Taliban Says 'It's Too Early' to Know if Insurgents Might Attack Withdrawing U.S. Troops

BY JULIA MARNIN 

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The Taliban said "it's too early" to determine whether insurgents would attack withdrawing U.S. forces, which are scheduled to fully depart Afghanistan before September 11 following a decision by President Joe Biden, according to the Associated Press.

The Taliban signed a deal with former President Donald Trump in 2020 that set a U.S. troops withdrawal date from Afghanistan of May 1, 2021, but the military pullout date was extended by Biden.

"It's too early for these issues, nothing can be said about the future," Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naeem told AP when asked about the possibility of violence from insurgents.

Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby emphasized during a press conference last Friday that the withdrawal of troops will begin May 1 and be completed by September 11, saying, "We've seen their threats, and it would be imprudent for us not to take those threats seriously. It would also be imprudent for the Taliban to not take seriously what [President Joe Biden and Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III] both made clear: Any attack on our drawdown, on our forces or our allies and partners...will be met very forcefully."

Clausewitz and the Phantoms of War Without Victory

By James A. Russell

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President Biden’s announced withdrawal of our troops from Afghanistan, in turn, followed by NATO allies, is certainly welcome and long overdue. It is an acknowledgment of what has long been obvious: we were unprepared to pay the astronomical costs of defeating the Taliban. Victory was always a phantom in Afghanistan, just as it has been in Iraq for the United States and the western democracies.

Ending the direct involvement in wars like Afghanistan a hemisphere away from what we now call the "homeland" is a good idea, but the unsettled state of the international system means that perhaps, even more, grave conflicts loom in the cold dawn to come.

The people of this country should reflect deliberately on these possible threats and give more thought (and afterthought) to what is glibly called the “forever war,” but which requires a sober, non-ideological, and critical analysis not found in tweets, Instagram pictures, and cable news tantrums put together for our entertainment.

The German Prussian theoretician of war Carl von Clausewitz reminds us from the 19th century that organized political violence exists across a spectrum of conflict. As such, the struggle of political will as organized violence, as well as the native anger and hatred somehow shoved into a political goal, can scarcely be said ever to have abated at all.

Afghanistan Will Know No Peace Without Pressure on Pakistan

BY M. ASHRAF HAIDARI

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Forty-two years have passed since the start of nonstop imposed conflicts in Afghanistan. During this period, several attempts have been made to stabilize the country and to restore sustainable peace there. However, each peace effort has failed or stalled, including the Doha Agreement recently, which the United States under the Trump administration and the Taliban signed in February 2020.

This expedient measure that intended to serve the former president’s electoral goals excluded the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan as a principal stakeholder in the U.S.-Taliban talks that produced a fragile deal. But it coerced the Islamic Republic into making an unprecedented concession: the release of over 5,500 Taliban prisoners. In exchange, the Taliban was supposed to start meaningful “intra-Afghan” talks, notably reduce violence towards a mutual ceasefire, sever ties with al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, and ensure those prisoners would not return to the battlefield. None of these have so far materialized, thanks to the Taliban and their regional state-sponsor, Pakistan.

As former war criminals and drug-traffickers, most of the released Taliban prisoners have either returned to the battlefield or resumed drug-trafficking out of Taliban-controlled areas. And still others have manned the Taliban’s campaign of targeted killings, whose victims are largely the drivers of Afghanistan’s continued progress, including protection of human rights, empowerment of women and girls, and freedoms of expression and press.

‘The Taliban Have Tracked Me’

BY ALI M. LATIFI

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POL-E ALAM, Afghanistan—Shaima Zargar, director of women’s affairs in Logar province, just south of Kabul, says that up until a year ago she dressed pretty much as she pleased. She certainly never wore a chadari, or burqa, the forbidding blue shroud that the Taliban forced all women to wear the last time they were in power.

Now, Zargar puts a burqa on wherever she goes.

“The Taliban have tracked me. I’ve been actively followed. I’ve received direct threats, and it’s all been over the last year,” Zargar said of the period since the Taliban signed an armistice with the Trump administration. That fear has only grown in the last few days since U.S. President Joe Biden announced he was pulling all U.S. troops out by the 20th anniversary of Sept. 11, and NATO followed suit.

Her greatest fear right now is violence and a sense it may be impossible for under-equipped local government forces to hold off the Taliban, said Zargar, whose office has worked hard to ensure the rights of Logari women. “We’ve fought back against cultural practices and prejudices, but none of that matters if families are afraid to send their daughters to school due to fear of bombs and mines,” she said.

That fear is borne out in the numbers. According to the United Nations, the first quarter of 2021 saw a 37 percent increase in civilian casualties among women.

“The number of Afghan civilians killed and maimed, especially women and children, is deeply disturbing,” said Deborah Lyons, the U.N. secretary-general’s special representative for Afghanistan.

In recent years, the United States has sought a “conditions-based” withdrawal from Afghanistan. From George W. Bush to Donald Trump, every president who has presided over the war has made reference to these nebulous conditions, which kept the resurgent Taliban on their toes.

ASEAN’s Myanmar Crisis

by Joshua Kurlantzick

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With the situation in Myanmar disintegrating into chaos, and Myanmar possibly becoming a potential failed state, some regional powers, including the United States and Australia, have taken significant actions against the junta government. Australia has suspended military cooperation with the Myanmar military, and the Joe Biden administration has implemented a broad range of targeted sanctions against the junta and many of its businesses. Taiwan, which has significant investments in the country, has passed a parliamentary motion condemning the situation in Myanmar and calling on the junta to restore democracy. (Japan, historically reticent to take a tough approach toward Naypyidaw, has taken a more passive approach, calling on the Myanmar junta to restore democracy and having its defense head join a call rejecting the coup but so far not taking stronger moves.)

