Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“I leave comparisons to history, claiming only that I have acted in every instance from a conscious desire to do what was right, constitutional, within the law, and for the very best interests of the Whole people. Failures have been errors of judgment, not intent.”

- Ulysses S. Grant, 1876

“People of humble station have more leeway when it comes to using force, bringing suits, rushing into quarrels, and indulging their anger…For a king, even raising his voice to use intemperate language is at odds with his majesty.”

- Seneca

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

— From Coraline by Neil Gaiman

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 3 (Putin's War)

2. Don’t Believe the Generals

3. AUKUS and the Evolution of Special Operations for Great-Power Competition

4. Taiwanese tycoon to fund 'civilian warriors' to defend against invasion

5. US hanging fire on Australia’s nuclear subs

6. ATACMS: The Weapon Ukraine Could Hit Russia With from 186 Miles Away

7. China, Russia and Iran Are Slowly Ganging Up on the US

8. Big Question for the U.S. Military: Could They Battle China and Russia At the Same Time?

9. This Airborne unit will give longer weekends if troops avoid DUIs

10. Putin has already lost war with Ukraine -Ex-US Special Forces Officer

11. What Is America's Goal for the Ukraine War? Answer: We Don't Have One

12. Ukraine Situation Report: HIMARS Gets The America's Got Talent Treatment

13. Ukraine’s Zelensky Rallies Europe Against Russia’s ‘Energy Attack’

14. Putin Has a Problem: Kherson Offensive A 'Tactical Surprise' For Russia Military

15. Perspective | The U.S. is repeating its failed 1990s Afghanistan policies

16. I study America's youth. Here's what I found

17. Putin Has a Problem: Kherson Offensive A 'Tactical Surprise' For Russia Military

18. School Is for Everyone

19. Pentagon Research Center Quietly Contradicts Optimism of Defense Secretary Austin (AFRCOM)

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 3 (Putin's War)

Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-3

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 3

Sep 3, 2022 - Press ISW

understandingwar.org

Karolina Hird, Grace Mappes, Angela Howard, George Barros, and Mason Clark

September 3, 8:00 pm ET

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

Ukrainian officials directly stated on September 3 that the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive in southern Ukraine is an intentionally methodical operation to degrade Russian forces and logistics, rather than one aimed at immediately recapturing large swathes of territory. Ukrainian Presidential Advisor Oleksiy Arestovych told the Wall Street Journal on September 3 that the current goal of Ukrainian forces in the south is the “systemic grinding of Putin’s army and that Ukrainian troops are slowly and systematically uncovering and destroying Russia’s operational logistical supply system with artillery and precision weapon strikes.[1] Arestovych’s statement echoes ISW’s assessment that the ongoing counteroffensive will likely not result in immediate gains and that Ukrainian forces seek to disrupt key logistics nodes that support Russian operations in the south and chip away at Russian military capabilities.[2]

The Kremlin could intensify its efforts to promote self-censorship among Russian milbloggers and war correspondents who cover the war in Ukraine. Russian authorities arrested and later released prominent Russian milblogger Semyon Pegov (employed by Telegram channel WarGonzo) in Moscow on September 2, due to what WarGonzo described as Pegov drunkenly threatening a hotel administrator.[3] Pegov is an experienced military journalist and WarGonzo has extensive links to the Russian military and access to Russian military operations in Donbas in 2014, Syria in 2015, and Ukraine in 2022.[4] ISW continues to track anomalous activity regarding Russia's milbloggers. We cannot confirm the circumstances of Pegov’s arrest, but WarGonzo’s explanation may be correct.

However, ISW previously assessed in July that the Kremlin seeks to promote self-censorship among milbloggers who have undermined Kremlin efforts to portray the war in Ukraine as a decisive Russian victory, and the Kremlin may seek to amplify this censorship. Russian military bloggers have candidly reported on Russian forces‘ poor performance in Ukraine and have discussed how the Kremlin has attempted to censor their coverage in Ukraine.[5] Prominent milblogger Rybar noted that the relationship between the Russian military command and war correspondents particularly soured after Russian President Vladimir Putin met with war correspondents during the St. Petersburg Economic Forum on June 17, during which Putin likely tried to defuse milbloggers’ discontent.[6] The Kremlin later likely intensified efforts to promote self-censorship among milbloggers by using a leaked letter from mothers of Russian soldiers who demanded the ban of journalist activity on the frontlines in July.[7]

The Kremlin so far has not escalated to detaining milbloggers for their coverage. Pegov’s arrest—if connected to his coverage in Ukraine—would be a significant development in Russian efforts to control the Russian information space. ISW forecasted that the Russian information space would change significantly if the Ministry of Defense cracked down on milbloggers and stopped them from operational reporting since ISW uses milbloggers and Russian war correspondents as sources of Russian claims on a daily basis.[8] We will continue to observe and report on milblogger and war correspondent behavior and will flag significant changes in the Russian information space as we observe them.

Key Takeaways

Ukrainian officials directly stated that the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive is a methodical operation to intentionally degrade Russian forces and logistics in the south, rather than one aimed at immediately recapturing large swathes of territory.
The Kremlin may be intensifying efforts to foster self-censorship among Russian milbloggers and war correspondents who are covering the war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian military officials reported that Ukrainian forces continued positional battles along the Kherson-Mykolaiv frontline and that Ukrainian troops are focusing on striking Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs), equipment and manpower concentrations, and logistics nodes along the Southern Axis.
Social media footage shows evidence of effective Ukrainian strikes in western and central Kherson Oblast.
Russian mibloggers continue to claim that Ukrainian forces are fighting in western Kherson Oblast, along the Inhulets River, and in northern Kherson south of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border.
Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks northeast and south of Bakhmut and north and southwest of Donetsk City.
Ukrainian forces may be conducting localized attacks along the line of contact in Western Zaporizhia Oblast to disrupt ongoing Russian troop deployments.
Russian authorities continue to generate combat power from recruitment through state-owned enterprises and prisons to circumvent general mobilization.
Russian occupation authorities are increasingly struggling to provide basic services in occupied areas of Ukraine.

Ukrainian Counteroffensives (Ukrainian efforts to liberate Russian-occupied territories)

Ukrainian military officials reported that Ukrainian forces continued positional battles along the Kherson-Mykolaiv frontline on September 3. Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command stated that Ukrainian troops conducted positional battles and artillery strikes against Russian positions in unspecified areas.[9] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that in response to recent Ukrainian attacks, Russian forces have strengthened the administrative and police regime in occupied areas around the Dnipro River and continued shelling Ukrainian positions and conducting reconnaissance sorties.[10] Ukrainian officials maintain their calls for operational silence surrounding the progress of Ukrainian attacks in the south.[11]

Ukrainian military officials reiterated that Ukrainian forces are continuing to focus on striking Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs), equipment concentrations, and logistics nodes on September 3. Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported that Ukrainian forces conducted over 22 airstrikes and 400 artillery missions on September 3. These strikes reportedly hit a command and observation post of the Russian 205th separate motorized rifle Cossack brigade in Snihurivka (about 60km east of Mykolaiv City near the Kherson-Mykolaiv Oblast border), a Russian pontoon crossing near Kozatske (about 55km east of Kherson City and across the Dnipro River from Nova Kakhovka), three ammunition warehouses throughout the Kherson and Beryslav districts, and two ammunition supply points in unspecified locations.[12] The Ukrainian General Staff also noted that Ukrainian aircraft conducted over 40 sorties to support ground elements that destroyed an unspecified number of Russian command and control points, ammunition warehouses, logistical support systems, and areas of concentrated manpower.[13] The Ukrainian General Staff notably posted footage of Ukrainian Bayraktar TB2s destroying Russian T-72 tanks in an unspecified location along the Southern Axis, which may be indicative of overall insufficient Russian air defense capabilities in Kherson Oblast.[14]

Social media footage from residents of Kherson Oblast provides visual evidence of Ukrainian strikes in western and central Kherson Oblast. Geolocated footage shows the aftermath of a Ukrainian strike on the “Lost World” hotel and sports complex in Kherson City on September 3.[15] Ukrainian sources claimed that the complex belonged to the Russian-backed head of the Kherson occupation administration, Volodymyr Saldo.[16] The Ukrainian General Staff noted on September 2 that the Russian company that was based in the ”Lost World” sports complex previously looted the property and fled to occupied Crimea.[17] Elements of the Russian-backed occupation regime likely used the ”Lost World” complex as some sort of headquarters. Local residents additionally posted footage of the aftermath of a Ukrainian strike on a Russian ammunition depot in Oleshky, about 8km southeast of Kherson City across the Dnipro River.[18] Geolocated footage also shows a destroyed Russian Pantsir-S1 air defense system in Oleshky.[19] Social media footage of explosions in Nova Kakhovka (55km east of Kherson City) supports satellite imagery from September 2 depicting that the Nova Khakovka dam bridge has partially collapsed due to Ukrainian strikes.[20] The satellite imagery shows a roughly 20m-by-9m segment of the bridge has fallen into the river, which has likely rendered this section of the dam bridge inoperable (see below image).[21]

[Imagery courtesy of Planet Labs PBC]

Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces are fighting in three distinct directions as of September 3—northwest of Kherson City along the Kherson-Mykolaiv Oblast border; in western Kherson Oblast near the Inhulets River along the Kherson-Mykolaiv border; and in northern Kherson Oblast south of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border.[22] ISW cannot independently confirm whether Ukrainian forces are fighting in these areas.

Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian troops attempted advances in the Posad Pokrovske area, about 25km northwest of Kherson City near the Mykolaiv Oblast border. One Russian source reported that Ukrainian troops are accumulating equipment in Posad Pokrovske and taking up defensive positions in Myrne and Lyubomirivka, just east of Posad Pokrovske.[23] Another Russian source reported that Russian forces destroyed a Ukrainian armored convoy that attempted to break through Russian defensive lines between Oleksandrivka and Tavriiske, just west of Posad Pokrovske.[24] Footage posted to social media on September 3 also indicates that Ukrainian troops may have advanced into areas near Myroliubivka, about 5km south of Posad Pokrovske.[25] Several Russian sources also reported that Ukrainian troops attempted to advance in northern Kherson near the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border around Vysokopillya, Olhyne, Petrivka, Novorontsovka, and Osokorivka.[26] Several prominent Russian milbloggers amplified claims that Ukrainian forces broke through Russian defensive lines in Ternivka (16km northeast of Snihurivka), crossed the Inhulets River, and took control of Blahodativka.[27] A Russian milblogger also claimed that Ukrainian troops retreated from previously captured positions in Bezimenne and Shchaslyve to Sukhyi Stavok, directly southeast of Blahodativka, and that Kostromka (just southeast of Sukhyi Stavok) remains a contested ”grey zone.”[28]

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) continued to claim that Ukrainian forces have failed to establish positions along the Kherson-Mykolaiv border.[29] The Russian MoD stated that Russian troops are continuing to inflict damage on Ukrainian troops and equipment and that Ukrainian losses are causing Ukrainian troops to desert in increasing numbers.[30] The Russian MoD also claimed that Russian air defense is successful in intercepting Ukrainian missiles, shells, and attempted strikes over various areas of the Southern Axis.[31]

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because those 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 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.

Ukrainian Counteroffensives
Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and two supporting efforts);
Russian Subordinate Main Effort- Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
Russian Supporting Effort 1- Kharkiv City
Russian Supporting Effort 2- Southern Axis
Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
Activities in Russian-occupied Areas

Russian Main Effort- Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort- Southern Kharkiv and Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Note: We have revised our organization of Russian lines of effort to include Russian operations in eastern Zaporizhia Oblast as part of the Donetsk Oblast effort due to recently observed force allocations indicating the Russian grouping east of Hulyaipole, previously grouped with the Southern Axis, will support efforts southwest of Donetsk City.

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks along the Izyum-Slovyansk axis on September 3 and conducted routine shelling in this area.[32] Russian forces likely did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks toward Siversk on September 3 and continued routine artillery strikes on the town and surrounding settlements.[33] Russian sources claimed that Russian and proxy troops, including elements of the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) 4th Brigade, actively attacked Siversk under the cover of air bombardments and artillery support.[34] However, ISW cannot independently confirm the veracity of the claimed footage, and Russian forces have not conducted confirmed ground attacks toward Siversk over the last week.

Russian forces continued ground attacks northeast and south of Bakhmut on September 3. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops attacked near Vesela Dolyna (5km southeast of Bakhmut), Kodema (13km southeast of Bakhmut), and Zaitseve (8km southeast of Bakhmut).[35] Russian and proxy forces continued offensive operations northeast of Bakhmut and reportedly attempted to advance around Soledar (10km northeast of Bakhmut).[36]

Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks near the northern and southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City on September 3. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops attempted to advance from Novobakhmutivka (about 15km north of the outskirts of Donetsk City) and attacked around Avdiivka (about 10km north of the outskirts of Donetsk City).[37] Russian troops, including elements of the 42nd Guards Motorized Rifle Division, reportedly conducted ground attacks in Marinka, directly on the southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City.[38] Russian troops continued routine artillery strikes along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City frontline.[39]

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks southwest of Donetsk City or in eastern Zaporizhia Oblast on September 3 and continued routine artillery strikes in these areas.[40]

Supporting Effort #1- Kharkiv City (Russian objective: Defend ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Izyum and prevent Ukrainian forces from reaching the Russian border)

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks in northeastern Kharkiv Oblast on September 3 and continued routine shelling of Kharkiv City and surrounding areas.[41]

Supporting Effort #2- Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground assaults along the frontline in Zaporizhia Oblast, west of Hulyaipole, and continued routine shelling along the line of contact on September 3.[42] The Russian Defense Ministry (MoD) claimed that Russian forces struck a Ukrainian ammunition depot in Orikhiv, roughly 64km southeast of Zaporizhzhia City.[43]

Ukrainian forces are likely conducting localized attacks along the line of contact west of Hulyaipole to disrupt Russian force deployments. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces are attacking Russian forces’ positions via unspecified means and in unspecified locations along the frontline.[44] The current Ukrainian policy of operational silence about counteroffensive actions in Kherson Oblast may be limiting Ukrainian reporting about offensive actions along the Zaporizhia Oblast frontline as well. A Russian source reported that Ukrainian forces have conducted daily reconnaissance-in-force operations against Russian positions in Nesteryanka (10km southwest of Orikhiv) since August 31 and are heavily shelling the surrounding area, but ISW cannot confirm these reports.[45] Ukrainian forces struck the Melitopol airfield again on September 3.[46]

The Russian MoD claimed (likely falsely) that Ukrainian forces attempted to storm the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) for the second time on September 2.[47] The Russian MoD claimed that 250 Ukrainian special forces and foreign personnel attempted to land at positions near Enerhodar but that Russian aviation and artillery pushed back the Ukrainian forces to the north bank of the Kakhovka reservoir.[48] Russian sources also published an interview of a Russian soldier and pictures of a drone and warhead as evidence of Ukrainian attacks on the ZNPP, but such evidence is inconclusive and easily staged.[49] Ukrainian forces remain unlikely to launch a tactical and unsupported attack against the ZNPP, and Russian forces are likely stepping up information operations to portray Ukrainian threats to the nuclear plant. Russian officials and milbloggers amplified claims on September 3 that Ukrainian forces are preparing for chemical or biological attacks in Ukraine alongside the claims of Ukrainian attacks on the ZNPP.[50] Russian war correspondent Rostislav Zhuravlev reported that RIA Novosti provided its journalists with gas masks a month prior in case of a chemical attack.[51] The Kremlin is likely presenting these narratives of nuclear and biochemical provocations in southern Ukraine together to try to degrade Western trust and aid to Ukraine.

Russian forces continued targeting rear areas in Mykolaiv Oblast on September 3. Ukrainian sources reported that Russian forces conducted an airstrike on a logistics warehouse in an unspecified area of Mykolaiv Oblast.[52] The Russian MoD reported that Russian forces struck an ammunition depot in Voznesensk, Mykolaiv Oblast, roughly 88km northwest of Mykolaiv City.[53]

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

Russian federal subjects (regions) are continuing to recruit, form, and deploy volunteer battalions to Ukraine. Local media reported that the Orenburg Oblast-based “Ermak” Cossack volunteer battalion deployed to a final staging area near the border with Ukraine on September 2.[54] Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov announced that the Chechen 78th Motorized Rifle Regiment (subordinate to the Southern Military District’s 42nd Motorized Rifle Division) completed its formation on September 3.[55]

Russian authorities are reportedly increasingly recruiting employees of Russian state-owned entities for “volunteer” military service in Ukraine. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on August 3 that the Kremlin provided new unspecified norms to Russian state companies to facilitate the selection of “volunteers” and ordered the Russian Railways company to generate up to 10,000 new candidates for short-term military service contracts among its civilian employees.[56] These efforts represent further attempts by Russian authorities to use existing structures to pressure Russians into signing short-term contracts without having to carry out general mobilization.

