News & commentary by Dave Maxwell. Edited and published by Daniel Riggs.
1. Austin eyes rolling back Trump-era policy on special operations
2. How the National Cyber Director Position Is Going to Work: Frequently Asked Questions
3. 'Bouquet-throwing contest:' Biden's CIA nominee William Burns gets rave reviews in hearing
4. George Shultz’s Enduring Wisdom Can Guide Diplomacy Today
5. New Hicks Memo Sets Acquisition, Force Posture 2022 Budget Priorities
6. DoD policy pick faces ‘critical’ confirmation hearing, says Reed
7. ‘Great Power Competition’ Is a Dangerously Simple Frame
8. Senate Armed Services chair expects 'some extension' of troops in Afghanistan
9. Pentagon report reveals disturbing details about White supremacists in the ranks
10. Navy sends another guided-missile destroyer through contentious Taiwan Strait
11. 'A reckoning is near': America has a vast overseas military empire. Does it still need it?
12. Disrupting the “Chinese Dream” – Eight Insights on how to win the Competition with China
13. FDD | IAEA Weakens Iran Nuclear Safeguards
14. FDD | What’s wrong with appeasement?
15. Can Biden Fix the U.N. Human Rights Council?
16. Flag Officer Announcements
17. General Officer Announcements (Air Force)
18. China Wants Your Data — And May Already Have It
19. Desert Storm - SF Team Fights to Survive Behind Enemy Lines | SOF News
20. Military helped Darren Raley discover his potential
21. Austin Praises 'Whole-of-Government, All-of-Nation' Effort Against COVID-19
1. Austin eyes rolling back Trump-era policy on special operations
Politico· February 24, 2021
What this article does not discuss is how the SECDEF plans to comply with the NDAA (Section 922 specifically) and Congress' intent for greater and more effective civilian oversight of SOF. We are going to return to the custom of the Pentagon and services and USSOCOM stiff-arming any attempt to move SOF from service-like responsibilities to having the requisite service authorities with proper civilian oversight to improve the effectiveness of special operations.
2. How the National Cyber Director Position Is Going to Work: Frequently Asked Questions
lawfareblog.com· by John Costello and Mark Montogomery · February 24, 2021
Excerpts:
“The NCD was never intended to spring fully formed from the minds of the multi-stakeholder commission that recommended it or the Congress and the pages of statute that gave birth to it. It will take time and considerable effort to find its way among the dynamic environment of the White House and the fray of the interagency. The creation of the deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies is a positive development and will need to be accounted for. The NCD is not and likely will not remain static. The president holds preeminence in delegating authority to the position through executive order. And Congress maintains its prerogative to empower the position further and in response to, and support of, how the president manages the position. It is an iterative dynamic that will lend itself well to evolving needs of cybersecurity and the demands of the office.
But the fundamental argument for the establishment of the position remains the same: The U.S. government needs vision, leadership, and unity of effort in cyberspace. This is true irrespective of political party or administration—though the Biden administration is off to a good start. That said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. The NCD position changes the institutional dynamic and is a marked step forward in ensuring enduring leadership and accountability. It will need to evolve, certainly, but as it stands the position is a good start. It is up to the Biden administration to make it successful.”
3. 'Bouquet-throwing contest:' Biden's CIA nominee William Burns gets rave reviews in hearing
USA Today · by Deirdre Shesgreen and Bart Jansen
Excerpts:
Warner has previously said that Burns' status as an apolitical diplomat could help restore confidence and morale at the CIA after four years of attacks by Trump. Trump repeatedly cast doubt on the intelligence community's work, particularly when it came to conclusions about Russia's attacks on the 2016 and 2020 elections.
"As a career diplomat under Democratic and Republican presidents, (Burns) has established himself as a smart and tested public servant who is free from political interference," Warner said in response to Burns' nomination. "Now more than ever, our intelligence and defense communities deserve leaders who will not politicize our national security institutions."
4. George Shultz’s Enduring Wisdom Can Guide Diplomacy Today
The National Interest · by Earl Anthony Wayne · February 24, 2021
Excerpt:
“George Shultz’ counsel is vital for America today—invest in building trust abroad and at home. Be true to America’s interests and values and know those of your friends and rivals. Work with patience to create and sustain close partnerships. Forge trust-based understandings with competitors using the range of U.S. levers. Invest heavily in strengthening U.S. diplomacy and its diplomats to rebuild America’s role in the world. The Biden team’s initial weeks appear to reflect this spirit. Let’s fully incorporate Shultz’ wisdom into U.S. diplomacy for the years ahead.
5. New Hicks Memo Sets Acquisition, Force Posture 2022 Budget Priorities
breakingdefense.com · by Paul McLeary
Excerpts:
“The need to focus on key areas and prioritize certain modernization plans was underscored this morning by Sen. Jack Reed, the new chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Speaking with reporters virtually, Reed acknowledged that there will have to be tradeoffs in upcoming Pentagon budgets.
