From the outset of his invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s vast ambitions for the war were obvious. He intended to topple the government in Kyiv and either partition or take control of Ukraine. But Putin’s aspirations extended beyond carving a sphere of influence in central and eastern Europe. By subjugating the Ukrainian polity, Putin hoped to initiate a new era of global politics, one detached from American leadership. He promised an international system that would be genuinely postcolonial, solicitous of conservative values, and robustly multipolar, with Russia serving as one of its central arbiters.

Even after setback after setback on the battlefield in Ukraine, Putin remains committed to a brutal, immiserating war effort. He will do what he can to isolate and impoverish Ukraine in pursuit of an international order that sidelines the West and restores Russia’s proper place in the world, as he construes it. Announced by Putin at the 2007 Munich Security Conference, Moscow’s turn from the West accelerated after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, reaching a breaking point with the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The longer the war lasts, the more Putin will look for opportunities to undermine and supplant the West.

Russia’s strategy to globalize the war has multiple dimensions. In its economic relations, Moscow has capitalized on the opportunism of countries indifferent to the conflict: the Kremlin aims to integrate Russia into non-Western networks of trade, defense, and commerce. Ideologically, Russia blames the war on Western deceit and Ukrainian betrayal, leveling accusations of hypocrisy against the United States and its allies. Diplomatically, Russia and the West are carrying the conflict into international institutions. Whether in the United Nations Security Council or at the International Atomic Energy Agency, whatever modus vivendi there had once been between Russia and the West has come apart. By nurturing apathy and frustration with the war in non-Western capitals, Moscow hopes that other countries will join its ranks or at the very least distance themselves from the West.

Central to Russia’s global strategy are force and fear. Consciously stoking anxiety about nuclear catastrophe, the Kremlin seeks control over global pressure points. Its bid to strong-arm Europe through gas and energy exports may have failed, but the Kremlin has other tools at its disposal, one of which concerns the global supply of food. By pulling out of the Black Sea Grain Initiative in July 2023, after threatening to do so for months, Russia has upped the ante. Brokered by Turkey and the UN, this agreement ensured the wartime export of Ukrainian grain. Since leaving the deal, Russia has tried to impose a de facto blockade on civilian shipping to and from all Ukrainian-held Black Sea ports. To hinder Ukrainian shipments, it has attacked ports, grain storage facilities, and other sites along the Danube River. In so doing, Russia hopes to gain long-term coercive leverage over Ukraine, while waging a prolonged military struggle to subdue the country.

The United States, along with other countries supporting Ukraine, must avoid wishful thinking about Russia’s chronic decline. They should not underestimate the scale of Moscow’s ambitions. Neither a great power nor a regional power in the classic sense, Russia exists in a confusing category of its own: it is a regional power with considerable global reach. To fend off Putin, the United States and its partners should think of the war in similarly global terms. This involves recognizing the limits of sanctions, preemptively identifying Russia’s next pressure points, emphasizing the importance of food security, and developing a diplomatic stance that is less narrowly transatlantic and more broadly appealing to non-Western countries. Russia will use its global assets and instruments to prolong the war. The United States must harness its global influence to shorten the war, maximize support for Ukraine, and contain Russia.

RUSSIA’S WORLD

Putin’s Russia inherited the dual legacies of imperial Russian foreign policy and Soviet great-power status. Russia had been a part of the European state system since the seventeenth century, extending far west in the decades before World War I and making its presence felt throughout Asia and the Middle East. The Soviet Union embraced Russia’s imperial past and was extremely active in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, especially when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev came to power in the mid-1950s and devoted himself to new varieties of Soviet internationalism. Yevgeny Primakov, the foreign minister under Russian President Boris Yeltsin, contended in the late 1990s that the world was “multipolar” and that Russia was too large, consequential, and proud to be impeded by Washington’s hegemonic pretensions.

