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Quotes of the Day:
“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
- Ray Bradbury
“Experience is the hardest kind of teacher. It gives you the test first and the lesson afterward.”
- Oscar Wilde.
“People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacity to think.”
- Aldous Huxley
1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 1, 2023
2. Analysis: The Beginning of the End of Putin in Crimea
3. Russian ‘hybrid’ war threatens NATO’s eastern flank, Poles warn
4. Opinion | American Power Just Took a Big Hit
5. Three Years After Chinese Communist Crackdown, Hong Kong Continues To Suffer – OpEd
6. ‘Defending democracy’ a losing strategy against authoritarian narratives
7. US ‘counter-disinformation’ efforts need updating
8. As Taiwan's government races to counter China, most people aren't worried about war
9. Attack on Taiwan will bring "resolute reaction" - US
10. Last Gasp of the Neoconservatives
11. Russia is losing in Ukraine but winning in Georgia
12. Game of Drones: The dangerous rise of military and surveillance warcraft
13. How China Will Take Taiwan
14. Planning for the Next War Must Be a Mixture of Art & Science
15. English Classes For Resettled Afghan Women In Charlotte
16. It Costs Just $400 to Build an AI Disinformation Machine
17. Top Russian Rocket Scientist Dies of Mushroom Poisoning Weeks After Moscow’s Failed Moon Landing
18. With wary eye on China, U.S. moves closer to former foe Vietnam
19. World War II special operations veteran receives Special Forces tab
20. The global human rights regime has collapsed
21. In New Moon Race, Russian Crash Shows the Only U.S. Rival Is China
22. A Brutal Path Forward, Village by Village
23. The Joint Force Needs a Counter-SOF Strategy
24. Biden’s Destiny Is Linked to Ukraine’s
25. U.S. Arms Makers Look Overseas to Boost Stockpiles
1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 1, 2023
Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-1-2023
Key Takeaways:
- Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence (GUR) Head Kyrylo Budanov reported that the Russian military deployed elements of a newly created “reserve army” (the 25th CAA) to enable units currently on the frontline in Luhansk Oblast to laterally redeploy to defend against the Ukrainian counteroffensive in southern Ukraine.
- The 25th Combined Arms Army is unlikely to be combat effective at scale given its rushed deployment, ahead of a previously reported intended deployment date of December 2023.
- Additional Russian lateral redeployments and the immediate commitment of intended operational reserves suggest that short term reinforcement needs are impeding intended long-term reconstitution efforts.
- Russian “Vostok” Battalion commander Alexander Khodakovsky continues to highlight the impact of the lack of Russian counter-battery capabilities on Russian morale in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area.
- Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and made some advances on September 1.
- Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast but did not make any confirmed gains.
- Russian occupation officials announced on September 1 that voting began for the Russian regional elections held in occupied Ukraine and will continue in various forms through September 10.
- Russian officials continue efforts to forcibly indoctrinate Ukrainian youth into Russian culture and identity by integrating schools in occupied Ukraine into the Russian educational system.
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 1, 2023
Sep 1, 2023 - Press ISW
Download the PDF
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 1, 2023
Riley Bailey, Grace Mappes, Nicole Wolkov, Angelica Evans, and Mason Clark
September 1, 2023, 7:15pm 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 1pm ET on September 1. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the September 2 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.
Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence (GUR) Head Kyrylo Budanov reported that the Russian military deployed elements of a newly created “reserve army” (the 25th CAA) to enable units currently on the frontline in Luhansk Oblast to laterally redeploy to defend against the Ukrainian counteroffensive in southern Ukraine. Budanov stated on August 31 that the Russian military deployed elements of the newly formed 25th Combined Arms Army (reportedly formed under the Eastern Military District) to replace elements of the 41st Combined Arms Army (Central Military District) in the Kupyansk direction, and that these elements of the 41st Combined Arms Army (CAA) began a “slow” redeployment to an unspecified area in southern Ukraine.[1] Elements of the 41st CAA’s 35th Separate Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade and 90th Tank Division participated in the failed Russian winter 2023 offensive operation in Luhansk Oblast and have continued limited offensive activity along the Svatove-Kreminna line through now.[2] These units are likely degraded and have been operating without brigade and regiment level rotations like many frontline Russian units throughout the theater. ISW previously assessed that a lack of operational reserves would force the Russian command to conduct further lateral redeployments and make tough decisions about what sectors of the front to prioritize.[3] The Russian military command appears to have deployed elements of the newly formed and likely low quality or understrength 25th CAA to Luhansk Oblast to free up the relatively more effective 41st CAA elements for southern Ukraine. Budanov added that elements of the 25th CAA are already participating in hostilities in Luhansk Oblast.[4]
The 25th Combined Arms Army is unlikely to be combat effective at scale given its rushed deployment, ahead of a previously reported intended deployment date of December 2023. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) formed a “reserve army” at the end of June, likely referencing the 25th CAA, which began recruiting personnel from the Russian Far East in mid-May.[5] The 25th CAA will reportedly consist of 30,000 contract personnel in two motorized rifle divisions as well as an unspecified number of tank and artillery battalions, although it is unclear what elements have actually formed to date.[6] Budanov stated that Russian forces formed the 25th CAA as a ”strategic“ reserve and did not intend for the formation to be combat ready before October or November 2023.[7] A Russian administrator in Dalnegorsk, Primorsky Krai posted a recruitment ad for the 25th CAA on June 5 that claimed that the 25th CAA would train personnel from September 1 to December 1 and then deploy to either Zaporizhia or Kherson Oblast - ISW has not independently observed reporting of the October or November date Budanov cited but has no reason to question this statement.[8] Ukrainian Deputy Chief of the Main Operational Department Oleksii Hromov stated on July 5 that the 25th CAA would not be combat ready until at least 2024.[9] Budanov noted that the 25th CAA elements that have arrived in Luhansk Oblast are understaffed and lack training, unsurprising due to their accelerated deployment.[10] ISW cannot yet independently verify that elements of the 25th CAA are operating in Luhansk Oblast, and the scale of the 25th CAA’s commitment is unclear from Budanov’s comments. The current size and capabilities of the elements of the 25th CAA deployed to Ukraine five months prematurely are unclear. The formation is likely either severely understaffed and not near the paper strength of two divisions, or is poorly trained much like initial Russian mobilized units in fall 2022, or both.
The Russian command likely views the deployment of a combat ineffective formation to Luhansk Oblast as a tolerable risk given the relatively lower tempo of operations along much of the Luhansk Oblast frontline. The recent lateral redeployment of elements of the 76th Guards Air Assault (VDV) Division from the Kreminna area in Luhansk Oblast to the Robotyne area in western Zaporizhia Oblast in late August further suggests that the Russian military command likely views this sector of the front as relatively safe.[11] Ukrainian forces are conducting limited ground attacks in Luhansk Oblast compared to other areas of the front.
Additional Russian lateral redeployments and the immediate commitment of intended operational reserves suggest that short term reinforcement needs are impeding intended long-term reconstitution efforts. The redeployment of elements of the 41st CAA to southern Ukraine is the third major Russian lateral redeployment since the start of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in June and the second in recent weeks.[12] Russian formations at the division level (and in some areas lower) defending in southern Ukraine have done so without rotation since the start of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, and these forces have committed substantial material, manpower, and effort to hold back Ukrainian advances.[13] The second lateral deployment in the span of a few weeks suggests an increasing Russian concern about the stability of Russian defenses in light of Ukrainian advances around Robotyne. The creation of the 25th CAA is likely a part of Shoigu’s long-term objective previously announced in January 2023 to form several new major ground forces formations, and the deployment of elements of the 25th CAA to avoid creating gaps in the Russian defense suggests that the immediate threat of a Ukrainian breakthrough is serious enough to supersede that effort.[14]
Russian “Vostok” Battalion commander Alexander Khodakovsky continues to highlight the impact of the lack of Russian counter-battery capabilities on Russian morale in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area. Khodakovsky claimed on September 1 that Russian forces continue to suffer from a lack of counter-battery capabilities in the Novomayorske-Novodonetske-Kermenchyk area (12km to 18km southeast of Velyka Novosilka), where Khodakovsky and the “Vostok” Battalion are reportedly defending.[15] Khodakovsky insinuated that Russian forces are experiencing extreme physical and psychological stress in this area due to constant Ukrainian artillery fire and the Russian inability to return fire.[16] Khodakovsky expressed concerns about whether distressed and exhausted Russian forces will be able to defend against a future Ukrainian offensive in this sector of the front.[17]
Khodakovsky has previously highlighted similar concerns about the Russian defense in this area, although his recent comments are more negative and defeatist in tone.[18] Khodakovsky’s complaints about the lack of counter-battery capabilities in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area and concerns about its impacts on Russian morale are not necessarily indicative of a wider phenomenon in the Russian defense. However, Khodakovsky’s comments likely accurately reflect the situation in his limited but important sector of the frontline as well as the situation for often neglected proxy military formations such as Khodakovsky’s Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) “Vostok” Battalion. Khodakovsky noted on August 31 that Russian forces cannot lose sight of the daily fight against Ukrainian forces while fantasizing about "burying the enemy in the future.”[19] Khodakovsky may believe that senior Russian commanders have done exactly this by letting the situation deteriorate to the point that Russian forces may be unable to defend against future Ukrainian offensives in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area.
Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and made some advances on September 1. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations south of Bakhmut, and geolocated footage shows that Ukrainian forces marginally advanced northwest of Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut).[20] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces achieved unspecified success in the Novodanylivka-Novopokropivka direction (5km to 13km south of Orikhiv) in western Zaporizhia Oblast.[21] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Robotyne (10km south of Orikhiv) and Verbove (18km southeast of Orikhiv), however.[22] US National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby stated on July 1 that the US has observed notable Ukrainian progress in the “Zaporizhia area” (likely meaning the western Zaporizhia Oblast direction) in the past 72 hours and that Ukrainian forces have achieved some success against the “second line of Russian defenses” in southern Ukraine.[23] Kirby also stated that anonymous US officials’ criticisms of the progress of the Ukrainian counteroffensive are unhelpful.[24]
Politico confirmed previously-reported numbers of refurbished US Abrams tanks set to arrive in Ukraine by mid-September. Politico confirmed that Ukraine will receive the first 10 of the 31 promised refurbished US Abrams tanks by mid-September following refurbishment in Germany, citing a US Department of Defense official and another source.[25] The US Army Europe and Africa Spokesperson Colonel Martin O’Donnell stated that the US remains committed to delivering the 31 Abrams during an unspecified timeframe in the fall.[26] O’Donnell stated that 200 Ukrainian servicemen recently completed one of the final phases of Abrams training. Ukraine is unlikely to deploy the initial Abrams tanks (two platoons) until the entire brigade set is ready for operations.
Russian Deputy Defense Minister Colonel General Yunus-Bek Yevkurov is reportedly visiting multiple African countries as part of the Russian Ministry of Defense’s (MoD’s) continued effort to assume control over the Wagner Group’s operations in Africa. A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that Yevkurov is conducting a tour of various African countries including Burkina Faso and recently visited Libya and Syria in an attempt to replace “private military companies” (PMCs) with Russian MoD-controlled formations.[27] The milblogger also claimed that the Russian MoD is forming a “volunteer corps” to function as an “expeditionary corps” that will include over 20,000 personnel.[28] The “expeditionary corps” may be a reference to the “Rossiyskiy Ekpeditsionniy Korpus” (Russian Expeditionary Corps) PMC that Russian officials are allegedly creating to conduct operations abroad.[29] Bloomberg reported on August 31 that unnamed sources close to the Russian MoD and an unspecified PMC claimed that a Russian MoD-affiliated PMC is positioned to take control of Wagner’s operations in the Central African Republic.[30] ISW has continually observed claims since the Wagner rebellion on June 24 that the Russian MoD is attempting to consolidate control over Wagner operations in Africa.[31]
A Russian public opinion poll indicates that there is likely little to no societal discontent around the Wagner Group or its financier Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death, and the true cause of the plane crash will have little impact on both Russian perceptions and the future of the Wagner Group. Independent Russian polling organization Levada Center found that roughly equivalent percentages of Russians believe that either Prigozhin’s death was accidental; Russian authorities intentionally orchestrated Prigozhin’s death; Prigozhin is still alive; or the cause of Prigozhin’s death is difficult to determine.[32] Levada Center polls conducted on June 23 and August 23 found that Russians are almost evenly split between disapproving and approving of Prigozhin’s activities.[33] Public opinion on the death of Prigozhin (very likely a Kremlin-directed assassination) would only impact Kremlin or Ministry of Defense decision making if public opposition reached a far higher threshold, and the Kremlin likely in fact benefits from continued disagreement in Russian society over the circumstances of Prigozhin’s death.
A fringe Russian milblogger arrested on August 31 for allegedly discrediting the Russian military reportedly pled guilty on September 1.[34] Russian state media outlet TASS reported that Andrey Kurshin, administrator of the “Moscow Calling” Telegram channel, pled guilty to charges for knowingly disseminating false information about the Russian military and faces up to 10 years in prison.[35] Russian media outlet Baza claimed that Russian officials charged Kurshin for posts made on September 14 and November 23, 2022 covering Russian shelling of Zaporizhia Oblast and a strike near a dam on the Inhulets River near Kherson City, respectively.[36] Kurshin, via the “Moscow Calling” channel, has actively criticized the Russian military, Ministry of Defense (MoD), and Kremlin throughout the war for poor Russian conduct, and these specific and older posts are unlikely to be the impetus for Kurshin’s arrest. Russian authorities reportedly arrested prominent ultranationalist Igor Girkin based on Telegram posts two months prior to his arrest but reportedly began investigating Girkin on the same day he levied especially harsh critiques against Russian President Vladimir Putin, as ISW has previously reported.[37]
Key Takeaways:
- Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence (GUR) Head Kyrylo Budanov reported that the Russian military deployed elements of a newly created “reserve army” (the 25th CAA) to enable units currently on the frontline in Luhansk Oblast to laterally redeploy to defend against the Ukrainian counteroffensive in southern Ukraine.
- The 25th Combined Arms Army is unlikely to be combat effective at scale given its rushed deployment, ahead of a previously reported intended deployment date of December 2023.
- Additional Russian lateral redeployments and the immediate commitment of intended operational reserves suggest that short term reinforcement needs are impeding intended long-term reconstitution efforts.
- Russian “Vostok” Battalion commander Alexander Khodakovsky continues to highlight the impact of the lack of Russian counter-battery capabilities on Russian morale in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area.
- Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and made some advances on September 1.
- Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast but did not make any confirmed gains.
- Russian occupation officials announced on September 1 that voting began for the Russian regional elections held in occupied Ukraine and will continue in various forms through September 10.
- Russian officials continue efforts to forcibly indoctrinate Ukrainian youth into Russian culture and identity by integrating schools in occupied Ukraine into the Russian educational system.
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 limited offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on September 1 but did not make any confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive actions near Novoselivske (15km northwest of Svatove) and Novoyehorivka (16km southwest of Svatove).[38] Russian Western Grouping of Forces Press Officer Yaroslav Yakimkin claimed on September 1 that Russian forces continued offensive operations in the Kupyansk direction and captured an unspecified Ukrainian stronghold.[39] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that elements of the Russian Western Grouping of Forces captured several unspecified Ukrainian strongholds and key heights in the Kupyansk direction between August 25 and September 1.[40] Russian sources claimed on September 1 that Russian forces continued to make unspecified gains near Synkivka (9km northeast of Kupyansk), Petropavlivka (7km east of Kupyansk), and Vilshana (14km northeast of Kupyansk), although ISW has not observed visual confirmation of these claims.[41] A prominent Russian milblogger claimed that there are only positional battles ongoing in the Kupyansk direction.[42] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces conducted an assault near Bilohorivka (12km south of Kreminna) but did not specify an outcome.[43]
Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted limited unsuccessful ground attacks along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on September 1.[44] Yakimkin claimed that elements of the Russian Western Grouping of Forces repelled four Ukrainian counterattacks in the Kupyansk direction.[45] Russian Central Grouping of Forces Spokesperson Alexander Savchuk claimed on September 1 that elements of the Central Grouping of Forces repelled four Ukrainian assaults near Torske (15km west of Kreminna) and the Serebryanske forest area south of Kreminna.[46] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces repelled three Ukrainian assaults near Torske and another three assaults near the Serebryanske forest area.[47]
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 continued offensive operations near Bakhmut on September 1 and made marginal advances south of Bakhmut. Geolocated footage published on September 1 indicates that Ukrainian forces made marginal advances northwest of Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut).[48] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations south of Bakhmut.[49] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Ukrainian forces repeatedly unsuccessfully attacked near Klishchiivka and Malynivka (24km northwest of Bakhmut) over the last week.[50] A prominent Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces continue efforts to capture Klishchiivka.[51] Another Russian milblogger posted footage purportedly showing elements of the Russian 200th Motorized Rifle Brigade (14th Army Corps, Northern Fleet) repelling Ukrainian attacks in the Bakhmut direction.[52]
Russian forces continued counterattacks near Bakhmut on September 1 but did not make any confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Kurdyumivka (12km southwest of Bakhmut).[53] Ukrainian Eastern Grouping of Forces Spokesperson Ilya Yevlash stated on August 31 that Russian forces are counterattacking in the Bakhmut direction in order to stop Ukrainian advances.[54] Several Russian milbloggers claimed on September 1 that Russian forces counterattacked near Kurdyumivka, Ozaryanivka (14km southwest of Bakhmut), and Klishchiivka and recaptured unspecified positions in the area.[55] Other milbloggers claimed that Russian forces recaptured some heights west of Klishchiivka.[56] The Russian volunteer ”Hispaniola” Battalion, notably comprised of Russian sports fans, claimed to be operating near Bakhmut.[57]
Russian forces continued ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line on September 1 but did not make any confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Sieverne (6km west of Avdiivka), Krasnohorivka (directly west of Donetsk City), Marinka (directly west of Donetsk City), and Novomykhailivka (10km southwest of Donetsk City).[58] A Russian milblogger claimed on July 31 that Russian and Ukrainian forces skirmished near Nevelske (directly west of Donetsk City) and claimed that Russian forces have entrenched themselves near the Trudovska mine area near Marinka.[59]
Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)
Ukrainian forces reportedly continued offensive operations in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area but did not advance on September 1. Russian Eastern Grouping of Forces Spokesperson Oleg Chekov claimed that Russian forces repelled a Ukrainian attack in the direction of Pryyutne (15km southwest of Velyka Novosilka).[60] Other Russian sources claimed that small Ukrainian groups attacked in the direction of Staromlynivka (14km south of Velyka Novosilka) and that Ukrainian forces are conducting offensive operations near Staromayorske (9km south of Velyka Novosilka).[61] Russian “Vostok” Battalion Commander Alexander Khodakovsky expressed frustration with the inadequacy of Russian counterbattery fire near Urozhaine (9km south of Velyka Novosilka) and along the Novomayorske-Novodonetske-Kermenchyk line (12-18km southeast of Velyka Novosilka), claiming that Russian artillery in the area takes several days to strike Ukrainian positions whereas Ukrainian forces do not suffer such constraints.[62] Khodakovsky claimed that Russian forces defending in the area are under extreme physical and psychological stress and warned that this stress will impact Russian forces’ defensive ability in the area.[63]
Russian forces continued limited offensive operations in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on September 1 and reportedly advanced. A Russian milblogger claimed that elements of the Russian 127th Motorized Rifle Division (5th Combined Arms Army, Eastern Military District) advanced 100-200 meters north of Pryyutne since August 30.[64] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive actions in the Velyka Novosilka area, likely referring to the broader Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area.[65]
Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast and reportedly advanced on September 1. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces achieved unspecified success in the Novodanylivka-Novopokropivka direction (5km to 13km south of Orikhiv).[66] Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces attacked near Verbove (18km southeast of Orikhiv) overnight on August 31 to September 1 and on September 1, but that Russian forces repelled the attacks.[67] One Russian milblogger characterized the Ukrainian forces that attacked near Verbove as small, 15-person groups without armored vehicle support.[68] Russian sources also claimed that Russian forces repelled a Ukrainian attack near Robotyne (10km south of Orikhiv), and some claimed that Russian forces still maintain positions in southern Robotyne.[69]
The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful operations near Verbove in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 1.[70]
Reported Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) efforts to censor a subsect of Russian milbloggers who are complaining about the treatment of the Russian Separate 205th Motorized Rifle Brigade (49th Combined Arms Army, Southern Military District) in Kherson Oblast are likely impacting discourse about the brigade.[71] A Russian milblogger claimed on September 1 to have obtained information about the conflict within the Russian 205th Brigade from other milbloggers, Russian personnel in the area, and other unspecified sources who cannot publish such information themselves, indicating that some voices are deliberately self-censoring likely out of fear of retribution.[72] Some milbloggers claimed that they refuse to stay silent following reports that unspecified actors within the Russian military command called for the milbloggers’ detentions on August 31, but also largely kept their complaints vague.[73] A milblogger claimed that unspecified “very respected persons” and “political circles” are becoming interested in the situation, indicating that these milbloggers may fear specific reprisals from these individuals.[74]
Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)
Russian authorities continue to target migrants with Russian citizenship living in Russia for military service as part of ongoing crypto-mobilization efforts. Russian opposition outlet Mobilization News reported on September 1 that Russian authorities detained 21 migrants with Russian citizenship in Krasnoyarsk Krai who did not register with military registration and enlistment offices and issued 18 of them military summonses.[75] Mobilization News also reported that Russian security forces conducted raids on retail outlets in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast from August 21 to 31, issued military summonses to almost 50 migrants who recently received Russian citizenship, and deported 26 migrants.[76]
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 officials continue efforts to forcibly indoctrinate Ukrainian youth into Russian culture and identity by integrating schools in occupied Ukraine into the Russian educational system. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the opening of a new school for 1,100 students in occupied Mariupol, Donetsk Oblast on September 1, the first day of the Russian school year.[77] Putin claimed that schools in occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson oblasts now operate under Russian educational standards. Russian opposition outlet Verstka reported on September 1 that Russian schools, likely including those in occupied Ukraine, will implement a “unified education program” to promote Russian patriotism and societal values.[78] Russian teachers told Verstka that they expect the new program to include propaganda to support and normalize the war in Ukraine.[79]
A Ukrainian official reported that Russian authorities are using children as human shields in occupied Kherson Oblast. Ukrainian Operational Command South Spokesperson Captain First Rank Nataliya Humenyuk stated on September 1 that unspecified Russian units are deployed next to a Russian-built boarding school in occupied Kherson Oblast where children are constantly present.[80] Such deployments would violate Article 51 of the Geneva Convention IV which states that, “the presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favor or impede military operations.”[81]
Russian occupation officials announced on September 1 that voting began for the Russian regional elections held in occupied Ukraine and will continue in various forms through September 10. The Kherson Oblast occupation administration announced that voting has started at 329 extraterritorial sites in 81 Russian regions and will last from September 1 to 4.[82] Zaporizhia Oblast occupation official Vladimir Rogov claimed that Russian occupation officials began door-to-door visits to collect early votes from settlements near the frontline.[83] Rogov also claimed that early voting will last for eight days and cover over 214,000 voters in 375 settlements in occupied Zaporizhia. Russian occupation officials from Nova Kakhovka, Chaplynka, and Bilozerka in occupied Kherson Oblast called on civilians to vote early between September 2 and 7 and noted that single-day voting will occur from September 8 to 10.[84] ISW continues to assess that Russian occupation authorities are likely conducting early voting and making house calls to collect votes in order to artificially increase voter turnout and achieve desired election results.[85]
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)
The Russian-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) began the “Combat Brotherhood 2023” operational-strategic command staff exercises in Belarus on September 1.[86] The annual joint military exercise will last through September 6 and include military contingents from Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.[87] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) stated that 2,500 military personnel and 500 units of equipment in total from CSTO members will participate in the exercises.[88] “Combat Brotherhood 2023” has five centerpiece component exercises: “Interaction-2023,” consisting of combined arms combat planning exercises with the CSTO’s joint Collective Rapid Reaction Force; “Search-2023” special reconnaissance exercises; “Echelon-2023” logistics exercises; “Barrier-2023” chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) protection exercises; and “Rock-2023” special exercises involving unspecified Ministry of Emergency Situations elements with CSTO Rapid Reaction Force elements.[89] The Belarusian Ministry of Defense (MoD) stated that CSTO Collective Rapid Reaction Forces practiced mass fuel and lubricants distribution and logistics organization as part of “Echelon-2023" exercises on September 1.[90]
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. Analysis: The Beginning of the End of Putin in Crimea
Analysis: The Beginning of the End of Putin in Crimea
“As Putin’s ‘red line’ increasingly comes under assault, his only recourse remains targeting civilians and Ukrainian grain. Meanwhile, Ukraine keeps pressing south.”
