Quotes of the Day:
"Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence."
- Louis Pasteur
"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay."
- Simone de Beauvoir
1. The Army Needs to Understand the Afghanistan Disaster
2. Seven Movies Worth Watching About 9/11
3. Entire U.S. Terrorism Watch List Leaked Online
4. How AI Could Go Disastrously Wrong
5. White House wants $6.4 billion to help resettle Afghan allies, refugees
6. New war-gaming center to speed up weapon deliveries to US Marines
7. Japan’s Potential Acquisition of Ground-Launched Land-Attack Missiles: Implications for the U.S.-Japanese Alliance
8. Confronting Chaos: A New Concept for Information Advantage
9. As airport reopens, Taliban gives permission for at least 200 dual nationals, including Americans, to leave the country
10. America’s High-Tech Problem in Low-Tech Wars
11. Biden Is Running a Hostage Negotiation With the Taliban
12. Taliban’s government includes designated terrorists, ex-Guantanamo detainees
13. After 9/11, the U.S. Got Almost Everything Wrong
14. Opinion | How 9/11 conspiracy theories fueled the war on reality
15. Forceful, Yet Magnanimous: The Foreign Policy of George H. W. Bush
16. Pentagon Chief Says Hopes Fading for More Open Taliban Government in Afghanistan
17. Hybrid Wars: Technological Advancements and the Generational Evolution of Warfare
18. Russian Rear Area Operations and the Resistance Operating Concept
19. The Pandemic Has Cost the Pentagon at Least $13.6B and Counting
20. China won't accept US hegemonic acts in the South China Sea
21. Koch-Funded Quincy Institute Joins Communists To Demand Biden Administration Lift Sanctions on US Enemies
22. General Failure: How the U.S. Military Lied About the 9/11 Wars
23. Pro-Beijing operatives used social media to try promoting NYC protest - CyberScoop
24. A Reckoning for U.S. Foreign Policy Elites is Long Overdue
24. U.S. Navy looks to South Korea's free-diving women for hypothermia remedy
25. Biden boots Trump appointees from military academy advisory boards
26. Afghanistan withdrawal has Taiwan pondering its alliance with the US – and China is upping the pressure
1. The Army Needs to Understand the Afghanistan Disaster
An interesting proposal for an independent civilian commission. Frank and Matt wrote a very comprehensive and comprehensive report on the Iraq War.
The Army Needs to Understand the Afghanistan Disaster
The service can’t review its own performance. An independent civilian commission is necessary.
WSJ · by Frank Sobchak and Matthew Zais
Soldiers walk together after returning home from deployment in Fort Drum, N.Y., Sept. 6.
Photo: brendan mcdermid/Reuters
The U.S. war in Afghanistan was a costly failure. More than 2,400 Americans died during the two-decade conflict. Tens of thousands more returned home with life-altering wounds. The Kabul government collapsed before American forces had withdrawn and the Afghan Army simply evaporated. The Taliban marked its victory with celebratory gunfire and parades.
This disastrous outcome deserves an honest reckoning. Such introspection is especially needed within the U.S. Army, which provided most of the mission commanders and a majority of the troops. Unfortunately, there is little incentive for either the service’s leaders or bureaucracy to conduct such an inquiry.
Iraqi forces similarly collapsed after the U.S. departure. We helped draft the Army’s historical inquiry of the Iraq war from 2013 to 2019. This effort was championed by Gen. Ray Odierno, at the time the Army chief of staff, and Gen. Lloyd Austin, who then ran Central Command and is now defense secretary.
Our findings weren’t always flattering, including that American generals had offered inflated assessments of Iraqi military capability. Gen. Odierno’s successor, Gen. Mark Milley, attempted to bury the work and its lessons. Gen. Omar Jones, the Army’s senior public affairs officer who had tried to block a conference that aimed to draw lessons from the My Lai Massacre, supported Gen. Milley’s effort to quash the Iraq study. Gen. Milley eventually agreed to publish the Iraq war history, after the story appeared in the press.
Gen. Milley was successful, however, in shelving plans to incorporate the findings into the Army’s professional military education; releasing the full declassified archives that accompanied the history; and printing copies for military leaders and soldiers. A bootlegged version from Amazon is now the easiest way to get a copy.
The U.S. military needs to avoid repeating the mistakes that doomed the efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. But who should conduct this study? And how should it be done? The House Armed Services Committee recently approved a commission, but an inquiry done by lawmakers will fall prey to partisanship.
The Army’s record suggests the service can’t conduct an unvarnished review of itself. In the 1980s, Army leaders tried to suppress one of the seminal works of the Vietnam conflict, Andrew Krepinevich’s “The Army in the Vietnam War.” The Defense Department and Secretary Austin should instead direct the formation of a team of academics and practitioners. This team should answer to the National Defense University, while being fully empowered by the Defense secretary.
Organizing the group outside normal military structures and having it led by civilians should prevent the services from trying to kill an unflattering assessment. As an additional precaution, the group’s charter should allow civilian leaders to publish the findings without the approval of the military services.
The group should be diverse and include civilian academics, journalists and current and former military members who served and didn’t serve in Afghanistan. The leader will need bipartisan credentials, perhaps an acclaimed author of military history. The inquiry should include members from all service branches, though the team should be focused on the ground war and thus draw members largely from the Army and Marines.
Once formed, the team should focus on providing a brutally honest assessment, one unafraid to criticize senior military officers. The perspective should be of the theater commander, while also including strategic deliberations with the president, senior Pentagon officials and Congress. The study should also look at how well battlefield commanders carried out that strategy.
The study must be unclassified and, similar to the Iraq inquiry, the team should be granted full access to the emails of all general officers who served in or had responsibility for Afghanistan. Secretary Austin should order a full declassification effort and direct his subordinates to cooperate.
The first step in recovery is admitting that one has a problem. Deep introspection is necessary at the Defense Department to understand the role the U.S. military and its uniformed leaders played in the Afghanistan tragedy. The military isn’t infallible, and it is time to be held accountable for our part in defeat.
Mr. Sobchak, a retired Army Special Forces colonel, is a contributor at the MirYam Institute. Mr. Zais, a retired Infantry colonel, is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. Both were co-authors of the Army’s history of the Iraq war.
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WSJ · by Frank Sobchak and Matthew Zais
2. Seven Movies Worth Watching About 9/11
I am behind on my cultural awareness through film. I have not seen any of these (though I have seen parts of Zero Dark Thirty during some channel surfing)
Seven Movies Worth Watching About 9/11
Some of these films are fictional. Others are inspired by, or based on, actual events. Each tries to provide insight into what the events of that day unleashed.
Saturday marks the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. We are sharing sources to learn more about that day and its ramifications. Today we’re recommending seven movies about 9/11 and its consequences. Some of these films are fictional. Others are inspired by, or based on, actual events. Either way, they each try to provide insight into what the events of that day unleashed.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011). An estimated three thousand children lost parents in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, forever altering their lives. Based on Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel of the same name, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close tells the story of one such child. Nine-year-old Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn) and his father, Thomas (Tom Hanks), have a tight knit relationship. Thomas plans scavenger hunts that push Oskar outside of his comfort zone by requiring him to explore New York City and interact with others. A year after Thomas dies in the collapse of the World Trade Center, Oskar finds a key in Thomas’ closet. Oskar sets out to discover what the key had to do with his father. In doing so, he finds closure following his father’s death. You can watch Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, or YouTube.
Reign Over Me (2004). Thousands of Americans lost loved ones on 9/11. How do you cope with that kind of loss? In Reign Over Me, Director Mike Binder explores that question through the fictional story of Charlie Fineman (Adam Sandler). Charlie’s life comes crashing down around him when his wife and three daughters die in the collapse of the World Trade Center. Five years later, he runs into his former roommate from dental school, Alan Johnson (Don Cheadle). Alan is shocked by how much Charlie has changed. Once friendly and outgoing, Charlie is withdrawn and unkempt. Alan works to rekindle their friendship and help his friend return to normal life. Charlie, in turn, helps Alan see the joy and meaning he had overlooked in his own life and relationships. The film, which also features Jada Pinkett Smith and Liv Tyler, shows the value of true friendship during dark times. You can watch Reign Over Me on Apple TV, Amazon Prime, or Hulu.
The Report (2019). In the wake of 9/11, the George W. Bush administration turned to “enhanced interrogation techniques” to extract information from actual or suspected terrorists. After news leaked that the CIA had destroyed tapes of the investigation of high-level al-Qaeda operatives to cover up instances of torture, the Senate Intelligence Committee launched an investigation. The Report tells the story of that effort, which concluded in 2014 with a 6,700-page report, much of which remains classified. Senate staffer Doug Jones (Adam Driver) is tasked by Senator Diane Feinstein (Annette Benning) to investigate the destruction of the interrogation videos. He uncovers evidence that the CIA misrepresented its methods, the number of detainees it tortured, and the quality of the information it gained. But not everyone wants the Senate to fulfill its oversight role. Driver and Benning, who are joined by Jon Hamm, Ted Levine, and Corey Stoll, elevate this procedural into a gripping look at recent abuse of human rights by the United States. You can watch The Report on Amazon Prime.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012). What happens when worlds collide, and what we want and what we had conflict? Based on Mohsin Hamid’s novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist tells the story of Changez Khan (Riz Ahmed), a Pakistani immigrant living in the United States. After graduating from Princeton, he seems to have it all. He works for a big Wall Street firm, his boss likes him, and he is dating a beautiful photographer (Kate Hudson). However, his life in America changes drastically after 9/11. He is suddenly viewed with anger and suspicion. He returns home to Lahore, Pakistan, where he soon becomes entangled with a CIA agent (Liv Schreiber) looking to find a kidnapped American college professor. Director Mira Nair focuses on the different directions Khan’s life pulls him–from his urge to pursue a career in the United States, his commitment to his family in Pakistan, and his conflicted views of the United States and U.S. foreign policy. You can watch The Reluctant Fundamentalist on Apple TV, Amazon Prime, or Hulu.
Worth (2020). How much is a life worth? Washington, DC, attorney Kenneth Feinberg was tasked with answering just that question for each of the nearly three thousand people who died on 9/11. Two months after the attacks, he was appointed special master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. Director Sara Colangelo tells the story of how Feinberg over the course of nearly three years worked with the victims’ families to distribute more than $7 billion. Many families disagreed with the decisions he made and the manner in which he communicated them. Michael Keaton played Feinberg, while Stanley Tucci played Charles Wolf, whose wife died in the World Trade Center and who led the opposition to Feinberg. “There’s a certain dramatic license that they play in the film,” according to the real-life Feinberg, and journalists have been quick to point out where facts give way to fiction. But even Wolf agrees that the film rings true in its account of a man who changes and grows as he comes to understand the depth of pain the victims’ families. You can watch Worth on Netflix.
United 93 (2006). The 9/11 terrorists hijacked four planes. Three of them hit their targets. The fourth, United Flight 93, crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after its passengers heroically fought to retake control. In United 93, Director Paul Greenglass recreates the story of the doomed flight in real-time using what is known from its flight path, communications with air traffic control, phone calls from passengers to their loved ones, and interviews with the families of the flight crew and passengers. Greenglass shunned big Hollywood names and cast relative unknowns in the film. Indeed, the flight crew is portrayed by actual pilots and flight attendants. No one knows for certain what the terrorists intended to target with United Flight 93, though many experts suspect it was the U.S. Capitol. What we do knows is that the plane was just twenty minutes from Washington, DC, when it crashed. You can watch United 93 on Amazon Prime, Hulu, or Peacock.
Zero Dark Thirty (2012). In Zero Dark Thirty—military slang for the hours before dawn—Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow tells the story of Maya, a tenacious CIA agent whose work makes possible the Navy SEAL Team Six raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of 9/11. Did Maya exist in real life? No, she’s a composite character based on several CIA officers who helped track down Bin Laden. The film’s literary license wasn’t the only thing that stirred controversy when it debuted. Critics variously condemned initial plans to release it just before the 2012 presidential election, the fact that Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal cooperated with the CIA as they planned the movie, and the film’s depiction of “effective” torture. (Senator Feinstein walked out of a screening of the film in real life to protest a waterboarding scene.) The controversy didn’t keep Zero Dark Thirty from being nominated for Best Picture, or Jessica Chastain from receiving a Best Actress nod for playing Maya. You can watch Zero Dark Thirty on Amazon Prime, Google Play, or YouTube.
Margaret Gach and Leila Marhamati assisted in the preparation of this post.
This piece, first published by the Council on Foreign Relations, is used with permission.
3. Entire U.S. Terrorism Watch List Leaked Online
It is not clear if the list is still exposed or if the entire list was leaked.
Entire U.S. Terrorism Watch List Leaked Online - View from the Wing
The US government maintains a “No Fly List” and airlines are required to check passengers against it before allowing them to fly. They maintain other lists that trigger increased security screening and potentially harassment.
The lists are pre-crime profiling. Not even based on science. And it’s also done very very poorly. People get on the list by mistake, because they’re related to someone who is on it (or just have a similar name), or because they visited the wrong country in the wrong year. .
These are secret lists that people haven’t been entitled to know they are on, how they got on, or to confront the evidence relied upon to put them on it. Legally there is very little recourse, and when challenged the government claims ‘state secrets.’
What we actually need are robust due process protections for inclusion on government lists of US citizens. People wind up on the list arbitrarily, by mistake, and without real evidence.
The ‘No Fly List’ works like this:
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Formal responsibility for the list rests with the TSA and under 49 U.S.C. § 46110 inclusion is only reviewable by circuit courts in which judges are required to defer to the TSA’s judgment about all alleged facts and are permitted only to review the administrative record created by and provided to them by the TSA itself.
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Until 2015 the TSA wouldn’t even tell people whether they were on the list (making it difficult to sue to get off the list when you can’t prove you’re on it). The TSA does not tell people why they are on the list.
- Decisions to put someone on the no fly list are based on predictive pre-crime profiling rather than actual evidence about the individual’s actions or intentions. This is a huge leap in our justice system.
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Unlike in Minority Report there’s not even a clear scientific basis upon which people’s intentions and actions are being predicted.
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You can get on the list just by being related to someone (guilt by association) suspected of terrorist involvement. Or just traveling to the wrong country at the wrong time. An army veteran and civilian military contractor was placed on the list for having visited Yemen in 2009. Or because someone at the FBI checked the wrong box on a form by mistake, or failed to check a box by mistake or in retaliation for refusing to become an FBI informant. We don’t even know much more about what goes into these determinations because the government has claimed their secret sauce is a ‘state secret’.
It appears that federal government lawyers have perjured themselves claiming that the list was not shared. It’s even given to “police forces at private universities, hospital security staff” and it’s not clear what, if any, restrictions there are on how the information is used. Meanwhile the government “adds hundreds of thousands of names to the list every year.”
There are now nearly two million names on terrorism watch lists and the entire list was leaked online via a Bahrain server. Not sure how I missed this a few weeks ago, but thanks to commenter jamesb2147 for flagging. With Europeans included on the list, surely the E.U. should fine the U.S. government under GDPR?
“The exposed Elasticsearch cluster contained 1.9 million records,” Diachenko said. “I do not know how much of the full TSC Watchlist it stored, but it seems plausible that the entire list was exposed.”
Information exposed in the leak included data points such as:
Full name
TSC watchlist ID
Citizenship
Gender
Date of birth
Passport number
Country of issuance
No-fly indicator
More passport numbers were leaked online by the government than by Marriott, even.
More From View from the Wing
4. How AI Could Go Disastrously Wrong
In the one and only computer science course I took in college in the 1970s we had to learn about COBOL programming using punch cards and the "computer room" was as big as a house.
“Governments, businesses and militaries are preparing to use today’s flawed, fragile AI technologies in critical systems around the world,” the study said. “Future versions of AI technology may be less accident-prone, but there is no guarantee.”
It continued: “The machine learning models of 2020 could easily still be in use decades in the future, just as airlines, stock exchanges and federal agencies still rely today on COBOL, a programming language first deployed in 1960.”
For the Pentagon — which has decades-old equipment in its inventory — that could be particularly problematic, Toner said.
“The Defense Department [has] to be really forward leaning in thinking about ways to use these technologies and then testing them and starting to consider potential use cases,” she said. Officials need “to be really cautious and deliberate in actually embedding them into platforms because … any platform that is acquired is likely to be in use for decades.”
While some issues may become evident early in the development process, others could take years to manifest after systems are already in widespread use, she added.
How AI Could Go Disastrously Wrong
9/8/2021
By
iStock illustration
As researchers and engineers race to develop new artificial intelligence systems for the U.S. military, they must consider how the technology could lead to accidents with catastrophic consequences.
In a startling, but fictitious, scenario, analysts at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology — which is part of Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service — lay out a potential doomsday storyline with phantom missile launches.
In the scenario, U.S. Strategic Command relies on a new missile defense system’s algorithms to detect attacks from adversaries. The system can quickly and autonomously trigger an interceptor to shoot down enemy missiles which might be armed with nuclear warheads.
“One day, unusual atmospheric conditions over the Bering Strait create an unusual glare on the horizon,” the report imagined. The missile defense system’s “visual processing algorithms interpret the glare as a series of missile launches, and the system fires interceptors in response. As the interceptors reach the stratosphere, China’s early-warning radar picks them up. Believing they are under attack, Chinese commanders order a retaliatory strike.”
Doomsday examples such as this illustrate the importance of getting artificial intelligence right, according to the report, “AI Accidents: An Emerging Threat — What Could Happen and What to Do.”
While AI accidents in other sectors outside of the Defense Department could certainly be catastrophic — say, with power grids — the military is a particularly high-risk area, said Helen Toner, co-author of the report and CSET’s director of strategy.
“The chance of failure is higher and obviously when you have weaponry involved, that’s always going to up the stakes,” she said during an interview.
AI failures usually fit into three different categories, according to the report. These include robustness, specification and assurance.
Failures of robustness occur when a system receives abnormal or unexpected inputs that cause a malfunction, the report said. Failures of specification happen when a system attempts “to achieve something subtly different from what the designer or operator intended, leading to unexpected behaviors or side effects.” Failures of assurance occur when a system cannot be adequately monitored or controlled during operation.
While the military could face any of those types of accidents, Toner noted that robustness is a top concern.
“All of them come into play,” she said. “Robustness is an especially big challenge because … [of] the presence of an adversary who’s going to try to cause your systems to fail.”
However, the military is institutionally attuned to such dynamics, so officials would likely put the most attention and resources toward addressing those types of issues, she added.
The Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center is actively working to avoid AI accidents and blunders.
Jane Pinelis, the JAIC’s chief of test and evaluation, said the organization has partnered extensively with the Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation as it develops new technology.
“We work with them on a variety of issues,” she said during a recent briefing with reporters. “We work with them and coordinate with them probably a few times every week.”
Each of the JAIC’s systems is tested, and the center is currently collaborating with DOT&E on different systems that are in various stages of development, she said.
However, Toner noted that rigorous testing and evaluation of any deep learning system remains a big challenge. “This isn’t a DoD problem, this is a whole world problem.”
The Defense Department must also be mindful that while researchers and engineers are developing new systems that could one day be more resilient, many of today’s systems will be around for a long time, the CSET report noted.
“Governments, businesses and militaries are preparing to use today’s flawed, fragile AI technologies in critical systems around the world,” the study said. “Future versions of AI technology may be less accident-prone, but there is no guarantee.”
It continued: “The machine learning models of 2020 could easily still be in use decades in the future, just as airlines, stock exchanges and federal agencies still rely today on COBOL, a programming language first deployed in 1960.”
For the Pentagon — which has decades-old equipment in its inventory — that could be particularly problematic, Toner said.
“The Defense Department [has] to be really forward leaning in thinking about ways to use these technologies and then testing them and starting to consider potential use cases,” she said. Officials need “to be really cautious and deliberate in actually embedding them into platforms because … any platform that is acquired is likely to be in use for decades.”
While some issues may become evident early in the development process, others could take years to manifest after systems are already in widespread use, she added.
To better avoid accidents, the federal government should facilitate information sharing about incidents and near misses; invest in AI safety research and development; fund artificial intelligence standards development and testing capacity; and work across borders to reduce accident risks, the report said.
For the military, working across borders is critical, Toner said.
In a defense setting, “a really key component of that is thinking about the strategic stability implications of increasing the use of AI,” she said. Toner seconded recommendations from the National Security Commission on AI — which released its final report to Congress in March — that called for more discussion around crisis dynamics, conflict escalation and strategic stability with Russia and China.
5. White House wants $6.4 billion to help resettle Afghan allies, refugees
Freedom is not free (though I do not think the people who coined that phrase meant it to be used in this way).
White House wants $6.4 billion to help resettle Afghan allies, refugees
White House officials are asking Congress for $6.4 billion in new, emergency funding to help resettle tens of thousands of Afghan citizens evacuated from their homeland in recent weeks.
The money could be approved as part of a federal budget extension lawmakers will have to approve by the end of September. If they don’t, it will trigger a partial government shutdown, since the fiscal 2022 federal funding bills are still months away from completion.
In a message from the White House to lawmakers on Tuesday, acting Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young said the majority of the money would support processing operations for the allies and refugees and provide additional transportation from third-country waiting stations to final destinations for the individuals.
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Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday the U.S. was working with the Taliban to resolve the matter.
“In addition to security processing, evacuees receive extensive COVID-19 and other public health precautions, and are resettled in the United States with the help of government-funded partners,” she wrote. “We urge Congress to appropriate $6.4 billion to enable the success of this multifaceted, historic mission.”
White House officials said the money would support plans to resettle nearly 100,000 Afghans in the United States over the next year.
Defense Department officials have said that more than 124,000 American citizens, Afghan allies and refugees were transported out of Afghanistan.
But administration officials have faced significant criticism for the chaotic nature of that evacuation, and continued questions about how many American citizens may still be trapped in the Taliban-controlled country.
State Department officials have said that as many as 200 American citizens may still be inside Afghanistan and trying to leave. President Joe Biden has vowed to get them to safety, but through diplomatic operations, not military incursions.
In addition, many advocacy groups have said that thousands of former interpreters, security personnel and other Afghan aides to American forces were left behind in the evacuation missions because of visa and paperwork problems. State Department officials met with U.S. veterans groups late last week to discuss possible solutions to help those individuals.
Earlier this year, the White House had asked for about $3.3 billion in the fiscal 2022 budget to support Afghan military and security personnel. The fall of the democratic Afghan government negated the need for that spending, but administration officials hope that at least some of that planned funding can be redirected to the refugee effort.
“The operation to move out of danger and to safety tens of thousands of Afghans at risk, including many who helped us during our two decades in Afghanistan, represents an extraordinary military, diplomatic, security, and humanitarian operation by the U.S. government,” Young wrote.
RELATED
Thousands of Afghans who applied to the Special Immigrant Visa program may have been left behind in the frantic evacuation effort.
White House officials also asked for at least $14 billion in additional emergency funding to deal with natural disasters in recent months, including the West Coast wildfires and hurricane damage in the southern U.S. in July and August.
The request does not include damage from Hurricane Ida, which caused an estimated $10 billion in damage in southern states and along the East Coast.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., late Tuesday voiced support for the plan, and vowed to work quickly with House leaders on passing a compromise plan.
Along with the budget extension, lawmakers will have to pass a measure to raise the federal debt ceiling to keep the government from defaulting on its debts. Both issues are expected to be the focus of intense partisan fighting over the next few weeks.
Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.
6. New war-gaming center to speed up weapon deliveries to US Marines
Excerpts:
Now, the Corps is planning its next step forward: a first-of-its-kind war-gaming center that will allow the service to repeatedly run scenarios, each time tweaking concepts, tactics and technologies to guide the Corps’ Force Design 2030 decision-making process at a rapid pace.
The Marine Corps Wargaming and Analysis Center will give the service this rapid learning capability, said Scott Lacy, the chief of staff of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, which will oversee the center’s operations.
New war-gaming center to speed up weapon deliveries to US Marines
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Marine Corps, tasked with accelerating its force modernization efforts, started the Advanced Naval Technology Exercise series to put promising technology prototypes in the hands of Marines for rapid feedback and learning.
Now, the Corps is planning its next step forward: a first-of-its-kind war-gaming center that will allow the service to repeatedly run scenarios, each time tweaking concepts, tactics and technologies to guide the Corps’ Force Design 2030 decision-making process at a rapid pace.
The Marine Corps Wargaming and Analysis Center will give the service this rapid learning capability, said Scott Lacy, the chief of staff of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, which will oversee the center’s operations.
“It’s beneficial because it enables us to speed up what we call the campaign of learning, which is about identifying a concept; war gaming that concept; ultimately taking that result and conducting a live, virtual or constructive experimentation with it; and also identifying where new technology on the horizon may fit in to that process, and then ultimately that turns into requirements, which ideally turns into acquisitions,” Lacy told Defense News on Aug. 27. “And so if you can hasten that process of campaign of learning and build a really rich body of analytic work that underpins those decisions, it’s really valuable to the institution.”
A rendering of the Marine Corps Wargaming and Analysis Center. (U.S. Defense Department)
“We’re not currently manned, trained or equipped for a peer adversary in this operational environment, and we owe it to the country to get ourselves into a better place,” Lacy said. “Everything we can do to hasten the process of change in the right ways, that puts us in a better position for competition with a peer adversary because that adversary is not slowing down, that adversary would love it if we continue to operate as slowly as possible.”
What can Marines do at the center?
The 100,000-square-foot center in Quantico, Virginia, will transform military war gaming from a tabletop exercise to an immersive experience in a simulated environment.
Real-world intelligence will inform the background environment in the war games. Science and technology experts will help shape the tools adversaries employ in the modern and futuristic scenarios. Sophisticated graphics and modeling technology will help players clearly see the challenges they face and recognize how new concepts, tactics and weapons would fare in a potential battle.
The primary mission of the center will be capability development, Lacy said, noting the facility will be large enough to host war games involving hundreds of participants and to simultaneously run multiple, differing scenarios.
“Where we have something like Force Design [2030], where we have a very concrete vision of the way ahead that needs additional details filled out, this is the center that will help us get at those details faster and figure out what works and what doesn’t work” in the war game, and then use that information to design live experiments, Lacy said.
The center will help shape how the service looks in 2030 but will remain relevant well into the future to ensure the force stays ahead of ever-evolving threats.
“The analysis that results from this process and the decisions that are underpinned by that analysis will be part of the institutional decisions on resourcing and decisions on [the] way ahead,” Lacy added. “And as the commandant has described a number of times, this is likely to be against a peer adversary and move/counter-move pacing threat. And so we need to be able to rapidly identify when the adversary has created a counter-move that impacts our plans, and then find our counter to that counter — and this will really expedite that process.”
The center will also help answer questions about force size and equipment needed for the Corps to succeed in various environments — and it will then help the service continuously question those answers to ensure they hold up in modern scenarios.
Construction of the new war-gaming center should be complete in 2023, with it opening in 2024 and reaching full capability in 2025. (Matthew Stinson/Naval Facilities Engineering Command Washington)
“The ability to rerun different courses of action at machine speed — you know, many, many, many, many times — allows you a body of data that is impossible to replicate now” with tabletop war gaming and live experimentation, Lacy said.
Given the capacity of the center, he added, there will be opportunities to perform operational planning for missions such as resupplying a disaggregated force in a contested environment, or seizing a particular island or airstrip.
How does industry benefit?
The center is meant to help the Marine Corps as well as its joint and interagency partners focus on preparing for future operations. But the benefits could extend to the acquisition process and to industry, providing faster and clearer requirements for companies to address emerging capability gaps, Lacy said.
Much like the Advanced Naval Technology Exercise, or ANTX, series before it, the war-gaming facility could provide a new way for small businesses to get their ideas to the Marine Corps without needing a fully fledged manufacturing capability.
When the Navy and Marine Corps started ANTX in 2017, businesses large and small, traditional and nontraditional, were encouraged to bring prototypes to the beach for a ship-to-shore maneuver demonstration. Marines and sailors would test the prototypes in something akin to a real contested environment, and then provide feedback to industry and service decision-makers.
“One way in which they’re very similar is the sense of providing very useful, detailed feedback to the institution, to the Marine Corps,” Lacy said, adding that the war-gaming center would do in a simulated environment what ANTX did in a live environment.
He also said the barrier to entry for industry could be lower with the war-gaming center.