Russian authorities are also continuing to recruit volunteers from unconventional sources to circumvent conducting general mobilization. Russian outlet Vot Tak reported on September 1 that Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin and founder Dmitry Utkin personally visited penal colonies in Rostov and Ivano Oblasts on unspecified dates and recruited approximately 1000 prisoners for the war in Ukraine.[57]Vot Tak added that Prigozhin plans to create a special unit for low-status citizens from Russian prisons. Russian news source The Insider reported on September 2 that a former Russian prisoner sentenced to 25 years for gang activity, including five murders, posthumously received high Russian and Luhansk/Donetsk Peoples’ Republics honors for military service in Ukraine.[58] Ukrainian forces have previously captured former Russian convicts pressed into military service.[59] Russian news organization Rotunda reported that a homeless shelter in Saint Petersburg received requests from recruiters to distribute recruitment pamphlets.[60] Rotunda further cited messages from an unspecified Ministry of Defense recruitment group that they would consider new contracts for servicemembers previously dismissed from the army due to breach of contract.[61]

Ukrainian special forces are reportedly increasingly able to conduct minor raids across the border into Russia, possibly disrupting Russian logistics and forcing Russian forces to redeploy to secure the border. Social media footage on September 2 depicted a Ukrainian raid into Russia from Sumy Oblast, Ukraine, to lay mines and destroy an MDK-3 trench digger.[62] One post claimed that Ukrainian forces can “come and go as they please” across the border, though this is almost certainly an exaggeration and Ukrainian cross-border raids likely remain limited.[63] Western news outlets first reported in late June that Ukrainian special forces began conducting operations in Russian territory.[64]

Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of occupied areas; set conditions for potential annexation into the Russian Federation or some other future political arrangement of Moscow’s choosing)

Administration officials in Russian proxy republics continue to struggle with the provision of basic administrative necessities in occupied areas. Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Head Denis Pushilin fired an inspector and severely reprimanded the head of Kirovskyi District in Donetsk City on September 3 due to their failure to solve ongoing water supply problems in Kirovskyi District.[65] DNR authorities have previously blamed Ukrainian shelling for damaging or cutting power to water filtration plants.[66] Russian and proxy authorities have faced repeated difficulties supplying water to occupied Ukrainian territory, but the degradation of water supplies in Donetsk City itself, which Russian forces have occupied for eight years, indicates mounting challenges.

Russian occupation authorities are continuing to prepare for annexation referenda. Ukrainian Kherson Oblast Head Yaroslav Yanushevich stated that occupation authorities are going door-to-door in residential areas in Velyka Lepetykha, Kherson Oblast (on the left bank of the Dnipro River), and forcing civilians to fill out questionnaires to obtain a Russian passport.[67] Russian authorities can use civilian data to monitor dissent and coerce cooperation with the occupation governments.[68] The occupation Election Commission of Zaporizhia Oblast announced that it received samples of voting equipment, including voting booths and transparent ballot boxes, to further prepare for the Zaporizhia Oblast annexation referendum.[69] Russian occupation authorities are however unlikely to be able to carry out large-scale referenda despite ongoing preparations, as ISW has previously assessed.[70]

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.

[3] https://apostrophe dot ua/ua/news/world/ex-ussr/2022-09-03/v-moskve-zaderzhan-izvestnyj-propagandist-smi-ozvuchili-prichinu/278438; https://focus dot ua/world/527931-prishel-pyanyy-v-gostinicu-rossmi-pishut-o-zaderzhanii-propagandista-pegova-v-moskve; https://t.me/wargonzo/8098; https://www.kommersant dot ru/doc/5546296

[4] https://twitter.com/VeraVanHorne/status/642192115250933760; https://twi... ru/russia/374795

[54] https://orenburg dot media/?p=151511

[57] https://vot-tak dot tv/novosti/01-09-2022-prigozhin-verbuet-arestantov/; https://t.me/istories_media/1426

[66] https://radiosputnik.ria dot ru/20220219/obstrel-1773751845.html; https://ria dot ru/20220603/gorlovka-1792967183.html; https://ria dot `ru/20220705/donetsk-1800349472.html

understandingwar.org

2. Don’t Believe the Generals

I do strongly agree with the point that we should not blame operational and tactical failures on politics at home. No military professional should be blaming military failures on politics. That said, the definition of military victory is achieving the political object. Did we know the political objective and did we have a military strategy and supporting campaign plans to achieve the political object?

Excerpts:

Defeat is a bitter pill for any army to swallow. And unfortunately, blaming operational and tactical failures on politics at home—a stab in the back—is a long and dangerous tradition: You can find Iraq and Vietnam versions of that sardonic T-shirt. Plenty of blame can be spread around for America’s defeat in its longest foreign war. But don’t let the generals fool you: We were losing when they left.

Don’t Believe the Generals

The Atlantic · by Gil Barndollar, Jason Dempsey · September 2, 2022

A T-shirt that was popular with veterans for much of America’s nearly 20-year war in Afghanistan showed a helicopter in flight with the caption We Were Winning When I Left. U.S. generals seem to be the only ones who didn’t get the joke. On the first anniversary of our botched withdrawal, the military leaders most responsible for America’s disastrous outcome in Afghanistan have continued to loudly insist that the war was winnable when they were in charge, and that responsibility for the debacle must lie with someone else.

Retired Generals Frank McKenzie and Joseph Votel, the last two commanders of U.S. Central Command, which includes Afghanistan, recently made the case that America should have stayed indefinitely, arguing that the pullout was a mistake and that America could have defended its interests—and kept the Taliban at bay—with a small residual force of a few thousand soldiers. And in The Atlantic, the retired general and former CIA director David Petraeus, who commanded the war in Afghanistan after presiding over the surge that helped bring temporary stability to Iraq, wrote that more than a decade ago “we had finally established the right big ideas and overarching strategy.” But the problem, he maintained, was that America did not have the stomach for a “sustained, generational commitment.”

A sustained, generational commitment? The United States spent more than $2 trillion in Afghanistan and sacrificed the lives of 2,461 servicepeople over those two decades. And in that time, the top brass mostly got their way. President Barack Obama caved to his generals, agreeing to a substantial troop surge in a war he was trying to end. President Donald Trump did the same on a smaller scale, entering office on a promise to end the war but eventually agreeing to a “mini-surge” and deferring a full withdrawal to his successor.

From the magazine: My escape from Afghanistan

The outcome of America’s commitment was an Afghan government and military that couldn’t hold out long enough even for U.S. forces to leave with a semblance of dignity. The “right big ideas” deployed by a generation of generals proved to be empty slogans: “government in a box,” “money as a weapons system,” “ink spots.” All of these were tactical approaches or overly simplistic frameworks that ignored the nuances of Afghan politics and the reality of attempting to modernize a fractured country that was mired in corruption and a continuing civil war.

This myth of a sustainable stalemate is contradicted by a mountain of evidence and experience. U.S. casualties in the Afghan War’s last years remained low because of the Doha Agreement, whatever its flaws. The Kabul government’s forces that had to fight and win the war were losing “gradually and then suddenly,” as Ernest Hemingway described bankruptcy.

By 2017, Afghan army and police recruiting began to dry up, a result of high casualties, corruption, and mistreatment, as well as successful Taliban propaganda that capitalized on those failures. Later that year, the U.S. government classified Afghan security forces’ size and stopped collecting district stability data, a fraught but valuable metric of security. These were not the hallmarks of a winning campaign. General McKenzie admitted to the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2018 that Afghan security forces were suffering unsustainable attrition. And when Afghan forces failed in battle with the tools and training we had given them, the answer from the generals was not to shift our approach but always to ask for more time and more money.

We both first deployed to Afghanistan more than a decade ago; our combined experience in the war covers the period from 2009 to 2014. What became clear during those deployments was that the war was a fundamentally doomed endeavor. Our efforts to build a national Afghan army in the image of our own military were not only ineffective; they also made the Afghan government’s crisis of legitimacy worse. We both served alongside a range of Afghan government forces and saw firsthand how the model we were imposing on their military simply did not fit the country we were fighting in.

In June 2011, a full decade before last year’s total withdrawal, President Obama announced a major troop reduction in Afghanistan and a future “responsible end” to the war. Trump successfully campaigned in 2016 on a pullout promise; as president, he signed the February 2020 Doha Agreement that would deliver just that. President Joe Biden ordered an Afghanistan policy review, and then chose to delay the withdrawal but ultimately honor the Doha terms.

Read: The Afghanistan withdrawal: a potential disaster in the making

In the face of all these signals that the U.S. intervention was coming to an end, America’s generals seemed to think they could keep a small war in Afghanistan going forever. If the war didn’t end, hard questions about the fundamental flaws in execution never had to be acknowledged. U.S. military leaders could continue to pretend that they had achieved something in the country.

As for the inevitable chaos of the withdrawal itself, the U.S. State Department deserves most of the blame for the shameful condition of the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa program, which prevented tens of thousands of our Afghan partners from getting out of the country safely, and the White House must own some final operational and timing decisions in Kabul. But the bulk of the blame for the failures of analysis, planning, and execution still rests on the shoulders of our military and its leaders. They built a house of cards in Afghanistan. As years of reporting and research have shown, whether it would come crashing down was never in doubt; it was only a matter of when and how.

Defeat is a bitter pill for any army to swallow. And unfortunately, blaming operational and tactical failures on politics at home—a stab in the back—is a long and dangerous tradition: You can find Iraq and Vietnam versions of that sardonic T-shirt. Plenty of blame can be spread around for America’s defeat in its longest foreign war. But don’t let the generals fool you: We were losing when they left.

Gil Barndollar is a senior fellow at Defense Priorities, a think tank specializing in military and strategic issues. He served in Afghanistan as a U.S. Marine in 2011–12 and 2013–14.

Jason Dempsey is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank specializing in defense and national-security issues. He served in the U.S. Army in Afghanistan in 2009 and 2012–13.

The Atlantic · by Gil Barndollar, Jason Dempsey · September 2, 2022

3. AUKUS and the Evolution of Special Operations for Great-Power Competition

I just wrote 2000 words on this very topic (title: AUKUS Special Operations Forces in Strategic Competition, Integrated Deterrence, and Campaigning) that should be published later this month for an AUKUS compendium.

Excerpt:

Finally, SFA—considered SOF-adjacent during the War on Terror but increasingly important under GPC—offers opportunities under AUKUS. U.S. and UK SFABs have not operated together on deployments, while Australia’s unique tradition has resulted in a differing approach. Collaboration on training, technology, and doctrine among the partners’ SFA organizations could accelerate adaptation.

My conclusion:

AUKUS is a modern security partnership well suited to meet the interests of the three nations. Although it is currently focused on information sharing and advanced technology it provides the framework and opportunity to expand the scope to look at the security challenges of the gray zone and Chinese malign activities. AUKUS SOF can play a part in strategic competition and help mitigate the damage China and others can do to the region and the international community. The SOF capabilities could be effectively employed to maximize their contributions to integrated deterrence. An AUKUS SOF campaign could contribute to the trilateral security interests of AUKUS. Establishing an AUKUS SOF working group is necessary to explore the capabilities and possibilities.

AUKUS and the Evolution of Special Operations for Great-Power Competition - Security & Defence PLuS Alliance

WRITTEN BY DAVID KILCULLEN

securityanddefenceplus.plusalliance.org · by Douglas Guilfoyle

Introduction

Special operations (SO) have emerged as an important area of quiet collaboration since the trilateral AUKUS pact was announced in September 2021. Special operations forces (SOF) were central to the War on Terror, with Australian, British, and American SOF cooperating closely in Iraq and Afghanistan. But neutralizing non-state armed groups differs dramatically from great-power competition (GPC) against adversaries like Russia and China. As a result, SOF in all three nations have been evolving toward new capabilities for GPC. AUKUS offers opportunities to accelerate this adaptation, both for SOF and SOF-adjacent assets such as amphibious and airborne forces and security force assistance troops. This essay explores the evolution of Australian, British, and American SO from the War on Terror toward GPC and examines how AUKUS can help reorient SOF to the new environment.

Special Operations in the War on Terror

During the War on Terror, SOF performed three main missions. The first—seen during the initial invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the “awakening” in Iraq in 2007, and the campaign against the Islamic State in 2015-19—was what American and British doctrine calls unconventional warfare (UW) and Australians call special warfare (SW). This employed SOF teams to organize, train, advise, and assist guerrillas in enemy-controlled terrain. UW/SW requires independent operators able to function with minimal support, individual initiative and resilience, deep area knowledge, and the cultural and language skills to survive alone, for lengthy periods, in enemy-controlled terrain. It enabled several successes in the War on Terror but was not the day-to-day task for most SOF.

The second mission was security force assistance (SFA). Throughout Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, SOF advisors helped build partner forces’ capacity for counterterrorism or stabilization. SFA mostly involved training conventional forces in friendly-controlled or contested terrain, with access to extensive support; it gradually became seen as SOF-adjacent rather than a core SOF task. Australia, with a long tradition of SFA, selected training teams from a mix of conventional and SOF organizations, deploying them to Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Philippines. British and U.S. forces created Security Force Assistance Brigades (SFABs), specialized units that gradually took over most SFA, freeing SOF for higher-end tasks.

The most demanding task was direct action (DA)—killing or capturing terrorists. DA employed specialized assault teams supported by an immense intelligence, surveillance, targeting, aviation, and logistics infrastructure. It involved short-duration but intense assaults supported by drones and combat aircraft. Over time, DA evolved into an integrated cycle, servicing target lists at industrial scale around the clock. Individual combat skills were critical in this context, initiative and cultural/language skills less so; the individual operator was, in effect, a highly trained cog in a large, well-oiled machine. DA was extremely dangerous and technically demanding. Understandably, given its difficulty, high risk, and strategic prominence, DA came to absorb the bulk of effort, resourcing, and attention from SOF.

The pressure to excel at these three mission sets—particularly DA—drove SOF adaptation during the first two decades of the 21st century. SOF became fungible: an Australian Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) troop or Commando platoon, for example, would receive identical tasking to—and thus needed to be functionally interchangeable with—a U.S. Navy SEAL platoon or British Special Air Service (SAS) troop. National and service-specific characteristics that differentiated SOF units at the start of the war were flattened out by the need to perform similar, repetitive missions in the same environment. That environment—with exceptions—was land-based, austere, located in the developing world, against adversaries who lacked air and naval forces, long-range fires, electronic warfare, armoured vehicles, or similar high-end capabilities.

SO for Great-Power Competition

Even before large-scale combat operations in the War on Terror began to wind down with the territorial defeat of the Islamic State’s “caliphate” in 2019, SOF in the AUKUS nations (and other allies) had started reorienting to the emerging era of GPC. Initial adaptations focused on updating SOF organization, tactics, doctrine, and technologies for a wider range of environments, more capable adversaries, and new missions. SOF leaders recognised that counterterrorism was not going away; rather, GPC would coexist alongside UW/SW, SFA, DA, and enduring tasks such as hostage rescue and countering weapons of mass destruction.

It soon became clear, however, that the fundamental adaptation needed was a mindset shift. During the War on Terror, SOF had often been tactically offensive but strategically defensive. They dominated the battlefield through offensive maneuver, rarely encountering adversaries able to match them in combat power. But strategically, the purpose of such operations was defensive, a holding action to allow other means—diplomatic, political, and economic—to address the underlying issues driving terrorism. Despite (or perhaps because of) SOF’s tactical excellence in suppressing terrorism, strategic efforts to address its causes lagged and ultimately failed—fostering today’s “forever wars” of persistent, ubiquitous low-level terrorist threat.

By contrast, in GPC, tactical actions are mostly defensive—shoring up resilience to foreign interference, supporting whole-of-nation defense, assisting government-sponsored resistance movements to deter invasion, cyber-defence and counterinfluence. But at the strategic level, Western posture is often offensive in effect if not intent, as seen in NATO’s encroachment on Russia’s “red lines” in Moscow’s near abroad, or freedom-of-navigation operations in Beijing’s claimed sphere of influence in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait. Thus, SOF frequently find themselves conducting long-range, long-duration, dispersed, stealthy missions, in or near the territory of adversaries able to generate local tactical overmatch, in a reversal of the last 20 years.

Since adversaries in GPC are nuclear-armed great powers with capable conventional military forces, most competition takes place in the “gray zone” (in British parlance, sub-threshold), below the level of overt armed conflict but beyond normal peacetime statecraft. “Cross-domain coercion” is the norm, across multiple simultaneous categories of competition. SOF are the force of choice for gray zone tasks, but they require new capabilities and, most importantly, need to shed the War on Terror mindset; GPC involves not only countering threats but also becoming the threat, conducting offensive or disruptive gray zone activities against high-end adversaries.

In this setting, DA is less frequent, while SFA is increasingly important, and variations on UW/SW, including support to resistance (STR), increasingly rely on remote-access technologies to support partners at a distance using electronic means. Against great-power adversaries with advanced cyberwarfare, electronic attack, and signals intelligence capabilities, such approaches require updating. Likewise, SOF reliance on space-based systems such as GPS, satellite communications, and overhead sensing is problematic against adversaries whose space-warfare and counterspace capabilities match or exceed our own.