By Mark Toth
By Jonathan Sweet
September 2, 2023, 9:40 am | Comments ( 1)
kyivpost.com · by Mark Toth
Months in the making, Ukraine is again boldly taking the fight to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Inside of Russia itself. In and around Bakhmut, and now, most notably, strategically southward in the Zaporizhzhia Oblast toward the “decisive terrain” of the Crimean Peninsula.
We have called for strategic patience in these pages and elsewhere, cautioning that we would know when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his generals’ counteroffensive would take shape. We are now starting to see it develop in small villages and towns such as Robotyne and Verbove.
It was never going to be easy. Especially since the Kremlin had months to prepare its defensive lines in Zaporizhzhia because of the Biden Administration’s dithering in getting Kyiv the full suite of ammunition and weapons that would best position Ukraine’s armed forces to achieve an outright victory over Putin.
Wars are managed in a variety of ways, leveraging the instruments of national power collectively known by the acronym DIME – Diplomacy, Information, Military and Economic. Up until now, given relative static battlefronts, the war in Ukraine has been predominantly one of military forces engaged in close combat.
The results of which have played out in the information ecosphere with it being weaponized, creating a ‘Nebula of War’ and competing narratives.
More on this topic
Not everyone who criticizes the Russian President dies violently, but many do. The death of the head of the Wagner PMC, suggests that Putin’s associates will continue to eliminate those who offend.
Washington urging Zelensky to press his counteroffensive. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry is pushing back on social media insisting they know best. And Russia trying to win the war using propaganda that Putin’s soldiers are unable to win on the ground.
Everyone is now an expert on how we should fight. A gentle reminder that no one understands this war better than we do. pic.twitter.com/TIwssQjiFh
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) August 31, 2023
Nonetheless, Washington and Moscow’s attempt to shape and influence their distinctly different preferred outcomes of the war – arguably, a negotiated peace in terms of the United States and a defeated Ukraine in terms of Russia – are becoming irrelevant. Ukraine has weighted the DIME equation back to Military and in doing so is foreshadowing the beginning of the end of Putin in Crimea.
Ukraine’s hard-fought counterattack south of Robotyne in the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Oblast is progressing south. Zelensky and his generals are encouraged by what they are seeing. The fog or ‘nebula’ of war is lifting, and Ukraine is on the move, while the Kremlin now finds itself in reaction mode – and facing the reality that maneuver warfare favors Ukraine.
Retaking Zaporizhzhia is key in isolating the Crimean Peninsula from Russia. If and when the coastal land route is severed by Ukraine, Moscow would be reduced to reinforcing its military forces in Crimea via Black Sea shipping or across the Kerch Bridge.
Once that happens, Kyiv would likely destroy the bridge using – air launched cruise missiles (Storm Shadow, SCALP or Germany’s Taurus missile. Ukraine’s innovative “Sea Baby" naval drones would be highly disruptive to Russian sea shipping and sustainment operations.
To achieve this game changing, if not game ending result, Zelensky needs his counteroffensive forces to continue breaking through the layers of multiple Russian defensive belts which are heavily seeded with mines, trenches, dragon’s teeth obstacles and dismounted infantry guarding Zaporizhzhia. It has not been easy; however, Ukraine is doing just that.
Elements of Kyiv’s troops have liberated Robotyne, while others are pushing southeast toward the small city of Verbove and creating an expanding bulge southward. Each of these are significant as they are indicative of Ukraine having fully breached what is described as the main defensive belt, and are now being afforded manoeuvre west and south, while also being able to concentrate HIMARS and other artillery fires including cluster munitions on Russia’s layered defensive belts.
The significance of this movement southward is not lost on Washington, nor Moscow. After weeks of growing US criticism concerning the pace of Ukraine’s counteroffensive – indeed, even its direction – Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged “steady [Ukrainian] progress.”
Russia, in response, has been forced to reposition and expose their remaining best forces in Ukraine in order to block the advance, potentially leaving gaps in their defenses.
After Ukraine’s decisive breakthrough at Robotyne, the Kremlin dispatched elements of the once elite 76th Guards Air Assault Division (VDW) to attempt to shore up its defenses in the area facing Kyiv’s onslaught.
Likewise, to relieve pressure in Zaporizhzhia, Russia again – either as an actual counterattack or demonstration to fix Ukrainian forces – is reported to have amassed 100,000 troops along the Kupiansk-Lyman axis in northeast Ukraine.
Zelensky has forced Putin’s commanding general, Valery Gerasimov, to divide his forces away from Crimea’s “decisive terrain,” which will likely determine the outcome of the war.
Zelensky’s National Guard and territorial defense forces will continue to attrit Russian ground forces in the Donbas as they did all winter and spring as his best trained and equipped forces continue to press south toward the Crimean Peninsula.
Predictably, Moscow cannot figure out how to publicly react to Kyiv’s breakthrough, let alone get on the same page. Lost in the Information aspect of DIME, Putin’s propagandists are struggling to explain the growing Military realities of DIME on the ground in Ukraine.
Even as late as last Wednesday, Telegram channels were touting reports from Russian soldiers falsely claiming they still occupied Robotyne. Recent drone attacks on Moscow and elsewhere in Russia including the Pskov airport further contribute to the “noise” and counter the narrative given Russian citizens can now see and feel first-hand the Kremlin’s inability to defend their cities.
Moscow is on the verge of panic. Putin propagandist and former Russian general Andrey Gurulev appearing on Vladimir Solovyov’s streaming show, urged Putin to use a tactical nuke on Ukrainian forces in and around Robotyne, noting “Perfect. They are all bunched up there. Simply perfect.”
Yet another Russian man-boy crying ‘nuclear’ wolf, albeit it was music to Solovyov’s ears who readily agreed.
Ukraine remains undeterred. Putin’s use of nuclear pacifiers by his propagandists may work for a badly misinformed Russian public, however, not on Kyiv – or Washington and Brussels.
As Putin’s “red line” increasingly comes under assault, his only recourse remains targeting civilians and Ukrainian grain. Meanwhile, Ukraine keeps pressing south.
Seizing Verbove and moving on to Tokmak is likely Ukraine’s next move notwithstanding the Kremlin’s efforts to forestall Kyiv’s growing momentum.
Taking Tokmak is vital as it would provide Ukraine with a glidepath to the major city of Melitopol and its control of Russia’s land bridge between Crimea and the increasingly war-beleaguered Motherland. It would also put Ukrainian artillery in striking distance of Melitopol itself and the ability to disrupt Russian lines of communication.
Notably, Ukraine is also hitting its stride. Despite the enormous cost in lives – estimated at 70,000 dead and up to 120,000 wounded; not counting civilian casualties – Zelensky and his generals are taking the fight to Russia. Drone strikes on Moscow. Swarm drone attacks on Russian air bases, including Wednesday’s attack on the Pskov airport inside of Russia that destroyed multiple military transport planes.
And Ukraine is manufacturing its own drones and surface vessels to continue launching a steady stream of cross border attacks.
Crimea is the end state. To achieve that, Zelensky and his generals must either isolate the peninsula, force a surrender or reconquer it.
Ukraine is doing just that. Not only in terms of the close fight in Robotyne and Verbove, but in their Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) as well.
As Gen. Ben Hodges, former commanding general of U.S. Army Europe, recently stated: “The [Ukrainian] counteroffensive is more than the ground assault. UAF MDO have the initiative and are gradually making Crimea untenable for Russian Navy, Air Force, air defense.”
The war is by no means close to being over. Hard days lie ahead. But we are seeing the beginning of the end of Putin in Crimea – and eventually all of Ukraine.
Even the Biden Administration has taken notice, as a senior State Department official told reporters on Wednesday, “It's very important that Ukraine win this war. And by 'win,' I mean as President Biden said, Russians leave all of Ukraine.”
kyivpost.com · by Mark Toth
3. Russian ‘hybrid’ war threatens NATO’s eastern flank, Poles warn
Excerpts:
With Mr. Prigozhin gone, it is unclear who will take command of the mercenaries.
Gen. Kukula said Tuesday there has already been an uptick in provocations from the Belarusian side of the border, including the use of lasers pointed at Polish border forces’ eyes. He did not say specifically who inside Belarus was using the tactic.
Russia has for years sought a military advantage over the U.S. and its allies through the use of hybrid warfare — an approach often credited to Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces.
...
Poland has “become a playground of Russian spy games,” one counterintelligence official told the visiting press group Tuesday.
Officials said Polish security authorities have detained 16 people in recent months on suspicion of involvement in a Russian espionage ring operating inside the NATO country. The ring’s key mission was to monitor Polish military facilities and track road and rail routes for NATO equipment moving across the border into Ukraine.
Russian ‘hybrid’ war threatens NATO’s eastern flank, Poles warn
Unconventional methods supplement military intimidation
washingtontimes.com · by Guy Taylor
Subscriber-only
By - The Washington Times - Tuesday, August 29, 2023
WARSAW, Poland — Russia is expanding its use of “hybrid warfare” — including cyberattacks, border disruptions and disinformation campaigns — in a bid to destabilize NATO‘s eastern flank, the Polish government’s top national security official warned on Tuesday.
With Moscow’s conventional military bogged down in Ukraine after 18 months of war, the Kremlin is increasingly bent on sowing regional chaos, said Jacek Siewiera, the head of Poland’s National Security Bureau.
Western European nations, he added, should be more vigilant about the “broad spectrum of activities” Moscow is launching with help from ally Belarus to intimidate front-line NATO members such as Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, for supporting Ukraine. The threat exists even though NATO and Russian forces have carefully avoided direct conflict.
“No one in NATO should be convinced that the hybrid threat doesn’t affect his life,” Mr. Siewiera, who also serves as secretary of state in the government of Polish President Andrzej Duda.
“In Europe, in France, Spain in many other countries, if they are not facing hybrid threats right now, I’m sure that they cannot exclude it in the nearest future,” Mr. Siewiera told a group of international journalists visiting Poland on a trip sponsored by the Polish Foreign Ministry.
His comments coincide with weeks of rising tensions between Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s government and NATO’s easternmost member nations, where fears have swirled that the war in Ukraine could spread.
Poland has deployed thousands of troops to its border with Belarus. Polish military and security officials openly characterize Belarus as the Kremlin’s pawn.
“We assess that Belarus is nothing more than just a tool in the hands of Russians,” Gen. Wieslaw M. Kukula, the commander general of Poland‘s Armed Forces, said Tuesday.
The unease between Warsaw and Minsk has risen dramatically since the death of Russian Wagner Mercenary Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and other top company officials in a private plane crash last week.
Mr. Prigozhin had relocated a large contingent of Wagner mercenaries to a site in Belarus as part of a deal to end his abortive uprising against Russian President Vladimir Putin in late June. The Lukashenko government has said it hopes to use the Wagner forces for Belarus‘ own security interests.
With Mr. Prigozhin gone, it is unclear who will take command of the mercenaries.
Gen. Kukula said Tuesday there has already been an uptick in provocations from the Belarusian side of the border, including the use of lasers pointed at Polish border forces’ eyes. He did not say specifically who inside Belarus was using the tactic.
Russia has for years sought a military advantage over the U.S. and its allies through the use of hybrid warfare — an approach often credited to Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces.
In 2013, the general published a journal article now widely considered the strategic foundation for the Kremlin’s subversion policies in the years since. The “Gerasimov Doctrine of Hybrid Warfare” blends conventional and unconventional warfare, essentially expanding military battlefield options infinitely.
“In the 21st century we have seen a tendency toward blurring the lines between the states of war and peace,” the general wrote. “Wars are no longer declared and, having begun, proceed according to an unfamiliar template. The very ‘rules of war’ have changed.”
U.S. national security experts have anticipated a surge in Moscow’s use of hybrid warfare for months, particularly since January, when Mr. Putin tapped Gen. Gerasimov to personally take command of all Russian forces in Ukraine.
Apart from the border tensions, Polish security officials say there is no doubt Russia is driving the hybrid warfare campaign, and that other tactics are already being used inside Poland, the key staging ground for much of the NATO equipment being provided to Ukraine.
Poland has “become a playground of Russian spy games,” one counterintelligence official told the visiting press group Tuesday.
Officials said Polish security authorities have detained 16 people in recent months on suspicion of involvement in a Russian espionage ring operating inside the NATO country. The ring’s key mission was to monitor Polish military facilities and track road and rail routes for NATO equipment moving across the border into Ukraine.
At the same time, the officials said, Russia and Belarus are pushing a “full-fledged propaganda campaign” to undermine Poland-Ukraine relations and amplify domestic divisions ahead of Poland‘s October parliamentary elections.
“We are in the preelection time, it’s very tense,” said one of the officials. “This hybrid war against Poland will continue, … especially during the election period.”
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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4. Opinion | American Power Just Took a Big Hit
From the Quincy Institute. Just want the institute wants - waning American influence is a good thing to them.
But the author identifies a fundamental issue - the difference between leadership and dominance. Is the US a leader or a dominant nation?
Excerpts:
More than anything, the growing attraction of BRICS is a signal that American global dominance is waning. But that doesn’t mean most of the group’s new and original members are anti-American: Egypt is a steadfast security partner, Brazil and South Africa have longstanding relationships, and India is perhaps Washington’s closest friend in the collection. They would simply prefer to live in a world in which the United States was a leading, rather than the dominant, power.
And would that be so bad? America, facing its own intractable domestic problems, should view BRICS expansion less as a threat and more as an opportunity. It offers a chance for the United States not only to relearn the practice of cooperation but also to let go some of the distant burdens and notions of exceptionalism that do not serve its national interest. In the process, a better America — and possibly a better world — may yet emerge.
Opinion | American Power Just Took a Big Hit
By Sarang Shidore
Mr. Shidore, the director of the global south program at the Quincy Institute, writes extensively about geopolitics.
The New York Times · by Sarang Shidore · September 1, 2023
Guest Essay
American Power Just Took a Big Hit
Sept. 1, 2023, 1:00 a.m. ET
Delegates at the BRICS summit in Johannesburg last week.Credit...Pool photo by Marco Longari
For more than a decade, the United States mostly ignored BRICS. The grouping, formed by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, rarely registered on Washington’s radar. When it did, the impulse — as shown by Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, recently stressing that the coalition is not “some kind of geopolitical rival” — was to downplay the group’s significance. Western commentators, for their part, largely painted BRICS as either a sign of Chinese attempts to dominate the global south or little more than a talking shop. Some even called for its dissolution.
Such complacency looks less tenable now. At a summit in Johannesburg last week, the group invited six global south states — Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — to join its ranks. In the aftermath of the announcement, indifference gave way to surprise, even anxiety. Yet there’s no need for alarm. BRICS will never run the world or replace the U.S.-led international system.
It would be a mistake, though, to dismiss its importance. After all, any club with such a long waiting list — in this case, nearly 20 nations — is probably doing something right. BRICS’s expansion is an unmistakable marker of many countries’ dissatisfaction with the global order and of their ambition to improve their place within it. For America, whose grip on global dominance is weakening, it amounts to a subtly significant challenge — and an opportunity.
The critics have a point: BRICS remains a work in progress. Its two major initiatives — the New Development Bank and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement — are quite small when compared with the scale of global development lending and finance. Other initiatives such as cooperation on health research and space exploration are in their embryonic stages. Expansion could make institution-building harder, with more players in the mix. There are, for example, some differences between the way China and Russia and the global south states view the grouping.
America’s global dominance, to be sure, is underwritten by vast military spending, a network of alliances and hundreds of far-flung military bases. But even if an expanded BRICS only muddles along in terms of material success — and there’s a good chance it will do better than that — it will challenge Washington in three key areas: global norms, geopolitical rivalries and cross-regional collaboration.
Since the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 and despite the disastrous interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, America has been able to portray itself as speaking for the values of freedom and democracy everywhere. In fact, the disproportionate sway Washington holds over the articulation of global norms is a major source of its power. It’s not for nothing that the Biden administration repeatedly claims that the world is divided between rules-following democracies and rules-flouting autocracies, with the United States at the head of the former.
This “democracy vs. autocracy” framework has already been partly discredited by Washington’s own embrace of authoritarian governments. A bigger BRICS would deal it another blow from a different angle. Of the 11 states that will make up the expanded group, four can be said to be democracies, four are autocracies, two are monarchies and another a theocracy. It is further evidence that a country’s political system is a poor indicator of how it frames its interests and with whom it decides to build a coalition.
What’s more, the expanded group will include two pairs of fierce rivals — India and China, Saudi Arabia and Iran — as well as the acrimonious pairing of Egypt and Ethiopia. Shared BRICS membership alone will not solve the serious problems between these adversaries. But it will create unique opportunities for direct, two-way conversations between states that dislike each other in a relatively safe multilateral environment. Washington has historically found advantage in exploiting divisions for its own ends, most notably in the Middle East. By reducing the distrust between countries, BRICS could help counter this unhealthy cycle.
President Xi Jinping of China and President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, second from left, at the BRICS summit. More thaCredit...Pool photo by Alet Pretorius
To perpetuate its primacy, Washington also tends to divide the world into regions. U.S. allies and partners, in the global south especially, are typically urged to counter a U.S. adversary or forge deeper ties with local U.S. partners in their region. India and the Philippines are encouraged to counter China, for example, while the Gulf States are nudged to focus on Iran and build links with Israel.
This divide-and-conquer approach acts to limit middle powers’ horizons to their own regions. With members across three continents, BRICS could create new spaces for key global south states to forge deeper habits of interaction and cooperation well beyond their regions, working against the grain of Washington’s preferred division of labor.
More than anything, the growing attraction of BRICS is a signal that American global dominance is waning. But that doesn’t mean most of the group’s new and original members are anti-American: Egypt is a steadfast security partner, Brazil and South Africa have longstanding relationships, and India is perhaps Washington’s closest friend in the collection. They would simply prefer to live in a world in which the United States was a leading, rather than the dominant, power.
And would that be so bad? America, facing its own intractable domestic problems, should view BRICS expansion less as a threat and more as an opportunity. It offers a chance for the United States not only to relearn the practice of cooperation but also to let go some of the distant burdens and notions of exceptionalism that do not serve its national interest. In the process, a better America — and possibly a better world — may yet emerge.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
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Sarang Shidore (@globalsarang) is the director of the Global South program at the Quincy Institute and a member of the adjunct faculty at George Washington University.
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The New York Times · by Sarang Shidore · September 1, 2023
5. Three Years After Chinese Communist Crackdown, Hong Kong Continues To Suffer – OpEd
Doug Bandow reminds us of what is happening in Hong Kong.
Three Years After Chinese Communist Crackdown, Hong Kong Continues To Suffer – OpEd
September 2, 2023 0 Comments
https://www.eurasiareview.com/02092023-three-years-after-chinese-communist-crackdown-hong-kong-continues-to-suffer-oped/
By Acton Institute
By Doug Bandow
Despite a push to draw young talent back to the city, Hong Kong is suffering grievously as the Chinese Communist Party crushes civil rights, pursuing dissidents even beyond its borders.
At the end of August, the Hong Kong government charged a Cantonese language group with “threatening national security.” The latter had posted online an essay, cast in the form of fiction, that emphasized the city’s loss of liberty.
Andrew (Lok-hang) Chan, who headed Societas Linguistica HongKongensis, explained that the group, which published the essay, was only related “to arts and literature” but nevertheless was “targeted by the national security police.” He closed the association in response.
Hong Kong’s brutal assault on human rights has disappeared from newspaper front pages, which is a victory for Chinese president Xi Jinping and Hong Kong chief executive John (Ka-chui) Lee, Beijing’s local gauleiter. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has effectively extinguished Hong Kong’s inherited British liberties.
After the territory’s return to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1997, the Special Administrative Region enjoyed political autonomy that was supposed to last a half century. However, in June 2020, after years of increasing popular unrest, China imposed the expansive National Security Law (NSL), effectively outlawing criticism of the PRC. Since then, the Hong Kong government, now headed by Lee, has arrested more than 260 people under the NSL and prosecuted more than 3,000 people on charges under other statutes, most long after the targeted conduct.
The conclusion of the European Commission’s latest report on Hong Kong is grim:
2022 saw the continuing erosion of Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy and of rights and freedoms that were meant to be protected until at least 2047. The year was also marked by the far-reaching implementation of the NSL. Trials of pro-democracy activists and politicians continued to intensify. Many people were awaiting trial, including 47 pro-democracy activists who participated in a primary election, members of the now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, media tycoon Jimmy Lai and many others. Many of them have been held in custody since January 2021, in some cases in solitary confinement. The colonial-era sedition law was repeatedly used in national security cases. In July, the United Nations Human Rights Committee in its fourth periodic review under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in Hong Kong called for the repealing of both the NSL and the sedition law.
