Quotes of the Day:
"Kimilsungism is a mixture of socialism, nationalism, and Kim Il Sung worship. North Korean propagandists have forged Kim Il Sung as the world's greatest nationalist, enabling Korea to emancipate itself from the imperial powers of Japan, the U.S., the Soviet Union, and China."
-Aie-Rie Lee, Hyun-chool Lee, Ji-Yong Lee,and Il-Gi Kim, quoted in Benjamin Young's book, Guns, Guerrilla, and the Great leader; North Korea and the Third World
"When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives."
- Robert A. Heinlein
"Philosophy is common sense with big words."
- James Madison
1. Ken Burns Says Current Times ‘Equal’ to Civil War, Depression and World War II: ‘It’s Really Serious’
2. When America’s All-Volunteer Force Loses a War
3. The Biden Administration Needs to Act Fast to Reset Relations with France
4. U.S. Allies Still Trust America
5. Congress’ Afghanistan watchdog will continue oversight
6. Assessing the Alignment of U.S. Diplomatic and Military Power to Forestall Armed Conflict
7. The Atlantic Alliance After Afghanistan
8. How America Should Deal With the Taliban
9. FDD | The Bizarre Positive Biden Spin on Afghanistan
10. Islamic State bombs Taliban convoys in eastern Afghanistan
11. AFSOC plans to demo amphibious MC-130J by end of next year, commander says
12. Air Force Special Operations Commander Expects New, Lighter Plane to Fight Terrorists Next Year
13. Pentagon replacing Defense Travel System, says savings and user satisfaction will result
14. Shaping a Way Ahead for Pacific Defense: The Evolving Role of the USAF
15. Biden seeks to open a new chapter in world affairs, facing fresh skepticism from allies
16. A Rahm Emanuel is Exactly What Japan Wants, Asia Scholars Say
17. It's clearer to India than ever that Quad is no military alliance. Everything's a bit AUKUS
18. Indo-Pacific needs 'third way'
19. The Key to Understanding Our Endless Wars Is the Goat Cart Theory
20. China: the overly sensitive superpower
21. Xi Jinping Aims to Rein In Chinese Capitalism, Hew to Mao’s Socialist Vision
22. The War in Afghanistan Is What Happens When McKinsey Types Run Everything
23. AUKUS Is the Death Knell of Australia's Strategic Ambiguity
24. Beijing’s bid to join CPTPP may fail yet also succeed, experts say
25. A ‘Proof of Death’ Video From Xinjiang
26. Army finally reveals why a soldier is being court-martialed for a mysterious firefight in Syria
27. Afghanistan Was Lost in the Halls of Harvard
28. Air Force general to review errant Kabul drone strike, make recommendations for discipline
1. Ken Burns Says Current Times ‘Equal’ to Civil War, Depression and World War II: ‘It’s Really Serious’
One of the most provocative statements I have heard lately.
You can listen to the hour and a half podcast at the link below.
Ken Burns Says Current Times ‘Equal’ to Civil War, Depression and World War II: ‘It’s Really Serious’
Amy Sussman/Getty Images
Historian and documentary filmmaker Ken Burns said that the present day is one of the worst times in American history.
Burns made the remark while on the “SmartLess” podcast, hosted by Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, and Sean Hayes, comparing current events with the Civil War, the Depression, and World War II.
“It’s really serious. There are three great crises before this: the Civil War, the Depression, and World War II. This is equal to it,” he said on Monday’s episode when asked about the direction the United States was headed.
The documentarian went on to quote comments made by Abraham Lincoln during a January 1838 speech to a group in Springfield, Illinois:
From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we will live forever or die by suicide.
Lincoln’s statement highlights how the greatest threat to America is the nation itself through death by suicide.
“We’re looking right down the muzzle of that gun,” Burns added.
Listen above, via SmartLess
2. When America’s All-Volunteer Force Loses a War
Excerpt:
The humiliating end to America’s longest war came suddenly, and its shocks will ripple throughout the U.S. military for years to come. But in the immediate aftermath of this painful defeat, the nation’s civilian and military leadership should recognize that they have some new obligations to the all-volunteer force that they lead. These leaders should address the individual pain and anger that many servicemembers may be feeling by affirming the fundamental value of their military service. They should reaffirm the warrior ethos that animates each of the military services and the special operations community and commit to upholding those virtues. They should both ensure that the hard lessons of the past 20 years are identified and truly learned and hold themselves accountable for the disastrously executed withdrawal that left thousands of America’s partners behind. These tasks stem partly from a moral obligation to those who sacrificed so much over the past 20 years, but they are also necessary to ensure that the all-volunteer force remains strong, capable, and motivated to fight America’s future wars. If the men and women who fought in the Afghanistan conflict are to remain fully committed to their service tomorrow, and to continue encouraging young people to consider military service, they need to hear about the end to this long war from those at the top.
When America’s All-Volunteer Force Loses a War - War on the Rocks
The sudden fall of Afghanistan marks the very first time that the U.S. military has clearly lost a war fought solely by volunteers. This defeat will have many strategic consequences, but it also may have a deeply corrosive effect on the nation’s all-volunteer military. Losing a war can be debilitating for any military organization and can deeply erode morale and confidence. For a force that is widely viewed as the most capable and professional military in the world, the potential for such harmful consequences should not be underestimated. Left unaddressed, they could imperil the long-term health and effectiveness of the all-volunteer force.
Arguments will rage for a long time about whether the United States could have won the war in Afghanistan with another approach — or even won at all. But after the nation invested two decades, more than $2 trillion, and the lives of almost 2,500 military personnel, the outcome remains the same. Afghanistan is now occupied and controlled by essentially the same Taliban movement that governed the country in 2001 and which is gleefully celebrating its victory over the United States, NATO, and the internationally backed government in Kabul. The U.S. military now faces the challenge of processing this defeat on two different levels: as individuals, among those who deployed and fought, and as an institution, in which the military’s leaders should now help the all-volunteer force process this painful outcome while simultaneously ensuring that it remains strong and capable of winning the nation’s future wars.
Individually, those who served in Afghanistan are reeling from the speed and shock of the final collapse that capped a frustrating war many of them committed years of their lives to fighting. Watching scenes of the chaotic evacuation of Americans and some of their Afghan allies from Kabul, those who served in the Hindu Kush — one of us included — are inevitably experiencing painful and clashing emotions of anger, loss, grief, and resentment. They face an existential question about their service: Why did I sacrifice years of my life and lose friends in a war that essentially ended up where it began, with Afghanistan in the hands of the Taliban?
That angst will be compounded by a deep sense that the humiliating departure from Afghanistan — nearly the worst imaginable way to leave — represented a violation, an abandonment even, of the deepest ethos instilled among those who serve in uniform. All of the U.S. military services subscribe to a version of what the Army calls its warrior ethos: “I will always place the mission first. I will never accept defeat. I will never quit. I will never leave a fallen comrade.” The Marine Corps reflects this commitment in its recruiting pitch, “Battles Won,” and in its famed motto, Semper Fidelis (always faithful). And in the special operations community, “no one left behind” is a sacrosanct bond. An untold number of military servicemembers have been killed and wounded fulfilling that specific commitment to their brothers and sisters in arms during the past 20 years.
Yet the chaotic bumbling of the last days of the Afghanistan War undercut every aspect of this ethos. Committing to leave no one behind is especially important when creating bonds between the men and women who choose to place themselves in harm’s way for the nation. Many servicemembers now believe that the nation violated that bedrock principle by leaving behind 100 to 200 Americans and tens or even hundreds of thousands of Afghans who supported the United States at great personal risk over the last 20 years. Ad hoc veteran and military efforts to help get those people out in the last weeks of the U.S. withdrawal, which have been brilliantly described as a “digital Dunkirk,” powerfully reflects this deep-seated military creed.
Military leaders at all levels are going to have to confront these issues — for themselves and for their troops. And though that will be a complex and difficult process, this conversation should begin with the following message: “You served honorably and did what the nation asked you to do.” For the nation to keep its promise to those it asked to fight, this affirmation is a vital expression of gratitude and respect for all those who deployed to Afghanistan simply because the nation sent them. But it is not sufficient to sustain a strong all-volunteer force into the future. Unlike the U.S. defeat in Vietnam, the costs of this war — especially its human costs — were borne not by the nation as a whole, but by a small cohort of volunteer warriors while the vast majority of Americans remained uninvolved and largely uninterested. The failures of the war, and the policies that led to them, do not in any way diminish the fact that every single person who served in the war volunteered to fight when there was no obligation to do so. That choice, and the profound consequences it would have for those who stepped forward, shielded the rest of us from the painful experiences of war. The nation’s leaders and its people have an obligation to convey their gratitude for those who volunteered to serve so that those who follow in their footsteps know that their sacrifices are both honored and appreciated.
Institutionally, the U.S. military faces three critical tasks. First, it has both a moral and a practical obligation to dissect what went wrong during the 20 years of war and to demonstrate that it has processed and learned from those hard lessons. Current and future generations of servicemembers ought to have confidence that the hard lessons from Afghanistan were not buried and that harsh critiques of wartime decisions and performance in this war’s aftermath were welcomed in order to better prepare for any future irregular wars. The U.S. military utterly failed to do this after the Vietnam War, as it sought to erase counter-insurgency from its institutional memory instead of insisting on a brutal degree of self-assessment examining how military actions contributed to the defeat. As a result, a new generation of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines entered their own unconventional wars a quarter century later with no current doctrine or training on fighting insurgents. This should never happen again.
Second, U.S. military leaders ought to clearly identify what went wrong with the disastrous evacuation and take full responsibility for their part in the debacle. The decision to end the war was rightly made by civilian leaders. Their decision may or may not have been strategically wise. But the execution of the withdrawal was clearly a military responsibility, and it was indisputably done poorly. Congress is already scheduling hearings in an effort to establish some accountability for the war’s ghastly final days and for leaving behind so many Afghans who took tremendous personal risks to help the American effort. In recent weeks, we’ve both seen many social media posts about the withdrawal referencing Paul Yingling’s famous observation about recent conflicts — that a private who loses a rifle suffers greater consequences than a general who loses a war. Restoring confidence in the key principles of the warrior ethos requires senior leaders to launch a swift and candid assessment of the bungled conclusion to the war — perhaps by an independent and respected outside body, to ensure its credibility — and to hold themselves accountable for any military failures.
Third, senior leaders of the Department of Defense and the services should guide the force to somehow absorb the loss of the war in Afghanistan constructively. After the rancorous end of the Vietnam War in 1975, many servicemembers and veterans concluded that the war was lost primarily because civilian leaders imposed too many restrictions on military operations, forcing the military to fight with one hand tied behind its back. For some, this led to an insidious belief that the military had been “stabbed in the back” by political leaders, the media, and anti-war protesters who ostensibly undermined the U.S. military on the battlefield and caused the U.S. capitulation. But senior U.S. military leaders, including Gens. Creighton Abrams and Frederick Weyand, sought to stamp out this dangerous interpretation by reinforcing the idea that militaries in the United States and other democratic societies always fight within constraints imposed by elected leaders. The generals ensured that the psychology of blame and defeat never took root within the force, which enabled it to refocus on preparing for the wars of the future.
The parallels with today are clear. We’ve both heard veterans of the war in Afghanistan argue that the past four administrations forced the U.S. military to fight with one hand tied behind its back in Afghanistan with overly restrictive rules of engagement and feckless decision-making. There is a clear risk that some leaders and troops may begin to blame the war’s stinging outcome on poor civilian leadership and support. Senior military and defense leaders should once again stop this narrative from spreading throughout the force. In fact, doing so today is even more important than it was after Vietnam, since a force that consists entirely of self-selected volunteers faces a greater risk than a conscript force of developing a belief that it is morally superior to the society it serves. It’s a short leap from that outlook to conclude that the military was failed in Afghanistan by the poor decisions of civilian policymakers who have never been in uniform. This third task of helping the force come to grips with the loss of Afghanistan could be strongly reinforced by the first task, since an open and candid assessment of the military’s performance during the 20 years of the war would clearly demonstrate that civilian leaders were not the only ones to make major mistakes.
The humiliating end to America’s longest war came suddenly, and its shocks will ripple throughout the U.S. military for years to come. But in the immediate aftermath of this painful defeat, the nation’s civilian and military leadership should recognize that they have some new obligations to the all-volunteer force that they lead. These leaders should address the individual pain and anger that many servicemembers may be feeling by affirming the fundamental value of their military service. They should reaffirm the warrior ethos that animates each of the military services and the special operations community and commit to upholding those virtues. They should both ensure that the hard lessons of the past 20 years are identified and truly learned and hold themselves accountable for the disastrously executed withdrawal that left thousands of America’s partners behind. These tasks stem partly from a moral obligation to those who sacrificed so much over the past 20 years, but they are also necessary to ensure that the all-volunteer force remains strong, capable, and motivated to fight America’s future wars. If the men and women who fought in the Afghanistan conflict are to remain fully committed to their service tomorrow, and to continue encouraging young people to consider military service, they need to hear about the end to this long war from those at the top.
Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, U.S. Army (ret.) and Dr. Nora Bensahel are visiting professors of strategic studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and senior fellows at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies. They are also contributing editors at War on the Rocks, where their column appears monthly. Sign up for Barno and Bensahel’s Strategic Outpost newsletter to track their articles as well as their public events.
3. The Biden Administration Needs to Act Fast to Reset Relations with France
Conclusion:
The United States needs to do something big to reset relations with France. It should use this opportunity to offer its unreserved support for E.U. defense initiatives. Doing so would represent a sea change in America’s approach to Europe. It would also lay the groundwork for European defense integration, strengthen the European Union, and hopefully reestablish a strong Franco-American partnership. It would certainly be quite the plot twist for this fracas to end up bringing the United States and France closer together. But isn’t that how romcoms always end? Let’s hope the United States can pull it off. But, to do so, it will need to act — and fast.
The Biden Administration Needs to Act Fast to Reset Relations with France - War on the Rocks
Major White House national security announcements rarely (if ever?) mimic plot lines from romantic comedies. But the announcement of a new security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States (shortened to “AUKUS”) that will, among other things, equip Australia with advanced nuclear-powered submarines — which resulted in the termination of an existing $66 billion submarine deal Australia had with France — created a fallout worthy of any rom-com. France, left at the alter by Australia, and betrayed by its wedding party, is now looking to get even. France recalled its ambassador from Washington for consultations — and there’s nothing funny about how ugly things can get unless the Biden administration takes concrete steps to repair ties with Paris.
The announcement of the submarine deal — made by President Joe Biden, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison in a joint, virtual speech — completely blindsided France. Officials in the French government and national security community thought it had entered a lasting, decades-long partnership with Australia when they signed an agreement in 2016 to buy 12 diesel-electric submarines. It was France’s largest arms sales in history and was central to its Indo-Pacific strategy. Just two weeks ago, France and Australian foreign and defense ministers met and agreed on “the importance of the Future Submarine program.” Shockingly, Australia failed to tell France before the White House announcement that it was canceling the deal. As a result, France learned of the agreement like the rest of us, from the press. Even more galling for France is that three Anglo-allies spent months collaborating yet deliberately kept France in the dark. France says top U.S. and Australian officials deceived them in one-on-one meetings throughout the summer. French Foreign Ministry Jean-Yves Le Drian called it a “stab in the back.”
For Washington, French outrage has taken some of the shine off of what the White House rightly sees as a massive accomplishment. The submarine agreement with Australia and the United Kingdom is a legacy achievement for the Biden administration. It solidifies America’s China strategy and cements U.S. relations with Australia, a key U.S. ally that has fought alongside American troops in every major military engagement since World War I. Australia been subject to brutal economic and political coercion from Beijing in the last several years, and the new Australia-U.K.-U.S. deal is a key signal that Washington will help Canberra defend its vital security interests. As a result, the White House might be tempted to say all’s fair in love and arms sales, and dismiss French complaints as a mere tantrum that will pass.
But the United States now has a huge problem.
Franco-American relations are in danger of entering a costly downward spiral, not seen since the fallout from France’s opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Yet, this dispute could become way more damaging to U.S. interests, given the depth of France’s sense that America betrayed its confidence, France’s role in NATO and the European Union, and the growing importance of U.S.-E.U. cooperation on a host of important geopolitical issues, such as climate, trade, and technology regulation. France is not going to allow this to simply blow over.
The Biden administration needs to act fast to try to reset relations with Paris. In the short term, Washington should invite French President Emmanuel Macron to Washington with the expressed purpose of building a new Franco-American partnership. As part of the outreach, and the key enticement for France, the Biden administration should agree to support one of Macron’s top foreign policy priorities: the development of E.U. defense capabilities. This would represent a major change in U.S. foreign policy toward Europe, which has long opposed the development of E.U. defense efforts due to fears that it would undermine NATO and America’s role in Europe. Revamping America’s approach to Europe is not what the Biden administration had in mind when announcing an enhanced security partnership with Australia and the United Kingdom. But, to prevent a drastic deterioration in the transatlantic alliance, it’s what is now demanded.
This Is Bad and it Could Get Much Worse
France is unlikely to compartmentalize or silo its outrage. France, like the United States, is a proud republican nation with global ambitions and an outlook that is prickly slighted. Paris has already pulled its ambassadors to the United States and Australia, cancelled a Washington gala, and more substantively said it was unlikely to support continuing E.U. trade talks with Australia. It will continue to make itself heard.
French efforts to voice its displeasure with the United States will go beyond symbolic gestures. This is not to say France will just lash out. But France will have little interest in making compromises or seeking common ground with Washington on issues about which it does not care or on which it differs. This could have real blowback at NATO and its once-a-decade efforts to develop a new “strategic concept” for the alliance, which is not a major French preoccupation. France could also seek to find daylight with the United States on China and the Indo-Pacific or could up its engagement with Russia, undermining U.S. efforts to forge transatlantic unity. While reaching out to Russia has at times alienated its E.U. allies in Central and Eastern Europe, France has a history of holding out hope that engagement with Russia might moderate Moscow’s belligerent approach to Europe.
But U.S. officials should also appreciate that the submarine fallout may affect technology, trade, and even climate issues. While France can’t determine or dictate outcomes at the European Union on its own, it can certainly block agreements, push Brussels to take a harder line on trade and regulatory disputes with the United States, reduce the E.U. Commission’s negotiating leeway, and make the European Union a less flexible negotiating partner. For instance, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen travelled to Europe in July and pressed the European Union to drop or postpone their efforts to impose digital taxes on big U.S. technology companies so as not to upset talks at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on a global corporate minimum tax, a major Biden administration priority. The European Union agreed to hold off until October, causing some political blowback in the European Parliament. Perhaps France will push the European Union to go forward with its digital tax proposal or will escalate its own unilateral efforts on digital taxes and dare the United States to retaliate.
The bilateral diplomatic crisis will overshadow the much anticipated U.S.-E.U. Trade and Technology Council, which will meet in Pittsburgh in late September. The talks are critical to aligning the United States and European Union on key issues central to competition with China, such as 5G technology, digital regulation, and preventing Chinese acquisition of sensitive technologies, especially related to AI. Making progress in harmonizing trans-Atlantic approaches in areas of domestic regulation was always going to be difficult — France, if it chooses, has the power to make it almost impossible. Additionally, the United States and European Union will need to work together to reconcile their climate and trade policies, such as over the European Union’s creation of a tax on carbon-intensive imports. This will require careful negotiations with both sides showing some flexibility. In short, France has a lot of ways to make itself heard.
Without a significant U.S. effort to repair ties with France, there is a very real danger that the current crisis will have debilitating long-term damage not just for bilateral cooperation but for the trans-Atlantic alliance as a whole. America’s inept handling of the Australian submarine agreement undermined Atlanticists in the French security establishment, especially those that have worked for years to make the case that France should work with the United States in addressing concerns about China and Indo-Pacific security. That the United States humiliated France in such a brazen way has discredited those views completely. Instead, the episode will empower stakeholders in Paris who advocate for a much cooler relationship with Washington and — tapping into the Gaullist foreign policy tradition — wish to be allied with the United States, but not necessarily aligned on key issues related to Russia and China. If these arguments win out, France can stall progress and upend trans-Atlantic cooperation. This will exasperate American officials and bureaucrats and activate anti-French sentiment lurking in the U.S. government. The mutual suspicion that is already present within some elements of the bureaucracies of both governments will get worse. Frustrated and impatient, U.S. officials will throw up their hands, decry the inability to get things done, and further reduce their engagement with Europe — because why bother? Hence, a trans-Atlantic alliance badly in need of renewal after a rough four years of the Trump administration will instead wither further.
France Is a Serious Security Actor Around the World
Washington needs to work hard to get Franco-American relations back on track. While, in the past, the Washington security policy community might have dismissed French concerns, France’s position within the European Union, a market equivalent in size to the United States and China, gives it considerable clout and leverage. With Angela Merkel leaving the European stage after 16 years in office, and a new German government likely to prioritize establishing strong Franco-German relations over ties with Washington, Macron’s role will only become more important in Europe.
France has also emerged as a critical military partner for the United States over the last decade. After Brexit, France has by far the most capable military within the European Union. It spends 2 percent of its gross domestic product on defense and is willing to project military force to defend its interests. France has taken the lead in the Sahel, intervening in 2013 to stop the Malian government from falling to Islamist extremists. It continues to maintain thousands of forces in the region. Olivier-Rémy Bel of the French Ministry of Defense explained that the “limited but critical, and largely non-combatant, support” the United States provides in the form of air-refueling and drone surveillance “increases many times over the abilities of the French, European, and African forces fighting on the ground and shouldering most of the burden.” This summer, France and the United States signed a roadmap to increase special forces cooperation for counter-terrorism operations. On the same day France found out about the new partnership between Canberra, London, and Washington, it announced that French forces had killed the top Islamic State leader in Africa, who the United States held responsible for the deaths of four U.S. soldiers and at least six Nigerien soldiers in Niger. Macron noted that France would continue the fight against terrorism in the Sahel “with our African, European and American partners.”
France is also a key player in the Indo-Pacific. French Polynesia in the South Pacific is a French protectorate, giving France the second largest exclusive economic zone in the world. France has 7,000 permanently deployed forces in the region and a powerful capable navy that also features nuclear-attack submarines. France conducts freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea and in the Taiwan strait. In April, it hosted joint naval exercises with the United States, Australia, Japan, and India in the Bay of Bengal. France has a strong military relationship with India. It is providing India with 36 advanced Rafale fighter jets, which will significantly modernize India’s fighter fleet. All of this — as well as the European Union’s increased focus on the Indo-Pacific and its crucial role in setting standards on trade, technology, and supply chain issues — makes mending ties with France essential to U.S. strategy in the Indo-Pacific.
Washington may legitimately protest that it is not to blame for Australia’s cancellation of the submarine program with France. This was an Australian decision and it was up to Canberra to let Paris know about the cancellation. However, the fundamental source of France’s outrage is the way in which American officials engaged in secret diplomacy — and apparently misled Paris in high level meetings — on an issue of significant strategic and industrial importance. As a result, the Biden administration, and the president himself, is going to need a concerted effort to convince France that it is truly a valued partner of the United States. This will require more than a few words of praise from Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Setting up an apologetic phone call is not going to cut it. Instead, the administration will need to take some bold steps.
What Washington Should Do Now
The White House should begin repairing ties with France by inviting Macron to Washington for a state visit. While German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited in July and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is visiting next week, Macron has not yet been invited to Washington during the Biden administration. Washington should make clear that the purpose of the visit isn’t just to soothe bruised egos. Instead, it should be about resetting relations, with the vision of building a new Franco-American partnership.
The goal of the visit should be to reverse the broad mistrust between the U.S. and French national security bureaucracies and to lay the groundwork for more intensive cooperation. France, as noted, is already a close U.S. military partner, but the diplomatic, military, and intelligence relationship could certainly be deepened. The United States and France could agree to set up more structured dialogues and engagements, such as regular political-military talks. These occur regularly with the United Kingdom but are much more intermittent with France. The goal should be to build trust through these engagements, laying the groundwork for deeper defense and security cooperation, in particular in relation to the Indo-Pacific, the Sahel, and defense sales.
But by far the biggest step the Biden administration can take is to back E.U. defense efforts. During Macron’s visit, Biden should give clear and strong remarks of U.S. support. The United States and France should release a joint statement that outlines the principles and objectives of E.U. defense. And the United States should commit to using its considerable diplomatic clout in Europe to support the development of E.U. defense.
This would go a long way toward mending relations. Developing E.U. defense is perhaps Macron’s top geopolitical priority. It is so important to Macron that he is convening a major summit on E.U. defense just prior to the French presidential elections next year. This will likely be the focal point of the French presidency of the European Union, and Macron will be desperate for it to be a success.
But for Macron’s E.U. defense ambitions to materialize, he needs U.S. support. Other E.U. members, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, simply will not support E.U. defense efforts if the United States is not on board. Countries that face an existential threat from Russia (e.g., Poland and the Baltic states) need to be assured that E.U. defense initiatives won’t lead the United States to become less engaged in Europe or NATO. The United States has also long urged European governments to increase their defense spending, but has opposed E.U. defense on the grounds that it would detract from NATO. The United States has used its influence to press E.U. members, such as the United Kingdom (before it withdrew from the European Union) and Poland, to oppose various E.U. defense proposals. Hence, while the European Union made major advances, the bold E.U. defense proposals of the 1990s went almost nowhere.