“If a firm in industry comes up with a potential solution and … that looks like something that we want to examine further, then we would work via the current process that we’ve got for inputting industry ideas and figure out how to turn that into a representation in a war game. And that would help us determine if the capabilities that are described … would move us in the direction that we want,” Lacy said.
Lacy said the war-fighting lab hasn’t determined how fully engineered a technology must be before it can be used in a war game, but avoiding manufacturing a prototype would be a win for small companies trying to pitch ideas.
In the meantime, he said, industry should continue to engage with the Marine Corps through advanced planning briefs to industry to stay in the loop about acquisition needs to support Force Design 2030. The center, he added, will only help quicken the pace at which the Corps can send requirements to industry for development and acquisition.
“I think what we will ask them in the future is very similar to what we are asking of them now. But we will be capable of moving faster, I believe, to get after those issues [on which] we’re seeking their help,” Lacy said.
Why is a new war-gaming center needed?
The Marine Corps Wargaming and Analysis Center was formally established in 2017 by then-Commandant Gen. Robert Neller, but the idea and early planning work date back to 2015. Now-retired Lt. Gen. Robert Walsh, who served as the deputy commandant for combat development and integration from 2015 to 2018, told Defense News it was becoming clear the Corps needed a path away from optimization for ground wars and toward preparing for naval warfare against an advanced adversary like China or Russia.
“We saw that it was going to take a lot of innovation to move us in a new direction because we certainly didn’t have any of the right ideas, and there was no blueprint on how to do this,” he said in an Aug. 30 interview.
Walsh and other leaders at the time looked to the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab as the nexus of the “combat development process with the operational environment.” They reached out to previous leaders like former Commandant Gen. Charles Krulak, who helped stand up the lab in 1995.
Walsh and his team reinvigorated the lab and reoriented it to address the threat of peer adversaries. ANTX and the Marine Corps Wargaming and Analysis Center were meant to bolster separate parts of the lab to support innovation and rapid learning.
A U.S. Marine holds a variant of the M72 Light Anti-Tank Weapon during an urban-focused portion of Advanced Naval Technologies Exercise 2018. (Lance Cpl. Shannon Doherty/U.S. Marine Corps)
An experiments division and a science and technology division were aided by the creation of ANTX in 2017, with a demonstration format that allowed them to learn a lot in a tight feedback loop among concept planners, war fighters and industry.
The Marine Corps Wargaming and Analysis Center was the comparable idea for the war-gaming division, which already existed to carry out war games that fulfilled Title 10 obligations — the roles of each service — and to participate in joint, interagency and multinational war-gaming events.
Though the war-gaming division did important work, “we were still operating way behind the times as far as what you could do with the technology that was out there today as far as war-gaming, analysis, modeling and simulation,” Walsh said. When he’d brief Marine Corps and Pentagon leadership on his recommendations for new gear to modernize the force, or go to Congress to ask for funding, he said he had analysis from tabletop games, but felt it fell short of ideal justification.
“The Wargaming and Analysis Center [would] beef up the war-gaming division at the war-fighting lab to get more analysis, so when you stood up before another audience to go, ‘This is where we’re headed, this is what they need, these are the capabilities they need, this is the program of record that we need,’ you would have the analysis behind it that you could stand there and people go: ‘OK, we can buy into that, that makes sense, and we’ll support you.’ ”
Walsh said the initial ANTX events had demonstrable effects on Force Design 2030 and Marine Corps acquisition, with the ideas for a long-range unmanned surface vessel and unmanned ground vehicles capable of launching weapons dating back to the 2017, 2018 and 2019 series.
The ANTX series will continue, and Walsh said he hopes the war-gaming center in a few years will bring the force design process full circle, convincing the Pentagon and Congress the Corps has the analytical rigor behind funding requests for new programs, rather than just anecdotal success stories from Marines experimenting in the field.
“When somebody like [Commandant Gen. David] Berger steps up and says, ‘Here’s my Commandant’s Planning Guidance, here’s Force Design 2030; now I need these new capabilities, whether it’s ground-based anti-ship missiles, long-range sensors, [MQ-9 drones],’ — whatever that may be — he’s able to sit there now and show the analysis that goes behind it that can help justify how we got to where they are,” Walsh said.
“So in a very innovative way, that allows the Marine Corps to go from concept all the way to rapid prototyping much quicker because they’re able to put a much finer point on things where people will really acknowledge the hard work that was done. And when they challenge it — they’ll challenge it — and [then] hopefully in most cases [they’ll] be able to accept the work that was done behind it, instead of questioning it and going: ‘Hey, this is too subjective, we don’t have enough detail here.’”
Megan Eckstein is the naval warfare reporter at Defense News. She has covered military news since 2009, with a focus on U.S. Navy and Marine Corps operations, acquisition programs, and budgets. She has reported from four geographic fleets and is happiest when she’s filing stories from a ship. Megan is a University of Maryland alumna.
7. Japan’s Potential Acquisition of Ground-Launched Land-Attack Missiles: Implications for the U.S.-Japanese Alliance
Excerpts:
Examining the potential consequences for the U.S.-Japanese alliance is not the same as evaluating whether Japan should acquire strike options or not. We are not making any argument for or against Japanese strike capabilities. Nor do the insights gleaned from the two scenarios offered above exhaust the possible consequences that Japanese procurement of ground-based strike options might have for the alliance. Other issues that may arise include matters related to doctrine and concept formation, training, command and control, intelligence sharing, operational coordination, posture, airspace deconfliction, and air and missile defenses. At the broadest level, there may be questions related to the nature of the alliance itself and whether it is shifting from its traditional shield-spear relationship to one more akin to two spears, albeit of different sizes.
Our objective is to emphasize that any Japanese acquisition of ground-based strike capabilities would have significant consequences for the U.S.-Japanese alliance and to highlight some of them. As the robust debates in Japan demonstrate, there may be deterrent advantages for the country should it field these capabilities. Yet if Japan does so, American and Japanese policymakers may need to have a new and expanded set of conversations about how such missiles will be used and how the alliance could adjust to incorporate them into this relationship.
Japan’s Potential Acquisition of Ground-Launched Land-Attack Missiles: Implications for the U.S.-Japanese Alliance - War on the Rocks
JEFFREY W. HORNUNG AND SCOTT W. HAROLDSEPTEMBER 9, 2021
In late August 2017, millions of people in northern Japan got a startling, early morning text message. “Missile alert,” it read, before telling people to take cover. North Korea had launched a ballistic missile, which flew over Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido before landing in the sea. Two weeks later, North Korea fired another missile through Japanese airspace. Pyongyang’s provocations are not the only ones that have been making Japanese policymakers anxious. Although China has been active in the waters and airspace near Japanese territory for a long time, over the last several years, the level and types of activity have increased. In the air, for example, Japanese fighters are scrambling almost twice per day in response to Chinese military aircraft entering Japan’s Air Defense Identification Zone.
In light of the current security environment, many Japanese decision-makers have been looking for ways to bolster deterrence using their country’s own defense capabilities. One option, although still in the realm of the theoretical, includes the acquisition of ground-launched land-attack missiles. Japanese policymakers eschew the terms “long-range strike” and “offensive strike.” Instead, they describe such missile capabilities using terms like “deterrence” or “self-defense,” an approach that dates back to the 1950s when the Ichiro Hatoyama administration said the spirit of the constitution did not mean the government had to “sit and wait to die” in the event of a missile attack. Although the Hatoyama administration did not specifically refer to missile capabilities, the statement has been recognized as providing a legal basis for the acquisition of capabilities to strike foreign bases. While the debate among Japanese policymakers over whether the country should acquire ground-attack missiles never completely disappeared over the subsequent years, it focused largely on the legal considerations related to possession of such weapons.
Most of the analysis and commentary about Japanese policymakers’ recent interest in procuring ground-based strike missiles has focused on the deterrent advantages they would provide. While these discussions cogently assess how such weapons might affect adversaries’ calculations, they rarely consider the broader potential consequences that Japanese procurement of strike capabilities may have for the U.S.-Japanese alliance. In reality, any Japanese acquisition of such weapons could carry substantial implications for the alliance in relation to planning, operations, and procurement decisions. Those implications merit greater debate, discussion, and planning among Japanese and American policymakers.
Japan’s Dangerous Neighborhood
As Japan’s National Security Strategy describes it, the country’s surrounding region is becoming “ever more severe.” Retired Lt. Gen. Koichi Isobe, who served in the Ground Self-Defense Force, notes that the past decade has been the first time Japan has ever been forced to confront threats from the north, the Korean Peninsula, and the southwest islands simultaneously.
While North Korea has kidnapped Japanese nationals, intruded into Japanese waters with spy ships, and fired ballistic missiles over and toward Japan, it is Pyongyang’s advancing nuclear weapons and delivery systems that are the most alarming for Tokyo. North Korea’s capabilities are growing in number and diversity, and they constitute “grave and imminent threats to Japan’s security,” in the words of the 2021 Defense of Japan white paper.
China’s rapidly modernizing armed forces represent perhaps an even greater threat to Japan, one that ranges from the “gray zone” to the nuclear realm, including in the so-called “new domains” of space, cyber, and the electromagnetic spectrum. In addition to Chinese military aircraft entering Japan’s Air Defense Identification Zone, Chinese vessels are routinely sailing in Japanese waters, including its territorial waters. These activities stress both Japan’s Coast Guard and its Self-Defense Forces.
These increasingly frequent instances of Chinese coercion, alongside similar actions directed against Taiwan, have led some Japanese Diet members to propose reinforcing ties between Japan and Taiwan in an effort to dissuade China from pressuring Taiwan. And the summary of Tokyo’s latest defense white paper states that “stabilizing the situation surrounding Taiwan is important for Japan’s security and the stability of the international community,” reinforcing recent public signals from senior figures in the Japanese defense establishment that the country has a national interest in Taiwan’s security.
As the risks to Japan’s security appear to grow, the public debate in Japan increasingly focuses on how best to reinforce deterrence. Some argue that deterrence by denial might be sufficient to dissuade Beijing or Pyongyang from taking aggressive actions. Others, however, argue that Japan should consider the desirability of procuring strike capabilities that would allow the Self-Defense Forces to enhance deterrence through the threat of punishment.
Japan’s Current Missiles
Japan’s Self-Defense Forces are modern armed forces with advanced capabilities, including a newly introduced capacity for amphibious operations in defense of the country’s remote islands. While the Self-Defense Forces possess the ability to hold enemy platforms at risk from the air or sea, they do not possess ground-launched ballistic or cruise missiles with sufficient ranges to strike an adversary’s territory, and even their capabilities for targeting air and naval platforms are of limited range.
According to open sources, Japan’s current Type-03 surface-to-air missiles have a range of 31 miles, and an upgraded version currently under development will extend that to 62 miles. Similarly, starting in 2019, the Self-Defense Forces began deploying advanced Type-12 anti-ship cruise missile batteries at selected sites across the country’s southwest island chain, but these have a maximum range of only 124 miles. In 2019, it was reported that the range of these missiles would also be extended, to 560 miles. Assuming the Japanese government meets the goals it set out for itself in its most recent Mid-Term Defense Program, by 2023, the Self-Defense Forces will field more strike options from the air, specifically Joint Strike Missiles (with a range of approximately 172 miles) and the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range (approximately 620 miles).
These capabilities all have the potential to deliver a munitions package far from Japanese territory, but they lack the advantages of ground-based missiles, such as survivability and deeper magazines. In analyzing the implications of Japanese ground-launched missiles for the U.S.-Japanese alliance, we limit our focus to the potential consequences of any decision by the Japanese government to acquire missiles like ground-launched variants of Tomahawks or medium-range ballistic missiles. Although the maximum ranges of such missiles are currently unknown as they are not yet developed, a useful point of reference is what the United States is hoping to develop and deploy. According to early reports, Washington is planning on a ground-launched variant of the Tomahawk and a ground-launched ballistic missile that could have maximum ranges of 620 miles and 2,485 miles, respectively.
If Japan acquired missiles with similar ranges, depending on their deployment, Japan could strike Chinese and North Korean territory. For example, the distance from the Japanese island of Okinawa, where there is a concentration of U.S. and Japanese armed forces, to China’s east coast is approximately 550 miles. And from any of the Self-Defense Force bases in northern Kyushu, such as Ainoura, Sasebo, or Kasuga, Pyongyang is about 460 miles away. From these same locations, Beijing is approximately 870 miles away. If Japan acquired missiles possibly capable of reaching three times that distance, large strategic areas of both China and North Korea would be well within range of them.
Consequences for the U.S.-Japanese Alliance
It is Japan’s sovereign right to decide whether or not to pursue ground-based strike options. Given the country’s various constitutional, legal, and policy restrictions on certain types of capabilities and the ability to use force, acquisition of ground-based missiles that can hit another country would likely require the government to characterize these as defensive weapons or “standoff missiles.” That, however, would only be the first step. Attaining these new capabilities would carry significant consequences for the alliance between the United States and Japan in areas like planning, operations, and procurement decisions. These become clear when considering two hypothetical scenarios.
The first is one often mentioned by Japanese officials as a hypothetical case for when Japan could use strike capabilities: North Korea preparing to launch, or already having launched, missiles at Japan. While Japan’s right to act in self-defense is indisputable, evaluating this scenario raises questions for the United States and Japan that would need to be resolved. In considering any North Korean scenario where Pyongyang has initiated hostilities, Japanese policymakers should work on the assumption that South Korea and the United States would be involved. If Japanese decision-makers are willing to consider strikes against North Korean missile pads, their U.S. counterparts would want to ensure that America avoids getting pulled into executing any plan that is not of its own choosing. Additionally, American policymakers would likely want to coordinate and incorporate potential Japanese plans into existing U.S.-South Korean operational plans and approved target lists. And because Japanese missiles may fly over South Korea — or provoke an attack against that country by North Korea, which might decide to counter threats to its south — Tokyo’s plan would need to be coordinated with Seoul or at least with Washington.
The problem, however, is that Japan is not included in U.S.-South Korean planning efforts. Regardless of the state of Japanese-South Korean ties, the United States (or South Korea once operational control is transferred) is unlikely to agree to any Japanese plan to strike or counterstrike North Korea as that could increase the risk of friendly fire against U.S. or South Korean forces operating in the theater. Such an option would also be likely to cause problems for the existing preparations of the United States and South Korea, as well as for the agreed division of operational responsibilities between them: Japanese missile operations could, for example, disrupt plans related to when and where U.S. and South Korean forces should be at the onset of hostilities. While the solution would be trilateral collaboration in the U.S.-South Korean planning process to involve Japan, continuing sour ties between Tokyo and Seoul likely preclude such a solution for the foreseeable future.
The second scenario to consider is a conflict involving China, and that case would generate distinct challenges for the U.S.-Japanese alliance, with three issues being especially problematic.
First, China houses many of its nuclear capabilities alongside its conventional ones. Should Japan field weapons capable of reaching these missile sites, the Chinese government’s strategic calculations could be adversely affected. Although this may be a positive development from a deterrence standpoint, any contingency potentially involving nuclear weapons would prompt the involvement of U.S. Strategic Command and levels of classification that go well beyond what Japanese officials are likely privy to (as Tokyo does not possess strategic weapons of any type). American policymakers may be uncomfortable with Japanese operations that carry the prospect of strategic escalation but that have not been coordinated with U.S. planners in advance.
A second issue stems from China’s size. Because China is vastly larger than North Korea, Japan’s Self-Defense Forces would likely need help gathering operational intelligence as they work to build their own capabilities, including cyber, electronic warfare, long-range radars, sensors, and satellites. Pouring resources into these capabilities, assuming Japan’s overall defense budget is not greatly increased, would be likely to negatively affect Japan’s procurement efforts in other critical defense areas, possibly causing capability gaps elsewhere that might necessitate greater efforts from the United States.
Finally, unless fully planned for and framed within an alliance operational construct in advance, Japan and the United States may have difficulty achieving consensus on strike operation objectives. Would American officials be satisfied with Japan only striking specific tactical targets like individual launchers? Would Washington urge Tokyo to aim at more operational-level facilities and systems that enable China to conduct or sustain its war effort? Or would the United States want Japan to use its strike options to impair China’s broader East China Sea operational area to enable the United States to project forces deep into enemy territory? This, in turn, raises questions about differences between U.S. and Japanese decision-makers in their willingness to pursue high-value targets. Such issues may need to be discussed thoroughly and resolved in advance of any move by Japan to field ground-based, long-range strike capabilities. And such questions are not likely to be settled easily.
The Need for New and Expanded Alliance Discussions
Examining the potential consequences for the U.S.-Japanese alliance is not the same as evaluating whether Japan should acquire strike options or not. We are not making any argument for or against Japanese strike capabilities. Nor do the insights gleaned from the two scenarios offered above exhaust the possible consequences that Japanese procurement of ground-based strike options might have for the alliance. Other issues that may arise include matters related to doctrine and concept formation, training, command and control, intelligence sharing, operational coordination, posture, airspace deconfliction, and air and missile defenses. At the broadest level, there may be questions related to the nature of the alliance itself and whether it is shifting from its traditional shield-spear relationship to one more akin to two spears, albeit of different sizes.
Our objective is to emphasize that any Japanese acquisition of ground-based strike capabilities would have significant consequences for the U.S.-Japanese alliance and to highlight some of them. As the robust debates in Japan demonstrate, there may be deterrent advantages for the country should it field these capabilities. Yet if Japan does so, American and Japanese policymakers may need to have a new and expanded set of conversations about how such missiles will be used and how the alliance could adjust to incorporate them into this relationship.
Jeffrey W. Hornung and Scott W. Harold are senior political scientists at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation.
8. Confronting Chaos: A New Concept for Information Advantage
Excerpts:
Information dominance in a conflict with China or Russia is a fantasy. Disruption and degradation are reality. However, this reality presents potential advantages because chaos cuts both ways.
If China or Russia attacks the United States or its allies and partners, it will want to keep the conflict limited and tightly controlled. U.S. forces that can operate effectively after absorbing punches in space, cyberspace, and the electromagnetic spectrum negate the idea of a quick, limited war. American counterattacks, combined with the fog and friction of conflict, will degrade Beijing’s and Moscow’s detailed operational pictures and disrupt the ability of their leaders to maintain tight control of their armed forces. In this phase of the conflict, the side that can deal with chaos and operate more effectively with degraded systems will likely seize the initiative.
In theory, this is a competition in which professional, highly trained, well-educated, and combat-experienced U.S. forces should excel against Chinese or Russian forces operating under tight, centralized command and control. In practice, however, U.S. forces continue to assume that military advantage is their birthright, rather than something for which they must continually fight. Hyten’s comments are a warning to the entire defense community that assuming advantage is a path to defeat. Instead, U.S. forces should become so comfortable operating with degraded information systems in the chaos of combat that China and Russia cannot see a feasible path to victory.
Confronting Chaos: A New Concept for Information Advantage - War on the Rocks
“It failed miserably.” With these words, Gen. John Hyten dropped a bomb on the Defense Department’s vision for fighting China and Russia, the joint warfighting concept. He told a defense industry group that an adversary red team “ran rings around” a U.S. team using the concept in an October 2020 wargame. Some defense thinkers claimed this was no big deal. However, although American teams lose wargames all the time, this is, in fact, a very big deal.
The joint warfighting concept is a top priority for the Pentagon. It’s supposed to align the armed services’ operational thinking and inform future force development. The Defense Department has been developing the concept for years, and yet it still failed. More worrying is why it failed. According to Hyten, the concept assumed U.S. forces could achieve information dominance in a great-power conflict, akin to what the American military attained during the 1991 Gulf War. That assumption is fatally flawed.
Nearly three years after the 2018 National Defense Strategy identified gaining and maintaining information advantage as a critical mission, thinking among Defense Department leadership about information advantage remains muddled. They don’t understand what it means, what it requires, or how to achieve it. This intellectual vacuum permits “zombie ideas” like information dominance to shamble onward while the department and armed services treat technology as a panacea for their operational and strategic headaches.
How Did the Defense Department Get Here?
The wargames and analysis that informed the 2018 National Defense Strategy all hammered home the same point: Information and the systems that gather, transmit, store, and process it have become the single biggest vulnerability in putative conflicts with China or Russia. This is the result of three interrelated trends.
Second, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and its replacement in defense planning with regional threats like Iraq and North Korea, shifted the assumptions underpinning the development of U.S. information systems. Rather than designing them to withstand Soviet attacks, the Pentagon built systems with weaker adversaries in mind and those enemies couldn’t threaten U.S. systems in space, cyberspace, or the electromagnetic spectrum. The post-9/11 explosion of information systems exacerbated this problem: U.S forces have become increasingly reliant on systems, like satellite communications, that are susceptible to myriad attacks by capable military adversaries. By building an information architecture on the assumption that it is impervious, the Pentagon turned its greatest strength into its most worrying vulnerability.
A New Vision, Undefined and Partly Executed
In response to these trends, the 2018 National Defense Strategy prioritized developing a more resilient information architecture and added gaining information advantage to the force-planning construct, which comprises the missions U.S. armed forces collectively need to execute. Lamentably, neither the strategy nor the subsequent Joint Concept for Operating in the Information Environment publicly defined information advantage.
As a member of the team that wrote the defense strategy and one of the people responsible for including information advantage in the force-planning construct, I recall how our team understood information advantage at the time. In contrast to previous technology-focused thinking, information was defined broadly and included technical systems, cognitive processes, and perceptual/psychological effects. The term “advantage” was meant to convey how contested the information environment would be in competition or conflict with an opponent like China or Russia. Unlike “superiority” or “dominance,” with their connotations of decisive or lasting ascendancy, advantage was meant to be marginal, ephemeral, contingent, and constantly fought over.
In sum, information advantage should be understood as gaining a temporary and contested edge in using information through technical systems, cognitive processes, and perceptual/psychological influence to achieve tactical, operational, or strategic advantages against a competitor in peacetime or an adversary in war.
This approach is understandable, but potentially dangerous. While the U.S. military desperately needs a new information architecture to replace its aging patchwork of networks and datalinks, the degree and scope of connectivity these concepts envision is difficult to achieve under benign conditions. They are nearly impossible to realize in the event of a Chinese or Russian attack. Aiming for dominance — rather than advantage — creates unrealistic expectations, warps requirements, and sets these programs up for failure and going over budget. Additionally, by focusing on technology, these initiatives ignore the human aspects of information. China and Russia may target American information systems, but their goal is to degrade U.S., allied, and partner forces cognitively and psychologically. The technical ability to gather and share information is useless without the ability to trust it, convey it to the right audiences, make sound decisions, and take actions based on it.
The Defense Department should simultaneously set less ambitious requirements for its information architecture while expanding the scope of its efforts to gain information advantage.
A New Concept for Information Advantage
Chinese and Russian military writing provides American defense planners some signposts for how to gain information advantage — properly understood — over Chinese and Russian military forces. There are dozens of useful and accessible English sources that summarize Chinese and Russian thinking. Collectively, these sources reveal four approaches that should inform U.S. planning.
First, in the scenarios that most concern American defense planners — like a Chinese invasion of Taiwan or a Russia-NATO conflict — Chinese and Russian political leaders are likely to try to limit the conflict to avoid unwanted expansion or escalation. Second, both states see themselves as locked in a continuous information confrontation or struggle in which they counter U.S. information operations while creating advantageous conditions for themselves. They seek to do this by, among other things, attacking the perceptions of key audiences, like the populations and elites of the United States and its allies and partners, undermining the cohesion of U.S.-led coalitions and potentially endangering U.S. basing access or overflight rights. Third, they plan to attack U.S. and coalition information and command systems early in a conflict — preemptively if possible. Finally, both Chinese and Russian leaders try to exercise tight, centralized command and control over their armed forces in various ways, including through automation, routinized tactics, and political officers.
A U.S. concept for information advantage should pursue four lines of effort to exploit or counter these Chinese and Russian approaches.
Exploit Tensions Between Active Defense Strategies and Limited Objectives
A key aspect of gaining information advantage — or minimizing disadvantage — early in a conflict is to make China or Russia confront a dilemma of choosing between conflict limitation and escalation control on one hand and operational aggression on the other.
The Defense Department should start creating this dilemma by limiting the effectiveness of reversible and non-kinetic attacks by adversaries, particularly in space. Non-kinetic and reversible attacks carry less risk of escalation than kinetic strikes. Increasing the U.S. space constellation’s resilience to jamming, laser dazzling, or cyber attacks, for instance, would force China and Russia to choose between limiting their space offensives or attacking with kinetic weapons and risking escalation and the creation of debris that might imperil their own constellations or those of neutral parties.
Next, the Pentagon should disperse its information and command systems, which are concentrated at overseas locations like Ramstein Air Base. Dispersing them within the theater would force China and Russia to attack more targets and increase the likelihood that some U.S. systems would survive initial strikes. Spreading systems to more countries also raises the possibility that Chinese and Russian aggression might expand or solidify a U.S.-led coalition.
The United States should also develop an ability to rapidly relocate key overseas functions — like air operations centers — to the homeland. U.S. Central Command recently demonstrated this capability by relocating its Combined Air Operations Center from Qatar to South Carolina. This move took months of planning, but during a contingency combatant commands will need immediately executable options. If critical nerve centers can be relocated quickly, China and Russia would face a dilemma between leaving them unharmed or escalating a conflict by attacking the U.S. homeland. This approach works hand in hand with dispersing key systems overseas. Some functions, like satellite ground stations, should be located forward and should be dispersed. Others, like air operations centers, are such critical targets that relocating them to the homeland is more appropriate.
Increasing multilateral cooperation in critical functions — like space situational awareness —would also confront Chinese and Russian leaders with unwelcome options. They would have to choose between gaining information superiority and expanding a conflict by attacking a critical system on which many countries rely.
Level the Information Playing Field
Peacetime information operations aren’t the Defense Department’s core competence, by either proclivity or legal authority. However, the department is the organization most likely to bear the brunt of failure in the information environment. Gaining information advantage doesn’t necessitate countering every aspect of Chinese and Russian information warfare. Instead, U.S. forces should undertake targeted efforts to build trust with allies and partners to sustain basing access, bolster alliance cohesion, and improve situational awareness. Thankfully, some allies and partners, like Estonia and Vietnam, have proven capable of dealing with Chinese and Russian information warfare. The Pentagon doesn’t need to replicate their capabilities, but rather provide funding, technology, and an ability to disseminate best practices.
The armed services should also educate their personnel about Chinese and Russian information operations and train them on dealing with specific tactics prior to deployment. Once deployed, U.S. servicemembers and units should know that they are in an active information theater, where every action, whether on patrol or off duty, can have strategic ramifications. By aligning their information operations with their real-world operations, U.S. commanders can engender trust in key audiences.
Get Loose
As China and Russia have myriad means to attack U.S. information systems in space, cyberspace, and the electromagnetic spectrum, degradation is inevitable. Instead of trying to ensure information dominance through ubiquitous connectivity, the Defense Department should seek information advantage by being able to operate with degraded systems more effectively than America’s opponents.
Operating with degraded systems requires “loose” methods for managing information and executing command, in contrast with the Defense Department’s current “tight” command-and-control processes. Tight operations are rigid, hierarchical, methodical, centralized, and exquisitely precise. Loose operations are fluid, flat, omni-directional, improvisational, delegated, and adequately precise. Loose operations should coexist with, rather than replace, tight operations, and U.S. forces should be able to switch between methods as conditions and missions demand. They should get loose when attacking large numbers of armored vehicles in a highly contested and complex targeting environment, for example. But they should be tight when striking a strategic target with a hypersonic missile.
To operate loose, the armed forces should first adopt delegated command models like mission command or command-by-negation. In theory, the armed services already use these methods. In practice, however, command tends toward the “10,000-mile screwdriver.” Delegation is the linchpin of loose operations because it enables command with degraded communications, thereby retaining tactical and operational momentum in highly contested environments.
Second, command, control, and communication should be de-linked. In tight operations, these functions are combined as “C3,” creating a vulnerability whereby adversaries can sever command and control by jamming communications. Instead, command, control, and communications should each function independently. Unity of command would remain, but commanders could issue orders through whichever network is available and delegate control to lower echelons or to other units or services, depending on the mission and conditions.
