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Celebrating the First Republic of Armenia with a True Sense of Dignity, Victory and Pride

Armenia Independence

OPINION: Can today’s Republic of Armenia claim it is independent, sovereign and democratic and celebrate the May 28, 1918 day of victory and pride with an equal sense of victory and pride?

By Madeleine Mezagopian

Amid domestic, regional and global turbulences, on May 28th the Armenian nation in Diaspora and in Motherland Armenia celebrated the painful however glorious birth of the First Armenian Republic in 1918.

Given the surrounding existence threatening circumstances, this year’s celebration transformed into solemn contemplation on how to remain loyal to the sacrifices preceding and following the first Republic of Armenia through carefully dealing with the immediate challenges that may very well threaten the current Republic of Armenia itself.

The ongoing Russian-Ukraine war with its still ambiguous causes and outcomes is surely reconfiguring the world order and with it, political and military alliances. Certain actors like Turkey and Azerbaijan, despite their despicable record of human rights, are gaining an upper free hand in fulfilling expansionist schemes.

Turkey and Azerbaijan, two countries presented with Armenian territories in the aftermath of the First Republic of Armenia, through antagonizing Russia and taking advantage of their association with the US, are threatening anew the destiny of the current Republic of Armenia and of what is left of Armenian Artsakh.

These developments surely warrant not only to remember but to reproduce the Armenia of 1918 when Armenians vigorously and faithfully fought to keep the Armenian nation alive and prevent Ottoman rulers from committing further Armenian genocide.

Armenian Americans are a vital part of the fabric of the United States. They make our nation stronger and more dynamic, even as they continue to carry with them the tragic knowledge of what their ancestors endured. We recognize their pain and honor their story.

Statement by U.S. President Joe Biden on Armenian Remembrance Day, April 24, 2022

Today, the fate of the Armenian Nation and of Motherland Armenia is vulnerable. However, it can be salvaged and the glorious memory of the First Armenian Republic can be proudly celebrated even repeated. An ambitious however doable national aspiration can be materialized through the efforts of Armenians worldwide and in Motherland Armenia concerted towards the arrival of a salvation government comprising loyal Armenian elites, ruling Armenia peacefully, without territorial and democratic compromises, and foremost serving the national interests of United Armenia.

The domestic anger and frustration of the Armenian people in diaspora and in Motherland Armenia are intensified by the policies of the current government which reflect a betrayal to the memory of May 28 of 1918 and to the memory of millions of Armenian martyrs of past and recent history. The prescription for the current Republic of Armenia to survive with dignity and without further loss of territories is through adopting neutral policies, providing humanitarian services to those truly seeking safety and security, while simultaneously involving and interacting with its people rather than suppressing and persecuting them.

Further, for the current Republic of Armenia to survive with dignity and pride necessitates remaining faithful to the sacrifices of the heroes of the battles of Sardarabad, Bash Abaran and Karakilisa* through resisting unconditional normalization with Turkey and Azerbaijan and the further surrender of territories of Armenian Artsakh, redrawing the borders of Armenia resulting in further concessions.

The Republic of Armenia must advance and invest all available diplomatic tools to regain the Republic of Armenia of 1918. Only then can Armenia claim being independent, sovereign and democratic and entitled to celebrate May 28th with a true sense of dignity, victory and pride.

[* The Ottoman defeats at Sardarabad, Bash Abaran and Karakilisa staved off the annihilation of the Armenian nation, and the victories were instrumental in allowing the Armenian National Council to declare the independence of the First Republic of Armenia on May 30, 1918 (retroactive to May 28)].

Madeleine Mezagopian, for LIMA CHARLIE WORLD

[Edits by Anthony A. LoPresti]

[Original Main Photo: Vahram Baghdasaryan]

Madeleine M. R. Mezagopian is a published author and the holder of the Swedish Royal Medal of the North Star (Kungliga Nordstjärnemedaljen) and the Shield of the University of Jordan. She is a researcher, adviser and analyst and has served as the Executive Director at Al Arab Al Yawm (English) newspaper. Mezagopian is also a member of the General Assembly of Al-Hussein Society–Jordan Centre for Training and Inclusion.

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Lima Charlie World provides global news, featuring insight & analysis by military veterans, intelligence professionals and foreign policy experts Worldwide.

Support Lima Charlie’s quality journalism and independent voice! Our team at Lima Charlie World works hard to bring you in-depth & insightful news coverage. We believe in our mission to investigate and report the truth, with an eye towards promoting peace, understanding & positive political engagement … But our independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and effort to produce. If everyone who reads our work would make a small donation, we would be able to continue keeping you informed. Please take a moment. Thank you in advance for your kind support.

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Image Lima Charlie News Headline Armenia Velvet Revolution MAY 11 2018
Image Lima Charlie News Headline Sanctions and the Rise of Putin G.Busch APR 27 2018

The Dodik Problem – Civil War in the Balkans Looms Large

As the U.S. and E.U. remain asleep at the wheel, the Balkans face what could be another Serb, Bosnian, Croat civil war, drawing Russia and Turkey into the fray. Will Milorad Dodik fuel Serbian secession igniting the spark? Bill Stuebner offers analysis and possible solutions.

“The place is a powder keg,” a well-respected international diplomat with vast experience in the Balkans told me during our latest meeting. “And Dodik is close to lighting the fuse.” With the diplomat having just spent a few weeks in and around Bosnia and Herzegovina, I trusted the assessment. And the assessment about Milorad Dodik, the populist politician currently serving as the 7th Serb member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, seemed spot on.

Of course predicting the spark that sets off the Balkan powder keg, ushering a return to bloody civil war, seems like an easy one. Historically speaking, the residents of the Balkans, particularly those of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), will go back to slaughtering each other, as they did 30 years ago. The inanity of the 1995 Dayton (Paris) Peace Agreement, along with feckless Western powers, virtually guarantee renewed conflict.

The situation is reminiscent of one of the key scenes in the 2005 film, “Kingdom of Heaven,” a Ridley Scott epic set during the 12th Century Crusades. “Give me a war,” orders King Guy de Lusignan to Reynald of Châtillon, Prince of Antioch, and one of the King’s most loyal supporters. “That is what I do,” replies Reynald.

The Bosnian War marked Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II, a genocidal war resulting in nearly 100,000 dead and over 2.2 million people displaced in horrific acts of ethnic cleansing. The breakup of Yugoslavia provided the fuel for the three year conflict. The powder keg is now primed, again. Ethnic and political divides remain strong. We must find a way to stop the coming violent conflict.

Exact predictions of when the final bloody break will come will remain difficult to make until it’s too late to avoid bloodshed.”

The Dodik Problem

In 2018, when Milorad Dodik was elected the 7th Serb representative in the BiH Presidential Triumvirate, having served repeated terms as Prime Minister and then President of Republika Srpska, he brought with him a long history of obstructionism towards the international community. This, coupled with heated, racially divisive domestic politics, and the denial of Serb atrocities during the war, was targeted towards winning the populist vote.

For years Dodik advocated the fracturing of BiH, and the carving of this frail state into ethnically divisive sections. An ultra nationalist, Dodik has called BiH a “failed country” and a western “experiment” that “does not work”.

One of the cornerstones of the Dayton Peace Agreement was the notion of unifying the three warring armies under one banner, with the ambition of it helping create a stable nation-state, preventing further bloodshed and divesting the military of ethnic biases. The Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina (OSBiH or BiH Joint Military) became the official military force of BiH.

Under Dodik’s leadership, there is little wonder the already weak BiH Joint Military is joint in name only. At the unit level, BiH could never break its stark ethnic divides. Still, historically, BiH military leadership was quasi-cohesive, working closely with European peacekeeping forces and the international community. Its political leadership was kept at arms-length.

This took a perilous turn after Dodik recently threatened to stop cooperating with the Bosnian state institutions, and to raise his own Army of Republika Srpska. Such a move would destroy what little unity there is, creating a divisive military marching under Dodik’s very own banner. It’s hard to not see this as anything but a dangerous precursor to a new civil war.

​Exact predictions of when the final bloody break will come will remain difficult to make until it’s too late to avoid bloodshed. But what steps, if any, could the West take to thwart Dodik’s plans, and those of his accomplices, and correct the perilous course the region is on?

[Bosnian Serb politician, Milorad Dodik, kissing the Bosnian Serb flag in 2010 (Photo: Milan Radulovic / AFP)]

​Today, the geopolitical power balance is very different from that of 1995 when Dayton was imposed not just on BiH, but also on a weakened Russia still reeling from the breakup of the Soviet Union. In those days, U.S. Ambassador / Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke could throw America’s might around during the Dayton talks, and there was not much anyone could do about it. In 1995 the United States was the last man standing amongst the superpowers. 

Today, American influence is greatly diminished, partly because of the bloody nose it received from its humiliating failures in Afghanistan and Iraq, but mostly because its leaders lack the will to engage in anything difficult internationally. The United States is now just one of many players when it comes to questions like the continued existence of BiH.

Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, while playing a far weaker hand than that of the former Soviet Union, has shown the will to carry out Russian foreign policy with force and determination. Putin has inevitably shown that such will can overcome strength when dealing with opponents who lack the former. Russia has displayed this frequently, most notably in Crimea, Ukraine, Mozambique, Sudan, Libya, and Iraq.

Compounding Putin’s resolve is Europe’s considerable reliance on Russia’s rich natural gas supplies, a Sword of Damocles that hangs heavy over the EU. Such dependency has hamstrung Central and Western European leaders, all too weak to call Russia’s bluff for fear of damaging their economies. These are leaders oblivious or willfully ignorant to the fact that a unified EU boycott would wreak havoc on a Russian economy wholly dependent on the export of natural resources.

​Should Dodik choose to carry out his threats to destroy the tragically flawed Dayton accords, and set Republika Srpska on the path to secede from BiH, Russia’s next moves are fairly predictable.

Thousands of “little green men” would deploy from the asymmetrical hybrid warfare unit the Russian military intelligence directorate has created, commonly known as Wagner. A few fighter-bombers dispatched from Republika Srpska would dare NATO to do anything about it. 

At the same time, Russia could incentivize Serbian President Aleksander Vucic to engage the heavy weaponry of the JA (Yugoslav Army) with the promise of regaining Kosovo as an integral part of Serbia. In this way, he could neutralize Bosniak leaders whose remaining Bosnian Army would have no chance of ensuring the continued integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

During this emerging crisis ​it is questionable whether the Army of the Republic of Croatia, a full-fledged NATO member since 2009, would deploy. Conflicts with NATO would result if actions taken are not supported by the NATO alliance. Regardless, any military action taken by the Croation Armed Forces would likely be only to secure Western Herzegovina for the “defense” of Croats in that region. Undoubtedly, this would be done with the legitimacy provided by the Croat-member of the Bosnian presidency, Dragan Covic, who has had a long-cherished dream of the Croat part of BiH joining Croatia. This would only further fuel what would then be a full-blown military conflict.

While shedding crocodile tears on the world stage, Croatian leaders would work behind closed doors to take advantage of the crisis and ultimately annex Western Herzegovina into what many Croatians have always considered the natural structure of the Croatian Republic. Russia would likely avoid encroaching upon what Croatia considers its rightful territory and, thereby, obviate the risk of triggering the NATO collective self-defense clause. What the world would witness is a modern-day Molotov-Ribbentrop pact on a small scale.

The only hope at that point would be a unilateral move by Turkey to intervene militarily, albeit primarily to bolster Bakir Izetbegovic, Turkish President Recep Erdogan’s regional protégé. Izetbegovic, who served as the 6th Bosniak member of the Presidency of BiH from 2010 to 2018, is still widely considered to be the real leader of BiH’s Bosniaks. Much like his late father, Alija Izetbegovic, who in 1992 became the first president of the newly independent Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bakir Izetbegovic only truly supported a unified BiH if a Muslim majority dominated it. Bakir would then rule as the de facto potentate of a rump Bosnia and Herzegovina.

While BiH is unraveling, the bulk of the militarily ineffectual EUFOR (European Force) in Bosnia and Herzegovina would likely be withdrawing. Out of the over 500 men and women deployed under the EUFOR banner today, 120 are from the Turkish forces. Such leverage could support an Erdogan gambit to springboard Turkey into a region that remained an integral part of the Ottoman Empire for 600 hundred years. In short order, this would mean that Erdogan, “The Man Who Would Be Sultan” would soon find an uneasy meeting of purpose and intent with “The Man Who Would Be Tsar” – Vladimir Putin. And neither is foolish enough to trust the other.

The place is a powder keg … and Dodik is close to lighting the fuse.”

The Melian Dialogue lives

What can be done to avoid this bleak scenario? For the West, military options are out of the question. Neither the United States, nor the European Union, will risk global escalation of the conflict to save Holbrooke’s still-born creation. 

Tragically, some predicted this fate from the very beginning. In May, 1992, on the third day of the first donor conference for Bosnia and Herzegovina in Brussels, two old diplomats made a grim observation. One German and one Italian, both veterans of World War II in the Balkans, they summed up the situation with the following formula: “Build a wall around Bosnia and Herzegovina and lock the door. Wait twenty years and open the door. If there is anyone left alive, lock the door for another twenty years.” Of course, such hyperbole highlighted what was really at stake and, for the sake of so many innocent people, we should still heed the message. Something must be done.

​The European Union has significant economic leverage, which it could utilize. However, in the absence of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, it has become increasingly difficult to imagine the EU unified enough to effectively come to terms with what must be done, much less apply pressure evenly and reliably. Nevertheless, there are options. 

First and foremost, despite the economic risk, the EU must look to alternative sources for its energy needs and lift its overwhelming dependence on Russian natural gas. This would be at least as damaging to Russia as the EU, but it is significantly more likely to frustrate Putin’s weaponization of energy and force Russian attrition. This approach is compatible with the economic Union that is the core of the EU, and while costly and difficult, it remains a better path than actual armed conflict with Russia.

​Another means of pressure by the EU, this time directed towards the problematic leaders of the Balkans, could be through the effective use of immigration controls. Hundreds of thousands of former Yugoslavs live and work inside the Union, and unlike the mass refugees of the 1990s that taxed EU resources, they compensate for a very serious labor shortage stemming from decades of Western Europe’s ever-decreasing birth rate. At the same time, they help to alleviate economic and political pressures on their respective home governments, which are unable to provide job opportunities, adequate housing, or necessary social welfare support. Work in the EU also allows them to send substantial remittances to relatives who remained behind.

​Both Dodik and Vucic could be made to pay a fatal political price if EU member states were to revoke all working visas to these citizens. The enormous monetary penalty and political backlash from returning workers makes for an angry electorate and unstable economic situation. Putin’s Russia can barely provide for its own population, let alone take care of the resulting unemployed citizens of Serbia and Republika Srpska. The mere threat of such a coordinated EU-wide policy might, by itself, create enough turmoil inside BiH and Serbia to force political reconsideration and readjustment towards divisive and antagonistic policies.

[Russian President Vladimir Putin and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic arrive for a news conference in Belgrade (Stoyan Nenov / REUTERS)]

This strategy would bear an immediate and significant economic cost to the EU, however the loss of Serb workers could be overcome. While Serbs make up the largest part of the former Yugoslav workforce, the impact could also mean nearly 100% employment for Bosniaks and Croats from the Bosnian Federation, relieving tensions from the breakup of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The EU could also step up automation efforts and be willing to accept more laborers from ethnic groups that Europeans, for racial, educational, and religious reasons, have been hesitant to embrace in the past. Russian workers in Europe might even be made to incur the same visa penalty, which would not be beneficial to Vladimir Putin’s political longevity.

​Across the Atlantic, the United States should not be left out of the economic and political equation. Brussels must coordinate any efforts made with Washington, with the US imposing the same types of visa restrictions, coupled with additional economic sanctions on Russia, Serbia, and Republika Srpska. This would have less impact on the American economy than it would the EU, but the US must back its EU partners in making these hard decisions and not seek to merely benefit. The EU and the US must also ensure that not one cent of IMF or World Bank money finds its way to the transgressors. 

Added public pressure could be the denial of membership in any and all types of organizations and athletic competitions in which the West participates. These joint actions by the West, if enacted smartly, would make both Russia and its Serb allies into political and economic pariahs, forcing serious reconsideration of any aggressive acts.

There is no denying that such measures would be difficult and painful to implement and would most certainly impose unfair punishment on the average Serb and Russian citizen. But if the threat were made meaningful and properly communicated to Putin, Vucic, and Dodik in a way that would leave little doubt as to the seriousness and will of Western powers, it is likely they might well buckle. In any case, these acts of economic warfare are highly preferable to actual conventional war and peacekeeping. The situation and resulting willingness to retaliate against those that step out of line must also be communicated and made clear to Erdogan and the Croatian leadership.

​This recommended strategy must also be coupled with renewed determination and energy by the United States and the European Union to make Bosnia and Herzegovina into a viable and fully functioning state. This can only be done by first abandoning Dayton and starting over from scratch. In other words, as a Bosnian friend of mine recently said, Western policies toward BiH must be more than a “soup sandwich.”

Bill Stuebner, LIMA CHARLIE WORLD

[Edits by John Sjoholm and  Anthony A. LoPresti]

William Stuebner served in the United States Army for twenty years, first in the Infantry and then as a military intelligence officer. The last five years of his career revolved around the wars in Central America where he first led a special intelligence team and then worked as the El Salvador desk officer for the Department of Defense. He was also an assistant professor in the Social Sciences Department of the United States Military Academy where he taught politics and political philosophy.

Stuebner’s Balkans work began in May 1992, shortly after the commencement of hostilities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and continues to this day. His assignments included: Humanitarian Assistance Officer for the Department of Defense; Bosnian Field Representative for the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, United States Agency for International Development; Expert on Mission, Office of the Prosecutor, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (twice); Senior Deputy Head of Mission for Human Rights and Chief of Staff, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina. He has also headed two Non-Governmental Organizations dealing with international criminal justice and peace building.

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Lima Charlie World provides global news, featuring insight & analysis by military veterans, intelligence professionals and foreign policy experts Worldwide.

Support Lima Charlie’s quality journalism and independent voice! Our team at Lima Charlie World works hard to bring you in-depth & insightful news coverage. We believe in our mission to investigate and report the truth, with an eye towards promoting peace, understanding & positive political engagement … But our independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and effort to produce. If everyone who reads our work would make a small donation, we would be able to continue keeping you informed. Please take a moment. Thank you in advance for your kind support.

For up-to-date news, please follow us on twitter at @LimaCharlieNews

In case you missed it:

Image Lima Charlie News Headline - Radovan Karadzic - William Stuebner - APR 19 2019
Lima Charlie News Headline Putins Great Game in the Balkans MAY 9 2019

Can the U.S. Counter China’s Growing Soft and Sharp Power Influence Through Sanctions?

Economic sanctions have long been the preferred foreign policy tool to outright aggression. Whether to restrict or enhance military capabilities, force or weaken political ideologies, or respond to human rights violations, countless analysts and statesmen have debated their effectiveness. Yet rising tensions with a developing China have forced many in the West to rethink the strategy, with advances in technology becoming a critical focal point of the debate.

The announcement in September by the Biden Administration of a deal between the U.S., the UK and Australia (AUKUS), to deploy and share nuclear submarine technology in hopes of pushing back against Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region, highlights the momentous shift in U.S. attitude towards China in recent years. Lima Charlie News has reported extensively about China’s economic and military moves in the South China Sea, as well as throughout Africa, the EU and the world, expanding soft power and “sharp power” influence, its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and clashes with the West on various issues that include the autonomy of Hong Kong, Taiwan, ASEAN and the South China Sea, technology, and human rights.

This year saw the largest incursion yet of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) into Taiwan, with dozens of military aircraft, including nuclear-capable bombers and anti-submarine aircraft, entering Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, causing another potential flashpoint in U.S.-China relations. Such incursions are ongoing.

Adding to tensions have been disputes over the origins of COVID-19, a pandemic fueling a devastating economic and health crisis that has affected the economies, health and well-being of billions worldwide.

This year, amid allegations of China being behind a massive hacking of Microsoft, intelligence warnings of a low-level cyber war with China have intensified.  This prompted China’s foreign ministry to accuse the U.S. in July of “ganging up with its allies” and engaging in “smear and suppression out of political motives,” asserting that the U.S. was “the largest source of cyber-attacks in the world.”

While tensions between the U.S. and China have manifested in, what is arguably a trade war that has been ongoing since 2018, Americans across party lines are supporting a range of tougher policies against China.

Given the evolving dynamics between the countries, it is more relevant than ever to examine the tools of foreign policy the U.S. has and can use to manage its relationship with China. Always controversial, economic sanctions have been a preferred tool.

The evolving use of sanctions as a tool of foreign policy

Historically, the use of international sanctions generally falls into categories that include economic sanctions, diplomatic sanctions, military sanctions, sanctions connected to cultural or athletic (sports) restrictions, and more recently, environmental sanctions that concern international environmental protection efforts. They are the primary foreign policy tools that sovereign powers or global and regional organizations can use to influence nations, entities, or even individuals that violate international norms of behavior. Favored by policymakers who see them as a more efficient method of achieving foreign policy objectives, being more punitive than diplomacy but lower cost than military action, economic sanctions are becoming an increasingly important tool of American foreign policy. Just this year, the U.S. imposed sanctions on individuals who have undermined Hong Kong’s autonomy, targeted Myanmar’s junta, and marked Russian entities and officials linked to cyberattacks. In 2020, there were 777 sanctions designations, with ninety designations of Chinese entities and individuals.

In addition to the increasing use of sanctions to achieve foreign policy objectives in recent decades, the nature of the sanctions imposed has also been shifting. There is a broader variety of sanctions, and the sanctions are more directed at specific targets.

This tool of foreign policy has been used throughout history in various forms. In 432 B.C. in Ancient Greece, economic sanctions were used by the city of Athens to ban Megara traders from its marketplaces to target their economy and compel a change in behavior. This arguably helped trigger the Peloponnesian War. In medieval Europe, during the Crusades and Commercial Revolution, embargoes enacted by the Papal States were intended to prevent or restrict trade with Islamic states, while the economic and maritime powerhouse, Republic of Venice, enacted embargoes during its ongoing conflict with the Ottoman Empire.

Centuries later, the American colonies would come to boycott British goods over oppressive taxation, a prelude to the Revolutionary War. Caught between the British and French during the Napoleonic Wars, the U.S. would enact the Embargo Act of 1807, among other restrictions on trade with Great Britain, that would eventually lead to the War of 1812. Throughout the 1800s, France, Britain, Germany, Spain and Russia employed various economic sanctions, embargoes and blockades prefacing and resulting in the Napoleonic Wars, the Franco-Prussian War and the Crimean War.  

20th Century, Communism and the Cold War

The modern sanctions regime, however, emerged in the 20th century when the League of Nations enforced multilateral sanctions in order to uphold the Covenant of the League of Nations and encourage collective security. Its modern counterpart, the United Nations, has played a similar role with the UN Security Council passing sanctions resolutions that include asset freezes, travel bans, and arms embargoes.

In 1948, as the Cold War heated up, the U.S. and Western allies embarked on a decades long strategy to isolate and defeat communism through economic sanctions beginning with the Soviet Union and China, though China would be treated more harshly, as explained further below. The Export Control Act of 1949 (ECA), intended to restrict the export of strategic materials and equipment to Soviet bloc nations (reasons being national security, foreign policy, and short supply), would come to include China, North Korea and various communist countries. The ECA would be extended in 1951, 1953, 1956 and again in 1958.  The ECA was supported by subsequent trade and sanction legislation including the Mutual Defense Assistance Control Act of 1951 (Battle Act)(an “embargo on the shipment of arms, ammunition, and implements of war, atomic energy materials, petroleum, transportation materials of strategic value”), and the Export Administration Act (EAA) of 1969, reestablished in 1979, and amended.

In February 1962, President John F. Kennedy would announce an embargo on trade between the U.S. and the communist regime in Cuba, resulting in decades of crushing economic sanctions, many of which remain in place today.

In the 1970s, certain exceptions to trade restrictions were made, for example as with wheat when Soviet crops failed in 1973. Restrictions would tighten during periods of aggression, such as when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December 1979.

In January 1983, Ronald Reagan approved the National Security Decision Directive 75 (NSD 75), which set out three elements of U.S. policy towards the Soviet Union: external resistance to Soviet imperialism; internal pressure on the USSR to weaken the sources of Soviet imperialism; and negotiations to eliminate, on the basis of strict reciprocity, outstanding disagreements.

To that end, NSD 75 set U.S. economic policy objectives that were geared primarily to both inhibit Soviet military strength and to weaken communist sentiment worldwide. This included initiatives to prevent the transfer of technology and equipment that could aid Soviet military power, to avoid “subsidizing the Soviet economy or unduly easing the burden of Soviet resource allocation decisions” in order to maintain pressure for change in the Soviet communist system, to decrease any leverage the Soviet Union may have on Western countries based on trade, energy supply, and financial relationships, and to permit mutual beneficial trade with the USSR in non-strategic areas, such as grain imports.

While nuclear non-proliferation (central to technology based sanctions), and the demise of communism were critical goals during the Cold War, U.S. economic pressure on the Soviets would lead to considerable conflict with its allies over energy needs and the export of oil and gas equipment.

“Sanctions were used against the USSR starting almost immediately after World War II, but they were always of limited effectiveness. It is one thing to sanction a potentially hostile nation, but it is far more difficult to persuade all of your allies to do the same,” said Douglas A. Drabik, professor of history and author specializing in the Soviet Cold War era. Drabik added, “with the exception of high end military technology, the Soviets were almost always able to find a supplier for what they required.”

Post Cold War sanctions

After the Cold War, the use of economic sanctions intensified dramatically, and by the 1990s there were nearly as many sanctions imposed as during the first ninety years of the 20th century. Notable usage during this period includes United Nations sanctions against Iraq, Haiti, and the former Yugoslavia. Despite modest policy concessions that resulted from the use of sanctions during this period, many policy analysts and researchers who have studied these measures deemed them a failure due to the costs they imposed on civilians in those countries.

In Iran, for example, the price of a family’s food increased over 250-fold over the first five years of the sanctions regime and led to the excess deaths of an estimated 100,000 to 250,000 young children between 1991 and 1992. This led to an increased reluctance in policy makers to use broad-based economic sanctions that would damage the entire economy of a country. The full impact to the civilian population of Iraq, of over a decade of sanctions from 1990 to the 2003 invasion, however, has led to heated debate. For example, allegations arose that common cited data as to child mortality rates resulting from the economic sanctions had been doctored by the Saddam Hussein regime.

A significant shift in the use of sanctions came after 9/11, where the attacks by al Qaeda on the U.S. mainland led President George W. Bush to issue Executive Order (EO) 13224. This directive gave Treasury Department officials far-reaching authority to freeze financial transactions and assets of individuals and entities suspected of supporting terrorism. Bush also threatened to bar any foreign bank that did not comply with the order from doing business in America. Given the dominance of the U.S. dollar in trade and finance, this increased risks for financial institutions that engaged with these entities and fundamentally shifted the financial regulatory environment.

These developments brought about an increased use of “smart” or targeted sanctions, where the sanctions imposed are directed at specific individuals or entities, such as elite members of a targeted regime, rather than the entire nation. By restricting access of actors to U.S. owned or influenced financial systems, the goal is to incentivize a change of behavior in these specific actors while minimizing the impact of financial hardship on the larger public.

In addition to the focus on specific targets, the variety of sanctions used has also grown. While trade embargoes were frequently used in the past, sanctions now include a wider range of actions which are tailored to the circumstances of the industries, organizations, and individuals who are targeted.

For example, in 2019, allegations of security risks led the U.S. to impose sanctions against Chinese multinational tech company Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., which restricted any foreign semiconductor company from selling chips developed or produced using U.S. technology to Huawei, including barring Google from providing technical support to new Huawei phone models and access to Google Mobile Services. Sanctions against Huawei, among other Chinese companies, have continued into the Biden Administration.

How are U.S. sanctions implemented?

Given the wide-ranging impact of U.S. sanctions, it is worth examining their legal basis, the implementation process, and enforcement mechanism.

A U.S. president derives the power to enforce sanctions today primarily through the National Emergencies Act (NEA), which establishes the framework for the declaration of emergencies, and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which confers “broad authority to regulate financial and other commercial transactions involving designated entities” after declaring a national emergency in response to any “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the U.S. that originates “in whole or substantial part outside the United States”. The NEA was signed by President Gerald Ford in 1976 (50 U.S.C. § 1601 et seq.), and the IEEPA was signed by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 (50 U.S.C. § 1701 et seq.). The IEEPA authorizes the president to block transactions and freeze assets to deal with such threat. Together, these acts allow the president to provide a relatively quick response to international issues of concern.

After a foreign policy threat has been identified, experts from relevant executive branch agencies are convened by the National Security Council. These experts often include representatives from Defense, State, and Treasury Departments, members of the intelligence community, and members of law enforcement. Interagency deliberations will often take place, with a key focus on how allies will react to the foreign policy problem. If allies support the sanctions effort and impose multilateral sanctions, these will often be more effective than unilateral sanctions imposed solely by America. A recent example of multilateral sanctions is the joint efforts by the European Union (EU), the U.S., Canada, and the UK to signal dissatisfaction at China over the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

While senior policymakers set expectations on the desired impact of the sanctions on a macro level, the target selection is primarily driven by the intelligence community and law enforcement, who utilize their expertise and knowledge to make sure the impact is calibrated. After the targets and sanctions measures are determined, attorneys from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) draft an executive order, a signed, written, and published document from the president used as a means of issuing federal directives. The draft executive order is coordinated with the legal team at the Department of State and the Department of Justice to ensure that it meets legal requirements. The draft recommendation is then presented up the chain of command and finally put forth to the president for a decision.

After the president approves the sanctions and declares a national emergency, the sanctions are rolled out for state agencies and the private sector. OFAC will place sanctioned individuals or entities on the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List and will often issue frequently asked questions that give additional guidance to the private sector who are responsible for adhering to the scope of the sanctions. For entities or individuals that do not abide by sanctions laws, currently, civil and criminal penalties of up to twenty years imprisonment and $1,000,000 in fines per violation can result. Civil penalties vary based upon the specific sanctions program and the monetary amount, which is adjusted annually by  OFAC.

In addition to the monetary and legal risks, there are also reputational and operational risks for entities that fail to follow relevant laws. For example, French international banking group BNP Paribas S.A., currently the largest bank in Europe and the seventh largest bank in the world by total assets, pleaded guilty in 2014 to processing billions of dollars in financial transactions for blacklisted Cuban, Iranian, and Sudanese entities, which led to a historic fine of $8.9 billion as well as suspension of its dollar clearing capabilities, the ability to convert payments on behalf of clients into U.S. dollars from a foreign currency, for one year.

The Magnitsky Act and the Russian Sanctions Regime

After almost 9 years since the enactment of the Magnitsky Act, and 6 years since the death of Sergei Magnitsky, the consensus is that economic sanctions have had a significant impact, even affecting Russia’s GDP, which has not grown since 2014.

One significant piece of sanctions regulations put in place in recent years is the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act (Global Magnitsky Act), which sanctions foreign government officials implicated in human rights abuses anywhere in the world. The Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012 (the Magnitsky Act), originally signed into law by President Barack Obama, arose from Russia’s treatment of Sergei Leonidovich Magnitsky, a Russian tax advisor to Hermitage Capital Management. Hermitage is an investment fund and asset management company specializing in Russian markets, co-founded by financier political activist Bill Browder.

By 2005, Hermitage’s value had reportedly reached $4.5 billion, and while Browder had publicly praised Vladimir Putin, for years his company had reputedly targeted corporate corruption in Russia, including becoming what he described as a “shareholder activist” in Russian energy giants like Gazprom and Surgutneftegaz.  Likewise, Browder, Hermitage and even Magnitsky had been accused by Russian tax authorities of evading taxes and siphoning funds to offshore accounts, as early as 2004, sparking investigations.

By November 2005, Browder’s visa was revoked, he was blacklisted by the Russian government, banned from entering Russia, and was deemed a “threat to national security.” Hermitage allegedly refused to submit to bribes to resolve the problem. By May 2006, the Tax Crimes Department of the Ministry of the Interior had requested company and bank documents from Hermitage.

