Indian Strategic Studies

18 March 2021

The Changing Face of Military Assistance and Techniques of Informal Penetration

Sidney P. Williams

This content was originally written for an undergraduate or Master's program. It is published as part of our mission to showcase peer-leading papers written by students during their studies. This work can be used for background reading and research, but should not be cited as an expert source or used in place of scholarly articles/books.

Modern day intervention can be described as a sort of “geopolitics of plunder,” wherein external states become involved in civil conflicts and generate chaos, both intentionally and inadvertently. The literature on the effects of external intervention is extensive and primarily attempts to resolve whether foreign interventions are advantageous, and to what extent the international system is able to condition conflict intensity, outcomes, and technologies of rebellion. To advance a more nuanced area of this field, this paper will analyze how limited or covert foreign aid allows states to exacerbate civil conflicts through the construction of “spaces of exception” or “gray zones.” Through the study of scholarship on territorial sovereignty, competitive intervention, and proxy warfare, it will explore the degree to which the U.S. has appropriated limited intervention in the form of “unconventional warfare,” and how this has allowed states to violate territorial sovereignty via parastatal actors in the name of regional and international security. Ultimately, this paper will demonstrate how the U.S., as the epitome of a hegemonic state actor, is generating knowledge regarding security and violence that enables it to overstep international and domestic legal barriers in order to pursue wider geopolitical dominance and a “militarized regime of hypervisibility” (Gregory 2011).

SQUARE PEG, ROUND HOLE: MANEUVER WARFARE AND THE URBAN BATTLEFIELD

John Spencer

In a recent article, author Paul Barnes argued against assertions made by Professor Anthony King of the University of Warwick a few months ago in an episode of the Royal United Services Institute’s Western Way of War podcast. During the conversation, Dr. King stated that the future of warfare would be increasingly urban, an environment ill-suited for maneuver. Because of this, he argued, boldly, that “maneuver warfare is dead.” Barnes disagrees, claiming in his article that recent history not only shows that maneuver warfare is alive and well, but that what he calls “maneuverist” principles have proven successful in multiple contemporary urban battles.

At the heart of the disagreement, though, is the fact that there isn’t based on a single, clear, shared definition of maneuver warfare. Is it some grand theory describing the application of state power—an application that uses an indirect approach to avoid an adversary’s strengths and then strike with enough surprise and capability to put the enemy at such physical disadvantage or in such psychological disarray that they lose their will to fight? Is it an ancient form of war, thousands of years old and rooted in Chinese theories about defeating an enemy without even fighting? Or is it a more specific warfighting philosophy that is only a hundred years old and put forth by J.F.C Fuller, B.H. Liddell Hart, and others—a philosophy that requires operational speed, mobility, and decisive strikes against less mobile enemies using formations of tanks and aircraft to destroy an enemy’s ability to exercise command and control or organize counterstrikes? Or is the term more literal, a reference simply to the combination of maneuver (movement to secure an advantage) and warfare (military operations between enemies)? Is there a difference between strategic, operational, and tactical maneuver warfare? Are there differences in the theory if applied in the different warfighting domains?

17 March 2021

The U.S. Must Prepare for the Worst in Afghanistan

Candace Rondeaux

Afghanistan’s president, Ashraf Ghani, stands between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Faced with the fact that the United States has lost patience with the Afghan government’s dithering negotiations with the Taliban, Ghani now has little choice but to orchestrate a deal that will likely end his presidency—and almost certainly result in a destructive civil war. Whether Washington decides to honor a bargain struck with the Taliban under the Trump administration, which calls for the exit of 2,500 American troops by May 1, or whether the Biden administration extends their mission by another 90 or 180 days, is almost immaterial. What waits on the other side of a final U.S. drawdown is a pitched battle for control of Kabul and Afghanistan’s other major population centers. Everyone needs to prepare for that inevitability now.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in fact, seemed to signal in a letter to Ghani leaked early this week that the U.S. is gearing up to do just that. The tone of Blinken’s bluntly worded missive suggests that the Biden administration understands that its efforts to reenergize talks between the Taliban and Kabul are unlikely to produce a long hoped for political settlement without U.N. mediation and cooperation from regional stakeholders. As it is, neither Ghani nor the Taliban have signaled much appetite for the White House’s new proposal to form an interim government with representatives from all sides in Afghanistan. Moreover, the chilly silence that greeted U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad’s push late last year for the Taliban and Ghani’s government to meet in Turkey to hash out the terms of a cease-fire and power-sharing deal is a pretty good indicator that any bargain struck there to reduce hostilities won’t hold for very long.

Why staying in Afghanistan is the least bad choice for Biden

Madiha Afzal and Michael E. O’Hanlon

In a Washington Post op-ed, Madiha Afzal and Michael O'Hanlon write, "We believe that the correct answer is to stay. As difficult as it is to remain in this longest war, the most likely outcome of pulling out of Afghanistan would be very ugly, including ethnic cleansing, mass slaughter and the ultimate dismemberment of the country."

Can the United States, under the Biden administration, responsibly end its forever war in Afghanistan?

The White House reportedly has a new idea on how to try, after watching peace talks in Qatar between the Afghan government and the Taliban flounder over the past year. It is proposing an international summit including Afghan leaders and the Taliban. The initial goal would be to create an interim power-sharing government, which would buy time for more comprehensive peace talks thereafter. This would also allow the United States and NATO to keep their small military footprint in place for a while longer, beyond the May cutoff that some believe the February 2020 deal between Washington and the Taliban requires.

