“A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.”

- Theodore Roosevelt

“If democratic power-sharing is a potent form of freedom, accepting an election loss may be the ultimate demonstration of how free you want to be. History is littered with fascist leaders who have rigged elections and tortured or killed critics, but their regimes are remarkably short-lived - especially considering the obsession these men usually have with holding power. Many wind up dead or in prison, and almost none leave behind stable regime. Western democracies, on the other hand, are among the most enduring and prosperous political systems in history. They seem to be able to transfer power almost indefinitely, which further bolsters their economies and cements their alliances.”

- Sebastian Junger, Freedom

"Stick to what’s in front of you – idea, action, utterance."

- Marcus Aurelius

• Russian forces continued efforts to encircle Lysychansk and conducted offensive operations to the south and southwest of the city.
• Russian forces have likely not yet reached the T1302 Bakhmut-Lysychansk highway on the ground but are denying Ukrainian forces use of it by continuing artillery and airstrikes against remaining Ukrainian positions along the road.
• Russian forces focused on regrouping and improving their tactical positions north of Slovyansk.
• Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground assaults in northern Kharkiv Oblast and continued shelling Ukrainian positions north of Kharkiv City.
• Russian forces conducted artillery and missile strikes along the Southern Axis.
• Russian authorities continue efforts to expand the pool of recruits available to fight in Ukraine.

• Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and three supporting efforts);
• Subordinate Main Effort—Encirclement of Ukrainian troops in the cauldron between Izyum and Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts
• Supporting Effort 1—Kharkiv City;
• Supporting Effort 2—Southern Axis;
• Mobilization and force generation efforts;
• Activities in Russian-occupied Areas

The bill, introduced on Friday by California Rep. Young Kim and Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, comes as members of Congress are looking to understand what the current environment -- particularly the demand for weapons into Ukraine and mounting pressures on US supply chains -- means for the delivery timeline of weapons to Taiwan.

In total there are hundreds of millions of dollars of arms sales to Taiwan that Congress wants updates on. The hope is to "pull back the curtain" on what is contributing to the delay of US arms arriving in Taiwan and come up with solutions to expedite deliveries, one congressional aide explained.

• Inmarsat, which operates 14 satellites, has a maximum data speed of 492 kbps kilobits per second.
• Iridium operates 66 satellites and has a data speed of 176 kbps on its older satellites, 704 on its newest.
• Globalstar, operating 24 low earth satellites, has a speed of 9.6 kbps on its first-generation satellites and up to 704 on its newest.

The entire Department of Defense needs to be at an Operation Warp Speed tempo where urgency and humility are the watchwords, and the armed forces reward speed and fielded capability over compliance or perfection. One officer stated that “entire swaths of the Department are going through the motions”—a preference for process over power. Under a Warp Speed-like posture, the Pentagon can cut development and production times to enable immediate implementation of available tech into the systems the U.S. military possesses today, while gathering data from that implementation to strengthen completely new technologies still in design.

Accepting a unilateral drawdown of trained manpower, capacity, training, and posture throughout the next decade will result in a self-inflicted stasis, in which our weapons and warfighters become more like antiques than armed forces—expensive yet impractical.

The Pentagon and Congress have for three decades delayed modernization critical to the sustainment of credible U.S. combat power. Backs against the wall now, policymakers must not cede American military supremacy to a “dusty death,” but rather revise the pace of productivity by accepting that the armed force cannot survive on “buying time” to gain capability, but rather buying capability to gain time.

“The so-called NATO’s new Strategic Concept ignores facts, distorts the truth, … vilifies China‘s foreign policy, makes irresponsible statements about China’s natural military development and its national defense policy, promotes confrontation and conflict, [and] is filled with the Cold War mentality and ideological prejudices,” Mr. Zhao said at his regular briefing with reporters Thursday in Beijing.

• The BRICS group of countries are brewing up a challenge to dollar dominance with a new reserve currency.
• But it's unlikely to challenge the dollar, as four of the five currencies are managed against the greenback.
• "I'd rather be paid in US dollars than rand, real, rubles, rupees or yuans," one analyst told Insider.

1. How should societal characteristics and national competitive advantage be defined?
2. What is the causal relationship between societal characteristics and competitive outcomes?
3. What are the specific societal characteristics that have been historically associated with national dynamism and competitive position?
4. What is the United States' standing in those areas?

• These are national ambition and will, unified national identity, shared opportunity, an active state, effective institutions, a learning and adapting society, and competitive diversity and pluralism.
• There is some causal relationship between these seven characteristics and competitive outcomes in most cases studies the authors examined.

• Factors such as national ambition or pluralism can become competitive handicaps when pushed to an extreme.
• Some of the characteristics harbor greater risk than others in this regard: Excessive national ambition and will is more dangerous than excessive shared opportunity. But all of them carry some danger when thrown out of balance.

• These include membership in networks of trade and exchange of ideas.
• It is often the interaction of these nonsocietal factors with the qualities of a nation—the ways in which its character matches or falls out of alignment with the demands of the moment—that determines national fates.

• It is these blended, interactive effects, creating competitive wholes greater than the sum of their parts, that distinguish the strongest and most competitive nations of each era.
• Nations whose competitive standing deteriorates tend to manifest weakness in many factors that compound: Competitive failure typically results from a negative-feedback loop of some kind, in the same way that success derives from a positive-feedback loop.

• Competitive societies tend to be open, tolerant, full of intellectual energy and commitment to learning; they have a powerful sense of their own role in the world and a sense of mission or will; they almost always benefit from strong public and private institutions, as well as a state apparatus that actively promotes advantage; and they embody a pluralistic clash of ideas and an ability of people from many backgrounds to offer their talents and succeed.

• RAND National Security Research Division

• Copyright: RAND Corporation
• Availability: Available
• Print Format: Paperback
• Paperback Pages: 418
• List Price: $49.95
• Paperback Price: $39.96
• Paperback ISBN/EAN: 1-9774-0939-3
• Document Number: RR-A499-1
• Year: 2022
• Series: Research Reports

Difficult as the choices may be, the West cannot simply ignore the problem.

Moscow’s naval blockade of Ukraine’s sea ports has taken Ukraine’s vital food exports off the market.

Russia’s grip on the Black Sea is not absolute.

Difficult as the choices may be, the West cannot simply ignore the problem.