But Southeast Asian states, which have some of the greatest leverage over Naypyidaw—and certainly among the most to lose if Myanmar becomes totally unstable, with refugees flowing out of the country and conflicts possibly spanning borders—have done little about the crisis. Many regional states have remained silent on the coup and the atrocities, or have expressed mild concern. Indonesia has been an important exception, with President Joko Widodo condemning the violence and pushing for an emergency Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit, which seems in the works, but with no fixed date yet even as Myanmar unravels.

Regional states claim they want to keep communication lines to Myanmar open, which is reasonable, but they have taken few other measures to address the crisis. As in many other crises, ASEAN remains torn, and with so many of its states now run by outright authoritarians or illiberal leaders who came to power in democratic elections, most of the region does not want to take a tough approach to the crisis.

Afghans Haven’t Forgotten Taliban Atrocities

BY STEFANIE GLINSKI 

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QARABAGH, Afghanistan—The Taliban flooded into the Shomali Plain by the thousands, supported by tanks and air power. Reza Gul fled south toward Kabul barefoot amid the chaos, leaving behind her house, her belongings, and the bodies of her three teenage sons, slain by Taliban bullets.

Within days, the militants had deliberately killed countless people, scorched the rich farming land, destroyed tens of thousands of houses, and blown up irrigation systems. The Taliban’s 1999 invasion of the Shomali Plain, stretching north from Kabul toward Bagram, was one of their most brutal—and lingering. Today, the destruction is still visible. Behind the main highway, countless skeletons of old houses are testimony to the Taliban’s past atrocities; out of 70 villages in Gul’s district of Qarabagh, 99 percent of the houses were destroyed. Many of the ruins have never been rebuilt.

Gul, who is now 75, breaks into tears at the memory, which remains crystal clear, as deeply etched as the wrinkled crevasses in her face that she said show just how much she’s suffered.

US Nuclear Fears Are Shifting From a Clear Russian Threat to a Murkier Chinese One

BY PATRICK TUCKER

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China is putting its nuclear forces on higher alert, yet the threat posed by Beijing’s arsenal is not well understood by the United States or its allies, the head of U.S. Strategic Command testified on Tuesday.

“I can’t get through a week without finding out something I didn’t know about China,” Adm. Charles Richard, the head of U.S. Strategic Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

Richard said China’s “very opaque” nuclear policy makes it “difficult to determine their intentions.”

But evidence suggests that China is moving toward a higher state of alert, he said in his written testimony.

“While China keeps the majority of its forces in a peacetime status, increasing evidence suggests China has moved a portion of its nuclear force to a Launch on Warning (LOW) posture and are adopting a limited ‘high alert duty’ strategy,” he wrote.

Beijing is buying new satellites to detect enemy launches and new command-and-control systems for its own forces, he wrote.

“Their networked and integrated platform advancements will enable skip-echelon decision-making processes and greater rapid reaction,” he wrote.

IntelBrief: QAnon – A U.S. National Security Threat Amplified by Foreign-Based Actors

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FBI Director Wray remains concerned about the national security threat posed by QAnon conspiracy theories and adherents of this movement.

Key tenets of the QAnon conspiracy theory appeal to a significant number of Americans, according to a new Soufan Center report.

Russia-driven amplification of QAnon-related narratives was predominant in 2020, but began to wane beginning in 2021.

China-related perpetuation of QAnon conspiracies proliferated toward the end of 2020 and now outpaces Russia-related amplification.

In testimony last week to the United States Senate Intelligence Committee, FBI Director Christopher Wray highlighted the continuing national security threat posed by adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory. Wray’s comments echo longstanding concerns within the Bureau, dating back to 2019, regarding the ability of online conspiracy theories to inspire real-world harm by individuals and small groups. QAnon believers committed various acts of murder, plotted political violence, and kidnapped children; in 2021, more than three dozen QAnon members were arrested (one was killed) for storming the U.S. Capitol building during the January 6 insurrection. In the aftermath, the main protagonist of the QAnon narrative, President Donald J. Trump, failed to be reinstated, as prophesized, and the shadowy individuals behind QAnon’s online postings have failed to deliver new content for months. This begs the question, why is the FBI still concerned about QAnon? The Soufan Center’s latest special report, “Quantifying the Q Conspiracy: A Data-Driven Approach to Understanding the Threat Posed by QAnon,” clarifies that the QAnon threat persists because its core message continues to resonate with large numbers of the American public. Moreover, the report lays out evidence that foreign-based actors, located in China and Russia, among other states, are amplifying QAnon-related content.

The Flawed WHO Coronavirus Origins Study

Anthony Ruggiero

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The only thing the WHO report accomplishes is showing how the organization was focused on pleasing Beijing. This is an important test for Biden—Xi Jinping will triumph if the WHO report stands

Even the head of the World Health Organization does not trust his own investigators’ report on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. He has every reason to be skeptical: Chinese authorities and the WHO’s credulous investigators arduously avoided a serious examination of the possibility that the virus escaped from a Wuhan laboratory. The report is less a researched conclusion than a collection of opinions of the WHO team filtered through the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Neither the report nor the WHO’s current leadership can advance our paramount concern to prevent another pandemic.

