Quotes of the Day:

“Understand: the greatest generals, the most creative strategists, stand out not because they have more knowledge but because they are able, when necessary, to drop their preconceived notions and focus intensely on the present moment. That is how creativity is sparked and opportunities are seized. Knowledge, experience, and theory have limitations: no amount of thinking in advance can prepare you for the chaos of life, for the infinite possibilities of the moment. The great philosopher of war Carl von Clausewitz called this “friction”: the difference between our plans and what actually happens. Since friction is inevitable, our minds have to be capable of keeping up with change and adapting to the unexpected. The better we can adapt our thoughts to changing circumstances, the more realistic our responses to them will be. The more we lose ourselves in predigested theories and past experiences, the more inappropriate and delusional our response.”

​- R​obert Greene, The 33 Strategies of War

​"There is no such thing as freedom of choice unless there is freedom to refuse."

- David Hume

"Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret."

- Ambrose Bierce​

​1. 'Let's Make A Deal' Ukraine and the Poor Prospects for Negotiations with Putin

2. What are Bradley Fighting Vehicles? U.S. kit Ukraine has "high hopes" for

3. ‘Spies and Lies’: Peeling Back the Curtain on China’s Covert Ops

4. U.S., Allies Say Armored Vehicles Will Give Ukraine’s Troops an Edge

​5. New Publication: Grey Zone Ethics: A Practitioners Guide to Making Ethically Difficult Decisions

6. Ukraine: WAR BULLETIN January 5, 5.00 pm EST

7. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JANUARY 5, 2023

8. China 'under-representing' true impact of Covid outbreak, WHO says

9. How to Win Friends and Choke China’s Chip Supply

10. 5 takeaways from what defense leaders told the Jan. 6 committee

​11. ​Kremlin-ordered truce is uncertain amid suspicion of motives

​12. ​EXPLAINER: Is China sharing enough COVID-19 information?

13. China developing own version of JADC2 to counter US

14. Pat Donahoe, civilian, wants a word with the Army

​15. ​Destroyer Makes First U.S. Warship Taiwan Strait Transit of 2023

16. For many of the 1,271 Americans under Russian sanctions, it’s a point of pride

​17. Pentagon Senior Leaders Unfocused on Combat Readiness

​18. Drone advances in Ukraine could bring new age of warfare

19. ​It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s . . . Time to Plan for Drones in Other Domains

​20. ​America’s True Divide: Pluralists vs. Zealots

21. Daniel Johnson: The military could ease its recruiting crisis by doing more to resolve systemic racial issues

​22. ​Why Xi Jinping Reversed His Zero-Covid Policy in China

1. 'Let's Make A Deal' Ukraine and the Poor Prospects for Negotiations with Putin

Conclusion

Strategic decisions about war, including termination of hostilities, are undeniably complex. Prof. Dan Reiter, from the University of Virginia, identified a key condition for ending conflict in his book How Wars End. The critical condition is the confidence level of the engaged belligerents that the opposing adversary would honor a finalized agreement. But Russia’s track record with accords like Helsinki, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces accord, Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, and Minsk agreements is spotty. They are consistently twisted or violated. They are a means to an end; that objective is never about moving forward toward resolution and compromise. 

Most wars do come to a conclusion, and usually with some sort of negotiated political agreement. But Fred Ikle’s book on war termination, Every War Must End, was only partially right. Many wars are also protracted tests of endurance. History is replete with examples like the Hundred Years’ War and the Thirty Years’ War. Even the 20th century’s devasting pair of wars can be conceived of as a singular conflict of four decades duration in Europe. This war will end too, someday. Putin acts as if the geopolitical costs of his incompetence are inconsequential for Russia. He can spin the humiliating performance of the Russian troops in his domestic propaganda, but Putin knows better than anyone else the answer to the question “Is Russia losing?” As Sir Lawrence Freedman concluded in November, Putin knows that the war was lost long ago. Yet, he’s reluctant to choose a path out, afraid to find out what is behind the curtain.

Some think that greater efforts at a diplomatic resolution are naïve or simply dismissed reflexively. Negotiated endings to human conflict are the norm but can ultimately only be pursued only when each side believes that it can gain and lock in more at the table than it can on the ground. Neither side is there right now. Putin has dug a deep hole and accelerated every trend Russian hawks feared, particularly a stronger and more cohesive NATO closer to its borders. Still, the prospects for peace are extremely slim, unless one is willing to accept peace on Putin’s terms.

That is not to say that there is no hope for securing a suitable peace, or that it’s not worth trying for. Peace cannot be established or sustained without a broader conception of the regional order. I agree with Freedman that “It does no harm to start thinking about a post-war security order” but not if it is built on wishful thinking or wildly imaginative conceptions of a modern-day Concert of Europe. The best way to gain an enduring peace is to ensure that Putin understands that continuing this war will generate great political and economic losses that are as bad as the staggering defeats he has gained in the military domain. Then he will be pushed aside or forced to make a deal. At this point, we are all spectators on Monty Hall’s show wondering which choice the contestant will make. We should help clarify for Putin and his supporters that there is no prize or better deal forthcoming, no matter how barbaric his tactics are.

'Let's Make A Deal' Ukraine and the Poor Prospects for Negotiations with Putin

​January 4, 2023

​

Editor’s note: The Russian invasion of Ukraine has arguably been the most significant geopolitical event of 2022. Beginning with Dov Zakheim’s comments in the Spring 2022 issue, Orbis authors have discussed the ramifications of the invasion. As we approach the one-year anniversary, Revisiting Orbis will be offering updated commentary from its contributors, starting with this first essay from Frank Hoffman.

 ​by ​Frank G. Hoffman

Frank G. Hoffman serves on the Board of Advisors at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and currently is serving at the National Defense University as a Distinguished Research Fellow with the Institute for National Strategic Studies.

https://www.fpri.org/article/2023/01/lets-make-a-deal-ukraine-and-the-poor-prospects-for-negotiations-with-putin/

What would Monty Hall say about the odds of a peace deal in Ukraine? I am probably dating myself in this reference to a popular TV show from the 1960s. Hall was the show’s host which was based on colorfully dressed contestants being asked to select between different options. The selected audience members had to make choices between something presented at hand before them like a large amount of cash or something hidden behind a curtain. The prizes included consumer items like cars, jewelry or vacation trips, or gag items like a goat. Those that guessed wrong went home empty-handed or with their goat.

The combatants in Ukraine face a similar choice. Should they take what they have or hold out for a nicer prize? This article will explore the ongoing debate about the potential dangers associated with negotiating an end to the Russo-Ukraine war. There are several advocates calling for a deal but few ideas on what the negotiations should include. In fact, many Western analysts seem to think it is entirely an affair between the combatants. This ignores the strategic interests NATO and other contributors have in the endgame, and the costs and huge risks they are incurring. After outlining the debate and some potential implications, a framework for a deal is offered. It is a notional agreement as a starting point, and it crosses announced red lines from both antagonists. 

Ukraine has defied expectations and admirably defended its sovereignty. It still has quite a way to go to eject Vladimir Putin’s armed forces and hirelings. A bitter frozen conflict could last for some time despite the tenacious and creative defense of Ukraine’s determined military. But it is time to start thinking about the end game. Sketching out the compromises and hard choices for Russia’s termination of its “Special Military Operation” is not an exercise in optimism or wishful thinking. Understanding what the West desires out of this conflict and what is the objective in terms of relations with a defeated Russia is a clear strategic question for US policymakers at this point in time. 

Recently, there have been discussions about a negotiated settlement in Ukraine. Reporting from the New York Times revealed ongoing debates in the Biden administration about encouraging Ukraine to seek a diplomatic solution sooner rather than later. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, reinforced this account at The Economic Club of New York. He thought the time was coming when a political solution could be obtained, and he publicly suggested that Kyiv should seize that moment. He explained his position in a subsequent interview where he noted that the Ukrainian military has fought the Russian military to a standstill. “Now,” he argued, “we think there are some possibilities here for some diplomatic solutions.” He went on noting that kicking the Russians physically out of Ukraine entirely would be a very difficult task, and “the probability of Russia achieving its strategic objectives of conquering Ukraine is … close to zero.”

It appears that the White House and State Department do not feel the time is right nor do they think the United States should be pressuring Ukraine’s president to initiate a political negotiation. Likewise, NATO’s secretary general was lukewarm on the chances at this time, claiming that Russia merely wants a ceasefire to lock in its gains to date and buy time for renewed military operations in the spring when it has fresh troops and revived its ammunition stocks. 

Gen. Milley, however, accurately defined the military context and offered an insightful historical analogy. He told reporters at a follow-up event at the Pentagon about the timing for negotiations now was appropriate, stating “You want to negotiate at a time when you’re at your strength and your opponent is at weakness.” He drew upon an analogy to the extended stalemate of World War I, where most parties understood after the first year that a military solution was very unlikely. Yet, for political reasons, each side sustained several more years of war in a test of endurance that added millions of casualties and dissolved several empires. This reflects a well-founded historical sense about the costs of war, both human and materiel.  

The most relevant element of this analogy is the stalemated character of the conflict and its horrendous casualties. But, additionally one cannot discount the dramatic dissolution of the Russian, German, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian empires and the political chaos that ensued. Another interesting lesson is the post-war treaty that did not, in the eyes of many scholars, set conditions for long-term stability. As Henry Kissinger has observed, “The punitive Treaty of Versailles that ended the war proved far more fragile than the structure it replaced.” While supportive of Ukraine’s victory, he concurs that the time is approaching to build on the strategic changes to date and “integrate them into a new structure towards achieving peace through negotiation.” Other scholars have added that a strategic defeat that degrades Russia so badly that it becomes a resource pawn for China could significantly benefit Beijing in today’s geostrategic competition.     

Others contend that this is no time to go wobbly and argue that more advanced US weapons should be sent (faster) to abet Kyiv’s victory instead of seeking negotiations. It is certainly premature given the fact that Russia still holds nearly a fifth of Ukraine’s territory and perhaps even a larger part of its economy. Ukraine has momentum on its side at present. But a truce or a negotiated settlement may lock in Putin’s gains, and thus talks at this point are seen as counterproductive. 

But if you account for the risks and costs that are rising, it is clearly time to see if the combatants can look behind the curtain and see what kind of a deal can be had. There are a number of issues that might give a policymaker pause and think that now is an appropriate time to consider how the conflict could be terminated. These include:

• Intelligence that Russia’s latent national power has deeper reservoirs (organic and from allies like China, North Korea, and Iran) that are going to be tapped.
• Anticipated alternative sources of fighting strength (for example, Iran or Belarus preparing to join).
• Some evidence that Russia is rebuilding combat power faster than commonly thought or prepared to attack NATO to escalate the conflict wider beyond Ukraine.
• Increased risk for escalation is growing (signals from Shoigoi perhaps regarding Russian use of nuclear capability).
• A possible drastic drop in European Union/NATO support (due to ongoing recessions, inflation concerns, and political changes).
• A perceived drop in US support (due to fears of recession, rising inflation, costs) from either Democratic progressives who issued and retracted their concerns or restraints from the Republican Party which intends to closely scrutinize military aid.  
• Concerns that higher priorities in Asia are being undercut and that the probability of opportunistic aggression in that theater is rising.
• An assessment that continued security support to Ukraine is drawing down US military readiness, and that restoring munitions stocks is going to be costly and slow for both Washington and its allies.

On this latter point, it is clear that Western governments are coming to grips with just how far they can deplete their own munitions stocks and how limited their industrial base really is after the scope of ammunition used in Ukraine. It’s not clear whether defense companies can meet the demand, due to a confluence of worker shortages, record-high inflation, and supply-chain disruptions (although Putin suffers from the same supply woes and has a smaller economy under sanctions). 

Given this extensive litany of concerns, it is no surprise that national security officials are weighing the costs and consequences of the war. In fact, if these potential risks were not being considered and debated, the White House could be accused of malpractice. At the same time, there were problems raised by the New York Times story:

• It partially exposed internal deliberations and differences of opinion among the Biden administration’s senior team to the public.
• It upset Ukraine’s political leadership since it came on the heels of their successful offensives to regain Kherson.
• It may be misperceived by Putin that the United States is wavering in its support for a clear military success for Ukraine.

On this latter point, a number of diplomats, regional experts, and scholars are concerned about negotiating with Russia at this time. Raphael Cohen from RAND provided an incisive commentary on the dangers raised by Milley’s comments, and concluded they were an inducement for Putin to press on. The administration responded forcibly to clarify that misperception.   

Would some sort of negotiated settlement with a Russian withdrawal from selected areas be feasible? There is little common ground on what the deal may look like. Volodymyr Zelensky offered some general conceptions of what peace might look like in late November. His preferred outcome included Russia’s withdrawal from all occupied Ukrainian territory (including Crimea), reparations, and judicial determined consequences for war crimes. This seemingly renewed willingness to discuss the cessation of the conflict seems to have been generated to satisfy suggestions from Washington that Kyiv present itself as still open to some sort of a peace agreement. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kubela, argues that Kyiv will not compromise on its territory and that he foresees no prospect for productive peace talks. 

In addition to our own perspectives in Washington and Kyiv, the input of key allies must be factored in. Here the positions are mixed. After consultations with Biden in a trip to Washington, President Emmanuel Macron from France articulated the need for greater dialogue, even counterintuitively calling for the inclusion of security guarantees for Russia. Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom, conversely, called for a decisive victory, claiming that “Anything less than a Russian defeat in Ukraine will embolden Moscow and other authoritarian powers.”

What a Deal Could Look Like

So, what might a deal look like? Unlike Monty Hall’s show, politicians need to know what the options might be, rather than making choices behind a curtain. Under what conditions might the US government want to push for a settlement at this particular point in time, when limited progress will be made and Russia still holds a substantial swath of Ukrainian territory that would strangle its long-term economic potential? Both sides are bleeding, literally and figuratively. But neither side seems prepared to negotiate. A settlement is not in sight and a premature deal would alleviate the horrible suffering inside Ukraine but only temporarily and only in the land held by Kyiv. Russia would simply regroup over time and threaten Ukraine’s freedom and peace in Europe yet again. At this point, there seems to be no available mechanism or motivation to implement a political solution or even just a cease-fire. The latter may be palliative, stopping the horrific violence, but it is certainly not conducive to long-term stability. It would lock in a frozen conflict along the current battle lines, with Putin holding more ground and resources than before the war. It would require Ukraine’s political leadership to cede a swath of ground but more critically to abandon the inhabitants of that land to barbaric treatment.

So far neither of the contending parties has offered a clear platform of a deal. Various European leaders have tried to lay out some generic concept to draw the parties to the table. The Russian foreign minister has complained that Kyiv is not serious about ending the war, and thinks a deal could be achieved if the Ukrainians would only accept “current realities.” But the only true reality is much larger than what is happening on the battlefield. The Russians do not see the new realities as a stronger and more united NATO, a well-armed Ukraine, their loss of human talent and foreign capital, the impact of protracted sanctions, and eventually reduced energy revenues, or the end of Putin’s regime. The biggest reality of all is the fact that Russia’s military cannot cash the checks that Putin is writing, his ambitions outstrip the capabilities of his army. Overreaching is a classic fault of bad strategy noted by John Lewis Gaddis.   

The Russians insist that they will not even come to the table without an agreement that the annexations of the four oblasts be recognized as a precondition for talks. Zelensky has given a speech with a ten-point plan that was more about principles and demands in response to Washington’s subtle message than clear positions. He wants Russian troops to pull out of all the oblasts, and he claims to want Crimea back as well. 

No one appears to be ready for a deal, or perhaps they are just posturing before sitting down. But there is no proposal on offer that provides a framework for diplomacy. My own starting point is laid out in the table below. The first column reflects the major contested elements that would comprise the ultimate agreement. These include political, economic, and military alignments, reparations and reconstruction costs, and security guarantees. Starting points for the parties to the treaty are listed in the columns. Since the war and its costs are shared beyond just the combatants, I have included a column for international parties to the negotiation. 

Economic and Security Alignments. The key element of the proposed starting point is a tradeoff in Ukraine’s alignment with the West. Economically and politically, Ukraine would continue its transformation for accession into the European Union. In security and military terms, however, Kyiv would accept a neutral position with security guarantees from a coalition of willing countries. NATO forces would not be positioned inside Ukraine, and in return Russian forces would not be in Belarus either. Zelensky has previously offered this posture, but that was early in the conflict.

Territorial Control. Several key sticking points would complicate negotiations. In my proposals, the four occupied oblasts are returned to Ukraine’s control. Moscow would object to this, just as much as Ukraine would to the proposed recognition of Russian control of Crimea. Most observers believe efforts to retake Crimea by force would be bloody and arduous. This is doubly true if a substantial portion of Ukraine’s growing combat power is depleted in the upcoming campaign to free the annexed oblasts. But officials in Kyiv are more upbeat about their chances of reclaiming the peninsula.

Table 1: Provisional Negotiated Settlement  

Ukraine

International Community

Russia

Economic Alignment

EU member

Incorporates Kyiv into EU expeditiously

Security Alignment

Neutral, and no NATO troops. 

Only defense attaches in embassies

No Russian troops in Belarus

Reparations

Donor, EU, and Ukrainian funded

Reconstruction

International donors

Territory

Retains sovereignty of 4 occupied oblasts

Recognition of Russian control of Crimea

Retains Crimea

Justice/Criminal

Ukraine retains option of referrals to International Criminal Court

UN Human Rights Commission assessment

Russian Citizens

Ukraine pledges to preserve political rights and access to all media for Russian residents

Russian speakers retain rights to language, culture, and access to Russia TV/radio

Crimean Access

Ukraine retains rights over water

Russia agrees to allow access to Sea of Asov

Black Sea Security

Establishment of a UN Maritime Observation Group

Refugees and Deportees

Ukraine returns all Russian prisoners

Red Cross supervision and UNHR support

Russia returns all prisoners, deportees including children

Security Guarantees for Kyiv

Coalition of willing states agree to protect Ukrainian sovereignty 

Economic Sanctions

EU and US modulate Russian energy imports to enforce the agreement

Reconstruction and Reparations. This proposal does little in terms of holding Russia accountable for reparations. The costs of rebuilding the country’s battered infrastructure range from $350 to $800 billion. The World Bank’s most recent estimate is almost $350 billion. Resources for this reconstruction challenge will be hard to find, even assuming that the Ukrainian economy rebounds at all, much less than to its former level. That will be hard to achieve if Russia occupies a swath of areas critical to Ukraine’s manufacturing, mining, and agricultural centers. 

Rebuilding Ukraine is going to require resources. A costly modern-day recovery effort, a Marshall plan for Ukraine, will be needed to ensure that Ukraine recovers and has a chance at the peace and prosperity it has earned defending itself from unprovoked aggression. Western capitals could transfer all of Russia’s frozen foreign-held hard currency reserves to a judicially controlled grand master for claims by Ukraine and other states for the costs of rebuilding Ukraine and compensating victims. This would signal to Moscow that every building and power transformer destroyed will be rebuilt and Putin will foot the bill. This initial proposal was to have a European court or the International Criminal Court hold those funds, and Ukraine would be the principal injured party able to make claims to the court. A team from the Atlantic Council led by Steve Hadley, the widely respected former US national security advisor, has proposed that the funds (just over $300 billion) be seized and given to Ukraine’s government. In the proposal herein, reparations are presented as a cost that Ukraine will have to bear, aided by the contributions of the international community. 

Prisoner exchanges have been ongoing, but the return of kidnapped Ukrainians and accountability for those missing could be problematic in negotiations. Accounting for a large number of missing children is also going to be difficult for Ukrainian political leaders to resolve.

Security Guarantees. Ukraine has articulated its desire for clear security guarantees, and numerous countries have expressed an interest in participating in some coalition of the willing. Ukraine’s foreign minister has unwisely asked once again for immediate accession to NATO, calling past delays from Brussels a “strategic mistake.” In the proposed initial framework, neutrality for Ukraine is proposed to satisfy Moscow’s interest. But either sanctions or other seized assets might be held as a bond to secure Russia’s good behavior.

This is not a complete agreement, the elements are depicted as merely the starting point for the parties to begin to negotiate. It is not presumed to satisfy all parties. Nor does it truly resolve the larger question of Russia’s relationship with the West. Moscow’s schizophrenic and imperial delusions will not be permanently resolved by this agreement, and its sense of grievance against the democracies is only going to be enflamed by the evident hollowness of Russia’s military might and the diminished economic status Putin has created for his people.

Post-War Relationships. As several experts have noted, Russia is not going away, it will remain a persistent power and probably remain a persistent source of instability to Europe. The character of this conflict and its termination is going to influence Europe for the remainder of this decade. It behooves us to not just think in the short term or delude ourselves that Washington or the capitals of our NATO allies do not have a dog in this fight and the resolution of the conflict. One suspects that elites in Berlin and Paris want to reflexively return to some version of the pre-war status quo, and return to economic intercourse, especially Russian energy imports. Somehow the atrocities in Bucha, the attacks on hospitals and nuclear facilities, the rape and sexual violence, the kidnapped children whisked away, and the unchecked predation of Moscow’s Wagner Group mercenaries on European soil are quickly whitewashed. The West is going to have to construct a cohesive approach towards Russia after the war, and a united position today may accelerate the cessation of the war if Moscow understood this. 

It is difficult to think that some meaningful and just treaty can be hammered out with Putin anytime soon. Putin seems intent on doubling down, weaponizing the winter cold, and eliminating Ukraine’s electricity grid. He has pinned his latest false hope on the long disproven notion of “wonder weapons” against a society. Ukraine’s recent successes make it clear that it can still achieve more on the battlefield. It will be costly in human lives, but Kyiv is likely to continue to make progress as long as it has the tools. It is likely to make more progress next year, although it is doubtful that it can reclaim everything. As Mick Ryan has noted, retaking Crimea would prove highly challenging and may incur costs that Zelensky’s foreign supporters cannot cover.

So the war will continue on, as it did in 1914. But that does not mean that diplomatic exchanges cannot occur or that the attendant risks to the region should not be carefully managed.

Conclusion

Strategic decisions about war, including termination of hostilities, are undeniably complex. Prof. Dan Reiter, from the University of Virginia, identified a key condition for ending conflict in his book How Wars End. The critical condition is the confidence level of the engaged belligerents that the opposing adversary would honor a finalized agreement. But Russia’s track record with accords like Helsinki, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces accord, Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, and Minsk agreements is spotty. They are consistently twisted or violated. They are a means to an end; that objective is never about moving forward toward resolution and compromise. 

Most wars do come to a conclusion, and usually with some sort of negotiated political agreement. But Fred Ikle’s book on war termination, Every War Must End, was only partially right. Many wars are also protracted tests of endurance. History is replete with examples like the Hundred Years’ War and the Thirty Years’ War. Even the 20th century’s devasting pair of wars can be conceived of as a singular conflict of four decades duration in Europe. This war will end too, someday. Putin acts as if the geopolitical costs of his incompetence are inconsequential for Russia. He can spin the humiliating performance of the Russian troops in his domestic propaganda, but Putin knows better than anyone else the answer to the question “Is Russia losing?” As Sir Lawrence Freedman concluded in November, Putin knows that the war was lost long ago. Yet, he’s reluctant to choose a path out, afraid to find out what is behind the curtain.

Some think that greater efforts at a diplomatic resolution are naïve or simply dismissed reflexively. Negotiated endings to human conflict are the norm but can ultimately only be pursued only when each side believes that it can gain and lock in more at the table than it can on the ground. Neither side is there right now. Putin has dug a deep hole and accelerated every trend Russian hawks feared, particularly a stronger and more cohesive NATO closer to its borders. Still, the prospects for peace are extremely slim, unless one is willing to accept peace on Putin’s terms.

That is not to say that there is no hope for securing a suitable peace, or that it’s not worth trying for. Peace cannot be established or sustained without a broader conception of the regional order. I agree with Freedman that “It does no harm to start thinking about a post-war security order” but not if it is built on wishful thinking or wildly imaginative conceptions of a modern-day Concert of Europe. The best way to gain an enduring peace is to ensure that Putin understands that continuing this war will generate great political and economic losses that are as bad as the staggering defeats he has gained in the military domain. Then he will be pushed aside or forced to make a deal. At this point, we are all spectators on Monty Hall’s show wondering which choice the contestant will make. We should help clarify for Putin and his supporters that there is no prize or better deal forthcoming, no matter how barbaric his tactics are.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a non-partisan organization that seeks to publish well-argued, policy-oriented articles on American foreign policy and national security priorities. 

Image: President of Russia

2. What are Bradley Fighting Vehicles? U.S. kit Ukraine has "high hopes" for

What are Bradley Fighting Vehicles? U.S. kit Ukraine has "high hopes" for

Ukraine Believes These Latest Vehicles Can Win Them the War ​

Newsweek · by Ellie Cook · January 5, 2023

President Joe Biden confirmed during a visit to Hebron, Kentucky, that the U.S. was considering sending Bradley Fighting Vehicles to Ukraine, after he was asked whether it was a possibility.

Answering with a simple "yes," Biden did not offer any further information on a possible timescale nor on how many of the armored vehicles could be supplied to Ukrainian forces.

The U.S. Army has been using Bradleys for decades, and the White House was mulling sending Kyiv the combat vehicle ahead of the new year, Bloomberg reported on December 29.

At the time, anonymous sources said a decision was still unconfirmed.

A Bradley Fighting Vehicle is pictured in northeastern Syria in April 2022. The U.S. is considering sending Bradleys to Ukraine, President Joe Biden said on Wednesday. Delil Souleiman/AFP via Getty Images

Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine's head of military intelligence, said in an interview with ABC News that Kyiv was "waiting for" the Bradleys to be sent.

He was then quoted in a press release published by the Ukrainian government as saying that the delivery of the armored vehicles would "significantly improve the combat ability of our units" and he had "high hopes" for them.