Unfortunately, this diplomatic Hail Mary is very unlikely to produce a quick accord. Whatever leverage President Biden can generate over Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, including the implied threat of a quick U.S. and NATO troop departure, the Taliban is unlikely to accept the demand for a 90-day reduction in violence. Its leaders are also unlikely to agree to meaningful power-sharing — especially if they sense we are already halfway out the door.

Thus, Biden will still likely have to decide: Do we stay or do we go? We believe that the correct answer is to stay. As difficult as it is to remain in this longest war, the most likely outcome of pulling out of Afghanistan would be very ugly, including ethnic cleansing, mass slaughter and the ultimate dismemberment of the country.

A New Pivot to Asia

BY C. RAJA MOHAN

As he takes a fresh look at Washington’s China strategy, President-elect Joe Biden faces hard choices. China has become a powerful challenger to the United States’ post-World War II global primacy. To make matters worse, the political coalition that propelled Biden to victory is deeply divided on how to deal with China. There is strong opposition among Democrats to the total political confrontation and complete economic decoupling from China that outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration articulated toward the end of its term. Among progressives, there is deep resistance to a cold war with China, even as they want to intensify the pressure on Beijing on human rights. Powerful corporate interests on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, many of them with close ties to the Democratic Party, would love to go back to business as usual with China. American workers and their advocates are wary of ceding even more manufacturing jobs to China in the name of renewed economic globalization. Many other Democrats see climate change as the most important challenge to humanity and believe the United States must cooperate with China to mitigate the threat.

In responding to these competing demands, Biden smartly avoided specifics during his successful campaign for the presidency. He argued that China is not a threat but a competitor and that this competition can be addressed and won by the United States. To do this, Biden would take to industrial policy to rebuild traditional U.S. strengths. Criticizing Trump’s tariff wars as a blunt instrument, Biden promised to develop a more sophisticated strategy of economic engagement and competition with China. If Trump trashed U.S. allies as freeloaders and free riders, Biden would rebuild Asian alliances to produce a more effective coalition to persuade China to abide by the rules. Soon after the election was called in his favor, Biden was quick to call allies in Tokyo, Seoul, and Canberra. He also dialed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose country has emerged as a major regional partner for the United States in recent years. That Biden is not Trump and will replace chaos in Washington with competence has sent strong messages of reassurance to most Asian allies. Biden’s long foreign-policy experience and the team of familiar figures from the Obama and Clinton administrations have generated much comfort in Asian capitals.

Weaponized Drones: The Next Terrorist Modus Operandi in Southeast Asia?

By V. Arianti and Muh Taufiqurrohman

In 2020, a series of arrests conducted by Indonesia’s anti-terror police Detachment 88 revealed the terrorists’ intention to use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones. In October last year, a group of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) militants based in Bekasi, a suburb of Jakarta, was found in the possession of a drone and its batteries. Two months later, research by PAKAR, an Indonesia-based NGO that studies terrorism, suggested that that an Indonesian cell that supports the Islamic State (IS), led by a long-time extremist Hanif Ali Bhasot alias Abu Dayyan, planned to conduct an attack using a weaponized drone in Jakarta, targeting police officers. But how significant is the threat of terrorist weaponization of drones in Southeast Asia?

In this region, non-government entities and individuals have used drones for non-military purposes such as to provide aerial views of political rallies, monitor illegal logging, spray fertilisers and pesticides on plantations, and conduct business advertisements, as well as for recreational usage. Despite commercial drone usage in Southeast Asia in 2019 only contributing to less than 3 percent of the $127.3 billion global drone market, it is predicted to grow in the coming years. In Indonesia, drone sales have grown by up to 25 percent annually since 2015. One of the reasons for this growth is the affordable price of drones, which ranges from about $30 up to $4000.

China’s Dangerous Step Toward Cyber Conflict

By Tobias Burgers and David J. Farber

A recent report by the cybersecurity company Recorded Future describes a sophisticated cyber campaign by Chinese agents aimed at Indian targets. The report outlines how a Chinese state-supported group – dubbed Red Echo – managed to install malware in India’s critical civilian infrastructure, including electric power organizations, seaports, and railways. While there is confusion as to whether the attacks caused power outages last October, Recorded Future’s report is clear in their conclusion that Red Echo’s cyber intrusions are directly linked to the Sino-Indian conflict along the mountainous northern border. While the two nuclear-armed states were fighting at sub-zero temperatures and high altitudes with medieval tools, a much more high-tech, 21st century-style battle occurred across the Indian cyberspace.

Using this campaign, China has embarked on a new game in the East Asian cyber domain. Now a major state actor has used offensive cyber means to send a political signal with disruptive effect. The use of cyber tools as part of the international security relations toolkit is not novel. China has previously used cyber means to send political messages to other nation-state adversaries. For example, when Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen was elected, her social media networks were attacked by Chinese actors. However, what sets the Indian hack apart from prior cyber operations is the intended effect of the operation: Prior signalling cyber operations were acts of digital vandalism, yet in this case, the campaign aimed to have a destructive, or at least disruptive, impact in the physical domain. A campaign of this sort – causing potential physical destruction – comes much closer to a conventional military conflict.

We argue that this is a significant escalation of cyberattacks in the Indo-Pacific region. We view the choice of targets by the Chinese attackers as an additional, mounting sign of escalation: Rather than targeting military infrastructure, the Chinese attackers deliberately chose to strike civilian infrastructure. This set of events indicates that China is now willing to reset the rules of the cyber game in the Indo-Pacific. Such a reset has the potential to increase confrontation in the Sino-Indian conflict and thereby impact conventional regional security balances.