The low point this year has been the mass trial of the 47, a Who’s Who of city democrats. Their alleged crime was to organize a popular vote to choose candidates for the upcoming Legislative Council election. The PRC’s local enforcers retrospectively declared the defendants’ action to be subversive and a threat to national security. The proceedings began in February, a dramatic example of how the law is used to punish even the mildest dissent, with any opposition to Chinese rule considered to constitute a threat. The outcome of the case seems preordained.
Chief Executive Carrie Lam, whose maladroit administration triggered mass demonstrations, enjoyed watching her pro-democracy tormentors suffer but appeared to be more cheerleader than persecutor. John Lee, who took over earlier this year, is playing a more active role as chief executive than did his predecessor and is apparently determined to wreak vengeance on anyone who ever criticized Beijing. Among his targets are booksellers and journalists. In April, his government even arrested a Hong Kong student who condemned the CCP on social media while studying in Japan. Such are the “national security” threats that cause the mighty Chinese state to tremble.
Passage of the NSL encouraged what one official described as an “alarming” exodus from Hong Kong. Tens of thousands of people relocated, many young professionals. Among them were parents determined to protect their children from communist indoctrination. Previous reeducation plans were derided as brainwashing and thwarted by popular protests, which have become impossible today.
Despite a recent population uptick, Hong Kong’s rulers are concerned about the prospects of the city-state’s global pretensions. Government propagandists downplay the role of the NSL, instead emphasizing high housing prices and long working hours as the reasons for the failure to attract more young workers. Lee has “launched a campaign to convince the world that despite Covid-19 and a brutal security crackdown, the Chinese territory is not only open for business but remains Asia’s premier financial center.”
That will be difficult given the ongoing assault on civil and political liberty. Particularly noteworthy is Lee’s campaign against people who sought asylum abroad. For instance, the pro-democracy party Demosisto, co-founded by Nathan Law, disbanded when the NSL was enacted. Law and seven other Demosisto activists fled Hong Kong before it became an open-air prison. In July, Lee’s government arrested four people, former Demosisto members all, “suspected of using companies, social media and mobile applications to receive funds that they then provided to the people overseas,” as well as making “seditious” social media posts.
Yet Lee’s main target remains those beyond his geographic reach. The authorities have offered a bounty of $128,000 for information leading to their prosecution, an award available to family and friends, Lee emphasized. As in Les Misérables, the prosecutors promise to be unrelenting: “The only way to end their destiny of being an abscondee who will be pursued for life is to surrender.”
Lee’s enforcers are also targeting family members, most recently detaining Law’s sister-in-law: “She is suspected of assisting persons wanted by police to continue to commit acts and engage in activities that endanger national security,” said one local official. In this way, Hong Kong is openly mimicking the PRC’s unrelenting persecution of other dissidents, such as Uyghurs fleeing Xinjiang, pursuing them even when granted sanctuary abroad.
In fact, Cantonese promoter Andrew Chan, noted above, is also living abroad. Five policemen raided his father’s home, warning that Chan would “become the ninth wanted person if he does not take down the [fictional essay] article.” Nor are foreigners exempt. At least one American citizen has been charged under the NSL. In August, Danish artist Jens Galschiøt, creator of the “Pillar of Shame” sculpture at the University of Hong Kong, previously seized by the police, inquired whether an arrest warrant had been prepared against him, as reported in China. Hong Kong’s security head, Chris Tang, refused to answer but complained that “it is a common modus operandi of those seeking to endanger national security to engage in such acts and activities under the pretexts of ‘peaceful advocacy,’ ‘artistic creations’ and so forth.”
At least Liberty appeared to win a modest victory last month when a court refused the city’s request to order internet platforms such as Google to ban the song “Glory to Hong Kong,” the opposition’s unofficial anthem. However, the government has appealed, urging the court to treat Lee’s dictates as binding: “Where it is the assessment of the executive authorities that a proposed measure is necessary or may be effective or have utility, the Court should accord due weight and deference to such assessment and grant the injunction unless the Court is satisfied that it shall have no effect.”
In mid-August, another court overturned the conviction of seven activists for having organized an illegal protest. Although also welcome, the ruling was technical, regarding the elements of the offense, and had no practical effect. The defendants already had served their sentences and been convicted of participating in the same event.
In any case, such modest victories will be overwhelmed by new prosecutions under the NSL. Hong Kong now looks like any other Chinese city, in which civil and political liberties have become unknown ideals. Unfortunately, Hong Kong’s absence from the headlines reflects lack of attention, not of repression.
About the author: Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is the author of several books, including Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire.
Source: This article is published by the Acton Institute
Acton Institute
The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty is named after the great English historian, Lord John Acton (1834-1902). He is best known for his famous remark: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Inspired by his work on the relation between liberty and morality, the Acton Institute seeks to articulate a vision of society that is both free and virtuous, the end of which is human flourishing. To clarify this relationship, the Institute holds seminars and publishes various books, monographs, periodicals, and articles.
6. ‘Defending democracy’ a losing strategy against authoritarian narratives
Some pundits say we are in a Cold War 2.0 while others are vehemently opposed to using anything connected to the Cold War 1.0 to describe today's strategic environment. And there are those who think "containment "is a four letter word instead of an 11 letter one. But we should not let such arguments prevent us from exploring what worked during the Cold War and what might be useful in today's security environment.
Excerpts:
This is why the defence of democracy cannot be accomplished through piecemeal removal of specific content across digital networks. Nor can it be achieved through better disinformation research.
Instead, citizens need their own narrative framings that ensure the language we use to describe the world reflects the world we want to live in, not the language proffered by Russia or China. When democracy is attacked, citizens shouldn’t have to grasp futilely for evidence, examples or arguments in favour of our system of politics; we should be readily armed.
Author Peter Pomerantsev noted that the Kremlin, through its contradictory, false narratives, is assaulting the link between facts and justice. Technology makes the rupture easier.
When truth on the internet is under attack, we need to rely on our minds as a backstop.
...
In that era, American diplomat George Kennan sketched out what became the US policy of ‘containment’ to support countries ‘resisting attempted subjugation’ by Moscow. Contrast that with today, when components of our society—in politics, security, business, the economy—have to be roused from a neoliberal dream to face the uncomfortable fact that a US–Russia–China great-power contest is happening, won’t go away and requires a whole-of-nation defence.
Today, like in 1946, there is a need for a containment strategy. But this time, in addition to helping contain attacks on countries like Ukraine, democracies need to contain the subjugation of their liberal ideas and language. If we can do that, the battle against Russia’s and China’s messaging can move from the domain of governments to the imagination and will of the public.
Once that happens, democracy will have a fighting chance against the narrative power of Moscow and Beijing in the networked age.
I am still a believer in the words of the 2017 National Security Strategy:
"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."
Access NSS HERE
‘Defending democracy’ a losing strategy against authoritarian narratives | The Strategist
aspistrategist.org.au · by Chris Zappone · September 1, 2023
Not so long ago, the consensus around defending democracy on the internet was nearly a settled matter. A sort of de facto understanding held that to fight disinformation and defend democracy, we should resist the impulse to try to control information or the behaviour of authoritarians we oppose.
The statement of values, though, does little to blunt the power of illiberal narratives on the democratic imagination.
If anything, Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter (now X) highlights the folly of approaches that rely on simply policing social media—because what happens when the mind of one of those policing (in this case, the platform’s owner) is won over by the Kremlin’s narratives on Ukraine?
Musk’s invocations of ‘free speech’ actually make the platform more accommodating to the sorts of voices that embrace Kremlin propaganda with gusto.
But X is just one platform among a growing array of communication options.
And it’s across this galaxy that the Kremlin, its proxies and its friends level accusations at Western democracy (‘imperialism!’), frame events (‘NATO expansionism!’) and draw ominous conclusions (‘deep state-controlled propaganda media!’). Opponents are told we’re ‘Russophobic’ and that our values threaten their ‘traditional’ civilisations.
Likewise, the People’s Republic of China racialises political debates, accusing critics of xenophobia. This muddies the real issue of racism in democracy, while falsely presenting the Chinese Communist Party as a spokesperson for the racially vilified.
These influences point back to a well-established conundrum for liberal society: how do we ensure that our own freedoms aren’t used by adversaries to undermine our society and its interests?
Classifying these views as ‘disinformation’, as has become the custom, isn’t entirely accurate. Many of these ideas have their origins in democracies, or at least find an audience here.
We need to think less about how to police content on networks to ‘defend democracy’ and consider how to defend our minds and political culture against the arguments, views and ideas that dismember and neutralise liberal democracy’s values.
Ideas rarely stand alone; they are inevitably linked to other ideas.
So, when the Russian foreign ministry claimed last year that Russia would be ‘forced to take retaliatory steps’ if Finland joined NATO, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek correctly noted that the ‘decision appears “forced” only if one accepts the whole set of ideological and geopolitical assumptions that sustain Russian politics’.
Similarly, by defending against the accusation of ‘Russophobia’, Westerners accept the possibility that racism towards Russians is our motivation, rather than the reality that Western states (and Ukraine) are responding to the state activity of Russia.
At every turn, Russian narratives seek to introduce a dissembling logic that inverts our democratic reasoning.
Part of why Russia can reach so deeply into democracies is its fluency with Western liberal culture. Much of the Russian political class see themselves as speaking from a moral high ground on contested issues, perpetually ‘misunderstood by the West’, perpetually under attack and perpetually justified in responding.
As the Australian National University’s Kyle Wilson notes, Russians’ view of Russia, as formulated by the regime-controlled media, is as a ‘repository of superior values’. The Kremlin’s view of Russia, he says, can be summarised as: ‘We are different, we are unique, we are superior and we are under attack.’
Faced with Russia’s particular complaints, we should recall an idea underpinning liberal democracy—universality. Understanding our own instinct for universality is the foundation of a strategy for pushing back against authoritarians: it can help democratic citizens understand their worldview and how its impact doesn’t and shouldn’t end at the jurisdiction of a state.
Russia’s (and increasingly China’s) stock in trade in the internet era is to identify voices and events inside democracies that can be co-opted to advance authoritarian narratives. Black Lives Matter protests, for example, are framed not as emphatic calls for reform, but as emblems of an irredeemably unjust society. Coordinating state messaging from overseas with the agitation of democratic citizens is a sort of card trick that authoritarian nations are adept at.
When ‘free-speech advocates’ agitate against US foreign policy positions, their words are picked up in Russia’s or China’s state-sponsored reporting. Protesters in democracies are fed a steady diet of carefully chosen images and arguments amplified by authoritarian state-backed media and social media networks. Consequently, democracies are continually allowing their language to be shaped by illiberal voices.
This is why the defence of democracy cannot be accomplished through piecemeal removal of specific content across digital networks. Nor can it be achieved through better disinformation research.
Instead, citizens need their own narrative framings that ensure the language we use to describe the world reflects the world we want to live in, not the language proffered by Russia or China. When democracy is attacked, citizens shouldn’t have to grasp futilely for evidence, examples or arguments in favour of our system of politics; we should be readily armed.
Author Peter Pomerantsev noted that the Kremlin, through its contradictory, false narratives, is assaulting the link between facts and justice. Technology makes the rupture easier.
When truth on the internet is under attack, we need to rely on our minds as a backstop.
Rather than defending democracy by waiting for evidence of digital manipulation that can be ‘called out’, we should generate content from a set of assumptions that sustain democracy and compete for the attention of the global public.
The first step would be to raise the volume of the debate on issues like human rights and limits on power, and raise it to a level that holds Russia and China to their own rhetoric in international affairs.
Both countries cite the UN charter, for example. Both are UN Security Council members. Where are the robust voices demanding that they heed the principles of that agreement and body?
To mount these arguments, democracies must be able to articulate their position in terms the global public can understand.
‘We must become better—and more agile—at explaining ourselves in terms and principles relevant to others’ circumstances, rather than assuming that everyone is sold on “Democracy 101”,’ said former Australian ambassador to Russia Peter Tesch.
With that achieved, the public would then learn how to better counter, contextualise or ignore the proliferation of various Kremlin narratives.
Recent revelations that a subeditor at Radio New Zealand was adjusting copy to conform to the Kremlin’s worldview show that there will always be people in liberal democracies who are willing to accept the ‘putinoid’ view of the world.
If the universality of our liberal ideals is understood, discussed, shared more widely and reflected across our institutions, such outbreaks of Kremlin counternarratives are less worrying. Facing a cascade of detail and complexity, the human mind can lean on these ideals for guidance.
We can also take some comfort that this situation isn’t new. Liberal nations have always struggled in the pursuit of a system that embraces freedom of thought and expression.
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, democracies found to their shock that their ally of convenience, the Soviet Union, had, with no notice, turned its propaganda and espionage energies once again back against them. In those days, the stakes of a great-power contest didn’t need to be explained to a public that had experienced decades of intermittent war.
In that era, American diplomat George Kennan sketched out what became the US policy of ‘containment’ to support countries ‘resisting attempted subjugation’ by Moscow. Contrast that with today, when components of our society—in politics, security, business, the economy—have to be roused from a neoliberal dream to face the uncomfortable fact that a US–Russia–China great-power contest is happening, won’t go away and requires a whole-of-nation defence.
Today, like in 1946, there is a need for a containment strategy. But this time, in addition to helping contain attacks on countries like Ukraine, democracies need to contain the subjugation of their liberal ideas and language. If we can do that, the battle against Russia’s and China’s messaging can move from the domain of governments to the imagination and will of the public.
Once that happens, democracy will have a fighting chance against the narrative power of Moscow and Beijing in the networked age.
aspistrategist.org.au · by Chris Zappone · September 1, 2023
7. US ‘counter-disinformation’ efforts need updating
I have a simple recommended concept to consider: Recognize, Understand, EXPOSE, Attack.
First we must recognize the adversary's strategy - its overall strategy to include its information and influence strategy,
We must gain a sufficient (but hopefully) deep understanding of the strategies as this will help us to develop concepts to counter them as well as develop a superior influence strategy.
We must EXPOSE the adversaries strategy. We must tell the multiple target audiences (e.g., US public, Ukraine Public, Russian, PRC, Iran, and north Korean publics, International community) what the adversary's strategy is, how it is executing it and what the adversary is trying to achieve. The intent of exposure is to "inoculate" the "friendly" target audiences. If they understand the strategy and what it is trying to accomplish, how it is trying to influence them, then they are less likely to be influenced by it. We are helping to develop sufficient critical thinking among the populations by providing knowledge and understanding. Knowledge and understanding is like a vaccine against the virus of propaganda.
Lastly we have to attack the enemy's strategy with a superior information strategy. (e.g., political warfare)
A superior influence strategy should be based on four concepts: Large amounts of Information, Practical information, the Truth, and Understanding.
Target audiences need large amounts of information to inform them - from news to entertainment - e.g., stories that describe what is happening and why, either directly or indirectly through fiction (but not lies).
Target audiences need practical information - what actions can they take to defend themselves from propaganda and from the overall adversary strategy - and some target audiences like the Ukraine public (and Russian, PRC, Iranian, and north Korean) need practical information on how to resist as well as how to survive. For example, useful information from the Ukraine government and the international community can help sustain the people's lives and sustain support for the resistance and for the defense of Ukraine.
Target audiences need the truth - but they need the truth before the propaganda lies from the adversary - "a lie goes around the world before the truth can put its pants on." The target audiences must be saturated with the truth - good AND bad information - this is why there needs to be massive amounts of information and this is how you help inculate the people from propaganda.
Lastly, the target audiences need to understand the threat, the adversaries' strategies, the effects on them, and their human rights,
And I cannot emphasize this enough:
"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."
Access 2017 NSS HERE
US ‘counter-disinformation’ efforts need updating
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4173256-doing-it-wrong-us-counter-disinformation-efforts-arent-working/
BY CHAZ MARTIN, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 08/30/23 9:00 AM ET
AP Photo/Sam Mednick
Supporters of Niger’s ruling junta hold a Russian flag at the start of a protest called to fight for the country’s freedom and push back against foreign interference in Niamey, Niger, Thursday, Aug. 3, 2023. The march falls on the West African nation’s independence day from its former colonial ruler, France, and as anti-French sentiment…
As Russia continues its military campaign to grind down Ukraine’s democracy, it is waging a wider information war on multiple fronts.
To attack Ukraine’s supply lines, Russia has cultivated a network of influencers, activists and politicians who oppose NATO support to Kyiv. To project imperviousness to Western sanctions, Russia uses savvy PR to promote its economic and defense relationships with a patchwork of partners willing to trade with Moscow, convening Indian, African, Arab and Latin American partners at recent high-profile trade events.
Russia uses information operations to gain influence in regions that rarely reach U.S. news feeds, such as Africa’s Sahel belt, where multiple recent pro-Russian military coups have been amplified by viral social media images of Russian flags in the streets.
Until recently, Chinese information operations were clumsy compared to Russia’s. Beijing’s main audience has been an ethnic-Chinese diaspora, such that its global English-language outlets merely cut and paste communist party talking points. But China has been learning from the masters how to spread propaganda through local influencers in their target countries. For example, a recent report has exposed Chinese ties to a network of American leftist organizations advocating pro-Beijing policies.
The U.S. and its allies awoke to the threat of “disinformation” in 2014, when Russia employed subterfuge and “little green men” to mask its 2014 occupation of eastern Ukraine and Crimea. The State Department launched new programs in response, and expanded training for U.S. diplomats.
I was the State Department’s first Russian-language spokesperson at the UN General Assembly the following year. I worked on strategic communications initiatives inside and outside government over the last decade.
Since 2014, the U.S. and its allies have attempted to meet the moment by “countering disinformation,” an approach that prioritizes media literacy programs to educate foreign audiences, fact-checking training for independent journalists, and official statements calling out Russian and Chinese lies. All of these approaches are useful, but have collectively kept the U.S. on defense, against Russia’s and China’s relentless offense.
This “countering” approach puts us at a disadvantage in several ways: First, the U.S. has prioritized detecting disinformation, whereas Russia and China have focused on disseminating it. Last November, for example, the State Department notably called out the Wagner Group’s network of pan-African YouTubers who promote pro-Russian propaganda to millions of subscribers. Despite the call-out, the YouTube pages are still in operation, most recently pumping out content in support of the Niger coup to francophone audiences across West Africa.
Second, the U.S. primarily communicates through official government platforms and spokespeople, while Russia and China increasingly partner with local influencers and outlets who deliver their message in a local voice. Across dozens of democracies, Russia and China have co-opted social media influencers and political parties to parrot Moscow’s and Beijing’s positions on NATO, Ukraine and Taiwan.
Third, the U.S. views the information war as a race to deliver timely facts to inform audiences, whereas Russia and China view it as a race to capture their targets’ emotions and motivate them to act. Russia’s cynical use of World War II narratives to frame its fight with Ukraine as a fight against Nazism is a prime example. Russia and China are increasingly collaborating on campaigns, rebooting a Soviet disinformation claim that the U.S. runs a global network of biological weapons labs. Despite best efforts by the U.S. to refute such stories with facts, decades of repetition can make them stick.
When considering ways to meet this challenge, many have proposed increased funding to the U.S. Global Media Agency, which oversees Voice of America and other U.S.-funded outlets. Indeed, these platforms need proper funding to support their important mission to “inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy.” They are not a sharp weapon, however, in the fight against Russian and Chinese propaganda, given a statutory “firewall” that prohibits the United States government from influencing their editorial policy. As a result, while Russian and Chinese state-funded outlets promote Russian and Chinese policy, U.S.-funded media outlets are legally bound to serve as neutral sources of information.
Increasingly, U.S. diplomats and U.S. partners realize that the defensive approach of the past decade has failed, as evidenced by the rapid growth of hard-right and hard-left political movements promoting Russian positions within key NATO countries, including Germany and Slovakia. There is also increasing realization that U.S. communicators need new tools and private-sector approaches to win in a highly competitive media space.
To compete, U.S. communicators need private-sector marketing tools and partnerships to confidently promote an attractive, affirmative vision for the future that can countervail Russia and China’s gray authoritarian offerings with something better. As founder of Factcheck.org Kathleen Hall Jamieson put it, “It is not advisable to negate something; it is advisable to displace something.”
To engage increasingly fragmented audiences in an age of skepticism toward governments, the U.S. needs to expand collaboration with independent influencers across the globe, building on the success of handful of U.S. embassies that have piloted the approach. Finally, the U.S. needs to prioritize narratives that resonate locally, rather than one-message-fits-all communications directives from Washington.
Though we have fallen behind in the information war, this is a battle we can win. America remains a beacon for billions of people who seek to experience the opportunities, freedoms and global connectivity that America represents. Russia and China can’t compete with that. If we can focus on confidently telling America’s story, we can overcome anything our adversaries throw at us.
Chaz Martin, the U.S. State Department’s former Russian language spokesperson, is director of international communications for Spirit of America.
8. As Taiwan's government races to counter China, most people aren't worried about war
We cannot want to defend Taiwan more than the Taiwan people. We cannot fear war in Taiwan more than the Taiwan people.
As Taiwan's government races to counter China, most people aren't worried about war
AP · by HUIZHONG WU · September 2, 2023
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TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — As People’s Liberation Army fighter jets from China sped toward Taiwan on Friday, life on the self-governing island carried on as normal.
Andy Huang, a restaurateur in Taipei, said he has become desensitized to military threats from the mainland.
“I’ve been hearing about China invading for 30 years,” he said.
Taiwan’s government is racing to counter China, buying nearly $19 billion in military equipment from the United States, and extending military conscription for men to a year starting in 2024. But many on the island say they don’t feel the threat.
That may be partly due to the nuanced views many Taiwanese hold of China. While polls indicate most people on the island reject reunification, many say they are attracted to their much larger neighbor’s dynamic economy, and its shared language and culture. Others are simply numb to hearing about the threat in their backyard.
Beijing claims Taiwan as its own territory, and its actions in recent years have led some to fear it is preparing to use force to try to take control of the island. Taiwan has been compared to Ukraine by American lawmakers and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen.
The island’s politicians have not been shy about sounding the alarm. “In order to keep the peace, we need to strengthen ourselves,” Tsai said last month at a war memorial commemorating the last time Taiwan and China battled.
Members of the public don’t feel that urgency.