Switching from English to Ukrainian in the interview to appeal to U.S. citizens, he said it "will not take too long now, and every taxpayer in the U.S. will be able to see where every cent went. We will change this world together."

On Wednesday, the French government announced it would be sending armored combat vehicles to Ukraine.

President Emmanuel Macron's office said France would supply Kyiv with AMX-10 RC light armored fighting vehicles, with one official saying it would be the "first time that Western-made armored vehicles are being delivered in support of the Ukrainian army."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked the Élysée Palace following a phone call with Macron, writing on Twitter that he was grateful "for the decision to transfer light tanks and Bastion APCs to Ukraine, as well as for intensifying work with partners in the same direction."

Retd. Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, who has commanded U.K. and NATO chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense (CBRN) forces, told Newsweek sending armored vehicles like Bradleys "would certainly help" the Ukrainians, notably in Crimea.

He suggested it could be a move that escalates the conflict, but argued Russia's scope for further escalation was limited.

What are Bradley Fighting Vehicles?

Bradley Fighting Vehicles are capable of carrying several military personnel and are equipped with a powerful gun.

However, they are smaller than the Abrams tanks the U.S. has so far declined to send to Ukraine.

Bradleys are hailed as an "integral part of the U.S. Army's Armored Brigade Combat Team" by BAE Systems, which produces the armored vehicles.

According to the manufacturers, Bradleys possess "outstanding survivability, mobility and lethality."

Former White House defense analyst Mark Cancian told Bloomberg in December that Bradleys "would provide a major increase in ground combat capability because it is, in effect, a light tank."

He argued that the U.S. had enough Bradleys to be able to supply Ukraine without any issues, noting that some vehicles would be older and require upgrades.

Bradleys would nonetheless be an asset to the Ukrainians, boasting 25 mm guns and TOW anti-tank missiles, he continued.

On December 21, the Department of Defense announced that the U.S. would send a further $1.85 billion to Ukraine in an aid package including a Patriot air defense system and munitions.

Newsweek · by Ellie Cook · January 5, 2023

3. ‘Spies and Lies’: Peeling Back the Curtain on China’s Covert Ops

Conclusion:

Western governments are still waking up to China’s influence operations and have a long way to go as they develop responses. Right now, I’m especially concerned about the situation in strategically significant countries in the Indo-Pacific. Australia is far better protected against political interference than it was five years ago, but we can’t say the same about Pacific Island nations or many states in Southeast Asia.

‘Spies and Lies’: Peeling Back the Curtain on China’s Covert Ops

Insights from Alex Joske.

thediplomat.com · by Mercy A. Kuo · January 5, 2023

Advertisement

The Diplomat author Mercy Kuo regularly engages subject-matter experts, policy practitioners, and strategic thinkers across the globe for their diverse insights into U.S. Asia policy. This conversation with Alex Joske ̶ author of “Spies and Lies: How China’s Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World” (Hardie Grant Books 2022) and a former senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute – is the 349th in “The Trans-Pacific View Insight Series.”

Identify the key components of China’s security system and the roles of the Social Investigation Bureau and united front work.

The Chinese Communist Party oversees the world’s largest security apparatus. If we’re just talking about intelligence agencies, then that includes three separate military intelligence systems and the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of State Security on the civilian side. Other organs such as the United Front Work Department, Taiwan Affairs Office, and International Liaison Department also engage in activities that cross into the realm of covert and clandestine operations.

Among these agencies, the Ministry of State Security’s Social Investigation Bureau has been the focus of my research. It’s been behind some of the MSS’s most notorious operations, such as the case of Katrina Leung (an FBI asset who actually worked for the MSS) and has a focus on elite influence operations. Part of its success is down to the way it sits atop united front networks. The United Front Work Department and other organs build networks of CCP-aligned figures and organizations, and the MSS Social Investigation Bureau often recruits intelligence assets from within those networks. This integration of united front work and intelligence operations traces right back to the Chinese Civil War.

China Reform Forum is a think tank in Beijing that presents itself as a reform-minded institution close to China’s leadership. I found that, since its founding, China Reform Forum has actually been run by the MSS Social Investigation Bureau. It’s a platform for intelligence and influence operations against foreign countries, particularly the United States.

Numerous MSS officers have held roles as leaders and scholars affiliated with China Reform Forum, which they used with great success to covertly engage with foreign scholars, diplomats, politicians, and business figures. Especially in the early 2000s, China Reform Forum stood out to many of its interlocutors as unusually well-connected and influential within China. This helped establish China Reform Forum as the go-to think tank in Beijing, and many of its undercover MSS officers were even treated by the U.S. embassy as sources and quoted in dozens of cables.

In what ways have China’s operations “fooled the world”?

Advertisement

The core thrust of these MSS influence operations was an effort to persuade outsiders that China would rise peacefully and inevitably undergo liberal reforms. The MSS’s China Reform Forum was the origin of the “theory of China’s peaceful rise,” which was articulated by Zheng Bijian, a senior propaganda official who served as China Reform Forum’s figurehead. At the same time, the undercover MSS officers often claimed that China would “inevitably” democratize and presented themselves as genuine reformists who would help foreign visitors set up meetings with Chinese leaders and other “reformist” thinkers inside the Party.

This operation was clearly deceptive. The MSS is not in the business of helping foreigners encourage democracy and reform in China. The same officers behind China Reform Forum were also running clandestine assets in the United States and attempting to blackmail or corrupt some of the foreign scholars they met.

Nonetheless, “peaceful rise” managed to effectively capture and reinforce the aspirations many held for China’s future. Some scholars and policymakers still argue that China genuinely aimed to pursue “peaceful rise” before changing its policy as Xi Jinping came to power. The fact that the U.S. government’s policy of encouraging China to become a “responsible stakeholder” in the international order was introduced, in part, as a response to interactions with China Reform Forum speaks to the success of this MSS effort.

With Xi Jinping’s absolute control over the CCP, examine how Xi will likely use the Chinese government apparatus to achieve the party’s strategic objectives.

Xi certainly has extensive control over the party but it’s difficult to know where the limits of that control are. Intelligence and security agencies operate in secret, which can make them difficult to control, and, probably in reaction to this, Xi has heavily purged them over the past decade. Having promoted the previous minister of state security and installed a trusted colleague, Chen Yixin, at the helm of the MSS, Xi now seems to be placing more trust and political backing in these spies.

This should give the MSS more ability to coordinate with and enlist the services of the full breadth of China’s party-state in intelligence operations – meaning better access to cover and resources. If the party’s leadership feels an increasing sense of urgency in achieving its international objectives, for example in winning over politicians in the Pacific Islands, this would manifest as more aggressive, numerous, and potentially violent MSS operations under a higher appetite for risk.

Evaluate the strengths and vulnerabilities of Western government and industry responses to China’s influence operations.

Western governments are still waking up to China’s influence operations and have a long way to go as they develop responses. Right now, I’m especially concerned about the situation in strategically significant countries in the Indo-Pacific. Australia is far better protected against political interference than it was five years ago, but we can’t say the same about Pacific Island nations or many states in Southeast Asia.

Mercy A. Kuo

Mercy Kuo is Executive Vice President at Pamir Consulting.

VIEW PROFILE

thediplomat.com · by Mercy A. Kuo · January 5, 2023

4. U.S., Allies Say Armored Vehicles Will Give Ukraine’s Troops an Edge

U.S., Allies Say Armored Vehicles Will Give Ukraine’s Troops an Edge

Bradley Fighting Vehicles, German Marders, French AMX-10 will protect Ukrainian fighters speeding around the battlefield

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-allies-say-armored-vehicles-will-give-ukraines-troops-an-edge-11672958229?mod=hp_lead_pos5

By Gordon LuboldFollow

 in Washington and Daniel MichaelsFollow

 in Brussels

Updated Jan. 5, 2023 6:19 pm ET

The U.S., France and Germany have said they will send dozens of armored infantry vehicles to Ukraine, a significant deployment of Western support at a critical juncture in its war against invading Russian forces.

President Biden said Thursday that the U.S. would provide Bradley Fighting Vehicles, a tracked vehicle that resembles a tank but with a smaller gun, fulfilling months of requests from Kyiv. The Bradleys are part of a new military-aid package—which officials said they expected to outline formally Friday—that would include other munitions, vehicles and weaponry. 

Germany, meanwhile, said it would send Marder infantry vehicles, and France said it would send AMX-10 wheeled armored vehicles.

The vehicles will give Ukraine a new armed and armored capability, enabling its forces to roll mechanized infantry troops into the fight and giving them a higher level of maneuverability and firepower.

NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP

WSJ Politics & Policy

Scoops, analysis and insights driving Washington from the WSJ's D.C. bureau.

Preview

Subscribe

“It will provide a significant boost to Ukraine’s already impressive armored capabilities and we’re confident that it will aid them on the battlefield,” said Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, adding that it will be particularly effective against Russian tanks. “It’s not a tank but a tank-killer,” he said.

Gen. Ryder declined to give details on the types of Bradleys that would be provided, how long it would take to furnish them or the time that would be needed to train Ukrainians on the vehicles. 

Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz decided to send the Marder vehicles as well as one battery of the Patriot missile-defense system following a conversation Thursday with Mr. Biden, a German government spokesman said. 

Ukraine needs an array of equipment to reconstitute after heavy losses in recent months and to arm itself for coming offensives.

The West’s decision to provide the vehicles isn’t necessarily a major inflection point, but another turn of security assistance with more and better equipment, said Michael Kofman, the research director for Russian studies at CNA, a think tank.

“We are more than 10 months into the war now and it’s clear that the West is searching for what additional capabilities can be provided to Ukraine to help it achieve victory,” he said. “As the war drags on, this search will entail digging into the repertoire of capabilities that are available and nations changing policy over time on those weapons or systems that they were previously withholding.”

The vehicles offer a number of advantages to Ukrainian forces. As with wheeled Australian Bushmasters and Turkish Kirpi mine-resistant armored personnel vehicles that have already been sent, they can transport infantry near front lines in relative safety, giving Ukrainian troops more mobility and impunity than they otherwise would have. If the U.S. provides the vehicles in large numbers, that could give Ukraine a serious advantage. 

American Armor

Bradley fighting vehicle can speed troops to the frontlines

Max speed:

Max firing range:

Weight:

In service:

Origin:

38 mph

4.2 miles

22.6 tons

1981

U.S.

Can carry up to 10 personnel

depending on model

Requires a crew of 3

Main gun

25mm M242 Bushmaster chain gun

BGM-71 TOW anti-tank

guided missile launcher

Driver’s vision port

8.4 ft

10.5 ft

21.1 ft

Note: Illustration is an M2A4 model.

Sources: United States Army Acquisition Support Center, Military Today

Adrienne Tong/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Wheeled vehicles such as the AMX-10 can move faster than tracked vehicles, giving Ukrainian forces vital speed against slow-moving Russian forces. Even tracked Bradleys, which have an official top speed of around 35 mph, can move quickly, with soldiers reporting having driven them above 50 mph.

Wheeled vehicles generally must stay on roads or firm ground, unlike tracked vehicles, which can drive through mud, sand and other unstable types of terrain. But wheeled vehicles normally get better gas mileage, giving them greater autonomy in operations. They also ordinarily require less maintenance than tracked vehicles.

While AMX-10s and Bradleys don’t have cannons as tanks do, they carry guns that can be lethal. The AMX-10 is referred to as a “tank killer” because it fires shells almost as large as those of a tank that can pierce tank armor. Bradleys carry TOW missiles that can destroy most tanks.

Both vehicles have better passive and active protection, targeting equipment, and secondary guns than almost any Russian tank or comparable vehicle.

France has committed to giving Ukraine fast AMX-10s.

PHOTO: EMMANUEL DUNAND/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Poland gave Ukraine more than 240 modernized Soviet-type tanks early in the war. Now, Poland is considering a request from Ukraine to donate its German-made Leopard main battle tanks, a senior Polish diplomat said. 

“They are for real considering giving anything just to help Ukraine,” said a Czech official closely involved in helping ship western arms into Ukraine, who confirmed that request.

The Leopards are much more heavily armored, and more protected against antitank weapons, than the vehicles France, Germany, and the U.S. have so far offered. 

Poland has more than 240 Leopard tanks, enough for two tank brigades, and plans to eventually unload all of them, said Slawomir Debski, director of the Polish Institute of International Affairs, a Warsaw think tank close to the Polish government. The pace at which it could give those to Ukraine depends on how quickly Poland receives replacement tanks it has ordered from manufacturers in South Korea and the U.S., he said. Berlin would also need to approve.

“It’s a question of not if, but when,” said Mr. Debski, adding that the Western reluctance to provide tanks was finally diminishing after months of diplomatic pressure. “It’s exactly something Poland has argued for, for many months.”

Bojan Pancevski and Drew Hinshaw contributed to this article.

Write to Gordon Lubold at gordon.lubold@wsj.com and Daniel Michaels at Dan.Michaels@wsj.com

Appeared in the January 6, 2023, print edition as 'Armored Vehicles Will Give Ukraine an Edge, the West Says'.

5. New Publication: Grey Zone Ethics: A Practitioners Guide to Making Ethically Difficult Decisions

Thu, 01/05/2023 - 6:34pm

• https://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/new-publication-grey-zone-ethics-practitioners-guide-making-ethically-difficult-decisions

Grey Zone Ethics: A Practitioners Guide to Making Ethically Difficult Decisions

A new book from Small Wars Journal contributor, Dan Pace. It is a followup to his journal article "A House Divided: A Look at SOF Values"

The special operations community has an ethics problem. While forward, operators frequently encounter lose / lose situations that the community isn't preparing them to solve.  This increases the risk of mission failure and damage to the reputation of the SOCOM community as a whole.  In part, the problem stems from the difficulty of the situations themselves, but the problem is aggravated by the community's treatment of ethics training as an individual task, when it isn’t.  Ethics training is a collective task, and it requires as much training as any other special operations skill set.  Grey Zone Ethics provides an accessible and realistic solution to this problem. 

6. Ukraine: WAR BULLETIN January 5, 5.00 pm EST

This is also posted on the Small Wars Journal here: https://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/ukraine-war-bulletin-january-5-500-pm-est

Embassy of Ukraine in the USA

WAR BULLETIN

January 5, 5.00 pm EST

During the day, Russia carried out 8 airstrikes and carried out more than 10 attacks from MLRS systems.

The main efforts of Russian occupiers are focused on attempts to completely capture the Donetsk region within the administrative border. They are conducting offensive operations in the Bakhmut and Lyman directions.

Russia is unsuccessfully trying to improve the tactical position in the Kupyansk and Avdiivka directions. On Novopavlivka, Zaporizhzhya and Kherson - it is being defended.

The war will be over when Russian soldiers either leave or we drive them out - address by the President of Ukraine

Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine had a phone call with U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan

WAR ROOM

General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

The total combat losses of the Russian forces from 24.02.2022 to 05.01.2023:

personnel ‒ about 109720 (+810) killed,

tanks ‒ 3041 (+3),

APV ‒ 6108 (+2),

artillery systems – 2051 (+12),

MLRS – 426 (+2),

Anti-aircraft warfare systems ‒ 215,

aircraft – 284 (+1),

helicopters – 271 (+1),

UAV operational-tactical level – 1844 (+2),

cruise missiles ‒ 723,

warships / boats ‒ 16,

vehicles and fuel tankers – 4759 (+14),

special equipment ‒ 182 (+1).

https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid04CxJGvzUtjjxeodfBD2G4umsnVJafmEDZ6ZKm9WGdi3SkZVTKGnYkTGFTyAGofFol

During the day, the enemy carried out 8 airstrikes and carried out more than 10 attacks from MLRS systems.

The threat of enemy air and missile strikes on critical infrastructure objects remains throughout the territory of Ukraine.

The main efforts of the russian occupiers are focused on attempts to completely capture the Donetsk region within the administrative border. They are conducting offensive operations in the Bakhmut and Lyman directions.

The enemy is unsuccessfully trying to improve the tactical position in the Kupyansk and Avdiivka directions. On Novopavlivka, Zaporizhzhya and Kherson - it is being defended.

There are no significant changes on the Volyn, Polisiya, Siverskyi and Slobozhanskyi directions. There were no signs of the formation of enemy offensive groups. At the same time, the invaders are shelling the positions of our troops and civilian objects along the entire contact line.

In the direction of Slobozhanskyi, the districts of Staritsa, Ohirtsevo, Vovchansk, Ustinivka, and Figolivka of Kharkiv region were damaged by fire.

In the Kupyansk direction, Dvorichna, Vilshana, Kupyansk, Kislivka, Kotlyarivka, Krokhmalne and Berestovka in the Kharkiv region and Novoselivske and Stelmakhivka in the Luhansk region came under the influence of fire.

On the Lyman direction, enemy shelling was recorded in Makiivka, Ploschanka, Kuzmyny and Dibrov, Luhansk region.

In the direction of Bakhmut, the occupiers shelled Spirne, Berestov, Belogorivka, Vesele, Soledar, Krasna Gora, Bakhmut, Bila Gora, Kurdyumivka, Diliivka, Severnye, Mayorsk and New York in Donetsk region.

Avdiivka, Nevelske, Maryinka and Novomykhailivka of the Donetsk region were damaged by fire in the Avdiivka region.

In the direction of Novopavlivsk, the enemy shelled Mykilske, Vugledar and Prechistivka in Donetsk region.

In the Zaporozhye direction, the areas of Zelene Pole and Novopil settlements of the Donetsk region came under enemy artillery fire; Gulyaipole, Zaliznychne, Charivne, Shcherbaki and Stepove in Zaporizhzhia and Nikopol in the Dnipropetrovsk region.

In the Kherson direction, the enemy does not stop terrorizing the civilian population. Civil infrastructure and civilians in Chornobayivka and Kherson were damaged by the artillery shelling.

The military-political leadership of the russian federation is taking measures to prevent the mass departure of men of conscription age abroad before the next wave of mobilization, which is expected in January of this year. A complete ban on crossing the state border for men of conscription age is not excluded.

Forced passporting of the population in the temporarily occupied and occupied territories of Luhansk region continues. Thus, banking institutions in the occupied region require passports of the russian federation to issue payment cards.

During the day, the Ukrainian aviation made 15 strikes on enemy concentration areas, as well as 3 strikes on the positions of its anti-aircraft missile systems.

At the same time, our defenders shot down an enemy Su-25 aircraft and a Mi-8 helicopter.

Units of missile troops and artillery of the Defense Forces of Ukraine carried out fire damage to the area where the occupiers' manpower and military equipment were concentrated.

https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0cbuyRqCwVVzRZ7s8CKeiZMmehGFvGsnG29rzzzACBhkJHarwW1Y5ciRMgrhBZZdLl

Defense Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine

Kyrylo Budanov: “russia Is Not Military Threat to the World Anymore”

Attacks on russian territory are likely to continue. This was said by Major General Kyrylo Budanov, chief of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, in an interview with TV station АВС News, without specifying whether Ukraine would be behind the strikes.

According to the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, attacks inside of russia will continue and will move further and further into the territory. Regarding the responsibility of Ukraine in these strikes, he will be able to comment after the end of the war.

Kyrylo Budanov also expressed hope that Ukraine would receive American Bradley armoured fighting vehicles in the near future.

“We are waiting for them. We really hope for them. This will significantly improve the combat capability of our units,” he said.

According to the Chief of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, the “hottest” fights for the liberation of Ukraine will start in March.

"Our goal, and we will achieve it, is returning to the borders of 1991, like Ukraine is recognized by all subjects of international law," said Kyrylo Budanov.

As for the future of russia, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence said there are several scenarios in play, but the message is clear: “You should not be afraid of the transformation of russia. It will only benefit the whole world. russia is not a military threat to the world anymore, just a tall tale.”

According to Kyrylo Budanov, the only issue remaining is russia’s nuclear arsenal and the uncontrollable regime that will lead “the whole world to realize the necessity of russia’s denuclearization or at least an international overseeing of its nuclear arsenal.”

https://gur.gov.ua/en/content/rosiia-bilshe-ne-stanovyt-viiskovoi-zahrozy-svitu.html

russia’s Private Military Companies Recruits Political Prisoners from Chechnia

According to Ukraine’s military intelligence data, russian private military company “Wagner Group” has begun to recruit convicts from the correctional institutions of the Chechen Republic of the russian federation. Most of the prisoners were convicted for political reasons.

The process of recruiting prisoners to the ranks of “Wagner Group” PMC is ongoing in the colony settlement No. 3 in the town of Arhun, as well as in the correctional facility No. 2 of the village of Chernokozovo.

More than 50 convicts have already been "mobilised" from both colonies, most of whom were convicted on fabricated cases.

Colony employees are already threatened with punishment for disclosing this information.

https://gur.gov.ua/en/content/rosiiski-pryvatni-viiskovi-kompanii-rekrutuiut-politychnykh-v-iazniv-iz-chechni.html

POLICY

President of Ukraine

The war will be over when Russian soldiers either leave or we drive them out - address by the President of Ukraine

I wish you health, dear Ukrainians!

Today was another active diplomatic day - four more leaders of partner states were fully informed about Ukraine's defense needs and the nearest plans of the terrorist state.

Russia will not be able to conceal in silence its preparations for a new wave of aggression against Ukraine and the whole of Europe. The world will know in all details - how and when the aggressor is preparing a new escalation in this war. And every new mobilization step of Russia will be known to the world even before Russia makes it. We will ensure this.

And we strengthen the defense of Ukraine every day.

I always discuss two things with all leaders - more defense support for our state, that is, more weapons for our army, and more protection for all Ukrainians - protection on the ground, in the sky and at sea.

My conversation with Prime Minister of Croatia Plenković today was not only meaningful, as always, but also quite inspiring.

I heard the full support for our state, as well as the readiness of Croatia to be a leader in the implementation of those steps that guarantee the return of security elements to Ukraine and Europe in general. Croatia is ready to be a leader in those efforts that are necessary to clear our land from Russian mines and unexploded shells. This is one of the vital tasks for our country and all Europeans.

No part of Europe should be - and will not be - contaminated with mines, no matter how hard Russia tries to fill our land with its instruments of death.

My today's conversation with the President of Latvia was also devoted to the path that our entire continent must take to ensure truly reliable security after the defeat of Russian aggression. We discussed the points of the Ukrainian Peace Formula - security, restoration of our territorial integrity and full force of the UN Charter, as well as the fair responsibility of Russia and all its murderers for the terror against Ukrainians.

I would also like to mention the conversation with President of Türkiye Erdoğan - it concerned many elements of security in our Black Sea region.

Of course, we talked about the necessary steps to ensure food security and what needs to be done for nuclear safety and prevention of any radiation incidents, the threat of which Russia has made, unfortunately, quite real.

We also talked about the dynamics of the situation in our region - about the fact that the masters of Russia are now in a rather desperate situation due to the defeats of the occupiers at the front and are ready for various manipulations.

I am grateful to President Erdoğan for supporting our state and the necessity of fair restoration of the security of Ukraine and the whole of Europe based on the restoration of our territorial integrity.

My conversation with Prime Minister of Spain Sánchez was very meaningful and timely. On the eve of the new meeting in the Ramstein format, it is very important for each of our partners to know 100% the real situation on the frontline and what our Defense Forces are ready for. I thank Mr. Prime Minister Sánchez and all Spaniards for their unwavering support of our commitment to defend freedom.

And today I would like to express separate gratitude to President Biden and Chancellor Scholz for the decision to strengthen our defense, a very important decision. We will have another Patriot battery and powerful armored vehicles - this is truly a great victory for our country. All details and terms will be announced tomorrow - after my conversation with Mr. Chancellor.

Today, I also held a meeting of the Staff devoted primarily to the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and all our defense and security forces. We understand that we must use the nearest time - January and the beginning of February - to be ready for any attempts of terrorists to use new mobilization resources of Russia.

Today, I would like to commend our fighters of the 54th separate mechanized brigade who have been successfully holding positions in the Bakhmut direction for many months. And also - the fighters of the 35th marine brigade for the gradual, step by step liberation of our territories in the Donetsk direction. Thank you, warriors!

I am grateful to each and everyone who provides us with the much needed resilience and progress in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions!

And one more thing I want to remind the citizens of Russia today.

On November 15, the Ukrainian Peace Formula was presented. One of its points provides for the withdrawal of Russian occupation troops from the territory of our country. This is a guaranteed and reliable way to cease fire, stop casualties and war in general.

As of the morning of the same day, the number of Russian soldiers killed was 82,000.

On December 12, Russia received an offer to begin implementation of the Peace Formula with the withdrawal of occupation troops just on Christmas Day.

As of that day already, the number of Russian soldiers killed was almost 95,000.

Apparently both of our proposals have not been heard by the leaders of your country... In the place where they are, apparently, it is too deep to hear.

As of today, you have already lost almost 110,000 of your soldiers killed in this war.

Those who continued the terror against our country and sent all those people of yours to the slaughter, rejecting our offers to stop the Russian aggression, certainly do not value life and definitely do not seek peace.

Now they want to use Christmas as a cover to at least briefly stop the advance of our guys in Donbas and bring equipment, ammunition and mobilized men closer to our positions. What will this bring? Just another increase in the death toll.

Everyone in the world knows how the Kremlin uses respites at war to continue the war with renewed vigor. But to end the war faster, that is not what is needed at all. What is needed is the citizens of Russia who will find the courage to free themselves of their shameful fear of one man in the Kremlin, at least for 36 hours, at least at Christmas time.

Your fear of him destroys your country, which is also already deep... But not in a bunker.

To end the war is to end your state's aggression. Even when your missiles and drones are not hitting our cities, the terror in the occupied territories continues. You don't give Ukrainians any respite. People are tortured, electrocuted, raped. This continues every day while your soldiers are on our soil.

And the war will be over when your soldiers either leave or we drive them out.

So, let them take the toilet bowls - they'll need them on the road - and go back home. Behind our border of 1991.

I thank everyone who helps our people defend freedom!

I thank everyone who fights and works to defeat terrorists!

Glory to our strong people!