None of this would matter if European defense was not in such a shambolic state. European militaries have, with few exceptions, experienced decades of decline. Overall, European forces are now in a shocking state of readiness. European defense budgets are stretched trying to balance maintaining aging equipment or investing in new high-end equipment. But the problem is not just low European spending. It is that almost every European country is trying to operate a full spectrum military, leading to tremendous waste and fragmentation. The European Union collectively spends as much on defense as a major global power, roughly $200 billion annually, but, because this spending is divided between 27 member states, Europe is far weaker than the sum of its parts. E.U. member states operate more than 37 different types of tanks and 19 different combat aircraft, making operating together exceptionally difficult. Thus, if the European Union had wanted to insert forces to Hamid Karzai International Airport to evacuate E.U. citizens they likely wouldn’t have been be able to do so without the United States. Hence, European security is thus firmly dependent on the United States.
On the one hand, the decrepit state of European militaries is a huge indictment of post-Cold War U.S. policy toward Europe. On the other hand, the major concern of the United States in the 1990s was that it would lose influence in Europe. In that sense, U.S. policy has been successful, since Europe is as dependent as ever. But this is not a good situation for the United States or Europe. It is not the 1990s anymore. The United States has pivoted to Asia and isn’t focused on Europe. And yet, U.S. policy toward European defense remains unchanged, as if it is just as attentive to European security interests as it was, as if nothing has changed geopolitically, and as if the European Union didn’t exist.
This situation totally exasperates France, which is why it has pushed the European Union to start taking security into its own hands. While the Biden administration has softened past U.S. opposition, it has not fully endorsed E.U. defense efforts either. This has disappointed Macron, who was hoping the Biden administration would change U.S. policy. As part of a future state visit, the United States should agree to support E.U. defense efforts and should offer to use its diplomatic leverage to reassure skeptical Central and Eastern European countries that ambitious expansion of E.U. defense initiatives has America’s seal of approval. In exchange, the United States should insist that France support strong E.U.-NATO coordination and that France define “strategic autonomy” as Europe developing the capabilities to act on its own, and drop the more expansive conception that is occasionally advanced, of the E.U. decoupling from the United States or NATO.
What should make this concession palatable to the White House is that it is firmly in America’s interests. Even without the submarine fallout, it would be time for a shift to America’s post-Cold War approach to European defense to embrace the role of the European Union and encourage E.U. members to integrate forces, pursue joint procurements, gain economies of scale, and reduce their reliance on U.S. forces to operate. Crucially, this will strengthen NATO, not detract from it, as Europe would become militarily more capable. The central mission of NATO, linking the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and continental Europe together would remain unchanged. The major shift for NATO would involve intensifying E.U.-NATO coordination.
Fears that E.U. defense will simply become a tool of a French foreign policy belie the fact that France doesn’t control or dictate what happens at the European Union. If France goes too far on a particular issue, Poland, Germany, other E.U. members, or the E.U. Commission itself will stymie it. Furthermore, U.S. support for E.U. defense won’t magically make it materialize. Building an E.U. defense capacity is a generational effort. There are also differences of view within the European Union, in addition to understandable skepticism of French motives from some European countries. Any ambitious E.U. defense proposal will also have to make it through the European Union’s laborious legislative process, full of tense negotiations and veto points. It is possible, maybe even likely, that, even with U.S. support, the European Union will be unable to reach an agreement on any far-reaching defense proposals.
Nevertheless, embracing E.U. defense will require the White House to overcome considerable internal opposition. The State Department has spent the last 23 years — ever since Secretary of State Madeleine Albright expressed reservations — vigorously opposing a greater defense role for the European Union. A generation of foreign service officers have thus spent their careers opposing the concept.
The U.S. defense industry will also make its voice heard. American defense companies are nervous about the future of E.U. defense and have stepped up its lobbying against E.U. efforts. They worry that France would dominate the European Union, and would try to lock U.S. defense companies out of the European defense market. Hence, Washington wants to ensure the involvement of the U.S. defense industry in potential E.U. defense procurements. But the United States should drop the demand that the European Defense Agency sign an “administration arrangement” with the United States before launching U.S.-E.U. defense talks. Washington argues that this expands U.S.-E.U. defense cooperation but, to France — and many other E.U. members that hide behind French opposition — this is simply the United States trying to involve itself in E.U. defense procurements. This also raises concerns that E.U. defense exports could be subject to stringent U.S. export rules if they include parts and components from U.S. companies. The United States simply needs to accept that, if European governments are going to spend more on defense, they are going to buy European.
Looking Ahead
The United States needs to do something big to reset relations with France. It should use this opportunity to offer its unreserved support for E.U. defense initiatives. Doing so would represent a sea change in America’s approach to Europe. It would also lay the groundwork for European defense integration, strengthen the European Union, and hopefully reestablish a strong Franco-American partnership. It would certainly be quite the plot twist for this fracas to end up bringing the United States and France closer together. But isn’t that how romcoms always end? Let’s hope the United States can pull it off. But, to do so, it will need to act — and fast.
Max Bergmann is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. From 2011 to 2017, he served as a senior advisor and member of the Policy Planning Staff at the Department of State, where he focused on political-military affairs.
Image:
4. U.S. Allies Still Trust America
Alliances are critical to US national security.
Excerpts:
The U.S. will remain the richest and most powerful country for years to come, the only nation capable of projecting military force anywhere on Earth. Washington can’t get everything it wants, but American power still has no substitute.
Most U.S. allies understand this. Take the Australian case: For seven decades, Australia has found the U.S. to be a powerful and reliable ally. The two countries have fought beside each other in every major conflict of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Per the first sentence above what happens if we do not raise the debt ceiling? Will the dollar as the reserve currency come under attack? And what happens if another currency replaces the dollar? What will happen to the US economic instrument of power?
U.S. Allies Still Trust America
A new defense pact serves as a powerful rebuttal of the argument that Washington is in retreat.
After the fall of Kabul last month, many observers of U.S. foreign policy concluded that America had lost interest in its allies, and that its allies had lost faith in America.
An important development in Asia, however, serves as a powerful rebuttal of both arguments.
The conventional wisdom in August was that Washington was no longer a reliable partner and that allies’ trust had been destroyed by the manner of its withdrawal from Afghanistan. One unnamed former British intelligence officer, for example, opined to a reporter that the chaotic close to the Afghanistan mission marked “the end of an era of Western liberalism & democracy that started with the fall of the Berlin Wall.”
Conservatives in particular were quick to write off President Joe Biden. Commentators who had supported the mad non sequitur of George W. Bush’s Iraq War and endorsed the election of the appalling Donald Trump now claimed that Biden’s withdrawal, after the U.S.’s 20-year commitment to Afghanistan, had shattered their confidence in America.
This response was disproportionate and ahistorical. It demonstrated what the Australian strategist Owen Harries called “the parochialism of the present.”
And the announcement last week of the Australia-U.K.-U.S. defense pact, or AUKUS—which promises closer military and scientific ties among the three countries and the development of a nuclear-powered Australian submarine fleet—is a reminder of the enduring potency of America’s network of alliances.
The U.S. will remain the richest and most powerful country for years to come, the only nation capable of projecting military force anywhere on Earth. Washington can’t get everything it wants, but American power still has no substitute.
Most U.S. allies understand this. Take the Australian case: For seven decades, Australia has found the U.S. to be a powerful and reliable ally. The two countries have fought beside each other in every major conflict of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Yet there has always been a lively domestic debate about America. Australia’s participation in the Iraq War alongside American forces was unpopular. The unimpressive U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic made Australians worried, and President Trump’s behavior made them heartsick.
Still, support for the U.S. alliance has been one of the most consistent results over nearly two decades of polling by the Lowy Institute, which I lead.
Australian soldiers fought in Afghanistan for many years, so August was a difficult month. But the American withdrawal didn’t change Canberra’s calculus when it came to signing up for AUKUS.
A lot of this has to do with Australia’s relationship with China. In recent years, Canberra has faced increasing pressure from Beijing. This includes trade sanctions imposed to punish Australia for the sin of calling for an independent international investigation into the origins of the coronavirus.
In response, Australia has bolstered its domestic resilience, increased its defense spending, and thickened its connections with other regional powers, including India, Japan, and Indonesia.
This has not been uniformly welcomed at home: Some have long argued that Australia should do more to accommodate Beijing’s rise. But public opinion toward China has hardened, in tandem with Chinese behavior. A Lowy Institute poll this year found that, for the first time, more Australians see China as a security threat than an economic partner. Trust in China has fallen precipitously, with only 16 percent of Australians saying they trust China “a great deal” or “somewhat” to act responsibly in the world, down from 52 percent three years ago.
Now, with AUKUS, Australia is doubling down on its old alliance with the U.S. while also drawing the United Kingdom more deeply into the Indo-Pacific. This is an ambitious step for Australia, a signal that the country intends to shape its external environment and contribute to the regional balance of power. Washington seeks to strengthen Australia’s capabilities, as well as the shared sense of solidarity felt by the three allies. For its part, London will tender the pact as evidence of Britain’s global standing and ambition. With this deal, all three countries are betting on one another’s reliability over the long term.
For Australia, the deal offers great opportunities but also carries risks. Nuclear-powered submarines provide immense capability in terms of lethality, speed, range, and stealth. These boats will give Australia significant deterrent power. Yet AUKUS will anger China, which remains Australia’s largest trading partner. Beijing will worry about what it means for the tightening of U.S. alliances in Asia more generally. If Chinese leaders were given to self-reflection, they would realize that this deal was, in fact, made in China.
Australia will need to demonstrate that this move is not escalatory, that it contributes to regional stability, and that it accords with Australia’s commitment to the rules-based order, especially the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Canberra must increase its investment in diplomacy as well as defense—and in new relationships as well as old ones. For Australia, the Anglosphere is necessary but not sufficient.
The pact has infuriated France, which has lost a prized contract to build conventionally powered submarines for Australia and recalled its ambassadors to the U.S. and Australia in protest. The French contract was a troubled one, but the Australian government ought to have shown more grace in the manner of its withdrawal from it. Washington and Canberra should move to assuage the anger felt in Paris.
Washington and Canberra should also move to assuage the anger felt in Paris, which has recalled its ambassadors to the U.S. and Australia in protest. France is an important Indo-Pacific power in its own right, and a key advocate of European involvement in the region.
AUKUS is a head-snapping development. The sharing of nuclear secrets between sovereign nations is as intimate as international relations gets. It may not be replicated with other U.S. allies for a long time, if ever.
But Australia is far from the only Asian power looking to do more with Washington. At the White House this week, Biden will host the first in-person leaders summit of the Quad countries: the U.S., Australia, India, and Japan, the last two of whom seem comfortable with AUKUS. And while some Southeast Asian countries have registered concerns over the new pact, others are supportive.
Indeed for most Asian countries, the U.S. remains an invaluable partner. Its formidable forward presence brings balance to the Indo-Pacific. Few want the region to be dominated by an aggressive China. No one wants to live in another’s shadow. Most prefer a balance of forces, with a general acceptance of international norms and the rule of law, along with the long-term presence of America.
August was hard and harrowing for the U.S. and its friends. But the world’s judgment of America’s staying power was premature. In September, things are looking brighter.
5. Congress’ Afghanistan watchdog will continue oversight
The only man who has been able to accurately report on what has been happening in Afghanistan over the past two decades. I am sure there will be PhD dissertations comparing his assessments with the military assessments
Congress’ Afghanistan watchdog will continue oversight
The United States may have completed its military withdrawal and chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan, but John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, intends to keep asking hard questions.
“There’s still a lot of money in the pipeline” slated for Afghanistan, Sopko said last Tuesday during an event hosted by the government watchdog organization Project on Government Oversight. “There are a lot of questions that need to be answered.”
Congress created Sopko’s position in the fiscal 2008 National Defense Authorization Act to watch over the deluge of funding it was spending on reconstruction projects in Afghanistan. Sopko took over the role four years later.
The office will cease to exist once there is no more reconstruction funding to oversee, but in the meantime, Congress continues to want answers, particularly about the collapse of the Afghan Security Forces and police, in whom the U.S. had invested around $90 billion. It also wants to know what happened to American-supplied equipment, Sopko said.
“It’s a phenomenal amount of money that went out the door,” he said. “As far as we can tell, the spigots with the money flowing over there were open wide almost to the end.”
Sopko said that his staff has the expertise to continue even without the ability to visit Afghanistan, which is now under the control of the Taliban.
All told, the United States spent almost $150 billion over 20 years trying to remake Afghan society, only to see the government collapse within weeks of the announcement that all U.S. troops would depart by the end of August. Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul devolved into chaos as U.S. troops airlifted more than 122,000 people out before the Aug. 31 deadline.
Avenues of oversight
Lawmakers from both parties are demanding answers about the handling of the withdrawal and evacuation, particularly after a suicide bombing at one of the airport’s gates killed 13 American servicemembers.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken testified on Capitol Hill this week, and Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Gen. Mark Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs, are scheduled to appear before the Senate Armed Services Committee along with U.S. Central Command chief Gen. Kenneth McKenzie on Sept. 28.
Sopko stressed the importance of learning lessons from Afghanistan, lest the United States repeat the same mistakes again.
“The United States is really not prepared for large reconstruction programs like this in a conflict zone,” he said. “Every time we do it, we do it poorly.”
Leaders resolve again and again not to do it, but the U.S. has engaged in three major reconstruction efforts in the last 50 years in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, he noted. The United States would be better off accepting that it will likely find itself engaged in something similar in another challenging part of the world and prepare itself for that mission than simply vowing to never do it again, he said.
Sopko said that he was initially surprised by the speed of the collapse of the Afghan Security Forces, but when he and his staff reflected on it, it seemed inevitable.
Corruption was rampant in the Afghan military, he said. One American commander once told Sopko that 50 percent of the fuel provided by the United States was stolen, he said.
“We spent too much money, too fast, in too small a country, with no oversight,” he said. “Every Afghan you talk to says it was the corruption in the military that led to the military’s downfall.”
And once the U.S. set a departure date, senior Afghan military officials began stealing even more, he said.
Many Afghan soldiers hadn’t been paid in five or six months, and the government didn’t feed them or provide them with bullets, he said. They had very little close air support because there was little or no fuel for the aircraft.
When the Taliban arrived, they often offered government troops a choice: to fight and be killed, or take a bus ticket back home, Sopko said.
Repeated warnings
Much of this information should not come as a surprise to those who have followed Sopko’s quarterly reports.
Sopko described how he faced “gale force” headwinds from “people in Washington whose careers were made on happy talk.”
“There was just a constant drumbeat of ‘Success is almost here, just give us another appropriation,’” Sopko said.
And when Sopko’s reports ran afoul of that rosy picture, officials started classifying documents to keep the real picture from public view, he said.
Many of the documents were stamped “NATO Classified,” and not many congressional staffers have that specific clearance, he said, making it even more challenging for lawmakers to get an accurate portrait of the state of play.
“I remember actually briefing members on this, and they couldn’t bring their staff in,” he said. “So the member knows this, but he can’t talk to anybody about what he just saw.”
Noting that he has been in Washington since the 1980s — Sopko previously worked as chief counsel for oversight and investigations for the House Energy and Commerce Committee when it was chaired by Michigan Democrat John D. Dingell — he said that in his experience the government doesn’t classify good news, and if it does by mistake, it finds a way to leak it.
So when the government begins to overclassify certain information, Sopko said it’s a good guess that there’s a bad news story lurking behind it.
And when they couldn’t classify certain types of information, they stopped collecting it. After Sopko’s reports on districts and population under government control began telling a grim story, U.S. officials stopped tallying that data, he said.
“At some point, the U.S. government said that information is no longer relevant,” Sopko said. “What’s relevant is peace. I actually had a general tell me that.”
___
© 2021 CQ-Roll Call, Inc
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
6. Assessing the Alignment of U.S. Diplomatic and Military Power to Forestall Armed Conflict
Graphics at the link.
I would like to see a Northeast Asia Combatant Command considered.
Conclusion:
With the American public weary of extended overseas military deployments, and U.S. President Joseph Biden seeking to maintain America’s global power status without straining financial and military resources, a larger Foreign Service and a DoS in sync with DoD are worth discussing.
Assessing the Alignment of U.S. Diplomatic and Military Power to Forestall Armed Conflict
Posted by
Michael D. Purzycki is an analyst, writer, and editor based in Arlington, Virginia. He has worked for the United States Marine Corps, the Department of the Navy, and the United States Army. In addition to Divergent Options, he has been published in Charged Affairs, Merion West, the Center for International Maritime Security, the Washington Monthly, Braver Angels, France 24, the Truman National Security Project, and Arc Digital. He can be found on Twitter at @MDPurzycki, and on Medium at https://mdpurzycki.medium.com/. Divergent Options’ content does not contain information of an official nature nor does the content represent the official position of any government, any organization, or any group.
Title: Assessing the Alignment of U.S. Diplomatic and Military Power to Forestall Armed Conflict
Date Originally Written: August 12, 2021.
Date Originally Published: September 20, 2021.
Author and / or Article Point of View: The author believes an expansion of the Department of State’s Foreign Service, and closer alignment of the efforts of the Departments of State and Defense, can help the United States forestall international conflicts before they turn violent, and give the U.S. military time to modernize and prepare for future conflicts.
Summary: Regardless of whether the U.S. maintains its military edge, unless it invests in other forms of national power, armed conflict is very likely. Without closer alignment between the Department of State and Department of Defense, on a long enough timeline, unnecessary wars will occur.
Text: The United States has the world’s most powerful military. The U.S. military’s budget ($778 billion in 2020, compared to $252 billion for second-largest-spender China)[1], its global reach, and the skills of its personnel[2], are unmatched. Twenty-first century conflict, however, will not always require conventional military strength to win. While there are steps the U.S. military can take to prepare, civilian power can help forestall conflict in the meantime.
The Foreign Service includes approximately 8,000 Foreign Service Officers (FSOs)[3]. Past FSOs have included some of America’s most renowned diplomats. Perhaps most famously, George Kennan, stationed in the U.S. embassy in Moscow, was one of the first observers to comprehensively analyze the Soviet threat to post-World War II peace. His 1946 “Long Telegram[4]” and 1947 “X-Article[5]” were key in forming the basis for the U.S. policy of containment throughout the Cold War.
Later FSOs perceptively analyzed the weaknesses of U.S. foreign policy. Richard Holbrooke, who would later negotiate the Dayton Accords ending the Bosnian War, began his diplomatic career as an FSO in South Vietnam, where he was skeptical that U.S. support could save the regime in Saigon[6]. In 1971, when Pakistani forces began to commit genocide during the Bangladesh War of Independence[7], FSO Archer Blood warned Washington of the massacres the American-supported Pakistani military was carrying out[8].
A large increase in the number of FSOs could give the U.S. many more diplomatic eyes and ears in potential conflict zones. More FSOs could increase the chance of the U.S. brokering peace deals between warring parties, or of better judging early on whether a conflict is one the U.S. military should stay out of. Early involvement by diplomats could preempt later involvement by troops.
Even with a much larger Foreign Service, there is still a chance the U.S. will be drawn into conflict. The foreign policy goals of Russia and China, powers not content to live in a U.S.-dominated international system, may overwhelm attempts to keep the peace. Nonetheless, an investment in diplomatic power, in building relationships with other countries’ leaders and policymakers, could pay off in the form of wars avoided.
Closer collaboration between the diplomatic and military arms of U.S. power would also have benefits. Even if the U.S. chooses to have a less militarized foreign policy, reducing the military’s absolute strength need not be the solution. Ensuring that diplomats and military commanders work closely together, and making clear that U.S. policymakers do not inherently favor one over the other, could increase the relative strength of civilian power without weakening the military.
Both the Department of State (DoS) and the Department of Defense (DoD) divide the world into six regions (see first map below) for their operations[9]. DoS activities in each region are directed by an assistant secretary, while each DOD regional combatant command is headed by a four-star general or admiral. Additionally, the world’s oceans are divided among the U.S. Navy’s numbered fleets, some of whose boundaries correspond to those of the combatant commands (see second map below)[10]. However, DoS and DoD regions are not always aligned with each other. Aligning them, by shifting countries between regions, could better integrate civilian and military power.
For example, of the countries in DoS’ Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs (SCAA), those with coastlines are in DoD’s U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) and the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet – except for Pakistan in U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM), whose coast is under the 5th Fleet. Meanwhile, the Navy has discussed bringing back its deactivated 1st Fleet and giving it responsibility for part of the Indian Ocean[11].
Suppose 1st Fleet were established under the aegis of USINDOPACOM (as 7th Fleet currently is), and were to align with the coasts of the SCAA countries. Pakistan could move from USCENTCOM to USINDOPACOM, and from the 5th to the 1st Fleet. When DoS officials needed to work closely with DoD officials with regard to, for example, India and Pakistan — two nuclear-armed states with a rivalry dating back to their creation in 1947 — there would be one combatant commander and one Navy flag officer for them to communicate with, not two of each.
Similarly, Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia could be moved from U.S. Africa Command (USAFRICOM) to USCENTCOM, which already includes Egypt. This would align the DoS and DoD maps of North Africa as all five North African countries are currently in DoS’ Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. Egypt, a long-time ally of the U.S. and a recipient of more than $1 billion in U.S. military aid annually[12], has taken sides in such events as the recent civil war in Libya[13] and domestic political turmoil in Tunisia[14]. If the U.S. wanted to leverage its relationship with Egypt to resolve conflicts in North Africa, it could benefit from such overlap between DoS and DoD.
Changes like these will be limited in what they can accomplish. For example, if part of the Indian Ocean is allocated to 1st Fleet, the southern boundary of the fleet’s waters will still have to be drawn. Furthermore, USINDOPACOM is already geographically large, and already includes three of the world’s four most populous countries: China, India, and Indonesia[15]. Adding Pakistan, the fifth most populous country [16], could stretch its burdens beyond the ability of its officers to manage them. Nevertheless, if this or similar changes increase collaboration between DoS and DoD, enabling the U.S. to better manage crises and avoid deployments of U.S. forces to conflict zones, they are worthy of consideration.
With the American public weary of extended overseas military deployments, and U.S. President Joseph Biden seeking to maintain America’s global power status without straining financial and military resources, a larger Foreign Service and a DoS in sync with DoD are worth discussing.
Endnotes:
[16] Ibid
7. The Atlantic Alliance After Afghanistan
They had to update this after AUKUS but I think more analysis is required due to the new alliance and the friction with France and the EU over the cancelled submarine deal.
The Atlantic Alliance After Afghanistan | by Gunther Hellmann & Charles A. Kupchan - Project Syndicate
,
The transatlantic alliance is enjoying a period of restoration following the damage done by former US President Donald Trump. But as the West’s messy exit from Afghanistan has made clear, the United States and its European allies must undertake determined efforts to prepare for the formidable challenges it now faces.
FRANKFURT/WASHINGTON, DC – Transatlantic relations rebounded buoyantly after US President Joe Biden arrived in the Oval Office. But the Taliban’s rapid takeover in Afghanistan and the chaotic evacuation of foreign nationals and at-risk Afghans has soured the mood. European disquiet over Biden’s handling of the Afghan withdrawal, alongside Germany’s forthcoming federal election on September 26, makes this an opportune moment to take stock of the Atlantic alliance.
Four fundamental geopolitical changes are reshaping transatlantic relations. First, although the transatlantic link survived Donald Trump, his presidency (and near re-election), coupled with the illiberal populism that also infects Europe, has exposed the fragility of liberal democracy in its historical bastions. This internal menace, rather than China, Russia, or violent extremism, may pose the greatest threat to the transatlantic community today.
Second, even though Biden’s election has reinvigorated Atlanticism, the domestic foundations of US internationalism have weakened considerably. NATO allies perceive the United States’ too-hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan as a worrying sign that Biden’s “foreign policy for the middle class” means a focus on the home front and a continuing US retrenchment in the broader Middle East. Moreover, America’s strategic preoccupation with China could mean less US attention and resources for Europe, and imply an expectation that Europeans will do more to provide for their own security.
Third, the European Union has itself undergone major changes in recent years. Its internal cohesion has weakened in the face of the migration crisis, Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the stubborn hold of illiberal governments in Central Europe. The new strains on EU solidarity reinforce the need for German leadership, but also increase others’ wariness of Germany’s outsize influence.
The fourth change is China’s strategic ambition and, thanks to its transnational Belt and Road Initiative, its growing global reach. The Atlantic alliance does not enjoy the material and ideological dominance it once had, and must adapt its strategic priorities accordingly.
To preserve its centrality and cohesion amid this changing global landscape, the Atlantic community should pursue several objectives. As a top priority, it needs to defeat the enemy within by addressing the underlying sources of illiberal populism. Conditions are not identical in the US and Europe, but a transatlantic conversation about reducing economic insecurity, mapping out the future of work in the digital era, and recovering from COVID-19 is essential. Another high priority is developing immigration policies that meet the US and Europe’s moral obligations and economic needs but also secure their borders. Otherwise, nativist appeals will continue to gain traction.
As for NATO and the security link between North America and Europe, talk of a transatlantic rebalancing finally needs to become reality. NATO’s European members, and Germany in particular, must shoulder a significantly larger share of the defense burden and upgrade their military capability and readiness. In effect, Germany needs to become the strongest conventional military power in NATO’s European pillar. The US would remain the alliance’s existential military backbone, but it would no longer run the show. At the same time, the political importance of the US troop presence in Europe would grow, reassuring European allies that more German power means more security.
