Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“The greatness of a man is not how much wealthy acquires, but in his integrity and ability to affect those around him positively.”

- Bob Marley

"Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish."

- John Quincy Adams

"The wisest mind hath something yet to learn."

- George Santayana

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 23, 2023

2. Strategy to Counter China in Pacific at Risk in Congress Budget Fight

3. Russia’s Army Learns From Its Mistakes in Ukraine

4. U.S. Economy Could Withstand One Shock, but Four at Once?

5. Listen to stunning 911 tape after F-35 pilot parachuted into backyard: ‘We had a military jet crash’

6. Gen. Mark Milley, polarizing Joint Chiefs chairman, exits center stage

7. Zelensky’s Blunt Talk Wins Support but Also Irks Friends

8. China-Taiwan Weekly Update, September 23, 2023

9. Freedom Fighter Maria Ressa on How Disinformation Degrades Democracy

10. North Korea is slave state

11. Ukraine war: How Zelensky is grappling with Western war fatigue

12. Taiwan raises concerns about situation 'getting out of hand' with China drills

13. "Crab trap": Special Operations Forces strike Black Sea Fleet HQ during commanders' meeting

14. Fact: Russia Is Losing the Ukraine War—Badly

15. Two Words That Ukraine Should Fear More Than Anything Else

16. Putin Gets Bad News: Ukraine Carries Out Powerful Strike on Crimean Airfield

17. The government is colluding with social media platforms to censor Americans

18. Is America uniquely vulnerable to tyranny?

19. Chinese Spies Are Targeting Access, Not Race

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 23, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-23-2023

Key Takeaways:

ISW is now prepared to assess that Ukrainian forces have broken through Russian field fortifications west of Verbove in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
Ukrainian forces have not overcome all prepared Russian defensive positions near Verbove.
Ukrainian forces are deepening their penetration in Zaporizhia Oblast and are assaulting Novoprokopivka – a frontline village 1.5 km immediately south of Robotyne.
Ukrainian military officials stated that the Ukrainian counteroffensive would continue in the winter.
The Ukrainian counteroffensive in western Zaporizhia Oblast has likely destroyed the Russian 810th Naval Infantry Brigade (Black Sea Fleet).
A senior Ukrainian official explicitly confirmed that Ukraine’s objective in Bakhmut is to fix Russian forces. Ukraine’s fixing of Russian forces in Bakhmut may be alleviating pressure on the Kupyansk frontline.
Ukraine’s simultaneous counteroffensives in Bakhmut and southern Ukraine are impeding Russia’s long-term force generation efforts as Russia redeploys its new reserves to defend against Ukrainian advances.
A Ukrainian intelligence chief stated that the September 22 Ukrainian strike on the Russian Black Sea Fleet (BSF) Command headquarters in Sevastopol injured senior Russian commanders.
Russian forces conducted a series of missile and drone strikes against Ukraine on the night of September 22 to 23.
Zaporizhia Oblast occupation governor Yevgeny Balitsky appointed former Roscosmos (Russian space agency) head and ultranationalist figure Dmitry Rogozin as a Russian Federation Council senator representing occupied Zaporizhia Oblast
A Russian insider source argued that the Russian military should reintroduce military officers for political affairs (zampolits) to address the Russian military’s problems with political and ideological commitment– a problem that Russian military thinkers identified in September 2018.
Disjointed Wagner Group contingents reportedly returning to fight in Ukraine are likely to have a marginal impact on Russian combat capabilities without bringing the full suite of effectiveness Wagner had had as a unitary organization under financier Yevgeniy Prigozhin’s and founder Dmitry Utkin’s leadership.
Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, in western Donetsk Oblast, in the western Donetsk-eastern Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast but did not make any confirmed advances on September 23.
Russian authorities are reportedly embezzling funds from military facilities near the border of Ukraine.
Russian government programs continue to forcibly deport children in occupied Ukraine to Russia.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 23, 2023

Sep 23, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 23, 2023

George Barros, Kateryna Stepanenko, Christina Harward, Nicole Wolkov, and Frederick W. Kagan

September 23, 2023, 8:30pm ET

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

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

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 3pm ET on September 23. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the September 24 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

ISW is now prepared to assess that Ukrainian forces have broken through Russian field fortifications west of Verbove in western Zaporizhia Oblast. These fortifications are not the final defensive line in Russia’s defense in depth in western Zaporizhia Oblast, but rather a specific series of the best-prepared field fortifications arrayed as part of a near-contiguous belt of an anti-vehicle ditch, dragon's teeth, and fighting positions about 1.7 - 3.5 km west of Verbove.[1]

Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Commander Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi stated in an interview with CNN published on September 23 that Ukrainian forces achieved a “breakthrough” on the left flank near Verbove and that Ukrainian forces continue advancing.[2] Combat footage posted on September 22 shows a destroyed Ukrainian Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) and BMP-2 operating slightly beyond Russia’s fighting positions trench line near Verbove, indicating continued Ukrainian progress in deploying more heavy equipment beyond Russia’s triune belt of the anti-vehicle ditch, dragon’s teeth, and fighting positions.[3] Commercially available satellite imagery indicates that Ukrainian forces have brought heavy equipment closer to Verbove over the past 96 hours in a manner consistent with Tarnavskyi’s statement.[4] The Wall Street Journal reported on September 21 that Ukrainian forces achieved a “limited breakthrough” west of Verbove citing an unnamed Ukrainian Air Assault Forces officer.[5]

Ukrainian forces have not overcome all of the prepared Russian defensive positions near Verbove. Ukrainian forces’ rate of advance near their breakthrough remains unclear. Russian forces likely still control segments of the long trench line of Russian fighting positions between Robotyne (10km south of Orikhiv) and Verbove, especially near the tactical high ground to the south. Russian forces have reportedly established prepared fighting positions in almost every tree line that Ukrainian infantry are slowly and systematically fighting through. Russian forces have more field fortifications beyond Verbove; there are more anti-vehicle trenches and fighting positions north of Ocheretuvate (26km southeast of Orikhiv), for example. It is unclear the extent to which those positions are manned, however. ISW continues to assess that the Russian military does not have sufficient forces deployed to this sector of the front to completely man its defenses in depth and that Ukrainian forces should be able to operate through Russian field fortifications more rapidly if they are not properly manned.[6]

Ukrainian forces are deepening their penetration in Zaporizhia Oblast and are assaulting Novoprokopivka – a frontline village 1.5 km immediately south of Robotyne. Geolocated combat footage posted on September 23 shows elements of the Russian 70th Regiment (42nd Motorized Rifle Division, 58th Combined Arms Army, Southern Military District) ambushing and killing two Ukrainian infantrymen in Novoprokopivka’s northeastern outskirts, indicating that Ukrainian forces have likely cleared Russian positions between Robotyne and Novoprokopivka.[7] Multiple Russian sources reported that Russian forces repelled a Ukrainian attack against northern Novoprokopivka on September 22.[8] This is the first confirmed Ukrainian ground attack in the immediate vicinity of Novoprokopivka.

Ukrainian military officials stated that the Ukrainian counteroffensive would continue in the winter. Tarnavskyi told CNN that he expected a major Ukrainian breakthrough after Ukrainian forces reach Tokmak (a major Russian stronghold in western Zaporizhia) and that it is important that Ukrainian forces not lose the initiative they currently hold.[9] Tarnavskyi also stated that Ukrainian operations will continue through the winter as Ukrainian forces are mostly advancing on foot without vehicles and that inclement weather will thus not have a major negative effect on the Ukrainian counteroffensive.[10] Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Head Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov echoed a similar assessment about continued Ukrainian winter operations in an interview with The War Zone published on September 22.[11] ISW has previously assessed that, while seasonal weather can slow ground movements and challenge logistics, it will not impose a definite end to Ukrainian counteroffensive operations.[12] The culmination of the Ukrainian counteroffensive will likely depend rather on the Russian and Ukrainian balance of forces as well as on Western aid to Ukraine.

The Ukrainian counteroffensive in western Zaporizhia Oblast has likely destroyed the Russian 810th Naval Infantry Brigade (Black Sea Fleet). Budanov stated in his interview with The War Zone published on September 22 that the 810th Brigade was “completely defeated” in southern Ukraine.[13] Budanov stated that the 810th Brigade has withdrawn and that Russian airborne (VDV) units replaced them on the front. Budanov‘s description of the status of the 810th Brigade corresponds most closely to the US military‘s doctrinal definition of the tactical mission task of “destroy”: “physically render[ing] an enemy force combat-ineffective until reconstituted.”[14] Elements of the 810th Brigade have reportedly been operating in the Zaporizhia direction since March 2023 and in western Zaporizhia Oblast since June 2023.[15] ISW previously observed the 810th Brigade in October 2022, when it was reportedly operating in Kherson Oblast, and the unit was likely reconstituting in the rear in the interim before assuming positions in Zaporizhia Oblast.[16] The 810th Brigade has repeatedly suffered significant losses, and Ukrainian forces have destroyed the unit in the past, following which the Russian military has reconstituted it. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on April 19, 2022, that the 158 soldiers of the 810th Brigade had been killed and about 500 wounded.[17] GUR Deputy Chief Major General Vadym Skibitskyi stated on July 31, 2022, that 200 servicemen of the 810th Brigade refused to return to the war in Ukraine, and the Ukrainian General Staff reported on September 12, 2022, that the 810th Brigade lost more than 85% of its personnel in the Kherson direction and that many again refused to return to combat.[18]

A senior Ukrainian official explicitly confirmed that Ukraine’s objective in Bakhmut is to fix Russian forces. Ukraine’s fixing of Russian forces in Bakhmut may be alleviating pressure on the Kupyansk frontline. Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Head Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov stated that Ukrainian forces achieved their objective of pinning Russian forces in Bakhmut and preventing their transfer to other areas of the theater – such as southern Ukraine – in a September 22 interview.[19] Budanov also stated that the Russian military deployed the recently created and not fully formed 25th Combined Arms Army (CAA) of the Eastern Military District “roughly north of Bakhmut.”[20] Budanov previously reported on August 31 that the Russian military deployed elements of the 25th CAA to replace elements of the 41st CAA (Central Military District) in the Kupyansk direction as elements of the 41st CAA began a "slow” redeployment to southern Ukraine.[21] The Russian deployment of elements of the 25th CAA to Bakhmut instead of Kupyansk will likely disrupt Russian efforts to fix Ukrainian forces in the Kupyansk direction, as Russian forces need these troops to continue assaults in place of the 41st CAA. Ukrainian officials and Russian sources have indicated that the tempo and the intensity of Russian offensives on the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line has significantly decreased in recent weeks as Russian forces are continuing to regroup and rotate personnel in this direction, and the redirection of the deployment of 25th CAA may have alleviated some of the pressure from this frontline.[22] Budanov’s statement supports ISW’s recent assessment that Ukrainian counteroffensive operations on Bakhmut’s southern flank have fixed a large amount of Russian combat power in Bakhmut that would otherwise be available to reinforce Russian defenses in the south — or, in this case, to attempt to force Ukrainian forces to redeploy to defend against Russian assaults around Kupyansk.[23]

Ukraine’s simultaneous counteroffensives in Bakhmut and southern Ukraine are impeding Russia’s long-term force generation efforts as Russia redeploys its new reserves to defend against Ukrainian advances. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) formed a “reserve army” at the end of June, likely referencing the 25th CAA among other formations, which began recruiting personnel from the Russian Far East in mid-May.[24] The formation of the 25th CAA was likely part of Shoigu’s announced intent to conduct large-scale force restructuring by 2026, and the use of these forces in combat and defensive operations will likely expend reserves intended for the long-term reconstitution and expansion of Russia’s military.[25] The Russian military command has also likely been unable to fully staff or properly train the 25th CAA at this time. Budanov specified that the unfinished 25th CAA has about 15,000 troops, whereas the Russian military had reportedly hoped to recruit 30,000 contract personnel for the 25th CAA.[26] Ukrainian military officials assessed that the 25th CAA would not be combat effective until at least 2024.[27] Russia had previously attempted to form the 3rd Army Corps over the summer of 2022 as a reserve force but had deployed and expended much of this ill-prepared formation defending against Ukrainian counteroffensives in the fall of 2022.[28]

A Ukrainian intelligence chief stated that the September 22 Ukrainian strike on the Russian Black Sea Fleet (BSF) Command headquarters in Sevastopol injured senior Russian commanders. Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Head Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov told Voice of America (VOA) in an interview published on September 23 that the Ukrainian strike on the BSF Command headquarters wounded the commander of the Russian grouping of forces in the Zaporizhia direction, Colonel General Alexander Romanchuk, who is in “very serious condition” and the commander of the 200th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade (Northern Fleet), Lieutenant General Oleg Tsekov, who is “unconscious.”[29] Budanov also reported that the strike killed at least nine and injured 16 Russian personnel.[30] VOA reported that the GUR has no information about the alleged death of BSF commander Admiral Viktor Sokolov.[31] Ukrainian Special Operations Forces reported that Ukrainian forces “precisely” struck the BSF Command headquarters during a meeting of senior BSF leadership.[32] Satellite imagery published on September 22 showing the BSF Command headquarters before and after the strike indicates that Ukrainian forces conducted a precision strike.[33]

Imagery of the strike against the Black Sea Fleet Headquarters. September 23, 2023.

Imagery courtesy of Planet Labs PBC.

Russian forces conducted a series of missile and drone strikes against Ukraine on the night of September 22 to 23. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces destroyed 14 of 15 Shahed-131/136 drones and that Russian forces launched four missiles.[34] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted a missile attack on Kremenchuk, Poltava Oblast.[35] Several Russian sources claimed that the Russian forces conducted a retaliatory strike on Kremenchuk airfield after the Ukrainian strike on the BSF Command headquarters.[36]

Zaporizhia Oblast occupation governor Yevgeny Balitsky appointed former Roscosmos (Russian space agency) head and ultranationalist figure Dmitry Rogozin as a Russian Federation Council senator representing occupied Zaporizhia Oblast.[37] Rogozin is affiliated with the “Tsarskiye Volky” (Tsar’s Wolves) volunteer battalion but has not held a position in the Russian government since his dismissal as head of Roskosmos in July 2022.[38] A Russian insider source claimed that Rogozin has ties to the “Convoy” private military company (PMC) and advocated for its use in Africa and Nagorno-Karabakh to Russian Presidental Administration Head Anton Vaino.[39] ISW previously reported that Crimean occupation head Sergey Aksyonov formed a “Convoy” with Wagner-affiliated Konstantin Pikalov.[40] The insider source claimed that unspecified Russian officials forced Rogozin to go on a “business trip (exile)” to defense industrial base enterprises in Belarus after multiple meetings with Vaino.[41] Rogozin’s appointment as occupied Zaporizhia Oblast Federation Council senator may be indicative of his ties to Russian occupation officials and his attempts to secure a new position in the Russian government.

A Russian insider source argued that the Russian military should reintroduce military officers for political affairs (zampolits) to address the Russian military’s problems with political and ideological commitment — a problem that Russian military thinkers identified in September 2018. The insider source claimed that GRU political officers are using an outdated “Soviet template” to conduct information operations against the enemy and are failing to provide political support to Russian military personnel.[42] The insider source noted that Russian political officers must resolve the contradictions between senior Russian political leaders‘ slogans and reality to ensure that military personnel can distinguish between possible and impossible objectives. The insider source claimed that Russian military-political work encourages blind repetition of phrases and orders, which prevents Russian military personnel from understanding and communicating Russian political decisions to their subordinates or explaining contradictions in political leadership messaging. Chairman of the Russian State Duma Defense Committee Colonel General Andrey Kartapolov identified similar issues in his September 2018 essay justifying the creation of the Russian Military-Political Directorate.[43] Kartapolov stated that Russian military-political leadership should adapt Soviet structures to new content. Kartapolov also argued that Russia must ensure the “information protection” of military personnel and create a stable conviction in both the military and broader society about why they must serve Russia. This insider’s argument suggests that the Russian military has not solved the problem that Kartapolov identified over the past five years.