Third, joint all-domain command and control should be a confederation of smaller networks capable of operating independently, rather than a single super network. The fundamental design principle of this system should be functioning locally when Chinese or Russian attacks degrade long-range connectivity. In that scenario, this federated architecture would retain local connectivity through mobile, ad hoc networks composed of nodes sharing data in multiple directions over short ranges. These short-range mesh networks are difficult to jam and resilient to the loss of individual nodes. Likewise, tactical cloud storage would increase resilience by providing forward forces with access to data without relying on vulnerable high-bandwidth connectivity to rear-area servers. Finally, universal data translators would function like dongles, making different frequencies, waveforms, and data standards mutually comprehensible, thereby allowing data to pass freely across diverse networks including legacy and allied systems. These translators will be crucial for connecting joint or combined forces in contested environments, while also allowing critical information — like command instructions or targeting data — to route around network outages using alternative networks.
The Pentagon is showing progress building this type of system. There’s broad agreement about the character of the architecture, and technology demonstrations and experiments show promise. Skeptics note, however, that the consensus is on broad principles and that the devil is in the details. Moreover, technology demonstrations are not major acquisition programs, and funding for these initiatives is inconsistent. These doubts are warranted, but the real cause for concern has to do with these programs’ design objectives and requirements: Currently they are too ambitious and emphasize persistent, high-bandwidth, long-range connectivity. Instead, they should focus more on resilience to degradation and disruption. These two objectives are in tension with each other. Attempting to do both could result in incoherence or going over budget.
The final component of loose operations is “good-enough” targeting. The introduction of precision-guided munitions fundamentally altered the role of information in warfare. With the advent of such munitions, information allowed a few weapons to destroy precisely identified and located targets. Counter-terrorism high-value target interdiction represents the apotheosis of this development, with terabytes of exquisite data, collected over weeks, used to target a single person for a drone strike. This deliberate, information- and time-intensive targeting process would be impossible when trying to strike many moving targets in the harried, chaotic, and degraded environments of great-power war. The U.S. military will need to design targeting processes and weapons around information that is “good enough.” This requires larger numbers of affordable weapons — like area-effects munitions — as well as smarter weapons, such as the Brilliant Anti-Tank Munition, capable of identifying targets with imprecise initial targeting information.
Organize and Train for Degradation
The 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act spread a layer of joint frosting on top of a service-dominated cake. Geographic combatant commanders rely on component commanders to plan and execute operations, and component commands align closely with the Air Force, Navy/Marine Corps, and Army. Tensions abound where service interests and responsibilities tangle, like air component commands where every service has assets and demands for support. In wargames, these components often plan independently at the expense of joint priorities. When Chinese or Russian attacks degrade joint communications, each component fixates on its own battle. Rather than achieving synergies, components become less than the sum of their parts.
The ad hoc character of many joint commands exacerbates this problem. Given their roles as de facto military ambassadors, combatant commanders often delegate operational command to joint task forces. Unlike standing combatant command staffs, these commands may not have experience working together, and they may be overseeing unfamiliar rotational forces. The trust and familiarity that are critical for operating in chaotic conditions may be lacking. To remedy this, the Pentagon should create sub-unified commands focused on China (under U.S. Indo-Pacific Command) and Russia (under U.S. European Command). These commands would plan for conflict and oversee standing joint units trained, organized, equipped, and postured specifically to compete with and deter China and Russia.
These shifts would improve integration near the top of the chain of command, but, in a great-power conflict, lower echelons should also work seamlessly across organizational boundaries and operating environments. As communications degrade, tactical commanders lose coordination with joint colleagues and access to capabilities controlled by higher joint headquarters. To address this, the department should “federate” joint commands, pushing them to lower echelons and giving them control of joint capabilities like cyber attacks.
Finally, training should enable the profound inter-service cooperation required by great-power conflict. Current training processes are service oriented, with joint training and exercises generally occurring at the very end of or after deployment. If the department expects units to fight cohesively across services and operating environments, they should train together earlier and deploy together. This is the only way to develop the familiarity and trust needed to execute mission command and delegated control across organizational boundaries.
A Radical Transformation
Information dominance in a conflict with China or Russia is a fantasy. Disruption and degradation are reality. However, this reality presents potential advantages because chaos cuts both ways.
If China or Russia attacks the United States or its allies and partners, it will want to keep the conflict limited and tightly controlled. U.S. forces that can operate effectively after absorbing punches in space, cyberspace, and the electromagnetic spectrum negate the idea of a quick, limited war. American counterattacks, combined with the fog and friction of conflict, will degrade Beijing’s and Moscow’s detailed operational pictures and disrupt the ability of their leaders to maintain tight control of their armed forces. In this phase of the conflict, the side that can deal with chaos and operate more effectively with degraded systems will likely seize the initiative.
In theory, this is a competition in which professional, highly trained, well-educated, and combat-experienced U.S. forces should excel against Chinese or Russian forces operating under tight, centralized command and control. In practice, however, U.S. forces continue to assume that military advantage is their birthright, rather than something for which they must continually fight. Hyten’s comments are a warning to the entire defense community that assuming advantage is a path to defeat. Instead, U.S. forces should become so comfortable operating with degraded information systems in the chaos of combat that China and Russia cannot see a feasible path to victory.
Chris Dougherty is a senior fellow in the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). His research areas include defense strategy, strategic assessments, force planning, and wargaming. Prior to joining CNAS, Mr. Dougherty served as senior adviser to the deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development at the Department of Defense. During this time, he led a handful of major initiatives including the development and writing of major sections of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, including the Global Operating Model, the Force-Management and Planning Construct, and the Force-Planning Priorities.
9. As airport reopens, Taliban gives permission for at least 200 dual nationals, including Americans, to leave the country
Some good news.
As airport reopens, Taliban gives permission for at least 200 dual nationals, including Americans, to leave the country
The Washington Post · by Susannah George and Siobhán O'Grady Today at 7:22 a.m. EDT · September 9, 2021
KABUL — Roughly 200 Afghan dual nationals — including about 30 Americans — have been granted permission to leave the country Thursday, two diplomats based in Kabul confirmed, as the airport was declared to be repaired and ready for some commercial flights.
The manifest for the Qatar Airways flight granted permission for 211 Afghans to leave from Kabul, but it is unclear how many people reached a convoy in time for safe passage to the airport. The diplomats spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
The dual nationals on the manifest also included passport holders from Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Ukraine, Canada and Germany.
Qatari and Taliban officials gathered on the tarmac in Kabul on Thursday to announce that the airport was nearly fully operational after significant repairs were made in the aftermath of chaos when the Taliban came to power.
Mutlaq Al-Qahtani, Doha’s special envoy to Afghanistan, told reporters that it should no longer be seen as an “evacuation" but rather free passage for those with valid travel documents. “We want people to think this is normal.”
“I can say this is a historic day in the history of Afghanistan, as the Kabul airport is now operational," he said. “We want to have a gradual reopening of the airport."
Thursday’s flight out is the first such large-scale air departure of Afghans since a U.S. airlift concluded with the departure of foreign forces from Afghanistan just over a week ago.
The Taliban pledged that once the airlift was complete, Afghans with travel documents would be free to leave the country. But in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif, a number of planes chartered to evacuate at-risk Afghans have been stuck on the tarmac for days. Organizers of that evacuation effort say the Taliban has not granted the planes permission to take off. The Taliban said technical issues and the lack of a fully functioning Interior or Foreign ministry has held up the effort.
This week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington was working with the Taliban to move U.S. citizens and other allies out of the country safely but that complications had arisen over some passengers’ travel documents.
“It’s my understanding that the Taliban has not denied exit to anyone holding a valid document, but they have said those without valid documents, at this point, can’t leave,” Blinken said in a news conference in Doha.
The situation in Afghanistan remains unstable, with protests breaking out across the country in recent days as the Taliban announced a caretaker government in the capital, composed largely of hard-line Taliban members. Several members of the new interim government were previously detained at Guantánamo Bay and were released in exchange for U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl in 2014.
On Wednesday, Taliban forces cracked down on a protest in Kabul, detaining several Afghan journalists and severely beating two who work for Etilaatroz, an Afghan newspaper, the outlet said on Twitter. Photos shared on social media showed their backs covered with lash marks.
The Interior Ministry later announced a ban on protests, saying participants have been “harassing people and disrupting normal life.”
“All citizens are informed that for the time being, they should not try to hold demonstrations under any name or title,” the statement said.
“For the past few days, a number of people in Kabul and other provinces have taken to the streets in the name of demonstrations, disrupting security, harassing people and disrupting normal life,” the ministry said in a statement.
The international community is still grappling with how to manage the Taliban takeover.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters Thursday that Washington is closely monitoring whether al-Qaeda militants will attempt to use Afghanistan as a new staging ground to launch attacks against the United States.
“The whole community is kind of watching to see what happens and whether or not al-Qaeda has the ability to regenerate in Afghanistan,” he said while visiting Kuwait. “We put the Taliban on notice that we expect them to not allow that to happen.”
On Wednesday, a spokesman for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Reuters that Britain “will continue to judge the Taliban on their actions.”
“We would want to see, in any situation, a diverse group in leadership which seeks to address the pledges that the Taliban themselves have set out, and that’s not what we have seen,” he said.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said Wednesday that “the announcement of a transitional government without the participation of other groups and yesterday’s violence against demonstrators and journalists in Kabul are not signals that give cause for optimism.”
China announced that it will send around $31 million worth of aid, including coronavirus vaccines, to Afghanistan. Xinhua, the state-run news agency, reported that Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China welcomes Taliban statements related to government formation and international cooperation, particularly on terrorism, and “the key is to transform them into concrete action.”
Meanwhile, former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani, who fled the country on Aug. 15, released a statement Wednesday saying he believed his departure “was the only way to keep the guns silent and save Kabul and her 6 million citizens.”
He also firmly denied what he described as “baseless allegations” that he fled with millions of dollars “belonging to the Afghan people” and said he is open to a U.N. investigation or audit.
O’Grady reported from Doha, Qatar.
The Washington Post · by Susannah George and Siobhán O'Grady Today at 7:22 a.m. EDT · September 9, 2021
10. America’s High-Tech Problem in Low-Tech Wars
America’s High-Tech Problem in Low-Tech Wars | Small Wars Journal
America’s High-Tech Problem in Low-Tech Wars
By Michael Ferguson
In 1997, between two very different wars with Iraq, military historian Williamson Murray highlighted what he saw as a disturbing trend in the US Department of Defense. A newfound obsession with supposedly revolutionary military technologies was sidelining history and strategic studies in professional military education programs. He believed this fascination was preparing the US officer corps “to repeat the Vietnam War” in the twenty-first century, only more “disastrously.”
These new tools, such as the highly accurate Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM), F-117 Nighthawk stealth aircraft, and AH-64 Apache attack helicopter were so successful in Operation Desert Storm (1990-1991) that the defense community dubbed that conflict the 100-hour war. Gen. Colin Powell, who oversaw the operation as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, even got his own philosophical doctrine out of it: The Weinberger-Powell Doctrine.
After the 9/11 attacks, intelligence officials began exploring the possibilities of hunting down Osama bin Laden using specialized teams augmented with the most sophisticated equipment and intelligence platforms. Commander of US Central Command, Gen. Tommy Franks, bought into the idea of emerging technologies supplanting the need for a large ground force. In his memoirs he envisioned a coming “revolution in warfare” that would look like science fiction compared to military operations a decade prior.
Chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, Cofer Black devised the initial incursion plan into Afghanistan and tasked Gary Schroen to wrangle the Northern Alliance and kill Osama bin Laden. As a long-time advocate of revolutionary military technologies, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld embraced the idea, especially because President George W. Bush was reluctant to place a heavier military force at risk.
The pitch for small teams with big technologies won the day.
A group of roughly 100 intelligence officers and special operators fought alongside their Afghan partners to route al-Qaeda and topple the Taliban government by December 2001. But it wasn’t enough to capture bin Laden. A 2009 report from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee concluded that the refusal to deploy a larger ground force at Tora Bora allowed bin Laden to escape into Pakistan where he remained for the next decade until his death in 2011. Cofer Black later echoed this sentiment, suggesting that the deployment of additional military forces could have been decisive in the early hunt for bin Laden.
Most experts came to agree that the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine was effective in 1991 not because of its high-tech means, but rather its massing of combat power and well-defined, feasible ends. At the height of the Afghan War in 2011, the United States had 98,000 troops on the ground. That is less than one-fifth of the US manpower dedicated to push Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait in 1991. The Taliban is not the Iraqi Army, but anyone who has spent time traversing Afghanistan’s unforgiving terrain can tell you that securing that country is a monumental task.
While the initial operation in Afghanistan was relatively successful, the subsequent campaign turned the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine on its head. By deploying limited means—supposedly balanced by advanced weapons and intelligence systems—the United States sought an audacious political objective: Transform an ardently tribal region into a relatively stable democracy through overt foreign military occupation.
Throughout the war, the United States and by extension its Afghan partners relied heavily on persistent aerial surveillance, accurate close air support, uncontested tactical communications, and abundant logistical networks. None of these resources were organic to the Afghan National Army (ANA) or sustainable in the absence of US forces. After America’s withdrawal from the country in August 2021, highly effective Afghan commandos could only do so much without this enabling framework.
Former commander of US European Command, Gen. Ben Hodges, recognized that attempts to mold the ANA into a high-tech, conventional force similar to the US military were poorly imagined. Not only that, but they likely contributed to the rapid collapse of the Afghan government last month. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley concurred with this assessment in a more recent interview.
This strikes at the heart of the issue.
Once US forces withdrew, it pulled the rug out from under the Afghan Army by removing the structure upon which it spent the last twenty years building a dependency. This certainly influenced their will to fight, leading to what senior defense officials now characterize as an unexpectedly rapid deterioration of Afghanistan’s security forces.
Gen. Sir Nick Carter, the UK’s chief of defence staff, stated recently that everyone got the intelligence wrong on the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. If he is right, the inevitable question is, why did everyone get it wrong? In light of the above approaches to America’s involvement there, it seems likely that the advanced technologies employed by foreign advisors created a bloated image of the Afghan Army’s operational capacity.
Technology evolves quickly. With discussions on everything from lethal autonomous weapons to quantum computing now swirling about the defense enterprise, the potential for advanced military technologies to make similar promises in future wars is far greater than it was in 2001. Even if fully imagined, however, none of these capabilities would have delivered victory in Afghanistan. There is no guarantee they will do so in the next war, either.
None of this is to say that modern technologies are not vital to military operations. They have saved my life in Iraq and Afghanistan more than once, and there is certainly much work to be done in the realms of modernization and acquisitions. But I have yet to come across an Afghan War postmortem that pinpoints a lack of advanced weapons as instrumental in America’s failures there. I don’t expect to.
Any review of Afghanistan’s history reveals that Afghan problems have always demanded Afghan solutions with Afghan resources. Low-tech, decentralized approaches have characterized that region’s style of warfare since Alexander the Great invaded Bactria in the fourth century BCE. If America takes nothing else from its experience there, it should adopt a more realistic outlook on the limits of its massive, conventional military in small, irregular wars.
Williamson Murray insisted that any technological leap into the future must be done with a healthy respect for the past and a realistic appreciation of what is humanly possible. Aptly named, the title of his 1997 paper cited in the opening of this article was Clausewitz Out, Computer In, referencing the famous Prussian strategic theorist, Carl von Clausewitz. Two centuries ago, Clausewitz wrote of the moral powers in war—the forces external to those that can be measured and calculated. He described their “incredible influence” as “best exemplified by history.” America’s high-tech gambit in low-tech Afghanistan is now part of that history. Learning from it will be the mandate of a generation.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the policies or positions of the United States Army, Department of Defense, or United States Government.
Michael Ferguson
Michael Ferguson is an officer in the United States Army with two decades of experience throughout Southwest Asia, Europe, and Africa. He fought in Iraq and Afghanistan during both initial troop surges and is co-author of a forthcoming book from Routledge Press on the legacy of Alexander the Great. You can find him on LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/michael-p-ferguson.
11. Biden Is Running a Hostage Negotiation With the Taliban
Excerpts:
Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress are already demanding that the Biden administration reveal all details of its negotiations with the Taliban since the fall of Kabul. This would provide much-needed transparency and accountability to any quid pro quo being offered to the Taliban.
But Congress should not stop there. It should also prohibit the release of any funds to the Taliban through the Federal Reserve, IMF, or other international organizations Washington has leverage over. In addition, Congress should pass legislation barring recognition of a Taliban-led government, including by the United Nations, and dramatically expanding U.S. financial sanctions to target the Taliban government’s central bank and economic sectors.
The administration, for its part, should not capitulate to the Taliban’s demands; it should make clear that any attempt to impede the continued departure of U.S. citizens, other Westerners, or Afghan allies will be met with force.
The Trump administration’s decision to negotiate with the Taliban and undermine the Afghan government was wrong. Biden’s decision to leave Afghanistan was even worse—and his withdrawal process has been a disaster. Doubling down by caving to Taliban extortion will not prevent the group from helping al Qaeda launch terrorist attacks against the United States. It will guarantee they will.
Biden Is Running a Hostage Negotiation With the Taliban
Foreign Policy · by Saeed Ghasseminejad, Matthew Zweig, Richard Goldberg · September 8, 2021
A front-row seat to the Republicans' debate over foreign policy, including their critique of the Biden administration.
Making concessions now will only encourage terrorism.
A Taliban fighter stands guard as people move past him at a market in Kabul on Sept. 5. AAMIR QURESHI/AFP via Getty Images
In late August, CIA director William Burns met with Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar in Kabul, presumably to negotiate the evacuation of U.S. citizens and Afghan allies. For all intents and purposes, the Biden administration is running a hostage negotiation with a terrorist organization. The question for policymakers: What is U.S. President Joe Biden offering to pay now that the last remaining U.S. forces have withdrawn?
Thousands of U.S. and other Western citizens, along with their Afghan allies, remain trapped in Taliban-controlled territory in the wake of Biden’s decision to withdraw all U.S. forces from the bases and airfields that could have been used to protect and evacuate them. These stranded individuals are wholly dependent on the Taliban’s cooperation to enter and depart Kabul and other airports.
The prospect of thousands of U.S. and allied hostages remaining in Afghanistan without U.S. military assistance leaves the United States and its fellow democracies vulnerable to extortion. International recognition as Afghanistan’s legitimate government will be the Taliban’s critical first step toward gaining additional concessions and resources, such as direct economic assistance. Official recognition would, in turn, likely help the Taliban achieve another demand: access to hard currency, including Afghan government assets that have been blocked by the United States and others.
In late August, CIA director William Burns met with Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar in Kabul, presumably to negotiate the evacuation of U.S. citizens and Afghan allies. For all intents and purposes, the Biden administration is running a hostage negotiation with a terrorist organization. The question for policymakers: What is U.S. President Joe Biden offering to pay now that the last remaining U.S. forces have withdrawn?
Thousands of U.S. and other Western citizens, along with their Afghan allies, remain trapped in Taliban-controlled territory in the wake of Biden’s decision to withdraw all U.S. forces from the bases and airfields that could have been used to protect and evacuate them. These stranded individuals are wholly dependent on the Taliban’s cooperation to enter and depart Kabul and other airports.
The prospect of thousands of U.S. and allied hostages remaining in Afghanistan without U.S. military assistance leaves the United States and its fellow democracies vulnerable to extortion. International recognition as Afghanistan’s legitimate government will be the Taliban’s critical first step toward gaining additional concessions and resources, such as direct economic assistance. Official recognition would, in turn, likely help the Taliban achieve another demand: access to hard currency, including Afghan government assets that have been blocked by the United States and others.
Afghanistan’s reserve assets, estimated at around $9 billion, are mostly parked in the United States. The Taliban face two obstacles in getting their hands on these funds. First, the United States does not recognize the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan as the country’s legitimate government—and, therefore, owner of these assets. Second, the Taliban are designated a terrorist entity by the U.S. Treasury Department, as are many of the group’s leaders. For now, the bulk of Afghanistan’s reserves remain frozen at the U.S. Federal Reserve.
Funds held and distributed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) offer another potential source of hard currency for the Taliban. As part of the IMF response to the global economic crisis triggered by COVID-19, Afghanistan was scheduled to receive $455 million in assistance this month. IMF officials have suspended this transfer and also blocked access to other IMF resources, such as special drawing rights. Obviously, the Taliban are keen to get their hands on these funds.
Biden may be tempted to pay the Taliban’s racket, if only to keep Afghanistan out of the headlines going into the 2022 midterm elections.
The Taliban likely have other diplomatic and economic demands. The group hopes to be officially recognized as Afghanistan’s representative to the United Nations General Assembly, a key source of legitimacy they were denied when they ruled Afghanistan before 2001. The Taliban will also demand the removal of U.N. and U.S. sanctions that could impede commercial relationships with the rest of the world.
China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and Qatar already appear willing to help the Taliban avoid international pariah status. For his part, Biden has not taken recognition or the release of funds off the table, perhaps naively believing such incentives will induce good behavior by the Taliban. In the president’s mind, the Taliban are grappling with what he called an “existential crisis” about whether or not they want to be internationally isolated. The State Department told reporters that the administration would consider a carrot-and-stick approach.
Biden may be tempted to pay the Taliban’s racket, if only to keep Afghanistan out of the headlines going into the 2022 midterm elections. But appeasing a terrorist organization allied with al Qaeda would be a catastrophic mistake that endangers U.S. national security.
The Taliban maintained close ties to al Qaeda both before and after the 9/11 attacks. For example, one of the Taliban’s deputy emirs, Sirajuddin Haqqani, is a long-standing al Qaeda ally and the head of the Haqqani network, the Taliban’s most sophisticated and experienced faction. Since regaining power, the Taliban have already freed thousands of al Qaeda and Islamic State prisoners and appointed former al Qaeda-linked commanders and Guantánamo Bay detainees to key government posts. The U.S. military is now warning that al Qaeda’s operational capabilities are rapidly regrowing. Given the relationship between the Taliban and al Qaeda, a de facto trade of cash for hostages could end up financing future terrorist attacks against Americans.
Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress are already demanding that the Biden administration reveal all details of its negotiations with the Taliban since the fall of Kabul. This would provide much-needed transparency and accountability to any quid pro quo being offered to the Taliban.
But Congress should not stop there. It should also prohibit the release of any funds to the Taliban through the Federal Reserve, IMF, or other international organizations Washington has leverage over. In addition, Congress should pass legislation barring recognition of a Taliban-led government, including by the United Nations, and dramatically expanding U.S. financial sanctions to target the Taliban government’s central bank and economic sectors.
The administration, for its part, should not capitulate to the Taliban’s demands; it should make clear that any attempt to impede the continued departure of U.S. citizens, other Westerners, or Afghan allies will be met with force.
The Trump administration’s decision to negotiate with the Taliban and undermine the Afghan government was wrong. Biden’s decision to leave Afghanistan was even worse—and his withdrawal process has been a disaster. Doubling down by caving to Taliban extortion will not prevent the group from helping al Qaeda launch terrorist attacks against the United States. It will guarantee they will.
Saeed Ghasseminejad is a senior financial economics advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Twitter: @Sghasseminejad
Matthew Zweig is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Twitter: @MatthewZweig1
Richard Goldberg is a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He served on Capitol Hill, on the U.S. National Security Council, and as the governor of Illinois’s chief of staff. Twitter: @rich_goldberg
12. Taliban’s government includes designated terrorists, ex-Guantanamo detainees
Excerpt:
Brief profiles for 22 of the Taliban men who will govern under the emirate are offered below. This list does not include all of the figures appointed to lead. FDD’s Long War Journal will likely add to this list in the future. Many of the Taliban leaders discussed below have either current or historical ties to al Qaeda. Indeed, some of them worked closely with al Qaeda throughout their careers. Some of them are U.S.-designated terrorists.
Taliban’s government includes designated terrorists, ex-Guantanamo detainees | FDD's Long War Journal
Taliban-linked accounts say this billboard was erected in Kabul. It is dedicated to Mullah Omar and Jalaluddin Haqqani.
The Taliban has announced the formation of an “interim government” to rule over Afghanistan. The Taliban’s regime will be known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. This is entirely unsurprising. The first emirate was toppled during the U.S.-led invasion in late 2001. The jihadis, members of both the Taliban and al Qaeda, waged jihad for the next two decades in order to resurrect it. The Taliban was clear about its political goal all along.
Many of the newly appointed leaders in the Islamic Emirate are actually old Taliban leaders. More than a dozen of them were first sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council in early 2001. Some new faces have joined them.
Brief profiles for 22 of the Taliban men who will govern under the emirate are offered below. This list does not include all of the figures appointed to lead. FDD’s Long War Journal will likely add to this list in the future. Many of the Taliban leaders discussed below have either current or historical ties to al Qaeda. Indeed, some of them worked closely with al Qaeda throughout their careers. Some of them are U.S.-designated terrorists.
Five of the newly-appointed Taliban leaders were once held at the detention facility in Guantánamo, but exchanged for Bowe Bergdahl in 2014. They are discussed at the end of this analysis.
Haibatullah Akhundzada.
Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada is the current “Emir of the Faithful,” or top leader of the Taliban. He has served as the Taliban’s emir since 2016. At some point during the jihad against the Soviets, Akhundzada reportedly fought within the ranks of the Hezb-e-Islami group led by the mujahideen commander Yunus Khalis. After the Taliban took over most of Afghanistan, ruling from 1996 to 2001, Akhundzada was a religious scholar, judge and head of the judiciary branch.
As the top judicial figure, Akhundzada issued fatwas, or religious decrees, justifying all aspects of the Taliban’s operations, including suicide attacks. His son, Hafiz Abdul Rahman, killed himself in a suicide attack against Afghan forces in Helmand province in 2017. Ayman al Zawahiri, the head of al Qaeda, swore allegiance to Akhundzada in 2016. The Taliban’s “Emir of the Faithful” has never disavowed Zawahiri’s oath.
Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund is the acting head of state. Akhund was a close compatriot of Mullah Omar. During the Taliban’s first regime from 1996 to 2001, Akhund served as the governor of Kandahar, foreign minister, and first deputy of the Taliban’s council of ministers.
Taliban accounts shared this image of Hassan Akhund.
On behalf of the Taliban’s senior leadership, Akhund refused to turn over Osama bin Laden after al Qaeda carried out the August 1998 U.S. embassy bombings — the deadliest attack by bin Laden’s network prior to 9/11. “We will never give up Osama at any price,” Akhund said, after the U.N. threatened to impose sanctions if bin Laden wasn’t handed over. Akhund was sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council in Jan. 2001. As of 2009, Akhund was one of the Taliban’s “most effective” insurgent commanders. He was also member of the Taliban’s supreme council.
Taliban-linked social media accounts have shared multiple images of Akhund in recent days, including photos of him meeting with other senior Taliban officials. One image can be seen on the right.
Sirajuddin Haqqani is the acting interior minister. In that role, he will likely have great power within the Taliban’s newly resurrected Islamic Emirate. Indeed, Sirajuddin issued guidance to the Taliban’s commissions and judges as the jihadists took over the country this year.
Sirajuddin is the son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, who served as a commander in Yunus Khalis’s Hezb-e-Islami group, but became more widely known as a notorious powerbroker in the region. Jalaluddin was the founder of the so-called Haqqani Network, which is an integral part of the Taliban. The Haqqanis have benefited from the support of Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishment.
In Oct. 2001, Jalaluddin was appointed the head of the Taliban’s military forces. In that role, he helped Osama bin Laden escape the American manhunt in late 2001, while also publicly defending the al Qaeda founder. Indeed, Jalaluddin was one of bin Laden’s first benefactors and helped incubate al Qaeda in the Haqqanis’ own camps in eastern Afghanistan during the 1980s. Al Qaeda issued a glowing eulogy for Jalaluddin after the Taliban announced his death in 2018, and continued to honor him in the months that followed.
Sirajuddin Haqqani issued orders concerning how to govern as the Taliban conquered Afghanistan.
Years before Jalaluddin’s demise, Sirajuddin inherited the leadership of the Haqqanis’ network. He has overseen it for much of the past two decades. At the same time, Sirajuddin quickly rose up the Taliban’s ranks, serving as one of two deputy emirs to Akhundzada since 2016, as well as the head of the Taliban’s Miramshah Shura.
Sirajuddin has worked closely with Al Qaeda throughout his career, so much so that it is often difficult to tell the Haqqanis and al Qaeda apart. A team of experts working for the United Nations Security Council recently reported that Sirajuddin may even be a member of al Qaeda’s “wider” leadership. Regardless, there is no question that Sirajuddin is an al Qaeda man. The Haqqanis main media arm has even celebrated the unbroken bond between the Taliban and al Qaeda. And al Qaeda’s general command has referred to Sirajuddin and Akhundzada as “our emirs in the Islamic emirate.” The U.S. government has listed Sirajuddin as a specially designated global terrorist, offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to his capture and prosecution.