Coco Wang is one of the many people who feel a connection to China without considering themselves Chinese. Her grandparents came to Taiwan among people fleeing the 1949 Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, which left rival governments ruling the mainland and Taiwan. Her grandparents kept in touch with relatives in China, and she remembers summers traveling through the country’s rural areas with her parents.
She considers herself Taiwanese, but worked in Shanghai for a year before the pandemic and is thinking of going back.
The opportunities in China are so much bigger, she said. “There’s this feeling that if you just go in and you really work at it, then you can really achieve something,” she said.
China is Taiwan’s largest trading partner, receiving 39% of the island’s exports in 2022 despite new trade barriers imposed amid rising tensions.
While Wang feels drawn to China, she acknowledged that it is not entirely possible to leave politics at the door when working there. Colleagues in Shanghai occasionally called her a “Taiwanese separatist.”
She knew they meant it as a joke, but it made her uncomfortable. To herself, she thought: “We are already independent. Taiwan is just Taiwan.”
Her viewpoint is widely shared.
Since polling began in the 1990s, majorities on Taiwan have said they favor the status quo, rejecting both proposals for unification with the mainland and a formal declaration of independence that could mean war.
But a closely watched poll question that asks people whether they consider themselves Chinese has shown the island’s population growing further from the mainland, said Ching-hsin Yu, the head of National Chengchi University’s Election Study Center. When polling began in 1992, over two-thirds of respondents said they were both Chinese and Taiwanese, or just Chinese. Today, close to two-thirds say they are just Taiwanese, while around 30% identify as both.
Those attitudes don’t translate directly into views on relations with the mainland, Yu said, but among the majority who identify as Taiwanese there has been a subtle shift toward favoring the status quo for now, but with “eventual independence.”
Huang, the restaurant owner, said he was taught in school that he was Chinese, but as an adult came to consider himself just Taiwanese.
His restaurant in Taipei, which specializes in Taiwanese cuisine, has a “Lennon Wall” dedicated to the now-banned Hong Kong democracy movement, decorated with hundreds of Post-It notes with messages from patrons.
Huang shut down in solidarity with protesters during Taiwan’s Sunflower movement in 2014, when tens of thousands demonstrated against a trade deal with China. He says the Chinese population is “brainwashed.”
Personally, he wants independence now, but he also said he can wait until more of Taiwan’s public is convinced.
Nor does he think much about war, he said. “Whether they attack or not, that’s for China’s leaders to decide; it’s pointless for us to worry,” said Huang.
For others, like Chen Shih-wei, cultural and emotional ties to China are very strong. Chen’s family immigrated to Taiwan during the Ming dynasty, which ended in 1644, and he considers himself both Chinese and Taiwanese.
“I’m Chinese and I’m Taiwanese. This can’t be separated,” he said. “We’ve read the history, including the clan records, and we are clear that we came from the mainland, and came from people who had landed in Taiwan, and grew up here.”
Chen, who is from Taichung in central Taiwan, traveled to China many times as a young athlete, starting in 1990. On the mainland, he said, he encountered more similarities than differences. Chen is pro-reunification, but doesn’t believe it will happen in his lifetime.
Chen now lives in Matsu, a group of Taiwanese-held islands that are closer to China than the island of Taiwan. He said he is somewhat worried about the prospect of conflict. “This is not what the public on both sides want to see,” he said.
No one sees an easy way out of the accumulated antagonism of the past several years, whether military, diplomatic or economic.
But Wang said the tensions are between the two governments, not between people.
“Taiwanese and mainlanders are largely friendly to each other. Why is it like this?” she said.
HUIZHONG WU
China correspondent based in Taiwan
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AP · by HUIZHONG WU · September 2, 2023
9. Attack on Taiwan will bring "resolute reaction" - US
Or maybe we do want to defend Taiwan more than the Taiwan people.
Seriously, to contribute to deterring the PRC/CCP decision to attack Taiwan they must know (believe) that we will come to the defense of taiwan.
Attack on Taiwan will bring "resolute reaction" - US
PUBLISHED : 1 SEP 2023 AT 12:58 WRITER: KYODO NEWS
Bangkok Post · by Bangkok Post Public Company Limited
Taiwanese flags are seen at the Ministry of National Defence of Taiwan in Taipei, Taiwan, on Dec 26, 2022. (Photo: Reuters)
United States Congressman Rob Wittman said Friday any unprovoked attack on Taiwan will result in a "resolute reaction" from the United States, as he and other American lawmakers met with the island's leader Tsai Ing-wen in Taipei.
The vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee stressed the importance of ensuring peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific by forging a foundation of strength between friends and partners. "We know strength is the best deterrent to anyone that may think there's an opportunity to act badly in this region," he said.
Wittman did not point the finger at China, but Beijing has been stepping up military pressure against Taiwan since Tsai, of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party, was elected as the island's leader in 2016.
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, Vice President William Lai and American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Director Sandra Oudkirk attend a Fourth of July reception at the AIT in Taipei, Taiwan, on July 6, 2023. (Photo: Reuters)
Tsai thanked Wittman and his delegation for demonstrating congressional support for Taiwan and helping formulate a security blueprint to assist US allies in defending democracy and freedom.
"With the current expansion of authoritarianism, it is more important than ever for democracies to work together in solidarity. We look forward to coordinating with the United States and a growing number of democratic partners to jointly defend regional stability and prosperity." Tsai said.
Beijing views self-ruled democratic Taiwan as a renegade province and in recent years has frequently sent its military aircraft and vessels near the island.
A view of city during sunset in Keelung, Taiwan, on Wednesday. (Photo: Reuters)
Bangkok Post · by Bangkok Post Public Company Limited
10. Last Gasp of the Neoconservatives
Conclusion:
It seems, however, that the last thing the neocons want is peace in Ukraine. Instead, Kristol’s group wants to “put pressure on Republicans to do the right thing on Ukraine”--which means providing more military aid and training to Ukrainian forces to enable them to achieve victory in the war. As Kelly Beaucar Vlahos notes in Responsible Statecraft, the neocons’ focus is more war, not diplomacy. That also seems to be the focus of the Biden administration, which recently asked Congress for $24 billion more in aid to Ukraine. It is high time for Republicans and America’s leaders to ignore the advice of the Bill Kristols, Max Boots, and David Frums of the American political spectrum. They have been wrong--disastrously wrong--for the last thirty years. The words of Oliver Cromwell to Parliament in 1653 and Leo Amery to Neville Chamberlain in 1940 should be directed at the neoconservatives who still seek to exercise influence over U.S. foreign policy: “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.”
Last Gasp of the Neoconservatives
By Francis P. Sempa
September 02, 2023
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/09/01/last_gasp_of_the_neoconservatives_977053.html
SPECIAL SERIES:
The Washington Post on August 15, 2023, in a story by Mariana Alfaro, writes about Bill Kristol’s launch of “Republicans for Ukraine,” which is using a $2 million ad campaign “to get congressional Republicans to commit to continue funding aid for Ukraine ahead of what is likely to be a lengthy appropriations fight.” According to Alfaro, advertisements, which will include “testimony” from pro-Ukraine Republican voters, will appear on television, billboards, and online. After two decades of promoting failed and costly wars and interventions, Kristol and what is left of the neoconservative movement are making a last gasp at relevance by once again promoting American involvement in another war.
Fortunately, neoconservatives are a dying breed in American politics. At least in the Republican Party. Having achieved relevance in the latter stages of the Cold War by breaking with the Democratic Party (where most of them came from) and supporting President Ronald Reagan’s policies that won the Cold War, the neoconservatives spent much of the post-Cold War world finding new “monsters to destroy” (to use the famous phrase of John Quincy Adams). They first picked Saddam Hussein in Iraq. But after the U.S. military achieved a quick victory on the battlefield in 1991 and forced Iraqi forces to leave Kuwait, the neoconservatives criticized the Bush 41 administration for not toppling the Iraqi regime. During the Clinton administration, the neocons were ardent champions of U.S. intervention in the Balkans. Then, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the neoconservatives persuaded the George W. Bush administration not only to retaliate against our enemies in Afghanistan but to declare a “Global War on Terror” and launch a crusade to democratize the Arab regimes of the Middle East. Bush 43, backed by the neoconservatives and using Wilsonian rhetoric, preemptively attacked Iraq, overthrew the heinous Hussein regime, declared “victory,” and then needlessly expended the lives of American soldiers and American treasure in failed efforts to remake the Middle East in America’s image.
At the same time that the neoconservatives promoted the democratization of the Middle East, they also urged the Bush 43 administration to expand NATO closer to Russia’s border, ignoring the prudent counsel of Bush 41 Secretary of State James Baker (who told Russian leaders that NATO would not expand if Russia didn’t contest German reunification), and Russian expert and elder statesman George F. Kennan who presciently warned that NATO expansion would revive the worst aspects of Russian nationalism and imperialism. Bush 43 not only expanded NATO further (Romania, Estonia, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia were given membership in 2004, while Albania, and Croatia were invited during the Bush 43 administration but formally joined in 2009), he also publicly called for Ukraine and Georgia to join the alliance. The neocons also urged U.S. intervention in Syria and Libya in 2011 as part of their championing of the so-called “Arab Spring,” which led not to democracy but instead to anarchy, chaos, and increased Russian and Chinese influence in the region.
Last year Jeffrey Sachs wrote that Ukraine is “the latest neocon disaster.” He described the war in Ukraine as “the culmination of a 30-year project of the American neoconservative movement.” Sachs in that piece recounted the neocon track record of promoting disastrous military adventures that have resulted in diminishing U.S. influence abroad and, in the case of Ukraine, risking a wider European war. Sachs concluded that “[i]nstead of risking this disaster, the real solution is to end the neocon fantasies of the past 30 years and for Ukraine and Russia to return to the negotiating table, with NATO committing to end its commitment to the eastward enlargement to Ukraine and Russia in return for a viable peace that respects and protects Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Sachs' call for a negotiated solution to the Ukraine War was echoed recently in the pages of The National Interest by Russia expert Alex Burilkov and State Department consultant and military intelligence officer Wesley Satterwhite. Burilkov and Satterwhite call for an American-led peace effort in Ukraine before Russia launches a new offensive in the wake of Ukraine’s failed summer offensive. They call their proposed solution a “Korea scenario,” which will result in Ukraine trading parts of four regions occupied by Russia for “robust Western (American) security guarantees.” This, the authors write, would enable the United States to “defuse tensions with Moscow” and focus on the Pacific and China, where we face a “true peer rival.” The authors worry, however, that Russia might seek victory instead of a negotiated solution, and if Russia achieves a victory it would be a “significant setback for the United States and NATO. A Russian victory would also strengthen the Sino-Russian strategic partnership. America, the authors write, must pursue serious peace negotiations now with both Ukraine and Russia. “Only then,” they write, “will the United States be able to focus entirely on containing China, which is of paramount importance to American security and prosperity.”
It seems, however, that the last thing the neocons want is peace in Ukraine. Instead, Kristol’s group wants to “put pressure on Republicans to do the right thing on Ukraine”--which means providing more military aid and training to Ukrainian forces to enable them to achieve victory in the war. As Kelly Beaucar Vlahos notes in Responsible Statecraft, the neocons’ focus is more war, not diplomacy. That also seems to be the focus of the Biden administration, which recently asked Congress for $24 billion more in aid to Ukraine. It is high time for Republicans and America’s leaders to ignore the advice of the Bill Kristols, Max Boots, and David Frums of the American political spectrum. They have been wrong--disastrously wrong--for the last thirty years. The words of Oliver Cromwell to Parliament in 1653 and Leo Amery to Neville Chamberlain in 1940 should be directed at the neoconservatives who still seek to exercise influence over U.S. foreign policy: “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.”
Francis P. Sempa writes on foreign policy and geopolitics. His Best Defense columns appear at the beginning of each month.
11. Russia is losing in Ukraine but winning in Georgia
Russia is losing in Ukraine but winning in Georgia
By Giorgi Kandelaki
atlanticcouncil.org · · August 31, 2023
With attention at NATO’s July summit in Vilnius firmly focused on Ukraine’s membership prospects, the absence of Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili received relatively little attention. And yet this absence reflected an ongoing geopolitical shift in the wider Black Sea region with potentially major consequences for international security. While Russia is losing in Ukraine, there are growing indications that the Kremlin is winning in Georgia.
Weeks before this summer’s NATO summit, Georgian PM Garibashvili sparked international headlines by blaming NATO for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This statement reportedly caused the alliance to deny Garibashvili a place at the summit, according to German daily newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Garibashvili’s comments were controversial but hardly exceptional. Indeed, they reflected the Georgian government’s broader turn away from Euro-Atlantic integration and toward the Kremlin.
In July 2023, Georgia signed a strategic partnership with China, signaling a further shift away from the West amid growing signs of Beijing’s tacit support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Georgian government has not only embraced Beijing’s “Belt and Road” initiative, but has also indicated support for other Chinese foreign policy ventures that appear designed to counterbalance the West in general and the United States in particular. This trend should be on the radar of all Western policymakers.
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Western leaders should know that downplaying the geopolitical changes currently taking place in Georgia is short-sighted. The West’s weak response to Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia is now widely seen as a major strategic blunder that emboldened Vladimir Putin and set the stage for the genocidal invasion of Ukraine. Fifteen years on, the revival of Russian influence in Georgia is helping to convince Putin that despite major setbacks, he will ultimately be able to achieve his goals in Ukraine.
While the Western world has united in opposition to Russia’s attack on Ukraine, Georgia has stood aside and has instead adopted a range of Kremlin-friendly policies. Crucially, the Georgian authorities have flatly refused to join international sanctions against Russia. Meanwhile, Tbilisi recently restored direct flights with Russia, despite calls from the EU and US not to do so. Government officials have also echoed Kremlin propaganda accusing the West of attempting to pressure Georgia into attacking Russia.
Meanwhile, critics have accused the Georgian authorities of embracing anti-democratic policies similar to those adopted by Russia in recent decades. In spring 2023, the ruling Georgian Dream party attempted to implement new laws that closely mirrored existing Russian legislation targeting civil society organizations as “foreign agents.” This initiative was eventually blocked by large-scale public protests, but efforts to demonize civil society and the country’s political opposition have continued.
The impact of Russian propaganda in the Georgian information space is another problematic issue that is particularly evident in the rehabilitation of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. For years, the Putin regime has promoted a revisionist approach to Stalin, portraying him a strong leader whose role in securing victory over Nazi Germany outweighs his crimes. Among Georgian audiences, Russia has successfully utilized Stalin’s Georgian roots, with the Soviet dictator emerging as a figurehead for an anti-Western strain of Georgian nationalism that aligns closely with Kremlin narratives.
In recent years, 11 new statues to Stalin have been erected in Georgia, while one recent Georgian opinion poll found almost 46% of respondents agreed that “patriotic Georgians should be proud of Stalin.” This change in attitudes toward Stalin has yet to attract much attention in the West, but it serves to highlight the vulnerability of Georgian society to Russian information warfare.
Failing to address Georgia’s slide into Russia’s geopolitical orbit would be a costly mistake. To avoid this outcome, Washington and Brussels need to adopt clear policies. Time is of the essence. As Russian influence continues to grow in today’s Georgia, Western leverage is inevitably diminishing. It is vital that the West puts its legitimate leverage to work without delay to demonstrate that further steps toward Moscow will come with considerable costs. This would help the Georgian people to democratically reverse the country’s dangerous current trajectory.
The alternative would be disastrous for Georgia, Ukraine, and Western interests. If Putin is able to reassert Russian dominance over Georgia and derail the country’s Euro-Atlantic ambitions while continuing to occupy twenty percent of the country, he will be encouraged to believe that a similar outcome will eventually prove possible in Ukraine. That would prolong the current war and pave the way for further acts of Russian aggression.
Giorgi Kandelaki is a former Georgian MP and a former Chair of the Georgian Delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. He is currently a project manager at the Soviet Past Research Laboratory (Sovlab), a think-tank dedicated to researching Georgia’s totalitarian past and countering the weaponization of history.
The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.
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Image: A demonstrator holds a Georgian flag in front of police officers during a protest against a draft law on "foreign agents", which critics say represents an authoritarian shift and could hurt Georgia's bid to join the European Union, in Tbilisi, Georgia. March 9, 2023. (REUTERS/Zurab Javakhadze)
atlanticcouncil.org · by Peter Dickinson · August 31, 2023
12. Game of Drones: The dangerous rise of military and surveillance warcraft
Excerpts:
Let’s not overreact. Drones have incredible value in the civilian world. With or without AI capability, they assist in humanitarian and disaster response, engineering, construction, crop monitoring, weather forecasting, and search and rescue. They are not infallible nor invincible. In warfare, they can be countered with conventional anti-aircraft weapons, nets and electronic jamming. Basic Gepard antiaircraft guns have been effective against Shahed-136 drones in Ukraine. Lasers and defending drones are being developed now. In a recent encounter, a manned Russian Jet used flares to force a Reaper drone to abort its mission.
Drones are just another technological advance, like aeroplanes were in the 20th century. If used productively, they will greatly assist humankind — but only if we can curb our self-destructive ways.
Game of Drones: The dangerous rise of military and surveillance warcraft
BY PATRICK DRENNAN, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 08/31/23 8:30 AM ET
https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/4179259-game-of-drones-the-dangerous-rise-of-military-and-surveillance-warcraft/
From drones that can soar through the stratosphere, to rotor drones that hover a few feet above the ground, and underwater drones that glide 50 feet underwater, drones have transformed our lives and modern warfare. Will they eventually destroy us?
There are basically two main types of military drones: those used to destroy and kill by firing munitions, and those used for surveillance. In the Ukraine war, they are often used together.
Russia utilizes Iranian HESA Shahed 136 drones that are relatively cheap and explode on GSP-set targets. On the battlefield, they use more precise Zala Lancet drones. Both sides use cheap hand-held drones with bombs attached. The Ukrainians have been ingeniously making thousands of inexpensive suicide or Kamikaze drones. Comprised of cheap electronic parts, some made on 3D printers, they only have to last long enough to deliver their deadly cargo.
It has changed the military forever.
Every British and American army platoon will now have a drone operator. The 75th Ranger Regiment at Fort Benning is being trained in using the RQ-28A short-range reconnaissance (SRR) quadcopter drone. “The SRR RQ-28A capability will provide game-changing technology to Army platoons, enhancing both soldier lethality and survivability,” said Carson L. Wakefield of Soldier UAS.
However, the most effective and powerful killer drones are the American MQ-9 Reaper and the Russian Kronshtadt (Sea Eagle) Orion’s. Thousands of lives have been lost to both, in Ukraine and in other wars. The Russian drones are generally not as accurate as their American counterparts, and they have clearly been aimed at civilian infrastructure. The International Criminal Court opened an investigation into possible crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide, issuing an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin in March 2023.
The U.S. Reaper and its predecessor, the MQ-1 Predator, are more accurate but they are also responsible for non-combatant deaths, including women and children. After a strike during the Afghanistan withdrawal on Aug. 29, 2021, killed 10, including seven children, the U.S. government set new guidelines.
Since then, American drone strikes have been unerringly accurate and singularly focused. The strike that killed al Qaeda terrorist Ayman al-Zawahiri on a Kabul balcony is a prime example. But enhanced capability seems more ominous for future drone killings, and it raises ethical questions.
Ukrainian, Russian, British and American militaries are increasingly hiring young game-players rather than specialized military pilots to fly drones. They are accustomed to Call of Duty-style video games, which are immersive fiction and trivialize violence against computer-generated avatars. They should be wary.
Close-up images of eviscerated and bloodied real-life human beings is traumatizing. A 2013 Military Report found that “drone operators and support staff have higher chances of suffering from emotional disengagement, Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD), emotional exhaustion, and burnout” (compared to conventional jet pilots) and “and no clear demarcation between combat and personal/family life.” In his book “Vertical: The City from Satellites to Bunkers,” author Stephen Graham describes the intense training that U.S. drone operators undergo “to dehumanise the ‘enemy’ people below whilst glorifying and celebrating the killing process.”
One could argue that the surveillance drones are just as dangerous to humankind as the killer drones. The most popular drones in Ukraine used by both the Ukrainians and the Russians are the Mavic Pro quadcopter, produced by Chinese manufacturer DJ. It provides high-definition surveillance and costs less than $4,000. China has banned online sales — but not military sales.
Surveillance by drone is increasingly precise and intimate. Drone pilots become familiar with their victims. They see them in the ordinary rhythms of their lives, with their spouses and friends, with their children. Modern drones use GPS and biometrics such as facial recognition programs. They can identify individuals by their gait and their mannerisms. Using AI to collate all of this information, they build databases of people — not just enemies, but entire villages and towns.
In the civilian world, human rights activists have attacked companies like Facebook (now Meta) and TikTok for using facial recognition to identify its users. In 2021, Facebook was fined $650 million for privacy violations. In Western democracies there has been concern, but — as yet — no real action. In the United States, the Facial Recognition Act (2022) has been proposed but not enacted. In China and Russia, there are no such reservations, and this data is used freely to control their citizens. It’s a real-life “Nineteen Eighty-Four” scenario.
The picture is further complicated if drones can be programmed to initiate an attack autonomously, without direct human involvement. A fake report caused great consternation when a military drone was reported as attacking its operator. Yes, autonomous military drones are flying now, but they do not currently have sentient capabilities. However, all militaries are experimenting with drone swarms, using AI robot drones.
China has used Robot Dogs for years but recently released a video of a drone delivering a robot dog with an attached machine gun. The United States is developing hundreds of small insect-type drones, mainly for surveillance, that will be capable of spreading micro-viruses. Truly sentient drones may be at least three years away. There is still time to mandate international regulations on their use.
Let’s not overreact. Drones have incredible value in the civilian world. With or without AI capability, they assist in humanitarian and disaster response, engineering, construction, crop monitoring, weather forecasting, and search and rescue. They are not infallible nor invincible. In warfare, they can be countered with conventional anti-aircraft weapons, nets and electronic jamming. Basic Gepard antiaircraft guns have been effective against Shahed-136 drones in Ukraine. Lasers and defending drones are being developed now. In a recent encounter, a manned Russian Jet used flares to force a Reaper drone to abort its mission.
Drones are just another technological advance, like aeroplanes were in the 20th century. If used productively, they will greatly assist humankind — but only if we can curb our self-destructive ways.
Patrick Drennan is a journalist based in New Zealand, with a degree in American history and economics.
13. How China Will Take Taiwan
As an aside anyone who calls themselves a "CIA agent" is suspect in my opinion (it does not seem that he is a foreigner spying on his country for the CIA). But maybe he did not write that biography of himself.
Excerpts:
It seems we have only two choices.