A more active European security role goes hand in hand with greater capability. As the US continues to pull back from the broader Middle East, Europeans – whether through the EU or NATO – have to pick up some of the slack to help promote stability in trouble spots such as Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, and Nagorno-Karabakh. A more capable and active Europe will gain more public support and become a more effective a partner for the US, strengthening the transatlantic relationship. In contrast, the more Europe free rides on the US, the more quickly Europeans will lose confidence in the EU and the faster American patience will run out, weakening transatlantic ties.
Lastly, the US and its European allies need to forge a more united front vis-à-vis China. This does not mean that Europeans should rally behind Biden’s vision of a world-defining clash between democracy and autocracy. On the contrary, they should encourage him to dial down his rhetoric and treat China as a capable competitor, not an implacable foe. Because Europe remains an important ally, it can help an overheated US find the right mix of containment and engagement.
But building a transatlantic consensus will not be easy. Just this past week, a nasty rift opened between France and the Biden administration over the new security partnership between the US, the United Kingdom, and Australia, which entails Australia’s acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines from the US and the cancellation of a pending order to buy French submarines. And the EU issued a policy paper, “EU Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific,” that plays down confrontation with China.
But Europe must meet the US halfway by toughening its stance toward China. To be sure, economic decoupling is not on the horizon; China is far too integrated into the global economy. Nonetheless, the EU and the US need to push back together against China’s unfair trade practices and align their policies on export controls, repatriation of supply chains for sensitive technologies, and the regulation of Chinese investment abroad. The Atlantic democracies should also continue to speak with one voice regarding human rights in China.
Moreover, an effective Atlantic strategy for dealing with China requires joint US-European efforts to improve relations with Russia. The current Chinese-Russian partnership significantly augments the collective challenge they pose to America and Europe. Pursuing a measured détente with Russia – as European leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier have proposed – can help put distance between China and Russia. President Vladimir Putin remains a tough interlocutor, but he may welcome Western outreach, given Russia’s long history of tension with China and the Kremlin’s inevitable discomfort with being China’s junior partner.
The Atlantic alliance is enjoying a period of restoration following the damage inflicted by Trump. But as the West’s messy exit from Afghanistan makes clear, it needs to undertake determined efforts to prepare itself for the formidable challenges ahead.
Update Sep 17, 2021 13:52UTC
The tenth paragraph of this commentary has been added to reflect the security partnership between the US, the UK, and Australia that was announced September 15, 2021.
8. How America Should Deal With the Taliban
Excerpts:
Although Biden is right that al Qaeda has sustained serious damage over the last decade, Afghanistan’s new era offers the terrorist group a unique and dangerous opportunity. The country is now ruled by an Islamist movement that has fought alongside al Qaeda for more than 30 years. Over the months and years ahead, the terrorist group will undoubtedly take advantage of this opportunity to reestablish its power base.
Washington, therefore, cannot simply wash its hands of Afghanistan and wish away a terrorist threat that will likely grow over the months and years to come. The United States ignored Afghanistan after the Soviets departed in 1989, and the result was the 9/11 attacks. The central issue, however, is the way in which the United States chooses to engage with the problem. U.S. behavior should be based on both a commitment to freedom and human dignity and an awareness of the terrorist threats emanating from the region.
The most effective way to redeem Washington’s botched withdrawal and rebuild trust among U.S. partners is to closely coordinate with like-minded states on a diplomatic and security policy designed to shape Taliban behavior. The Biden administration must first work to understand why past U.S. negotiations with the Taliban went so wrong—and then begin dealing with the group from a position of strength.
How America Should Deal With the Taliban
Avoiding the Diplomatic Errors That Doomed the U.S. Withdrawal
As the United States ends its mission in Afghanistan, U.S. policymakers have already begun to reckon with American military failures over 20 years of fighting. But the war’s disastrous finale was not solely the result of armed conflict. In cataloging its mistakes, Washington must also seriously evaluate its diplomatic efforts—especially peace talks with the Taliban led by U.S. negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad.
Both President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden made clear their desire to end U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan. But the negotiations, which were largely held on Taliban terms, were neither necessary nor desirable—in fact, the eventual deal struck in Doha likely hastened the Taliban’s victory. If Biden wishes history to judge his withdrawal from Afghanistan as an acceptable foreign policy decision, his administration must reckon with this diplomatic failure and begin to take a tougher and more realistic approach toward the Taliban. Doing so is the only way to prevent the reemergence of a global terrorist hotbed.
Unfortunately, the Trump administration’s desperation to conclude a deal will make this process more difficult. Three years of negotiations empowered Taliban hard-liners, many of whom now play central roles in the new interim government—including al Qaeda–linked Haqqani network leader Sirajuddin Haqqani. As they craft a post-withdrawal strategy, U.S. officials must therefore change their diplomatic tack—judging the Taliban by their actions before granting them international recognition or economic assistance. This approach, coupled with a new counterterrorism strategy, is the best way to protect vital U.S. interests in the years to come.
ROSE-COLORED GLASSES
Although the United States spent years locked in negotiations with the Taliban, Washington’s approach to those talks was often defined by wishful thinking. The so-called Afghanistan Papers—confidential documents published by The Washington Post in December 2019—showed that U.S. military leaders often provided rosy assessments of the military situation or told political leadership that the United States had “turned a corner” in the fight against the Taliban, even when facts showed otherwise. As deputy assistant to the president and National Security Council senior director for South and Central Asia from 2017 to 2021, I witnessed senior civilian officials ignoring or papering over facts that did not comport with their diplomatic agendas.
This predilection produced a number of serious negotiating errors that eventually came to define the resulting Doha agreement, the deal paving the way for a U.S. troop withdrawal in exchange for Taliban pledges to counter terrorism and refrain from attacking American soldiers on their way out. The first mistake—the result of a misguided belief that the Taliban would eventually agree to negotiate with the U.S.-backed government in Kabul—was the U.S. decision to exclude the Afghan government from talks, which prematurely conferred legitimacy on the Taliban.
The second error was failing to condition the pace of the talks on Taliban violence levels. Washington’s unwillingness to suspend negotiations, even amid escalating violence, revealed the United States’ desperation for a deal. In the end, the only requirement Washington imposed on the Taliban was to reduce violence for six days before signing the agreement.
Three years of negotiations empowered Taliban hard-liners.
The third error, based on wishful thinking that the Taliban were actually interested in negotiating a political settlement rather than fighting their way back to power, was forcing Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners without a commensurate concession from the Taliban, such as reducing violence.
Among the Taliban prisoners released was the Afghan army sergeant Qari Hekmatullah, who in 2012 murdered three Australian soldiers in cold blood while they rested on their base. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison pleaded with Trump not to force Ghani to release Hekmatullah. It was unnecessary to free this hardened Taliban killer, especially when one of Washington’s most trusted allies was opposed to it. The Trump administration, for its part, hoped that Hekmatullah’s release would facilitate peace talks—a belief that turned out to be wildly unfounded. Instead, the Taliban used the Doha process to enhance their international legitimacy and divide the Afghan leadership.
Altogether, U.S. concessions weakened the Ghani government, sowed divisions among anti-Taliban leaders, and signaled to Afghan security forces that the United States was switching horses, sapping their will to fight. The United States would have been far better off negotiating its withdrawal directly with the Afghan government, something that Ghani himself proposed in early 2019. By doing so, the United States would have avoided demoralizing its Afghan partners as Washington pulled back U.S. forces. Instead, by simultaneously withdrawing its troops and making a political deal with the government’s enemy of 20 years, Washington ended up handing the country over to the Taliban.
TERRORIST TIES
Throughout the talks, U.S. negotiators also failed to accurately assess the Taliban’s remaining links to terrorist groups. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Khalilzad repeatedly claimed that the Taliban had agreed to break ties with al Qaeda, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. In October 2020, Edmund Fitton-Brown, United Nations Coordinator for the Islamic State, al Qaeda, and Taliban Monitoring Team, said the Taliban had promised al Qaeda before the Doha agreement was signed that the two groups would remain allies. Fitton-Brown also reported that al Qaeda was already celebrating the departure of U.S. and NATO forces from the country as a victory for global radicalism. In a report released in early June 2021, the United Nations also noted that the relationship between the Taliban and al Qaeda remained strong and that the Taliban had done little to sever links that had been “cemented through second-generational ties.” This was despite explicit language in the eventual agreement stating that the Taliban would instruct their members not to cooperate with groups that posed a threat to the United States and its allies.
It is too early to determine exactly how the Taliban’s victory will alter terrorism trends in the region. Still, initial indicators are worrisome. After Kabul’s fall, the Taliban appointed a hard-line interim government headed by Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, who served as foreign minister and then deputy prime minister during Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001. Sirajuddin Haqqani, the new interior minister, has a $5 million FBI bounty on his head for his role in terrorist attacks that killed U.S. citizens. An exception to this hard-line rule is Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, now deputy prime minister, who spent eight years in a Pakistani jail before Khalilzad requested his release to participate in peace talks. Baradar is more moderate and was part of a group of insurgents who engaged in negotiations with Hamid Karzai when he was Afghan president in 2009. Baradar’s relegation to deputy, however, appears to be a sign that hard-line Taliban factions currently have the upper hand.
LIKE-MINDED PARTNERS
As the United States reckons with these failures, policymakers in Washington must learn from their negotiating mistakes and alter U.S. diplomatic strategy accordingly. A crucial part of this process will be developing a collaborative strategy with the European Union, United Kingdom, and other like-minded states to press the Taliban to meet specific human rights and counterterrorism conditions. This approach would stand in sharp contrast to Khalilzad’s focus on coordinating closely with China and Russia—countries that, unlike the United States’ European partners, place little value on respect for human rights.
Although the United States will need lines of communication with the Taliban to get its remaining citizens and allies safely out of the country and deliver humanitarian assistance, there should be no rush to establish formal diplomatic relations with a group that remains allied with terrorists. By closely coordinating with allies and partners and setting clear conditions for engagement, Washington stands the best chance of successfully shaping future Taliban behavior. Striking the appropriate balance is particularly critical here, as nearly 70 percent of the Afghan government’s budget came from foreign aid. The donor community must determine how to meet Afghans’ basic needs while not rewarding the Taliban with diplomatic recognition and economic assistance before the group has earned it.
A central condition for any future engagement should be Taliban respect for human rights and governance standards. During their first week back in power, the new leadership went to great lengths to show the world that their movement had evolved on issues of governance, terrorism, and women’s rights. The Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid gave a press conference in Kabul where he offered amnesty to those who worked for the government, vowing that there would be no reprisal killings. He said women would be allowed to work, study, and participate in society “within bounds of Islamic law.”
Washington’s approach to talks with the Taliban was often defined by wishful thinking.
Contrary to Mujahid’s statements, however, women were later told to stay in their homes until the Taliban rank-and-file received instructions on how to treat women properly. The Taliban subsequently banned women’s sports and mandated that women attend only all-female university classes. There have also been reports of the Taliban preventing girls from attending school beyond the primary level and threatening female police officers. Donor countries should make clear that further limits on women’s rights and participation in society, education, and the economy will impact the Taliban’s ability to access international finance.
The United States also must maintain Treasury Department sanctions on individuals involved in terrorism. Washington should not accede to Taliban demands to remove the sanctions merely because these leaders now hold positions of power. Furthermore, the United States should refrain from unfreezing $9 billion in U.S.-held Afghan assets so long as terrorist leaders such as Sirajuddin Haqqani remain part of the Taliban government.
Finally, the Biden team should work closely with like-minded UN Security Council members, including France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, to resist Chinese and Russian pressure to lift sanctions without conditions. In particular, the United States and its European allies should be clear that unless the Taliban establish a more inclusive government, the UN waiver that allowed sanctioned Taliban leaders to travel internationally will be withdrawn when it comes up for renewal later this year. As former U.S. State Department officials have noted, the Taliban misused the waiver to gain international legitimacy while continuing to wage war and assassinate Afghan civil society leaders, journalists, and human rights activists.
PARTNERS AND METHODS
Washington also needs to reevaluate its reliance on Pakistan as its key partner on issues related to Afghanistan. This was another mistake during talks with the Taliban, as U.S. negotiators worked hand in glove with Islamabad. Although the United States leaned heavily on Pakistani leaders to facilitate peace talks, statements from officials in Islamabad as the Taliban entered Kabul were revealing. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan announced that the group “had broken the shackles of slavery,” while his special assistant tweeted that “the contraption that the US had pieced together for Afghanistan has crumbled like the proverbial house of cards.”
Since 2001, no U.S. administration has been able to successfully convince Pakistan to crack down on Taliban activity inside its territory. Trump, for his part, suspended U.S. military assistance in January 2018, but Islamabad still failed to disrupt the group’s operational activity, financial transactions, or cross-border flows of weapons and fighters. Although it is too late to penalize Pakistan, U.S. officials should learn from 20 years of intransigence and maintain low expectations when it comes to counterterrorism cooperation. It may be possible for Washington to work with Islamabad when targeting other terrorist groups such as ISIS-K, the Islamic State’s Afghanistan offshoot, but Pakistan’s intelligence service will never turn on the al Qaeda–linked Haqqani network. Pakistani military and intelligence leaders rely on the latter to deny India a foothold in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan’s new era offers terrorist groups a unique and dangerous opportunity.
Instead, the Biden administration should refocus its efforts on coordination with other regional democracies, especially India. For too long, Washington eschewed the idea of counterterrorism cooperation with New Delhi out of deference to Pakistan. With that policy in tatters, the United States must realize that it has far more to gain by coordinating with democratic states that fight terrorism than by fruitlessly trying to work with regimes that rely on terrorist proxies to achieve regional objectives. India already is playing a helpful role at the UN Security Council, where it is currently serving a two-year term as a nonpermanent member. As UNSC president, India introduced a strong resolution on Afghanistan in August that called for combating terrorism, upholding human rights, and encouraging an inclusive political settlement with full, equal, and meaningful participation by women.
As it devises a new counterterrorism strategy that does not rely on an active troop presence, Washington should also invest in partnerships with Central Asian states that border Afghanistan, such as Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Without bases inside Afghanistan, the United States will need to invest in enhanced drone technology for operations launched from bases in the Middle East. The Pentagon and intelligence agencies should, moreover, focus on increasing signals and other nonhuman intelligence collection assets in the region.
LEARNING FROM MISTAKES
Although Biden is right that al Qaeda has sustained serious damage over the last decade, Afghanistan’s new era offers the terrorist group a unique and dangerous opportunity. The country is now ruled by an Islamist movement that has fought alongside al Qaeda for more than 30 years. Over the months and years ahead, the terrorist group will undoubtedly take advantage of this opportunity to reestablish its power base.
Washington, therefore, cannot simply wash its hands of Afghanistan and wish away a terrorist threat that will likely grow over the months and years to come. The United States ignored Afghanistan after the Soviets departed in 1989, and the result was the 9/11 attacks. The central issue, however, is the way in which the United States chooses to engage with the problem. U.S. behavior should be based on both a commitment to freedom and human dignity and an awareness of the terrorist threats emanating from the region.
The most effective way to redeem Washington’s botched withdrawal and rebuild trust among U.S. partners is to closely coordinate with like-minded states on a diplomatic and security policy designed to shape Taliban behavior. The Biden administration must first work to understand why past U.S. negotiations with the Taliban went so wrong—and then begin dealing with the group from a position of strength.
9. FDD | The Bizarre Positive Biden Spin on Afghanistan
Excerpts:
In perhaps the clearest sign of what is to come, the Taliban have now formed a new government, and there’s nothing moderate about it. Many of the cabinet ministers have been sanctioned by the U.S. and the UN for terrorism. Several were Guantanamo Bay detainees. Two of them appear on the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program, whereby the U.S. government offers millions of dollars for information that could lead to their kill or capture.
In late August, in the wake of the televised horrors out of Kabul, President Biden continued to appeal to the Taliban to help facilitate the departure of stranded American citizens and others from the country. Out of sheer desperation, he tried to wield the “power” of the United Nations. A recent UN resolution “sent a clear message about what the international community expects the Taliban to deliver on moving forward, notably freedom of travel, freedom to leave,” Biden said in a televised speech. “And together, we are joined by over 100 countries that are determined to make sure the Taliban upholds those commitments.”
The UN likely had little to do with what came next. The Taliban ultimately granted the U.S. and others permission to facilitate a number of evacuation flights. This was by no means a collaboration or a nod to a budding relationship with Washington. It was a tactical consideration in the group’s longer-term objective of reconquering Afghanistan. Mission accomplished.
FDD | The Bizarre Positive Biden Spin on Afghanistan
No, the Taliban are not America’s partners
fdd.org · by Jonathan Schanzer Senior Vice President for Research · September 20, 2021
Remarkably, the Biden administration refuses to acknowledge any of this. Officials are doubling down on the narrative that “adults are back in charge” at the White House. Worse, the administration is peddling the abjectly false and Orwellian narrative that the Taliban are pragmatic actors, or even partners, with whom the United States is able to work to achieve common interests. Such depraved thinking cannot go unaddressed.
On August 17, 2021, during the bungled American pullout, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told journalists at the White House that American officials were “in contact with the Taliban to ensure the safe passage of people to the airport. We are monitoring for any potential terrorist threats… including from ISIS-K.” In saying this, Sullivan conveyed the deranged notion that the Taliban, a terrorist group that partners with al-Qaeda and seeks the destruction of the American-led world order, were U.S. partners in the U.S. pullout.
Similarly, as plans took shape for a final military withdrawal in late August, Secretary of State Antony Blinken conveyed to the American people that the White House had placed its trust in the Taliban. He stated that America aimed to “incentivize the Taliban to make good on its commitments,” and that “if the Taliban is serious about the commitments that it’s repeatedly made in public, including nationally across the country, as well as in private, commitments that the international community intends to hold the Taliban to, then we’ll find ways to do it.”
This was preposterous to anyone even vaguely familiar with the Taliban’s history of extremism and violence. Yet Blinken doubled down, citing “expectations of the Taliban going forward if they’re going to have any kind of relationship with the rest of the world, starting with freedom of travel but then going on to making sure that they’re sustaining the basic rights of their people, including women and girls; making sure that they’re making good on commitments they’ve repeatedly made on counterterrorism; and having some inclusivity in governance.”
The Taliban never cared about “making good” with the international community. As my colleague Thomas Joscelyn has pointed out, the Taliban rejected more than 30 demands by the U.S. and the United Nations to turn over Osama bin Laden over the years. After al-Qaeda perpetrated the deadly U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1988, the Taliban’s foreign minister vowed to “never give up Osama at any price.” Mullah Omar, the Taliban’s founder, refused to turn over bin Laden even after 9/11.
Nor is this ancient history. The Taliban and al-Qaeda continue to cooperate closely to this day. In 2020, for example, a United Nations report established that the Taliban “regularly consulted with al-Qaeda during negotiations with the United States and offered guarantees that it would honor their historical ties.” Earlier this year, the Defense Intelligence Agency also reported that the Taliban remained close with al-Qaeda and was planning large-scale offensives once the United States withdrew. Their joint targets: “population centers and Afghan government installations.”
It appears that General Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, and Rear Admiral Peter Vasely, head of U.S. forces on the ground in Afghanistan, did not heed the DIA report. Both referred to the Taliban as “our Afghan partners,” Politico reported in August. This may explain why they committed the grievous error of removing American military assets before evacuating diplomats, U.S. civilians, and Afghan allies. Indeed, there was no military cover for the civilian retreat. So when the Taliban predictably mounted their offensive and retook the country, Washington could not offer any protection to the civilians seeking to flee. The result was bedlam, leading to an ad hoc effort to evacuate thousands of people left stranded.
Adding insult to injury, when the American military withdrawal was complete, al-Qaeda released a two-page statement congratulating the Taliban on their victory. Moreover, Al Arabiya reported that al-Qaeda forces joined with the Taliban to attack the Afghan resistance forces that had gathered in the province of Panjshir, northeast of Kabul. This only confirmed what should have been obvious to all from the start: The Taliban view al-Qaeda, not the United States, as a partner.
But the Biden administration didn’t stop with the ridiculous notion that the Taliban were partners. It soon embarked on a campaign to brand the jihadi faction as moderate—relative to ISIS-K. Never mind that, upon sacking the country, the Taliban, the more powerful of the two groups, had just released hundreds or even thousands of ISIS operatives from jail. President Joe Biden himself stated on August 20 that he wanted “to make everybody understand—that the ISIS in Afghanistan are the—have been the sworn enemy of the Taliban.”
Biden repeated this four days later, noting the risks of “attack by a terrorist group known as ISIS-K, an ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan—which is the sworn enemy of the Taliban as well.”
Several media outlets soon regurgitated this bizarre line. Eric Schmidt of the New York Times wrote a head-spinning piece highlighting the threat from ISIS-K in Afghanistan, with the headline calling the group “a sworn enemy of both the Taliban and the United States.” Only later in the piece did Schmidt note that “ISIS-K has never been a major force in Afghanistan, much less globally.”
The truth is, while ISIS and the Taliban may have clashed, they have quite a lot in common. Their ideological underpinnings are virtually indistinguishable. They both seek to resurrect an Islamic caliphate. They both wield Islam to justify their violence and brutality. Their antipathy for America and the West is a core driver of their recruitment efforts. But even more remarkable is how similarly they evolved.
In 2013, ISIS grew out of the civil war in Syria. It rapidly conquered territory and laid waste to its enemies. The group was led by a fanatic known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who imposed hudud penalties in which thieves were punished by amputation and adulterers were stoned. Western innovation was strictly prohibited.
In the mid-1990s, the Taliban emerged out of the civil war in Afghanistan. They, too, rapidly conquered territory and imposed strict Sharia law. The group was led by a fanatic known as Mullah Omar, who also imposed hudud penalties on transgressors. And the Taliban also banned music, games, and certain Western technology.
ISIS was ultimately vanquished by a U.S.-led military coalition in 2016. The Taliban were ultimately vanquished by a U.S.-led invasion in 2002. In neither case was either group completely eradicated, however. They both fled to safer jurisdictions and regrouped.
In the Syrian theater, al-Qaeda and ISIS clashed and competed. This is the dynamic that the Biden administration seeks to exploit in its Afghanistan spin. In Syria, the Islamic State refused to recognize al-Qaeda’s authority. But it went a bit further than that. Al-Qaeda grew uncomfortable with the way in which ISIS had alienated the Muslim world with its brutality and nonchalant approach to killing. In 2014, al-Qaeda disavowed ISIS. Then, in 2016, al-Qaeda’s franchise in Syria—the violent jihadi group known as the Nusra Front and later Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)—disassociated itself from the broader al-Qaeda network. Analysts increasingly began to describe HTS as “moderate” compared to ISIS.
This should all sound somewhat familiar. However, even then, it was a long throw from third. Describing the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda as “moderate,” even in relation to ISIS, deliberately ignores the franchise’s long-standing ties to the broader jihadi matrix. It further ignores the group’s horrifying track record, including suicide bombings and the slaughter of Western-backed rebels fighting the Assad regime.
It is said that success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. Not so in this case. The effort to rebrand the Taliban as “moderate” tracks back more than a decade. It could not have happened without the help of the Obama administration. That said, the Trump administration deserves its fair share of the blame.
In June 2010, President Barack Obama called the Taliban “a blend of hard-core ideologues, tribal leaders, kids that basically sign up because it’s the best job available to them. Not all of them are going to be thinking the same way about the Afghan government, about the future of Afghanistan.” Then-Vice President Biden in 2011 stated that the U.S. military was “breaking the momentum of the insurgents and the radicalized portion of the Taliban” (emphasis added). Biden claimed that same year that “the Taliban, per se, is not our enemy.” Thus began the Obama administration’s search for the “moderates” within one of the world’s deadliest terrorist organizations.
Discussions began in 2011 between the tiny but wealthy Persian Gulf nation of Qatar and the Taliban, with the notion that eventually the latter would open an embassy in Doha. By 2013, the Taliban created an official office there, with the full backing of Washington. The following year, the Obama administration authorized the release from Guantanamo of the “Taliban Five”—senior Taliban figures with a history of violence against the United States and known ties to al-Qaeda—in exchange for Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, an American captured by the Taliban after (deliberately) wandering off his base. The Taliban detainees were sent to Qatar, where officials promised to monitor their activities.
This was akin to having a fox guard the henhouse. Persistent reports indicated that Qatar had been supporting and financing a range of Islamist terrorist groups. Nevertheless, Washington continued to encourage Qatar to take the lead in political negotiations over the future of the Taliban in Afghanistan. As the United States looked to exit Afghanistan, the Obama administration was angling for a diplomatic arrangement to provide cover for doing so. Qatar, warts and all, was America’s proxy negotiator.
In a strange turn of events, after Obama left the White House in 2016, the Trump administration sustained this effort. It did so even as the Taliban Five joined the Taliban’s negotiating team, reportedly at Doha’s urging. By 2019, the U.S. had concluded nine rounds of negotiations in Qatar. The process was gaining steam.
In 2020, President Donald Trump publicly implied that the Taliban could soon be ready to take responsibility for Afghanistan’s security. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asserted that the Taliban had agreed to “break” their “relationship” with al-Qaeda and to “work alongside of us to destroy, deny resources” to al-Qaeda and to “have al-Qaeda depart from” Afghanistan. He later stated that the White House expected “the Taliban to honor their commitments to make a clean break from all terrorist organizations.” There was even talk about inviting the Taliban for talks at Camp David.
What was strange about all of these overtures and statements (apart from the fact that they were not grounded in reality) was that Trump had pilloried the Obama administration for insisting that engagement with the Islamic Republic of Iran would sideline “the hardliners” and empower “the moderates.” But then he turned around and took a page from the Obama handbook. He pursued diplomacy with the Taliban, sworn enemies of America, even as he derided a similar process with Iran.