Taliban accounts released this picture of Mullah Yaqoub.
Mullah Yaqoub is the acting defense minister. He is the son of Mullah Omar, the founder and first emir of the Taliban. Omar repeatedly refused to hand over Osama bin Laden to the U.S. both before and after the 9/11 hijackings.
Alongside Sirajuddin Haqqani, Yaqoub has served as one of the Taliban’s two deputy emirs since 2016. Yaqoub was also named as the group’s military commander. Yaqoub previously served as a member of the Quetta Shura and the military commander of 15 provinces.
In a recent video blaming America for the 9/11 hijackings, Yaqoub openly praised the Taliban’s suicide squads, saying they will continue to play a leading role in the defense of the Islamic Emirate. The Taliban did not previously release pictures showing Yaqoub’s face, but some images (including the one on the right and others) were shared via social media within the last day.
Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar is the acting first deputy head of state. Baradar cofounded the Taliban with Mullah Omar, and served at the most senior levels within the Taliban between 1996 and 2001, including as deputy minister of defense. The Trump administration negotiated Baradar’s release from prison in Pakistan, where he was detained for approximately eight years, in order to give negotiations between the two sides the appearance of gravitas. Baradar then headed the Taliban’s delegation in Doha, Qatar and secured the deal that led to the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. That agreement paved the way for the Taliban to seize control of the country. Baradar was sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council in Feb. 2001.
Mullah Abdul Salam Hanafi is the acting second deputy head of state. He was a key member of the Taliban’s Doha delegation, which secured America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. Abdul Salam has playing a leading role in the Taliban’s diplomatic efforts with China and other powers since the fall of Kabul. He was sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council in Feb. 2001, as he served as the deputy minister of education for the Taliban at the time. Years later, beginning in 2007, the Taliban named him its shadow governor for Jawzjan province. He was also “believed to be involved in drug trafficking,” according to the U.N.
Khalil al Rahman Haqqani is the acting minister of refugees. He has played a leading diplomatic role in Kabul since it fell, accepting pledges of loyalty to the newly restored Islamic Emirate from various parties. Flanked by arm guards, Khalil was also seen preaching in the Pol-e Khishti Mosque, the largest mosque in Kabul. Khalil is a brother of Jalaluddin Haqqani and the uncle of Sirajuddin Haqqani. He has served as a key fundraiser, financier, and operational commander for the Haqqani Network.
Khalil Haqqani preaching at the largest mosque in Kabul in August. (Picture was shared by Taliban social media accounts.)
When the U.S. Treasury Department designated Khalil as a terrorist in 2011, it noted that he “acted on behalf of” al Qaeda’s military, or “Shadow Army,” in Afghanistan. In 2002, when the U.S. was hunting Osama bin Laden, Khalil deployed men “to reinforce al Qaeda elements in Paktia Province, Afghanistan.” The U.S. State Department’s Rewards for Justice Program has offered a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to his capture and prosecution. It is likely that at least some of al Qaeda’s personnel are considered “refugees” in Afghanistan, meaning they will be included in Khalil Haqqani’s portfolio.
Mullah Abdul Manan Omari is the acting minister of public works. Omari is a brother of Mullah Omar and uncle to Mullah Yaqoub. In 2016, he was named the head of the Taliban’s preaching and guidance commission, which was tasked with spreading “the goals of Islamic Emirate,” while countering the “illegality and aims of the invaders and their stooges,” meaning the Afghan government. He served as a member of the Taliban’s negotiating team in Doha, Qatar.
Mullah Taj Mir Jawad is the acting first deputy of intelligence. Jawad was a leader in what the U.S. military used to refer to as the Kabul Attack Network, which pooled fighters and resources from the Taliban, Al Qaeda, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Islamic Jihad Union, the Turkistan Islamic Party, and Hizb-I-Islami Gulbuddin in order to conduct attacks in and around Kabul. The network extended into Logar, Wardak, Nangarhar, Kapisa, Ghazni, and Zabul Provinces. Jawad is a leader within the Haqqani Network. In his new role, Jawad will work with Abdul Haq Wasiq, an ex-Guantanamo detainee discussed below.
Qari Fasihuddin is the acting chief of army staff. An ethnic Tajik, Fasihuddin commanded the Taliban’s forces in northern Afghanistan during the group’s final conquest in the spring and summer of 2021. He also led Taliban troops during the recent offensive in the Panjshir Valley.
The former Afghan Ministry of Defense claimed that Fasihuddin was killed in Sept. 2019, but that wasn’t true
Fasihuddin has served as the deputy head of the Taliban’s military commission. He has ties to foreign jihadist groups such as the Turkistan Islamic Party and Jamaat Ansarullah, a Tajik terrorist organization. Fasihuddin was the Taliban’s shadow governor for Badakhshan province. After the province fell in the summer of 2021, he put Jamaat Ansarullah in command of five districts.
Maulvi Abdul Hakim Sharia is the acting minister of justice. FDD’s Long War Journal assesses that this may be the same person as Maulvi Abdul Hakim Ishaqzai, who was the Taliban’s shadow justice minister and negotiator for the group in Doha, Qatar. He is reportedly close to the Taliban’s emir, Haibatullah Akhundzada, and studied at the Darul Uloom Haqqani, a Deobandi seminary that is often referred to as the “University of Jihad.”
Najibullah Haqqani is the acting minister of communications. He was sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council in Feb. 2001. During the Taliban’s first regime, he was the deputy minister of finance. He was the Taliban’s military commander for Kunar province as of June 2008 and worked as the shadow governor for Laghman province as of 2010.
Abdul Baqi Haqqani is the acting minister of higher education. During Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001, he served in various positions, including as governor of Khost and Paktika provinces, and vice minister of information and culture. He was sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council and the European Union for activities on behalf of the Taliban both prior to and after 9/11.
Mullah Hamidullah Akhundzada is the acting minister of aviation and transport. He was sanctioned by the U. N. Security Council in Jan. 2001 for serving as the head of Ariana Afghan Airlines during Taliban’s first rule.
A Taliban-linked account shared this image of Abdul Latif Mansoor.
Mullah Abdul Latif Mansoor is the acting minister of water and power. He was sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council in Jan. 2001, due to his role as the Taliban’s minister of agriculture.
He went on to fill a number of other positions, including as a “member of the Taliban Supreme Council and Head of the Council’s Political Commission as at 2009.” He was the Taliban’s shadow governor for Nangarhar province in 2009 and “a senior Taliban commander in eastern Afghanistan” one year later.
Amir Khan Muttaqi.
Amir Khan Muttaqi is the acting minister of foreign affairs. Muttaqi was a member of the Taliban’s negotiating team in Doha, Qatar. Muttaqi was sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council in Jan. 2001 for his role as the Taliban’s minister of education.
Muttaqi was the Taliban’s minister of information and culture during the pre-Oct. 2001 regime and also chief negotiator with the U.N. Muttaqi later held a seat on a Taliban regional council, as well as the Taliban’s supreme council.
Maulvi Noor Mohammad Saqib is the acting minister of hajj and religious affairs. Saqib was sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council in Jan. 2001 for his role as the chief justice of the Taliban’s supreme court. He studied at the Darul Uloom Haqqani, a Deobandi seminary that is often referred to as the “University of Jihad.” He has also been a member of the Taliban’s supreme council and head of the religious committee, “which acts as a judiciary branch of the Taliban.”
Ex-Guantanamo detainees hold senior positions within the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate
President Obama’s own Guantanamo Review Task Force had previously assessed that all five Taliban leaders should be held pursuant to the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), as it was too risky to transfer them.
All five men now hold key positions in the Taliban’s regime. Four of them were appointed to senior posts in the Taliban’s hierarchy, while the fifth was reportedly named the governor of Khost province.
Intelligence cited by U.N. Security Council and Joint Task Force – Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO), which oversees the detention facility in Cuba, ties all five Taliban figures to al Qaeda prior to 9/11. JTF-GTMO assessed that each of the five men was a “high” risk detainee, and “likely to pose a threat to the U.S., its interests, and allies.” At least four of the five were sanctioned by the U.N. in early 2001. The biographical information below comes from the U.N. Security Council’s sanctions pages, leaked JTF-GTMO threat assessments, or other identified sources.
Abdul Haq Wasiq is the acting director of intelligence. Wasiq was the deputy minister of security (intelligence) during the Taliban’s first regime. He was sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council in Jan. 2001.
A Taliban-linked account shared this recent image of Abdul Haq Wasiq.
The U.N. reported that Wasiq was a “local commander” in Nimroz and Kandahar provinces before being promoted to deputy director general of intelligence prior to 9/11. In that capacity, according to the U.N., Wasiq “was in charge of handling relations with al Qaeda-related foreign fighters and their training camps in Afghanistan.”
Wasiq’s al Qaeda ties were also documented by JTF-GTMO’s analysts. U.S. military-intelligence officials found that Wasiq “utilized his office to support al Qaeda and to assist Taliban personnel elude capture” in late 2001. Wasiq also “arranged for al Qaeda personnel to train Taliban intelligence staff in intelligence methods.”
A recent photo of Muhammad Fazl, via a Taliban-linked account..
Mohammad Fazl is the deputy defense minister. Fazl had the same role, or a similar one, in the Taliban’s first regime. He was sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council in Feb. 2001. At the time, Fazl was the Taliban’s deputy chief of army staff.
Fazl was a “close associate” of Mullah Omar and “helped him to establish the Taliban government.” The U.N. found that Fazl “was at the Al-Farouq training camp established by al Qaeda.” Fazl “had knowledge that the Taliban provided assistance to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan…in the form of financial, weapons and logistical support in exchange for providing the Taliban with soldiers.” The IMU worked closely with al Qaeda at the time. Fazl also commanded a fighting force “of approximately 3,000 Taliban front-line troops in the Takhar Province in October 2001.”
According to JTF-GTMO, Fazl had “operational associations with significant al Qaeda and other extremist personnel.” Fazl allegedly conspired with Abdul al-Iraqi, one of Osama bin Laden’s chief lieutenants and the head of al Qaeda’s Arab 055 Brigade, to “coordinate an attack” on the Northern Alliance following the assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud in Sept. 2001.
Khairullah Khairkhwa is the acting minister for information and culture. Khairkhwa was sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council in Jan. 2001. At the time, he was the Taliban’s governor for Herat Province. He had also served as the governor Kabul province, the minister of internal affairs, and spokesperson during the Taliban’s first regime.
According to JTF-GTMO, Khairkhwa was a close confidante of Mullah Omar prior to 9/11. JTF-GTMO also cited intelligence linking Khairkhwa to Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s camps in Herat. In June 2011, a Washington D.C. district court denied Khairkhwa’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus, based in large part on his admitted role in brokering a post-9/11 deal with the Iranian government. As a result of the talks mediated by Khairkhwa, the Iranians agreed to support the Taliban’s jihad against the U.S. in Afghanistan.
Noorullah Noori is the acting minister of borders and tribal affairs. Noori was sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council in Jan. 2001. At the time, he was both the Taliban’s governor of the Balkh Province, as well as the “Head of the Northern Zone of the Taliban regime.”
A Taliban-linked account shared this image of Noorullah Noori.
According to JTF-GTMO, Noori was a “senior Taliban military commander” prior to his detention. Noori allegedly “fought alongside al Qaeda as a Taliban military general, against the Northern Alliance” and also “hosted al Qaeda commanders.” Along with Mohammad Fazl (below), Noori was suspected of committing “war crimes,” “including the murder of thousands of Shiite Muslims” prior to the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.
Mohammad Nabi Omari wasn’t named to the senior staff of the Taliban’s regime, but he was reportedly appointed the new governor of Khost province. He has longstanding ties to the Haqqani Network and attended talks in Doha on its behalf.
Prior to this time in U.S. custody, according to JTF-GTMO, Omari “was a senior Taliban official who served in multiple leadership roles.” Omari was allegedly a “member of a joint al Qaeda/Taliban” cell in Khost “and was involved in attacks against U.S. and Coalition forces.” He was also a “close associate” of Jalaluddin Haqqani and worked with the Haqqani Network.
Omari’s son, Abdul Haq, was killed during fighting in Khost province in July. Like his father, Abdul Haq reportedly fought for the Haqqani Network. The Taliban celebrated Abdul Haq’s “martyrdom” in a statement on Voice of Jihad, noting that the group’s leaders, including Akhundzada, were willing to lose their sons in their campaign to conquer Afghanistan. The Taliban had a point.
Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal. Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for FDD's Long War Journal.
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13. After 9/11, the U.S. Got Almost Everything Wrong
Long read. But a very depressing conclusion that we should all reflect upon. Can we regain hope, goodwill and unity?
That 17-minute delay between the two plane crashes—the brief period during which commuters looked up at the smoke rising from the North Tower and still went about their day—epitomized a New York and an America utterly unrecognizable today. Contrast it with this image: a video of a motorcycle backfiring in Times Square in the summer of 2019. Crowds flee; thousands run for their lives at the mere sound of a long bang. After the choices we made after 9/11 corrupted our national psyche and our politics, we are a fearful and divided country. The fear exacerbates the division. Gun sales have soared.
Ironically, we find ourselves in another fight against a shadowy, shape-shifting foe. The coronavirus has killed the equivalent of the 9/11 death toll every three days for the past 18 months. The total death toll surpasses the entire population of Wyoming. At least one part of the U.S. government’s response has been exemplary: Innovative and effective disease-defeating vaccines have been developed, approved, and administered to the majority of American adults for free at a truly impressive speed. Yet rather than pulling us together, the COVID-19 crisis has pushed Americans even further apart. Historians someday will study this moment and wonder how our society was so fragmented as to fumble a crisis that, in technical terms, we were well equipped to handle.
The answer, unfortunately, will be simple: We are confronting the current crisis with little of the hope, goodwill, and unity that 9/11 initially created, and that reality is inseparable from the fear and suspicion that came to dominate America’s reaction to the 2001 attacks—and yielded a long succession of tragic consequences, cynical choices, and poisonous politics. Looking back after two decades, I can’t escape the conclusion that the enemy we ended up fighting after 9/11 was ourselves.
After 9/11, the U.S. Got Almost Everything Wrong
A mission to rid the world of “terror” and “evil” led America in tragic directions.
On the Friday after 9/11, President George W. Bush visited the New York City site that the world would come to know as Ground Zero. After rescue workers shouted that they couldn’t hear him as he spoke to them through a bullhorn, he turned toward them and ad-libbed. “I can hear you,” he shouted. “The whole world hears you, and when we find these people who knocked these buildings down, they’ll hear all of us soon.” Everybody roared. At a prayer service later that day, he outlined the clear objective of the task ahead: “Our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.”
Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press two days later, Vice President Dick Cheney offered his own vengeful promise. “We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will,” he told the host, Tim Russert. “We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we’re going to be successful.” He added, “That’s the world these folks operate in, and so it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal.”
In retrospect, Cheney’s comment that morning came to define the U.S. response to the 2001 terrorist attacks over the next two decades, as the United States embraced the “dark side” to fight what was soon dubbed the “Global War on Terror” (the “GWOT” in gov-speak)—an all-encompassing, no-stone-unturned, whole-of-society, and whole-of-government fight against one of history’s great evils.
It was a colossal miscalculation.
The events of September 11, 2001, became the hinge on which all of recent American history would turn, rewriting global alliances, reorganizing the U.S. government, and even changing the feel of daily life, as security checkpoints and magnetometers proliferated inside buildings and protective bollards sprouted like kudzu along America’s streets.
I am the author of an oral history of 9/11. Two of my other books chronicle how that day changed the FBI’s counterterrorism efforts and the government’s doomsday plans. I’ve spent much of this year working on a podcast series about the lingering questions from the attacks. Along the way, I’ve interviewed the Cassandra-like FBI agents who chased Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda before the attacks; first responders and attack survivors in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania; government officials who hid away in bunkers under the White House and in the Virginia countryside as the day unfolded; the passengers aboard Air Force One with the president on 9/11; and the Navy SEALs who killed bin Laden a decade later. I’ve interviewed directors of the CIA, FBI, and national intelligence; the interrogators in CIA black sites; and the men who found Saddam Hussein in that spider hole in Iraq.
As we approach the 20th anniversary of 9/11 on Saturday, I cannot escape this sad conclusion: The United States—as both a government and a nation—got nearly everything about our response wrong, on the big issues and the little ones. The GWOT yielded two crucial triumphs: The core al-Qaeda group never again attacked the American homeland, and bin Laden, its leader, was hunted down and killed in a stunningly successful secret mission a decade after the attacks. But the U.S. defined its goals far more expansively, and by almost any other measure, the War on Terror has weakened the nation—leaving Americans more afraid, less free, more morally compromised, and more alone in the world. A day that initially created an unparalleled sense of unity among Americans has become the backdrop for ever-widening political polarization.
The nation’s failures began in the first hours of the attacks and continue to the present day. Seeing how and when we went wrong is easy in hindsight. What’s much harder to understand is how—if at all—we can make things right.
As a society, we succumbed to fear.
The most telling part of September 11, 2001, was the interval between the first plane crash at the World Trade Center, at 8:46 a.m., and the second, at 9:03. In those 17 minutes, the nation’s sheer innocence was on display.
The aftermath of the first crash was live on the nation’s televisions by 8:49 a.m. Though horrified, many Americans who saw those images still went on about their morning. In New York, the commuter-ferry captain Peter Johansen recalled how, afterward, he docked at the Wall Street Terminal and every single one of his passengers got off and walked into Lower Manhattan, even as papers and debris rained down from the damaged North Tower.
At the White House, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice called Bush, who was in Florida. They discussed the crash and agreed it was strange. But Rice proceeded with her 9 a.m. staff meeting, as previously scheduled, and Bush went into a classroom at the Emma E. Booker Elementary School to promote his No Child Left Behind education agenda. At the FBI, the newly arrived director, Robert Mueller, was actually sitting in a briefing on al-Qaeda and the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole when an aide interrupted with news of the first crash; he looked out the window at the bright blue sky and wondered how a plane could have hit the World Trade Center on such a clear day.
Those muted reactions seem inconceivable today but were totally appropriate to the nation that existed that September morning. The conclusion of the Cold War a decade earlier had supposedly ended history. To walk through Bill Clinton’s presidential library in Little Rock today is to marvel at how low-stakes everything in the 1990s seemed.
But after that second crash, and then the subsequent ones at the Pentagon and in the fields outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania, our government panicked. There’s really no other way to say it. Fear spread up the chain of command. Cheney, who had been hustled to safety in the minutes after the second crash, reflected later, “In the years since, I’ve heard speculation that I’m a different man after 9/11. I wouldn’t say that. But I’ll freely admit that watching a coordinated, devastating attack on our country from an underground bunker at the White House can affect how you view your responsibilities.”
The initial fear seemed well grounded. Experts warned of a potential second wave of attacks and of al-Qaeda sleeper cells across the country. Within weeks, mysterious envelopes of anthrax powder began sickening and killing people in Florida, New York, and Washington. Entire congressional office buildings were sealed off by government officials in hazmat suits.
The world suddenly looked scary to ordinary citizens—and even worse behind the closed doors of intelligence briefings. The careful sifting of intelligence that our nation’s leaders rely on to make decisions fell apart. After the critique that federal law enforcement and spy agencies had “failed to connect the dots” took hold, everyone shared everything—every tip seemed to be treated as fact. James Comey, who served as deputy attorney general during some of the frantic post-9/11 era, told me in 2009 that he had been horrified by the unverified intelligence landing each day on the president’s desk. “When I started, I believed that a giant fire hose of information came in the ground floor of the U.S. government and then, as it went up, floor by floor, was whittled down until at the very top the president could drink from the cool, small stream of a water fountain,” Comey said. “I was shocked to find that after 9/11 the fire hose was just being passed up floor by floor. The fire hose every morning hit the FBI director, the attorney general, and then the president.”
According to one report soon after 9/11, a nuclear bomb that terrorists had managed to smuggle into the country was hidden on a train somewhere between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. This tip turned out to have come from an informant who had misheard a conversation between two men in a bathroom in Ukraine—in other words, from a terrible global game of telephone. For weeks after, Bush would ask in briefings, “Is this another Ukrainian urinal incident?”
Even disproved plots added to the impression that the U.S. was under constant attack by a shadowy, relentless, and widespread enemy. Rather than recognizing that an extremist group with an identifiable membership and distinctive ideology had exploited fixable flaws in the American security system to carry out the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration launched the nation on a vague and ultimately catastrophic quest to rid the world of “terror” and “evil.”
At the time, some commentators politely noted the danger of tilting at such nebulous concepts, but a stunned American public appeared to crave a bold response imbued with a higher purpose. As the journalist Robert Draper writes in To Start a War, his new history of the Bush administration’s lies, obfuscations, and self-delusions that led from Afghanistan into Iraq, “In the after-shocks of 9/11, a reeling America found itself steadied by blunt-talking alpha males whose unflappable, crinkly-eyed certitude seemed the only antidote to nationwide panic.”
The crash of that second plane at 9:03, live on millions of television sets across the country, had revealed a gap in Americans’ understanding of our world, a gap into which anything and everything—caution and paranoia, liberal internationalism and vengeful militarism, a mission to democratize the Middle East and an ever more pointless campaign amid a military stalemate—might be poured in the name of shared national purpose. The depth of our leaders’ panic and the amorphousness of our enemy led to a long succession of tragic choices.
We chose the wrong way to seek justice.
Before 9/11, the United States had a considered, constitutional, and proven playbook for targeting terrorists: They were arrested anywhere in the world they could be caught, tried in regular federal courts, and, if convicted, sent to federal prison. The mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing? Arrested in Pakistan. The 1998 embassy bombers? Caught in Kenya, South Africa, and elsewhere. In Sweden on the very morning of 9/11, FBI agents had arrested an al-Qaeda plotter connected to the attack on the USS Cole. The hunt for the plotters of and accomplices to the new attacks could have been similarly handled in civilian courts, whose civil-liberties protections would have shown the world how even the worst evils met with reasoned justice under the law.
Instead, on November 13, 2001, President Bush announced in an executive order that those rounded up in the War on Terror would be treated not as criminals, or even as prisoners of war, but as part of a murky category that came to be known as “enemy combatants.”
While civil libertarians warned of a dark path ahead, Americans seemed not only to shrug off the new approach but also to embrace the no-holds-barred response. In an odd case of geopolitical life imitating Hollywood, the Kiefer Sutherland counterterrorism fantasy vehicle 24 premiered just as Bush drew his new lines on the War on Terror. The show’s ticking-clock drama and line-crossing protagonist taught Americans that stopping evil meant doing evil, that torturing suspects got results and saved lives. The Fox show was a huge hit, its graphic violence and torture a key selling point to audiences.
The CIA actually adopted the Sutherland approach within weeks of the show’s premiere. The agency set up “black sites” around the world to hold terror suspects and force them to talk. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld created and publicly celebrated the prison at Guantánamo, arguing that the sliver of Cuban soil was beyond the reach of U.S. courts, habeas corpus, and due process. The government cut experienced FBI interrogators out of the mix and replaced them with young, untrained military and CIA interrogators. The spy agency hired outside psychologists who designed brutal and scientifically unsound techniques—including beatings, forced nudity, dietary manipulation, sensory deprivation, chaining prisoners in stress positions for hours at a time, confining them in mock coffins, depriving them of sleep, throwing them against a wall, and waterboarding them—that the U.S. called “enhanced interrogation.” Everyone else would call it torture. None of it was conducted under the ticking-clock scenario celebrated by 24; most of these sessions began months and in some cases years after a prisoner was first detained.
Twenty years after 9/11, it’s unclear whether a single meaningful piece of intelligence came out of the torture program, which a U.S. Senate investigation later determined was deployed against dozens of detainees in CIA custody. We tortured CIA detainees and “enemy combatants” in Gitmo whether they seemed useful or not. Similar abuses occurred in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where guards sexually abused and humiliated prisoners. The moral stain from this era was so obvious that al-Qaeda in Iraq, the group that morphed into the brutal ISIS, later used the imagery against us—parading its own prisoners around in the orange jumpsuits from Gitmo. And yet American leaders continued to embrace the approach anyway. Mitt Romney ran for president promising to “double Guantánamo.” And no senior official, in either the military or the CIA, has ever been held accountable for the deaths, degradations, and abuses inflicted in our name. Quite the opposite: President Donald Trump even promoted Gina Haspel, who had overseen a black site in Thailand, to director of the CIA.
Meanwhile, removing the terror cases from traditional federal courts and sending them to military tribunals has still produced no closure for the families of 9/11 victims. So far, none of the alleged 9/11 plotters sitting in Guantánamo have faced trial. Military-commission proceedings for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, allegedly a mastermind of the attacks, and four co-defendants are still in a pretrial phase. The trial might start next year—or sometime further in the future. In the meantime, the U.S. military is paying millions of dollars a year to maintain a prison in Cuba housing middle-aged and elderly terror suspects—and in a sign that the military recognizes justice won’t come soon, it has made plans to bring in nursing-home and hospice care in the years ahead. In contrast, the traditional federal courts have repeatedly proved successful in the years since at trying terrorism suspects, including Zacarias Moussaoui—the only person convicted of being a conspirator in the 9/11 plot.
At home, we reorganized the government the wrong way.
Within hours after the 9/11 attacks, serious government failures began to come into focus. The CIA, NSA, and FBI had all overlooked pieces of the plot; bureaucratic inertia and interagency jealousy had prevented the sharing of intelligence that might have disrupted the looming attacks; the CIA had even known that two of the hijackers, known al-Qaeda operatives, were inside the United States. The following March, the Immigration and Naturalization Service notified a Florida flight school that it had approved visas for two of the 9/11 hijackers, including the ringleader Mohamed Atta. That America’s intelligence, counterterrorism, and law-enforcement systems needed an overhaul had become obvious. Following some initial reluctance, the Bush administration embraced a top-to-bottom reorganization of the federal government around “homeland security,” a phrase with little presence in American life before the attacks.
Certain aspects of the reorganization proved successful. The structure of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Counterterrorism Center, and the Justice Department’s newly created National Security Division have all been net positives inside the government. But the biggest change, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the largest government reorganization since World War II, has consistently proved to be a mistake.
Congress shoehorned politically charged immigration and border-security agencies into the same department with uncontroversial emergency-management programs—a setup that left the latter neglected. But beyond its flawed bureaucratic structure and organizational chart, the DHS has the wrong DNA. Unlike the Justice Department, it has no institutional culture rooted in respect for the rule of law. Unsteeped in America’s traditions of freedom and openness, the new department was built to view everything through a lens of “Can it hurt us?” This corrosive mindset became particularly visible on immigration and border-control issues, as a culture of welcoming new citizens and families shifted to one of questioning and suspicion—especially if you happened to have dark skin.
Homeland Security has helped set up scores of so-called state fusion centers, little-scrutinized entities that ostensibly promote intelligence sharing among multiple levels of government but, in practice, have targeted people, such as members of antiwar groups, who do not remotely qualify as terrorists. The department has also accelerated the militarizing of local and state police departments, which recast themselves as potential front-line responders to terror attacks on the American homeland. Billions of DHS dollars have flooded into America’s cities and small towns and, coupled with programs from the Pentagon, provided police officers with weapons of war—heavily armored military vehicles, rifles, grenade launchers, and other tactical gear. It doesn’t take much of a leap to conclude that the transformation of our nation’s police from local guardians to GWOT warriors created more distance between officers and the communities they patrol, and exacerbated the tensions that led to the Black Lives Matter movement. (Similarly, the aggressive, politicized enforcement efforts by the immigration and customs agency forged after 9/11 have prompted a counterreaction in the form of “Abolish ICE.”)
Only the shock of that moment at 9:03 a.m. one Tuesday morning two decades ago can explain why America cobbled together a Frankenstein Cabinet department to fend off terrorists. One DHS section, the newly formed Customs and Border Protection, experienced a surge of growth so poorly executed that the agency became a major corruption threat in the region near the border with Mexico. New agents and officers were sent into the field before background checks were completed. (“We made some mistakes,” one CBP commissioner told me in 2015. “We found out later that we did, in fact, hire cartel members.”)