Beijing essentially dictated the conclusions to the WHO when its officials visited China in January and February. At a press conference on Feb. 9 in Beijing at the conclusion of the trip, the WHO and China were on the same page labeling the lab-origin theory as “extremely unlikely” while amplifying the CCP’s claims that the pandemic started outside China. Two days later in Geneva, the WHO director-general said all hypotheses would be investigated. Nonetheless, the final report stuck with Beijing’s preferred line against the lab-origin theory.

A War in Europe? Why Putin’s Russia Is Escalating in Ukraine

by Andreas Umland

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Vladimir Putin’s decisions in favor of Russia’s military territorial expansion were as rational, in terms of domestic and foreign power politics, in Georgia in 2008 as they were in Ukraine in 2014. A third such decision in the coming weeks or months would be equally so. In 2008, no sanctions by the West followed the de facto Russian occupation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The European Union’s only relevant sanctions package related to the Ukraine conflict was adopted less than two weeks after Russia had shot down a Malaysian passenger plane over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. The sanctions that the EU adopted as a result, which remain in place to his date, and that have had a moderate impact on Russia’s economy, were not so much a reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Rather, they represented Brussels’s punishment of Moscow for the deaths of over 200 EU citizens who had been on the MH17 flight. Truly painful EU sanctions in response to Moscow’s adventures in the post-Soviet space—such is the lesson of Russia’s various wars in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus over the past thirty years—have never been and probably never will be adopted.

For Russia in 2008 and 2014, the economic costs of its violent escalations in Georgia and Ukraine were low, and, for the Putin regime, the short-term domestic political gains were high. Therefore, to refrain from military interventions in South Ossetia as well as Abkhazia in 2008, and in Crimea as well as the Donets Basin in 2014 would have been sins of omission. They boosted Putin’s popularity and his regime’s stability, at least in the short term.

The popularity of the Russian ruling elite has been declining for several months now. This is due, above all, to the far-reaching humanitarian, social, and economic consequences of the Coronavirus crisis, which are glossed over in Russia’s official statistics. Among Putin’s various current political problems, the best known is Alexei Navalny’s gradual transformation into a martyr. As a result of these and some other concurrent challenges, the stakes for Putin and his followers have risen significantly since 2020.

The U.S.-Japan Summit: Uneventful and Indecisive

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Japanese Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide’s summit with U.S. President Joseph Biden was awaited with a mixture of anticipation and anxiety in at least four capitals: Washington, Tokyo, Beijing, and Taipei. Both the United States and Japan have concerns about increasingly assertive Chinese behavior in the East China and South China Seas and escalating pressure by China to annex Taiwan despite the often expressed wishes of Taiwan’s electorate to remain separate. In the weeks before the summit, China’s state-controlled media betrayed its leadership’s concern by repeatedly warning the Japanese government against collusion with the United States.

As is typical of high-level diplomatic discussions, the parties have different goals which must be reconciled lest the ritual communiqué be little more than vacuous statements about the commitment of both sides to peace, stability, and protection of the environment. Here, the stakes were high: this was to be the first state visit of Biden’s presidency and, as such, a symbol of the importance of the alliance with Japan as well as a test for both leaders. Japanese media opined that, since his previous career had focused on domestic issues, foreign affairs were not Suga’s strong suit and fretted about what that portended. Japan wanted yet another reiteration of American support for its claim to sovereignty over disputed islands in the East China Sea known to the Japanese as the Senkaku and to China as the Diaoyu, and a commitment to move forward with relocating the Futenma Marine Air Station to Henoko, long delayed because of political and geological problems. The United States wanted a stronger Japanese defense commitment to the alliance, while Taiwanese hoped for both sides to affirm their opposition to Beijing’s pressure for incorporation into the People’s Republic of China (PRC). And Beijing wanted to forestall exactly those aims.

Ukraine-Turkey cooperation has its limits

Dimitar Bechev

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On April 10, President Volodymyr Zelensky made his way to Istanbul to take part in the ninth meeting of the Turkish-Ukrainian High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council. The primary purpose of his visit was to solicit support from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan against Russia, a more pressing priority than trade and investment.

In recent weeks, Ukraine has been feeling the heat. Since the end of March, Moscow has been amassing troops on the Ukrainian-Russian border. According to Kyiv, there are currently about 40,000 Russian troops in the area, not far from the frontlines in the Donbass, and the same number in Crimea which was annexed by Russia in 2014.

While Zelensky’s first port of call is the United States, he has good reason to count on Turkey, too. Ankara refuses to recognise Crimea’s annexation and offers rhetorical support to Ukraine. In a joint declaration, Erdogan and Zelensky pledged to continue “coordinating steps aimed at [..] the de-occupation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, as well as territories in Donetsk and Luhansk regions”. The wording matches their last joint statement from October 2020, when the two leaders met in Turkey.

Erdogan also re-committed to the so-called Crimean Platform launched by Kyiv and backed by the Biden administration, which aims to put pressure on Russia. Turkey intends to use the foreign policy initiative to channel economic assistance to Crimean Tatars in regions bordering the peninsula.

A Historian’s Guide to the Geopolitics of War

by James Jay Carafano

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Decades ago, the U.S. military adopted the concept of the “three levels of war” as part of their doctrine. Developed from a historical appreciation of conflict, this framework for understanding war remains relevant, a reminder that even as technology and geopolitics march on, sometimes the past marches with them.