Once a political rival to Primakov, Putin soon became a disciple of the former foreign minister and prime minister. Money poured into Russia after 2000, allowing Putin to modernize the Russian military and revive the Soviet Union’s soft power. By 2015, Moscow’s military modernization had enabled power projection in the Middle East, and Russia intervened in Syria on the side of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The Kremlin’s soft power might have appeared negligible to the casual observer; Russia lacked the economic might of China, the lifestyle appeal of Europe, and the military power of the United States. Yet Putin’s Russia avidly fostered ties with non-Western countries, often by invoking historical grievances about the West. Putin has consistently presented Russia as an autonomous global actor and an antidote to a reckless, revisionist United States. In this guise, he seeks to appear as a role model for other leaders dissatisfied with the international status quo.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has tarnished Russia’s reputation in Europe and the United States, raising doubts about his regime’s competence. But the war has not isolated Russia from the world. Instead, the war has signaled a new chapter in Russia’s global orientation. Styling itself as a David to the Western Goliath, Russia has cultivated a wartime soft power that resonates. Many countries perceive the West as focused on the Ukraine war to the exclusion of other urgent challenges. They contend that the United States, having fought wars of aggression in Vietnam and Iraq, falls short of its purported standards and principles. Some governments, including those of Brazil, Syria, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe, parrot the Kremlin’s line about the West’s aggressive and arrogant policies toward Russia, blaming the war on the West. Moscow invokes these sentiments in the UN Security Council, at the diplomatic gatherings it convenes (such as the Russia-Africa Summit held in St. Petersburg this past July), and at the summits of the BRICS grouping, which brings together Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, and will soon be expanded to include six other nations. Time and again, Russia argues that Ukraine and the West—not Russia—are out of sync with the global majority.

The durability of Russia’s economy illuminates the war’s global context. The West has not knocked Russia’s economy substantially off balance, and many major economies ranging from India’s to South Africa’s are either continuing or expanding their commercial ties with Russia. The war has shifted Russia’s trade and technology transfers, whether it be drones supplied by Iran, microchips smuggled through the “roundabout trade,” or emerging energy markets in Asia. Although the West initially assumed that the threat of sanctions would deter Russia from invading or that sanctions themselves would prevent Russia from waging a long war, the conflict has thus far shown otherwise.

UNDER PRESSURE

Trapped in a forever war of its own making, Russia is increasing global pressure in critical areas. Russian foreign-policy experts and media propagandists alike have insinuated that a nuclear conflagration could occur unless the West backs down over Ukraine. These veiled nuclear threats have been heard in the West and globally, bolstering the belief (held by some) that Russia should not be pushed too far and that its demands should not be dismissed. Russia has greatly curtailed collaboration with the West on pressing global challenges such as nuclear arms control and nonproliferation, while also becoming more and more obstructionist at the UN, where cooperation was unexpectedly robust in the months following the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Russia has recently undermined multilateral arrangements it once tolerated, such as a mechanism facilitating cross-border aid into Syria. Russia’s appetite for tackling global problems jointly with the West is gone. Putin blithely attributes this decline of multilateralism to the West.

When yesterday’s pressure points do not deliver, Russia moves on to other ones. The Kremlin’s most recent preoccupation is the global food supply. Putin’s abandonment of the Black Sea Grain Initiative was a cruel, calculated action in line with Russia’s broader strategy: blocking Ukraine’s access to international markets and gaining control over a major global chokepoint. Beyond the Black Sea, Russia has attacked Ukrainian grain terminals near Romania. This follows the Kremlin’s futile attempts to degrade Ukraine’s economic wherewithal through strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure last winter. Russia’s attacks against Ukraine’s grain supply are affecting global foodstuff prices, with Russia standing to profit as one of the major global alternatives.

In withdrawing from the grain deal, Russia is pursuing aims beyond mere profit. With the twinned goals of gaining advantage in Ukraine and pushing back against Western influence, Moscow is asserting itself as a pivotal global actor in the supply of foodstuffs. Having imposed immense suffering on the people of Ukraine, Russia’s attacks on grain supply are expanding the perimeter of this suffering to people all over the world, and in this suffering resides real geopolitical leverage. Such behavior is yet another reason for the United States and other countries—states that are food producers or have viable alternatives to Russian grain—to counter Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine.