Even today, the CBP refers to its mission as “keeping terrorists and their weapons out of the U.S. while facilitating lawful international travel and trade.” But its agents primarily find themselves working what amounts to a humanitarian mission on the southern border as migrants flee violence in Central America. This mismatch of resources, training, and personnel helps explain why morale among DHS employees is far lower than in the federal government as a whole.
Last summer, DHS agents and officers ran amok across the country following the protests around the murder of George Floyd. Federal officers snatched citizens off the street in Portland, Oregon, and hustled them into unmarked rental vans. Such episodes reveal all too starkly the danger of creating a new law-enforcement bureaucracy at a moment of national anxiety, effectively enshrining fear into law forever.
Abroad, we squandered the world’s goodwill.
A rare bright spot in the period just after 9/11 was that people around the world reacted to an attack on us as if it had been an attack on them, too. But nearly every step the U.S. pursued in the War on Terror from that point forward cost us friends.
The military and diplomatic mistakes that America made in Afghanistan and Iraq are so obvious in hindsight and have been so thoroughly chronicled by others that they need little recounting here. Afghanistan, at the start, appeared set to be a remarkable victory. Within weeks of our invasion, in the fall of 2001, the U.S. was winning a limited, focused war, yet the Bush administration turned to invade Iraq, starting a war of choice loosely justified through the same bad intelligence and fear-mongering that underlay so many of the government’s other decisions. The Iraq debacle led to defeat in Afghanistan, too, despite trillions of dollars in spending and far too much bloodshed in both countries.
In an embrace of cynicism and realpolitik, we relied on allies—most notably Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia—that made our fight more bloody and more costly. Their own officials funded and even harbored the very terror networks we were fighting. These countries’ brutal and corrupt governments were so morally bankrupt that they became recruiting posters for future Islamic extremists.
In Afghanistan, we made common cause with awful men—warlords and corrupt politicians who pillaged communities, laundered and stole American taxpayer money, trafficked drugs, and made backroom deals with the people we were supposed to be fighting. After the brother of Afghanistan’s president was assassinated in 2011, The Guardian eulogized the southern Afghanistan “mafia don” as “corrupt, treacherous, lawless, paradoxical, subservient and charming”—and that’s not even the brother whom U.S. prosecutors actively investigated for alleged corruption. We condoned child rape. We propped up a government that never reflected the will of the people and that looked so illegitimate to its own citizens that it collapsed in days as American forces withdrew this summer. Its leaders were among the first to flee.
We picked the wrong enemies.
President Bush, it’s worth remembering, worked hard initially to ensure that the fight against al-Qaeda wasn’t seen as a war on Islam. “The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends,” he said in a national address before a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001. “It is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them.” But he also broadened the fight to include the defeat of “every terrorist group of global reach” and flattened it into a conflict of cultural values. In an address to the American people, he declared, “Americans are asking, ‘Why do they hate us?’ They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.”
Time, along with more fiery rhetoric from Christian evangelical leaders and conservative politicians alike, muddied the message that the U.S. wasn’t at war with Islam, especially as the American success against al-Qaeda morphed into a longer-running battle against offshoots such as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and ISIS. Xenophobia quickly overcame leaders’ better angels, particularly on the right. A war that began against an identifiable ideological group—one condemned by others around the world and whose membership likely numbered only about a hundred hard-core adherents—morphed into a larger fight against “terror” broadly, where extra suspicion would fall on tens of thousands and then hundreds of thousands.
Even as the War on Terror rapidly curtailed the ability of any Islamic extremist group to carry out a major, spectacular attack like 9/11, the mentality it created poisoned America and its politics. Hate crimes against Muslims jumped—as did hate crimes against Sikhs, from people too lazy or filled with animosity to bother to understand the difference. In the years ahead, Islamophobic trainings would proliferate inside the FBI and the military, at least until they were exposed in the press. In 2008, GOP speakers insinuated falsely that Barack Obama was a closet Muslim—as if that mere faith, practiced by a billion people around the planet, should be disqualifying for a candidate.
That demonization of Muslims helped give rise to the “birtherism” that Donald Trump embraced to wend his way into the hearts and minds of the Republican Party base, win the GOP’s presidential nomination, and—using a platform that stoked fears of immigrants, ISIS, and terrorists—win the White House.
Meanwhile, for all the original talk of banishing evil from the world, the GWOT’s seemingly exclusive focus on Islamic extremism has led to the neglect of other threats actively killing Americans. In the 20 years since 9/11, thousands of Americans have succumbed to mass killers—just not the ones we went to war against in 2001. The victims have included worshippers in churches, synagogues, and temples; people at shopping malls, movie theaters, and a Walmart; students and faculty at universities and community colleges; professors at a nursing school; children in elementary, middle, and high schools; kids at an Amish school and on a Minnesota Native American reservation; nearly 60 concertgoers who were machine-gunned to death from hotel windows in Las Vegas. But none of those massacres were by the Islamic extremists we’d been spending so much time and money to combat. Since 9/11, more Americans have been killed by domestic terrorists than by foreign ones. Political pressure kept national-security officials from refocusing attention and resources on the growing threat from white nationalists, armed militias, and other groups energized by the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim strains of the War on Terror.
That 17-minute delay between the two plane crashes—the brief period during which commuters looked up at the smoke rising from the North Tower and still went about their day—epitomized a New York and an America utterly unrecognizable today. Contrast it with this image: a video of a motorcycle backfiring in Times Square in the summer of 2019. Crowds flee; thousands run for their lives at the mere sound of a long bang. After the choices we made after 9/11 corrupted our national psyche and our politics, we are a fearful and divided country. The fear exacerbates the division. Gun sales have soared.
Ironically, we find ourselves in another fight against a shadowy, shape-shifting foe. The coronavirus has killed the equivalent of the 9/11 death toll every three days for the past 18 months. The total death toll surpasses the entire population of Wyoming. At least one part of the U.S. government’s response has been exemplary: Innovative and effective disease-defeating vaccines have been developed, approved, and administered to the majority of American adults for free at a truly impressive speed. Yet rather than pulling us together, the COVID-19 crisis has pushed Americans even further apart. Historians someday will study this moment and wonder how our society was so fragmented as to fumble a crisis that, in technical terms, we were well equipped to handle.
The answer, unfortunately, will be simple: We are confronting the current crisis with little of the hope, goodwill, and unity that 9/11 initially created, and that reality is inseparable from the fear and suspicion that came to dominate America’s reaction to the 2001 attacks—and yielded a long succession of tragic consequences, cynical choices, and poisonous politics. Looking back after two decades, I can’t escape the conclusion that the enemy we ended up fighting after 9/11 was ourselves.
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14. Opinion | How 9/11 conspiracy theories fueled the war on reality
A video just under 10 minutes that we should all watch and reflect upon while putting aside our partisanship and using our critical thinking ability. We need to embrace evidentiary thinking.
Opinion | How 9/11 conspiracy theories fueled the war on reality
Twenty years after Osama bin Laden terrorized the United
States, evidentiary thinking is under attack from the inside.
When terrorists flew two jetliners into the World Trade Center on a clear blue morning 20 years ago — and a third plane into the Pentagon — Americans’ belief that they were invulnerable to attack was shattered. That belief, of course, was false. The War of 1812. Pearl Harbor. We’d been attacked before. But not while we had such a modern, well-funded military and intelligence networks. The system failed us — a reality too stressful for many Americans to bear.
Evan Laine, a former trial lawyer-turned-academic whose home city — New York — was attacked, believes that people carrying the stress had two options. They could accept that the system failed us, or change the narrative. He eventually paired up with political economist Raju Parakkal to study what motivated people to change the narrative, i.e., believe in conspiracy theories blaming George W. Bush for 9/11 instead of the terrorists who planned and executed the attacks.
Their work provides crucial insight into the broader attacks on evidentiary reality that we’re facing today. Conspiracy theories about the pandemic and the 2020 election have their roots in older myths that Bush, not Osama bin Laden, was the “evildoer” on 9/11.
In this short film, Laine and Parakkal reflect on why people are inclined to adopt a narrative unsupported by evidence. Their explanation draws a chilling line between 9/11 “trutherism” and the “Big Lie” of 2020.
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15. Forceful, Yet Magnanimous: The Foreign Policy of George H. W. Bush
I think we forget how much happened during Bush 41's term. Panama, Iraq, fall of the Berlin Wall, German unification, collapse of the USSR. These were complicated times all forgotten because of the line "read my lips, no new taxes."
Given today's complex world it may be useful to reflect on his foreign policy and leadership.
Conclusion:
And George Bush helped pull it off. Somewhere, I would like to think, the ghosts of Plutarch, Aristotle and Machiavelli are saluting him for his forceful yet magnanimous foreign policy. Rest in peace.
Forceful, Yet Magnanimous: The Foreign Policy of George H. W. Bush
Transient times are the hardest to manage for any statesman.
Here's What You Need to Know: President Bush held office during a time of tectonic change, as four decades of cold war drew to an end.
President George H. W. Bush went to his reward on November 30, 2018 after a life well lived. Let's canvass historians and philosophers of old to see what they might take from reviewing his legacy as a man and a statesman.
Start with the Greek-turned-Roman historian Plutarch. Plutarch’s enduring fame comes mainly from his “Parallel Lives,” capsule biographies of famous Greeks and Romans. He would pair up a Greek and Roman—say, Pericles, the first citizen of classical Athens, with Fabius “the Delayer,” who drew out Rome’s war against Hannibal for years until Rome was ready to seize the offensive—in order to compare and contrast their virtues and vices.
Doing so throws virtue and vice into stark relief. For Plutarch, studying great and not-so-great figures from antiquity constitutes the surest way to learn how we should live our lives. We moderns can pattern ourselves in part on the ancients—emulating their virtues while shunning what they thought, felt or did that was low, or base, or unbecoming.
George Bush would make a fit subject for one of Plutarch’s biographies. The historian might render an Aristotelian verdict after reviewing George Bush’s character, words and deeds. The ancients were obsessed with virtue, and Aristotle viewed honing virtue as a matter of building sound habits. To make yourself virtuous, do virtuous things as a matter of routine. In particular, contended the Lyceum’s founder and overseer, it was critical to form the habit of searching out the “golden mean” between the excess and deficiency of some trait.
Finding the golden mean involves more than merely splitting the difference 50/50 between the excess and a shortfall of some mode of thinking, feeling or doing. For example, doughty warriors tend more toward an excess than a deficiency of physical courage. Foolhardiness is the former, cowardice the latter. Reckless disregard of personal safety is hazardous—but cowards accomplish nothing whatsoever on the battlefield. In combat it’s better to have to restrain yourself from being too venturesome than it is to give in to fear and flee from danger.
Seeking the golden mean seemed to come natural to President Bush. Consider his handling of alliance politics during Operations Desert Shield, the buildup to war in the Persian Gulf in 1990, and Desert Storm, the campaign to evict Saddam Hussein’s army from conquered Kuwait. Bush was bold but not too bold. The Gulf War represented the world’s reply to an open-and-shut case of cross-border military aggression. Yet Bush sensed it would be self-defeating to be too aggressive when drawing up war aims against Iraq.
Marching on Baghdad and compelling unconditional surrender would have constituted the most decisive course of action, and the most satisfying for the American armed forces, government and populace. It would have also meant invading and occupying an Arab country alongside Arab allies. This, Bush realized, would be a bridge too far for Arab rulers and peoples. It would conjure up traumatic memories of Western imperialism while making Muslims complicit in the new trauma. Gulf states might blanch at taking part in such an adventure. They might even withdraw the basing rights and seaport access without which no offensive could easily proceed.
Better to settle for the lesser goal of driving the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait and work through the UN Security Council to set ceasefire terms. The more temperate pathway might not deliver optimal results. But it would deliver agreeable results while holding together a grand coalition made up of countries as disparate as Syria, Denmark and Japan. And it would set a precedent for how to counter aggression in the post-Cold War “new world order” Bush saw taking shape.
Boldness, then, has its limits. Plutarch and Aristotle would instantly recognize—and perhaps even applaud—the prudence and self-restraint George Bush exercised while devising and overseeing operations in the Gulf.
Transient times are the hardest to manage for any statesman. Any caretaker can preside over steady-state circumstances; founding something, ending something, or managing the transition from one thing to another demands vision and a sure hand. Accordingly, Renaissance Florentine statesman-philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli advises that keeping up with changing times constitutes the most trying challenge before princes or republics. Fall behind the times and you court future disaster.
President Bush held office during a time of tectonic change, as four decades of cold war drew to an end. The Gulf War was a regional war that took place during the endgame of the Cold War, a protracted global struggle. Complexity was layered upon complexity. Magnanimity toward Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet Union was Bush’s watchword for handling the Cold War denouement. He took care not to lord the impending Western victory over the Soviets. He went out of his way to consult with Gorbachev about the design and conduct of operations in the Persian Gulf.
Treating the Soviet premier as an equal applied a balm to wounded Soviet pride—and improved prospects for postwar concord between East and West. Few victories are permanent in war and diplomacy. Defeated foes have a way of regenerating, and they seldom forget deliberate humiliation at the hands of the victors. Paybacks are hell. Think about a vengeful Germany, forced to concede “war guilt” in writing after World War I. Celebrating without jeering, then, is the trick for victors such as the West in the Cold War.
And George Bush helped pull it off. Somewhere, I would like to think, the ghosts of Plutarch, Aristotle and Machiavelli are saluting him for his forceful yet magnanimous foreign policy. Rest in peace.
James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College. The views voiced here are his alone.
Image: Reuters
16. Pentagon Chief Says Hopes Fading for More Open Taliban Government in Afghanistan
Excerpts:
Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a press briefing earlier this month that it is possible the U.S. could coordinate strikes with the Taliban to combat Islamic State, which operates in Afghanistan and is a rival of the Taliban. But Mr. Austin stopped short of saying whether the U.S. wouldn’t work with or recognize the new Afghan government.
“I leave it to State to help figure out whether or not, and how, we will engage, if we will engage, the Taliban,” Mr. Austin said, referring to the State Department.
A final stop in Saudi Arabia to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was canceled at the last minute for what the defense chief said were scheduling issues on the Saudi side.
Pentagon Chief Says Hopes Fading for More Open Taliban Government in Afghanistan
U.S. defense secretary says he sees no evidence of reforms after Taliban appoints old guard leaders to top government positions
WSJ · by Nancy A. Youssef
On Tuesday, the Taliban named a transitional government and declared the restoration of their Islamic Emirate, three weeks after claiming control of Kabul. The new cabinet elevated the traditional hard core of the Taliban leadership, and was made up almost exclusively of ethnic Pashtuns. The interim government also excluded women and other political factions, prompting protests that were violently dispersed.
Haibatullah Akhundzada was named top leader with overall oversight of state affairs and Mullah Hassan Akhun —who served as foreign minister in the previous Islamic Emirate, which harbored Osama bin Laden and was forced from power by the 2001 U.S. invasion—as the new prime minister.
Sirajuddin Haqqani, whom Washington designates a global terrorist because of close links between al Qaeda and his Haqqani network, was named minister of interior, overseeing Afghanistan’s police and internal security. The FBI currently offers a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to his arrest.
“We don’t get a vote” on the Taliban’s decision to include members of the Haqqani network, Mr. Austin said. “But certainly these are people that I don’t look favorably upon.”
The government formation signals that the Taliban could allow the reconstitution of al Qaeda amid fears from some U.S. officials that Afghanistan could re-emerge as a haven for the group that launched the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“We put the Taliban on notice that we expect for them to not allow that to happen. And I think one of the ways that the Taliban can demonstrate that they are serious about being a bona fide government and respected in an international community is to not allow that to happen,” the defense chief said.
Qatari and U.S. officials said earlier Thursday that Taliban authorities are allowing some 200 Americans and other foreign nationals to leave the country on a flight to Qatar, the first such departure from Kabul since U.S. forces withdrew last month.
The expected flight by a Qatar Airways Boeing 777 would mark the resumption of international passenger operations at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, and is expected to be followed by daily air links to foreign countries, a senior Qatari official said.
Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a press briefing earlier this month that it is possible the U.S. could coordinate strikes with the Taliban to combat Islamic State, which operates in Afghanistan and is a rival of the Taliban. But Mr. Austin stopped short of saying whether the U.S. wouldn’t work with or recognize the new Afghan government.
“I leave it to State to help figure out whether or not, and how, we will engage, if we will engage, the Taliban,” Mr. Austin said, referring to the State Department.
A final stop in Saudi Arabia to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was canceled at the last minute for what the defense chief said were scheduling issues on the Saudi side.
WSJ · by Nancy A. Youssef
17. Hybrid Wars: Technological Advancements and the Generational Evolution of Warfare
Excerpts:
Since hybrid warfare includes the occurrence of both state and non-state actors, its origins can first be observed in fourth generation warfare, wherein, non-state actors were first introduced. Fourth generation warfare altered the dynamics of conducting war through the introduction of non-state actors. Terrorism, or the incorporation of violence against non-combatants was presented as part of warfare. With regards to technological advancements in fifth generation warfare, faster computer networks, artificial intelligence, autonomous combat, machine learning, stealth technology, space-based systems, bio-chemical agents and artificial intelligence serve to remove physical combat from perception. In fifth generation warfare, the perceptions of the masses are the center of gravity, which are altered through the technological advancements of networking and surveillance. As a result, hybrid warfare is claimed as an information warfare, where misinformation is spread through newspapers, leaflets, computers, spam emails and other related technologies. As a consequence, ordinary individuals become insurgents against their governments, and state instability is generated. Hence, hybrid warfare gradually disperses violence, whilst victims are unaware of the projected warfare.
Hybrid Wars: Technological Advancements and the Generational Evolution of Warfare | Small Wars Journal
Hybrid Wars: Technological Advancements and the Generational Evolution of Warfare
by Tamseel Aqdas
Introduction
With respect to its evolving tendencies, warfare can be depicted as dynamic in nature. A discussion of the contemporary geopolitical environment discloses advancements in the philosophy and art of war. Those developments are associated with technological progression, resulting in novel strategies and implications for warfare. Contemporary evolving methods have merged with traditional understandings of warfare, marking the concept of hybrid warfare.
As a general concept elements of hybrid warfare can be observed throughout history. George Washington’s Continental Army displayed elements of hybrid warfare in its surprise attack at Trenton, and his use of militias in the southern states. Another highlight of the evolution of hybrid warfare can be witnessed in the Arab revolt too, where the British military forces devised a formulation of irregular forces and conventional operations made famous by T.E. Lawrence. Nevertheless, the contemporary concept of Hybrid warfare has grown into hyper complexity “due to the rise of non-state actors, information technology, and the proliferation of advanced weapons systems.”
Modern-day hybrid warfare emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union, where a rise in unconventional challenges to the traditional state-on-state war was witnessed. The dominance of the American intervention in southwest Asia in 1991, it’s defeat of Iraq in 2003, and its dominance of the oceans through its aircraft carriers forced competitors to develop new war methodologies. The new thinking was to exploit the weaknesses of the conventional military structures. As a result, conventional capabilities were combined with irregular and asymmetric tools, resulting in the genesis contemporary of hybrid warfare.
The term hybrid warfare is a comparatively new concept; thus, consensus on a universally accepted definition does not prevail. In fact, its subjective nature has resulted in distinctive definitions across the international system, based on national perspectives. The term was first introduced by William J. Nemeth in 2002 who hypothesized that hybrid warfare consists of a creative combination of synchronized non-military and military-strategic deployment. Non-military efforts include psychological and social combat of propaganda, fake news, diplomacy, electoral intervention.
Ultimately, the goal of hybrid warfare lies in attaining societal control, influencing individual mindset, and manipulating the executive authorities of states. The “core values, motivational factors, cultural basis, and strategic infrastructure of a country” are influenced, i.e., are now legitimate targets of soft and hard power. In addition, the hybrid nature of warfare can be utilized across the several operating environments of the conventional battlefield, the indigenous population of the conflict zone, and the international community. This interconnectedness along with its asymmetric nature makes it difficult to tackle hybrid warfare since militaries lack the flexibility to shift mindsets on the constant basis required by this new warfare.
This article will deconstruct hybrid warfare with respect to its evolution. The role of technological progression in the development of warfare will be analyzed, along with the prospects of hybrid warfare in the contemporary international system. The evolution of warfare has introduced new methodologies into combat, which is a significant change in the trajectory of the evolution of warfare, since resources are allotted for countering the influence of non-state actors instead of the hard power military potential of states. In short, the theory explores the development of hybrid warfare as technological advancements have evolved the course of warfare through introducing irregular means of social and psychological combat.
Generations of Warfare and Technology
The evolutionary process can be categorized as generations where each generation resulted in advancements, which can be categorized as first, second, third, fourth and fifth generation warfare. It can be seen that the evolution of warfare reveals the influence of technology. To elaborate, it can be implied that evolution of warfare is directly linked to technological advancements. Technology results in evolved weaponry and warfare strategies.
First generation warfare emerged subsequent to the treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Whereby, the concept of territorial sovereignty was introduced. This concept effectively translated into state monopoly in the conduct of war over tribes. As a result, “this generation of warfare was linear and saw the fielding of small professional armies that relied upon rigid drill to maximize firepower”. Furthermore, a culture of order was established in warfare though military uniforms and rules of ranks. In this manner, the previous disorderliness in battle fields was tackled. Formerly, warfare was not conducted in a systematized manner, and 1st generation warfare introduced the concept of organized manpower. The organizational element resulted in the formation of effective strategies against the opposing forces. In addition, this generation resulted in the development of French revolutionary armies, which carried low training levels and massive manpower.
Second generation warfare was introduced by the French military and ended following World War 1. The culture of order was continued, while mass manpower was replaced by mass fire power in terms of domination over battle field. The reason for this transition was the introduction of artillery, airplanes, and heavy gunfire. As a result, soldiers were relieved of hand-to-hand combat. In addition, obedience guided by rules took precedence over self-initiatives. Technological progression was first witnessed as part of 2nd generation warfare. As, weapons, such as, artillery, airplanes, and heavy gunfire were introduced. This development resulted in the transition from manpower to fire power. In addition, Prussian forces devised the military operational art. Whereby, military forces received directions with regards to executing strategically critical operations.
Third generation warfare was developed by Germany amid World War 2. During World War 1 Germany practiced infiltration tactics, which resulted in development of tanks in World War 2. The concept of maneuver warfare was introduced, where emphasis was laid on surprise tactics of bypassing and undermining the enemy through speed, stealth and surprise. In addition, tanks artillery and fighter aircrafts were also introduced. Germany practiced this during the blitzkrieg campaigns of World War 2, that were predominantly time-centered in comparison to place-centered. As a result, initiative gained advantage over previously emphasized disciple. With respect to 3rd generation warfare technological evolution was introduced in the form of maneuver warfare. Maneuver warfare commenced the concepts of speed, stealth, surprise and bypassing the “enemy’s lines to cause a collapse of their forces from the rear”. Such projections developed warfare into prioritizing self-initiatives, over previously emphasized disciple.
Fourth generation warfare has gained prominence in the last six decades. This generation introduced non-state actors as party to warfare, as a result, the state monopoly over warfare ended. Non-state actors introduced terrorism in warfare, thus altering its dynamics. As a result of terrorism, traditional military forces were passed, and civilian populations became a direct target. This generation introduced non-state actors as part of warfare. As a result, the prominence of traditional military forces was reduced, as civilian populations were directly targeted through terrorism. Such shifts reshaped the dynamics of warfare, as states lost their monopoly over warfare.
Fifth generation warfare distinctly reshaped the art and philosophy of war, as a battle of perceptions and information was introduced. Under that notion, masses of rivalry states were provided with a manipulated view of the world and politics, resulting in state instability. With technological advancements such as, “computers and electronics, information, communication, weapons, greater speed, capable sensors, rapid deployment, stealthier technology, fuel efficiency, enormous lethality, space-based systems, biochemical agents, and artificial intelligence” have distinctly altered the conduct of warfare. Under this system, rivalry states are manipulated through information, which ultimately generates state instability.
Development into Hybrid Warfare
The development of warfare with respect to technological evolution ultimately resulted in the phenomenon of hybrid warfare. Hybrid warfare if often regarded as the ‘grey zone’ between war and peace time. Implying that, “states seek to carry out their objectives without crossing the threshold to open conventional war”. As a result, the use of both conventional and irregular tools is incorporated, which are executed by both state and non-state actors.
The fusion nature of hybrid warfare allows for the incorporation of both state and non-state actors. Thus, arguably the notion of hybrid warfare was first introduced amidst fourth generation warfare. Where, unconventional weapons were incorporated by non-state actors to destabilize states. With that said, fifth generation warfare beheld further development in the domain of hybrid warfare. Fifth generation warfare emerged during the age of information. Under which, hybrid warfare was introduced as means projecting altered perceptions and information. Implying how, the perceptions of common masses was altered through networking and surveillance, whereby manipulating their views.
Moving forward, the development of hybrid warfare can be examined through the categories provided by Michael O’Hanlon. According to him, the first factor resulting in the development of hybrid warfare was the integration of social, political, military and economic system. Implying how submerged integration lead to identification of potential hybrid threats. Adding on, he further elaborated the role of technological advancements and the emergence of sophisticated technologies in the development of warfare. His last category acknowledged the global reach of emerging “precision-guided and long-range technologies”, and state vulnerabilities which were leveraged by non-state actors.
Deconstructing Hybrid Warfare
The main purpose of hybrid warfare is to disperse violence, whereby the victim is unaware of the projected warfare. Henceforth, the perceptions of common masses are manipulated and altered through psychological and social combat. The desired outcome is attained through capitalizing on socio-political vulnerabilities, exploiting religious sentiments and cultural icons. Such actions are undertaken through fake news, diplomacy, and electoral intervention. Moreover, in Sun Tzu words hybrid warfare is the “acme of skill [a victory without fighting].” Thus emphasizing on the notion that, victory can be attained without adopting conventional war techniques. Instead, enemy forces can be internally destabilized through the art of hybrid warfare.
Critical functions and vulnerabilities
Critical functions and vulnerabilities constitute a key measure of hybrid warfare. Critical functions can be regarded as the “activities or operations distributed across the political, military, economic, social, information, infrastructure spectrum”. A disruption of which can result in a collapse of a state or society. Critical functions can be represented under actors, infrastructures, and processes. It can be stated that critical functions carry vulnerabilities, which can be exploited through hybrid warfare. Henceforth, in order to tackle hybrid warfare, it is crucial to analyze the critical functions. This process can be undertaken by understanding the reasoning behind their inter-dependence and the potential vulnerability that can arise.
Synchronization of means and horizontal escalation
Synchronization in hybrid war is the control of both military and non-military strengths focused as instruments of power towards a desired competitor outcome. With synchronization, the escalation and de-escalation of hybrid warfare occur in a horizontal manner, making room for greater options for the attackers. This is because, through horizontal escalation, “actor can stay below certain detection and response thresholds”. Hence, the horizontal axis is generally hidden beneath the surface in the form of cyber and A.I. operations. Ultimately, this trait of hybrid warfare provides the attacker with the ability to exploit vulnerabilities without detection.
Effects and non-linearity
Effects and non-linearity form a dominant trait of hybrid warfare. With respect to this concept, effects refer to changing the state of entities. The effects are produced through targeting the vulnerabilities of a system. However, the effects cannot be categorized and planned as linear events. The implication of this is that the outcomes of hybrid warfare are essentially unpredictable. Moreover, similar actions can yield different effects in an alternating contexts.
Information as a tool
Technology has rapidly developed throughout the generations of warfare. With the increased technology of cyberspace, media and social media in fifth generation warfare, hybrid warfare has incorporated information as a tool. Through information, cultures are manipulated at the unconscious level with diplomacy and propaganda. As a result, the mass unconscious mind is incapable of detecting political information manipulation, and rivalry states can generate their desired outcomes. The misinformation is spread through newspapers, leaflets, computers, spam emails and other related technologies. The consequence of which is that, ordinary individuals turn into insurgents, and function against their governments.
Incorporation of social media
In the current era, billions of individuals employ the use social media. Thus, making it a channel for strategic communication and projecting information onto perception. In addition, novel forms of rhizome-like networks are emerging, which are directly responsible engaging information warfare. Examples of such networks include: antonyms collective, wiki leaks, military and political tool factories. Furthermore, information tends to travel in a viral manner on social media, meaning, individuals do not take out time to distinguish between authentic and false information. As a result, social media is able to shape the perceptions of masses through fabricated propaganda.