Friday’s Quad Summit Will Show if It’s Just a Talking Shop

BY SALVATORE BABONES

When presidents and prime ministers get together for a group meeting, what do they talk about? Only the fly on the wall knows for sure—or in the case of the upcoming Quad leaders’ summit, maybe the hackers. On Friday, U.S. President Joe Biden will hold a virtual meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. The online teleconference of the group—which some consider a fledgling security alliance against China—is bound to be a tempting target for Chinese, North Korean, and Russian cyber-espionage.

Or is it? Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, told reporters that the Quad leaders would focus on issues including “the threat of COVID,” “economic cooperation,” and “the climate crisis.” Pressed for further details, she reiterated these three core issues. There seems no reason not to take the stated agenda at face value. But if that’s all the Quad leaders will be talking about, the spies might as well sit this one out. Even if it were a public Zoom event, there would be little intelligence value in dialing in.

The COVID-19 pandemic, trade, and climate are all important issues, but they’re not Indo-Pacific issues. There’s nothing about them that requires high-level cooperation among the region’s leading democracies. There’s only one issue that affects the Indo-Pacific region as a region—the one issue that even makes the Indo-Pacific a meaningful regional concept—and that’s maritime security. China, North Korea, and even Russia threaten the secure integration of the Indo-Pacific region on, over, and under the seas. As an alignment of powerful regional democracies, the Quad can effectively counter regional revisionism by these powers. Indo-Pacific maritime security is the one issue that makes the Quad the Quad.

Anti-Asian Attacks Are Blighting the United States

BY CAROLINE CHANG, ANKA LEE, JOHNA OHTAGAKI

In recent weeks, a spate of high-profile violent crimes has caused widespread fear in the Asian American community. An 84-year-old man died in San Francisco after being pushed to the ground by a teenager for no apparent reason. Across the bay in Oakland, California, three people, including a 91-year-old man, suffered injuries after similar attacks. A shop owner in Washington, D.C. was pepper sprayed after being verbally abused with racist language.

These are just the latest examples of a worrisome trend—since the pandemic began, there have been more than 3,000 hate crimes reported against Americans of Asian descent.

These hate crimes violate the dignity and rights of Asian Americans. They also threaten the global reputation of the United States and its national security. During the Trump presidency, the world watched with horror as a U.S. leader utilized dog whistle language, such as the phrases “kung flu” and the “China plague,” to fan the flames of white nationalism and direct racism against Asian Americans.

Congressional leaders and prominent legislators, such as Rep. Kevin McCarthy and Sen. Tom Cotton, as well as senior executive branch officials, most notably the United States’ former top diplomat, Mike Pompeo, also used phrases like “China virus” even after the World Health Organization warned that these labels stigmatized individuals of Chinese descent. Such behaviors offered easy—and uncomfortably accurate—propaganda fodder for China, just as violence against Black Americans did for the Soviet Union during the civil rights era. But while Moscow attempted to pose as a leader for oppressed people worldwide, Beijing is instead attempting to portray itself as the head of the global Chinese diaspora.

America Will Only Win When China’s Regime Fails

BY ZACK COOPER, HAL BRANDS

Competition between the United States and China has begun, but how will it end? There is a bipartisan consensus that Sino-American relations will be defined primarily by rivalry across multiple regions and dimensions of statecraft for years to come. Yet there is little clarity on what U.S. leaders hope will happen after that. Washington has accepted the reality of competition without identifying a theory of victory. There is no lack of suggestions, but U.S. leaders have yet to articulate how this competition will lead to something other than unending tension and danger.

At several points, the Trump administration argued that rivalry with China was caused by the nature of the Communist Party, implying that the rivalry would last as long as the regime did. Yet the administration also insisted, confusingly, that its approach was not based “on an attempt to change the PRC’s domestic governance model.” Similarly, the Biden administration has accepted strategic competition with China—“extreme competition,” as the president phrased it—without publicly clarifying how that competition might ultimately be resolved.

There are many possible outcomes to the Sino-American competition, from the United States ceding a sphere of influence to China, to mutual accommodation, to Chinese collapse, to a devastating global conflict. Yet if the goal of competition is to secure a better peace by means short of war, then the pivotal question becomes whether the United States can achieve this outcome by changing the minds of Chinese leaders—convincing them that expansion and aggrandizement is futile—or whether it will require the decline of Chinese power or the downfall of the Chinese Communist Party.

China’s New Five-Year Plan Is a Disappointment

BY ALICE HAN, EYCK FREYMANN

Last week, China began its biggest annual political gathering, the so-called Two Sessions (lianghui). The early policy documents and speeches to come out of the Beijing gathering have surprised many investors and political analysts with their caution and lack of ambition. The era of striving for sky-high growth rates is clearly over. Rather, Chinese GDP growth is likely to underperform expectations this year and beyond. With sober-minded, fiscally conservative planners now firmly in control of policy, Beijing is turning its attention to debt reduction and a daunting agenda of structural reform.

One of the first signs of the shift came when Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s annual Government Work Report issued a strikingly conservative GDP target of more than 6 percent. Many financial analysts, following the International Monetary Fund’s projections, had expected 8 percent or more.

This comes after the nearly unprecedented decision last year to set no growth target at all, using the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse. Leading up to this year’s Two Sessions, there were heated debates in Beijing about whether to return to the old targeting approach. Some economists argued that targets helped motivate local officials and provide an impetus for economic activity. Others advocated dropping them entirely and focusing on other metrics like employment.