On 4 June 2007, Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) police raided Hermitage’s Moscow offices and its law firm Firestone Duncan over allegations of tax fraud. Corporate documents, tax documents and computers were confiscated. Browder assigned Magnitsky, an auditor at Firestone Duncan, to investigate. Magnitsky and his colleagues reportedly uncovered a $230 million (5.4 billion ruble) tax fraud involving Russian tax officials and three Hermitage-owned companies.

The Magnitsky investigation would eventually conclude that the 2007 MVD raid was a “corporate raid” resulting in the theft and loss of control of the three Hermitage-owned companies to organized criminals (the “Klyuev gang”), possibly with the help of Russian police, tax officials, bankers, the judiciary, and government officials. According to Magnitsky, these corrupt individuals conspired to fraudulently reclaim hundreds of millions in taxes previously paid by Hermitage to the Russian Federation, with one such tax refund amounting to the largest in Russian history. Hermitage advised Russian authorities of the conclusions of Magnitsky’s investigation, and Magnitsky testified before the State Investigative Committee in June and October 2008.  

In November 2008, Magnitsky was placed under arrest, accused of colluding with Hermitage to evade taxes, and detained at the Butyrka prison in Moscow. Magnitsky was held for eleven months without trial. During this period, he developed gall stones, pancreatitis, and calculous cholecystitis, and was given grossly inadequate medical care.  Surgery was ordered, but never performed, and Magnitsky eventually died on 16 November 2009 while in his cell at the pretrial detention facility known as “Matrosskaya Tishina.”  Evidence showed that Magnitsky had also been severely beaten while imprisoned.

In 2012, Congress passed the Magnitsky Act, which requires the president to impose sanctions on individuals involved in the “criminal conspiracy” uncovered by Magnitsky. This was followed by the passage of the Global Magnitsky Act in 2016, which applies the 2012 laws globally. The 2016 Act also expanded the designation to include individuals “responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture, or other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights,” as well as foreign government actors responsible for significant corruption.

Both President Trump and President Obama signed a series of executive orders during their administrations, imposing a range of sanctions against Russia over issues including malicious cyber activities, the use of chemical weapons, weapons proliferation, as well as North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela-related sanctions violations.

In addition to the sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act, a large number of sanctions were imposed on Russian individuals and entities in response to Russia’s 2014 invasion and annexation of Crimea and its subsequent role in instigating conflict in Ukraine. President Obama issued a series of four executive orders which sanctioned more than 680 individuals, entities, vessels, and aircrafts by placing them on OFAC’s Specially Designated Nationals List. This was part of a broader set of multilateral sanctions, where the EU, Norway, Canada, and Australia, also adopted sanctions actions against Russia. Functioning as a tool of nonrecognition policy, these sanctions highlighted that these countries do not recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea. Russia responded with its own sanctions, including a food import ban against these countries.

In June 2017, despite opposition by then President Donald Trump, the U.S. Congress, with overwhelming majority support, adopted the Combating American Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), legislation that incorporated the provisions of the Countering Russian Influence in Europe and Eurasia Act of 2017 (S. 1221).

CAATSA, influenced by Russia’s ongoing involvement in the wars in Ukraine and Syria and its interference in the U.S. 2016 election, was designed to expand punitive measures imposed by executive orders and convert them into law.

As stipulated by Section 241 of the bill (“Report On Oligarchs And Parastatal Entities Of The Russian Federation”), the Treasury Department was mandated to release a list identifying “the most significant senior foreign political figures and oligarchs in the Russian Federation, as determined by their closeness to the Russian regime and their net worth.”

On December 20, 2017, President Trump issued Executive Order 13818 invoking the Global Magnitsky Act. As of October 2020, OFAC had publicly designated 107 individuals under this executive order. On April 15, 2021, President Biden signed Executive Order 14024, expanding sanctions against Russia and imposing sectoral sanctions on Russia’s central bank, finance ministry, and sovereign wealth fund, signaling continued commitment to the use of sanctions as a foreign policy tool against Russia.

After almost 9 years since the enactment of the Magnitsky Act, and 6 years since the death of Sergei Magnitsky, the effectiveness of the Magnitsky Acts, CAATSA, and various sanctions having been imposed upon Russian individuals and entities, the consensus is that economic sanctions have had a significant impact, even affecting Russia’s GDP, which has not grown since 2014. Counter efforts to downplay or negate the allegations raised by Browder and Magnitsky are ongoing, even entering the realm of controversial documentaries.

While the overall effectiveness of sanctions against Russia is not the subject of this article, Lima Charlie News has examined the subject in various articles, including Dr. Gary K. Busch’s “Sanctions and the Rise of Putin’s Russia (starring oligarchs, siloviki, Rossiyskaya mafiya and Oleg Deripaska),” and John Sjoholm’s “Aluminium prices stabilize after U.S. eases Russia sanctions for aluminium giant Rusal.”

This Tuesday, October 19, 2021, F.B.I. agents raided homes linked to Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, as part of an investigation into whether he violated U.S. sanctions. Under the Trump administration, sanctions were imposed on Deripaska in 2018 by the U.S. Treasury Department, however sanctions against his companies were lifted in 2019. In a lawsuit filed by Deripaska in March 2019, his lawyers claimed that the sanctions had cost him billions, made him “radioactive” in international business circles, and exposed him to criminal investigation and asset confiscation in Russia.

Tiananmen Square Protests: A young woman caught between civilians and Chinese soldiers, who were trying to remove her from an assembly near the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, on June 3, 1989. (Jeff Widener/AP) 

U.S. Sanctions on China

What distinguishes Sun Tzu from Western writers on strategy is the emphasis on the psychological and political elements over the purely military.”

– Henry Kissinger, On China

Similar to sanctions against Russia, sanctions against the People’s Republic of China have also been used as a foreign policy tool on issues where the U.S., the West and China have differing interests. Unlike the sanctions imposed against Russia, however, most economic sanctions against China are relatively recent, reflecting the current rise in geopolitical tensions between the two countries.

Beginning in 1949, after Mao Zedong led the Chinese Communist Party to victory, and during the Korean War, the U.S. sought primarily to restrict, via embargo, all technology or machinery that could be used in the production of military weapons, including nuclear weapons and technology.  As detailed in the Journal of Transatlantic Studies (Cain, 2020) America’s trade embargo against China and the East in the Cold War Years), the Truman administration first enumerated items to be banned, and President Eisenhower enabled US embassy officials to police the bans. The U.S. simultaneously engaged in support of the economic development of non-communist countries and allies in the region, such as Japan, Philippines and Taiwan.

While Western alliances had agreed with the U.S. to limit trade with the USSR and Eastern Bloc, due to U.S. pressure, China remained under tighter restrictions via a policy known as the China differential. President Eisenhower, however, favored trade and engagement with China, which he believed could help wean the PRC off of its relationship with the Soviet Union and possibly communist principles, and avoid a costly economic embargo from harming America’s allies in the region. Eisenhower faced opposition from members of his own cabinet, the CIA and Defense, who favored isolating China. Western and Asian allies, especially Japan seeking to rebuild after World War 2, sought to open lucrative trade with Hong Kong and China. These fractures would eventually widen.  

During the Kennedy administration, trade embargo restrictions against China were loosened somewhat, then reimposed by President Johnson. President Nixon (with the advice of Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger) would eventually strive to build greater relations with China. Dr. Kissinger would remain a vocal proponent of seeking “an agreement in principal between the two giants” that “is essential.”

By 1989, America would come to impose a series of economic sanctions on China after the Tiananmen Square protests and violent government crackdown. However, all but two of the sanctions have been made obsolete by circumstances, broadly waived or removed on a case-by-case basis.

The recent increased use of targeted sanctions began primarily during the Trump presidency and focused on the use of technology. In August 2018, expanding upon the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) first passed in 1961, President Trump signed the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 (NDAA 2019), which included a ban on U.S. federal government use of Huawei and ZTE equipment, citing national security concerns.

Critics argued the legislation contained “watered-down” measures, and failed to reinstate tougher sanctions on ZTE to punish the company for illegally shipping products to Iran and North Korea. At that time, the Department of Commerce also listed both companies on its Entity List under the Export Administration Regulations.

These steps are part of the larger technology decoupling between America and China, which has been expanding in both scale and scope. With the COVID-19 pandemic exposing supply chain vulnerabilities, in June 2021, the U.S. Senate also passed new policy legislation aimed at boosting American technology capabilities. The U.S. Innovation and Competition Act of 2021 (USICA), is a bipartisan $250 billion bill aimed at countering China’s technological gains while giving the U.S. a competitive edge. USICA commits funding towards scientific research, subsidies for semiconductor research, design, and manufacturing initiatives, robot / artificial intelligence development, and an overhaul of the National Science Foundation (NSF), establishing a Directorate for Technology and Innovation.

According to AP, China responded to the legislation by objecting to being cast as an “imaginary” U.S. enemy.

In addition, in June 2021, the U.S. and European Union issued a joint summit statement emphasizing their intention to coordinate more closely on various shared goals, including technology issues. Titled, “Towards a Renewed Transatlantic Partnership,” the statement references the long shared democratic values between the U.S. and EU, and lays out four primary goals: “(i) end the COVID-19 pandemic, prepare for future global health challenges, and drive forward a sustainable global recovery; (ii) protect our planet and foster green growth; (iii) strengthen trade, investment, and technological cooperation; and (iv) build a more democratic, peaceful, and secure world.”  By establishing the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council (TTC), the pact seeks to “cooperate on the development and deployment of new technologies based on our shared democratic values, including respect for human rights, and that encourages compatible standards and regulations.”

With an eye towards nations such as China and Russia, the partnership states:

“We reject authoritarianism in all its forms around the globe, resisting autocrats’ efforts to create an environment that protects their rule and serves their interests, while undermining liberal democracies. We intend to enhance cooperation on the use of sanctions to pursue shared foreign policy and security objectives, while avoiding possible unintended consequences for European and U.S. interests.”

The partnership agreement devotes an entire section to Russia and China, declaring with regard to China:

“We intend to closely consult and cooperate on the full range of issues in the framework of our respective similar multi-faceted approaches to China, which include elements of cooperation, competition, and systemic rivalry. We intend to continue coordinating on our shared concerns, including ongoing human rights violations in Xinjiang and Tibet; the erosion of autonomy and democratic processes in Hong Kong; economic coercion; disinformation campaigns; and regional security issues. We remain seriously concerned about the situation in the East and South China Seas and strongly oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo and increase tensions. We reaffirm the critical importance of respecting international law, in particular the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) noting its provisions setting forth the lawful maritime entitlements of States, on maritime delimitation, on the sovereign rights and jurisdictions of States, on the obligation to settle disputes by peaceful means, and on the freedom of navigation and overflight and other internationally lawful uses of the sea. We underscore the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, and encourage the peaceful resolution of cross-Strait issues. We intend also to coordinate on our constructive engagement with China on issues such as climate change and non-proliferation, and on certain regional issues.”

Increased efforts by the U.S., EU and China, to limit technology integration and to foster technological development, have resulted in a reduced dependence and greater strategic decoupling between the technology sectors in these countries.

China has also signaled its intention to become more independent, making technological self-reliance a key theme in its 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025).

Covington’s Global Policy Watch (“Spotlight on Semiconductors,” April 2021), states that technology is a “core focus of the plan” with several chapters dedicated to “describing how China’s leaders hope to transform the country into an innovation powerhouse.” According to GPW, the semiconductor industry “is a core component of this effort as China sees semiconductor capabilities and supply as intrinsically linked to its economic and national security, a conviction that has sharpened in recent years as U.S. policy has taken aim at Chinese supply chain vulnerabilities.”

These efforts by the U.S., EU and China, to limit technology integration (NDAA 2019), to cooperate to limit and expand technology development (U.S.-EU Summit Statement), and to foster technological development (USICA and China’s 14th Five-Year Plan), have resulted in a reduced dependence and greater strategic decoupling between the technology sectors in these countries.

A picture released by Xinhua News Agency shows Chinese President and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Xi Jinping (C), Premier Li Keqiang (3-R), members of the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) Li Zhanshu (3-L), Wang Yang (2-R), Wang Huning (2-L), Zhao Leji (R) and Han Zheng (L) attending the fifth plenary session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in Beijing, China, 29 October 2020. The session took place in Beijing from 26 to 29 October 2020. EPA/XINHUA/WANG YE 

In addition to technology, other areas of conflict have also been the subject of sanctions between America and China. Different from the technology decoupling, however, are broader multilateral sanctions by coordinated Western nations against various infringements of autonomy and human rights in China.

On July 9, 2020, the Trump administration imposed sanctions and visa restrictions against senior Chinese officials under the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act. These sanctions have been further reaffirmed recently as part of broader efforts by the U.S., Canada, the EU, and UK to protest “human rights violations and abuses” in Xinjiang.

In addition to human rights abuses, in July 2020, President Trump signed into law the Hong Kong Autonomy Act (HKAA), which imposes sanctions on officials and entities in Hong Kong and mainland China that are deemed to help violate Hong Kong’s autonomy. Pursuant to the HKAA, in August 2020, the U.S. imposed sanctions against eleven individuals, including Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, for “undermining Hong Kong’s autonomy and restricting the freedom of expression or assembly.” On December 7, 2020, fourteen Vice Chairpersons of the National People’s Congress of China were further sanctioned in relation to this issue.

On March 18, 2021, the eve of U.S.-China meetings in Alaska, the Biden Administration announced a series of sanctions against twenty-four officials linked to China’s crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong.

On July 16, 2021, pursuant to an advisory (Hong Kong Business Advisory – Risks and Considerations for Businesses Operating in Hong Kong), the Biden Administration imposed additional sanctions on seven deputy directors of the central government’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong. The advisory was ostensibly “to highlight growing risks” associated with actions undertaken by the PRC and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) “that could adversely impact U.S. companies” that operate in the Hong Kong SAR of the PRC. The growing risks referred to are due to changes to Hong Kong’s laws and regulations, namely, the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (National Security Law, or NSL) signed on June 30, 2020. The risks fall into four categories: risks for businesses following the imposition of the new law; data privacy; risks regarding transparency and access to critical business information; and risks for businesses with exposure to sanctioned Hong Kong or PRC entities or individuals.

The July 2021 Advisory warns that the new NSL introduced a heightened risk of PRC and Hong Kong authorities using expanded legal authorities to collect data from businesses and individuals for actions that may violate “national security”, including via electronic surveillance without warrants and the required surrender of data to these authorities.

Mirroring U.S. policy towards China regarding human rights issues, in July 2021, Members of the Parliament of the European Union (MEPs) voted to adopt three resolutions on the human rights situation in Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and Iran. The resolutions called for further actions, encouraging “EU countries to impose sanctions against individuals and entities responsible for serious violations of human rights and international law in Hong Kong under the EU human rights sanctions regime.” Per the MEPs statement, “The resolution also calls on the Hong Kong authorities to stop harassing and intimidating journalists, release arbitrarily detained prisoners, and denounces any attempts to muzzle pro-democracy activists and their activities,” while it encourages EU countries to decline invitations to attend the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, “unless the Chinese Government demonstrates a verifiable improvement in the human rights situation in Hong Kong, the Xinjiang Uyghur Region, Tibet, Inner Mongolia and elsewhere in China.”

The Impact of Sanctions

The irony of sanctions is that while they may induce certain behavior in the short-term, this will also corrode their effectiveness in the long-term.

While governments are willing to use sanctions as a tool for influencing behavior when diplomacy alone is insufficient, the effectiveness of sanctions in achieving desired goals is hotly debated. Examining the effects of sanctions on Russia may inform us of the potential impacts of U.S. and Western sanctions on China.

The Russian economy has been severely impacted by sanctions in recent years, growing only by an average of 0.3% per year compared to the global average of 2.3% per year since 2014. It is hard to isolate the extent sanctions have contributed to this, however, as the imposition of sanctions coincided with a drop in oil price that happened in the last months of 2014.

That being said, Russia’s Finance Minister Anton Siluanov noted that sanctions and the drop in oil prices cost Russia $140 billion per year saying “we will lose around $40 billion a year because of sanctions, and around $90-100 billion a year if we assume a 30% drop in the price of oil.” A study by the IMF looking at Russia concluded that sanctions lowered Russia’s growth by 0.2% every year from 2014 to 2018. Other sources estimate a loss of 1% of annual GDP during 2014-2015 and 0.5%-1.5% of foregone GDP growth since the U.S. placed additional sanctions in August 2018.

Outside of the direct impacts, sanctions have also increased uncertainty for many Russian companies, making it harder to set a corporate strategy, which may have further economic consequences. In a hypothetical world where there are more severe sanctions against China, we can expect them to have a similar effect of increasing uncertainty and reducing China’s economic growth.

That being said, there are several key differences between imposing sanctions on China compared to imposing them on Russia. Primarily, China has a GDP of $14.34 trillion, which is significantly larger than the $1.7 trillion of the Russian economy. This means that it would be much easier for China to absorb the impact of sanctions imposed on it, and this difference is only expected to expand in the future. The different levels of economic integration with the U.S. and the West is another reason why sanctions will hit both countries differently. In 2019, Russia was America’s 20th largest supplier of goods with imports totaling $22.3 billion. In contrast, China was America’s 3rd largest trading partner with imports valued at $451.7 billion. The significant economic integration between the U.S. and China means sanctions against China will also have a much larger negative impact domestically.

The irony of sanctions is that while they may induce certain behavior in the short-term, this will also corrode their effectiveness in the long-term. Punitive sanctions will induce targeted countries and entities to look for alternatives and reduce their reliance on the sanctioning nation. For example, U.S. sanctions against Iran have led the country to turn towards Russia, China, and India. Thus, the more sanctions are used, the more targets will turn towards alternatives to insulate themselves against its future effects.

In the case of China, they are turning towards domestic companies, further accelerating the technology decoupling between America and China.

“China sees domestic tech development and innovation as both the defence and offense to potential US sanctions,” said Winston Ma, attorney, author and an adjunct professor of law at New York University School of Law. Ma’s recent book “The Digital War – How China’s Tech Power Shapes The Future of AI, Blockchain and Cyberspace” highlights the dramatic advances China has made in these tech fields, emerging from a “mobile economy” to a “digital economy”. Ma notes in the chapter, “The Tech Cold War”:

“China’s ambitions and progress have led to talk of an artificial intelligence arms race with the United States. Cross-border tech investments are increasingly viewed through national security lenses by the two countries. In recent years, more and more deals have been blocked, corporations sanctioned, and AI exchanges restricted. Hence, the digital economy is in a vital conflict and crisis: the global tech world, together with at least part of the world economy, has now fractured into two – and potentially more, considering Europe, Japan, and other regions – spheres of influence. Nations and companies around the world are being forced to choose sides in a conflict that is fracturing global supply chains and tech innovation.”

One area where this is currently playing out is in the semiconductor industry, which has traditionally been dominated by U.S. companies, with eighty percent of the chipmaking and design processes being carried out by American businesses. An investigation into ZTE found the company to have violated existing sanctions against North Korea and Iran. As a result, the company became the target of sanctions itself. Placed on the “entity list” also known to some as the “death penalty,” ZTE found itself unable to access key semiconductor components and announced that “as a result of the Denial Order, the major operating activities of the company have ceased.”

Neck-choking” technology, such as semiconductor technology, are technologies where China is heavily reliant on America. These areas are considered by the Chinese government to be potential areas of weakness where the American government can potentially “strangle” or put pressure on China.

“The virtual monopoly on chip design and chip making equipment sectors has given the US vast powers to control the flow of technology to China, and the Chinese government is determined to be free of ‘neck-choking’,” says Ma.

This has led the government to invest aggressively in its semiconductor fund resulting in an unprecedented growth in the area. Over 22,000 new companies focusing on semiconductors were registered in China in 2020.

China’s growing sanctions regime

China sees domestic tech development and innovation as both the defence and offense to potential US sanctions.”

– Winston Ma

In addition to their negative economic impacts and the potential corrosion of their long-term effectiveness, another danger of over-reliance on sanctions in diplomatic relations with China is the potential for escalation. Unlike Russia, which has a limited range of response options, China has not hesitated to put retaliatory measures in place when it has been the target of sanctions.

Shortly after America imposed sanctions on China over its treatment of Uyghur minorities earlier last year, Chinese officials quickly announced retaliatory sanctions on July 13, 2020 against American officials and entities in a symbolic attempt to retaliate. A month later, China imposed additional sanctions on eleven individuals after America imposed sanctions on China for its erosion of Hong Kong autonomy.

Interestingly, China’s willingness to impose retaliatory sanctions has been a recent phenomenon. China is a relatively late participant in the sanctions landscape and actually opposed them in the past because it was often the target of such measures. Sanctions were once considered by China as a violation of sovereignty.

Despite the late entrance, however, China is already overseeing a rapid expansion of its sanctions regime, making a series of changes to its legal framework in response to the recent sanctions placed on it. China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) first issued the Provisions on the Unreliable Entity List which establishes a formal mechanism for sanctioning individuals and entities. Afterwards, it passed the Export Control Law which establishes a comprehensive export control framework.

In January 2021, MOFCOM also published Rules on Counteracting Unjustified Extra-territorial Application of Foreign Legislation and Other Measures which allow Chinese authorities to punish companies with business in China for complying with foreign sanctions restrictions. Most directly in June 2021, China adopted the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law (AFSL) which provides a legal basis for China to adopt retaliatory measures against “discriminatorily restrictive measures” that are imposed on it.

Responses to this new law have been mixed. Some commentators, for example, Political Economy Editor at South China Morning Post, Zhou Xin, have argued that the new law is a defensive move by Beijing to increase its legal arsenal in the face of sanctions threats by foreign governments. Others, however, have a more negative view. The European Union Chamber of Commerce President, Joerg Wuttke, noted that “Such action is not conducive to attracting foreign investment or reassuring companies that increasingly feel that they will be used as sacrificial pawns in a game of political chess.”

Whereas sanctions in America have a robust legal framework that involve multiple legal authorities and a process that is codified and published in the Code of Federal Regulations, China has yet to develop a comprehensive system. The Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law as it currently stands is broadly written, which has led to concerns in the business community. Additionally, the law contains wording that implicates “any organization and person” who comply with any foreign sanctions. For companies doing business in China, this means that they may be sued in China for complying with American export control rules. This may put businesses in a dilemma of choosing between complying with American sanctions or complying with Chinese laws.

Despite these developments, it is important to note that China has yet to blacklist foreign companies. As of now, China seems less focused on implementing restrictive sanctions measures and more on building its deterrent capabilities. Given the dominance of both the U.S. and Chinese economies, escalating sanctions between the two countries could have devastating consequences.

Finally, it is important to note the interests of other countries and how they could play a potential role. For example, countries like the UK are aligned with America in speaking out against China on issues such as human rights. However, they also need to engage with China on areas of mutual interest, which range from trade to climate change. For instance, China is an important partner for the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow this year. If sanctions continue to escalate, however, it may become harder and harder for these countries to balance their interests.

Conclusions?

While the use of sanctions as a tool of foreign policy will not be going away anytime soon, leaders should be careful in terms of their use because of the potential for escalation, especially as China is increasingly building out its capabilities on this front and has demonstrated a willingness to use them. We have already seen how this could play out in the trade war with China, which has cost America an estimated 0.3% of GDP and nearly 300,000 jobs. China’s increasing role and its aspirations to dominate and shape the world order mean it is much more emboldened to strike back.

Gloria Zheng, LIMA CHARLIE WORLD

[Edited by Anthony A. LoPresti]

Gloria Zheng is a Corporate Bank analyst at a European financial institution. Prior to this role, Gloria graduated magna cum laude from New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, where she double majored in Philosophy and Business, with concentrations in Finance and Computing & Data Science. At NYU she completed her thesis titled “Corporate Venture Capital and Digital Disruption”. Gloria served as Co-President of the Stern Business and Law Association and President of the NYU Policy Debate team.

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American Insurgency – What Does a Peaceful Transition of Power Look Like Now?

OPINION: America is supposed to be the world’s exporter of democracy, a profile in and of the peaceful transition of power for our generation and generations to come. As the country transitions from the presidency of Donald J. Trump to that of Joseph R. Biden, America remains more fractured than ever. After the January 6th siege of the Capitol by a violent insurgency, threat levels remain at an all time high. With the world watching, just what example of American democracy are we leaving for our children?

The United States of America is the world leader when it comes to democracy.  “We the People” export democracy.  I should know, I was on the ground with the 82nd Airborne in 2005 exporting democracy to the people of Iraq.  I was a representative of freedom for not just the United States of America, but a change agent for all free men and women from around the world. 

In Baghdad, the election of 2005 was violent.  In January, just one of many suicide bombers blew himself up about 100 meters from a polling station, killing one person and wounding 10 others. I remember. I still see the body parts in my head. 

As a practitioner of war, I understand how to influence a population, having employed various tactics in Iraq.  Before the run up to the election of 2005, my job was to reach out to local national leaders and offer infrastructure contracts. I would pay them directly to manage the project so that the community would believe that these projects had been paid for by local leaders with funds from the central Iraqi government.  If the community found out that Americans were funding a project, anti-Iraqi factions would move in and attack those projects, targeting those who would cooperate with the “infidels.” In order to counter these attacks, we had to apply pressure to the local community, so that they would unite and be a partner in helping us hunt these violent factions that were tearing the country apart.   

We were attempting to build a nation, and we had to make the local population believe that their government was in charge, that it was able to sustain their needs before the election.  Most of all, the people of Iraq had to believe in the stability of their government, and for a peaceful transition of power, Iraqis had to be confident in their electoral process; disinformation and divisiveness had to be countered and cancelled. Our deception kept the local community safe, while at the same time it exposed these factions and their activities allowing us to work towards neutralizing them.  

I’ve seen firsthand in struggling democracies like Iraq the importance of solidarity and peaceful transitions of government as well as the power of an individual’s vote.  Tragically, America is now seeing violent and divisive tactics designed to erode confidence in our democracy, our electoral process, and even our ability to affect a peaceful transfer of power. Sadly, I have seen divisive tactics and disinformation being used against my own community, and these negative messages of doubt and distrust are influencing our youth even at the middle school and elementary school levels.  

This is why the events in Washington on January 6th concern not only myself and my community as a whole, but the foundation of my family structure. 

My family is split between liberals and conservatives.  I find myself to be a moderate so I am not influenced one way or the other, but as a father, I must be able to create a safe environment for my children to grow and prosper in their political views. I do this by having spirited debates with my daughters and offer them different perspectives on the things we discuss.  It allows me to listen to my child as they explain how they see the world, and I get to share with them my life experiences and stories.  It’s one of the greatest benefits of being a parent. 

My daughter has said to me, “Dad, the election was rigged.”  

However, after the violence in DC, it has left me struggling with a dilemma; How do you support your child’s opinion when that opinion originates in hate and spills over into violence?  This is not the right example that our children should be following. As a parent raising children, I have to be the example and provide the support, growth and development of my children in a safe and secure environment.  This becomes challenging however when violence erupts over an election.  It becomes difficult to explain the peaceful transition of power to my children. 

My oldest daughter is a proud Trump supporter and leans more conservative.  As her father, I support her choices and opinions on all matters, including politics.  I do my best to explain the difference between being a conservative and being a Trump supporter. Yet, after the events in DC, it has become more difficult.  Hate is not a family value, but hate is what was on display. 

Equally troubling, this hate is based on a lie. A cruel and reckless lie. The “Big Lie”. My daughter has said to me, “Dad, the election was rigged.”  As an Election Judge, I worked on the front lines registering eligible voters and allowing them to speak their voice.  I have worked side-by-side with my neighbors from different political affiliations to ensure the security and accuracy of our elections.  We provided a free and fair election that was transparent and accurate.  We ensured at all times that there was party balance when it came to dealing with voters and ballots.  This was our sacred duty. 

Yet, all that work was minimized by four words.  She ignored the violence, ignored the misinformation, ignored the pain, ignored the facts of the free and fair election and summarized it all into “the election was rigged.”

Meanwhile, our democracy suffers irreparably.

Brian Sicknick, a Capitol police officer who died of injuries suffered during the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Photo: NEW JERSEY AIR NATIONAL GUARD

We’ve all watched in horror the images of violence that day. One U.S. Capitol Police officer was killed.  Officer Brian Sicknick had joined the USCP in July 2008, having enlisted in the National Guard six months after graduating high school in 1997, then deploying to Saudi Arabia and Kyrgyzstan.  That was the same year I graduated high school and joined the Army.

MPD Officer Daniel Hodges was beaten with his own baton while being pinned in a doorway.  We’ve all seen the video of him desperately shouting for help, mouth bloodied, as the crowd surge crushed him. Hodges remembered being attacked by a man who was “practically foaming at the mouth.” He would later say, “If it wasn’t my job I would have done that for free … It was absolutely my pleasure to crush a white nationalist insurrection and I’m glad I was in a position to help. We’ll do it as many times as it takes.”

Officer Michael Fanone, a narcotics detective, had rushed to assist, but was dragged into the crowd, beaten, and shocked repeatedly with a Taser. Rioters stripped the gear off his body, including his ammunition, police radio and badge. Fanone stated afterwards in an interview:

“Some guy started getting a hold of my gun and they were screaming out ‘Kill him with his own gun!’. At that point it was self-preservation, how do I survive this situation. And I thought about using deadly force. I thought about shooting people. And then I just came to the conclusion that … if I was to do that I might get a few, but I’m not going to take everybody and they’ll probably take my gun away from me and that would definitely give them the justification that they were looking for to kill me, if they already didn’t have made that up in their minds … The other option I thought of was to try to appeal to someone’s humanity. And I just remember yelling out that I have kids. And it seemed to work. Some people in the crowd started to encircle me and try to offer me some level of protection.”

Fanone added, “A lot of people have asked me my thoughts on the individuals in the crowd that helped me or tried to offer some assistance. And I think kind of the conclusion I’ve come to is, ‘Thank you … but f*ck you for being there.’”

We’ve also watched video of Officer Eugene Goodman, an Iraq combat Veteran who had deployed with the 101st Airborne, bravely drawing the angry crowd away from entering the Senate Chamber. Goodman is being considered for a Congressional Gold Medal.  There are rumors of dedicating a statue to him.

I had also watched live when a security detail emerged from the Capitol building with a paramedic team frantically administering first aid to an exposed, shirtless woman. They applied chest compressions as she lay on the stretcher before rushing her to the hospital.  Her neck bloodied, she appeared to not be breathing on her own, due to an apparent gunshot wound. Video would soon surface that Ashli Babbitt, a U.S. Air Force Veteran from California, was part of the violent mob that had attempted to smash through barricaded doors into the House Chamber. A police officer in plain clothes shot Babbitt as she tried to climb through a broken window of one of the doors, a Trump flag tied around her waist. Babbitt had deployed overseas on multiple occasions, to Afghanistan in 2005, Iraq in 2006, and the United Arab Emirates in 2012 and 2014.

They say 5 people died. By my count, one courageous law enforcement officer died, and four terrorists mounting an attempted coup were thwarted that day.  Then there is U.S. Capitol Police officer Howard Liebengood, who later committed suicide after being on duty that dreadful day.  In all, 56 D.C. Metro Police officers were injured, with 60 Capitol Police officers injured and 15 hospitalized. These horrific numbers continue to rise with members of the Capitol Police battling the trauma they experienced and the subsequent suicidal ideations. 

As more and more disturbing video emerges from that day, questions about Capitol security and preparedness continue and must be thoroughly investigated. We now stand days before the 2021 Inauguration, at a threat level never before seen. U.S. intelligence warns of more violence to come.

Still, some in Congress, magnified by pundits on media outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax and OAN, repeat or enable the Big Lie that this election was stolen. All despite volumes of evidence to the contrary. The deluge of disinformation about what was clearly a free and fair election is staggering.

And now, a second impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump looms ahead. Whether he did incite the riot on January 6, and, equally important, whether he failed to act, and failed in his duty to act once the riot was underway, will be decided before the Senate. Whether Donald Trump can run for office again, possibly splitting the Republican vote, is also on the table.