Glory to Ukraine!

https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/vijna-zakinchitsya-koli-rosijski-soldati-abo-pidut-abo-mi-yi-80249

We must prevent a scenario when the aggressor will leave millions of Ukrainians without electricity - Andriy Yermak at the international constituent meeting to support the restoration of Ukraine's energy sector

Pursuant to the instruction of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Head of the Presidential Office Andriy Yermak held a constituent meeting with international partners to support the restoration of the Ukrainian energy sector.

It was joined by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources Geoffrey Pyatt, representatives of the G7 countries, the European Union and its institutions, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the World Bank, the UNDP and USAID.

Ukraine is still facing extremely serious challenges, as Russia continues massive terrorist attacks on the Ukrainian energy system, their intensity is expected to increase, the Head of the Presidential Office emphasized.

"We have only one way out: to repel attacks by air defense forces, to strengthen the protection of energy facilities, and to restore what could not be saved as soon as possible. And here your help is really critical. We have to exclude a scenario when the aggressor will leave millions of people without electricity, water, heat, communication and other essential services for several weeks," said Andriy Yermak.

The Head of the Office of the President thanked all friends and partners for supporting Ukraine and providing assistance to the Ukrainian energy sector. At the same time, he emphasized that our state needs the faster delivery of equipment for the restoration of energy capacities.

"Please check what is in the reserves, what is not used now, what can be transferred to us as soon as possible. Let it not be absolutely new, but let it work," Andriy Yermak urged the partners.

He also emphasized the need to establish more efficient procurement mechanisms and reduce the duration of deliveries, synchronize the chain of order - financing and production.

Geoffrey Pyatt, who oversees the work to support the restoration of the Ukrainian energy system, on his part and on behalf of the participants of the meeting expressed support for Ukraine. He condemned Russia's attacks on Ukrainian critical infrastructure and civilian objects, particularly on New Year's Eve, and assured of further support.

"As President Biden said, we will resolutely do everything to ensure that Russia does not succeed in this war," he stressed and added that the Congress had passed a law providing for $1.1 billion to support the energy sector of Ukraine and Moldova.

According to him, the work is underway to transfer these funds as soon as possible and direct them to the repair of energy facilities destroyed as a result of the aggressor's attacks. It is about restoring the Ukrainian energy system in such a way that it is more sustainable, less dependent on fossil fuels and meets the EU standards.

For further effective work, the participants of the meeting agreed to maintain the dialogue on a regular basis.

https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/mayemo-ne-dopustiti-scenariyu-koli-agresor-zalishit-miljoni-80245

Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine had a phone call with U.S. President's Advisor Jake Sullivan

Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andriy Yermak had a phone call with U.S. President's National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

In the framework of the ongoing dialogue, Andriy Yermak informed his interlocutor on the current situation at the front and possible actions of the enemy in the coming months.

According to Andriy Yermak, it is very important that Ukraine's partners continue to provide effective support in ensuring the defense needs of Ukraine to adequately respond to future challenges.

Andriy Yermak also recalled the words of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy following his meeting with President Joseph Biden in Washington, D.C., on the importance of creating an effective air shield for Ukraine. After all, by destroying the energy system of our state with missiles and kamikaze drones, Russia seeks to use cold as a weapon of mass destruction against civilians. 

The interlocutors discussed further coordination in ensuring energy security of Ukraine.

Andriy Yermak expressed gratitude to the American side for understanding the situation and willingness to further support our country in the struggle for independence, freedom and democratic values.

https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/kerivnik-ofisu-prezidenta-ukrayini-proviv-telefonnu-rozmovu-80229

Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine

 Nearly 39 million tonnes over 10 months of war – volume of supplies of Ukrainian agricultural products to other countries

Nearly 39 million tonnes of grain, oilseeds and their products have been shipped by Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. The top three crops shipped during the 10 months of war are: corn – 15.6 million tonnes, wheat – 8.6 million tonnes, and sunflower oil – 3.3 million tonnes.

In the last month of 2022, 6.8 million tonnes of agricultural products were shipped. It is 900,000 tonnes more than in November. In general, December was marked by the expected decrease in rapeseed supplies. Instead, corn exports increased by 1.3 million tonnes, up to 3.3 million tonnes.

The volume of exported wheat in December remained unchanged and amounted to 1.6 million tonnes. Also, supplies of sunflower oil and soybeans remained almost unchanged. Sunflower oil was shipped in the amount of 468,000 tonnes, compared to 466,000 tonnes in November. Soybeans supplies totaled 387,000 tonnes in December against 385,000 tonnes in November. At the same time, the supply of sunflower seeds decreased by 65,000 tonnes, down to 312,000 tonnes.

A significant decrease was seen in the shipments of rapeseed: 237,000 tonnes in December against 412,000 tonnes in November and 777,000 tonnes in October. This phenomenon is seasonal and traditional for Ukraine.

The volume of barley shipments almost halved, with 179,000 tonnes exported in December.

The export volumes of vegetable oil meal had a slight decrease of 13,000 tonnes in December, down to 331,000 tonnes. The supplies of soybean oil increased by 4,000 tonnes, up to 20,000 tonnes.

The general pattern of December shipments in percentage terms is as follows: 48.32% – corn, 23.03% – wheat, 6.93% – sunflower oil, soybeans – 5.74%, sunflower seeds – 4.62%, vegetable oil meal – 4.9%, rapeseed – 3.51%, barley – 2.65%, soybean oil – 0.30%.

The total volume of shipments for 10 months by crop: 15.6 million tonnes – corn (39.96%); 8.6 million tonnes – wheat (21.98%); 3.3 million tonnes – sunflower oil (8.37%); 3 million tonnes – rapeseed (7.75%); 2.7 million tonnes – sunflower seeds (6.92%); 2.2 million tonnes – vegetable oil meal (5.8%); 1.7 million tonnes – barley (4.37%); 1.7 million tonnes – soybeans (4.48%), 188,000 tonnes – soybean oil (0.48%).

Information on the volume of shipments by type of goods and mode of transport is provided in accordance with the “Delivery Control” system.

Dashboard data in terms of shipment of agricultural crops by type and shipment logistics are updated twice a month.

https://www.kmu.gov.ua/en/news/maizhe-39-mln-tonn-za-10-misiatsiv-viiny-obsiahy-postavok-ukrainskoi-ahroproduktsii-v-inshi-krainy

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine

Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba: President @ZelenskyyUa has proposed a clear Peace Formula of ten steps. Russia has been ignoring it and instead shelling Kherson on Christmas Eve, launching mass missile and drone strikes on New Year. Their current “unilateral ceasefire” can not and should not be taken seriously. https://twitter.com/DmytroKuleba/status/1611076829577904128?s=20&t=fv_pINKwMd2dzwptZJfC_w

7. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JANUARY 5, 2023

Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-january-5-2023

Key Takeaways

• Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement that Russian forces will conduct a 36-hour ceasefire in observance of Russian Orthodox Christmas is likely an information operation intended to damage Ukraine’s reputation.
• Putin’s framing of the ceasefire on religious ground reinforces another Russian information operation that falsely frames Ukraine as suppressing religious groups and positions Putin as the true protector of the Christian faith.
• Putin has not changed his fundamental maximalist objectives in Ukraine.
• Wagner Financier Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed that prisoners who volunteered with the Wagner Group in Ukraine received pardons, likely in a bid to inflate his influence and political power, strengthen Wagner Group’s prisoner recruitment, and reassure Wagner Group criminals in uniform.
• Russian forces continued limited counterattacks to regain lost positions along the Svatove-Kreminna line, and Russian forces claimed that Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in the area.
• Ukrainian forces reportedly conducted a successful counterattack as Russian forces continued offensive operations around Bakhmut and west of Donetsk City.
• Russian forces continued to operate sabotage and reconnaissance groups on the Dnipro River and reinforce positions in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast.
• Russian milbloggers claimed recent Russian successes in Zaporizhia Oblast, likely to distract from the slow Russian offensive around Bakhmut that may be culminating.
• Mobilized Russian servicemembers likely continue to represent an outsized portion of Russian military casualties in Ukraine.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JANUARY 5, 2023

Jan 5, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

understandingwar.org

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 5, 2023

Karolina Hird, Riley Bailey, Grace Mappes, Layne Philipson, George Barros, and Frederick W. Kagan

January 5, 8pm ET

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

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement that Russian forces will conduct a 36-hour ceasefire between January 6 and January 7 in observance of Russian Orthodox Christmas is likely an information operation intended to damage Ukraine’s reputation. Putin instructed Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to initiate a ceasefire from 1200 January 6 to 2400 January 7 along the “entire line of contact between parties in Ukraine” and called on Ukraine to accept the ceasefire to allow “a large number of citizens of citizens professing Orthodoxy” to attend services on the day of Russian Orthodox Christmas.[1] Putin’s announcement was ostensibly in response to an appeal by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow (head of the Kremlin-controlled Russian Orthodox Church) for a temporary ceasefire in observance of Christmas Eve and the Day of the Nativity of Christ.[2] Ukrainian and Western officials, including US President Joe Biden, immediately highlighted the hypocrisy of the ceasefire announcement and emphasized that Russian forces continued striking Ukrainian military and civilian infrastructure on December 25—when many Orthodox Ukrainians celebrate Christmas—and New Year’s.[3]

Putin could have been seeking to secure a 36-hour pause for Russian troops to afford them the ability to rest, recoup, and reorient to relaunch offensive operations in critical sectors of the front. Such a pause would disproportionately benefit Russian troops and begin to deprive Ukraine of the initiative. Putin cannot reasonably expect Ukraine to meet the terms of this suddenly declared ceasefire and may have called for the ceasefire to frame Ukraine as unaccommodating and unwilling to take the necessary steps towards negotiations. This is an intentional information tactic that Russia has previously employed, as ISW has reported.[4] Ceasefires also take time to organize and implement. Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov notably said on December 14 that Russia has no plans for a ceasefire for Russian Orthodox Christmas, so Putin’s sudden January 5 announcement was surprising.[5] The date of Russian Orthodox Christmas in 2023, after all, has been known for centuries. Had Putin been serious about a religiously motivated ceasefire he had ample time to prepare for it. The announcement of a ceasefire within 24 hours of when it is meant to enter into force suggests that it was announced with the intention of framing Ukrainian forces who continue to fight throughout the timeframe of the ceasefire as unwilling to work towards peace and wanting to fight at all costs.

Putin’s framing of the ceasefire on religious grounds additionally reinforces another two-fold Russian information operation that frames Ukraine as suppressing religious groups and positions Putin as the true protector of the Christian faith. As ISW has previously observed, the Kremlin has weaponized discussions of Eastern Orthodox Christianity to accuse Kyiv of oppressing religious liberties in Ukraine.[6] Russian sources have recently picked up on raids carried out by the Ukrainian State Security Service (SBU) against Russian Orthodox churches and clergy members and Ukrainian sanctions against Kremlin-linked elements of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Moscow Patriarchate (UOC MP).[7] These measures are not efforts to suppress religious liberties in Ukraine but rather are aimed at explicitly pro-Kremlin elements of the Russian Orthodox Church that have materially, politically, and spiritually supported Russian aggression against Ukraine.[8] The invocation of a ceasefire on distinctly religious grounds in line with Russian Orthodox Christian tradition is a subcomponent of this information operation. Suddenly announcing a ceasefire with Ukraine that should have been negotiated well in advance in observance of Russian Orthodox Christmas will allow Russia to frame Ukraine as infringing on the right of believers to celebrate the holiday as hostilities will likely continue into January 6 and 7. This information operation can support the baseless Kremlin narrative that Ukraine was persecuting Orthodox Christians and Russian speakers, a narrative that Putin has repeatedly advanced as justification for his illegal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The ceasefire announcement positions Putin as the guarantor of Christian values and beliefs. Putin and other Russian officials have frequently framed the war in Ukraine as a religious war against “Satanic” and “fanatical” elements of Ukrainian society that seek to undermine traditional religious values and morality.[9] Putin’s proposed ceasefire supports false Russian information operations that Russia is fighting a holy war against an immoral Ukrainian society and its secular Western overseers. In actuality, Russian forces have suppressed religious freedom in occupied Ukrainian territory since 2014.[10]

The pro-war Russian milblogger information space responded to the ceasefire announcement with vitriolic discontent. Several prominent milbloggers emphasized that Russian soldiers do not want a ceasefire at all and remarked that it is a useless, defeatist ploy that is unlikely to succeed in the first place.[11] One milblogger who was previously embedded with Russian units in Bakhmut and attended the annexation ceremony at the Kremlin in September employed overtly genocidal, dehumanizing rhetoric in response to the ceasefire and stated that Russian soldiers do not want compromise: They “want to kill every person dressed in the uniform of the enemy army, regardless of gender and the circumstances that forced the subhuman [sic] to wear this uniform.”[12] This level of vitriol originating from milbloggers who are typically fairly aligned with Putin’s line on the war is noteworthy and undermines Putin’s ability to present Russia as the party that is willing to negotiate. Putin’s continued association with this milblogger community, especially those who frequently openly call for genocide, continues to demonstrate the fact that Putin has not decided to compromise his aims in Ukraine.

Putin reiterated his maximalist objectives in a telephone conversation with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on January 5. Putin emphasized that Moscow remains open to negotiations with Kyiv as long as such negotiations “take into account new territorial realities.”[13] Accounting for “territorial realities” in the context of negotiations means hammering Ukraine into making concessions that directly undermine its territorial sovereignty.[14] NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg also noted on January 5 that there are no indicators that the Kremlin’s ambitions have changed.[15]

The use of a ceasefire as an information operation, coupled with Putin’s continued propagation of maximalist goals in Ukraine, continues to indicate that Putin has no desire to actually negotiate with Ukraine. Additionally, Putin’s continued alignment with and decision to platform milbloggers who routinely use openly genocidal language and call for unrestrained hostilities offer clear indicators of his intentions along these lines. If and when Putin becomes serious about seeking compromises that Ukraine and the West could seriously contemplate accepting, he will have set conditions with the vocal and prominent nationalist community he is currently empowering and courting. He could threaten, marginalize, de-platform, co-opt, or cajole the pro-war milbloggers into accepting more limited objectives, but such activities would be apparent in the information space. As long as Putin continues to give air and prominence to such extremists, however, it will remain clear that he does not intend to abandon his maximalist aims.

Wagner Financier Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed that prisoners who volunteered with the Wagner Group in Ukraine received pardons, likely in a bid to inflate his influence and political power. Russian state media outlet RIA Novosti reported that Prigozhin told reporters that two dozen former prisoners completed six-moth contracts with the Wagner Group fighting in Ukraine and received pardons.[16] Russian sources published footage of Prigozhin holding a ceremony for the Wagner Group personnel at a rehabilitation center in Anapa, Krasnodar Krai, in which he awarded the former prisoners state medals and pardon papers.[17] ISW has not observed any official Russian government source comment on whether the Wagner personnel did indeed receive these pardons. Under the Russian Criminal Code and Article 89 of the Russian Constitution, only the Russian President may issue a pardon to an individual, although regionally based pardon commissions and individuals may petition the Russian President to pardon specific individuals.[18] It is possible that Prigozhin submitted petitions to pardon the former prisoners on their behalf. It is also possible that Prigozhin is claiming that the former prisoners received pardons when in actuality a Russian court may have issued them a “Release from Punishment” (a commuting of a prison sentence and/or other criminal punishment) or the State Duma of the Russian Federation granted the former prisoners amnesty.[19] ISW has not observed any official Russian sources report that a Russian court or the State Duma has taken either of these legal actions on behalf of these former prisoners, although it is perfectly possible that they did. Previous reporting suggested that the Wagner Group promised prisoners “full exemption from their criminal punishment” and not necessarily that prisoners would receive pardons.[20]

Prigozhin is likely using the ambiguity of the legal status of these former prisoners to create the impression that he is influential enough to be able to secure pardons for Wagner Group personnel. Prigozhin likely publicized the granting of the pardon papers to reflect this supposed influence in support of ongoing efforts to cast himself as the central figure in the ultra-nationalist pro-war community.[21] By appearing to take public credit for pardoning these criminals Prigozhin risks seeming to arrogate to himself powers that only Putin actually wields.

Prigozhin also likely publicized the pardons to strengthen the Wagner Group’s ongoing recruitment of prisoners and to assuage current Wagner Group personnel’s possible concerns about promised legal rewards. US National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby reported on December 22, 2022, that the Wagner Group currently has 50,000 personnel deployed to Ukraine, including 40,000 convicts recruited from Russian prisons.[22] Kirby reported that over 1,000 Wagner Group personnel died in Ukraine in a month, and Russian opposition outlet The Insider reported on November 5 that 500 former prisoners volunteering with the Wagner Group died in Ukraine in two months.[23] The Wagner Group likely needs to replenish its forces after heavy losses, predominantly of former prisoners, and Prigozhin likely publicized the supposed pardons to augment the Wagner Group’s recruitment campaign in Russian prisons. Prigozhin also likely publicized the pardons to reassure the reportedly 80 percent of deployed Wagner Group personnel in Ukraine who have been promised some type of legal reward for their participation in hostilities. Prigozhin has increasingly pinned his standing in the Russian ultra-nationalist pro-war community on the Wagner Group’s ability to capture territory and, particularly, on its offensive on Bakhmut.[24] Prigozhin likely intends to further motivate Wagner personnel and generate new paramilitary forces in a misguided and implausible effort to reverse the culmination of the Bakhmut offensive.

Key Takeaways

• Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement that Russian forces will conduct a 36-hour ceasefire in observance of Russian Orthodox Christmas is likely an information operation intended to damage Ukraine’s reputation.
• Putin’s framing of the ceasefire on religious ground reinforces another Russian information operation that falsely frames Ukraine as suppressing religious groups and positions Putin as the true protector of the Christian faith.
• Putin has not changed his fundamental maximalist objectives in Ukraine.
• Wagner Financier Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed that prisoners who volunteered with the Wagner Group in Ukraine received pardons, likely in a bid to inflate his influence and political power, strengthen Wagner Group’s prisoner recruitment, and reassure Wagner Group criminals in uniform.
• Russian forces continued limited counterattacks to regain lost positions along the Svatove-Kreminna line, and Russian forces claimed that Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in the area.
• Ukrainian forces reportedly conducted a successful counterattack as Russian forces continued offensive operations around Bakhmut and west of Donetsk City.
• Russian forces continued to operate sabotage and reconnaissance groups on the Dnipro River and reinforce positions in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast.
• Russian milbloggers claimed recent Russian successes in Zaporizhia Oblast, likely to distract from the slow Russian offensive around Bakhmut that may be culminating.
• Mobilized Russian servicemembers likely continue to represent an outsized portion of Russian military casualties in Ukraine.

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

• Ukrainian Counteroffensives—Eastern Ukraine
• Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and one supporting effort)
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort—Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Supporting Effort—Southern Axis
• Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Activities in Russian-occupied Areas

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

Eastern Ukraine: (Eastern Kharkiv Oblast-Western Luhansk Oblast)

Russian forces continued limited counterattacks to regain lost positions along the Svatove-Kreminna line on January 5. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled a Russian assault near Stelmakhivka (16km northwest of Svatove).[25] A Russian milblogger claimed that battles in the past week between Ukrainian and Russian forces northwest of Svatove have been positional in nature and that control of terrain has not changed.[26] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Ukrainian forces repelled a Russian assault near Ploshchanka (17km northwest of Kreminna).[27] A Russian milblogger claimed that elements of the 3rd Motorized Rifle Division of the 20th Guards Combined Arms Army of the Western Military District have been conducting an offensive or a very active defense along the Ploshchanka-Makiivka line (22km northwest of Kreminna) for the past few weeks.[28] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces are trying to push Ukrainian forces back from positions near the R-66 (Svatove-Kreminna) highway and that fighting is the fiercest near Chervonopopivka (6km north of Kreminna).[29] The Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian artillery units can currently interdict all Russian movements on the highway and that Russian forces intend to resume movements along the highway after pushing Ukrainian forces further back.[30] Luhansk Oblast Head Serhiy Haidai stated on January 5 that Russian forces transferred mobilized servicemembers and Wagner Group personnel to the Kreminna area out of fear that the tactical situation in the area was worsening.[31] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces also conducted an assault towards Bilohorivka, Luhansk Oblast (12km south of Kreminna).[32]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in the directions of Svatove and Kreminna on January 5. A Russian milblogger claimed on January 5 that Ukrainian forces regularly conduct night raids on Russian positions near Kuzemivka (15km northwest of Savtove) intending to exhaust Russian combat power in the area.[33] A BARS-13 (Russian Combat Reserve) affiliated source claimed on January 5 that Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups routinely attempt to penetrate Russian positions in the direction of Svatove.[34] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces are attempting to cut a section of the R-66 highway that leads into Kreminna near Chervonopopivka, where both Russian and Ukrainian forces have been conducting assaults and counterattacks in the past week.[35] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attempted to advance towards Russian positions in the Kreminna area on January 5.[36]

Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

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

Ukrainian forces reportedly conducted a successful counterattack as Russian forces continued offensive operations around Bakhmut on January 4 and 5. The Ukrainian State Border Guards Service reported on January 4 that Ukrainian soldiers conducted a tactical counterattack in Bakhmut and advanced 300 meters in an unspecified area, forcing Russian troops to withdraw from certain unspecified positions.[37] Russian sources refuted this report and claimed that Russian troops have advanced northeast and south of Bakhmut and made gains within Bakhmut itself.[38] The Ukrainian General Staff stated on January 5 that Ukrainian troops repelled Russian attacks on Bakhmut itself; northeast of Bakhmut near Bilohorivka (22km northeast), Soledar (10km northeast), Krasna Hora (5km north), Vyimka (25km northeast), and Pidhorodne (5km northeast); and south of Bakhmut near Kurdyumivka (12km southwest), Mayorsk (20km south), and Pivnichne (20km southwest).[39] Geolocated footage posted between January 4 and 5 indicates that Russian troops have made marginal advances south of Bakhmut near Opytne (3km south of Bakhmut) and Kurdiumivka.[40] Russian milbloggers claimed that Wagner Group forces expanded their control over certain urban areas on the eastern outskirts of Bakhmut.[41] Former commander of militants in Donbas in 2014 and prominent milblogger Igor Girkin noted that this sector of the front is a “mutual meatgrinder of attrition” for Ukrainian and Russian troops.[42]

Russian forces continued offensive operations along the western outskirts of Donetsk City on January 5. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops attacked near Vodiane, Krasnohorivka, Vesele Marinka, and Pobieda, all ranging along the northern to southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City.[43] Russian milbloggers continued to remark on urban fighting within Marinka.[44] Geolocated footage posted on January 5 shows the aftermath of a Ukrainian strike on a base used by Chechen fighters in Marinka, indicating that Russian troops hold limited positions along the N15 Donetsk City–Zaporizhzhia City highway on the southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City.[45] Russian forces did not conduct any ground attacks in western Donetsk or eastern Zaporizhia oblasts and continued routine shelling in these areas.[46]

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

Russian forces continued to operate sabotage and reconnaissance groups on the Dnipro River and reinforce positions in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast on January 5. Ukrainian Kherson Oblast Military Advisor Serhiy Khlan stated on January 4 that Russian forces are training mobilized personnel in the Henichesk area and transferring more manpower to the area.[47] The Head of the Ukrainian Joint Press Center of the Tavrisk Direction Defense Forces, Yevhen Yerin, stated on January 5 that Russian forces are primarily conducting defensive actions in Kherson Oblast, and only use small sabotage and reconnaissance groups in the Dnipro River and delta islands to probe Ukrainian defenses.[48] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces maintain positions on Velyki Potemkin Island southwest of Kherson City in the Dnipro River delta and that Ukrainian forces previously only briefly landed on the island on January 2.[49] One milblogger claimed that the islands remain contested and that it does not make sense for Russian forces to maintain positions on the islands as they cannot launch an effective amphibious operation without controlling a bridgehead to Kherson City.[50]

Russian milbloggers claimed recent Russian successes in Zaporizhia Oblast on January 5, likely to distract from the slow Russian offensive around Bakhmut that may be culminating and to secure limited positions along the Zaporizhia Oblast frontline. A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces continued to expand their zone of control near Dorozhnyanka (6km south of Hulyaipole), which Russian sources claimed that Russian forces captured on December 31.[51] The milblogger claimed that Russian forces continue to probe Ukrainian defenses in the area and exposed Ukrainian positions in the forest belt east of the T0401 highway between Hulyaipole and Dorozhnyanka.[52] A different milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces do not conduct any offensive operations along the Zaporizhia Oblast frontline and lost their chance to launch an offensive near Vasylivka, Zaporizhia Oblast.[53] Russian milbloggers claimed for months that Ukrainian forces were preparing for an imminent counteroffensive in Zaporizhia Oblast.[54]

Ukrainian forces continued to target Russian military assets in rear areas of southern Ukraine. Odesa Military Administration Spokesperson Serhiy Bratchuk amplified reports of an explosion of an S-300 missile warehouse in Radensk, Kherson Oblast, which is within range of Ukrainian tube artillery.[55] Zaporizhia Oblast occupation official Vladimir Rogov claimed that Russian air defenses activated over Melitopol, Zaporizhia Oblast on January 4.[56] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) confirmed on January 4 a Ukrainian strike in Tokmak, Zaporizhia Oblast, but denied allegations that Russian forces used a hospital in Tokmak as a military facility.[57] The Russian MoD claimed the hospital strike killed a Russian military medic but otherwise did not comment on casualty counts.