“Seeing the elephant,” was a popular nineteenth-century catchphrase. It meant investing a lot of effort to see or do something and then concluding it hadn’t been worth it. The term was usually applied to the experience of war.

The phrase was often paired with the ancient Hindu parable of the blind men who encounter an elephant for the first time. Each described the animal differently, according to which part of the elephant they touched. This aptly explained the challenge of analyzing and describing war, so much was shaped by perspective and experience.

In practice, nineteenth-century military histories reflected the elephant parable. In the West, Napoleon Bonaparte was the historian’s elephant in the room, the dominant topic. What complicated understanding the Napoleonic way of war was that Bonaparte did pretty much everything there was to do in fighting a war. He commanded troops in battle. He directed protracted operations over vast distances. He was his empire’s strategist making all the big decisions about how the ways, means and ends of France’s way of war would be employed.

The Russian Military Buildup on Ukraine's Border | An Expert Analysis

By Peter B. Zwack, Victor Andrusiv, Oksana Antonenko 

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The Kennan Institute recently asked several of our experts and friends to weigh in on this developing story and consider the following questions:

1. What is behind the ongoing military buildup by Russia on Ukraine’s eastern border and in Crimea?

2. Is this a show of force, a presage to military confrontation or invasion of Ukraine by Russia, or something else?

3. If Russia does undertake offensive operations in Ukraine, what might that look like and how might the U.S., Europe, and NATO respond?

Read analysis from Victor Andrusiv, Oksana Antonenko, Mykhailo Minakov, Igor Zevelv, and Brig. Gen. (ret) Peter Zwack below!

Paul Kagame: the hidden dictator

BY MARTIN FLETCHER

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Do Not Disturb” said the sign outside Room 905 of Johannesburg’s Michelangelo Towers hotel on 1 January 2014. When the police finally broke in they found the garrotted body of Patrick Kare-geya, Rwanda’s former head of ­external security, on the bed. Karegeya had fallen out with the regime he had helped create, and was murdered by a Rwandan hit squad as he helped build an opposition movement in exile.

“Do Not Disturb” is also the sign that has been metaphorically hung on the narrative that Paul Kagame’s Rwandan regime has so assiduously cultivated over the past quarter century – namely that a heroic band of ­warriors led by Kagame swept in from Uganda to halt the Hutus’ genocide against their fellow Tutsis in 1994, then built a prosperous and harmonious new country on the ruins of the old one.

It is a narrative that the international ­community, wracked with guilt over its failure to prevent that genocide, has for the most part happily swallowed. Kagame’s regime has faults, it concedes, but it has brought peace and stability to Africa’s highly combustible Great Lakes region and turned tiny, mountainous, landlocked Rwanda into the “Switzerland of Africa”.

Foreign assistance, much of it British, pours into a country that has become an ­advertisement for the efficacy of international aid. Kagame is welcomed by ­presidents and prime ministers, hailed by philanthropists and showered with awards. Bill Clinton has called him “one of the greatest leaders of our time”. Tony Blair has praised his “visionary leadership”.

‘A Threat From the Russian State’: Ukrainians Alarmed as Troops Mass on Their Doorstep

By Anton Troianovski

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MARIUPOL, Ukraine — There are the booms that echo again, and parents know to tell their children they are only fireworks. There are the drones the separatists started flying behind the lines at night, dropping land mines. There are the fresh trenches the Ukrainians can see their enemy digging, the increase in sniper fire pinning them inside their own.

But perhaps the starkest evidence that the seven-year-old war in Ukraine may be entering a new phase is what Capt. Mykola Levytskyi’s coast guard unit saw cruising in the Azov Sea just outside the port city of Mariupol last week: a flotilla of Russian amphibious assault ships.

Since the start of the war in 2014, Russia has used the pretext of a separatist conflict to pressure Ukraine after its Westward-looking revolution, supplying arms and men to Kremlin-backed rebels in the country’s east while denying that it was a party to the fight.

Biden Should Sink This Proposed Nuclear Weapon

By MONICA MONTGOMERY and KINGSTON REIF

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President Joe Biden’s first real test of his commitment to reducing the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. national security strategy and trimming the bloated nuclear weapons budget is imminent. The administration released an initial topline version of its first national defense budget request on April 9 and is expected to release the full request in May or June. While a number of unnecessary and costly nuclear weapons programs should be critically reviewed by the administration, one program stands out for immediate cancellation: the Trump administration’s proposal for a new nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile.

Abandoning development of this new nuclear weapon should be an easy choice. Biden opposed the missile during his campaign for president and for good reason. The weapon would be a redundant and dangerous multi-billion-dollar mistake.

Three decades have passed since the United States last deployed nuclear cruise missiles at sea. President George H.W. Bush directed the nuclear Tomahawk Land Attack Missile to be taken off patrol in 1991 at the end of the Cold War. The weapons remained in storage in Washington state until the Obama administration identified them as a redundant capability in its 2010 Nuclear Posture Review and ordered their retirement.

How Many Bridges Can Turkey’s Erdogan Burn?

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Since his sweeping overhaul of Turkey’s political system in 2017, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has cemented his near-total control over the country. Despite the worst electoral setback of Erdogan’s career in the Istanbul mayoral election in June 2019, as well as a tailspinning economy exacerbated by the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, he continues to maintain his grip on power, even if he must destabilize Turkey’s democracy to do so.