So how has this been a peaceful transition, as envisioned by our Founding Fathers?  How do you educate your child that this is not what our country does? 

Whether Donald Trump incited the riot on January 6, and, equally important, whether he failed to act, and failed in his duty to act once the riot was underway, will be decided before the Senate.

There is an energy of division in politics that appears to be growing to unprecedented levels. Some say we are currently engaged at the height of what is being described as political domestic hybrid warfare. Certainly, the momentum of this energy of division is further dividing us, and as a parent, it is becoming increasingly difficult to educate my children and my community on what it means to be an American and what a peaceful transition of government looks like. 

We must set the example for our children because they will follow our lead.  How do we want them to run our elections in the future?

Free and fair, or with violence and hatred of heart?

Don Martinez, LIMA CHARLIE WORLD

[Edited by Anthony A. LoPresti]

Don Martinez is a retired Iraq War veteran, Chief Strategy Officer for Lima Charlie News, a former Election Judge in El Paso County, Chair of the Colorado Latinos Vote and sits on the Defense Council with the Truman National Security Project.  All views and opinions expressed are his own.

[Main Image: U.S. Capitol Police with guns drawn stand near a barricaded door as protesters try to break into the House Chamber at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. Photo: Andrew Harnik / Associated Press][@andyharnick]

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Image Swords to Plowshares: Urban Farming for the New Warrior [Lima Charlie News]
Swords to Plowshares: Urban Farming for the New Warrior

As Trump’s hold on power fades domestic hybrid warfare rages on

The tendency of those in power, to hold onto power at all costs, is as old as civilization itself. Machiavelli believed that the only real concern of a political ruler, is the acquisition and maintenance of power. This imperative has been taken to new heights these last 4 years, escalating tenfold these last 4 weeks after Election 2020. Yet behind the scenes of this current power struggle, America remains engaged in its own, internal, hybrid warfare.  

Power is the great aphrodisiac.

-Henry Kissinger

During these last several years Lima Charlie News has reported on the critical challenges faced by democracies worldwide from ever expanding cyberwarfare and disinformation operations, geared towards disruption and demoralization, with the ability to not just threaten infrastructure, but to control information.

We’ve reported on the siege of democratic institutions and the rise of totalitarian regimes worldwide. This has included highlighting those leaders who wear a mask of democracy while reigning “President for life.

We’ve reported on dysfunctional and corrupt elections, and challenges faced by struggling and faux democracies.

We’ve also reported on Russia and China’s ongoing hybrid warfare, waged against the democracies of the U.S., NATO and its allies. It includes well funded and supported disinformation farms that push out “fake news” with corresponding bot armies trolling social media, seeding dissension and mistrust in institutions. Election interference is a staple of such operations, as has been shown in Ukraine, and numerous FSU and EU nations. Such concerted interference in America’s 2016 election has been well documented.

From these case studies, it’s clear that notions of hybrid warfare have continued to evolve over the years. Based on the current strife in America post-election, it just may come to define America’s ongoing internal political struggles.

Originally hybrid warfare defined irregular non-state actors with advanced material capabilities. The term has since morphed into meaning conceptual warfare, involving a blend of approaches, from conventional warfare to the polar opposites found in irregular warfare and cyber warfare.

Author Peter Pindják wrote in NATO Review that hybrid conflicts “involve multilayered efforts designed to destabilise a functioning state and polarize its society.” Pindják wrote that unlike conventional warfare “the ‘centre of gravity’ in hybrid warfare is a target population [where] the adversary tries to influence influential policy-makers and key decision makers by combining kinetic operations with subversive efforts.” This can even include the collective and organized generation of “fake news” or engaging in election interference.

Håkan Gunneriusson wrote in Lima Charlie’s “Russia and China’s ongoing ‘hybrid warfare’ – When does it cross the line?” that:

“Hybrid warfare is not about translating a national doctrine to see if the exact wording is found in the tomes of text. Instead one has to look towards the actions of the nation-state and its agents. The virtue in using such terminology and approach is to avoid being limited by archaic concepts and their historical connections or conjugations, and to avoid becoming bogged down in academic discussion with little relation to current developing events.”

America’s Domestic Hybrid War

As recent troubling events post-2020 Election continue to unfold, it is becoming more and more evident that America is, essentially engaged in internal, political, hybrid warfare.

Machiavelli opined in The Prince that the only real concern of a political ruler is the acquisition and maintenance of power. Certainly this is the primary goal of Donald J. Trump, who has decided to define his legacy as a Commander in Chief determined to hold onto power at all costs. The Prince is proving to be more and more relevant during these waning days of the Trump presidency.

True to Trump, another prince has continued to operate in the dark alleys of the U.S. political scene, and will likely continue the post-election fight. Having dominated the private army model worldwide, Erik Prince has supported hybrid operations like Project Veritas, a group that uses militarized political opposition and espionage tactics, disguised as journalism, to spread disinformation and to discredit and destroy the reputations of those adverse to Donald Trump and “the cause”. Prince has a long history of employing and embedding former spies and operators to disrupt America’s political arena. Funded, trained and supported by Prince, Project Veritas has close ties to Trump, and remains a tool in the Trump hybrid warfare toolbox.

Extensive disinformation continues to circulate and fuel the conflict, thanks to dubious cable and online news sources, and social media, a subject for another article.

In any hybrid warfare strategy, operational effectiveness requires the removal and embedding of critical ground personnel. Necessary to the Trump/GOP hybrid operation, is the drainage of the “Swamp” in order to fill it with another Swamp. Expect to see the last 40 days of Trump’s presidency rife with questionable swaps in government offices and key bureaucratic positions.

Crippling and demoralizing your enemy by leaving behind scorched earth is also an effective tool in the hybrid warfare toolkit. None doubt that President Trump intends to make reality as difficult as possible for the incoming Biden-Harris administration. To accomplish this, Trump is likely to engage in a multitude of less-than-obvious acts of long term strategic effect in spaces where regular consumer-grade media coverage is less than stellar. For instance, he might provide tacit presidential and national legal legitimacy for operations being undertaken by allied nations, which could be detrimental to specific regional stabilities.

Such paradigm shifting and inflammatory acts are unlikely to be immediately noticed by the incoming administration, and would thus be able to continue to a point where the damage and effects of them become irreversible. Such a situation might leave the Biden-Harris administration with no firm ground to stand on.

“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large…”

-Thomas Jefferson

None of these multi-prong operations are as disconcerting to America’s democracy as the concerted, hybrid legal attacks on the election process itself. Also known as lawfare, this strategy employs a scorched-earth policy where frivolous, highly flawed lawsuits are deployed flooding the judicial system, not necessarily to win, but to raise doubt in the electoral process and maintain the fight.

Just yesterday, 17 “red” state attorneys general joined in the Texas lawsuit filed Tuesday against the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin. While legal and constitutional scholars laughed at the absurdity of the Texas case, that 17 individuals who swore to uphold the Constitution would join in on it, is indicative of more troubling times to come for the Biden administration and the nation itself. The absurdity rose to new heights today when over 100 House Republicans joined in support of the Texas lawsuit.

Piling on countless debunked arguments, Texas v. Pennsylvania, et al. is not only a monumental failure and embarrassment from a constitutional law perspective, it stands as a political coup by those lacking the ability to stand up for democracy. Cloaked in the veil of “defending” America’s Constitution, a granular review of the evidence presented in other state lawsuits proves exactly the opposite.

The recent Nevada challenge, upheld by a unanimous Nevada Supreme Court, is just such a study in how each and every allegation of fraud or malfeasance in the hybrid toolbox lacks any support. “Mountains” of evidence are one-by-one shot down by a diligent judicial process, one to be proud of in these trying times.

Worth reading, recent Nevada state court decisions offer highly detailed analyses describing the election process while debunking Trump’s repeated election fraud claims. In the hybrid attack to maintain power, the legal challenges to the 2020 election, show massive cracks in this offensive.

Jesse Law, et al. v. Judith Whitmer, et. al.

This week the Nevada Supreme Court rejected President Trump’s appeal to overturn that state’s election results, affirming the lower court’s decision striking down allegations of widespread voter fraud. In yet another loss for the outgoing President (marking over 50 losses or withdrawals of post-election lawsuits), the unanimous 6-0 ruling held that the Trump team had failed to demonstrate any legal error in the district court’s decision, while noting that the district court had even considered evidence that did not meet evidentiary requirements under Nevada law for expert testimony or for admissibility.

Attached to the Supreme Court’s Order, the 34 page decision (Jesse Law, et al. v. Judith Whitmer, et al., Judge James T. Russell), first described in detail the histories of, and technical workings of, the mail-in voting machines used to sort and check signatures, and the machines and software used for in-person voting.  Agilis Ballot Sorting System, provided by Runbeck Election Services, with Parascript automatic signature verification technology, is the standard for mail-in voting.  Dominion Voting Systems is the standard for in-person voting machines and software.

As stated by the court:

“Runbeck is a well-respected election services company headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. It provides a suite of hardware and software products that assist with mail ballot sorting and processing, initiative petitions, voter registration, and ballot-on-demand printing. It is also one of the largest printing vendors for ballots in the United States. In 2020 alone, it printed 76 million ballots and mailed 30 million. Runbeck’s clients are state and county election officials in the United States. Runbeck does not do work for political parties or candidates.”

The Agilis ballot-sorting machine is similar to those used by the U.S. Postal Service. It takes a high res photo of each ballot as it is run through the machine, it weighs the ballot envelope, checks its barcode, and its signature, all before sorting it for counting or flagging for a deficiency. The decision details the meticulous way the hardware and software was purchased, tested, checked, audited and certified by various officials throughout the state, county and federal government. It also details the meticulous way signatures were checked, and accepted or rejected.

“If a signature was scored below 40, it was flagged for human verification. Clark County’s permanent election personnel were initially trained by a forensic signature expert and former FBI agent, and they developed a training program for temporary staff based on this instruction. During the human verification process, an election worker reviewed the signature against a reference signature on a computer screen. If the reviewer was uncertain about a signature, the signature was passed along for additional review and compared against the voter’s entire history of signatures. If uncertainty persisted, the signature was reviewed by Joseph P. Gloria, Clark County’s Registrar of Voters, as a final check. If the signature was then rejected, the voter could undertake Nevada’s statutory cure process.”

The decision also details the in-person voting process and technology provided by Dominion Voting Systems, which is really quite impressive.  “These voting systems are subject to extensive testing and certification before each election and are audited after each election.”  While bizarre Dominion software conspiracy theories, pushed by the likes of QAnon and former Trump team attorney Sidney Powell, have been debunked repeatedly, including by former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Christopher Krebs, this was not addressed by the court.

Examples of testing and certification cited by the court include:

  • “the electronic voting systems used by Clark County were certified by the federal government when they were first brought on the market, as well as any time a hardware or software component is upgraded. This certification is done by a voting system test laboratory.”
  • “The electronic voting machines are also tested and certified by the [Office of the Nevada Secretary of State], who contracts with the Nevada Gaming Control Board for this certification.”
  • “Clark County’s electronic voting machines were last inspected by the Gaming Control Board in December 2019 and certified by the [Office of the Nevada Secretary of State] shortly thereafter.”
  • “The voting machines are also audited against a paper trail that is generated … when voters make their selections.”
  • “After each election, Clark County, like Nevada’s other counties, conducts a random audit of its voting machines. Specifically, it compares the paper trail created by the printer against the results recorded by the voting machine to ensure they match.”
  • “Clark County conducted this audit following the November election and there were no discrepancies between the paper audit trail created by the printer and the data from the voting machine.”

After detailing various prior Trump election fraud cases that have been dismissed, the court waded through the evidence presented. Despite the bulk of the Trump team’s evidence consisting of inadmissible hearsay, the court still considered it. “The Court nonetheless considers the totality of the evidence provided by Contestants in reaching and ruling upon the merits of their claims.”

What follows, is an embarrassing series of arguments set out by the Trump team, led by lawyers Shana D. Weir (Weir Law Group) and Jesse R. Binnall (Harvey & Binnall), more examples of how credible, capable lawyers refuse to touch these frivolous cases.

Incredibly, key “expert” witnesses offered by the Trump team failed miserably to abide by even the most basic requirements for offering expert evidence. Experts Michael Baselice (citing incidence of illegal voting in the 2020 General Election based on a phone survey of voters) and Jesse Kamzol (claiming significant illegal voting occurred in Nevada during the 2020 General Election, based on his analysis of various commercially available databases of voters) failed to provide sources for data, a verification of conclusions, and proof of quality control of the data presented. One expert report submitted by Scott Gessler also “lacked citations to facts and evidence” that Gessler had used to come to his conclusions and “did not include a single exhibit to support of any of his conclusions.”

The defendants, meanwhile (led by Bradley S. Schrager and team at Wolf Rifkin, Shapiro, Schulman & Rabkin, and Marc E. Elias and team at Perkins Coie), submitted the deposition testimony of Wayne Thorley, Nevada’s former Deputy Secretary of State for Elections, Jeff Ellington, President and Chief Operating Officer of Runbeck (manufacturer of the Agilis machine), and Joseph P. Gloria, the Registrar of Voters for Clark County.  In each case the court found their testimony to be credible.

The defendants also produced the testimony of Dr. Michael Herron, a pre-eminent, highly qualified expert in the areas of election administration, voter fraud, survey design, and statistical analysis. As stated by the court, “Dr. Herron holds advanced degrees in statistics and political science; has published academic papers in peer-reviewed journals about election administration and voter fraud; and has an extensive record of serving as an expert on related topics in litigation before numerous courts, none of which has found that his testimony lacks credibility.”

“The Court finds there is no evidence that voter fraud rates associated with mail voting are systematically higher than voter fraud rates associated with other forms of voting.”

In analyzing the Trump team’s primary claim that voter fraud occurred at multiple points in the voting process at rates in Nevada that exceed the margin of victory in the presidential race, the court found none of the Trump team’s arguments to be persuasive. In fact, it found that Trump expert Scott Gessler actually contradicted this argument by testifying that he has no personal knowledge that any voting fraud occurred in Nevada’s 2020 General Election.

Relying on Dr. Herron’s testimony, the court concluded that:

  • “After examining voter turnout in Nevada and constructing a database of voter fraud instances in the State from 2012 to 2020 … out of 5,143,652 ballots cast in general and primary elections during that timeframe (not including the 2020 General Election), the illegal vote rate totaled at most only 0.00054 percent.”
  • Contestants’ allegations “strain credulity.”
  • “none of the grounds [in the Contest] contains persuasive evidence [(1)] that there were fraudulent activities associated with the 2020 General Election in particular [or] the presidential election in Nevada; [(2)] that these fraudulent activities led to fraudulent votes, [or (3)] that these allegedly fraudulent votes affected the vote margin of 33,596 . . . that separates Joe Biden and Donald Trump in Nevada.”

Based on this testimony, the Court found that “there is no credible or reliable evidence that the 2020 General Election in Nevada was affected by fraud.”

Moving next to allegations and testimony submitted claiming that there were problems and irregularities with the provisional balloting process, that certain voters were allowed to vote without proper Nevada identification, and that the consequences of voting provisionally were not explained to voters, the court struck down each claim:

  • “The record does not support a finding that election officials counted ballots cast by same-day registrants who only provided proof of a DMV appointment in place of a Nevada photographic identification.”
  • “The record does not support a finding that any provisional voters were wrongfully disenfranchised because of directions provided by election officials or because they were not given an opportunity to cure their ballots.”
  • “The record does not support a finding that voters were made to cast provisional ballots on election day and then not given the opportunity to cure their lack of identification.”
  • “The record does not support a finding that same day registrants with out-of-state identification were permitted to vote a regular, rather than provisional, ballot.”

As to claims of “mismatched signatures”, namely that the Agilis machine consistently malfunctioned and accepted invalid signatures, again the court found a complete lack of credible evidence:

  • “The record docs not support a finding that the Agilis machine functioned improperly and accepted signatures that should have been rejected during the signature verification process.”
  • “The record does not support a finding that election workers counted ballots with improper signatures that should have been rejected.”
  • “The record does not support a finding that ejection workers authenticated, processed, or counted ballots that presented problems and irregularities under pressure from election officials.”
  • “The record does not support a finding that illegal ballots were cast because the signature on the ballot envelope did not match the voter’s signature.”

Nor did any of the evidence support claims that “1,000 illegal or improper votes were cast and counted” as a result of maintenance and security issues with voting machines, that 1,000 legal votes were not counted due to issues with voting machines, or that maintenance and security issues resulted in illegal votes being cast and counted or legal votes not being counted.

Echoing the baseless claims made in other Trump election fraud lawsuits, the court also rejected claims that voters were sent and cast multiple ballots and otherwise double voted, that non-Nevada residents cast ballots and those ballots were counted, and that numerous persons arrived to vote in-person on election day only to find out that a mail ballot was cast in their name already. Again, each affidavit submitted (regardless of hearsay), as in numerous other Trump election fraud lawsuits, contained conclusory, self-serving, uncorroborated accounts, that are easily explained.

While we may be tempted to cast these witnesses as liars, they may actually believe what they think they saw. They may have witnessed something they believe to be suspicious, questionable or out of the ordinary. Yet all obviously fail to ask real questions or look to other possible explanations for these supposed anomalies, most likely swayed by President Trump’s repeated mantra that there was indeed widespread, nefarious election fraud.  They “Want to Believe”.

This brings to mind one witness in the Pennsylvania lawsuit, Jesse Morgan, a contract truck driver for the U.S. Postal Service. Morgan testified he delivered what he was told were ballots from a postal facility in Bethpage, New York, to Lancaster, Pennsylvania on October 21. While unsure of the amount of supposed ballots shipped (“two pallets” worth), he said he parked the USPS trailer at the Lancaster city postal facility, but when he returned the next morning, the trailer was gone. Ignoring the fact that he’s an admitted “ghost hunter” with a criminal record, Morgan may actually have believed something fraudulent took place. The problem is, he failed to ask any real questions or investigate the matter, before spreading conspiracy theories that were quickly lapped up by certain media and tweeted out by President Trump. The story was easily debunked. It actually is common for absentee ballots to be mailed from one state to another, as the ballots are meant to be used by college students, members of the military, people who travel for work, and others who may be absent on Election Day. In addition, the number of absentee ballots returned in Lancaster County was less than the number requested, which is completely normal.

Of course, responsible, ethical legal counsel, as officers of the court, are required to ask these questions and weed out frivolous claims and unsupported evidence. Here, Trump team lawyers again failed miserably to do so. Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 11 (or NRCP 11 in Nevada), such frivolous conduct could be sanctionable.

Certainly arguing the “Hugo Chavez, George Soros, Hillary Clinton, Dominion algorithm vote flipping” conspiracy theory would be sanctionable. But where exactly is the line? In my experience obtaining sanctions is an increasingly uphill battle. But I really do Want to Believe that at some point courts will sanction Team Trump. There certainly has been a call for censure or disbarment.

Following the Trump election fraud playbook, the usual litany of baseless allegations were also pushed by counsel in the Nevada lawsuit: that election workers were pressured to push ballots through despite deficiencies; that votes from deceased voters were improperly cast and counted; that persons cast mail ballots in other persons’ names; that election officials counted ballots that arrived after the deadline for submitting them; that Nevada failed to properly maintain its voter lists resulting in illegal votes cast and counted; and that the postal service was directed to violate USPS policy and improperly deliver ballots.

As in numerous similar lawsuits, each was rejected after careful analysis and for all of the same deficiencies.

Lastly, the Nevada district court analyzed and rejected claims that there was Biden-Harris “candidate misconduct”. Per the decision, the record does not support either “a finding that groups or individuals linked to the Biden-Harris campaign offered or gave, directly or indirectly, anything of value to manipulate votes in this election or otherwise alter the outcome of the election” or “that multiple ballots were filled out against a bus bearing the Biden-Harris emblem outside a polling place in Clark County.”

While the court held that the standard of proving fraud required clear and convincing evidence, “even if a preponderance of the evidence standard was used, the Court concludes that Contestants’ claims fail on the merits there under or under any other standard.”

In the district court’s analysis, the Trump team failed to prove:

  • that there was a “malfunction of any voting device or electronic tabulator, counting device or computer in a manner sufficient to raise reasonable doubt as to the outcome of the election.”
  • that “illegal or improper votes were cast and counted” and/or “legal and proper votes were not counted … in an amount that is equal to or greater than the margin between the contestant and the defendant, or otherwise in an amount sufficient to raise reasonable doubt as to the outcome of the election.”
  • that “the election board or any member thereof was guilty of malfeasance.”
  • that “the defendant or any person acting, either directly or indirectly, on behalf of the defendant has given, or offered to give, to any person anything of value for the purpose of manipulating or altering the outcome of the election.”

Once again, the Trump team election fraud narrative has produced no results, and released no “Kraken“, while threatening to inflict ongoing harm to America’s faith in its electoral and democratic process. Comforting, however, is the fact that America’s judicial system has proven itself to be a reliable and credible bulwark against enemies of democracy.

The district court’s well reasoned 34 page decision should be required reading for all U.S. citizens, especially those that still have doubt.  It sheds light on a mountain of lies and deception, pushed by unethical lawyers led by Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, Joe diGenova, and Lin Wood, irresponsible media, unscrupulous politicians, and an outgoing, increasingly unstable POTUS.

The danger to democracy is real, as are the physical threats of violence and intimidation hurled against elected officials and their families. That recently SCOTUS unanimously declined to weigh in on the Pennsylvania lawsuit brought by Republican Rep. Mike Kelly is promising. But just how long must this go on until violence results?

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

– Abraham Lincoln

America’s domestic hybrid war rages on, with combatants fielding a multi-layered approach that combines regular and irregular political weaponry and tactics. The legal / judicial assault will continue for months, and years, to come. Brave patriots have stepped forward, risking reputation and billable hours, to engage the enemy on America’s home courts. “Operation Litigation” is in full swing. God help us.

Anthony A. LoPrestiLIMA CHARLIE WORLD

UPDATE December 11, 2020: The Supreme Court unanimously rejected the Texas lawsuit, backed by Donald Trump, seeking to throw out all voting results in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin.

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Surviving epidemics, pandemics, bioterrorism and COVID-19 – Are you prepared?

Crisis consulting firm “MOSAIC” views the COVID-19 coronavirus through the lens of security and intelligence crisis management, releasing the guide Surviving Epidemics and Bioterrorism to show the efficacy of biological warfare countermeasures to the present crisis.

The 21st century is proving to be a kaleidoscope of potentially humanity ending threats. The COVID-19 virus is the latest joy peeking out of Pandora’s Box, and MOSAIC, a crisis management, intelligence and security advisory firm (Multi Operational Security Agency Intelligence Company), is releasing an updated survival guide in response.

The second edition of a publication originally produced in 2005 in the aftermath of the anthrax attacks, Surviving Epidemics and Bioterrorism features comprehensive information on COVID-19. Readers will learn about the origin of the virus and prevention efforts that can be employed to prevent its spread.

But Surviving Epidemics doesn’t stop there.

The original MOSAIC guide was specifically designed for deliberately caused outbreaks, such as a biological or chemical attack, but the authors believe that much of the content can be applicable to naturally occurring ones, such as COVID-19. “The difference between an outbreak and biological warfare relates predominately to the source of the infectious disease, but the survival methods that need to be adhered to are virtually identical.”

By viewing the COVID-19 coronavirus crisis through the lens of security and intelligence analysts and experts, MOSAIC seeks to show the efficacy of certain biological warfare countermeasures to the present crisis.

Tony Schiena, a counterterrorism expert, former intelligence operative and founder of MOSAIC, told Lima Charlie News, “When we built MOSAIC’s team, we brought together crisis management experts that could adapt to a broad range of security threats, that included bioterrorism experts and one senior leader in the CIA’s response to the ebola outbreak in West Africa. That team is exactly why we are prepared for rapid response in the face of the COVID-19 virus.”

Apart from Schiena, who made headlines in 2015 for exposing ISIS use of chemical and radiological weapons against the Kurds in Iraq, MOSAIC consists of intelligence and security experts that include Darrell M. Blocker, former Deputy Director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, and Richard Frankel, a former FBI agent that served as the Associate Director of National Intelligence and Senior FBI Representative to the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence. MOSAIC reports that it has approached the COVID-19 epidemic by analyzing its impact on, among other things, world economies, migration, and even opportunities for organised criminal networks.

“MOSAIC has already started conducting Red Team analyses on the COVID-19 pandemic and is identifying sectors, populations, technologies and other affected areas, while devising stop measures in case the predictions crystallise,” said Schiena.

The authors of Surviving Epidemics are clear to stress that this is not doomsday planning but a very pragmatic approach on how best to protect yourself and your family from a seemingly unlikely but extremely serious crisis. “It must be emphatically stated that the coronavirus is not in any shape, way or form an example of a biological or chemical weapon, but the advice provided is logically and practically sound for dealing with outbreaks, epidemics or pandemics.” For example, “quarantines are amongst a number of routine responses to outbreaks, but very few are prepared for this eventuality.”

There is almost no place on the surface of the Earth, however hostile the environment, in which man has not survived and in many cases flourished.

-John Kingsley, Introduction to Surviving Epidemics and Bioterrorism

The Surviving Epidemics handbook opens with a detailed introduction to COVID-19. It places COVID-19 in a continuum with its coronavirus precursors, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Coronaviruses consist of a core of genetic material, enclosed within an envelope of protein spikes, which resembles a crown; corona is the latin term for crown. Coincidentally, past strains of coronavirus were found to have genomes of a mosaic structure.

Coronaviruses are zoonotic, meaning they are transmitted between animals and people. SARS was transmitted from civet cats to humans and MERS from dromedary camels to humans. Since December 2019, when the World Health Organisation (WHO) was informed of a cluster of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China, the specific culprit for COVID-19 remains unclear. Surviving Epidemics tracks through detection of COVID-19, transmission rates, and fatality rates, clearly articulating that coronaviruses are an ongoing threat. Coronaviruses are apparently circulating in animals that have not yet infected humans, meaning coronaviruses could be a growing and persistent problem.

As of this writing, more than 95,100 people have been sickened by the recent coronavirus outbreak. Of at least 3,249 deaths, all but 268 are in mainland China. Virtually every sector in the world has been affected by COVID-19 with significant losses occurring from business disruption.

Surviving Epidemics tracks through much of the safety measures advised by governments and experts worldwide, which are admittedly basic and generally consists of recommendations that include “respiratory hygiene” and “cough etiquette”, the usefulness, or lack thereof, of face masks, “social distancing” and even developing a healthy immune system that includes the use of various home remedies.

The initial countermeasures described in the book are meant for a limited crisis, one in which a tragic number of people are perishing, but the functions of global capitalism do not break down. Basically: how do you try not to become infected while still showing up to work?

The rest of the handbook, however, is meant to prepare the reader for far worse eventualities. Humanity has not been subject to a truly devastating pandemic since the advent of modern medicine, with the Spanish Flu in the aftermath of the First World War killing some 40-50 million people. At the time, this was around 3% of the global population. The book argues, however, that given modern advances in medicine and hygiene, we are currently in better conditions to withstand deadly biochemical and radiological events than ever before in human history.

Once past discussion about COVID-19, the book cycles to more of a survival guide, detailing emergency procedures for biochemical and even radiological events. In that respect Surviving Epidemics is a relatively comprehensive guide of how to prepare you, and your family, for a long term pandemic or global tragedy, both in protecting yourself from exposure and ensuring your basic survival needs are met. The book provides differing guidelines according to lengths of disruption, ranging from one week to one year.

A section on First Aid provides emergent medical care information specific to biochemical and radiological disasters, and another section details instructions for the construction of shelters. Yet another section provides guidance on face respirators and even how to construct a rudimentary face mask. Readers should also note the various survival pack outlines, storage information, and recipes included towards the end of the guide. The guide, which can be downloaded for free from Amazon, is a manageable 128 pages, and is densely packed with actionable items.

You might be asking yourself, why do I need to stockpile for a year, will the government not come to help? Also, COVID-19, radiological, biochemical terrorism … Come on, is the apocalypse going to drop on my house specifically? Interestingly, these two questions somewhat answer each other.

In the initial aftermath of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina, many residents of New Orleans were not as high and dry as they might have liked. It took between 3 and 5 days for the U.S. federal government to distribute food and water to the city’s residents, while unsanitary conditions caused the rampant spread of infectious diseases, including an outbreak of norovirus. This might not move you to stock up for a year, but let us think this through. Since 2005, the U.S. housing market has threatened to trigger a global financial meltdown, refugees have more than doubled as a share of the global population, and the frequency of severe weather events has continued its onward march. All this indicates that self-reliance in the face of disaster should be a priority.

Surviving Epidemics is a guide on how best to protect yourself and your family from an extremely serious crisis, whichever it may be. Maybe you’ll get lucky, and your crisis will be the government’s top priority. However, if an epidemic, turned pandemic, followed by any one of a number of natural or unnatural catastrophes comes to your door, it might take awhile for someone to reconnect the phone lines so you can order food, or call the police.

LIMA CHARLIE WORLD

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Lima Charlie World provides global news, featuring insight & analysis by military veterans, intelligence professionals and foreign policy experts Worldwide.

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The Kurds – Betrayal and an ignored report highlight US policy failures

Kurds - Betrayal and an ignored report highlight US policy failures

A US administration ignores the obvious, choosing betrayal over allies, trading Kurdish lives for a path towards US foreign policy failure. [By William Stuebner and John Sjoholm]

It is exceedingly rare nowadays for the United States Congress to participate in any meaningful bipartisan effort to resolve serious foreign policy issues. The Syria Study Group (SSG) was an abnormality in Washington from day one.

Formed in October 2018 to make recommendations to Congress on US military and diplomatic strategy in Syria, the SSG featured a twelve-member body of actual subject-matter specialists, each with experiences actually relevant to the topic at hand. The election of these individuals to participate in the group is an oddity in the D.C. political environment, where subject-matter merit is often trumped by political loyalty.

Headquartered at and supported by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) in D.C., the SSG set out to write a comprehensive report within a year. On September 26, 2019, the group presented its Final Report and Recommendations highlighted by laudatory comments from senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire) and Mitt Romney (R-Utah).

The report came out swinging. Within its 49 pages of concise, pithy analysis, it managed to not just describe the complex, often-ignored ground realities in Syria and the Middle East, it offered a series of recommendations that may actually, if adhered to, make a difference.

Seeking to bring peace and stability to Syria, while strengthening America’s national interests in the region, the report made seven key recommendations.

  • Consolidate gains in northeastern Syria following the territorial defeat of ISIS and offer an alternative vision for governance, resource allocation, and security in Syria.
  • Until conditions inside Syria improve, deny the Assad regime and its backers all avenues for normalisation by enforcing the regime’s diplomatic isolation and maintaining a rigorous sanctions architecture.
  • Test and verify Russian willingness to support political settlements acceptable to the United States, but continue activities that increase the costs to Russia for its actions in Syria.
  • The United States should remain focused on expelling Iranian forces from Syria but recognise that this is best accomplished in phases. The key near-term goal should be to prevent further entrenchment of Iran and its many partners and proxies while raising the cost to Iran for its support of the Assad regime.
  • Seek areas for cooperation with Turkey and address legitimate Turkish security concerns while pressing Turkey to avoid any incursion into northeastern Syria and to improve conditions in the Afrin and Euphrates Shield areas.
  • Seek to address the humanitarian crisis in Idlib and counter the presence of terrorist groups there.
  • Energise efforts to address the humanitarian crisis inside Syria while taking steps to shore up countries hosting Syrian refugees.

[Read the full report]

All in all, there is a lot of skilfully placed common sense throughout the pages of the report. This common sense (as rare as it often is in reports such as this) was coupled with the stark reality that any leverage available to the US to pressure the involved parties is severely limited and problematic. The group’s co-chairs identify the main obstacle in the report’s introductory letter.

“Achieving these outcomes will require a long-term commitment to a sound strategy, the careful balancing of ends and means and—most importantly—political support at the highest levels.”

In the immortal words of Hamlet, ay, there’s the rub.