Disjointed Wagner Group contingents reportedly returning to fight in Ukraine are likely to have a marginal impact on Russian combat capabilities without bringing the full suite of effectiveness Wagner had had as a unitary organization under financier Yevgeniy Prigozhin’s and founder Dmitry Utkin’s leadership. Former Luhansk Oblast Administration Head Serhiy Haidai stated on September 23 that Wagner personnel are operating in Luhansk Oblast and across different sectors of the frontline.[44] Haidai also stated that he did not know the number of Wagner personnel or the organization under which these Wagner personnel are operating in Ukraine.[45] A Wagner-affiliated source claimed that about 500 Wagner personnel including those who refused to participate in the Wagner rebellion on June 24 have joined a new unspecified organization organized by the former Wagner personnel department head and will likely return to Ukraine to fight on the southern flank of Bakhmut.[46] ISW previously observed reports that the Wagner personnel department head (previously referred to as Vadim V. “Khrustal”) is attempting to recruit Wagner fighters for a new PMC for operations in Africa.[47] These reports indicate that Wagner forces are fragmented and are unlikely to organize into a cohesive fighting force or have an impact on Russian combat capabilities if they return to fighting in Ukraine.

Key Takeaways:

ISW is now prepared to assess that Ukrainian forces have broken through Russian field fortifications west of Verbove in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
Ukrainian forces have not overcome all prepared Russian defensive positions near Verbove.
Ukrainian forces are deepening their penetration in Zaporizhia Oblast and are assaulting Novoprokopivka – a frontline village 1.5 km immediately south of Robotyne.
Ukrainian military officials stated that the Ukrainian counteroffensive would continue in the winter.
The Ukrainian counteroffensive in western Zaporizhia Oblast has likely destroyed the Russian 810th Naval Infantry Brigade (Black Sea Fleet).
A senior Ukrainian official explicitly confirmed that Ukraine’s objective in Bakhmut is to fix Russian forces. Ukraine’s fixing of Russian forces in Bakhmut may be alleviating pressure on the Kupyansk frontline.
Ukraine’s simultaneous counteroffensives in Bakhmut and southern Ukraine are impeding Russia’s long-term force generation efforts as Russia redeploys its new reserves to defend against Ukrainian advances.
A Ukrainian intelligence chief stated that the September 22 Ukrainian strike on the Russian Black Sea Fleet (BSF) Command headquarters in Sevastopol injured senior Russian commanders.
Russian forces conducted a series of missile and drone strikes against Ukraine on the night of September 22 to 23.
Zaporizhia Oblast occupation governor Yevgeny Balitsky appointed former Roscosmos (Russian space agency) head and ultranationalist figure Dmitry Rogozin as a Russian Federation Council senator representing occupied Zaporizhia Oblast
A Russian insider source argued that the Russian military should reintroduce military officers for political affairs (zampolits) to address the Russian military’s problems with political and ideological commitment– a problem that Russian military thinkers identified in September 2018.
Disjointed Wagner Group contingents reportedly returning to fight in Ukraine are likely to have a marginal impact on Russian combat capabilities without bringing the full suite of effectiveness Wagner had had as a unitary organization under financier Yevgeniy Prigozhin’s and founder Dmitry Utkin’s leadership.
Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, in western Donetsk Oblast, in the western Donetsk-eastern Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast but did not make any confirmed advances on September 23.
Russian authorities are reportedly embezzling funds from military facilities near the border of Ukraine.
Russian government programs continue to forcibly deport children in occupied Ukraine to Russia.

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

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

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian forces reportedly conducted offensive operations on the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on September 22 but did not advance. A Russian milblogger claimed on September 22 that Russian forces conducted a ground attack near Novoyehorivka (15km southwest of Svatove) but did not specify an outcome.[48] The milblogger claimed that Russian forces continued consolidating their positions near Synkivka and that there were no significant changes in the Serebryanske forest area near Kreminna.[49]

Ukrainian officials did not report any Russian ground attacks on the Kreminna-Svatove line on September 23. Former Luhansk Oblast Administration Head Serhiy Haidai stated on September 23 that Russian forces in Luhansk Oblast have decreased the volume of their artillery fire because they are rotating personnel.[50]

Russian sources retracted claims that Russian forces occupy Synkivka (6km northeast of Kupyansk). The Russian MoD reported that Russian forces struck Ukrainian forces near Synkivka on September 23.[51] A prominent Russian milblogger reported that Ukrainian forces control Synkivka as of September 23.[52] Russian sources previously claimed that Russian forces had partially encircled Synkivka and captured the northern part of the settlement in mid-August 2023.[53]

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

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations on Bakhmut’s southern flank on September 23, but did not make new territorial gains. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued to conduct offensive operations in an unspecified area south of Bakhmut.[54] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces are repelling Ukrainian attacks at Kurdyumivka (12km southwest of Bakhmut).[55] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Captain Ilya Yevlash stated that Ukraine’s recent liberation of Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut) and Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut) enables Ukrainian forces to strike Russian rear positions and target Russian control points.[56] Yevlash added that Ukrainian positions are approximately three kilometers away from the Russian ground line of communication (GLOC), likely referring to Russian logistics line on the T0513 highway. Russian sources, including the Russian MoD, continued to claim that Ukrainian forces are not in full control of Klishchiivka and are continuing to fight for the settlement.[57]

Russian forces continued to counterattack on Bakhmut’s northern and southern flanks but did not achieve any confirmable advances on September 23. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully conducted ground attacks near Minkivka (13km northwest of Bakhmut), Orikhovo-Vasylivka (10km northwest of Bakhmut), Hryhorivka (9km northwest of Bakhmut), Klishchiivka, and Andriivka.[58] A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger similarly stated that Russian forces are counterattacking in the Klishchiivka and Andriivka areas and are engaged in fierce battles over the heights on Bakhmut’s northern flank that stretches to the eastern outskirts of Berkhivka (3km north of Bakhmut).[59] The milblogger claimed that Russian forces still control most of the heights in the area.[60]

A Russian milblogger amplified information about a claimed encounter with mobilized servicemen of the 11th Separate Air Assault (VDV) Brigade in August 2023, which revealed that elements of this elite unit likely deployed in the Bakhmut area lack artillery support.[61] The milblogger received a message from one of his subscribers who claimed to have encountered newly arrived mobilized personnel of the 11th VDV Brigade who were committed to daily assaults on an unspecified frontline. ISW previously observed elements of the 11th VDV Brigade deploying to Bakhmut and participating in combat starting in June and July 2023.[62] The subscriber noted that elements of the 11th VDV Brigade launched assaults without proper artillery support and that the Russian Armed Forces failed to introduce additional reserves to reinforce the brigade’s unspecified 300-meter advance – resulting in numerous Russian deaths.

Russian forces launched offensive operations on the Donetsk City-Avdiivka line on September 23 but did not advance. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults near Avdiivka, Sieverne (6km west of Avdiivka), Marinka (directly west of Donetsk City), Pobieda (5km southwest of Donetsk City), and Krasnohorivka (6km west of Donetsk City).[63] A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that Russian forces continued to attack Marinka and resumed offensives on the approaches to Krasnohorivka.[64]

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

A Russian milblogger claimed on September 23 that Russian forces attacked Ukrainian positions from the Mykilske direction (4km southeast of Vuhledar) but did not advance.[65]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations in the western Donetsk-eastern Zaporizhia Oblast border area on September 23. The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces repelled five Ukrainian attacks in unspecified areas in the western Donetsk-eastern Zaporizhia Oblast border area.[66] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted unsuccessful attacks west of Staromayorske (9km south of Velyka Novosilka).[67]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations in the western Donetsk-eastern Zaporizhia Oblast border area on September 23 and did not make confirmed advances. The Russian “Vostok” Battalion, reportedly operating in the western Donetsk-eastern Zaporizhia Oblast area, claimed that Russian forces regained unspecified positions previously lost in the Velyka Novosilka area and that elements of the Russian 40th Naval Infantry Brigade (Pacific Fleet) advanced in an unspecified area.[68] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces counterattacked near Novodonetske (12km southeast of Velyka Novosilka) and Novomayorske (18km southeast of Velyka Novosilka).[69] Footage published on September 23 purportedly shows elements of the Russian 394th Motorized Rifle Regiment (127th Motorized Rifle Division, 5th Combined Arms Army, Eastern Military District) operating near Rivnopil (10km southwest of Velyka Novosilka).[70]

Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 23 and advanced. Geolocated imagery published on September 23 indicates that Ukrainian forces advanced north of Novoprokopivka (14km south of Orikhiv).[71] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces are pushing Russian forces out of their positions Verbove area (18km southeast of Orikhiv).[72] Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Commander Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi stated in an interview with CNN published on September 23 that Ukrainian forces achieved a “breakthrough” on the left flank of Verbove and that Ukrainian forces continue to advance.[73] Russian milbloggers widely denied reports of a Ukrainian “breakthrough” near Verbove and Ukrainian advances in northern Novoprokopivka.[74] The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Verbove and Robotyne.[75] Russian milbloggers also claimed that fierce fighting is ongoing on the western outskirts of Robotyne.[76]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 23 but did not make confirmed advances. Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces attacked near Mala Tokmachka (7km southeast of Orikhiv) and Robotyne.[77] Geolocated footage published on September 22 shows elements of the Russian “Osman” Spetsnaz unit operating west of Verbove.[78] Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Oleksandr Shtupun stated that Russian forces have been using Storm-Z units in the past week in attempts to recapture positions near Robotyne.[79]

Russian sources continue to claim that Ukrainian forces conduct cross-river raids in the Dnipro River delta. The Russian MoD claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attempted to establish positions on islands and on the left bank of the Dnipro River.[80] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces continue operating on islands in the Dnipro River delta.[81]

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

Russian authorities are reportedly embezzling funds from military facilities near the border of Ukraine. The Ukrainian Resistance Center stated on September 23 that aerial reconnaissance images reportedly showing Russian military locations in Kursk Oblast indicate that Russian strongholds in the area near the border with Ukraine are unmanned, lacking equipment, and overgrown with vegetation.[82] The Ukrainian Resistance Center stated that there is evidence that unspecified actors embezzled from these military facilities and are falsely “imitating” the construction of defenses near the Ukrainian border.[83]

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

Russian government programs continue to forcibly deport children in occupied Ukraine to Russia. The Kherson Oblast occupation administration stated on September 22 that 90 children from occupied Kherson Oblast recently went to Moscow as part of the Russian Ministry of Culture’s “Cultural Map” program.[84] The Kherson Oblast occupation administration stated that Russian authorities will send “thousands” more children from occupied territories in Ukraine to Moscow and St. Petersburg by the end of 2023.[85]

The Russian United Russia party is attempting to assimilate Ukrainian children in occupied territories into Russia. The Kherson Oblast occupation administration stated that representatives of the United Russia party gave a Russian history lecture to over 100 children in Skadovsk Raion, Kherson Oblast, and that United Russia’s “Historical Conversations” project has already hosted over 1,500 similar lectures in Kherson Oblast.[86]

The Russian Republic of Mordovia continues to expand its patronage network in occupied Kherson Oblast. The Kherson Oblast occupation administration stated on September 23 that the Russian Republic of Mordovia supplied schools in Kalanchak Raion, Kherson Oblast, with textbooks and equipment.[87] ISW has previously reported on the recent expansion of the patronage network between the Republic of Mordovia and occupied Kherson Oblast.[88]

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

A combined Belarusian air defense and anti-air rocket forces contingent returned to Belarus on September 23 after training in the Russian Far East.[89] Elements of the Belarusian 1st Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment, the 377th Guards Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment, and the 15th Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade conducted tactical live fire exercises with S-300 air defense systems at the Russian Telemba Training Ground in Buryatia.[90] It is unclear if these Belarusian elements exercised with Russian counterparts or simply trained at Russian training grounds. This training likely helps develop the joint Russian-Belarusian regional air defense system which effectively subordinates Belarus’ Air and Air Defense command to Russia’s Western Military District.[91]

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

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

2. Strategy to Counter China in Pacific at Risk in Congress Budget Fight

An information effort to influence the China Hawk Republicans to pressure those would allow the government to shutdown?

Strategy to Counter China in Pacific at Risk in Congress Budget Fight

Biden administration’s negotiation of aid pact with Marshall Islands is regarded as test of U.S. commitment

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/strategy-to-counter-china-in-pacific-at-risk-in-congress-budget-fight-f162fcd4?mod=hp_listb_pos1

By Charles Hutzler

Sept. 24, 2023 5:00 am ET

Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed political leaders from Pacific island nations to Washington last year. PHOTO: SARAH SILBIGER/PRESS POOL

WASHINGTON—Count as another looming casualty of the House Republicans’ budget fight a U.S. effort to fortify its influence in the Pacific against China.

The Biden administration is racing to finish an updated economic assistance pact with the Marshall Islands, to complement similar agreements reached with Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia. The three archipelagic nations occupy part of a strategic expanse of ocean between Hawaii and the Philippines and host critical U.S. military facilities. The administration is seeking $7.1 billion over 20 years to renew the three pacts starting in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

Republicans in a key House committee have yet to include the funding in legislation, saying that the agreement with the Marshalls isn’t completed and that the administration must identify cuts elsewhere to offset outlays on the pacts and keep overall spending down.

President Biden attended the first U.S.-Pacific Island Country Summit, held last year in Washington. PHOTO: SUSAN WALSH/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Completing the pact with the Marshalls and funding the three agreements are being seen as a test of U.S. commitment toward a region it once dominated but then neglected in recent decades, providing an opening for China. President Biden is hosting a collection of Pacific island leaders on Monday for a summit that administration officials said is intended to demonstrate U.S. resolve to reassert the American presence in the region.

“If we fail to approve that package in a timely way, we severely risk our credibility vis-à-vis the region and obviously vis-à-vis what we are saying on competing with China,” said Joseph Yun, the envoy leading U.S. negotiations with the three Pacific island nations.

At last year’s Pacific island summit—the first of its kind held by the U.S.—Biden and leaders and senior officials from 14 Pacific island governments pledged to forge a strong partnership in the face of what they called “an increasingly complex geopolitical environment”—a glancing reference to China. Among the top U.S. objectives, the White House said, was completing the agreements with the Marshalls, Palau and Micronesia.

Mountain Shield: How Taiwan Plans to Counter a Chinese Invasion

Russia’s Army Learns From Its Mistakes in Ukraine

Early in the war, the West was shocked at the Russian military’s poor performance. But Moscow has fixed many errors and adapted on the battlefield.

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/russias-army-learns-from-its-mistakes-in-ukraine-a6b2eb4?mod=hp_lead_pos1

By Matthew LuxmooreFollow and Michael R. GordonFollow

Updated Sept. 24, 2023 12:04 am ET

More than a year after Moscow failed in its goal of a lightning victory in Ukraine, the Russian military has steadily adapted on the battlefield as it shifts to a strategy of wearing down Ukraine and the West.

The poor performance of the Russian military in the early days of the war shocked many in the West and ultimately allowed Ukraine to resist, and then roll back, a large part of the Russian advance.

But Russia has since learned from its mistakes, adapting in ways that could make it difficult for Ukraine to expel Russian forces from its territory.

After Ukraine easily swept through Russia’s lines in the Kharkiv region last autumn, Moscow spent months preparing formidable defenses ahead of the current Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south. Moscow is also deploying drones to scope out and attack Ukrainian positions in a way that Kyiv has struggled to respond to.

As a result, Ukrainian forces have advanced slowly in the past few months, facing dense minefields while Russian helicopters, antitank missiles and artillery pick them off.

BELARUS

Russian fortifications

Russian-controlled

Voronezh

Kursk

RUSSIA

Belgorod

Kyiv

Kharkiv

UKRAINE

Luhansk

Donetsk

Zaporizhzhia

MOLDOVA

Mariupol

Mykolaiv

Odesa

Kherson

ROMANIA

Sea of Azov

CRIMEA

Black Sea

100 miles

Sevastopol

100 km

Note: Russian-controlled area as of Sept. 19

Sources: Brady Africk, American Enterprise Institute (Russian fortifications); Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project (Russian-controlled area)

Emma Brown/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

“We have seen quite a few areas where they’re adapting, and of course we’re paying close attention to that,” Gen. James Hecker, the top U.S. Air Force commander in Europe, said in an interview.