Option One: Support Taiwan covertly by selling the Taiwanese all the weapons they can afford, teaching their military how to use them, and then hoping they want to fight mainland China. After all, during the Korean War, the Soviet Union supported the North Koreans fighting the U.S. by selling them equipment including aircraft, and even supplying them with pilots. We knew all about it, but the U.S. and the Soviet Union did not go to war. Neither has China nor the U.S. gone to war because of American F-16 fighter sales to Taiwan.
Option Two: Send what warships we can spare into the far Pacific and attempt to break the blockade by force. War games, even with the usual loaded dice, show the U.S. winning a few at the cost of aircraft carriers, aircraft, and the death of many thousands of American soldiers and sailors. The war games we do win assume that the Taiwanese will fight like tigers and that our allies are willing to join us in the bloodbath. Those scenarios also require that we strike mainland China and the islands built by China in the South China Sea in order to neutralize runways, missile batteries, and shore installations.
What will happen when we attack those islands and China’s mainland? They will respond by attacking the American homeland. They will attack us with ICBMs, biowar pathogens, cyber attacks to destroy critical infrastructure, with the thousands of Chinese saboteurs crossing our border daily, and with high altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) attacks on our undefended electrical grid that will ultimately kill 90 percent of the American population.
I cannot know what readers of the realities I list here might think.
As for me, I choose Option One.
How China Will Take Taiwan
https://andmagazine.substack.com/p/how-china-will-take-taiwan
And there's nothing we could or should do about it...
CHET NAGLE
AUG 30, 2023
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Unless China’s dictator-for-life, Xi Jinping, wants to get rid of thousands of his young citizens without jobs by using them as cannon fodder in an invasion of Taiwan, there is a much less painful way to take that island – a blockade.
As a young naval aviator who flew in the Cuban Missile Crisis, I know a few things about blockades. The U.S. blockade of Cuba was over in 28 days, except for the usual speeches by politicians.
Why was it so successful? Because of:
- Home field advantage. Cuba was 90 miles away from U.S. supplies of fuel, ammunition, aircraft, and weapons.
- Naval and air supremacy. With the world’s largest navy, we were able to deploy a huge task force that included four aircraft carrier battle groups: Enterprise, Independence, Essex, and Randolph.
- Strategic nuclear weapon (ICBM) supremacy. Soviet general Anatoly Gribkov stated that Khrushchev and his military advisers knew “that U.S. strategic nuclear forces outnumbered ours by approximately 17 to 1 in 1962.”
- If China establishes a blockade around Taiwan in 2023, they will have the same template the U.S. had in Cuba in 1962, only with a lesser number of ICBMs. To offset that, however, they will have a greater number of intermediate-range missiles (IRBMs) in the theater of operations than will the U.S. and Taiwan. China is 100 miles from Taiwan, and that ensures air supremacy. With 355 combatant ships plus 85 patrol ships carrying anti-ship cruise missiles, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) can easily block Taiwan’s eight major ports.
Of course, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will have a different objective for a blockade of Taiwan than the U.S. had for the blockade of Cuba. The U.S. wanted the Soviet Union to cease sending IRBM missiles to Cuba and remove those already there. The CCP's objective will be to stop ships carrying energy and food in order to beggar Taiwan into submission.
Once the CCP declares a blockade no civilian vessels will dare to cross the blockade line for lack of maritime insurance. Lloyds of London is already raising risk rates for ships sailing into Taiwanese waters. The only commercial vessel I saw near the Cuban blockade line was a cruise ship off southern Florida, with its passengers dancing under the stars. There will be no cruise ships in the Taiwan Strait when the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) declares it to be closed to all traffic.
How could Taiwan deal with a Chinese air and sea blockade? Let’s examine some facts about Taiwan.
First, Taiwan’s population is close to 100% ethnic Han, as is the population and rulers of mainland China. To this day there is an abundance of close and traditional family connections between the mainland and Taiwan. It is therefore no surprise that at least two million Taiwanese, ten percent of Taiwan’s population, lives and works on the mainland now. It is also no surprise that China is Taiwan’s best trading partner. In 2020 Taiwan sold China goods worth $120.7 billion – 25% of their total exports and almost double their trade with the United States.
Second, Taiwan is even more dependent on imported food and energy than mainland China. Given the size of its population and geography, Taiwan has a drastic shortage of farmland, a problem worsened by conversion of arable land into solar energy farms and factory sites. As a result, in 2021 Taiwan imported about $15 billion worth of food. Even with storehouses of prepackaged meals, cutting off food imports would mean the 20 million Taiwanese remaining on the island would ultimately be on starvation rations. Add that to Taiwan’s reliance on shipping to import 97 percent of its energy, and it becomes obvious a blockade would quickly put the island Taiwanese in dire straits.
Because Chinese families in China and Taiwan are close in bonds of affection and business, the question arises, will the Taiwanese on the island and on the mainland fight a blockade by China? If so, what could they do? It is certain that an attack on blockade ships by Taiwan’s aircraft and missiles would result in an overwhelming missile, bomb, and gunfire counter-attack by China and its blockade warships. The Taiwan government knows all this, and so it can only rely on the United States and its regional allies to break the blockade for them.
We have arrived at the crucial question. To break the blockade, will the U.S. and its Indian, Australian, and Japanese allies attack the armed forces of China?
Since none of America’s regional allies have formally agreed to join in an attack on China except, perhaps, in logistical support roles. That means the United States will do the heavy lifting, just as it did in the Korean “UN police action,” the Vietnam War, and countless other foreign wars and battles. It is unlikely that the American public will be enthusiastic about joining a war between two Chinese countries 7,000 miles away, despite the constant drumbeat of globalists, neocons, and the other Dr. Strangelove “defenders of democracy” who are now urging us to go to war over Taiwan.
It seems we have only two choices.
Option One: Support Taiwan covertly by selling the Taiwanese all the weapons they can afford, teaching their military how to use them, and then hoping they want to fight mainland China. After all, during the Korean War, the Soviet Union supported the North Koreans fighting the U.S. by selling them equipment including aircraft, and even supplying them with pilots. We knew all about it, but the U.S. and the Soviet Union did not go to war. Neither has China nor the U.S. gone to war because of American F-16 fighter sales to Taiwan.
Option Two: Send what warships we can spare into the far Pacific and attempt to break the blockade by force. War games, even with the usual loaded dice, show the U.S. winning a few at the cost of aircraft carriers, aircraft, and the death of many thousands of American soldiers and sailors. The war games we do win assume that the Taiwanese will fight like tigers and that our allies are willing to join us in the bloodbath. Those scenarios also require that we strike mainland China and the islands built by China in the South China Sea in order to neutralize runways, missile batteries, and shore installations.
What will happen when we attack those islands and China’s mainland? They will respond by attacking the American homeland. They will attack us with ICBMs, biowar pathogens, cyber attacks to destroy critical infrastructure, with the thousands of Chinese saboteurs crossing our border daily, and with high altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) attacks on our undefended electrical grid that will ultimately kill 90 percent of the American population.
I cannot know what readers of the realities I list here might think.
As for me, I choose Option One.
A guest post by
Chet Nagle
Chet Nagle is a graduate of the Naval Academy and Georgetown Law School. A carrier pilot, he was in the Cuban Missile Crisis. A civilian, he was a Pentagon official, CIA agent, and author. He was awarded the Order of Oman during the war with Yemen.
14. Planning for the Next War Must Be a Mixture of Art & Science
There is a yin yang relationship between the two. The real "art" (or perhaps science) is finding the right balance between the two in any given situation. This is one reason why I like the JP 5-0, Joint Planning. It eliminated the cookie cutter 56 phase template for operations starting with the worst ever named phase, Phase Zero. Using a standard phasing template for all campaigns prevents the intellectual rigor that is necessary for campaigning. One size does not fit all in strategy and cmapaigning. And in terms of PhaseZero we must be able to conduct (or sustain as the case may require) an entire campaign in what we previously called Phase Zero. This is especially true for irregular warfare campaigns and for competing in the gray zone of strategic competition. We should not try too hard or create campaigns that result in reaching the old Phase Three, Decisive Operations - which are by definition assumed or interpreted to be kinetic.
Planning for the Next War Must Be a Mixture of Art & Science
In recent decades, military planning has leaned more heavily on science than art, but success in a peer-level fight will depend on commander’s intent and the art of warfare.
By Rear Admiral Patrick Piercey, U.S. Navy (Retired)
September 2023 Proceedings Vol. 149/9/1,447
usni.org · September 1, 2023
Simple plans are the hardest to develop because they require critical thinking, creativity, and imagination to distill complex problems to their essence and develop approaches to solve them. Today, the national security environment is more complex and chaotic than in the late Cold War. The environment is characterized by great power competition and the increasing risk of great power conflict. The United States faces threats in more domains, including cyber and space, and the threats range from a multitude of state to nonstate actors. The nation, along with its allies and partners, is developing new resources and capabilities to counter these threats, but harnessing them effectively offers challenges.
Faced with growing complexity and chaos, can the U.S. military still develop and execute plans that are resilient and agile? With limited staff, time, logistics, and weapons, crafting perfect plans wastes resources, and the enemy gets a vote. “Understand the Adversary: Respect Their Intentions and Capabilities” is the first section in Naval History and Heritage Command’s paper on planning the Pacific war.1 Plans will be probed and tested by the enemy and, therefore, must be resilient and agile.
So, how does a staff develop winning plans at the operational level of war? The joint force has planning doctrine to achieve these characteristics, but operational design and the joint planning process (JPP) require focus and must incorporate both the art and science of war. Art weighs more heavily than science in operational design, but science is more essential to the planning process. Understanding the duality of art and science and the symbiotic relationship between operational design and the JPP are key.
Joint Planning Doctrine
Joint Publication 5-0, Joint Planning, states, “Joint planning is the deliberate process of determining how to implement strategic guidance: how (the ways) to use military capabilities (the means) in time and space to achieve objectives (the ends) within an acceptable level of risk.”2 This deliberate process includes the JPP along with operational design methodology.3 The JPP is better known and understood and consists of seven steps: planning initiation, mission analysis, course of action (COA) development, COA analysis and wargaming, COA comparison, COA approval, and plan (or order) development.4 Operational design, which is lesser known and understood, is defined as “the analytical framework that underpins planning. Operational design supports commanders and planners in organizing and understanding the operational environment as a complex interactive system.”5 Operational design methodology consists of nine steps that can be distilled to three main points: understand the situation, identify the problem, and develop an operational approach.
Together, JPP and operational design are complementary elements of joint planning. In his October 2009 Vision for a Joint Approach to Operational Design, then–Marine Corps General James Mattis observed that standard planning processes had served the military well to that point.However, he wrote that commanders and staffs tend to use these processes somewhat mechanically, with a focus on procedure and details that often obscures the importance of the creative process. The complexity of current and projected challenges requires critical thinking, creativity, foresight, and adaptability—rather than strict reliance on methodical steps—to become routine.6 In his vision, General Mattis sought to balance the mechanistic JPP with the creative approach of operational design and, thereby, improve joint planning by incorporating both the art and science of war.
The nature of war involves both art and science. Naval War College Professor Milan Vego addressed this duality when he wrote, “The idea that the conduct of war is a science is almost as old as warfare itself.”7 Vego added, “The view that the conduct of war is largely an art is not entirely new.”8 Art refers to the creative, imaginative, intuitive, human factors, whereas science refers to the analytical, theoretical, and technological factors. Military art emphasizes mastering war through the human lens, including experience, judgment, and intuition, stressing the subjective decision-making abilities of commanders. Military science emphasizes mastering war through an analytical lens, stressing the systematic and analytical study of warfare, using scientific methods and theories to solve military problems. In his article, Vego expertly takes the reader through a historical account of the art-vs.-science debate and concludes, “Our knowledge and understanding of warfare is a science, but the conduct of war itself is largely an art.”9
The Commander, Operational Design, and Operational Art
The commander is central to this dual approach. As described in a Joint Staff J7 paper, “Operational design is commander-centric and largely an ‘art of war’ versus ‘science of war’ endeavor. Commander’s engagement is central to the development of an operational approach. This is the culmination of the efforts to understand the environment and identify the problem.”10 Why is the commander central? Because the commander brings experience, education, intuition, judgment, and the vision expected to link specific actions of the joint force to broad strategic end states.11 In creating the operational design, the commander applies operational art, which Joint Planning defines as “the cognitive approach by commanders and staffs—supported by their skill, knowledge, experience, creativity, and judgment—to develop strategies, campaigns, and operations to organize and employ military forces by integrating ends, ways, means, and evaluating risks.”12
The planning process derives from a methodical, mechanistic planning approach inherited from the conduct of land warfare—for example, from European wars in which roads, number of soldiers, march times, battleground conditions, length of firing lines, and mass of fire concentrated on the center were valuable planning factors. In today’s strategic and operational environments, the complexity of competition and conflict demands a greater understanding and a more imaginative approach—one that requires critical thinking, creativity, foresight, and adaptability. Operational design is intended to provide that approach, enabling critical and creative thinking to better understand and describe poorly defined problems and visualize broad approaches to solve them. Operational design is all about understanding the situation, identifying the problem, and developing an operational approach.13 “Design does not replace planning, but planning is incomplete without design. The balance between the two varies from operation to operation as well as within each operation. Design helps the commander provide enough structure to an ill-structured problem so that planning can lead to effective action toward strategic objectives.”14
The Chinese military is fielding 4th and 5th generation capabilies, such as this J-15 fighter taking off from the carrier Shandong. In a fight in the western Pacific, the enemy will get a vote. China Daily (Li Jinghan)
A war with China in the western Pacific in this decade would be so paradoxically complex, interrelated, interdependent, uncertain, unpredictable, and chaotic that the operational situation may seem impossible to understand. That is why the cognitive approach of operational art is fundamental. Done well, it will provide an ability to see through the clutter and fog to the crux issues, to distill a complex situation to its essence. Perceiving the situation and the problem should lead to a vision and creative process for how to overcome it. The vision becomes the operational approach—a broad framework to overcome the problem.
OperAtional Design and JPP Together
Joint Publication 5-0, Joint Planning, defines operational art as “the cognitive approach by commanders and staffs . . . to develop strategies, campaigns, and operations.” Joint Staff
How do operational design and the JPP work together? Operational design provides the framework of a broad operational approach to solve the problem. Given the operational approach, planners use the JPP with its orderly, analytical set of steps to refine operations to solve the problem: determine a mission; develop, analyze, and compare COAs; select a COA; and produce a concept of operations or an order.15 The JPP’s scientific approach fills in with detail the broad brush strokes of the operational approach. In addition, operational design and JPP work together iteratively during plan execution. With a good assessment process, the commander and staff may identify and determine conditions that have changed during execution that warrant revisiting the operational approach or plan. For example, a change in the operational environment, being off plan, or a change in an underlying assumption may necessitate updating the understanding of the situation, reframing the problem, and subsequently adjusting the operational approach and corresponding plans. Simply put, operational design and the JPP—if properly used together—can build resiliency and agility into planning.
Planning Observations
Having focused on operational design and the JPP, the following practical observations are offered:
Commander’s Involvement
The personal involvement of the commander cannot be overemphasized. Commanders bristle when micromanaged from above. They yearn for mission command. The basic principles of mission command are commander’s intent, mission-type orders, and decentralized execution, with mission statement and commander’s intent being products of JPP.16 Developing a deep understanding of commander’s intent is challenging, particularly when commander’s intent is conveyed in written form. To fully understand commander’s intent, the staff and subordinate commanders need to understand the commander. They need to be in his or her mind. This requires interaction and dialogue. Therefore, a commander who frequently engages subordinate commanders, staff, and planners builds a high level of understanding. This understanding underpins good planning because the planning products and the processes that develop them are infused with the commander’s intent and logic, which enables mission command.
The commander also provides guidance that fills in gaps from higher headquarters. In addition, the iterative dialogue between subordinates, the staff, and planners stimulates the commander’s own critical thinking and creative process. Through this give-and-take dialogue, the commander conveys how to fit the various pieces together in a resilient and agile plan.
Four Functions
The joint force brings firepower and effects to bear. Ideally, it operates with unity of command. Unfortunately, that is neither realistic nor likely given the complexity of the command-and-control (C2) structures among the vast number of commands working in multiple supported and supporting relationships. Internal friction affects the unity of effort, speed, and tempo of operations, and this friction will worsen during crisis and conflict because of internal and external factors. The most important external factor is enemy action. Four actions—coordination, integration, prioritization, and synchronization—can reduce friction in planning and execution. Coordination is the process of organizing people or groups so that they work together properly and well; integration is the process of blending into a functioning, unified whole; prioritization is the process of listing or rating things in order of priority; and synchronization is the process that makes actions work together in operation.
Supported and supporting relationships between commands and the forces and effects they bring to bear must be coordinated, integrated, prioritized, and synchronized. For example, how are all domain fires synchronized when a combatant commander may have neither operational control nor the delegated authority to use the fires? Are the C2 structures capable of synchronizing the fires at the right times and places? Is coordination good enough to achieve synchronization? Does the prioritization ensure availability of fires at the right time?
All Domain/Multidomain/Joint Fires
In conflicts ranging from Operation Desert Storm through Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, the U.S. military enjoyed the capability to deliver firepower from multiple domains against practically any target at a time and place of its choosing. Against today’s peer adversaries—particularly against the Chinese military—that likely will not be true. Joint fires and schemes of maneuver will be contested in tomorrow’s battles. While the U.S. joint force has experience synchronizing multidomain fires, effective synchronization becomes more challenging as the number of domains increases. With the growing importance of the space and cyber domains, planning must account for the additional complexity in executing and synchronizing fires in all domains against an agile, capable enemy. Commanders and their staffs must understand the situation in the less familiar domains of space and cyber to include associated opportunities, vulnerabilities, and risk. The art must not lag the science. All domains must factor into operational design methodology and resulting approaches.
Decision Space
It is important to give the commander as much time as possible to make decisions. To do this, the staff must answer many questions, including: what decisions need to be made; who needs to make them; what information is required; who has the authority to make the decisions; who needs to be included in the decisions; how much time it will take to make the decisions; how far in advance the decisions need to be made to achieve desired effects; and what actions will be taken when decisions are made. Understanding and answering these questions affords the commander greater temporal awareness of the decision space, enabling more agile maneuver. Potential benefits from this agility include adjusting the tempo of operations for advantage; operating inside the enemy’s decision cycle; looking further ahead instead of being captured by the now; and giving higher authorities more time to make a decision.
Enemy Courses of Action
It has always been true that the enemy “gets a vote,” but in the past 30-plus years, the U.S. military has not been accustomed to the enemy getting a decisive vote at the tactical level, especially in the naval domain. Given how fundamental understanding and knowing the enemy is to operational design, this is articulated in the JPP. A prime example is the use of enemy courses of action (ECOAs). Common JPP practice identifies most likely and most dangerous ECOAs, which essentially set the left and right limits of assumed enemy action. Proposed friendly COAs are war gamed against these left and right enemy limits, and the friendly COAs are compared based on their success. Eventually a COA is chosen, with the underlying assumption that the enemy will act within predicted left and right limits.
But what happens if the enemy acts differently? What if the enemy’s actions are more dangerous than the most dangerous ECOA? Can the commander, staff, and engaged forces recognize what the enemy is doing? They must be able to see changes in the operational environment. They must revisit the situation, reframe the problem, and change the operational approach. They might need to execute a branch plan or sequel or come up with a new plan. Resilient and agile planning incorporates operational design methodology that can overcome this potential blind spot.
Planning must account for the additional complexity of synchronizing fires in all domains—including cyber and space—against an agile, capable enemy. U.S. Marine Corps (Teagan Fredericks)
Time to Rebalance
In the 1980s, U.S. military art and science leaned heavily toward peer competition with the Soviet Union. After the Cold War, and especially after 9/11, it shifted toward counterterrorism and now back to peer competition. Today’s joint force has significant experience fighting terrorists but little in fighting a peer competitor that can challenge in every domain. China has closely studied the U.S. way of war. What happens when, in crisis or conflict, the enemy simultaneously denies or disrupts U.S. military command and control, creating a lapse in C2? Are U.S. plans and forces resilient and agile enough to absorb the first punch and keep fighting? Commander’s intent, mission command, all-domain fires, and the ability to maneuver in the decision space must be resilient enough to keep going. Creating that resiliency means the joint force must rebalance toward critical thinking, creativity, and imagination—otherwise known as the art of war.
Admiral Nimitz Understood Operational Design
By Captain Gerry Roncolato, U.S. Navy (Retired), with the help and guidance of Trent Hone
While the term “operational design” is relatively new to the lexicon, it would be easily recognizable to World War II commanders, including Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, Admiral Raymond Spruance, and their planning staffs. Operation Flintlock in the Marshall Islands illustrates this historical connection.
Throughout the war, Admiral Nimitz provided overarching guidance and let his subordinates do the detailed planning. Here, Nimitz (left) walks the deck of the USS New Jersey (BB-62) with Admiral Raymond Spruance, Commander Fifth Fleet, in April 1944. Naval History and Heritage Command
Under pressure from Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Nimitz constantly pushed his command to go faster. This required frequent reorganizations as the scope and magnitude of the war grew and as the Pacific Fleet staff correspondingly expanded into the Commander, Pacific Ocean Area, joint staff.1
Nimitz’s command style was ideally suited to accelerate his central Pacific campaign, keeping the Japanese back on their heels while also meeting demands from Washington. Nimitz kept his staff small (compared to corresponding Army staffs) to maximize flexibility, responsiveness to the commander’s intentions, and adaptability.2 Nimitz provided overarching guidance and let his subordinates do the detailed planning, but he remained intimately involved throughout to provide feedback to the planners and to ensure they were proceeding in line with his objectives.
Operation Flintlock followed the conquest of the Gilbert Islands and commenced in early 1944. Nimitz provided what would now be called the operational design. Always seeking opportunities to exploit, he left the objectives of the operation rather open, other than that it would entail the reduction of Japanese defenses in the Marshalls.3
Nimitz laid out the broad contours of the plan and, when it became clear that the best approach would be to bypass the eastern Marshalls and strike directly at Kwajalein, he focused his subordinates’ attention there. He directed the striking power of the Pacific Fleet using “a multidimensional array of carriers, amphibious assault forces, land-based planes, and surface ships [to] . . . enter the island group, overwhelm enemy defenses, and seize Kwajalein and Majuro.”4 Spruance’s staff then developed the detailed plan and issued it just weeks before the landings.
Myriad other examples could be presented. Throughout military history, good commanders have provided the essence of operational design to guide their staffs in developing detailed operational plans. Those same commanders then remained engaged in the planning process, resolving differences and keeping the plan on track.