“The top line number might not be the best guide of how we’re getting value for money, and that’s what we’re gonna try to look for — what are the systems that provide real advantages going forward, and what programs and policies to make us stronger as a nation.”
New Hicks Memo Sets Acquisition, Force Posture 2022 Budget Priorities
DepSecDef Hicks writes that “due to the limited amount of time available before the Department must submit its FY 2022 President's Budget request, the process to re-evaluate existing decisions will focus on a very small number of issues with direct impact on FY 2022 and of critical importance to the President and the Secretary.”
6. DoD policy pick faces ‘critical’ confirmation hearing, says Reed
Defense News · by Joe Gould · February 24, 2021
Someone mentioned to me that there must be a "sacrificial lamb" so the confirmation process will not be all smooth sailing for certain nominees while others have a more difficult time.
7. ‘Great Power Competition’ Is a Dangerously Simple Frame
defenseone.com · by C. Anthony Pfaff · February 24, 2021
A useful critique that hopefully generates discussion.
Excerpts:
“Therefore, where adversaries prefer conflict to cooperation or concession, the U.S. should privilege armed conflict and commit credible and capable combat forces to the region. Where the opposite preference holds, the U.S. should privilege competitive activities below the threshold of war — assuring allies, boosting their resilience to adversary political pressure, disincentivizing adversary provocations. Where preferences are unclear, it may make sense to privilege a more dynamic force posture, rotating smaller forces in the regions to assure allies and test adversary preferences and resolve.
Successful deterrence depends on getting the terms of engagement right. To the extent adversary aggression and provocation is driven by a sense that they are disadvantaged in the current order, they will be incentivized to continually challenge it. Thus, posture decisions should be integrated into a larger approach that employs political, economic, and other means to create the most inclusive order possible. Of course, it is not likely, for a variety of reasons, that revisionist powers like China and Russia, or rogues like Iran and North Korea, will prefer any order that the United States and its partners would also accept. However, promoting a more inclusive order than its adversaries will facilitate U.S. influence and maximize the effect its global posture will have.”
8. Senate Armed Services chair expects 'some extension' of troops in Afghanistan
The Hill · by Rebecca Kheel · February 24, 2021
9. Pentagon report reveals disturbing details about White supremacists in the ranks
CNN · by Ellie Kaufman and Oren Liebermann, CNN
10. Navy sends another guided-missile destroyer through contentious Taiwan Strait
Stars and Stripes· by Caitlin Doornbos · February 25, 2021
An interesting statistic here:
“Before this month, the most recent Taiwan Strait transit happened on Dec. 31, marking the Navy's 13th passage through the waterway in 2020. That trip broke the service's prior record, set in 2016, of 12 Taiwan Strait transits in a single year.”
11. 'A reckoning is near': America has a vast overseas military empire. Does it still need it?
USA Today · by Kim Hjelmgaard· February 25, 2021
The headline foretells this article's biased agenda. As do the subtitles:
- Sea change in security threats
- How big is the US military investment?
- COVID-19 kills and costs more
- Climate chaos leading to social chaos
- China and cyberattacks: How the US compares regarding its greatest foes
- 'Physics is physics'
- After 9/11, 'so much blood and treasure'
- Drone warfare and questions of accountability
- In Washington, old habits die hard
- 'Mini Americas,' mini resentments
I think the fundamental question to ask is how to best (optimally) organize and position our military capabilities to best serve US interests, deter war, react to contingencies, and protect American values. A point by point counter to this article is necessary.
12. Disrupting the “Chinese Dream” – Eight Insights on how to win the Competition with China
madsciblog.tradoc.army.mil · February 25, 2021
The TRADOC G2's "mad scientist" project has been extremely productive in generating critical thought on a wide range of key national security issues.
13. FDD | IAEA Weakens Iran Nuclear Safeguards
fdd.org · by Anthony Ruggiero · February 24, 2021
From my FDD colleague Anthony Rugerrio who just returned from his service on the NSC in the Trump administration.
14. FDD | What’s wrong with appeasement?
fdd.org · by Clifford D. May · February 24, 2021
In a word: everything.
Appeasement does not work - certainly not with north Korea.
Excerpts:
“Unlike Chamberlain, Mr. Biden has alternatives to appeasement. The least bad would be a policy of “peace through strength.” Were he to embrace that approach, he would refrain from alleviating economic pressure on Iran’s rulers so long as they are actively engaged in terrorism – including unleashing militias to attack Americans in Iraq as recently last week – hostage-taking-and-holding, illicit nuclear weapons and missile development, and both threatening and assaulting their neighbors.
A peace-through-strength policy also would mean ending our reliance on China’s rulers for strategic commodities and, as a matter of morality, not buying from them anything produced by workers deprived of basic human rights. Sen. Tom Cotton has just released a report on “Targeted Decoupling and the Economic Long War” with Beijing. It should be required reading within the Biden administration.