To be sure, Russia’s military—which has suffered more than 270,000 killed and wounded as its army has lost more than 50% of its “combat effectiveness,” according to some Western estimates—may need to make deeper changes to sustain a yearslong war.

It still suffers from a Soviet-style top-down structure that allows little initiative for front-line commanders and gives priority to political goals from Moscow over battlefield decision-making. It expended months and thousands of lives to take Bakhmut, an eastern Ukrainian city with little strategic value, after the Kremlin identified it as a key target. Russia has continued to deploy tens of thousands of soldiers to defend the city, where it claimed its only major victory since the early months of the war.

Moreover, Russia is now largely on the defensive as it tries to hold back the Ukrainian push, and it is far easier for armies to defend than to go on the offensive. Analysts and Western officials say Russia has exhausted its offensive capacity for now and is failing to gain new ground in parts of eastern Ukraine where it is still trying to push forward.

However, the Russian military is showing some capacity to learn from early mistakes.

Ukrainian troops are holding positions near Bakhmut, a city captured and defended by Russia at great human cost. PHOTO: REUTERS

For instance, early in the war, Russian warplanes flew into the teeth of the Ukrainian air defenses and suffered serious losses because Moscow had failed to gain air superiority. More than 75 planes were shot down, with many flying “right into the surface-to-air missile engagement zones of the Ukrainians,” said Hecker.

He added, however, that much of the Russian air force now remains intact. “So they now don’t fly in those rings or if they do, it is for low altitude for very quick moments and then they go back out,” he said, although that tactic has seriously hampered the accuracy of the Russian bombing missions and that air superiority remains well beyond the Russians’ reach.

The Russians have added guidance capabilities to older bombs that they release from planes flying beyond the range of Ukraine’s air defense, including from aircraft flying over Russian territory. Ukraine struggles to detect and shoot them down with their Soviet-era aircraft.

Russia has also moved command posts and many ammunition depots farther from the front lines after Ukraine struck them using Western-provided Himars launchers, which fire guided rockets with a range of almost 50 miles.

After the Ukrainians began to use extended-range JDAM satellite-guided bombs, the Russians moved their command posts farther back still. Those strikes have forced the Russians to conserve the use of artillery, extend their already strained supply lines and become more precise in their targeting.

The U.S. now says it will provide a small number of ATACMS missiles to Ukraine in coming weeks and that more might be provided later. Those surface-to-surface missiles have a range between 100 and 190 miles depending on the model that is provided, and could similarly target Russian logistical lines.

How U.S. ATACMS Missiles Could Help Push Ukraine Back Into Crimea

U.S. Economy Could Withstand One Shock, but Four at Once?

A year of surprisingly strong growth is about to be tested by a strike, the possibility of a government shutdown, student loans and oil prices

https://www.wsj.com/economy/u-s-economy-could-withstand-one-shock-but-four-at-once-8312ba51?mod=hp_lead_pos2

By David Harrison

Sept. 24, 2023 5:30 am ET

A broader work stoppage could curb auto production and drive up vehicle prices. PHOTO: BILL PUGLIANO/GETTY IMAGES

The U.S. economy has sailed through some rough currents this year but now faces a convergence of hazards that threaten to create more turbulence.

Among the possible challenges this fall: a broader auto workers strike, a lengthy government shutdown, the resumption of student loan payments and rising oil prices.

Each on its own wouldn’t do too much harm. Together, they could be more damaging, particularly when the economy is already cooling due to high interest rates.

“It’s that quadruple threat of all elements that could disrupt economic activity,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon.

Many analysts expect slower economic growth this fall but not a recession. Daco forecasts economic growth to slow sharply to a 0.6% annual rate in the fourth quarter from an expected 3.5% gain during the current quarter. Economists at Goldman Sachs expect growth to cool to a 1.3% rate next quarter, from a 3.1% gain in the third.

So far in 2023, robust consumer spending and historically low unemployment have supported solid U.S. economic activity, despite the Federal Reserve lifting interest rates to the highest level in 22 years to fight inflation by slowing growth. Growth in Europe and China, meanwhile, has slowed sharply.

One economic threat is a wider and more prolonged strike by the United Auto Workers against three Detroit automakers. Nearly 13,000 workers began striking three plants on Sept. 15. And UAW President Shawn Fain said Friday the strikes would expand to 38

General Motors and Stellantis parts-distribution centers across 20 states.The initial impact of the limited strike is expected to be modest, but a broader work stoppage could curb auto production and drive up vehicle prices. Workers at auto-parts suppliers could also lose their jobs.

A broad strike would shave off between 0.05 and 0.1 percentage point from annualized economic growth for every week it lasts, according to Goldman Sachs.

By idling factories, a strike also postpones the auto sector’s full recovery from supply-chain disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Vehicles were scarce on dealer lots through much of last year as parts shortages held down production levels. That pushed up prices when many households were looking to buy.

Domestic vehicle production is returning to near to where it was before the pandemic. Over time, the strike could dent output and push up prices again.

“I don’t expect the strike on its own to tip the national economy into recession, but there are other speed bumps coming,” said Gabe Ehrlich, an economist at the University of Michigan. “You put all those together and it looks like it might be a bumpy fourth quarter to end the year.”

The next bump could be a partial government shutdown. Congress has until the end of September to agree to fund the government. For now, lawmakers are far apart.

If they can’t reach a deal, all but the government’s most essential workers would be furloughed, perhaps as many as 800,000 nationwide. Those workers would likely spend less during the shutdown and the government would temporarily buy fewer goods and services.

UAW STRIKE: HOW IT LOOKS ON THE PICKET LINE

EMILY ELCONIN/BLOOMBERG NEWS

In December 2018, a similar standoff caused a five-week partial shutdown in which the government funded some agencies and not others. Roughly 300,000 federal workers were furloughed. It shaved 0.1% off economic output in the fourth quarter of 2018 and 0.2% in the first quarter of 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Most of that lost economic activity was made up later, when the government reopened and federal workers received back pay, according to CBO.

Another bump will be the resumption of federal student loan payments Oct. 1. The restart could divert roughly $100 billion from Americans’ pockets over the coming year, according to an estimate from Wells Fargo economist Tim Quinlan.

That would be the first time many borrowers make payments since March 2020, when the Education Department paused them to help cushion the financial effects of Covid-19. That freed people up to spend the money on other things as the economy rebounded, helping prop up growth.

Monthly payments for the tens of millions of student-loan borrowers affected average between $200 and $300 per person. Even though they make up a relatively small slice of $18 trillion in annual U.S. consumer spending, they are still a worry to

Walmart, Target and other large retailers. Higher gasoline prices add to that pressure. Brent crude oil prices have hovered above $90 a barrel for the past few days, up from just above $70 this summer. Gasoline prices surged 10.6% in August from the prior month, the largest one-month increase since June 2022, according to Labor Department data.

That caused consumer inflation to edge higher for the second straight month after trending down the prior year. Pump prices have mostly held steady at higher levels this month. The average price of a gallon of regular gasoline Friday was $3.86, according to OPIS, an energy data and analytics provider.

Elevated energy costs, like student loan payments, cut into Americans’ budgets for dining out, holiday gifts and other discretionary purchases. They also can feed into prices for goods and services that are manufactured, shipped or flown. Airline fares rose nearly 5% last month. Persistent inflation could keep pressure on the Fed to hold interest rates higher for longer to further slow the economy.

“It’s the strike, it’s government shutdown, resumption of student loan payments, higher long-term rates, oil price shock,” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said when asked Wednesday about external factors that could affect the economy. “You’re coming into this with an economy that appears to have significant momentum. And that’s what we start with. But we do have this collection of risks.”

Write to David Harrison at david.harrison@wsj.com

5. Listen to stunning 911 tape after F-35 pilot parachuted into backyard: ‘We had a military jet crash’

What a strange case. I hope we learn the details someday.

Listen to stunning 911 tape after F-35 pilot parachuted into backyard: ‘We had a military jet crash’

washingtontimes.com · by Ben Wolfgang

Video

By - The Washington Times - Friday, September 22, 2023

A stunning 911 audiotape released late Thursday offered a window into the frantic minutes immediately after the crash of an F-35 fighter jet last Sunday, with the plane’s pilot and the homeowner whose yard he parachuted into pleading with emergency dispatchers to send help immediately.

The recording offers few details on exactly what led to the crash of the $100 million aircraft outside Charleston, South Carolina, or why the F-35 Lightning II continued flying long after the pilot ejected from the cockpit. But the 911 recording does provide insights into just how confusing and chaotic the situation seemed to be.

“I guess we’ve got a pilot in our house and he says he got ejected,” said a Charleston County resident, apparently the homeowner who found the Marine Corps pilot in his backyard.

“I’m sorry, what happened?” the 911 dispatcher said, according to the tape.

“We got a pilot in the house and I guess he landed in my backyard, and we were trying to see if we could get an ambulance to the house,” the resident said.

At the time of the call, it’s likely that the F-35 was still flying over South Carolina. After the dispatcher’s brief conversation with the resident, a man who identified himself as the pilot came on the line.

“We had a military jet crash. I’m the pilot,” the man said. “We need to get rescue rolling. I’m not sure where the airplane is. It would have crash-landed somewhere. I ejected.”

He said he was at an altitude of about 2,000 feet when he ejected and was forced to bail out because of an “aircraft failure.” The pilot’s name has not yet been released.

“I’m OK. My back just hurts,” the pilot said, then asked whether there were any reports of an airplane crash nearby.

“I have not seen any come up yet,” the dispatcher said.

The 911 operator then asked what part of the pilot’s body was injured, sparking a more urgent response.

“Ma’am, I’m the pilot in a military aircraft and I ejected,” he said. “So I just rode a parachute down to the ground. Can you please send an ambulance?”

Witnesses in South Carolina told NBC News this week that the aircraft appeared to be flying almost “inverted” and just 100 feet above treetops before it crashed. It’s unclear why the pilot ejected from the aircraft, nor is it clear why the F-35’s transponder wasn’t working, which prevented the military from easily tracking the plane and locating its debris once it crashed.

It took more than 24 hours to locate the debris field.

Reports of technical problems, cost overruns and behind-schedule maintenance have plagued the F-35 program for years. A Government Accountability Office report released Thursday cast new light on the longstanding maintenance and sustainment issues affecting the F-35’s ability to do its job, though it’s unclear whether those issues played any role in last Sunday’s incident.

“Maintenance challenges negatively affect F-35 aircraft readiness. The F-35 fleet mission capable rate — the percentage of time the aircraft can perform one of its tasked missions — was about 55% in March 2023, far below program goals,” the GAO said in its study.

“This performance was due in part to challenges with depot and organizational maintenance. The program was behind schedule in establishing depot maintenance activities to conduct repairs,” the report said. “As a result, component repair times remained slow with over 10,000 waiting to be repaired — above desired levels. At the same time, organizational-level maintenance has been affected by a number of issues, including a lack of technical data and training.”

• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.

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washingtontimes.com · by Ben Wolfgang

6. Gen. Mark Milley, polarizing Joint Chiefs chairman, exits center stage

Another of the many retrospectives on the retiring Chairman.

I think the conflicting subtitle is the legacy.

Gen. Mark Milley, polarizing Joint Chiefs chairman, exits center stage

Admirers say he helped save American democracy. Critics contend he dragged the military deeper into the country’s toxic political fray.

By Dan Lamothe, Missy Ryan and Karen DeYoung

September 24, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Dan Lamothe · September 24, 2023

As the war in Ukraine approached its first anniversary, the Pentagon’s top officer, Gen. Mark A. Milley, assessed the carnage that had followed Russia’s full-scale invasion: With more than than 100,000 soldiers likely killed or wounded on each side, he said, there was a “window of opportunity” for the combatants to hammer out a deal.

Milley told an audience in New York that both parties must recognize victory may not be “achievable through military means.” He drew a comparison to World War I, explaining how strategists a century earlier had predicted a swift end to the bloodshed, only for it to become an unwinnable standoff that killed millions and set the stage for World War II. “Things can get worse, so when there’s an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved, seize it,” Milley said. “Seize the moment.”

The declaration was classic Milley, according to colleagues and observers who have worked closely with him. The general, immersed in military history and alarmed by the potential for escalation with Russia, the largest nuclear power in the world, was publicly advocating a position the Biden administration had eschewed as the president and other top advisers sought to project unqualified support for Ukraine’s defense. It was a notion that unnerved America’s partners in Kyiv.

Milley, whose four-year tenure as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ends with his retirement this month, will exit center stage as one of the most consequential and polarizing military chiefs in recent memory, leading America’s armed forces through a fraught period that included the precarious final months of Donald Trump’s presidency, a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, and Washington’s high-stakes standoff with Moscow.

Admirers commend the brash Boston-area native for steering the military through Trump’s attempts to subvert democracy and the constitutional rule of law, keeping troops out of the 2020 election chaos and choreographing key aspects of the Pentagon’s support to Ukraine. Milley would say later he harbored concern that Trump might issue unlawful orders, and that, if he had, they “wouldn’t have been followed.”

Critics say the general stretched the bounds of what is expected to be a nonpartisan role, wading into hot-button debates again and again, and dragging the military farther into the political fray at a time when the institution’s public backing is already under strain. Some found him overly focused on his own legacy.

This account of Milley’s tenure as chairman is based on interviews with more than a dozen senior political appointees in both the Trump and Biden administrations, retired military officers and other Washington insiders. Several people spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer frank assessments of the general’s record. Collectively, they portrayed an outspoken, ambitious leader who offended some in his assumption and stewardship of the military’s premier assignment, and who fell from favor with one president only to find new footing with another, all while navigating Washington’s toxic politics.

Milley, through a spokesman, declined to be interviewed for this profile.

Trump, apparently reacting to news coverage of the general’s impending retirement, said on his social media platform late Friday that Milley’s departure “will be a time for all citizens of the USA to celebrate!” He accused Milley of being a “train wreck,” and falsely stated that phone calls, authorized by Trump administration officials at the time, in which Milley sought to reassure Chinese officials that the United States was stable during the presidential transition were a “treasonous act.” Trump wrote, “This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”

Milley has not responded publicly to the allegations. He commented previously, though, that there is a “damaging drumbeat” of criticism directed at the Pentagon amounting to a “deliberate attempt, in my view, to smear the general officer corps and the leaders of the military, and to politicize the military.”

Like the general, retired Adm. Mike Mullen’s tenure as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, under Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama, spanned two presidents with vastly different outlooks and agendas, the second of whom sought to undo much of what his predecessor had done. Under any circumstances, Mullen said, the job is “ridiculously hard.” Milley, he added, “had more of a challenge” than most and is likely to “come out somewhere close to heroic” for his actions during the presidential transition.

“He was, and remains, a hell of a warfighter,” Mullen said.

‘Milley wanted the job, obviously’

Milley, an Army infantry officer and former college hockey player, has spent over 43 years in the military and emerged as Trump’s selection for chairman at an unexpected time. The president announced his decision on Twitter, now called X, in December 2018, surprising senior officials at the Pentagon just before an Army-Navy football game. The move was months ahead of schedule and seen by many as undercutting the chairman at that time, Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., who was slated to remain in the position until the following September but seen by Trump as insufficiently loyal.

Jim Mattis, at the time Trump’s defense secretary, had recommended Gen. David Goldfein, the chief of staff of the Air Force, to succeed Dunford. Others close to the president suggested instead that he go with Milley, who had been recommended by Mattis to lead U.S. European Command. Milley knew Mattis wanted him in Europe, people familiar with the matter said, but accepted the role of chairman when Trump offered. “Milley wanted the job, obviously,” said one retired senior U.S. military officer. “Mattis will probably never talk to him again.” Mattis, who resigned later that month while citing differences of opinion with Trump, declined to comment.