The Trump team never presided over a military withdrawal, however. That was Biden’s ill-fated decision. One can only speculate as to what Trump would have done had he gone on to serve a second term—but there can be no doubt that he set in motion the process of ceding Afghanistan to the Taliban, agreeing to a withdrawal deal on February 29, 2020, and then drawing down troops. This provided the Taliban with a timeline for their military offensive to reconquer the country.
In January 2021, the Trump team handed the baton to the Biden administration. Despite wholesale changes in policy and personnel, Biden retained Trump’s appointed U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, who had played a crucial role in working with the Qataris. Khalilzad kept the ill-fated dialogue alive with the Taliban while promoting the fiction that this was a pragmatic group that could work with Washington. In May, he even slammed projections that the Taliban might overrun Kabul after the American departure as “mistaken.” He insisted that the Taliban “seek normalcy in terms of relations—acceptability, removal from sanctions, not to remain a pariah.” So much for that.
The United States has not just lost America’s longest war in a spectacularly embarrassing fashion. It has lost the narrative. The facts speak for themselves. The Taliban are not partners. They are not friends. And they are not moderate. Al-Qaeda has helped to make that abundantly clear in recent weeks. As Joscelyn noted in the Long War Journal, al-Qaeda’s senior leadership has gloated about the Taliban’s return to power, praising it as a “historic victory” and calling upon Muslims worldwide to support the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.”
Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of the entire al-Qaeda network, has further sworn an oath of allegiance to the Taliban’s emir, Hibatullah Akhundzada. This should come as no surprise, of course. Al-Qaeda’s leader has maintained an oath of loyalty to the Taliban’s emir for more than two decades. But this history only underscores the absurdity of the Biden administration’s claims.
In 2014, al-Qaeda announced a new franchise: al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent. It was deliberately created to support the Taliban. In the meantime, other al-Qaeda affiliates, such as Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, have long operated in areas of Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban, suggesting a modus vivendi, at minimum. My colleague Bill Roggio continues to track the presence of al-Qaeda throughout Afghanistan. It was significant before the pullout (Roggio predicted for that reason, among others, that the U.S. withdrawal would be a disaster). The al-Qaeda presence in Afghanistan, now that America is gone, is only likely to grow.
The glue that binds it all together is the Haqqani network, a terrorist group that is both one of al-Qaeda’s closest allies and also an integral component of the Taliban’s network. The Taliban’s new interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, embodies this relationship. He has served as the Taliban’s deputy emir since 2015, while a recent UN report identified him as a member of the “wider al-Qaeda leadership.”
The Taliban’s strong ties to al-Qaeda only reinforce the fact that the group has not grown more moderate or pragmatic in recent years. But one need not look to al-Qaeda for evidence of this. The group recently released propaganda venerating its “suicide squads.” In the same video, the Taliban blamed American “policy” for the attacks of 9/11—attacks they have never attributed to al-Qaeda.
In perhaps the clearest sign of what is to come, the Taliban have now formed a new government, and there’s nothing moderate about it. Many of the cabinet ministers have been sanctioned by the U.S. and the UN for terrorism. Several were Guantanamo Bay detainees. Two of them appear on the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program, whereby the U.S. government offers millions of dollars for information that could lead to their kill or capture.
In late August, in the wake of the televised horrors out of Kabul, President Biden continued to appeal to the Taliban to help facilitate the departure of stranded American citizens and others from the country. Out of sheer desperation, he tried to wield the “power” of the United Nations. A recent UN resolution “sent a clear message about what the international community expects the Taliban to deliver on moving forward, notably freedom of travel, freedom to leave,” Biden said in a televised speech. “And together, we are joined by over 100 countries that are determined to make sure the Taliban upholds those commitments.”
The UN likely had little to do with what came next. The Taliban ultimately granted the U.S. and others permission to facilitate a number of evacuation flights. This was by no means a collaboration or a nod to a budding relationship with Washington. It was a tactical consideration in the group’s longer-term objective of reconquering Afghanistan. Mission accomplished.
Jonathan Schanzer is senior vice president for research at Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow him on Twitter @JSchanzer. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, non-partisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Jonathan Schanzer Senior Vice President for Research · September 20, 2021
10. Islamic State bombs Taliban convoys in eastern Afghanistan
Could there be a civil war between the Islamic State and the Taliban? What does the international community do if that occurs?
Islamic State bombs Taliban convoys in eastern Afghanistan | FDD's Long War Journal
Amaq News Agency released a 17-second video showing an IED attack on a Taliban convoy in Jalalabad.
The Islamic State’s Khorasan Province has claimed responsibility for a series of bombings that targeted Taliban convoys throughout the city of Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province. The group claims that 35 Taliban members were killed or wounded in the attacks, though the casualty figures could not be independently verified.
Amaq News Agency, a media arm for the Islamic State, released a single-page statement on the attacks, as well as a short video showing an improvised explosive device being detonated underneath a Taliban vehicle. A screen shot from the video can be seen above.
Amaq claimed that seven bombings were carried out on Sept. 18 and 19, with the final explosion occurring outside of the Indian consulate in Jalalabad. Other jihadists have assaulted the Indian consulate inside the city in the past, but there is no indication in Amaq’s reporting that the diplomatic location was deliberately targeted on this occasion.
The so-called caliphate’s men previously controlled a number of districts in Nangarhar. The Islamic State even seized ground in the Tora Bora Mountains, which were once home to Osama bin Laden.
As of early 2016, the Islamic State’s men reportedly controlled 10 districts in Nangarhar. However, their safe haven shrunk in the months that followed. They lost their turf after battling the U.S. military, security forces for the now deposed Afghan government, as well as rival jihadists from the Taliban and al Qaeda.
Even after losing its turf, the Islamic State retained a terror network in Nangarhar. That network received a new influx of personnel in recent months, as thousands of jihadists were freed from Afghanistan’s jails, including in Jalalabad.
On Aug. 26, an Islamic State suicide bomber blew himself up outside of the airport in Kabul. U.S. forces were overseeing a chaotic withdrawal from the country at the time. Dozens were killed in the bombing, including 13 U.S. service members.
The U.S. military launched a retaliatory drone strike against an Islamic State “planner” in Nangarhar one day later, but provided no real details on the target or the casualties inflicted.
Days later, the U.S. military conducted an air strike in Kabul, claiming it was necessary to neutralize an imminent Islamic State threat. On Sept. 17, U.S. Central Command was forced to admit that no terrorists were killed in the bombing. Instead, ten civilians, including seven children, were killed.
The Islamic State remains opposed to the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate. The group’s leaders claim that only their would-be caliphate is a legitimate government.
Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for FDD's Long War Journal.
Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.
11. AFSOC plans to demo amphibious MC-130J by end of next year, commander says
I had no idea the capability was this far along in development.
AFSOC plans to demo amphibious MC-130J by end of next year, commander says
Air Force Special Operations Command plans to demonstrate an amphibious version of the MC-130J Hercules by the end of next year, AFSOC’s commander told reporters Monday morning at the Air Force Association convention.
“I can say with certainty that our plan is to conduct a demo by the 31st of December next year.,” AFSOC commander Lt. Gen. Jim Slife said in a roundtable with media on Sept. 20. Slife emphasized that a flying demo would most likely feature a single aircraft and would be aimed at validating digitally engineered models that the program has run so far on the aircraft’s capabilities.
The variant of the MC-130J capable of landing on water the aircraft would be better equipped for a wider breadth of missions as the Pentagon shifts focus to littoral regions, per a Sept. 14 statement. The development has been dubbed the MC-130J Amphibious Capability, or MAC.
The latest rendered illustrations of the proposed model feature large, removable floats that would allow the aircraft to take off and land on both bodies of water and runway independent locations. In allowing significantly greater to non-traditional takeoff and landing areas, MAC would also help curtail aircraft vulnerability by avoiding easily-targetable locations.
“This capability allows the Air Force to increase placement and access for infiltration, exfiltration, and personnel recovery, as well as providing enhanced logistical capabilities for future competition and conflict,” said Lt. Col. Josh Trantham, AFSOC Science, Systems, Technology, & Innovation Deputy Division Chief in the Air Force’s statement.
The Air Force had previously announced it’s intention to develop the water-capable aircraft at the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference in May of this year, as reported by The Drive in May. Though the ept. 14 AFSOC update doesn’t provide a significant amount more detail than May’s announcement, it does note that a task force of unspecified collaborators are working with AFSOC and the Air Force Research Lab’s Strategic Development Planning and Experimentation directorate to create a prototype. The Air Force estimates an operational capability demonstration could come in as little as 17 months.
This isn’t the first time plans for an amphibious aircraft with the built-in versatility of the C-130 has come to light. Lockheed toyed with the idea of a Hercules Amphibian for the Navy as early as the 1960s, according to Tyler Rogoway’s 2015 analysis for Jalopnik, pointing out that such an aircraft would have wide-reaching applications beyond strictly battlespace operations, like rescue missions and firefighting.
While the U.S. military currently has zero seaplanes in its fleets, David Alman noted last year for War on the Rocks, that Japan, Russia, and China each operate a modest number of their own. Readiness in the Indo-Pacific could be vastly improved by the operational benefits of seaplanes’ versatility, Alman wrote, citing previous American seaplane development and operation in the early 1900s and through World War II.
Slife stressed, however, that the MAC would not be a “seaplane” per se.
“I see it referred to float plane or sea plane, which is not actually accurate,” Slife said. “It is strictly amphibious capability we’re after. In other words, utilities and land on either land or water and not be completely a maritime-only kind of platform.”
MAC prototypes are currently being tested in digital environments and through virtual reality modeling by AFSOC and companies in the private sector, according to the Air Force. AFSOC believes that these emerging tools will help streamline prototype development in such a way that accurately incorporates real-world feasibility while reducing risk.
“Being able to experiment with existing technology to evaluate design tradeoffs and test a new system before ever bending metal is a game-changer,” said Maj Kristen Cepak, AFSOC Technology Transition Branch Chief.
Air Force Times reporter Rachel Cohen contributed to this story.
Leila has covered global military and security operations from across the U.S., the Middle East, and Latin America.
12. Air Force Special Operations Commander Expects New, Lighter Plane to Fight Terrorists Next Year
Air Force Special Operations Commander Expects New, Lighter Plane to Fight Terrorists Next Year
The head of Air Force Special Operations Command said he is feeling confident about acquiring a new cheap and light aircraft next year as part of the Armed Overwatch program for missions against terrorist and extremists in places such as Africa.
The command wants to field a series of about 75 flexible, fixed-wing aircraft that could fly in remote locations and require little logistical support. The fleet could provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, as well as close-air support and precision-strike missions in coordination with ground troops.
Lt. Gen. Jim Slife, the AFSOC commander, said testing and evaluation of the Armed Overwatch candidate planes at Florida's Eglin Air Force Base has gone well, adding that congressional support for the program is growing. He spoke to reporters during the Air Force Association's Air Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland.
"I think there's a good likelihood that we'll go into procurement in fiscal year '22," he said.
Slife said earlier this year that AFSOC thinks an Armed Overwatch plane could keep up pressure on terrorist or other violent extremist groups that don't fly aircraft, without requiring the expense of more advanced U.S. fighter aircraft.
U.S. Special Operations Command in May announced contracts totaling $19.2 million awarded to five companies for prototype aircraft: Leidos Inc., MAG Aerospace, Textron Aviation Defense, L-3 Communications Integrated Systems, and Sierra Nevada Corp.
SOCOM said in May that the five demonstrations likely would be completed by March 2022. Slife said Monday that three vendors had demonstrated their aircraft over the summer and met all the requirements.
SOCOM commander Gen. Richard Clarke told lawmakers in July that he envisioned having four operational squadrons of 15 aircraft apiece. One of those would be deployed at any given time, he said, and the others would be home for training, maintenance and recovery to prepare for their next deployment.
A fifth squadron for training purposes was also being considered, Clarke said.
13. Pentagon replacing Defense Travel System, says savings and user satisfaction will result
A game changer for all military personnel!. I hope none of the software engineers who developed DTS have been hired by the new company.
Pentagon replacing Defense Travel System, says savings and user satisfaction will result
A U.S.-bound plane is parked at a gate at Narita International Airport in Japan in 2019. The Defense Department will roll out a replacement to the Defense Travel System over the next three years. (Aaron Kidd/Stars and Stripes)
The Defense Department soon will begin a three-year rollout of a cloud-based system intended to replace the aging Defense Travel System, which has been beset by costly inefficiency for years.
Dubbed MyTravel, the new system will let users book travel and process expense reports online.
The Pentagon previously projected the upgrade would lower the price of airline tickets and reduce the time spent by DOD military and civilian personnel on booking travel by more than 10 million hours a year.
The new system is expected to be fully operational by fiscal year 2025 and will eventually handle some 3.8 million transactions a year.
The system is being developed by Bellevue, Wash.-based Concur Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Germany’s SAP SE. DOD and Concur signed a $374 million contract last week.
Under a contract signed in 2018, Concur developed a prototype of MyTravel. In awarding that contract, the Pentagon said it was spending about $9 billion on travel, about 70% of that for temporary duty assignments.
Passengers arrive at the Ramstein Air Base, Germany, passenger terminal in 2016. The Defense Department will roll out a replacement to the Defense Travel System over the next three years. (Jonathan Stefanko/U.S. Air Force)
The government has seen a per-trip savings through limited use of the prototype, but the dollar amounts for the costs of about 4 million annual trips under the legacy system and the projected savings under MyTravel at full implementation were redacted from the contracting documents.
DTS, which has been around in some form for over two decades, continues to incur technical debt “through poor usability, low customer satisfaction and improper payment of travel entitlements,” according to a document justifying the contact award.
MyTravel's “modern, easy-to-use interface” is expected to improve usability and customer satisfaction, the document states.
A built-in artificial intelligence engine identifies possible irregularities in travel expenses and already has shown that it could significantly reduce improper payments, the contracting document states.
MyTravel is expected to ramp up from processing some 1,000 transactions this fiscal year to 30,000 next year, the document says. It currently has a user base of about 2,000 people, it says, a small fraction of DOD's nearly 3 million personnel.
The prototype project took three years, adding DOD-specific capabilities to Concur’s commercial product in over 30 rapid-development cycles known as “sprints,” the contract documents state.
It can currently handle temporary duty travel, local travel, travel to military installations and overseas travel, the document states.
As the contractor shifts from development to production, more sprints will be used to configure it for processing leave, medical, training and deployment travel in compliance with DOD rules.
Chad Garland
Chad is a Marine Corps veteran who covers the U.S. military in the Middle East, Afghanistan and sometimes elsewhere for Stars and Stripes. An Illinois native who’s reported for news outlets in Washington, D.C., Arizona, Oregon and California, he’s an alumnus of the Defense Language Institute, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Arizona State University.
14. Shaping a Way Ahead for Pacific Defense: The Evolving Role of the USAF
Excerpts:
BG Winkler underscored that PACAF is focused on the importance of operating as a joint force and doing so by learning from its ongoing operational engagements.
As he put it: “Our vision for the Pacific is to operationalize the Pacific AOR. In so doing, we need to take a proactive approach. Too often we operate in the Pacific theater at the speed of staff. What we need to do in the Pacific theater is to act at the speed of operations.”
With the current force, a key path to unleash enhanced capabilities is being able to leverage airpower in enhance the capabilities of the air-maritime force, up to and including the role of the USCG. The presence force throughout the Pacific, whether American, partner or coalition provides the baseline for engagement with competitors and adversaries.
Shaping a Way Ahead for Pacific Defense: The Evolving Role of the USAF - Second Line of Defense
By Robbin Laird
During my recent visit to Hawaii, I had a chance to talk with Brigadier General Michael Winkler, Director of Strategic Plans, Requirements and Programs at the Pacific Air Force.
We discussed a wide range of subjects, but in this article, I will focus on our discussion of the way ahead for PACAF and the joint force in crafting a way ahead for Pacific defense.
The U.S. services and our allies are focused on shaping innovative ways to deliver effective warfighting and deterrent capabilities. For the USAF, a key focus is upon building out fifth generation airpower, leveraging that capability across the joint force, crafting, shaping and delivering a more distributed force labelled as Agile Combat Employment, and preparing the ground for the coming of the new bomber as a key weapon system for the Pacific.
BG Winkler underscored that PACAF is focused on the importance of operating as a joint force and doing so by learning from its ongoing operational engagements.
As he put it: “Our vision for the Pacific is to operationalize the Pacific AOR. In so doing, we need to take a proactive approach. Too often we operate in the Pacific theater at the speed of staff. What we need to do in the Pacific theater is to act at the speed of operations.”
With the current force, a key path to unleash enhanced capabilities is being able to leverage airpower in enhance the capabilities of the air-maritime force, up to and including the role of the USCG. The presence force throughout the Pacific, whether American, partner or coalition provides the baseline for engagement with competitors and adversaries.
Leveraging presence to connect to a wider integrated force is a key way ahead to deal with the challenges in the Pacific.
BG Winkler put it this way: “A United States Coast Guard National Security Cutter might be facing a challenge.
“And because we haven’t fully integrated their sensor suite in with the rest of the DoD capabilities, they aren’t going to be as informed as they need to be because we haven’t made those connections or able to leverage the full range of U.S. combat power.
“We are working towards enhanced integratability in the force. A game changing capability is based on ensuring that every sensor out there is connected to a network, and that network shares information with everybody that we allow access to it. And we would want to make sure that all of our allies and partners have access to that network.
“Certainly, all the U.S. forces forward deployed would have access to that network, as well.
“We’ve got a lot of work to get from where we are today to actually being able to build that capability, but that’s one of the things that we need to redouble efforts on. Access to the right information is going to be the key to the next conflict. I also think that both parties in the next conflict will probably be trying to prevent the other country from being able to have an information advantage. “
Throughout the discussion he highlighted the importance of what I have referred to as full spectrum crisis management capability.
The USAF needs to be able to contribute across the conflict spectrum, precisely because deterrence works only if demonstrated power is engaged from the lower to higher ends of conflict.
BG Winker argued: “The more we build out our phase zero peacetime capabilities, the more we organize, train and equip our force right now to be able to have that information advantage.
“We need to continue to practice those tactics, techniques and procedures in phase zero, as we’re doing normal training operations, or even normal real-world operations in phase zero.
“Every single HADR event is an opportunity to shape a mixed force that can then share that same type of data. I think that using those training reps as an opportunity to better build our joint interagency situational awareness is definitely a step in the right direction.
“We have tools to do that right now. We don’t have to wait for a 5-year, or 10-year advanced battle management solution. We’ve got Link 16 networks, we’ve got radios, we’ve got a lot of different ways that we can communicate information. To the degree that we can do that more machine to machine, I think that’ll be a more efficient way of doing it, because we’re going to start to develop large amounts of data.
“So much data that the human that’s trying to assimilate all that data now becomes the choke point in the process. So, the more that we can get the machines and the artificial intelligence finding the anomalies in the normal activity for us, the easier it will be for us to be able to process that data and start to capitalize on information advantage.
“But we certainly don’t need to wait for future capabilities; we can enhance joint capabilities across the spectrum of warfare now by working more integration with the key elements of air, sea and land power.”
PACAF is working the agile employment concept as a key part of shaping the ability of the Air Force to operate across the expanse of the Pacific and to do so in a more survivable mode.
When I met the current PACAF Commander in Australia, he was the commander of 11th Air Force. And during a 2018Williams Seminar, he discussed the need for what would now call Agile Combat Employment. I wrote about his assessment in my book on the evolution of Australian Defence strategy published earlier this year.
At the Williams Foundation Seminar in Canberra in March 2018, the 11th Commander, Lt. General Kenneth Wilsbach, highlighted the nature of the challenge requiring the shift to mobile basing as follows:
“From a USAF standpoint, we are organized for efficiency, and in the high intensity conflict that we might find ourselves in, in the Pacific, that efficiency might be actually our Achilles heel, because it requires us to put massive amounts of equipment on a few bases. Those bases, as we most know, are within the weapons engagement zone of potential adversaries.
“So, the United States Air Force, along with the Australian Air Force, has been working on a concept called, Agile Combat Employment, which seeks to disperse the force, and make it difficult for the enemy to know where you are at, when are you going to be there, and how long are you are going to be there.
“We’re at the very preliminary stages of being able to do this but the organization is part of the problem for us, because we are very used to, over the last several decades, of being in very large bases, very large organizations, and we stove pipe the various career fields, and one commander is not in charge of the force that you need to disperse. We’re taking a look at this, of how we might reorganize, to be able to employ this concept in the Pacific, and other places.”
Now PACAF Commander, Wilsbach has made this a core effort.
And this is how BG Winkler underscored the effort: “PACAF has done a pretty decent job over the last three years of getting the Air Force to embrace this idea of agile combat operations and to export it to Europe as well.
“The whole idea, if you rewind the clock to the mid 80s, early 90s, was that every single base in the United States Air Force that was training for conflict would do an exercise where you’d run around in chemical gear.
“At that point in time, there was a large chemical biological threat, and the Air Force recognized that it needed to be able to survive and operate in that chemical threat. So, we trained to it.
“I think the new version of that chemical biological threat is the anti-access area denial umbrella. The idea of agile combat employment is our capability to survive and operate and keep combat momentum underneath the adversary’s anti-access area denial umbrella.
“Basically, we are focusing on our ability to survive and operate in a contested environment.
“PACAF has taken a realistic approach that is fiscally informed because it would be very difficult for us to go try to build multiple bases with 10,000-foot runways, and dorms, and ammunition storage all over the Pacific. ”
“What we’ve done instead is concentrated on a hub and spoke mentality, where you build a base cluster. That cluster has got a hub that provides quite a bit of logistic support to these different spoke airfields. The spokes are more expeditionary than most folks in the Air Force are used to.
“The expeditionary airfield is a spoke or a place that we operate from. It’s not 10,000 feet of runway, it’s maybe 7,000 feet. We’re probably not going to have big munitions storage areas, there’s probably going to be weapons carts that have missiles on them inside of sandbags bunkers.
“And we’re going to look a lot more like a Marine Expeditionary base than your traditional big Air Force base. It’ll be fairly expeditionary.”
We then discussed the challenge of reducing the number of USAF personnel necessary to sustain air operations, along the lines which the Marines have focused upon. “The MOS challenge is a very real problem for us. And I think we’re starting to figure out how we’re going to get around that. We’re calling it multi capable airman, where we do some degree of cross training. So, your average crew chief now can actually do other flight line tasks like load missiles, and vice versa, your fuels folks actually can do some minor maintenance tasks. It is very much more along the lines of the USMC model.
“The goal is to have airmen do more things, which then means we don’t need to deploy as many of them to one location to still get the job done. And then, we’ll work a logistics schema maneuver from the hubs to the spokes to do the things you’d mentioned previously, the fuel resupply, the munitions resupply, any other expendables.”
We then focused on the shift of ISR from intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance to information, surveillance, reconnaissance, and the shift to decision making at the tactical edge.
As BG Winkler underscored: “Our allies and partners are a huge part of everything that we’re going to end up doing out here in theater. We like to think that they are an asymmetric advantage, and the more that we can get the coalition plugged in. It’s not just U.S. sensors that are out there feeding the rest of the joint coalition force, but it is important to tap into the allied and partner sensors.
“I do think that we’re at a precipice for information warfare, and the fact that some of the forward based sensors that we have like the F-35, can generate way more intelligence data then our traditional ISR fleet, like the E3. Australia’s flying the E7, fairly modernized, very robust ISR capabilities on those.
“I think there’s been some discussion within the United States Air Force about whether or not we need to up the game and maybe make an E7 purchase, as well.
“But we are getting to that point where the forward base fighters actually are so much more technologically advanced than our ISR fleet, that it makes you question where the ISR node should be. I agree, it doesn’t necessarily need to be all the way back in Hawaii. It could be somewhere else in the theater.
“But the Air Force, as you’re aware, has traditionally operated with AOC as the central node for command and control in the Pacific. We’re trying to figure out as an Air Force what the future looks like.
“But I don’t think that future is going to be five years from now. I think it might be 10 years from now.
“And in the short term, what you’ll probably see is a something that allows us to operate from the AOC, protect our capabilities to operate from the air operation center, to be able to help synchronize fighters throughout the entire AOR, but then set up subordinate nodes that are probably forward of the AOC.
“If the AOC does get cut off or shut down, for some reason, you do still have subordinate C2 nodes in the theater that can keep the continuity of operations, and keep some battlefield momentum up, to continue to take the fight to the enemy.
“And I think we’re all getting more serious about electronic warfare.
“I’ll be interested to see how those capabilities mature over the next 10 years. I think we’re at a situation right now, where electronic warfare a lot of ways still is a supporting force to the kinetic stuff.
“The big question in the electronic warfare is, knowing you’ve got a limited number of assets that can do it. Where do you want to prioritize that?
“And that question drives you back right to, who is doing the command and control? How are you integrating the most effective electronic warfare to support the highest priority kinetic warfare?
“That’s a commander’s decision, so the important part of that is the Joint Force Commander or the Joint Task Force Commander, or whoever is running the fight, needs to very clearly articulate to his subordinate commanders, who is the supported commander for synchronizing those joint fires?
“Because without knowing that ahead of time we may possess all of the capability in the world as a joint force but we will never employ it as effectively as we could.”
We then discussed training.
And with the coming of the B-21 in the mid-term, preparing for the coming of the B-21, not as a platform, but a weapons system, notably integrated in the air-maritime fight is a key consideration. The role of an expanded ability to work in the synthetic environment is important, but BG Winkler felt that progress has not been rapid enough in this domain, and live training is critical and to do so in ways that better emulate the Red side threat.
