Small Wars Journal

03/07/2021 News & Commentary – National Security

Sun, 03/07/2021 - 1:31pm

News & commentary by Dave Maxwell. Edited and published by Daniel Riggs.

1. Flag Officer Announcements (INDOPACOM and PACFLEET)

2. With less U.S. tactical support, Afghanistan’s elite forces are struggling to roll back Taliban advances

3.  UK will work closely with India, Japan, US, Australia in Indo-Pacific: British High Commissioner

4. U.S. military planned to conduct drill off Senkakus last month

5. Biden proposes a Quad summit; this is why

6. When Does a Cyber Attack Become an ‘Act of War’?

7. Japan considers sending in troops to help meet China’s Diaoyu challenge

8. Foreign Policy for Pragmatists: How Biden Can Learn From History in Real Time

9. Guam: The Foundation of Any U.S. Military Strategy on China

10. Pentagon Announces Nominees to Lead INDO-PACOM, Pacific Fleet

11. Op-ed: Biden and Xi are offering dueling worldviews — the winner will shape the global future

12. Top China Diplomat Warns Biden to Tread Carefully on Taiwan

13. What Colonel John Boyd Would Warn About China Today

14. The New ‘End of History’

15. The January 6 Attack Deserves A Strong and Bipartisan Congressional Response

16. Russian Disinformation Campaign Aims to Undermine Confidence in Pfizer, Other Covid-19 Vaccines, U.S. Officials Say

17. Why it took us nearly a year to tell the full story of what happened to Navy Capt. Brett Crozier

18. The messy way the Marines joined US Special Operations Command

19. CSM Jack Joplin, celebrated Delta Force Warrior, Dies at 82.

 

1. Flag Officer Announcements (INDOPACOM and PACFLEET)

defense.gov· March 5, 2021

I expect we might soon see the announcement of the new US commander in Korea. I hope whomever it is will be is able to observe the exercise taking place over the next two weeks.

 

2. With less U.S. tactical support, Afghanistan’s elite forces are struggling to roll back Taliban advances

The Washington Post · by Susannah George · March 5, 2021

This is probably the most capable military force in Afghanistan. 

But articles this one always beg the question, how can the taliban be so effective without high technology and air support? And have created a military force in our image that is not capable of independent warfighting?

 

3. UK will work closely with India, Japan, US, Australia in Indo-Pacific: British High Commissioner

m.timesofindia.com

Someone tweeted that there will need to be a new name for the Quad. I think we have to stop using the shorthand of the Quad and come up with a new name that will be both inclusive and describe what the "grouping" is all about.

 

4. U.S. military planned to conduct drill off Senkakus last month

Japan News· by Yomiuri Shimbun · March 5, 2021

Cancelled due to bad weather. But this is a significant "assessment" of the exercise:

“The drill was apparently going to be conducted on the assumption that U.S. forces in Japan would be mobilized in the event of an emergency related to the Senkaku Islands.

The U.S. military had notified the Japanese side in advance that the drill was going to be conducted by U.S. forces alone. They planned to check a series of operations in which ammunition and other supplies would be dropped from a cargo plane and retrieved from the sea, the sources said.”

 

5. Biden proposes a Quad summit; this is why

asiatimes.com · by MK Bhadrakumar · March 7, 2021

Hopefully they will decide on a new name.

A view from India here.

 

6. When Does a Cyber Attack Become an ‘Act of War’?

thequint.com · by Karan Tripathi · March 7, 2021

Conclusion: "The framework for incorporating cyber warfare into law on armed conflict remains sketchy and under-developed, despite substantial strides being made in the recent past. While there have been frequent advancements in cyber technology, customary international law has remaining more or less static. International law must now adapt to the volatility of cyberspace."

 

7. Japan considers sending in troops to help meet China’s Diaoyu challenge

SCMP · by Catherine Wong · March 7, 2021

Excerpts:

“Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi said last week that Japan could deploy its self-defence forces if its coastguard could not handle the situation on its own, and that “coastguard-style standards” might apply to the self-defence forces in terms of firing on foreign vessels.

According to national broadcaster NHK, the Japan Maritime Self-Defence Force (MSDF) and coastguard had a joint exercise in the country’s southwestern waters on Wednesday.

The drill, designed to simulate response to attacks on an important facility by foreign vessels, involved a destroyer, a missile boat and two helicopters from the MSDF, as well as two coastguard patrol ships. It was the first time in eight years the MSDF has sent a destroyer to join the annual exercise.

 

8. Foreign Policy for Pragmatists: How Biden Can Learn From History in Real Time

Foreign Affairs · by Gideon Rose · March 5, 2021

Interesting perspective:

“Learning in U.S. foreign policy has come largely across administrations. President Joe Biden’s goal should be to speed up the process, allowing it to happen within an administration. Call it the Bayesian Doctrine: rather than being wedded to its priors, the administration should constantly update them.