Initially, Trump seemed enamored with Milley, whose tough talk and extensive combat record impressed the president, two former U.S. officials said. By all accounts, the general understood the president could be unpredictable and capricious. His mentors and colleagues had warned him that serving directly under Trump may be volatile and end poorly.

On a rainy September day in Washington, Milley was sworn into office. During the ceremony, he promised the president to “always provide informed, candid and impartial military advice to you, the secretary of defense, the National Security Council and to the Congress.” Trump, in his remarks, called Milley “outstanding” and said he was a “friend” who deserved the position.

Overshadowing the moment, though, were news accounts indicating that the president was the subject of a whistleblower complaint stemming from a phone call that he had with Volodymyr Zelensky, then the newly elected leader of Ukraine. The scandal would result in the first of Trump’s two impeachments.

In the ensuing weeks, Milley and the Pentagon were thrust into the spotlight amid a number of high-profile national security events. First, was the bloody incursion by Turkish forces into northern Syria, jeopardizing the safety of hundreds of American troops deployed there. Next came the daring raid to kill Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. By late December 2019, after an American contractor was killed in Iraq and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was breached, administration officials, having concluded Iranian-backed militias were responsible, hatched a plot to eliminate one of Tehran’s most celebrated military figures.

On Jan. 3, 2020, an American drone strike killed Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Quds Force, as he sat in a vehicle outside Baghdad International Airport. Milley and other U.S. officials defended the operation, saying intelligence had suggested that Soleimani was preparing to unleash a new wave of violence against U.S. personnel in the region. Iran responded with ballistic missile strikes against two American positions in Iraq, leaving dozens of troops with head injuries, but no fatalities.

Mark T. Esper, who became Trump’s defense secretary a few months before Milley took over the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in his memoir that while some senior U.S. officials at the time wanted to strike Iran quickly and repeatedly, he and Milley urged restraint and consideration of second-order effects. In an interview, Esper, who clashed with Trump over a number of policy disagreements, called Milley “an important adviser and partner to me through an extraordinarily complex and difficult time in American history.”

Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, the general responsible at that time for U.S. forces in the Middle East, said he has a “very, very, very high regard for Milley,” calling him “the only guy that stood by me” during some difficult days when, some feared, there was little standing in the way of a full-blown war with Iran. “I always felt Mark had my back up there in D.C. when nobody else was interested in doing that,” McKenzie said. Milley understood “the fact that moving forces in and out of the theater did send signals to Iran.”

‘I should not have been there’

In May 2020, after the police killing of George Floyd inspired racial justice protests in cities across the United States, Trump called for putting active-duty troops on America’s streets. But Milley and other senior defense officials saw great peril in any attempt to invoke the Insurrection Act, arguing instead that any violence should be addressed by law enforcement, not the military.

Weeks of tension finally boiled over on June 1, 2020, when law enforcement personnel abruptly and aggressively cleared hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Lafayette Square outside the White House, ahead of Trump and other officials marching to a church across the street in a show of force. Among them were Esper and, for a time, Milley.

The general, wearing his camouflage fatigues, broke off from the group shortly after Trump departed the White House, and later said that the situation came together so quickly that he did not initially realize what was happening. But the damage was done. Photographs of the spectacle caused a furor, with critics asserting that Trump had exploited the U.S. military to threaten the American people.

Milley considered resigning but was talked out of doing so by colleagues and others whose counsel he sought as he navigated Trump’s impulsive directives and desire to use the military to show political strength. Days later, the general issued an apology instead, telling an audience at the National Defense University in Washington that he had made “mistake” and not realized what was happening until it was too late.

“I should not have been there,” Milley said. “My presence in that moment, and in that environment, created the perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”

The mea culpa, along with a similar one made by Esper, infuriated Trump to such a degree that neither man’s relationship with the president would recover. The two felt “hornswoggled” by the incident, according to a former U.S. official, after which both demonstrated greater independence from the White House.

For Milley’s part, he began a monthly campaign to underscore publicly that the military would take on no unconstitutional role in the looming presidential election or domestic politics more broadly. Speaking later to the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, assault by Trump’s supporters on the U.S. Capitol, he cited several media interviews he had granted in addition to comments he made at the National Museum of the United States Army in November 2020.

“We are unique among militaries,” Milley said then. “We do not take an oath to a king or a queen, a tyrant or a dictator. We do not take an oath to an individual. No, we do not take an oath to a country, a tribe or religion. We take an oath to the Constitution.”

Mullen, the retired Joint Chiefs chairman, said the Lafayette Square episode hurt both Milley and the military. “You better think through what your boundaries are before you start” a job like the chairmanship, he said, “because you’re going to get slammed. You’ll be in the Oval [Office] one day and you’ve got 30 seconds. If you haven’t thought through what your boundaries are, you’re going to roll.”

‘Too much, too often and too loudly’

As President Biden took office, some Democrats wondered whether they could trust Milley, one of only a handful of senior U.S. officials due to stay on after the transition. The Biden administration, with its by-the-book national security process and deep bench of experienced Washington officials, would do business differently than its predecessors.

Milley earned trust along the way, observers said, advising Biden while not publicly disclosing their conversations. But under a sustained barrage of attacks from the former president and other conservatives, Milley continued to clash with critics.

One incident came during a House Armed Services Committee hearing in June 2021, as Republicans pressed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Milley over what they called “wokeness” within the armed forces. They singled out an elective course on race being taught to cadets attending the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., and a policy under Austin, implemented after dozens of military veterans participated in the Capitol riot, requiring all service members to spend a couple of hours learning about domestic extremism.

Milley told lawmakers he personally found it “offensive” that the military was being called out for “studying some theories that are out there.” The general said he wanted to “understand White rage” and what compelled thousands of people to assault Congress. “I’ve read Mao Tse Tung. I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist,” he added. “So what is wrong with” having “some situational understanding about the country for which we are here to defend?”

His statement went viral, becoming another example of Milley, in uniform, saying what critics believe would have been better left to a civilian political appointee. “One of the things about going to the Hill is, ‘Don’t say what you don’t have to say,’” said a retired general who worked with Milley. “Mark was trying to give an intellectual answer, but it didn’t work because the sound bites were bad.”

In August 2021, failures surrounding the fall of the American-backed government in Afghanistan and the subsequent deadly scramble to evacuate unleashed a torrent of criticism. Milley, who in private had advised Biden not to withdraw all forces as Taliban militants steadily advanced toward the Afghan capital, held his tongue as the president later falsely suggested that no one had encouraged him to maintain a presence of about 2,500 U.S. troops there. A month later, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Milley declared the collapse a “strategic failure.”

“The enemy is in charge in Kabul,” testified Milley, who had served three tours in Afghanistan. “There’s no other way to describe that.” Milley, asked by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) why he had not resigned after Biden chose not to follow his advice, replied that the United States “doesn’t want generals figuring out what orders we’re going to accept.”

A few months later, as the Kremlin telegraphed its preparations for the invasion of Ukraine, U.S. officials intelligence officials predicted incorrectly that Kyiv would fall quickly. Since then, Milley has cultivated what observers say is an effective partnership with his Ukrainian counterpart, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, working adroitly to coordinate and sustain an expansive network of Western assistance that has enabled the outgunned Ukrainian military to inflict staggering losses on the Russians for nearly two years.

“I think he carried the department on Ukraine,” said McKenzie, the retired general. “If there was something close to an irreplaceable person, it’d be Mark Milley on Ukraine.”

The Milley era, observers say, is also unique for his participation in multiple books scrutinizing the Trump presidency, something he has acknowledged under questioning by members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The accounts have cast him as a defender of American democracy in ways that are unhelpful to the nonpartisan nature of his job, critics say.

Kori Schake, an expert on civil-military relations at the American Enterprise Institute, said the general’s collaboration with authors appears to her as “self-aggrandizing.” She said she cringed reading accounts of Milley telling others they needed to safely “land the plane” while Trump worked to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election.

“It is not appropriate for the president’s senior military adviser to stray into what is political territory, and General Milley does that a lot in his time as chairman,” Schake said. “He can’t resist the temptation.”

Another former senior defense official who worked with Milley was even more blunt. “He has a ton of virtues,” this person said, “but his Achilles’ heel will be that at times he spoke too much, too often, and too loudly, with himself usually the hero.”

His defenders say the general’s legacy is one of great consequence, as his tenure has overlapped with so many combustible moments in the nation’s history.

Peter Feaver, a civil-military relations expert at Duke University whom the general has consulted over the years, said that while there is a range of opinions about Milley and his execution of the job, he merits high marks. Yes, Feaver acknowledged, he made some mistakes. But critics have repeatedly exaggerated or miscast his actions, he said.

“Any time someone is painted in too vivid of colors, the chances are that the truth is somewhere in between,” he said. “General Milley had one of the toughest assignments” of “any chairman in modern memory.”

The Washington Post · by Dan Lamothe · September 24, 2023

7. Zelensky’s Blunt Talk Wins Support but Also Irks Friends

Zelensky’s Blunt Talk Wins Support but Also Irks Friends

Ukraine’s president, a novice politician, has defied expectations with his diplomatic savvy, though repeatedly has overstepped

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/zelenskys-blunt-talk-wins-support-but-also-irks-friends-1c8c2553?mod=Searchresults_pos1&page=1

By Daniel MichaelsFollow, Laurence NormanFollow and Lindsay WiseFollow

Sept. 24, 2023 7:12 am ET

BRUSSELS—Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s high-profile wartime leader, has proved himself to be a communications whiz, rallying Western public opinion to his side and winning remarkable support for his embattled country.

But there is also Volodymyr Zelensky, the actor-turned-president and political neophyte, who can be his own worst public-relations enemy, risking the support of other world leaders with angry broadsides aimed at some of Kyiv’s biggest benefactors.

The two Zelenskys were on display during the president’s recent visits to New York and Washington.

On the podium at the United Nations General Assembly, he lashed out at some European allies that are engaged in a spat over Ukrainian grain exports, saying they “play out solidarity in a political theater” but are actually “helping set the stage for Moscow.”

Poland, one of Ukraine’s most fervent backers and one of the countries tussling over the grain, returned fire. Polish President Andrzej Duda compared Ukraine to a drowning man who could pull a would-be rescuer down.

Polish President Andrzej Duda PHOTO: JAKUB KACZMARCZYK/SHUTTERSTOCK

Two days after Zelensky’s U.N. speech, the president showed his charming and thankful side as he made the rounds in Washington, profusely thanking the U.S. and Poland for their assistance. U.S. officials said Friday that President Biden pledged advanced long-range missiles to help the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Zelensky’s mix of ire and appreciation reflects his desire to display strength at home and gratitude abroad, according to Ukrainian political observers.

His contrasting stances and iconoclastic approach to wartime communications can come at a cost. His informal, apparently impromptu reactions carry an air of authenticity that has won him allegiance and respect. But they can also come off as grating to career politicians and diplomats from other countries who must address their own domestic audiences.

Zelensky, a comedian and performer who gained broad notice on Ukrainian TV playing a schoolteacher who becomes president but was a nearly unknown figure on the world stage, was thrust into the spotlight when Russian troops invaded in February 2022.

In the past 18 months or so, Zelensky has irked U.N. officials by saying the Security Council should act against Russia or consider dissolving itself. He infuriated some Israeli lawmakers by comparing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the Holocaust.

In an interview in May, Zelensky said that, as an outsider, he can’t grasp why some Western governments move slowly with weapons deliveries when Ukraine needs them immediately to save lives. He said he uses all means available—at times abrasive, at times supplicatory—to secure additional support.

Zelensky has expressed frustration with the pace of weapons deliveries from some Western governments. PHOTO: JUSTYNA MIELNIKIEWICZ/MAPS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Military aid from allies, including Western-provided infantry-fighting vehicles, is helping Ukraine pursue its counteroffensive. PHOTO: REUTERS

A senior European official who has dealt extensively with Ukraine said that Zelensky’s demeanor became more focused and precise after the invasion. “Of course in war times, especially, things get black and white, and when there are things that you don’t like, or statements that don’t support you, you take it quite emotionally,” said the official.

During the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Lithuania in July, Zelensky posted a social-media message rebuking NATO allies for their “unprecedented and absurd” resistance to advancing Ukraine’s candidacy for membership.

That fulmination angered Biden and his closest advisers, according to people familiar with the events, and nearly prompted the administration to remove any mention of Ukraine’s candidacy from a summit communiqué.

Britain’s then-defense secretary, Ben Wallace, said Zelensky should remember that “You’ve got to persuade doubting politicians in other countries that, you know, that it’s worthwhile” to support Ukraine.

The next day, a chastened Zelensky called the summit “a meaningful success for Ukraine.” He boasted that his delegation would return home with a “significant security victory” promising “absolutely new security opportunities.”

Zelensky’s calls for a faster path to NATO membership have created friction with allies such as President Biden. PHOTO: SEAN GALLUP/GETTY IMAGES

In Washington on Thursday, Zelensky displayed his growing political savvy and star power. Speaking to members of Congress days before a potential government shutdown that is currently the main focus of their attention, he concentrated on messaging about why helping Ukraine helps America.

One senator asked Zelensky, “What would you say to my constituents who question whether we should be spending all this money?” recalled Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.).

“Of course, the answer is they’re on the front lines against Putin, and he will keep going if he’s not stopped there—and it will be much more costly,” Blumenthal recounted Zelensky’s response, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Sen. Todd Young (R., Ind.), a strong backer of Ukraine, praised Zelensky for emphasizing implications of a potential reduction in U.S. support to Ukraine not just for that country, but also for Iran, China and North Korea.

“He was quite clear that they will be emboldened if we don’t continue to assist the Ukrainians in making a stand on this front,” Young said.

Zelensky met with U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal in Kyiv last month. PHOTO: UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SER/VIA REUTERS

Leading a country at war is always difficult, especially one that has been invaded and is at constant risk of attacks on civilian targets, as Ukraine is. Adding to pressure on Zelensky is his overwhelming reliance on allies for weapons, intelligence and funding. History is dotted with wartime leaders beholden to others who, like France’s Charles de Gaulle during World War II, constantly infuriated benefactors.

Zelensky’s messaging overall has helped Ukraine, starting from the war’s first day. That evening, he addressed an emergency meeting of European Union leaders by video, telling them, “This may be the last time you see me alive.” Officials present said his comments were deeply moving, prompting fast and unprecedented EU assistance.

Since then, Zelensky and his media-savvy team have served up a steady stream of posts and videos presenting him as strong but empathetic, always clad in military green and unshaven. The look contrasts both with his boyish prewar looks and with Putin’s austere strongman style.

The messaging has won international attention, but is also very focused on the Ukrainians who elected him in 2019.

In a social-media video filmed from central Kyiv on Ukraine’s Independence Day last month, Zelensky thanked his nation’s soldiers, teachers, nurses, children and engineers who fixed bombed-out power stations for their efforts to stave off Russia’s invasion.

“I am grateful to everyone who is waiting for their loved ones from the front line, to everyone who prays for them every day, who calls or texts such an important ‘How are you?’ to hear the much-desired ‘Everything is fine!,’” he said.

Write to Daniel Michaels at Dan.Michaels@wsj.com, Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com and Lindsay Wise at lindsay.wise@wsj.com

8. China-Taiwan Weekly Update, September 23, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/china-taiwan-weekly-update-september-23-2023

Key Takeaways

Terry Gou aims to unify with the Kuomintang (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) against the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ahead of the 2024 presidential election and is unlikely to succeed in bridging differences between the parties.
The consensus among the major Taiwanese political parties to defend the Republic of China’s sovereignty provides the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with opportunities to advance its coercive unification campaign.
The CCP purged Defense Minister Li Shangfu in September 2023 following investigations into corrupt equipment procurement.

CHINA-TAIWAN WEEKLY UPDATE, SEPTEMBER 23, 2023

Sep 23, 2023 - ISW Press

China-Taiwan Weekly Update, September 23, 2023

Authors: Nils Peterson, Ian Jones, and Frank Hoffman of the Institute for the Study of War, Alexis Turek and Jonathan Baumel of the American Enterprise Institute

Editors: Dan Blumenthal and Frederick W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute

Data Cutoff: September 19 at Noon

The China–Taiwan Weekly Update focuses on the Chinese Communist Party’s paths to controlling Taiwan and relevant cross–Taiwan Strait developments.