Old-school approaches (HF Morse Code communications, direction-finding via LORAN-C, or celestial navigation) are part of the solution, but new technologies—including LiDAR targeting, magnetometer-based navigation, tropospheric scatter communications, or quantum entanglement for encryption—are also critical. SOF today are in an adaptation race against adversaries whose technology acquisition ecosystems are much more agile than our own. Likewise, when adversaries have hypersonic missiles, loitering munitions, and capable air forces, SOF commanders who “never had to look up because the U.S. always maintained air superiority” now need agile air defense, counter-drone, counter-surveillance, and cyberdefense tools to survive.

Implications of AUKUS

Against this background, AUKUS offers opportunities for accelerated adaptation and economies of scale for SOF and SOF-adjacent forces. Maritime and littoral SOF are at a premium in GPC, particularly in the Indo-Pacific theater, with its vast oceanic distances and complex coastal hydrography. AUKUS-driven partnership offers SOF innovation in autonomous systems, underwater and surface technologies, maritime raiding, long-range reconnaissance, and non-standard maritime and aviation operations. In each category, one or more of the AUKUS partners is better-resourced or further along than the others, so that pooling research efforts could accelerate adaptation. Such cooperation could also help AUKUS partners achieve the goal of being “interchangeable” rather than merely interoperable, creating the opportunity to “operate seamlessly together, at speed”—a traditional SOF capability.

The U.S. SOFWERX and Australia’s equivalent organization offer lessons that could be hugely useful for the UK’s recently-created Defence BattleLab. Science and technology collaboration among AUKUS partners is longstanding, but increased research funding—and the associated industrial innovation policies and critical technology mapping—offers opportunities for joint specialized research on SO.

Doctrinally, U.S. and European partners have been developing a Resistance Operating Concept and manuals for GPC, refining them over multiple training cycles, with SOF training alongside territorial defense forces for STR in enemy-occupied terrain. While the U.S. does not officially have a presence in Ukraine, the war there has offered a dose of reality on the feasibility of STR techniques, enabling rapid improvement. Although Australia and the UK do not formally include STR as a core SOF task, both have a long tradition of such operations, making joint STR doctrine feasible under AUKUS. Indo-Pacific partners have conducted STR workshops with U.S. and European SOF, and adapting approaches from the European theater to local conditions would likewise make sense for Australia.

SOF-adjacent capabilities also offer scope innovation. The UK’s Future Commando Force (FCF) reorganized and re-equipped Royal Marines Commandos for the more threatening, dispersed, and connected environment of GPC, resulting in agile SO-capable commando units and offering lessons for the United States Marine Corps (USMC) and Australian Amphibious Force. Indeed, Australia’s specialized amphibious unit, the 2nd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (2RAR), with its associated supporting assets, looks and operates very similarly to an FCF-adapted Royal Marines Commando. 45 Commando Royal Marines, an FCF-adapted unit, performed strikingly well in exercises with the USMC in 2021, suggesting that cross-pollination among AUKUS partners could offer significant benefits for tactical innovation.

Notably, the Royal Navy possesses insufficient sealift to deploy all available Royal Marines Commandos, whereas Australia currently fields one battalion-sized amphibious unit but has two landing helicopter dock (LHD) amphibious assault ships, each capable of embarking a battalion group. There is an obvious opportunity here for Royal Marines Commandos to operate with 2RAR and the Royal Australian Navy’s amphibious group—perhaps similarly to the USMC’s rotational deployments to the northern Australian city of Darwin.

In terms of airborne capability, both the UK and U.S. maintain rapidly deployable parachute and helicopter-delivered forces—two divisions in the U.S. and one brigade in the UK; Australia retired its non-SOF airborne battlegroup more than a decade ago, with only SASR and Commando units currently practicing airborne insertion. The feasibility of opposed parachute assault in modern warfare is debated, and the opening days of the Ukraine war offered new material for that debate. Still, airborne assets can rapidly insert large forces into a threatened area, over a strategic distance, as part of deterrence or during pre-combat operations. This has clear relevance to GPC, and would be a useful focus under AUKUS.

Finally, SFA—considered SOF-adjacent during the War on Terror but increasingly important under GPC—offers opportunities under AUKUS. U.S. and UK SFABs have not operated together on deployments, while Australia’s unique tradition has resulted in a differing approach. Collaboration on training, technology, and doctrine among the partners’ SFA organizations could accelerate adaptation.

Conclusion

AUKUS is in its infancy, but the pact offers clear opportunities to increase each partner’s speed, agility, and efficiency in adapting to GPC. From a focus on unconventional/special warfare, security force assistance, and direct action during the War on Terror, SOF from each AUKUS partner are adapting to new missions, more dangerous adversaries, and a much more challenging and complex environment. While many War on Terror missions will remain alongside the new tasks of gray zone competition and cross-domain coercion against great-power adversaries, there are opportunities to accelerate adaptation through collaboration among Australian, British, and American SOF. Such collaboration will likely never receive the prominence afforded to efforts like the nuclear submarine program, and rightly so. But quietly, behind the scenes, it may prove equally important.

About the Author

David Kilcullen

Dr. David Kilcullen is Professor of International and Political Studies at the University of New South Wales, and Professor of Practice in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. A former soldier, diplomat, and scholar of guerrilla warfare, terrorism, urbanisation and the future of conflict, he served 25 years for the Australian and United States governments. He heads the Future Operations Research Group at UNSW Canberra, and teaches Masters courses on contemporary strategy, special operations, urban warfare and military innovation and adaptation at UNSW and ASU.

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securityanddefenceplus.plusalliance.org · by Douglas Guilfoyle

4. Taiwanese tycoon to fund 'civilian warriors' to defend against invasion

A whole of society effort. A resistance operating concept with Taiwanese characteristics.

Excerpts:

Tsao, who was once reported to be worth £2.3 billion ($4.3b), had previously taken Singaporean citizenship, but last month said he had reinstated his Taiwanese passport.

"The people of Taiwan need a morale boost... so I gave up my Singaporean citizenship and came back here to be with everyone," he said, adding that he had decided to remain in Taiwan until his death.

"The first way [I could die] is an illness, which is beyond my control," Tsao said. "The second is dying laughing while watching the fall of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party]."

The CCP claims Taiwan as its own territory even though it has never ruled there, and has threatened to invade if the island does not agree to be annexed.

Taiwanese tycoon to fund 'civilian warriors' to defend against invasion

Daily Telegraph UK

By Nicola Smith

2 Sep, 2022 08:00 PM

3 mins to read

nzherald.co.nz · by Nicola Smith

One of Taiwan's richest tycoons has pledged to fund a force of "civilian warriors" and marksmen to help repel a possible Chinese invasion.

Robert Tsao, 75, who founded the chip maker United Microelectronics Corp (UMC), wore a helmet and bulletproof vest as he announced in Taipei that he was willing to privately fund two civilian defence training programmes costing one billion Taiwanese dollars ($52 million).

He said that £17 million ($32m) of that would be used to train three million "civilian warriors" over three years, while £11 million ($20m) would help train up expert marksmen.

Tsao, who was once an ardent supporter of the peaceful unification of Taiwan with China, told Radio Free Asia he had experienced a change of heart after witnessing the crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong during the 2019 protests.

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VIDEO: Taiwan businessman hopes to repel China with civilian force

A Taiwanese microchip tycoon unveils plans to train more than three million "civilian warriors" to help defend the island against a potential Chinese invasion, donating NT$1 billion ($33m) of his own money pic.twitter.com/BmC5QflGah

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) September 1, 2022

Tsao said he had been particularly disturbed by an incident at Yuen Long metro station when pro-China thugs ruthlessly beat passengers while the police appeared to delay their response.

Tsao, who was once reported to be worth £2.3 billion ($4.3b), had previously taken Singaporean citizenship, but last month said he had reinstated his Taiwanese passport.

"The people of Taiwan need a morale boost... so I gave up my Singaporean citizenship and came back here to be with everyone," he said, adding that he had decided to remain in Taiwan until his death.

"The first way [I could die] is an illness, which is beyond my control," Tsao said. "The second is dying laughing while watching the fall of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party]."

The CCP claims Taiwan as its own territory even though it has never ruled there, and has threatened to invade if the island does not agree to be annexed.

In recent months, Beijing has stepped up aggressive military drills around the democratic island nation, prompting urgent debate about how Taiwan can best defend itself, including whether it should create a more robust civil defence force.

Last month, Tsao offered to donate three billion Taiwanese dollars to bolster the island's defences.

Taiwan's Government has said it will evaluate whether his plans are feasible.

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UMC distanced itself from its founder, emphasising that he had retired and now had "nothing to do with UMC".

nzherald.co.nz · by Nicola Smith

5. US hanging fire on Australia’s nuclear subs

Wasn't this the centerpiece of AUKUS?

US hanging fire on Australia’s nuclear subs

High-ranking US naval official points to shipyard and labor constraints that could push delivery well beyond 2030

asiatimes.com · by Gabriel Honrada · September 2, 2022

In the latest blow to Australia’s ambitious plans to acquire nuclear-powered submarines, overstretched US and UK shipyards may not be able to supply Canberra with the boats within the decade as outlined in the three sides’ AUKUS agreement, according to reports in late August.

At a recent Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies seminar, US Navy Rear Admiral Scott Pappano was asked if the AUKUS arrangement to supply Australia with nuclear subs would burden or draw crucial resources away from the US’ own sub-building plans.

“If you are asking my opinion, if we were going to add additional submarine construction to our industrial base, that would be detrimental to us right now without significant investment to provide additional capacity, capability to do that,” said Pappano, emphasizing that the same capacity situation exists in the UK.

His statements contrast with earlier comments made by Australian opposition leader and former defense minister Peter Dutton this June saying that the US could provide the first two nuclear subs by 2030, without providing material evidence such a timeline was in place.

In those comments made on national television, Dutton expressed confidence that the US would pull out all the stops to help Australia acquire nuclear submarines. Pappano’s statements, however, would appear to shoot down the possibility of such an early delivery.

Former Australian Defense Minister Peter Dutton has defended the AUKUS deal. Photo: AFP / Mandel Ngan

Pappano mentioned workforce issues as a drag factor, noting that securing skilled naval shipyard workers such as casters and molders is increasingly difficult as many of these laborers have shifted from manufacturing to services.

A 2017 study by RAND mentions declining levels of workforce experience in US shipyards, noting productivity drops when experienced workers are replaced with less-experienced ones.

The study also says aging US nuclear subs and increased workloads on the US carrier fleet have caused more work in fewer maintenance periods, resulting in less frequent availabilities for skilled workers and inefficiencies in project execution.

Such challenges will no doubt affect how fast the US may be able to supply nuclear subs to Australia.

Furthermore, an August 2022 report from the US Congressional Research Service (CRS) shows that the US is struggling to fulfill its own nuclear submarine requirements.

The report states that the US Virginia-class nuclear submarine program has experienced “cost growth” in its early stages and is now suffering from spare parts shortages, maintenance delays and concerns about shipyards’ capacity to deliver.

Apart from workforce issues, Pappano pointed out that Australia’s plan to acquire nuclear submarines may put the US’ own nuclear submarine program at risk. According to Pappano, US submarine production in fiscal 2025 is expected to be five times higher than in 2020.

The increase in workload includes doubling the production of Virginia-class subs to two boats a year and introducing the new Virginia Block V variant, which has a 25-meter midsection that can house 28 Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Moreover, the US is phasing out its aging Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines for the new Columbia class. The first boat is projected to enter service in 2027, with 12 Columbia subs slated to replace the 14 long-serving Ohio-class units, which first entered service in 1976.

The mass retirement of the Los Angeles- and Ohio-class submarines opens a dangerous underwater warfare capability gap, says Professor Tetsuo Kotani in a Nikkei news report.

He notes that as current US nuclear submarines enter mass retirement in the 2020s, the total number of boats will decline as production likely fails to catch up.

This delay will open a submarine capability gap starting in 2027 when China’s threat of invading Taiwan is believed to be at its peak. It is thus highly likely that the US will not allow Australia’s request for nuclear submarines to jeopardize its own defense requirements.

Despite that, Australia still has options to replace its long-serving and troubled Collins-class boats, whose issues include budget overruns, poor welding, excessive noise, unreliable engines, non-streamlined periscopes and obsolete combat systems.

Senior defense analyst Brent Sadler notes in a Nikkei report that added capital investments from Australia could boost the submarine supply base in the US, adding to US capabilities to supply nuclear submarines for AUKUS while not jeopardizing its own submarine program.

Asia Times has noted that Australia could revisit the idea of long-range conventional subs while waiting for nuclear ones.

Before announcing that it would acquire nuclear submarines under AUKUS, Australia had a previous agreement with French naval shipbuilder DCNS for 12 Barracuda Shortfin conventional submarines derived from the French Navy’s Barracuda-class nuclear submarines.

However, Australia canceled its agreement with DCNS due to technical, cost, systems compatibility, labor and construction timeline issues in favor of acquiring nuclear submarines from the US and UK.

But limitations in US and UK nuclear sub-building capabilities may force Australia to keep its Collins-class subs in service for much longer than previously planned.

The Australian Collins-class submarine, HMAS Rankin (SSK 78), enters Pearl Harbor for a port visit after completing exercises in the Pacific region. Photo: US. Navy / Seaman Ryan C. McGinley

As such, Australia may want to consider other large conventional boats such as derivatives of the Israeli Dakar-class or the South Korean KSS-III-class.

Australia may also consider using unmanned submarines to fill in its underwater warfare capability gaps until replacements for their Collins-class boats enter service.

Asia Times has reported on Australia’s efforts to develop unmanned submarines, which it can potentially deploy to cover chokepoints in the Lombok, Sunda and Makassar Straits, areas where its Collins-class boats and their planned crewed replacements will most likely operate.

In addition, Australia might acquire a second-hand UK Astute nuclear submarine instead of a US Virginia-class boat.

Defense News reports this month that Australian submarines are training alongside their UK counterparts aboard the newest Astute-class submarine, the HMS Anson, familiarizing the latter with the UK-made submarine’s systems.

The Defense News report mentions the UK has seven planned Astute-class boats, five already in service and two in advanced stages of construction slated to enter service in the mid-2020s, with a replacement already in the works.

asiatimes.com · by Gabriel Honrada · September 2, 2022

6. ATACMS: The Weapon Ukraine Could Hit Russia With from 186 Miles Away

ATACMS: The Weapon Ukraine Could Hit Russia With from 186 Miles Away

19fortyfive.com · by Steve Balestrieri · September 3, 2022

What Difference Would US ATACMS In Ukraine Make? Are They Already There? – The HIMARS missile system given to Ukraine in military aid packages by the United States has been used very effectively since its first appearance on the battlefield. As 19fortyfive reported earlier, US Army General Mark Hertling (ret) said that the HIMARS system had been a “game changer” against the Russian forces in the invasion of Ukraine.

Ukraine fires Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMLRS) from HIMARS, which have successfully targeted key Russian military targets such as command posts and ammunition depots. These GMLRS have a range of about 50 miles.

However, Kyiv has asked for the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), which has a range of about 186 miles.

But thus far, Washington has declined this request. “We don’t want to take steps that widen the conflict, and so some of the assurances that we’ve asked for in the context of these particular systems are mindful of that, of not wanting these systems to be used to attack Russian territory,” Colin Kahl, US undersecretary of defense said.

“We have provided them with hundreds and hundreds of these precision-guided systems, and the Ukrainians have been using them to extraordinary effect on the battlefield,” Kahl said.

“It’s our assessment that the most relevant munitions for the current fight are the GMLRS. We have prioritized getting the Ukrainians the GMLRS they need, not only to hold in the east but may generate some momentum elsewhere in the country.

General Characteristics of the ATACMS and Why Ukraine Wants Them:

The ATACMS performs the mission of giving the US military a weapon between conventional artillery, GMLRS missiles, and long-range ballistic and cruise missiles. While listed as a ballistic missile, that isn’t entirely accurate.

Although it travels on a ballistic arc, the ATACMS, on its downward trajectory, performs a series of rapid moves, turns, and course corrections that make it hard to track and harder to intercept.

The US Army characterizes the ATACMS as a maneuvering missile.

It can be fired from either the HIMARS or the M270 MLRS.

Mass: 3,690 pounds (1,670 kg)

Length: 13 feet (4.0 m)

Diameter: 24 inches (610 mm)

Maximum firing range: 190 mi (300 km)

Wingspan: 55 inches (1.4 m)

Flight ceiling: 160,000 ft (50 km)

Maximum speed: In excess of Mach 3 (0.6 mi/s; 1.0 km/s)

Guidance system: GPS-aided inertial navigation guidance

Russia Threatens Further Action If ATACMS Are Used:

In a July 20 interview, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that the territorial scope of Russia’s “special military operation” would expand if Ukraine received long-range weapons from the West. Lavrov highlighted the West’s provision of HIMARS artillery to Ukraine as a cause for this expansion. Lavrov’s assertation that if Ukraine got the ATACMS, this would necessitate Russia to expand the scope of its invasion.

A rocket fires from an HIMARS launcher during a live fire certification for A and B batteries, 3rd Battalion, 27th Field Artillery Regiment, 18th Fires Brigade (Airborne) Feb. 17, Fort Bragg, N.C.

One line of thought suggests that this would indicate that Russia might seek to push a further 300 kilometers into Ukrainian territory to negate the range of the ATACMS.