Russian forces continued routine fire against areas in Zaporizhia, Mykolaiv, and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts on January 5.[58]

The head of Ukrainian nuclear energy agency Energoatom, Petro Kotin, stated in an interview published on January 4 that Energoatom does not believe that the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) efforts to establish a safety and security zone around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) are realistic.[59] Kotin stated that Ukrainian forces will return the ZNPP to Ukrainian control and that Russian forces would have to withdraw from the ZNPP if Ukrainian forces broke through Russian lines and captured Melitopol.[60]

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

Official Ukrainian sources continue to report that Russian officials are preparing for another imminent wave of mobilization in Russia and occupied territories in Ukraine. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on January 5 that the Russian military-political leadership is taking measures to prevent Russian men from leaving the country during a new mobilization wave in January and that Russian officials are considering a complete foreign travel ban for Russian men of military age.[61] The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on January 5 that Russian forces and occupation officials are preparing for another wave of mobilization in Russian-occupied Zaporizhia Oblast.[62] The Resistance Center reported that Russian occupation officials have introduced new restrictions on movement that require residents in Berdyansk and Melitopol to obtain permission from local military commandant's offices in order to leave the cities.[63] Russian occupation officials likely introduced the measures to prevent military-age men from fleeing the upcoming wave of mobilization. ISW reported on December 31, 2022, that Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov stated that he knew “for a fact” that the Kremlin plans to close all Russian borders for military-age men, declare martial law, and begin another wave of mobilization in January.[64]

Mobilized Russian servicemembers likely continue to comprise an outsized portion of Russian military casualties in Ukraine. BBC Russian Service reported on January 2 that it has confirmed open-source data for the identities of 538 mobilized Russian servicemembers killed in Ukraine.[65] BBC Russian Service noted that real casualties among mobilized Russians servicemembers could be much higher, as many reports on Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine since October 2022 do not indicate the status of the servicemembers.[66] ISW reported on December 9, 2022, that the BBC Russian Service’s ongoing open-source investigation into the identities of confirmed Russian casualties with independent Russian outlet Mediazona had identified over 400 mobilized Russian personnel killed in Ukraine.[67] BBC Russian Service noted that the more than 100 confirmed Russian mobilized personnel killed in Ukraine since early December 2022 does not account for the large number of mobilized personnel that were killed in a Ukrainian strike on a Russian base in Makiivka, Donetsk Oblast on December 31, 2022.[68] The breakdown of the confirmed mobilized personnel killed in Ukraine shows that certain Russian oblasts are overrepresented, matching the pattern the BBC Russian Service has reported for all confirmed Russian servicemembers killed in Ukraine.[69] ISW assesses that the overrepresentation of certain Russian oblasts in casualty figures is partially a result of Russian force-generation efforts that have focused on specific Russian regions.[70] Shortages of professional soldiers in combat operations, poor training, and Russian commanders’ lack of regard for the lives of mobilized Russian personnel may also account for the recent predominance of mobilized personnel in confirmed Russian casualty figures in Ukraine.

Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of and annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian civilians into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Russian forces and occupation authorities are continuing to intensify filtration measures in occupied territories. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on January 5 that Russian forces are prohibiting movement within occupied Zaporizhia Oblast and are only permitting those with permits to leave occupied territories.[71] Ukrainian Kherson Oblast Administration Advisor Serhiy Khlan stated on January 5 that Russian forces are prohibiting civilians in occupied Kherson Oblast from leaving occupied territories until January 15.[72]

Russian occupation authorities are continuing passportization efforts in occupied territories. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on January 5 that Russian occupation authorities have shortened the process to receive Russian passports in Horlivka, Donetsk Oblast, from 30 to 10 days.[73] The Ukrainian General Staff also stated on January 5 that Russian occupation authorities are continuing to forcibly passportize citizens in occupied territories and that banking institutions in Luhansk Oblast require Russian passports to issue bank cards.[74]

Russian authorities are continuing to take measures to consolidate legal and administrative control of occupied territories. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed and implemented a decree (N984) to simplify procedures to allow Ukrainian collaborators to join the occupation civil service by abolishing psychological screening and personal recommendations from other civil servants.[75] The decree also provides that newly-hired collaborators may undergo medical examinations in absentia.[76] The Ukrainian General Staff reported on January 5 that Russian occupation authorities in Donetsk Oblast are issuing citizens Russian license plates and driver’s licenses.[77]

Russian forces and occupation authorities continued to seize and repurpose civilian infrastructure to support Russian military activities in occupied territories on January 5. Luhansk Oblast Head Serhiy Haidai stated on January 5 that Russian forces coerced farmers in Bilovodsk, Luhansk Oblast to abandon their hangers in order to accommodate Russian servicemen and personnel.[78] Haidai also stated that Russian occupation authorities are continuing to seize and repurpose civilian hospitals to treat Russian and Wagner Group servicemen throughout Luhansk Oblast.[79]

Russian occupation authorities are continuing to take measures to incentivize Ukrainian citizens to move to occupied territories. Russian officials passed a resolution on January 3 on the provision of a two percent rate on mortgage loans for residents in occupied territories.[80] Kherson Occupation Administration Head Vladimir Saldo stated on January 5 that the new planned city on the Arabat Spit will need new residents and that preferential mortgages will make housing there much more affordable.[81] Russian occupation authorities likely seek to increase the population in the deep rear in occupied territories to strengthen production capabilities and support logistics related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russian occupation authorities continued making efforts to consolidate economic control of occupied territories on January 5. Ukrainian Kherson Oblast Administration Advisor Serhiy Khlan reported on January 5 that Russian occupation officials are allowing Ukrainian civilians to exchange the Ukrainian hryvnia for Russian rubles at select banks in occupied Kherson Oblast in accordance with proposed rates.[82]

Russian forces and occupation authorities are continuing to take measures to identify possible partisans in occupied territories. Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov stated on January 5 that Russian forces conceal themselves in civilian clothing before entering supermarkets and other public places in Melitopol, Zaporizhia Oblast, in an effort to identify possible partisans.[83]

ISW will continue to report daily observed indicators consistent with the current assessed most dangerous course of action (MDCOA): a renewed invasion of northern Ukraine possibly aimed at Kyiv.

ISW’s December 15 MDCOA warning forecast about a potential Russian offensive against northern Ukraine in winter 2023 remains a worst-case scenario within the forecast cone. ISW currently assesses the risk of a Russian invasion of Ukraine from Belarus as low, but possible, and the risk of Belarusian direct involvement as very low. This new section in the daily update is not in itself a forecast or assessment. It lays out the daily observed indicators we are using to refine our assessments and forecasts, which we expect to update regularly. Our assessment that the MDCOA remains unlikely has not changed. We will update this header if the assessment changes.

Observed indicators for the MDCOA in the past 24 hours:

• Nothing significant to report.

Observed ambiguous indicators for MDCOA in the past 24 hours:

• The Belarusian Ministry of Defense stated on January 5 that Russia will continue deploying Russian forces to Belarus and will conduct combat exercises with Belarusian forces within the context of the combined Russian–Belarusian Regional Grouping of Forces (RGV).[84]
• Belarus’ State Border Committee accused Ukrainian forces of engaging in “provocations” on the Ukraine-Belarusian border by aiming weapons at Belarusian border guards at the Poddobryanka checkpoint (between Chernihiv and Gomel oblasts) on January 5.[85]

Observed counter-indicators for the MDCOA in the past 24 hours:

• Reuters National Security Correspondent covering the Pentagon Idrees Ali reported on January 5 that the Pentagon assesses there are no indications that Russia intends to use Belarus as a new front in the war in Ukraine.[86]
• The Ukrainian General Staff reiterated that it has not observed Russian forces in Belarus forming a strike group as of January 5.[87]

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

[1] http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/70330; https://ria dot ru/20230105/putin-1843179065.html

[2] http://www.patriarchia dot ru/db/text/5992770.html

[5] https://www.themoscowtimes dot com/2022/12/14/kremlin-says-russia-has-no-plans-for-holiday-ceasefire-in-ukraine-a79698; https://www.ntv dot ru/novosti/2738255/ ; https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/kremlin-says-christmas-ceasefire-no...

[13] https://www.aa.com dot tr/ru/%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B0/%D1%8D%D1%80%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%B0%D0%BD-%D0%B8-%D0%BF%D1%83%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BD-%D0%BE%D0%B1%D1%81%D1%83%D0%B4%D0%B8%D0%BB%D0%B8-%D1%83%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%83-%D1%81%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%8E-%D0%B8-%D1%8D%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BA%D1%83/2780252; http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/70328

[16] https://ria dot ru/20230105/vagner-1843111082.html

[18] https://base.garant dot ru/12125251 ; https://www.advgazeta dot ru/novosti/vladimir-putin-utverdil-novyy-poryadok-pomilovaniya/

[19] https://www.imolin.org/doc/amlid/Russian_Federation_Criminal_Code.pdf ; https://rus.ozodi dot org/a/32210797.html

[20] https://meduza(dot)io/feature/2022/12/13/v-ukrainskih-telegram-kanalah-opublikovali-intervyu-byvshego-zaklyuchennogo-zaverbovannogo-v-chvk-vagnera ; https://t.me/svobodnieslova/1046

[23] https://theins dot ru/news/256690 ; https://www.reuters.com/world/us-says-russias-wagner-group-bought-north-...

[48] https://gazeta dot ua/articles/np/_u-silah-oboroni-rozpovili-pro-diyi-voroga-bilya-hersona/1127816

[62] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2023/01/05/okupanty-obmezhuyut-ruh-meshkancziv-tymchasovo-okupovanyh-rajoniv-zaporizkoyi-oblasti/

[63] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2023/01/05/okupanty-obmezhuyut-ruh-meshkancziv-tymchasovo-okupovanyh-rajoniv-zaporizkoyi-oblasti/

[71] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2023/01/05/okupanty-obmezhuyut-ruh-meshkancziv-tymchasovo-okupovanyh-rajoniv-zaporizkoyi-oblasti/

[75] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2023/01/05/rosiyany-sprostyly-zakonodavstvo-dlya-poshuku-kolaborantiv/

[76] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2023/01/05/rosiyany-sprostyly-zakonodavstvo-dlya-poshuku-kolaborantiv/

[80] https://crimea dot ria.ru/20221215/putin-predlozhil-vvesti-v-novykh-regionakh-rossii-lgotnuyu-ipoteku-pod-2-1125912504.html

[85] https://t.me/gpkgovby/2593; https://sputnik dot by/20230105/gpk-belarusi-rasskazal-o-provokatsiyakh-na-granitse-so-storony-ukrainy--video-1070896549.html; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/21102; https://t.me/SolovievLive/149613

understandingwar.org

8. China 'under-representing' true impact of Covid outbreak, WHO says

China 'under-representing' true impact of Covid outbreak, WHO says | CNN

By Simone McCarthy, CNN

Updated 1:34 AM EST, Fri January 6, 2023

CNN · by Simone McCarthy · January 5, 2023

Video Ad Feedback

China accused of 'underrepresenting' scale of Covid outbreak, WHO says

02:46 - Source: CNN

CNN —

The World Health Organization has accused China of “under-representing” the severity of its Covid outbreak and criticized its “narrow” definition of what constitutes a Covid death, as top global health officials urge Beijing to share more data about the explosive spread.

“We continue to ask China for more rapid, regular, reliable data on hospitalizations and deaths, as well as more comprehensive, real-time viral sequencing,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a media briefing in Geneva Wednesday.

“WHO is concerned about the risk to life in China and has reiterated the importance of vaccination, including booster doses, to protect against hospitalization, severe disease, and death,” he said.

Speaking in more detail, WHO executive director for health emergencies Mike Ryan said the numbers released by China “under-represent the true impact of the disease” in terms of hospital and ICU admissions, as well as deaths.

He acknowledged that many countries have seen lags in reporting hospital data, but pointed to China’s “narrow” definition of a Covid death as part of the issue.

The country only lists those Covid patients who succumbed with respiratory failure as having died of Covid. In the two weeks prior to January 5, China reported fewer than 20 deaths from local Covid cases, according to figures released on the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website – even as the outbreak has overwhelmed hospitals and crematoriums amid apparent Covid surges in multiple cities.

Commuters at a subway station in Shanghai, China, on Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2023.

Qilai Shen/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Major Chinese cities past Covid peak as wave moves to rural areas, new study projects

On Thursday, China’s Foreign Ministry said the country has always shared epidemic information “in a timely, open and transparent manner” and insisted its Covid situation was “under control.”

“It is hoped that the WHO secretariat will take a science-based, objective and just position and play a positive role in addressing the pandemic globally,” spokesperson Mao Ning said at a daily news briefing.

Chinese experts would attend a regular WHO member state briefing on Thursday to “respond to technical issues that are of concern to other parties,” Mao said, adding that China would continue to closely monitor possible mutations of the virus and release relevant information.

Data ‘not forthcoming’

WHO officials, who have grappled with Beijing’s tight control of data access throughout the pandemic, have become increasingly vocal in their calls for reliable information as a major outbreak rips across China’s urban centers in the wake of an abrupt relaxation of disease controls last month.

The surge in cases in a country of 1.4 billion has also raised global concerns about the potential emergence of new variants – and of China’s levels of monitoring and sharing data. A number of countries have implemented Covid testing requirements for travelers from China, citing a dearth of data on strains circulating there.

On Wednesday, the European Union “strongly encouraged” its member states to introduce a requirement for a negative Covid test for passengers traveling from China to the EU, according to a statement released by the Swedish presidency of the bloc.

WHO’s Tedros said Wednesday it was “understandable” that some countries were taking these steps, “with circulation in China so high and comprehensive data not forthcoming.”

China’s Foreign Ministry earlier this week decried the measures as unscientific and vowed to take “corresponding countermeasures for different situations in accordance with the principle of reciprocity.”

Some health experts around the world have also criticized targeted travel screening as ineffective and voiced concern such measures could fuel racism and xenophobia.

No new variant reported

In an online statement updated Thursday, GISAID – an international initiative for sharing genomic data of viruses causing influenza and Covid-19 – said China had continued “to ramp up” its surveillance efforts and preliminary analyses indicated reported data closely resembles that of known variants already spreading globally.

Chinese health officials also presented recent genomic data to a WHO advisory body during a closed-door meeting Tuesday. In a statement Wednesday, the WHO advisory body said the variants detected in China are known and have been circulating in other countries, with no new variant yet reported by the Chinese CDC.

But the advisory group and top WHO officials stressed the need for more forthcoming genomic data. The latest situation adds to longstanding challenges for the UN body, which faced criticism at the start of the pandemic that it did not push China hard enough for data amid concerns Beijing was obscuring critical information.

“There’s a lot more data that needs to be shared from China and additionally from around the world so that we can track this pandemic as we enter this fourth year,” Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead on Covid, said Wednesday.

“We need more information on sequencing around the country, (and for) those sequences to be shared with publicly available databases like GISAID so that deeper analyses can be done,” she said.

CNN’s Hira Humayun and Sugam Pokharel contributed reporting.

CNN · by Simone McCarthy · January 5, 2023

9. How to Win Friends and Choke China’s Chip Supply

Conclusion:

The worst-case scenario for Washington would be if it were unable to build a consensus on more far-reaching controls and instead expanded its use of extraterritorial controls to target foreign tooling capabilities that have been exempted while negotiations are ongoing. The United States should avoid the urge to take this route. Even a mostly symbolic or partial deal with allies would be valuable, signaling Western unity and serving as the basis for future coordination. As Washington considers further restrictions across a range of economic fronts, including additional export controls and outbound investment screening, it can ill afford to alienate its natural partners in Europe and Asia.

Washington’s Oct. 7 rules are both unilateral and extraterritorial. Yet the need for a shared approach to export control policy has never been more urgent. Bringing other countries on board is vital to restricting China’s progress in advanced chips, AI, and supercomputing. If done right, this can also serve as a critical first step towards a new era of strategic trade controls that will prepare Washington and its democratic allies to better manage their strategic competition with China.

How to Win Friends and Choke China’s Chip Supply - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Emily Kilcrease · January 6, 2023

On Oct. 7, the Biden administration took a risky gamble, introducing a sweeping set of new export controls that will reach deep into China’s advanced semiconductor production, supercomputing, and artificial intelligence ecosystems. These novel and ambitious restrictions usher in a new phase of technological competition with China.

But they have been implemented unilaterally, without the support of any other country. A major South Korean firm has called the new controls “painful” and European officials have rebuked the United States for dictating export control policy. If Washington seeks to keep China as far behind as possible in critical technologies, it needs to persuade key partners in Europe and Asia to implement similar controls. The United States has bet that impairing China’s advanced technology capabilities now exceeds the benefits of retaining leverage over China that can be used in the future. This bet is predicated on the assessment that the controls are so sweeping, China cannot recover from them by developing equivalent capabilities on its own. This is undoubtedly true in the short-term, as the United States dominates the “tooling” or manufacturing necessary for advanced semiconductors, as well as the design of graphic processing unit chips critical for AI. But the long-term success of the U.S. strategy is on much shakier ground. U.S. technology chokepoints will become vulnerable over time. And if other countries do not implement similar controls, foreign firms will have a strong commercial incentive to backfill U.S. technology that can no longer be sold to the Chinese market.

To its credit, the Biden administration recognizes the need for coordination and has been engaged in a concerted effort to win over key partners. However, early assessments of how quickly the United States could obtain agreements have proven wildly optimistic. The very aspects of the new U.S. rules that make them so effective today will pose challenges in building a consensus approach that can endure over time. The difficult task for U.S. export control officials will be to persuade key producers — namely the Netherlands, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan — to fundamentally rethink their export controls strategy. This means convincing allied governments that slowing Chinese advances in supercomputing, AI, and chips, even in purely commercial areas, is urgently necessary to prevent China’s military modernization and human rights abuses. This in turn requires overcoming fundamental divergences with European and Asian allies about how hard and fast to pursue a strategic decoupling from China in advanced technology sectors.

Become a Member

To forge a consensus, the United States should remain laser focused on the national security justification for the new controls and offer foreign partners a clear picture of how far it intends to extend its aggressive new approach, specifically in sectors other than chips and supercomputing. Washington should proactively work with partners to mitigate the economic effects of the new controls, providing clarity and predictability for industry participants with investment timelines that stretch over a decade. Guidance on future licensing policy, as well as exemptions from the extraterritorial aspects of the new rules for those countries that implement substantially similar controls, should feature prominently in the ongoing negotiations. The ultimate objective should not be to have all partners implement identical controls. Instead, U.S. officials should prioritize aligning controls with other major producer nations to target the most significant technology chokepoints and the areas where the risk of backfilling U.S. technologies is highest.

A Profound Impact

Washington’s Oct. 7 rules impose multiple layers and types of restrictions that are intended to have a swarming effect and foreclose any legal loopholes Beijing may seek to exploit. U.S. export controls will severely restrict the flow of nearly all chips and related technologies produced globally into the high end of China’s supercomputing ecosystem, including advanced graphic processing unit chips destined for any purpose in China. They will also prevent China from using foreign chip foundries or “fabs” to attempt to manufacture chips it can no longer buy on the commercial market. New restrictions on U.S. semiconductor manufacturing equipment will punch a hole in China’s production lines as every fab producing advanced logic or memory chips depends on U.S. tools. Moreover, by prohibiting Americans from engaging in key parts of China’s semiconductor sector, the rules will starve China of U.S. expertise necessary to replicate technologies that it can no longer buy.

The core principle of U.S. export control policy towards China has for decades been to prohibit the export of any U.S. item to China that could be used for military, intelligence, or space-related purposes. For commercial technologies, the United States historically based licensing decisions on a sliding scale, accepting that China’s indigenous technology capabilities will advance and seeking to maintain a roughly two-generation advantage in the most cutting-edge commercial technologies. In contrast, the new U.S. strategy takes a broad ecosystem-based approach. This means it seeks to inhibit any progress in supercomputing, AI, and advanced chips production writ large, due to the enabling effects — rather than direct links — these technologies will have on China’s military and surveillance capabilities.

The broader implications of the new U.S. approach are profound, as it declares the advancement of key sectors of the Chinese economy as a de facto national security risk. While the United States has been careful to justify the new strategy on national security grounds, the strategy will unquestionably have significant economic impacts on China, which will compound over time as China’s capabilities are frozen in place and lag further and further behind other global producers. It also remains unclear how far the U.S. strategy will extend beyond chips. The administration has identified artificial intelligence, quantum information systems, biotechnology and biomanufacturing, and advanced clean energy technologies as fundamental to U.S. national security. If the United States imposed restrictions across these technology ecosystems comparable to what has just been done for advanced chips production and supercomputing, it would almost certainly lead to a broad technological decoupling from China.

Bringing Others on Board with a Clear Vision

It is the potential implications of Washington’s new strategy that have precluded support from U.S. partners, rather than any dovishness on their part. Europe’s views on China have been hardening. Beijing’s complicity in the Russian invasion of Ukraine has only accelerated an ongoing trend in Europe toward viewing China as a rival, though this may be tempered by a wide range of views within Europe and the economic importance of China for certain member states. Washington’s Asian partners are also not naïve about the threats posed by China, though many still seek to manage rising geopolitical tensions without drawing the ire of their largest trading partner. Growing skepticism towards China, however, will not automatically translate into agreement with the United States on specific measures, and Washington is still far ahead of the pack when it comes to a willingness to sever its economic ties with Beijing. Key partners may be amenable to stepping up certain export controls but are unlikely to agree to an approach that deems large portions of the Chinese economy as off limits.

To build greater strategic alignment with its foreign partners, the United States should be candid about the economic implications of its new measures but steadfast in defending their urgency from a national security standpoint. Washington is not seeking to provoke China but rather respond to the country’s economic and political system, in which the line between commercial and military endeavors has been erased. Therefore, while the United States is not seeking to fully decouple from China, it does not want its own technology — nor that of its allies — to fuel China’s military modernization and weapons of mass destruction development.

The United States should offer a clear vision for which other technologies it might similarly target with an aggressive ecosystem approach and, conversely, which areas of economic engagement with China can continue unimpeded. If the Oct. 7 controls prove effective, it will be through leveraging U.S. chokepoints in critical nodes of the semiconductor supply chain. But these chokepoints are unique and not necessarily replicable in other areas. In biotechnology or quantum information systems, for example, capabilities are more diffuse, giving the United States less ability to use export controls. In these areas, a coordinated approach with partners is all the more essential, as unilateral U.S. export controls will be insufficient or potentially counterproductive. U.S. restraint in considering new export controls in these types of technologies would be prudent, both to assuage concerns of partners and because of the difficulty of imposing unilateral controls. If the European and Asian allies consider expanding export controls on advanced chips production and supercomputing, it is fair for them to push the United States to define the outer bounds of its new export control policy.

European and Asian partners will also want to consider the scope of technologies to target. Washington need not push for directly replicating U.S. controls. Rather, the goal should be for each country to focus on the technologies for which their companies are dominant producers and on which China is most reliant. In tooling, for example, the United States created new list-based controls for chip-making tools that are exclusively available from U.S. suppliers. Having Japan and the Netherlands implement identical controls in this realm will be critical over the long term to ensure that firms from these countries cannot simply backfill U.S. technologies. But it is equally important that Japan and the Netherlands control technologies available exclusively from Tokyo Electron and Advanced Semiconductor Materials Lithography.

Determining the appropriate scope of controls is a two-fold challenge, requiring agreement on both the technological thresholds for controls as well as whether to make controls static or dynamic. The U.S. approach is to freeze China at the 14 nanometer threshold for logic chips as well as comparable thresholds for memory chips. These static thresholds may well be seen as overly protectionist by U.S. partners, depending on how credible they view recent reports indicating that China’s existing capabilities already exceed them. Similarly, other countries may face political difficulties in replicating the most severe aspects of U.S. controls, such as those that prevent U.S. firms from shipping even benign items such as pencils to designated facilities. Washington should adopt a flexible approach aimed at securing the maximum amount of controls politically possible today while preserving good will to continue coordination towards more stringent controls in the future. A deal with the Dutch and Japanese governments that restricts a broader range of advanced tooling equipment while permitting the sale of pencils, for example, is still a clear win.

A further challenge will be for partners to determine how to implement substantially similar controls within their existing legal frameworks. While the United States has broad and flexible authority to impose creative new export controls, other countries’ existing legal authorities and policy practices limit them to only implementing controls agreed to through multilateral export control regimes. Countries like Japan, the Netherlands, and South Korea could potentially circumvent this by using “catch-all” authorities that allow them to control technologies with a weapons of mass destruction application. But these authorities have been used infrequently and primarily to address ad hoc issues. They have not been used to publicly list large numbers of commercial technologies that present national security concerns due to their potential for enabling military or surveillance applications. To use the catch-all authorities, partner nations would have to be willing to take an extraordinary interpretation of their existing legal framework — something they would only consider in extraordinary circumstances. Indeed, the majority of chip-producing countries were willing to do this when Russia invaded Ukraine. The major challenge now for the United States is to convince them that competition with China is equally urgent.

Mitigating Economic Impact

Mitigating the negative commercial impacts of the Oct. 7 rules, anticipating possible Chinese retaliation, and addressing the diplomatic friction caused by the use of extraterritorial measures will also help win allied support. Foreign multinationals with major manufacturing facilities in China, such as South Korean memory chip companies and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, want to know if their facilities will be commercially viable over the mid- to long-term. Under the new rules, U.S. technology cannot be exported to any fab in China that meets designated technology thresholds, including those operated by U.S. or partner country companies. SK hynix, a major South Korean memory chip firm, has noted that the rules could force it to shutter certain operations in China. It is not in Washington’s strategic interest to force these firms to exit from China without warning. Doing so could create further shocks to global chip supply and dent the commercial prospects of the exact firms that the United States should be working with to improve friendshoring. The United States has offered a short-term reprieve by granting temporary licenses for foreign multinationals, but this is a band-aid solution rather than a firm guarantee that can guide large-scale investments with a five- to 10-year time horizon. If the United States does not intend to grant licenses in perpetuity, it should coordinate with these firms to allow for an orderly and economically sustainable transition out of China. At a minimum, the United States should grant licenses for a five-year period, accompanied by a clear commitment on licensing policy after that, so that foreign multinationals can plan and, if needed, transition their operations smoothly outside of China.