Key Takeaways

Terry Gou aims to unify with the Kuomintang (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) against the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ahead of the 2024 presidential election and is unlikely to succeed in bridging differences between the parties.
The consensus among the major Taiwanese political parties to defend the Republic of China’s sovereignty provides the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with opportunities to advance its coercive unification campaign.
The CCP purged Defense Minister Li Shangfu in September 2023 following investigations into corrupt equipment procurement.

Taiwanese Presidential Election

Terry Gou aims to unify with the KMT and TPP against the DPP ahead of the 2024 presidential election and is unlikely to succeed in bridging differences between the parties. Gou’s electoral strategy and chances of winning rely on joining forces with one of the other opposition candidates rather than prevailing in a four-way race. The KMT and TPP have not expressed willingness to merge their campaigns with Gou. Polling released on September 20 after the announcement of Tammy Lai as his vice-presidential candidate still shows Gou in a distant fourth place.[1]

Gou’s campaign spokesperson Huang Hsih-hsiu reiterated on September 17 that the purpose of Gou's entry into the presidential race is to “unite the opposition.”[2] Huang suggested that newly announced vice-presidential candidate Tammy Lai is prepared to step aside if Gou forms a combined ticket with another of the current presidential candidates.[3]
KMT Chairman Eric Chu on September 15 said Gou should “focus on the big picture” and “put self-interest aside.” A recent Taiwanese media report suggests Ko has decided against working with Gou.[4] A Storm Media report from September 19 stated that high-level KMT officials claim Ko Wen-je’s team indicated that Ko has already ruled out the possibility of collaboration with Gou, which is in line with his late August statement that such a pairing would be “impossible.”[5]
Gou’s previous outreach to TPP candidate Ko Wen-je on the topic of cooperation did not produce a combined ticket, however.[6] Ko stated that Ko-Gou cooperation is impossible and called on Gou to first discuss cooperation with the KMT.[7]

The consensus among major Taiwanese political parties to defend the Republic of China’s (ROC) sovereignty provides the CCP with opportunities to advance its coercive unification campaign. Messaging by KMT presidential candidate Hou Yu-ih and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) candidate Ko Wen-je to the American foreign policy community in conjunction with the DPP’s attacks on Hou shows the Taiwanese political consensus over defending the ROC’s sovereignty. The parties agree on the necessity of defending the ROC’s sovereignty. However, their arguments demonstrate that they disagree over what the term means. This disagreement presents the CCP with opportunities to exacerbate leverage points over each of the three mainstream presidential candidates as a means to achieve unification.

Hou stated that Taiwan should strengthen dialogue to decrease the chance of war at a forum hosted by the National Committee on American Foreign Policy on September 15.[8] Hou promoted his “3D” strategy that calls for deterrence, dialogue, and de-escalation in a speech on September 18 before scholars at the Brookings Institute and in an article published on the same day in Foreign Affairs magazine.[9]
On September 19, the DPP criticized Hou’s article for ignoring China as “the biggest source of regional tension.”[10] The party also criticized Hou for supporting the 1992 Consensus without viewing it as a vehicle for the CCP to unify with the ROC.[11]
Ko stated during a September 13 interview with Bloomberg that he would prefer to rename the 1992 Consensus, which would allow him to publicly reject the 1992 Consensus while opening dialogue with China.[12] Ko stated that “we cannot always tell [China] no, because after ‘no,’ there is no other step.”[13]

Meaning of ROC Sovereignty for Leading ROC Presidential Candidates

Terminology: 1992 Consensus: a disputed cross-strait policy formulation supported in different formations by the CCP and KMT that acts as a precondition to cross-strait dialogue. The TPP conceptually supports the 1992 Consensus but rejects openly supporting it due to its polarizing effect in Taiwanese politics. The DPP does not support the 1992 Consensus.

Presidential Candidate (Party)

Meaning of ROC Sovereignty

Lai Ching-te (DPP)

An independent ROC willing to engage in dialogue with the CCP, but not under the 1992 Consensus.[14]
Lai does not aim to declare Taiwanese independence from the governing Republic of China framework.[15]

Hou Yu-ih (KMT)

An independent ROC aiming to reduce cross-strait tension by engaging in dialogue with the CCP under the 1992 Consensus.[16]

Ko Wen-je (TPP)

An independent ROC aiming to reduce cross-strait tension by engaging in dialogue with the CCP under an unspecified concept similar to the 1992 Consensus.[17]

The CCP could falsely messaging to Taiwanese and international audiences that cross-strait economic and political dialogue on the party’s terms is a means to maintain cross-strait peace. This would expand the CCP’s capacity to create cross-strait engagement agreements through which to coerce the ROC into unification.

Chinese Communist Party and People’s Liberation Army Decision Making

The CCP purged Defense Minister Li Shangfu in September 2023 following investigations into corrupt equipment procurement. The Central Military Commission Equipment Development Department announced the investigations in July 2023. Li oversaw the department from 2017-2022.[18] Li’s dismissal is the latest in a trend of purges of high-ranking PLA officers. The CCP purged PLA Rocket Force commander Li Yuchao and two of his deputies in July 2023 following corruption investigations.[19] They were replaced later that month by Wang Houbin and Xu Xisheng, two commanders with no prior experience serving in the Rocket Force. The purges indicate Xi’s perspective that the PLA is not sufficiently loyal to the party and his willingness to risk projecting instability within the CCP in order to establish loyalty within the party.[20]

The People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) launched a record number of 103 aircraft as part of a violation of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) on September 17.[21] This development is part of a trend of increasing PLAAF ADIZ violations. The PLAAF began employing new flight patterns on August 24 in Taiwan’s ADIZ. The new flight patterns involve longer horizontal incursions across the median line and counterclockwise flights in the sensitive northern part of Taiwan.[22] Horizontal refers to a parallel flight path to the Taiwan Strait median line, which runs between the PRC and ROC. The PLA very likely increased the number of ADIZ violations in order to wear down Taiwanese military readiness, force difficult decisions regarding ROC resource allocation, as well as create a sense of impenetrable siege among the Taiwanese population.

The PLA also conducted naval exercises in the Yellow Sea from September 17 to 23 in response to the September 15-19 trilateral US-Canada-South Korea exercise further southeast in the Yellow Sea.[23] These exercises messaged CCP displeasure at what it considered sensitive exercises in the Yellow Sea. Exercises in the Yellow Sea are sensitive from the party’s view because of their relative proximity to Beijing. This is consistent with ISW’s September 15 assessment that the CCP may stage a similar reaction to the upcoming US-Canada-South Korea exercise in the Yellow Sea.[24]

9. Freedom Fighter Maria Ressa on How Disinformation Degrades Democracy

Set aside Velshi's opening monologue and take 10 minutes to listen to my good friend Maria Ressa talk about disinformation - the infrastructure of disinformation.

Freedom Fighter Maria Ressa on How Disinformation Degrades Democracy

https://www.msnbc.com/ali-velshi/watch/-freedom-fighter-maria-ressa-on-how-disinformation-degrades-democracy-193624133507

Nobel Laureate and legendary Filipino-American investigative journalist Maria Ressa has been on the frontlines of the fight for democracy for decades. Ressa knows very well what happens when democracy is eroded and disinformation is rampant. And she knows how not to let it become routine and numbing. At great risk to her own life, she has taken on anti-democratic forces on several fronts, from Al-Qaeda terrorists in the aughts to present day authoritarians. And she's paid dearly for it. She’s faced trumped-up criminal charges in her native country after the news site she founded, Rappler, published a series of stories exposing government corruption, and scrutinized former president Rodrigo Duterte's bloody war on drugs that left thousands dead or disappeared. And just last week she was acquitted of a contrived tax evasion charge by a court in the Philippines. It's the latest victory, not just for Maria Ressa herself, but for her country's fight for press freedom. And the fight for Press Freedom is the fight for freedom, itself.

10. North Korea is slave state

I spent some time with the author this weekend and I will spend some of the Chuseok holiday later this week with him and some other escapees who do not have any family in the South. We will visit Free North Korea Radio. I am learning a lot about information and influence operations in the north from them this week. They confirm a lot of what I have previously learned but also provide some important new insights.

I also spent time with two Japanese of Korean descent who are suing Kim Jong Un (the Kim family regime) for fraud. They were among the 93,000 who were duped into returning to north Korea (the Socialist Workers Paradise) from Japan from the 1960s. Ironically, most of these people were not originally from north formerly industrialized north but from the relatively poor agricultural South. Very few have escaped.

One of the fascinating insights that they shared was that in the Songbun system the elite and the wavering classes do not see or think about the disloyal classes since they are apparently well segregated. I had to ask them why it is that if the people are so enslaved that they do not rise up and revolt. Most Americans wonder about this question as most would say Americans would never stand to live under an oppressive regime. I assumed they would say that it is the security mechanism that oppresses them, but that is only one part. They said that the disloyal classes really cannot imagine any different life - they felt like they were sentenced to live in these conditions that it is their fate and there is nothing they can do about it. They cannot imagine revolting because it is not in their frame of reference to understand what a revolt is and how they would do it. One said they just do not know what to do. They also said the elite do not want change because they want to survive with their relatively "good lives" and the wavering class is also just trying to survive. But they too do not know what to do to effect change. But they do not know what to change their country into. Everyone I talked to said they need help to understand their situation in life and what they can do to make their lives better. They need information and belief with knowledge the people can cause change. It has been really enlightening to meet Koreans and Japanese who have experience in the north during this north Korea Freedom Week.

We should think about the power of information and how that might lead to resistance and change.

North Korea is slave state

The Korea Times · September 17, 2023

North Koreans work at a timber yard in Dzhalingra camp in Russia's Far East, May 16, 2003. AP-YonhapBy Kim Dong-jae

Until last year, I was one of the modern slaves of Kim Jong-un. I was born and raised in North Korea. I worked in a North Korean building company in Russia for more than 5 years. I came here to tell the story of 21st-century slaves that exist in North Korea.

Have you ever seen slaves with your eyes? If you would like to see one, you should take a look at North Korean workers who are toiling abroad. And, if you talk with one of them for more than five minutes, you'll see the face of a modern slave.

Why are they slaves? There are many reasons, but I can't tell you all the reasons here, so I'll tell you only three.

First, they can't listen to anyone, look at or say anything while working abroad. Second, they can have no money, although they work as hard as a working ox. Third, they can say nothing about the bad treatment they get from Kim Jong-un. After hearing my story, you'll understand why we must end the dictatorship of the Kim family and the system of slavery there.

I'd like to begin my story from the airport of Vladivostok where I was sent in Russia. I arrived with my fellow workers at Vladivostok airport. When we arrived at the airport, the company director said to us workers, "From now on, you must work like ants for Kim Jong-un and yourselves." He said that we even had to make sugar drops from dung if necessary to make money. From the airport of Vladivostok as soon as we arrived in Russia, he always used "little" before our names, like "little Dong-jae," and did not treat us as human beings.

We were very often verbally yelled at and physically abused. But the only thing we could do was comply.

He was a little dictator for us in Russia.

We entered Russia saying we were exchange students. Our company's name wasn't on any legal documents. And in Russia, it is forbidden for students to work. We worked illegally.

So, the police clamped down on us whenever they saw us at construction sites while we were working. And if the police took one of us to jail, it was our problem, not the company's, not the government's. North Korean companies and the government are only observers of the imprisonment of their unhappy members. We had to escape the police's eyes and lay low in order to work in Russia.

The company director led us straight from the airport to the construction site, sealed off by armed guards. All the way to the construction site, the secret policeman of our company repeated the same words like a parrot. "Here is capitalism, and everybody here is our enemy." In every North Korean company, there must be at least one secret policeman, according to the diplomatic policy of Kim Jong-un's regime. So, in our company, one secret policeman stayed with us while we were working in Russia.

His only work was to watch over the members of our company, including the director, so nobody would escape. After arriving at the construction site, the director and the secret police told us not to listen to foreign workers. The director said they were all our enemies because they were on the same side as capitalism and the U.S.

He said, "Don't look at anything on the phone or TV because there is capitalism, and all capitalists lie. Don't say anything about us to foreigners since our enemies will take us to the Russian police."

On my first day in Russia, on my bed at night, I thought about my situation. What do people call a person who can't listen to anyone, look at or say anything?

A slave.

I realized that my identity was that of a slave. Our goal in Russia was to work for money. But, our real identity was as slaves of Kim Jong-un. One day, I heard the words of the director to the secret police, "It's good only when the worker's spirit is suppressed, and to suppress a worker's spirit, it is necessary to organize frequent overtime work until midnight for several nights in a row to sap him of energy. Without the strength of the body, he'll lose his spirit, too, and without spirit he'll think only about eating and sleeping like livestock. He won't think about money or resistance."

Indeed, it was an idea fitting for a little dictator. In fact, most of us in our company would sleep while walking to and from the construction site. And, we looked so pathetic that foreigners would ask us if we were prisoners the government sent for punishment. At that moment, I would answer, "We are normal people."

Surely, both they and I knew that we were not normal.

Every one of us had to pay $500 a month to the North Korean government. We usually worked for more than 18 hours a day, from 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. the next day. After 5 years of working 18 hours a day for about $3000 a month, we usually left with only one month's salary. Our director was making much more while we did most of the work. This ridiculous scenario can be explained only by the fact that we were slaves.

I would like to say one final thing that made me realize how we were slaves, not people. After the outbreak of COVID-19, a state of quarantine was declared in Russia and North Korea. One day, the secret police delivered us a directive from the motherland regarding COVID-19. It was really a directive from Kim Jong-un.

But the content was truly absurd. In case of being infected by the epidemic, it was regarded as unfaithfully participating in the COVID-19 quarantine project, and it was considered to be an act of treason. The person infected with COVID-19 was treated as a traitor to the nation instead of a person needing medical treatment. The workers were dumbfounded and couldn't keep this news to themselves. It was an absurd situation that went against all common sense: If you fell ill, you got no sympathy, even when in danger of death at any time. From the mouths of some workers, the words: "We are not even human beings" began to leak out. Perhaps it was starting to dawn on them that they were really just slaves of Kim Jong-un.

I didn't want to live any longer as a slave of the crazy Kim Jong-un. So, last year, I made my plan a reality to escape North Korea, and now I have become a citizen of the Republic of Korea. I had to sacrifice so much to gain the freedom that so many people take for granted, like fresh air or clean water. When I was defecting from North Korea, the thought that motivated me was that my world would never change, and my destiny would not change either without action.

A bad world does not change without action. And such a bad world perhaps might come knocking at your door all of a sudden as it did to me. And maybe then it's already too late. I hope you will add your voices to free the slaves in North Korea from the slave owner Kim Jong Un. I don't believe slave owners or slavery can be justified for any reason.

Kim Dong-jae (not his real name) was the winner of the 18th Freedom Speakers International (FSI) North Korean Refugee English Speech Contest on Aug. 26. His mentors for the contest were Dr. Gregory Gresko and Henry Hoffman. Kim's remarks were edited for publication by Casey Lartigue Jr., co-founder and co-president of FSI with Lee Eun-koo.

The Korea Times · September 17, 2023

11. Ukraine war: How Zelensky is grappling with Western war fatigue

Ukraine war: How Zelensky is grappling with Western war fatigue

BBC · by Menu

Published
21 hours ago

About sharing

BBC · by Menu

12. Taiwan raises concerns about situation 'getting out of hand' with China drills

Taiwan raises concerns about situation 'getting out of hand' with China drills

Reuters

TAIPEI, Sept 23 (Reuters) - The increased frequency of China's military activities around Taiwan recently has raised the risk of events "getting out of hand" and sparking an accidental clash, the island's defence minister said on Saturday.

Taiwan has said that the past two weeks has seen dozens of fighters, drones, bombers and other aircraft, as well as warships and the Chinese carrier the Shandong, operating nearby.

China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, has in recent years carried out many such drills around the island, seeking to assert its sovereignty claims and pressure Taipei.