This follows the Moscow playbook where they quickly threaten an escalation if Washington were to send the long-range missiles to Kyiv.

Andrei Morochko, a spokesman for the so-called “People’s Militia” of the LNR, which is a proxy for Moscow, echoed Lavrov’s threats and stated that after the Russian capture of Lysychansk that Russia and its separatist proxies would need to advance 300 kilometers deeper into Ukrainian territory to “secure” its borders fully.

Do the Ukrainians Already Have ATACMS?

The recent events in Crimea have resulted in conflicting storylines by the Ukraine Defense Ministry. When the Saki airfield was heavily damaged, with at least nine aircraft destroyed, which was half the combat aircraft of the Black Sea Fleet’s 43rd Independent Naval Attack Aviation Regiment, a Ukrainian official said that a “device exclusively of Ukrainian manufacture was used,” leading many to believe it was a drone or perhaps a US Harpoon anti-ship missile.

Later, Ukrainian Defense Secretary Oleksii Reznikov said to the Washington Post that the attacks in Crimea resulted from a cadre of saboteurs, a “resistance force,” that were trained and led by Ukrainian Special Forces, targeting ammunition depots, fuel warehouses, and Russian command centers.

But several US special operators were convinced that this wasn’t sabotaged, citing the size of the craters would require 500 pounds of C4 explosives. Many believe, and it has already been rumored, that the Ukrainians have already taken possession of ATACMS.

Although Washington has declined to send ATACMS to Ukraine, many of the US allies have them. Among the known operators of the ATACMS are Australia, Bahrain, Greece, Poland, Romania, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and the USA. One of our allies, thorough covertly or clandestine US military aid, could have given the Ukrainians some of the missiles.

How Would the ATACMS Be Used By Ukraine:

If Ukraine does indeed have ATACMS, how would the military use them? The operations in Crimea with the Saki airfield and the ammunition depot are prime examples of taking out important Russian targets far behind the front lines without resorting to hitting targets inside Russia. Washington refers to Crimea as still part of Ukraine.

Major Russian command and control centers that are beyond the range of GMLRS could then be targeted. And Russian naval vessels of the Black Sea Fleet at anchor in Sevastopol would then be in range.

ATACMS could aid the survivability of the Ukrainian Air Force pilots by targeting Russian air defense batteries and parked aircraft. And as we’ve already seen in Kherson, with the GMLRS weapons, they could target and destroy major bridges that the Russians use in resupply operations.

Expert Biography: Steve Balestrieri is a 1945 National Security Columnist. A proven military analyst, he served as a US Army Special Forces NCO and Warrant Officer in the 7th Special Forces Group. In addition to writing for 19fortyfive.com and other military news organizations, he has covered the NFL for PatsFans.com for over 11 years. His work was regularly featured in the Millbury-Sutton Chronicle and Grafton News newspapers in Massachusetts.

19fortyfive.com · by Steve Balestrieri · September 3, 2022

7. China, Russia and Iran Are Slowly Ganging Up on the US

Why do the great thinkers always seem to leave out north Korea? (my bias is showing)

China, Russia and Iran Are Slowly Ganging Up on the US

The leading autocratic states don’t have formal security alliances the way Washington does, but in some ways that makes them more dangerous.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-09-01/china-russia-and-iran-are-slowly-ganging-up-on-the-us?sref=hhjZtX76

ByHal Brands

September 1, 2022 at 2:49 PM EDT

Everywhere the US looks, its geopolitical rivals are making common cause. Russia and China proclaimed a strategic partnership “without limits” just before the former’s invasion of Ukraine. Iran is helping Russian President Vladimir Putin fight that war by providing him with military assistance. Beijing and Tehran have their own strategic relationship, one that’s been several decades in the making.

Washington doesn’t yet face a full-fledged alliance of hostile powers. But that’s the wrong way to think about the convergence between three countries that are increasingly united in their hostility to the US.

Big Question for the U.S. Military: Could They Battle China and Russia At the Same Time?

19fortyfive.com · by Robert Farley · September 3, 2022

The U.S. military faces significant challenges as it moves in an era of great power competition. The big question seems obvious now: Can Washington take on both Russia and China at the same time in a wartime scenario?

The United States now finds itself embroiled in crises in both Europe and the Pacific. The Russia-Ukraine War has settled into an uneasy stalemate that nevertheless risks escalation. The visit of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to Taipei has triggered a ratcheting of tensions over the long-term status of Taiwan. It is not likely that either of the current crises will escalate, but Washington could find itself fighting (or proxy fighting) against two great powers in two different parts of the world.

How much pressure could this put upon the United States? Much depends on the nature of the conflict in each theater, but it is likely that the US could sustain the war in both theaters for quite a while.

The War in Ukraine

The Russia-Ukraine War has become a proxy conflict between Moscow and the West, with the US, in particular, dedicating huge amounts of sophisticated weaponry.

Currently, the Ukrainian armed forces are generating enough fighting power to prevent Russia from conquering a broader swath of the country. The US and its NATO allies are supplying weapons, economic aid, logistical support, and intelligence to help the Ukrainians fight. The United States has supplied the greatest portion of foreign equipment used by Ukrainian forces in their ongoing fight against Russia, but the rest of NATO has also chipped in to considerable effect. Arguably, Washington provides the political glue that holds the coalition together, but most of the European capitals have committed to the war with or without the United States. Despite the costs of the war (in terms of equipment) and the costs generated by the war (in terms of economic dislocation and energy supplies) the Europeans at the moment seem willing to continue to provide support for Ukraine.

What if Russia decides to escalate? In Europe, NATO forces hold what is likely to be a decisive edge over the Russians in all conventional capabilities. This advantage is most pronounced at sea and in the air, where the navies and air forces of the European members of NATO easily surpass in size and capability the forces that Russia has currently engaged in Ukraine. And if Russia does decide to escalate it will likely eliminate any residual caution on the part of the rest of the alliance to resist Russian aggression.

A military conflict over Taiwan could nevertheless shift the balance of the Russia-Ukraine War. China would likely lose any residual reluctance to aid Russia’s war effort, up to and including the dispatch of equipment and personnel. Russia’s economic situation would ease somewhat, at least relatively, as world trade networks would experience complete disruption.

A China War

For a fight over Taiwan, the United States would require high-end naval and air assets that are not currently in use near Ukraine and that, in any case, would provide overkill against Russia’s stretched and outdated forces. This includes the most important vessels in the US Navy (including attack submarines, cruise missile submarines, carrier battlegroups, and amphibious battlegroups) but also the advanced fighter, bomber, tanker, and recon aircraft operated by the Navy and the Air Force.

Chinese Type 055 Destroyer.

Even if the US was required to deploy ground troops (and could do so safely), it is unlikely that this would tax any capability currently being used to support the fight in Ukraine. Moreover, Taiwan would immediately take precedence over any need faced by Ukraine, largely because of the NATO alliance.

The US can count less on allies in the Pacific than in Europe, although here, much depends on the political situation. If France and the United Kingdom see themselves as fighting against an Authoritarian Axis, each could dispatch an effective naval flotilla to the Pacific. More importantly, Japan and Australia have taken critical steps towards solidifying their relationships with the United States with specific reference to a crisis over Taiwan. Washington could perhaps not count on allied involvement, but Beijing could hardly count on keeping the allies out. In any case, China likely does not have the military capabilities at the moment to quickly defeat a US-supported Taiwan.

(April 8, 2021) U.S. Marine Corps F-35B Lightning IIs assigned to Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 164 (Reinforced), 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, land on the flight deck of the amphibious assault ship USS Makin Island (LHD 8). The Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group and embarked 15th MEU are operating in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations to enhance interoperability with allies and partners and serve as a ready response force to defend peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Patrick Crosley)

Overlap

The biggest overlap between the Taiwan and Ukraine theaters of operations involves demands on logistics and on intelligence. To be sure, the US has kept a close watch on Chinese activity since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but some of the electronic, cyber, and analytical assets currently devoted to helping Ukraine fight would undoubtedly need to be shifted towards China. Some of this effort could be replaced by the Europeans, but the US has enough sufficiently unique assets in this area that Ukraine would undoubtedly notice the shift.

In terms of logistics, the fight in Ukraine has already put a strain on the US defense industrial base. Fighting has used up stocks of weapons and ammunition as the course of fighting has turned towards attrition. Again, the US is fortunate that there’s not a lot of overlap between the operational demands in Ukraine and Taiwan, but US forces would likely suffer some shortages in the case of extended fighting on both sides of Eurasia. As noted, Taiwan is likely to take precedence if there’s competition between the two theaters.

What Happens Next?

The US has paid for the luxury to build a military sufficient to fight in both Asia and Europe, and not generally with the same weapons. There is undoubtedly some overlap in terms of air capabilities and logistical assets, but the immense fighting power of the US armed forces would not be inordinately strained by the need to wage war in both theaters because the theaters made different demands. Even if the war in Ukraine escalated to direct conflict between NATO and Russia, it is likely that the fighting would involve the fielded forces of European countries, with the United States playing an important support role. In short, the United States can fight both Russia and China at once… for a while, and with the help of some friends.

Expert Biography: Dr. Robert Farley has taught security and diplomacy courses at the Patterson School since 2005. He received his BS from the University of Oregon in 1997, and his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 2004. Dr. Farley is the author of Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force (University Press of Kentucky, 2014), the Battleship Book (Wildside, 2016), and Patents for Power: Intellectual Property Law and the Diffusion of Military Technology (University of Chicago, 2020). He has contributed extensively to a number of journals and magazines, including the National Interest, the Diplomat: APAC, World Politics Review, and the American Prospect. Dr. Farley is also a founder and senior editor of Lawyers, Guns and Money.

19fortyfive.com · by Robert Farley · September 3, 2022

9. This Airborne unit will give longer weekends if troops avoid DUIs

This Airborne unit will give longer weekends if troops avoid DUIs

It's the carrot versus stick approach.

BY NICHOLAS SLAYTON | PUBLISHED SEP 3, 2022 2:37 PM

taskandpurpose.com · by Nicholas Slayton · September 3, 2022

Troops with the 11th Airborne Division are getting a new reward. Companies and batteries can now earn an additional day off work. The catch? They must all pass drug tests and not get busted for driving under the influence for 90 days.

Military Times reported on an August 11 memo the head of the 11th Airborne Division sent to troops. Maj. Gen. Brian Eifler sent out the memo to his troops, detailing several policies. If a battalion can hit the 90-day mark without a positive drug test or DUI, the formation gets a four-day weekend. A whole brigade? That earns either one four-day weekend or a pair of three-day weekends, per the memo. But to qualify, beyond just hitting that 90 day benchmark, at least 10% of a unit must be regularly drug tested.

It’s unclear how much of a problem DUIs are with the division or troops as a whole in Alaska. According to Military Times, the issue however is bad enough that commanders stopped the sale of alcohol on base after 10 p.m. The division is headquartered in Fort Wainright in Fairbanks, Alaska, which is in a much more remote part of the state than units such as the ones near Anchorage. Beyond absence from families and larger communities, the isolation and cold of being stationed that far north in Alaska can and has hurt morale for soldiers stationed there and can hurt the mental well being of the troops.

The move by Eifler comes even as the Army as a whole is considering easing alcohol restrictions in the barracks. That’s currently being tested out to see if that is the better alternative to current rules regarding booze. A study from this year by SAGE Journals found heavy and binge drinking to be a serious issue and danger to unit readiness, and that enforcement of restrictions did not seriously affect the actual alcohol consumption by soldiers.

The 11th Airborne Division has historic roots, but only recently got a new life. It was formed during World War II for airborne operations. It was reconstituted in June this year, folding in other units in Alaska. It comprises roughly 12,000 soldiers, and is the first time in seven decades that the Army formed a new airborne division.

The military has been using additional leave as an incentive for a number of initiatives, from unit discipline such as with the 11th Airborne Division, and to get more recruits to sign up and quickly deploy to basic training. In Alaska, additional time off can be granted for doing community service, completing a sexual assault prevention course and even doing cold weather sports like cross country skiing or visiting a glacier.

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taskandpurpose.com · by Nicholas Slayton · September 3, 2022

10. Putin has already lost war with Ukraine -Ex-US Special Forces Officer

I never heard of this officer. Here is his bio: https://www.mykelhawke.com/#abouttop

Putin has already lost war with Ukraine -Ex-US Special Forces Officer - Kyiv Post - Ukraine's Global Voice

kyivpost.com · by Interfax-Ukraine · September 4, 2022

An exclusive interview with Mykel Hawke, U. S. Army Special Forces Officer, Captain (retired 2011), combat veteran, for the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency and reprinted below.

– Mr. Hawke, as a military officer, how do you assess the course of the Russian-Ukrainian war? Why was a country 27 times larger in area unable to achieve more or less serious successes against Ukraine on the battlefield in 6 months?

– First and foremost prayers for all the people in Ukraine who are fighting and resisting the obvious Russian crime against humanity. And prayers to all the people who are out there helping Ukraine right now.

But the answer to your question why do I think that a small country like Ukraine can stand up against a big country like Russia is very simple. We have such an expression in American English: ‘It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog’. In my opinion Ukraine has the will to fight, they have a reason to fight, they have been bullied by Russia for a long, long time, even back before the starvation in the 30s.

The fact is that Russia has already committed two major crimes in Donbas and Crimea, they’ve made it very clear what their intention is, which is to wipe out the Ukrainian people and take their land. That’s obvious to the world.

So for me there are two main reasons why Ukraine has been able to stand up and fight against the Russians. One, the Ukrainians believe in their fight, they know it’s a fight for survival whereas most of the Russians don’t believe in it, don’t support it. It looks to the most of the world like Putin has gone off the rails and is trying to relive some sort of perceived false glory of the old days of the Russian Empire and wanting to make a legacy.

The reason I say that is because it’s very dangerous. He’s not doing it for any real political reason or economic reason of survival. It’s all his ego. His people are so afraid of him, that they just keep coming. Most of soldiers that go to fight don’t want to be there. That’s pretty obvious by their conduct in everything that we’re seeing.

It’s clear that they sent in the Wagner group, a bunch of ruthless mercenaries that don’t care for human life, they demonstrated that in Africa, Syria and other places. He sent in the Chechens who are notoriously brutal and awful. I believe most of the war crimes committed have been from those type of people more than the regular Russian soldiers. But I’m praying that the international laws will come and hold them accountable. All know the truth about how Russia has conducted themselves so inhumanely and how the Ukrainians have consistently from the very beginning shown how heroic they are – from the grandmother saying to Russian soldiers :’Take the seeds and put them in your pockets because flowers will grow when you die’ to border guards from Snake Island saying: ‘Russian warship, go fu… yourself’.

The Ukrainians have just been fighting for their survival with honor and integrity, and the Russians have done all the horrible crimes that are the worst kinds of things that humans can do. That’s why I think Ukraine is prevailing against Russia right now.

– As we know from the media Armed Forces of Ukraine started counteroffensive in the South of Ukraine. What do you think about it? How do you assess the perspectives of Ukraine’s counteroffensive to get back Crimea and Donbas?

– I think the main reason – the Russians had bad intelligence and they underestimated their opponent which is the number one mistake in all military operations. They underestimated the Ukrainian people, they thought they could just walk in and take it, they weren’t expecting of fight, and they bit off more fight than they could chew. They got spanked and they got pushed back. And that’s when they realized this isn’t going to be easy. But because it’s Putin and it’s his ego, he’s not going to stop until he’s stopped, in my opinion.

– What weapon and equipment will Ukraine need to be effective in such counteroffensive and also in medium and long term perspective?

– When it comes to what type of military hardware and weapons systems Ukraine is going to need, it’s important to note that like in all wars there is an evolution. People don’t know what to expect at the beginning. So at first we were very concerned about maybe we should not give too many weapons, it might escalate it too high.

Putin is sitting on nuclear weapons. The issue here is that Putin and Russia have already threatened everyone in the world with nukes: ‘We’ll nuke anybody’, ‘We’ll take the space station out’, ‘We’ll blow up a nuke and make a tsunami to take out London’. The whole international community is going to have a discussion after this about nuclear powers. Just because someone has a gun and they can hold it to your head doesn’t mean they’re right and we’ll give them that power.

American strategy has been to try to solve the problem at the lowest level without escalating it because no one wants a nuclear war. But the world is starting to realize that Putin has already threatened nukes, he’s already willing to cause potential nuclear disaster with the nuclear plant that they’ve taken over and tried to disconnect. So there are all these things which need to make the leaders of the world realize that he’s got nukes, yes, but so do we. If he’s going to threaten to blow up water and tsunami a people and a city that have nothing to do with the fight, it clearly shows Putin has no respect for humanity or international law.

In my opinion we need to give Ukraine every weapon they need to overcome whatever Russia brings to the battlefield. So if they bring choppers, if they bring planes, we need to give you anti aircraft and choppers and planes. You have shown your capability, your competence, you’ve been brave. The whole world has watched this little country of Ukraine stand up against the giant of Russia and bring it to its knees. In order to end this war we need to give Ukraine every weapon that they need short of nukes to stop Putin’s criminal invasion of Ukraine.