“The United States will not be able to rally allies and partners, or achieve unity of purpose within the U.S. government, if we continue to project uncertainty about our commitment to Syria. Although the Syria Study Group believes our proposals offer a viable way forward to secure U.S. interests, we would not counsel engaging in this effort unless it has the support of the President and the Congress, and unless they are willing to make the case for it to the American people. Our troops, diplomats, and aid workers deserve no less.”

While the report goes to considerable lengths to acknowledge the border configuration concerns of Syria and Turkey, in an effort to assuage Ankara’s concerns, it also acknowledges that the interests of the Kurds must to some degree be met and respected. More so, it concludes that in order to continue to carry out functional regional policies, the US has a direct need to protect the interests of the Kurds.

It is worth pointing out that while the report states that vigorous diplomacy is required to accomplish this form of equilibrium between interests, and that the Kurds must be protected during the process, it does not go so far as to recommend that significant, long-term American military protectionism is necessary.

At the time the report was being written, the US military had begun to carry out joint border patrols with Turkish Forces seeking to establish this equilibrium in anything but name. In essence, before the recent involvement by national leadership and the latest Department of Defense leadership change, the military was largely carrying out what the report would come to recommend doing.

[Comrades of SDF soldiers attend the funeral in Kobane in July 2017 of five comrades killed during fighting with ISIS. (Photo: Morukc Umnaber / Picture Alliance)]

For No Eyes Only

In the report’s introductory letter the group urges Congress and the Administration to consider these findings and recommendations carefully, and to implement them in their entirety. Such a statement is usually found only in reports where the authors believe their findings will run counter to the Washington D.C. zeitgeist … meaning that decisionmakers and their specialists will mark the report down for the “shred-without-reading” treatment.

It is doubtful that President Trump was even made aware of the release of the report, or at least that any White House staffer with access to the president made him aware of it. If anything, the fact that the report was bipartisan and that Senator Mitt Romney was a leading Republican proponent of it, probably guaranteed that the opinions, analysis, and recommendations expressed in it were Dead On Arrival (DOA) without even the faintest hope of gaining any worthy discussion.

In fact, the speed with which President Trump relegated the findings to the ash-heap of history was astonishing. The report was released on September 26th, a Thursday. By Sunday, September 29th, President Trump had suddenly ordered the withdrawal of the bulk of US armed forces operating within Syria; this after a phone call with his Turkish counterpart, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The removal of the bulk of US forces meant that the only true deterrent of merit for a renewed Turkish offensive against the ambitious Syrian Kurds was gone.

Even the Obama Administration, widely seen as having a particular inability to acknowledge prevailing ground truths and dynamics in the Middle East, understood during its later days that such a Turkish military offensive would be a worst-case scenario. It was understood that such an offensive would be a disaster not just in the humanitarian sense, but in the sense of damaging American operational capabilities in the region. It was no secret that the withdrawal of the live-wire that is the American military presence in the Syrian-Turkish borderland would result in a Turkish military offensive.

Such an offensive is likely to lead to the decimation of the Syrian Kurdish forces as well as widespread casualties among Kurdish civilians.

Of course, for observers of US policy in the Middle East, the eventual betrayal of the Kurds had always been just a matter of time. Abandoning the Kurds is something American presidents, sooner or later, always do. This latest duplicity, however, is worse than all that have come before.

In recent years the Syrian Kurds, among others, have valiantly shed blood and lives alongside Western special operations forces in the war against the Salafist-Jihadist militia group, the Islamic State in the Levant (ISIS). The Democratic Union Party (PYD), a Syrian Kurdish political party of a Marxist leaning, were amongst the first to send its militia group, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), into battle against ISIS.

The YPG would soon, along with a series of smaller Kurdish militia groups and various Arab militia groups, join in under the US-backed umbrella group known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The resulting fighting force, without a doubt, has been among the most efficient fighting forces in the war on ISIS that the US and the West have had at its disposal.

As a result of this investment in manpower, the Kurds have suffered enormous casualties for such a small population. Western news reports suggest the YPG alone has lost approximately 11,000 killed and more than 24,000 wounded. Their sacrifice represents thousands of American casualties that never had to happen.

[President Donald Trump states that Syrian Kurds did not “help us in Normandy” while speaking at the White House, Oct. 9, 2019 (Photo: Evan Vucci)]
When questioned about this, President Trump typically reduced the situation to a monetary transaction arguing that we had given the Kurds massive amounts of cash and military equipment. Trump has also claimed that he is honoring his pledge to end US involvement in “endless wars”, while ordering thousands of troops to Saudi Arabia. Registering even higher on the crazy scale, the President also quoted a “fact” he had learned from some right-wing source that the Kurds were not with us on the beaches of Normandy in World War II.

This is not worthy of comment.

Their sacrifice represents thousands of American casualties that never had to happen.

What Happens Next?

The members of the study group and their staff need to accept the fact that they just wasted a year of their lives. The Syrian debacle should also serve as a lesson to the many Washington think tanks that their meetings and publications are unlikely to have significant policy impact in an administration that has abandoned any semblance of a rational, organised policy process.

Also, as it appears that this current administration based a major decision on a personal whim (or on whoever spoke to the President last), there is little reason for the technocrats at the National Security Council (NSC), Department of State, or Defense Department to read reports or attend discussions and attempt to formulate decision papers. While the influence of the “chattering class” was often less than what they believed (or claimed to their donors), now it is almost certain that most of their jobs represent no more than “white-collar welfare”; their publications will only be deemed worthwhile if they support the political arguments of one extreme or the other.

What About the Kurds?

More importantly, what options are left to the Kurds in Syria?

The Kurds have now awoken to the reality that they have yet again been abandoned by their American friends, left to the tender mercies of President Erdogan. The battle-hardened Kurdish militia groups are now facing the significantly better equipped Turkish military. There is little doubt the Kurds will sell their lives dearly. They will, most certainly, make all of the Western advisers and trainers that have had the honour of serving alongside them proud. As they always have.

These battles will not be fair. They will not be of rifleman versus rifleman, as was the war against ISIS where Kurds and SDF had the advantage of Western air support. Now, the Kurds must face a modern, heavily equipped military. This means armour, jets, heavy artillery, and high tech infantry-level equipment. No doubt the Kurds will find the Turkish heavy armour to be convenient targets for well-rehearsed improvised anti-tank tactics combined with the muddy Syrian winter terrain. The Turkish Air Force will also be well aware of what kind of hardware that the Kurds have available, and that can be used against the Air Force fighters.

The Turks’ access to advanced infantry level technology, mostly provided to them by the US, will mean that even the friendly terrain and shadows cast by the Kurds’ longest-running ally, the mountains, will no longer suffice. While the Kurdish fighting men and women are likely to show the Turks a trick or two, it will not suffice when it comes to protecting their population centres against concentrated air and artillery strikes. In a war like this, it will undoubtedly be the civilians who pay the heaviest price of all.

The Turks will likely seek to push the Kurds out of even traditionally ethnic Kurdish enclaves, before following the same tactic the Russians deployed in Crimea; an ethnic redistribution and reconfiguration. While the Turks will likely not go the full mile – all the way to what the international community would call ethnic cleansing – they will stop just short of it. Before long, the Kurdish ethnic majority found today in the Syrian-Turkish borderland will have been replaced with a majority of Syrian Arab ethnicity. The majority of the Kurdish refugees will probably seek a relative safe haven inside northern Iraq, which will ultimately cause a different series of destabilising problems within the decades to come.

[U.S.-backed SDF fighters stand guard next to men waiting to be screened after being evacuated from territory held by ISIS, near Baghouz, eastern Syria, in
February 2019. (Photo: Felipe Dana / AP)]
In the immediate sense though, this approach by the Turks is likely to be welcomed with open arms by the Damascus leadership under Syrian President Bashar al Assad. It will remove a troublesome ethnic minority that seeks self-rule at a time when the Assad government is hard-pressed to impose its rule on the entirety of Syria. If the Syrian Kurds wish to have any chance of surviving as an ethnic minority inside Syria, they will probably have to subjugate themselves to the Assad regime and its allies. This will significantly strengthen Assad, who may even be tempted to agree to semi-autonomous areas of Kurdish control for their help in countering the Turkish violation of his country’s sovereignty.

By strengthening Assad, by extension, Russia and Iran will also be strengthened, further consigning the United States to regional irrelevance, and global weakness.

ISIS Again

Did President Trump even consider what will happen to some 12,000 ISIS suspects currently imprisoned and guarded primarily by Kurdish forces?

ISIS is already rebuilding and has begun to seize the opportunity to organise a mass jailbreak by thousands of their toughest fighters. As of this writing hundreds have already escaped. Their Kurdish guards must either join the fight against the Turks or flee to protect their families. Reportedly, one of the prisons has already been hit by a Turkish airstrike giving the prison guards further incentive to leave their posts.

When asked about the ISIS prisoner problem, President Trump shrugged it off and nonchalantly pointed out that the 4,000 international fighters among them are mostly Europeans and will likely just return to Europe.

This is just what America’s European allies wanted to hear.

Refugees, the Region and NATO: Who and What Now?

Speaking of allies, who will be America’s boots on the ground in Syria now that the US has betrayed the Kurds?

Assad may use the Kurds to some extent against a resurgent ISIS, but he is just as likely to use them against opposition fighters in the Idlib enclave. This could result in a quick government victory in the northwest, adding 1-3 million more Syrian refugees to the already overburdened system. Lebanon will not take in these refugees, and President Erdogan already plans to send a million or more refugees from Turkey into areas that the Kurds will have fled from along the border to effect a thorough ethnic cleansing.

This betrayal may not have a negative effect just on the Kurds.

NATO allies may become increasingly worried about whether or not America will come to their collective defence should they be confronted by an emboldened President Putin. Already concerned about President Trump’s negative characterisations of NATO, abandoning the Kurds will force NATO to reconsider its security options.

Finally, President Erdogan has added one more threat should the European community confront him over his assault on the Kurds and blatant disregard of Syrian sovereignty. Last week Erdogan warned that he controls the gates through which three million refugees could flood into Europe, and that he is ready to open them. Greece has taken his threat seriously enough to make an emergency request to NATO to send ships to block the migrant sea route.

One can only imagine the shame that American advisors to the YPG are feeling right now. It is a shame all Americans should share. Perhaps some think tank can conduct a study on how we should handle our collective guilty feelings.

In the meantime, we have only to ask ourselves, when will the US government’s decision-making process ever show signs of a return to rationality?

William Stuebner and John Sjoholm, for LIMA CHARLIE WORLD

[Additional edits by Anthony A. LoPresti] [Main Image: Courtesy Reuters]

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William Stuebner served in the United States Army for twenty years, first in the Infantry and then as a military intelligence officer. The last five years of his career revolved around the wars in Central America where he first led a special intelligence team and then worked as the El Salvador desk officer for the Department of Defense. He was also an assistant professor in the Social Sciences Department of the United States Military Academy where he taught politics and political philosophy.

Stuebner’s Balkans work began in May 1992, shortly after the commencement of hostilities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and continues to this day. His assignments included: Humanitarian Assistance Officer for the Department of Defense; Bosnian Field Representative for the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, United States Agency for International Development; Expert on Mission, Office of the Prosecutor, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (twice); Senior Deputy Head of Mission for Human Rights and Chief of Staff, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina. He has also headed two Non-Governmental Organizations dealing with international criminal justice and peace building.

John Sjoholm is Lima Charlie’s Middle East Bureau Chief, managing editor, and founder of the consulting organisation Erudite Group. He is a seasoned Middle East and North Africa expert, with a past in the Swedish Army’s Special Forces branch and the Security Contracting industry. He studied religion and languages in Sana’a, Yemen, and Cairo, Egypt. Between 2007-2011 he was an adviser to the President of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh. He has lived in the Middle East since 2005, and has been part of a multitude of Western-backed regionally stabilising projects. He currently resides in Egypt. Follow John on Twitter @JohnSjoholmLC

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Netflix series ‘The Paper’ (Novine) reflects reality of politics, corruption and freedom of expression in Croatia, the Balkans and beyond

Why should anyone outside of Croatia and the greater Balkans watch Netflix’s hit show “The Paper” other than entertainment value and loads of sex, violence, and titillating political and church scandals?

This month Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the international non-profit that advocates for freedom of information and freedom of the press, issued a statement condemning Croatia’s government for remaining “astonishingly silent” about police investigations into recent attacks on journalists.

“Reporters Without Borders … is disturbed by the Croatian government’s silence about a spate of hate messages and threats against journalists and calls on the authorities to publicly condemn these attacks in order to end the impunity enjoyed by those responsible.”

RSF consistently ranks Croatia 64th out of 180 countries in its press freedom ranking. (Notably America’s 2019 ranking fell to 48).

“Are the Croatian words ‘Smrt novinarima’ (‘Death to journalists’) going to become commonplace in Croatia?”, states the RSF report, following the appearance of threatening graffiti outside of several news organizations. The widespread intimidation of Croatia’s journalists has included labeling them as worms (“Novinari crvi”), death threats posted on social media, physical attacks, fines, arrests, frivolous lawsuits and political pressure.

Just this week, journalist Gordan Duhacek, who writes for the popular Croatian news website Index.hr, was arrested and fined for posting an “anti-police” message on Twitter.

Cited by arresting police, Duhacek allegedly violated a 1970s law that states, “whoever discredits or insults public authorities or officials while carrying out, or in connection with carrying out, their duties or their lawful orders, shall be punished by a fine equivalent … to 50 to 200 Deutschmarks or imprisonment for up to 30 days.” The RSF’s recent report notes that in Croatia insulting “the Republic, its emblem, its national hymn or flag” is punishable by up to three years in prison and that “humiliating” media content has been criminalised since 2013.

In a recent interview, Hrvoje Zovko, president of the Croatian Journalists Association (CJA/HND), said “In Croatia, it’s open season on journalists”.

Amid protests and condemnation over threats to media freedom, RSF has also reported that Croatia’s state run radio and television network, Hrvatska Radiotelevizija (HRT), is the target of government meddling and “is clearly under political pressure”. According to RSF, interest groups attempt to influence HRT’s editorial policies and interfere in its internal operations.

Yet, something very interesting has come out of HRT, content that is now available to almost half a billion viewers in almost 190 countries.

Commissioned in 2015, HRT provided 90 percent of the initial funding for the television drama “Novine”, a series focused around a fictional Croatian newspaper in the port city of Rijeka that IMDB describes as “The last independent newsroom in the country is taken over by a construction magnate for reasons that have nothing to do with love or respect for journalism.” “Novine” opened with construction tycoon Mario Kardum (played by Aleksandar Cvjetković), buying the newspaper after Novine journalists begin digging up dirt that linked Kardum to shady business dealings and a suspicious traffic accident where three people were killed. Kardum assumes total control of the newspaper.

Produced by Croatian production house Drugi Plan (Miodrag Sila and Nebojša Taraba), the series first premiered as part of Sarajevo Film Festival’s Avant Premieres before airing on HRT in 2016. Director Dalibor Matanić explained, “We wanted to explore and understand the events and social shifts that destroyed journalism in our country”. Written by renowned Croatian author and journalist Ivica Djikić, the Croatian-language series was lauded for its plot complexities, as well as its numerous sub-plots.

“Novine” became an instant hit. Before a second series could be produced, HRT announced in 2018 that American media juggernaut Netflix had bought the rights to “Novine” and would introduce it to the world, renamed “The Paper” for international release. After a successful second season, this June, Netflix announced that filming for the third season had begun.

In “The Paper”, the nationalist, extreme-rightist, corrupt mayor of Rijeka is mounting his campaign for the presidency. This is the first instance of how the plot turns the actual situation on its head, as the city of Rijeka tends to be more liberal than much of the rest of the country and, as such, would be an unlikely place for the character “Mayor Tomašević” (played by Dragan Despot) to emerge. His political antagonist, Croatia’s President and head of the left-leaning Social Democratic Party, is obviously modeled after today’s real-world President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović who is decidedly right-wing and nationalistic.

While American audiences often take a dim view to shows requiring subtitles, the series and its crew have been widely acclaimed for featuring excellent acting and production values. Rightfully so. It is quite apparent that Netflix has a binge-worthy hit on its hands.

And, yes, people actually do smoke and drink as much as it appears on screen. Whether or not they engage in as much sex is for someone else to judge.

So why should anyone outside of Croatia and the greater Balkans region watch “The Paper” other than entertainment value and loads of sex, violence, and titillating political and church scandals?

It is most noteworthy what the series says about freedom of expression in Croatia and the myriad problems facing a society still emerging from unresolved memories of World War Two, and fifty years of socialism under Josip Broz Tito. While this series should be of interest to a wide audience, it is especially of interest to diplomats and military men and women who have been engaged in the Balkans over the past two decades and may be wondering why their best efforts have achieved so little.

Anywhere money is the key to power and the primary motivator, the tale so well told in this series is common.

“The Paper” skewers each and every sacred cow in modern Croatian society. This makes a dramatic statement about freedom and openness in a country that only in the past decade has entered NATO and the European Union. By exposing the slimy underside of establishment politics, big business, the Catholic Church, organized crime and heroic accounts of the “Great Homeland War” of 1991-1995, this series scores a trifecta.

Still, all this might not be enough if it were merely exposing specifically Croatian fault lines. Rather, many of the problems revealed here permeate the entire region, other post-communist countries, and even Western Europe and the United States where the phrase “fake news” and accusations that the press is the “enemy of the people” have become commonplace.

The people of the states of the Former Yugoslavia will no doubt be able to recognize all of the sub plots as relevant to their own societies. Chief amongst those subplots are:

  • The post-communist role played by ex-police/intelligence officers
  • The rise of extreme nationalistic right-wing groups and policies to gain political advantage
  • The financial and sexual misbehavior of religious figures and institutions
  • The use of hardened war veterans for both ordinary crime and political assassination
  • The power wielded by business/organized crime figures and their shifting alliances with public figures from all sides of the political spectrum
  • The impunity from accountability so many politicians and oligarchs and their families enjoy because of money and connections

It is debatable whether Tito’s security services were relatively benign compared to their Stalinist counterparts in other countries, or just better at covering their tracks. Their operatives and successors continue to work and thrive, only reporting to new masters or working as free agents for personal profit. Can anyone doubt that they, or at least their imitators, have been involved in the many political assassinations and murders of journalists that have occurred since the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s?

For example, were the killings in Sarajevo of the Bosniak police official, Nedzad Ugljen, and the Bosnian Croat politician, Jozo Leutar, just random incidents devoid of any influence from the top levels of government? What about the assassinations of Zeljko Raznatovic (aka Arkan) and several others in Belgrade before they could be arrested and, perhaps, testify against their superiors?

So many high-level eliminations and so few prosecutions are not a coincidence.

[2017 promotion for ‘Novine’ featuring fictitious Mayor Ludvig Tomašević (played by Dragan Despot)]
What about the continued use of fear and hate mongering on the part of Balkan politicians? The last war proved there is fertile ground throughout the region for gaining and maintaining power through the use of these tools.

Take, for instance, the fact that the aforementioned Croatian President Kolinda can publicly mourn (rightfully) the mass executions of Croatians at Bleiburg at the end of World War II by Tito’s Partisans, yet ignore the many thousands of Serbs and others at Jasenovac, the Balkan Auschwitz? And what about Bosnian Serb President Milorad Dodik who denies the genocide at Srebrenica?

Of course, none of these kinds of activities are reserved only to the Balkans. Rather, the fomenting of hate, xenophobia and racism, especially on the Right, are just as common in Russia, Hungary, Austria, Italy, France, Myanmar, India, and, sadly, the United States of America.

As for corruption and sexual abuse by men and women of the cloth, this behavior is common in all faiths and in nearly every country. What makes “The Paper” storyline so unique in Croatia is that the Church has been sacrosanct and, indeed, Catholicism is elemental to the national identity of most Croatians. As shown in the series, Croatian politicians of every stripe compete for the blessings of the Church to boost their election chances. American readers may well recognize a similar pattern in their own country by substituting Catholic for Evangelical.

That some battle-hardened veterans find it convenient to sell the skills they have learned at great personal cost to the highest bidder should come as no surprise, especially in regions like the Balkans where good jobs are scarce. It was no accident that the notorious American security provider Blackwater found Serbia an especially good place to recruit triggermen. The contractor hired hundreds of Serbians with ground combat experience despite the fact that there was no ground combat in Serbia proper, unless one counts Kosovo, and even there close combat was rare. How convenient it was for both employer and employee to have a situation where one could be well-paid and operate in areas with no rule of law to get in the way.

If a veteran possessed no moral compass, or one where the needle always pointed in the direction of political authority and cold cash, it is naturally tempting for an unscrupulous politician to employ a skilled sniper or explosives expert to solve a problem quickly and easily. “The Paper” reveals a veteran sniper, who has already murdered an inconvenient police officer, seeking to assassinate the Prime Minister. This is not unlike a real-world incident in Montenegro where Serbs and Russians conspired to murder Prime Minister Djukanovic on the eve of his country’s accession to NATO membership.

[Netflix series “The Paper” (Novine)]
The tale of shifting alliances and loyalties among politicians, businessmen and organized crime figures is well demonstrated in “The Paper”.

Anywhere money is the key to power and the primary motivator, the tale so well told in this series is common.

While perhaps especially egregious in countries that arose out of totalitarianism, war and collective ownership, as we say in America, “politics makes strange bedfellows”, and we must wonder if our own system is any longer superior to that of the Balkan countries.

Finally, there are so many strong characters in “The Paper” that anyone not very familiar with the Balkans, post-Communist Eastern Europe, and the names of pre-war Yugoslavia (American pundit P. J. O’Rourke once referred to the Croatian conflict as the “war of the unspellables against the unpronounceables”) might find it useful to draw up a personalities list or chart just to keep up with who is screwing (both literally and figuratively) whom.

While it is difficult to pick out one character as being the lead, if it were possible to do so, probably “Dijana” (Branka Katic), a determined, courageous and promiscuous Serb investigative reporter who returned to Rijeka from Belgrade after the war would get my nod. She ties together more of the sub plots than anyone else.

Viewers, however, can form their own opinions from the large cast almost all of whom turn in masterful performances. My favorite characters include “Jure” (Drazen Mikulic), a tough war-veteran cop from Herzegovina who in many ways is a consummate professional, but who doesn’t shy away from setting off car bombs and beating suspects to a bloody, unrecognizable pulp; and “Blago” (Zdenko Jelcic), a scary career Yugoslav police/intelligence officer who transfers his loyalty first to Croatia and then to various political and business figures, while always maintaining a germ of humanity under his almost-psychotic facade.

[Spoiler alert]

Blago is ultimately betrayed and accused of murdering a neo-Nazi Croatian war hero at the behest of the government; an incident that informed viewers will see as a direct reference to the assassination of the real-life commander of the Croatian special forces, Blaz Kraljevic.

That the series can basically accuse the founding fathers of modern Croatia of this murder and get away with it is incredible. Like the fictional independent Rijeka newspaper, the series is making a stand on behalf of much needed journalistic integrity. Given everything “The Paper” reveals about societal undercurrents in Croatia, it should be no surprise to Western diplomats and soldiers who have served in the Balkans that so little lasting progress has been made.

That this series could even be produced demonstrates, however, that there is some cause for optimism. Perhaps the democratic and legal gates through which a country has to pass through to attain European Union membership really do have some beneficial effects.

But what about other countries like Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo who have not yet traversed the difficult path to EU membership and perhaps never will?

One cannot be blamed for being pessimistic, especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina where the complex Dayton Agreement-mandated political system has multiplied the opportunities for corruption, crime and officially-ordered murder. Sadly, this situation is exacerbated by almost complete legal impunity for the rich and well-connected. Until the day comes when the other former Yugoslav states can produce and broadcast programs like “The Paper” and hold everyone, including the highest political figures accountable to the rule of law, I remain gloomy about the possibility of societal progress.

Meanwhile, we should all recognize the warning signs of the same accountability problem in America.

Keep an eye out for the show’s third season currently in production. I am certain viewers will return for the sex and violence, and end up staying for the politics!

William Stuebner, for LIMA CHARLIE WORLD

[Edited / developed by John Sjoholm with additional edits by Anthony A. LoPresti] [Main Image: Courtesy HRT / Netflix / Drugi Plan ]

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William Stuebner served in the United States Army for twenty years, first in the Infantry and then as a military intelligence officer. The last five years of his career revolved around the wars in Central America where he first led a special intelligence team and then worked as the El Salvador desk officer for the Department of Defense. He was also an assistant professor in the Social Sciences Department of the United States Military Academy where he taught politics and political philosophy.

Stuebner’s Balkans work began in May 1992, shortly after the commencement of hostilities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and continues to this day. His assignments included: Humanitarian Assistance Officer for the Department of Defense; Bosnian Field Representative for the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, United States Agency for International Development; Expert on Mission, Office of the Prosecutor, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (twice); Senior Deputy Head of Mission for Human Rights and Chief of Staff, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina. He has also headed two Non-Governmental Organizations dealing with international criminal justice and peace building.

Lima Charlie World provides global news, featuring insight & analysis by military veterans, intelligence professionals and foreign policy experts Worldwide.

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Image Lima Charlie News Headline - Radovan Karadzic - William Stuebner - APR 19 2019Lima Charlie News Headline Art of Foreign Influence Russian Military Adviser JUN 3 2019 DeAtkineLima Charlie News Headline Russo-Turkish Alliance AUG 1 2019

Blossoming Russo-Turkish alliance leaves U.S., NATO behind

Blossoming Russo-Turkish alliance leaves U.S., NATO behind [Lima Charlie News]

Amid the failed politics of Patriot missiles and F-35s, Moscow and Ankara’s blossoming relationship has left NATO and U.S. interests exposed.

Relations between Turkey and the West continue to face a number of challenges. The latest set of challenges, that culminated recently in a squabble over the purchase of American versus Russian weapons systems, are but mere symptoms of a much larger set of predicaments.

Many of these problems are being erroneously pinned on U.S. President Donald Trump, ignoring the fact that NATO-Turkish relations have been deteriorating since the early 2000s. From the first days of the War on Terror, Turkey has been a reluctant tactical partner to the West. This reluctance likely stems from the belief that Western engagement in the region does little to advance Ankara’s ambitions. Instead, the greater the Western presence in the Middle East, the greater the threat to Ankara’s ambitions. Such ambitions are namely the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

This problematic relationship has now reached a new height. A series of shifts and what some see as outright betrayals have emerged.

Putin Erdogan
[A Russian bodyguard stands near President Vladimir Putin as he talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a meeting in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. (Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko / AFP/Sputnik)]
In recent months Turkey completed its controversial purchase of the Russian made S-400 Triumf anti-aircraft weapons system (NATO codename SA-21 Growler, previously known as the S-300 PMU-3). This deal with Russia over a NATO ally was consummated despite the availability of a barely equal American option (more about that later). Aside from this transaction, Ankara has also politically and militarily sided with Moscow in the ongoing war in Syria, where questions have also arisen as to just how friendly Turkey appears to be with certain Jihadist-aligned militia groups that operate in Syria and worldwide. Overall, Turkey appears to be quickly forming a geostrategic alliance of potentially great regional impact with Russia.

In response to these developments, Washington announced a few weeks ago that it would not allow Turkey to purchase the highly advanced, yet probably flawed, trillion-dollar boondoggle that is the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II. This announcement, however, did not have the expected effect. Rather than crawling back begging for Washington’s forgiveness, Ankara ramped up its dialogue with Moscow over the purchase of the Su-27 derivate multi-role Sukhoi Su-35 (NATO codename Flanker-E) air superiority fighter jet.

None of this is surprising. It all plays into a much larger mosaic, of which few are aware of its full extent. Ankara’s strengthening of ties to Moscow comes in no small part due to the pragmatism Moscow employs when it comes to the ground truths in Syria, Libya and Iran, just to name a few places that Turkey has an active interest. Russia’s actions on the ground throughout the Middle East, and elsewhere, show that while Turkey’s regional ambitions can be viewed as incompatible with the West, they are certainly compatible, for the time being, with Russia.

In the Shadow of a Coup

President Erdoğan has in recent years engaged in an aggressive consolidation of power. His actions have fueled domestic and international concern about increasing authoritarianism in the country.

In July 2016, Erdoğan survived a large-scale coup attempt by members of the Turkish military. The perpetrators accused their president of being, among other things, undemocratic. In the immediate aftermath, which is still ongoing, the government detained tens of thousands, often on undisclosed grounds, and shut down a variety of businesses, schools and media outlets. Also detained were a large number of Turkish citizens affiliated with U.S. diplomatic facilities, including even janitors and other service personnel. Since the attempted coup, the Turkish military has lost a considerable number of its most qualified officers and strategists. In June 2019, a quasi-civilian court sentenced 151 people, mostly from the military, to life in prison for their involvement in the coup attempt.

Officially, the objective of this “Great Purge” was to root out anyone associated with the former Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is viewed by some as the polar opposite of Erdoğan. The U.S. has refused to hand over Gulen, and many Turks believe that Washington had some degree of involvement in the coup. These acts by the Erdoğan government come in no small part out of fear that another coup may be brewing, one that must be found and quickly and savagely brought to an end.

Odd Couples

To facilitate a harsh rule and approach to a country’s domestic scene, one must carefully select international partners. The West is no longer a suitable partner for such things. Perhaps it never was. During the 2011 Arab Spring movement, the author worked extensively with the leaders of Egypt and Yemen witnessing firsthand how weak, even dubious U.S. support was for its regional allies, partners that had found themselves exposed to populist movements.

Russia however, with its natural habit of nihilistic realpolitik and little interest in moral condemnation is often an ideal partner. There is little doubt that Moscow would be more than a willing partner if called upon to assist. Additionally, recent speculations have implied that a deciding factor in favour of purchasing highly advanced armament systems from Russia is that such systems would not have any built-in safety protocols against firing on your own air force jets, or those of your allies.

Turkey has a long history of not siding with Western interests. As is often the case, this is in large part due to ill-understood practicalities. The West is not always the most practical or united entity to deal with. The West also has a tendency to not understand the ground truths in the places it elects to engage with. The U.S. has become near infamous for this. While Turkey’s ruling government had at one time become known for being passive-aggressive, often offering snide remarks from the sidelines, in recent decades Turkey has moved from a reluctant ally to an active obstacle to Western interests. This has been mostly under Erdoğan’s rule.

[Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in November, 2018. Photographer: Bulent Kilic / AFP]

Turkey in NATO

Turkey’s importance to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is not just due to the nation’s geostrategic location. Turkey has the second-largest military force in NATO. A NATO without Turkey would be significantly weakened.

There does not presently exist a mechanism for suspending, much less expelling a country from the NATO alliance. The removal of Turkey as a NATO ally is unlikely. Erdoğan knows this. Western military operations throughout the upper Middle East remain heavily reliant on Turkey and its geographically vital position as the proverbial Gate to the East. The cost to NATO, meaning the cost to the U.S., of finding a replacement for Incirlik Air Base, a vital installation situated some 70 miles from the Syrian border, is both financially and politically immeasurable. Despite several willing partners, such as Greece and Jordan, such a shift is also unlikely. Having said that, it would not be a bad idea for NATO to at least remove its nuclear capabilities at Incirlik.

The War Against the War

Turkish reluctance as a NATO ally became particularly noticeable in the summer of 2002 as the U.S.-led coalition of The Willing to invade Iraq began taking shape. With the U.S. military and intelligence community having begun preparatory operations it was initially thought that Turkey would cooperate with a suitably shaped war plan. As a result, Turkish military leadership was given a seat at the planning table.

Turkish political and military support, however, was proven to be largely unavailable. Ankara had little to no interest in providing actual support for the coalition and its plans. No doubt this reluctance was in no small part because the Western plan relied heavily on swift-moving special operations forces, which would in turn rely on the humanitarian tactical landscape and some pragmatic alliances – namely the Kurds. This approach was one that Ankara could not adhere to.

Western special operations operators working closely with Kurdish assets was a deal breaker for Turkey. These Kurdish assets would gain immeasurable resources, tactical know-how and strategic benefits by their affiliation with the West’s premier fighters and intelligence operators.

Ultimately, Ankara feared that the Kurds would gain enough Western awareness and political support to further their quest for a sovereign nation under whatever titulary name and shape it might take. War has made stranger things possible.