The way to do so is to make theorists, not principals, the administration’s true team of rivals, forcing them to make real-world predictions, and to offer testable practical advice, and then seeing whose turn out to be better in real time. In this approach, searching intellectual honesty is more important than ideology; what people think matters less than whether they can change their minds. Constantly calculating implied odds won’t always win pots. But it will help the administration fold bad hands early, increasing its winnings over time.

​...

The Biden administration, in short, does not face a tragic choice of pessimism, optimism, or just winging it. Instead of embracing realism or liberalism, it can choose pragmatism, the true American ideology. The key is to draw on diverse theoretical traditions to develop plausible scenarios of many alternative futures, design and track multiple indicators to see which of those scenarios is becoming more likely, and follow the evidence honestly where it goes.

Such an approach to foreign policy would not change the world. But it would allow the United States to see the world clearly and operate in it more effectively. Which would be nice for a change.

 

9. Guam: The Foundation of Any U.S. Military Strategy on China

19fortyfive.com · by James Holmes · March 7, 2021

Excerpts: 

"... Funding for the air and missile defense of Guam is my Number 1 priority—most importantly because Guam is U.S. homeland.”

...

Makers of maritime strategy in Washington and allied capitals fret constantly about whether to designate the Chinese mainland as a “sanctuary” in time of war, refraining from going after bases and forces stationed there. The reason for such restraint is straightforward: China is a nuclear-armed antagonist, and assailing its territory would fill its people and leadership with terrible resolve—prompting a massive, and perhaps atomic, response. Safer to put the mainland off-limits.

Davidson, sotto voce, put Beijing on notice that the same is true in reverse. PLA commanders and their political masters must not blithely assume they can attack sovereign U.S. territory with impunity—even if that territory happens to be located in Asia’s marine environs rather than North America. Terrible resolve works both ways.

One hopes the message gets through. Prospects for peace will brighten if it does.

 

10. Pentagon Announces Nominees to Lead INDO-PACOM, Pacific Fleet

news.usni.org · by Sam LaGrone · March 6, 2021

 

11. Op-ed: Biden and Xi are offering dueling worldviews — the winner will shape the global future

CNBC · by Frederick Kempe · March 6, 2021

Conclusion:

“In the end, the world is not going to be organized either by Chinese or American fiat, but rather by a concert of national interests, influenced by the trajectory of the world's two leading powers.

Xi's bet is that China's momentum is unstoppable, that the world is sufficiently transactional, and that his economy has become indispensable to most U.S. allies. President Biden must not only shift that narrative but also work in common cause to reverse the reality of democratic weakening.”

 

12. Top China Diplomat Warns Biden to Tread Carefully on Taiwan

Bloomberg · by Bloomberg News · March 7, 2021

Excerpts:

“At the same time, Wang reiterated China’s willingness to work with the U.S. to address shared concerns about the coronavirus pandemic and the global economy. “I hope China and the U.S. restarting cooperation on climate change can also bring a positive change of climate to bilateral ties,” Wang added.

While China has expressed optimism that relations would improve under Biden, it continues to put the onus on Washington to fix the damage done during Donald Trump’s four-year tenure. On Sunday, Wang cited Beijing’s battle with “hegemony, high-handedness and bullying” and “outright interference in China’s domestic affairs” in a list of the country’s diplomatic accomplishments over the past year.”

 

13. What Colonel John Boyd Would Warn About China Today

The National Interest · by James Holmes · March 7, 2021

Excerpts:

“Think about the competing narratives. Beijing claims that the South China Sea has belonged to China for centuries and was stripped from the nation by seaborne conquerors. Powerful stuff. By contrast, Washington’s rallying cry in Southeast Asia is “status quo!” Try leading soldiers over the top with that. Ergo, it’s at least conceivable that China holds an edge in uniting government, people, and military for long-term strategic competition against America and its Asian allies.

And lastly, says Clausewitz, “we must evaluate the political sympathies of other states and the effect the war may have on them.” To borrow from General Patton, people love a winner while shying away from likely losers. U.S. leaders must calculate strategy and diplomacy with regional audiences in mind, including friends and allies, bystanders, and third parties able to influence the competition’s outcome. If the United States appears unable or unwilling to compete over the long term, China’s neighbors may well start accommodating themselves to Beijing’s wishes in Southeast Asia. They may have no other recourse with no strong external patron to back them.

Am I counseling despair? Hardly; more like a sense of urgency. As Boyd and Clausewitz teach, fathoming the nature of a struggle constitutes the beginning of strategic wisdom. For the United States, this is a campaign far from home, for seemingly abstract goals, against a rival that prizes its purposes and thus—by Clausewitzian logic—has undertaken an open-ended effort involving a heavy expenditure of resources to achieve those purposes.

The time for acting is long overdue. Let’s get serious about observing, orienting, and deciding so we can act.”

 

14. The New ‘End of History’

The National Interest · by Parag Khanna · March 6, 2021

Another interesting perspective and an interesting grouping of the four power centers.