For example, the Middle Eastern region has long been a battlefield of hybrid warfare. Middle Eastern states rejecting the hegemony of aggressive states become victim to the installation of puppet leaders. After which, powerful states invoke anti-state insurgents against a targeted regime. This gives rise to violent protests under the name of “fighting corruption, fighting increased prices and inflation, dictatorship, or religious sentiments”. Cowards and actors are then summoned through cyberspace, social media, mass media and other tools for information warfare.
The non-state actors and insurgents ultimately resort to unlawful use of force against the state, by destroying public property and targeting civilians. After which, state leaders respond with excessive force to restore peace and the security of the state. This triggers domestic anarchy, whilst the actions of the aggressor state go unnoticed. In fact, the non-state actors are actively funded against the governments. Examples of states that are victim of contemporary hybrid warfare are Syria and Yemen. There, regime changes resulted in a civil war and destabilization of the country, with the distribution of foreign aid and weapons to the rebels.
Future of Hybrid Warfare
Warfare is gradually shifting into its sixth generation. This development rejects the imposition of balance through nuclear deterrence between states, with new hybrid warfare methodologies seen as pivotal and powerful. Warfare is expanding into targeting the network-based critical assets of states, such as, banking, electricity and other related facilities. Under this context, state over-dependence on conventional military hardware and technologies will experience direct consequences.
Embodiment of sixth generation warfare can be seen in the case of China. China’s advantage over states is gained through economy and law, rather than military standoffs. For example, China effectively debt traps states to gain economic advantage in the international system. Russia also uses economic sticks and carrots and irregular forces in the process of annexing Ukraine and increasing influence in the Middle East through Syria.
Conclusions
Over the year’s technological advancements have altered the art and philosophy of war. The shifting dynamics can be condensed in the form of generations of warfare, namely: first, second, third, fourth and fifth generation warfare. Ultimately, the rapid evolution of technology formed the concept of hybrid warfare. Irregular means of psychological and social combat are incorporated to alter the perceptions of the masses. The battlefield encompasses societies through fake news, diplomacy, and electoral intervention, rather than previous generations with military combat. In addition, priority lies with capitalizing on socio-political vulnerabilities, rather than gaining instantaneous combat victory over the opponent.
Since hybrid warfare includes the occurrence of both state and non-state actors, its origins can first be observed in fourth generation warfare, wherein, non-state actors were first introduced. Fourth generation warfare altered the dynamics of conducting war through the introduction of non-state actors. Terrorism, or the incorporation of violence against non-combatants was presented as part of warfare. With regards to technological advancements in fifth generation warfare, faster computer networks, artificial intelligence, autonomous combat, machine learning, stealth technology, space-based systems, bio-chemical agents and artificial intelligence serve to remove physical combat from perception. In fifth generation warfare, the perceptions of the masses are the center of gravity, which are altered through the technological advancements of networking and surveillance. As a result, hybrid warfare is claimed as an information warfare, where misinformation is spread through newspapers, leaflets, computers, spam emails and other related technologies. As a consequence, ordinary individuals become insurgents against their governments, and state instability is generated. Hence, hybrid warfare gradually disperses violence, whilst victims are unaware of the projected warfare.
Tamseel Aqdas
Undergraduate Student, Department of Peace and Conflict Studies, National Defence University, Islamabad
Alex Deep, “Hybrid Warfare: Old Concepts, New Techniques,” (2015) Small Wars Journal:1-2.
Ibid.
Vikrant Deshpande, “Hybrid Warfare: The Changing Character of Conflict,” (2018) Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis: 4-5.
Ibid.
"MCDC Countering Hybrid Warfare Project: MCDC January 2017 Understanding Hybrid Warfare," Assets Publishing Service, (2017) 11-13.
Ibid.
James K. Wither, “Making Sense of Hybrid Warfare,” JSTOR 15, no. 2, (2016): 73-87.
Waseem Ahmad Querishi, "Fourth- and Fifth-Generation Warfare: Technology and Perceptions ."(2019) Digital Sandiego :188-192.
Idib.
Robert J. Bunker, "Generations, Waves, and Epochs: modes of Warfare and the RPMA," Small Wars Journal: 2-4.
Idib.
Robert J. Bunker, "Generations, Waves, and Epochs: modes of Warfare and the RPMA," Small Wars Journal: 2-4.
Ibid
Waseem Ahmad Querishi, "Fourth- and Fifth-Generation Warfare: Technology and Perceptions ."(2019) digital sandiego :188-192, https://digital.sandiego.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1293&context=ilj.
Robert J. Bunker, "Generations, Waves, and Epochs: modes of Warfare and the RPMA," Small Wars Journal: 2-4.
Waseem Ahmad Querishi, "Fourth- and Fifth-Generation Warfare: Technology and Perceptions ."(2019) digital sandiego :188-192, https://digital.sandiego.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1293&context=ilj.
Idib
Waseem Ahmad Querishi, "Fourth- and Fifth-Generation Warfare: Technology and Perceptions ."(2019) Digital Sandiego :188-192, https://digital.sandiego.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1293&context=ilj.
Idib.
Idib
Robert J. Bunker, "Generations, Waves, and Epochs: Modes of Warfare and the RPMA," Small Wars Journal: 2-4.
Robert J. Bunker, "Generations, Waves, and Epochs: modes of Warfare and the RPMA," Small Wars Journal: 2-4.
Waseem Ahmad Querishi, "Fourth- and Fifth-Generation Warfare: Technology and Perceptions ."(2019) Digital Sandiego :188-192, https://digital.sandiego.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1293&context=ilj.
Ibid.
Jack Brown, "An Alternative War: The Development, Impact, and Legality of Hybrid Warfare Conducted by the Nation State," Journal of Global Faultlines 5, no.1-2 (2018): 58-82.
Ibid.
Waseem Ahmad Querishi, "Fourth- and Fifth-Generation Warfare: Technology and Perceptions ."(2019) Digital Sandiego :188-192, https://digital.sandiego.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1293&context=ilj.
Ibid.
"MCDC Countering Hybrid Warfare Project: MCDC January 2017 Understanding Hybrid Warfare," Assets Publishing Service, (2017) 11-13.
Jack Brown, "An Alternative War: The Development, Impact, and Legality of Hybrid Warfare Conducted by the Nation State," Journal of Global Faultlines 5, no.1-2 (2018): 58-82.
"MCDC Countering Hybrid Warfare Project: MCDC January 2017 Understanding Hybrid Warfare," Assets Publishing Service, (2017) 11-13.
Ibid.
Ibid.
James K. Wither, “Making Sense of Hybrid Warfare,” JSTOR 15, no. 2, (2016): 73-87.
Ibid.
A-M Huhtinen and J Rantapelkonen, Disinformation in Hybrid Warfare,” JSTOR 15 no. 4, (2016): 50-67.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Jack Brown, “An Alternative War: The Development, Impact, and Legality of Hybrid Warfare Conducted by the Nation State,” Journal of Global Faultlines 5, no. 1-2, (2016): 58-82.
Jack Brown, “An Alternative War: The Development, Impact, and Legality of Hybrid Warfare Conducted by the Nation State,” Journal of Global Faultlines 5, no. 1-2, (2016): 58-82.
Ibid.
Muhammad Nadeem Mirza and Summar Iqbal Babar, “The Indian Hybrid Warfare Strategy: Implications for Pakistan,” HAL Archives, (2020):40-45.
Ibid.
Ray Alderman, “Sixth generation warfare: manipulating space and time,” Military Embedded Systems (2015): 1-2.
18. Russian Rear Area Operations and the Resistance Operating Concept
Wed, 09/08/2021 - 8:50pm
Russian Rear Area Operations and the Resistance Operating Concept
By Philip Wasielewski
In 2014, the politico-military face of Europe changed considerably after the Russian
Anschluss of Crimea and its follow-on subversion of, and incursion into, eastern Ukraine. While
some decried Russia for “acting in a 19 th -century fashion”, it became clear to many eastern and
central European states, NATO members and non-members alike, that their 21 st century security
challenges now could include invasion and occupation by the Russian Federation. Nowhere in
NATO was this challenge felt more acutely than in the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and
Lithuania. They had regained their sovereignty after the fall of the Soviet Union, but
unfortunately also regained the same geopolitical challenges to their security that they faced
during their interwar existence – limited territory providing no strategic depth and a small
population unable to generate conventional military forces that could deter a Kremlin hostile to
their independence.
In response to Russian aggression in Ukraine, NATO took specific steps to increase
Baltic security. Since 2017, four multinational battlegroups totaling approximately 4,500 troops
have been deployed to the Baltic states and Poland to serve as a proportionate deterrent force and
to send a clear message that an attack on one would be met by troops from across the alliance. 1
NATO has improved its security posture in the Baltics through multiple deployments and
exercises and by investing in infrastructure and pre-positioned forces via the European
Deterrence Initiative.
However, learning from its wars in Chechnya and Georgia, covert intervention in
Ukraine, and deployments to Syria, Russian military combat capability has also greatly increased
especially in integrating reconnaissance and electronic warfare assets with fires into a lethal
whole. A 2018 RAND study estimated that, “improvements in Russia’s military forces over the
last decade have reduced the once-gaping qualitative and technical gaps between Russia and
NATO.” The result being that, “in the event of a ground attack on a NATO member in the Baltic
region, Russia would have a substantial time-distance advantage in the days and weeks of its
ground campaign because of its strong starting position and ability to reinforce with ground and
air units from elsewhere in Russia.” 2 In other words, if deterrence fails, Russian forces could
overrun one or all three of the Baltic states in a short time and make their recovery a long bloody
enterprise.
In 2014, parallel to the effort to strengthen deterrence via conventional forces, Special
Operations Command Europe began working with NATO and partner special operations forces
to enhance Unconventional Warfare (UW) capabilities in the region. One of the results of this
partnership was the publication of the Resistance Operating Concept (ROC) in November 2019.
The purpose of the ROC is to, “encourage governments to foster pre-crisis resiliency through Total Defense, a “whole-of-government” and “whole-of-society” approach, which includes
interoperability among its forces and those of its allies and partners…The ROC seeks to identify
resistance principles, requirements, and potential challenges that may inform doctrine, plans,
capabilities, and force development.” 3 Prior to and following publication of the ROC, a series of
field and table top exercises, seminars, publications, etc., have ensued to increase interoperability
and capability to conduct UW in the region as a way to increase deterrence and to be prepared if
deterrence fails.
The ROC is a comprehensive, well thought out, and flexible publication with a wealth of
knowledge from the study of past UW campaigns including one on Baltic terrain in the early
Cold War. Hopefully, its tenets will never have to be put to the test in combat. Unlike
incursions into Georgia and Ukraine, the crossing of any Baltic border by Russian forces would
initiate NATO Article V deliberations and the most likely decision would be full-out war
between the alliance and the Russian Federation. The Kremlin is manned by astute figures aware
of their own history and who know that failed wars have been the end of many a Russian ruler
and dynasty. It is hard to see what advantage they believe they would achieve by attacking these
three nations. While Russia may enjoy the above-mentioned conventional force advantage in the
Baltics, its leaders must also understand that war with NATO may not be contained to that small
region, that their ability to sustain an economy under wartime conditions is limited, and that
eventually an alliance of 30 countries with a combined Gross Domestic Product over 10-times
that of Russia will be able to marshal enough combat power to overturn any temporary win on
the Baltic battlefield. 4 But should deterrence fail, should miscalculation, emotion, and/or human
error rule in the decision-making process, then the ROC may have to be put into practice.
Therefore, the purpose of this article is to discuss wartime challenges a Baltic resistance
may face and how this might inform which specific UW activities may be more or less likely to
succeed. In other words, based on current Russian capabilities and past Soviet and Russian
operations, it will try to “Red Team” likely Russian counters to UW operations.
This article assumes that since war with NATO would be an existential struggle for the
Kremlin leadership (who would forfeit their positions, if not their lives, if they lose), Russia
would use all power necessary to win, would not be constrained by international public opinion,
but would be deterred from using nuclear weapons by U.S., British, and French strategic
arsenals. It also assumes that Russian forces would occupy all of the Baltic states and possibly
parts of Poland to establish lines of communication with its Kaliningrad enclave. Finally, it
assumes that it will take NATO several months to a year or more to generate and transport the
necessary conventional forces to the region to retake the Baltics and that Russian forces will use
this time wisely to consolidate their hold on the conquered territory.
Russian Capabilities
While Russian conventional and strategic military capabilities are well studied, less
attention is paid to Russian paramilitary forces designated to counter UW activities and their
Soviet predecessors who had a long history of suppressing resistance operations. Soviet doctrine had a sizeable rear area security program that emphasized security of lines of communications,
coastlines, and borders; suppression of local insurgents; and defense against unconventional
warfare (including saboteurs, partisans, and propaganda). These missions were mainly the
province of the internal troops of the KGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). 5 From
1944 to the mid-1950s, Soviet paramilitary forces with local collaborators successfully destroyed
every armed resistance movement they faced in countries overrun by the Red Army including
Poland and all the Baltic states.
Today, the suppression of UW activities in occupied territory would be led by the
Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Russian National Guard. They would be
supported by a number of entities, state and non-state, to provide a ubiquitous security presence
throughout the battle zone.
The FSB is the largest of Russia’s three major intelligence services and is the successor
of the KGB’s Second Chief Directorate (Counterintelligence) and Fifth Chief Directorate
(Ideology and Dissidents) amongst others. Its paramilitary forces include both the Border
Guards (approximately 170,000 troops) and a Special Operations command consisting of the
Alpha and Vympel Spetsnaz groups. It is the lead agency for counterintelligence and
counterterrorism inside of Russia with extensive experience in paramilitary operations in
Chechnya and the breakaway republics of Ukraine.
Russia’s National Guard, or “Rosgvardia”, was created in 2016 by amalgamating MVD
Internal Military troops with various police special forces and riot control units. Its reported
strength is 340,000 troops. The legislation creating Rosgvardia gives it several distinct internal
security tasks, which would easily transfer to wartime missions. As one analysis of Rosgvardia
describes:
Rosgvardia’s place in the military organization of the Russian state is defined by its
territorial defense tasks – in the specific Russian meaning of territorial defense. Russia
does not expect an armed attack on its own territory: territorial defense mainly means
covering the rear of, and providing auxiliary services to, the Armed Forces.” 6
The FSB would provide the professional investigative and counterintelligence (to include
cyber and electronic intercept) assets and direction to an anti-UW effort in occupied Baltic
territory. It would be supported by Rosgvardia and a variety of other forces such as detailed
MVD police units, Cossack security patrols, Chechen volunteer battalions, and private security
companies (that Rosgvardia regulates) similar to or even including Wagner. Besides the
conventional Russian ground and air defense forces that would occupy the Baltics, a fully
mobilized rear area security effort could put up to an additional half million men in a land area of
167,000 square kilometers (just smaller than Missouri) normally populated by approximately 5.8
million people. 7 It could be a crowded Unconventional Warfare Operational Area (UWOA).
Likely Russian Rear Area Operations
What is likely to happen once initial combat operations end and Russian conventional
and rear area security forces consolidate their positions? At a minimum, in the days, weeks, and
first few months following the occupation of the Baltic states, local populations can expect the
following.
First, all government offices will be occupied and their records and archives seized.
Special interest will be directed towards the defense and security services as well as the police,
communications centers, and government administration (personnel records). Defense,
intelligence, police, civil servants, and political figures will be arrested and interrogated. A key
intelligence requirement will be NATO preparations to retake the Baltics including stay-behind
operations. You can be assured that the FSB and Russian Military Intelligence have been
following the ROC as closely as the readers of this publication.
Second, public communications will cease. Mass media will not reopen until proper
censorship controls are in place. Internal telephone and internet services will cease until they are
connected to Russia’s targeted internet and telephone surveillance system (SORM). 8 Ham radios
will be confiscated, UHF/VHF radio communications will only be allowed for government
agencies (fire departments), and all radio frequencies will be monitored to include direction
finding of suspect transmissions. There will be no legal international communications channels
including the postal service. Finally, count on satellite systems supporting GPS and
communications being gone once NATO declares war on Russia.
Third, curfews will be established followed by a requirement for all citizens to report for
a census and the issuance of new identity documents. These will help in population control and
for identifying newcomers to an area. “Losing” these documents will bring strong sanctions and
one can expect that they will be hard to counterfeit via local means. Passes may be required for
intercity travel. The ruble or possibly special occupation scrip will replace national currencies.
The holding of any foreign currencies will be a criminal offense. Rationing and ration cards may
be introduced; less because of food shortages but more as a population control measure (i.e., to
starve out resistance members in the countryside or in urban hides).
Fourth, local Russian populations will be empowered (in Estonia they are 24.8% of the
population, in Latvia 24.5%, and in Lithuania 5.8%) 9 and militias based on ethnic Russians will
be formed to assist in keeping local order. Separate overt and clandestine informant systems will
be established by the FSB. For the overt system, each apartment building, residential block, or
small village will have a person appointed who is responsible to the occupation authorities for
the activities of all in that structure or area. They will need to report on everything from the
arrival of new persons and curfew violations to even simple remarks against the new regime.
The clandestine system will consist of informants secretly recruited by FSB officers (using
coercion or inducements of better conditions) to collect similar information on those around
them including family members. Failure to report incidents that the FSB later learns of will lead
to trouble not just for the rule breakers but also for those supposed to be vigilant and reporting on
them. People will be encouraged to denounce each other for real or suspected disloyalties. Baltic
citizens will remember this system or will have heard their parents talk about it. It is the Stalinist
system of terror and informants that operated during the Soviet era. 10
Finally, in addition to the above, planners should also expect that before long some stay-
behind assets and organizations will be penetrated or betrayed and that the FSB will recruit or
coerce some members to work for them. The Russians have a long history of such operations
from conducting Operation Berezino and countering Germany’s Operation Zeppelin in World
War Two to subverting the post-war Polish underground movement WiN (Wolność i
Niezawisłość – Freedom and Independence). Some cells may be compromised without our
immediate detection as there is unfortunately a long history of duress codes either not being
applied or not being believed. 11
What will be the reaction of Russian authorities to sabotage, sedition, or guerrilla warfare
activities undertaken by the resistance? The ROC has an appendix on population interaction
with foreign occupiers, which acknowledges the possible use of mass terror against a population
and how this can affect population responses to both an occupier and a resistance movement.
However, the appendix’s concluding paragraph – Context of Today’s Threat – appears to
downplay the possibility of the future use of widespread terror tactics in occupied areas when it
states:
“Based on twenty first century mores, rapid and accurate information exchanges among most
advanced nations, and various forms of international integration and inter-dependence, an
occupier from among these nations is not likely to apply widespread terror in the forms analyzed
in the above case studies…This is because today’s aggressive state actors are likely to use more
subtle means of coercion and terror.” 12
The authors may have had in mind when writing this paragraph, the operations of
Russian special forces during the illegal annexation of Crimea. However, that was a one-time
and unique situation in an environment of mostly ethnic Russians unprepared, unwilling, or
unable to resist that coup de main. In all other cases, this statement is inconsistent with the
demonstrated behavior of Russian or Soviet forces in counter-guerrilla or internal security
operations in numerous settings and over numerous decades. Russian reactions to resistance
activities, kinetic and even non-kinetic, will be swift, direct, and brutal in order to destroy the
resistance as quickly as possible.
For example, Soviet operations in Afghanistan from 1978-1988 killed approximately two
million Afghan, wounded approximately 600,000 to two million others and created six million
refugees. 13 Russian operations in Chechnya, against their own citizens, in two separate wars from
1994-2003 have resulted in-between 150,00 and 200,000 civilian deaths. 14 It was in Chechnya
that that the system of “filtration centers” for the detainment and interrogation of suspected
terrorists was established. These camps were known for their brutalities to include electric
shocks to genitals, toes, and fingers; asphyxiation with plastic bags; cutting off of ears; filling
mouths with kerosene; beatings; cigarette burnings; scalding with hot water; deprivation of sleep
and food, etc. 15 In another war, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported in 2020 that, “the Syrian-
Russian alliance showed callous disregard for the lives of three million civilians in the [Idlib]
area…The alliance launched dozens of air and ground attacks against civilian objects and
infrastructure in violation of the laws of war, striking homes, schools, healthcare facilities and
markets.” 16 HRW has also documented the raids, arbitrary arrests, and torture conducted by Russian authorities against the native Tatar population in Crimea who oppose Russia’s
takeover. 17 Russian private security companies working overseas are just as apt to use similarly
brutal methods as reported by United Nations investigators in the Central African Republic.
Their alleged violations include mass summary executions, arbitrary detention, torture during
interrogation and the forced displacement of the civilian population, about 240,000 of whom
have fled their homes. 18 Finally, the culture of the Russian army itself has a strong underlying
base of brutality due to the culture of “Dedovshchina” where junior enlisted men are bullied and
terrorized by more senior soldiers, leading to numerous cases each year of suicide and murder.
The above examples were not the ugly collateral damage of war but the result of
systematic brutal occupation policies designed to target populations and terrorize them into
surrendering rather than winning over their “hearts and minds.” We can expect no less if war
comes to the Baltics. Therefore, Russian tactics against resistance operations are likely to
include:
Indiscriminate executions and taking of hostages. A bridge is blown up between two
villages and in retaliation all military age males in both those villages are executed.
Food denial to starve out resistance fighters similar to the tactics of the Holodomor in
Ukraine and other Soviet regions during the forced collectivization of agriculture.
Depopulation of entire populations near areas of guerrilla activity into local filtration
centers or Russia itself. As Stalin once said, no person, no problem.
Twenty first century mores, rapid and accurate information exchanges among most
advanced nations, and various forms of international integration and inter-dependence have not
protected a million Uighurs from concentration camps; they will not protect Baltic citizens
resisting a Russian occupation especially when Russia is conducting total war and has sealed off
the region from the rest of the world. NATO and especially Baltic governments-in-exile will
face difficult decisions about the types of UW activities to pursue while preparing the battlefield
for conventional operations to liberate their territory. Conventional operations themselves will
cause massive destruction and civilian casualties. How many additional casualties will national
leaders want to endure before liberation is possible? This is the dilemma Chetnik guerrilla leader
General Draja Mihailovich faced in Yugoslavia during World War Two. Whether to agree to a
ceasefire with the Germans while Allied forces were still years away and save his people or
continue guerrilla operations like Tito’s Partisans and accept the awful losses from Nazi
executions of hostages and destruction of entire villages? 19 Making an occupation “painful” can
run both ways and while the strategic purpose of Total Defense is to demonstrate to a potential
aggressor that an attack will be extremely costly (ROC, page 18), total war could overcome Total
Defense. Baltic governments-in-exile will have to balance actions to save state sovereignty but
not destroy the nation. While the Afghan nation could survive several million casualties, a Baltic
nation with only a million and a half people cannot.
Implications for NATO
Assuming that an invasion of the Baltics conquers all three countries and stabilizes with a
heavily defended front somewhere in Poland, there will be no contiguous ground border to
provide a sanctuary. This and the extensive air defense/area denial weapon systems that will
move into theater will make infiltration, logistical resupply, and medical evacuation extremely
difficult. Therefore, Special Forces with secure and hard to detect communications systems must
be in place before hostilities.
Personnel involved in resistance movements must have both the training and resources to
survive what will be a hostile and denied operational environment. The ROC recognizes in its
description of pre-crisis resistance component organization (page 27) that core cadre should not
have military or government records for security reasons. But beyond that, resistance members,
(and the resistance will want/need to include persons with military/security experience), will all
need to have alternate personas (to protect their families) that can withstand the strict
counterintelligence environment that Russian occupation will bring. In today’s digital age, even
the most innocuous farmer or day laborer cannot suddenly appear out of nowhere but will have
to have a fully documented life story - birth certificate; school and past employment records;
phone, social media, and bank accounts; etc. The FSB will have control of many local data bases
and use them for counterintelligence research. Therefore, solidly constructed personas and the
ability to live up to them will be necessary for indigenous shadow government, underground, and
guerrilla personnel as well as their Special Forces colleagues.
Language skills for Special Forces soldiers operating in an urban environment supporting
an underground will need to be native or near native. The U.S. Army may wish to break
personnel assignment norms and allow select soldiers to make a career out of serving in just one
Baltic country to gain the language and cultural skills necessary to survive in a denied area. This
could mean a Detachment “A” Berlin type formation in each country, which might become the
longest sustained “pilot team” mission in UW history. 20
Additionally, because of the propensity of Russian forces to use terror in countering
insurgencies, the gain of any operation (kinetic or passive) will have to be assessed against the
retributions that may follow. 21 If this forces a resistance to forego sabotage and guerrilla actions
and limit subversion activities, the resistance still has a vital role in supporting the eventual
conventional counterattack by preparing the battlefield, recovering and safeguarding personnel,
documenting war crimes, and especially collecting intelligence. The later will be vital because
with the possible destruction or blinding of satellite reconnaissance assets, air defenses that make
airborne photoreconnaissance prohibitive, a communications black-out of the local population,
and effective observance of operational security (especially radio and electronic transmissions)
procedures by the occupying forces, Special Forces and indigenous resistance personnel may be
the only reliable intelligence collection capability for the Combatant Commander.
This does not mean that the resistance cannot affect kinetic operations, just that they
should do so in an indirect and nonattributable method. By providing targeting intelligence, they
may be able to have a greater kinetic effect than any single saboteur or guerrilla platoon could
ever have. This was stressed to me in a conversation with former OSS veteran Franklin Lindsay whose studies on UW are noted in the ROC. Lindsay said that he was picked by OSS because of
his engineering background and that sabotage operations he led in Yugoslavia against rail
bridges needed tons of explosives and scores of men. However, he noted that in the era of
precision guided munitions, that template is no longer necessary if the targeting information can
be provided to air and missile units.
Therefore, resistance to Russian occupation will likely bear more of a resemblance to
classic human intelligence operations in a hostile and denied area than a replay of the sabotage
and guerrilla warfare operations of World War Two. In this case for Special Forces personnel,
language skills, cultural knowledge, the ability to live a cover, and the skill to conduct vetting
and counterintelligence operations of the various components of a resistance that can be created
will be the main keys to survival and success.
Conclusion
In operations to liberate the Baltics, NATO will face a foe with a massive
counterintelligence and rear area security apparatus ready to act ruthlessly against any signs of
resistance. The UWOA will be constrained by the lack of a contiguous external sanctuary and
limited areas for internal ones. Until air defense/area denial weapons systems are attritted, there
will be severe limitations on infiltrating Special Forces into the UWOA. Therefore, Special
Forces and indigenous resistance forces must be in place when hostilities start, be prepared to be
“rolled over”, and then have the training, communications resources, and personas to support
Total Defense operations. This means that these assets will invariably be small in numbers
because of the skills that must be mastered and the strict counterintelligence vetting that must be
continuously conducted. Therefore, most of their operations will need to be of a strategic and
operational nature to get the most out of a very precious capability. Because of the environment
specific to a Russian occupation, the resistance will be more of an intelligence war and less of a
guerrilla one. However, their operations will still provide essential support to NATO
conventional forces by giving them the knowledge they will need to degrade enemy capabilities,
achieve the eventual liberation of the Baltic states, and preserve their populations. By resisting
in this manner, the Baltic peoples can produce yet another legacy of subtle but effective
opposition to tyranny.
1 NATO, NATO battlegroups in Baltic nations and Poland fully operational, 28 August 2017,
www.nato.int/cps/en/natohqs/news_146557.html, accessed 17 July 2021.
2 RAND, Assessing the Conventional Force Imbalance in Europe: Implications for Countering Russian Local
Superiority by Scott Boston, Michael Johnson, Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, and Yvonne K. Crane, 2018.
3 Resistance Operating Concept, JSOU Press, 2020, page 17.
4 GDP estimates for NATO from NATO Countries: Statistical Profile, www.nationmaster.com/country-
info/groups/NATO-countries, and for Russia from International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook
Database, April 2021, IMF.org, accessed 17 July 2021.
5 FM 100 2-2, Headquarters, Department of the Army, Washington DC, 16 July 1984, page 14-1.
6 Center for Eastern Studies, Rosgvardiya: A Special Purpose Force by Jolanta Darczewska, Warsaw, May 2020.
7 CIA World Factbook 2021
8 For a brief description of the SORM systems see Center for Strategic and International Studies, Reference Note on
Russian Communications Surveillance by James Andrew Lewis, 18 April 2014.