– What do you think in general about the situation on the battlefield now and the strategies of Ukraine and Russia? Do you think Ukraine succeeds in expelling the enemy?

– Without a doubt, the fact that Russia can’t do what they want, already shows that Ukraine has succeeded so far. You look at all the things that Putin is trying to do and getting rid of his generals and firing his staff and bringing in mercenaries and giving bonuses to try to recruit more soldiers. He has a large problem. In my opinion, he has already lost, he will never win this. Even if you stop today you showed him that he can’t take what he wants. He’s a failure, he’s lost. Now it’s just a matter of how long will his people tolerate him doing what he’s doing.

What I think about the current situation on the battlefield in Ukraine is that Ukrainians are holding on well, they’re striking everywhere that they can, they’re penetrating into what Russia thought were safe areas.

I’m a Special Forces officer, 25 years combat veteran, I studied guerrilla warfare, and we an expression that whoever believes longest and strongest will always win. That is absolutely every man, woman and child in Ukraine, they believe in what they’re doing, they will fight every way, everywhere possible. Ukraine is doing a great job of holding Russia back, of defeating them frequently and humbling them. Their current attempts to try to strike deeper and make Russia withdraw its ships, withdraw its aircraft are all very successful strategies by the part of your military and all your people who aren’t military but are still fighting for their country.

– From your professional point of view what are the current needs of Ukrainian Armed Forces in weapon on the battlefield? Does Ukraine need systems with ranges beyond 80 kilometers?

– I personally believe that Ukraine needs the most powerful weapons that we can give them to end this quickly. The sooner we end this the sooner we stop the starvation of people around the world, we stop the fuel crisis, stop evil and we show the world that we will not tolerate this kind of evil.

We need to give you the aircraft, the weaponry, the training, the support, because clearly, your people are competent and capable and great fighters. All they need are the tools and I do believe that our leaders need to give those tools to Ukraine, including aircraft. (and training)

– To your mind, why still no aircrafts were given to Ukraine or no trainings of Ukrainian military pilots are being held?

– Because right now the war has primarily been a land battle, a little bit of sea battle. Once you take it to the air it escalates significantly because aircraft can go all way to the other side of the country, they can reach into the capital and start striking civilian targets and get out pretty quickly. By going to aircraft it will escalate the war. However we do know that Putin really hasn’t pulled those cards out of his deck yet to start using them. But he will, he is going to do everything he can before he accepts that he’s already failed and been defeated. That’s the main reason why we haven’t given aircraft, we’ve been worried about escalating it due to his threat of nukes, however he is going to bring the aircraft in and we should be giving you the fighter helicopters, the fighter planes, the support and all anti-aircraft we can give you so that they don’t get a chance to even get across your border before you take them down.

The real question for the Ukrainian army is how far do you push. I think everyone would agree with Ukraine taking back everything that belongs to them but not going into Russian territory. However as a guerrilla you can’t let them just go to that line and say: ‘Ok. we’re safe now, you have to respect that’. But if they stay amassed on your border you have to push them back, you have to show them that you can hit them in their country just like they hit you in your country until they stop. That’s what I believe is going to be the only strategy that can work moving forward.

– What do you think about the role of NATO as an organization in supporting Ukraine? Shouldn’t Alliance do more to help our country and how specifically?

– Yes, I very much believe that NATO should and could do more. That’s a very delicate topic, because obviously, it’s one of the things that Putin said he didn’t want and he failed because now he has more people joining NATO than ever before. So good job, Putin.

But the other thing is that NATO wants to make sure that they do a legitimate process for vetting the people that come into NATO. All politics aside. You have to make sure that all the members are meeting the same standards. That’s been an issue. And of course, NATO is concerned: ‘If we allow Ukraine in then Russia will say that gives them an excuse for their fight’ because that’s been their concern all the time, but that’s more of propaganda and lies. Putin lies about everything. There’s nothing he says that is true.

In my opinion NATO needs to allow Ukraine to join NATO and then to say Putin: ‘It’s NATO now, you stop and go home or we all come and we bring the spank and we hold you accountable and you will fail’. I believe NATO needs to let Ukraine in and they need to support Ukraine and stand up against Putin and I’m hoping that would be enough of an escalation, that he would stop.

– What about the fears of NATO about possibility of getting into war with Russia? Do you believe that Ukraine can become a member of NATO even though there’s a war in our country?

– I believe so. Absolutely. We’ve all listened to Putin’s threats, we’ve all listened to Putin’s lies, he’s a liar, he’s already there, he’s already causing a global problem with fuel and food, he does not care. So NATO has to stop the old thinking that the old Putin would respect international law. He’s going to die, he doesn’t care, he wants a legacy, no matter what. He doesn’t care how many Russians he kills or how many other citizens of Ukraine he kills or even other countries. So NATO needs to recognize this is a threat to the world now, they need to stop him now.

– What do American citizens think about Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine and how do they feel about the allocation of aid to Ukraine by the United States?

– I’m a very straight shooter, so I’ll just lay it out. I think there are may be 20-25% of Americans, most of them very right wing, sort of GOP Republican, Trump people who support Russia still because Trump supported Russia and we all know why, we have our opinions on that (maybe the law will find out soon enough). But because of Trump’s support of Putin there’s a percentage of people in America that support Russia, believe it or not, despite everything that they’ve seen.

Most Americans absolutely support Ukraine, love Ukraine, are proud of you, guys, we’re praying for you. The reason I bring all that up is because that trickles into our politics, which then trickles into the money and aid that we can give because there’s still 20-25% that are complaining about giving money to Ukraine. They don’t realize that Ukraine is fighting for the entire world, for the entire balance of good and evil, and that it’s a fight that Americans believe in and that’s what we were raised on. So most Americans believe and support you but there’s that percent that pushes back so it makes hard for political people to continue to help. We keep doing it because President Biden 100% believe in you. We all watched what Trump did to Ukraine for his political advantage and we saw how wrong it was. But Biden is supporting Ukraine just because it’s the right thing.

The global economy has economic issues with fuel, and with food because of Putin. It does make it even more painful when we do send aid, for that small but loud and vocal, small percentage to complain. That’s the issue that we have. You also have some right wing extremists, that’s ok, we know that, that’s a part of having a fairly free nation as long as they don’t hurt other people, that’s when we draw the line. You have some extremists, we have some extremists, it’s a little bit of a political dance to keep the aid going. But the good is that President Biden is 100% committed to Ukraine in seeing you prevailing this war and I think that’s exactly what’s going to happen.

– Can this big support of Ukrainians by Americans change with the change of a government?

– We are going through an unprecedented political turmoil in the States, the likes of which I’ve never seen in my lifetime. I never imagined after being in 9 different wars, that I would see this kind of rhetoric and talks amongst American people. In my opinion the sad part is that the Right is playing very dirty, they’re lying, they’re cheating, they’re stealing and they have a lot of money. So they have a chance to get into the next political cycle. If they do, I do believe that they will stop or severely reduce the support for Ukraine. That is a real concern for all of us here at home. We’re doing our best. But yes, you are right, that could change in the next political cycle.

– How do you think this war is going to evolve in the nearest future and how can change the aid of West because of some fatigue and discussions on the need of talks with Russia?

– First and foremost the war is going to continue as long as Putin is alive. He will never stop until he’s dead. Even if you stop him I think he’ll fight dirty, that’s the way we’ve seen him do with assassins and killing people.

The war is going in Ukraine’s favor right now. I know that Putin’s is going to keep trying to do dirty tricks and cheat to try to win. I believe that the Ukrainians are still going to prevail no matter what he tries. Then the concern is how dirty is he willing to go: will he blow up the nuclear plant and then withdraw and say that you did it, and that he had to withdraw to save his troops and be the hero? I can easily see something like that because he’s so dirty and he’s such a liar. But I do believe without a doubt that Ukraine is going to prevail. There’s a quote that I live by as a Green Beret and a guerrilla warfare fighter, that’s from the Shakespeare’s story Henry V: “When lenity and cruelty vie for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner.” In short, what he’s saying is that when two powers like Ukraine and Russia are fighting for power the one who is the good one, the kind one, is the one that’s going to win. And in this case in my opinion that’s absolutely Ukraine. You’re going to win.

– Mr. Hawke, do you plan to visit Ukraine and maybe make some film or TV story about the war in Ukraine? Can you also please tell a little bit more about the help you are providing to Ukraine now?

– I’ve been in nine different wars and this is the first war that I really believed in, that I haven’t been able to go to. Part of it is because of my work, it’s a very good work helping a greater cause, but mainly for my family, my wife has said: ‘Please, no more wars’, and I said: ‘Ok, sweetie, I love you, I will stay out’. But I will do everything I can from home to help. So I’ve helped get doctors in, I’ve helped get medical supplies in, I’ve helped get special ops trainers and I’ve helped get some other supplies in and I’ve helped other women and children who are stuck on the battlefield get out by getting other special ops guys to go in and help them get out. So that’s just a tiny little part that I’ve been doing, other than my messaging to the world, like letting them know what’s going on and keeping them informed. I try not to get into politics too much. But when I see something so very wrong I feel it’s my duty and my obligation to speak up and keep Americans aware of what’s going on over there. That’s the stuff that I’ve been doing behind the scenes.

I did have the wonderful opportunity to work over in Ukraine around 2008-2009 as a Special Forces officer for a little while. I loved the country, I loved the people, they looked to me like Americans with an accent, hardworking, good people, very industrious. Yes, I absolutely would love to come back to Ukraine to do some help, to do some filming. We actually had a plan to make a little film over there a couple of years ago before things started to get a little bit tetchy. Yes, I 100% love Ukraine and definitely want to go back and would love to do some other work there supporting you.

Hopefully soon this war will be over, you can start getting back to your life and then I think you’ll see a lot of people coming from around the world and saying how proud they are of you for what you’ve endured and how well you endured it. The heroism that we’ve seen from the Ukrainian people across all walks of life has been amazing and inspiring to the world. I hope they understand that.

Text: Nataliia Pushkaruk

kyivpost.com · by Interfax-Ukraine · September 4, 2022

11. What Is America's Goal for the Ukraine War? Answer: We Don't Have One

Conclusion:

The cost to the United States for all these failures has been profound – and now we’re creating a new mission without a clear objective and no identifiable end state. The Russia-Ukraine war just passed the six-month mark. The danger isn’t as much that we might still be trying to divine the Administration’s objectives six years from now – though that sad outcome is entirely possible – but that this war could one day spill over Ukraine’s borders and get us sucked into a war we should never have fought and from which we could never benefit.

What Is America's Goal for the Ukraine War? Answer: We Don't Have One

19fortyfive.com · by Daniel Davis · September 3, 2022

Does America Have a Goal or Strategy for Ukraine? On Friday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced the G7 had agreed to impose a price cap regime on Russian oil. As with most other actions by the U.S. and Europe related to Russia’s unjust war against Ukraine, the announcement of the cap was big on rhetorical flourish, but thread-bare on any evidence of a coherent strategic objective.

(19FortyFive Contributing Editor Daniel L. Davis, author of this article, analyzes the situation in Ukraine on Fox News above.)

The intent of the cap is to set a global price just above Russia’s marginal cost so that Moscow won’t make a profit on the sale of oil but high enough that Russia won’t stop producing altogether. Current global demand can’t be met without the nearly nine million barrels of oil per day provided by Russia, and if Putin were to stop producing suddenly, the resulting supply shock could send the price of oil into the stratosphere.

The purpose of the cap, Yellen claimed, would be to “deliver a major blow for Russian finances and will both hinder Russia’s ability to fight its unprovoked war in Ukraine and hasten the deterioration of the Russian economy.” It remains to be seen if the G7 can make good on its aspiration and actually develop and implement a worldwide price cap scheme. But along with other actions sponsored or endorsed by the United States government, it is far from certain what end state Washington hopes to obtain.

On February 7, about three weeks before Putin ordered the Russian military to invade its smaller neighbor, President Biden threatened to “impose the most severe sanctions that have ever been imposed” should Russia invade. Four days later, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan explained that President Biden “believes that sanctions are intended to deter. And in order for them to work — to deter, they have to be set up in a way where if Putin moves, then the costs are imposed.”

Yet after the threats of sanctions failed to deter Putin, Biden adjusted the rationale when he claimed that in fact “no one expected the sanctions to prevent anything from happening.” Instead, he continued, the sanctions were designed to show Western “resolve,” which, over time, “will impose significant costs on him (Putin).” Even with this new claim on his justification for sanctions, there was no explanation for what these “significant costs” were designed to accomplish. The Administration’s lack of focus didn’t stop there, unfortunately.

In late April, Secretaries of Defense and State, Lloyd Austin and Antony Blinken, traveled to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to explore ways the U.S. could help Ukraine’s military. Following their meeting, Austin said the United States wanted to see Ukraine remain a “sovereign country,” and that the U.S. wants “to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.” It’s what Austin, Blinken, and Biden have not said, however, that illustrates a continuing problem with American foreign policy.

To date, none of America’s top leaders have said how our support for Kyiv is expected to achieve the outcomes sought. No one has articulated what a “weakened” Russia looks like or how we’ll know when that standard has been reached – or even why weakening Russia is a vital interest to the U.S. that is worth taking huge risks. These are not just academic or hair-splitting questions. They are foundational. Here’s why:

Since even before the war began, the United States has had no vision for the end state it wishes to produce. For example, if Biden’s objective prior to 24 February genuinely was to deter Russia from launching a war, it should have been clear beyond a reasonable doubt that a threat of sanctions alone would not have been sufficient to convince Putin not to invade.

Washington would have had to be aggressively engaged diplomatically with both Kyiv and Moscow to use the full heft of U.S. power to find a route to prevent war. There is no evidence the U.S. put any serious diplomatic effort towards averting war. Without a clearly articulated objective, there was nothing to guide the various departments of the Administration on how to achieve the desired outcome. The result was predictable: policy failure.

Virtually the only objective voiced by any member of Biden’s national security team since the war began has been Austin’s aforementioned desire to see Russia “weakened.” Yet if the White House doesn’t know what a weakened Russia looks like, how will it ever know if its actions are contributing towards a successful outcome beneficial to America? That’s where we are right now.

We send multiple rounds of multi-billion-dollar support to Ukraine, including some modern and some antiquated gear, but it is not a coherent set of military kit tied to enabling a specific capacity in the Ukraine Armed Forces. The White House leads multiple tranches of sanctions against Russia, but there is no declared purpose as to what they are intended to produce.

Since we don’t know what we’re trying to accomplish, no one can tell the American people how much the effort is going to cost, how long it’s going to last, or even what success would look like. If this sounds familiar, it should: it is basically the same aimless, incompetent foreign policy the United States has been pursuing for decades.

RGW-90 rocket launcher in Ukraine. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

-We fought a generational war in Afghanistan that never bothered to set an objective; no one in power even articulated what success would look like, and thus no victory of any sort was ever achieved;

-We started a war in Iraq beginning in 2003 that quasi-ended in 2011, only to return again in 2014 – without any president bothering to set an attainable military objective or even articulating what the Force was there to accomplish so the American people could know when the operation could successfully end – and it continues without success or end to this day.

-We have had the same malady in our actions in Syria, Libya, Somalia, Niger, and many other locations in Africa: the government has not identified any attainable military objectives whose accomplishment would benefit our country and signal the end of the mission – and thus none have benefitted the U.S. and most still drone unsuccessfully on.

The cost to the United States for all these failures has been profound – and now we’re creating a new mission without a clear objective and no identifiable end state. The Russia-Ukraine war just passed the six-month mark. The danger isn’t as much that we might still be trying to divine the Administration’s objectives six years from now – though that sad outcome is entirely possible – but that this war could one day spill over Ukraine’s borders and get us sucked into a war we should never have fought and from which we could never benefit.

Now a 1945 Contributing Editor, Daniel L. Davis is a Senior Fellow for Defense Priorities and a former Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army who deployed into combat zones four times. He is the author of “The Eleventh Hour in 2020 America.” Follow him @DanielLDavis

19fortyfive.com · by Daniel Davis · September 3, 2022

12. Ukraine Situation Report: HIMARS Gets The America's Got Talent Treatment

Sense of humor or effective PSYOP? Not for us to judge - What do the pre- and post- test analyses of the target audiences tell us?

See the video at the link: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-situation-report-himars-gets-the-americas-got-talent-treatment

Ukraine Situation Report: HIMARS Gets The America's Got Talent Treatment

Saint Javelin’s latest production is another example of the unprecedented online information war swirling around the conflict in Ukraine.

thedrive.com · by Stetson Payne · September 3, 2022

Both near and far from the Ukrainian frontlines, the information war rolls on, memes and all.

A handful of accounts and organizations have turned much of the war into legend: the Bayraktar TB2, FGM-142 Javelin, and the "Ghost of Kyiv" have all had their days in the sun.

But nothing has grabbed the internet’s attention quite like the M142 HIMARS and its strikes on Russian targets. From the folks who brought you “BBC Planet Ukraine,” here’s Saint Javelin’s latest production: “HIMARS Got Talent.”