Asked by reporters on the sidelines of parliament whether there was a risk of an accidental incident sparking a broader conflict given the frequency of the Chinese activities, Taiwan Defence Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said: "This is something we are very worried about".

Warships from China's southern and eastern theatre commands have been operating together off Taiwan's east coast, he added.

"The risks of activities involving aircraft, ships, and weapons will increase, and both sides must pay attention," Chiu said.

China has not commented about the drills around Taiwan, and its defence ministry has not responded to requests for comment.

Chiu said that when the Shandong was out at sea, which Taiwan first reported on Sept. 11, it was operating as the "opposing force" in the drills. Ministry spokesman Sun Li-fang added that China's Eastern Theatre Command forces were the "attacking force", simulating a battle scenario.

Taiwan's traditional military planning for a potential conflict has been to use its mountainous east coast, especially the two major air bases there, as a place to regroup and preserve its forces given it does not directly face China unlike the island's west coast.

But China has increasingly been flexing its muscles off Taiwan's east coast, and generally displaying its ability to operate much further away from China's own coastline.

China normally performs large-scale exercises from July to September, Taiwan's defence ministry has said.

On Saturday the ministry said China had largely dialled back its drills, reporting that over the previous 24 hour period it had only spotted two Chinese aircraft operating in its air defence zone.

Taiwan has frequently said that it would remain calm and not escalate the situation, but that it won't allow "repeated provocations" from China, whose forces have so far not entered Taiwan's territorial seas or airspace.

Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Roger Tung Editing by Shri Navaratnam

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Acquire Licensing Rights, opens new tab

Reuters

13. "Crab trap": Special Operations Forces strike Black Sea Fleet HQ during commanders' meeting

"Crab trap": Special Operations Forces strike Black Sea Fleet HQ during commanders' meeting

Ukrainska Pravda

Sat, September 23, 2023 at 12:21 AM EDT·2 min read

news.yahoo.com · by Ukrainska PravdaSeptember 22, 2023 at 9:21 PM·2 min read79Link Copied

A successful operation by the Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine resulted in a missile strike on the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in the temporarily occupied city of Sevastopol on 22 September.

Source: the press service of the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces on social media

Details: Soldiers of the Special Operations Forces said that their daring and painstaking work allowed them to hit the Black Sea Fleet headquarters "on time and spot on" during a meeting of the Russian Fleet’s leadership in occupied Sevastopol.

The Special Operations Forces soldiers passed the data to the Air Force for the strike.

Quote: "The details of the operation will be disclosed as soon as possible, and the result is dozens of dead and wounded occupiers, including the senior leadership of the fleet.

Let's carry on!"

Background:

On the morning of 22 September, the Russian Ministry of Defence reported an attack by guided missiles and UAVs on occupied Crimea, with the Russians claiming they had managed to shoot down one missile and two drones.
Later, it was reported that there had been a missile attack on the Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Sevastopol. The Russian Ministry of Defence even acknowledged the death of one soldier, although later the occupiers' defence ministry said that person had gone missing.
Against the backdrop of explosions in occupied Crimea, Air Force Commander Lieutenant General Mykola Oleshchuk thanked the pilots of the Air Force and mocked Russian propaganda.
Foreign media outlets said that Ukraine used Storm Shadow missiles to attack the Black Sea Fleet headquarters.
Kyrylo Budanov, Chief of Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, said that at least 9 people, including Russian generals, were killed and 16 wounded in the Ukrainian attack on the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol.

Ukrainska Pravda is the place where you will find the most up-to-date information about everything related to the war in Ukraine. Follow us on Twitter, support us, or become our patron!

news.yahoo.com · by Ukrainska PravdaSeptember 22, 2023 at 9:21 PM·2 min read79Link Copied

14. Fact: Russia Is Losing the Ukraine War—Badly

So many different interpretations and assessments.

Fact: Russia Is Losing the Ukraine War—Badly

Contrary to those Western analysts who believe the Russo-Ukrainian War has reached a stalemate, pro-regime Russians admit that they are losing—badly.

19fortyfive.com · by Alexander Motyl · September 23, 2023

Contrary to those Western analysts who believe the Russo-Ukrainian War has reached a stalemate, pro-regime Russians admit that they are losing—badly.

Two pieces of evidence make a convincing case.

On September 15, Major General Andrei Gurulyev, a combative Duma deputy of markedly illiberal tendencies who in recent months has argued that Russia should “burn” Ukraine, bomb Great Britain, and reintroduce the Stalinist terror, suddenly had a change of heart and described conditions on the front lines as being near-catastrophic. He even had the temerity to call the war a war, eschewing the prescribed official terminology (“special military operation”) and thereby engaging in a criminal offense for which many Russians have been punished.

According to Gurulyev’s Telegram posting, the Ukrainians are resilient, adaptive, and resourceful, and have succeeded in pushing back the Russians, imposing high casualties, evading Russian artillery, neutralizing Russian helicopters, deploying huge numbers of virtually limitless drones, and dealing effectively with the minefields. Indeed, “the enemy has seized some of our defensive positions.” Naturally, concludes Gurulyev, “we will win,” though “only one serious problem keeps us from Victory.” What might that be?

It’s lying.

Gurulyev’s answer is shocking, considering that he’s spent much of his career doing just what he now denounces. “Mendacious reports, unfortunately, lead to incorrect decisions on a variety of levels.” The major general is right, of course, though what he fails to see is that the problem is inherent in the very nature of the overcentralized political (and military) system created by Russia’s illegitimate president, Vladimir Putin. Mendacity, to put it simply, is the best way to survive and thrive in today’s Russia, just as it was in the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire.

The lying begins at the lowest levels and then proceeds upwards. By the time it reaches the corridors of power, Russia’s decision-makers, Putin included, have a false, sugarcoated picture of actual events on the ground. Hence his belief that invading Ukraine would be a cakewalk. Fixing the problem requires more than stopping to lie. The only effective solution is to dismantle Putin’s top-heavy fascist regime and replace it with something approaching democratic accountability.

Gurulyev paints a depressing picture—for Russia, that is—but just how bad conditions are on the front was made crystal clear in mid-September by the Ministry of Labor and Social Development, which ordered 230,000 death certificates for family members of deceased combat veterans. Back in May 2023, it ordered 23,716 such certificates; in 2022, the number was 5,777.

The last two numbers—23,716 and 5,777—look like accurate tabulations of war dead, though keep in mind that they probably do not include the thousands of Russians left to rot on the battlefield, the approximately 50,000 dead Wagner mercenaries (of whom many were inmates), and the tens of thousands of fighters from the occupied Donbas territories. The first figure—230,000—may reflect the actual number of dead or an estimate of how many will die or both.

Now, let’s engage in some conservative “guesstimating.” We know that 29,493 definitely died. Add 10,000 left to rot, 50,000 Wagnerites, and another 50,000 Donbasites, and we get approximately 140,000 dead Russians. Let’s assume that of the 230,000 just-ordered death certificates only half are intended for actually killed Russians and the rest are intended for future use. That comes out to 115,000; add that figure to 140,000 and you get 255,000 dead Russian soldiers. Significantly, the Ukrainians estimate that about 274,000 Russians have been killed.

Whatever the exact number of Russian fatalities, it’s obviously very high—probably no fewer than 150,000 and no more than 275,000. These numbers are decidedly not evidence of Russian battlefield success or even of a stalemate. And viewed in tandem with Gurulyev’s lamentations, they convincingly demonstrate that Western analysts and policymakers who see no chance of a Ukrainian victory are simply dead wrong. In fact, victory may be closer than we suspect. All Ukraine needs to do is to continue doing what it’s already doing: degrading Russian military infrastructure, incrementally liberating territory, killing Russians, and demoralizing survivors.

Small wonder that the Kremlin wants to introduce a second, much larger mobilization. Russian soldiers are dying at alarmingly high rates, and reserves are lacking. Putin and his comrades face a dilemma. On the one hand, they need more soldiers, whom they regard as little more than cannon fodder. On the other hand, presidential elections are scheduled for March 2024. Although the outcome is preordained, it would be embarrassing for the regime if Russians decided to develop a backbone and resolved to save their fathers and sons from near-certain death in the fields of Ukraine by destroying their ballots, refusing to vote, or—Heaven forbid—demonstrate for their right to live.

About the Author

Dr. Alexander Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia, and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires, and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, including Pidsumky imperii (2009); Puti imperii (2004); Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires (2001); Revolutions, Nations, Empires: Conceptual Limits and Theoretical Possibilities (1999); Dilemmas of Independence: Ukraine after Totalitarianism (1993); and The Turn to the Right: The Ideological Origins and Development of Ukrainian Nationalism, 1919–1929 (1980); the editor of 15 volumes, including The Encyclopedia of Nationalism (2000) and The Holodomor Reader (2012); and a contributor of dozens of articles to academic and policy journals, newspaper op-ed pages, and magazines. He also has a weekly blog, “Ukraine’s Orange Blues.”

19fortyfive.com · by Alexander Motyl · September 23, 2023

15. Two Words That Ukraine Should Fear More Than Anything Else

Two Words That Ukraine Should Fear More Than Anything Else

19fortyfive.com · by Peter Suciu · September 24, 2023

‘War Fatigue’ Is a Big Problem for Ukraine Now – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday. The leader of the embattled nation called for Russia to be removed from the Security Council, while he criticized the group for failing to prevent the conflict. However, Zelensky may have also seriously damaged his standing with some of his staunchest allies after suggesting that some nations in Europe were engaged “in a political theater – making a thriller from grain.”

That was a reference to the ban on Ukrainian grain imposed by Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia, which Zelensky suggested was helping Russia.

“Alarmingly, some in Europe play out solidarity in a political theater — turning grain into a thriller. They may seem to play their own roles. In fact, they’re helping set the stage for a Moscow actor,” Zelensky said in his address.

Polish leaders have responded by comparing Ukraine to a drowning person hurting his helper and threatening to expand the ban on food products from its neighbor. Yet, Warsaw had been among the staunchest supporters of Ukraine, supplying weapons as well as humanitarian aid, and even opening its borders to refugees.

Military aid from Poland has included fourteen MiG-29 jet fighters and 320 Soviet-era tanks.

Poland to Focus on Internal Needs

It is now clear that Kyiv shouldn’t expect additional military hardware from its neighbor, and on Thursday, it was reported that Poland will cease supplying such aid. Instead, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said his nation’s focus will be on defending itself with more modern weapons.

Poland has made deals with the United States to supply M1 Abrams main battle tanks, while it is also buying a number of MBTs and other military hardware from South Korea.

“We are no longer transferring weapons to Ukraine, because we are now arming Poland with more modern weapons,” Morawiecki said, while he added he would not agree to Poland’s markets being destabilized by grain imports.

Despite this shift, Warsaw will still maintain its supply hub that is used to transfer Western-supplied military hardware to Kyiv.

“Our hub in Rzeszow, in agreement with the Americans and NATO, is fulfilling the same role the whole time as it has fulfilled and will fulfill,” added Morawiecki.

However, news broke before publication that Poland would indeed continue to send aid to Ukraine.

Zelensky Must Fight War Fatigue in the U.S.

Following his visit to New York to speak at the United Nations, Ukraine’s president also traveled to Washington where he sought to urge U.S. lawmakers to continue their support.

Congress has provided more than $100 billion in aid to date, including $43 billion in military hardware. Some hard-right Republicans have sought to end further support for Kyiv, and have taken the stance that Washington cannot send another blank check to Zelensky – while others have asked for greater accountability on how the money already sent has been spent.

However, it did appear that Zelensky will not return to Ukraine empty-handed.

“I asked what do you need? What’s your plan for victory?,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told AFP, adding that Ukraine is “going to get” the $24 billion aid tranche wanted by the White House.

Buffett to the Rescue?

U.S. businessman and philanthropist Howard Buffett also warned on Wednesday that public interest for the Ukraine war could wane, and said he would step up his own support to set an example.

“I do have a concern about whether people can maintain the level of interest in (Ukraine). Particularly, in the U.S. one of the drawbacks will be the political campaign that we’re going into,” Buffet told Reuters in an interview in Kyiv, and added that war fatigue could make it hard for Ukraine to achieve victory. “It’s a tougher fight, but I think it goes to the point that letting the war drag on is a huge mistake. I think the U.S. and Europe have to step up even more and help Ukraine win this war and put it to end.”

Author Experience and Expertise

A Senior Editor for 19FortyFive, Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu.

From the Vault

‘Vacuum Bombs Destroyed’: Ukraine Footage Shows Putin’s Thermobaric Rockets Destroyed

BOOM! Ukraine Video Shows Precision Strike on Russian Air-Defense System

19fortyfive.com · by Peter Suciu · September 24, 2023

16. Putin Gets Bad News: Ukraine Carries Out Powerful Strike on Crimean Airfield

Putin Gets Bad News: Ukraine Carries Out Powerful Strike on Crimean Airfield

Ukrainian forces carried out a complex attack against a Russian-held airfield in occupied Crimea on Thursday, The Kyiv Post reported. The country’s intelligence service, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), used drones to confuse the Russian air defenses around the base located in Saki, Crimea.

19fortyfive.com · by John Rossomando · September 24, 2023

“Missile strikes are being launched on the military facilities of the invaders in the temporarily occupied Ukrainian Crimea,” Andriy Yusov, spokesman for the Directorate of Military Intelligence of Ukraine (HUR), told The Kyiv Post.

That created gaps exploited by Ukraine’s Neptune anti-ship missiles were able to destroy 12 Su-24 and Su-30 fighters that were on the tarmac at the base. A Russian Pantsir air-defense system was destroyed as was a training facility for using the Iranian Mohajer-6 UAV.

Ukraine hopes to use unconventional warfare tactics to degrade Russia’s military infrastructure in Crimea. Unconfirmed reports stated that high-ranking Russian military leaders had met there.

“The strike was carried out after the SBU verified the data that the commanders of the enemy fleet were indeed [present] in the military unit,” they told Kyiv Post.

An estimated 30 Russian service personnel were killed.

“As for the tactics that the Ukrainian army is now implementing in relation to the temporarily occupied Crimea and Sevastopol, this is the preparation of the future battlefield,” Ukrainian military expert Vladislav Seleznyov told Ukraine’s Channel 24.

Black Sea Fleet Headquarters Hit

Ukraine also hit the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet located in Crimea on Friday in a reportedly SBU-managed operation. Russia claimed that there were at least six victims. Unconfirmed reports suggested that Admiral Viktor Sokolov, commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleets was among them.

The Ukrainian armed forces released a statement saying “around 12:00, the Ukrainian defense forces successfully struck the command headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet in temporarily-occupied Sevastopol,” The Washington Post reported.

Ukraine Vows More Attacks in Crimea

Ukraine promises to keep up its unconventional warfare against Russia in Crimea.

“We promised that ‘there will be more,’” Mykola Oleschuk, the air force commander, posted on social media. “So, while the occupiers are recovering in Melitopol, and air alarms are still sounding in Sevastopol, I thank the pilots of the Air Force once again!”

“All missiles were intercepted!” Oleschuk continued, with evident sarcasm. “I hope that next time Russian air defense will again not let us down.”

Ukrainian Saboteurs Strike Airfield Near Moscow

The Ukrainians have also carried out sabotage operations inside Russia.

Ukraine’s HUR announced an operation at the Chkalovsky Air Base on Telegram. HUR stated that the attack generated “quite a bit of hysteria.”

“Unknown saboteurs… planted explosives and detonated AN-148 and IL-20 aircraft (both belong to the 354th special purpose aviation regiment) at the airfield, which is carefully guarded, as well as the MI-28N [Havoc] helicopter, which was actively involved in shooting down attack drones over Moscow region.”

Russia’s “Flying Kremlin” doomsday plane that would serve as Vladimir Putin’s flying command post in the event of a nuclear war is parked at this base.

Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin took off from the Chkalovsky Air Base in 1968 for his ill-fated training flight in a MiG-15UTI that crashed after takeoff.