9 CIA World Factbook 2021
10 For in-depth discussions of Soviet era internal control systems summarized in this paragraph, see KGB: The Secret
Work of Soviet Secret Agents by John Barron, Bantam Books, New York, 1974, especially Chapter 5, “How to run a
tyranny.”
11 For a description of Operations Berezino and Zeppelin and other Soviet “radio play” operations see Stalin’s Secret
War: Soviet Counterintelligence Against the Nazis, 1941-1945 by Robert W. Stephan, University Press of Kansas,
2004. For information on the Soviet penetration of WiN, see Operation Rollback: America’s Secret War Behind the
Iron Curtain by Peter Grose, Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, 2000. For an example of the failure of the
duress code process see Secret Army, Secret War: Washington’s Tragic Spy Operation in North Vietnam by
Sedgwick Tourison, U.S. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 1995 plus London Calling North Pole by Herman
Giskes and Between Silk and Cyanide by Leo Marks for German and British views of the compromise of the Dutch
resistance movement in World War Two.
12 ROC, op. cit. page 202.
13 Afghanistan’s Endless War: State Failure, Regional Politics, and the Rise of the Taliban by Larry P. Goodson,
University of Washington Press, 2001.
14 Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, Civil and Military Casualties of the War in Chechnya, accessed at
https://web.archive.org/web/20070821154629/http://www.hrvc.net/htmls/references.htm, on 18 July 2021.
15 Putin’s Wars: The Rise of Russia’s New Imperialism by Marcel H. Van Herpen, page 193, Rowman & Littlefield,
Lanham, MD, 2014; Allah’s Mountains: Politics and War in the Russian Caucasus by Sebastian Smith, page 190, I.B,
Tauris, London, 1998; The War in Chechnya by Stasys Knezys and Romanas Sedlickas, page 151, Texas A&M
University Press, 1999.
16 Human Rights Watch, Targeting Life in Idlib: Syrian and Russian Strikes on Civilian Infrastructure, 15 October
2020, accessed at https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/10/15/targeting-life-idlib/syrian-and-russian-strikes-civilian-
infrastructure, on 18 July 2021.
17 Human Rights Watch, Crimean Tatars Face Unfounded Terrorism Charges,12 July 2019, accessed at
https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/07/12/crimean-tatars-face-unfounded-terrorism-charges#, on 24 July 2021.
18 Guardian, Russian Mercenaries Behind Human Rights Abuses in CAR, Say UN Experts by Luke Harding and Jason
Burke, 30 March 2021.
19 For further on this see Patriot or Traitor: The Case of General Mihailovich by David Martin, Hoover Institution
Press, Stanford, California, 1978. Of the several excellent World War Two case studies in the ROC, it would
probably benefit with the addition of a Yugoslav case study to examine this issue in greater depth.
20 For an unclassified history of this unit, see Special Forces Berlin: Clandestine Cold War Operations of the U.S.
Army’s Elite, 1956-1990 by James Stejskal, Casemate Publishers, Havertown, PA, 2017.
21 While the ROC does recognize the ebb and flow of resistance activities in its section on Aggressor Actions and
National Resistance (page 34), it does not fully address the dilemma of tradeoffs related to facing mass terror.
About the Author(s)
The author is a retired 31-year veteran paramilitary operations officer of the Central Intelligence Agency.
19. The Pandemic Has Cost the Pentagon at Least $13.6B and Counting
The Pandemic Has Cost the Pentagon at Least $13.6B and Counting
And that figure could rise as the Defense Department starts mandatory COVID-19 testing for unvaccinated civilian workers.
The coronavirus pandemic has cost the Pentagon at least $13.6 billion over the past year and more costs are expected as the military increases its testing of civilian personnel, according to U.S. defense officials.
The current total includes an estimated $7.1 billion to reimburse defense companies for pandemic-related expenses and $6.5 billion for “other COVID-related costs,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Jessica Maxwell.
Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, who in July visited destroyer-maker Bath Iron Works and the Navy’s Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, said she saw firsthand how the pandemic was affecting the shipbuilding sector.
“It's pretty clear that the pandemic has taken a toll on both the supply chain to get parts up to the shipyards and also with regard to the ability to bring the workforce together,” Hicks said Wednesday at the Defense News Conference. “We know it's had a real impact.”
Hicks would not say whether the Pentagon would continue a popular policy of paying contractors more money up front. Executives have championed the practice, which was put in place early during the pandemic, saying it has allowed them to increase cash flow to the small suppliers, especially those that have lost commercial revenue due to the decline in passenger air travel.
“We are certainly looking closely at...ensuring that [the] defense industrial base is sound for the future,” Hicks said. “Progress payments are part of how we think about looking out for our supply chain, but it's not the only tool and obviously...different parts of the supply chain are having different effects from the pandemic.”
Section 3610 of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, better known as the CARES Act, allowed defense companies to recoup money they used to keep assembly lines running during the pandemic. While Congress authorized those funds, it never passed an appropriations measure. A number of trade organizations are pushing Congress to extend Section 3610 benefits, which expire at the end of September, in light of the COVID-19 Delta variant.
The Pentagon estimates about $7.1 billion of its COVID-related costs are covered by the CARES Act, according to Maxwell, the Pentagon spokeswoman.
“The Department acknowledges there are a number of pandemic-related cost impacts that are separate and distinct from the paid leave costs associated with Section 3610,” Maxwell said in an email.
The remaining $6.5 billion is what the Pentagon calls “other COVID-related costs,” which “will delay development programs, impact production deliveries, organic industrial base operations, and contract maintenance,” she said. The figure is based on estimates received from “major defense contractors.”
Over the past year, companies have missed key deadlines on a number of major weapons projects, which they ascribed to supply chain issues caused by facility shutdowns, sick employees, and other pandemic-related factors. For instance, Lockheed Martin delivered 21 fewer F-35 than planned in 2020 due to the pandemic, while Boeing has blamed COVID for delays in building a new Air Force One.
“As situations may differ for each company and contract, the Department handles missed delivery goals on a case-by-case basis,” Maxwell said.
The Pentagon, Hicks said Wednesday, could have some “near-term expenditures” to perform COVID-19 tests on civilian workers, which unlike the military are not required to receive the vaccine. Mandatory testing for unvaccinated civilian workers will begin in the fall, she said. Pentagon officials are encouraging contractors to get vaccinated.
“We're working closely—across the department and with the interagency colleagues—on the right approach for our contractors who are present on a routine basis on defense installations to make sure we have the right strategy for them,” Hicks said.
The United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing, is the only high-profile defense company to mandate employee vaccinations.
20. China won't accept US hegemonic acts in the South China Sea
From the CCP propaganda mouthpiece.
Excerpts:
The US has deliberately provoked disputes in the South China Sea, and it must in turn endure the PLA's increasingly strong countermeasures against it. The game between the two sides will continue to go to an extreme. The US will definitely see the PLA show up at its doorstep in the not-too-distant future. And together with China, the US will face the uncertainty which is increasingly difficult to control - the two sides' warships and aircraft on the seas will carry huge mutual strategic hostility, and the two countries will not yield to each other.
If the situation goes on like this, there will sooner or later be an incident between China and the US in the South China Sea. The US is the greatest threat to peace in the South China Sea, and it may eventually ruin the peace in the region. This is not just alarmist talk.
While China is competing with the US at sea, it must also make preparations for military frictions when the two sides fail to control their disputes, as well as the possible large-scale military conflicts afterwards. Once the situation gets out of control and triggers military clash between China and the US, we must give full play to our home field advantage. China will definitely win once there is a war.
China won't accept US hegemonic acts in the South China Sea: Global Times editorial - Global Times
Illustration: Chen Xia/GT
US Guided-missile destroyer USS Benfold trespassed in waters near the Meiji Reef in the South China Sea Wednesday without permission from China. The Chinese side mobilized aircraft and ships to warn off and expel the ship from the waters. In a 7th Fleet news release, the US side acknowledged that USS Benfold sailed within 12 nautical miles of Meiji Reef. But it said the warship was asserting navigational rights and freedoms. It claimed the Meiji reef "is not entitled to a territorial sea under international law," and "the land reclamation efforts, installations, and structures" built on the reef "do not change this characterization under international law."
China and the US don't agree on the nature of the 12 nautical miles of Meiji Reef. Other different views exist worldwide. But international law doesn't empower any country to challenge others' sovereign claim with an intrusion by a warship. The US in particular has no right to do so given the fact that it has not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
What the US has done is a naked provocation, and this is obvious to all. There are many Chinese people and facilities on Meiji Reef, and the US warship that sailed so close to it apparently posed a threat. The Chinese side cannot remain indifferent, but must take countermeasures. This is common sense.
The US policy to make waves in the South China Sea and instigate Vietnam and the Philippines to confront China has failed. It has become so exasperated that it crazily dispatched a warship to assert so-called freedom of navigation and trespass within 12 nautical miles of the Chinese reef.
The US warship came from afar to make provocations nearby the Chinese reef. It was in fact a declaration of the US hegemony. The conditions for such an action are that only Washington has the strength to do so, and even if other countries are upset, they can do nothing but bear the US' abuse of its hegemony. However, China has become stronger, which has undermined the abovementioned conditions. Therefore, the US provocations in the South China Sea are not only a hegemony declaration but also aim at strategically suppressing China. With China's approaches and abilities to resist such pressure growing, the risks that such US provocations will spark a maritime friction between China and the US will become higher and higher.
If Chinese warships go to US military bases in the Asia-Pacific and the US allies' coastlines to conduct close-in reconnaissance operations and declare freedom of navigation, and if South China Sea claimant countries also conduct such operations around islands and reefs occupied by other parties, will the world's maritime order be better or more chaotic?
Simply telling the truth to the US is not enough for China. China needs to take active actions and speed up the establishment of its ability to conduct close-in reconnaissance operations on the above-mentioned bases and coastlines. The rapid development of China's blue-water navy has made this possible. Only by making the US have a taste of its own medicine can we touch the nerves of the US and its allies, and reshape the Western world's understanding of US bullying in the South China Sea.
The US has deliberately provoked disputes in the South China Sea, and it must in turn endure the PLA's increasingly strong countermeasures against it. The game between the two sides will continue to go to an extreme. The US will definitely see the PLA show up at its doorstep in the not-too-distant future. And together with China, the US will face the uncertainty which is increasingly difficult to control - the two sides' warships and aircraft on the seas will carry huge mutual strategic hostility, and the two countries will not yield to each other.
If the situation goes on like this, there will sooner or later be an incident between China and the US in the South China Sea. The US is the greatest threat to peace in the South China Sea, and it may eventually ruin the peace in the region. This is not just alarmist talk.
While China is competing with the US at sea, it must also make preparations for military frictions when the two sides fail to control their disputes, as well as the possible large-scale military conflicts afterwards. Once the situation gets out of control and triggers military clash between China and the US, we must give full play to our home field advantage. China will definitely win once there is a war.
21. Koch-Funded Quincy Institute Joins Communists To Demand Biden Administration Lift Sanctions on US Enemies
Ouch!
Koch-Funded Quincy Institute Joins Communists To Demand Biden Administration Lift Sanctions on US Enemies - Washington Free Beacon
The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft is joining a coalition of civil society groups that call for President Joe Biden to roll back sanctions against Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba.
Forty-six organizations, including two avowedly Communist groups, on Tuesday submitted a letter to Biden that urges him to implement "significant" changes to the United States' sanctions policy. The U.S. Peace Council and International Action Center are openly supportive of Communist and totalitarian regimes.
The U.S. Peace Council has cozied up to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and accused the U.S. government of launching coups in Ukraine and Venezuela. The International Action Center recently released a report that parrots the popular Chinese talking point that the coronavirus originated in a U.S. military lab in Maryland.
Sent in the wake of the Biden administration's withdrawal from Afghanistan, a policy long backed by the isolationist-leaning Quincy Institute, the letter demonstrates the organization's ongoing efforts to push Biden's foreign policy to the left.
"We write to urge you to complete the administration's sanctions policy review as expeditiously as possible, to make its findings public, and to implement significant and structural changes to U.S. sanctions policy," the letter reads.
The signatories offer to provide "expertise" to the Biden administration during its sanctions policy review.
"We believe we have valuable insight to share, and your administration has said it seeks such input," they write.
The letter is the Quincy Institute's first known collaboration with the U.S. Peace Council and the International Action Center, two of the harshest critics of U.S. foreign policy.
The U.S. Peace Council has been a reliable defender of America's adversaries since it launched in 1979 as an affiliate of the Soviet Union. In recent years, the group has cozied up with Assad and Nicolás Maduro, the disputed president of Venezuela.
The International Action Center has conducted similar "anti-imperialist" activism since its founding in 1992. Its founder, former attorney general Ramsey Clark, gained notoriety for defending war criminals Slobodan Milošević, Charles Taylor, and Saddam Hussein. Clark also represented two Nazi camp guards, Karl Linnas and Jakob Reimer, who faced war-crime charges after they immigrated to the United States.
The Quincy Institute did not respond to a request for comment. The International Action Center and the U.S. Peace Council did not return requests for comment.
Another signatory, CODEPINK, is waging a campaign called "China Is Not Our Enemy" to oppose the Biden administration's pending arms sales to Taiwan. Many of the group's arguments echo Chinese Communist Party talking points.
"Given China's overwhelming military superiority over Taiwan, more weapons will do nothing to enhance Taiwan's self-defense; instead they will further deepen Taiwan's military reliance on the U.S., making U.S. involvement in a future China-Taiwan clash increasingly likely," CODEPINK's campaign site reads. "Sending more weapons to Taiwan will surely upset Chinese leaders, further sabotaging opportunities for much-needed cooperation on climate change, pandemic relief, nuclear nonproliferation, and other issues of common concern."
CODEPINK and 47 other organizations signed a July letter that urges the Biden administration to prioritize cooperating with China on climate change rather than looking into Beijing's litany of human rights abuses. The Washington Free Beacon reported that several of the other cosigners take funds from left-wing billionaire George Soros.
22. General Failure: How the U.S. Military Lied About the 9/11 Wars
A brutal critique from Peter Maas and the Intercept.
General Failure: How the U.S. Military Lied About the 9/11 Wars
Army Gen. David Petraeus is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on April 25, 2007.
Photo: Lawrence Jackson/AP
Pretty much every day since 9/11, the U.S. military has disciplined soldiers who failed to do their jobs properly. They have been punished for minor offenses, like being late for duty, and for serious crimes, such as murder or assault. Since 2001, there have been more than 1.3 million cases of discipline in the armed forces, according to the Pentagon’s annual reports on military justice.
But the generals who misled Congress and the American public about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have not needed to worry about negative consequences for their careers. After 20 years of conducting a disinformation campaign about what was really happening on the ground, not a single U.S. general has faced any punishment. The reverse happened — they were praised for their deceptively upbeat assessments and given more stars, and when they retired with generous military pensions, they landed high-paying jobs on corporate boards, further profiting from their disingenuousness.
This disconnect is getting new scrutiny after the collapse of the American campaign in Afghanistan. Last month, a Marine officer posted a video in which he scorched the country’s generals for the chaos of the evacuations from Kabul. His video went viral, especially on right-wing platforms that prefer to focus only on the war’s final act under President Joe Biden. But Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller’s video — which elicited a rapid reaction from the military’s machinery of discipline, with Scheller being relieved of his command in hours — has stirred up a deeper critique of America’s generals.
“Four-star general officers are treated with great respect in the U.S. military — akin to modern day viceroys,” wrote Andrew Milburn, a retired colonel, in an article in Marine Corps Times last week. “Their exalted position shouldn’t permit them to execute without question an interminable and costly war to no end. Or, worse, to offer continuous assurance that the war was going well when it wasn’t. … Despite two wars that have seen their shares of disasters — not a single general officer has been relieved of his duties for incompetence.”
In Afghanistan and Iraq, several hundred thousand civilians and combatants have perished (including more than 7,000 American soldiers), millions of people have become refugees, and trillions of dollars have been wasted. Politicians were responsible for this, pundits were responsible, and so-called experts from think tanks were responsible too. But the generals were closest to these wars and most aware, or should have been, of what was happening. Few were closer or profited more than two in particular: Gen. Lloyd Austin, who is now secretary of defense, and Gen. David Petraeus, one of the most lauded military figures of the past 20 years.
Gen. Lloyd Austin prepares to hold a media briefing on Operation Inherent Resolve, the international military effort against the Islamic State, on Oct. 17, 2014, at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.
Photo: Allison Shelley/Getty Images
A Meeting in Baghdad
Back in 2003, Austin strode into a meeting at Baghdad’s oil refinery and demonstrated how the U.S. military was well on its way to catastrophe in the forever wars.
At the time, Austin was the assistant commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, the backbone of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. A month earlier, U.S. forces had seized the Iraqi capital, which quickly descended into chaos. Austin was meeting on May 12 with the director of the Daura refinery, which was the target of nightly waves of looters trying to steal whatever they could — gasoline, cars, cash, office furniture.
Dathar Khashab, the refinery director, had one item on his agenda.
“The problem is security,” he told Austin. “The most irrational things are happening in Baghdad. Yesterday I lost one of my pickups.”
Austin did not want to hear that the occupation was wobbling. He blamed looting on criminals released from prison by ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, even though the looting was being done by pretty much anyone with a wheelbarrow or AK-47. He said things were improving every day, which they were not.
“We never promised to get rid of all crime in a city of 6 million, but we’re getting our hands around it,” he said. “We’re setting up new police, and we’re doing it quickly.”
Khashab, dressed in work overalls, was having none of it.
“Things are getting worse, not better,” he replied. “Continuous theft is still here.”
Since 9/11, U.S. generals have consistently failed to see what was happening before their eyes, or they knew what was happening and lied about it. The conversation at the Daura refinery was an early look at this syndrome. There was little doubt to anyone with a clear mind that Baghdad, at that moment, was getting more dangerous. Austin insisted on his own reality.
“You compare the crime statistics today, after a war, to any major city in the world — the crime you have here is less,” Austin said. “There is a perception that crime is rampant. It is not.”
Khashab, whom I had been shadowing for a magazine article, was about to explode.
“But the Iraqi people in Baghdad are comparing the crime now to what they had two months ago!”
Austin was now visibly irritated.
“What you had two months ago was a brutal dictator who killed thousands of people,” he shot back.
“Yes,” Khashab replied, “but we did not have people stealing cars and robbing houses.”
The meeting came to a cold end. After Austin left, Khashab started talking about setting up booby traps to ward off the looters.
A few years after the invasion, Austin returned to Iraq as the commander of U.S. forces there, and later he took charge of Central Command, the headquarters for military operations in the Middle East and Afghanistan. His charmed path became even more charmed after he retired from the military. In addition to drawing a monthly pension of about $15,000, Austin joined several corporate boards, including the board of directors of United Technologies Corporation, the military contractor that merged with Raytheon in 2020, from which he has received more than $1.5 million, and advisory boards at Booz Allen Hamilton and a private equity firm called Pine Island Capital Partners. Biden’s secretary of defense owns a $2.6 million mansion in the Washington, D.C., area with seven bedrooms, a five-car garage, two kitchens, and a pool house.
Fatal Errors
In congressional testimony, in media interviews, and in speeches to their troops, Austin and the other generals who oversaw the 9/11 wars did the opposite of telling the truth.
“The Afghan forces are better than we thought they were,” Marine Gen. John Allen told Congress in 2012, when he was commanding U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. “This has been dramatic progress.”
Allen’s successor, Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., was just as bullish.
“I talk a lot about winning these days, and I firmly believe that we’re on a path to win,” he said in Kabul in 2013.
In the same ceremony, Dunford’s deputy voiced similar optimism.
“You will win this war, and we will be there with you every step of the way,” said Gen. Mark Milley, who is now the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Austin, when he took his turn atop Central Command, parroted the happy talk of his predecessors. In Senate testimony in 2016, he said the Afghan military was fending off the Taliban and getting “stronger and more capable.” He added, “Afghanistan remains a worthwhile and strategically necessary investment.”
It’s crucial to understand what the generals were not saying. Austin, for instance, congratulated the Afghan military for having “retaken and reestablished security in key areas, such as Kunduz.” He did not mention that the battle for Kunduz involved a U.S. aircraft attacking a hospital and killing 42 civilians — doctors, nurses, patients. It was the kind of civilian slaughter that typified U.S. and Afghan military operations, and that doomed the war. Austin and an entire generation of generals did their best to avoid mentioning these inconvenient details, denying them unless they were confronted with irrefutable evidence, and then doing little in the aftermath to prevent these atrocities from reoccurring.
It would be dismal enough if the generals believed their own optimism, but they didn’t, as journalist Craig Whitlock’s new book, “The Afghanistan Papers,” explains. Based on secret interviews the government conducted with officers and civilians who served in Afghanistan, Whitlock’s book offers overwhelming evidence that military leaders knew the war was failing and lied about it. The book cites an Army colonel, Bob Crowley, as saying that “every data point was altered to present the best picture possible.” Whitlock described the military’s upbeat assessments as “unwarranted and baseless,” adding that they “amounted to a disinformation campaign.”
A wounded staff member of Doctors Without Borders, a survivor of U.S. airstrikes on the organization’s hospital in Kunduz, receives treatment in Kabul on Oct. 6, 2015.
Photo: Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images
Failures and Lies
Unlike their counterparts in the worlds of politics or journalism, members of the armed forces belong to an institution that claims to aggressively regulate itself with an internal justice system that punishes troops who violate its code of conduct. Thousands of officers and enlisted troops are court-martialed every year; some are incarcerated in military prisons, and tens of thousands face lesser punishments, such as reductions in rank and other-than-honorable discharges. A review by The Intercept of the Pentagon’s annual reports on military justice, going back to 2001, shows more than 1.3 million cases of nonjudicial punishment and courts martial. While a handful of top military officers have been punished for bribe-taking and other offenses in recent years, there has not been a whisper of the possibility of holding combat generals to account for the carnage they perpetuated.
“An officer who misrepresented, misled, and lied to Congress, under the standards of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, has committed a crime,” noted Paul Yingling, a retired Army officer and author of a widely read article on generals evading responsibility. “Captains and sergeants face consequences all the time if they lie or otherwise engage in dishonorable conduct. All I would ask is that we apply the same standards to the conduct of war that we apply to falsifying travel documents.”
Yingling’s 2007 article was titled “A Failure of Generalship” and included a now-famous line: “As matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war.” A few years later, a similar critique came from Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, whose article in Armed Forces Journal, headlined “Purge the Generals,” suggested that “a substantial chunk” of military leaders should be fired. In 2012, the journalist Thomas Ricks, who had spent much of his life covering and studying the U.S. military, wrote a slashing article that described the history of American generals after 9/11 as “a tale of ineptitude exacerbated by a wholesale lack of accountability.” Ricks went on: “Ironically, our generals have grown worse as they have been lionized more and more by a society now reflexively deferential to the military.”
Whitlock’s book pointed to one reason the generals failed: cowardice. In one of the secret military interviews, a British general, Peter Gilchrist, who served as deputy commander of U.S. and NATO forces in the early years of the Afghanistan War, described his American counterparts cowering during meetings with then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. “This was a real cultural shock for me,” Gilchrist said. “You should see these guys — and they’re great men, grown up, intelligent, sensible, but like the jellies when it came to going in front of the SecDef.”
A Narrative of Success
It was 2005, still early in the disaster in Iraq, and the most famous general of the 9/11 era, David Petraeus, was telling me how wonderfully things were going.
At the time, Petraeus was charged with creating new Iraqi security forces after the original Iraqi army was disbanded at the start of the U.S. occupation. The bureaucracy he presided over went by the acronym MNSTC-I — Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq — and was headquartered in Baghdad’s Green Zone, which was ringed by miles of blast walls, razor wire, and stop-or-die checkpoints. Petraeus had four computers on his desk, giving it the look of a currency trader’s workstation, and there was a fruit bowl atop a mahogany table. He wielded a laser pointer to highlight statistics on a PowerPoint that was titled “Commanders Brief” and projected onto a flat-screen TV for his audience of two — me and another U.S. reporter.
The U.S. had distributed 98,000 sets of body armor to the new Iraqi forces, Petraeus said with enthusiasm, or what he wanted to be understood as enthusiasm. These Iraqi fighters had also been provided with 230 million rounds of ammunition, 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles, and 5,400 heavy machine guns. Four bases the size of Fort Drum had been established across the country, he added, with a total of 92 operational battalions of more than 40,000 troops. “People keep asking when will the Iraqis take over,” Petraeus said. “They have taken over in certain areas.”
This was largely a fiction. The security forces in question were embryonic, generally ineffectual, and entirely dependent on not just American supplies but on American soldiers leading the fight. Petraeus was doing what pretty much every general who served in Iraq and Afghanistan would do, stringing together any data he could find that would masquerade as a narrative of success. The statistics on his PowerPoint were vintage Vietnam — find big numbers and call them victory.
I was in Petraeus’s office to get his support for an embed with one of the handful of Iraqi forces that seemed willing to fight. They were called the Special Police Commandos, and Petraeus had dispatched one of his top advisers, Jim Steele, to work with them. I got a green light for the embed and caught rides on Blackhawks to Tikrit and then Samarra, north of Baghdad, where the Iraqi commandos were engaged in an offensive alongside U.S. forces.
The tactics employed by these U.S.-trained commandos were violently illegal. I saw detainees beaten up, I heard a prisoner scream from torture, and I witnessed a mock execution. After it became clear that I was seeing a lot of war crimes, I was abruptly told that my embed was over — grab my backpack and get on the next chopper to anywhere. I quickly made satphone calls to as many officials as I could reach in the few minutes available before being driven off the small U.S. base where I was staying; at the last moment, I was told I could continue for a few more days.
The cynicism of America’s most famous general emerged after the publication of my story, which had the cover headline “The Salvadorization of Iraq?” — referring to the dirty war in El Salvador in the 1980s. I expected that Petraeus would be upset, because the tactics of his Iraqi pupils were clear violations of the Geneva Conventions. Instead, a few hours after my story was posted online, Petraeus emailed me to request a correction that would state he was responsible for standing up the Special Police Commandos. He was upset that I hadn’t given him sufficient credit for creating these thugs in combat fatigues.
In 2007, Petraeus was named the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and became famous for implementing a strategy of counterinsurgency that he portrayed as focusing on protecting civilians and winning their hearts and minds. It was the opposite of what he was hoping to get credit for with his brutish commandos two years earlier; the contrast showed the lack of sincerity in either strategy. Yet those strategies had one thing in common: They provided a justification for keeping the war going, offering an illusion of victory on the horizon.
“The casualty figures showed that Afghanistan was growing more unstable and insecure — the exact opposite of what the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy was supposed to accomplish.”
Petraeus, hailed as a savior in Iraq, went on to command U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan from 2010 to 2011. While there, he painted a deceptively rosy picture of what was happening. As Whitlock notes in “The Afghanistan Papers,” Petraeus told Congress in 2011 that U.S. and Afghan soldiers were engaged in “precise, intelligence-driven operations” that killed or captured “some 360 targeted insurgent leaders” in a typical 90-day period and that the number of surveillance blimps and towers had increased from 114 to 184. “The past eight months have seen important but hard-fought progress,” he told the House Armed Services Committee. “Key insurgent safe havens have been taken away from the Taliban. Numerous insurgent leaders have been killed or captured.”
But as Whitlock’s book notes, “military officers in the field knew the blizzard of numbers meant nothing.” The more important truth was that civilian casualties were rising. “The casualty figures showed that Afghanistan was growing more unstable and insecure — the exact opposite of what the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy was supposed to accomplish. U.S. intelligence assessments also cast doubt on the war’s progress. Intelligence analysts in the CIA and the military prepared reports that were far more pessimistic than the pronouncements from commanding generals in the field. But intelligence officials rarely spoke in public and their reports remained classified.”
Public assessments from the generals were akin to a grift. In a scathing article last week, one of Petraeus’s advisers in Afghanistan, Sarah Chayes, recalled how she made a flurry of proposals for stemming corruption in the U.S.-backed government in Kabul. “None of those plans was ever implemented,” Chayes wrote. “I responded to request after request from Petraeus until I realized that he had no intention of acting on my recommendations; it was just make-work.”