The information war and its army of memes wern't totally unexpected parts of a potential war as Russian troops massed along the Ukrainian border, but it has become even more than that. The online battle for eyeballs, hearts, minds, and heavy weaponry has become a vital part of the war effort being fought on the social media battlefield.

Ukraine has seen memes turn into tangible benefits as well. You may know them as 'The Fellas,' the 'North Atlantic Fellas Organization (NAFO),' or you may just know them as the costumed doge profiles terrorizing pro-Russian accounts on Twitter.

Well, the tracksuit tactical doges crowdfunded a whole 2S7 Pion self-propelled howitzer, aptly named “Superbonker 9000.” Yes, it looks exactly like you would imagine.

You can read all about this scattered online batallion of Ukraine supporters in this recent profile in the Washington Post.

As we mark more than six months of fighting in Ukraine, keeping the rest of the world aware and committed to a cause will grow more and more difficult with attention spans like they are. It just goes to show that while the meme may not always make sense, if it works, it works.

Before heading into more of the latest news and updates from Ukraine, The War Zone readers can get caught up with our previous rolling coverage here.

The Latest

The latest count from the Oryx blog tallies more than 1,000 Russian tanks lost in Ukraine. The count includes only those losses visually confirmed — the actual number is very likely much, much higher — and dwarfs previous Russian losses in Chechnya and Georgia.

These losses include top-end types and aging tanks pulled from storage like the T-62. With sanctions keeping critical components out of Russian assembly lines, Moscow may again look to older technology to backfill its units.

Forbes.com reported on Wednesday, citing the Russian state-run TASS news agency, that the Kremlin is considering restarting early-model BMP production. Factories that would be churning out next-generation T-15 Armatas, Kurganets-25s, and Bumerang armored vehicles would instead revert to making Cold War-era BMPs.

Adding insult to injury with the milestone, it looks like the Russian tank turret toss competition has made its way to a Scalemates model art.

The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) saga continued Saturday, with reports emerging the plant has again lost connection to the power grid within two days of an International Atomic Energy Agency inspection team's departure. Ukraine's state nuclear company Energoatom said Thursday five IAEA members would stay at the plant until Saturday, though it is not clear whether these team members were present when power was lost or what caused the outage.

The Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kherson Oblast continued Saturday, with video emerging of overrun Russian positions as Ukrainian tanks continue the advance. There’s also the burned-out wreckage of a Russian Pantsir-S1 air defense system.

We’re also seeing Ukrainian forces using Dutch-donated YPR-765 armored personnel carriers in its offensive, with at least one captured by Russian forces. There are also reports that Ukrainian advances are being couched as a feint attack on Russian Telegram channels, with the real target being Kharkiv, which is an interesting way to cope with the news from Kherson.

It's not all good news for Ukraine though. The fighting is not one-sided, clearly, as evidenced by this captured YPR-765 equipped with an M2 50 cal machine gun. These vehicles were sent to Ukraine from The Netherlands. A Ukrainian Husky Tactical Support Vehicle, donated by the U.K., was also lost at one of the Inhulets River crossings during the offensive.

Like clockwork, Ukraine continued strikes on the three Russian-held crossings over the Dnieper, with explosions reported near the Antonivsky Railway Bridge, and satellite imagery showing the road bridge at Nova Kadhovka Dam collapsed after further attacks.

For reasons that escape all common sense, someone thought it would be a great time to hold a military reenactment in Sevastopol. You know, home of the Black Sea Fleet headquarters and recurring destination for kamikaze drones? This is in addition to wider Crimea now coming under persistent attack by mysterious methods. Yeah, 'let’s do a Crimean War reenactment with cannon fire there right now.'

There’s a short clip of a rather Mad Max-looking buggy in Ukrainian service, packing a DShK 12.7mm heavy machine gun, serious firepower for such a light vehicle. Buggies have become a major element within Ukrainian ground forces' hit-and-run tactics.

We will continue to update this story until we state otherwise.

Contact the author: stetson.payne@thewarzone.com

thedrive.com · by Stetson Payne · September 3, 2022

13. Ukraine’s Zelensky Rallies Europe Against Russia’s ‘Energy Attack’

In addition to kinetic conflict and political warfare we have eccominc or energy warfare. Perhaps this is more akin to the Chinese concept of Unrestricted Warfare.

Ukraine’s Zelensky Rallies Europe Against Russia’s ‘Energy Attack’

Moscow shut vital Nord Stream pipeline as Ukraine presses attack in south

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraines-zelensky-rallies-europe-against-russias-energy-attack-after-gas-cutoff-11662287651?mod=hp_lead_pos6

By Isabel ColesFollow

Updated Sept. 4, 2022 7:06 am ET

DNIPRO, Ukraine—Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky urged European countries to respond to an “energy attack” from Russia, after it indefinitely suspended natural-gas flows to the continent through a vital pipeline.

The move was the latest escalation in an economic war that is set to come to a head this winter as cold temperatures increase demand for energy. On the battlefield, Russian and Ukrainian forces are also digging in for winter, seeking to gain territory and secure positions before bad weather makes maneuvering harder and complicates operations for soldiers.

Kremlin-controlled energy company Gazprom PJSC said late Friday it would suspend supplies of natural gas to Germany via the Nord Stream pipeline until further notice, ramping up pressure on European governments racing to avoid energy shortages.

“This winter, Russia is preparing for a decisive energy attack on all Europeans,” Mr. Zelensky said in his nightly address, urging European governments to respond with more sanctions and to deprive Moscow of revenue from oil and gas. Russia “is trying to attack with poverty and political chaos where it cannot yet attack with missiles.”

Moscow has reduced gas supplies to Europe since June, blaming Western sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for preventing maintenance of the Nord Stream pipeline.

European governments say Moscow is deliberately stoking energy prices to raise the political costs of their military involvement with Kyiv and weaken voters’ support for Ukraine. European governments and industry have been able to sock away more natural gas than some analysts had expected over the summer—protecting the continent from the threat of imminent large-scale shortages—but worries for the winter remain high.

In a sign of the potential risks, an estimated 70,000 people took to the streets of Prague on Saturday in protest against the Czech government, calling on the ruling coalition to do more to curb energy prices and voicing opposition to the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Soaring energy prices sparked antigovernment protests in Prague on Saturday.

PHOTO: MARTIN DIVISEK/SHUTTERSTOCK

Organized by several far-right and fringe political groups, the demonstration called for the Central European nation to be militarily neutral and ensure direct contracts with gas suppliers, including Russia.

Gazprom said on Friday it had found a technical fault during maintenance of the Nord Stream pipeline, which connects Russia with Germany under the Baltic Sea. The pipeline, which had been due to resume operation on Saturday after three days of maintenance, will remain closed until the issue is fixed, the company said, without giving any timeline. Before the maintenance, the pipeline was operating at 20% of its capacity.

The announcement came hours after the Group of Seven wealthy nations agreed to an oil-price cap for Russian crude. That would force buyers seeking to insure their shipment via insurers located in a G-7 or EU country to observe the price limit on their purchases.

The cap, whose level will be set at a future meeting, originated in a U.S. initiative and has been under discussion for months. Moscow has said countries imposing a cap won’t receive any Russian oil, sales of which make up a far bigger share of its state revenues than those of natural gas.

Surging gas prices have spurred European governments to scale back their dependence on Russian gas ahead of the winter months, potentially undermining Moscow’s leverage in the long run. In the short term, however, it could force them to ration energy—a move that would hurt industrial companies and tip the continent’s already fragile economy into a recession.

Fresh evidence of the dangers came Saturday, when Swedish and Finnish government officials vowed to provide liquidity to Nordic power-market players should they need it after Gazprom’s move.

A staff member clears debris from a medical facility in Mykolaiv, southern Ukraine, following a Russian strike.

PHOTO: DIMITAR DILKOFF/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Germany on Sunday unveiled its third energy-crisis relief package this year, valued at €65 billion, equivalent to $64.7 billion, to shield consumers from soaring prices over the winter. “Our country is facing a difficult time,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said. “We will not abandon anyone. We will get through this winter.”

Six months into the war, Kyiv is also under pressure to show its Western partners it can turn military backing into gains on the battlefield. While Western weapon shipments have helped Ukrainian forces slow Russia’s advance in the east, Ukraine has yet to retake significant territory in an offensive operation.

After weeks of speculation about an offensive in the south, Ukraine intensified attacks during the past week along the front with Russia around the regional capital Kherson. It isn’t clear whether Ukrainian forces have made meaningful progress because Kyiv has maintained a high level of operational secrecy and restricted journalists’ access to the front line.

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Ukrainian officials say the battles have yielded breakthroughs and the recapture of some villages. An immediate retaking of Kherson isn’t Kyiv’s objective, officials say. Russian officials have said the Ukrainian offensive has failed.

The threat of a Ukrainian push in the south has drawn Russian forces away from the east, which became the focus of Moscow’s war effort after fierce resistance by Ukrainian forces around the capital, Kyiv, compelled Russian troops to abandon an assault there in March.

Oryx, an open-source intelligence tracker, now has more than 1,000 Russian tanks visually confirmed to have been destroyed since Russia began its large-scale invasion on Feb. 24.

While the front lines have moved relatively little, Russian missiles continue to rain down daily on Ukrainian cities. In the south, the head of the Mykolaiv regional military administration, Vitaliy Kim, said fresh strikes overnight had inflicted significant damage on medical facilities, a museum and educational institutions. The northeastern city of Kharkiv was also hit, according to Mayor Ihor Terekhov.

Write to Isabel Coles at isabel.coles@wsj.com

14. Putin Has a Problem: Kherson Offensive A 'Tactical Surprise' For Russia Military

Putin Has a Problem: Kherson Offensive A 'Tactical Surprise' For Russia Military

19fortyfive.com · by Jack Buckby · September 3, 2022

Russia Has More Problems to Contend with in Ukraine: Britain’s Ministry of Defence described Ukraine’s Kherson offensive as a “tactical surprise” for the Russians in an update over the weekend.

In an intelligence update shared on Twitter, British intelligence officials revealed how Ukraine’s advance was unexpected to the Russians and noted how Ukrainian troops were able to exploit Russia’s poor logistics to regain lost ground.

“Since 29 August 2022, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been conducting renewed offensive operations in the south of Ukraine,” the update reads. “One element of this offensive is an ongoing advance on a broad front, west of the Dnipro River, focusing on three axes within Russian-occupied Kherson Oblast.”

The operation, the intelligence says, has limited immediate objectives but is proving successful as Ukrainian troops are “exploiting poor logistics, administration, and leadership in the Russian armed forces.”

The comments come after Western government officials describe “tactical gains” made during the first week of Ukraine’s latest counteroffensive against Russia in Kherson. On Friday, officials said that while the operation is limited in scope, it is already beginning to work.

“The Ukrainians themselves have already said that the offensive is, in their words, a planned slow operation to grind the enemy, which will take time and effort,” one official said. “I don’t think we should be anticipating gigantic breakthroughs which completely change the picture…the signs are good at the moment.”

Russia Isn’t Ready

Russia is still struggling to resupply its dwindling troops in eastern Ukraine, too. According to Ukrainian intelligence, 40% of the military equipment earmarked for the newly formed 3rd Army Corps is not combat-ready.

A representative from the Intelligence Directorate at Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense said that Russia was using its latest military equipment back in February and March, and that new equipment may not be read for some time. The newly-created Russian military units are designed to provide additional support for existing units in Ukraine but are depending on Soviet-era equipment until the new equipment arrives.

A Soldier assigned to the 109th Transportation Company, 17th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, U.S. Army Alaska, handles a M136E1 AT4-CS confined space light anti-armor weapon during live-fire training at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, Oct. 12, 2017. The Soldiers of 17th CSSB recently completed a series of live-fire training events that honed their skills on a variety of weapon systems to include: the M4 carbine, the M9 pistol, the M203 grenade launcher, and the M136E1 AT4-CS confined space light anti-armor weapon. (U.S. Air Force photo by Alejandro Peña)

Intelligence suggests that Russia will not be able to fill the ranks of these new units and provide them with the necessary modern equipment until the end of November, meaning Russia could be forced to maintain its defenses in eastern and southern Ukraine for several more months before launching new offenses of their own.

Russia is believed to have redeployed around 20,000 troops to the western bank of the Dnipro River to hold back Ukrainian troops advancing into the region, but it’s unclear how long Russia can prevent the inevitable without access to more troops and equipment.

Video of Ukraine’s forces launching an attack. Image Credit: Twitter Screenshot.

Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.

19fortyfive.com · by Jack Buckby · September 3, 2022

15. Perspective | The U.S. is repeating its failed 1990s Afghanistan policies

Excerpts:

In retaliation, the United States has once more economically cut off Afghanistan from the world. While ostensibly aiming to punish the Taliban — especially after it reneged on promises to treat women better than it had during its initial reign — as before, ordinary Afghans are bearing the cost.

The U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction reports that 18.9 million Afghans face “extreme levels of hunger” and “near famine conditions.” Yet the United States continues a policy of icy indifference toward the unfolding humanitarian crisis. The inability of the United States to navigate the delicate balance of addressing the crisis at the human level, while simultaneously refusing to politically recognize the Taliban, once more sets the conditions for disaster.

The experience of the late 1990s suggests that not only will the policy drive vast suffering in Afghanistan, but it won’t curb the brutality of the Taliban — or its support for terrorism. Instead, international sanctions probably will worsen the regime’s extremist policies. The empty alcoves where once the Buddhas of Bamian stood are a testament to the failures of the policies past and a warning to the continuation of those policies today.

Perspective | The U.S. is repeating its failed 1990s Afghanistan policies

Trying to punish the Taliban financially only hurts average Afghans

Perspective by Ali A. Olomi

Ali A Olomi is a historian of the Middle East and Islam and assistant professor of history at Loyola Marymount University.

September 2, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Ali A. Olomi · September 2, 2022

Wednesday marked the first anniversary of the end of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. The longest foreign war in U.S. history came to a close with a chaotic withdrawal that left the country in the hands of the Taliban and confronting a brewing humanitarian crisis. Despite militarily withdrawing, the United States continues to pursue a policy of financially starving Afghanistan of desperately needed funds in an attempt to force the Taliban to reduce its repression — especially of women — as well as its support for terrorism.

This approach resurrects the American policy toward the Taliban between the late 1990s and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001 — and early signs indicate it will have the same consequences now as it did then. Starving the regime of funding won’t improve its behavior. Instead, it will only lead to prolonged suffering for Afghans.

The Taliban emerged in the wake of the U.S.-Soviet proxy war during the Cold War and the subsequent Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and occupation from 1979 to 1989. The withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1989 left a power vacuum that plunged Afghanistan into chaos as former mujahideen commanders — who had received support from the United States during the war — and regional power brokers vied for dominion. Corruption and civil strife were rampant.

A conservative faction of the former mujahideen, who had built a power base in the rural parts of the country, entered the fray ostensibly to address the chaos and conflict. They promised stability and drew support from young madrassa students and displaced refugees. This power and its regional base enabled the Taliban to lead an insurgency, which caught the other political players by surprise. Within a few years, the Taliban had seized sizable portions of Afghanistan, including the capital city.

Though it promised stability, the Taliban never hid their eventual vision of establishing order through brutal repression. Almost immediately after wresting control of Afghanistan, the regime began restricting the movement of women, policing access to education and carrying out violent reprisals against political opponents.

Even so, the United States welcomed the Taliban as a potential partner in the region. Leading figures in the State Department hoped the new regime would usher in stability and end infighting. American policymakers were also enticed by a partnership that could result in economic rewards.

Afghanistan was ideally located for a major gas pipeline, which policymakers estimated would be profitable for Western companies and lower prices for Western consumers. The petroleum company Unocal began courting the Taliban soon after they seized control of the country. In 1995, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Robert Oakley, joined the project as a key player for finalizing an agreement between the United States and the new regime in Kabul. Alongside him was Zalmay Khalilzad, a former Bush administration official who had joined the RAND Corporation, and former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who would serve as a special consultant — demonstrating bipartisan support for the project.

The Unocal-Taliban deal promised economic rewards, and Democrats and Republicans alike also saw it as potentially offering a direct foothold in the region after the proxy war of the 1980s. Such a relationship would offer a counterbalance in the region to the hostile Iranian regime.

Critically, Unocal would go on to funnel nearly 1 million dollars through the University of Nebraska to Kandahar to establish a training school for future pipeline workers as it pushed for the completion of a deal. The Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline promised to flood the region with tens of millions of dollars in profits, something particularly attractive to the cash-starved Taliban.

In 1997, as part of their charm offensive, Unocal invited the Taliban to Texas with the approval of the Clinton State Department. Company executives warmly welcomed Taliban officials — despite the regime’s brutality and well-known human rights violations — and both parties eagerly pursued a deal.

It all fell apart in 1998 after Osama bin Laden organized and directed the U.S. Embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. With the Taliban backing Bin Laden and the U.S. launching cruise missile strikes in Afghanistan, the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline deal was dead. By all accounts, the Taliban was neither directly involved nor aware of what Bin Laden was planning. Yet they remained committed to their partnership with the al-Qaeda leader — even at the cost of the potential influx of American money, and their hopes for a relationship with the United States.