France In The Indo-Pacific: A Mediating Power?

By MURIELLE DELAPORTE

The French nuclear attack submarine Emeraude patrols in the Indian and Pacific Oceans © @Florence_ Parly on Tweeter, February 8th, 2021

As the US seeks to counterbalance China, it would do well to look to America’s oldest ally, France, which is stepping up its own presence in the Pacific.

From its earliest actions and statements, the Biden Administration has sought to reassure its allies in Asia about Washington’s continuous commitment to a ‘’secure and prosperous’’ Indo-Pacific. While the more diplomatic language has been interpreted in some quarters as a step down compared to Trump’s ‘’Free and Open Indo-Pacific,” there is a bipartisan consensus in America about the need to prevent Beijing from ‘’filling the void’’ economically and militarily in what’s become the heart of the global economy.

Such a consensus is not only shared by Washington’s allies in the region, but also increasingly so in Europe. President Biden, whose conciliatory tone and inclusive approach are welcome in the European diplomatic circles, should be able to count on the support and participation of his European counterparts. France could be in that sense uniquely helpful — both as an Indo-Pacific nation itself for more than two centuries and as the first European nation to have established a formal strategy in the Indo-Pacific, in 2019.

Beijing has a plethora of military options against Taiwan after 2022

BY LYLE J. GOLDSTEIN

Fortunately for Taiwan, the Beijing Olympics are coming up fast and Mainland China is all but certain to exercise restraint, at least through early 2022 for that reason. After that date, however, all bets are off and the island faces grave military danger since the military balance across all domains of warfare has titled now heavily in favor of China.

In addition to the overarching teleological view of China’s inexorable rise, the immediate impetus for Chinese advocates of forceful unification is the recent experience in Hong Kong. In this case, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) hawks argue that they exercised patience over decades with “one country, two systems,” but the result of half measures and compromise has been festering anti-Chinese sentiment and humiliation for the CCP.

Three military options are open to Beijing short of an all out invasion. First, Beijing could opt for a massive show of force to intimidate Taipei. This was done before in 1995 and 1996 when the the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) fired missiles into the sea off of the southern Taiwan city of Kaohsiung. To be sure, in 2022, such a fireworks display could be all the more impressive, applying the full weight of the largest conventional missile force in the world. For additional shock and awe, the PLA might well sortie its fighters and bombers to make close passes over the entire island.

China’s Regulatory War on Ant

ANGELA HUYUE ZHANG

HONG KONG – Ever since Alibaba founder Jack Ma criticized Chinese financial regulation in a speech last October, a regulatory storm has pummeled the country’s entire online financial and consumer sector. The Shanghai Stock Exchange suspended the planned initial public offering of fintech conglomerate Ant Group – an Alibaba affiliate – just two days before its launch, and regulators subsequently launched a massive crackdown on Chinese Big Tech. While Ma’s speech appears to have been an unforeseeable random event, the logic of Chinese bureaucratic politics made Ant’s IPO debacle inevitable.

German "ordoliberal" principles are embedded throughout the European Union's economic governance, making it easy to forget that they were once dismissed out of hand. But with sound policymaking essential to secure sustained growth after the pandemic, a reappraisal of the model that enabled post-war Germany's "Wirtschaftswunder" is in order.11Add to Bookmarks

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As I elaborate in my new book, power within the Chinese bureaucracy is fragmented among central ministries and levels of government. A department’s mission and objectives determine its stance and approach toward regulating businesses.

The Polar Policies in China’s New Five-Year Plan

By Marc Lanteigne

The release this week by the Chinese government of its 14th Five-Year Plan (FYP), which will guide the country’s economic policies until 2025, was swiftly and predictably put under a microscope within the country, as well as by the international community. Included within the plan, and representing a significant shift from previous like policy documents, was a brief but telling statement confirming Beijing’s interest in further developing the Polar Silk Road as a component of the wider Belt and Road Initiative, while calling for further engagement with both the Arctic Ocean region and Antarctica.

The inclusion of polar regional policies within the new FYP represents a greater acknowledgement of the emerging importance of the two poles to China’s expanding foreign policies. This move also further confirms that economic considerations are now also taking up a larger role in Chinese polar engagement, (especially relating to the Arctic), alongside expressed interests in scientific diplomacy, including research on climate change. In addition, the FYP statement is the most coherent signal yet of Beijing’s aspirations to be accepted by the global community as a stakeholder at both poles, including being accepted as a de facto “near-Arctic state,” in relation to China’s evolving international power.

The FYP document did confirm Chinese ongoing interests in scientific development in the polar regions, linking further research at the poles to the need to also develop deep sea exploration capabilities and expanded space (including lunar) missions. Polar research missions using China’s Snow Dragon icebreaking ships were described as entering a “second phase,” with calls for a “three-dimensional” monitoring platform to be developed as well. (It was announced last December that China is seeking to launch a satellite in 2022 specifically to monitor Arctic shipping routes).

China’s Dangerous Step Toward Cyber War

By Tobias Burgers and David J. Farber

A recent report by the cybersecurity company Recorded Future describes a sophisticated cyber campaign by Chinese agents aimed at Indian targets. The report outlines how a Chinese state-supported group – dubbed Red Echo – managed to install malware in India’s critical civilian infrastructure, including electric power organizations, seaports, and railways. While there is confusion as to whether the attacks caused power outages last October, Recorded Future’s report is clear in their conclusion that Red Echo’s cyber intrusions are directly linked to the Sino-Indian conflict along the mountainous northern border. While the two nuclear-armed states were fighting at sub-zero temperatures and high altitudes with medieval tools, a much more high-tech, 21st century-style battle occurred across the Indian cyberspace.