Russians Killing Russians For Cash

Russian soldiers have been recruited into the ranks of Ukrainian partisans and have been killing their comrades in exchange for cash. In one case documented by The Kyiv Post noted that a “Russian soldier allegedly placed 10 kilograms of explosives between two trucks at a military base in the occupied city of Henichesk, in Kherson region at the border with the Crimean Peninsula.”

While Ukraine’s conventional offensive stands ground to a halt, it appears that Ukraine is willing to use any means necessary to deliver pain to the Russians. The spy war seems to be one of the hidden but crucial fronts in this war.

John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.

19fortyfive.com · by John Rossomando · September 24, 2023

17. The government is colluding with social media platforms to censor Americans

The government is colluding with social media platforms to censor Americans

Washington Examiner · by Sen. Rand Paul · September 24, 2023

In 2021, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a military research agency under the Pentagon , sought proposals for “real-time, comprehensive tools that establish ground truth for how countries are conducting domestic information control.”

DARPA’s goal in developing artificial intelligence (AI) technology ostensibly was to help the United States government better understand “how digitally authoritarian regimes repress their populations at scale over the internet via censorship, blocking, or throttling.”

Of course, the solicitation made it clear that the Pentagon did not want the proposals to look at the activities of the United States government. The Pentagon and the U.S. government, as a whole, enjoy professing moral superiority over authoritarian governments when it comes to upholding basic democratic values — even as officials erode them at home.

Indeed, American politicians have no qualms about criticizing foreign governments such as Russia and China for suppressing civil liberties and efforts to eliminate dissent. Yet, there seems to be a complete unwillingness to have an honest conversation about the disturbingly similar actions our own government is actively engaged in and financing.

For decades, the Pentagon and other federal agencies have been quietly partnering with private organizations to develop powerful surveillance and intervention tools designed to monitor and influence narratives on social media.

For example, a 2021 Pentagon program called Civil Sanctuary sought to develop AI tools to scale the moderation capability of social media platforms to create what it describes as a “more stable information environment.” In other words, the goal of this Pentagon program was to exponentially multiply the government’s ability to coordinate censorship of online speech.

The Pentagon has invested millions of taxpayer dollars to develop these tools — not only for the use of social media companies but also by the intelligence community and law enforcement.

Meanwhile, the Department of Commerce (DOC) is awarding million-dollar grants for cognitive research into how the U.S. government can foster trust in AI with the general public.

So, while the federal government is using taxpayer dollars to develop AI to surveil and monitor Americans’ online speech, it is also spending money to figure out how to get you to trust the AI.

Over the last year, starting with the Twitter Files, journalists have exposed the deep coordination between the federal government and social media platforms regarding content moderation decisions and policing the speech of Americans.

As Michael Shellenberger, a respected journalist who exposed the Department of Homeland Security’s collusion with social media companies to deplatform individuals questioning COVID-19 mandates, rightly pointed out, “The threat to our civil liberties comes not from AI but from the people who want to control it and use it to censor information.”

Last week, the Fifth Circuit affirmed the government likely violated the First Amendment by coercing social media companies to remove speech the government disagreed with in regards to the origins of COVID-19, pandemic lockdowns, vaccine efficacy, and the Hunter Biden laptop story.

The court cited numerous examples of U.S. government officials engaging in domestic information control on social media. Government officials demanded that platforms implement stronger COVID misinformation monitoring programs, modify their algorithms to avoid amplifying misinformation, target repeat offenders, and magnify communications from certain trusted sources.

After one meeting with federal officials, one platform committed to reducing the visibility of information that was skeptical of the government’s COVID vaccine policy, even when it does not contain actionable misinformation. Facebook likewise promised to label and demote a popular video after officials flagged it, even though they acknowledged it did not qualify for removal under its policies.

I fear that we are likely in only the beginning stages of understanding the extent of the federal government’s involvement in the content moderation decisions of private social media platforms.

What we do know is that our government is funding the development of powerful artificial intelligence tools for monitoring and shaping online discourse.

Now, I want to be clear. AI is not inherently malicious. It has the potential to revolutionize basic aspects of society, from healthcare to education.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM RESTORING AMERICA

However, in the hands of an unchecked government, AI can be weaponized as a tool to suppress the fundamental values our country was founded upon — the open exchange of ideas, the freedom to question, and the right to dissent. As AI continues to develop, I remain committed to conducting extensive oversight on this issue and working diligently to protect the First Amendment rights of American citizens.

Rand Paul is a U.S. senator for Kentucky and serves as the ranking member on the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

Washington Examiner · by Sen. Rand Paul · September 24, 2023

18. Is America uniquely vulnerable to tyranny?

Conclusion:

Tyranny of the Minority is one of the best guides out there to the crisis of American democracy. It just puts a touch too much focus on institutions at the expense of the deeper social forces rotting their foundations.

Is America uniquely vulnerable to tyranny?

What a brilliant new book gets right — and wrong — about America’s democracy.

By Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp zack@vox.com Sep 24, 2023, 6:00am EDT

Vox · by Zack Beauchamp · September 24, 2023

Trump on the campaign trail in Iowa.

Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Zack Beauchamp is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he covers ideology and challenges to democracy, both at home and abroad. Before coming to Vox in 2014, he edited TP Ideas, a section of Think Progress devoted to the ideas shaping our political world.

In The Odyssey, Odysseus and his crew are forced to navigate a strait bounded by two equally dangerous obstacles: Scylla, a six-headed sea serpent, and Charybdis, an underwater horror that sucks down ships through a massive whirlpool. Judging Charybdis to be a greater danger to the crew as a whole, Odysseus orders his crew to try and pass through on Scylla’s side. They make it, but six sailors are eaten in the crossing.

In their new book Tyranny of the Minority, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt — the authors of How Democracies Die — argue America’s founders faced an analogous problem: navigating between two types of dictatorship that threatened to devour the new country.

The founders, per Levitsky and Ziblatt, were myopically focused on one of them: the fear of a majority-backed demagogue seizing power. As a result, they made it exceptionally difficult to pass new laws and amend the constitution. But the founders, the pair argues, lost sight of a potentially more dangerous monster on the other side of the strait: a determined minority abusing this system to impose its will on the democratic majority.

“By steering the republic so sharply away from the Scylla of majority tyranny, America’s founders left it vulnerable to the Charybdis of minority rule,” they write.

This is not a hypothetical fear. According to Levitsky and Ziblatt, today’s America is currently being sucked down the anti-democratic whirlpool.

The Republican Party, they argue, has become an anti-democratic institution, its traditional leadership cowed by Trump and a racially reactionary base. As such, it is increasingly willing to twist legal tools designed to check oppressive majorities into tools for imposing its policy preferences on an unwilling majority. The best way out of this dilemma, in their view, is radical legal constitutional reform that brings the American system more in line with other advanced democracies.

Tyranny of the Minority is an exceptionally persuasive book. I think it is almost inarguably correct about both the nature of the modern Republican Party and the ways in which it exploits America’s rickety Constitution to subvert its democracy. I come to some similar conclusions in my own forthcoming book on democracy, The Reactionary Spirit (which, full disclosure, has benefited significantly from Levitsky’s feedback in drafting).

Yet at the same time, I believe he and Ziblatt slightly overweight the significance of America’s institutions in its current democratic crisis. Institutions matter for how authoritarian parties take power, but ultimately they may be less decisive than the social strength of the forces arrayed against democracy.

If a reactionary movement is popular or aggressive enough, it’s not clear that any kind of institution can stop it from threatening democracy. Hence why other advanced democracies with distinct institutional arrangements, like Israel, are currently going through democratic crises with root causes strikingly similar to America’s. It’s true that America’s institutions have paved a swift road for the Trumpist right’s attack on democracy. But they may not be quite as central to the story of its rise as Tyranny of the Minority suggests.

The American right’s turn against democracy

Ziblatt and Levitsky are two of America’s very best comparative political scientists, with expertise that makes them uniquely well-equipped for the subject they’re examining.

Ziblatt is the author of an important study of European conservative parties, concluding that their strategic choices played a unique role in determining the health of continental democracy in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Conservative parties, by their nature, represent those forces in society — including the wealthy and powerful elite — opposed to radical social change. For this reason, Ziblatt found, they are especially important in determining whether defenders of the status quo attempt to stymie social change from within the democratic system or whether they reject elections and political equality altogether.

Levitsky is a Latin America specialist who, along with co-author Lucan Way, wrote a prescient analysis of a new style of autocracy back in 2002 — a system they termed “competitive authoritarianism” that subsequently emerged as the premier institutional means for turning a seemingly stable democracy into an autocracy (see: Hungary). Competitive authoritarian governments masquerade as democracies, even holding elections with real stakes. But these contests are profoundly unfair: The incumbent party ensures that the rules surrounding elections, like who gets to vote and what the media gets to say, are heavily tilted in their favor. The result is that the opposition has little chance to win elections, let alone pass their preferred policies.

Tyranny of the Minority analyzes the United States in light of these two broad themes, the importance of conservative parties and the ever-evolving institutional nature of authoritarianism. The first half of the book analyzes how and why the Republican Party went down an anti-democratic path. The second focuses on how the peculiar design of American institutions has created opportunities for the GOP to undermine democracy from within.

Around the world, they find two conditions that make political parties more likely to accept electoral defeats: “when they believe they stand a reasonable chance of winning again in the future” and when they believe “that losing power will not bring catastrophe — that a change of government will not threaten the lives, livelihoods, or most cherished principles.”

Then-President Donald Trump walks off stage after speaking during a rally at the El Paso County Coliseum on February 11, 2019, in El Paso, Texas.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

In the 21st century, these conditions no longer held among the GOP’s conservative white base. Democrats were no longer a mere political rival, but avatars of a new and scary social order.

“Not only was America no longer overwhelmingly white, but once entrenched racial hierarchies were weakening. Challenges to white Americans’ long-standing social dominance left many of them with feelings of alienation, displacement, and deprivation,” Levitsky and Ziblatt write. “Many of the party’s voters feared losing ... their country — or more accurately, their place in it.”

This, they say, is what made the party vulnerable to conquest by someone like Trump. Rather than fight the base in democracy’s name, traditional Republican elites like Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) acted as “semi-loyal democrats”: leaders who say the right things about supporting democracy and the rule of law, but value partisan victory over everything else — including basic, non-partisan democratic principles. This enabled the entire party to become a vehicle for an anti-democratic agenda.

“Openly authoritarian figures — like coup conspirators or armed insurrectionists — are visible for all to see. By themselves, they often lack the public support or legitimacy to destroy a democracy. But when semi-loyalists — tucked away in the hallways of power — lend a hand, openly authoritarian forces become much more dangerous,” they explain. “Throughout history, cooperation between authoritarians and seemingly respectable semi-loyal democrats has been a recipe for democratic breakdown.”

How America’s system makes life easy for would-be autocrats

In the US, Levitsky and Ziblatt see a democracy made vulnerable by its own Constitution.

The Constitution’s framers were the first to take Enlightenment ideas about freedom and translate them to an actual political system. The only historical democratic experiences they looked at were from antiquity, in places like Athens and Rome. Classical sources repeatedly chronicled threats to democracy, even outright collapse, emanating from mob rule.

Though the founders knew that democracy was at heart about majority rule, they took the Greco-Roman experience seriously and designed a system where majorities were severely constrained. The tripartite separation of powers, bicameral legislature, indirect election of the president and senators, lifetime Supreme Court tenure, the laborious process for amending the Constitution: all of these were built, in whole or in part, as limitations on the ability of majorities to impose their will on minorities.

Some American counter-majoritarian institutions emerged not from well-intentioned design but political necessity. Leading founders like James Madison bitterly resented the basic structure of the Senate, where each state gets two seats regardless of size; Alexander Hamilton called it “preposterous” during a constitutional convention debate. It was included purely to mollify small states like Delaware and Rhode Island, who were refusing to join the Union absent sufficient protections for their interests.

A painting of the signing of the US Constitution.

GraphicaArtis/Getty Images/Howard Chandler Christy

Over time, the US shed some of these minoritarian trappings — senators are now directly elected, thanks to the 17th Amendment — but deepened others. In 1803’s Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court gave itself expansive power to strike down legislation that was not explicitly granted in the Constitution. More recently, the filibuster emerged as a de facto 60-vote requirement for passing legislation in the Senate — a practice similar to the supermajority vote that the founders explicitly rejected early on.

Levitsky and Ziblatt show that almost every other peer democracy went in the opposite direction.

The United States is “the only presidential democracy in the world in which the president is elected via an Electoral College,” “one of the few remaining democracies that retains a bicameral legislature with a powerful upper chamber,” and “the only democracy in the world with lifetime tenure for Supreme Court justices.” Moreover, they note, “the U.S. Constitution is the hardest in the world to change” — making it extremely difficult for reformers to do anything about America’s minority-empowering institutions.

These institutions allow the Republican Party to rule despite being a distinctly minority faction — one that holds extreme positions on issues like taxes and abortion, and has lost the popular vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections.

So long as the party retains appeal among a hard core of racially resentful supporters, efficiently distributed around the country to take advantage of the Senate and Electoral College’s biases, it can remain nationally competitive. The right’s control over the Supreme Court will likely last decades, thanks to lifetime tenure, allowing it to remake American policy and institutions with impunity. The GOP’s disproportionate national power enables its cadres at the state and local level to pursue explicitly undemocratic policies for holding power, like felon disenfranchisement and extreme gerrymandering, without fear of federal intervention.

Hence the titular “tyranny of the minority”: The Republican Party, having broken with its core commitment to democracy, has now embraced a peculiarly American strategy for taking and wielding power undemocratically.

“America’s countermajoritarian institutions can manufacture authoritarian minorities into governing majorities,” they write. “Far from checking authoritarian power, our institutions have begun to augment it.”

Can good institutions save a rotted society?

Levitsky and Ziblatt are, in my mind, clearly correct about both of their two major points: that the GOP has become an anti-democratic faction, and that America’s minoritarian institutions have given them a straightforward pathway to wielding power undemocratically. The evidence for both propositions is overwhelming, and the book’s style — engaging historical case studies accompanied by a precise deployment of data — hammers them home persuasively. Tyranny of the Minority is an exceptional book, one of the very best in its genre.

But there are some tensions inside of it: in this case, a subtle conflict between the two halves of the argument.

The United States, Ziblatt and Levitsky note, is hardly the only wealthy democracy to have experienced the rise of far-right parties hostile to social change — citing the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and “all of Scandinavia” as prominent examples. Yet those democracies, in their view, “remain relatively healthy.”

The key difference, Levitsky and Ziblatt argue, lies in the institutions. Because those countries are considerably more majoritarian, it is far harder for an authoritarian minority to corrode democracy at a national level. Therefore, they conclude, the best way to safeguard America’s institutions is to make them more like our peers abroad: abolish the Electoral College, eliminate lifetime tenure for Supreme Court justices, end the filibuster, switch to proportional representation in Congress, ban partisan gerrymandering, and make the Constitution easier to amend.

The obvious objection to these proposals is that they are impractical, that the very nature of the problem — Republican control over minoritarian institutions — makes reforming them infeasible. But there’s a deeper, and more interesting, question raised by Levitsky and Ziblatt’s diagnosis: Is it really the case that our institutions are what make America unique?

America’s minoritarian institutions certainly create a particular pathway for our domestic revanchist faction to gain power and wield it against democracy. But there are plenty of other ways for a democracy to eat itself.

Israel, for example, has an extraordinarily majoritarian political system. It is a parliamentary democracy, meaning limited separation of executive and legislative power, whose legislature is elected on a purely proportional basis. There is a simple majority requirement for passing legislation and even amending the Basic Law (its constitution-lite). The judiciary is, for all intents and purposes, the only check on unfettered majority rule.

Yet Israel is, at the moment, in the midst of a democratic crisis every bit as serious as America’s, perhaps even more so, in which an anti-democratic governing majority seeks to remove the court as a barrier to its radical agenda. The root cause of the crisis is very similar: a far-right faction of the population that wishes to protect existing social hierarchies from the threat of change. But the extremist strategy for cementing their power is the polar opposite: exploiting majoritarian institutions, not minoritarian ones. It’s the founders’ fear come to life, the Scylla to America’s Charybdis.