The eagerness to establish business dealings between the United States and the Taliban gave way to a new period of isolation and American sanctions.

Afghans paid the price for the regime’s support of terrorism. Food and water scarcities led to famine, and lack of access to medical supplies increased infant mortality and death from readily curable diseases. Decades of proxy wars and civil strife had left the country with no infrastructure to speak of — making it ill-equipped to deal with a humanitarian crisis. Plus, the Taliban closed down schools. And the soured relationship with the United States shattered international support and cut off trade.

In 2001, however, a Swedish foreign delegation along with UNESCO visited the Buddhas of Bamiyan and offered funding to potentially buy and preserve the centuries-old historical statues. The Taliban leader, Mohammad Omar, in an interview with journalist Mohammad Shehzad, claimed that when the regime asked that the money go to food for starving children instead of preserving the statues, they were rebuffed. In retaliation for what they deemed the international community’s indifference to Afghan suffering, the Taliban destroyed the Buddhas. Speaking to journalist Barbara Crossette, Taliban envoy Rahmatullah Hashemi said, “The scholars told them that instead of spending money on statues, why didn’t they help our children who are dying of malnutrition? They rejected that, saying, ‘This money is only for statues.’ ” While the regime had earlier intervened to prevent a local commander from damaging the statues, it decided that “if you are destroying our future with economic sanctions, you can’t care about our heritage.”

Destroying the statues was an act of defiance — one that epitomized the reaction to the imposition of sanctions. The regime thumbed its nose at demands from the United States and its allies, even as ordinary Afghans suffered. Where there had once been centuries-old Buddhas, now there were empty alcoves — markers of the failed policy toward the Taliban. In the years that followed, the Taliban became even more repressive, destroying music cassettes, carrying out public executions and using physical violence to maintain their hold over major cities.

Yet despite the failure of sanctions to alter the Taliban’s behavior in the 1990s, the situation in 2022 appears to be remarkably similar.

Under the Trump administration, Khalilzad, who served in the George W. Bush administration after his efforts on behalf of the Unocal deal, returned to a position of power and hammered out the withdrawal deal between the United States and the Taliban. Last year, the Taliban unexpectedly seized Kabul forcing the United States into a hasty, chaotic and internationally humiliating withdrawal.

In retaliation, the United States has once more economically cut off Afghanistan from the world. While ostensibly aiming to punish the Taliban — especially after it reneged on promises to treat women better than it had during its initial reign — as before, ordinary Afghans are bearing the cost.

The U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction reports that 18.9 million Afghans face “extreme levels of hunger” and “near famine conditions.” Yet the United States continues a policy of icy indifference toward the unfolding humanitarian crisis. The inability of the United States to navigate the delicate balance of addressing the crisis at the human level, while simultaneously refusing to politically recognize the Taliban, once more sets the conditions for disaster.

The experience of the late 1990s suggests that not only will the policy drive vast suffering in Afghanistan, but it won’t curb the brutality of the Taliban — or its support for terrorism. Instead, international sanctions probably will worsen the regime’s extremist policies. The empty alcoves where once the Buddhas of Bamian stood are a testament to the failures of the policies past and a warning to the continuation of those policies today.

The Washington Post · by Ali A. Olomi · September 2, 2022

16. I study America's youth. Here's what I found

I remain bullish on our youth.

I study America's youth. Here's what I found

Today’s young people are intelligent and kind, but they are overworked and burned out.

Big Think · by Sara Konrath

What are today’s young people like compared to young people in the past? We often hear stereotypes about American teenagers and young adults, and the above quote feels fresh, even though it was written about flappers in 1926. You can find similar views about the wayward ways of youth as far back as 700 BCE from Hesiod, the Greek poet, and others.

Older generations tend to stereotype recent generations of young people, questioning their intelligence and self-control, and calling them lazy, selfish, and uncaring.

In her book, Unfairly Labeled, Jessica Kriegel argues that, as with other stereotypes, generational stereotypes are harmful and inappropriate in the workplace. Young people often find these stereotypes unfair, as in this 19-year-old flapper’s response to the opening quote: “In this continual fencing, the past generation has not spared us any. They have misinterpreted, twisted and contorted most innocent deeds, light spoken words, healthy pastimes.” Indeed, recent research confirms that young people feel distress at negative stereotypes (e.g., narcissism) being attributed to them.

Stereotypes involve people from one group making judgments and assumptions about people from another group. But what do young people say about themselves?

Measuring generational change

I’m a social scientist who has been following generational trends in the psychological traits of young Americans for most of my career. One way to do this is to compare young people of a similar age (e.g., high school seniors) from different time periods. This is different than simply asking people of various ages to fill out a survey at a single point in time. The latter surveys can help us understand age differences, but age differences don’t necessarily mean generational change. Perhaps they are explained by different responsibilities and experiences that come with different stages of life, such as marriage or parenting. That is why we need to compare young people of the same age on the same measures over time: his can help us to see generational change.

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Importantly, the changes I study are based on young people’s own self-perceptions and abilities, rather than stereotypical beliefs from other age groups. So, what does this research say about young people in recent years?

Busting myths about the younger generation

First, recent generations of young Americans are not less intelligent than earlier generations. The evidence, in fact, suggests the opposite: There have been consistent increases in IQ scores in the past century (three points per decade in the U.S.), which is known as the Flynn effect. This indicates that younger generations of Americans perform better on standardized measures of intelligence.

How about self-control? Are today’s young people more prone to instant gratification than those in the past? Quite the opposite. Indeed, two recent studies found that today’s children are able to wait longer for rewards than children in previous decades.

Another common stereotype about younger generations of Americans is that they are lazier than previous generations. Yet, recent generations of American children have been in school for more of their lives, for more hours per week, with more jam-packed schedules, and with less free play, than earlier generations. Thus, young people today are anything but lazy: They are working more and having less unstructured leisure time.

As for narcissism and empathy, my previous research found that narcissism was increasing and empathy was declining between the late 1970s and 2009. However, updated research has found that these trends dramatically reversed after the Great Recession, with a decrease in narcissism and increase in empathy among young Americans since then. (We recently presented the latter at the Association for Psychological Science in May 2022.) This confirms other research finding that people tend to turn to others during times of economic crisis, and that cooperative behavior is increasing in youth over time.

Overall, when examining these trends, it looks like the kids are good — in terms of both their competence and their moral compass. They are increasing in intelligence and self-control, and at least since the 2008-2009 recession, they are becoming less narcissistic and more empathic.

The kids are burned out

But are the kids okay? In my forthcoming book, Culture of Burnout: American life in an age of increasing expectations (Oxford University Press), I provide evidence that young Americans have been showing increased burnout symptoms over time.

The first symptom of burnout is emotional exhaustion. Younger generations have been reporting higher stress, compared to older generations, since the beginning of the American Psychological Association’s annual national surveys in 2007. They have also reported feeling increasingly overwhelmed since the 1980s. But emotional exhaustion can go beyond stress, and recent generations of young Americans also have been showing increased mental health symptoms such as depression and anxiety.

The second symptom of burnout is cynicism, or low trust in others. There have been declines in the percentage of young Americans who agree that people are basically good and trustworthy. For example, in 1972, 32.1% of 18-25-year-old Americans reported being trusting on the General Social Survey, but by 2018, only 15.4% did. This is a worrisome trend, because trust is the foundation of positive relationships, and arguably, of democracy itself. It is also interesting in light of recent increases in empathy: Young people care about others and want to help, but they believe that others don’t feel the same way. That represents a way of relating to others that psychologists would label an “insecure attachment style.” Not surprisingly, we have found declines in secure attachment styles since the late 1980s.

The final symptom of burnout is feelings of low accomplishment or low self-efficacy. In recent years, national surveys find that American high school students are more likely to believe that the plans they make will not work out, that there are barriers to getting ahead, and that they don’t have a chance of being successful in life. These feelings are especially remarkable in light of the research that finds rising intelligence, self-control, and hard work over time.

Why are young Americans increasingly burned out? The burnout equation involves too many expectations and demands, plus too few resources and support. These increasing demands have been both internal (e.g., unrealistic educational goals and perfectionism) and external (e.g., the rising cost and competition of college and stagnant wages).

These increased demands push young people toward an extrinsic, economic payoff mindset, that leads them to spend more time working and monetizing their behaviors. It’s a feeling of always being “on” and never being able to fully relax. We only have 24 hours in a day, and more time “on” crowds out intrinsic activities done for their own sake, many of which can help buffer burnout, such as exercise, relaxing in nature, participating in the arts, and socializing. Although data are not yet fully available to document changes in burnout symptoms during the pandemic, it likely increased even more since 2020, because demands increased and resources decreased for many Americans.

The underlying hidden metric under these increasing symptoms of burnout and increasing demands is the increase over time in economic inequality. There are high correlations between changes in the GINI index and symptoms of burnout among young Americans, which points toward broader cultural and workplace patterns, rather than the simple need for “more self-care.”

Relative to previous generations, today’s American young people are intelligent, able to delay their gratification, and cooperative and caring. Yet, they are trying very hard to meet the increasing expectations for success in our society, only to find themselves exhausted, frustrated at the doors slamming in their faces, and minimizing their accomplishments, since they don’t seem to pay off. Burnout is an understandable response to an untenable situation: It is a forced halt to the rat race.

Solutions to burnout

What are some potential solutions to increasing burnout? We need to flip the burnout equation: decrease expectations and demands on young people, while also providing more resources and support. This needs to come from many different sources, ranging from educational institutions to workplaces to government policies. In terms of the latter, policies can focus on either limiting the winner-take-all economy or providing opportunities and subsidies that help offset the rising costs of trying to succeed in today’s increasingly competitive environment.

Unfortunately, burnout itself is a demoralizing force, making it less likely that groups of young people will rise up and fight the system. So, older generations need to fight it on their behalf, and young people need to reclaim rest, rejuvenation, and revitalization as acts of political warfare, to paraphrase Audre Lorde’s famous quote.

Engaging in burnout buffers can help restore energy levels in order to rethink and retool the world we live in. Most of them are free or inexpensive, whether taking a hike or bike ride in nature, spending quality time with friends, or creating or enjoying some sort of art — basically, anything that is done for the sake of enjoyment alone, without an economic benefit. Make love, not war was the mantra of 1960s youth, and perhaps we need a new one today: Make love, not work.

Big Think · by Sara Konrath

17. Putin Has a Problem: Kherson Offensive A 'Tactical Surprise' For Russia Military

Putin Has a Problem: Kherson Offensive A 'Tactical Surprise' For Russia Military

19fortyfive.com · by Jack Buckby · September 3, 2022

Russia Isn’t Ready

Video of Ukraine’s forces launching an attack. Image Credit: Twitter Screenshot.

19fortyfive.com · by Jack Buckby · September 3, 2022

18. School Is for Everyone

Is education a public good?

Excerpts:

Without public education delivered as a public good, the asylum seeker in detention, the teenager in jail, not to mention millions of children growing up in poverty, will have no realistic way to get the instruction they need to participate in democracy or support themselves. And students of privilege will stay confined in their bubbles. Americans will lose the most powerful social innovation that helps us construct a common reality and try, imperfectly, to understand one another.

It’s a testament to the success of our schools that it took the pandemic shutdowns for many people to see all the essential roles they play in society. The length of these closures made the United States an outlier among other wealthy nations. They forced Americans to ask themselves: What is school for?

Public Goods

First published Wed Jul 21, 2021

The government plays a significant role in providing goods such as national defence, infrastructure, education, security, and fire and environmental protection almost everywhere. These goods are often referred to as “public goods”. Public goods are of philosophical interest because their provision is, to varying degrees, essential to the smooth functioning of society—economically, politically, and culturally—and because of their close connection to problems concerning the regulation of externalities and the free-rider problem. Without infrastructure and their protection goods cannot be exchanged, votes cannot be cast, and it would be harder to enjoy the fruits of cultural production. There is widespread agreement among political philosophers that some level of education is required for democracy to be effective. Due to their connection to externalities and the free-rider problem, the provision of public goods raises profound economic and ethical issues. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/public-goods/

School Is for Everyone

By Anya Kamenetz The New York Times12 min

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Credit...Illustration by Chloe Scheffe; photographs by Internet Archive; Ansel Adams, Esther Bubley, Warren K. Leffler and Russell Lee, via Library of Congress; Museums Victoria, Muhammad Haikal Sjurki, Note Thanun and New York Public Library, via Unsplash; and Mikus, via Wikimedia Commons

Ms. Kamenetz is a longtime education reporter and the author of “The Stolen Year: How Covid Changed Children’s Lives, and Where We Go Now,” from which this essay is adapted.

For the majority of human history, most people didn’t go to school. Formal education was a privilege for the Alexander the Greats of the world, who could hire Aristotles as private tutors.

Starting in the mid-19th century, the United States began to establish truly universal, compulsory education. It was a social compact: The state provides public schools that are free and open to all. And children, for most of their childhood, are required to receive an education. Today, nine out of 10 do so in public schools.

To an astonishing degree, one person, Horace Mann, the nation’s first state secretary of education, forged this reciprocal commitment. The Constitution doesn’t mention education. In Southern colonies, rich white children had tutors or were sent overseas to learn. Teaching enslaved people to read was outlawed. Those who learned did so by luck, in defiance or in secret.

But Mann came from Massachusetts, the birthplace of the “common school” in the 1600s, where schoolmasters were paid by taking up a collection from each group of households. Mann expanded on that tradition. He crossed the state on horseback to visit every schoolhouse, finding mostly neglected, drafty old wrecks. He championed schools as the crucible of democracy — his guiding principle, following Thomas Jefferson, was that citizens cannot sustain both ignorance and freedom.

An essential part of Mann’s vision was that public schools should be for everyone and that children of different class backgrounds should learn together. He pushed to draw wealthier students away from private schools, establish “normal schools” to train teachers (primarily women), have the state take over charitable schools and increase taxes to pay for it all.

He largely succeeded. By the early 20th century all states had free primary schools, underwritten by taxpayers, that students were required to attend.

And that’s more or less how America became the nation we recognize today. The United States soon boasted one of the world’s highest literacy rates among white people. It is hard to imagine how we could have established our industrial and scientific might, welcomed newcomers from all over the world, knit our democracy back together after the Civil War and become a wealthy nation with high living standards without schoolhouses.

The consensus on schooling has never been perfect. Private schools older than the nation continue to draw the elite. Public schools in many parts of the country were segregated by law until the mid-20th century, and they are racially and economically segregated to this day.

But Mann’s inclusive vision is under particular threat right now. Extended school closures during the coronavirus pandemic effectively broke the social compact of universal, compulsory schooling.

School closures threw our country back into the educational atomization that characterized the pre-Mann era. Wealthy parents hired tutors for their children; others opted for private and religious schools that reopened sooner; some had no choice but to leave their children alone in the house all day or send them to work for wages while the schoolhouse doors were closed.

Students left public schools at a record rate and are still leaving, particularly in the blue states and cities that kept schools closed longer. Scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (known as the Nation’s Report Card) dropped significantly this year: 9-year-olds lost ground in math for the first time since the test came out in the 1970s, and scores in reading fell by the largest margin in more than three decades. The drop in math was much worse for Black students than for their white peers. Home-schooling is on the rise, private schools have gained students, and an unknown number have dropped out altogether; Los Angeles said up to 50,000 students were absent on the first day of class this year. Teachers are experiencing intense burnout, and schools have many staff vacancies.

Meanwhile, a well-funded, decades-old movement that wants to do away with public school as we know it is in ascendance.

This movement rejects Mann’s vision that schools should be the common ground where a diverse society discovers how to live together. Instead, it believes families should educate their children however they wish, or however they can. It sees no problem with Republican schools for Republican students, Black schools for Black students, Christian schools for Christian students and so on, as long as those schools are freely chosen. Recent Supreme Court decisions open the door to both prayer in schools and public funding of religious education, breaking with Mann’s nonsectarian ideal.

If we want to renew the benefits that public schools have brought to America, we need to recommit to the vision Mann advocated. Our democracy sprouts in the nursery of public schools — where students grapple together with our messy history and learn to negotiate differences of race, class, gender and sexual orientation. Freedom of thought will wilt if schools foist religious doctrine of any kind onto students. And schools need to be enriched places, full of caring adults who have the support and resources they need to teach effectively.

Without public education delivered as a public good, the asylum seeker in detention, the teenager in jail, not to mention millions of children growing up in poverty, will have no realistic way to get the instruction they need to participate in democracy or support themselves. And students of privilege will stay confined in their bubbles. Americans will lose the most powerful social innovation that helps us construct a common reality and try, imperfectly, to understand one another.

It’s a testament to the success of our schools that it took the pandemic shutdowns for many people to see all the essential roles they play in society. The length of these closures made the United States an outlier among other wealthy nations. They forced Americans to ask themselves: What is school for?

For Melissa Henderson, a single mother of five in Georgia, school was a safe place for her kids. With schools and day cares closed in May 2020, she left her 14-year-old daughter in charge of her younger siblings. Ms. Henderson was arrested and charged with reckless conduct.