Here he noted that building new capabilities in Alaska, on the U.S. side, and in Australia, on the Australian side, were key ways ahead. And, although we did not discuss this, in my view, being able to operate the new bomber from these two trajectories as an air-maritime asset, or one that can work with the tactical air forces, or the fleet is a key leverage for the mid-term for the United States and the allied forces.
BG Winkler closed by linking the training discussion with where we had started the conversation, namely, working from operations to con-ops evolution. “Admiral Aquilino, INDOPACOM commander, believes that entire Pacific Ocean right now should be our training space. Every single time that China sails a Surface Action Group, out here into the Philippine Sea, we ought to be working as a joint force to integrate and bring in additional assets that maybe we haven’t used in the past.
“For example, maybe that’s an opportunity for us to partner with the Coast Guard to figure out how we can get them added into a Link 16 network to share situational awareness.
“But we need to take advantage of the opportunities our adversaries provide us by getting out and about in the Pacific.
“And that’s how you get that training level down to the operators that are going to be pulling triggers, and assimilating information in a combat environment as you let them train.
“Do it every single day in their weapons platform. I think any situation in this theater is an opportunity for us to practice.
“It’s just a matter of us taking the same mentality that we have in the CENTCOM AOR, where you are operating every single day and driven by what is going on in the theater and putting that into practice.”
Featured Photo: U.S. Air Force F-15C Eagles assigned to the 44th Fighter Squadron, Kadena Air Base, Japan, fly in formation during RED FLAG-Alaska (RF-A) 21-3, near Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, Aug. 23, 2021. RF-A is the world’s premier tactical joint and coalition air combat employment exercise, designed to replicate the stress that warfighters face during combat sorties. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Aaron Larue Guerrisky).
A recent example of expanded exercises with allies in the Pacific has been the “Heifara-Wakea” engagement with the French Air Force.
Post Views: 350
15. Biden seeks to open a new chapter in world affairs, facing fresh skepticism from allies
Trust or skepticism?
Biden seeks to open a new chapter in world affairs, facing fresh skepticism from allies
The Washington Post · by Anne Gearan and John Hudson Yesterday at 7:03 p.m. EDT · September 20, 2021
NEW YORK — President Biden, who was welcomed by much of the world as the steady hand who would restore trust in American leadership and repair alliances ruptured by President Donald Trump, has some repair work to do on his own account as he meets world leaders this week.
Biden faces skepticism from many and hostility from a few as he prepares to address the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, his first address there as president. The global bill of complaint includes his handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan and coronavirus pandemic policies such as alleged vaccine hoarding and the continuation of Trump’s policy to deport most would-be migrants on public health grounds. And Biden’s hopes to link arms with European allies against China were soured by a new, unprecedented breach with ally France in the days leading up to the assembly.
Biden wants to focus on U.S. vaccine donations, efforts to combat climate change and the contest between democracies and autocracies for global preeminence as the United States emerges from the shadow of wars rooted in the 9/11 attacks.
“The president will essentially drive home the message that ending the war in Afghanistan closed a chapter focused on war and opened a chapter focused on purposeful, effective, intensive American diplomacy, defined by working with allies and partners to solve problems that can’t be solved by military force,” a senior U.S. official said Monday, speaking on the condition of anonymity under rules set by the White House.
Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told reporters Monday that the episode is evidence that Europe and the United States may have conflicting objectives in Asia and less common ground than presumed.
“We thought that this [kind] of unilateralism and unpredictability, the brutality of the announcement, of the lack of respect for a partner, we thought these belonged to the past,” Le Drian said.
Biden has proposed a peacemaking call with French President Emmanuel Macron, who is not attending the U.N. meeting in person this year. Le Drian said the call will take place “in the coming days.” Le Drian, though, does not plan to meet with his counterpart, Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
U.S. officials have sought to play down the significance of the rupture, although France had never before yanked its ambassador from Washington, as it did last week. The United States counts France as its oldest ally.
“We don’t share their view in terms of how this all developed, but we understand their position and we will continue to be engaged in the coming days on this,” the U.S. official said.
The contretemps came atop hurt feelings among some NATO allies who felt sidelined by Biden’s abrupt announcement that all U.S. forces would leave Afghanistan by Aug. 31 — and stung by the chaos of the closing days of a nearly 20-year mission.
As the United States and NATO partners rushed to help people leave ahead of a Taliban takeover, a terrorist attack killed scores of Afghans and 13 U.S. service members. Several NATO nations said they could not get everyone out before Biden’s deadline.
The Pentagon acknowledged last week that it mistakenly tracked and killed an innocent aid worker in Kabul after misidentifying him as a terrorist. The attack also killed nine other civilians, most of them children, and opened questions about Biden’s claim that the United States could keep a lid on terrorism in Afghanistan via remote surveillance.
Biden is expected to earn some goodwill from European allies with his decision Monday to ease travel restrictions on fully vaccinated foreign visitors, starting in November. Thousands of foreign nationals with families in the United States, many European, have been unable to see them through much of the past 18 months.
The political tension with France may have helped speed the decision. Blinken discussed the travel ban at length with the French ambassador to Washington, Philippe Etienne, just before Etienne was ordered to return to Paris, officials said.
More than 80 presidents and prime ministers and their entourages planned to be in Manhattan this year for the return the U.N. General Assembly — often called the “Super Bowl of diplomacy” — after last year’s all-virtual gathering featuring taped speeches from world leaders.
Biden’s schedule in New York is brief. He is holding only one meeting with a fellow leader, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, after his General Assembly address instead of the typical round of sideline meetings jokingly known as “diplomatic speed dating.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will meet with Biden later Tuesday back at the White House, and Biden is leading a U.N.-related virtual meeting on the pandemic on Wednesday, from Washington.
“America is back,” Biden said to reporters Monday before his meeting with U.N. Secretary General António Guterres. “We believe in the United Nations and its values.”
The risk that the influx of visitors might create a new rash of coronavirus infections is a concern for U.S., U.N. and New York City officials, who have placed restrictions on the size of traveling delegations. There is also a “vaccination van” outside the U.N. building that will provide free testing and single-dose shots of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
“We need to take all measures to ensure that it does not become a superspreader event,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said at a news conference Friday.
The United Nations has adopted an “honor system” for leaders to attest they are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.
One test of the city and United Nations’ pandemic protection plans is likely to come Tuesday, when Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is slated to open the marquee portion of the event, when world leaders speak one after the other against an iconic green marble backdrop.
The populist Bolsonaro, a Trump ally who contracted the virus last year, as recently as last week said publicly that he does not need to be vaccinated, because he has naturally acquired antibodies. A member of his delegation’s advance team has already tested positive for the coronavirus, according to Brazilian media.
The return of lanyard-wearing diplomats and hordes of staffers is a welcome sign for a city that was economically ravaged by the pandemic and is just now reopening its premier tourist attractions, including Broadway.
U.N. officials also said the diplomatic benefits are myriad when world leaders can meet face-to-face in discreet settings rather than stale videoconferences.
“For 75 years, the General Assembly has benefited from impromptu meetings and corridor discussions that can carry huge importance in solving bilateral and multilateral issues,” Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesman for Guterres, said in an interview.
“We want to find the right balance between being extremely safe and cautious and also being able to engage in face-to-face diplomacy,” he said.
After Biden leaves, most of that diplomacy will be in the hands of Blinken, whose Dutch and British counterparts were fired or demoted amid complaints about the management of the NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Blinken, who fielded criticism over the Defense Department’s rushed withdrawal and evacuation while appearing before a Senate panel last, told lawmakers he did not offer the president his resignation over the crisis.
Biden has lost some international goodwill this year, but he’s still a more welcome guest here than his predecessor ever was, U.N. watchers said.
“Generally, I think Biden will get a warm reception, as he isn’t Trump,” said Richard Gowan, a U.N. expert at the International Crisis Group.
Annabelle Timsit in London contributed to this report.
The Washington Post · by Anne Gearan and John Hudson Yesterday at 7:03 p.m. EDT · September 20, 2021
16. A Rahm Emanuel is Exactly What Japan Wants, Asia Scholars Say
Excerpt:
If he is confirmed, Emanuel will become ambassador to a U.S. treaty ally at a critical time in the relationship, when Biden is seeking to recruit Japan to take a tougher stance against the rising threat of China. In April, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga was the first foreign leader to visit Biden at the White House. Biden’s choice of Emanuel, with whom he has a close relationship, signifies again how important the alliance with Japan is to the president, Smith said.
“I’m not hearing people being critical of him,” said Kirsti Govella, deputy director of the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund. “People focused on Asia or Japan realize a central concern is continuing the close relationship and continuing to be seen as a key ally. In many ways, the best ambassador is one who can keep the U.S.-Japan relationship central to U.S. foreign policy.”
Many past U.S. ambassadors to Japan have had little or no experience in the region. Caroline Kennedy, lacked any expertise on Japan or diplomatic background, yet was successful as ambassador from 2013 to 2017 and loved by the Japanese public, in part because her name carried a lot of weight in American politics.
“If the Japanese had to choose between someone who knows them well and someone who knows the president well, they’d probably choose someone who knows the president well every time,” Cooper said.
A Rahm Emanuel is Exactly What Japan Wants, Asia Scholars Say
What matters in American politics is not what matters to Tokyo.
Progressives hate him and Republicans love to hate on him, but Rahm Emanuel’s controversial nomination to be U.S. ambassador to Japan is receiving strong support from one key constituency far from the fringes of left-right politics: Asia security experts. Leading watchers of the region say Emanuel is poised to offer the Japanese what they most want in an ambassador: a personal connection to President Joe Biden.
Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor and White House chief of staff to President Barack Obama, has received public opposition from some Democrat members of Congress over his record on police violence and race. But issues commanding attention in American politics often are far removed from those in other capitals. Asia experts said that, from a foreign policy viewpoint, his long-time relationship with the current president will be seen as an asset in Japan and an indication that America values its relationship with Tokyo.
“It’s really important in Tokyo among government and political leaders that there is a person in Tokyo who can pick up the phone and speak to the president,” said Sheila Smith, a senior fellow for Asia Pacific studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “There is no doubt that Rahm Emanuel can do that.”
Critics of Emanuel’s nomination, which was formally sent to the Senate last week, point to his role as Chicago mayor in the investigation of the 2014 police murder of a Black teenager in which it took 13 months for video footage of the shooting to be released. Some left-wing Democrats have alleged that Emanuel played a role in that delay, though he has denied it.
In August, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Minn., said senators should reject Emanuel’s nomination “if you believe Black lives indeed matter.” Three weeks ago, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said in a statement that Emanuel’s alleged role in this “cover up” should be “disqualifying for any position of public trust.” When his nomination was made official last week, Ocasio-Cortez said in a tweet, “This continues to be one of the most bizarre campaigns / uses of energy in Washington. Once again, Senate should vote NO on confirming Rahm Emanuel.”
When asked if any of the left’s criticism of Emanuel included concern about his lack of foreign policy credentials, a spokesperson for Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., pointed to a Sept. 1 joint statement with Rep. Mondaire Jones, D-N.Y., that focused entirely on racial justice.
Requests for comment to some of the most ardent critics of Emanuel, including Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, and Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y. were not returned.
Despite the pushback from those House Democrats over his record as mayor, members of the foreign relations committees on the Hill widely support Emanuel, including Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, as well as Sens. Ben Cardin, D-Md., and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., both members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that will consider his nomination. Perhaps more importantly, Emanuel has the support of Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the majority whip.
“Japan is an important strategic partner in Asia, particularly in light of our continued challenges from China,” Durbin tweeted in August. “I will do all I can to help Rahm become America’s voice in Japan.”
No Democrat in the Senate has said they will vote against Emanuel’s nomination. One of the only Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee who has expressed any reservations is Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who said he had received letters from constituents with concerns about Emanuel’s response to the shooting of Laquan McDonald in 2014.
“Please be assured that I will keep your views in mind should Mr. Emanuel’s nomination come before the Senate for consideration,” Merkley wrote.
Republicans and conservative pundits historically have detested Emanuel as a Clinton-Obama insider. When he was spotted visiting Trump Tower in December 2016, Fox’s Sean Hannity warned President-elect Donald Trump against cozying up to “Rahm ‘Rambo dead fish’ Emanuel.”
But even some Republicans intend to support Emanuel’s bid for the ambassadorship. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., have applauded Biden’s choice.
“I congratulate @RahmEmanuel on his nomination. I know the Japanese people with their deep love for the U.S. look forward to welcoming the next Ambassador,” tweeted Hagerty, a former ambassador to Japan in the Trump administration.
Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Roy Blunt, R-Mo., also said they will support Emanuel, the Washington Post reported.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told Politico he will vote no because of “Chicago’s decline” under Emanuel’s leadership, but did not mention foreign policy.
Though Senate progressives Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., are not on the committee that will consider Emanuel’s nomination, any senator can block a nomination from final confirmation. Neither has said whether they will take up the objections of their House counterparts, but there is history here, too. In the 2020 presidential primaries, Emanuel called Sanders’s chances to defeat Trump a “really a big risk,” during an interview with Stephen Colbert, who joked, “Are you here tonight to kneecap Bernie Sanders?” During the previous election cycle in 2016, Sanders thanked Emanuel on Twitter for not endorsing him, saying that “I don’t want the endorsement of a mayor shutting down schools and firing teachers.”
Both offices did not return a request for comment.
White House officials remain confident in Emanuel’s nomination, and no senators have expressed private concerns to the administration, a senior administration official told Defense One. Still, Emanuel isn’t taking anything for granted and is “hustling for every senator’s support,” the source said.
Some of Emanuel’s critics raise concerns that his well-known brisk demeanor could clash with Japanese culture, but Smith said Emanuel will find sharp-elbowed, competitive politicians in Japan as well, and that she doesn’t expect Japanese officials will have any difficulty working with him.
“Kono is not your typical quiet, reserved Japanese politician,” Cooper said. “If it happens to be that Kono ends up being the next prime minister, I think you could make a strong argument that Rahm Emanuel is a pick that would work really well with him.”
If he is confirmed, Emanuel will become ambassador to a U.S. treaty ally at a critical time in the relationship, when Biden is seeking to recruit Japan to take a tougher stance against the rising threat of China. In April, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga was the first foreign leader to visit Biden at the White House. Biden’s choice of Emanuel, with whom he has a close relationship, signifies again how important the alliance with Japan is to the president, Smith said.
“I’m not hearing people being critical of him,” said Kirsti Govella, deputy director of the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund. “People focused on Asia or Japan realize a central concern is continuing the close relationship and continuing to be seen as a key ally. In many ways, the best ambassador is one who can keep the U.S.-Japan relationship central to U.S. foreign policy.”
Many past U.S. ambassadors to Japan have had little or no experience in the region. Caroline Kennedy, lacked any expertise on Japan or diplomatic background, yet was successful as ambassador from 2013 to 2017 and loved by the Japanese public, in part because her name carried a lot of weight in American politics.
“If the Japanese had to choose between someone who knows them well and someone who knows the president well, they’d probably choose someone who knows the president well every time,” Cooper said.
17. It's clearer to India than ever that Quad is no military alliance. Everything's a bit AUKUS
A view from India. There are second and third order effects to every action in international affairs.
A buried lede (for me at least as I missed this last week): "Which is why Blinken’s comments to the US Congress last week that the US is in talks with India for a staging post to undertake “over the horizon” strikes inside Afghanistan are interesting."
Excerpts:
Under the circumstances, India’s participation in the Quad is a hugely significant step – but let us not pretend that it catapults India into the centre of global realpolitik. It doesn’t. India certainly leads the developing world ably, but a yawning gulf of many light years separates it from the big boys. In that world, cutting a deal is par for the course – you win some, you lose some.
Which is why Blinken’s comments to the US Congress last week that the US is in talks with India for a staging post to undertake “over the horizon” strikes inside Afghanistan are interesting.
Was Blinken fudging the truth or did he mean what he said? Having partnered with Pakistan these past few years to deliver the Taliban in Kabul, is Blinken now teasing Pakistan with its sudden interest in India and Afghanistan? Is the US Secretary of State indicating that Biden and Modi could write a new chapter on Afghanistan? Watching this space just became more interesting.
Lastly, France’s anger at AUKUS also holds lessons for India: It is imperative to build your national strength to afford, like Paris, to throw a histrionic fit. The world will take India less seriously if it undercuts its democratic credentials within and refuses to engage with regional economic partnerships like RCEP abroad.
Also, France is likely to sooner than later make up with the US — NATO allies can’t afford to squabble so long and so publicly. Moreover, France knows that it would have done exactly the same if it was offered the opportunity to earn $60 billion so quickly.
That’s why “everyone is naked in the hamam” principle applies so readily to global politics.
As for India, it will welcome an AUKUS-Quad shoe in and will keep her relationship with France in fine fettle — more Rafale fighters are on their way, anyway.
PM Modi’s outing to Washington DC, the first time in a couple of years, is a good opportunity to feel the world’s pulse and the direction in which it is headed.
It's clearer to India than ever that Quad is no military alliance. Everything's a bit AUKUS
AUKUS has been a cold shower on the pretensions of two nations. One of them is India.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi takes part in the First Quad Leaders’ Virtual Summit with US President Joe Biden, Australian PM Scott Morrison and Japanese PM Suga, in New Delhi on 12 March 2021 | ANI
Text Size:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will undertake his first post-pandemic international trip to the US to meet other leaders of the Quad – US President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga – on 24 September. But with the Australia-UK-US, or AUKUS, alliance startling the world this weekend, several questions abound. Here are a few:
First, does AUKUS expand the Quad tent of democracies or does it diminish it? Second, since AUKUS is a nuclear submarine-based security alliance focussed on countering China and Quad isn’t – as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken maintained during his recent Delhi visit – is the US likely to concentrate its mind on AUKUS rather than Quad?
Third, is the US need to ally with nations to counter China a manifestation of its decline as a global power? (After all, if the US was so strong, why would it need to partner with others?) Conversely, with AUKUS and Quad leaders meeting in quick succession next week in Washington DC, is the US trying to burnish its credentials as a global power in the wake of its shambolic exit from Afghanistan?
French fury
Meanwhile, with France recalling its ambassadors to the US and Australia after Canberra cancelled the $60 billion conventional submarine deal with Paris last week – and French foreign minister Jean Yves le Drian decrying the plot as an exercise in “duplicity, a major breach of trust and contempt”, some are beginning to ask why Paris is throwing such a big global tantrum.
Or, as they might say in Bollywood, France ko itna gussa kyon aata hai. Why does France get so angry?
Certainly, France’s fury against AUKUS has shaken the globe. But of that, in a moment. What is interesting in both the Quad and AUKUS groupings is that except for India, all the other nations have military alliances of one or another sort with the other.
In AUKUS, the US and UK are NATO allies – as was the rejected partner, France – while Australia and the US have a security treaty relationship. In the Quad, like the US and Australia, US and Japan have a security alliance. Only India stands alone.
Certainly, France is believed to be furious that the US pushed Australia to pick one NATO ally (UK) over the other (France). Certainly, the English-speaking world won against the non-English speaking world. Remember that the Five Eyes, the world’s primary intelligence-sharing alliance between the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand — which is believed to have given the intelligence regarding security threat to New Zealand that made its cricket team pull out of the Pakistan tour – dates back to the Second World War and is a partnership between the English-speaking democracies. (It is only in recent years that nations like South Korea, Japan, and India are being considered for minor partnerships in this grouping.)
France, arguably, is upset that it has lost out to the Anglosphere – it has reason to be. It fancies itself as a Pacific power, through control over territories like New Caledonia. Britain is certainly trying to climb back on the coat-tails of its more powerful cousin across the Atlantic to return to the Pacific – it lost all pretence of being a truly international player when it gave up Diego Garcia to the US in 1966.
US-China duel
It’s not clear when AUKUS was thought up – all we know is that the deed was finalised on the margins of the G-7 summit in Cornwall in June. Masterminded by the US, it is the new game in town. The Afghanistan and Iraq wars over the last 20 years have clearly dented US power to go it alone, but AUKUS has demonstrated US ability to mobilise middle powers to mount a serious challenge to Beijing.
In fact, even as it declines, the US has shown that it can both throw cold water on France’s pretensions to be a global power and put Australia on notice about shedding its final hesitations about challenging China – remember that China has been Australia’s largest trading partner over the past decade, accounting for over 32 per cent of Australian exports, despite Australia echoing the US demand in 2020 to investigate the origins of the coronavirus.
Only 10 days ago, the Chinese lobbied the Australian Parliament to recommend its admission into the Trans-Pacific Partnership, citing the runaway success of the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement.
In fact, a decade ago, Australia had put the Quad “on ice,” according to Reuters, because of China’s objections to the Quad’s joint naval exercises.
Today, the Quad is back on track and the US has created a new security alliance. Australia’s turnaround is fair warning that the world is once again dividing itself up, this time with China as the key antagonist.
Quad and India
So, what is the Quad? Let’s first see what it is not. It is not, for example, a nuclear submarine-based alliance, like AUKUS. Officials say the Quad will deal with “non-military determinants” of global security – such as supply chain diversification, climate change, vaccines, and technology among others.
That in itself is impressive. To be part of a global conversation, for example, that seeks to reduce its exposure to China and build alternative supply chains, is an ambitious venture.
Except that the pandemic has been so cruel to India that India’s exposure to Chinese goods has gone up – not come down. The economy may have finally emerged from the demonetisation woods, but key links remain broken because of the pandemic’s fury.
Under the circumstances, India’s participation in the Quad is a hugely significant step – but let us not pretend that it catapults India into the centre of global realpolitik. It doesn’t. India certainly leads the developing world ably, but a yawning gulf of many light years separates it from the big boys. In that world, cutting a deal is par for the course – you win some, you lose some.
Which is why Blinken’s comments to the US Congress last week that the US is in talks with India for a staging post to undertake “over the horizon” strikes inside Afghanistan are interesting.
Was Blinken fudging the truth or did he mean what he said? Having partnered with Pakistan these past few years to deliver the Taliban in Kabul, is Blinken now teasing Pakistan with its sudden interest in India and Afghanistan? Is the US Secretary of State indicating that Biden and Modi could write a new chapter on Afghanistan? Watching this space just became more interesting.
Lastly, France’s anger at AUKUS also holds lessons for India: It is imperative to build your national strength to afford, like Paris, to throw a histrionic fit. The world will take India less seriously if it undercuts its democratic credentials within and refuses to engage with regional economic partnerships like RCEP abroad.
Also, France is likely to sooner than later make up with the US — NATO allies can’t afford to squabble so long and so publicly. Moreover, France knows that it would have done exactly the same if it was offered the opportunity to earn $60 billion so quickly.
That’s why “everyone is naked in the hamam” principle applies so readily to global politics.
As for India, it will welcome an AUKUS-Quad shoe in and will keep her relationship with France in fine fettle — more Rafale fighters are on their way, anyway.
PM Modi’s outing to Washington DC, the first time in a couple of years, is a good opportunity to feel the world’s pulse and the direction in which it is headed.
Jyoti Malhotra is a senior consulting editor at ThePrint. She tweets @jomalhotra. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)
18. Indo-Pacific needs 'third way'
From the French Ambassador to Thailand commenting on AUKUS and the INDOPACIFIC.
Excerpts:
Our goals are clear: sustainable and inclusive prosperity; green transition with a special focus on clean energy and transport, the protection of biodiversity, and sustainable management of the oceans; better connectivity including the development of digital partnerships; and human security with a priority on health issues.
In implementing these goals we will continue with our EU partners to promote an open and rules-based security architecture, including secure sea lines of communication, capacity-building and enhanced naval presence in the Indo-Pacific in accordance with the legal framework established by the UNCLOS.
Security and defence are a key pillar of the French Indo-Pacific Strategy under which we will contribute to the security of regional areas like Southeast Asia by promoting military and security cooperation; and preserve, alongside our partners, access to common areas in a context of strategic competition and increasingly restrictive military environments.
We also aim to participate in the maintenance of strategic stability and military balances of power through action based on multilateralism; and anticipate security risks brought about by climate change. In this context we will reaffirm our naval presence in the region, and reinforce our partnerships, especially in Southeast Asia, notably with Thailand. The region needs cooperation and inclusiveness, not confrontation.
Indo-Pacific needs 'third way'
Bangkok Post · by Thierry Mathou Bangkok Post Public Company Limited
France deeply regrets Australia's unilateral decision to stop the "Future Submarine Program" (FSP) developed within the framework of the relationship of trust that united our two countries until recently, to engage in a military alliance with the United States, which has led them to exclude a member of the European Union from a partnership in the Indo-Pacific.
This sudden and surprising choice is not only contrary to the letter and spirit of our agreements, but also illustrates a lack of consistency at a time when we need predictability and reliability to unite in the Indo-Pacific region to build strong and inclusive partnerships. We need to reinforce the rule-based multilateral order, address global challenges, lay foundations for a just and sustainable economic recovery for the post-Covid era, promote democracy, the rule of law, human rights and universally agreed commitments such as the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals, and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, and work for a secure and stable geopolitical environment.
As illustrated in Southeast Asia, the Indo-Pacific is an area facing profound strategic changes. China's increasing power and territorial claims, as well as the global competition under way with the United States, are weakening the balance of power in the region. The context is also marked by transnational threats, proliferation crises, and security consequences due to climate change. The oceans are at the heart of the tensions, and securing shipping lanes and freedom of navigation remain major issues.