And so, rather than the global hierarchy freezing in 1989, we have arrived at a landscape of at least four coherent and viable centers of global leadership: the United States, Europe, China, and democratic Asia (especially the budding entente among Japan, Australia, and India). Geopolitically, it’s three against one. Economically, it’s every power for itself. And ideologically, each holds itself to be superior to the rest. Thirty years ago, “The End of History?” challenged Western declinism with a recipe for triumphalism. Today it is clear that no model will prevail over the others.

Linear ideologies are by their very nature teleological, whereas today’s complex world presents a series of ever unfolding dialectical collisions producing novel outcomes that pull the system in new directions. Europe’s return to Asia as a commercial rather than colonial power and its tense co-development with China of the new Eurasian Silk Roads is just one example.

The antithesis, then, of Fukuyama’s putative thesis isn’t any singular ideological proclamation but a panoramic shift from small ‘h’ history to big “H” History, a recognition that the end of one phase of history already contains the seeds of the next phase’s dynamics. The foresight we need to cope with the complexity of today and tomorrow will derive more from unpacking these collisions through a holistic geopolitical frame rather than with the ideological blinders of political science. The past three decades have proven to be anything but boring. We should expect nothing less from those lying ahead.

 

15. The January 6 Attack Deserves A Strong and Bipartisan Congressional Response

georgetownsecuritystudiesreview.org · by Brianna Lifshitz · March 6, 2021

Conclusion:

“By choosing to pursue justice, Congress would also be placing far-right extremism and white supremacy at the forefront of counterterrorism efforts. For too long, homegrown white supremacy has been an afterthought of the American national security apparatus, despite a rise in terrorist attacks and plots since 2013 that have been carried out by this exact demographic. An independent commission that investigates the motives, collaboration, networks, and plans of Jan. 6 would give insight into how this group thinks and acts, providing useful information to prevent future attacks. Overall, a detailed commission similar to the 9/11 commission could generate a roadmap to avoid future security breaches and emphasize far-right extremism as a national security threat.

Going forward, it would be beneficial for Congress to look at a variety of factors that contributed to one of the United States’ biggest recent security failures. This investigation should examine both local security failures (including Capitol Police’s plan or lack thereof), as well as the extremists (who was responsible for organizing, what their motives were, and how the attack was planned). The investigation should also cover any potential links to foreign governments.

The attacks on January 6 were horrible. A failure to act in a bipartisan manner, come together as a country, and condemn violence as exhibited would spell deeper consequences of our nation.“

 

16. Russian Disinformation Campaign Aims to Undermine Confidence in Pfizer, Other Covid-19 Vaccines, U.S. Officials Say

WSJ · by Michael R. Gordon and Dustin Volz

And so it goes. Russia may be a declining military power with a backwater economy but it excels in trying to dominate the information domain.

Subversion takes many forms and it is an integral part of Russian strategic doctrine.

 

17. Why it took us nearly a year to tell the full story of what happened to Navy Capt. Brett Crozier

taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol · March 6, 2021

 

18. The messy way the Marines joined US Special Operations Command

news.yahoo.com· by Stavros Atlamazoglou · March 6, 2021

I would be interested in hearing from the Marines (and USSOCOM staff) who were present at the creation about how they assess this article.

 

19. CSM Jack Joplin, celebrated Delta Force Warrior, Dies at 82.

Sandboxx · by Stavros Atlamazoglou · March 2, 2021

It was an honor to serve with CSM Joplin. He was my battalion CSM when I was a young team leader. Leaders with his level of experience taught us all so much.

 

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“The United States cannot reshape other countries in its own image and that, with a few exceptions, its efforts to police the world are neither in its interests nor within the scope of its resources. This whole tendency to see ourselves as the center of political enlightenment and as teachers to a great part of the rest of the world strikes me as unthought-through, vainglorious and undesirable.”

- George F. Kennan

 

“The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one. Their strictly Puritanical origin, their exclusively commercial habits, even the country they inhabit, which seems to divert their minds from the pursuit of science, literature, and the arts, the proximity of Europe, which allows them to neglect these pursuits without relapsing into barbarism, a thousand special causes, of which I have only been able to point out the most important, have singularly concurred to fix the mind of the American upon purely practical objects. His passions, his wants, his education, and everything about him seem to unite in drawing the native of the United States earthward; his religion alone bids him turn, from time to time, a transient and distracted glance to heaven. Let us cease, then, to view all democratic nations under the example of the American people.”

- Alexis de Tocqueville

 

"The station which we occupy among the nations of the earth is honorable, but awful. Trusted with the destinies of this solitary republic of the world, the only monument of human rights, and the sole depository of the sacred fire of freedom and self-government, from hence it is to be lighted up in other regions of the earth, if other regions of the earth shall ever become susceptible of its benign influence. All mankind ought then, with us, to rejoice in its prosperous, and sympathize in its adverse fortunes, as involving everything dear to man. And to what sacrifices of interest, or convenience, ought not these considerations to animate us? To what compromises of opinion and inclination, to maintain harmony and union among ourselves, and to preserve from all danger this hallowed ark of human hope and happiness."

-Thomas Jefferson

 

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