For Alexis, a 10-year-old on Maui, school was a place to be with her friends. She has a rare genetic condition and is autistic. When schools closed, she went from a “happy, bubbly, loving-life child” to “flat and empty and not really there — like a robot,” said her mother, Vanessa Ince. Alexis regressed from walking to crawling, went back to wearing diapers and stopped using a communication device.

For Osvaldo Rivas Santiago, a 15-year-old growing up in foster care in Vancouver, Wash., school was where he set goals for himself and excelled. He had trouble willing himself to stay focused with remote learning.

“It impacts your motivation,” he told me. “You tend to not really care about school at all.”

The shutdowns reminded Americans that schools provide vital services besides learning. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, slammed “people who saw teachers as glorified babysitters” before the pandemic. But the fact is, public school is the nation’s major source of free child care for working families. Moreover, tens of millions of children depend on school for meals, safety, special education services and therapies, and English language learning.

They are also hubs of community togetherness.

I live around the corner from my daughter’s public elementary school in Brooklyn, a sprawling brick building dating to 1895. At the start of the pandemic, the cheerful daily rush of cargo bikes, scooters and children walking to school gave way to an eerie silence punctuated by the howl of ambulances.

Without the ability to meet in person regularly, some neighborly relationships curdled. Someone removed the schoolyard’s Black Lives Matter and Pride flags, and suspicions flew. Here and across the country, school board and P.T.A. meetings moved online and sometimes stretched into the wee hours of the night as parents yelled themselves hoarse over reopening protocols and varying responses to the nation’s racial upheaval.

Some Americans missed schools when they were closed, and others distanced themselves. The extended blue state closures were a failure on the part of Democrats, who have historically been the party that Americans trust over Republicans when it comes to education. That trust eroded during the pandemic, as many Democratic governors and mayors seemed unable to balance families’ needs with fears of a deadly virus. Today, the few union leaders and other educators who have impugned or outright denied the existence of learning loss are coming pretty close to arguing that public schools accomplish nothing. If being at home for a year and a half didn’t have any negative impact on children, why do we need school?

All of this emboldened a movement on the right that has for more than half a century sought to dismantle public education and the idea that Americans from diverse backgrounds should learn alongside one another.

Corey DeAngelis, a fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, told me that “the teachers unions’ influence on keeping the schools closed for so long” opened the door to expanded alternatives. His dream is a universal voucher program, where taxpayer funds are parceled out directly to families to spend as they wish, with no public school “monopoly.” Meaning, no collectively funded infrastructure to provide education as a public good.

This dream began, more or less, in 1955, when the University of Chicago’s Milton Friedman published the first manifesto arguing for school vouchers to replace publicly administered education. James McGill Buchanan, a University of Chicago-trained economist teaching at the University of Virginia, took the argument further by seizing on the era’s post-Brown v. Board of Education segregationist fervor. As Nancy MacLean summarizes in “Democracy in Chains,” her acclaimed but polarizing 2017 intellectual history of the right in America, Buchanan intuited that if rich white people could be convinced that they were justified in no longer paying for public schools, it opened the door to resist all taxation, all public goods. And he supplied that justification. He came to argue that it was anti-liberty to force people of wealth, a minority, to ante up for goods enjoyed by the majority.

What was called “massive resistance” to integration was so strong that some places in the South chose to close public schools altogether rather than see them integrated. In the fall of 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower called in the 101st Airborne to protect the Little Rock Nine. The next year, the Arkansas Legislature and the governor tried to block desegregation by closing Little Rock’s four public high schools, Black and white, entirely. It became known as the Lost Year. In Prince Edward County, Virginia, officials went even further, closing the schools from 1959 all the way to 1964, while providing private schooling to white children.

This was an outright rejection of Mann’s ideal that Americans should be educated at public schools that serve everyone. And the mark of that rejection remains to this day. Throughout the South, white children attend private schools that began as so-called segregation academies during the civil rights era, while many Black children attend the hollowed-out public schools that white students left behind. And elsewhere the pattern is repeated — in fact, schools in the Northeast are among the most segregated in the country.

The movement Friedman and Buchanan encouraged lives on. Opposition to public education, and the promotion of alternatives like vouchers and for-profit schools, has attracted Catholics long devoted to parochial schools, evangelical Christians and other religious groups, cultural conservatives, corporate capitalists and libertarians. Today they are joined by the millionaires and billionaires who see K-12 education as another sector ripe for disruption.

In other words, the core constituencies of today’s Republican Party, otherwise seemingly so disparate, unite over this one issue. Their shared agenda is to privatize and defund schools.

This movement could have no better avatar than Betsy DeVos, who had never taught in, attended or sent her children to a public school before President Donald Trump named her secretary of education. “I personally think the Department of Education should not exist,” she said in July.

During the pandemic, Ms. DeVos diverted a disproportionate share of federal relief funds to private schools until a judge declared her actions illegal. She proposed a federal school voucher program.

And she declined to direct the Department of Education to track school reopening plans or Covid mitigation strategies, abdicating responsibility for helping districts reopen safely, even as the Trump administration called for them to reopen at any cost. Her approach signaled exactly what the agenda will be if Republicans regain control of the federal government.

And though Mr. Trump is out of office (for now), and Ms. DeVos with him, the Supreme Court justices the former president nominated have opened the door to both prayer in public schools and the public funding of religious schools. Right-wing donors, many of whom have long histories of opposing public education, have backed the activists whipping up a fervor over the treatment of race and queer and trans rights in the classroom. In the eyes of conservative activists, public education is the enemy of the people, alongside the deep state and the mainstream media, and they are working hard to make the American people believe it too.

Mann’s vision of public schools is at stake right now. Not only his vision of school as the great equalizer, the place where disadvantaged groups gain access to social and economic capital, which is important enough, but also his view of school as the place where Americans can give up ignorance in exchange for freedom.

This country has seemingly never had a harder time embracing a shared reality or believing in common values. The parents who are showing up at school boards yelling about “critical race theory” and pronouns are trying to get public schools to bend history, reality and values to their liking. I disagree with them vehemently, but I also want them to stay in the argument. It would be far worse if these parents went home and created their own schools. Because their children would then grow up with one set of unchallenged beliefs, while my children and the children of like-minded people would grow up with another — emerging as adults who have no hope of understanding one another, much less living together peacefully.

If we lose public education, flawed as it is, the foundations of our democracy will slip. Not only the shared knowledge base but also the skills of citizenship itself: communication, empathy and compromise across differences.

I grew up Jewish in the Bible Belt, studious and serious. My Christian classmates sometimes taunted me that I was going to hell.

I can only imagine how I would have felt if my teachers had openly agreed. If my textbooks were full of conspiracy theories about “globalists” and Jewish space lasers. If I and my friends who were Jain or Buddhist had to choose between attending a school that conformed to the majority of our neighbors’ religious beliefs and staying home.

As it was, it was hard to be singled out. But that experience of difference helped me connect with Creole children, and those whose families came from Sri Lanka, Costa Rica, Taiwan, India, Nigeria — brought to the land of football and po’ boys by the oil industry and jobs at Louisiana State University. And some of my closest friends were from white, churchgoing families too. We did the Cajun two-step, lined up for the geography bee and learned to be together, imperfectly, in this ever-various country.

Anya Kamenetz (@anya1anya) is a longtime education reporter and the author of “The Stolen Year: How Covid Changed Children’s Lives, and Where We Go Now,” from which this essay is adapted.

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19. Pentagon Research Center Quietly Contradicts Optimism of Defense Secretary Austin (AFRCOM)

Although a very negative article (to be expected from Nick Turse on everything related to Defense) I think DOD (and Congress for funding) should be commended for supporting and allowing critical research and the publication of research that may be contrary to political agendas. The question is whether this report will influence DOD views and assessments?

I don't know if this is a "devastating report" but it is the link to the infographic published by the Africa Center at NDU referenced in the article below. https://africacenter.org/spotlight/sahel-and-somalia-drive-uninterrupted-rise-in-african-militant-islamist-group-violence-over-past-decade/

Pentagon Research Center Quietly Contradicts Optimism of Defense Secretary Austin

On the same day Lloyd Austin lauded U.S. troops in Africa, the Pentagon’s Africa Center released a report on rising terrorism there.

The Intercept · by Nick Turse · September 4, 2022

Last month, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin touted the accomplishments of U.S. Africa Command, commending its leaders and personnel for tackling terrorism and making the continent more secure and stable. “Every day, AFRICOM works alongside our friends as full partners — to strengthen bonds, to tackle common threats, and to advance a shared vision of an Africa whose people are safe and prosperous,” he announced at a ceremony honoring the new AFRICOM commander, Gen. Michael Langley.

That very same day, the Defense Department’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research institution, issued a devastating report that directly refuted Austin’s positive assessments. “Militant Islamist group violence in Africa has risen inexorably over the past decade, expanding by 300 percent during this time,” reads the analysis. “Violent events linked to militant Islamist groups have doubled since 2019.”

I’m in

Austin’s commentary and the Pentagon’s contradictory report come as the Biden administration has ramped up the U.S. war in Somalia, turning the impoverished Horn of Africa nation into one of the prime fronts in the two-decadelong war on terror. After a lull in the spring, when AFRICOM conducted no airstrikes in Somalia, President Joe Biden approved a plan to redeploy close to 500 U.S. ground forces there — reversing an eleventh-hour withdrawal of most U.S. troops by then-President Donald Trump in late 2020 — and authorized the targeted killings of about a dozen leaders of the terrorist group al-Shabab.

In June, AFRICOM conducted an airstrike in Somalia, reportedly killing five members of al-Shabab. Just over a month later, AFRICOM announced another attack that killed two militants. In August, AFRICOM conducted at least five airstrikes that reportedly killed 17 “al-Shabaab terrorists.”

“Despite President Biden’s campaign promise to end the forever wars, Somalia remains one of the most active areas in the world for U.S. counterterrorism operations,” said Sarah Harrison, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group and formerly associate general counsel at the Defense Department’s Office of General Counsel, International Affairs. “That is a direct result of President Biden’s new policies, which include repositioning hundreds of U.S. forces back to Somalia and, over this summer, ramping up airstrikes. This obviously diverges from the administration’s rhetoric on winding down the U.S. war on terror and, in my opinion, is not helpful absent an internationally coordinated strategy to address conflict drivers, which are mainly political.”

Over the last 15 years, the United States has conducted no fewer than 260 airstrikes and ground raids in Somalia. Under the auspices of the secretive 127e authority — which allows U.S. Special Operations forces to train, arm, and direct local surrogates to carry out missions on behalf of America — the U.S. has also employed no fewer than five proxy forces in Somalia. The U.S. has also spent more than $2.2 billion on security assistance to the Somali military, including its elite Danab Brigade, since 2009. This is in addition to more than $3.2 billion in humanitarian and development assistance provided since 2006.

On August 9, the same day that the command conducted three airstrikes there, Austin talked up “the power of partnership in Somalia, where AFRICOM supports our partners as they lead the fight against al-Shabab.” That “power” and the billions of U.S. tax dollars behind it have produced little positive impact, according to the Pentagon’s Africa Center. “Somalia continues to see a steady rise in militant Islamist events and fatalities,” according to the report, which notes that deaths resulting from attacks have jumped 11 percent since last year. “The record 2,221 violent events reported are a 45 percent increase from the 3-year average from 2018-2020.”

“The policy to address protracted conflict in Somalia has been largely militaristic even though the required solution is chiefly political.”

While the U.S. has been fighting al-Shabab since the 2000s, the group was “linked to 36 percent of all militant Islamist group violence recorded on the continent this past year,” according to the Africa Center. The group holds power in wide swaths of the countryside and runs a shadow state complete with courts and tax authorities that netted the group $120 million in 2020, according to U.S. government estimates. Al-Shabab is also increasingly able to take on the Somali military. While Austin noted that America’s “persistent military presence in Somalia” allows the United States to “more effectively advise, assist, and train African forces as they combat the threat of al-Shabab,” violence by the group increasingly consists of battles with state security forces — a jump from 56 percent of attacks in 2019 to 72 percent in 2022. Al-Shabab is also able to conduct complex and devastating attacks in cities, including the capital, Mogadishu. Late last month, the group’s 30-hour siege of the upscale Hayat Hotel there left close to 140 dead or wounded.

“Notwithstanding 15 years of military involvement by the United States and the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia, al-Shabab remains powerful in its ability to conduct complex attacks. That’s because the policy to address protracted conflict in Somalia has been largely militaristic even though the required solution is chiefly political,” said Harrison. “This war will not end on the battlefield, as U.S. officials — military and civilian — have told me. The United States and other international actors cannot continue to lean on military containment of al-Shabab. Their goal must be to end the war, which will require supporting reconciliation efforts led by the federal government of Somalia and a commitment to eventual negotiations with al-Shabab.”

A U.S. Army instructor walks next to Malian soldiers during an anti-terrorism exercise at the Kamboinsé-General Bila Zagre military camp on April 12, 2018, near Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso.

Photo: Issouf Sanogo/AFP via Getty Images

Quiet Before 9/11

As dismal as the U.S. record has been in Somalia, the results are even worse in the other main African theater of the U.S. war on terror, the Sahel — especially Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger.

Just before the forever wars got underway after 9/11, the United States searched for terrorist threats in Africa but failed to locate them. A 2000 report from the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, for example, examined the “African security environment.” While noting the existence of “internal separatist or rebel movements” in “weak states,” as well as militias and “warlord armies,” it made no mention of Islamic extremism or major transnational terror threats. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the State Department counted a total of just nine terrorist attacks in 2002 and 2003 in all of Africa, resulting in a combined 23 casualties.

Just before the forever wars got underway after 9/11, the United States searched for terrorist threats in Africa but failed to locate them.

Despite this, the U.S. poured more than $1 billion into the nations of West Africa through various military assistance efforts, including the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership, a program designed to “counter and prevent violent extremism” in the region. The United States also employed a host of other episodic training programs, including the African Crisis Response Initiative, the African Contingency Operations Training and Assistance program, the International Military Education and Training program, the Counterterrorism Fellowship Program, the Global Peace Operations Initiative, and the Joint Combined Exchange Training program. In Burkina Faso alone, the U.S. has poured in hundreds of millions of dollars through more than 15 security assistance programs. The payoff has been abysmal.

“The Sahel,” according to the Africa Center report, “has seen a quadrupling in the number of violent extremist events since 2019. Along with Mozambique, this is the sharpest spike in violence of any region on the continent during this timeframe.” The 2,612 attacks by militants in the Sahel over the past year outpaced even Somalia in terms of violence by Islamist militants. The 7,052 resulting fatalities account for almost half of all such deaths reported on the continent. And a quarter of those fatalities were civilians — a 67 percent jump over 2021.

Austin briefly acknowledged the insecurity in the Sahel without mentioning the role that officers trained under the many U.S. security assistance programs in the region have played in undermining the very governments the U.S. has sought to shore up. “Some African militaries have pushed out civilian governments,” Austin noted. “So let’s be clear: A military exists to serve its people — and not the other way around.” The many U.S. training programs employed in the Sahel have not, however, made this clear to all of their graduates. Since 2008, U.S.-trained officers have attempted at least nine coups (and succeeded in at least eight) across five West African countries, including Burkina Faso (three times), Guinea, Mali (three times), Mauritania, and Gambia.

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

Earlier this year, for example, Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who participated in at least a half-dozen U.S. training exercises, according to AFRICOM, overthrew the government of Burkina Faso. In 2020, Col. Assimi Goïta, who worked with U.S. Special Operations forces for years, headed the junta that overthrew Mali’s government. After staging the coup, Goïta stepped down and took the job of vice president in a transitional government tasked with returning Mali to civilian rule. But nine months later, he seized power again in a second coup.

The Africa Center found that about 95 percent of the increase in militant Islamist violence on the continent since 2019 was centered in just two theaters, the Sahel and Somalia. But worrying trends are emerging elsewhere, it said.

Violence in the Sahel has increasingly drifted south into the relatively peaceful littoral states along the Gulf of Guinea. Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, and Togo have experienced nearly 20 terrorist attacks in the past year, according to the Africa Center. Violence by the militant group Ahlu Sunnah wa Jama’a in Mozambique is also on the rise, increasing 17 percent since 2020. And while attacks by Boko Haram in Nigeria have dropped substantially, the Islamic State of West Africa conducted about as many attacks and killed double the number of civilians as its rival terror group, a 50 percent increase over 2021.

All told, the Africa Center reported a record 6,255 “violent events” by militant Islamist groups in 2022, a 21 percent jump from last year. Fatalities resulting from these attacks also spiked almost 50 percent since 2019, bringing this year’s death toll to a staggering 14,635.

As he closed his remarks last month, Austin congratulated AFRICOM on building security and fostering peace on the continent. Yet that same day, the Africa Center noted that “militant Islamist violence in Africa has risen continuously over the past decade, doubling in just the past 3 years.”

The Intercept · by Nick Turse · September 4, 2022

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

VIDEO "WHEREBY" Link: https://whereby.com/david-maxwell

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

V/R

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow

Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Phone: 202-573-8647

Personal Email: d avid.maxwell161@gmail.com

Web Site: www.fdd.org

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Subscribe to FDD’s new podcast, Foreign Podicy

FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

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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