The future of the Indo-Pacific lies neither in the emergence of a regional hegemony nor in shaping military alliances. The region needs a new approach, a third way, an alternative to confrontation that responds to the aspirations of the countries of the Indo-Pacific, especially in Southeast Asia where countries like Thailand are supporting the development of an inclusive regional architecture where dialogue and cooperation prevail over rivalry.
This is the approach proposed by France, with the adoption in 2018 of her Indo-Pacific strategy which aims to maintain an open and inclusive space, free from all forms of coercion and based on the promotion of multilateralism and the respect of international law. It is also the priority of the European Union, which has published a Joint Communication on the European Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. A stronger European presence, notably in Southeast Asia, will make it possible to better address the challenges of this vast region, where the EU has already forged solid partnerships, in particular with Asean, whose principle of centrality we strongly support.
France, which will take over the presidency of the European Council from Jan 1, 2022 is determined to promote an ambitious agenda in the Indo-Pacific aimed at preserving the freedom of sovereignty of everyone.
Southeast Asia is at the centre of our priorities as illustrated by our development partnership with Asean, our desire to participate in the Asean Defence Ministers Meeting Plus (ADMM+) and our decision to develop our relations with the key countries in the region like Thailand with which we are in the process of actively drafting a bilateral roadmap to upgrade our relations to the level of a strategic partnership.
The regrettable decision that has just been announced on the FSP reinforces our determination to promote European strategic autonomy, which is the only credible way to promote our values in the world, especially in the Indo-Pacific where we are happy to share the objectives presented in the "Asean Outlook on the Indo-Pacific" adopted in 2019 under the Thai presidency.
With France's overseas territories and communities which represent a population of nearly 2 million people, France is a nation in her own right in the Indo-Pacific where we want to be a stabilising power.
In the months and years to come we will roll out our priorities together with our European partners to propose solutions to the security, economic, health, climatic and environmental challenges facing the countries of the region.
Our goals are clear: sustainable and inclusive prosperity; green transition with a special focus on clean energy and transport, the protection of biodiversity, and sustainable management of the oceans; better connectivity including the development of digital partnerships; and human security with a priority on health issues.
In implementing these goals we will continue with our EU partners to promote an open and rules-based security architecture, including secure sea lines of communication, capacity-building and enhanced naval presence in the Indo-Pacific in accordance with the legal framework established by the UNCLOS.
Security and defence are a key pillar of the French Indo-Pacific Strategy under which we will contribute to the security of regional areas like Southeast Asia by promoting military and security cooperation; and preserve, alongside our partners, access to common areas in a context of strategic competition and increasingly restrictive military environments.
We also aim to participate in the maintenance of strategic stability and military balances of power through action based on multilateralism; and anticipate security risks brought about by climate change. In this context we will reaffirm our naval presence in the region, and reinforce our partnerships, especially in Southeast Asia, notably with Thailand. The region needs cooperation and inclusiveness, not confrontation.
Thierry Mathou is ambassador of France to the Kingdom of Thailand.
19. The Key to Understanding Our Endless Wars Is the Goat Cart Theory
Hmmm... Quite the thesis and critiques of US policy and strategy on multiple levels. Take the goat with a grain of salt or two.
I dislike Tim Shorrock and his patently anti-American writing but this excerpt deserves reflection.
The candy-bars-and-nylons myth of how Americans make war is a pernicious one, and one that has been well-established in the country’s mythology for almost as long as this country has made war anywhere. General William Sherman was at his most accurate when he said that, “War is cruelty. There’s no use trying to reform it.” And the people who know that best are the people caught up in it. On the electric Twitter machine Monday morning, author Tim Shorrock shared a passage about an ill-advised program in Vietnam called “Operation: Toy Drop,” in which the United States dropped toys for children into North Vietnam in the hopes of winning hearts and minds. The Americans interpreted it as a demonstration (once again) of the compassionate way Americans made war. The Vietnamese saw it rather differently.
But the reaction of Asians was bitter. They labeled it "blasphemy." They saw us one day dropping bombs that killed children, then the next showering them with toys, with messages of love, then the following days again dropping the killing bombs. They felt that the Americans were making sport of child slaughter.
The innocence of our arrogance is the truly exceptional part.
The Key to Understanding Our Endless Wars Is the Goat Cart Theory
Making war in all the places we have creates cycles of violence, collateral damage, and human suffering that we have to answer for one way or another.
Esquire · by Charles P. Pierce · September 21, 2021
Regulars here at the shebeen are familiar with our Goat Cart Theory of foreign relations. It has to do with the unintended—or marginally intended—consequences of making our wars in all those places. The scenario involves a terrorist kingpin who is sipping tea at a cafe on a dusty backroad somewhere in West Asia. He is identified as such by our super-secret intelligence network and a drone is dispatched to, well, dispatch the guy.
Meanwhile, minding his own business, a guy with a goat cart—or a Nissan—comes down the road on the way to buy the ingredients for the family bolani. It’s hot and he’s tired and he's ready for a cool glass of dhoog. Just as he passes the cafe, the drone comes in and does its business. The terrorist kingpin is vaporized. So is the guy with the goat cart. In the western press, we wake up and learn that, say, the No. 3 man in the local al Qaeda franchise has been killed and, up next, the latest on what de facto Prime Minister Joe Manchin said today in the Senate.
But what of the goat cart guy? He’s just as dead as the terrorist kingpin. How do you think his family feels about us? His uncles and aunts and nieces and nephews? How about his own kids? Can you think of any reason why they wouldn’t abandon the family farms and go into the business of making war on the people who killed their peaceable paterfamilias? And then, one day, one of the guy’s nephews is the new terrorist kingpin, drinking his tea at the roadside cafe and one of our spy cameras catches him there.
We have had a couple of news stories recently that illustrate the Goat Cart Theory splendidly, if tragically. The first, of course, is the admission by the U.S. government that one of our super-secret intelligence mechanisms was unable to distinguish jugs of water from blocks of C4, and that a drone was dispatched that killed 10 members of an Afghan family, including seven children, who had no more connection to terrorism than did the DeFranco Family. When the original cover story fell apart, the Pentagon was properly chastened; General Kenneth McKenzie offered sincere apologies because this horrible blunder happened on his watch. And I’m sorry, but this isn’t enough. Heads have to roll behind this one. If that means resignations all the way up the chain of command at the Pentagon, so be it. This is the kind of event that resonates through the generations; Zemari Ahmadi, who worked for a US aid group and who was the primary target, has nephews and uncles and nieces and aunts. My biggest fear at the moment is that Ahmadi’s killing will now become grist for American domestic politics, and that I will have to watch conservative politicians shed crocodile tears about Ahmadi and his family, whom they’d otherwise fight to keep out of this country because terrorism, that’s why.
We rained death from the sky.
Marcus YamGetty Images
The other story, this one in the Washington Post, is about the perilous position of the women of Afghanistan. (Again, there is a lot of rending of garments by conservatives, who otherwise aren’t too cool about women’s rights in this country.) The Post interviewed a number of Afghan women who seem admirably clear-eyed about what has happened around them over the past 20 years.
Such was the case with the U.S.-backed peace deal between the Ghani government and Hezb-i-Islami warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, also known as “the Butcher of Kabul.” For Joya, the 2016 agreement set the stage for the 2020 U.S.-led negotiations with the Taliban, which ultimately resulted in the replacement of one dehumanizing force in Afghanistan with another.
As the U.S. mission in Afghanistan shifted from a short-term military operation to a long-term nation-building project, women-led activist groups in the diaspora also became vocal about the war’s ongoing violence, which ended up killing 71,000 civilians and displacing 5.9 million Afghans between 2001 and 2020. Organizations like Afghans for Peace partnered with Veterans Against the War to protest the war’s human fallout. As organizer Suraia Sahar noted in a 2012 protest, “You cannot liberate women through occupation, through war, through violence, through bombs, through tanks.”
I’m sorry, ma’am, but with that kind of attitude, you’ll never be working for the Brookings Institute.
The candy-bars-and-nylons myth of how Americans make war is a pernicious one, and one that has been well-established in the country’s mythology for almost as long as this country has made war anywhere. General William Sherman was at his most accurate when he said that, “War is cruelty. There’s no use trying to reform it.” And the people who know that best are the people caught up in it. On the electric Twitter machine Monday morning, author Tim Shorrock shared a passage about an ill-advised program in Vietnam called “Operation: Toy Drop,” in which the United States dropped toys for children into North Vietnam in the hopes of winning hearts and minds. The Americans interpreted it as a demonstration (once again) of the compassionate way Americans made war. The Vietnamese saw it rather differently.
But the reaction of Asians was bitter. They labeled it "blasphemy." They saw us one day dropping bombs that killed children, then the next showering them with toys, with messages of love, then the following days again dropping the killing bombs. They felt that the Americans were making sport of child slaughter.
The innocence of our arrogance is the truly exceptional part.
This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io
Esquire · by Charles P. Pierce · September 21, 2021
20. China: the overly sensitive superpower
Excerpts:
China does take criticism personally, though. When Australia called for an independent investigation of Covid’s origins last year, China slapped stiff tariffs on some Australian products. China’s ambassador to Canberra even suggested boycotting Australian products.
China didn’t call these measures sanctions, but that’s effectively what they were. Washington uses – some would say overuses – sanctions to deter what it perceives as human-rights violations. Beijing has now started to use the equivalent of sanctions to send a different message: Those who wish to trade with China should keep their mouths shut.
America’s farmers and ranchers, who send more than 20% of their exports to China, must wonder whether that message will someday be applied to them.
China: the overly sensitive superpower
China's unwillingness to cooperate on a Covid origin investigation prioritizes avoiding criticism over preventing the next pandemic
When Washington’s intelligence agencies were tasked with determining the origins of Covid-19 a few months ago, there was reason to hope they would succeed. Rumor had it they were using supercomputers to dig out and analyze previously unnoticed evidence.
The report they filed on August 24 dashed those hopes. According to the two-page unclassified summary, the agencies couldn’t agree on a conclusion.
Four believed the virus originated in an animal, but they had low confidence in their belief. One agency – some guess the FBI – was moderately confident a laboratory incident of some sort was to blame. Three others didn’t think there was enough evidence to support either theory.
They all agreed a definitive conclusion would require China’s cooperation. “Beijing, however, continues to hinder the global investigation, resist sharing information and blame other countries, including the United States,” the unclassified summary said.
It’s a disappointing report and there are those in Washington who think the agencies need to work the problem harder. Knowing how the novel coronavirus started and spread could be critical to controlling the next pandemic – and there will be a next pandemic someday.
Nobody, though, doubts the report is right about China’s obfuscation.
For some time now, China has been suppressing information that could help pinpoint Covid’s origins. Ironically, its obstructionism has lent credence to the lab-incident theory, which is the one that would, if true, speak the worst about China.
For if the animal theory were true, the Chinese would have no reason to deny foreign researchers information – would they?
File photo taken on March 30, 2020 shows workers wearing protective suits walking next to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, in China’s central Hubei province. Photo: AFP / Hector Retamal
Actually, they might. China’s authorities have tried for years to stamp out wet markets where wild animals are sold for food. If the disease got its start in a wet market, Beijing would be embarrassed.
There are other possible explanations for the lack of cooperation. Perhaps they just don’t know how Covid-19 started and fear what an investigation by foreigners might turn up. (If so, the world must hope they’re doing an honest and thorough investigation on their own.)
It’s also possible the Chinese are truly convinced the disease came to China from a foreign country, maybe even a US lab, as they keep suggesting. If that’s the case, though, what harm would it do China to let foreign researchers see the logbooks, clinical samples and other data they’ve asked for?
(And if that’s the case, they might try offering a little evidence for the supposed non-Chinese origin.)
Amid all these what-ifs, one thing seems clear: In concealing information about Covid-19, China is saying something about itself.
Assume, for the sake of argument, a likely worst-case scenario for China. Assume China cooperated with international investigators, who found proof Chinese lab researchers had accidentally unleashed Covid-19 while doing “gain of function” research on the underlying virus.
What’s the worst that could happen to China if this happened? It would be subjected to international criticism. On the battlefield of world public opinion, it would lose a skirmish.
By concealing information that could shed light on Covid’s origins, then, China is essentially saying that avoiding international criticism is more important to it than helping the world prevent future pandemics – pandemics that could kill many Chinese people, wherever they began.
People maintain social distancing as they queue to receive nucleic acid tests for Covid-19 in Huaian in China’s eastern Jiangsu province on August 2, 2021. Photo: AFP
What we are learning about this emerging superpower, then, is how thin-skinned it is. The US is criticized all the time, even by its allies. China refuses to accept criticism. For countries that must deal with China as an adversary, or a trading partner, or both, this is an important, and worrying, thing to understand.
No country likes to be criticized, but China seems especially touchy. Perhaps this comes with one-party rule. Democratic governments are used to being criticized; autocracies aren’t.
It’s also possible China’s 19th-century history of being maltreated by Western imperialists has left the country hypersensitive to how it’s perceived internationally. I got a taste of how sensitive in 1997, when I was invited to spend a few days lecturing at a provincial Chinese university.
In every session, the students, who were bright and engaging and generally well-informed, asked the same question: Why was the Western media so critical of China?
The question puzzled me. As the leader at the time of an American media company’s editorial operations in Asia, I was familiar with Western media coverage of China. At that time, in 1997, I considered it generally balanced. Some of the coverage was positive, some negative, and most neutral.
The students, it seemed to me, were unhappy that any of it was negative. Their attitude seemed much like that of China’s government today: If you can’t say something nice about us, don’t say anything at all.
Part of how I responded to the students’ question seemed to puzzle them as much as the question puzzled me. In democracies, I said, the press plays a watchdog role. We cover all governments with a critical eye, our own and those of other countries.
In other words, don’t take it personally.
Students wave flags of China and the Communist Party of China before celebrations in Beijing on July 1, 2021, to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. Photo: AFP / Wang Zhao
China does take criticism personally, though. When Australia called for an independent investigation of Covid’s origins last year, China slapped stiff tariffs on some Australian products. China’s ambassador to Canberra even suggested boycotting Australian products.
China didn’t call these measures sanctions, but that’s effectively what they were. Washington uses – some would say overuses – sanctions to deter what it perceives as human-rights violations. Beijing has now started to use the equivalent of sanctions to send a different message: Those who wish to trade with China should keep their mouths shut.
America’s farmers and ranchers, who send more than 20% of their exports to China, must wonder whether that message will someday be applied to them.
Former longtime Wall Street Journal Asia correspondent and editor Urban Lehner is editor emeritus of DTN/The Progressive Farmer. This article, originally published September 20 by that news organization and now republished by Asia Times with permission, is © Copyright 2021 DTN/The Progressive Farmer. All rights reserved.
21. Xi Jinping Aims to Rein In Chinese Capitalism, Hew to Mao’s Socialist Vision
True colors?
Xi Jinping Aims to Rein In Chinese Capitalism, Hew to Mao’s Socialist Vision
Going beyond curbing tech giants, he wants the Communist Party to steer flows of money and set tighter limits on profit making
He is trying to roll back China’s decadeslong evolution toward Western-style capitalism and put the country on a different path entirely, a close examination of Mr. Xi’s writings and his discussions with party officials, and interviews with people involved in policy making, show.
For most of the 40 years after Deng Xiaoping first unleashed economic reforms in China, Communist Party leaders gave market forces wider room to flourish. That opening helped lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and created trillions of dollars in wealth, but also led to rampant corruption and eroded the ideological basis for continued Communist rule.
In Mr. Xi’s opinion, private capital now has been allowed to run amok, menacing the party’s legitimacy, officials familiar with his priorities say. The Wall Street Journal examination shows he is trying forcefully to get China back to the vision of Mao Zedong, who saw capitalism as a transitory phase on the road to socialism.
Mr. Xi isn’t planning to eradicate market forces, the Journal examination indicates. But he appears to want a state in which the party does more to steer flows of money, sets tighter parameters for entrepreneurs and investors and their ability to make profits, and exercises even more control over the economy than now. In essence, this suggests that he aims to rewrite the rules of business in what could someday be the world’s biggest economy.
“China has entered a new stage of development,” Mr. Xi declared in a speech in January. The goal, he said, is to build China into a “modern socialist power.”
The government’s recent measures to tame housing prices are worsening a cash crunch at China Evergrande Group , a heavily indebted real-estate developer, sending chills across global markets. Beijing is unlikely to bail out Evergrande the way it has rescued many state firms, analysts say, and could further tighten the regulatory screws on other private developers.
Mr. Xi has signaled plans to go much further. During a leadership meeting in August, he emphasized a goal of “common prosperity,” which calls for a more equal distribution of wealth. This would be achieved in part through more government intervention in the economy and more steps to get the rich to share the fruits of their success.
An electronic display at a booth for e-commerce giant Alibaba at a Beijing trade fair on Sept. 3.
Photo: Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press
An Aug. 29 online commentary circulated by state media called it a “profound revolution” for the country.
“Xi does think he’s moving to a new kind of system that doesn’t exist anywhere in the world,” said Barry Naughton, a China economy expert at the University of California, San Diego. “I call it a government-steered economy.”
A number of countries closely regulate industry, labor and markets, set monetary policy and provide subsidies to help boost their economies. In Mr. Xi’s version, the government would have a level of control that would allow it to steer the economy and industry along a path of its choosing, and channel private resources into strengthening state power.
The big risk for China and Mr. Xi is that the push winds up suppressing much of the entrepreneurial energy that has powered China’s boom and years of innovation.
For foreign businesses, the campaign likely means more turbulence ahead. Western companies have always had to toe the party line in China, but they are increasingly asked to do more, including sharing personal user data and accepting party members as employees. They could be pressed to sacrifice more profits to help Beijing achieve its goals.
“Supervision over foreign capital will be strengthened,” said a person familiar with the thinking at China’s top markets regulator, “so it won’t be able to obtain ultra-high profits in China through monopoly and capital-market operations.”
The Information Office of the State Council, China’s top government body, didn’t respond to questions for this article.
Deng Xiaoping Portrait Square in Shenzhen, China, seen in November 2020. President Xi Jinping wants the Communist Party to reassert influence it had ceded to the government and private sector after Deng began his economic reform in 1978.
Photo: Yan Cong/Bloomberg News
At internal meetings, some of them say, Mr. Xi has talked about the need to differentiate China’s economic system. Western capitalism, in his view, focuses too heavily on the single-minded pursuit of profit and individual wealth, while letting big companies grow too powerful, leading to inequality, social injustice and other threats to social stability.
Early this year, when Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. took down former U.S. President Donald Trump’s accounts, Mr. Xi saw yet another sign America’s economic system was flawed—it let big business dictate what a political leader should do or say—officials familiar with his views said.
A few months later, when the Chinese Communist party celebrated its centenary on July 1, Mr. Xi donned a Mao suit and stood behind a podium adorned with a hammer and sickle, pledging to stand for the people. After the speech, he sang along with “The Internationale” broadcast across Tiananmen Square. In China, the song, a feature of the socialist movement since the late 1800s, has long symbolized a declaration of war by the working class on capitalism.
Xi sings ‘The Internationale.’
Such gestures, once dismissed as political stagecraft, are being taken more seriously by China watchers as it becomes evident Mr. Xi is more ideologically driven than his immediate predecessors.
The difference between his vision and Western-style capitalism, he has said at internal meetings, is that in China, “Capital serves the people.”
Industries that Mr. Xi views as being led astray by a capitalist spirit, including not only tech but also after-school tutoring, digital gaming and entertainment, are bearing the immediate brunt.
A policy aimed at turning private education companies into nonprofit entities all but killed New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc., which has provided English lessons to generations of students studying abroad. Its shares have plunged about 90% this year.
Founder Yu Minhong, nicknamed “Godfather of English Training” in China, broke into tears during a recent company meeting, according to an employee. “It’s devastating to him, and to all of us,” the employee said.
Xi Jinping, the most powerful Chinese leader in recent decades, addressed the nation on July 1 at a ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of the ruling Communist Party.
Photo: Xie Huanchi/Zuma Press
State-owned companies, having already bulked up under Mr. Xi’s rule, are marching into areas that were pioneered by private firms but are increasingly seen as crucial to national security, such as management of digital data.
A ministry supervising state companies, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, is mapping plans to set up more government-controlled providers of cloud services for data storage, people familiar with the agency’s workings say. Such services have been dominated by private companies, including Alibaba and Tencent.
The city of Tianjin has ordered companies it supervises to migrate data from private-sector cloud platforms to state-owned ones within two months of the expiration of existing contracts, and by September 2022 at the latest, according to an official notice dated Aug. 12. More localities are expected to follow suit, the people say.
Government-controlled entities are acquiring stakes and filling board seats in more companies to make sure they fall in line with the state’s goals. ByteDance Ltd., owner of the video-sharing app TikTok, and Weibo Corp. , which runs Twitter-like microblogging platforms, recently have sold stakes to state-backed companies.
Mr. Xi is fully in charge of the campaign, instead of delegating details to Vice Premier Liu He, his chief economic adviser, as in the past. A central party office reporting directly to Mr. Xi has been sending out directives instructing ministries to take actions and coordinate policies.
China’s Vice Premier Liu He represented President Xi in negotiating a trade deal with the U.S.
Photo: Evan Vucci/Associated Press
Mr. Liu, known as a market-friendly reformer, spent the past few years representing China’s top leader abroad in trying to avert a trade war with the U.S. At times, he sought to cast Mr. Xi’s efforts to skeptical Americans as necessary for pushing through stalled market-oriented changes.
Mr. Liu, who faces retirement next year, had to offer a Mao-style self-criticism for not having stopped Didi from launching a $4.4 billion New York initial public offering in late June, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Self-criticism, traditionally used by the party to discipline members, is a practice Mao borrowed from Stalin and remains alive and well in Mr. Xi’s China.
Mr. Xi blamed a lack of coordination among regulators for letting the IPO slip through. While China’s cybersecurity regulator had sounded alarms to Didi about its network security before the stock listing, other regulators such as the transportation ministry, which reports to Mr. Liu, were largely supportive of the listing plan.
Soon after the IPO incident, Mr. Liu said at a public forum: “In the new stage of development, we should coordinate the relationship between development and security.”
Chinese regulators also recently reviewed a deal involving private-equity firm Blackstone Inc., co-founded by billionaire Stephen Schwarzman, another key figure in U.S.-China relations. Like some other financiers, he served as a go-between for China’s leaders and the Trump administration.
In June, Blackstone agreed to acquire a majority stake in Soho China Ltd., a property developer, for about $3 billion. The price was about 40% Soho China’s book value as of the end of last year, leaving Blackstone significant room for gains.
China’s social media quickly grew abuzz with posts describing the husband-and-wife team that runs Soho China, Pan Shiyi and Zhang Xin, as trying to cash out so they could leave China as sentiment turns against wealthy tycoons. Beijing’s censors, who often delete posts in the name of fending off negative energy, left these alone. The couple couldn’t be reached for comment.
Visitors at Sanlitun Soho complex in Beijing. Soho China tanked in Hong Kong trading after a $3 billion deal involving U.S. private-equity firm Blackstone collapsed.
Photo: Gilles Sabrie/Bloomberg News
The State Administration for Market Regulation in August started an antitrust review of the deal. A month later, Blackstone scrapped it as the review dragged on. In a joint statement Sept. 10, the firms said they wouldn’t be able to “satisfy the pre-conditions” in time to complete the transaction.
Blackstone declined to comment further. Soho China didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Xi’s plan to reset the economic order came together at the Central Economic Work Conference last December, an annual agenda-setting event, say officials familiar with the process. At the meeting, at a heavily guarded government hotel in western Beijing, Mr. Xi highlighted some acute imbalances brought by “big capital,” some of the officials say.
He singled out the internet-technology sector for having big companies that use capital markets and other resources to enrich their owners and investors—widening income gaps and diverting funds from parts of the economy important to China’s competitiveness such as high-end manufacturing.
To Mr. Xi, said Chinese officials, the sight of connected people getting rich could hurt the party’s standing among the underprivileged it is supposed to represent.
In January, at a meeting with senior officials from across the country, Mr. Xi stressed the importance of spreading wealth more evenly among China’s 1.4 billion people, a socialist objective of early party leaders. “Realizing common prosperity is not only an economic issue but also a major political issue related to the ruling foundation of the party,” he said.
Fintech firm Ant Group is undergoing a major restructuring that will put the company under much tighter government control.
Photo: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg News
The emphasis also reflected Mr. Xi’s conviction that Chinese socialism under sole control of the party will prevail over U.S.-style capitalism. Mr. Xi has indicated he thinks the China model has proven better than the Western system at fighting the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Time and momentum are on our side,” he said at the January meeting.
In Beijing, some officials have dubbed Mr. Xi’s effort to smack down big capital boluan fanzheng, or bringing order out of chaos. It is the new catchword for macroeconomic policy, a government adviser said.
To accommodate the planned overhaul, the leadership set a growth target of 6% for 2021, relatively low given the strong rebound at the time. “We should grab the window with lower growth pressure” to push ahead with changes, the Politburo said in April.
Mr. Xi and his underlings still talk about the need to develop the private sector, which accounts for 80% of China’s urban jobs. But officials say the focus now is on fostering small and midsize companies, in areas ranging from power equipment to sensors and semiconductors, that aren’t likely to become alternative power bases. These firms are expected to emphasize innovation that elevates China’s manufacturing capabilities over profits.
Underpinning Mr. Xi’s actions is an ideological preference rooted in Mao’s development theories, which call state capitalism a temporary phase that can help China’s economy catch up to the West before being replaced by socialism.