At the same time, Erdogan has pursued an adventurous and bellicose foreign policy across the Mediterranean region, putting Ankara increasingly at odds with its NATO allies. After Turkey’s purchase of a Russian air-defense system in July 2019, Washington suspended Turkish involvement in the F-35 next-generation fighter plane program. In October 2019, the Turkish incursion into northeastern Syria targeting Syrian Kurdish militias highlighted the disconnect between the U.S. Congress—which fiercely defended the Syrian Kurds, America’s principal partner on the ground in the fight against the Islamic State—and former U.S. President Donald Trump, who seemed oblivious to their plight and subsequently received Erdogan at the White House. Turkey’s repeated incursions into waters in the Eastern Mediterranean claimed by Cyprus, as well as its standoffs with Greek and French naval vessels in the region, have further raised tensions and alarmed observers.

Psychological Warfare: Principles for Global Competition

By MAJ Robert Coombs

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Principles of PSYOP

We have been handicapped however by a popular attachment to the concept of a basic difference between peace and war, by a tendency to view war as a sort of sporting contest outside of all political context by a national tendency to see a political cure-all, and by a reluctance to recognize the realities of international relations – the perpetual rhythm of struggle, in and out of war.[1]

George Kennan, The Inauguration of Organized Political Warfare, 1948

NSC 4, 1947, identified the United States “is not now employing strong, coordinated information measures to counter this [Russian] propaganda campaign or to further the attainment of its national objectives.”[2] The United States once again finds itself in the same predicament following the Second World War; we are in a global competition with revisionist states that seek to exert power through non-military capabilities. Captain Charles Smith stated in 1952, “Modern warfare has become total; it involves not only the man who fires the gun but every man and woman who can help build the gun or who can help make the man want to fire the gun… Therefore, military strategy must not only deal with overcoming the physical ability of the enemy to resist, it must also deal with the minds – to destroy the morale – of the whole population in order that military victory is made with the least cost to us in men, money and materials.”[3] The United States is realigning our military obligations once again, developing a scenario reminiscent of the 1950s when physical force was insufficient to achieve national strategic goals. This environment is ripe for the renaissance of psychological warfare, where soft power and influence through is the coin of the realm. To operate in an environment where influence takes primacy over physical prowess, we must understand the principles of psychological warfare that make up this environment.

How Face Recognition Can Destroy Anonymity

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STEPPING OUT IN public used to make a person largely anonymous. Unless you met someone you knew, nobody would know your identity. Cheap and widely available face recognition software means that’s no longer true in some parts of the world. Police in China run face algorithms on public security cameras in real time, providing notifications whenever a person of interest walks by.

How Face Recognition Can Destroy Anonymity

Cameras are everywhere, and increasingly powerful software can pick an individual out of a crowd. Except sometimes algorithms get it wrong.

STEPPING OUT IN public used to make a person largely anonymous. Unless you met someone you knew, nobody would know your identity. Cheap and widely available face recognition software means that’s no longer true in some parts of the world. Police in China run face algorithms on public security cameras in real time, providing notifications whenever a person of interest walks by.

Remembering al-Qaida

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George Friedman, April 20, 2021

The United States invaded Afghanistan 20 years ago, soon after the attack on Sept. 11, 2001. By 2008, then-President Barack Obama made it a point to disengage from what has become known as the Forever Wars. He failed. His successor, President Donald Trump, pledged likewise but failed all the same. President Joe Biden, too, has said the U.S. would withdraw, this time by the anniversary of the 9/11 attack.

The war in Afghanistan can’t be discussed without discussing al-Qaida, the Islamist group led by Osama bin Laden, the son of an extremely wealthy Yemeni who had moved his family to Saudi Arabia. His goal was to recreate an Islamic caliphate. As I wrote in “America’s Secret War,” his strategy was to unite the Islamic world against its common enemy, the United States. To that end, he would conduct an attack against the United States that generated massive causalities and electrified the world. If the U.S. could be attacked, it would prove the U.S. to be vulnerable. If the United States declined to respond, it would prove Washington to be weak or cowardly, or so the thinking went. Both cases would, bin Laden thought, achieve the same end: Islamic unity.

The attack against the United States was both simple and brilliant. Hijacked aircraft would strike American icons – the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Congress (the latter of which failed). The Islamic world would know these buildings well and would see al-Qaida’s power. What was remarkable was the detailed planning, the deployment of operatives and the movement of money, none of which was fully detected by U.S. intelligence. (There are always those who claim that they predicted such events. I have no idea what they said to whom before the attack, only what they claimed to have said after.) The fear that struck the United States was palpable.

Part of the fear was that Washington did not know what al-Qaida was planning next and what resources it had. The idea that 9/11 was the sum total of its capability was plausible, but there was no evidence for it, and the American public was thinking of all the worst-case scenarios. There was intelligence, necessarily uncertain in nature, that al-Qaida had acquired a single small nuclear device. All reasonable people scoff at such thoughts now, but in the days after the attack, nothing was being dismissed. Lenin said that the purpose of terror is to terrify. The country was terrified, because none of us knew what was next.

The Challenge of a Two-Front War: India’s China-Pakistan Dilemma

BY Sushant Singh

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Concerns over a two-front military threat from China and Pakistan in the early 2000s led India to develop a strategy based on deterrence and dissuasion to prevent any loss of territory. The military was never resourced accordingly, however, leaving open serious vulnerabilities. Despite recent improvements in India-China and India-Pakistan relations, the two-front military threat remains a formidable challenge with no easy answers. India does not have the economic wherewithal to resource its military to fight a two-front war. The alternative—seeking partnerships with other powers to externally rebalance—will also prove difficult, given that the Quad initiative is still in its early stages and cannot provide reliable protection as of now. The smartest choice for New Delhi, therefore, is to neither fight nor prepare to fight a two-front war. Instead, India should seek durable and enduring peace with one of its adversaries. Since China remains a long-term strategic competitor and permanent peace with Pakistan is at odds with the dominant political ideology in New Delhi, however, the Indian military is likely to remain in an unviable position: resource-constrained, overstretched, and vulnerable.