European and Asian partners may also be concerned about further economic impacts stemming from Chinese retaliation. While Beijing did file a complaint against the United States at the World Trade Organization, its response to the Oct. 7 controls has otherwise been muted, consistent with China’s tendency to act with restraint when responding to U.S. measures. Smaller economies, however, have not been so lucky in the past, and China has a well-known track record of using trade coercion to respond to political disputes. To blunt any Chinese retaliation, future deals should include as many partners as possible, since a larger coalition makes retaliation more difficult and risky. For example, even if the Dutch are the key European member state to join a coalition around tooling, these controls should be supported by the European Union as a whole. The United States should also commit to providing robust political and economic support to any economy that is a target of Chinese retaliation over new export control measures.

Addressing the economic impacts on foreign multinationals is all the more important given that the same group of key allies have also raised concerns about the Inflation Reduction Act and its provisions to favor U.S. electric vehicle makers. These provisions flout U.S. trade obligations and have caused a backlash in South Korea, whose carmakers will be particularly hard hit. European and Japanese officials have also raised serious concerns. U.S. policymakers would be naïve to consider these as unrelated events. Cumulatively, they are raising doubts about Washington’s commitment to its allies and partners and cynicism toward Washington’s support for a rules-based international trading system.

Washington should also address the friction caused by the expansion of extraterritorial export controls, which partners can perceive as coercive or bullying. In the Chinese context, this type of extraterritorial rule was previously limited to Huawei, a single company. The United States is now applying extraterritorial rules across whole sectors in China. Extraterritorial rules were used expansively in the Russia export controls, but this was an extraordinary wartime measure. In contrast, the extensive use of extraterritorial rules in the Oct. 7 package signals a much greater willingness to leverage U.S. market power to impose global restrictions. What was once novel has now become commonplace.

European partners have consistently objected to extraterritorial application of U.S. authorities in other contexts. Secondary sanctions, which can be used to deter European firms from engaging in transactions with U.S.-sanctioned entities that are legal under E.U. law, became particularly controversial after the United States withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal. This, along with concerns over China’s economic coercion, helped motivate the creation of the E.U. anti-coercion instrument, which would provide the European Union with the ability to counter coercive trade practices by imposing retaliatory tariffs or other economic restrictions in response. Asian partners are equally concerned about being forced into significant new controls without their consent.

To address these concerns, the United States should exempt foreign partners from the extraterritorial aspects of the Oct. 7 rules if these partners implement similar export controls of their own. The export controls imposed on Russia in 2022 offer a template, as the United States exempted 37 countries from the sweeping set of extraterritorial export controls once these countries had committed to take equivalent steps. The United States can and should offer a similar carrot for the Oct. 7 controls while also pushing partner countries to close re-export loopholes that have become problematic in the Russian case. Extraterritorial rules become unnecessary if the United States is joined by a coalition of other countries whose own rules render them redundant. Moreover, the United States will be in a better position to monitor compliance if joined by other governments. Rather than acting alone to enforce these complex rules across the entirety of the global chip supply chain, a coalition approach allows the United States to leverage the enforcement capabilities of a range of partners, fundamentally strengthening its position.

Conclusion

The worst-case scenario for Washington would be if it were unable to build a consensus on more far-reaching controls and instead expanded its use of extraterritorial controls to target foreign tooling capabilities that have been exempted while negotiations are ongoing. The United States should avoid the urge to take this route. Even a mostly symbolic or partial deal with allies would be valuable, signaling Western unity and serving as the basis for future coordination. As Washington considers further restrictions across a range of economic fronts, including additional export controls and outbound investment screening, it can ill afford to alienate its natural partners in Europe and Asia.

Washington’s Oct. 7 rules are both unilateral and extraterritorial. Yet the need for a shared approach to export control policy has never been more urgent. Bringing other countries on board is vital to restricting China’s progress in advanced chips, AI, and supercomputing. If done right, this can also serve as a critical first step towards a new era of strategic trade controls that will prepare Washington and its democratic allies to better manage their strategic competition with China.

Become a Member

Emily Kilcrease is senior fellow and director of the Energy, Economics, and Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. She previously served in economics and security roles at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the National Security Council, and the Department of Commerce.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Emily Kilcrease · January 6, 2023

10. 5 takeaways from what defense leaders told the Jan. 6 committee

I have avoided the Jan 6th news because I do not want to engage in the partisan fight among the extremists on the right and left. My only response to January 6th is to ask and answer the following questions as criteria for evaluating where one stands on the Jan 6th incident.: (1) Do you support and defend the Constitution of the United States? and (2) Do you support a peaceful transfer of power in the United States?

​But I offer this short piece because it ​provides some information about how the military and the National Guard reacted on that day and illustrates a number of issues regarding chain of command and organization and even perception management. My sense is that the events of the summer drove much of Pentagon thinking and that they were trying their best to keep the military out of politics and not allow it to be misused. But that created the inability to respond effectively to the actual crisis.

1. DC National Guard leaders didn’t have a direct line to their Pentagon bosses

2. Military officials still disagree over who authorized a military response and when

3. Guard troops had strict orders not to share any equipment with other security personnel

4. Trump didn’t stop the military response to the Capitol, but he didn’t help it either

5. Defense officials talked about court-martialing retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn

5 takeaways from what defense leaders told the Jan. 6 committee

militarytimes.com · by Leo Shane III · January 5, 2023

The special committee charged with investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by rioters bent on disrupting certification of the 2020 presidential election released more than 900 pages of testimony from current and former senior military officials, detailing their actions, reactions and confusion to the violence that day.

Together, their perspectives show uncertainty across the Defense Department on how to react to the crowds assembling at the Capitol, the silence from the White House and the creeping politicization of the military force.

The interviews — which accompany the committee’s 845-page summary of the event — include previously unreleased observations from Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, former acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller, former Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and former District of Columbia National Guard Commander Maj. Gen. William Walker.

Here are some of the previously unreported highlights:

RELATED

Guard waited more than three hours for approval to respond to Capitol riots, official says

The commanding general of the District of Columbia National Guard said he was frustrated by Pentagon leaders' response to the Capitol attack.

1. DC National Guard leaders didn’t have a direct line to their Pentagon bosses

Amid the chaos of attack on the Capitol, Walker — who would oversee the first National Guard troops deployed to help with security — said he tried to call McCarthy to get clarity on when to send personnel. But after he dialed, he realized that he didn’t have a working number for the Army leader.

“If I wanted to speak to the Secretary, I had to go through Lt. Gen. [Walter] Piatt,” the director of Army Staff, Walker told members of the committee. “So now I’m feeling this go-between between me and the secretary all of the sudden.”

The issue was one of multiple problems with the military response detailed by the committee in its report. Lawmakers blamed those mistakes on miscommunication, rather than malice.

RELATED

DC Guard almost deployed to Capitol on Jan. 6 without permission

Officials with the select committee investigating the violence on Jan. 6 released a final 845-report on their findings on Thursday.

2. Military officials still disagree over who authorized a military response and when

The main sticking point, across multiple witnesses, is the time between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. that day. Leaders disagreed about when a formal response started.

McCarthy has stuck to the official report of events that the Defense Department put together in the days following Jan. 6, reiterating that he ordered Walker at 3 p.m. to mass the entire D.C. Guard at their armory and come up with a plan for how they would approach the Capitol. Just after 4:30 p.m., with an agreed upon plan to link up with Capitol police, McCarthy thought everything was good to go.

Walker, on the other hand, said he didn’t believe he had full authorization to head to the Capitol until he saw McCarthy announce the Guard’s activation at 5:09 p.m., during a televised press conference with D.C.’s mayor and chief of police. Troops arrived on scene just after 6 p.m.

During public congressional testimony and before the Jan. 6 committee, Walker later expressed frustration particularly that the quick reaction force he assembled ahead of Jan. 6 wasn’t able to respond as soon as Miller gave the approval to deploy D.C. troops around 3 p.m.

RELATED

Former national security staff blast Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 as harmful to democracy

Officials said they found no evidence Trump spoke with Guard officials to help secure the Capitol amid the insurrection attempt.

3. Guard troops had strict orders not to share any equipment with other security personnel

An order to prohibit sharing equipment meant no military shields or batons for the Capitol Police, who found themselves unprepared for the size and violence of the crowd.

The problem stemmed from criticism the Guard received for its role in response to civil rights protests in summer 2020. Milley and others worried the response had politicized the Guard, and fed a perception that the military was taking sides in political debate.

“You’ve got other police forces that are wearing camouflage uniforms that look a lot like a military uniform,” Milley said in his testimony. “And to an average American citizen, you know, I can’t distinguish between a cop and a soldier.

“Loaning local police a shield that says military police on it, and then the American people think the military is the guy wielding that baton just because there’s a shield that says military police, or a helmet that says MP, things like that … That was one of the big lessons learned, is to make sure that police are easily identifiable and distinguishable from military forces.”

RELATED

Pence — not Trump — asked Guard troops to help defend Capitol on Jan. 6, panel says

The accusation was among multiple findings from the panel charged with investigating the lead-up and response to the attempted insurrection.

4. Trump didn’t stop the military response to the Capitol, but he didn’t help it either

Contrary to some public claims that Trump obstructed efforts to get Guardsmen to the Capitol to deal with rioters, Milley said that he believed defense officials acted as quickly as possible given the chaotic situation. Personnel was prepped and moved as soon as possible, and was not stalled by a lack of cooperation from Trump.

But the Pentagon’s top officer noted that he and other senior military officials did not speak with Trump at all that day, a situation he found odd.

“You’re the Commander in Chief,” he said of Trump. “You’ve got an assault going on the Capitol of the United States of America, and there’s nothing? No call? Nothing? Zero?

“I thought at the time and I think about it since: [The silence] was highly unusual.”

RELATED

Everything we know Gen. Milley has told the Jan. 6 panel

Here is all of the publicly released testimony by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in one place.

5. Defense officials talked about court-martialing retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn

Milley said he had conversations with unnamed officials about taking some kind of legal action against Flynn, who had publicly supported the idea of military leaders seizing voting machines and re-running the 2020 election. But the Joint Chiefs chairman called such a move a logistical and political nightmare.

“Flynn is saying things and doing things that I absolutely fundamentally disagree with on so many levels,” he told the committee. “But bringing him back on active duty to court-martial him and subject him to crimes based on the Uniform Code of Military Justice is a giant step … I don’t think it rises to that level.”

Milley said Trump had also floated a similar idea for other generals who spoke out against his administration. The chairman similarly opposed that idea.

About Leo Shane III and Meghann Myers

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.

Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members.

11. Kremlin-ordered truce is uncertain amid suspicion of motives

Does the Orthodox Church provide top cover for Putin to initiate a "truce?" But we are rightly suspicious since all warfare is based on deception.

Kremlin-ordered truce is uncertain amid suspicion of motives

AP · by ANDREW MELDRUM · January 6, 2023

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The impact of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s order for his forces in Ukraine to observe a unilateral, 36-hour cease-fire was in doubt Friday after Kyiv officials dismissed the move as a ploy but didn’t clarify whether Ukrainian troops would follow suit.

Moscow also didn’t say whether it would hit back if Ukraine kept fighting.

The Russian-declared truce in the nearly 11-month war began at noon Friday and was to continue through midnight Saturday Moscow time (0900 GMT Friday to 2100 GMT Saturday; 4 a.m. EST Friday to 4 p.m. EST Saturday). There were no immediate reports of it being broken.

Putin’s announcement Thursday that the Kremlin’s troops would stop fighting along the 1,100-kilometer (684-mile) front line or elsewhere was unexpected. It came after the Russian Orthodox Church head, Patriarch Kirill, proposed a cease-fire for this weekend’s Orthodox Christmas holiday. The Orthodox Church, which uses the Julian calendar, celebrates Christmas on Jan. 7.

ADVERTISEMENT

But Ukrainian and Western officials suspected an ulterior motive in Putin’s apparent goodwill gesture.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy questioned the Kremlin’s intentions, accusing the Kremlin of planning the fighting pause “to continue the war with renewed vigor.”

Vladimir Putin

Putin orders weekend truce in Ukraine; Kyiv won't take part

Russia's hypersonic missile-armed ship to patrol global seas

EU hails high gas storage levels despite Russian cuts

Ukraine conflict casts shadow on Russia as it enters 2023

“Now they want to use Christmas as a cover to stop the advance of our guys in the (eastern) Donbas (region) for a while and bring equipment, ammunition and mobilized people closer to our positions,” Zelenskyy said late Thursday.

He did not, however, state outright that Kyiv would ignore Putin’s request.

U.S. President Joe Biden echoed Zelenskyy’s wariness, saying it was “interesting” that Putin was ready to bomb hospitals, nurseries and churches on Christmas and New Year’s.

“I think (Putin) is trying to find some oxygen,” Biden said, without elaborating.

State Department spokesman Ned Price said Washington had “little faith in the intentions behind this announcement,” adding that Kremlin officials ”have given us no reason to take anything that they offer at face value.”

The truce order seems to be a ploy “to rest, refit, regroup, and ultimately re-attack,” he said.

The Institute for the Study of War agreed that the truce could be a ruse allowing Russia to regroup.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Such a pause would disproportionately benefit Russian troops and begin to deprive Ukraine of the initiative,” the think tank said late Thursday. “Putin cannot reasonably expect Ukraine to meet the terms of this suddenly declared cease-fire and may have called for the cease-fire to frame Ukraine as unaccommodating and unwilling to take the necessary steps toward negotiations.”

Washington says it is prepared to keep backing Ukraine’s war effort. On Friday, the U.S. was due to announce nearly $3 billion in military aid for Ukraine — a massive new package that was expected for the first time include several dozen Bradley fighting vehicles.

The ill-feeling between the warring sides showed no signs of abating, despite the backdrop of Christmas.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, said those who rejected Putin’s proposal for a Christmas truce were “clowns” and “pigs.”

ADVERTISEMENT

“The hand of Christian mercy was extended to the Ukrainians,” he said in a Telegram post. “But pigs have no faith and no innate sense of gratitude.”

Some civilians on the streets of Kyiv said they spoke from bitter experience in doubting Russia’s motives.

“Everybody is preparing (for an attack), because everybody remembers what happened on the New Year when there were around 40 Shahed (Iranian drones),” local resident Vasyl Kuzmenko said. “But everything is possible.”

___

Follow AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

AP · by ANDREW MELDRUM · January 6, 2023

12. EXPLAINER: Is China sharing enough COVID-19 information?

Excerpts:

Health officials have defended the testing as a surveillance measure that helps fill an information gap from China. This means countries can get a read on any changes in the virus through testing, even if they don’t have complete data from China.

“We don’t need China to study that, all we have to do is to test all the people coming out of China,” said Yip, the former public health official.

Canada and Belgium said they will look for viral particles in wastewater on planes arriving from China.

“It is like an early warning system for authorities to anticipate whether there’s a surge of infections coming in,” said Dr. Khoo Yoong Khean, a scientific officer at the Duke-NUS Centre for Outbreak Preparedness in Singapore.

EXPLAINER: Is China sharing enough COVID-19 information?

AP · by HUIZHONG WU and ANIRUDDHA GHOSAL · January 6, 2023

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — As COVID-19 rips through China, other countries and the World Health Organization are calling on its government to share more comprehensive data on the outbreak. Some even say many of the numbers it’s reporting are meaningless.

Without basic data like the number of deaths, infections and severe cases, governments elsewhere have instituted virus testing requirements for travelers from China. Beijing has said the measures aren’t science-based and threatened countermeasures.

Of greatest concern is whether new variants will emerge from the mass infection unfolding in China and spread to other countries. The delta and omicron variants developed in places that also had large outbreaks, which can be a breeding ground for new variants.

Here’s a look at what’s going on with China’s COVID-19 data:

___

WHAT IS CHINA SHARING AND NOT SHARING?

Chinese health authorities publish a daily count of new cases, severe cases and deaths, but those numbers include only officially confirmed cases and use a very narrow definition of COVID-related deaths.

ADVERTISEMENT

China is most certainly doing their own sampling studies but just not sharing them, said Ray Yip, who founded the U.S. Centers for Disease Control office in China.

Science

Hawaii's Kilauea volcano erupts again, summit crater glows

UK saw hottest-ever year in 2022 as Europe's climate warms

Germany to draw up legislation to enable carbon storage

As COVID surges in China, US begins testing more travelers

The nationwide tally for Thursday was 9,548 new cases and five deaths, but some local governments are releasing much higher estimates just for their jurisdictions. Zhejiang, a province on the east coast, said Tuesday it was seeing about 1 million new cases a day.

If a variant emerges in an outbreak, it’s found through genetic sequencing of the virus.

Since the pandemic started, China has shared 4,144 sequences with GISAID, a global platform for coronavirus data. That’s only 0.04% of its reported number of cases — a rate more than 100 times less than the United States and nearly four times less than neighboring Mongolia.

___

WHAT IS KNOWN AND WHAT CAN BE FIGURED OUT?

So far, no new variants have shown up in the sequences shared by China. The versions fueling infections in China “closely resemble” those that have been seen in other parts of the world since July, GISAID said. Dr. Gagandeep Kang, who studies viruses at the Christian Medical College of Vellore in India, agreed, saying there wasn’t anything particularly worrisome in the data so far.

ADVERTISEMENT

That hasn’t stopped at least 10 countries — including the U.S., Canada, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, the U.K., France, Spain and Italy — from announcing virus testing requirements for passengers from China. The European Union strongly encouraged all its member states to do so this week.

Health officials have defended the testing as a surveillance measure that helps fill an information gap from China. This means countries can get a read on any changes in the virus through testing, even if they don’t have complete data from China.

“We don’t need China to study that, all we have to do is to test all the people coming out of China,” said Yip, the former public health official.

Canada and Belgium said they will look for viral particles in wastewater on planes arriving from China.

“It is like an early warning system for authorities to anticipate whether there’s a surge of infections coming in,” said Dr. Khoo Yoong Khean, a scientific officer at the Duke-NUS Centre for Outbreak Preparedness in Singapore.

___

IS CHINA SHARING ENOUGH INFORMATION?

Chinese officials have repeatedly said they are sharing information, pointing to the sequences given to GISAID and meetings with the WHO.

But WHO officials have repeatedly asked for more — not just on genetic sequencing but also on hospitalizations, ICU admissions and deaths. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expressed concern this week about the risk to life in China.

“Data remains essential for WHO to carry out regular, rapid and robust risk assessments of the global situation,” the head of the U.N. health agency said.

The Chinese government often holds information from its own public, particularly anything that reflects negatively on the ruling Communist Party. State media have shied away from the dire reports of a spike in cremations and people racing from hospital to hospital to try to get treatment as the health system reaches capacity. Government officials have accused foreign media of hyping the situation.

ADVERTISEMENT

Khoo, noting that South Africa’s early warning about omicron led to bans on travelers from the country, said there is a need to foster an environment where countries can share data without fear of repercussions.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

AP · by HUIZHONG WU and ANIRUDDHA GHOSAL · January 6, 2023

13. China developing own version of JADC2 to counter US

The cynic in me would say China is not developing it but stealing it. I recall one of our National War College students remarking that the Chinese concept of R&D is "steal to leap ahead."

But I guess JADC2 is something good if the Chinese want it. There are so many US and western concepts and technologies that China has copied (or stolen).

China will be innovative when they can develop a C2 system operated by TikTok.

China developing own version of JADC2 to counter US

c4isrnet.com · by Colin Demarest · January 5, 2023

WASHINGTON — China is pursuing a new military construct known as Multi-Domain Precision Warfare to align its forces from cyber to space, an effort U.S. officials say is fueled by a need to counter the Pentagon’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control initiative.

Like JADC2, the MDPW core operational concept, as it’s known, relies on interlinked command and control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to quickly coordinate firepower and expose foreign weaknesses, according to the annual China Military Power Report, which the U.S. Department of Defense delivered to Congress in November.

“As we note in the report, this new concept is intended to help identify key vulnerabilities in an adversary’s operational system and then to launch precision strikes against those vulnerabilities, which could be kinetic or non-kinetic,” a senior U.S. defense official told reporters Nov. 28, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Basically, it’s a way that they’re thinking about looking across domains to identify vulnerabilities in an adversary’s operational system and then to exploit those to cause its collapse.”

The Chinese military, the People’s Liberation Army, “refers to systems destruction warfare as the next way of war,” the official added. Under that premise, warfare is no longer solely focused on the destruction of enemy forces; rather, it is won by the team that can disrupt, cripple or outright destroy the other’s underlying networks and infrastructure.

RELATED

Defense Intelligence Agency forms ‘China mission group’ to track rival

"It really shows our long-term commitment to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and the potential fight against China," said the chief of staff.

The U.S. considers China the No. 1 threat to its national security, with Russia a close second. The two powers have long invested in military science and technology. Confronting them represents a sea change to the counterinsurgency operations that defined a previous — and lingering — American era in the Middle East.

“Clearly, the United States has been primarily focused on other threats for the last two decades. That has changed,” Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Ely Ratner said at a Dec. 8 event hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank. “In part, it started changing during the Obama administration. That accelerated under the Trump administration and really crystallized under this administration.”

To maintain an advantage over both powers and other technologically savvy adversaries, the Pentagon is attempting to realize JADC2, a connect-everything-everywhere campaign for communications and international collaboration. By linking once-disparate troops and databases across land, air, sea, space and cyber, defense leaders say the U.S. can strike faster, more efficiently and from farther away.

The notion, though, faces scrutiny from lawmakers and outside experts, who have expressed reservations about coordination between the Army, Air Force and Navy; how success will ultimately be measured; and its overarching price tag. The Navy alone wanted some $195 million for Project Overmatch, its contribution to JADC2, for fiscal 2023, a 167% jump over the $73 million it received in 2022.

Overmatch, specifically, is being executed behind closed doors, with service leaders reluctant to talk and details remaining skeletal. The clandestine route is taken to keep China off-balance and to stay out of range of its many ears and eyes, according to Bryan Clark, a senior fellow and director of the Center for Defense Concepts and Technology at the Hudson Institute.

“A key to that is not tipping your hand with regard to the things you’re actually trying to put together. They’re very careful on operational security for these Overmatch-related items,” Clark told C4ISRNET in early November. “Since we’re looking at this in the very near-term way, and since the Navy has failed to really field a wide variety and number of unmanned systems, the Navy’s only got a few tricks up its sleeve in terms of how it can combine different systems to create kill chains. Because of those limits, they’ve got to be really careful about showing which combinations they think are most valuable.”

Officials in Beijing have for years pursued an information-fluent force capable of dominating networks and bombarding targets from a sprawl of locations with a mix of weaponry.

A photo taken Jan. 4, 2021, shows People's Liberation Army soldiers taking part in military training in the mountains of China's far west. (AFP via Getty Images)

“PRC military writings describe informatized warfare as the use of information technology to create an operational system-of-systems, which would enable the PLA to acquire, transmit, process, and use information during a conflict to conduct joint military operations across the ground, maritime, air, space, cyberspace, and electromagnetic spectrum domains,” the power report states. “The PLA is accelerating the incorporation of command information systems, providing forces and commanders with enhanced situational awareness and decision support to more effectively carry out joint missions and tasks to win informatized local wars.”

JADC2 leans on artificial intelligence and sophisticated computing to speedily sift through mountains of data and inform battlefield decisions. China’s MDPW — first teased in 2021, according to the report — and its other approaches to conflict do, too.

“As the PLA continues to focus on improving its ability to fight and win informatized wars, future information systems will likely implement emerging technologies such as automation, big data, the internet of things, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing to improve process efficiencies,” it states. “The PLA has already begun this process by embracing big data analytics that fuse a variety of data to improve automation and to create a comprehensive, real-time picture for warfighters.”

The Pentagon’s public spending on AI, including autonomy, mushroomed to $2.5 billion in fiscal 2021, after breaking $600 million 2016. The software-centric technology can help vehicles navigate, predict when maintenance is required and assist identification and classification of targets. The U.S. Air Force’s chief information officer, Lauren Knausenberger, in November said the service needs to “automate more” despite already “doing some very interesting things” with AI in the lab, on the battlefield and “in things that we are building today.”

At least 600 AI projects, including several related to major weapons systems, such as the MQ-9 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, were underway as of April 2021, according to the Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog. At least 232 ventures are being handled by the Army. The Air and Space forces are together dealing with more than 80.

RELATED

US, UK partner on command and control as Project Convergence wraps

The U.S. Army's Project Convergence this year featured U.K. and Australian forces, a first for the Joint All-Domain Command and Control experiment.

To thwart the increasingly international ambitions of China, the U.S. is forging information-sharing alliances with friendly nations in the Indo-Pacific region. They include Australia, India, Japan and South Korea. Such arrangements are a pillar of JADC2, which involves a so-called mission-partner environment where data from a spectrum of foreign sources can be collected, secured and distributed.

Senators earlier this year in a draft of the annual defense bill instructed the Defense Department to focus on the buildout of JADC2 at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command — a tacit recognition of China’s power amid a bloodbath in Ukraine. While lawmakers are concerned about Eastern Europe, and have supported the shipment of materiel to the frontlines, China remains a long-term, disruptive challenge.

The Pentagon’s Ratner said the China Military Power Report documents the “growing assertiveness, this growing coercion, as it relates to the East China Sea, as it relates to the South China Sea, on the line of actual control against India and, of course, against Taiwan.”

“We’re also seeing a more-global PLA,” he said, “one that is pursuing installations around the world, very ambitious aspirations to be projecting power, sustaining power, overseas.”

About Colin Demarest

Colin Demarest is a reporter at C4ISRNET, where he covers military networks, cyber and IT. Colin previously covered the Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration — namely Cold War cleanup and nuclear weapons development — for a daily newspaper in South Carolina. Colin is also an award-winning photographer.

14. Pat Donahoe, civilian, wants a word with the Army

A lot to agree with here. But investigations are also healthy for transparency and of course for identifying systemic problems. Without investigations that bring light to problems those problems will be swept under the rug and will re-emerge later. But I think they are too often focused on finding someone "guilty" and can become "witch-hunts."  