Using this campaign, China has embarked on a new game in the East Asian cyber domain. Now a major state actor has used offensive cyber means to send a political signal with disruptive effect. The use of cyber tools as part of the international security relations toolkit is not novel. China has previously used cyber means to send political messages to other nation-state adversaries. For example, when Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen was elected, her social media networks were attacked by Chinese actors. However, what sets the Indian hack apart from prior cyber operations is the intended effect of the operation: Prior signalling cyber operations were acts of digital vandalism, yet in this case, the campaign aimed to have a destructive, or at least disruptive, impact in the physical domain. A campaign of this sort – causing potential physical destruction – comes much closer to a conventional military conflict.

Pacific Commander Warns China Likely To Move On Taiwan; Guam A Target

By PAUL MCLEARY

WASHINGTON: The head of the Indo-Pacific command believes China might try to annex Taiwan “in this decade, in fact within the next six years,” as part of its massive military buildup in the region.

Adm. Phil Davidson told the Senate Armed Services Committee that China is “accelerating their ambitions to supplant the United States and our leadership role in the rules-based international order,” which they’ve long said that they want to do by 2050. “I’m worried about them moving that target closer. Taiwan is clearly one of their ambitions before that, and I think the threat is manifest during this decade, in the next six years.”

One way to support Taiwan is through “persistent arms sales,” which were accelerated by the Trump administration, and could continue under the Biden team given its public comments on the need to contend with the Chinese buildup and incendiary rhetoric when it comes to the independent island.

How Special Ops Became the Solution to Everything

BY MARK BOWDEN

Within the span of a few decades, the United States has utterly transformed its military, or at least the military that is actively fighting. This has taken place with little fanfare and little public scrutiny. But without any conscious plan, I have seen some of the evolution firsthand. One of my early books, Black Hawk Down, was about a disastrous U.S. Special Ops mission in Somalia. Another, Guests of the Ayatollah, about the Iran hostage crisis, detailed an abortive but pivotal Special Ops rescue mission. U.S. Special Operators were involved in the successful hunt for the drug lord Pablo Escobar, the subject of Killing Pablo, and they conducted the raid that ended the career of Osama bin Laden, the subject of The Finish. By seeking out dramatic military missions, I have chronicled the movement of Special Ops from the wings to center stage.

Big ships, strategic bombers, nuclear submarines, flaring missiles, mass armies—these still represent the conventional imagery of American power, and they absorb about 98 percent of the Pentagon’s budget. Special Ops forces, in contrast, are astonishingly small. And yet they are now responsible for much of the military’s on-the-ground engagement in real or potential trouble spots around the world. Special Ops is lodged today under the Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, a “combatant command” that reports directly to the secretary of defense. It has acquired its central role despite initially stiff resistance from the conventional military branches, and without most of us even noticing.

It happened out of necessity. We now live in an open-ended world of “competition short of conflict,” to use a phrase from military doctrine. “There’s the continuum of absolute peace, which has never existed on the planet, up to toe-to-toe full-scale warfare,” General Raymond A. “Tony” Thomas, a former head of SOCOM, told me last year. “Then there’s that difficult in-between space.”

CYBERATTACKS: TIME FOR GLOBAL NET SUPERIORITY

JAMES CARLINI

As was pointed out in my article at the beginning of this year: “We are prepared to go into battle with 1,000s of tanks, hundreds of planes costing billions of dollars, and some very fast ships that have evolved from designs from half a century ago or more, but when it comes to software-based cyberattacks, we are far behind some of our potential enemies out there. Today’s software capabilities used in anti-virus and cyber-defense do not cover all the possibilities in cyber threats and attacks within electronic warfare.”

It’s time to attain “global net superiority,” a concept I defined in a whitepaper for the American Intelligence Journal.

Cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), the Internet of Everything (IoE), 5G networks, FirstNet (the First Responder Network Authority), and other cutting-edge concepts will not materialize successfully in the future, if their supporting intelligent infrastructure is not solid and resilient against cyberattacks. Gaping holes, ineffective threat intelligence tools, lack of adherence to organizational security policies, and no sense-of-urgency to add software upgrades (and patches) to anti-virus software will guarantee failure.

Biden Team Engaged in ‘Rigorous’ Debate Over Ending Forever War

BY MICHAEL HIRSH

As the 20th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, U.S. President Joe Biden is working to wind up the United States’ longest war—now often known as the “forever war.” But he and his top political appointees are facing stiff opposition from career military and intelligence officials who are wary of doing so prematurely, according to administration and human rights sources.

It’s not just Biden’s desire to get out of Afghanistan or his curtailment of drone strikes or his desire to once and for all close Guantánamo Bay. The big question is whether al Qaeda and its offshoots, which justified the “war on terror” in the first place, still pose a strategic threat to the United States. Some senior administration officials want to turn a page; some senior officials in the U.S. Defense Department and the intelligence community beg to differ.

Biden, like his top aides, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, are intent on closing as much of this two-decade-long chapter as they can and fulfilling the president’s campaign pledges. “The United States should not, and will not, engage in ‘forever wars’ that have cost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars,” Biden said in his recently released interim national security guidance, while stressing his desire to finally focus on Europe and the Indo-Pacific rather than the Middle East.