1. Trent Hone, Mastering the Art of Command: Admiral Chester W. Nimitz and Victory in the Pacific, (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2022), 212–213.
2. Hone, Mastering the Art of Command,187.
3. Hone, 213.
4. Hone, 222.
usni.org · September 1, 2023
15. English Classes For Resettled Afghan Women In Charlotte
Yes, this is an excellent humanitarian story. But I am sending this to include the comment I found on social media by the person who flagged this article. We need to think very deeply about this comment.
"there’s more human decency in almost any American town than in most countries. That’s a competitive advantage, let’s compete!"
English Classes For Resettled Afghan Women In Charlotte - WCCB Charlotte's CW
wccbcharlotte.com · September 1, 2023
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – A remarkable program was held at East Charlotte Presbyterian Church Thursday. About three dozen Afghan women gathered to learn the English language. These women arrived in the U.S. almost exactly two years ago during the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. Before the Taliban took over, these women had successful careers in their homeland as doctors, teachers and more.
Maliha Alemi was a kindergarten teacher in Afghanistan for 30 years. She now helps women in Charlotte learn English. She says, “It is very necessary for every woman to know English, how to educate our kids, how to do work outside (the home), and how to stand on our feet.”
Interpreting Freedom Foundation volunteer Sarah Blake Morgan explains, “The women that you see in this room behind me, they and their families sacrificed a lot for the United States, for us, and for our freedom. They either worked with the U.S. government, their husbands were interpreters, or staff members (who) worked at the Embassy.”
Masoma Afshar learned English while she was in Afghanistan, and helps women in the program learn the language. She says, “When I imagined people came from Afghanistan and didn’t know anything, it’s really hard for them to tell other people if they have any problems, if they have any appointments, if they want to go out for shopping or a pharmacy.”
The classes are made possible through a partnership between the Independence Fund, the Interpreting Freedom Foundation, and East Charlotte Presbyterian Church. There is currently a wait list, and they need volunteers and funding to keep it going. Click here to find out how you can help.
wccbcharlotte.com · September 1, 2023
16. It Costs Just $400 to Build an AI Disinformation Machine
Excerpts:
Some evidence of AI-powered online disinformation campaigns has surfaced already. Academic researchers recently uncovered a crude, crypto-pushing botnet apparently powered by ChatGPT. The team said the discovery suggests that the AI behind the chatbot is likely already being used for more sophisticated information campaigns.
Legitimate political campaigns have also turned to using AI ahead of the 2024 US presidential election. In April, the Republican National Committee produced a video attacking Joe Biden that included fake, AI-generated images. And in June, a social media account associated with Ron Desantis included AI-generated images in a video meant to discredit Donald Trump. The Federal Election Commission has said it may limit the use of deepfakes in political ads.
Micah Musser, a researcher who has studied the disinformation potential of AI language models, expects mainstream political campaigns to try using language models to generate promotional content, fund-raising emails, or attack ads. “It's a totally shaky period right now where it's not really clear what the norms are,” he says.
A lot of AI-generated text remains fairly generic and easy to spot, Musser says. But having humans finesse AI-generated content pushing disinformation could be highly effective, and almost impossible to stop using automated filters, he says.
It Costs Just $400 to Build an AI Disinformation Machine
A developer used widely available AI tools to generate anti-Russian tweets and articles. The project is intended to highlight how cheap and easy it has become to create propaganda at scale.
Wired · by Condé Nast · August 29, 2023
In May, Sputnik International, a state-owned Russian media outlet, posted a series of tweets lambasting US foreign policy and attacking the Biden administration. Each prompted a curt but well-crafted rebuttal from an account called CounterCloud, sometimes including a link to a relevant news or opinion article. It generated similar responses to tweets by the Russian embassy and Chinese news outlets criticizing the US.
Russian criticism of the US is far from unusual, but CounterCloud’s material pushing back was: The tweets, the articles, and even the journalists and news sites were crafted entirely by artificial intelligence algorithms, according to the person behind the project, who goes by the name Nea Paw and says it is designed to highlight the danger of mass-produced AI disinformation. Paw did not post the CounterCloud tweets and articles publicly but provided them to WIRED and also produced a video outlining the project.
Paw claims to be a cybersecurity professional who prefers anonymity because some people may believe the project to be irresponsible. The CounterCloud campaign pushing back on Russian messaging was created using OpenAI’s text generation technology, like that behind ChatGPT, and other easily accessible AI tools for generating photographs and illustrations, Paw says, for a total cost of about $400.
Paw says the project shows that widely available generative AI tools make it much easier to create sophisticated information campaigns pushing state-backed propaganda.
“I don't think there is a silver bullet for this, much in the same way there is no silver bullet for phishing attacks, spam, or social engineering,” Paw says in an email. Mitigations are possible, such as educating users to be watchful for manipulative AI-generated content, making generative AI systems try to block misuse, or equipping browsers with AI-detection tools. “But I think none of these things are really elegant or cheap or particularly effective,” Paw says.
In recent years, disinformation researchers have warned that AI language models could be used to craft highly personalized propaganda campaigns, and to power social media accounts that interact with users in sophisticated ways.
Renee DiResta, technical research manager for the Stanford Internet Observatory, which tracks information campaigns, says the articles and journalist profiles generated as part of the CounterCloud project are fairly convincing.
“In addition to government actors, social media management agencies and mercenaries who offer influence operations services will no doubt pick up these tools and incorporate them into their workflows,” DiResta says. Getting fake content widely distributed and shared is challenging, but this can be done by paying influential users to share it, she adds.
Some evidence of AI-powered online disinformation campaigns has surfaced already. Academic researchers recently uncovered a crude, crypto-pushing botnet apparently powered by ChatGPT. The team said the discovery suggests that the AI behind the chatbot is likely already being used for more sophisticated information campaigns.
Legitimate political campaigns have also turned to using AI ahead of the 2024 US presidential election. In April, the Republican National Committee produced a video attacking Joe Biden that included fake, AI-generated images. And in June, a social media account associated with Ron Desantis included AI-generated images in a video meant to discredit Donald Trump. The Federal Election Commission has said it may limit the use of deepfakes in political ads.
Micah Musser, a researcher who has studied the disinformation potential of AI language models, expects mainstream political campaigns to try using language models to generate promotional content, fund-raising emails, or attack ads. “It's a totally shaky period right now where it's not really clear what the norms are,” he says.
A lot of AI-generated text remains fairly generic and easy to spot, Musser says. But having humans finesse AI-generated content pushing disinformation could be highly effective, and almost impossible to stop using automated filters, he says.
The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, said in a Tweet last month that he is concerned that his company’s artificial intelligence could be used to create tailored, automated disinformation on a massive scale.
When OpenAI first made its text generation technology available via an API, it banned any political usage. However, this March, the company updated its policy to prohibit usage aimed at mass-producing messaging for particular demographics. A recent Washington Post article suggests that GPT does not itself block the generation of such material.
Kim Malfacini, head of product policy at OpenAI, says the company is exploring how its text-generation technology is being used for political ends. People are not yet used to assuming that content they see may be AI-generated, she says. “It’s likely that the use of AI tools across any number of industries will only grow, and society will update to that,” Malfacini says. “But at the moment I think folks are still in the process of updating.”
Since a host of similar AI tools are now widely available, including open source models that can be built on with few restrictions, voters should get wise to the use of AI in politics sooner rather than later.
Will Knight is a senior writer for WIRED, covering artificial intelligence. He writes the Fast Forward newsletter that explores how advances in AI and other emerging technology are set to change our lives—sign up here. He was previously a senior editor at MIT Technology Review, where he wrote about fundamental... Read more
SENIOR WRITER
17. Top Russian Rocket Scientist Dies of Mushroom Poisoning Weeks After Moscow’s Failed Moon Landing
My first thought was, "You cannot make this stuff up." But then I remembered, yes you can. I have not seen any other reporting on this.
Never pick mushrooms after you have been responsible for a failed moon landing.
Top Russian Rocket Scientist Dies of Mushroom Poisoning Weeks After Moscow’s Failed Moon Landing
The scientist's family said he'd picked mushrooms every summer but had never been sickened by them before
Published 09/01/23 11:54 AM ET|Updated 19 hr ago
Nick Gallagher
themessenger.com · September 1, 2023
A prominent Russian rocket scientist died of apparent mushroom poisoning at a Moscow hospital Wednesday morning, just weeks after a Russian spacecraft failed to land on the south pole of the Moon.
Vitaly Melnikov, 77, worked at RSC Energia, the rocket company that built the Luna-25 craft, which crashed on its ill-fated Moon mission on August 19, according to Moskovsky Komsomolets, a Moscow-based newspaper.
Had it successfully landed, Luna-25 would have been the first time Russia returned to the Moon since the end of the Soviet era.
Melnikov, who authored nearly 300 papers and previously collaborated with NASA scientists, spent about 20 days in the hospital before finally succumbing to the poisoning.
Relatives said he picked the mushrooms in the forest near his second home outside of Moscow on August 9 -- the day before Luna-25 launched. The following afternoon, he reportedly boiled them and ate them for dinner. His family was in Moscow at the time.
The next day, Melnikov began experiencing signs of poisoning, including low blood pressure and dehydration, and he was brought to the hospital. His condition continued to worsen, and he died on the morning of August 30.
Doctors presumed he had picked a poisonous mushroom that had a similar shape and color to the ones he normally ate. His family told the Russian paper he'd picked mushrooms every summer but had never been sickened by them before.
A different scientist involved in the same lunar project project, 90-year-old Mikhail Marov, reportedly suffered a severe health deterioration just after the lander crashed, according to The Statesman.
Marov told local press that the failure had impacted his physical health. "For me, perhaps, it was the last hope to see the revival of our lunar program," he reportedly said.
Some experts have speculated that Russian President Vladimir Putin may be behind a spate of unexplained deaths among prominent Russian officials, journalists, and political enemies.
Some two dozen Russian businessmen died under mysterious circumstances in 2022 alone. Most recently, a plane carrying mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and other top leadership of the Russia-backed Wagner Group, which had been fighting on the frontlines of Ukraine before staging a coup, was shot down on August 23.
The Soyuz-2.1b rocket with the moon lander Luna-25 automatic station takes off from a launch pad at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Russia's Far East, on Aug. 11, 2023.Roscosmos State Space Corporation via AP
themessenger.com · September 1, 2023
18. With wary eye on China, U.S. moves closer to former foe Vietnam
Excerpts:
The United States is now the top destination for exports from Vietnam, which has made a dramatic economic transformation over the past two decades. VinFast, the country’s leading electric vehicle manufacturer, is now selling its sleek SUVs in California and recently held an initial public offering of its stock on Nasdaq. American companies have likewise shown a willingness to do business: Apple and Google suppliers have invested heavily in new factories in Vietnam, and a major announcement is expected from Boeing, which said earlier this year that it intends to expand its footprint in the country.
The upgrade in relations also stands to boost defense and security cooperation between the United States and Vietnam. Hanoi and Washington are expected to increase U.S. aircraft carrier visits, joint military exercises and arms sales, officials said. Among the top buyers of Russian arms, Vietnam has said publicly it wants to diversify its military arsenal. Last year, Vietnam hosted its first international defense fair, and U.S. defense contractors Raytheon and Lockheed Martin sponsored the two largest booths.
Vietnam does not have treaty allies. Instead, the communist state has a rigid three-tier hierarchy of bilateral ties. Washington was granted “comprehensive” partnership status a decade ago, and normally it takes years for Hanoi to move a country to the next level, dubbed “strategic.” But Hanoi is slated to fast-track an upgrade to the highest tier, with Washington earning the “comprehensive strategic” designation, officials say.
With wary eye on China, U.S. moves closer to former foe Vietnam
The two countries are boosting economic and tech ties as Beijing increases its assertiveness in the region
By Ellen Nakashima and Rebecca Tan
September 1, 2023 at 11:34 a.m. EDT
The Washington Post · by Ellen Nakashima · September 1, 2023
The United States and Vietnam are poised to significantly enhance their economic and technological ties, bringing the former foes closer at a time of increased Chinese assertiveness in the region.
The deal, expected to be announced when President Biden makes a state visit to Vietnam next weekend, is the latest step by the Biden administration to deepen relations in Asia. For Hanoi, the closer relationship with Washington serves as a counterweight to Beijing’s influence.
The establishment of a “comprehensive strategic partnership” will give the United States a diplomatic status that Vietnam has so far reserved for only a handful of other countries: China, Russia, India and South Korea. The move was confirmed by a senior Biden administration official and two people in Hanoi familiar with the matter.
It shows that Hanoi is willing to risk angering Beijing but sees the move toward Washington as necessary given how aggressively China is flexing its military muscle in the region, analysts said.
“If you have the United States on the same pedestal as China, that is saying a lot to Beijing, but also to the rest of the region and the world,” said Derek Grossman, a senior defense analyst at Rand Corp. and former U.S. intelligence officer. “That’s saying the U.S.-Vietnam relationship has come a long way since 1995,” when the two countries normalized relations.
The agreement, proposed by the Biden administration in recent months, flows from a U.S. strategy to build economic and security partnerships in the Indo-Pacific that can serve as a bulwark against Chinese economic and military coercion.
For Vietnam, it “serves both symbolic and substantive purposes,” said Le Hong Hiep, a senior fellow at the Singapore-based ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.
The agreement is expected to lead to greater economic activity between the two countries, as the United States seeks to diversify its manufacturing supply chains away from China and as Vietnam aspires to develop advanced technologies. American semiconductor firms have expressed “a willingness to support them in that ambition,” said a senior Biden administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the agreement has not yet been announced.
The United States is now the top destination for exports from Vietnam, which has made a dramatic economic transformation over the past two decades. VinFast, the country’s leading electric vehicle manufacturer, is now selling its sleek SUVs in California and recently held an initial public offering of its stock on Nasdaq. American companies have likewise shown a willingness to do business: Apple and Google suppliers have invested heavily in new factories in Vietnam, and a major announcement is expected from Boeing, which said earlier this year that it intends to expand its footprint in the country.
The upgrade in relations also stands to boost defense and security cooperation between the United States and Vietnam. Hanoi and Washington are expected to increase U.S. aircraft carrier visits, joint military exercises and arms sales, officials said. Among the top buyers of Russian arms, Vietnam has said publicly it wants to diversify its military arsenal. Last year, Vietnam hosted its first international defense fair, and U.S. defense contractors Raytheon and Lockheed Martin sponsored the two largest booths.
Vietnam does not have treaty allies. Instead, the communist state has a rigid three-tier hierarchy of bilateral ties. Washington was granted “comprehensive” partnership status a decade ago, and normally it takes years for Hanoi to move a country to the next level, dubbed “strategic.” But Hanoi is slated to fast-track an upgrade to the highest tier, with Washington earning the “comprehensive strategic” designation, officials say.
Despite the communist affinity with its big brother to the north, Vietnam has been motivated to find new partners due to Beijing’s aggressive activity over the past decade. But, said the senior administration official, it was also enticed by Washington’s engagement this year with India — another major developing country in the region — that has resulted in agreements to partner in technology, defense and education.
“We were able to make a credible case” to Hanoi to take the relationship “to the highest level,” the official said.
But the deal is not a steppingstone to a formal defense alliance, Biden administration officials said.
“This is not Vietnam coming to the American side of the playground,” said Gregory Poling, director of the Southeast Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “This is Vietnam ensuring that it can balance the two powers [China and the United States] so it can maintain its own autonomy.”
Vietnam, which shares a border with China, has long disputed Beijing’s territorial claims over the Spratly and Paracel islands in the South China Sea. China’s coast guard continually harasses Vietnamese oil and gas drilling operations and regularly boards Vietnamese fishing ships.
Vietnam has expressed interest in increasing cooperation with the United States on maritime surveillance and technology, said Le, the analyst in Singapore. “With the comprehensive strategic partnership in place, this is all on the table,” he added.
Hanoi remains cautious of offending Beijing, which is steadily modernizing its military, analysts say.
Last week, shortly before the White House announced Biden’s trip to Vietnam, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Nguyen Phu Trong, traveled with the Chinese ambassador to Vietnam, Xiong Bo, in what some saw as an attempt to mitigate potential backlash once the upgrade in relations is announced.
While inspecting a border trading pass in Lang Son province, Trong, widely seen as the most powerful political figure in Vietnam, praised the “comrades and brothers” friendship with China. Biden is scheduled to meet with Trong in Hanoi.
But the deepening relationship has drawn criticism from human rights advocates, who say that Hanoi continues to crack down on dissent and religious freedom and accuse Washington of placing strategic interests ahead of core values.
Ben Swanton, co-director of the 88 Project, a U.S.-based nonprofit that tracks the arrests of activists in Vietnam, said he’s skeptical that closer relations with the United States will lead to greater freedoms for the Vietnamese people. In the past decade, Hanoi’s warming relationship with Washington has done little to deter a rising authoritarian trend led by Communist Party hard-liners, he said.
According to the 88 Project, Vietnam has imprisoned nearly 200 people on political grounds, including several of the country’s most prominent climate activists. In 2016, as part of a highly publicized visit to Vietnam, President Barack Obama met with a group of civil society leaders; many of them are now in jail or in exile.
“The commitment to democracy and human rights,” Swanton said of the Biden administration, “has been cast aside in favor of extending U.S. dominance in the region.”
Administration officials respond with an argument deployed when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who in 2005 was denied a visa to the United States for his role in deadly communal riots in western India, was welcomed to the White House for a state dinner in June.
They raise human rights concerns with these leaders, but in private, “quietly, respectfully,” said the administration official. “We question whether public lecturing is the best plan of action with countries that are seeking to work closely with us.”
Washington should insist on seeing progress in human rights and civil liberties, even if done quietly, said Duy Hoang, executive director of Viet Tan, a pro-democracy political group in Vietnam. “To have a free and open Indo-Pacific,” said Duy, “you really need free and open societies.”
Tan reported from Singapore.
The Washington Post · by Ellen Nakashima · September 1, 2023
19. World War II special operations veteran receives Special Forces tab
Although the Army refuses to recognize the lineage of the OSS to Special Forces (because Army rules do not allow lineage linked to non-Army and "ad hoc" organization) it is good to see the Army Special Operations Command and the 1st Special Forces Command do the right thing and award the tab to this American hero.
World War II special operations veteran receives Special Forces tab
armytimes.com · by Davis Winkie · September 1, 2023
Army special operations leaders presented a Special Forces tab and the iconic green beret Friday morning to a man believed to be the last living member of their World War II Office of Strategic Services’ Operations Group predecessors, known as OGs.
Technician 4th Grade Ellsworth “Al” Johnson, now 100, was a medic who parachuted into France and China with the OGs. The ceremony took place in Zeeland, Michigan, where Johnson resides today in a nursing home. Army Special Operations Command’s deputy commander, Maj. Gen. Patrick Roberson, and 1st Special Forces Command leader Brig. Gen. Gil Ferguson presented the tab and beret.
“He laid the groundwork for what we are today,” Roberson said during the ceremony, which the veteran’s family attended. “Everything that he did in 1944 — we model ourselves on in our training and the operations that we conduct. [It’s our] origin story.”
Each OSS OG was roughly 34 soldiers — a four-man command element and two 15-soldier sections that could operate independently. These groups provided a blueprint for future units, according to historical research by Army special operations officials, who noted that today’s Special Forces A-teams resemble the WWII-era OG sections.
Then-Pfc. Ellsworth Johnson (top right), a medic assigned to the Office of Strategic Services' Operational Groups, poses for a photo with fellow unit members in an undated 1944 photo taken in Brockhall, Northamptonshire, England during their training. (Courtesy of 1st Special Forces Command)
According to a personal memoir, Johnson was drafted into the Army as a medic. That disappointed him, although he received valuable surgical training, so he volunteered for the OSS to avoid being “a bed-pan jockey,” he said.
On Johnson’s first mission, his unit, OG Patrick, successfully captured a dam in Central France after jumping behind German lines in August 1944, according to historical reports. They achieved this by linking up with the French Resistance and successfully convincing the dam’s German garrison to abandon its post.
After his unit’s success in France, Johnson and many of his peers volunteered to jump into China in July 1945 with Chinese paratroopers of the 2nd Chinese Commando that they’d trained. They led an assault on a Japanese garrison that inflicted significant casualties on the enemy but failed to take the town. A medical history report said Johnson successfully stabilized and evacuated wounded troops, including two Americans, while waiting for a doctor to arrive.
After the Japanese surrender in August 1945, Johnson and his fellow OSS troops made their way out of Asia and back to America, where he was discharged from the service. He went on to have a successful career in the cosmetics industry, according to an Army report.
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.
20. The global human rights regime has collapsed
Global South versus Global North.
This is quite an indictment:
When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was passed by the UN in 1948, it was celebrated as a big step towards a more peaceful world. Coming on the back of the horrors of the second world war and the Holocaust, it was a ray of hope signalling that a better world, where the fundamental rights of all are respected, could be possible. Yet this dream did not last long. The very nations that developed and pushed for the new human rights regime swiftly started to violate it to further their interests, hurt their enemies and expand their interests. They even attacked several Global South nations to bring them “democracy” and protect their “human rights”.
What is new, however, is the open rejection of the Western human rights framework by the Global South populations. Those who have been suffering the worst of the Global North’s aggression and duplicity since the signing of the UDHR are no longer convinced at all that Western governments, institutions and organisations can – or more accurately want to – protect their fundamental rights. They now see them as what they are: ineffective, duplicitous, and more crucially, dangerous.
...
The end of the human rights era should be viewed as an opportunity to forge a new path towards inclusivity and equity that puts the Global South’s, the global majority’s, demands at the forefront of constructing new, radical visions and frameworks.
Only by moving beyond the West’s hypocritical use of human rights as a discriminatory ordering principle for international politics can we create a more inclusive, diverse, and representative approach to defining and protecting everyone’s fundamental rights.
In doing so, local communities and Indigenous populations in the Global South can take an active and central role in rethinking and implementing environmental preservation and sustainable development.
As we face multiple interconnected ecological and humanitarian crises, the international community needs to urgently accept the undeniable demise of the current human rights regime and move quickly to construct a radical alternative that would truly put the fundamental rights and needs of all human beings, including those in the Global South, at its centre.
The global human rights regime has collapsed
We urgently need a radical new framework to protect the fundamental rights of all human beings.
Al Jazeera English · by Haythem Guesmi
Human rights, as we know them, are dead.