Based on this story alone (as I have no additional knowledge of the situation) I am embarrassed by the actions of a couple of the Colonels.

In terms of mistakes I always recall the anecdote about General Marshall learning that a Lieutenant had lost some expensive piece of equipment and asking the commander what he was going to do about it. When he said relief the Lieutenant General Marshall asked why would we ant to do that when we just spent $100,000 training him not to make the same mistake again? I don't know if that anecdote is true but it is a story that provides what I think is an important lesson and I have been fortunate enough to have had many commanders let me learn from my mistakes.

I recall another incident with the late BG Toney. When I was a battalion commander some of our teams were in Hawaii conducting a night live fire exercise. One of our newest NCOs right out of the Q course was struck by friendly fire. Fortunately, he was able to make a full recovery. I was somewhere overseas (Thailand, Philippines , or Korea , I cannot recall). After calling my commander - then Colonel Fridovich, I had to call BG Toney. He asked me what I was going to do. The right answer for him was that the team would be back on the range the next day so as not to let this incident impact them and reduce their focus on training for combat. But in terms of the 15-6 investigation he gave me the following guidance. Identify the systemic problem that caused this, e.g., raining, leadership, experience, etc, He said do not conduct an investigation to determine who fired the round that actually struck the NCO. Conduct the investigation to determine the problem and not fix blame on the person who fired the round (unless of course it was determined to be intentional which it was not). Since it was an accident that soldier did not need to be identified because if he was it would have unnecessary but long term effects. The point is we conducted the investigation because it was required and it allowed us to identify any systemic problems without being a witch hunt for the "shooter." And that team became stronger because of the incident. 

Excerpts:

He thinks the Army should tolerate those who make well-intended mistakes, as he did. “If they’re doing it in the spirit of standing up for Army values [and] defending Army regulations, Army decisions [and] Army policies, but [it] may not exactly be worded in the best way, we should make accommodations for them,” the retired two-star said.

Donahoe wants one thing to be clear: even after more than a year under IG investigation, a media frenzy, and doubt over his retirement, he still loves the Army and wants to help everyone from individual soldiers to the service itself learn from his tribulations. But that may require a reevaluation of where social media fits into the service’s sweeping “information advantage” plans and how to govern and respond to issues in that space.

“If my experience is illustrative or educational... I hope the Army can benefit from it. We need better guardrails and guidance on what we want folks doing,” he said. “First off, the Army’s got to say, this is a problem that needs to be addressed. And then we need structure. And we need policy, we need regulation to be able to deal with it.”

“I don’t think we’ve come to that understanding as an Army,” he concluded with a grimace.

...

The two-star called inspector general investigations in their current state “the most un-American process you can imagine.”

It’s not just inspector general investigations, though. In the Army, there’s an administrative investigation for every situation. As Donahoe put it, the practice has “bled into our culture now. We investigate everything immediately.”

Lost equipment? Initiate a Financial Liability Investigation of Property Loss — or FLIPL.

Think someone has done something questionable? An administrative investigation under Army Regulation 15-6 following “informal procedures” can be “used in any administrative action against an individual, regardless of the particular procedures used, and regardless of whether that individual was a subject or designated as a respondent.” Those punishments can include involuntary discharges, reliefs, forfeitures and more.

Under defense department regulations, the Pentagon-wide inspector general holds responsibility for investigations into senior officials. But they “may” delegate inquiries against lower-ranking generals to the Army inspector general, Army spokesperson Smith said. That’s what happened in Donahoe’s case.

Reading the report, the peculiarity of the investigator’s task becomes apparent.

To evaluate whether Donahoe violated regulations banning “counterproductive leadership,” the investigator compared his behavior against a list of doctrinally-defined hypothetical “destructive” leaders. The labels range from “incompetent manager” to “affable non-participant,” “insensitive driven achiever,” and even “toxic self-centered abuser.”

In Donahoe’s case, the original complainant accused him of fitting three of those categories, none of which the investigator substantiated. For the social media allegations, the investigator was charged with calculating whether it was more likely than not that the general had violated edicts such as “think, type, post” and failed to display the Army Values.

Pat Donahoe, civilian, wants a word with the Army

But is the service, which opted not to punish him for his social media posts, willing to listen?By Davis Winkie

armytimes.com · by Davis Winkie · January 5, 2023

COLUMBUS, Ga. — Pat Donahoe has something to say. Many things, in fact.

For months, the former Fort Benning commander and head of the Maneuver Center of Excellence remained mum while Army officials deliberated his fate. He’d decided to leave the Army, his retirement already approved. But would he be allowed to retire as a two-star general?

In September, the Department of the Army inspector general formally concluded the fast-talking New Jersey native had violated Army policies during three separate incidents on Twitter. There was one where he pushed back against Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s tirade against women in uniform, a second where he virtually waded into the crowd and debated right-wing trolls, and a third where he traded public tweets with a lieutenant training under his command.

But Donahoe, long known for his willingness to address problems publicly and head-on through the same social media feeds that later brought him under scrutiny, had to sit in silence as media reports revealed his planned retirement (previously slated for Oct. 1) would be delayed while senior officials weighed punishing him.

To hear him tell it, his experience illustrates two broader problems: the Army’s over-reliance on plodding administrative inquiries as a crutch for addressing allegations big or small, and its ongoing struggle to define and govern social media for those in uniform.

It took inspector general officials more than a year to work through a series of allegations repeatedly made by a colonel angered by Donahoe’s decision to reorganize the maneuver training center. Accusations ranged from how he handled the reorganization to vague incidents such as another colonel’s feeling slighted by an award ceremony. Then the investigator zeroed in on the commander’s social media conduct.

On Oct. 11, the topic derailed the service’s painstakingly-curated messaging plans at the annual Association of the U.S. Army conference, where leaders launch new initiatives and concepts. Nearly half of the first round of questions to the Army’s top leaders at a press conference were related to Donahoe, his investigation, or related social media concerns. Senior leaders quickly found themselves off script from the service’s sleek 14-page “communications playbook” created by a public relations contractor in preparation for the event.

It was an unfamiliar, uncomfortable place, he recounted to an Army Times reporter in a sheltered nook of a Columbus coffee shop in his first on-the-record interview since retiring on Jan. 1 as a two-star general without a formal reprimand or punishment. Army Times, which first broke the news of the investigation in September, has exclusively published the 41-page investigative report below.

“We consider this case closed,” said Army spokesperson Cynthia O. Smith said in a statement to Army Times that confirmed Donahoe’s retirement as a major general.

“I’m at the YMCA on the elliptical…[while] watching the AUSA press conference,” Donahoe said. “I was sick to my stomach by the end of that. [It’s] a really hard place to be in an adversarial relationship with the leaders of your service. That is not something I’ve ever desired.”

Over the course of an hours-long interview that overcast day, Donahoe made his case — covering social media policy, disinformation, administrative investigations and more. He’s calling for the Army to fundamentally reevaluate how it considers social media in a world where abandoning “the social media space” amid controversy can end a general’s career, but jumping into the online fray when prominent commentators attack women in uniform leads to an investigation.

He thinks the Army should tolerate those who make well-intended mistakes, as he did. “If they’re doing it in the spirit of standing up for Army values [and] defending Army regulations, Army decisions [and] Army policies, but [it] may not exactly be worded in the best way, we should make accommodations for them,” the retired two-star said.

Donahoe wants one thing to be clear: even after more than a year under IG investigation, a media frenzy, and doubt over his retirement, he still loves the Army and wants to help everyone from individual soldiers to the service itself learn from his tribulations. But that may require a reevaluation of where social media fits into the service’s sweeping “information advantage” plans and how to govern and respond to issues in that space.

“If my experience is illustrative or educational... I hope the Army can benefit from it. We need better guardrails and guidance on what we want folks doing,” he said. “First off, the Army’s got to say, this is a problem that needs to be addressed. And then we need structure. And we need policy, we need regulation to be able to deal with it.”

“I don’t think we’ve come to that understanding as an Army,” he concluded with a grimace.

The investigation

Donahoe first came under scrutiny from the inspector general in December 2020 when a colonel working for him at the Maneuver Center of Excellence, which is the Army proponent for infantry and armor training and doctrine, filed a complaint alleging that he was a “toxic and counterproductive leader.”

The unnamed colonel, who the inspector general noted kept a journal of his interactions with Donahoe and “slights and behaviors described by others over time,” also complained about his commander’s tweets in one of many subsequent additions to his original report.

After initial interviews, the inspector general dismissed the allegations in April 2021 without a formal investigation because they were “not credible” and Donahoe had responded to their concerns. But that changed July 26, 2021, when Army Public Affairs officials informed Army Secretary Christine Wormuth that Donahoe’s Twitter interactions sparring with right-wing figures had garnered attention.

The next day, the inspector general revived the allegations of poor leadership and launched a formal investigation into Donahoe’s social media behavior.

The toxic leadership allegations arose because a group of senior infantry officers, including the first colonel who complained, was displeased with Donahoe’s decision to restructure the maneuver center to balance the number of infantry with armor officers, who were outnumbered by their infantry peers, according to the report. They’d seemingly coordinated their answers on a command climate survey prior to the investigation, the document notes.

The unnamed colonel continued submitting additional complaints, accusing Donahoe of failing to treat him with “dignity and respect” when the general reassigned him after he completed the minimum year required to receive an annual evaluation, which rated him in the “top 2 of the 20 Colonels on the MCoE Staff” and recommended him for promotion to brigadier general, according to the report.

A second colonel told the investigator he was upset that Donahoe didn’t congratulate him for selection to attend the Army War College and presented the colonel with an award without his subordinates present.

After extensive interviews, the inspector general concluded that Donahoe did not exhibit counterproductive leadership while directing the reorganization, nor did he retaliate against the initial complainant or treat him without dignity and respect.

But for social media conduct, the investigator ultimately faulted Donahoe for three series of posts.

Donahoe agrees he was in the wrong on one of those episodes.

When the general made a Twitter post encouraging the COVID-19 vaccine in July 2021, a right-wing provocateur — who was later banned from the platform — instigated an argument with Donahoe about whether he should focus on the vaccine or suicide prevention initiatives. Over the next three days, Donahoe responded to the original critic and others, in what the inspector general described as a “snarky” tone.

The investigator concluded that the Fort Benning commander “did not act with dignity and respect, particularly in intimating that disagreeing with him somehow may equate to disloyalty to the U.S. Further the negative social media and national media attention to [Maj. Gen.] Donahoe and the Army demonstrated another lapse in judgment that was not commensurate with a [general officer] in the public eye.”

Army Times asked Donahoe to reflect on those findings.

“I should have stepped away from that engagement, even though it was an engagement about the vaccine and about disinformation,” he said. “I was overly snarky. I was [acting like] a teenage New Jerseyan at that point.”

Smith, the Army spokesperson, emphasized the need for “good judgment” when leaders engage on social media “with dignity and respect.” The service’s top civilian, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, told reporters at the October press conference that generals need to avoid being “drawn into...the inflammatory kind of environment that frankly Twitter really lends itself to.”

Wormuth added that senior leaders “have to choose their words very carefully.”

But the other incidents are less clear-cut, Donahoe contended.

In March 2021 after conservative commentator Tucker Carlson made controversial remarks arguing that women don’t belong in the military, Donahoe shared a video of a woman’s reenlistment ceremony atop a tank with a message that said Carlson “couldn’t be more wrong.” Other leaders, including Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Grinston and Gen. Paul Funk — now retired, but then Donahoe’s boss as the Training and Doctrine command’s top general — posted quote tweets atop a NCO’s reply to Donahoe’s tweet endorsing his sentiment.

Even the inspector general’s investigator admitted the effort was “potentially admirable.”

But the report ultimately declares the post “exhibited poor judgement [sic]…[and] subsequent media coverage drew national attention for [Maj. Gen.] Donahoe and did not reflect an Army culture of dignity and respect, and it cast the Army in a negative light.” The inspector general concluded the tweets violated the service’s vague “think, type, post” social media policy and service-wide command policy.

Over coffee in Columbus, Donahoe quipped he was “in good company” when he responded to Carlson and argued the inspector general should not have concluded he violated a regulation in that instance.

Maj. Gen. Patrick Donahoe, Eighth Army’s operations general officer, speaks to the 30 competitors at the Eighth Army Best Warrior Competition at Camp Humphreys, May 30, 2020. (Sgt. Steven Close/Army)

“We value the women that serve in the United States Army,” he said. “And we’ve got to say that loudly and proudly…It’s a challenge to the cohesion of the Army, when an entire population inside the Army feels that senior leaders aren’t willing to defend them publicly, and we should never step away from that duty as senior leaders.”

In the third incident, the general was found to have violated part of a Training and Doctrine Command regulation that prohibits communication between training officers and officers attending the Basic Officer Leader Course — the second stage of officer education that trains them in their specialty. The cited portion of the regulation, TRADOC 350-36, is overwhelmingly focused on preventing the sexual and financial exploitation of vulnerable young officers at the hands of their trainers.

But the investigator ruled Donahoe exchanging a public joke on Twitter about assisting on a training project with an armor lieutenant — and later admonishing her to “go to sleep” to end the conversation — violated the rule.

The general said the investigator failed to consider the full context of the exchange. According to his response, summarized by the inspector general, the lieutenant was facing online threats and harassment after posting a photograph of herself with insignia associated with combat arms. In Donahoe’s eyes, publicly interacting with the officer was a way to fulfill his command responsibility to shield a subordinate facing online attacks.

Inspector general officials disagreed, saying the interaction could lead others to believe “he had given her preferential treatment over other students…while [Maj. Gen.] Donahoe stated he was joking when he made the comments [about being ‘co-author’ on her battle analysis project], the cadre had no way of knowing that.” They concluded it “had serious impacts [on] the effectiveness of his training staff.”

Donahoe reiterated to Army Times that he disagreed with the investigators, who he added did not interview the officer’s brigade commander to ask whether the tweets had impacted his training mission.

He also argued that the regulation “speaks to private interactions” rather than public-facing posts on sites like Twitter, which he equated to “me screaming across the street at that person and them screaming back.” The findings reflect “a misunderstanding of how the systems work. I am intervening publicly where she’s been threatened with sexual violence.”

In his eyes, “that should not be a substantiated violation of any policy or Army value.” But Smith, the Army spokesperson, rejected Donahoe’s interpretation and said the regulation “applies to all forms of communication. Furthermore, it is the conduct and relationship that is being regulated irrespective of format.”

Amid harassment that continued beyond the investigation, the lieutenant later deleted her public social media accounts.

‘A conclusion in search of evidence’

As Donahoe puts it, his exit from the Army epitomizes a culture that has gone overboard on administrative investigations of all stripes.

“We have this investigatory culture now [where] everything has to be an [administrative investigation],” he argued. “I think that stems from how we operated in Iraq and Afghanistan, where every interaction outside the wire had to be substantiated or documented for the record.”

Donahoe decried the IG report, saying, “In many places, it looks like a conclusion in search of evidence.” And for administrative investigations, an investigator merely has to assemble enough evidence to demonstrate an allegation is more likely than not — or 51% likely — in order to deem it “substantiated” under the preponderance of evidence standard.

The two-star called inspector general investigations in their current state “the most un-American process you can imagine.”

It’s not just inspector general investigations, though. In the Army, there’s an administrative investigation for every situation. As Donahoe put it, the practice has “bled into our culture now. We investigate everything immediately.”

Lost equipment? Initiate a Financial Liability Investigation of Property Loss — or FLIPL.

Think someone has done something questionable? An administrative investigation under Army Regulation 15-6 following “informal procedures” can be “used in any administrative action against an individual, regardless of the particular procedures used, and regardless of whether that individual was a subject or designated as a respondent.” Those punishments can include involuntary discharges, reliefs, forfeitures and more.

Under defense department regulations, the Pentagon-wide inspector general holds responsibility for investigations into senior officials. But they “may” delegate inquiries against lower-ranking generals to the Army inspector general, Army spokesperson Smith said. That’s what happened in Donahoe’s case.

Reading the report, the peculiarity of the investigator’s task becomes apparent.

To evaluate whether Donahoe violated regulations banning “counterproductive leadership,” the investigator compared his behavior against a list of doctrinally-defined hypothetical “destructive” leaders. The labels range from “incompetent manager” to “affable non-participant,” “insensitive driven achiever,” and even “toxic self-centered abuser.”

In Donahoe’s case, the original complainant accused him of fitting three of those categories, none of which the investigator substantiated. For the social media allegations, the investigator was charged with calculating whether it was more likely than not that the general had violated edicts such as “think, type, post” and failed to display the Army Values.

Donahoe expressed frustration that despite the inexact nature of the investigations, accused soldiers have little rights in the proceedings. Whistleblower protections prevent the accused from confronting the complainant, he said, and the accused’s attorney is not permitted to speak during any interviews with the investigator.

“[Maj. Gen.] Donahoe was afforded due process throughout the investigation in accordance with Army policy,” Smith said. In a text message commenting on Smith’s statement, Donahoe argued that the service’s “current policy doesn’t allow for due process as most Americans understand it...[the current policy] is why it is this way.”

He also argued that such systems can be “weaponized” by those who disagree with policy decisions in order to create an investigative cloud hanging over commands. “And they were effective,” he added.

Moreover, IG investigations often stretch out for months on end. Donahoe first received preliminary results of the investigation in September 2022, about 14 months after it formally began, “for a relatively simple allegation.”

“I was under investigation for three-quarters of the time I was in command [at Fort Benning],” he estimated. “That’s dysfunctional. The fact that we can’t get investigations completed in a timely manner is a challenge to our command authorities…we need to solve that as an Army.”

The general also believes that if the investigation had been completed in a timely manner, the public relations disaster over his retirement delay may have never occurred, saying with a laugh, “I think the only reason you know my name is that we couldn’t finish an investigation in time for me to retire.”

Part of the problem may lie with the sheer volume of high-stakes investigations the office handles, as well as the complex administrative processes that govern them.

According to data provided by Smith, the Army inspector general has formally investigated 71 allegations against at least 17 general officers since the start of fiscal 2019 (many cases, such as Donahoe’s, include multiple allegations against a single officer). Of those, 24 — or roughly 1 in 3 — allegations were deemed substantiated.

Asked why inspector general investigations can take years, Smith cited the uniqueness of each investigation and said, “[The inspector general] develops an investigative plan for each investigation and modifies that plan as the Investigating Officer gathers evidence and allegations are added or removed. The duration of an investigation is dependent on the nature of the complaint and the allegations presented.”

And investigations delegated down to the Army inspector general from the defense department inspector general must be reviewed and approved by the military-wide watchdog before Army-level officials can take action on the findings, offering another potential source of delay.

In some cases, external factors can also intervene. When the defense department inspector general wanted to investigate claims that an Army brigadier general’s workplace conduct had harmed the effectiveness of the White House Military Office, officials were unable to even begin their investigation for more than a year due to disagreements between White House and Pentagon attorneys over interview procedures and related issues.

‘A clear insider threat’

And while the investigation into Donahoe’s leadership and social media conduct dragged on, influential anonymous right-wing social media accounts (most notably the person known as “TerminalCWO,” known for attacking COVID-19 policies) amplified and spread rumors about the allegations against him. The same users often attack other DoD officials and policies, passing along disinformation via Telegram, Instagram and other platforms to their tens of thousands of followers.

“These are admitted, self-identified soldiers and officers serving in the United States Army [who are] hiding behind a thin veneer of anonymity, who are violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice online every day,” Donahoe said. “[They’re] attacking good order and discipline in the formation, or ridiculing civilian oversight of the military, or making racist and misogynistic attacks on leaders and soldiers.”

While commanding Fort Benning, Donahoe took action against an officer there who was running one such account which harshly criticized a brigade commander based on remarks the commander had made in a private meeting. The account administrator, when pressed for a source by his followers, revealed he’d been in the room. A subsequent investigation was able to substantiate that the officer was behind the account, due to self-professed biographical details on the account — such as prior Marine Corps service — that matched only one officer who was in the room.

The officer is currently awaiting discharge after facing an involuntary separation process where he received multiple reprimands and other punishments for his conduct until he had to face a “show cause” board to justify continued service in light of his misconduct, Donahoe said. But investigating and punishing such conduct is more difficult if an account has multiple administrators, or if they lay in another chain of command elsewhere in the service.

“Who in the Army should pursue that?” he asked in frustration as he described his attempts to report servicemembers he believed were linked to similar accounts but were assigned to other commands. Donahoe said he tried reporting to the inspector general and the service’s Criminal Investigation Division, but neither to his knowledge have investigated his claims.

“And part of the problem here is that it’s a clear insider threat,” the general argued. “Some of these individuals [running such accounts] have top secret security clearances and they are out there behind screen names…we need to have policies and authorities to get after this in a timely manner.”

Donahoe worries that the Army may lack the institutional attention span to address the problem, which he said would require concerted bureaucratic effort to establish structures, policies and regulations “to deal with it.”

Maj. Gen. Patrick J. Donahoe, commanding general of the U.S. Army Maneuver Center of Excellence and Fort Benning, sheds tears during his keynote address at the Global War on Terrorism Memorial rededication Sept. 12, 2020 at the National Infantry Museum. (Patrick A. Albright/Army)

Avoiding ‘muzzling’

The retired general cautioned that the service needs to put in the time and effort to meaningfully address personal social media conduct lest it “pull everybody off social media and…cede that information space. And it will only be those neutral or malicious actors out there who are coming after [us].”

However, recent policy changes (and companion Army guidance) are pulling senior troops away from personal social media accounts that reference their service or positions. Smith, the Army spokesperson, said an “Army Directive on social media is in staffing. The directive will make updates to existing public affairs policies and regulations.”

Under the most recent changes, personal account users must now “avoid” such links, and senior officials and public affairs personnel are strictly prohibited from maintaining personal accounts that post official guidance. Instead, senior leaders who want to communicate in an official capacity on social media must do so from generic accounts that will be archived and put on the shelf when they move to another position and retire.

Donahoe thinks moves like that risk alienating junior troops who are more online than any previous generation and “expect candid interactions with their leadership.”

“The only way that’s really possible [for senior leaders] is on social media,” he argued. “I don’t think muzzling everybody is the right answer.”

But that’s going to require the Army to accept a little risk that the thumbs behind the screens occasionally make mistakes, Donahoe said. Those who do should receive “accommodations” if their missteps were born from good intentions.

If the Army wants his input in developing the policies that find that balance, he’s ready to contribute “whatever I can do to help [the] institution.”

Despite his bumpy exit from the service, Donahoe, who will remain in Columbus in his retirement, described himself as “optimistic” about the progress the Army has made in recent years.

“Whether they involve me in it or not, [the Army] has the opportunity to learn…the right lessons” from his experience, he said. “Each of us individually as senior leaders in the Army need to be empowered to communicate with their own formations, with the Army and whole [defense department], and with the American people. And we should be empowered and trusted to communicate on behalf of the Army for that.”

CORRECTION: This story has been updated to accurately state the military duty status of both an officer who faced reprimand from Donahoe and another non-commissioned officer who was referenced in social media exchanges with the retired major general.

About Davis Winkie

Davis Winkie is a senior reporter covering the Army, specializing in accountability reporting, personnel issues and military justice. He joined Military Times in 2020. Davis studied history at Vanderbilt University and UNC-Chapel Hill, writing a master's thesis about how the Cold War-era Defense Department influenced Hollywood's WWII movies.

Share:

armytimes.com · by Davis Winkie · January 5, 2023

15. Destroyer Makes First U.S. Warship Taiwan Strait Transit of 2023

Destroyer Makes First U.S. Warship Taiwan Strait Transit of 2023

https://news.usni.org/2023/01/05/destroyer-makes-first-u-s-warship-taiwan-strait-transit-of-2023?utm_campaign=dfn-ebb&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sailthru&SToverlay=2002c2d9-c344-4bbb-8610-e5794efcfa7d

By: Heather Mongilio

January 5, 2023 12:34 PM

he Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Chung-Hoon (DDG-93) sails through the Taiwan Strait. US Navy Photo

USS Chung-Hoon (DDG-93) made the first Taiwan Strait transit of 2023, the Navy announced Thursday.

Chung-Hoon sailed through the strait Thursday, Lt. Kristina Wiedemann, a spokesperson for the U.S. Navy said in an email. Chinese state-run media did not acknowledge the passage, as of this posting.

The transit was done in accordance with international law and outside of any country’s territorial sea, Wiedemann said in the statement.

“Chung-Hoon’s transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the United States’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” she said in the statement. “The United States military flies, sails and operates anywhere international law allows.”

The Arleigh-Burke class destroyer is part of the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group, and is deployed to the U.S. 7th Fleet.

Chung-Hoon is part of Destroyer Squadron 9 and is homeported at Naval Base Pearl Harbor.

The transit follows an incident last month in which a Chinese naval fighter had an “unsafe and unprofessional” interaction with a U.S. Air Force surveillance aircraft over the South China Sea. Last week, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force sortied 42 aircraft across the median line of the strait into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) as part of a so-called “strike drill” according to Chinese state media.

Meanwhile, the PLAN is wrapping up a cruise of its Liaoning Carrier Strike Group after a patrol in the Philippine Sea, USNI News reported on Monday.

16. For many of the 1,271 Americans under Russian sanctions, it’s a point of pride

Excerpt:

The list, lack of punch aside, does serve as a rundown of Moscow’s grievances against the United States.

For many of the 1,271 Americans under Russian sanctions, it’s a point of pride

The Washington Post · by Adam Taylor · January 6, 2023

A Harvard astrophysicist. A Silicon Valley billionaire. Hollywood actors. Convicted murderers.

These are among the select but slowly growing list of Americans living under a strange penalty, that has proved a source of pride, bafflement, and in some cases, consternation: Russian sanctions.

Some 1,271 U.S. citizens have made Moscow’s “Stop List,” posted online by Russia’s Foreign Ministry.