Petraeus continued to float upward. In late 2011 he was tapped by President Barack Obama to head the CIA, but in 2012 he was caught sharing highly classified information with his girlfriend and biographer. He resigned from the CIA but avoided the felony charges and lengthy prison sentences that ruined the lives of other people who leaked classified information. Instead, Petraeus landed a lucrative partnership at the private equity giant KKR. He often gives speeches to friendly audiences, and he frequently appears on cable television, where in recent days he has sharply criticized the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
For military critics like Yingling, Petraeus should be answering hard questions from Congress, not getting softballs from TV hosts.
“Congress has the power to subpoena witnesses and compel testimony,” Yingling told The Intercept. “They can subpoena Gen. Petraeus, compel him to testify. They can put documents before him to ask him what he knew, when he knew it. And if they don’t, that failure itself is complicity.”
Yingling knows that his desire for an honest congressional investigation is likely a fantasy, because America’s political leaders have been co-conspirators with the generals in sustaining the bloodshed overseas. As the dust settles on 20 years of American warfare in Afghanistan, Congress is on track to approve a military budget that will be the largest ever.
23. Pro-Beijing operatives used social media to try promoting NYC protest - CyberScoop
All Americans need to understand what the Chinese (and Russians and others are doing). We are being manipulated (and easily in many cases).
Excerpts:
Pro-Chinese groups also appear to be taking a page out of the Russian playbook. Russia’s Internet Research Agency successfully pulled off tricking real Americans into attending fake protests ahead of the 2016 election.
Brookie cautioned against using Russia as a measuring stick for China’s success, however.
“What their definition of success would be is going to be a lot different. China wants to build credibility and been seen as a responsible global power,” says Brookie. Russia, on the other hand, “wants to throw a bunch of wrenches into the information environment,” regardless of reputational cost.
While most of the influence campaigns discovered by researchers demonstrated low engagement, researchers predict that persistent investment in influence operations will ultimately benefit Beijing.
“We have early warning that this is being developed. They clearly have the resources for this and an intent to do something, to create a capability, that is serious,” says Hultquist. “And we can take it seriously now or we can take it seriously when it’s too late.”
Pro-Beijing operatives used social media to try promoting NYC protest - CyberScoop
Sep 8, 2021 | CYBERSCOOP
As a part of ongoing research into suspected Chinese influence operations, investigators discovered a network of fake accounts spamming Twitter and other platforms in April with posts calling for Asian Americans to protest racial discrimination in New York City. The effort was an “early warning” that China is getting bolder in how it attempts to influence politics outside of its borders, says John Hultquist, vice president of threat intelligence at Mandiant, a division of FireEye.
“The intent is what worries me here because they’re already trying to cross the serious line of getting people on the street,” said Hultquist.
Mandiant did not definitively attribute the effort to the Chinese government.
The staged protest, which instructed attendees to show up outside the alleged homes of former Trump advisor Steve Bannon and other individuals who claimed the Chinese government manufactured the coronavirus, was ultimately a flop. But it provides an important insight into how apparently Chinese groups are expanding beyond more rudimentary tactics to promote its interests abroad.
Despite an apparently heavy investment in such operations, researchers say influence operations meant to boost Beijing’s image rarely attract significant engagement. A rare exception came earlier this year when an influence campaign criticizing U.S. democracy gained attention from several diplomats on Twitter.
Still, the group’s scale and persistence make it a threat that requires “aggressive” monitoring, according to Shane Huntley, director of Google’s Threat Analysis Group. Google calls this group DRAGONBRIDGE.
“We anticipate they will continue to experiment to drive higher engagement and encourage others in the community to continue tracking this actor, shedding light on their operations and taking action against them,” Huntley said in a statement.
Researchers at Mandiant observe in the new report that while these propaganda campaigns still rely on spam-like techniques, they have massively ramped up the number of social media platforms and languages used to spread their messaging.
In addition to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, actors have coordinated similar activity across 30 social media platforms, including TikTok, and more than 40 other websites and online forums. Content in Russian, German, Spanish, Korean, and Japanese have all been tied to pro-China influence networks.
One explanation for the surge in content could be that researchers and platforms have put in more work to uncover such operations, says Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.
Since 2019, Twitter and Facebook have become more aggressive in removing influence operations tied to China and other nation-states, while researchers have improved their detection capabilities.
Pro-Chinese groups also appear to be taking a page out of the Russian playbook. Russia’s Internet Research Agency successfully pulled off tricking real Americans into attending fake protests ahead of the 2016 election.
Brookie cautioned against using Russia as a measuring stick for China’s success, however.
“What their definition of success would be is going to be a lot different. China wants to build credibility and been seen as a responsible global power,” says Brookie. Russia, on the other hand, “wants to throw a bunch of wrenches into the information environment,” regardless of reputational cost.
While most of the influence campaigns discovered by researchers demonstrated low engagement, researchers predict that persistent investment in influence operations will ultimately benefit Beijing.
“We have early warning that this is being developed. They clearly have the resources for this and an intent to do something, to create a capability, that is serious,” says Hultquist. “And we can take it seriously now or we can take it seriously when it’s too late.”
Updated 10/8/21: to include additional comment from Google.
-In this Story-
24. A Reckoning for U.S. Foreign Policy Elites is Long Overdue
Yes, all of us (national security practitioners, policy makers, forieng policy specialists and academics) need to take a hard look at ourselves in the mirror.
An interesting analogy but Mr. Doran should know that Afghanistan is not in the Middle East.
Historian Charles Norris Cochrane described the Peloponnesian War as, “a terrifying record of human energy and resources dissipated to no profitable end.” Future historians may give a similar assessment of the last two decades of U.S. failure in the Middle East.
A Reckoning for U.S. Foreign Policy Elites is Long Overdue
The present humiliation should be borne by foreign policy elites, the generals, the best and the brightest, not by the American people—and especially not by those who served, though they doubtless feel it more viscerally than the hawkish elites who counseled war.
The French were haunted for generations by their humiliation at Agincourt; the name itself became an admonition against hubris. The outnumbered, muddied English bowmen were thought to be no match for the mounted French knights panoplied in brilliant armor. The contempt with which Shakespeare’s Duke of Bourbon holds the common French whom he commands is a stark contrast with King Henry V’s democratic appeals to the English troops, with whom he walks and speaks and fights. Whereas Henry tells any man who doesn’t wish to die with him to depart freely, Bourbon terms any man who refuses to die “a base pander,” essentially a pimp, who should survive only to prostitute his own daughter to the lowly.
Shame and eternal shame, nothing but shame!
Let us die in honour: once more back again;
And he that will not follow Bourbon now,
Let him go hence, and with his cap in hand,
Like a base pander, hold the chamber-door
Whilst by a slave, no gentler than my dog,
His fairest daughter is contaminated.
-Duke of Bourbon, Shakespeare’s Henry V
Bourbon’s words could never be uttered by elites in our own democratic age, but they may still be found in the subtext: Yes, our arrogance led us to this—and you commoners will pay the price. Mere months after civilian and military elites scrutinized the ranks for ideological purity, their own rot was exposed before the country and the world.
War invariably falls hardest on common people, but until recent decades, senior officials were often held to account for failure. Statesmen and generals might pay for disaster with exile or even execution; at a minimum, they were forced to leave office in disgrace. Modern warfare is often harsher for soldiers and civilians alike but is somehow easier for elites. After Vietnam, a disgraced figure such as Defense Secretary Robert McNamara could go on an apology tour and reclaim some measure of respectability. Today, there is no accountability at all.
Foreign policy elites with careers unblemished by success live in comfort far from Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen, and die in their beds while thousands of Marines and soldiers followed such American Bourbons to humiliating defeat, only to end up in humble graves in parts of America as alien to ruling elites as Afghanistan is to troops from Appalachia. Thousands more live with physical and psychological wounds. It is long since time to hold the foreign policy elites and generals who failed America to account.
Historian Charles Norris Cochrane described the Peloponnesian War as, “a terrifying record of human energy and resources dissipated to no profitable end.” Future historians may give a similar assessment of the last two decades of U.S. failure in the Middle East.
Where did the United States go wrong? Much has been written and much more will be written, but a few general trends emerge. First, the enemy, “terror,” was an abstraction, and it’s impossible to wage war on an abstraction. Second, we didn’t understand the nature of Afghanistan—or of Iraq, or Syria, or Libya. America was successful at rebuilding post-tribal, modern societies like Germany and Japan, but not premodern societies. No one thought to ask whether the democratic institutions that emerge in high-trust societies can be replicated in societies with traditions of religious and ideological extremism, literacy rates below one-third, or consanguineous marriage rates of nearly fifty percent—a strong indicator of low social trust. Third, we possessed neither concrete objectives, nor a coherent strategy, nor a definite timeline. Essentially tactical approaches like counterinsurgency and counterterrorism served as substitutes for strategy, and few elites took notice. Then, as is often the case in the region, militaries that cohere around a religious identity proved stronger than those that cohere around a national identity. Perhaps above all, there was a misplaced confidence in the tools of the state and of statecraft. As many have noted, America is itself in need of nation-building and is in no position to lecture others.
The hubris of U.S. foreign policy elites over the past twenty years followed in large part from the misapplication of the lessons of World War II to the Global War on Terror. America was the only real victor of World War II, while the other great powers were devastated. So, we inferred that war could solve more problems than it actually can. Nevertheless, the last two decades of failed policy in the Middle East have produced several victors: China and Russia, Iran, and perhaps also Turkey. And arguably the Taliban, and even Al Qaeda and its outgrowths.
The reckoning for U.S. foreign policy elites—politicians, policymakers, generals, diplomats, think tanks that had access and influence—is long overdue. It’s time for a painstaking inquiry into what went wrong to ensure that it doesn’t happen again in the era of great power competition. One model for accountability could be the Church Committee hearings of 1975, which exposed abuses by the intelligence community and federal law enforcement that so shocked Americans that some agencies were nearly shut down altogether. Americans today would likely be similarly outraged as they learn that senior officials were aware not only of the impossibility of victory but also of rampant bacha bazi (pedophilia), bribery, and corruption, and other scandalous conduct in Afghanistan.
In 1992, U.S. Army General Norman Schwarzkopf wrote, “I am certain that had we taken all of Iraq, we would have been like the dinosaur in the tar pit—we would still be there, and we, not the United Nations, would be bearing the costs of that occupation.” There will be other tar pits to avoid in the decades ahead. Terrorist attacks will occur, terrorists may flourish, but the United States must remain focused on national security priorities, starting with great power competition.
For its part, the Biden administration and its glittering Ivy League elites now stand over the wreckage of the failure in Afghanistan like the French nobles at Agincourt. The present humiliation should be borne by foreign policy elites, the generals, the best and the brightest, not by the American people—and especially not by those who served, though they doubtless feel it more viscerally than the hawkish elites who counseled war.
The Afghanistan failure has a thousand fathers. The hubris, naïve optimism, and overextension that has long been plain to most Americans have yet to be fully grasped by some foreign policy elites. It is these elites, rather than the heroes who served there, who should go cap-in-hand and live the rest of their days as base panders—in shame, and eternal shame.
Andrew Doran is a senior research fellow at the Philos Project. From 2018-21, he served on the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State.
Image: Reuters.
24. U.S. Navy looks to South Korea's free-diving women for hypothermia remedy
We observed these divers on our honeymoon on Jeju Do in 1987. They are amazing women.
U.S. Navy looks to South Korea's free-diving women for hypothermia remedy
By Darryl Coote
JEJU ISLAND, South Korea, Sept. 7 (UPI) -- As the once inaccessible Arctic grows as a region of military concern under the effects of global warming, the U.S. military is confronted with the problem of protecting its soldiers from the stresses of cold water and the threat of hypothermia. Researchers have turned to a peculiar place for potential answers: South Korean grandmothers who harvest seafood from the ocean floor.
Off the coast of South Korea's southern resort island of Jeju, about 280 miles south of the capital Seoul, these elderly women known as haenyeo dot the ocean as they dive year-round for abalone, turban shells, sea mustard and agar.
They've been free diving for generations, with the profession generally inherited from mother to daughter. It has also changed little over the years, with the main difference being the discarding of white cotton bathing suits in the early 1970s for the black rubber wetsuits they wear today.
Their numbers have been dropping for decades, with most now well into their 70s or older. But they live as icons of the island's culture and a symbol of the femininity and strength of its women who have been the breadwinners for their families upon a volcanic island where farming is limited and against a backdrop of political strife and oppression.
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To Tae Seok Moon, an associate professor at Washington University in St. Louis, these women were the inspiration behind a research project that aims to combat hypothermia.
"This is probably the most craziest idea I ever imagined," he told UPI in an interview over Zoom.
Moon has been awarded a three-year grant worth more than $500,000 from the Office of Naval Research, which conducts science and technology programs for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, to study how the human microbiota, which are microorganisms that live on our skin and in our guts, may contribute to heat generation in cold environments, such as underwater.
His so-called crazy idea is to eventually engineer these microorganisms that maintain a symbiotic relationship with their host humans to generate heat when the environmental temperature drops.
"Basically, what we want to develop is a genetic circuit -- we call it a genetic circuit -- that is basically in the bacteria that allow microbes to increase heat production in response to temperature downshift," he said.
The microbes, he said, would also be able to reduce heat generation if exposed to a warm environment to maintain homeostasis of the human body.
The human body consists of 10 times as many microbial cells as human cells, and Moon said that for a healthy 154-pound adult, these cells could increase one's body temperature by 1 degree Celsius per hour.
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Arctic divers
Sandra Chapman, program officer at the ONR, told UPI its interest in Moon's project has to do with Navy divers.
"Expanding future Naval operation in Arctic regions will place a greater demand for better thermal protection for our warfighters," she said in an email. "Therefore, ONR seeks a smart-technology approach that can sense and respond to changes in temperature exposures, and the microbiome represent a promising solution to serve as our bodies' own thermostat."
Global warming is reshaping the world, and the Arctic has grown as a region of military concern with countries jockeying not only for influence over newly melted trade routes and access to vast untapped reservoirs of natural resources but to protect their northern borders and national interests from adversaries.
The United States has been ramping up its presence in the region, as have Russia and China, and the various branches of the U.S. military have been announcing their strategic blueprints for the region, which despite having the smallest of the five oceans could potentially connect 75% of the world's population.
According to the U.S. Navy, it is also home to an estimated 30% of the world's undiscovered natural gas reserves, 13% of global conventional oil reserves and rare earth minerals valued at $1 trillion.
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To optimize the capabilities of Navy divers in wartime demands a seamless transition between environments, Chapman said, a difficult task due to static technologies such as wetsuits, which cannot adapt to their environment and lose their thermal protection at depth and if ripped or torn.
"If we are able to use our resident microbiota to adapt to changing temperatures, we would be free from the current reliance on the different thermal protection needed for each different environment," she said.
Adapting to cold
Moon, an engineer of microbes, told UPI the haenyeo of his native South Korea were the inspiration behind the project because he wondered if their microbiota had adapted over generations to combat the cold water.
"Haenyeo is one strong example of who basically stand cold temperatures. So right now they have some nice wetsuits, and that kind of protects their body from the heat [loss], but think about 100 years ago and 200 years ago and then haenyeo is descended from those haenyeo," he said. "Normally, the kids become haenyeo and their kids become haenyeo, and that means genetically the haenyeo are strong people."
He mentioned the work of Melissa Ilardo, an adjunct faculty member at the University of Utah, who studied Indonesia's Bajau or Sea Nomads, finding that these divers have spleens 50% larger than their land-living counterparts. He wondered whether similar adaptations might be found in haenyeo.
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Chapman said they have sponsored Ilardo through a grant to study the thermal resilience of haenyeo with two objectives: to investigate the genetics and physiology underlying previously identified adaptations; and to probe novel genetic and physiological adaptations.
"This is really just the start of many questions about this population, especially depending upon the results that we get" from these investigations, Ilardo told UPI in a video call from Salt Lake City. "No one has really looked at the genetics of the haenyeo before, so this is going to be a really unique look into their genetic history and from that, there will be many more questions that we can ask."
Illardo said the Navy is "very interested" in the island's indigenous divers due to their ability to work for up to eight hours a day in cold water -- water "much, much colder" than other indigenous divers are generally exposed to.
According to seatemperature.info, Jeju's water temperature can drop to below 53 degrees F during the winter months.
"I don't personally know of any other population diving in waters as cold as the haenyeo," she said.
Navy divers have told her their greatest challenge is the cold.
"Given that that's kind of the number one obstacle to their ability to complete tasks underwater, more so than equipment, more so than gas mixes -- a lot of those things are really well dialed at this point -- but once they get cold to a certain point, they say they can't use their hands, they can't stay underwater any more, and so the haenyeo being able to stay in that cold water for so long was really exciting to everyone as a possibility to pursue," she said.
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Genetic factors
Ilardo was in Jeju the Thanksgiving before the pandemic hit to conduct measurements and experiments with the haenyeo with plans to publish her findings by the year's end.
Without getting into specifics, she said at times the phenotypes of haenyeo, or their observable physical properties, appear similar to non-divers in Jeju, but then there's other instances where they look completely different.
This could be the result of a mixture of environmental and genetic factors that she said she will now "tease apart" to see which might be genetic and which might be the result of their environment.
Studies have shown that the haenyeo's ability to withstand cold water has diminished somewhat following the switch from cotton to rubber diving suits in the 1970s, with a study published in 2017 asserting that "their overall cold-adaptive traits have disappeared."
Ilardo said the decrease in their thermal tolerance makes sense but that produced by their genetic adaptation, if one exists, would still persist. That is a question that current data cannot answer.
"I think they've been doing it for so long and hypothermia is so dangerous and particularly if you were carrying a child -- I can't imagine the strain that would put on a fetus -- I would lean toward genetics," she said, "but I'll have an answer soon."
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One reason why she is optimistic that a genetic signal within the haenyeo will be discovered is that they dive while pregnant.
"If you have some kind of adaptation that kind of buffers that strain then your child is more likely to survive to birth," she said.
The Haenyeo Museum, located near Jeju City, confirmed that haenyeo did dive while pregnant but the number who did may not be as many as the widely reported claim suggests.
In an email to UPI, the museum said only "a small percentage and not all haenyeo" dived while pregnant and the fact they did "is proof that Jeju women had a strong sense of responsibility" to take care of their family.
Disappearing profession
The issue the haenyeo seemingly present to researchers is that the profession's future is uncertain.
Once a prominent and financially important profession for the island, haenyeo have been decreasing for decades.
The museum said the government began collecting data on the haenyeo in 1965, with the 24,268 counted in 1966 being the highest on record, though prior to the 1960s, the number of divers would have been much higher.
At that time, more than 9,000 were between the ages of 15 and 20 while another 7,200 were 21 to 30 years old, it said.
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Last year, there were 3,613 haenyeo remaining, 97.8% of whom were over age 50, according to the museum. Only four, it said, were younger than 30.
Illardo explained that the death of the profession does not mean that the future descendants of haenyeo will lose the ability to withstand cold water if that ability is derived from a genetic mutation.
"Like the Bajau who have this large spleen, if they're farming, it's not going to make it harder for them to survive," she said. "It adapted to diving but it's not harmful so they're going to have just as many children and they're going to survive just as long as anyone else or maybe even longer if it's advantageous in some other way. That won't decrease its frequency, but mixing with other cultures will."
What the military and researchers can learn from this population who test the limits of human physiology is what the limits of the human physiology really are.
"It's really through how it can be stretched and how it can be exceeded that we understand how it's working in the first place," she said.
Moon said his project right now is "completely fundamental" but that once the three-year investigation into the heat-generation mechanism has been completed, the Department of Defense may want to expand it further.
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"Once this is successfully done, my future project will be visiting haenyeo and collecting some samples from skin," he said.
The end goal, he said, is to create something akin to a sunblock one smears on their skin or a pill one swallows containing the engineered microbiota that will generate heat when the user is exposed to a cold environment to prevent their body's temperature from dropping too low and ward off deadly hypothermia.
He said he may infuse it with the smell of Jeju's famed tangerines of green tea as a reminder from where his crazy idea first came from.
Asked if there was interest in studying the specific microbiome of the haenyeo, Chapman said no such project was currently supported by the Office of Naval Research but that it "may form an objective for future studies."
25. Biden boots Trump appointees from military academy advisory boards
Biden boots Trump appointees from military academy advisory boards
White House officials have asked for the resignation of multiple members of the military academies’ advisory boards who were appointed by President Donald Trump in a move his supporters are blasting as a dangerous politicization of non-partisan advisory panels.
Non-lawmaker members typically serve three-year terms, even across presidential administrations. Several members appointed by President Barack Obama at the end of his term served several years into the Trump administration, including Sue Fulton, President Joe Biden’s nominee for Assistant Secretary for Manpower and Reserve Affairs at the Pentagon, who served on the West Point panel.
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But on Wednesday, all six board members of the U.S. Military Academy Board of Visitors appointed by Trump were asked to submit their resignations by the end of the day or be terminated from the posts.
“It is tragic that this great institution is now being subjected to and hijacked by partisan action that serve no purpose and no greater good,” Meaghan Mobbs, a West Point grad and former Trump adviser on military family issues, wrote in response to the request.
“Make no mistake, the move to terminate duly appointed presidential appointees sets a dangerous precedent for future administrations and undermines our institutions.”
Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, who sits on the Board of Visitors to the Naval Academy, posted on social media that similar requests were made to Trump appointees on his panel and the one at the Air Force Academy.
“Instead of focusing on the stranded Americans left in Afghanistan, President Biden is trying to terminate the Trump appointees to the Naval Academy, West Point and Air Force Academy,” he wrote.
Lawmakers on the panels and West Point officials were unaware of the move until they were informed by board members of the resignation requests, according to individuals involved. Academy officials referred all questions to the White House.
Asked about the moves during a press conference on Wednesday afternoon, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the moves were made “to ensure [the president] has nominees and people serving on these boards who are qualified to serve on them and who are aligned with [his] values.”
She also dismissed assertions that the moves were politically motivated, saying that “the president’s qualification requirements are not your party registration, they are whether you’re qualified to serve and whether you’re aligned with the values of this administration.”
The dismissed officials from the West Point board are former Trump National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster; former Army Vice Chief Gen. Jack Keane; former Pentagon senior adviser Douglas Macgregor; former U.S. Army North commander Guy Swan III; and West Point grad David Urban, who Trump named chairman of the American Battle Monuments Commission.
McMaster is scheduled to be honored at West Point this weekend as a 2021 Distinguished Graduate award recipient.
All six board members still had time left on their three-year terms. None were given advance warnings of the decision.
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Macgregor’s appointment to the board in 2020 drew headlines because of past speeches and writings attacking Muslims and immigrants, as well as criticism of diversity programs.
Along with Spicer, at least two other Navy board members have also been asked for their resignation: former White House budget director Russ Vought and lawyer John Coale, who is married to former Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren.
The Air Force Academy board members include former Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway and Heidi Stirrup, an aide to former Trump adviser Stephen Miller.
Conway, in a statement, jabbed at Biden, according to the Associated Press.
“I’m not resigning but you should,” she said, adding that the move was a “disappointing but understandable” effort to distract from the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, a rise in COVID cases and a disappointing August jobs report.
The boards have had limited meetings since the start of the pandemic, and most work has been halted since Biden’s inauguration earlier this year.
No replacements for the board members have been publicly announced by the administration yet.
Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.
26. Afghanistan withdrawal has Taiwan pondering its alliance with the US – and China is upping the pressure
Afghanistan is not NATO, Europe, Taiwan, Japan, or South korea. While the press and pundits question US alliances (friends, partners, and allies , I do not think the leaders of our alliance partners (or our friends such as Taiwan) really seriously question our commitments, at least in private. They do not believe Afghanistan foreshadows withdrawals from our strategic alliances and partnerships around the world. And our adversaries will be mistaken if they do.
Afghanistan withdrawal has Taiwan pondering its alliance with the US – and China is upping the pressure
The chaotic withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan has sparked concerns among its allies about the credibility of commitments to its strategic allies. It has been popular to compare the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan with Saigon in 1975, but this has generated some debate among scholars of US foreign policy.
Harvard’s Stephen M Walt noted in Foreign Policy magazine, what has happened in Afghanistan is “tragic but it’s not a strategic disaster”. From a historical perspective, he wrote, the US retreat from Saigon was similarly not a strategic disaster in that it did not lead to the collapse of NATO. Nor did it force American allies in Asia into the Soviet or Chinese spheres of influence. Nor did the chaotic end to the Vietnam War cause the US client states in the Middle East reevaluate their relationships with Washington.
By contrast, Francis Fukuyama has pointed out in The Economist that the desperate escape of the Afghans from Kabul is a strategic misstep which signifies the end of US global hegemony. He believes that this is as much determined by domestic challenges – such as the severe polarisation of American society at the end of the Trump presidency – as by any global power shifts.
Former US national security adviser and secretary of state Henry Kissinger has argued in the same publication that the unilateral decision to withdraw could damage Washington’s relationships with its allies.
The fundamental concern is how America found itself moved to withdraw in a decision taken without much warning or consultation with allies or the people most directly involved in 20 years of sacrifice.
Recent events in Afghanistan are likely to exacerbate the decline in America’s global reputation, something identified by a survey taken at the end of the Trump administration by the influential Pew Foundation.
The withdrawal has prompted an ongoing debate about the reliability of the US as an ally, especially in the case of Taiwan, under perennial pressure from China, which sees the island as part of its sovereign territory.
‘Strategic ambiguity’
State-affiliated Chinese newspaper, the Global Times, claimed that the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan meant that Taiwan was likely to be “abandoned”. The paper’s editorial on August 16 reminded its readers that Taiwan is not a member of Nato:
The way the US maintains the alliance with Taiwan is simple: It sells arms to Taiwan while encouraging the DPP authorities to implement anti-mainland policies through political support and manipulation.
Biden quickly responded, insisting that Taiwan and Afghanistan are “fundamentally different situations”, adding that:
We made a sacred commitment to article 5 that if in fact anyone were to invade or take action against our Nato allies, we would respond. Same with Japan, same with South Korea, same with Taiwan. It’s not even comparable to talk about that.
Within hours, US officials rowed back on Biden’s statement, taking pains to stress that US policy towards Taiwan has not changed. This highlights the nature of the US relationship with Taiwan which is often summed up with the words “strategic ambiguity”. The US provides Taipei with the means weapons systems and training to defend itself against a possible attack. But it leaves open the question as to whether it would intervene militarily in such an eventuality.
Locked and loaded: a US-made F-16V fighter jet during the 36th Han Kuang (Chinese Glory) military exercise in Taiwan, July 2020. EPA-EFE/Ritchie B. Tongo
Beijing responded to Biden’s comments by asserting “Taiwan as a inalienable part of Chinese territory”:
No one should underestimate the Chinese people’s resolve, determination and strong ability to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.
‘Strategic clarity’
An editorial in the Taipei Times concluded that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan would provide both opportunities and challenges for Taiwan. Opportunities in that Washington is clearly shifting its focus to face what it sees as the growing threat from China, which, “as the leading democracy in the Indo-Pacific region … is firmly placed at the forefront of democracy against dictatorship”.
But this will be balanced by the challenge of continuing Taiwan’s journey from a rapidly developing “tiger economy” to an outward-facing, highly technocratic society which is “becoming a nation on equal terms in the global village”.
As far as China’s insistence that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan showed Washington’s unreliability as an ally, the editorial saw an ulterior motive at work:
The view that today’s Afghanistan is tomorrow’s Taiwan is intended to challenge the mutual trust between Taiwan and the US.
Veteran former Dutch politician and diplomat, Gerrit van der Wees – now an academic in the US focusing on east Asia, pointed out in a recent article that Biden’s statement should not be interpreted as a change in US policy towards Taiwan. Instead it should be seen as “a welcome move in the right direction and a step toward "strategic clarity”.
Describing strategic ambiguity as a tactic rather than a policy, he quoted US State Department official Ned Price’s statement on August 19 that “peaceful resolution of cross-strait relations consistent with the wishes and best interests of the Taiwan people” are a key component of US foreign policy.
Today, it is much more certain than it was even two or three years ago that the United States, with assistance from Australia, Japan, and others, would come to Taiwan’s defence in the case of an attack.
Even when Washington’s tactics regarding Taiwan remain strategically ambiguous, the clear shift from a “war on terror” in the Middle East to a focus on the Indo-Pacific should give an indication of the direction of travel in Washington. But a lot will depend on how Beijing and Taipei interpret the signals coming out of Washington.
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