Stimson’s South Asia program is pleased to publish a series of Research Notes, featuring discussion and analysis of South Asian security issues from a range of regional and international authors. These pieces are intended to provide diverse views on emerging topics and tensions that will impact regional stability and geopolitics for years to come.

Introduction

After Afghanistan, China and Russia will test Biden

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The US administration may have to handle crises over Taiwan and Ukraine at the same time GIDEON RACHMAN Add to myFT © James Ferguson Share on Twitter (opens new window) Share on Facebook (opens new window) Share on LinkedIn (opens new window) Save Gideon Rachman APRIL 19 2021 226 Print this page “America is back” proclaimed Joe Biden, a few weeks ago. But in Afghanistan, America is out. The US president has just announced the withdrawal of all remaining American troops from the country. A 20-year war will end on the symbolic date of 9/11, 2021. The watching world will wonder if a gap is emerging between White House rhetoric about re-engagement with the world, and a reality of continuing retreat. Biden insists that this is not the case. 

He argues that America has achieved its counter-terrorism aims in Afghanistan and now intends to “fight the battles for the next 20 years, not the last 20”. But perception matters. The danger is that the pullout from Afghanistan will be seen outside America as a Vietnam-like failure that could eventually lead to the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, a replay of the fall of Saigon to North Vietnam in 1975. Rival powers, in particular Russia and China, could now be emboldened to test the Biden administration’s resolve a little further. The obvious flashpoints are Ukraine and Taiwan. In recent weeks, the Kremlin has assembled more troops on its border with Ukraine than at any time since 2014 when Russia grabbed Crimea. Last week, China sent a record number of military jets into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone. 

‘Showgirls of Pakistan’ Doesn’t Need Your Victim Narrative

BY ZAB MUSTEFA

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When Saad Khan decided to make a documentary about Pakistan’s mujra, or theater, dancers, he didn’t expect the near-decade journey that would ensue. For him, making Showgirls of Pakistan started out with a couple of impromptu days of filming. Over seven years later, the project emerged as a feature-length documentary released globally this past January. To get the film out, he had to take on both the world’s predominantly white-run documentary industry and Pakistan’s mechanisms of social control at the same time.

Khan’s film follows the lives of three mujra dancers, who practice an art form dating back to the Mughal Empire. For centuries, mujra dancers entertained pre-colonial Indian courts and their royals with evocative dance performances. Mujra was a respected art form, and the dancers were considered an important part of the cultural and social fabric of the Mughal Empire—not just because of their proximity to royalty, but because of their value as cultural assets. But after the British colonized India, things changed. The British colonists’ efforts to impose their attitudes toward sex and sexuality on the local populations grew into a larger wave of conservatism. Mujra was eventually restricted and then outlawed.

“Mujra dancers were high taxpayers to the Mughal Empire, they had wealth and land,” Khan, 31, said from his apartment in Brooklyn, New York, in March. “It made sense for a colonizing force to dismantle that support through laws, by force and propaganda. It was a means to seize their power.” Eventually, Khan continued, “mujra was conflated with sex work and dancers with prostitutes, a supremely generalized narrative that exists and affects the lives of women in the business till now.”

Northern expedition: China’s Arctic activities and ambitions

Rush Doshi, Alexis Dale-Huang, and Gaoqi Zhang

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This report explores China’s internal discourse on the Arctic as well as its activities and ambitions across the region. It finds that China sometimes speaks with two voices on the Arctic: an external one aimed at foreign audiences and a more cynical internal one emphasizing competition and Beijing’s Arctic ambitions. In examining China’s political, military, scientific, and economic activity — as well as its coercion of Arctic states — the report also demonstrates the seriousness of China’s aspirations to become a “polar great power.”[1] China has sent high-level figures to the region 33 times in the past two decades, engaged or joined most major Arctic institutions, sought a half dozen scientific facilities in Arctic states, pursued a range of plausibly dual-use economic projects, expanded its icebreaker fleet, and even sent its naval vessels into the region. The eight Arctic sovereign states — Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States — exercise great influence over the Arctic and its strategically valuable geography. China aspires to be among them.

The report advances several primary findings:

China seeks to become a “polar great power” but downplays this goal publicly. Speeches by President Xi Jinping and senior Chinese officials with responsibility for Arctic policy are clear that building China into a “polar great power” by 2030 is China’s top polar goal. Despite the prominence of this goal in these texts, China’s externally facing documents — including its white papers — rarely if ever mention it, suggesting a desire to calibrate external perceptions about its Arctic ambitions, particularly as its Arctic activities become the focus of greater international attention.

Why growing Chinese-Russian common cause poses Biden’s nightmare

by Frederick Kempe

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Russia's President Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping walk down the stairs as they arrive for a BRICS summit in Brasilia, Brazil November 14, 2019. REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino/File Photo

President Joe Biden faces a nightmare scenario of global consequence: increasing Sino-Russian strategic cooperation aimed at undermining US influence and at upending Biden’s efforts to rally democratic allies.