In 2002 Ankara pitched to Washington a multi-decade plan that could alter the Middle East geopolitical and strategic landscape.

The Ankara Plan

Instead of the U.S. plan, Ankara and its military and intelligence leadership suggested alternatives more to their liking. This was made clear to me during conversations I had in 2007. At the time, then-Undersecretary of the Turkish Ministry of Defense General Işık Koşaner, and his colleague, Lieutenant General Necdet Özel, then-Commander of the 7th Corps and Deputy Commander of Training and Doctrine Command, told me that in 2002 Ankara had pitched to Washington an intelligence oriented operation that would disrupt Saddam Hussein’s and the Baathist rule of Iraq. It was sold as a multi-decade plan that could alter the Middle East geopolitical and strategic landscape, a highly cost-effective option that would see few Americans involved on a tactical level.

To the author, details of that plan appear very similar to the 1979-1989 CIA operation known as Operation Cyclone. Operation Cyclone had been deployed with great success against the Soviet presence in Afghanistan at an estimated total cost of some $6 billion. The proposed Ankara plan would have seen Turkey taking the same pivotal role that Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) had played during Operation Cyclone. It would have placed an undue amount of influence of Western interests in the Middle East at the hands of Ankara and would have sent Turkey’s pan-regional ambitions to unseen levels.

This is, at the very least, how Operation Cyclone played out for Afghanistan, the ISI and the Pakistani central government. No doubt there are still those in Turkey that believe such a solution would serve all interests and should have been implemented. The proposed Ankara plan only saw a predictable, tacit degree of consideration.

Instead, Washington and its coalition allies quickly saw fit to deploy more direct measures. Thus, by June 2002, Ankara and its military General Staff had already on multiple occasions refused entry for the CIA’s highly reputed counterterrorism field team. By early July 4th, the situation had reached a breaking point. The Turkish General Staff had yet again refused to allow the American intelligence team to enter Turkey, despite the fact that their destination was the NATO Incirlik Air Base. Ultimately, after a crisis meeting that same day, the counterterrorism team leadership decided it was necessary to override the Turkish refusal. The Show Must Go On.

Operation Hotel California

On the morning of July 7th, the team entered Turkish airspace after a brief refueling stop at a neighbouring NATO-membership nation and landed at the Western-military affiliated side of Incirlik. Ankara had not been told of the plan ahead of time. Mere days earlier, the team had seen reinforcements join their ranks from the U.S. Army 5th and 10th Special Forces Groups. Together, the CIA special activities team and their brothers from the Army would form the tip of the spear of the American tactical push into Iraq.

Nearly immediately after landing, the team received the necessary armaments and headed out towards the Turkish-Kurdistan border region. On July 10th, it crossed the Harburr River into Kurdistan. On the other side of the border, they would link up with Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and begin operations set to prepare the necessary tactical human landscape for the not-yet-decided-upon invasion. When they crossed the border, they initiated one of America’s most complex and dangerous covert operations to date.

Under the header of Operation Hotel California this group of men, along with their Kurdish allies would, throughout the initial tactical operations in Iraq, come to form the entirety of the northern force against Saddam Hussein’s forces.

As part of the group’s tactical operations, a series of false flag and false front operations were conducted. As part of a larger false information campaign carried out by the U.S. Army’s Psychological Operations (PSYOP) and Warfare division, the group conducted a deception operation to convince the Iraqis that the U.S. Army 4th Infantry Division would mount its primary assault into Iraq through Turkey. The plan to have the 4th Infantry Division enter the fray through the Turkish-Iraqi border had begun as part of the actual invasion plan, but was quickly rejected by the Turkish high command and thus abandoned by the U.S. command as well. The notion was, however, useful to keep alive as a rumour. This put additional pressure on the Special Operations field teams and their affiliated Kurdish militia groups tactical environment, putting their lives in direct danger, as the Iraqi military began to amass portions of its heavy armour and artillery in the area.

That this group would come to form the entirety of the northern flank against the Iraqi military was not planned. Instead, it had become a necessity. Within the months that followed Turkey would come to block scalable operations by the coalition from within the Turkish nation. The official fear was that the U.S. would initiate an additional northern front against Iraq from Turkey’s side thus forcing Ankara to take sides in a conflict it desired to be left out of.

As the Iraqi invasion plan quickly began to solidify, the Turkish political leadership attempted to throw yet another wrench in the Western war machinery. As 2003 began, Turkey’s parliament voted through a bill that would prohibit the U.S.-led coalition from opening a second front originating from Turkey. It also prohibited the use of NATO installations in the country from being used in “offensive matters” in regards to operations in Iraq. Ankara’s leadership did little to object to the parliamentary bill, instead giving its tacit support.

By March, mere days before the invasion was set to begin, the parliamentary decision allowed the Turkish military to prohibit the initial deployment of the 10th Special Forces Group from following their brethren’s path into battle via the Turkish border. In the days before March 20th, the day on which the invasion began, the 10th SFG group’s deployment had to be rerouted through the region. Instead of going through Turkey, it had to mount its assault from the Sunni Arab Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which also shares a border with Iraq. This meant that the deployment of troops, which had originally been scheduled to take four hours, would now take ten hours.

However, with March 20th looming ever closer, the writing on the wall was clear. The coalition would invade and Turkey risked being left behind. Thus, Turkey would eventually allow an increasing number of military operations to originate from Turkey. Midway through the initial stages of the invasion, Turkey would even turn its coat in the wind and join the coalition. This was done less out of interest of maintaining its alliance with the West, and more as a pragmatic measure to maintain its seat at the table.

As such, the remaining elements of the 10th SFG would be allowed to use Turkey as their staging ground, under the condition they would prioritise missions against al Qaeda affiliated group Ansar al-Islam fi Kurdistan (AAI) and its bases. Turkey viewed the AAI group as a potential threat against its interests in the border areas. Attacking them served the interests of all concerned parties and was part of the operational plan of Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force — North (CJSOTF-N), more commonly referred to as Task Force Viking. However, the allowance to use Turkey as a staging ground was only extended to small-scale and small-team operations. Larger-scale operations, such as the bulk deployment of Task Force Viking was not permitted.

Task Force Viking
[Task Force Viking paver stone (via Eugene G. Piasecki, Veritas)]

Ugly Baby

To avoid this restriction, Task Force Viking created a plan known as “Ugly Baby”. The Ugly Baby operation meant that coalition forces would engage in the longest infiltration by air mission since World War II, utilising Lockheed MC-130 Combat Talon I. The Ugly Baby operations infiltration mission aspect was initiated from Jordan, meaning that it would take the troops nine to eleven hours by air before they would reach their target destinations. The troops that initiated their operations out of Turkey were able to reach their target zones within three to five hours. The operation began in the early evening of March 20th, 2003.

As Task Force Viking landed, it was joined by some 60,000 Kurdish Peshmerga fighters from a variety of factions [1]. The Kurdish forces had received their training and were largely coordinated by the men from Operation Hotel California. It would take until March 23 before Turkey would allow air operations through Turkish airspace to be scaled up.

While the West engaged in special operations missions aided by the Kurds – who hoped their sacrifices on the battlefield would help make the Kurdish dream of a nation state a reality – the Turks covertly dispatched their own special operations troops. The Turks would train and equip the Turkmen Front with the goal of destabilising the Kurds and their militia capabilities. This, the Turks hoped, would allow them the pretext of entering the fray under the banner of a “peacekeeping” entity.

By mid-April, the Turkish plan had become apparent to the Western forces, and attempts were made to stop it. U.S. Army Colonel William C. Mayville Jr. began to intercept Turkish military forces operating covertly inside Iraq with the aim of escorting them back to the Turkish border.

[Russia’s S-400 missile system (Source: Mihail Mokrushin / Sputnik)]

Master Disruptor

These are just some of the more direct cases. Throughout the recent turmoil in Syria, Turkey’s role has been that of a disruptor of Western interests, even if such disruptions entailed a high humanitarian price – one that Ankara no doubt has little qualms of letting Syria’s civilians pay. Of course, adherers to Ankara would likely say the same thing about the West.

Turkey has sought to play a grander role in the affairs of the region since the early-2000s, and as it has done so, its Western relations have deteriorated. This comes in no small part due to the Turkish leadership’s erroneous belief that in order to hold an increasing geostrategic role in the region it must side with Islamic values and play the role of a foe to the West.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, first as Turkey’s Prime Minister in 2003 and then as President in 2014, has largely built his base fanning the traditionalist, Islamist and nationalistic winds of Turkey, while promising a return to the glory of Turkish-led empires long gone.

Ankara has placed Turkey on a problematic political trajectory, one destined to see increasing political friction with Israel, along with virtually any and all Sunni Arab countries in the region. In fact, the only Sunni Arab nation that Turkey has as of yet not “rubbed the wrong way” is Qatar. The only reason for the absence of conflict with Doha is that Qatar has been quite willing to share what influence it might possess with Ankara. Qatar’s willingness, however, may come to an abrupt end in the coming months as pressure from Riyadh is building, seeking to coerce Qatar to fall in line with the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s leadership. While Riyadh and Abu Dhabi’s strong arm tactics are in direct conflict with Ankara’s lofty ambitions, Turkey has shown great reluctance to provide any meaningful support to Qatar.

Patriots Unite Us!

The U.S.-made MIM-104 Patriot surface-to-air missile (SAM) system is without a doubt among the most highly advanced pieces of equipment that any nation can invest in. The system is in use across the U.S.-allied realm, from Japan to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Buying it means that you have access to world-renowned accuracy and reliability. But perhaps more important, buying the Patriot system shows your nation’s fidelity to the U.S.

Not buying it, well… shows something else.

As such, the U.S. has long sought to sell its MIM-104 Patriot system to Turkey. Turkey and its military top echelon need something like the Patriot system to enable the Turkish Air Force to enter the next level of Concept of Operations (CONOPS) and be able to engage in anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategies with their peers. Without it, a foe from the East or from the Levant – such as Israel or Iran – could violate Turkish air space with little penalty. Ultimately, in this day and age, with the battle for air supremacy being a large and deciding factor in any war, it is essential to have a contemporary/next-generation SAM system. Ankara knows this.

In other words, this would appear to be an easy sell. The U.S. has actually had Patriot systems deployed on and off in Turkey for years. The U.S./NATO controlled side of Incirlik Air Base received a Patriot installation featuring several batteries in January 1999. This Patriot system was deployed in light of a perceived threat increase against the base in the shape of SCUD missiles fired in relation to the Northern Iraq No-Flight Zone (NFZ) patrol flights which were operating out of the Turkish airbase. The Patriot systems, while deployed and active, were never fired and have remained at the base since.

The deployment of additional Patriot systems to Turkey was announced on December 4th 2012 in light of the escalating conflict in neighbouring Syria. The intent was to deploy them to protect strategically vital positions inside the country from potential missile and rocket attacks fired by non-state or state-supported groups operating from within the quickly spreading security vacuum in the Syrian-Turkish borderland areas.

In part, the “free” 2012 deployment of additional Patriot systems to Turkey was done so that the U.S. could win the $3+ billion Turkish long-range air and missile defence systems (T-LORAMIDS) bid, an ambitious programme which sought to install a nation-encompassing surface-to-air defence system, in 2013. The T-LORAMIDS programme was launched in March 2007 and was set to run for 5 years, with an announcement being made by year 6. Despite political pressure to award the $3+ billion bid to a NATO ally, the main candidate being the U.S., the bid was awarded to China Precision Machinery Import-Export Corporation (CPMIEC) and it is Hong Qi-9 (meaning “Red Banner-9), FD-2000 variation SAM system in September 2013. The Hong Qi-9 is an upgraded version of the Russian S-300 system. Its upgrades are believed to make it a hybrid variation between the S-300 and the S-400 systems out of a technological point of view.

The U.S. responded to the announcement by blocking funds which had previously been approved to integrate a Turkish SAM installation into the overall NATO defences. By 2015, the project appeared to have gone nowhere and was cancelled citing an undisclosed disagreement between Ankara and Beijing. The umbrella project T-LORAMIDS would, in turn, be cancelled a few months later in November 2015 without having seen a conclusion. The Chinese manufactured HQ-9, which had been intended for Turkey, would end up being shipped to Vietnam and Turkmenistan in exchange for Chinese companies gaining access to natural gas fields within these countries.

To further put pressure on Turkey to “do the right thing” during the summer of 2015 both the U.S. and Germany threatened to remove their in-country Patriot installations, thus exposing the nation to missile attacks from the uncontrolled areas in Syria. While the T-LORAMIDS programme would die the death of an orphan, Germany would still end up removing their Patriot installations. The trained German Patriot operators would, however, be redeployed along with Dutch operators to Turkey in October that same year to control the U.S. provided Patriot installations instead. This was however more likely due to issues with the installations rather than political causes. The U.S. Patriot installations have however remained.

[U.S Patriot Missile System]

A Western-Asian Standoff

Since the demise of the T-LORAMIDS project, Washington has continued to put pressure on Ankara to “choose wisely”, meaning to buy the Patriot system. At the same time, Turkey has engaged in negotiations for a T-LORAMIDS-like solution with all available producers. As such, the Turkish military has engaged in talks with not just the U.S. and Russia, but also France and the UK among others.

By the early summer of 2018, the U.S. went on a full charm offensive towards the Turks as it became apparent that the talks with Moscow were proceeding. It was, however, a widely held belief by Washington insiders that Turkey would, in the end, go with the United States. Turkish officials did express concern that the U.S. Congress would not agree to a sale of the Patriot system, citing previous opposition for other arms sales to Turkey on multiple of occasions. The U.S. countered this concern by offering favourable discounts and lines of credit. [2]

By December 2018, the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) notified Congress of a possibly impending sale of eighty Patriot MIM-104E Guidance Enhanced Missiles (GEM-T), sixty PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) missiles and related equipment at an estimated value of $3.5 billion. To proceed, congressional approval was required. [3] By the time that Congress was able to reply and an offer was provided to the Turkish armament acquisitions contact, Turkish officials had informed DSCA representatives that a deal with Russia for a greater number of S-400s and related equipment was a “done deal” and that it was all had for $2.5 billion, a billion less than the price of the Patriot offering.

The Turkish government had first expressed interest in purchasing the S-400 system during the 2009 International Defence Industry Fair in Istanbul. It was at that point considered the best system of its kind. Since then the Patriot system, among others, has seen several upgrades. But so has the S-400. It has without a doubt remained one of the most advanced and competitive surface-to-air systems on the market.  The Economist once, somewhat infamously, referred to the S-400 as “one of the best air-defence systems currently made”. It also features a more utilitarian design language, greater operational engagement range, a higher intercept speed and flight altitude, and a lower price point.

Turkish negotiators have specified very clearly that Turkey still could be interested in Patriot systems. But any purchase would be in addition to the S-400 systems from Russia, and the requirement of technical knowledge transfer stood firm.

That latter point, the technological knowledge transfer one, is key and has continued to haunt the negotiations between the U.S. and Turkey throughout. It is a problem that has remained since the early days of the T-LORAMIDS. Turkey wants to gain technological information and know-how not just to maintain these systems, but to develop and advance their own systems. One might add additional concerns to this fact when combined with the already mentioned ambitions of Ankara, and that Turkey has far-reaching ambitions of becoming a premier global armaments manufacturer to support that ambition. This no doubt makes Turkey’s NATO allies less than enthusiastic about co-production and technology sharing.

It is not unlikely that it was the technological knowledge transfer point that made the previous purchase of the Chinese Hong Qi-9 doomed to fail in 2015. According to Douglas Barrie of the International Institute for Strategies Studies in London, it is unlikely that the Chinese were able to hand over the technological know-how that the deal had stipulated. The S-300 design is owned by the Russian State and Beijing may not even possess the necessary knowledge base, much less been able to transfer such information without permission from Moscow.

It appears to be a straightforward, yet insurmountable problem. Fundamentally it comes down to two simple truths. The first is that Ankara wishes to understand what it is that they are buying and using. The second and more important truth is that Washington understandably does not trust Ankara. Considering the recent history in Iraq, events inside Syria, and overall moves by Ankara in the Middle East region — it is hardly surprising that Washington does not trust Ankara.

There are few indicators that Ankara will give in on the point of technology knowledge transfer, and the same can be said about Washington. A Western-Asian standoff if there ever was one. Combine this with Ankara’s ambition, and it does indeed make sense that Turkey went the way of Moscow. Russia is more than willing to not just play the role of a disruptive power but to also sell arms to just about anyone.

Technology transfers are not uncommon in weapons deals with regional powers that have a well developed military-industrial complex. It is indeed part of the package. There are however levels of technological transfer, and it is unclear just how vertical Russia’s technological transfer offering is at this point. Even Moscow is hesitant to provide full technological transfers to just anyone. Nonetheless, with Ankara, one supposes that the ultimate award would be grand enough to warrant any inherent dangers with doing full vertical level business with Erdoğan.

As part of this, the Turkish military has stated that it intends to be a partner with Russia as they jointly develop the next generation SAM system, the S-500.

Another entity that appears willing to chance it that Turkey’s ambitions will not come back to haunt the West is the Italian-French consortium Eurosam. Eurosam has been in cooperation with Turkish armaments producers Aselsan and Roketsan for four years with the ambition of creating a Turkish-designed SAM system. That system is believed to be ready for initial testing by October 2019.

To this day, the majority of actually-installed SAM systems in Turkey remains to be on-loan Patriot systems from the United States. The French Government, however has also installed the French-designed and developed SAMP/T system on at least two military sites inside the country.

In The Danger Zone

Turkey has been set to receive more than thirty Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II stealth jet fighters from the U.S. by the end of 2022. Public statements have indicated that the country was to purchase a total of 120 F-35A’s. That would make Turkey the biggest customer, bar the U.S. of course, of the F-35 program. In fact, the first four F-35As were handed over to Turkish Air Force representatives during a ceremony at the Lockheed Martin plant in Fort Worth, Texas on June 21st, 2018. Two of the planes were flight-ready at the time. Those two were flown to Luke Air Base in Arizona, where the members from the Turkish Air Force would begin training on the new plane.

That ceremony was likely a bittersweet event for the ranking Turkish air force officers. The F-35A’s were intended to be delivered to Turkey by early autumn, but that was not to be. U.S. lawmakers had on a number of occasions threatened, either directly or indirectly, to ban the delivery of the already purchased F-35 jets to Turkey, and expel participating Turkish companies from the programme entirely.

On July 19th, 2018, the U.S. Senate passed through a vote which blocked the delivery of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey. This meant the Turkish officers in the U.S. could only tacitly receive the planes, and only to train with, inside the U.S.

The reason for the ban of delivery was a fear that Turkey would trade F-35 secrets with Russia, either as part of the ongoing negotiations with the Russians, or if the deal was completed as part of a new alliance with Moscow. The deal to purchase the S-400 system from Russia was described in late June to be done, but the Turkish surface-to-air system purchases had already seen many false starts, and the world largely saw the deal as belonging in the category of soft and non-binding arms deals so often signed between nations in the interest of political expedience. In May 2017, one such category defining arms deal had been signed between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia with a stated total value of $350 billion over ten years.

The threat of being excluded from the F-35 programme was one that had an edge to it. A part of Turkey’s partnership status agreement in the F-35 programme is that Turkish defence contractors would provide some 937 individual parts necessary to make the F-35A plane airworthy. Additionally, select Turkish Air Bases were intended to function as part of the F-35 maintenance support backbone for European NATO allies. In May 2013, Lockheed Martin declared that Turkey was projected to earn $12 billion from licensed production of F-35 components alone.

By July 12, 2019, the first installment of Russian S-400 missile defence systems arrived to Turkey by way of air transport, utilising a Russian Air Force strategic airlift quad jet Antonov An-124 Ruslan. Almost immediately the U.S. threatened Turkey with sanctions under the “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act” (CAATSA). This was followed on July 17th with Turkey being dropped, officially suspended, from the F-35 programme.

It has not yet been divulged how, or when, the U.S. will return the over $1 billion of Turkish investments into the F-35 programme, or if Lockheed Martin has been able to source alternative providers of the some 937 necessary parts that Turkish manufacturers were providing the programme. Reports made before the events otherwise indicated that a Turkish expulsion from the programme could delay scheduled deliveries by upwards of two years.

On July 18th, a day after Washington announced the removal of Turkey from the F-35 programme, Sergei Chemezoc, the head of the Russian state-owned armament manufacturer Rostec, stated that Russia is ready to supply Turkey with Su-35 fighter jets to replace the absence of the U.S. F-35A deliveries. Ankara and Moscow have since been discussing this possibility.

The model that the Turks are interested in is the Sukhoi Su-35 Flanker-E, also known as the Su-35S. A fourth-generation plus, or even fourth-generation plus-plus super manoeuvrable jet fighter. Judging by what analysts and observers have stated, it appears to be at least equal, if not superior, to its Western competitors. Its development began in 2003, with the first prototype completed in 2007 and production starting in 2009. More information about this jet, and how it stacks up against the F-35, the F-22s or even the European allied alternatives can be had in Sebastien Roblin’s National Interest article “Airway: Russia’s Dangerous Su-35 vs. America’s F-22 or F-34 (Who Wins?)

[Russian Sukhoi Su-35 Flanker-E]
U.S. Air Force F-35A Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter
[U.S. Air Force F-35A Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. John R. Nimmo, Sr.]
Some reports also indicate that Turkey has also shown interest in the Sukhoi Su-57 stealth multirole fifth-generation jet fighter. This jet is barely out of prototype status but was built with the intent of initially operating alongside the Su-35, but to supersede the plane a few generations later.

It not unlikely that the S-400 purchase, and the follow through by Ankara, was at least to some degree part of a larger plan to do more than just obtain a suitable missile defence system. Forcing the U.S. to agree to an acceptable level of Patriot-affiliated technology knowledge sharing, and forcing a solution to the F-35 conundrum are also part of the plan. If an F-35 solution was not forthcoming then that too would present Ankara with the option of forcing Washington to release Turkey from any contractual obligation regarding the controversial fighter jet. This could be further spun into not just giving Ankara more credit with Moscow, but aiding in its regional ambitions as showing one who stands up against Washington.

Such gambits often work well in the region.

Those credits with Moscow and the perspective these events helped cement will no doubt come to help strengthen Ankara’s leadership position in the soon-coming dialogues with Tehran and Damascus over the future of the upper Middle East. The region is seeing several underlying socio-dynamic changes and is poised for a change in power dynamics. The Damascus coalition has emerged as largely victorious, allowing Tehran to further solidify its influence and operational capabilities throughout the region.

These changes have all been at the expense of Riyadh, which has predictably begun to lose what lustre it had with its Western audience. Meanwhile the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is quickly emerging as the region’s Sunni éminence grise, a true Machiavellian operator.

Ankara remains uniquely positioned to utilise these new power dynamics, now without having to worry about Washington’s meddling. Indeed, Washington appears to have quite willingly helped assist a well solidified Ruso-Türk Geostrategic alliance to take form.

Indeed, some, like my dear friend and colleague, U.S. Army Colonel (Ret.) Norvell DeAtkine would argue that Western-Turkish relations are even more endemic than what I have described.

John Sjoholm, for LIMA CHARLIE WORLD

[Edited by Anthony A. LoPresti ]

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John Sjoholm is Lima Charlie’s Middle East Bureau Chief, managing editor, and founder of the consulting organisation Erudite Group. He is a seasoned Middle East and North Africa expert, with a past in the Swedish Army’s Special Forces branch and the Security Contracting industry. He studied religion and languages in Sana’a, Yemen, and Cairo, Egypt.  He has lived in the Middle East since 2005, and has been part of a multitude of Western-backed regionally stabilising projects. He currently resides in Egypt. Follow John on Twitter @JohnSjoholmLC

Offline References:

[1] Neville, Leigh, Special Forces in the War on Terror (General Military), Osprey Publishing, 2015 ISBN 978-1-4728-0790-8, p.9

[2] Department of Defense, FY19 NDAA Sec 1282 Report, Status of the U.S. Relationship with the Republic of Turkey, Unclassified Executive Summary, November 26, 2018.

[3] Congressional Research Service, Turkey: Background and U.S. Relations In Brief, Unclassified, July 9, 2019.

Lima Charlie World provides global news, featuring insight & analysis by military veterans, intelligence professionals and foreign policy experts Worldwide.

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Cyber Warfare Now – Tales from the Digital Battlefield

Cyber Warfare Now - Tales From The Digital Battlefield [Lima Charlie News]

Democracies worldwide are facing critical challenges from ever expanding cyberwarfare operations with the ability to not just threaten infrastructure, but to control information. Until recently, it was generally accepted that there were just five countries that had the capability of carrying out offensive and defensive cyber-warfare operations on a large scale – the United States, China, Russia, Iran and Israel. But that list has grown. Lima Charlie News presents an in-depth guide to the major players and programs that have deployed to the world’s Cyber Battlefield.

On November 2, 1988, Robert Tappan Morris, the 22 year old son of Robert H. Morris, Sr., launched what is considered the first computer worm to be distributed via the Internet. The Morris Worm, or Great Worm, once released slowed down infected systems to a crawl rendering the networks they ran unusable. Within hours, the Internet was largely disabled in North America, while the worm was making its way around the world. It would take nearly a week before the Internet was able to reconnect and become united again. Robert Tappan Morris would become the first person to be prosecuted and convicted under U.S. federal law for releasing the worm.

At the time, Morris’ father was the leader of an innovative new team at the National Security Agency (NSA). Morris Sr. would co-author a series of books for the U.S. Department of Defense and the NSA known as the “Rainbow Series”, computer security standards and guidelines that would help develop America’s earliest cyber warfare doctrines and tools.

When Morris’ son released the Great Worm, it was a significantly different time. In 1989, there were just 27 known computer viruses. Today, that number is in the millions. The prevention of attacks and enforcement against violators has become an increasing quagmire costing billions. Cyber attacks against U.S. businesses cost $654 billion in 2018 alone. And while all network connections are to an extent traceable, this can only be taken so far before things get complicated. The Internet is essentially ruled by functional anarchy, and those wishing to control it will find that it is much like herding cats. Network traffic patterns, in combination with encrypted tunnels and anonymity servers, means that it is near impossible to control things on a good day.

Even worse, if you try to trace criminal traffic across world networks things will quickly become political. It has become even easier to hide an attacker’s true identity or intent by using proxies in nations that are less than cooperative with Western law enforcement agencies and counter-cyberterror efforts.

Attempts to trace an attack can be faltered with ease when traces require the cooperation of China, Iran or Russia. The refusal to assist with requests for data passing through their national networks leaves the case cold. It doesn’t help that attacks are often suspected of originating from state-sponsored or even state-operated outfits within those nations.

I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

– Albert Einstein

The Great Worm to Cyber Warfare

Cyber warfare is an extremely cost-effective means of disrupting or disabling an opponent. With far less reliance on large-scale industrial capabilities, the new battlefield of the digital era relies on the availability of key individuals with particular skill sets and mental aptitudes. In this new domain, smaller, often poorly funded players can effectively strike much more powerful, well-funded foes.

This type of warfare also has additional advantages to traditional asymmetrical or even symmetrical warfare. It can be extremely difficult to trace an attack back to the originating attacker. While seldom of importance to small asymmetrical terror-oriented groups, like al Qaeda’s cyber warfare wing or the pro-Assad Syrian Electronic Army, that advantage is key to state-operated or state-sponsored groups seeking to mask their attacks.

A prime David vs. Goliath example is Palestine. Under the leadership of Iran-supported Hamas, Palestine is engaged in a protracted cyberwar with a significantly better-funded U.S.-supported Israel. Israel has in turn successfully attacked its other traditional foe, Iran, on multiple occasions with great success and accuracy utilising its cyber warfare capabilities.

The chief example of Israel’s offensive cyber warfare capability is the so-called Stuxnet computer worm attacks against the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems of Iran’s nuclear program in 2010. It is believed that these attacks, which exploited a well-known vulnerability in Microsoft Word, were the breaching point of Stuxnet’s designers to propagate a larger, system and network-wide infection. The Stuxnet attack is widely believed to have employed a joint US-Israel designed cyberweapon that had begun development in 2005 with the specific objective of disabling Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

While Stuxnet appears to have been successful, the wide distribution of the worm led to other groups using it as part of their own cyber attack toolbox under a variety of deviations and names. This may include use by Iranian-backed groups.

Triton, believed to be a version of Stuxnet developed by an unknown third-party group, was deployed in December 2017 against an unidentified power station in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Triton breached the plant’s security measures utilising a very similar method as the original Stuxnet worm, and disabled the power station’s Triconex industrial safety technology (made by Schneider Electric SE). As a result of this attack, the power station’s personnel had to manually override the security systems and shut it down, causing a minor, largely localised disruption in the power grid.

While that attack was not serious, it was a good proof of concept. It would take until the end of 2015 before that proof-of-concept was deployed on a large scale.

US cyber attacks
[Courtesy of Forgerock]
In Ukraine, on December 23rd, 2015, the first known successful large scale cyber attack on a power grid took place. Utilising a trojan known as BlackEnergy, embedded into emails sent to publicly available corporate email addresses belonging to the Prykarpattyaoblenergo energy corporation, a group referred to as “Sandworm” was able to gain access to the corporate network.

As a result the group gained access to 30 substation SCADA controls which they used to switch the power off to 230,000 homes just before December 24th. With cyber conflicts having no rules of engagement to dictate even a modicum of humanity, thousands of households faced the bitter cold of a Ukrainian winter.

To cover their tracks, and to make bringing the stations back online even more difficult, the hard drives of several key computers were wiped out using the KillDisk malware. Whole segments of the internal IT-infrastructure were shut down. Service technicians would have to travel to each individual, often remote substation to reinstall or replace the control installations. It would take up to 6 hours before the systems were restored. Similar, but not yet successful attacks on the U.S.-power grid appear to be frequent.

As global cyber threats have continued to advance and expand in scope and complexity, within the past five years, Western nations have begun to wake up to the realisation that cyber activities from foreign operators can even endanger the very foundation of democracy. From the 5G network concerns with Chinese tech giant Huawei, to the ongoing discourse regarding aggressive Russian interference in American and European elections, the West has realised that safeguarding democratic values requires active engagement as much on the human terrain as on the cyber battlefield.

The Big Five of Cyberwarfare

In 2009 it was generally accepted that there were just five countries that had the capability of carrying out offensive and defensive cyber-warfare operations on a large scale: the United States, China, Russia, Iran and Israel. In 2019, ten years later, that list grew to include the United Kingdom, North Korea and Vietnam. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is believed to be about to join the list as well. On a more tactical level, Syria, Lebanon and Germany are believed to be able to carry out targeted attacks.

The original five will for the foreseeable future continue to be the world’s primary cyber warfare actors.

USA (America First)

The United States of America is the oldest great cyber power with a strategic-level capability to not just carry out cyber attacks, but to defend against attacks on an open-war level. It is also one of the nations in the top five whose economy and social infrastructure are the most dependent on the Internet. Disruptions in the U.S. network could quickly prove devastating to all levels of its vital infrastructures.

As such, the U.S. has long prepared its offensive capabilities in a first-strike capable fashion, developing significant cyber capabilities. As far as defensive capabilities, the U.S. military and intelligence community quickly saw the need to divide the Internet – ARPANET for public use and MILNET for the relatively more closed off section.

However, the built-in defences implemented during the early days of the Internet were largely based on the notion of obfuscation rather than firm security measures. This approach was quickly proven to be inefficient, especially when even the so-called Morris Worm was able to make the jump from the public, academically oriented ARPANET, onto MILNET to infect systems.

This would lead to then-Vice Admiral John Poindexter suggesting in 1985 the introduction of a new security classification, “Sensitive but Unclassified” (SBU). The classification was intended to be implemented primarily on open academic research and fit below the usual levels of Top Secret, Secret and Confidential, while enabling the U.S. government to deny foreigners access to research on matters it perceived could be made sensitive if taken in a particular direction. One of the things Poindexter stated that would be labeled as SBU were research papers relating to what would become the Internet, and the U.S.-infrastructure of the networks which would come to encompass the Internet. The academic world rioted against the notion of being supervised by the cloak-and-dagger crowd. In the end, SBU would come into existence but it would only be applied, and then only sparsely, to research and related matters that were under explicit federal supervision and control. This was not at all near the grand scale that Poindexter had intended.