Washington has increasingly used sanctions on individuals as a foreign policy tool of choice, wielding the U.S. financial system as a sledgehammer or scalpel to cut off its enemies, or those of its allies. Russia has come under crushing U.S. sanctions since it invaded Ukraine last February: Washington has imposed sanctions on more than 1,300 Russians in recent years and on more than 1,000 Russian legal entities. Sanctions keep designees from doing business with U.S. companies or individuals and often come at a steep penalty.

In an act of apparent diplomatic desperation, or perhaps for the theater of it, Russia is trying to respond in kind — and come up against the harsh one-sidedness of U.S. economic power. Russia’s Stop List is a fundamentally asymmetric response, and it’s not weighted in Moscow’s favor.

Americans who have found themselves under Russian sanctions include celebrities: Ben Stiller, Sean Penn and Morgan Freeman, all of whom appear to have drawn Moscow’s ire over expressions of support for Ukraine.

Politicians, including President Biden, are also on the list, as are executives, such as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

But most of the names included are far less familiar, and in some cases, confounding. While some come with descriptions justifying the designation (Freeman, for example, is dubbed a “well-known film actor” who, the Russian Foreign Ministry says, criticized Russia in 2017), three dozen on the list are simply described as “U.S. citizens.”

“To the best of my knowledge … I’m still the only astrophysicist that’s been sanctioned by the Kremlin,” said Benjamin Schmitt, a project development scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Some names on the list appear to be misspelled. Others have been dead for years, including the late senators Harry M. Reid and John McCain.

Unlike Russian oligarchs, known for travel and dealings in the West, U.S. citizens rarely have assets in Russian territory to be seized. Indeed, there are no public reports of anyone on the list having assets in Russia frozen.

Annie Froehlich, a lawyer with the firm Cooley who works on sanctions and exports controls (but who is not, as the Stop List says, a former employee of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control), said that while U.S. sanctions served policy aims, it wasn’t clear that Russian designations could do the same.

“It strikes me as just trying to cast a very wide net,” said Froehlich, who added that while she was unsettled by her inclusion on the list, she was pleased to be one place behind Freeman.

Many on the list scoff at its impact.

“It’s generally an honor to be on the sanctions list, so it’s not going to affect me negatively,” said Francis Fukuyama, a public intellectual and senior fellow at Stanford University who had been targeted by Moscow.

“What an honor,” Michael Carpenter, the U.S. Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Co-operation, wrote on Twitter in June. D.C. Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3), who pushed to name a street after a murdered Russian opposition politician, has also said she was “honored” to be included.

There was some affront — albeit largely sarcastic. Rob Reiner, the director of the film “This Is Spinal Tap,” told Deadline earlier this year he was “heartbroken” to be included.

The list, lack of punch aside, does serve as a rundown of Moscow’s grievances against the United States.

It names politicians from across the political spectrum — but not former president Donald Trump or many of his close allies — and their family members, as well as U.S. officials connected to the imposition of sanctions on Russia. Alongside them: U.S. officials and former soldiers linked to Guantánamo Bay detention camp and the abuses at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison — sanctions announced by Moscow in 2014, in apparent retaliation for human rights sanctions imposed by the United States at the time.

Others include law enforcement officials, lawyers and judges involved in high-profile cases against Russian citizens. There are also names linked to Chabad, an ultra-Orthodox branch of Judaism that has been labeled a cult by Moscow.

Roughly 30 names on the list are connected to cases in which a child adopted from Russia faced alleged abuse. Moscow banned American adoption of Russian children in 2012, naming the law after a child who died of heatstroke in a car in Virginia.

Some included are serving time in prison, with no immediate hope of release. It is unlikely they were planning a visit to Russia anytime soon.

“Being sanctioned came as a pretty big surprise to me, since I haven’t ever held a job in the U.S. government, as most others on the list have,” said Kathryn Stoner, a scholar from Stanford University who has extensively researched Russia for decades. “One of my kids said jokingly, ‘It’s always nice to be noticed, Mom.’”

“Yes, it’s me” on the list, said Rich Eychaner, a Des Moines-based entrepreneur who works to support LGBTQ rights around the world. “LGBTQ activists are very scary to the Russians.”

Some don’t know why they face Russian sanctions. “I can’t think of any explanation that makes sense at this stage of my life,” Leon Spies, an Iowa-based attorney, told the local politics blog Bleeding Heartland in May. “I was anti-communist as a kid when nuclear annihilation was an everyday nightmare, but most everyone was.”

Fukuyama is among the most well-known academics on the list. The political scientist, famous for his theory of the “end of history” with the collapse of the Soviet Union, found out he was included via Twitter. He believes he was included because of his work with the Stanford Sanctions Group, which is led by the Obama administration’s ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, and also includes Stoner.

Like Fukuyama, many view their inclusion on the list as a minor inconvenience, if not an honorable sacrifice.

“I’ve been a strong critic of Putin and his regime since 1999,” said Alexander Motyl, a professor of political science at Rutgers University. “So, it’s high time for the Russians to have recognized my work!”

Kristina Hook, a genocide scholar who is among those under Russian sanctions, said Ukrainians are the ones seeing real ramifications for defying Russia.

“The consequences of failing to speak out and to use my technical knowledge of the subject of genocide to advise decision-makers would be far worse for me than anything the Kremlin can do,” Hook said, noting that she had been among those sharing the argument that Russia’s actions in Ukraine meet the scholarly and legal definitions of genocide.

But others have feelings that are more mixed. Some journalists, including the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser, The Post’s David Ignatius and BellingCat’s Aric Toler, are on the list. “Some Americans might regard permanent exclusion from Russia as a treat, but I’m not one of them,” Ignatius wrote last year. “I’ve visited the country a half-dozen times, starting in the early 1980s, and enjoyed every visit.”

“This is a country that fascinates me, and that has been at the center of my entire professional life,” Stoner said. But “it won’t stop me from writing or saying what I want about Russia, just as I always have.”

The Washington Post · by Adam Taylor · January 6, 2023

17. Pentagon Senior Leaders Unfocused on Combat Readiness

I think Dr. Marion's these here can and should be challenged. I do not think the Pentagon has abandoned meritocracy for diversity. Feeling that it has does not make it so. This is such an emotional issue that generates extreme reactions.  In the simplest construct, I think the Pentagon is trying to add human dignity to meritocracy and not replace it with "diversity." I will hunker down for the incoming from that statement. But we should also know that there are no winners in our culture wars (except perhaps China, Russia, Iran, and north. Korea)

Excerpts:

The Pentagon’s abandonment of meritocracy in favor of Diversity and its lesser god, Equity, contributes – in addition to mediocrity – nothing to combat readiness. It does, however, invite Rage and Racism against the meritorious, and hopes of Reparations and Rewards for the unmeritorious. One renowned military historian and author, with years of experience on the board of an aerospace higher education institution, frames the issue this way:

Further, does anyone doubt the Chinese, Russians, North Koreans, and Iranians are rubbing their hands with glee at the current American DEI-based dystopia? At least the Ukrainians appear focused on actual combat readiness and battlefield effectiveness rather than on robust diversity, equity, and other divisive social experiments within their ranks. The results are self-evident, are they not?

Pentagon Senior Leaders Unfocused on Combat Readiness

By Forrest L. Marion

January 06, 2023

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/01/06/pentagon_senior_leaders_unfocused_on_combat_readiness_874150.html

During the so-called "Phoney War" from the fall of 1939 to the spring of 1940, the former Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Lord Gort – reassigned to command the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France against the German attack that everyone knew was to come – inexplicably remained attentive to nonessential concerns. Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s biographer wrote that during the eight months prior to the fateful date of 10 May 1940, when Hitler launched his attack on France, Gort “never once conducted an administrative, signals, Intelligence or even movement exercise.” He was entirely unprepared and ill-suited for the command he now held. One of Montgomery’s trusted subordinates, serving at Gort’s general headquarters at Arras, France, “. . . found the most amateur arrangements conceivable.” In one striking case of misdirected energy, Gort’s deputy “concentrated entirely on the wines and food for the mess of the Quartermaster-General at Noyel-les Vion, a village some miles west of Arras. How, in such circumstances, the BEF was supposed to swell itself into an eventual formation of two armies, with nearly half a million men, was incredible,” wrote Nigel Hamilton.

But Gort’s concern over the selection of wines for the officers’ mess shortly before the German onslaught against France in 1940 is not unlike the misguided activities of the Pentagon’s senior leaders amid gathering war clouds eight decades later. Since January 2021, the defense department’s obsession with Critical Race [racist] Theory (CRT) – and its “close cousin,” as Dr. Carol Swain describes – Diversity-Equity-Inclusion (DEI), adds no more to the combat readiness of the U.S. armed forces than did Gort’s choice wines. Worse, the Pentagon’s costly, counterproductive actions – including the virtue-signaling hunt for “extremists” within the ranks, renaming military posts, and promoting social-political causes from abortion-on-demand to pronoun preferences to drag-queen-military-library events to transgender reassignment procedures to unproven vaccine mandates – actually are lowering those intangible but indispensable elements of combat readiness known as morale and trust. (In terms of extremism, does not the discharging of trained personnel unwilling to subject themselves to an unproven vaccine, especially during a manpower shortfall, seem an example?) At least in the BEF’s case, the wine selections offered some momentary morale boost for British officers, albeit most of whom sadly lacked the professionalism required to engage the German Wehrmacht with any chance of success in 1940.

At least within socially permitted categories dependent on time and place, successful militaries have been based mainly upon merit. But today’s Pentagon seeks a paradigm change in the name of its god, Diversity, which means everything to its leadership. Years ago, conservative scholar and author, Professor Thomas Sowell, observed: “The mystical benefits of diversity are nonexistent, however politically correct it is to proclaim such benefits.” Two months ago, during oral arguments in an affirmative action case, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas rightly observed that diversity “seems to mean everything for everyone.” 

It is a well-known phenomenon that when a concept, doctrine, or program comes to mean everything, the overreach has the opposite effect. The thing, in fact, is reduced to nothingness.

The Pentagon’s abandonment of meritocracy in favor of Diversity and its lesser god, Equity, contributes – in addition to mediocrity – nothing to combat readiness. It does, however, invite Rage and Racism against the meritorious, and hopes of Reparations and Rewards for the unmeritorious. One renowned military historian and author, with years of experience on the board of an aerospace higher education institution, frames the issue this way:

In the long run, DEI is a trap for minorities. It denies them the rigorous education they need to truly master any field, and it cheapens any accomplishment by those minority members who DO work hard as there is always the suspicion by those who first meet them that they only got ahead because of a DEI ‘thumb on the scale.’ Sad, really. Worse, it builds in a lingering mistrust in any organization: Is Mr./Ms./Maj./Col. X really as competent as their resume says? Can I as a manager/team leader/commander rely on them? That is disastrous for the nation in the long run.

In contrast to DEI’s fostering of suspicion and mistrust of one’s merit, there have been plenty of minority members who achieved senior rank on the basis of outstanding accomplishments, not diversity initiatives. In my own Service’s context, the U.S. Air Force, four-star generals include Benjamin Davis, Chappie James, Bernie Randolph, Fig Newton, Les Lyles, Darren McDew, and the current chief of staff, C.Q. Brown, Jr. They all got there “‘the old fashioned way: they earned it.’ . . . And as everyone in the private and public and Govt and military fields should.” 

Further, does anyone doubt the Chinese, Russians, North Koreans, and Iranians are rubbing their hands with glee at the current American DEI-based dystopia? At least the Ukrainians appear focused on actual combat readiness and battlefield effectiveness rather than on robust diversity, equity, and other divisive social experiments within their ranks. The results are self-evident, are they not?

Forrest L. Marion, Ph.D., is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and military historian. He is the author of Flight Risk: The Coalition's Air Advisory Mission in Afghanistan, 2005-2015 (Naval Institute Press, 2018), and (forthcoming), Standing Up Space Force: The Road to the Nation's Sixth Armed Service (Naval Institute Press).

18.​ Drone advances in Ukraine could bring new age of warfare​

Drone advances in Ukraine could bring new age of warfare

c4isrnet.com · by Frank Bajak, The Associated Press · January 5, 2023

KYIV, Ukraine — Drone advances in Ukraine have accelerated a long-anticipated technology trend that could soon bring the world’s first fully autonomous fighting robots to the battlefield, inaugurating a new age of warfare.

The longer the war lasts, the more likely it becomes that drones will be used to identify, select and attack targets without help from humans, according to military analysts, combatants and artificial intelligence researchers.

That would mark a revolution in military technology as profound as the introduction of the machine gun. Ukraine already has semi-autonomous attack drones and counter-drone weapons endowed with AI. Russia also claims to possess AI weaponry, though the claims are unproven. But there are no confirmed instances of a nation putting into combat robots that have killed entirely on their own.

Experts say it may be only a matter of time before either Russia or Ukraine, or both, deploy them.

“Many states are developing this technology,” said Zachary Kallenborn, a George Mason University weapons innovation analyst. “Clearly, it’s not all that difficult.”

RELATED

How Ukraine learned to cloak its drones from Russian surveillance

AeroScopes identify drone operator positions thanks to something called DroneID, a program that is part of DJI drones’ firmware.

The sense of inevitability extends to activists, who have tried for years to ban killer drones but now believe they must settle for trying to restrict the weapons’ offensive use.

Ukraine’s digital transformation minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, agrees that fully autonomous killer drones are “a logical and inevitable next step” in weapons development. He said Ukraine has been doing “a lot of R&D in this direction.”

“I think that the potential for this is great in the next six months,” Fedorov told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

Ukrainian Lt. Col. Yaroslav Honchar, co-founder of the combat drone innovation nonprofit Aerorozvidka, said in a recent interview near the front that human war fighters simply cannot process information and make decisions as quickly as machines.

Ukrainian military leaders currently prohibit the use of fully independent lethal weapons, although that could change, he said.

“We have not crossed this line yet – and I say ‘yet’ because I don’t know what will happen in the future.” said Honchar, whose group has spearheaded drone innovation in Ukraine, converting cheap commercial drones into lethal weapons.

Russia could obtain autonomous AI from Iran or elsewhere. The long-range Shahed-136 exploding drones supplied by Iran have crippled Ukrainian power plants and terrorized civilians but are not especially smart. Iran has other drones in its evolving arsenal that it says feature AI.

FILE - This undated photograph released by the Ukrainian military's Strategic Communications Directorate shows the wreckage of what Kyiv has described as an Iranian Shahed drone downed near Kupiansk, Ukraine. (Ukrainian military's Strategic Communications Directorate via AP, File)

Without a great deal of trouble, Ukraine could make its semi-autonomous weaponized drones fully independent in order to better survive battlefield jamming, their Western manufacturers say.

Those drones include the U.S.-made Switchblade 600 and the Polish Warmate, which both currently require a human to choose targets over a live video feed. AI finishes the job. The drones, technically known as “loitering munitions,” can hover for minutes over a target, awaiting a clean shot.

“The technology to achieve a fully autonomous mission with Switchblade pretty much exists today,” said Wahid Nawabi, CEO of AeroVironment, its maker. That will require a policy change — to remove the human from the decision-making loop — that he estimates is three years away.

Drones can already recognize targets such as armored vehicles using cataloged images. But there is disagreement over whether the technology is reliable enough to ensure that the machines don’t err and take the lives of noncombatants.

The AP asked the defense ministries of Ukraine and Russia if they have used autonomous weapons offensively – and whether they would agree not to use them if the other side similarly agreed. Neither responded.

If either side were to go on the attack with full AI, it might not even be a first.

An inconclusive U.N. report suggested that killer robots debuted in Libya’s internecine conflict in 2020, when Turkish-made Kargu-2 drones in full-automatic mode killed an unspecified number of combatants.

A spokesman for STM, the manufacturer, said the report was based on “speculative, unverified” information and “should not be taken seriously.” He told the AP the Kargu-2 cannot attack a target until the operator tells it to do so.

Fully autonomous AI is already helping to defend Ukraine. Utah-based Fortem Technologies has supplied the Ukrainian military with drone-hunting systems that combine small radars and unmanned aerial vehicles, both powered by AI. The radars are designed to identify enemy drones, which the UAVs then disable by firing nets at them — all without human assistance.

The number of AI-endowed drones keeps growing. Israel has been exporting them for decades. Its radar-killing Harpy can hover over anti-aircraft radar for up to nine hours waiting for them to power up.

Other examples include Beijing’s Blowfish-3 unmanned weaponized helicopter. Russia has been working on a nuclear-tipped underwater AI drone called the Poseidon. The Dutch are currently testing a ground robot with a .50-caliber machine gun.

Honchar believes Russia, whose attacks on Ukrainian civilians have shown little regard for international law, would have used killer autonomous drones by now if the Kremlin had them.

“I don’t think they’d have any scruples,” agreed Adam Bartosiewicz, vice president of WB Group, which makes the Warmate.

AI is a priority for Russia. President Vladimir Putin said in 2017 that whoever dominates that technology will rule the world. In a Dec. 21 speech, he expressed confidence in the Russian arms industry’s ability to embed AI in war machines, stressing that “the most effective weapons systems are those that operate quickly and practically in an automatic mode.”

Russian officials already claim their Lancet drone can operate with full autonomy.

“It’s not going to be easy to know if and when Russia crosses that line,” said Gregory C. Allen, former director of strategy and policy at the Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center.

Switching a drone from remote piloting to full autonomy might not be perceptible. To date, drones able to work in both modes have performed better when piloted by a human, Allen said.

The technology is not especially complicated, said University of California-Berkeley professor Stuart Russell, a top AI researcher. In the mid-2010s, colleagues he polled agreed that graduate students could, in a single term, produce an autonomous drone “capable of finding and killing an individual, let’s say, inside a building,” he said.

An effort to lay international ground rules for military drones has so far been fruitless. Nine years of informal United Nations talks in Geneva made little headway, with major powers including the United States and Russia opposing a ban. The last session, in December, ended with no new round scheduled.

Washington policymakers say they won’t agree to a ban because rivals developing drones cannot be trusted to use them ethically.

Toby Walsh, an Australian academic who, like Russell, campaigns against killer robots, hopes to achieve a consensus on some limits, including a ban on systems that use facial recognition and other data to identify or attack individuals or categories of people.

“If we are not careful, they are going to proliferate much more easily than nuclear weapons,” said Walsh, author of “Machines Behaving Badly.” “If you can get a robot to kill one person, you can get it to kill a thousand.”

Scientists also worry about AI weapons being repurposed by terrorists. In one feared scenario, the U.S. military spends hundreds of millions writing code to power killer drones. Then it gets stolen and copied, effectively giving terrorists the same weapon.

To date, the Pentagon has neither clearly defined “an AI-enabled autonomous weapon” nor authorized a single such weapon for use by U.S. troops, said Allen, the former Defense Department official. Any proposed system must be approved by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and two undersecretaries.

That’s not stopping the weapons from being developed across the U.S. Projects are underway at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, military labs, academic institutions and in the private sector.

The Pentagon has emphasized using AI to augment human warriors. The Air Force is studying ways to pair pilots with drone wingmen. A booster of the idea, former Deputy Defense Secretary Robert O. Work, said in a report last month that it “would be crazy not to go to an autonomous system” once AI-enabled systems outperform humans — a threshold that he said was crossed in 2015, when computer vision eclipsed that of humans.

Humans have already been pushed out in some defensive systems. Israel’s Iron Dome missile shield is authorized to open fire automatically, although it is said to be monitored by a person who can intervene if the system goes after the wrong target.

Multiple countries, and every branch of the U.S. military, are developing drones that can attack in deadly synchronized swarms, according to Kallenborn, the George Mason researcher.

So will future wars become a fight to the last drone?

That’s what Putin predicted in a 2017 televised chat with engineering students: “When one party’s drones are destroyed by drones of another, it will have no other choice but to surrender.”

Frank Bajak reported from Boston. Associated Press journalists Tara Copp in Washington, Garance Burke in San Francisco and Suzan Fraser in Turkey contributed to this report.

19. It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s . . . Time to Plan for Drones in Other Domains

Excerpts:

So what should the United States do? The obvious answer is to invest in researching, developing, testing, and deploying countermeasures specific to nonaerial domains. But the less obvious part is to consider which aerial drone countermeasures might be usable or adaptable to nonaerial threats. Falcons and net guns probably are not useful, but variable jammers able to target different frequencies might do just fine. Ordinary antiship, antitank, and antitorpedo weapons may work well too. The United States can look at approaches developed to counter Iranian small manned boat swarms for insights applicable to countering swarming USVs. But wargaming, modeling, simulation, and exercises will all be needed to explore system trade-offs, investigate how adversaries may integrate drones with manned vehicles, and develop and test concepts of operation. Sites threatened by drones across multiple domains will also need to integrate detectors and interceptors to the maximum extent possible to ensure defenders are not overwhelmed with data and response options.

Especially critical is that the United States assesses countermeasures as broadly as feasible. Just as UAVs span the gamut from tiny quadcopters to the MQ-9 Reaper’s sixty-six-foot wingspan, nonaerial drones could range from bombs strapped to radio-controlled cars to USVs larger than a corvette. The composition and scale of the drone threat needs to be considered broadly too: How might the Russian response have changed if Ukraine used ten USVs and five UAVs? Or five USVs, five UAVs, and five manned fast attack craft? Or twenty of each?

UAVs have garnered significant attention in recent years. Rightfully so. UAVs were a defining feature of the post-9/11 war on terrorism, and nonstate actors have more recently shown they could weaponize commercial UAVs. Both trends drove a pattern of thinking about unmanned platforms that centered on the air domain. But the Ukraine war shows drones operating in other domains can have major consequences too. The United States needs to think seriously about this threat and how to prepare. If not, the next conflict may see American ships doing what Russian ships have been forced to do—cowering in a safe harbor.

It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s . . . Time to Plan for Drones in Other Domains - Modern War Institute

mwi.usma.edu · by Zachary Kallenborn · January 5, 2023

Share on LinkedIn

Send email

On October 29, Ukraine deployed a total of sixteen drones in an attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet. The extent of the physical damage inflicted by the attack is unclear, though a Russian minehunter and a frigate appear to have been damaged. But the larger psychological effects were significant: Russia appears to have withdrawn many of its ships, moving them to more secure ports, which limits the firepower and presence they can provide. Russia also upgraded the defenses of those ports, adding numerous booms throughout the area. But that didn’t stop another Ukrainian attack with unmanned vehicles on Novorossiysk a couple weeks later.

Perhaps the most surprising thing is that only nine of the vehicles involved in the October attack were UAVs—unmanned aerial vehicles. The other seven were USVs, unmanned surface vehicles plying the waves as they approached their targets. The Novorossiysk attack was also conducted by a USV. The involvement of USVs might come as a surprise, given that the United States has just experienced two decades of warfighting that reinforced the habitual conceptualization of drone warfare as a phenomenon of the skies.

The attacks actually were not the first time USVs have caused harm. In January 2017, Houthi rebels used drone boats to cause serious damage to a Saudi frigate. Such attacks can be expected to increase in the future, because the technology is simply not that difficult. The Houthis fielded the technology as a nonstate actor (albeit a well-resourced, state-sponsored one), while the Ukrainian systems were simple modified jet skis. Plus, USVs are relatively low cost, can strike at sea level to encourage flooding in the target vessel, and can carry more explosives than a mine or torpedo. However, drone countermeasures are almost entirely focused on countering UAVs. A few references to countering nonaerial drones exist in the open-source literature, but they are fleeting.

The United States needs to think more deeply about how to counter drones operating across every domain. Although certain systems like jammers may still be effective, the details may vary. Different domains may also have unique defensive options, while also having different opportunity costs with existing defensive systems. An antiship missile may work fine against a USV, for example, but is it worth it?

The Domain Challenge

Before a drone can be defeated, it must be detected and tracked. Current best practices for detecting and countering UAVs emphasize defense in depth using different types of sensors attuned to different signatures, given range differences and detection trade-offs. Although nonaerial drones may give similar types of signatures, the details will be different. For example, acoustic detectors may pick up the unique sound of a UAV engine or whirring rotors, but the engine of a ground or surface vehicle may sound quite different. Plus, how do detection measures hold up when groups of drones attack from multiple angles across multiple domains at once? Only once the drone is detected can defenders respond.

Jammers that sever the control link between the drone and the operator or the drone’s GPS links represent the most common form of drone countermeasure, accounting for over half the counterdrone systems on the market. A remotely piloted USV depends as much on communication links for control and navigation as a UAV. Those links can be jammed too. But the details will likely vary. Nonaerial drones may operate on different frequencies and at different ranges, while their generally larger sizes allow more power to be devoted to overcoming jamming signals, at least compared to smaller commercial drones. Likewise, unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs) may only minimally use the electromagnetic spectrum, given the challenges of underwater transmission, relying instead on acoustic signals. GPS jammers might still be useful as the UUV may use periscopes or buoys for GPS geolocation. Techniques like visual odometry may also decrease the need for GPS-based geolocation. And as unmanned systems become increasingly autonomous with humans playing smaller and smaller roles, communication links will also become less critical. But jamming is not the only option.

Nonaerial drones, of course, naturally share similarities with other vehicles operating in their respective domain: a USV is really just another boat. So, weapons designed to counter vehicles in those domains may be just fine. A prayer to Saint Javelin would offer the same prospects of salvation from a Russian Uran-9 unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) as from a Russian T-90 tank. However, what is less clear is the opportunity cost. Destroying a Russian tank would cause much more harm than destroying an Uran-9, especially because the Uran-9 performed quite poorly in its Syrian debut. The cost may be worth paying to defend a much more expensive asset, but may deplete resources over the long term, especially if cheap drones are used as munition sponges. That has long been a challenge with UAVs, such as when Israel used a multimillion-dollar Patriot missile to shoot down a homemade Hamas UAV. Different domains open up different options though.