Amid a climate emergency, seemingly endless conflict, and consequent refugee crises, the glaring absence of an effective global strategy to safeguard the most fundamental rights of impoverished and marginalised populations across the world has made it clear that the concept of “human rights”, as sacralised by the liberal West, has lost all meaning and purpose – for everyone, but especially for those of us in the Global South.
According to the United Nations, as many as 828 million people – or 10 percent of the global population – go to bed hungry each night. Of those struggling with hunger, 80 percent are living in areas prone to climate change – areas that are overwhelmingly in the Global South. Wars, uprisings and coups – often tied to geopolitical skirmishes between global powers – are also disproportionately harming these very same regions.
Unable to see an end to their misery, some of those suffering from war, famine, oppression or destitution in the Global South are embarking on dangerous journeys across desert and sea to find safety and prosperity in the Global North. Rather than taking action to protect the human rights of these refugees, however, the Western states who pride themselves in being the inventors of the very concept of human rights are treating them like an enemy.
As a result, tens of thousands are languishing in inhuman migrant detention centres along the US and European Union borders, and the Mediterranean Sea is now a migrant graveyard. According to the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project, more than 28,000 drownings have been recorded there since 2014. The true number of deaths is impossible to know and likely much higher.
And drowning in the Mediterranean is only one way people in the Global South, who make up the global majority, are dying en mass because the Western-led international community does not assess their human rights as being worthy of protection. They are also dying in natural disasters aggravated by climate change, and in wars waged to further geopolitical agendas. They are being killed by drones and burned alive by settlers.
The signs of the death of human rights are omnipresent. Western governments are working hard to shield the Israeli apartheid from accountability, while criminalising Palestinians resisting Israel’s oppression and those supporting their liberation struggle. The leading social media companies of the Global North are allowing dangerous misinformation targeting already marginalised and under threat populations to fester on their platforms. European countries are still selling a toxic pesticide – banned in the EU because of its proven harms to children and unborn babies – to countries in the Global South. And the list goes on.
All the while, the West continues to try and sell itself as the one true defender of human rights.
Western nations regularly condemn and even sanction the likes of Russia, China and Iran for violating the human rights of their citizens and those living in their influence zones. They often make foreign aid conditional on recipients making improvements on human rights protections, and some have even launched military interventions under the guise of addressing human rights violations in the past.
In response to the invasion of Ukraine, a country at the very heart of Europe, for example, the Global North states not only swiftly condemned the grave human rights violations Russia committed there, but also implemented special programmes to ensure any Ukrainian civilian in need can find safety in another country without facing significant obstacles. They also put their support behind the International Criminal Court (ICC) and provided its investigators with any help necessary to try and convict the Kremlin.
Viewed in isolation, this may be seen as confirmation of the West’s adherence to the international human rights regime it helped build. But for those in the Global South, who cannot help but compare the West’s embrace of Ukraine to its treatment of their own countries, this whole episode is nothing but confirmation of the Global North’s endless hypocrisy.
Indeed, the countries that took swift action to help the Ukrainian people did not open their borders to the Sudanese in the same manner when they were facing an equally grave military threat. They never did it for the Palestinians either, many of whom are still living under the iron fist of a violent invader.
They are also very selective about when they would support the ICC. Sure they supported ICC’s prosecution of Africans when it suited their agenda, but they never let its prosecutors anywhere near their own drone wars or unlawful torture programmes – in fact, the US is not even a state party to the court.
While they are now condemning Russia and any state that continues to collaborate with it, in the Global South they themselves have long been prioritising geopolitical interests over human rights concerns, supporting oppressive regimes and undermining democratic movements. This is arguably the main reason why many Global South nations have been hesitant to support Western-backed Ukraine’s resistance against the Russian invasion.
This crisis in the global human rights regime and discourse is not new.
When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was passed by the UN in 1948, it was celebrated as a big step towards a more peaceful world. Coming on the back of the horrors of the second world war and the Holocaust, it was a ray of hope signalling that a better world, where the fundamental rights of all are respected, could be possible. Yet this dream did not last long. The very nations that developed and pushed for the new human rights regime swiftly started to violate it to further their interests, hurt their enemies and expand their interests. They even attacked several Global South nations to bring them “democracy” and protect their “human rights”.
What is new, however, is the open rejection of the Western human rights framework by the Global South populations. Those who have been suffering the worst of the Global North’s aggression and duplicity since the signing of the UDHR are no longer convinced at all that Western governments, institutions and organisations can – or more accurately want to – protect their fundamental rights. They now see them as what they are: ineffective, duplicitous, and more crucially, dangerous.
Those protesting on Arab streets, living under constant attack in the Brazilian favelas, trying to survive the open-air prison that is Gaza or looking for a way out of the sprawling refugee camps in Bangladesh no longer believe or expect in any way that the Global North will come and do something to ensure their supposedly sacred “human rights” are not violated.
Human rights, as it is currently understood and applied in the Global South, must not be saved. Contrary to conventional wisdom that laments the end of the human rights era and suggests new solutions to safeguard it, it is rather long overdue to move beyond this discourse and imagine radically different egalitarian and progressive principles informed by the struggles and ethics of the people in the Global South.
The end of the human rights era should be viewed as an opportunity to forge a new path towards inclusivity and equity that puts the Global South’s, the global majority’s, demands at the forefront of constructing new, radical visions and frameworks.
Only by moving beyond the West’s hypocritical use of human rights as a discriminatory ordering principle for international politics can we create a more inclusive, diverse, and representative approach to defining and protecting everyone’s fundamental rights.
In doing so, local communities and Indigenous populations in the Global South can take an active and central role in rethinking and implementing environmental preservation and sustainable development.
As we face multiple interconnected ecological and humanitarian crises, the international community needs to urgently accept the undeniable demise of the current human rights regime and move quickly to construct a radical alternative that would truly put the fundamental rights and needs of all human beings, including those in the Global South, at its centre.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
Al Jazeera English · by Haythem Guesmi
21. In New Moon Race, Russian Crash Shows the Only U.S. Rival Is China
The dreaded use of "Cold War-style." No one wants to consider a Cold War 2.0
In New Moon Race, Russian Crash Shows the Only U.S. Rival Is China
Geopolitical tensions on Earth threaten to drive Cold War-style division in space
https://www.wsj.com/world/china/in-new-moon-race-russian-crash-shows-the-only-u-s-rival-is-china-422b3db2
By Natasha KhanFollow
Sept. 2, 2023 9:00 am ET
HONG KONG—A new Cold War-style competition has put the moon back at the center of global space ambitions, but the U.S. has a new chief rival.
More nations and companies are venturing into space, crowding the calendar with planned robotic landings for lunar research. But, like the scramble to plant boots on the moon in the 1960s, the race to establish a base on the lunar surface boils down to a contest between the world’s superpowers. Only this time it is Beijing, not Moscow, that Washington is up against.
China has been aggressively ramping up its space program since the U.S. barred it from working with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 2011 on security grounds. After a string of triumphs in recent years, it set its sights on starting to build a permanent moon base around the end of the decade—reviving U.S. lunar ambitions, with echoes of America’s all-out effort to beat the Soviet Union to the moon.
Men on the moon in July 1969: Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong beside the lunar lander and reflected in the helmet visor of fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin.
AP, NEIL ARMSTRONG/NASA/AP
Only American astronauts have stepped on the moon’s surface—and for decades there had been little interest in repeating the feat. Exploration efforts instead focused on robotic missions into deeper space.
Two years ago, China said it would join Russia in building a moon base and invited other interested nations to take part. But decades after the Soviet Union beat the world into space, Russia is a waning space power. Last month, a Russian lander crashed on the country’s first mission to the moon since Luna-24 in 1976, another setback for Moscow’s effort to again become a force in space exploration.
Yury Borisov, the director general of Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, said “the invaluable experience that our predecessors gained in the 1960s-1970s was almost lost” because of a disconnect between generations, according to state news agency TASS. After the moon crash, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Russia would persevere in its lunar program, TASS said.
The crashed Russian Luna-25 lander was among several recent or planned missions to the moon's south pole, where scientists have detected water.
Select moon landings and crashes
2023
Crash site of Ispace mission
(Japan)
2013
Chang’e 3
mission
(China)
2020
Chang’e 5
mission
(China)
1969
Apollo 11
(U.S.)
1969
Apollo 12
(U.S.)
Partial scan of south pole region showing water distribution
Aug. 2023
Chandrayaan-3
mission
(India)
Nov. 2023
Expected landing site of Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 mission (U.S.)
2023
Expected landing
site of Luna-25
before crash
(Russia)
Less
water signal
More
Notes: Map doesn't show full extent of lunar water, but rather relative abundance in the area that was scanned. Locations are approximate. IM-1 may land later than November.
Source: NASA
Peter Champelli/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
While Russia remains dependable at launching satellite payloads and ferrying crew and cargo to the International Space Station, around 250 miles from Earth, and while it has more than two decades’ experience helping to run the ISS, its failures in more-challenging space exploration mean China is at mission control in the partnership.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing sanctions have further strained Russian space plans. Doubts about its moon missions, swelling before the invasion, have grown faster with the imposition of technology controls and restrictions aimed at Russia’s aerospace and space sectors.
China’s technological achievements in space have outstripped Russia’s. For example, it landed a rover on Mars on its first try in 2021. The Soviets landed a rover in 1971 after earlier failures, but it broke down almost immediately.
A Soyuz rocket taking off on Aug. 11 with the moon lander Luna-25 on Russia’s first moon mission since 1976; it ended in a crash on the lunar surface. PHOTO: ROSCOSMOS STATE SPACE CORP./ASSOCIATED PRESS
A Chinese rocket taking off in May with a replacement crew of three astronauts for the country’s Tiangong space station. PHOTO: KEVIN FRAYER/GETTY IMAGES
In this latest moon race, Washington and Beijing are recruiting allies.
The U.S. has been leading the Artemis Accords. Devised by the Trump administration as China laid out increasingly ambitious lunar plans, these bind the U.S. and 27 other countries in a collaboration that lays out a framework for the peaceful exploration of the moon, Mars and other celestial bodies. The Artemis program aims for humans to return to the moon by 2025, and to establish a sustained presence there.
Chinese critics bristled at the framework, calling it a U.S. attempt to stymie China and set rules that favor its own interests. In one 2020 article, the Global Times, a Communist Party mouthpiece, criticized Washington’s “Cold War mentality against space rivals.”
The accords and the U.S. alliance they foster are a hurdle for Beijing, given the prohibition against working with NASA as well as Washington’s more recent efforts to deny China access to cutting-edge technologies.
China’s space program took a giant leap in May 2021, landing a rover on Mars on its first attempt.
CNSA/AP, REUTERS, ZUMA, AFP
“Space relations between the two global powers have gotten more frosty,” said Namrata Goswami, a co-author of the book “Scramble for the Skies: The Great Power Competition to Control the Resources of Outer Space.” She noted that the Biden administration has been tightening controls on exports of semiconductors and sensitive satellite technologies to China.
China has forged ahead on its own. Barred by that 2011 law from sending its astronauts to the ISS—which has hosted more than 200 astronauts from more than a dozen countries—the country built its own space station.
Still, as more nations invest in their own programs, there is symbolism in working together. India sparked an outpouring of national pride last month by becoming the fourth nation to achieve a controlled landing on the moon, and the first to do so in the south polar region. Hours before the landing, Prime Minister Narendra Modi—who had signed the U.S. accords on a state visit to Washington in June—used a summit under the Brics grouping, which includes China and Russia, to float the idea of a Brics Space Exploration Consortium.
THE NEW SPACE RACE
Moon missions mark a renewed international space race
“It will be very difficult for nations to keep a foot in both camps,” said Christopher Newman, a professor of space law and policy at the U.K.’s Northumbria University. While there may still be some pockets of European collaboration with China, Newman said, it is difficult to envision large-scale projects unless U.S.-China relations improve significantly.
China, which in 2019 became the first country to land a rover on the far side of the moon, plans more lunar missions to retrieve samples, seek water at the south pole and land astronauts. It aims to launch the Chang’e-7 probe in three years to start exploring for resources on the lunar south pole and the Chang’e-8 around 2028 to begin construction of the International Lunar Research Station, according to an April article on the central government’s website.
China successfully landed a probe on the far side of the moon in January 2019, when its Chang’e-4 touched down among three craters and sent back an image from the surface.
CNSA/AFP, XINHUA
China envisions a lunar base “jointly built by many countries,” according to a document posted on the website of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs that includes a visualization of the plan. The project would include tapping potential lunar energy sources, a system of transportation to and from Earth, communications and navigation infrastructure, as well as research facilities, the document shows.
The moon is attractive as a base because it could reduce the need for massive rockets to lift entire spacecraft, their fuel and payloads out of Earth’s clinging gravity field, said Simeon Barber, a planetary scientist at the Open University in the U.K. Water is thought to be the low-hanging fruit there, Barber said. “Can we extract lunar ice and use it for drinking water for astronauts in a lunar base? Or split it into oxygen and hydrogen to fuel spacecraft at the moon ready for onward journeys?”
How water is created on the moon's surface
1
2
3
An asteroid strikes the lunar surface creating glass beads from the extreme high temperature
Solar winds bring hydrogen atoms to the moon where they are irradiated and
combine with elements inside the beads
Over time, the beads slowly work deeper into the surface, forming a potential reservoir of water for astronauts
Solar
winds
Irradiation
Asteroid
+
H
+
H
0
H
H
2
2
Impact
glass
beads
0
H
2
Water reservoir
Source: Sen Hu, Chinese Academy of Sciences via Nature Geoscience
Brian McGill/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
After Russia’s crash, China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t directly respond to a question about collaboration with Moscow in space, but a spokesman said that “exploring the universe is a common cause for humanity,” and that its lunar research base is “open to all international partners.”
Members of the Beijing-based Asia-Pacific Space Cooperation Organization—which include Mongolia, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey and Thailand—have signed agreements to join Chin’s effort. Venezuela officially signed up in July. The International Lunar Research Station Cooperation Organization aims to complete signing agreements with space agencies and countries by October. Many of the countries have space programs that mostly focus on Earth-observation and ground-monitoring technologies.
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Aug. 23: India became the world’s first country to reach the lunar south pole, three days after Russia’s spacecraft crashed in the same region. WSJ explains why the two countries were racing to get there, and how their missions could affect the global space race. Photo: Aijaz Rahi/Associated Press
The Ukraine war has further muddled Russia’s space partnerships. In particular, some European companies and agencies have ceased work with Roscosmos. The joint European-Russian ExoMars mission was canceled last year following the invasion, just months before it was to launch on a Russian rocket, after many years of planning.
At the end of the day, China may well be able to go far on its own, said “Scramble for the Skies” co-author Goswami. Its partnerships, she said, are about building legitimacy and creating an alternative to the U.S.-led Artemis Accords.
The return capsule of the Chang’e-5 probe landed back in China on Dec. 17, 2020, carrying samples collected from the moon. PHOTO: LIAN ZHEN/ZUMA PRESS
Clarence Leong in Singapore contributed to this article.
Write to Natasha Khan at natasha.khan@wsj.com
22. A Brutal Path Forward, Village by Village
A Brutal Path Forward, Village by Village
By Marc SantoraPhotographs by Tyler Hicks
Marc Santora and Tyler Hicks spent time with units of Ukrainian Marines on the southern front.
- Sept. 2, 2023
- Updated 5:04 a.m. ET
The New York Times · by Marc Santora · September 2, 2023
Ukrainian soldiers fire a howitzer at targets in the direction of Bakhmut on the eastern front line on Monday.
As Ukraine pushes slowly forward in its counteroffensive, it’s relying heavily on the effort of hundreds of small-scale assault groups, each tasked with attacking a single trench, tree line or house.
Ukrainian soldiers fire a howitzer at targets in the direction of Bakhmut on the eastern front line on Monday.Credit...
Marc Santora and Tyler Hicks spent time with units of Ukrainian Marines on the southern front.
The mission for the Ukrainian unit was to take a single house, in a village that is only a speck on the map but was serving as a stronghold for Russian soldiers.
Andriy, a veteran marine, had waited for three days with his small assault team — none of whom had seen combat before — as other Ukrainian units crawled through minefields, stormed trenches and cleared a path to the farming village of Urozhaine. Finally, one day last month, the order came to move.
They raced to a predetermined location in an armored personnel carrier, and disembarked as explosions and gunfire rattled the ground beneath their feet, Andriy and members of his unit said. Driving out or killing the remaining Russians, they secured the house as night fell, posting guards and reviewing the day’s tactics to see how they might improve.
In the morning, the new order came: Take another house.
The monthslong campaign to breach heavily fortified Russian lines is being conducted in many domains and in many forms of battle, with artillery duels and drone strikes across the breadth of the front in southern Ukraine. But the engine driving the effort are hundreds of small-scale assault groups, often just eight to 10 soldiers, each tasked with attacking a single trench, tree line or house.
In this tactical approach, small villages loom large. They line paved roads, facilitating transport, and the buildings, even those ravaged by shelling, provide a measure of cover. The Russians are using them as strongholds; Urozhaine, for instance, was ringed by two trench lines and a maze of tunnels that allowed Russian troops to shoot in one location, then pop up somewhere else.
Ukrainian marines practice house-to-house combat during training exercises in the region of Vuhledar in August.
A Ukrainian soldier at an artillery position in the Bakhmut region.
It’s a hard way to fight a war — village by village, house by house — with no guarantee of success. Once taken and secured, however, the surviving Russian fortifications provide a base for the Ukrainians to plot their next move forward.
This has been the pattern for Ukraine as it tries to move along two north-south routes toward the Sea of Azov, looking for a place to break through and sever the so-called land bridge between Russia and occupied Crimea.
To the West, Ukrainian forces have been pushing on the path that leads toward Melitopol; having secured the key village of Robotyne, they were fighting fiercely this week at the village of Verbove, the next step in the advance. On Friday, the Ukrainian military said it had pushed three and a half miles beyond Robotyne, and John Kirby, the White House National Security Council spokesman, said Ukraine had made “notable progress” in the preceding 72 hours.
Urozhaine lies on an route farther east, along a small rural road that leads to Mariupol on the southern coast.
The battle over the village would last nine days, with the Russians finally retreating on Aug. 19 under a hail of Ukrainian artillery fire. It was a small but necessary step. As with Robotyne, securing it meant Ukraine’s forces had broken through the Russians’ first layer of defenses. Just as importantly, they have now held it for two weeks.
There are still some 60 miles of hard road ahead for the Ukrainians before they can reach the coast, and at least one more heavily fortified Russian defensive line in their way. The Russians are resisting fiercely, protected by entrenched positions, minefields and air superiority. The marines expect the fight to be bloody and slow.
“Russians have more artillery, more tanks, more drones, and more people,” said a veteran marine named Denis. “And they also fortify very well — whenever they get to somewhere — be it a settlement, a forest belt, or just a field.”
Ukrainian Marines during training exercises in the south. There are many newly trained recruits joining the war effort.
A Marine runs during training exercises. The path forward on the counteroffensive has been grueling.
The Ukrainians allowed a team from The New York Times to visit marines fighting on the road to Mariupol on multiple occasions over two weeks in August, on the condition that the journalists not reveal precise locations, soldiers’ full names and ranks, and certain operational details.
Daily success is measured in yards rather than miles. But dozens of these assaults have been raging daily for weeks and, taken together, they are adding up to gains that Ukraine says will pose increasing problems for overstretched Russian forces.
In more than a dozen interviews in recent days, troops engaged in combat voiced great confidence that they can break the Russian lines.
“After the first and the second lines there will be the straight way toward the sea, no more fortifications,” said Maksym, another veteran marine who fought in Urozhaine. “We will move like rockets.”
The marines are fighting on a line that runs south along the T0158, a rural road that winds its way through the Mokri Yali River Valley, where Ukrainians have retaken a series of villages since launching their counteroffensive in June. The next major assault target is Staromlynivka, about 12 miles from where the campaign began.
The Russians are racing in reinforcements to try and stop the advance, Ukrainian soldiers said.
Their description of the battle at Urozhaine was supported by unedited Ukrainian drone footage viewed by The Times. Key details also corresponded with accounts posted on social media by Russian soldiers and bloggers.
Ukrainian soldiers with a resupply of artillery for their 122-millimeter howitzer in the Bakhmut region.
Ukrainian soldier looking for a drone overhead that they can hear.
Before attacking Russians in a village, Ukrainians fight to control the elevated positions on the flanks, hoping to make the Russian positions untenable and limit the house-to-house fighting.
Each settlement presents many of the same challenges, so the marines map out each assault and drill as much as they can before launching an attack.
“The most important thing is to hold the first street,” Denis said. “Then we send an additional drone that looks at each building. Our soldiers are divided into two groups: the fire group and the maneuver group. The fire group shoots Russians hiding on different floors of the building and then the maneuver group clears it. This is how we move house after house.”
If the assault fails, he said, they call in artillery strikes and destroy the house.
The Russians are also adapting, the marines said, including using new tactics to make the already treacherous minefields even more lethal.
They will lace a pasture filled with mines with a flammable agent, for instance. Once the Ukrainians get to work clearing an opening, the Russians will drop a grenade from a drone, igniting a sea of fire and explosions.
The mining makes control over paved roads essential; they are the safest routes because mines are easier to spot and remove. The Russians know this and have set up defenses along the T0158, with concrete bunkers for machine gunners. Russian drones keep the roads under constant surveillance.
As Denis spoke a few miles from the line of contact, a unit was practicing an assault on a house. There is no shortage of battered buildings to run such drills, so they move locations often.
Ukrainian marines during exercises. The military does not have the luxury of a lot of time for training.
Marines of the Ukrainian Armed Forces during training exercises in the region of Vuhledar.
But Russian drones picked up the gathering of soldiers and fired rockets at them. The soldiers heard the whistle of the incoming rockets and had seconds to dive for cover. They scattered as the Russians unleashed another salvo. A hail of rockets crashed around the marines, but no one was injured.
A few days later, another group was preparing for their next assault along the road to Mariupol. They were among a recent influx of Marines who had completed training in Britain but had yet to experience combat.
A trainer named Vasyl, 53, was running the drills, barking orders as the new soldiers fired live rounds and rocket-propelled grenades for the first time. Time is a luxury they do not have as battles rage, he said, “so we do our best to get them ready as soon as possible.”
A key part of forming a successful assault unit, the soldiers said, was finding the most motivated recruits willing to race into a cauldron of destruction.
Like other Ukrainian outfits, the marines are composed of a mix of career fighters, volunteers and mobilized conscripts. About 70 percent come from the local area — including the occupied city of Mariupol — and soldiers believe that gives them a distinct advantage over an enemy they view as fighting for a paycheck, and holding positions out of fear of punishment for retreating.