Throughout the 1990s, the U.S. worked to enhance its capabilities with the understanding that it would soon be forced to meet an enemy unknown on the cyber battlefield. However, the various agencies and units involved in these activities were largely held separate, with little overlap.

The CIA, which was quickly developing an impressive cyber offensive and espionage capability, did its thing separate from the NSA. The military would even divide its cybersecurity thinking and responsibilities to a regional, at times even localised, level under the control of base commanders. The Pentagon would, for a long time, merely advise bases on best practice rather than establish a common structure.

During this time, cyber attacks on U.S. military installations would be investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), rather than the military intelligence division, despite the fact that the majority of attacks originated from inside Russia. The most famed such attack was the so-called Moonlight Maze attack in 1998, which managed to penetrate several sensitive U.S. government networks. That attack led to Newsweek reporting in September 1999 that the U.S. was “in the middle of a cyber war.”

U.S. Cyber Command Components [Image courtesy of the U.S. Department of Defense / DoD News]

America’s Post 9/11 ‘Big Brother’

After the attacks on September 11, 2001, as the War on Terror began, it was apparent that the U.S. was in danger of being attacked by small non-state actors on a grand scale as well. Al Qaeda was attracting capable, often young people, with considerable knowledge of how to carry out cyber warfare and cyber terrorism as well as affiliated influence operations. At the same time, the threat from old and new state actor foes was emerging. Russia, China and Iran were all getting into the game with a vengeance.

This led to several controversial knee-jerk suggestions by the U.S. security community.

In early 2003, now-Admiral John Poindexter, the former National Security Adviser to the Reagan administration, and then-Director of the DARPA Information Awareness Office (IAO), suggested a large scale project called “Total Information Awareness” (TIA). This “Manhattan Project of Counter-Terrorism” would entail the constant automatic monitoring of all American citizens. This would enable the system, and its analysts to detect could-be persons of interest with the intent of anticipating and preventing criminal acts before they were even committed.

In 2003, the project was defunded by Congress, only to be renamed the “Terrorism Information Awareness” project. With a name like that, no one could refuse it. Yet certain changes had to be made to make the sale. In 2004, the Department of Defense (DoD) had it funded under a classified budget annex. The TIA project team members were transferred to the NSA which would supervise the new iteration of the project.

Now, the politicians argued, the purpose was to limit the project to only target military and foreign intelligence interests against non-U.S. citizens. This, of course, meant that the project would have to be even less privacy aware [1], as you can only know if a potential threat is of foreign origin after you have analysed it in detail. Since 2006, TIA has largely been operating as a classified in-house project at the NSA. Similar projects, such as Topsail and Basketball have also come under NSA umbrella.

Many of these projects, such as Topsail, were mainly developed on spec by the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) in Reston, Virginia, with the help of the IAO under the name Project Genoa II. The SAIC board has the retired Admiral Poindexter as an adviser. Its former head of technology, Deborah Lee James, served as the Secretary of the Air Force between December 2013 and January 2017. Mrs James has been a voice in favour of increased military-related expenditures and has named Russia as “the biggest threat” to U.S. national security.

In 2009, a joint task force designed to coordinate the U.S. cyber warfare activities and be the tip of the spear was created – United States Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM). The command is situated at Fort George G. Meade in Maryland. The base is shared with the NSA, among other similar outfits.

Iran (Not Your Father’s Persian Techno)

Cyber warfare has long been a part of Iran’s military strategy, and is considered a part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) “soft war” operations. It is under this header that the support of foreign militia groups, and drop-in Islamist political parties, et al., can be found. Examples include Hezbollah in Lebanon, the al Houthi movement in Yemen, and Hamas in Palestine. All have their own cyber warfare operative units, often trained directly by experts from Tehran.

For instance, the Iranian Cyber Army, famed for its disruption of Twitter in 2009, is largely believed to be controlled by the IRGC. However, Iran appears less reliant on seemingly external, or named, groups than most of its contemporaries. Instead, Iran appears to prefer that the majority of its cyber operations exist under the direct command of the IRGC or one of its domestic national defence organs.

Israel has no doubt observed Iran’s growing offensive cyber capabilities with great concern.

In October 2013, the Iranian commander of the IRGC cyberwar division, General Mojtaba Ahmadi, was found dead in a wooded area near the town of Karaj, north-west of Tehran. Two 9mm rounds were lodged in his upper torso. The Tehran leadership immediately accused Israel’s external intelligence agency, the Mossad, of having carried out the killing.

Less than a week later, in mid-October 2013, the IRGC Brigadier General Mohammad Hossein Sepehr stated that Iran’s was the “fourth biggest cyber power among the world’s cyber armies.” The statement was agreed to by the civilian Israeli National Security Studies (INSS).

A July 2018 report by the American cybersecurity company FireEye detailed a suspected influence operation which originated from Iran. The operation aimed at individuals in the U.S., U.K, Latin America and the Middle East with the intent of leveraging a network of inauthentic news sites and supportive social media accounts to create anti-Saudi, anti-Israeli, pro-Iran and pro-Palestinian drive. Such behaviour was previously largely only attributed to Russian cyber influence and political warfare operations. A May 2019 New York Times article reported that despite FireEye’s 2018 report, these activities continued unhampered and with a degree of success.

Just last week, in the midst of escalated tensions over Iran’s downing of a U.S. drone, USCYBERCOM announced that it had engaged in a cyber offensive against an Iranian intelligence group believed to have assisted in the disabling of oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz.

Israel (Israeli Beach Party)

To read about Israeli capabilities, please check out the Lima Charlie News article “Israel-Hamas Cyberwar, when old warfare meets new” (May 11, 2019).

China (Might Makes Right)

China is without a doubt one of the more active cyber warfare actors. This is no surprise, as China was one of the earliest adopters of the doctrine as it evolved. With China having both the world’s second-largest economy, and the second-largest defence budget, both after the U.S., it also has the resources to be a real contender on the cyber battlefield.

Chinese military strategists were impressed by the use of information warfare by the U.S. military and intelligence agencies during the first Gulf War, such as its effectiveness in causing the Kurds to riot against Saddam Hussein. This included subsequent U.S. operations in Kosovo, Afghanistan and again in Iraq. It was self-evident based on results that this new umbrella warfare term would play a critical role in the increasingly interconnected world.

In 1993, two years after the first Gulf War, China’s military strategic guideline, “Preparations for Military Struggle” (PMS), would include the line “winning local wars in conditions of modern technology, particularly high technology”. This was the first, careful step, of China’s venture into the world of modern warfare. By 2004, one year into the second Gulf War, the PMS was changed to read, “winning local wars under conditions of informationization”. The term informationization is a China-specific term which would further be defined in the 2004 Chinese National Defense plan. That plan has a paragraph which reads “informationization has become the key factor in enhancing the warfighting capability of the armed forces.”

In essence, China intended to use information warfare, which they would come to refer to as Cyber Warfare in their 2015 Military Strategy plan, to maximize their strategic capabilities without firing a shot. To best facilitate this, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) set up its cyber warfare capabilities to work in tandem with the nation’s quickly growing industrial capabilities. This meant a focus on cyber espionage.

Down with CCP

In March 2019, the Swedish intelligence and research agency, Defence Research Agency (FOI), published a report titled “Kina’s industriella cyberspionage” (“China’s industrial cyberespionage”). The report was written by a team of intelligence analysts and consultants under the leadership of Johan Englund. It is the first public report by a government intelligence agency that details China’s increase in recent years of state-sponsored industrial cyber espionage, focusing on gathering information on next-generation IT-infrastructure equipment, missile technology, space and aeroplane technology.

In the report the FOI team shows that the Chinese cyberwarfare division is largely operated directly by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), with the assistance of the Ministry of State Security (MSS). In addition, the CCP is increasingly becoming dominant within the Chinese corporate section. In fact, it appears that the CCP is pushing legitimate, non-state aligned companies aside if they are operating within the IT-infrastructure or high technology fields.

In essence, if you want to be in business, you must have the CCP involved along with its strategic interests. Huawei and ZTE are both listed in the report as a primary example of this.

While the Chinese cyber warfare division, under PLA and MSS control, is largely focusing on corporate and industrial espionage, the United States is not the only target. European and Asian nations have not fared much better. For instance, Australia, Canada and India have all claimed that Chinese government sponsored, probably controlled, hackers breached security protocols in 2013 and 2014 to secure access to blueprints of sensitive installations and intelligence research matters.

The number of attacks the U.S. government and private enterprises lay at the feet of China is numerous. While most appear to be targeting information hubs, such as attempting to gain access to the Google mail services, or installing spy-ware enabled firmware on CISCO routers before they leave the factory, some attacks have had lethal consequences in the “real” world.

For example, between 2010 and 2012, the PLA-MSS cyber unit was able to penetrate a vital CIA instant messaging and database system. This led to, the U.S. government claims, the deaths of between 18 and 20 CIA assets at the hands of Chinese government operators. A joint operation by the CIA and FBI resulted in the January 2018 arrest of a former CIA employee believed to have turned Chinese Spy, Jerry Chung Shing Lee. China has denied all accusations that it carries out offensive cyber warfare operations and has on a number of occasions accused the U.S. of doing the same against Chinese interests.

Yet, while China’s cyber espionage operations are aggressive in nature, it appears to be Russia that is on the largest offensive when it comes to disruptive cyber operations.

[Attack map image via the now defunct Norse Corp. security company]

In August 2016, GRU officers targeted … a voting technology company that developed software by numerous U.S. counties to manage voter rolls, and installed malware on the company network. Similarly, in November 2016, the GRU sent spearphishing emails to over 120 email accounts used by Florida county officials responsible for administering the 2016 U.S. election. The spearphishing emails contained an attached Word document coded with malicious software … that permitted the GRU to access the infected computer.”

Mueller Report, Vol. I, pg. 51

Russia (You’ve got mail from Boris.Badenov@Kremlin.ru)

The Russian intelligence services GRU (Glavnoye Razvedyvatel’noye Upravleniye), SVR (Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki Rossiyskoy Federatsii), and FSB (Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti Rossiyskoy Federatsii), are all highly active and on the offensive across the digital battlefields. Both the military and civilian intelligence services have had vital portions of their cyber operations exposed in recent times. Names of operators, internal unit designations and a wealth of confidential information have been released to the world. There is little doubt what the Kremlin is doing.

While there are, obviously, no official numbers on how many groups that the three Russian security services are either operating or to some extent controlling, it is widely believed that there are at least ten unofficial cyber warfare groups within the purview.

The outfit that carried out the Ukraine power grid attack in 2015, Sandworm, also known as SandWorm Team, is believed to be part of Russia’s emerging hybrid warfare and cyber warfare doctrine and directly sponsored by the Russian state. Sandworm along with Fancy Bear are both believed to belong to a particular cyber warfare division within the GRU, the military intelligence agency.

One of the premier Russian hacker signatures, Guccifer 2.0 has been tied to the GRU as well. Guccifer 2.0 became known for the so-called “DNC Hack”, the 2016 Democratic National Committee email theft which appeared on Wikileaks.

In March 2018, details from the Mueller investigation leaked attesting that Guccifer 2.0 was in fact a collective of persons working for GRU’s Unit 26165 and Unit 74455. This after server logs revealed that on at least one occasion someone utilising the Guccifer 2.0 persona had failed to activate a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to obfuscate his IP address. It was then revealed to investigators that his connection originated from a computer at the GRU headquarters on Grizodubovoy Street in Moscow.

On July 13th, 2018 the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) acted on the Mueller investigation findings and indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers, all of which had utilised the Guccifer 2.0 persona to carry out their activities. The individuals on the DOJ indictment list were Viktor Borisovich Netyksho, Boris Alekseyevich Antonov, Dmitriy Sergeyevich Badin, Ivan Sergeyevich Yermakov, Aleksey Viktorovich Lukashev, Sergey Aleksandrovich Morgachev, Nikolay Yuryevich Kozachek, Pavel Vyacheslavovich Yershov, Artem Andreyevich Malyshev, Aleksandr Vladimirovich Osadchuk, Aleksey Aleksandrovich Potemkin, and Anatoliy Sergeyevich Kovalev. The Russian government has, however, declined to extradite the people named and shown little inclination towards reconsidering its position.

SVR and FSB are seemingly equally active in the field as well.

The Russian hacking group “Turla Crew”, which has been active for at least 15 years, appears to be tied with both SVR and FSB. Turla Crew appears to specialise in espionage, information gathering, and placement rather than outright disruptive activities. Between 2013 and 2015 they appear to have focused intently on European government installations, such as secretaries’ computers, embassy computers and military installations. The fact that the group has been active for at least 15 years, and during that time deployed at least 15 different, highly advanced Trojan horses and computer viruses, could be an indicator of how well protected they are.

One of the most telling tools of Turla Crew’s design is Uroburos. The tool suite belongs to the so-called advanced “rootkit” line of tools, used to infect networks using proprietary techniques with the goal of setting up rogue Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks, which it can then use to set up an ad-hoc network of infected nodes to covertly distribute or store confidential data. It is believed to have been active for three years before it was discovered by Western cybersecurity specialists. Pierluigi Paganini, a member of the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) and Cyber G7 Group stated in 2014 that he believed it could be a complex part of Russia’s cyber weapons programme.

In 2014, the Computer Network Attack (CNA) team at the joint Dutch intelligence task force, Joint Signal Intelligence Cyber Unit, was able to turn the tables on the Russian hacker group known as Cozy Bear. For more than three years the CNA team, which consists of members from both the civilian intelligence agency AIVD (Algemene Inlichtingen-en Veiligheidsdienst) and the military intelligence agency MIVD (Militaire Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst) had unfettered access to computers used by the Russian hacker group. During this period, the CNA was able to determine that ten individuals worked as part of the Cozy Bear group and that they were located inside the SVR headquarters.

In fact, the CNA had so thoroughly infiltrated the Cozy Bear group’s equipment that they had access to a built-in camera in the desk VoIP phone. Through that camera, the Dutch intelligence group was able to stream video and take pictures of visiting, ranking SVR officers.

Thanks to the evidence gathered during those three years by the Dutch cyber warfare division, the American intelligence community (USIC), including the CIA and the NSA, were able to convince several NATO allies that Cozy Bear was not only affiliated with the Russian intelligence apparatus, but had at times penetrated sensitive NATO installations.

In February 2017, it was discovered through an internal security review that Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear had made several attempts over a six-month period to breach network integrity at the Dutch Ministry of General Affairs and several other Dutch agencies. Rob Berholee, the head of the civilian intelligence agency AIVD, stated that they had concluded the attacks to have originated from Russia and had been seeking to gain access to privileged government documents. Fearing that a breach had occurred, but had remained undetected, Ronald Pasterk, the Dutch Minister of the Interior, declared that the 2017 Dutch General Election votes would be counted by hand. The Dutch intelligence agencies also warned that they had found evidence that the two Russian hacking groups had attempted similar breaches against French and German governmental server systems.

Cozy Bear, Fancy Bear and Guccifer 2.0 have all been directly linked to the DNC e-mail leak during the U.S. 2016 election.

Appearing before the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, on June 20, 2019, Dr. Alina Polyakova for the Brookings Institution testified that, “Russian influence operations do not focus on isolated events. Rather, taken as whole, they are at the core of a political strategy—honed in Europe’s East and deployed against the West—to weaken democratic institutions, sow discord in societies, and divide the transatlantic alliance.” Polyakova detailed ongoing cyber operations against Western / European nations, that included France, Germany, and Ukraine’s election systems and infrastructure.

Known Methodology = Known Actors

The methodologies applied by both the Russian and Chinese hacker groups are, in essence, virtually identical with those utilised by the more advanced criminal hacker organisations. These focus mainly on economic hacking and the use of digital mercenaries operating on a commission from others. This is partly why it is exceedingly difficult for investigators to prove conclusively that alleged attacks, such as Stuxnet, come from state-sponsored or controlled entities, as opposed to private interests.

The primary difference can, however, be found in the level of professionalism and purpose that government-affiliated hackers display. They are more often than not seeking access to government or research systems, where the economic benefits of control are slim but the information benefits are interminable. This behaviour and selection of targets indicates nation-level espionage intents, which is seldom something that private organisations or non-commissioned individuals would be interested in.

Overall, these operations in the relatively new combat of cyber space are largely steeped in long-standing traditions, such as the tradition of Maskirovka.

Maskirovka: The Russian Art of Deception and War

One of the aspects that Iran, China and Russia all share, is the use of offensive cyber technologies in the art of gathering information and utilising that information to create disruptive deception. This methodology can be summarised in the Russian term “Maskirovka” – although this behaviour obviously predates even that defined practice.

The literal translation of Maskirovka means “disguise” and refers to the early-twentieth-century Russian military doctrine which encompassed deception and obfuscation intermixed with aggressive military operations to accomplish strategic as well as tactical objectives. While the doctrine has been applied as a tactical instrument by the Russians since the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380, it is not a Russian contraption in origin.

Seemingly the approach was defined by the Chinese in the 5th century BC. Found in the military strategy philosophical syllabus The Art of War, it was written by an amalgam of Chinese military strategists but widely attributed to General Sun Tsu. In it, the strategy is largely defined as turning one’s weaknesses to strengths by tightly controlling the enemy’s perception of your capabilities. This will then lead your foe to focus his forces and movements on the wrong capabilities in your arsenal.

Sun Tsu (or Sun Tzu) and his affiliates belonged to the so-called master thinkers (School of Zi), which came to define China’s “Hundred Schools of Thoughts”-era. It spanned the so-called Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods of 722-277 BCE. Other philosophers from the same school, such as Confucious (also known as Kongzi), who inspired Confucianism and the Six Arts concept, and Lao Tsu (Laozi), who inspired Taoism, would come to encompass similar thoughts of turning perceived weaknesses to strengths. This concept is also a recurring theme in other Far East military strategy-related philosophies, often under the guise of martial arts with all-encompassing philosophical aspects, such as the Japanese Budō.

 “Every society is three meals away from chaos”

-Vladimir Lenin

The West Awakens – Democracy Targeted

Lima Charlie News has written extensively about cyber attacks and cyber influence operations that threaten the very foundation of democratic institutions worldwide. In addition to the Russian interference operations detailed in the Mueller Report, ongoing operations throughout Europe and the former Soviet Republics have awakened the U.S. and its NATO allies to the fact that safeguarding democratic values and elections requires active engagement on all fronts.

Most recently, reports have surfaced that USCYBERCOM has aggressively stepped up the deployment of cyber tools within Russia’s infrastructure, including systems operating the nation’s power grid, on new authorities granted by the White House and Congress (“defense forward”). According to the NY Times, a senior intelligence official speaking on condition of anonymity stated, “It has gotten far, far more aggressive over the past year … We are doing things at a scale that we never contemplated a few years ago.”

In Europe, a recent Finnish raid on what is likely to have been a joint Russian cyber and tactical operations cell headquarters inside Finland’s territory, is an alarming example.

On September 22nd 2018, Finnish authorities declared a no-fly zone over an archipelago of islands along the country’s southwestern coast, some 180 kilometres from the capital of Helsinki. This was followed by a large-scale raid by the civilian authorities acting on intelligence retrieved by the Finnish military Intelligence Division. Over a hundred heavily armed police officers, along with 280 individuals from other government organisations, descended on the small islands. To reach the area, the civilian authorities utilised military provided helicopters and naval vessels that had just received a fresh coat of paint to show that they were not, for the day, in military service. Still, the logistical aspect of the operation was carried out by military personnel on loan to the police for 72-hours.

The target was a series of buildings situated on the islands which were owned by a Russian corporation. Originally, the raid was described as being aimed at a Russian money-laundering operation. Information indicates, however, that the structures, one of which featured a helicopter pad and a private harbour, were believed to be used by Russian GRU as an operational hub for cyber and political warfare operations, as well as Spetznas infiltration operations and exercises in the area. Airiston Helmihe, an Estonian registered limited corporation, owned the buildings and is believed to be a known front for Russian intelligence services.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Western democracies have expelled at least 419 Russian spies from SVR, FSB and GRU. That number includes the approximately 180 Russians which were declared persona non grata after the March 2018 attempted murder on Sergei and Julia Skripal in Salisbury, England. In recent years, the majority of those expelled Russian agents have been involved in cyber warfare related operations, including influence, social media tinkering or outright espionage.

The American cybersecurity giant Mitre is one of the companies that has best surveyed the various hacking groups in the world, including groups linked to the intelligence services of various countries. Of the 72 so-called Black Hat-hacker groups on Mitre’s list, 24 originated from China, 6 from Russia, and 9 from Iran. India, Pakistan, North Korea, Vietnam and Lebanon all also featured at least one operative group each which could be affiliated with state actors. The other groups on Mitre’s index are largely criminal groups or so-called White Hat-hackers which merely seek to discover and explore security vulnerabilities.

A problem for cybersecurity researchers in identifying and publishing information about these hacker groups is the perception that the majority of information about state-sponsored cyber activities and affiliated hacking groups comes, not from private investigators or researchers, but from the American intelligence community (USIC). This is largely incorrect. While the USIC has provided a lot of information to its allies and even to the media, it consists of tainted information and usually with large information gaps. The most comprehensive and readily available information on these state-controlled hacking activities tends to come instead from the private sphere. Groups such as FireEye, CrowdStrike, Mitre, F-Secure or Bellingcat are key leaders in this realm.

The term cyber warfare is, in and of itself, quite deceptive. The overall doctrine used to fall under the term Information Warfare which was significantly more telling. This now legacy term implied that it was the management of information, i.e. a new way of creating information bubbles, psychological warfare and propaganda. It is easy to see how crowd-pleasing, commercially enabling information bubbles (also known as filter bubbles) imposed by corporations such as Twitter and Facebook fit under that header.

Control peoples’ information flow and you control their opinions and ability to express themselves. Just look at BREXIT — a very real result, with long-lasting ramifications due to a filter bubble.

Because of the nature of our contemporary interconnected society, it has never been more important – and in our pro-democracy foundation’s best interest – to combat such nefarious attacks on our information infrastructure. Cyber attacks will only increase in the foreseeable future. As such, the fight against hostile cyber acts, be it perpetrated by or on behalf of North Korea, Syria or Russia, is on principle something for all the world’s democracies to be concerned with.

John Sjoholm, for LIMA CHARLIE WORLD

[Edited by Anthony A. LoPresti ]

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John Sjoholm is Lima Charlie’s Middle East Bureau Chief and founder of the consulting organization Erudite Group. He is a seasoned Middle East connoisseur, with a past in the Swedish Army’s Special Forces branch and the Security Contracting industry. He studied religion and languages in Sana’a, Yemen, and Cairo, Egypt. He lived and operated extensively in the Middle East between 2005-2012 as part of regional stabilizing projects, and currently resides in Lebanon. Follow John on Twitter @JohnSjoholmLC

REFERENCE: [1] Shorrock, Tim (2008). Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing. Simon and Schuster. p. 221. ISBN 9780743282246.

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North Korea By the Numbers – Little Choice Remains for Trump and Kim

North Korea By the Numbers - Little Choice Remains for Trump and Kim [Lima Charlie News]

OPINION: Despite another Trump-Kim meeting, by the numbers, America’s choices don’t appear promising.

“You hear the power of that voice, nobody’s heard the voice before,” President Trump said praising North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un this Sunday as he sat beside Kim during an impromtu press conference in the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). “[H]e doesn’t do news conferences, in case you haven’t noticed, and this was a special moment.”

This weekend President Trump became the first sitting American president to set foot in North Korea, briefly stepping over the concrete border before heading back to the South Korean side. While former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton had each visited Pyongyang after their terms, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton had visited the DMZ while president, but never met with North Korea’s leader.

“Nobody knows how things turn out, but certainly, this was a great day, this was a very legendary, very historic day,” Trump said of the meeting. “It’ll be even more historic if something comes of it, something very important.”

The Numbers

6, 11, 10M, 25.6M, 12, 65, 50, 12 thousand, 100s of thousands, millions, trillions. A quick explanation of these numbers to set the stage.

South Korea is currently the 6th largest US trading partner. Owing largely to this status, it currently maintains the 11th largest global economy. The population of Seoul, South Korea’s capital and largest city is just under 10 million. This is the population that lives within Seoul proper and does not include the rest of the Greater Seoul Metropolitan Area, or GSMA, which is 25.6 million and one of the largest metropolitan areas on Earth. This is, by the way, roughly half the entire population of South Korea.

12 is the number of hours it once took me to drive from my home in Seoul to Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, only 65 kilometers (40 miles) away, owing to one of the worst traffic situations anywhere on the planet during the Chuseok holiday (Korean Thanksgiving). Seoul is closer to the DMZ than it is to Pyeongtaek. This distance is about 50 kilometers (31 miles). The largest US military installation in the world, outside of the US, Camp Humphreys has a population of approximately 12,000 US troops, civilian employees, and family members.

Hundreds of thousands, an admittedly very rough estimate, is the number of artillery rounds North Korea can start raining down into South Korea, every hour, with virtually no warning in the event of a second Korean War. Much of North Korea’s artillery can reach Seoul without North Korean forces crossing the DMZ. Some of their weapons can even reach Camp Humphreys in the same way. While the actual number of artillery rounds North Korea could send into South Korea is classified, it is “hundreds of thousands per hour”, and doctrinally many of these would be chemical or biological rounds, further exacerbating the death and destruction. It is also worth noting that due to the proximity of such a massive population center as the GSMA to the DMZ, even short-range artillery has the effect of long-range artillery.

Millions is a conservative estimate of the number of friendly casualties in any new war on the Korean peninsula, even if such a war only involved conventional and not nuclear weapons. Trillions are the number of dollars in cost to the US and our allies, a conservative estimate, of a new war between the two Koreas. This cost in lives and money would be expended very quickly, in days or weeks, not months or years.

The point these numbers, and many others not shared here, convey is that the only truly acceptable option in dealing with North Korea is a sincere, coordinated, global diplomatic effort bringing together all elements of national and international power. This effort must be diplomatic and must involve the entire spectrum of influence from informational efforts, economic, and of course the military option must remain on the table as a very last resort to make it abundantly clear that diplomacy must win out.

Yet, this option remains problematic. The United States not only has a vacuum of leadership, intelligence, historical awareness, and diplomatic acumen, it has a president so unaware of his limitations and so convinced of his own talents, he does not avail himself of the traditional advisors and institutions designed to help compensate for such shortcomings. For example, the U.S. currently has no permanent Secretary of Defense, no permanent Secretary of Homeland Security, and no permanent UN Ambassador.

Diplomacy by the Numbers

More numbers to illustrate this precarious situation are 0, 10, 86, and 1.

0 is the number of nations, other than the United States, who have announced the intention to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement. This might not seem relevant to dealing with North Korea, but it is, as I shall explain. 0 is also the number of nations, other than the United States, who originally signed onto the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (Iran Nuclear Deal) that have announced plans to withdraw from this agreement.

0 is also the number of nations, other than the United States, who have now recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. 10 is the number of US strategic allies who have specifically opposed US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. 86, on the other hand, is the number of countries with embassies in Tel Aviv rather than Jerusalem.

1 is the number of times Article 5 of the NATO Charter (collective defense) has been employed. This was to the defense of the United States by all other NATO nations after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. Finally, 1 is the number of US presidents who have ever called into question the United States’ commitment to the same NATO Charter that sees an attack against one NATO member as an attack against all NATO members.

And then we fell in love, okay? No, really – he wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters.”

-U.S. President Donald J. Trump, referring to North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un at a rally in West Virginia

The purpose of this second set of numbers is to illustrate the diplomatic dilemma faced by the United States. At a time when diplomacy is, arguably, more important than at any time in our nation’s history, or at least as important as it has ever been, we have a president that is unprecedentedly unsuited to such a challenge. This same President has done more than any other in US history to single-handedly dismantle all the mechanisms resident in the international order that could be brought to bear on this challenge.

Writing in The Washington Post, Nicholas Burns and Douglas Lute stated that the greatest threat to NATO “is the absence of strong, principled American presidential leadership for the first time in its history.” (“NATO’s biggest problem is President Trump“). While North Korea does not fall under the purview of NATO, the problem is the same. Our allies no longer trust us.

The rhetoric coming thus far from the US President, alternating between petulant schoolyard name-calling and fawning terms of endearment, is disconcerting. While Trump oscillates between issuing threats, cooing love talk, and legitimizing the North Korean regime more than any single world leader since Kim Il Sung, the situation is only growing worse.

The bottom line is that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is continuing to develop his nuclear weapons capabilities while basking in the glow of international legitimacy that Trump enables with face-to-face summits.

Such meetings were long sought by all three members of the Kim Dynasty but were denied by US leaders, for good reason. Counter to claims from the White House, any president since Truman could have met with the North Korean leader. The North Koreans would have welcomed it. American presidents of the past simply had the requisite level of diplomatic and political savvy to realize it would be a mistake to do so.

Kim Jong Un
Kim Jong Un (PHOTO CREDIT: KCNA/AFP)

The Final Count

A final number to consider is 36,914. This is the number of Americans who died opposing the North Korean regime during the Korean War. Remember that Kim Jong-un, like his father before him, is not a democratically elected leader. He is a despotic continuation of the same tyrannical dynasty started by Kim Il Sung in 1948. Kim Jong-un is responsible for the premeditated murder of countless of his own citizens, to include his own brother. And of Kim Jong-un, Donald J. Trump said proudly, “We fell in love.” Such an attitude is perfectly maladaptive to any outcome other than further encouraging North Korea’s bad behavior.

Before us are two Koreas – one an open, free, and an imperfect but fantastically successful democracy; the other, the most repressive, and dangerous, regime in the world today, an economic basket case. The United States faces three choices, two of which must be avoided at almost any cost.

The first choice, to accept a North Korea with the ability to employ nuclear-capable, intercontinental ballistic missiles, would give North Korea the ability to target not only all of America’s allies in the region but the US mainland itself with the most destructive weapons yet developed by mankind. North Korea has already detonated an atomic bomb with a yield as high as 30 kilotons. North Korea also continues to refine its missile technology. The Kim regime is getting precariously close to the ability to marry the two technologies of nuclear weapons and a global delivery mechanism. This is a situation we cannot accept under any circumstances. Option one is no option.

As bad as the threat of a nuclear-capable North Korea is, the reality of the second choice, a pre-emptive strike to topple the North Korean regime at best, or eliminate their nuclear capability at least, is far more problematic.

The revolution in military affairs that has allowed the United States to defeat most adversaries with a minimum of casualties (to both sides) is ideally suited to conflict in areas like Iraq. Our years of experience at places like the National Training Center and advanced weaponry that allows unprecedented standoff lethality has prepared us for combat in the open desert against conventional forces.

The realities of terrain, military capabilities, regional and global economics, and most importantly, populations are all very different on the Korean Peninsula than any the US has faced since World War II. Counter-intuitively, a second Korean War would be very different from the last Korean War due to the vastly different demographic and economic conditions in South Korea now versus 70 years ago. While the US easily defeated the conventional Iraqi forces, our challenge in dealing with the resulting insurgency are telling and reveal our inability to deal with non-conventional threats effectively.

The third option, diplomacy, must resolve this situation.

Yet, while vastly preferable, it remains problematic. This course of action requires a level of diplomatic and intellectual sophistication that the current US administration seems both incapable of and unwilling to effectively pursue. It is not an exaggeration to say that a failure of diplomacy in resolving the North Korea problem could, conceivably result in the greatest concentrated loss of human life and wealth in human history. Clichés aside, failure simply is not an option.

Unfortunately, the United States is not the world leader we need it to be at this critical moment.

Tony Davis, for LIMA CHARLIE WORLD

[Edited by Anthony A. LoPresti ]

Tony Davis is a retired Military Intelligence Lieutenant Colonel and author of the book, God Loves You: Some Restrictions May Apply (and Many Other Christian Dilemmas). Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @TonyOBDavis

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Getting to Yes in Syria – Negotiating Peace

Getting to Yes in Syria - Negotiating Peace [Lima Charlie News]

After an 8 year bloody conflict in Syria all sides have a lot to gain from a negotiated peace.