Demonstrators wave Israeli flags and stand by smoke flares to block a highway during a protest against the Israeli government’s judicial overhaul plan in Tel Aviv on July 8, 2023.

Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images

The point here is not that there are only two options for institutional design, America’s vetocracy or Israel’s blunt majoritarianism. Most advanced democracies fall somewhere in the middle, adopting a mix of majoritarian and counter-majoritarian institutions designed to generally permit majority rule while also preventing abuses of power.

Rather, the United States and Israel put together illustrate that institutions are an at-best-imperfect check on far-right authoritarian movements. The American far right has built a strategy tailored to American institutions; the Israeli far right has adopted a strategic approach tailored to the Israeli context. In both cases, the root of the problem is that there’s a sufficient social foundation for far-right authoritarian politics: one that provides the raw political muscle for bad actors to attack democracy using its own institutions.

Other democracies are not immune to far-right surges, including some that Levitsky and Ziblatt cite as relatively healthy.

The AfD, Germany’s far-right party, is surging in popularity, topping recent polls in four German states. A survey in May found that Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Rally, would defeat President Emmanuel Macron in their second rematch by a 55-45 margin. The UK approved Brexit by a majority referendum. Even in Canada, one of the most democratically stable Western democracies, extremist-linked legislator Pierre Poilievre is leading the traditionally center-right Conservative Party, which is currently ahead of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in the 2025 polls.

Not every far-right victory is a threat to democracy, of course, but it’s hard to be sure until they have power. Some Western far-right parties, like the AfD, are already showing troubling signs.

And in the US, where the far right is clearly undemocratic, surveys show a real chance that Trump wins the 2024 US election with an outright majority — not just in the Electoral College, but in the popular vote.

At root, Levitsky and Ziblatt appear a little too confident in their argument that the GOP’s extremism dooms the party to minority status.

It’s true that their agenda is out of step with the majority of Americans. But many voters, especially swing voters, don’t always vote on policy or ideology. They make ballot box decisions based on things like gas prices, inflation, and whether the party in power has been there for too long — factors that are often out of the president’s hands. Even if they do not agree with Trump that Mexicans are rapists or that the 2020 election was stolen, they’re willing to vote for him if they’re sufficiently frustrated with either the status quo or the other party’s option.

The same is true in other countries. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government was briefly dethroned in the 2021 election — only to return to power in 2022 after voters experienced life under a fractious coalition that spanned the right-left continuum. Marine Le Pen’s recent rise seems to be less about a majority of voters agreeing with her on immigration than a sense that she’s the only real alternative to an unpopular Macron.

Far-right parties, even potentially anti-democratic ones, can be politically viable under nearly any set of institutions. The key is to establish sufficient support among a large segment of the population that agrees with them, enough for there to be a large ideologically driven backlash. Once that happens, the party can establish itself as a viable alternative to the mainstream. And once that happens, they gain the potential to win over less ideological swing voters who simply have frustrations with the political status quo and look to any port in a storm.

This is not to let America’s institutions off the hook. Levitsky and Ziblatt are absolutely right that its outdated constitution makes it easier for the GOP to travel down an authoritarian path.

But “easier” doesn’t mean “necessary.” While Levitsky and Ziblatt ultimately take an institutions-first approach, seeing their reform as our way out of America’s crisis, I take a more society-first view: that America’s problems are primarily the result of deep social fissures exacerbated by outdated and poorly designed institutions. Even if the United States had a more authentically democratic institution, we’d still be riven by divides over race and identity that have unerringly produced the worst political conflicts in the country’s history.

It follows from this that institutional reforms are not enough: In addition to policies for political reform, we also need to think about ways to reduce the social demand for extreme politics. More bluntly: If widespread hostility to social change enables the GOP’s far-right authoritarian lurch, we need to figure out ways to shift Americans’ beliefs in a more egalitarian direction.

But such a proposal should be considered in addition to Levitsky and Ziblatt’s proposals, not in replacement of them — much as my critique of their book more broadly is less a fundamental concern than a difference in emphasis.

Tyranny of the Minority is one of the best guides out there to the crisis of American democracy. It just puts a touch too much focus on institutions at the expense of the deeper social forces rotting their foundations.

Vox · by Zack Beauchamp · September 24, 2023

19. Chinese Spies Are Targeting Access, Not Race

Excerpts:

Implying that all Chinese spies and influence agents are ethnically Chinese is analytically incorrect and counterproductive to U.S. national security efforts. Setting aside the discussion of whether or not such comments are racist or anti-American, a prioritized focus on ethnic Chinese spies and influence agents may draw focus away from and impede comprehensive counterintelligence efforts to detect the next Mallory, Claiborne, Hansen, Moinian, Majcher, or Singham. Moreover, increased scrutiny of Chinese Americans during the security clearance process may, in the CIA’s words, “turn away unnecessarily personnel who can make a major contribution to the nation’s intelligence efforts,” including counterintelligence analysis and operations, using their language and cultural expertise.

Finally, a key talking point and theme for China’s propaganda and influence operations is that U.S. society at large, and the U.S. government and Justice Department in particular, are racist against Chinese Americans. To combat these narratives, the U.S. government should significantly enhance its engagement with Chinese American communities, including first-generation immigrant and heritage Chinese language speakers across the United States. Translated bulletins from the National Counterintelligence and Security Center and the FBI in Mandarin Chinese warning about transnational repression efforts are a great start, but nowhere near sufficient.

Fluent speakers of Mandarin, Cantonese, and other Chinese dialects of any ethnicity in the U.S. government could increase language-enabled public outreach to Chinese diaspora communities, directly emphasizing that not all Chinese spies are ethnically Chinese while explaining how the Chinese intelligence services have exploited, abused, and intimidated community members through transnational repression. A paranoid witch hunt for Chinese Americans is not the answer—but instead plays right into the hands of the CCP.

Chinese Spies Are Targeting Access, Not Race

Implying China mostly uses ethnically Chinese assets is both wrong and dangerous.

By Horatio Smith, the pen name of a strategic analyst at the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, and an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve.

Foreign Policy · by Horatio Smith · September 22, 2023

On Aug. 3, 2023, the U.S. Justice Department arrested U.S. Navy sailors Jinchao Wei and Wenheng Zhao for illegally transmitting restricted military information to China. In the Southern District of California, Wei’s mother allegedly encouraged him to spy for China, and Chinese authorities allegedly provided the 22-year-old sailor with between $10,000 and $15,000 for information about Navy ships’ weapon capabilities, power structures, potential vulnerabilities, and movements. In a separate case in the Central District of California, Zhao allegedly sent a Chinese intelligence officer “operational plans for a large-scale military exercise” and specifically disclosed “the location and timing of naval movements, amphibious landings, maritime operations, and logistics support.”

Many commentators offered colorful responses to the Wei and Zhao arrests. In a since-deleted post on X (formerly Twitter), Eric Sayers, a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, commented that it was “awkward the two sailors arrested are Chinese. Do we just ignore that?” In the Washington Examiner, John Schindler questioned why the Pentagon continues to “grant security clearances to Chinese Americans without special scrutiny.”

Over a decade ago, during the Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao eras, these might have been valid points. Today, though, China’s recruitment techniques are very different—and in some ways, more dangerous.

Before 2011 Chinese human intelligence operations contained elements of the “grains of sand” or “mosaic” intelligence collection approach. This approach originates from a popular quote that has circulated in national security circles: “If the Russians want to get certain sand from a beach that’s special, they’ll have a submarine come in at night. […] They’ll get a bucket full of sand, and they’ll take it back to the submarine and leave. The Chinese will have 500 people having picnics on the beach, each picking up the sand in a small can (or, each picking up a grain of sand), and bringing it back.”

“Grains of sand” adherents believe that China relies on a significant number of “amateur collectors” who collect low-grade, if not entirely unclassified, information, and then assemble that information into a more coherent intelligence picture once they’re back in China. Believers in this theory also argue the Chinese intelligence services recruit “ethnically-Chinese sources, regardless of citizenship, in the hopes of appealing to patriotism and implicit threats to family in China,” and do not employ professional intelligence tradecraft, not even “age-old tools like dead drops.”

At one point, this was mostly true. For example, from 1949 to 2011, almost all agents directly recruited by the Chinese intelligence services in publicly known human intelligence operations against the United States and Taiwan were ethnically Chinese or Chinese ethnic minorities, with the notable exception of Glenn Duffie Shriver. Additionally, public reports strongly suggest that pre-Xi Jinping, Chinese agents were not trained by their handlers on professional intelligence collection tradecraft and ways to maintain operational security. For example, notorious Chinese spy Chi Mak simply tore his Chinese handlers’ information collection “wish-lists” into small pieces and threw them into the trash, where they were later reassembled by U.S. investigators. Ministry of State Security agent Katrina Leung had affairs with two FBI agents and ostentatiously purchased a house for $1.4 million in San Marino, Los Angeles, making no attempt to stay on the down low.

But this approach almost always incorporated conventional methods of recruitment too—like money. The Chinese intelligence services paid turncoat CIA officer Larry Wu-Tai Chin at least $180,000 throughout the course of his career (we may never know the true amount, due to Chin’s prowess in money laundering). China approached former Taiwan Ministry of Justice official Chen Chih-Kao when he was having financial difficulties sustaining his Shanghai-based magazine business. And, of course, China paid U.S. study abroad student Duffie Shriver, a White man, a significant amount of money to attempt to place him as a mole in the CIA or the State Department.

Writing in 2011 to explain exceptions to the “grains of sand” approach, former CIA counterintelligence analyst Peter Mattis argued that the Chinese intelligence services largely functioned according to the “adapted internal security” model for intelligence operations. Under this model, China focused on internal security as the end goal of every human intelligence operation, mostly could not run intelligence operations from abroad due to resource limitations and placed higher emphasis on interpersonal relationships and potential future information transmission than a source’s existing access to classified information of interest at the time of recruitment.

But these trends are shifting fast under Xi. The Chinese intelligence services are quickly becoming more professional, making initial contact with sources overseas via social media platforms, prioritizing the recruitment of sources with direct access to classified or restricted information of interest, and, perhaps most importantly, recruiting sources of all ethnicities. China is almost certainly now adopting a “Western/Russian” professional, foreign-directed intelligence collection approach, perhaps due to China’s increased overseas economic and security demands.

A trio of Xi-era Chinese human intelligence cases best illustrate this shift. In May 2019, U.S. authorities sentenced former CIA officer Kevin Patrick Mallory to prison for spying for China. According to a Justice Department complaint, Mallory first made contact with Ministry of State Security-affiliated personnel on social media, contacted former U.S. government colleagues to seek information of interest to China, and ultimately passed several classified top-secret documents to his Chinese handlers. Mallory’s handlers also provided him with an unspecified customized communications device that could “toggle between normal and secure messaging modes” and trained him on steganography, an advanced form of intelligence tradecraft. This case highlights the increased professionalization of the Chinese intelligence services.

Just two months later, in July 2019, the Department of Justice sentenced Candace Marie Claiborne, a former State Department employee, to 40 months in prison for providing internal documents to the Chinese intelligence services. Claiborne also maintained a top-secret security clearance while serving as a Foreign Service Office Management Specialist in Iraq, Sudan, and China, and provided sensitive State Department information to China in “exchange for gifts for herself and her family.”

But the cases don’t end there. On Sept. 24, 2019, U.S. authorities sentenced former Defense Intelligence Agency intelligence officer Ron Rockwell Hansen to 10 years in prison for attempting to pass classified documents to Chinese authorities. U.S. law enforcement arrested Hansen as he attempted to board a plane to China with secret information, and Hansen admitted to meeting with Chinese intelligence personnel multiple times to discuss information of interest and receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation from China.

None of these individuals were ethnically Chinese. Neither were William Majcher, a retired Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer arrested by Canadian authorities in July for allegedly spying and facilitating transnational repression for China, or a U.K. Parliamentary Researcher recently arrested in September for allegedly spying for China. The Chinese intelligence services are now prioritizing the recruitment of individuals with access to information of interest over perceived loyalty, regardless of their ethnicity.

The Chinese intelligence services’ recruitment and use of non-ethnically Chinese sources continued during the coronavirus pandemic. In November 2022, the Department of Justice sentenced Shapour Moinian, a former U.S. Army helicopter pilot and U.S. government contractor, to 20 months in prison for acting as an agent of China. Moinian was contacted by Chinese intelligence personnel while he was working on military and intelligence community aviation projects as a cleared government contractor, and later traveled to Hong Kong, where he provided information and materials on various types of U.S.-designed aircraft to his Chinese handlers.

Even ethnically Chinese individuals arrested for spying for China in the Xi era were almost always current or former employees in the national security field, with access to information of direct interest to the Chinese intelligence services. For instance, in August 2016, Kun Shan Chun, a naturalized U.S. citizen from China and an FBI electronics technician, pled guilty to “acting in the United States as an agent of the People’s Republic of China, without providing prior notice to the Attorney General.” Former CIA officer and FBI linguist Alexander Yuk Ching Ma also disclosed classified information obtained throughout his government employment, to include the identities of CIA human assets.

Chun, Ma, Wei, and Zhao were all U.S. government employees or former employees with access to classified information, just like Mallory, Claiborne, Hansen, and Moinian. It’s clear that whether you’re ethnically Chinese or not, as long as you have information that is of interest to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), you’re a potential target, especially if you’re a current or former U.S. government official. Regardless of your ethnicity, you’re fair game.

Critics of this argument may claim that Chinese United Front operations still primarily seek to influence ethnically Chinese immigrant and heritage language speaking communities overseas, as well as Chinese students and scholars. Yet while Chinese malign foreign influence operations indeed continue to target the Chinese diaspora, they have also significantly expanded to include non-ethnically Chinese online influencers and political activists.

For example, American millionaire Neville Roy Singham, a benefactor of far-left social activism and nonprofit organizations, has been funding an influence campaign that advances pro-China propaganda. Singham is also the husband of Democratic political advisor Jodie Evans, who co-founded Code Pink, a non-profit feminist grass-roots advocacy and charity organization in 2002. While Evans and Code Pink have criticized China’s human rights record in the past, she recently described the Uyghurs as “terrorists,” defended China’s mass incarceration systems, and argued that the United States “crushing” China would “cut off hope for the human race and life on Earth.”

Implying that all Chinese spies and influence agents are ethnically Chinese is analytically incorrect and counterproductive to U.S. national security efforts. Setting aside the discussion of whether or not such comments are racist or anti-American, a prioritized focus on ethnic Chinese spies and influence agents may draw focus away from and impede comprehensive counterintelligence efforts to detect the next Mallory, Claiborne, Hansen, Moinian, Majcher, or Singham. Moreover, increased scrutiny of Chinese Americans during the security clearance process may, in the CIA’s words, “turn away unnecessarily personnel who can make a major contribution to the nation’s intelligence efforts,” including counterintelligence analysis and operations, using their language and cultural expertise.

Finally, a key talking point and theme for China’s propaganda and influence operations is that U.S. society at large, and the U.S. government and Justice Department in particular, are racist against Chinese Americans. To combat these narratives, the U.S. government should significantly enhance its engagement with Chinese American communities, including first-generation immigrant and heritage Chinese language speakers across the United States. Translated bulletins from the National Counterintelligence and Security Center and the FBI in Mandarin Chinese warning about transnational repression efforts are a great start, but nowhere near sufficient.

Fluent speakers of Mandarin, Cantonese, and other Chinese dialects of any ethnicity in the U.S. government could increase language-enabled public outreach to Chinese diaspora communities, directly emphasizing that not all Chinese spies are ethnically Chinese while explaining how the Chinese intelligence services have exploited, abused, and intimidated community members through transnational repression. A paranoid witch hunt for Chinese Americans is not the answer—but instead plays right into the hands of the CCP.

Foreign Policy · by Horatio Smith · September 22, 2023

20.

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

Access NSS HERE

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Chinese Spies Are Targeting Access, Not Race

Implying China mostly uses ethnically Chinese assets is both wrong and dangerous.