An ardent follower of Mao, Mr. Xi has preached to party members that the hybrid model has passed its use-by date.
A 2018 article in the party’s main theoretical journal, Qiushi, or Seeking Truth, laid bare his belief: “China’s practice shows that once the socialist transformation is completed, the basic socialist system with public ownership as the main body is established...[and] state capitalism, as a transitional economic form, will complete its historical mission and withdraw from the historical stage.”
A woman sells Communist souvenirs, including pictures of Mao Zedong, at the Panjiayuan antique market in Beijing.
Photo: roman pilipey/Shutterstock
On other occasions, Mr. Xi has been blunter. “Socialism with Chinese characteristics is socialism, not any other ‘ism,’” he told senior party leaders in January 2013—a warning he has often given party members since then, according to officials.
As Mr. Xi clamps down on capital, his popularity among the party’s original base, the working class and rural poor, appears to be growing, thanks to his initiatives to fight corruption and poverty.
In Xingguo, a southern county where rocky land makes large-scale farming difficult, Mr. Xi’s portrait hangs on the walls of some residents’ living rooms, space once reserved for pictures of Mao.
Local residents credit Mr. Xi’s targeted approach to poverty alleviation, which includes assigning local officials to affected households.
“Previous leaders also talked about helping the poor,” a resident surnamed Zhong told a visiting Journal reporter in the spring of 2020. “But he really cares about us.”
22. The War in Afghanistan Is What Happens When McKinsey Types Run Everything
Another "interesting" critique of Afghanistan. (based [partly on the Netflix film "The War Machine"). Note the beginning of this is an introduction to the author's newsletter. The critique begins after about 5 paragraphs.
The War in Afghanistan Is What Happens When McKinsey Types Run Everything
Hi,
Welcome to BIG, a newsletter about the politics of monopoly. If you’d like to sign up, you can do so here. Or just read on…
I had a piece ready to go on Lina Khan’s attempt to break up Facebook, but I think it’s more important to talk about the competence problems revealed by the war in Afghanistan. There are monopoly elements involved, but there is a more basic question at work that keeps coming up, whether it’s the Boeing 737 Max, opioids, Covid mismanagement, or anything else of social importance. Do we have the competence to govern ourselves anymore? There’s also a follow-on question. Will this loss spur genuine reform of our McKinsey-ified elites who failed so spectacularly?
Also:
Other People’s Money, or why Wall Street itself is getting ripped off by a monopolist that charges 25 cents to send an email to investors.
Other People’s Money, or why does getting an email of your college transcript cost $9?
In Texas, hospitals are using Covid to try and suppress nurse wages.
What happened when the Centers for Disease Control hired Boston Consulting Group to run their vaccine rollout?
Sony builds an anime monopoly.
This is my first newsletter in three weeks. I was on vacation. I won’t normally have absences like this, but honestly, I was burned out. Don’t worry, I’m refreshed, and I have a good issue queued up for early next week, and some fun ideas going forward.
And now…
War Machine, starring Brad PItt.
"The Pervasiveness of Over-Optimism"
In 2017, Netflix put out a satirical movie on the conflict in Afghanistan. It was titled War Machine, and it starred Brad Pitt as an exuberant and deluded U.S. General named Glen McMahon. A fitness fanatic nicknamed ‘the Glanimal’ by his crew of adoring frathouse henchmen, McMahon is modeled on the real-life military leader Stanley McChrystal, who ran the surge in Afghanistan before being fired for saying disparaging things about Obama administration officials (including then VP Biden) on the record to Rolling Stone magazine.
In War Machine, McMahan comes to Afghanistan with a spirited can do attitude and a frat house of hard-partying yes-men, after having ‘kicked Al Qaeda in the sack’ running special operations in Iraq. He is obsessed with inspirational speeches and weird bureaucratic box-ticking, under the amorphous concept of leadership. This kind of leadership, though, isn’t actually working with wisdom and foresight, but is more like management consulting. Prior to arriving in Afghanistan, for instance, McMahan created a system, with the acronym SNORPP to coordinate military assets. At night, he cozies down to read books on management excellence, the kind that Harvard Business Review publishes as sort of Chicken Soup for the Executive’s Soul. He is also the author of a fictional book with the amazing title, “One Leg At a Time: Just Like Everybody Else.”
And yet his mission is unwinnable, which everyone seems to understand except him and his small team. McMahan constantly makes awkward speeches that make no sense, with the tone used by untrusted executives at corporate retreats. “We are here to build, to protect, to support the civilian population,” he told his troops. “To that end, we must avoid killing it at all costs. We cannot help them and kill them at the same time, it just ain’t humanly possible.” His character reflects what the actual government watchdog charged with overseeing the war in Afghanistan called one of the central problems with the U.S. effort, "the pervasiveness of over-optimism:"
If McMahan himself is a naive fool, he is surrounded by cynical bureaucratic opponents. As he seeks support for his new strategy of putting troops in Taliban-held provinces, he is gently ignored by the President of Afghanistan, who is a drug-addicted hypochondriac, and mocked by State Department and national security apparatchiks, who are striving cynics urging McMahon to just falsify numbers to make the war look a little better and not embarrass President Obama. Troops on the ground are demoralized and confused. No one actually believes in the mission, but dammit, McMahon is gonna get it done, whatever ‘it’ is. When McMahon tries to give an inspirational speech to ordinary Afghanis in Taliban-controlled territory about how the U.S. is going to bring them jobs and schools, one responds by saying he like jobs and schools, but please go away so the Taliban won’t retaliate. “The longer you are here the worse for us. Please go.”
It’s a hilarious, and extraordinarily dark movie. It also rang true, because it was based on the work of no-bullshit journalist Michael Hastings, who was perhaps the most honest reporter about the military establishment. And, as life is true to fiction, McChrystal, the general who Hastings profiled in Rolling Stone with an embarrassing story that led to his resignation, is now a management consultant (and board member of defense contractors). He runs inspirational ‘leadership training’ at the McChrystal Group, which is McKinsey with military branding.
In fact, McChrystal and much of our military leadership is tight with consultants like McKinsey, and that whole diseased culture from Harvard Business School of pervasive over-optimism and finance-venture capital monopoly bro-a-thons. McKinsey itself had involvement in Afghanistan, with at least one $18.6 million contract to help the Defense Department define its “strategic focus,” though government watchdogs found that the "only output [they] could find" was a 50-page report about strategic economic development potential in Herat, a province in western Afghanistan.” It turns out that ‘strategic focus’ means an $18.6 million PowerPoint. (There was reporting on this contract because Pete Buttigieg worked on it as a junior analyst at McKinsey, and he has failed upward to run the Transportation Department.)
I bring War Machine up because of today’s debate over Afghanistan. While there is a lot of back and forth about whether intelligence agencies knew that the Taliban would take over, or what would happen if we left, or whether the withdrawal could be done more competently, all you had to do to know that this war was a shitshow based on deception and idiocy at all levels was to turn on Netflix and watch this movie. Or you could read any number of inspector general reports, leaked documents, articles, talk to any number of veterans, or use common sense, which, polling showed, most Americans did. (Marine vet Lucas Kunce gives a nice rundown of the problem in this interview). I mean, it’s not like a major international media outlet printed a multi-part expose, which became a handy book, detailing the fact that everyone running the show knew it was an unwinnable mess nearly a decade ago. Oh, wait
In other words, the war in Afghanistan is like seeing management consultants come to your badly managed software company where everyone knows the problem is the boss’s indecisiveness and cowardice, except it’s violent and people die.
I mean, U.S. military leaders, like bad consultants or executives, lied about Afghanistan to the point it was routine. Here are just a few quotes from generals and DOD spokesmen over the years on the strength of the Afghan military, which collapsed almost instantly after the U.S. left.
In 2011, General David Petraeus stated, “Investments in leader development, literacy, marksmanship and institutions have yielded significant dividends. In fact, in the hard fighting west of Kandahar in late 2010, Afghan forces comprised some 60% of the overall force and they fought with skill and courage.”
In 2015, General John Campbell said that the the Afghan Army had “proven themselves to be increasingly capable,” that they had “grown and matured in less than a decade into a modern, professional force,” and, further, that they had “proven that they can and will take the tactical fight from here.”
In 2017, General John Nicholson stated that Afghan security forces had “prevailed in combat against an externally enabled enemy,” and that the army’s “ability to face simultaneity and complexity on the battlefield signals growth in capability.”
On July 11, 2021, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said that the Afghan army has “much more capacity than they’ve ever had before, much more capability,” and asserted, “they know how to defend their country.”
Basically, look at this photo below, imagine them in camouflage, and that’s the U.S. military leadership.
The Withdrawal Anger Is *Embarrassment*
There are significant recriminations over the embarrassing media stories on the withdrawal from Afghanistan, tremendous anger that political leaders like Trump and Biden made significant mistakes in how they withdrew U.S. forces. Many of these critiques, coming from Europeans as much as American elites, are in bad faith.
Nonetheless, rather than weighing in on the merits of these arguments, I think it’s better to look at how the establishment observed a stark portrait of Afghanistan before the withdrawal, to show that the current critiques have nothing to do with operational choices.
To that end, let’s look at a review of War Machine in Foreign Policy magazine, written by one of McChrystal’s aides, Whitney Kassel, who now works at private intelligence firm The Arkin Group. In this review, Kassel noted the movie made her so upset that she started cursing, because, while there were of course mistakes, the film was totally unfair to McChrystal and demeaned the entire mission of building a safe Afghanistan. Kassel, like most of these elites, didn’t get the joke, because she is the joke.
I see the discourse on the withdrawal as a super-sized version of this Kassel’s review. The ‘Blob,’ that loose network of diplomats, ex-diplomats, generals, lobbyists, defense contractors, fancy lawyers, famous journalists, and insiders see the obvious desire for withdrawal as similar to how Kassel saw the truth-telling of Hastings and the Netflix movie. They are angry and embarrassed that they can’t hide their failures anymore. Their entire sense of self was bound up in the idea of an illusion of an unbeatable all-powerful America, even when they, like General Glen “the Glanimal” McMahon were the only ones who believed it.
And their embarrassment covers up something even more dangerous. None of these tens of thousands of Ivy league encrusted PR savvy highly credentialed prestigious people actually know how to do anything useful. They can write books on leadership, or do powerpoints, or leak stories, but the hard logistics of actually using resources to achieve something important are foreign to them, masked by unlimited budgets and public relations. It is, as someone told me in 2019 about the consumer goods giant Proctor and Gamble, where “very few white-collar workers at P&G really did anything” except take credit for the work of others.
Defense Monopolies and the Afghan Army
It’s fun to act like it was always thus, that this is how empires behave. But in fact, that’s not true. The current Blob is relatively new. And believe it or not, Western forces used to be able to actually win wars.
Going back to the last significant victory, the allies won World War II in large part for two reasons. First, the Soviet Union sacrificed 27 million people defeating the Nazis, and second, the U.S. military, government, labor, and business leaders were exceptionally good at logistics. The U.S. military had at least a dozen suppliers for each major weapons system, as well as the ability to produce its own weaponry, the government had exceptional insight into the U.S. economy, and New Dealers had destroyed the power of the Andrew Mellon and J.P. Morgan style short-term oriented financiers and monopolists who had controlled the industrial sinews of the country.
Today, this short-termism has taken over everything, including the military, which is now dominated by McKinsey-ified glory hounds without wisdom and defense contractors with market power. And this leadership class hasn’t just eroded our strategic capacity, but the very ability to conduct operations. Two days ago, Afghan General Sami Sadat published a piece in the New York Times describing why his army fell apart so quickly. He went through several important political reasons, but there was an interesting subtext about the operational capacity of a military that is so dependent on contractors for sustainment and repairs. In particular, these lines stuck out.
The contractors also took proprietary software and weapons systems with them. They physically removed our helicopter missile-defense system. Access to the software that we relied on to track our vehicles, weapons and personnel also disappeared.
It’s just remarkable that contractors removed software and weapons systems from the Afghan army as they left. Remember, U.S. generals constantly talked about the strength of the Afghan forces, but analysts knew that its air force - on which it depended - would fall apart without contractors. The generals probably hadn’t really thought about the logistical problems of what dependence on contracting means. It’s just stunning that NATO forces would be trying to stand up an independent Afghan army, even as NATO contractors disarmed that army due to contracting arrangements.
I suspect the problem isn’t simply related to Afghanistan, because these kinds of problems are not isolated to the Afghan army. Last month, I noted that American soldiers are constantly complaining that bad contracting terms prevent them from fixing and using their own equipment, just as Apple stops consumers from repairing or tinkering with their iPhones. In 2019, Marine Elle Ekman noted that these problems are pervasive in the U.S. military.
Besides the broken generator in South Korea, I remembered working at a maintenance unit in Okinawa, Japan, watching as engines were packed up and shipped back to contractors in the United States for repairs because “that’s what the contract says.” The process took months.
With every engine sent back, Marines lost the opportunity to practice the skills they might need one day on the battlefield, where contractor support is inordinately expensive, unreliable or nonexistent…
While a broken generator or tactical vehicle may seem like small issues, the implications are much larger when a combat ship or a fighter jet needs to be fixed. What happens when those systems break somewhere with limited communications or transportation? Will the Department of Defense get stuck in the mud because of a warranty?
No one is invading the U.S., so these problems aren’t immediately obvious to most of us. Yet, with the collapse of the Afghan army, now we see an example of what happens when a military is too dependent on contractors, and that support system is removed (which adversaries could do to the U.S. military if they pursue certain strategies.) It turns out that the cost of not being able to repair your own equipment is losing wars.
More fundamentally, the people who are in charge of the governing institutions in our society are simply divorced from the underlying logistics of what makes them work. Everything, from the Boeing 737 Max to the opioid epidemic to the waste inside most big corporations to war, has been McKinsey-ified. And it’s all covered up with moral outrage, partisanship and culture warring, public relations, and management wisdom bullshit.
I’ll finish on a note of optimism. This loss in Afghanistan, while hugely embarrassing, could serve as a wake-up call. After the loss in Vietnam, a group of military officers, led by John Boyd, one of the greatest American military strategists in U.S. history, created a military reform movement, to change the way the Pentagon developed and used weapons, and they made enormous progress in restructuring key parts of the defense establishment. (One of the members of Boyd’s “Fighter Mafia,” Pierre Sprey, the man responsible for the remarkable A-10 Warthog, just passed away.) Similarly, the British, after losing the American Revolution, radically reformed their corrupt and antiquated systems of governance. Losing wars is a great spur to reform. It means that we as a society get to look at ourselves honestly. We may choose not to act on what we see, but we do in fact have the opportunity. And that’s not nothing.
UPDATE: I'd like to apologize to Whitney Kessel. She is no longer at the Arkin Group. After a stint at Palantir, she ended up at Morgan Stanley, where she is now the Head of Cyber Event Management for North America, which is not at all a highly paid fake job full of make work.
Like a lot of monopolists, Broadridge has market power despite charging high prices for a commodity service because its customers aren’t spending their own money, they are spending Other People’s Money. Stock brokers are the ‘customers,’ but they get to charge funds and firms for the cost, and get a kickback from Broadridge in the process. It’s great to buy something with someone else’s money, there’s no reason to hold prices down. And if you get a share of what you spend, you have an incentive to drive prices higher. Who cares how much the stuff you’re buying costs? You’re spending Other People’s Money!
A BIG reader sent me a note on how expensive it is to get emailed a PDF of a transcript from a university. It costs more than $9 apiece. Why? It turns out a firm called Parchment runs this service for a lot of universities, and Parchment is a roll-up of similar firms by private equity of similar firms. This is another example of Other People’s Money - the universities are the ‘customers,’ but the people who pay are the alumni and other stakeholders that need transcripts. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are kickbacks here as well.
Why have vaccine distributions been so problematic? It turns out many state leaders and the Centers for Disease Control relied on McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group to run their vaccine roll-outs. Predictably, the process has been a total cringe. This nugget is particularly embarrassing.
Instead of the “targeted program management support” promised in the contract, consultants often performed rudimentary services, such as taking notes during calls between states and the CDC, and then organizing that information in PowerPoint slides for presentations, agency officials said.
This violates my recommendation to Biden, which was to keep McKinsey away from government.
Disability rights and monopoly is its own topic, and a fascinating one. This story starts getting into the problem.
It's hard to hire nurses these days without offering more pay, so hospitals are doing what monopolists like to do. Price-fix! They are trying to get the government to help them collude against workers. “On behalf of hospitals in the state of Texas, having an organized, consistent approach that doesn’t pit hospitals against each other in looking for staffing is what we need,” said Marc Boom, chair of the Texas Hospital Association. In other words, hospital execs want to work together to make sure no nurses get to shop their labor skills around. That would be a straight-up antitrust violation, which is why they are trying to get government approval before doing it.
Shortage Watch: I’m going to start writing about shortages. Send me what you’re seeing. This, for instance, is a pretty simple example.
Thanks for reading. Send me tips on weird monopolies, stories I’ve missed, or comments by clicking on the title of this newsletter. And if you liked this issue of BIG, you can sign up here for more issues of BIG, a newsletter on how to restore fair commerce, innovation and democracy. If you really liked it, read my book, Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy.
cheers,
Matt Stoller
P.S. Don’t worry, I didn’t forget about Sony’s anime monopoly.
Hey Matt,
Long time reader here, I wanted to bring your attention to a sorta niche monopoly matter. Sony just recently acquired anime streaming service Crunchyroll for 1.2 billion dollars, they also acquired Funimation, another popular U.S. anime distributor, a few years ago. Both Crunchyroll and Funimation are two of the largest, and most accessible, streaming sites for anime. By purchasing Crunchyroll, Sony is essentially building an anime monopoly, something even the DOJ was afraid of despite approving the merger. Anime has grown dramatically in popularity over the past decade or so and Sony has kept pace constantly building and/or acquiring various distribution channels in Japan and around the world. Sony argues the acquisition will help them compete against streaming giants Netflix and Amazon (which are also trying to crack into the anime market), but you can color me skeptical.
Sony has said they'll consolidate the libraries into one service, but it remains to be seen what that'll look like. However, both Funimation and Crunchyroll offer a ton of free content, and my hunch is that it was because both services were competing against each other. However, if Sony is going head-to-head with Netflix and Amazon I imagine they'll cut back the free content and bring prices more in line with those services. Furthermore, with distribution becoming more consolidated, it'll likely put translators, animators, and studios in a worse bargaining position, which is saying a lot since many of them barely earnenough to survive.
I'll admit, I'm not an industry insider, I'm just a guy who likes anime and hates monopolies, but I figured the news around the acquisition would catch your attention. If you want to explore this further I'd highly recommend connecting with some folks over at Anime News Network, which has been following the industry since the late 90s.
Best,
A
P.P.S. Are you a lawyer who wants a cool job at the Department of Justice Antitrust Division? If so, there are a bunch of jobs open in San Fransisco and Washington, D.C.
23. AUKUS Is the Death Knell of Australia's Strategic Ambiguity
Excerpts:
Yet Australia’s diplomacy on this front was again clumsy. Leaving aside the sidelining of Paris that led to Gallic fury, key regional partners, especially Indonesia, were given only the most cursory notice. While the deal could not have been done even with more warning given to Jakarta, the Indonesian response was the sharpest, expressing caution at the move and concern that it might feed a renewed regional arms race. For others, excluding fellow Quad members in Tokyo and New Delhi, it may only reinforce residual perceptions about which loyalties Australia cherishes most. At the very least, Morrison should have dispatched a diplomatic envoy to the region on the day of the announcement to fully brief regional capitals.
Twenty-five years ago, in thinking about the new strategic order arising from the ashes of the old, Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations thesis classified Australia as a “torn country”—trapped between its British and North American cultural moorings and its geopolitical reality on the edge of Asia.
Huntington, in an extraordinary flight of fancy, argued that the policies of the Keating Labor government in Canberra at the time, with its emphasis on Australia finding security in, not from, Asia, might prove to be a symbol of Western decline.
Such a conclusion was rightly ridiculed at the time as a mark of Huntington’s broad brush strokes hiding more than they revealed. But somewhere, Huntington might very well be smiling at the coming of AUKUS. He has his proof that Australia has opted to cleave to older outlooks rather than forge a new path to a more secure Asia.
AUKUS Is the Death Knell of Australia's Strategic Ambiguity
At what cost is Australia attempting to strengthen its deterrence of China?
Following last week’s inauguration of the AUKUS defense partnership, which will see Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines drawing on British and U.S. technology, few could disagree that Australia has made its definitive strategic choice.
No longer can anyone in Washington harbor doubts as to where Canberra stands in the evolving contest with China.
After all, as recently as March 2019, when Arthur Culvahouse Jr. arrived to take up his position as U.S. Ambassador to Australia, he shocked senior officials in Canberra by revealing that before his departure, whisperers in Congress were asking “who lost Australia?”
The very proposition was absurd, but it underlined a lingering view in some U.S. policymaking circles that successive Australian governments had for too long maintained that prosperous economic relations with China could co-exist with a strong military alliance with the United States.
And in 2017, this writer was told by one analyst in Washington—now a senior official in the Biden administration—that Australia was a “great ally of the United States everywhere in the world except in Asia.”
From that time, Australian governments have not only been willing to call out China’s assertive international behavior, they have also been at the vanguard of pushing back against Beijing. This was most evident in the government’s call for an independent inquiry into the origins of COVID-19, a stance that infuriated China and precipitated the beginning of a series of punitive economic tariffs against a wide range of Australian exports.
Seen in that light, AUKUS represents something of a logical end point for Australia’s recent experience at the pointy end of Chinese coercion. It is a culmination, too, of an assiduous, relentless building of a ‘China threat’ narrative by elements of the Morrison government, some commentators, and think tanks, a narrative which has sunk deep roots in Australian public and elite opinion. The Lowy Institute’s Poll for 2021 found that 63 percent of Australians see China as a security threat, a 22 percent rise on the previous year. The rapid deterioration in relations with Beijing has only intensified calls for Canberra to do more to deepen even further its U.S. alliance. In that sense China is clearly the objective of AUKUS.
Moreover, Scott Morrison’s government will now claim that with AUKUS the full tapestry of Australian strategic policy is unfurled: a Reciprocal Access Agreement with Japan signed in November 2020; increased defense cooperation with India—symbolized by participation in the annual Malabar naval exercises; the Quad leaders meeting, which both the Trump and now Biden administrations have pushed to the forefront of U.S. Asia policy; and now this agreement for three of the oldest partners from the Second World War.
All of these measures push in the same direction: aligning Australia with the U.S. in what many analysts now accept is a “new Cold War” with China.
Canberra is emboldened. The prime minister, characteristically immodest in selling his diplomatic achievements, has already carved a niche for himself in the pantheon of Australian leaders: claiming to stand alongside John Curtin, who led the nation in World War II; and Robert Menzies, whose government negotiated the ANZUS treaty.
But this is also probably the biggest strategic gamble in Australian history. Other so-called ‘turns’ to America, such as those by Prime Minister Alfred Deakin in 1908 and John Curtin in 1941, have been expedient calls for assistance in a time of survivalist anxiety. AUKUS, according to a White House briefing, “binds decisively Australia to the United States and Great Britain for generations.”
Never mind that the first submarines will not arrive until the late 2030s, although there is now talk of leasing U.S. submarines in the interim. Or that Australia has no experience with nuclear technology. Or that cost blowouts will likely be massive. Never mind, too, that Australia will be captive to its technology partners.
The announcement’s biggest gamble, however, is its assumption that the United States will not return Trump or another similar politician to the Oval Office. Or that a future U.S. administration may take a different view of what the United States can and cannot do in terms of maintaining its regional primacy in Asia.
AUKUS represents the death knell for strategic ambiguity in Australian foreign policy. Although Canberra does have a record of shrewd alliance management in the past—of roaring loud in allied solidarity but committing the minimum muscle up front, as in the case of Iraq 2003 when Australian special forces were pulled back after the initial assault on Baghdad—it is fanciful to suggest that in any future military conflict with China, especially over Taiwan, the United States will not expect Australia to play a role in the battle.
Will a future Australian government of either political persuasion be able to resist U.S. pressure to be part of any such conflict? History suggests not. Australia, as we are constantly reminded in the speeches, has been by the U.S.’s side at every major conflict since the First World War.
Yet the irony of course is that by the time Australia’s submarines deploy, the region’s strategic contours may look very different indeed.
While the partnership is expected to see a series of further measures tightening the AUKUS embrace—more U.S. marines rotating through northern Australia, the pre-positioning of U.S. military equipment in Australia, and cooperation on missile technology—it involves no NATO-style collective defense mechanism. And great powers, as Australia knows only too well from experience, can turn on a dime.
Contrary to some of the excited claims to novelty in this announcement, AUKUS might more accurately be described as the latest example of that nervous, reflexive twitch in Australian strategic psychology.
Namely that when an Asian threat or menace appears on the horizon, Canberra’s impulse is to look to its Anglosphere cousins for protection. The history of Australian defense and foreign policy is replete with such moments. In that sense AUKUS is clearly freighted with powerful cultural assumptions and expectations.
That means regional perceptions of the announcement were always going to be crucial.
Yet Australia’s diplomacy on this front was again clumsy. Leaving aside the sidelining of Paris that led to Gallic fury, key regional partners, especially Indonesia, were given only the most cursory notice. While the deal could not have been done even with more warning given to Jakarta, the Indonesian response was the sharpest, expressing caution at the move and concern that it might feed a renewed regional arms race. For others, excluding fellow Quad members in Tokyo and New Delhi, it may only reinforce residual perceptions about which loyalties Australia cherishes most. At the very least, Morrison should have dispatched a diplomatic envoy to the region on the day of the announcement to fully brief regional capitals.