The battle for control rages on in Syria. The Syrian Civil War has continued its metamorphosis from a large-scale civil war, to a gruelling counterinsurgency operation, all the while savagely devastating its civilian population and the Syrian soul. The forces of what remains of the Syrian opposition have found a modicum of respite within the defensive perimeter of the proverbial walls of the ancient city of Idlib.

The offensive to capture Idlib, led by the Damascus-coalition consisting of Syrian and Russian government forces and their affiliated militant groups, began on April 30th. Operation “Dawn of Idlib” – as the offensive is referred to – is the result of the promise Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made in February 2019 to “liberate every inch of the country.” It is reliant upon the effective air-to-ground support of Syrian and Russian air force assets which carry out round-the-clock strikes and barrel bombing of metropolitan centres.

After an 8 year conflict with hundreds of thousands in casualties, and over 3.4 million refugees, the “Dawn of Idlib” operation alone has already displaced over 150,000 civilians and resulted in the deaths of over 2,000 people.

With the end of this year’s Ramadan on June 3rd, the Damascus coalition renewed its efforts to retake Idlib – civilian losses be damned.

[Members of the Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the “White Helmets”, carry away a body on a stretcher following a reported regime air strike in the village of Benin, about 30 kilometres south of Idlib in north-western Syria, on June 19, 2019. (AFP)]

Peace Without Giving In

In 1981, Roger Fisher and William Ury published the first edition of their seminal non-fiction best-seller titled Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. This brief but brilliant treatise advises would-be negotiators on how to determine the “Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement” – or BATNA – of their opponents. That is, what can antagonists realistically expect to gain from continuing their violent conflict rather than coming to a reasonable compromise solution through negotiation.

In a recent Lima Charlie News article, entitled “Syrian Endgame – The Hard Truth” (May 14th, 2019) I, along with my co-author John Sjoholm, attempted to define the BATNAs of the key players in Syria. To help with this, we sought to determine the primary goals and interests of those identified players.

Vladimir Putin’s BATNA is what makes him, and Russia, the Syrian Civil War’s victor ludorum. As “winner” Russia gains an increased influence throughout the Middle East. Yet that victory has come at a significant cost both in resources and international condemnation.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is also seeking a BATNA that may gain increased regional clout for Turkey, but at a price of engaging in a never-ending and unpopular war against the Kurds, both at home and abroad.

Syrian President Bashar al Assad will likely regain a tenuous control of Syria, but as part of a proxy government of the Kremlin. More so, Moscow will retain the option of eliminating Assad, his clan, and even the Alawis sect, both politically and physically, if it is deemed optimal to minimize a draining long-term conflict.

In turn, Iran may seek to secure its supply lines through Syria to its various allies, many of which are in conflict with U.S.-supported Israel. Yet, the costs of continued large scale deployment of Iranian assets in Syria is likely to spiral out of control. A continued Iranian presence in Syria is also likely to put Tehran on an escalating collision course with Washington. The U.S. has continued to increase sanctions and may possibly implement its ongoing threat of force.

For the relatively organised Syrian Opposition forces, moderate and less radicalized alike, their continued fighting on the ground, while enduring constant bombardment from the air, offers little gain. While facing the prospect of thousands of innocent civilian casualties, these forces risk further loss of credibility to more radical Salafist Jihadist militia entities such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State. As for the United States, it has absolutely nothing to gain from further fighting and the deployment of its military on Syrian territory.

The whole world has only the prospect of widespread slaughter and the resulting chaos from nearly four million Syrian refugees fleeing the Idlib enclave. This includes risk of the destabilization of neighboring Lebanon.

Everyone, as discussed in “Syrian Endgame – The Hard Truth”, has a lot to gain from a negotiated settlement, while no one, except the radical Jihadis, has much to look forward to from continued warfare. The question now, is how to structure a negotiation to achieve a successful peace that will benefit everyone but the radical elements. This includes the Kurdish militia forces and their political entities, even though they would emerge as major losers in any settlement. The difference for the Kurds is if they are to gain anything, their solution must be a broader regional one.

Syrian Abdul Razzaq Tlas (L),leader of the opposition Katibat al-Faruq, walks with Moroccan UN observer, Colonel Ahmed Himmiche (C), during the United Nations monitors visit to the restive city of Homs, Syria on April 21, 2012. (UPI / Khaled Tallawy)]

The Elements of a Successful Settlement

Successful peace negotiations should include the participation of all but the most incorrigible players. They should also include a credible outside actor who is seen as substantially unbiased, one that would organize and host the discussions, and act as a guarantor to monitor the fulfillment of an agreement. Russia and the United Nations have both tried to jumpstart negotiations but have failed because one was not trusted for having played too much of a direct role in the conflict, and the other has gained a reputation for being impotent.

“Pre-cooking” the elements of an agreement acceptable to the parties is an absolute necessity. The sine qua non will have to be a guarantee that there would be no United Nations Security Council (UNSC) veto of the deal. Before the first word is spoken at a peace conference, at least among Russia, the United States, and their allies and proxies, there must be agreement as to the main parameters of the arrangements. This does not mean that all, or even most, of the actors will be completely satisfied. As Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic said at Dayton in 1995, “this is an unjust peace, but my people need peace.”

A Field of Possible Organizers and Guarantors

The United Nations

The United Nations has a traditional role in organizing and following up on peace negotiations. While its credibility has suffered in Syria during the past eight years, it has sometimes shown a significant capacity to play the honest broker in other conflicts. El Salvador and Liberia are two examples. In the former, however, the UN did not attempt to enforce the peace. In the latter, the success was almost completely personality-dependent due to the unique choice of Ambassador Jacques Paul Klein who had already proven himself in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Unfortunately, the selection of such a strong Senior Representative of the Secretary General or SRSG is exceedingly rare.

Still, the United Nations might prove useful as a convener so long as there is substantial advance agreement and it is understood up front that the negotiation and enforcement will really be driven by the stronger participants. It would be unlikely that the United Nations would be able to stand up a strong and independent peacekeeping force. Yet any agreement could still lay out substantial roles for UN agencies like the Office for the Coordination of Humanitiarian Affairs (OCHA) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The United Nations Security Council might also call upon the Secretary General to take the lead in organizing a separate international conference to discuss the exceptionally thorny issue of Kurdish statehood aspirations. The fact that the Kurds number up to 35 million people spread over the territories of four countries where they represent sizeable, often restive, minorities, cries out for international resolution. In Turkey, for example, they make up 18% of the population, and there has been open conflict between the Turkish Government and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The Kurdish question will be exceedingly difficult to resolve, and, as such, should be kept from complicating the already-complex Syria peace negotiation. A good case could be made that the United States, having used Kurdish forces as proxies against ISIS in both Syria and Iraq, should be a major sponsor of this negotiation.

[T]his is an unjust peace, but my people need peace.”

-Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic

The Major Powers

Russia and the United States, possibly with Turkey and Iran as supporting actors, have emerged in this conflict as the “Major Powers”. There is precedent for a Major Power taking the lead in peace negotiations as a third party, even after having played a combat role in a conflict. A primary example is the role played by the United States in brokering the 1995 Dayton Agreement to the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

At the time, Russia was very weak, and the United Nations was almost totally discredited. While the U.S. organized, hosted and dominated the Dayton negotiations, it brought in the EU as bit players (causing resentment and lack of coordination), while engaging international organizations such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and various United Nations agencies to play specific roles. The result of this one-party-dominated process was a complicated, disorganized plan that was nearly dead on arrival, at least so far as the Bosnian Serbs were concerned.

On May 29th, the European Union called for a ceasefire in the Idlib region and said that Russia, Turkey, Iran and the Syrian Government must protect the population. From the perspective of safeguarding civilian populations in Northwestern Syria, it appears the EU has accepted the role of Major Powers as guarantors. By June 12th, the Russian military claimed that a ceasefire – the third since commencement of the Dawn of Idlib operation – had been brokered with Turkey. The ceasefire, however, failed immediately with Russia and the Syrian regime resuming intensive shelling and airstrikes. Turkish observers in Idlib also continued to come under mortar fire from territory controlled by Syrian government forces, with several casualties reported just last week. In response, Turkish forces shelled government-held villages.

The resulting problems with the Big Power-imposed 1995 Dayton Accords are not a reason to believe that an effort by Russia and the United States now in Syria would necessarily be doomed to failure. But they most certainly justify caution.

Russia has been far more of a combatant in Syria than the United States was in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Its Iranian allies are possibly even more hated than the Assad Regime itself, and President Putin probably has a less favorable reputation among necessary international contributors than President Bill Clinton had in 1995.

Yet, given enough self-interest and goodwill on the part of President Putin and President Trump, their cooperation could lead to a successful conclusion. Together, they could have tremendous influence on all relevant actors, and might even improve the bi-lateral relationship in the process. Furthermore, their collaboration would probably avoid any threat of a UN Security Council veto and diminish the power of possible spoilers. However, widespread ill will toward both of them, and their allies, and their vastly different interests and policy objectives, could possibly sink a lasting peace.

If, indeed, Russia and the United States were to find enough common ground, they could certainly impose peace. This would increase to a great extent if the Americans took the lead in the Northwest and on the Kurdish question, while the Russians were left to handle the rest of Syria and control both Iranian ambitions and Assad’s desire for total victory and a return to the pre-war status quo.

[Turkish troops gather in Hassa, Hatay province, in preparation for offensive against Kurds in Syria, January 21, 2018 (Image: Bulent Kilic / AFP)]

Regional Organizations

This week the European Union issued a statement in which it called on all sides “to restore an immediate cease fire” and ensure “the protection of and unhindered humanitarian assistance to the civilian population, and giving space for the start of a genuine Syrian political process.” According to the statement:

“The EU is deeply concerned by the situation in the north-west of Syria, namely in the provinces of Idlib and northern Hama. After more than eight years of conflict the Syrian population continues to suffer indiscriminate shelling, airstrikes, bombing and attacks. Military strikes by Syrian regime forces – supported by Russia – have destroyed IDP camps, schools and health facilities, which should be the very safest spaces. More than 230 civilians have lost their lives, more than 330,000 have fled in just six weeks, and three million more remain at risk.”

Probably the only regional organization with enough resources, neutrality and political clout to take the lead on negotiations and implementation is the European Union. While some members have been involved in a combat role in Syria, this has been almost exclusively in opposition to ISIS. EU members have engendered little or no bitterness among either the more moderate Opposition or the Assad Government.

The EU also has a strong interest in avoiding the catastrophic chaos that would result from continued war and the possibility of an all-out military assault on the Idlib enclave resulting in millions more desperate refugees flooding across its borders. It has the resources necessary to play a major role in reconstruction and refugee return.

While President Putin has strategic concerns with the EU, if Russia was left to deal with Assad-controlled territory as he saw fit, and it could ensure the long-term security of Russia’s air and sea military bases in Syria, Putin would undoubtedly welcome the resources the EU could bring to bear. Both he and President Trump might be happy for someone else to take responsibility for the mess to which they have both contributed.

There is certainly enough technical and political expertise within the European Union to help solve Syria’s post-war problems, but it would require that other nations provide military forces to ensure the peace. This could fall upon Turkey, with the Opposition forces reconstituted, perhaps as a paramilitary police force in the Northwest, with Russian and Syrian Arab Army assets situated elsewhere. As in any other option, the U.S. and certain sympathetic EU allies would have to tend to the resolution of the Kurdish question on a regional basis and soothe any dissatisfaction or concern on the part of President Erdogan.

The biggest challenge for the European Union in playing a leading role would be its own frequent lack of consensus, especially in light of Brexit, and a number of disagreeable national leaders. Avoiding another surge of migrants, could, however, sufficiently motivate the members to facilitate a peaceful solution.

[President Donald Trump, right, meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, Friday, June 28, 2019. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)]

Moving Forward

It seems most reasonable that Russia and the United States should cooperate towards building a lasting peace in Syria. President Putin, obviously, will be the primary leader of any effort given the far greater resources Russia has committed to Syria, not to mention the greater influence Russia has over its proxies. This calls for a well-planned, logical approach to a myriad of problems, something the current American Administration is not generally known for, but hopefully can rise to the occasion.

Reportedly, both the U.S. and Russia remain engaged in high-level talks, but each must give up the desired goal for either a reunified Syria under Assad (Russia) or a reunified Syria without Assad (United States).

At this week’s G20 Summit in Osaka, Japan, President Putin assured that he and President Trump had maintained discussions concerning Syria, while he also criticized German Chancellor Angela Merkel for allowing a million refugees, mostly Syrians, to settle in Germany. This Saturday, while in Osaka, Chancellor Merkel announced that the next summit on Syria with Russia, Germany, France, and Turkey is planned for this year in Istanbul. “We want to stay abreast of the situation in Idlib and the situation around the refugees.”

The European Union, while certainly unwilling and probably incapable of fielding an effective peacekeeping force, can be relied upon to provide extensive reconstruction and refugee resettlement funding, as well as technical expertise democratization training at least in the Idlib region.

Turkey has also shown a willingness to stand up to Russia and Syria on recent ceasefire violations, and with the help of more moderate Opposition forces can be counted upon to move against Jihadist spoilers. The big question is whether the Turks and Americans can overcome recent disagreements over the purchase of SA-400 missiles and the disruptive effect it will have on the interoperability of the joint NATO air defense infrastructure. Even more important is the question of whether they can use cooperation in Northwestern Syria to inspire greater rapprochement and restore good diplomatic relations that began all the way back in 1830 and which made Turkey a NATO mainstay during the Cold War.

The Iranians and Kurds remain wild cards. So far, Iran does not appear to be playing a role in the Russo-Syrian offensive in the southern part of the Idlib enclave, which may presage a decrease in their combat role in the conflict while they prepare for a possible confrontation with the United States. It remains to be seen what Iran will demand in the negotiations as the price for its investment in the conflict. The Kurdish YPG and their cousins in the PKK will need to be given reasons to hope for some resolution of their demands for autonomy if they are not to disrupt regional peace through increased conflict with the Turkish military.

At any rate, time is running out if the worst consequences of an all-out fight to the death in Northwest Syria is to be avoided. It is time to put aside unrealistic demands and find a way for “Getting to Yes.”

William Stuebner, for LIMA CHARLIE WORLD

[Additional edits by John Sjoholm and Anthony A. LoPresti] [Main Image: Reuters]

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William Stuebner served in the United States Army for twenty years, first in the Infantry and then as a military intelligence officer. The last five years of his career revolved around the wars in Central America where he first led a special intelligence team and then worked as the El Salvador desk officer for the Department of Defense. He was also an assistant professor in the Social Sciences Department of the United States Military Academy where he taught politics and political philosophy.

Stuebner’s Balkans work began in May 1992, shortly after the commencement of hostilities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and continues to this day. His assignments included: Humanitarian Assistance Officer for the Department of Defense; Bosnian Field Representative for the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, United States Agency for International Development; Expert on Mission, Office of the Prosecutor, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (twice); Senior Deputy Head of Mission for Human Rights and Chief of Staff, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina. He has also headed two Non-Governmental Organizations dealing with international criminal justice and peace building.

Lima Charlie World provides global news, featuring insight & analysis by military veterans, intelligence professionals and foreign policy experts Worldwide.

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Lima Charlie News Headline STRATEGIC OPTION Syrian Endgame MAY 14 2019

Africa’s Elections | In Malawi, food, land, corruption dominate

Africa’s Elections | In Malawi, food, land, corruption dominate [Lima Charlie News]
Africa’s Elections | In Malawi, food, land, corruption dominate [Lima Charlie News]

In a small African country battling poverty and starvation, land, farming and corruption remain key issues in Malawi’s politics.

Malawi – nicknamed “the Warm Heart of Africa” for the kindness of its people – is one of the poorest countries in the world. A small, landlocked country in southeastern Africa, over half of its almost 20 million people live under the poverty line. Ongoing food crises, often the result of extensive drought or devastating floods, have plagued the country for decades. Heavily reliant on foreign aid, in 2014, Malawi ranked as the world’s fifth most aid-dependent country or territory.

After Malawi won its independence from Britain in 1964, it eventually transitioned from a one-party dictatorship to a democratic system in the early 1990s. Democracy now thrives. This year 74% of the population turned out for presidential elections on May 21st.

By a slim margin voters returned incumbent President Peter Mutharika, head of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), for another five year term. Mutharika and the DPP took 38% of the vote, former evangelist Lazarus Chakwera of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) came in second with 35%, and Saulos Chilima (UTM) took 20%.

Yet, despite robust voter turnout, Malawi’s democratic elections are facing challenges by two of its losing parties.

A man casts his vote, with long lines behind him, at Masasa Primary School polling station in Mzuzu on May 21, 2019. (Patrick Meinhardt)]
[A man casts his vote, with long lines behind him, at Masasa Primary School polling station in Mzuzu on May 21, 2019. (Patrick Meinhardt)]

“Daylight Robbery”

After opposition parties unsuccessfully challenged the election in Malawi’s High Court last week claiming it was rigged, President Mutharika was sworn in for another 5 year term. On May 28, Mutharika took the oath of office before a capacity crowd at Kamzu Stadium, in the city of Blantyre.

“Whether you voted at all or not voted. Whether you voted for us or not for us. I am your President. I am the President of all Malawians. And Malawi is our country,” said Mutharika. “We cannot deny our history. Each political party played a fundamental role in the history of this nation. Now it is our call to develop this country. Let us remain focused on development and changing lives for the better.” Mutharika added, “As we say in our local language – nkhondo simanga mudzi. We cannot build this country with violence and bloodshed.”

This Tuesday however, protesters, led by Chakwera, stormed the offices of the president and government buildings demanding that Mutharika resign chanting anti-Mutharika slogans. Chakwera has called the election outcome “daylight robbery”.

“We are shutting down Capital Hill to show this illegal government that the people are in charge and not Mutharika,” MCP youth director Chimwendo Banda told Reuters. Mutharika, 78, a former law professor, won against Chakwera by 159,000 votes.

Also on Tuesday, Malawi’s High Court ruled that the petitions of the MCP and Chilima’s UTM party seeking to have the election results nullified can be consolidated. The petitions cited a number of alleged irregularities such as ballot stuffing, tampering with election sheets with a correction fluid (Tippex), as well as officials being caught with result sheets at home.

Malawi maintains a close military and security collaboration with the United States. In 2016, the U.S. opened the Office of Security Cooperation (OSC) in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe. With U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), the United States supports peacekeeping, training and equipment, multilateral exercises and conferences with the Malawi Defense Force (MDF) and Malawi law enforcement. The MDF, which originated from British colonial units formed before Malawi’s independence, became active in peacekeeping soon after the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Along with Tanzania and South Africa, it makes up the United Nations Force Intervention Brigade (UNFIB).

The United Kingdom, having an historic presence in Malawi, continues to provide military assistance and training to the country, including in the protection of some of the world’s most endangered species, that includes elephants, rhinoceroses and lions. Operation Corded, the name given to the UK Army’s counter-poaching deployment in Malawi, assists in the training of park rangers to crack down on the illegal wildlife trade. According to the BBC, about 30,000 elephants are illegally killed every year in Africa, with only about 450,000 elephants left. “In many places it has become literally a war against poachers – that’s why rangers are trained by British troops.” British soldiers, primarily the Coldstream Guards, have been deployed in Malawi’s Liwonde, Nkhotakota and Majete Wildlife Reserves.

Malawi’s Hot Topics: Food, Land and Corruption

Peacekeeping and poaching, while news in Malawi, were not issues of debate in #MalawiElections2019. The issues largely focused on were that of food, land and corruption. And for good reason.

In spite of having an overwhelmingly agricultural economy, with 80% of the population working smallholder farms, access to food is still a major struggle. 47% of children in Malawi are stunted from malnutrition. The nation is also subject to regular and devastating droughts, including one which has spanned over the last 2 years. When rain does come, the resulting flooding can further disrupt food production.

This March 2019, Malawi was struck by Cyclone Idai, one of the worst tropical cyclones on record to affect Africa and the southern hemisphere. Idai left more than 1,000 people dead and thousands more missing. Maize is a staple food in Malawi. After the catastrophic floods created by the cyclone, Malawi’s Agriculture Minister Joseph Mwanamvekha announced that the country may have lost 20% of the maize it would produce this season. (#MalawiFloods2019)

Malawi’s industrial agriculture is dominated by inedible cash crops. Tobacco constitutes an overwhelming 71% of exports. A further 10% is tea. Malawi is also known for growing “the best and finest” chamba (cannabis) in the world. The sale of “Malawi Gold” is considered by some to be a possible solution to the country’s economic woes and an answer to the steadily declining tobacco market.

Declining tobacco consumption in wealthy western countries has been undercutting tobacco prices. Malawi’s tobacco supply chain is dominated by a small number of large multinational corporations and many farmers are dependent on the tobacco leaf buyers for their farming equipment, which means that small farmers are relatively powerless to drive up prices.

“Most farmers used the land that was cultivating food crops for tobacco hoping that they would be able to purchase food from the market,” Dr. Milu Muyanga told Lima Charlie World. Dr. Muyanga, a faculty member at the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics at Michigan State University said that tobacco prices have not always been reliable, “but more critically the food markets have been problematic hence promoting widespread food insecurity.”

Michigan State University recently received a $7.8 million grant from the Agricultural Transformation Initiative (ATI) to develop policy to improve the lives of Malawi’s smallholder farmers. The ATI is a core mission of the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, a U.S. nonprofit with the goal of improving global health “by ending smoking in this generation” and by supporting the diversification of tobacco-dependent economies.

Buyers at a tobacco auction in Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital. (Amos Gumulira)
[Buyers at a tobacco auction in Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital. (Amos Gumulira)]

Land Reform Fail

Another prominent roadblock Mutharika fended off is a controversial 2016 land reform bill.

“The major issue that made the 2016 land reforms unpopular were the provisions that aim to remove the governance and administration of land from the realm of traditional leaders,” Dr. Muyanga told Lima Charlie. The reforms to land tenure (property rights to land in Malawi) enabled consolidation of land away from smallholders. “The proposed tenure system, though intended to create a vibrant land market, somehow makes the acquisition of land from the poor smallholders by the rich elites and foreigners very easy.”

The apportionment of land is a critical issue in Malawi, especially because the initial colonial settlers in the country were British farmers who established the tobacco and tea export industry that persists to this day. The consolidation of land into estates places the country’s primary export industry into direct competition for land with the country’s primary source of employment, the smallholder farms. Even as 1.8-2.6% of Malawi’s forests disappear annually, opening up land in an environmentally unsustainable way, Malawian farmers still struggle to find land.

“Land sizes are shrinking and now stand at about 0.33ha per household,” said Dr. Muyanga. “The land question remains a very sensitive issue, not only in Malawi but in sub-Saharan Africa in general.”

The question of land availability in the arid southern portion of the African continent has been critical across the region, be it the role of redistribution of farmland in the rise of Zimbabwean Dictator Robert Mugabe or the current growing popularity of the Economic Freedom Fighters in South Africa.

The controversial advocacy group, the People’s Land Organisation (PLO), or People’s Land Party, and its Supreme Leader Vincent Wandale attempted a radical appeal in Malawi on the land issue. With an aim to “take back all the land under estate ownership which was lawlessly grabbed from our grandfathers during the colonial period”, the PLO suffered a setback when Wandale was ordered to a psychiatric facility for treatment.

 “Wandale was by no means insane as he was described, because all he wanted was to address the problem of land, which the estates had apportioned themselves while the majority had nowhere to build and cultivate,” said MCP candidate Chakwera at a campaign rally. The MCP has angled to return to power, having ruled shortly after independence from 1966 to the establishment of free elections in 1993.

Corruption and Mismanagement

Malawi is the 120 least corrupt nation out of 175 countries, according to the 2018 Corruption Perceptions Index reported by Transparency International. According to the report, the Malawi corruption rank averaged around 90.81 from 1998 until 2018, reaching an all time high of 122 in 2017.

In 1995, soon after emerging from the 30 year absolute rule of “president-for-life” Hastings Banda, Malawi had created the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) and launched a comprehensive Corrupt Practices Act. Regardless, corruption continued to such an extent that it led to the withdrawal of international support. A major scandal uncovered in 2013, known as the “Cashgate Scandal”, included a British audit showing that 16 Malawian companies had received an estimated US $32 million in illicit payments from the government for goods and services that were never delivered or performed. More than 70 people were arrested, many of whom were subsequently tried and convicted, and President Joyce Banda fired her entire cabinet. In 2017 police issued a warrant for Banda’s arrest. After returning to Malawi from self-imposed exile in the U.S., Banda ran for president in the 2019 election, before withdrawing in March, endorsing Chakwera.

According to a 2014 Transparency International report, “The progress in the fight against corruption … seems to have stagnated: petty and grand corruption are commonplace and the high levels of patronage, nepotism and clientelism constitute a hurdle to the proper functioning of the anti-corruption framework.” Malawi has ratified the UN Convention against Corruption but is not a signatory to the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention.

In 2002, while Malawi was in the midst of a devastating famine, a cabinet member was implicated in the illegal sale of the nation’s emergency maize reserves to Kenya. The party emblem of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which rose to power in the aftermath of the 2002-2005 food shortage, is emblazoned with images of maize.

Malawi Democratic Progressive Party DPP logo

The DPP rose to power as a splinter group off the then-ruling United Democratic Front party. Led by President Bingu wa Mutharika (2004-2010), the brother of President Mutharika, the DPP brought multiple corruption charges against the former government.

President Mutharika faced a similar challenge during this 2019 election.

Chilima, former Vice President to Mutharika, formed the United Transformation Movement (UTM), challenging his predecessor on the basis of corruption and mismanagement. Chilima was an outspoken critic of the government, even while in office, and he quit the vice presidency in June to contest the presidency.

Protests in April 2018 over the "MK4bn scandal"
[Protests in April 2018 over the “MK4bn scandal”, in which 86 MPs were allegedly bribed for voting against an electoral reform bill, and the return of self-exiled former President Joyce Banda (2010-2012). Banda was chased out of office for the $32 million “Cashgate” scandal. (Photo: Lameck Masina)]
In June 2018, the Anti-Corruption Bureau had leaked a report on social media that accused Mutharika of receiving a bribe from a contractor tasked with supplying food to Malawi’s police. Mutharika called it fake news.

At his inauguration, standing before thousands of cheering supporters, President Mutharika said, “The honeymoon is over. If you belong to the DPP, you have no right to think that you are above the law or to be defiant to your superiors in the name of the party … We want a corrupt-free Malawi where our public resources continue to build roads, community technical colleges and buy drugs for the people.”

Anthony A. LoPresti and Diego Lynch, LIMA CHARLIE WORLD

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Lima Charlie World provides global news, featuring insight & analysis by military veterans, intelligence professionals and foreign policy experts Worldwide.

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Lima Charlie News Headline Art of Foreign Influence Russian Military Adviser JUN 3 2019 DeAtkineImage Lima Charlie News Headline Womens Day Africa MAR 8 2019

The Art of Foreign Influence: The Russian Military Adviser

The Art of Foreign Influence: The Russian Military Adviser [Lima Charlie News]
The Art of Foreign Influence: The Russian Military Adviser [Lima Charlie News]

History’s superpowers have long employed military advisers around the world as extensions of a country’s power and influence. Russia has a wealth of experience when it comes to optimizing and maximizing the use of advisers. A prime example is the advisory operations of the former Soviet Union in Egypt.

I have long been particularly interested in the role of professional soldiers training foreign militaries of underdeveloped countries. I had two tours of duty in that capacity, in Egypt and Jordan. But I inherited my keen interest in what is generally referred to as security assistance from my father. As a professional Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO), my father served as an adviser to the Philippine Scouts prior to the second World War. In 1946, he was then deployed to Korea where he served in the Korean Military Advisory Group (KMAG) for 18 months. His many stories, as told to me, have well stood the test of time.

My father very much admired the Philippine Scouts, a force which fought as well as, or better than, the American units fighting against the Japanese in the battle for the Pacific. As he told their tale, he explained that these men did not need to be taught how to soldier. They were consummate professionals. Rather, my father’s contribution was technical assistance vis-a-vis signal communication. His experience during the war mirrored my own with the Jordanian forces in the 1970s. Back then, the Jordanian Army was a professional military, schooled by the British, yet it was in need of technical assistance. Today, the Jordanian military stands out as one of the best militaries in the Middle East, if not the best.

My father’s experience in Korea was far different. Korean soldiers were amongst the toughest in the world. I myself served with some in 1961-62 and saw firsthand the draconian punishment that the Korean command handed down towards recalcitrant troops. Yet, the American advisers in Korea during my father’s time, after having survived the horrors of the Second World War, held a reluctance in giving their all for a far away country that was mired in corruption and political fratricide. As my father related, the Korean soldier was inured to hardship and was a keen learner, but the officer corps was corrupt, incompetent and suffered from frequent turnover due to political infighting.

To some degree, this mirrors my experience in Egypt, 1981-1983. The Egyptian Army’s virtue was that it had soldiers inured to hardship, yet it consisted of a mostly self-indulgent officer corps. By and large, it had lost the fighting edge instilled in it by professional Egyptian officers and the hard-driving Soviet training mission to prepare for the Arab-Israeli War of 1973, more commonly referred to as the Yom Kippur War or Ramadan War. By the time I had arrived in Egypt in 1981, the general Egyptian way of soldiering was stuck in a bygone era of British colonial tradition, reminiscent of Winston Churchill’s classic “The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan” (1899). This entailed a slothful, materialistic minded officers corps, adhering to the adage that whoever sticks their neck out for anything gets it chopped off. The rule of the sage was to play it safe. I found the Egyptian Army to be demoralized and bereft of much-needed weaponry.

Yet, I knew even then that when Soviet and Warsaw Pact advisers had first arrived to Egypt in 1955, they found the Egyptian Army in even worse shape. While the Soviet training advisory mission was at first more of a political effort than military, after 1968 it had become a top military priority. It should be said, the Soviets did a remarkable job in rebuilding the Egyptian Army after its demoralizing defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Despite their commendable service in Egypt, Soviet advisers were given very little recognition. The Russian military had long held the same lack of esteem for advisory jobs as the American army still does. It’s a simple fact, if your primary orientation in the military is in security assistance (i.e. advisory roles) you’ll have a hard time making flag officer. This was true for Russian officers in Egypt and Afghanistan, and it still holds true to this day.

This brings us to the purpose of this article.

While there are rooms full of books and materials about Russia’s involvement in the Middle East in terms of political, diplomatic, and arms assistance, there is very little about the efforts of the military adviser. Yet Russia, particularly, has a wealth of in-depth knowledge and experience when it comes to optimizing and maximizing the use of advisers in sensitive environments.

A prime example can be found in Russia’s extensive advisory operations in Egypt during the presidency of Gamal Abdel Nasser, prior to the expulsion of Russian military advisers from the country by President Anwar el‐Sadat beginning in 1972. The assistance Russia provided to Egypt in that era is similar in some respects to that given today to Syria’s Assad-led Damascus regime and its Syrian Arab Army (SAA).

[Russian military adviser trains Syrians in mine clearance operations (Image: Russian Defence Ministry)]
[Russian military adviser trains Syrians in mine clearance operations (Image: Russian Defence Ministry)]

The Military Adviser – An Historic Role

The world’s superpowers have historically employed military and political advisers as extensions of influence and power, often to achieve long-term goals. For instance, America has kept advisers in the Philippines since the Taft administration.

One of the earliest American advisers in the Philippines was Captain John “Black Jack” Pershing, famed for his involvement in the hunt for Pancho Villa and later as a commander of American forces in World War I. Ultimately, his work leading indigenous Philippine troops during the Philippine-American War (1899-1902) in their unending battle against Islamic insurgents would earn him his Brigadier General-title.

Another famed military adviser was one of General Douglas MacArthur’s aides in Manila. Future president Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower, then a middle-aged U.S. Army Major, sought to define and organize the U.S.-supported Philippine national army in the mid-1930s. A Herculean task that few dared, it no doubt honed his skills, which would soon be tested during the D-Day invasion in Europe.