As experienced soldiers, Andriy and Maksym, both 35, guided the new recruits.
“Of course we had some losses, not within our platoon, but within the brigade,” Maksym said. “It’s war, you know.”
Still, the marines achieved their objective in Urozhaine and were one small step closer to the sea.
“It’s also important for self-confidence and motivation,” Maksym said. “Many of the guys were new, it was their first fight. And now they know how it is.”
Marines practice carrying a wounded comrade during training exercises in the region of Vuhledar.
Gaëlle Girbes and Dimitry Yatsenko contributed reporting from the front line.
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
Tyler Hicks is a senior photographer for The Times. In 2014, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography for his coverage of the Westgate Mall massacre in Nairobi, Kenya. More about Tyler Hicks
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The New York Times · by Marc Santora · September 2, 2023
23. The Joint Force Needs a Counter-SOF Strategy
I am glad to see the author recognizes SOF on SOF conflict is to be avoided. I have been told by non-SOF personnel that we should use our SOF to attack the adversary's SOF. E.g., "It takes a SOF guy to defeat a SOF guy." This is usually an excuse used to aovid having to think about or commit resources to defeating enemy SOF.
Excerpts:
The following nine principles should be considered when developing a counter-SOF strategy:
• Specialized intelligence processes are critical.
• Identifying own force vulnerabilities provides invaluable insight.
• Anticipating friendly force and line penetration is important.
• Adaptability of friendly forces to contend with force infiltration is imperative.
• Rapid countering actions may prove decisive.
• Targeting specialized platforms is worth the effort.
• SOF-on-SOF engagements should be avoided at all cost.
• Massed conventional forces are a credible deterrent.
• Overwhelming firepower should be part of the plan to isolate and defeat SOF.
These principles are not all-inclusive, but they contribute to an overall framework for a counter-SOF strategy.
Strategic conflict will include the threat of adversary SOF, which demands forethought—i.e., developing a joint strategy for countering adversary SOF efforts with conventional forces. Integrating joint force capabilities and Special Operations Command expertise to build such a strategy is possible and should be prioritized, to provide operational commanders guidance before conflict erupts.
The Joint Force Needs a Counter-SOF Strategy
By Lieutenant Commander Alex Crosby, U.S. Navy
September 2023 Proceedings Vol. 149/9/1,447
usni.org · September 1, 2023
In a potential strategic conflict, the U.S. joint force must be prepared to counter adversary special operations forces (SOF) threatening U.S. national interests at home and abroad. The severity of these threats and the differences between conventional and special operations forces call for a joint strategy that better integrates U.S. Special Operations Command expertise with conventional force capabilities.
SOF Characteristics
Special operations forces are force multipliers and an asymmetric counter to a technological overmatch. Adversaries likely will recognize their benefits and the impact they could have on the joint force’s ability to conduct and sustain military operations. U.S. Navy (Katie Cox)
Several characteristics emphasize the challenges—and opportunities—adversary SOF present for the joint force:
Speed and strategic effects. Special operations usually are rapid clandestine or covert actions aimed at causing decisive strategic effects. They typically are conducted in sensitive areas under demanding time constraints and high operational risk. In addition, SOF operate deep behind enemy lines against critical targets.1
Adversary SOF likely would be employed for surgical attacks to prepare the battlespace for a larger conventional force.2 They would precede or act as forcible entry forces to identify, clarify, establish, or modify conditions necessary for a lodgment and eventual force breakout. Specifically, adversary SOF likely would seize small, initial lodgments at targets necessary for follow-on conventional force movement and maneuver, such as airfields, seaports, and rail centers. They also may provide or assist with fire support and reconnaissance that conventional forces are incapable of or not structured to execute.3
Signature management. SOF manage their signatures to obfuscate mission profiles and complicate countertargeting efforts. Like other modern military components, they are highly dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum, including for communications and intelligence; however, their requirements are lower than those of conventional forces, which allows them to operate relatively independent of burdensome communication structures.4 In addition, SOF prioritize sophisticated communication systems incorporating satellite relays or encryption to protect against detection.5
Specialized platforms. SOF often require specialized vehicles for infiltration, operation, and exfiltration. Examples include modified helicopters and four-wheeled vehicles designed for austere environments. Maritime SOF also have unique equipment, such as diver propulsion vehicles and undersea personnel delivery systems that launch from host vessels.6
These three aspects of SOF are directly relevant when establishing a counter-SOF strategy. Identifying own force vulnerabilities, especially those with operational and strategic ramifications across theaters, can provide insight into likely targets of adversary SOF. Specialized intelligence processes can undermine their signature management efforts and identify the distinct signatures of their specialized platforms, as well as their unique supply chains, making countertargeting efforts more successful.
Expertise and Intel
Integrating Special Operations Command’s expertise—especially its understanding of special operations tactics, techniques, and procedures—in the conventional force offers a way to develop a counter-SOF strategy. This expertise would be most effective if fully integrated into joint force operational planning and mission execution, which could include Special Operations Command liaising directly with the theater component commands to integrate, coordinate, and deconflict operations and ensure SOF support is oriented around counter-SOF efforts. The likely source for SOF liaison officers would be the theater special operations commands (TSOCs), which are uniquely suited to provide broad and continuous mission support for their respective geographic combatant commands (GCCs).7
With responsibility for manning, training, and equipping the friendly SOF community, including developing strategies and doctrines relevant to the geographic combatant commands, Special Operations Command could lead the development of a counter-SOF strategy for the joint force, with input from the conventional force of each GCC. This strategy could be disseminated through the TSOCs and operationalized by GCC conventional forces.
Specialized intelligence would be a critical element in implementing a counter-SOF strategy and the integration of friendly SOF and conventional forces. Given the speed of SOF operations, intelligence must be prompt and tailored to the needs of operational commanders countering adversary SOF—for example, to support dynamic targeting, such as close air support, for kinetic and non-kinetic fires by the conventional force.8 The specialized intelligence to support a counter-SOF strategy would require more efficient intelligence processes and authoritative direction of the intelligence community to meet the demands of conventional force operational commanders.
A necessary component
Some may argue that SOF are not relevant or critical in a strategic conflict. They and their high-value skills would be too susceptible to loss during such a conflict. The use of devastating force by conventional forces would negate any benefit from including SOF in operational fires. And, finally, joint warfighting concepts see conventional forces as the central component of strategic conflict, with minimal consideration for the employment of SOF.
However, the consequences of failing to have a counter-SOF strategy and the lack of time for adopting one once conflict erupts speak to the need to have a joint strategy in place early. As in all military operations, the adversary will seek to attack friendly centers of gravity. To prepare, the joint force should determine its critical vulnerabilities, which are likely to be targets for adversary SOF. Adversary SOF are particularly threatening to the joint security areas that support the theater-wide sustainment operations critical for continued conventional force actions.9 Unchecked, adversary SOF could strike air and sea points of departure, troop locations, and lines of communication to inflict strategic, decisive, and lasting effects.10 Given the devastating ramifications of adversary SOF, developing a counter-SOF strategy after such strikes will be too late.
SOF will likely be a central component of an adversary’s strategy in a high-end conflict. They are force multipliers, an asymmetric counter to a technological overmatch. In addition, adversary SOF, especially maritime SOF, threaten rear areas that would be critical for U.S. sustainment and force projection in a strategic conflict. Adversaries likely will recognize the immense benefits of special operations and the impact they could have on the joint force’s ability to conduct and sustain military operations.11
A Joint Strategy Framework
The following nine principles should be considered when developing a counter-SOF strategy:
• Specialized intelligence processes are critical.
• Identifying own force vulnerabilities provides invaluable insight.
• Anticipating friendly force and line penetration is important.
• Adaptability of friendly forces to contend with force infiltration is imperative.
• Rapid countering actions may prove decisive.
• Targeting specialized platforms is worth the effort.
• SOF-on-SOF engagements should be avoided at all cost.
• Massed conventional forces are a credible deterrent.
• Overwhelming firepower should be part of the plan to isolate and defeat SOF.
These principles are not all-inclusive, but they contribute to an overall framework for a counter-SOF strategy.
Strategic conflict will include the threat of adversary SOF, which demands forethought—i.e., developing a joint strategy for countering adversary SOF efforts with conventional forces. Integrating joint force capabilities and Special Operations Command expertise to build such a strategy is possible and should be prioritized, to provide operational commanders guidance before conflict erupts.
1. See Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Publication 3-05, Special Operations (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 16 July 2014), I-1; and William Rosenau, Special Operations Forces and Elusive Enemy Ground Targets: Lessons from Vietnam and the Persian Gulf War (Santa Monica, CA: Project Air Force/Rand, 2001), 36.
2. John B. Alexander, The Changing Nature of Warfare, the Factors Mediating Future Conflict, and Implications for Special Operations Forces (Hurlburt Field, FL: JSOU Press, 2006), 37.
3. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Publication 3-0, Joint Campaigns and Operations (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 18 June 2022), vii–22.
4. Alexander, The Changing Nature of Warfare, 39.
5. Joint Publication 3-05, Special Operations, I-1.
6. Rosenau, Special Operations Forces, 35; and John Chen and Joel Wuthnow, China Maritime Report No. 18: Chinese Special Operations in a Large-Scale Island Landing (Newport, RI: Naval War College China Maritime Studies Institute, 2022), 9
7. Joint Publication 3-05, Special Operations, I-3.
8. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Publication 3-09, Joint Fire Support (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 10 April 2019), iv–13, 14.
9. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Publication 3-10, Joint Security Operations in Theater (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 25 July 2019), iv–13.
10. Joseph F. Whelan, Countering Enemy Special Purpose Forces: An Evolving Mission for United States Special Operations Forces? (Fort Leavenworth, KS: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, School of Advanced Military Studies, 2001), 17.
11. Yair Ansbacher and Ron Schleifer, “How Special Operations Forces Can Contribute Strategically to Modern Wars: An Israel-US Case Study Comparison,” The RUSI Journal 166, no. 4 (August 2021): 39.
usni.org · September 1, 2023
24. Biden’s Destiny Is Linked to Ukraine’s
Excerpts:
Finally, doubling down on the support for Ukraine requires political leadership. In February, Biden delivered an excellent foreign policy speech in Warsaw, Poland. He said, before gathered heads of state and government and many European journalists,
One year into this war, Putin no longer doubts the strength of our coalition. But he still doubts our conviction. He doubts our staying power. He doubts our continued support for Ukraine. He doubts whether NATO can remain unified.
But there should be no doubt: Our support for Ukraine will not waver, NATO will not be divided, and we will not tire.
Yet Americans have barely heard from him on the subject of Ukraine since. That is political malpractice.
Now is not the time to play it safe. The past sixteen months have demonstrated that Putin’s regime is in no position to launch a world war in response to our assistance to Ukraine. Conversely, and in contrast to recent reports questioning Ukrainian military tactics, the administration has only its own self-deterrent instincts to blame for Ukraine’s slow progress on the battlefield.
The outcome of the war in Ukraine matters not just for the security of Europe or of the Indo-Pacific. It will also either boost or critically undermine America’s self-confidence, especially after the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan. And most importantly for Biden, his re-election and second term may well hinge on whether Ukrainians are able to achieve a complete victory before his time in office is up. He should act accordingly.
Biden’s Destiny Is Linked to Ukraine’s
As goes Ukraine’s war against Russian aggression, so likely goes Biden’s re-election campaign.
https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/bidens-destiny-is-linked-to-ukraines
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U.S. President Joe Biden makes an announcement on additional military support for Ukraine in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on January 25, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
THERE’S A NEW CONVENTIONAL WISDOM in Washington, best illustrated by the recent New York Times story featuring nameless Biden administration officials venting their frustration with Ukraine’s conduct of its defense against Russian aggression. Ukrainians are brave and deserve our support, goes the thinking, but the conflict will end in a stalemate.
If true, it would also be terrible news for President Biden, who needs his administration’s record in Ukraine to be an asset, rather than a liability, as he runs for re-election in 2024.
Whether he wants to or not, as a political issue, Biden owns the war in Ukraine. Even though, as Eric Edelman and Franklin Miller point out, “President Biden has never made the public case for his own policy in a primetime Oval Office address or anything other than on-the-run comments to the media,” he has repeatedly called for supporting Ukraine for “as long as it takes” (whatever that means). Trump, by contrast, has kept curiously quiet on Ukraine, besides promising to end the war in 24 hours. Biden has come under fire from a small but vocal cohort of Republicans for supposedly having written a “blank check” to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Support for Ukraine has declined faster among Republicans than among Democrats, with almost half of the GOP voters amenable to Russian territorial gains if it means a swift end to the war, according to a Gallup poll conducted in June. Just 19 percent of Democrats agreed. (In a May poll, 82 percent of Ukrainians opposed giving up any of Ukraine’s sovereign territory under any circumstances.)
Recent amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act to scrap funding for Ukraine, proposed by Reps. Marjorie Taylor Green and Matt Gaetz, were soundly defeated including by majorities of House Republicans (130-89 and 149-70, respectively). But opposition to Ukraine aid was still much higher than in 2022, when almost all Republicans voted for supplemental appropriations.
However, in a recent Hart Research poll, 74 percent of Americans, including 66 percent of Republicans, agreed that it was important to help “Ukraine defeat Russian aggression without Ukraine being forces to give up any of its territory to Russia,” making support for Kyiv’s war aims a winning political proposition—as long as the war effort is effective.
The danger of the new conventional wisdom is that it might turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. To be sure, there are good reasons to believe that the pessimists are underrating the cumulative nature of Ukraine’s advances and ignoring Ukraine’s determination to fight now, with or without Western support.
However, developments on the battlefield are also a function of Washington’s choices. If Biden continues to balk at providing Ukraine additional weapons, Ukraine’s war effort will become much harder.
Biden faces two possible feedback cycles. If Ukraine gets the weapons and support it needs, Americans are more likely to support its war aims, making it politically easier for the administration to send more aid, ask Congress for more appropriations, and help Ukraine win faster. The international landscape and Biden’s political position would benefit, and untold Ukrainian (and Russian) lives would be saved.
The reverse could also happen. The slow pace of Ukraine’s counteroffensive (which now may be accelerating) has already degraded American support for the helping Ukraine and raised fears on both the American right and left of “forever wars.” If Ukraine fails to win because it lacks the necessary resources, more Americans will balk at investing a hopeless situation.
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Going down that path would be political suicide for the administration. Biden cannot run on a record of another “forever war.” A frozen conflict, or some dodgy deal with Putin’s regime, will also make Biden look weak and ineffectual, given the considerable cost of U.S. support. The Biden administration has allocated $43 billion in security assistance for Ukraine since February 2022 (not including humanitarian and financial support). In for $43 billion, in for a pound.
In short, any outcome short of a Ukrainian victory is a threat to Biden’s 2024 run. More worryingly, it is bound to deal a fatal blow to what remains of the frayed internationalist consensus in U.S. foreign policy. If, after Iraq and Afghanistan, we will have spent tens of billions more with little to show for it, then maybe, many Americans will conclude, the isolationists were right all along. The costs of isolationism will, as usual, only become clear when it’s too late to avoid them.
Biden has only two options: go big or go home. The weapons systems that the United States has denied the Ukrainians for misguided fears of Russian escalation must be handed over now. That includes the ATACMs, the F-16s (the delivery of which the administration seems to be deliberately slow-walking), and the thousands of Abrams tanks collecting dust in storage.
Resistance from some Republicans, particularly in the House, against future Ukraine aid authorizations might be hardening. But that is no reason for Biden not to push hard for more money. If nothing else, reminding voters that Republicans are divided on the subject provides a political benefit.
Finally, doubling down on the support for Ukraine requires political leadership. In February, Biden delivered an excellent foreign policy speech in Warsaw, Poland. He said, before gathered heads of state and government and many European journalists,
One year into this war, Putin no longer doubts the strength of our coalition. But he still doubts our conviction. He doubts our staying power. He doubts our continued support for Ukraine. He doubts whether NATO can remain unified.
But there should be no doubt: Our support for Ukraine will not waver, NATO will not be divided, and we will not tire.
Yet Americans have barely heard from him on the subject of Ukraine since. That is political malpractice.
Now is not the time to play it safe. The past sixteen months have demonstrated that Putin’s regime is in no position to launch a world war in response to our assistance to Ukraine. Conversely, and in contrast to recent reports questioning Ukrainian military tactics, the administration has only its own self-deterrent instincts to blame for Ukraine’s slow progress on the battlefield.
The outcome of the war in Ukraine matters not just for the security of Europe or of the Indo-Pacific. It will also either boost or critically undermine America’s self-confidence, especially after the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan. And most importantly for Biden, his re-election and second term may well hinge on whether Ukrainians are able to achieve a complete victory before his time in office is up. He should act accordingly.
25. U.S. Arms Makers Look Overseas to Boost Stockpiles
The author mentions AUKUS and its importance. I would submit that "JAROKUS" – Japan - ROK - US – could be an even more important "partner" in the Arsenal of Democracy. The South Korean and Japanese defense industries could really be game changers in helping to arm like minded democracies and South Korea has already demonstrated this with arms sales to Poland and Romania among others. And South Korea has been backfilling 155mm artillery ammunition to the US as our stockpiles are reduced by providing support to Ukraine.
U.S. Arms Makers Look Overseas to Boost Stockpiles
Amid Ukraine war and China concerns, Pentagon supports ‘friend-shoring’ manufacturing lines abroad
By Doug Cameron
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Sept. 2, 2023 8:00 am ET
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/u-s-arms-makers-look-overseas-to-boost-stockpiles-1e1d6eac?page=1
War in Ukraine and fears of a potential conflict with China are pushing the Pentagon and its contractors to tap production lines overseas to bolster stockpiles of weapons and ammunition.
The turn to overseas weapons production to meet the soaring global demand comes as the U.S. government tries to boost manufacturing in key technologies like drones, missiles and rocket motors in countries such as Germany, Poland and Australia.
The Pentagon recently outlined plans to build thousands of autonomous weapons such as drones within two years to deter China. But shortages of chips, machinery and skilled workers have limited U.S. defense companies’ ability to surge capacity at home.
Meanwhile, the conflict in Ukraine is driving up demand for artillery shells and missiles, which Kyiv’s forces have used in vast quantities in their attempt to drive back Russian forces this summer. Pentagon planners have said that demand would be dwarfed in any conflict with China.
As a result, the Defense Department is encouraging defense contractors to pursue so-called friend-shoring, by relaxing rules for overseas production and the sharing of military technology with foreign manufacturers in allied nations.
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U.S. defense contractors’ inability to quickly replenish weaponry such as missiles and munitions for Ukraine has led Pentagon officials to argue that industry consolidation has gone too far and raised questions about how prepared America is for conflict. Illustration: Adele Morgan
Pentagon acquisition chief Bill LaPlante said recently that the Defense Department planned to announce a raft of deals over the next several months aimed at setting up weapons-factory production lines in Europe and elsewhere.
“Where we’re headed is co-development, co-production and co-sustainment with our partners,” he said.
The new climate has enabled deals that will see Polish companies produce U.S.-designed Javelin missiles—widely used in Ukraine—and German ones make parts for the
Lockheed Martin F-35 jet fighter, and a new rocket launcher. The U.S. has committed more than $40 billion in arms, ammunition and supplies to Ukraine since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, but U.S. defense companies have taken longer than the Pentagon expected to boost production at home to maintain U.S. stocks.
In lieu of that, U.S. defense companies and those in allied nations are seeking to exploit and expand production capacity overseas.
U.S. companies producing weapons and military equipment overseas isn’t new, with Lockheed Martin, RTX and
General Dynamics all operating facilities acquired through foreign acquisitions.However, most overseas production has occurred under so-called offset deals in which export buyers agree to purchase U.S. weapons in return for some production—and jobs—taking place in their own country.
The first signs of the Pentagon’s approach are emerging, alongside efforts by its big contractors.
In August, the Army awarded Canada’s IMT Defense the first tranche of contracts for shell production, designed to give manufacturers more certainty with guaranteed orders spread over multiple years. More awards are planned.
New alliance is a ‘sea change’
Among the most significant efforts to boost production through cooperative deals is the three-way alliance among Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. known as Aukus. The pact includes providing Australia with submarines. Beyond that, it includes using Australia to produce armed drones, rocket motors and other equipment for the Pentagon.
“Aukus is a sea change,” said Alek Jovovic, a principal in the aerospace and defense practice at Oliver Wyman, pointing to the technology transfer between the U.S. and Australia.
From left, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, President Biden and U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak discussed Aukus at the Point Loma naval base in San Diego in March. PHOTO: STEFAN ROUSSEAU/ZUMA PRESS
The planned increase in European defense budgets following the conflict in Ukraine has also encouraged U.S. companies to invest more in the region and pursue more joint ventures.
Berlin’s $8.8 billion order for F-35 combat jets opened the door for Germany to join the multicountry consortium that makes pieces for the stealthy plane.
Northrop Grumman picked Rheinmetall, a big German maker of ammunition and tank parts, to make center fuselage sections in a new joint venture.The German company fills a gap left by Turkish companies after Turkey was ejected from the F-35 program in 2019, because it chose to buy a Russian missile-defense system that could have compromised the plane’s effectiveness.
However, Rheinmetall won’t just fill the gap left by Turkey, it will provide extra capacity, said Dave Keffer, Northrop’s chief financial officer.
Poland’s military build up has been even larger than Germany’s, with billions of dollars in orders over the past year for equipment from the U.S., South Korea, Turkey and elsewhere.
Javelin missile makers Lockheed Martin and RTX are in talks with Poland’s Mesko, part of the state-owned PGZ arms group, to make Javelins and parts for the Patriot missile-defense system, according to company executives.
Przemysław Kowalczuk, the managing director of Mesko, said the timing of the final agreement for Javelin production depends on the U.S. State Department, which has final say over such deals.
Frank St. John, Lockheed’s chief operating officer, said the Pentagon and the State Department have been working on a new framework to streamline approvals for such joint ventures and co-production.
The downside includes exposing companies to foreign-currency swings and broader political winds. When Turkey was culled from the F-35 program, the Pentagon estimated it would take a year to find alternatives to Turkish suppliers. It took three.
U.S. military officials maintain that current stocks of missiles and shells are adequate for the threats facing the U.S. The Army declined to comment on whether the production capacity scheduled to come online from overseas would count toward the Pentagon’s targets for boosting output, including a planned tripling of 155mm artillery shells over the next 18 months to 80,000 a month.
Karolina Jeznach contributed to this article.
Write to Doug Cameron at Doug.Cameron@wsj.com
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
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