Twenty-five years ago, in thinking about the new strategic order arising from the ashes of the old, Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations thesis classified Australia as a “torn country”—trapped between its British and North American cultural moorings and its geopolitical reality on the edge of Asia.
Huntington, in an extraordinary flight of fancy, argued that the policies of the Keating Labor government in Canberra at the time, with its emphasis on Australia finding security in, not from, Asia, might prove to be a symbol of Western decline.
Such a conclusion was rightly ridiculed at the time as a mark of Huntington’s broad brush strokes hiding more than they revealed. But somewhere, Huntington might very well be smiling at the coming of AUKUS. He has his proof that Australia has opted to cleave to older outlooks rather than forge a new path to a more secure Asia.
James Curran is Professor of Modern History at Sydney University. A former intelligence analyst with the Australian Office of National Assessments, he is also a foreign affairs columnist for the Australian Financial Review and is writing a book on Australia-China relations, to be published in 2022.
This piece, first published by the Council on Foreign Relations, is used with permission.
24. Beijing’s bid to join CPTPP may fail yet also succeed, experts say
Beijing’s bid to join CPTPP may fail yet also succeed, experts say
- Differences with members of the 11-nation trade pact, notably Australia and Japan, may prevent China winning the backing needed
- CPTPP’s commitments would be difficult for China to meet – but applying may have diplomatic or economic benefits
Published: 11:00pm, 20 Sep, 2021
China is unlikely to be accepted into a Pacific Rim trade deal in the short term, but its application seeks to position it as embracing cooperation and opening up, analysts said.
It had already floated the idea to members after President Xi Jinping said last November his country was seriously interested in joining.
The pact took shape as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, seen as an effort to counter China before the US’ withdrawal in 2017, after which it was replaced by the CPTPP, without the US.
There has been division in the group – comprising Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam – over China’s application, which requires unanimous support. Singapore and Malaysia, which have close economic ties with Beijing, have been open to the idea.
In the opposing camp is Australia. Dan Tehan, its trade minister, said his country opposed China joining unless it convinced members it had a “track record of compliance” with international trade agreements, and resumed high-level dialogue with Canberra – suspended over Beijing’s trade restrictions on Australian goods. Japan, too, said it needed to determine whether China was ready to meet the trade pact’s “extremely high standards”.
Bryan Mercurio, an expert in free-trade agreements and trade law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said the application was significant in China’s efforts to position itself “as a strategic partner for growth and development, not a bully or threat”. But he said there was not “even a remote chance” that China would change its laws and policies to meet CPTPP standards.
“China will struggle to meet the commitment level necessary for the CPTPP in several areas, most notably subsidies, state-owned enterprises [SOEs], digital trade and possibly investment,” he said.
“There is also a growing belief that China does not fully implement its international commitments. This is not a good reputation to have, because it will mean other parties will be hesitant to provide any space in the negotiations.”
The CPTPP contains more rigorous trade commitments – including on labour, the environment, digital trade and SOEs – than the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) signed by China and 14 other Indo-Pacific countries last year.
China’s application follows the newly announced Aukus military alliance between the US, Britain and Australia, although Beijing denied it was linked.
RCEP: 15 Asia-Pacific countries sign world’s largest free-trade deal
Mercurio said China’s application could force US President Joe Biden to reconsider trade policy, with his administration yet to initiate any major trade deals.
“I suspect Biden was waiting until his second term, but I cannot see how that will now be possible,” he said. “The risk, however, is that the policy will be even more antagonistic towards China.”
A Beijing-based professor, who declined to be named because of the political sensitivity, said it was very unlikely China would agree to CPTPP requirements or that members would trust China to follow those standards if it committed to.
“This is very likely to be a diplomatic démarche, rather than pursued out of long-term economic calculation,” they said. “It is just like the rationale for signing the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment with the European Union. Perhaps the Chinese government feels that it needs to send this message to the US that China cannot be boycotted.
“There would be great resistance to even starting negotiations with China – we already know that Australia and Japan have dissatisfactions with China.”
The US said it would expect parties to the pact to evaluate China’s “non-market trade practices” and “use of economic coercion against other countries”.
Last year’s trade agreement between the US, Mexico and Canada required each to notify the others before signing a free-trade agreement with a “non-market economy”, a reference to China.
Taiwan signalled its interest in joining the CPTPP after it was left out of the RCEP, as Beijing – which claims the self-ruled island as its territory – continued its efforts to limit Taiwan’s space in the international arena.
A Beijing government adviser, who requested anonymity, said the CPTPP could help Beijing towards a “high level of opening up” – referenced repeatedly by the Chinese leadership .
“Beijing is clear that joining will be difficult, but the application indicated the leadership’s acceptance of the high standards,” he said. “China is still lagging in some sectors but the negotiations themselves would be a push to open up.”
According to Henry Gao, an associate professor of law at Singapore Management University, China had long built towards applying, having studied the pact since 2013 and removed trade and investment barriers in recent months despite concerns over its inward-looking “dual circulation” strategy – but it would still need to “provide substantive adjustment” to address a trust deficit with countries such as Australia and Canada.
“For domestic political reasons, the US is unlikely to return to the CPTPP any time soon,” he said. “This creates a perfect window of opportunity for China to manoeuvre into a pact that ironically was created by the US to contain China.”
Su Qingyi, a senior research fellow at China’s Institute of World Economics and Politics, wrote in an analysis shared on Monday by the China Finance 40 Forum think tank that China had economic interests in joining, such as furthering its opening up and taking part in global economic governance.
“But China will face many difficulties in joining, and will need to show concrete action in reaching CPTPP benchmarks and to work hard diplomatically to gain the support of individual CPTPP members to increase their trust and dispel doubts, and make them believe in China’s ability to execute,” Su said.
“But it is important to understand that the greater challenge is in the negotiation stage, and negotiations will be a very long battle.”
25. A ‘Proof of Death’ Video From Xinjiang
A ‘Proof of Death’ Video From Xinjiang
The CCP’s attacks on Western media reports took a gruesome turn with a video purporting to detail how Uyghur Mihriay Erkin died.
Advertisement
A campaign by the Chinese government to discredit survivors of detention camps who speak out against the regime has taken a macabre turn with the release of a “proof of death” video claiming that the demise of a young Uyghur woman was self-inflicted.
The short video set out to prove that Mihriay Erkin did not in fact die under interrogation as alluded to by Radio Free Asia. Instead it set out to “put the record straight” and claimed her death was caused by a refusal to accept treatment for the complications of Hepatitis B.
So-called “proof of life” videos, whereby long “disappeared” relatives of the diaspora are paraded on screen extolling the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), are the CCP’s latest tactic used to discredit activists campaigning on behalf of their families in Xinjiang. The loved ones deemed to have vanished appear onscreen against a plain background, or in the comfort of their own home around lavishly spread tables. They are usually filmed lambasting their exiled relative, telling them to stop criticizing China and demanding that they return. Very often work colleagues or friends are drafted in to cast doubt on the moral character of the exile as well, accusing them of loose living, lying, or theft.
The CCP has refined its modus operandi since the very first of these was released following the rumored death of a beloved Uyghur singer and musician, Abdurehim Heyit, in February 2019. Against a grey-tiled background, the disheveled Heyit, with a stubbled chin but a shaved head, reassured the world that he was alive and in “good health.”
Far from reassuring activists, the condition of Heyit and his awkward speech, which many fear was made under duress, provoked deep concern. It also unleashed the #MeTooUyghur campaign, with relatives clamoring for news of their own families.
These “proof-of-life” videos have developed in style and plausibility since the clumsiness of those early days. The CCP’s English-language mouthpieces, Global Times and China Daily, and broadcaster CGTN (China Global Television Network) have made a series of documentary-style features describing the new lives of exiles’ relatives, who have been “cured” from “extremism” and “separatist” tendencies during spells in the so-called Vocational Training Centers – more widely known abroad as reeducation camps.
A CGTN crew went to great lengths to follow up on a story released to Western media by exiled poet Aziz Isa Elkun, after he noticed on Google Earth that his village’s ancestral cemetery, together with his father’s well-tended grave, had been destroyed and his father’s remains removed. CGTN journalists traveled miles along dusty roads to the remote village where Elkun’s elderly widowed mother, whom he had not been in contact with or seen for three years, was forced to denounce her son and claim her husband’s new “eco” grave was more convenient.
Diplomat Brief
Weekly Newsletter
N
Get briefed on the story of the week, and developing stories to watch across the Asia-Pacific.
Now, China appears to be moving in a gruesome new direction. When a “proof-of-life” video proved impossible, the CCP made a video attempting to absolve itself of responsibility in a detainee’s death.
Advertisement
The death of Mihriay Erkin has always puzzled her uncle, the Uyghur language educator and activist Abduweli Ayup, now living in Europe. Since her mysterious disappearance in June 2019 after she was pressured into returning to Xinjiang by her parents, despite having a promising career in biotechnology science in Japan, Ayup has left no stone unturned to discover her whereabouts. He was blocked at every turn.
Mihriay Erkin during her student days in Japan. Photo provided by Abduweli Ayup.
Only after investigations by an RFA reporter, who called the police station in her home town, was her death finally confirmed in June 2021. But Ayup was none the wiser as to the cause of her death or the reason for her disappearance.
The recent appearance of a private video describing how Mihriay Erkin died, however, has only increased his distress and given him more questions than answers.
The clip, released a full two years after Erkin’s disappearance, seems to have been concocted to rebut a New York Times expose in July this year on the treatment of exiled Uyghur activists’ relatives, who are often rounded up and sent to camps in retaliation. Erkin was one of the subjects of journalist Austin Ramzy, who had interviewed Ayup on the activism that might have contributed to his niece’s retaliatory arrest. Following his feature, Ramzy was sent a private video clip by the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region news department, in which Erkin’s doctor and younger brother testified that she had been the author of her own death.
These videos are intended to reassure the world that Beijing has the Uyghurs’ best interests at heart and to quell the “fake news” attacking China from the West. But the decision to depart from China’s usual policy of publicly countering attacks on its integrity on national and international television, instead sending a bespoke private video to an international journalist, seemed strange to Ayup.
“They were obviously expecting a retraction in the New York Times,” he said, adding there were too many flaws and inconsistencies in the video for it to be credible.
A screenshot of the preamble to the video.
The preamble sent in a separate document to Ramzy was full of factual errors, according to Ayup. The document claimed that the reason Erkin finished her studies and returned home was ill health. Nothing could have been further from the truth, said Ayup, who confirmed that she had in fact already graduated in 2017, two years before she was called back. He produced text message evidence from her last correspondence with a friend from the Tokyo airport, indicating a reluctance to return. Erkin told her friend that a sense of responsibility toward her ailing parents, who themselves had been threatened if they could not persuade her to come home, had forced her hand.
In the video, filmed on an unknown date and from an unknown location, one Dilare Mahmut, claiming to be Erkin’s “attending physician,” recited a list of conditions suffered by the young Uyghur, from which she eventually succumbed after refusing treatment.
Advertisement
Erkin was a fit and healthy 30-year-old before she disappeared, according to her uncle. After 18 months in detention, the doctor described Erkin as suffering from a raft of ailments: acute gastroenteritis, chronic cholecystitis, chronic hepatitis B, severe anemia, malnutrition, “pleural fluid on her left lung,” “abdominal fluid (ascites) caused by liver disease,” followed by “etc.” According to the video, Erkin was offered treatment for these conditions but had refused.
In this screenshot from the video, Dilare Mahmut, who claims to have been Erkin’s doctor, recites the lengthy list of her ailments.
She had rejected all food and drink, pulled out intravenous drips, and refused to cooperate with treatment, to the extent the hospital thought she might have a “depressive disorder.” According to the hospital, even her own family could not persuade her to cooperate and she eventually died of “multiple organ dysfunction syndrome.”
The elephant in the room for Ayup was not that his niece had been sick, but how she had become so ill. If in fact Erkin had died of Hepatitis B, and the video was genuine, Ayup argued, far from being a vindication of China, it was further proof of the injustices underway in Xinjiang. Hundreds and thousands of innocent people have been detained without trial; Erkin’s rapid deterioration, in Ayup’s eyes, demonstrates the squalid conditions in which these detainees are kept.
As far as Ayup was concerned, the video is evidence of the crimes the CCP is meting out on his people and the lengths it is prepared to go to cover its tracks. “There have been too many accounts of conditions in the concentration camps for it to be a coincidence that Mihriay had become undernourished,” he said. “Prisoners are fed on steamed buns, vegetable gruel, and two glasses of water a day. If the video is true, no wonder she had developed malnutrition.”
The account of Erkin’s multiple health problems was evidence to Ayup of his niece’s suffering during her final months of life.
“If in fact she refused medication and pulled out intravenous drips, we have to ask the question: why?” asked Ayup, who himself endured the terror of arrest, torture and incarceration some years ago for the “crime” of promoting the Uyghur language. He explained the terror that fills every inmate, as they are subjected to unknown drugs and tests, which many detainees assume are meant to determine their suitability for organ harvesting.
“I’ll tell you why. Everyone in those prisons assumes they are there to be killed. Why should she submit herself voluntarily to unknown drugs that could have hastened her own death?” he asked.
“It would not have been surprising either if she was depressed,” Ayup added, emphasizing that she had been inveigled home from a promising career in Japan to ostensibly care for ailing parents, but was in fact summarily arrested and detained on her arrival.
Erkin’s brother, Mirshat, appears in the video to refute the “rumors” around her death.
Commenting on Erkin’s brother’s performance on the video, Ayup noticed his script was striking in its similarity to that of the doctor. With no medical background, Erkin’s brother had managed to recite complicated medical terminology in Chinese without hesitation. “I can only imagine the number of times he must have practiced those words,” said Ayup, cynically.
“Mirshat loved Mihriay. It would have been torture for him to blame his sister in this way for causing her own death. I can’t imagine what he went through.”
Advertisement
For Ayup, this video has only served to reinforce his determination to speak out about the atrocities against his people. “I dread to think what Mihriay suffered in detention,” he said.
“I am heartbroken, but will continue the fight.”
26. Army finally reveals why a soldier is being court-martialed for a mysterious firefight in Syria
Army finally reveals why a soldier is being court-martialed for a mysterious firefight in Syria
Nicoson allegedly ordered soldiers to delete video of the incident.
SHARE
An Army platoon sergeant is facing a court-martial next year for alleged misconduct before and after a brief 2020 gun battle in Syria between pro-regime and coalition forces.
It was reported last month that the Army intended to bring charges against Sgt. 1st Class Robert Nicoson, assigned to B Troop, 1st Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, though the Army didn’t originally provide details about his case. He is charged with violating orders, reckless endangerment, making unlawful threats, and obstruction of justice. The charges were referred for general court-martial by Maj. Gen. Christopher Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division.
“Charges are merely accusations and the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty,” Lt. Col. Brett Lea, a division spokesman, told Task & Purpose.
A US soldier walks near a Bradley Fighting Vehicle (BFV) during a patrol near the Rumaylan (Rmeilan) oil wells in Syria’s northeastern Hasakeh province on June 22, 2021. (Photo by Delil SOULEIMAN / AFP) (Photo by DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images)
There’s a lot we don’t know about what happened during the Aug. 17, 2020 encounter. But details have emerged from the military’s initial statements on the firefight and in court documents.
One version of events, as reported by Operation Inherent Resolve officials, says troops were “conducting a routine anti-ISIS security patrol,” and after “receiving safe passage … the patrol came under small arms fire from individuals in the vicinity of the checkpoint.”
On 8/17, @CJTFOIR & @cmoc_sdf, conducting a routine anti-ISIS security patrol near Tal Al-Zahab, encountered a checkpoint occupied by pro-Syrian regime forces…the patrol [was attacked]. Coalition troops returned fire in self-defense. No Coalition casualties. Full Statement pic.twitter.com/3qWFrZh1wR
— OIR Spokesman Col. Wayne Marotto (@OIRSpox) August 17, 2020
A portion of the fight was caught on video and circulated on social media. Some reports from Syrian media said U.S. helicopters bombed the checkpoint and killed a Syrian fighter. The OIR press release, however, said the coalition did not carry out an airstrike and there were no casualties.
فيديو يظهر الاشتباك بين عناصر من #الجيش_السوري وقوات الاحتلال الأميركي اثناء مرور الدورية الامريكية واعتراضهم من عناصر حاجز الجيش في #تل_الذهب بريف #القامشلي
— خالد اسكيف (@khalediskef) August 17, 2020
Another version of events that day can be pieced together by the charges against Nicoson. According to a copy of the soldier’s charge sheet that was provided to Task & Purpose, coalition forces reportedly approached a checkpoint controlled by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Nicoson was in the last vehicle of the patrol, according to his attorney Philip Stackhouse.
The U.S. troops had previously been ordered to stay roughly 1.2 miles from the pro-regime forces, according to the charge sheet. Despite the order, the charges say, Nicoson approached the compound, got out of his vehicle and threatened to kill the pro-regime troops if they didn’t allow the Americans through.
The American patrol proceeded through the checkpoint, the charge sheet says, despite knowing the soldiers “did not have permission to do so,” which was conduct “likely to cause death or grievous bodily harm to U.S. forces and pro-regime forces at the checkpoint.”
It’s unclear what happened next that led to the gunfight, though Nicoson “had reason to believe that there would be disciplinary proceedings pending,” according to the charge sheet.
NORTHEASTERN SYRIA – MAY 25: U.S. Army soldiers prepare to go out on patrol from a remote combat outpost on May 25, 2021 in northeastern Syria. U.S. forces, part of Task Force WARCLUB operate from combat outposts in the area, coordinating with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in combatting residual ISIS extremists and deterring pro-Iranian militia. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
After the shootout, he allegedly ordered two soldiers to delete video recordings of the interaction at the checkpoint, the charge sheet says. He also allegedly ordered a soldier “to falsely claim” that they’d been given permission to go through the checkpoint by the pro-regime forces.
American troops returned to their base after the incident, according to the press release from OIR.
Stackhouse told Task & Purpose that his client was arraigned and intends to plead not guilty. Nicoson was charged in April 2021, eight months after the incident. His trial is expected to begin in early January 2022, Stackhouse said.
The preliminary hearing officer on July 1, 2021, recommended the dismissal of two of the four charges against Nicoson — that he failed to obey an order and endangered others by dismounting his vehicle and approaching the pro-regime checkpoint before then passing through, according to a redacted report obtained by Task & Purpose outlining the preliminary hearing officer’s recommendations. Donahue rejected the officer’s recommendation.
Stackhouse said it was “disappointing” that Donahue ignored the recommendations made after a preliminary hearing of Nicoson’s case.
The hearing officer did, however, recommend the two other charges to court-martial. Those charges allege that Nicolson threatened to kill the pro-regime forces if they didn’t allow the coalition forces through the checkpoint near Tall Dahat, Syria and that he ordered soldiers to delete video of his actions at the checkpoint, and directed a soldier to lie and say that they’d been granted passage through the checkpoint.
NORTHEASTERN SYRIA – MAY 24: A U.S. Army helicopter crew member looks out from the open ramp of a CH-47 Chinook helicopter while transporting troops on May 24, 2021 over northeastern Syria. U.S. forces, part of Task Force WARCLUB operate from remote combat outposts in the area, coordinating with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in combatting residual ISIS extremists and deterring pro-Iranian militia. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
According to the redacted report, the investigation of the allegations makes it “very clear that these engagements were discussed at length between leadership and the troops and amongst the troops.”
“Because the [Criminal Investigation Command] investigation did not start until a couple months after the August incident, it appears the memories of the witnesses were already tainted by the time and outside influences,” the report says. “The witnesses seem to have inherent bias and prejudice as a result of what they were told after the fact.”
The U.S. has recently taken a back seat of sorts to the SDF, however. A defense official told Politico in July that no American troops had accompanied local forces on combat patrols for more than a year. “They are not kicking in doors, apprehending the enemy, etc.,” the official said.
Despite being there for several years it sometimes seems that lawmakers have forgotten the troops’ presence in Syria, and it’s unclear how much longer the U.S. presence will last. Jennifer Cafarella, a national security fellow at the Institute for Understanding War research institution, told Task & Purpose that the U.S. is “merely buying time” in Syria.
“The U.S. deployment in eastern Syria,” she said, “is sustainable only so long as no actor significantly increases pressure on them.”
The charge sheet can be viewed below:
More great stories on Task & Purpose
Haley Britzky is the Army reporter for Task & Purpose, covering the daily happenings in the Army and how they impact soldiers and their families, as well as broader national security issues. Originally from Texas, Haley previously worked at Axios before joining Task & Purpose in January 2019. Contact the author here.
27. Afghanistan Was Lost in the Halls of Harvard
Wow! Here is one for the civil-military relations debate.
Afghanistan Was Lost in the Halls of Harvard
The 40-year ROTC ban sent a deeper message: that American civilization isn’t worth defending.
Harvard was the first college to bring the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, or ROTC, to campus in 1916. ROTC was established by the U.S. National Defense Act, signed by President Woodrow Wilson. Its purpose, then as now, was to encourage college students to undergo military training as potential officers. Many campus plaques honor Harvard students who fought for their country, but ROTC came under attack in 1968 as part of opposition to the Vietnam War, the draft and the “military-industrial complex.” As the war became unpopular, antagonism toward the military on campus grew.
Both the draft and American involvement in Vietnam ended in 1973. One might have expected the voluntary ROTC to flourish, given that the U.S. still had plenty of enemies, some with dangerous weaponry and aims. Instead, rather than encourage outstanding students to undertake military training as part of their civic responsibility, faculty at Harvard and elsewhere took the lead in banishing ROTC from campus.
By the time I arrived at Harvard to teach in 1993, the ostensible justification for keeping ROTC off campus had shifted from objections to its educational function to rejection of the Clinton-era policy toward gay soldiers. Rather than legitimately opposing “don’t ask, don’t tell” through the political process, faculty used it as moral camouflage for their continuing war on military service.
The finer students saw through it. I fondly recall a student forum in 1999 where a self-described “gay libertarian” mocked the university’s policy, saying that the next pretext would be that recruits were not allowed freedom of speech.
But student conscience and conscientiousness were no match for opposition from the small number of faculty ideologues in the humanities and social sciences—the ones who determine a university’s political agenda because the rest of us are too indifferent or weak to stop them. In 1999 they passed a resolution preventing Harvard even from paying the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Harvard’s few remaining ROTC students were being sent for training. To get around this resolution, the administration asked alumni to foot the bill.
For almost 40 years, Harvard kept ROTC off campus, until the military no longer cared about reinstating it. With the training went the courses related to military history and security studies. The school’s only remaining military historian, Stephen P. Rosen, is approaching retirement.
Just as the presence of ROTC inculcated respect for military service, so did an anti-ROTC atmosphere deliver the message that a flawed America wasn’t worth defending. The message was clear: Harvard students are too good for military service. Leave national defense to the farm boys and those who don’t make it to an elite college. Forty years of such scorn for the military will bring low any democracy.
ROTC is back on Harvard’s campus now. But more than mere acceptance is needed. Students must be offered an education that demonstrates the exceptional merits of their country and civilization, and gives them the intellectual tools to defend it.
In a welcoming message this year, Harvard’s President Lawrence Bacow told students, “Climate change is the most consequential threat facing humanity.” Much as I respect his leadership, I believe that the university’s dereliction of democratic duty is a far greater and more immediate threat to humanity—one that is in his power to reverse.
Ms. Wisse is a professor emerita at Harvard University. Her memoir, “Free as a Jew,” is being released this week.
28. Air Force general to review errant Kabul drone strike, make recommendations for discipline
Air Force general to review errant Kabul drone strike, make recommendations for discipline
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has tasked the Air Force with designating a general who will conduct a review of the investigation into the Aug. 29 Hellfire missile strike in Kabul that reportedly killed 10 people, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters Monday.
In a memo dated Friday, he said, Austin directed Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall to choose a three-star or above to investigate what went wrong, how strike targeting might be changed in the future, and whether anyone involved in the mission should be disciplined.
“Part of that review will be to examine the investigation itself, the thoroughness of the investigation; to study the degree to which any policies, procedures or targeting mechanisms may need to be altered going forward, if any; and of course, to then take a look at what levels of accountability might be appropriate, and if so, at what level,” Kirby said.
Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, announced Friday that the initial investigation into the strike found that the U.S. erroneously targeted a civilian in its attempt to neutralize an imminent ISIS-K threat against troops manning the gates at the Kabul airport.
Once the Air Force selects a general, that officer will have 45 days to complete the review and report it to Austin, with recommendations for any changes or actions.
RELATED
“The strike was a tragic mistake,” Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, told a Pentagon news conference.
A review of this kind does not necessarily result in criminal charges, but may result in the removal of a decision-maker from his or her position, which could have career consequences down the line.
While McKenzie said Friday that CENTCOM would explore making payments to the families of those killed in the strike, Kirby said that Austin would support evacuating them out of the country if they were interested.
The initial investigation found that the white Toyota Corolla intelligence reports had flagged as suspicious did not contain ISIS bombmakers, though the targeting team on the ground in Kabul first noticed this particular car when it was parked outside of a known ISIS compound, McKenzie said.
The New York Times first reported that the attack actually targeted an Afghan civilian who had worked for an American aid organization over the previous 15 years. McKenzie confirmed that the car made a stop at that organization’s headquarters during the eight hours it was under surveillance.
Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members. Follow on Twitter @Meghann_MT
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