From Latin America to the depths of Asia’s jungles, America has dispatched military advisers throughout the world. Often these advisers have succeeded in accomplishing the impossible. And as warfare continues to move towards more asymmetrical micro-conflicts against non-state actors, the military and political adviser has grown in importance. This is an aspect that the U.S. government has thankfully realized.

The U.S. Army recently deployed the first Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB) out of Ft. Benning to Afghanistan in mid-2018. Its operation was a measurable success and upon its rotation completion, it was quickly decided that the 2nd SFAB would deploy to Afghanistan out of Ft. Bragg. The plan is to eventually create a six brigade force of soldiers specially trained to assist host countries to combine nation-building with assistance in military training of indigenous forces.

This is an innovation of some note, as the U.S. Army has seldom given much priority to the act of military assistance. This despite the fact that it’s one of the premier roles for the U.S. Army Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets, since the group’s inception in 1952.

The mission to train and assist is vague enough to allow virtually any type of training mission. Officially, the training program is modeled after the standard Infantry Combat brigade, leaving one to wonder what modifications and extensions could be made to encapsulate artillery, armor and other modern warfare tactics. At any rate, the most urgent issue for the SFABs will be the level and scope of the training they receive at the Military Training and Assistance Academy at Ft. Benning.

Will their training model include the cultural preparation needed? Will it require the seldom remembered but important study of lessons learned from other nations, not just the U.S.?

[Activation ceremony for the U.S. Army’s 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB)(U.S. Army photo)]

The Unrecognized and Unsung Role of Russia’s Egyptian Advisers

No one knew, or knows till now
About the awful heat and scorching sands
How in the fiery Arabian desert
We suffered thirst and yearning.

We defended the Fellah’s home and life
But no one ever thanked us
No one but Allah knew
How it was there and what happened.

And there in the sands on the Suez canal
It was as any war is:
Fate did not spare my comrades
But commanded me to remember them.

And to my last day, I’ll recall them
Whose life they gave for the struggle
Let the [Afghans], my friend and heir,
Sing about their fate and his.

-Vassily Murzintsev, “No One Knew”

The act of supporting Egypt was not a painless one for the Soviets. In a published poem entitled “No One Knew”, found in the excellent book “The Soviet-Israeli War 1967-1973” (by Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez), Soviet veteran Vassily Murzintsev laments his time in Egypt. The poem captures the vital, yet usually unrecognized role of the so-called Security Assistance, more commonly known as an adviser, professional.

Russia’s military intervention in Egypt was a mammoth effort to rebuild the Egyptian army after its demoralizing defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War. Russia’s involvement with the Egyptian military was all encompassing and essential. The Soviets would become instrumental in Egypt regaining the honor of its military. General Saad Shazly, the Egyptian Army Chief of Staff at the time, wrote in his monograph “Crossing the Suez” that this accomplishment would have been impossible without the assistance of the Soviet advisers.

Can we learn from Russia’s experience in Egypt?

[Soviet maps of the region in 1953 and 1967]
[Soviet maps of the region in 1953 and 1967]

Cultural Clash: Russian Advisers and their Egyptian Hosts

In examining Russia’s experience in Egypt, many of the same problems the United States experienced in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and even Iran prior to the revolution, were similarly experienced by Russian advisers. With around 20,000 Russians in Egypt, friction was bound to occur.

Soviet advisers were at every level involved in every aspect of Egyptian planning, training and logistics. Many senior advisers even brought their families and they lived in tightly guarded compounds where access in and out was rigidly controlled. At times the Russian commander in Egypt prohibited Russian families from leaving the compounds at all.

Once let out, the bumptiousness of Russians – from an Egyptian standpoint – was often on display. In one instance while traveling in Egypt in 1968, my wife and I took a small ferry across the Nile along with a number of Russian women and men. The women wore short house dresses with short-sleeved blouses. When we reached the other side of the Nile, the Egyptian boatman, his face twisted in disgust, kept repeating the word “zift” — a colloquialism that denotes anything dirty or lowly.

After some probing, the boatman said that his primary problem wasn’t so much their attire, but that the women had copious amounts of hair under their arms. To Egyptians, who prefer their women to have hair only on their heads, this was a massive breach of accepted behavior. To the ultra-conservative Muslim fellah this was more than a breach of etiquette, it was blasphemous. Understanding these norms is essential to intercultural relations.

Another cause for friction involved the apparent frugality of the Soviets. Russians in Egypt were paid relatively well, and were often granted monetary bonuses. Yet, when they left the compounds, often in groups, merchants complained they spent very little money, that they were cheap. Many Russians had volunteered for Egyptian duty in order to buy cars upon their return to Russia. At that time, this was beyond the dreams of most Soviet citizens. It was widely known that the monetary incentive was far more attractive than the patriotic duty of opposing capitalism.

[President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser greets First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev (L) during his visit to the United Arab Republic in 1964. (Photo Vasily Yegorov / ITAR-TASS)]
[President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser greets First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev (L) during his visit to the United Arab Republic in 1964. (Photo Vasily Yegorov / ITAR-TASS)]
A favorite item for Russians returning home, however, was gold. At one time the Egyptian security services complained to then-Egyptian President Anwar Sadat that the Russians were depleting Egyptian stocks of gold. This vignette is symptomatic of the basic distrust, which characterized the Egyptian-Soviet relationship.

General Saad Al Shazly probably expressed this tension best when he wrote:

“The Russians have many qualities, but concern for human feeling is not among them. They are brusque, harsh, frequently arrogant and unwilling to believe anyone has anything to teach them.”

Meanwhile, the Russians were highly critical of their Egyptian military hosts. Most irritating to Shazly was the condescending and preachy attitudes of Soviet officials. They often accused the Egyptians of failing to mobilize their people and seeking luxury instead of putting all their energies against Israel. They frequently asserted that the Egyptian army was largely composed of peasants, most of them poorly educated, and that officers were self-seeking, using their position for personal gain. The Russians also complained that the Egyptians did not know how to use Soviet weapons, and that the problem was low training standards of the Egyptians.

Despite some public acknowledgements of appreciation by the Egyptian embassy and Egyptian press, many sources, especially Israeli ones, described the eventual departure of Soviet advisers as a welcome relief to both Egyptians and Russians. Dan Asher in his book, “Egyptian Strategy for the Yom Kippur” wrote, “most Egyptian personnel loathed the Soviet’s self – righteous and heavy-handed involvement in all levels of the army.” A classmate of mine, Colonel Nicholas Krawciw, attached to a United Nations unit at the time, once recalled being invited to a party by Egyptian officers celebrating the departure of the Soviets.

The training of over 20,0000 Egyptians in Russia didn’t promote intercultural relations either, according to Colonel E.V. Badolato and the Egyptian writer, Mohammed Heikal. Social mixing between the Egyptians and Russians was almost non-existent. Nevertheless, in some aspects, the cultural hurdles were less for the Russians than Americans and other Western advisers.

[Soviet military advisers against the background of the Pyramid of Khafre and the Great Sphinx, 1972]
[Soviet military advisers against the background of the Pyramid of Khafre and the Great Sphinx, 1972]

Combat Training and a Tower of Babel

The Russian system was to instill in the trainee confidence and knowledge by using set-piece drills over and over. Generally speaking, trainees were never expected to exercise initiative or innovation but rather go through drills repeatedly until it was second nature. Basic soldier drills were emphasized, especially survival on the battlefield. If an Egyptian unit stopped for just a brief break, soldiers would immediately dig foxholes.

The Soviet training compared to Western training could be explained this way: in American training of small unit commanders the instructor would say, “This is the situation, as commander what are your actions?” In the Soviet system of training the instructor would say, “This is the situation, and this is what you should do. Now we will practice this until you get it right.”

Most of the training was “show and tell” in order to mitigate the language difficulties. Few Russians knew Arabic and fewer Egyptians knew Russian. The Cyrillic and Arabic writing systems are so difficult that translations were poorly done and often translations at general staff levels forced the Egyptians and Russians to use English.

The Russians also had immense problems with translators and interpreters qualified to work in the military field. In many cases, they were pulled out of language schools before they had completed their training creating a very disgruntled group. The translators were usually only half trained and were not at all happy being dumped in the desert when most were expecting some cushy foreign service posting.

There were often times when translators arrived without any tropical clothing or lodging arranged. Translator social media groups in the Glasnost period often complained about the shoddy treatment in Egypt at the hands of Soviet authorities. According to General Shazly, the Egyptians were often given no notice of the arrival of translators and had to produce clothing and living arrangements for the bewildered Soviet students in a matter of hours.

One of the facets of the Russian interface with Arabs, was that often Russians who spoke Arabic didn’t seem comfortable in their use of Arabic. Perhaps it was their fear of misspeaking creating a security breach. For instance, my counterpart, the Soviet assistant Army attaché in Jordan spoke modern standard Arabic quite well, but he continually asked the Jordanian officers if my Arabic was better than his. It was not, but the Jordanian officers would, just to “pull his chain” heap praise on my mixed Bedouin and Levantine Arabic. Like many KGB officers assigned to the Arab world, he had received two years of Arabic study. Yet the Arabic taught was of the modern standard variety, never used in normal Egyptian conversation.

Training the Trainers and Surviving Egypt

In both the Egyptian and Afghan interventions the Soviets had little time to train or acculturate their officers and troops. While staff work was excellent, it was largely modeled on Soviet intervention in Eastern bloc countries. As the dust settled it became clear that trainers had much to do to become competent at their jobs.

While advisers did do longer tours than American advisers in Iraq and Vietnam, usually about 18 months, and two years for senior officers, interpersonal skills were largely absent and they received no cultural training of any significance. The vast majority of officers knew nothing of Egypt and its people. What they were told was that Egypt, despite the so-called Nasser revolution, was still a “feudal state”.

While in Egypt the enemy was boredom and a lack of any diversions. Soviet troops, like most troops everywhere, were unimpressed with officially conducted tours of museums and historical tourist sites. Russian trainers worked hard and mostly learned on the job what they needed to know, but there was a lot of downtime. Examples include Ramadan, when training virtually shut down, and weeks of overwhelming heat which often limited training to a few hours a day.

Two major problems evident among the Russians in Afghanistan, vodka and drugs, were mostly absent in Egypt, but psychiatric problems were not. Junior officers and NCO’s found their spartan existence tough, and according to one of my fellow Egyptian instructors, a former Egyptian military psychiatrist, there were many cases of Russian soldiers and officers being sent home because of their inability to adjust to the environment.

Overall, the Russians were generally found to be dedicated instructors and stern masters. Despite the grumblings of senior Egyptian officers, President Nasser gave the Russian advisers carte blanche in training scenarios, all the while keeping a certain security distance between them. Nasser made it clear that the Russian instructors were the bosses and in time the Russians were even involved in promotions and assignments.

Russian advisers were intimately involved in the planning for the Ramadan War. Yet later, according to Yevgeny Primakov, former head of the Soviet Foreign Intelligence Service, President Sadat denied any Soviet involvement in the planning. As many sources attest, this is not true.

On an early official visit in 1978, with the U.S. Army Assistant Chief of Intelligence to Egypt, we were shown some of the minutely detailed and beautifully hand drawn cartographic depictions of the Suez Canal Israeli defensive positions and devices installed on the sand berms on the Israeli side. On many documents, in addition to Arabic text, I saw notes in Cyrillic. It should be added that the Russian skill in river crossing techniques was obvious in the Egyptian assault across the canal.

Commander-in-Chief of the USSR Air Force, Chief Air Marshal P.S. Kutakhov with the squadron pilots of the 135th air regiment, February 1972, Egypt.
[Commander-in-Chief of the USSR Air Force, Chief Air Marshal P.S. Kutakhov with the squadron pilots of the 135th air regiment, February 1972, Egypt.]

The Russian Equipment and Logistics System

The Russian logistics system and equipment tend to be better suited for third world recipients; for the most part, simpler to operate and maintain. The Russian “push” logistics system worked far better for the Egyptians than the U.S. “pull” system which depends on better educated and more mechanically inclined crewmen, as well as a systemic approach to logistics.

For instance, the common toolset, which, at that time was found in the American battalion maintenance, would be found at depot level in the Egyptian army. Egyptians were also incapable of battlefield recovery and getting damaged heavy weapons back into the battle. The Egyptian system, based on their level of training and education, was very single task oriented. For example, each tank crewman had specific jobs and the cross training required to do multiple tasks was not usually done.

The Russians reinforced their method of compartmentalized instruction. This seemingly inadequate training has to be understood within the context of the reality of the Egyptian educational level at the time and the general unfamiliarity with machinery. An example, the Egyptian army had to establish a driving school just to train drivers on the rudiments of driving wheeled vehicles.

Military logistics systems are culturally based. The Soviet/Russian system was predicated on a lesser degree of mechanical aptitude and education, which fitted into the Egyptian requirements and educational environment much better than the American systems. Many times in the interminable meetings with Egyptian officers I heard how much better American equipment was than its Russian counterpart, only to hear a few minutes later how “delicate” American equipment was compared to the Russian equipment.

No doubt this was true. For example, repair work on a tracked vehicle, which included pulling the engine out of the chassis, could be done at a U.S. battalion level. Yet, Egyptians did not have the expertise to use the required U.S. equipment (or perhaps the commanders did not want the responsibility). It had to be sent to the rear. In some cases, I felt this was simply a matter of certain officers maintaining their prerogatives and exercising the Arab military cultural tendency to hoard supplies and information.

Russian-Egyptian Cultural and Political Advantages

Despite the above, I do believe that at the time many similarities between Russian and Egyptian cultures existed. A general acceptance of authority, paranoia about military security, and living with few if any amenities are a few examples. The Egyptian soldier expected very little and received even less. Russian junior officers and NCO’s also had lower expectations.

The U.S. Department of Army Pamphlet, A Historical Study of Russian Combat Methods in WWII had described the Russian soldier as one who, “in addition to the simplicity which is revealed in his limited household needs and his primitive way of living, the Russian soldier has a close kinship with nature.” The forbearance of Russian advisers in Egypt suffering 120-degree temperatures, sleeping on the ground in cots just high enough to get them above the scorpions crawling around at night, were some of the privations endured by junior Soviet officers that bewildered Egyptian officers who themselves detested the desert.

Unless they were on exercises, most advisers retreated to their compounds in the evening, a policy acceptable to both the Egyptian and Russian security apparatuses. Personal relationships were abjured. In neither the Soviet army nor the Egyptian army were junior officers and NCO’s expected to exercise much initiative. In both militaries the NCO was simply a higher grade enlisted man and simply relayed and enforced orders. This made the training scenarios much easier for the Russians to conduct.

Renowned Sovietologist Walter Laqueur explained in his seminal studies of Russia in the Middle East that the Soviets came in with a relatively clean slate in regards to colonialism and attitude toward Israel. Western egregious political mistakes, such as the ill-fated Baghdad Pact, paved the way for Soviet involvement. Admiration among Arab intellectuals and military officers for the rapid Soviet industrialization and military prowess was also an important factor.

The large Muslim population of the USSR also enabled Russians to find enough compliant Muslims to present a “Muslim face” to the Arab World. Despite the earlier effort of the Stalinists to eradicate Islam in the USSR as incompatible with Marxism, according to American premier Middle East historian, Bernard Lewis, in consideration of geopolitical reasons, a great deal of intellectual outreach was expended to surface compatibility of Islam to communism.

[VIDEO: Russian advisers train Syrian troops – Zvezda]

Lessons Learned: A Look Forward

The Soviet experience in Egypt can be narrowed down to three salient lessons.

First, one cannot expect gratitude from even the most expensive and elaborate military assistance programs. Egyptian sources, other than Saad Shazly, scarcely mention the real impact of Russian assistance. Upon their departure, they also left behind a residue of ill-will.

Second, no long-term benefits accrued to the Russians. While Russia seems to be regenerating its relations with Egypt, both are very wary of political entanglements.

Third, and most importantly, the cultural component of the security assistance programs is vital. Despite the massive transfer of arms and equipment, along with the best professional efforts of competent Soviet officers, the constant friction between the two sides, especially at the top level, negated the Russian investment.

Some might say it has been quite a number of years since the last Soviet soldiers left Egypt, that times have changed. Yet it is well established that cultures change very slowly even as technologies surge ahead. The culture of societies, particularly the military subculture, changes almost imperceptibly and not always in a “progressive” sense.

An analysis of Russian military attempts to modernize and reform have been well captured in the book, “Military Reform and Militarism in Russia” by Aleksandr Golts. Attempts by a series of Russian Ministers of War, particularly Anatoliy Serdyukov, to institute reforms in the Russian armed forces were ultimately defeated by the colossal Russian military bureaucracy. As Golt wrote, “a Russian officer should stop being a minuscule cog in a huge military machine, deprived of the right to initiative, who acquires knowledge to the area relevant to him.”

Russia, under President Vladimir Putin, has apparently chosen a somewhat different path in Syria. Russia’s specialized forces, the Spetsnaz, have been engaged in combat alongside and sometimes commanding units of the pro-Assad regime forces. Rather than instituting the more formalized training that characterized the training of Egyptians and Afghans, it would seem that Russia has opted for a sort of on-the-job training offered by the ongoing conflict in Syria. Putin may not wish to face the issue of attriting young soldiers lives in another Afghanistan, an increasingly precious commodity in view of the rapidly declining Russian population. He has wisely chosen a sort of “hybrid warfare,” using irregular forces, mercenaries, clandestine methods, information and disinformation programs, at which the Russians have excelled for decades.

Professional military trainers require specialized education and personal attributes. Hopefully the American army creation of Security Force Assistance Brigades (SFAB) will develop the required attributes and knowledge. In establishing these units Americans have learned, somewhat belatedly, the unique requirements and roles of a military adviser. The SFAB should delve deeply into American Lessons learned, not just from Iraq or Afghanistan, but also from America’s training of Filipinos, Central American forces, Koreans, and irregular forces such as in the Burma Theater in World War II.

As important, while studying our own security assistance lessons learned, we should always ensure that we study those of other nations, particularly our rivals, and those of former enemies such as Nazi Germany and its training of European (non-German) Waffen SS units and the Muslim legions. In an article I wrote and published in 1999, I illustrated the failure of Western military advisers to institute lasting changes in the Arab military. Much of the failures can be attributed to futile attempts to re-create a military modeled on Western traditions and ethos.

History does not always repeat itself, and sometimes does in a modified and unrecognizable form. Charging ahead in a futurist fashion arrogantly assuming that technology and “new wave” doctrine will put us ahead of our adversaries is a recipe for disaster.

Colonel (Ret.) Norvell DeAtkine, for LIMA CHARLIE WORLD

[ Edited by John Sjoholm and Anthony A. LoPresti ]

U.S. Army Colonel (Ret.) Norvell DeAtkine spent nearly nine years of his 30-year military career in the Middle East as a military attache, student or political military officer. After retirement he taught for 18 years as the Middle East seminar director at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. Following his retirement from the JFK Center, Colonel DeAtkine held positions with the Defense Intelligence Agency, Iraqi Intelligence Cell and Marine Corps Cultural and Language Center. He has written a number of articles for various periodicals on primarily Middle Eastern military topics.

SOURCES:

The following sources are most helpful in terms of Soviet advisory material: Russia and the Arabs, by Yevgeny Primakov; Foxbats over Dimona and The Soviet-Israeli War 1967-1973, by Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez; The Egyptian Army in Popular Culture, by Dakia Said Mostafa; The Yom Kippur War, by Abraham Rabinovich (the later version); The Soviet Union and Egypt 1945-1955, by Rami Ginat; The Soviet Union and the Yom Kippur War, by Galia Golan; Armies of Sand, by Kenneth Pollack; The Soviet Union and the Middle East, by Walter Laqueur; Naval War College Review, “A Clash of Cultures: The Expulsion of the Soviet Military Advisors from Egypt”, by E.V. Badolato. – Author

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Iranian crackdown on MEK shows the activist group has popular support

Iranian crackdown on MEK shows the activist group has popular support [Lima Charlie News]
Iranian crackdown on MEK shows the activist group has popular support [Lima Charlie News]

OPINION | Iran’s increasing crackdown on the MEK, an activist group accused by the mullahs of organizing mass protests, proves the group is the main alternative to the present Iranian regime. Lima Charlie World is publishing the following opinion article in its entirety. At times, Lima Charlie World will publish opinion articles that are relevant to critical foreign policy issues. The viewpoints expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinions or viewpoints of Lima Charlie World.

In light of escalating tensions with Iran, the terrorist designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and increasing popular protests inside the country, many are asking: Is there a viable alternative to Iran’s mullahs?

Well, the Iranian Regime itself gives us the answer.

Last month, once again, senior Iranian regime officials publicly underscored the role of the main opposition Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) in organizing domestic protests. This comes after comments by the regime’s highest authority, supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who last year lambasted the MEK for organizing the uprisings. In January 2018, the regime’s president, Hassan Rouhani, even called French President Emmanuel Macron to complain about the movement’s presence in Paris.

When no European leader, including President Macron, paid heed to Rouhani’s desperate pleas, the regime even attempted to bomb the “Free Iran Rally – The Alternative” in Paris, as part of an increasingly aggressive international assassination program of its critics.

Tehran routinely refers to the MEK as an “existential threat” and subjects sympathizers to prison, torture and death by hanging. Since 1979, the Iranian regime has executed no less than 100,000 MEK members and sympathizers. In 1988 alone, the mullahs conducted what Amnesty International has called a “prison massacre” executing over 30,000 members and supporters of this organization for their democratic beliefs. Now, the struggle for democracy and freedom in Iran has entered a new phase.

A recent statement at a major event in Tehran speaks to the growing impact of the MEK and its vital role in directing mass protests inside Iran, drawing the authorities’ wrath.

Mahmoud Alavi, Minister of the regime’s intelligence service, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) said on April 19 that “over the past year 116 teams tied to the MEK have been confronted or dealt with.” During his Friday prayer speech, which was televised by state-run TV, he employed sensational phrases to play up the regime’s intelligence capabilities against the MEK. He stated that the arrest of 116 MEK “teams” (as opposed to individuals) across the country was inspired by supreme leader Ali Khamenei himself.

Iranian Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi (Photo: Ebrahim Noroozi / AP)
Iranian Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi (Photo: Ebrahim Noroozi / AP)

On April 22, MOIS Director General for East Azerbaijan Province announced in an interview:

“In 1397 (Iranian calendar beginning March 21) MEK activities in the Province had increased and for 1398 they have been given reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering missions to further their agenda inside the country. Last year the MEK exploited the economic and social problems to expand its activities. Some 60 individuals associated with the group were arrested and 50 more people identified and warned.”

On May 20, the revolutionary court in Tehran sentenced a 34-year-old MEK activist to death and three others to five years in prison for engaging in peaceful anti-regime protests.

In reaction to Alavi’s comments, the MEK stated that the number of last year’s arrests of its activists was actually much higher than the figures Alavi portrayed. It published a small sample of the names and specifics of 28 of the detainees, calling for urgent international action for their release. This sample list speaks volumes about the movement’s growing status inside Iran. Over half of those listed are less than 35 years of age. Among them are women, and they were arrested in 13 different cities across Iran, indicating the extensive reach of the MEK.

Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the political coalition National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which has the MEK as a member organization, called on the Secretary-General of the United Nations to take immediate action to release those detainees.

The Iranian regime is crippled by major crises and is deadly frightened of the Iranian people as its true enemy. It does not want them to be organized, and it certainly does not want any semblance of an alternative to its authoritarian rule. That is why it is on the hunt for anyone associated with the MEK. It has done this before. Following the 2009 protests, the regime hanged several MEK supporters to suppress dissent and discourage sympathy with the organization.

[NCRI Supporters rallying in Washington D.C. on March 8th, 2019. (Photo: Bruce Boyajian)]
[NCRI Supporters rallying in Washington D.C. on March 8th, 2019. (Photo: Bruce Boyajian)]
The regime is also vengeful towards the MEK because the group has revealed many aspects of the mullahs’ clandestine nuclear weapons program, including the revelations about the Natanz enrichment facility and the Arak heavy water site in August 2002.

To justify its massacre of MEK activists in Iran and its terror plots against the group, the Iranian regime has falsely claimed that the MEK has been involved in terrorism. Yet, a French investigative magistrate concluded after an eight-year investigation that the MEK’s military operations, which were unilaterally halted in 2001, were not terrorism, but rather resistance against tyranny.

Now, however, the MEK has significantly expanded the depth and breadth of its domestic activities through “Units of Rebellion” – small teams of ordinary Iranians organized to lead protests, write anti-regime slogans and deface the symbols of the regime’s suppressive might. This includes the establishment of IRGC and paramilitary Bassij offices scattered across the country.

Alavi’s comments belie what the regime apologists are spewing out about the “lack of popular support” for the movement inside Iran. The head of the regime’s intelligence service boasts about the “epic” scale of arrests of MEK members. The MEK has proven itself to be the only democratic opposition capable of rallying Iranians against the regime, through a formidable organizational structure and popular network inside the country.

The world should recognize the Iranian people’s democratic aspirations to change the regime. The only solution to the Iran crisis is a grassroots and indigenous one. As such, the international community should also take immediate action to release detainees who have been suppressed by the terrorist IRGC and MOIS forces. Designating the MOIS as a Foreign Terrorist Organization is another important step to be taken. Let’s send another strong message to Tehran that its terrorism is no longer tolerated.

Ali Safavi, for LIMA CHARLIE WORLD

[Subscribe to our newsletter for free and be the first to get Lima Charlie World updates delivered right to your inbox.]

Ali Safavi is an official with the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. An activist during the anti-Shah student movement in the 1970s in the US, Safavi has been involved in Iranian affairs since then and has lectured and written extensively on issues related to Iran, Iraq, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and the political process in the Middle East. Safavi was involved in the successful legal campaign to remove the main Iranian opposition movement, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), from the lists of terrorist groups in the United Kingdom, the European Union and the United States.

Safavi’s articles have been published in various books and periodicals including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Hill, The Boston Herald, The Washington Times, The McClatchy Newspapers, The Washington Post, and The Chicago Tribune, among others, and he has appeared on many television and radio programs on CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, CBC, The BBC, Sky TV, Al-Arabiya, and Al-Jazeera, among others. Safavi’s older brother, Hossein, a US-educated aerospace engineer from Northrop University in California, was executed by the current Iranian regime in 1981 for his opposition to their repressive policies. A sociologist by career, Safavi studied and taught at UCLA, California State University Los Angeles and University of Michigan from 1972 until 1981.

Safavi tweets at @amsafavi

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The Mind of Bolton – AUMF and the New Iran War (A Parody)

The Mind of Bolton - AUMF and the New Iran War [Lima Charlie News]
The Mind of Bolton - AUMF and the New Iran War [Lima Charlie News]

John Bolton, President Trump’s National Security Advisor, is searching for a way to use the 2001 Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF) to bypass Congress.

Evidence. All I needed was the evidence …

As I exited the Oval Office, that objective repeated in my head. Just a whiff of Iranian ties to the right terrorists would move Trump to say ‘yes.’

Just a whiff John. Just a whiff.

The plan was simple. My experience working in the Bush Jr. administration helped clarify which steps will legally justify these moves. My weekly breakfasts with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan made it clear that these two are largely willing to tow the President’s line.

Call me” – the President said making a gesture with his thumb and pinkie, rotary dialing with his other hand.

Pompeo had issued a written statement after the last flare up. “[Trump] looks forward to someday meeting with leaders of Iran in order to work out an agreement and, very importantly, taking steps to give Iran the future it deserves.”

And at least he has laid the legal groundwork for invasion.

‘They have hosted al-Qaeda, they have permitted al-Qaeda to transit their country,’ Pompeo told a dubious Senator Rand Paul in Senate testimony in April. ‘There is no doubt there is a connection between the Islamic Republic of Iran and al-Qaeda. Period, full stop.’

That’s all I have to say…

Conveniently, al Qaeda has sprung back to life. The Islamic State’s destruction left space for this old enemy to return. Just in time.

Thanks to the AUMF, we – the President – can use military force if he thinks he has public support. Otherwise, war can spell dire electoral consequences.

Congress will sit back and do nothing.

The President has already rallied his base against the Iranian regime with his “maximum pressure” campaign.

“If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!”

Fire and fury!

I love it.

Trump tweet Iran

Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group perfectly positioned. Check.

Brilliant brinksmanship this is. Brilliant.

This is not North Korea 2.0! Fake news.

“An Attack on Two Saudi Oil Tankers is An Attack On All Americans”.

Oh, Onion you can still make me laugh.

Onion tweet John Bolton

They have hosted al-Qaeda, they have permitted al-Qaeda to transit their country”
-U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo

This has all freed me up to focus on my main objective: transforming decades of bubbling up tension into open conflict then bam! Regime change in Iran.

The one page AUMF, passed in the Senate 98 to 0 and 420 to 1 in the House, authorizes the President ‘to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the US by such nations, organizations or persons.’

‘Harbored’ is my favorite part.

That’s the advantage of evolving franchises and the fluidity of terror cells, and the reason why the 2001 AUMF was written so broadly. Makes logical sense as well in that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, so naturally that’s where the terrorists are hiding.

The AUMF is conveniently absent of a definition of just how much evidence is needed for the President to move troops. I reminded the President that this timing (of course) would distract from the Mueller backlash and also be great for a reelection bid. Most wartime presidents are reelected.

Congress will do nothing.

Amendment by consent.

The Saudis approve.

He seemed to be pleased.

Under the AUMF, I don’t even have to deal with those ass clowns in the Congress. Just the President.

Even if Congress wants to get crazy and pull funds from this military operation, the President only needs ⅓, plus 1, of the Congressional vote to wage war on any target at any time. All he has to do is veto the act of withdrawal, requiring a ⅔ vote from both houses to overcome that.

That’s not going to happen. Congress isn’t going to risk being painted as failing to support troops in the field. Congress will continue funding because at the end of the day, the individual representative does not want to look weak or anti-American.

What’s the big deal anyways?

President Bush used the AUMF 18 times and President Obama used it 19 times — for military actions, to enact mass surveillance and to secure prisoners. President Trump has only used it twice!

Restraint, if you ask me…

As former Ambassador to the UN, I know nations have the right to defend themselves. Of course they do! Yes, we can also go to war when there is a joint authorization from the UN Security Council or through NATO under Article 5. This helps if we want to build coalitions and follow treaties and such.

What? Is Congress suddenly going to grow a spine?

The Walter B. Jones Restoring Power to Congress Act, which would repeal the 2001 AUMF, has a mere two co-sponsors. The bill was referred to the Foreign Affairs Committee in January, and hasn’t seen the light of day since. The bill is named for the late Senator Walter B. Jones (R. – N.C.), and is based off of his previous legislation.

Seems pretty easy to ignore.

Of the 17 Republicans running to assume Jones’ old seat, not one has in anyway critiqued Trump’s foreign policy.

OK now.

Is the media going to skip the reality TV cash cow that the 2020 presidential campaign will be, to cover some war in some country?

The media played its role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and little has changed. The war in Yemen has been largely ignored by major networks. The aftermath of the U.S. intervention in Libya is rarely mentioned. Opponents of regime change in Venezuela barely have a platform. None of the top ten circulated newspapers in the country spoke out against the President’s April 2017 strike on Syria.

But under the AUMF, I don’t even have to deal with those ass clowns in the Congress. Just the President.

Eighteen years into the War on Terror, the U.S. is involved in military actions in 76 countries, or 40% of the countries on the planet. What’s one more?

These are dangerous times. And I took an oath.

–END

Don Martinez (reporting from Washington, D.C. as the imagined John Bolton, or John Bolton Fan Fiction), for LIMA CHARLIE WORLD

[Diego Lynch and Anthony A. LoPresti contributed to this parody]

[Main image, from photo by Alex Wong]

U.S. Army Combat Veteran Don Martinez reports from Washington, D.C. where a campaign against the use of the September 18th, 2001, Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF) against Iran is being held.

Don Martinez is a senior correspondent with Lima Charlie News and Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) of Lima Charlie Media. Don is a retired US Army Field Artillery officer living in Colorado Springs, CO. He is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom with two combat deployments to Iraq where he earned his Combat Action Badge.

Lima Charlie World provides global news, featuring insight & analysis by military veterans, intelligence professionals and foreign policy experts Worldwide.

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