In recent weeks, the Biden team has sought to complete the withdrawal from Afghanistan, narrow the use of drone strikes, repeal the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that started the war on terror and the AUMF that came a year later to justify the invasion of Iraq, end the war in Yemen, and begin the process of closing Guantánamo. But “career forces in the military and the intelligence community are resisting” some of these moves, said one administration official privy to the discussions. A premature declaration of success, some argue, and a too-rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Middle East would leave Biden vulnerable to the same criticism that former U.S. President Barack Obama endured when he pulled out of Iraq in 2011, only to find he was opening the door to the rise of the Islamic State.

What’s Ahead for Venezuela’s Crisis?

There is no end in sight to the political and humanitarian crises that have overwhelmed Venezuela and spilled over into neighboring countries for the past several years. In fact, the protracted fight for control of the country has only meant additional suffering for its citizens, who are already living in the most dire conditions outside of a warzone in recent memory.

Even if the political stalemate is broken, there are no easy solutions for fixing the country’s economy, which was too dependent on oil and collapsed as global crude prices fell. But President Nicolas Maduro has shown more interest in consolidating his grip on power than making needed structural changes. The result has been growing shortages of food and basic supplies, widespread power outages and alarming rates of malnutrition. The crisis has also decimated the country’s health care system, leaving Venezuela at the mercy of the coronavirus pandemic, which is likely to further exacerbate all of its challenges.

Opposition leader Juan Guaido’s attempt to overthrow Maduro’s government in early 2019 with the backing of the United States appears to have backfired. U.S. support initially helped Guaido succeed in getting himself recognized as Venezuela’s legitimate interim president by governments in the region and around the world. But Guaido and the opposition proved unable to seize power, hardening the Maduro regime’s resolve and ultimately resulting in an impasse. The outcome of recent sham legislative elections, which removed the National Assembly from opposition control, underscored Guaido’s increasing irrelevance. Meanwhile, Washington’s public attempts to help bring down Maduro’s socialist administration have pushed the Venezuelan leader to strengthen his partnerships with Russia and China.

U.S. Poorly Integrates CCMDs, Hasn’t Figured Out Hybrid, Hyten Says

By John A. Tirpak

The current system of integrating the responsibilities and actions of regional commanders in chief doesn’t work well, and the U.S. is still failing to address hybrid warfare coherently, Gen. John E. Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said March 10.

He also discussed China and Russia’s strategic activities, how to approach modernizing NORAD, and his efforts to inject more speed into the joint requirements process.

Speaking on an online seminar of the Canadian Conference of Defence Associations, Hyten said the U.S. is struggling with “the integration piece” of its system of regional combatant commands, and who has responsibility for threats and conflicts that overlap the commands’ areas of regard.

“We’ve learned that we actually don’t know how to do that very well,” Hyten said. “We don’t effectively operate in an integrated manner.” The U.S. is experimenting with ways to close those seams through exercises and wargames, some alone and some in concert with allies, “especially in Europe,” he said.

“So, we’ve achieved the first step of the 12-step process, but we haven’t moved beyond,” he joked.

The Struggle for Technology Sovereignty in Europe

HERMANN HAUSER

AUCKLAND – Back when states regularly used armed forces to compel others into compliance or dependence, sovereignty was primarily a geographic and military concept. But the term has more recently taken on an added dimension.

German "ordoliberal" principles are embedded throughout the European Union's economic governance, making it easy to forget that they were once dismissed out of hand. But with sound policymaking essential to secure sustained growth after the pandemic, a reappraisal of the model that enabled post-war Germany's "Wirtschaftswunder" is in order.

The COVID-19 pandemic, for example, revealed the West’s dependence on China for supplies of face masks and personal protective equipment. And former US President Donald Trump weaponized American technology and payment systems in an effort to advance US interests. Technology sovereignty – or the lack of it – is fast becoming a central strategic issue, not least for Europe.

Imagine, for example, that Vice Admiral Eugene H. Black III, the commander of the US Sixth Fleet, suddenly requested something unpalatable of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, noting that his fleet was stationed in the English Channel. The government and most people in the United Kingdom would regard this as a very strange manifestation of the bilateral “special relationship,” and object strenuously.

Yet, there was no public outcry last year when Mike Pompeo, Trump’s secretary of state, leaned heavily on Johnson to exclude Chinese technology firm Huawei from the UK’s 5G network, implying that the United States otherwise would stop sharing intelligence with the UK. Pompeo also referred to the fact that the US controls the City of London’s payment infrastructure, and that all electronic chips used in the UK require US electronic design tool software.

Japan’s Changing Immigration and Refugee Policy

By Daisuke Akimoto

During the current ordinary session of the Diet, the Japanese government plans to revise the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act in order to prevent the long-term detention of foreign nationals. To this end, a cabinet decision to revise the legislation was made on February 19, 2021.

The revision of the legislation was influenced by domestic and international criticism against Japan’s immigration and refugee policy. In September 2020, the United Nations Human Rights Council Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued a report of opinions that the long-term detention of asylum seekers in Japan should be improved in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Indeed, quite a few foreign nationals have repeatedly applied for refugee status so that they could stay in Japan during the multiple recognition processes, causing lengthy detentions.

In order to rectify the system, the Japanese government decided to limit the number of times one can apply for refugee status. In theory, such a measure would shorten detention period and facilitate earlier deportation. Moreover, the new legislation could enable detainees to live outside of a detention center under supervision of an authorized individual or organization. Notably, the legislation would allow those who cannot return their home countries, due to conflicts, to stay in Japan, which is a meaningful change.