But the situation is different for countries dependent on Russian and Ukrainian grain or for those vulnerable to rising food prices. Countries struggling to feed their populations—the most fundamental obligation of any society—may be compelled to work with Russia to ensure a steady supply of grain at acceptable prices. To achieve their food goals, these countries may need to flatter Russia or reconsider votes in international institutions on issues critical to Russia. At the Russia-Africa Summit, Putin melodramatically offered free grain to six African countries—an act of empty showmanship. The Kremlin may provide grain at high cost, low cost, or no cost at all, but it will always press for something in return.

Countries supporting Ukraine should not underestimate Moscow’s ambitions.

In November 2022, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan used his leverage with the Kremlin, after it had reneged on the Black Sea Grain Initiative, to get it back to the deal; that deal required periodic renewal. At the urging of Erdogan, who is scheduled to visit Russia soon to discuss the grain deal, among other topics, Putin may eventually agree to a revised deal. Even if he does, he retains a source of leverage he can dial up or down at will.

Russia’s control of food supplies has dramatic implications. Scarcity is driving up the price of grain and other foodstuffs, generating inflation in global markets. Rising inflation is eroding support for incumbent governments while bolstering the popularity of opposition parties and movements. Despite subsiding inflation in the United States, Europe is still grappling with this challenge, coinciding with the rise of far-right parties throughout the continent. By releasing or continuing to withhold grain through a temporary deal, Russia can try to shape global economic conditions in accordance with its foreign policy agendas.

Food scarcity begets hunger, behind which looms instability. When coupled with global warming, which increases competition for agricultural resources such as water and arable land, hunger can generate political upheaval. It was a source of revolutionary anger in eighteenth-century France and in twenty-first-century Syria, where civil war was preceded by drought. Migrant flows, such as those that Europe experienced in 2015, can quickly export instability from one part of the world to another—Russia and Belarus have long exploited migration in pursuit of geopolitical objectives. Russia’s manipulation of global grain supplies is surely targeted at Europe and the United States, where a clear concordance exists between political actors opposed to migration and those reluctant to back Ukraine.

Putin’s goal is not to create vulnerability in a specific area. Rather, he aims to foster global dependence on Russia’s policy decisions. These elements of global influence matter more to Putin than his good reputation in Africa or the Middle East, where Moscow’s withdrawal from the Black Sea Grain Initiative dismayed many countries.

A LONG WAR

Effective support for Ukraine demands a policymaking imagination that extends beyond Europe. Ukraine’s well-being runs through global networks, which Russia—confronted with constraints on the battlefield—seeks to disrupt and damage. The Kremlin’s ultimate goal is clear: strangling the Ukrainian economy, society, and state by whatever means necessary. Moral scruples, appeals, and accusations will not deter Putin. Instead, it is essential to preserve Ukraine’s integration into the global economy, which Russia is deliberately attempting to degrade.

The United States’ most immediate challenge is food security. While energy’s geopolitical significance has long been recognized, with the U.S. government calibrated to handle energy contingencies, it is important to invest in similar interagency mechanisms for food security. These efforts—helping countries like Ukraine protect their commercial grain industry, supplying food where it is urgently needed, and increasing the grain available to global markets—could rally global support behind Ukraine more effectively than abstract arguments about international order or the merits of the UN Charter.

Over the past two decades, Moscow’s foreign policy decisions have often caught U.S. policymakers off guard, whether it was the 2008 invasion of Georgia, the annexation of Crimea, or meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Yet the U.S. government correctly anticipated Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late 2021, acting decisively to complicate the Kremlin’s plans. Washington should now understand that Moscow is geared up for a long war over the future of both Ukraine and the international order and that it will use global levers of power and influence to hurt Ukraine and the West. The effects of Russia’s actions will not be trivial. Nor will the Kremlin’s ruthlessness necessarily turn non-Western countries against Russia. The sooner U.S. policymakers appreciate the global dimensions of the war in Ukraine, the sooner they may be able to engineer the failure of Russia’s designs for Ukraine.

• MICHAEL KIMMAGE is Professor of History at the Catholic University of America and a Visiting Fellow at the German Marshall Fund. From 2014 to 2016, he served on the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, where he held the Russia/Ukraine portfolio.
• HANNA NOTTE is Director of the Eurasia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies and a Nonresident Senior Associate with the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Foreign Affairs · by Michael Kimmage and Hanna Notte · September 1, 2023

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com