It is the most significant and underrecognized test of Biden’s leadership yet: It could be the defining challenge of his presidency.

This past week, Russia and China simultaneously escalated their separate military activities and threats to the sovereignty of Ukraine and Taiwan respectively—countries whose vibrant independence is an affront to Moscow and Beijing but lies at the heart of US and allies’ interests in their regions.

Even if Moscow’s and Beijing’s actions do not result in a military invasion of either country, and most experts still believe that is unlikely, the scale and intensity of the military moves demand immediate attention. US and allied officials dare not dismiss the certainty that Russia and China are sharing intelligence or the growing likelihood that they increasingly are coordinating actions and strategies.

China's Huawei Is Winning the 5G Race. Here's What the United States Should Do To Respond

by David Sacks

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In 2015, China added the Digital Silk Road (DSR) to its massive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). While Beijing uses DSR to offer a suite of technologies to BRI countries, Huawei’s effort to provide next-generation communication networks to countries has drawn the most scrutiny in the United States.

U.S. officials have frequently claimed that Huawei is effectively an extension of the Chinese Communist Party. Under China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law, Huawei, like all Chinese companies and entities, appears legally required to conduct intelligence work on behalf of the Chinese government. According to this analysis, the Chinese government has the ability to use Huawei-built fifth-generation (5G) networks to collect intelligence, monitor critics, and steal intellectual property. There are also worries that the company might bow to government demands and disable networks to exert coercive pressure on a country.

The United States also has commercial concerns. Once Huawei builds a country’s 5G network, that country is likely to choose Huawei to upgrade those systems when newer technologies become available, thus excluding U.S. companies for potentially decades. Huawei has already finalized more 5G contracts than any other telecom company, half of which are for 5G networks in Europe.

In Africa, Huawei has built 70 percent of the continent’s 4G networks and has signed the only formal agreement on 5G, with South African wireless carrier Rain. The export of Huawei telecom equipment along the DSR has enabled the company’s share of global telecom equipment to increase by 40 percent in the years since BRI was rolled out.

China's Quest for Self-Reliance in the Fourteenth Five-Year Plan

Lauren Dudley

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Innovation is one of the main components of the plan. Over the next five years, China aims to increase research and development (R&D) investment by seven percent each year, with a focus on basic research. This increased R&D investment, paired with continued reform of China's innovation system, will play an important role in China's development of advanced technologies listed in the plan, including artificial intelligence, biotechnology, blockchain, neuroscience, quantum computing, and robotics. China is betting that by "tackling problems at the frontier of science and technology," expanding digital connectivity, and increasing data and computing power through the construction of new infrastructure, it will have successfully planted the “soil” to spur the growth of new technology applications, products, and business models.

In many ways, China's quest to innovate and develop emerging technologies is not new. In the early 1980s, Jiang Zemin, the future president and then-Minister of the Electronics Ministry, stressed the need for China to catch up with its more advanced counterparts in information technology, which he deemed the strategic high ground in international competition. Major policies since then, such as the National Medium- and Long-Term Program for Science and Technology Development and China's Twelfth and Thirteenth Five-Year Plans have responded to this need to enhance China's technological capabilities. Calls in these plans for promoting "indigenous innovation," "leapfrogging" in priority fields, and developing “strategic emerging industries," among other tasks, reflect some of the main goals outlined in the draft Fourteenth Five-Year Plan.

The U.S. Military Needs Citizen-Soldiers, Not Warriors

BY BRET DEVEREAUX 

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The brave women and men of the U.S. armed forces need no longer dine in the soft confines of a cafeteria. Instead, a recent effort attempted to renamed U.S. Army dining facilities as “warrior restaurants.” The renaming was eminently risible but highlights the U.S. Army’s recent love affair with the term. Recruits are asked “what’s your warrior?” in recruitment ads, the Army has a “warrior ethos” (complete with a stylish wall poster), and there is even a “Best Warrior Competition.”

There are only two small problems: U.S. military personnel are not warriors, and more importantly, they should never become warriors. Indeed, the very nature of a warrior is inimical to a free people under a constitutional government. The United States needs citizen-soldiers and has no use for warriors on the battlefield or at home. To understand why, it is worth probing what these words mean and their wider implications.

Most native English speakers recognize there is a meaningful difference between the words “soldier” and “warrior” and the ideas they represent. The phrase “Civil War warriors” feels wrong, just as referring to a Homeric hero or a Mongol horseman as a soldier does. Achilles moping in his tent was a warrior, not a soldier.

America’s Come-From-Behind Pandemic Victory

BY HAL BRANDS

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All protracted crises have multiple phases, which means real-time assessments of who is winning or losing can change dramatically based on when one takes a look. An analysis of how the Allies were doing in World War II, written in February 1942, would not have been very generous. And the trajectory of the Cold War looked very different in 1949 or 1969 than in 1989.

The same is true of the coronavirus pandemic. In late January 2020, the conventional wisdom was that COVID-19 was mostly a problem for China: a “Chernobyl moment” for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). By mid-March 2020, the conventional wisdom was COVID-19 was a disaster for the United States: a “Suez moment” for a declining superpower. In mid-2020, Europe looked like a relative winner in the crisis; today it looks like a loser.