Retaliation Options: US Cyber Responses To SolarWinds, Exchange Hacks

By BRAD D. WILLIAMS

WASHINGTON: Less than two months in office, the Biden administration is grappling with how to respond to two large-scale, widespread cyberespionage campaigns conducted by nation-states against the U.S. public and private sectors. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has said that critical infrastructure operators have also been affected by the SolarWinds and Microsoft Exchange server hacking campaigns.

The administration’s response to each incident will set the tone for and perhaps the trajectory of U.S. cybersecurity strategy, policy, and operations in response to adversarial national-state hacks over the next four years. The administration is said to be working on a multipronged response that will likely include a cybersecurity executive order, economic sanctions, and what National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan characterized as “tools seen and unseen.”

Any cyber operations response to each incident, whatever it might entail, is fraught with difficult questions on challenging issues, such as proportionality, the risk of escalation, and “cyber norms,” which the U.S. and many other nations advocate, but which some nations do not.

Cyber Command works to address criticism over how it integrates tools — challenges remain

By: Mark Pomerleau

WASHINGTON — U.S. Cyber Command is working to instill more seamless integration of disparate cyber war-fighting systems.

Congress has expressed concern that the command’s vision lacks a governance strategy to connect systems together, a key finding of an audit published in November by its nonpartisan watchdog. Lawmakers ordered the Department of Defense to report to them on its governance strategy, called the Joint Cyber Warfighting Architecture. While the report, turned in at the end of the previous administration, is not released publicly, a Senate Armed Services Committee staffer told C4ISRNET that the senators were correct in their assessment that the cyber strategy lacked proper structures.

The strategy, created in 2019 and meant to better align the commands’ programs and resources, is a priority this year for the command, Executive Director David Frederick said this week. He and other leaders who spoke at virtual events said the command is working on integrating its systems to serve needs across the military, but they acknowledged there are inherent difficulties with technology purchases for cyber warriors.

“The tricky part, for anybody who’s done large-scale acquisition programs is: How do you synchronize? How do we get all these programs to have a shared vision and a shared set of priorities to work through the interconnections and interdependencies? That’s our big challenge right now,” Frederick said March 10 at an Intelligence and National Security Alliance event. “We also are working with relatively limited authority at the command level. Most of the decision-making authority is at the acquisition program level within the military services.”

16 March 2021

South Asia deftly navigates China–India tensions

Rohan Mukherjee

China–India relations took a turn for the worse in 2020. Intrusions by the People’s Liberation Army along the contested border led to a military standoff and skirmishes, the likes of which had not been seen for decades between the two countries. Only recently have they begun the process of disengagement.

India’s neighbourhood has increasingly become a space in which the two major powers jostle for influence. Over the last decade, China has become one of the top exporters to South Asia. Chinese investments have poured into infrastructure projects such as railways, ports, highways and economic corridors spanning thousands of kilometres across the region. Except for India and Bhutan, all South Asian countries are members of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

South Asian states have been quietly watching the sparks flying on the Himalayan frontier. Even Pakistan — perhaps China’s closest partner globally and with the most to gain from India being distracted on its eastern flank — has done little out of the ordinary to change the status quo. On 25 February 2021, New Delhi and Islamabad unexpectedly recommitted to a ceasefire along their disputed border.

Nepal is an exception, taking the crisis as an opportunity to officially release and constitutionally legitimate a new map claiming three small territories historically disputed with India. India has claimed and controlled these territories for decades, with little official protestation from Nepal. Kathmandu’s unprecedented action during the China–India standoff therefore suggested a desire to poke India in the eye while acknowledging Nepal’s burgeoning ties with China. This type of signalling was a level up from the China–India military standoff at Doklam in 2017, when Nepali elites blamed India for the crisis but still acknowledged that it would be best for Kathmandu to stay uninvolved.

ENDING PAKISTAN’S PROXY WAR IN AFGHANISTAN: NEW PAPER BY CHRIS ALEXANDER

OTTAWA, ON (March 3, 2021): Alongside regimes in Russia, China and Iran, Pakistan deserves recognition as amongst the world’s greatest disruptors for its proxy war in Afghanistan. Many Canadians have lost their lives in pursuit of Afghanistan’s freedom and prosperity. Though the price was steep, Canada was a major contributor toward bringing greater stability to the country, strengthening a democratic government, empowering women and girls, and much more.

However, despite substantial efforts from the international community, Afghanistan remains mired in a worsening conflict – and these gains are increasingly under siege. In a new MLI paper titled “Ending Pakistan’s Proxy Way in Afghanistan,” former Ambassador and Cabinet Minister Chris Alexander reveals the integral role of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) as the principal and underlying cause of persistent war against Afghans and those who seek to help them.

Alexander argues that, instead of working to achieve stability under democratic institutions chosen by Afghans, Pakistan’s post-9/11 military leaders have “sheltered Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda while working to scale up military and terrorist campaigns prosecuted by the Taliban’s Quetta Shura, the Haqqani Network, and other groups.”

Alexander reveals that the Taliban and their allies have received unstinting support from Pakistan’s military for decades. This state terror as statecraft has systematically resulted in the Taliban’s capacity to continue engaging in terrorist activities. As a result, “ISI’s covert proxy war has killed a total of about 124,000 people to date – more than half of them Taliban fighters and nearly one third Afghan civilians,” notes Alexander.

Afghanistan: Another Peace to End All Peace?

It is too soon to say that the Biden Administration has taken on “mission impossible” in proposing the new peace plan that Secretary Blinken has sent to the Afghan central government and the Taliban, which is attached at the end of this commentary. It is not too soon to say that it has been saddled with an almost impossible legacy.