Physical barriers aren’t much protection from an aerial drone. Nets might protect narrow passages, but covering a whole building or military base in a net is unlikely to be a good idea. However, nets, fencing, booms, and bollards are quite viable for drones in other domains. Stopping a large UGV equipped with explosives is not too much different from stopping an attempted car bombing. Although UAVs can move dynamically through three dimensions, surface and ground drones are mostly restricted to two dimensions (except for the rare hybrid drone that can both fly and drive). UUVs are more flexible, being able to change depths, though ports with restricted entry and exit areas and relatively shallow waters might still be defendable with physical barriers. Plus, physical barriers do not require the drones to be detected first. The challenge with barriers is the risk of synchronous attacks. Multiple drones may strike in sequence with the first drone puncturing the barrier while follow-on drones flow through to the protected asset. Drones are relatively cheap, so massing them may not be an issue.

States are increasingly connecting numerous drones into integrated drone swarms that may operate in multiple domains simultaneously. For example, Russia is developing multidomain swarms in which UAVs guide heavy UGVs. Likewise, the US Navy has developed small USV swarms, while the Naval Postgraduate School is exploring “super swarms” involving thousands of drones. That creates a dilemma for defenders: Which drones should be the priority? Is it better to blind the UAVs providing guidance to a UGV mounted with a cannon, or target the ground vehicle? Can weapons like high-powered microwaves transition between and fire from a sufficiently large range of angles to counter drones operating in multiple domains? The Sevastopol attacks show integration into a single system is not necessary to raise these dilemmas, though dynamic, AI-driven maneuver may exacerbate the dilemmas drastically.

Preparing the Defense

The challenge is the United States does not appear well prepared to tackle these challenges. Although countering UAVs has gotten extensive attention, far less has been paid to countering nonaerial drones. In fact, in the open-source literature, there is scant analysis that focuses on differences in domain, except for a Naval Postgraduate School capstone research project on a counter-UUV system architecture. Defense budget documents do suggest parts of the Pentagon are at least aware: the fiscal year 2019 defense budget included funding to improve USV situational awareness for the I-Stalker / Sea Sparrow missile system.

So what should the United States do? The obvious answer is to invest in researching, developing, testing, and deploying countermeasures specific to nonaerial domains. But the less obvious part is to consider which aerial drone countermeasures might be usable or adaptable to nonaerial threats. Falcons and net guns probably are not useful, but variable jammers able to target different frequencies might do just fine. Ordinary antiship, antitank, and antitorpedo weapons may work well too. The United States can look at approaches developed to counter Iranian small manned boat swarms for insights applicable to countering swarming USVs. But wargaming, modeling, simulation, and exercises will all be needed to explore system trade-offs, investigate how adversaries may integrate drones with manned vehicles, and develop and test concepts of operation. Sites threatened by drones across multiple domains will also need to integrate detectors and interceptors to the maximum extent possible to ensure defenders are not overwhelmed with data and response options.

Especially critical is that the United States assesses countermeasures as broadly as feasible. Just as UAVs span the gamut from tiny quadcopters to the MQ-9 Reaper’s sixty-six-foot wingspan, nonaerial drones could range from bombs strapped to radio-controlled cars to USVs larger than a corvette. The composition and scale of the drone threat needs to be considered broadly too: How might the Russian response have changed if Ukraine used ten USVs and five UAVs? Or five USVs, five UAVs, and five manned fast attack craft? Or twenty of each?

UAVs have garnered significant attention in recent years. Rightfully so. UAVs were a defining feature of the post-9/11 war on terrorism, and nonstate actors have more recently shown they could weaponize commercial UAVs. Both trends drove a pattern of thinking about unmanned platforms that centered on the air domain. But the Ukraine war shows drones operating in other domains can have major consequences too. The United States needs to think seriously about this threat and how to prepare. If not, the next conflict may see American ships doing what Russian ships have been forced to do—cowering in a safe harbor.

Zachary Kallenborn is a policy fellow at the Schar School of Policy and Government, a research affiliate with the Unconventional Weapons and Technology Division of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, a fellow at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies, an officially proclaimed US Army “Mad Scientist,” and national security consultant. His research on autonomous weapons, drone swarms, weapons of mass destruction, and apocalyptic terrorism has been published in a wide range of peer-reviewed, wonky, and popular outlets, including the Brookings Institution, Foreign Policy, Slate, War on the Rocks, the Nonproliferation Review, and Parameters. Journalists have written about and shared that research in the New York Times, NPR, Associated Press, the New Scientist, and Newsweek, among dozens of others.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: UNITED24

Share on LinkedIn

Send email

mwi.usma.edu · by Zachary Kallenborn · January 5, 2023

20. America’s True Divide: Pluralists vs. Zealots

Excerpts:

America can’t do big things if we hate our neighbors. Americans have always done big stuff: winning world wars, walking on the moon, beating the Soviets. None of these would have been possible if tribalism and hatred of our neighbors had defined us. As we did with urbanization and industrialization in the 19th and 20th centuries, in the 21st century we have to build big. We must navigate technological disruption, relaunch a post-pandemic economy and win the tech race against the Chinese Communist Party. Political zealots can’t do these things. Only pluralists can. Recovery is possible.

But if recovery is to come, here’s what it will look like: Senators will have to acknowledge that a politicized echo chamber is unworthy of the world’s greatest deliberative body. Citizens will have to see that recovery means resisting the temptation to reduce fellow Americans to caricatures of their political affiliations. Recovery requires investment in things that will outlast partisan preferences. We must steward the present age, and play our small but vital parts in the work of self-government.

This is what Americans have always done, and why people from all over the world still yearn to join this crazy, beautiful experiment in liberty. America was the best home freedom has ever had, and it still is. Let’s build together anew.

America’s True Divide: Pluralists vs. Zealots

Stop making politics about partisan identities and tribalism and get back to persuasion and policy.

By Ben Sasse

Jan. 2, 2023 12:27 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-true-divide-pluralists-vs-zealots-power-democracy-partisanship-institutions-twitter-echo-chamber-neighbor-11672657710?utm_source=pocket_saves

ILLUSTRATION: PHIL FOSTER

Listen to article

Length(6 minutes)

Queue

The most important divide in American politics isn’t red versus blue. It’s civic pluralists versus political zealots. This is the truth no one in Washington acknowledges but Americans must realize if we’re going to recover.

Civic pluralists understand that ideas move the world more than power does, which is why pluralists value debate and persuasion. We believe America is great because it is good, and America is good because the country is committed to human dignity, even for those with whom we disagree. A continental nation of 330 million souls couldn’t possibly agree on everything, but we can hash out our disagreements in the communities where we live and the institutions we build. The small but important role of government, for the civic pluralist, is a framework for ordered liberty. Government doesn’t give us rights, or meaning, or purpose or permission. It exists to protect us from the whims of mobs and majorities.

Political zealots reject this, holding that society starts and ends with power. Government in their view isn’t to protect from the powerful or the popular. More than anything else, zealots—on the right and the left—seek total victory in the public square. They believe that the center of life is government power. They preach jeremiads of victimhood and decline. On the left, they want a powerful bureaucracy. On the right, they want a strongman. But they agree on a central tenet: Americans are too weak to solve problems with persuasion. They need the state to do it.

The zealots thrive in the chaos of the current moment. We are living in a disrupted age. The Digital Revolution has shifted Americans’ technological, economic, geographic and cultural life, and our political disruption is the result of these changes in our ways of feeling and thinking.

Modern media, through myriad outlets at our fingertips, all of them small and narrowly targeted, has transformed Americans’ conception of community. As communications become more instantaneous, we’ve become siloed and more lonely. We know less about our neighbors and more about the viral nut jobs who reinforce our polarized political opinions. Social media, cable television and click-bait news amplify the angriest voices. This is a casino business model, trying to captivate audiences instead of informing them. Social algorithms run on rage. Good-faith arguments don’t go viral.

The stupidity of tribalism has made politics primarily about partisan identities, not persuasion or policy. The screamers on the right and left fuel one another. In a nation as big as ours, there is always someone somewhere saying something stupid—but tribalism takes this fact as its lifeblood. And it’s the excuse for otherwise civic-minded Americans to ignore the nuts in their own party and obsess only over the nuts in the other party. We’re tempted to think that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. It takes a genuine leader to remind us that most of the time, the enemy of our enemy is still a jackass.

Through all this the Senate has been AWOL. At every other disruptive moment in American history, the Senate had something to contribute. Leaders stood up to debate our country’s challenges: Webster, Clay, Chase Smith, Dirksen, Moynihan. These were leaders who had something to say about the future. You could agree or disagree, love or hate them, but you had to be ready to debate. Great senators of the past stood up for ideas, not mere partisanship. Today, presidential hopefuls speechify to an empty chamber, blast fundraising emails during performative hearings and yell all day—to what end? To go on cable and yell anew all night.

The good news is that the American people are bored by this and there’s a huge majority market for something better. Twitter isn’t real life, and cable television doesn’t represent the public. The vast majority of Twitter traffic is driven by less than 2% of the public. According to Pew, less than 6% of Americans generate 99% of political tweets. The programs of Tucker Carlson, Lawrence O’Donnell and Anderson Cooper draw prime-time audiences that sound impressive until you realize that together they account for less than 2% of the public.

Here’s more good news: Americans can and will break the outrage cycle by building institutions. The zealous central planners don’t own America’s future. This country belongs to the optimists, the innovators and the builders. The places where we’ll figure out what comes next are churches, schools, businesses and neighborhood associations.

America can’t do big things if we hate our neighbors. Americans have always done big stuff: winning world wars, walking on the moon, beating the Soviets. None of these would have been possible if tribalism and hatred of our neighbors had defined us. As we did with urbanization and industrialization in the 19th and 20th centuries, in the 21st century we have to build big. We must navigate technological disruption, relaunch a post-pandemic economy and win the tech race against the Chinese Communist Party. Political zealots can’t do these things. Only pluralists can. Recovery is possible.

But if recovery is to come, here’s what it will look like: Senators will have to acknowledge that a politicized echo chamber is unworthy of the world’s greatest deliberative body. Citizens will have to see that recovery means resisting the temptation to reduce fellow Americans to caricatures of their political affiliations. Recovery requires investment in things that will outlast partisan preferences. We must steward the present age, and play our small but vital parts in the work of self-government.

This is what Americans have always done, and why people from all over the world still yearn to join this crazy, beautiful experiment in liberty. America was the best home freedom has ever had, and it still is. Let’s build together anew.

Mr. Sasse, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Nebraska. He has been appointed president of the University of Florida.

21. Daniel Johnson: The military could ease its recruiting crisis by doing more to resolve systemic racial issues

Daniel Johnson: The military could ease its recruiting crisis by doing more to resolve systemic racial issues

https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-opinion-military-recruiting-crisis-systemic-issues-black-members-20230104-w2t7zslsufbmtjomtkawyucbne-story.html?utm_campaign=dfn-ebb&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sailthru&SToverlay=2002c2d9-c344-4bbb-8610-e5794efcfa7d

By Daniel Johnson

Chicago Tribune

•

Jan 04, 2023 at 3:56 pm

Expand

Recruits in the Army Prep Course prepare to run on a track Aug. 27, 2022, during physical training exercises at Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina. (Sean Rayford/AP)

The U.S. military has entered 2023 amid its largest recruiting crisis since the end of the Vietnam War, with the possibility of being short thousands of new recruits. This year’s National Defense Authorization Act cut the Army’s size by 30,000 personnel, and the Pentagon is employing multiple methods to improve recruitment, from trying to reach Generation Z through video games and video game streamers, to increasing cash enlistment bonuses and changing mottos and commercials.

Blame for these shortages has been put on cultural issues, the state of the economy and other factors such as obesity and additional disqualifiers. However, there has been little discussion and recognition of how systemic disparities that some service members face in the military affect their propensity to join and serve.

Black service members make up 16% of the armed forces, according to 2017 Department of Defense data. Prospective recruits from this demographic who could be critical to solving the military’s recruiting crisis may shy away from service due to ongoing disparities in the military justice system and health and career outcomes.

The armed forces have issues with sexual assault and violence against women that the Department of Defense hasn’t adequately dealt with, along with systemic failures around suicide prevention and poor living conditions in soldier housing. Americans are increasingly less likely to join the armed services; even veterans are less likely to suggest it. Recently, the secretaries of the Army, Air Force and Navy wrote a commentary for The Wall Street Journal calling for young people to join the military because of the good it can do for them — but it is hard to see the good that can be had from military service if these multiple issues continue to occur.

Military leaders have blamed negative narratives around military service for preventing people from joining. But systemic racism and discrimination are an exacerbating factor to the nation’s recruiting crisis — and therefore national security.

For example, the military’s judicial system has no explicit category for hate crimes, which the federal government, 46 states and the District of Columbia have on the books, making it almost impossible to fully quantify racial discrimination in its ranks. Black service members are as much as twice as likely to face a court martial than white service members, according to an analysis by the advocacy group Protect Our Defenders, which focuses on military justice.

These convictions can lead to “bad paper discharges,” which prevent service members from receiving benefits from Veterans Affairs. The status of attempts to reform the military justice system to deal with this issue is unclear.

Regarding suicide, Black service members have a suicide rate that is significantly higher than that of Black Americans who have not served, according to Defense Department data, a fact that has not been widely reported. Among Black veterans, the per capita suicide rate is double the national average for Black Americans who have not served, a 2021 VA report on veteran suicide shows.

Just as with health outcomes for Black civilians who never served, there is also a wide disparity between the health outcomes for Black and white veterans. A 2017 VA study found that Black veterans were less likely to receive diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder from VA compensation and pension examiners and that there is no current standardized system that forces examiners to use evidence-based assessment methods. A lack of a diagnosis from an examiner means that a veteran does not receive the tax-free monetary benefit paid to veterans for service-connected disabilities, and further, it means they cannot receive VA treatment for the illness or injury.

Based on a Defense Department report on officer promotion rates, Black male and female officers are promoted at a lesser rate for senior positions than their white counterparts. This lack of Black leaders at the highest levels is evident in the numbers. In May 2020, there was just one Black four-star general in the Army versus 11 white counterparts, and there were two Black brigade commanders versus 94 white counterparts, according to Defense Department data.

Racism has long weakened the military from within, historian Natalie Shibley argued in a 2021 commentary for The Washington Post. It is still prevalent; nearly one-third of Black service members reported experiencing racial discrimination, harassment or both during a 12-month period, a 2017 Defense Department study found.

In the summer of 2020, in the midst of a national reckoning over race, the number of Black youths who indicated that they likely would serve in the military decreased by almost half versus the total from the previous summer, according to Defense Department polling. Last year, a survey by Blue Star Families, a group that advocates for military families, found many Black service members were turning down assignments based on a fear of racism at some duty stations and in certain career fields.

Any effort to solve the military’s recruiting problems should seek to rectify the disparities that Black service members and veterans face. Just as Congress has done in the aftermath of the Dobbs ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, decision-makers should discuss adding stronger protections for minority service members through policy and legislation.

The military is an organization that prides itself on defending our American ideals. Those ideals should be realized while a person is in the service.

Daniel Johnson is a Roy H. Park doctoral fellow at the Hussman School of Media and Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Johnson was a journalist in the Army in 2016 in Iraq and has contributed reporting to The New York Times and The Washington Post.

22. Why Xi Jinping Reversed His Zero-Covid Policy in China

Why Xi Jinping Reversed His Zero-Covid Policy in China

A wave of protests coupled with urgent pleas from many corners of the government finally prodded the leader to scrap the strict lockdown system he had touted throughout the pandemic

By Lingling WeiFollow

 and Jonathan ChengFollow

Jan. 4, 2023 12:26 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-xi-jinping-reversed-his-zero-covid-policy-in-china-11672853171?mod=hp_lead_pos10&utm_source=pocket_reader

BEIJING—By the end of an otherwise triumphant Communist Party Congress for Xi Jinping in October, it was growing harder for China’s leader to argue that his zero-Covid policy was working.

Reports were flowing into central government headquarters of rising infections nationwide, a surge taking place despite the strict lockdowns that had kept Covid-19 at bay for most of the prior three years, according to officials and government advisers close to Beijing’s decision-making.

The containment measures had come at a high cost, cutting sharply into the nation’s exports and retail sales, draining local finances and driving parts of the population to a near-breaking point.

But Mr. Xi wasn’t ready to reverse his stance. As late as mid-November, he was wavering on whether and how to unwind a policy with which he had so closely associated himself, according to the officials and advisers.

NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP

The 10-Point.

A personal, guided tour to the best scoops and stories every day in The Wall Street Journal.

Preview

Subscribe

A rare wave of protests in China’s largest cities in late November, coupled with urgent pleas from many corners of the government, finally prodded Mr. Xi to shift, according to the people. The policy was largely scrapped in early December.

That abrupt reversal thrust China into a new public-health emergency.

Doctors and nurses across the country’s hospitals, as well as officials at local branches of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, were given no advance warning of the shift, leaving them to face a spike in patients with no stockpiles of medical essentials.

China’s top health authority no longer publishes daily case tallies and has reported fewer than a dozen Covid deaths since the beginning of December.

But nearly 250 million people were infected with the coronavirus between Dec. 1 and Dec. 20, according to notes of a National Health Commission meeting on Dec. 21 seen by The Wall Street Journal and confirmed as authentic by officials familiar with the matter. The notes said half of Beijing’s 22 million residents had already been infected.

Medics delivered a patient to a hospital’s fever clinic in Beijing on Dec. 9.

PHOTO: THOMAS PETER/REUTERS

Amid the surge, Mr. Xi, who has embarked on his third term as the country’s most formidable leader since Mao Zedong, has increasingly curtailed policy debate and sidelined anyone raising public doubts about the zero-Covid strategy.

China has also shunned foreign advice, a shift from the global financial crisis in 2008, when senior Chinese officials sought out American experts, including ones at the World Bank, for consultation. When the World Health Organization’s director general said in May that China’s zero-Covid policy was unsustainable, China fired back, saying he should “get more knowledge about the facts and refrain from making irresponsible remarks.”

While in past decades decisions were made by a small number of Chinese leaders reaching consensus after rounds of internal deliberations, today Mr. Xi has been dubbed the “Chairman of Everything,” for his control over every lever of power from the military to the economy.

“As with other man-made disasters in China’s history,” said Mary Gallagher, a professor of Chinese politics at the University of Michigan, “political loyalty to the core leader now means no dissent, no collective decision-making and a lack of debate and discussion within the party on critical policy shifts.”

Swamped with patients

The director of the National Health Commission, Ma Xiaowei, said the outbreak was growing rapidly, according to the minutes of the December meeting. “I want to emphasize that deaths are inevitable,” the notes recorded him saying.

The National Health Commission declined to comment.

Emergency rooms and intensive-care units, from prosperous cities to villages, have been swamped with patients unable to get a hospital bed or even basic fever medication. Many of the patients were elderly and had insufficient or no vaccine protection after an inoculation campaign had stalled months earlier.

Crematoria have been filling up with dead bodies, forcing some desperate families to plead with emergency workers to pick up corpses at home, or to take bodies hundreds of miles away for cremation.

A group of mourners at a funeral home in Shanghai on Dec. 31.

PHOTO: QILAI SHEN/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Spokespeople for China’s cabinet, known as the State Council, didn’t respond to requests for comment. Beijing has defended its policy shift as being the right move at the right time, pointing to the lower fatality rates associated with the Omicron variant.

In a televised speech Saturday to mark the New Year, Mr. Xi appeared to acknowledge that his U-turn on zero-Covid has dented public trust in his leadership. “We have entered a new phase of Covid response where tough challenges remain,” he said. “It has not been an easy journey for anyone.”

Since the initial lockdown of Wuhan and surrounding Hubei province in the early weeks of 2020, China had adhered to a regimen of mass testing, home confinement and quarantines to snuff out even small outbreaks of Covid.

The measures allowed China to quickly reboot the economy early in the pandemic as the rest of the world was engulfed by waves of Covid variants and deaths.

Even though the lockdowns hurt livelihoods and stoked dissatisfaction as they were extended into a third year, Mr. Xi’s Covid approach came to underpin his belief in the superiority of the Chinese system over that of the Western world.

When the highly transmissible Omicron variant arrived in Shanghai in the spring of 2022, Mr. Xi initially tried to give the country’s wealthiest and most cosmopolitan city leeway to use targeted, rather than blanket, lockdowns, hoping it could offer a template for coexisting with the virus in the years ahead.

But as cases surged and other localities complained about Shanghai’s outbreak spreading to them, Mr. Xi ordered the city’s party chief, Li Qiang, a close ally, to reinstate the broad lockdown playbook.

Focus on Party Congress

The priority for Mr. Xi at the time, said the officials and advisers close to decision-making, was to make the Party Congress in October in Beijing a smashing political success for himself. That required muffling any challenge to his authority, including over the health policy. On May 5, the Politburo, in a meeting presided over by Mr. Xi, pledged to “resolutely fight against all words and deeds that distort, doubt, or deny” the zero-Covid policy, according to an official account of the meeting.

Workers wearing protective gear in Beijing on Dec. 15.

PHOTO: /BLOOMBERG NEWS

Omicron outbreaks continued to simmer across China and then began to creep up in the fall. Rather than secure and administer more vaccine doses, stockpile antivirals and other Covid treatments, or expand and upgrade hospitals and emergency wards, Beijing chose to plow more resources into building temporary quarantine facilities, enforcing strict lockdowns and mass testing its citizens.

As a result, as recently as late November, more than one-third of Chinese citizens aged 80 or older weren’t fully vaccinated, and China counted fewer than four ICU beds per 100,000 people, compared with 7.1 in Hong Kong and 11.4 in Singapore.

Many economists and citizens across China had come to expect a loosening of Covid restrictions after the Party Congress ended on Oct. 22. But little changed even after Mr. Xi secured his third term in power. When German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited Beijing on Nov. 4, Mr. Xi didn’t signal any shift on Covid, even as cases were surging and businesspeople urged Premier Li Keqiang to relax the country’s Covid policies.

In the days that followed, Mr. Xi was flooded with signals that his zero-Covid policy was becoming a source of social instability and economic turbulence.

At the world’s biggest iPhone assembly plant, in the central city of Zhengzhou, thousands of Foxconn Technology Group workers clashed with police in violent demonstrations aimed in part at pandemic restrictions. Foxconn founder Terry Gou warned that zero-Covid controls were threatening China’s position in global supply chains.

Security personnel removed a person during a protest at the factory compound operated by Foxconn on Nov. 23.

PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS

Exports, which had been China’s main pandemic-era growth engine, dropped for the first time in 2½ years in October, while retail sales, which had been rising in the months after Shanghai’s spring lockdown, also turned south. The data spooked China’s leadership, according to the officials and advisers close to decision-making.

Trying a gradual approach

Even then, Mr. Xi wasn’t ready to give up on zero-Covid altogether. Instead, he settled on a gradual approach to relaxing the measures, with no clear exit timeline.

On Nov. 11, as China’s official daily Covid infection tally surged above 10,000 for the first time in months, China announced 20 measures that eased restrictions, including shorter quarantines for inbound travelers and those identified as close contacts of infected patients.

While the measures sparked a stock-market rally and raised hopes of a broader reopening, the People’s Daily, the Communist Party mouthpiece, squelched the optimism by describing the measures as “fine-tuning” of the Covid-containment strategy rather than a loosening. Without a clear signal from Mr. Xi, some local officials even tightened restrictions.

Reports began to reach the leader of housing complexes across the country banding together to stage small revolts against rules confining residents to their homes, according to the officials and advisers close to decision-making.

On Nov. 26 and 27, protests erupted across some of China’s biggest and wealthiest cities. The rare display of public anger, with some protesters directly criticizing Mr. Xi and the Communist Party, alarmed Mr. Xi and his inner circle, the officials and advisers said.

A protest against the restrictive Covid policies in Beijing on Nov. 27.

PHOTO: THOMAS PETER/REUTERS

As the battle to keep the virus from spreading appeared increasingly futile, with the social and economic costs mounting, Mr. Xi decided to all but abandon zero-Covid, the people said.

In a closed-door meeting with European Council President Charles Michel in Beijing on Dec. 1, Mr. Xi described the protests as reflecting frustration, mainly among students, and also acknowledged that the pandemic had entered a less deadly stage, according to European officials familiar with the situation, signaling a shift in Beijing’s thinking.

On Dec. 7, China removed the last major pieces of the zero-Covid regime. On Dec. 14, the National Health Commission stopped reporting daily asymptomatic totals, and, on Dec. 25, it stopped publishing daily infection totals altogether.

Finally, on Dec. 26, Beijing announced the lifting of international travel restrictions, essentially ending the country’s self-imposed three-year isolation.

In the party’s version of events, the decision to end zero-Covid measures was optimally timed.

“The timing is right and the basic conditions are met,” Li Qiang, the Shanghai party chief who left his post after the Party Congress and who is set to become China’s premier in March, said at a Dec. 25 nationwide teleconference, according to a written summary of the meeting reviewed by the Journal and confirmed as authentic by the officials and advisers.

According to the meeting summary, Mr. Li urged senior officials overseeing healthcare, transportation and other sectors of the economy to affirm that message—as well as what he described as the “great achievements” of Mr. Xi’s zero-Covid policy.

The timing, however, has been questioned even by some top government health officials.

“If we look at it purely from the perspective of public health, we would rather delay the time [for reopening],” Zeng Guang, a Chinese epidemiologist and senior adviser to the National Health Commission, said at a public health forum in Beijing on Dec. 16, while urging more vaccination of the elderly. Mr. Zeng didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Corrections & Amplifications

More than one-third of Chinese citizens aged 80 or older weren’t fully vaccinated as of late November. A previous version of this article incorrectly said some 40% weren’t fully vaccinated. (Corrected on Jan. 5)

Write to Lingling Wei at lingling.wei@wsj.com and Jonathan Cheng at jonathan.cheng@wsj.com

Appeared in the January 5, 2023, print edition as 'Protests, Pleas Got Xi To Reverse Zero-Covid'.

23.

​​

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com