COVID-19 has indeed inflicted a deadly, horrific toll on the United States—upward of 564,000 deaths and counting. But a little more than a year after COVID-19 fully erupted around most of the world, it is time to update—indeed, significantly revise—the conventional understanding of who is “winning” and who is “losing” the pandemic. We are now mostly through the part of the crisis that painfully illustrated U.S. weaknesses and (reputed) Chinese strengths. The world’s understanding of the pandemic’s impacts is likely to only become more favorable to the United States over time—and its fallout may ultimately prove disastrous for China’s global ambitions.

Satellite Images Show Russia’s Expanding Ukraine Buildup

By Michael R. Gordon in Washington and Georgi Kantchev 

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Russia has moved warplanes to Crimea and bases near Ukraine to an extent greater than has previously been disclosed, adding to its capability for political intimidation or military intervention, according to commercial satellite photos of areas being used for the military buildup.

The photos, which were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, show Su-30 fighters lined up on a runway at an air base in Crimea. The aircraft, which are shown in a satellite photo from April 16, hadn’t been there in late March.

Other Russian military units on the Crimean peninsula include airborne troops, motorized rifle and armored units, attack helicopters, smoke generators, reconnaissance drones, jamming equipment and a military hospital, the photos indicate.

Those forces and the stationing of Su-34, Su-30, Su-27, Su-25 and Su-24 aircraft elsewhere in the region, which are also depicted in the photos, have strengthened Moscow’s political leverage to coerce Ukraine, current and former officials say.

“They have appropriately deployed the various elements of airpower that would be needed to establish air superiority over the battlefield and directly support the ground troops,” said Philip Breedlove, a retired U.S. Air Force general who served as the top NATO military commander when Russian forces seized Crimea and intervened in eastern Ukraine in 2014.

White House 'standing down' emergency response groups to SolarWinds, Microsoft hacks

BY MAGGIE MILLER 

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The Biden administration is “standing down” coordinated efforts by several key agencies to respond to recent major cybersecurity incidents including the SolarWinds hack, a senior administration official announced Monday.

Anne Neuberger, President Biden’s deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology, said the two unified coordination groups (UCGs) that were convened to respond to both the SolarWinds hack and recently discovered vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s Exchange Server would be scaled back.

“Due to the vastly increased patching and reduction in victims, we are standing down the current UCG surge efforts and will be handling further responses through standard incident management procedures,” Neuberger said in a statement.

The UCGs for both incidents are made up of the FBI, the National Security Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

The SolarWinds group was convened under the Trump administration after the breach, which was carried out by Russian hackers, was discovered in December. The group responding to the Microsoft vulnerabilities, which at least one Chinese state-sponsored hacking group exploited, was convened in March.

America's Place in Cyberspace: The Biden Administration’s Cyber Strategy Takes Shape

by David P. Fidler

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In cyber policy, the SolarWinds and Microsoft hacks have dominated the first weeks of President Joseph Biden’s administration. Even so, the administration has outlined its cyber strategy in speeches by President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken and in the president's Interim Strategic National Security Guidance [PDF]. The speeches and guidance never use "internet freedom," a departure from the prominence this idea long had in U.S. cyber policy. Instead, the strategy is anchored in the ideological, geopolitical, technological, and diplomatic pillars of President Biden's overarching vision for U.S. foreign policy and national security.

A striking feature of President Biden’s thinking is the need to renew democracy. In statements unthinkable less than a decade ago, the interim guidance asserted that democracies are “under siege” and “authoritarianism is on the global march,” and Secretary Blinken warned of the erosion and fragility of democracy. Cyber threats to democracy include election interference, disinformation, cyberattacks, and digital authoritarianism. The litany of anti-democratic cyber activities indicates that the United States should rethink democracy’s relationship with cyberspace as part of the democracy renewal project.

In the past, expanding global access to an open internet characterized how the United States connected democracy and cyberspace. With American democracy under threat, the United States needs to counter anti-democratic exploitation of cyber technologies by domestic and foreign actors. The United States faces the challenge of rolling back the spread of digital authoritarianism. Neither President Biden nor Secretary Blinken provided specific plans on how to achieve these objectives. But the president will hold a Summit of Democracy to address, among other issues, cyberspace challenges that democracies confront.

Christina Ayiotis Should Get a Blue Check Mark. So Should Everyone Else

by Robert K. Knake

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Two weeks ago, I got a direct message on Twitter from a fake account pretending to be my colleague Christina Ayiotis. It used @christinaayiot1 as the handle and had cut and paste her profile photo. The account had 0 followers, was only following six people, and the message was a simple “hey.” I flagged it on the app, tweeted it to the real Christina Ayiotas (@christinayiotas) and her more than 3,500 followers, and called it a day.

Christina also tweeted it at @twittersupport and asked for a blue check mark for her account to show that it was verified and legitimate. While Twitter removed the fake account, Christina is still without her blue check mark. She, and everyone else, should get one.

Twitter announced recently that after hitting pause on accepting applications for the coveted blue check marks a few years back, it would be restarting the process this quarter with a more equitable system. Previously, becoming verified on Twitter required extensive connections within the company. What is needed now is not a fairer program to determine the worthiness of accounts but an open and transparent process that would let most account holders that tweet under their real name become verified.

In a world in which social media creates its own celebrities overnight, the idea of choosing who is and is not a celebrity is ludicrous. As we saw in the 2016 election, a fake account pretending to be a private citizen can have enormous influence. Whoever created Christina’s fake account certainly had some intended scam they were going to use it for. In the grey area are fake accounts created for product promotion that are all too good at connecting potential consumers to fad diets and financial advice. Twitter users deserve to know whether an account—any account—is authentic.