The Trump administration’s peace agreement in February 2020 was followed by massive real cuts in U.S. personnel and military support, but it was never followed by any public peace plan – and it certainly never produced serious progress. The result is that the Biden administration has now taken office with very real facts on the ground in terms of the limits to U.S. capability, but with no real facts in terms of some form of agreed interim government or agreement to any aspect of what kind of Afghanistan could emerge out of a “peace” between the Afghan central government and the Taliban.

It is now mid-March, and there is still a deadline for the end of May that would require the U.S. to remove all troops as well as U.S. defense contractors and civilian personnel. In practice, this has meant that the Biden Administration has been compelled to propose a peace settlement that President Ghani has already virtually rejected and one that the Taliban will probably only accept if it feels that it can impose its own rule once the U.S. leaves.

The problems the Biden Administration faces in having to propose a real plan – nearly a year too late for it to succeed – has become all too clear the moment one actually reads the full peace settlement attached to this commentary, and when one looks at the portions that are highlighted. A real peace between real enemies is a massive, complex effort. The text that Secretary Blinken has proposed highlights issue after issue that should have been resolved long before now – issues that should have been considered long before the U.S. unilaterally announced a peace “agreement” without any real definition of a “peace” or without any real agreement.

Elements of change and continuity in the future of the Indo-Pacific

When discussing the newer elements and concepts in the future of the Indo-Pacific in 2021, elements of both change and continuity need to be taken into account. The end of the Cold War opened new facets of security, expanding it in ways that pushed frameworks beyond state and military security. The beginning of the 1990s marked a systemic shift in the study and analyses of security and world order to crucially encompass non-traditional approaches in the traditional security framework.

The changing focus towards non-traditional security

The 2020-2021 Covid crisis has demonstrated the profound impact of a non-traditional security issue to human survival and the well-being of peoples and states. The pandemic has resulted in 2.3 million deaths globally, as per latest figures. It has destabilized globalized economies, with poverty and hunger reaching unprecedentedly disturbing levels, thereby highlighting its devastating socio-economic impact.

In this light, 2021 sees, perhaps, for the first time, a non-traditional security issue racing past the traditional facets of security in terms of policy approaches and of the need for global solutions. In 2021, we are likely to see the issues of climate change and human epidemics take center stage. The past year has underscored that the referent of security is no longer just the State (in terms of state sovereignty or territorial integrity), but also the People (and their survival, well-being and dignity) both at the individual and societal levels. A non-traditional security issue has challenged the very survival of peoples and states, being transnational in nature and scope, defying unilateral remedies and requiring comprehensive political, economic, social responses.

Could Ukrainian Firm Solve China’s Jet-Engine Problem?

By REUBEN JOHNSON

Chendgu J-20 fighter prototypes, , considered suspiciously similar to the American F-35 Joint Strike Fighter — but at least initially powered by a Russian-made, 1980s-vintage engine.

KIEV: Washington and Kiev are trying to block the Chinese takeover of a jet-engine maker little known outside Ukraine, Motor Sich. If the sale goes through, it will let China obtain a key defence technology that has eluded them for decades, in one of the few remaining disciplines where the US and its allies retain a competitive advantage.

For decades, the Achilles’ Heel of Chinese airpower has been Beijing’s perennial inability to design and build reliable military jet aeroengines. For most of the years that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been engaged in its current modernisation drive, they have had to rely on aeroengine technology – as well as the off-the-shelf engines themselves – imported from Russia.

Lately, however, PLA have been trying to break this cycle of dependence by taking over an aeroengine firm here in Ukraine, the Motor Sich engine production association.

Based in Zaparozhiye, Ukraine, Motor Sich is one of the largest aeroengine enterprises left over from the former USSR, and today they are probably the only one that could design and build a new engine front-to-back on their own. The other major aeroengine firms – all of which are in Russia – have lost so many personnel over the years that every new Russian engine programme ends up being a cooperative effort between three or more design bureaux.

That effort has been blocked by both the US and Ukrainian governments – the US in an effort to keep Beijing from solving its aeroengine technology deficiency and Ukraine acting in order to not lose a strategically important enterprise.

Trigger warning. The CCP’s coordinated information effort to discredit the BBC

By Jacob Wallis and Albert Zhang

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) diplomatic accounts, Chinese state media, pro-CCP influencers and patriotic trolls are targeting the UK public broadcaster, the BBC, in a coordinated information operation. Recent BBC reports, including the allegations of systematic sexual assault in Xinjiang’s internment camps, were among a number of triggers provoking the CCP’s propaganda apparatus to discredit the BBC, distract international attention and recapture control of the narrative.

In ASPI ICPC’s new report, Albert Zhang and Dr Jacob Wallis provide a snapshot of the CCP’s ongoing coordinated response targeting the BBC, which leveraged YouTube, Twitter and Facebook and was broadly framed around three prominent narratives:

That the BBC spreads disinformation and is biased against China

That the BBC’s domestic audiences think that it’s biased and not to be trusted

That the BBC’s reporting on China is instigated by foreign actors and intelligence agencies.

In addition, the report analyses some of the secondary effects of this propaganda effort by exploring the mobilisation of a pro-CCP Twitter network that has previously amplified the Covid-19 disinformation content being pushed by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and whose negative online engagement with the BBC peaks on the same days as that of the party-state’s diplomats and state media.

To contest and blunt criticism of the CCP’s systematic surveillance and control of minority ethnic groups, the party will continue to aggressively deploy its propaganda and disinformation apparatus. Domestic control remains fundamental to its political power and legitimacy, and internationally narrative control is fundamental to the pursuit of its foreign policy interests.

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