Most essential: Peace through strength implies no diminishment of the American military power needed to deter despots. Deterrence makes shooting wars less likely. It’s puzzling that so many Western leaders find the logic behind that aphorism difficult to comprehend.
These days, there are those on both the right and the left – I’d call them isolationists, they prefer to be called “restrainers” – who are determined to “end endless wars.”
It’s a nice bumper sticker. In reality, there’s a distinction between wars and long-duration, low-intensity conflicts in which American forces train, advise and assist foreign partners as part of what should be a broader strategy to defeat or at least contain common enemies.”
15. Can Biden Fix the U.N. Human Rights Council?
Foreign Policy · by Richard Goldberg · February 24, 2021
We must try for the sake of the victims of human rights abuses around the world.
I am reminded of President Reagan who championed human rights while taking on the the strategic adversary of the USSR. We must work to prevent the UN Human Rights Council from being a cover for despotic regimes around the world. We have to successfully compete in the domain of international organizations.
I cannot emphasize this statement enough: China seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, and displace democratic institutions.
And this excerpt illustrates the above statement:
“Shaping the Human Rights Council is a primary objective of China’s larger strategy to exploit the U.N. system.
Most egregious, of course, is China’s election to the council amid what Blinken calls a genocide in Xinjiang. In true Orwellian fashion, China was previously appointed to a panel within the council that evaluates experts on religious discrimination—presumably including those who might have looked at China’s horrific human rights abuses against its Muslim citizens.
So, what is the Biden administration’s plan to achieve reform where its predecessors tried and failed? In her confirmation hearing last month, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield pledged to confront China inside the U.N. system and combat the double standards applying to Israel. Now is the time to make good on that pledge.
Shaping the Human Rights Council is a primary objective of China’s larger strategy to exploit the U.N. system. While running candidates to take control of standards-making bodies and U.N. agencies that can be used to support Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative—such as the International Telecommunication Union, the International Civil Aviation Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and the Industrial Development Organization—China’s growing influence over the council serves to whitewash its human rights record while putting the United States and its allies on the defensive.”
16. Flag Officer Announcements
A lot of flag officer changes.
17. General Officer Announcements (Air Force)
We are getting through the one and two star moves in the Army, Navy, and here for the AirForce. Have not seen the Marine Corps moves yet. I expect perhaps in the coming weeks we will see the three and four star moves.
18. China Wants Your Data — And May Already Have It
NPR · by Greg Myre · February 24, 2021
Not surprising but still troubling.
Excerpts:
“U.S. officials add that DNA collection by Chinese companies, even when done openly and legally, should be seen as part of a comprehensive effort to vacuum up millions and millions of records on U.S. citizens. And many Chinese efforts violate U.S. law, the officials say.
"Most Americans have probably had their data compromised by the cyber intelligence units of the Chinese government and Chinese military intelligence," said April Falcon Doss who worked at the National Security Agency and wrote the book Cyber Privacy:Who Has Your Data And Why You Should Care.
Falcon Doss said China is collecting detailed personal information on a massive scale for multiple reasons: to boost its economy, advance its technology and to support its espionage efforts.”
19. Desert Storm - SF Team Fights to Survive Behind Enemy Lines | SOF News
sof.news · by John Friberg · February 24, 2021
Excerpt: "The team was supported with air strikes that kept the Iraqi troops from overrunning the team’s position."
I recall being at CGSC in 1994 when one of the F-16 pilots was awarded, I think, a DFC for staying on station and defending this team. They brought most of the members of the ODA from Ft Campbell to Ft Leavenworth for the presentation. I remember one of the team guys telling the story of calling in the first air strike and when he saw the casing of the cluster bombs falling away he thought they were malfunctioning and griped that this was typical crap built for the military by the lowest bidder. He had never seen a live cluster bomb dropped until that point. But he quickly changed his mind when he saw the effects from the multiple explosions on the ground and what it did to the enemy.
But here is the ethical dilemma for the team. For those who argue the team should have held the children until after the operation or worse, permanently silenced them, the counter argument to that is the adults would have come looking for the missing children anyway and they would have been compromised regardless.
20. Military helped Darren Raley discover his potential
postandcourier.com · by Catherine Kohn
A nice human interest story and what the military and Special Forces did for someone.
21. Austin Praises 'Whole-of-Government, All-of-Nation' Effort Against COVID-19
defense.gov · by Jim Garamone
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“Words can destroy. What we call each other ultimately becomes what we think of each other, and it matters.”
- Jeane Kirkpatrick
“The Nation, which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. ... The Nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the Government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The Government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times, it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of Nations has been the victim.”
- George Washington, George Washington's Farewell Address
"War does not belong in the realm of arts and sciences; rather it is part of man's social existence…Politics, moreover, is the womb in which war develops."
- Carl von Clausewitz