War « Isegoria

His most disastrous error was to go into the Soviet Union as a conqueror instead of a liberator

Wednesday, August 2nd, 2023

The advice to attack an enemy’s weak points goes back at least to Sun Tzu in the fifth century B.C., Bevin Alexander explains (in How Hitler Could Have Won World War II), but it is extraordinarily difficult for human beings to follow:

Attacking Russia head-on was wrong to begin with, because it guaranteed the greatest resistance, not the least. A direct attack also forces an enemy back on his reserves and supplies, while it constantly lengthens the supply and reinforcement lines of the attacker. The better strategy is to separate the enemy from his supplies and reserves. That is why an attack on the flank is more likely to be successful.

Nevertheless Hitler could still have won if he had struck at the Soviet Union’s weakness, instead of its strength.

His most disastrous error was to go into the Soviet Union as a conqueror instead of a liberator. The Soviet people had suffered enormously at the hands of the Communist autocracy for two decades. Millions died when the Reds forced people off their land to create collective farms. Millions more were obliged to move great distances and work long hours under terrible conditions in factories and construction projects. The secret police punished any resistance with death or transportation to horrible prison gulags in Siberia. In the gruesome purges of the 1930s, Joseph Stalin had systematically killed all leaders and all military officers who, in his paranoid mind, posed the slightest threat to his dictatorship. Life for the ordinary Russian was drab, full of exhausting work, and dangerous. At the same time, the Soviet Union was an empire ruling over a collection of subjugated peoples who were violently opposed to rule from the Kremlin.

Vast numbers of these people would have risen in rebellion if Hitler’s legions had entered with the promise of freedom and elimination of Soviet oppression. Had Hitler done this, the Soviet Union would have collapsed.

Such a policy would not have given Hitler his Lebensraum immediately. But once the Soviet Union had been shattered, he could have put into effect anything he wanted to with the pieces that remained.

Hitler followed precisely the opposite course of action.

Posted in Policy, War | 9 Comments »

Nearly half-a-million people were living within a 150-mile radius of the explosion

Tuesday, August 1st, 2023

The first atomic bomb test site — selected in 1944 from a shortlist of eight possible test sites in California, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado — had been selected, in part, for its supposed isolation:

Yet in reality, nearly half-a-million people were living within a 150-mile radius of the explosion, with some as close as 12 miles away. Many, if not most, of these civilians were still asleep when the bomb detonated just before dawn.

Several civilians nearby — stunned by the blast — later reported that they thought they were experiencing the end of the world. A local press report stated that the flash had been so bright that a blind girl in Socorro, New Mexico — about 100 miles from the bombing range — was able to see it, and asked: “What’s that?” In Ruidoso, New Mexico, a group of teenage campers were jolted out of their bunk beds onto their cabin floor. They ran outside, worried that a water heater had exploded. Barbara Kent, one of the campers, recently recalled in an interview with National Geographic that “[A]ll of a sudden, there was a big cloud overheard, and lights in the sky. It hurt our eyes. It was as if the sun came out tremendous. The whole sky turned strange.”

A few hours later, white flakes began to fall from the sky. The campers began to play in the flurry.

“We were grabbing the white flakes, and putting it all over ourselves, pressing it on our faces,” Kent said. “But the strange thing, instead of being cold like snow, it was hot. And we all thought, ‘Well, the reason it’s hot is because it’s summer.’ We were only thirteen; we didn’t know any better.”

One family in Oscuro, about 45 miles away from the site, hung wet bed sheets in their windows to keep the flakes from floating into the house. The strange substance continued to fall from the sky for days, coating everything: orchards, gardens, herds of livestock, cisterns, ponds, and rivers.

Posted in Technology, War, Weapons | 1 Comment »

There is no neutral party that really is playing the role of trying to end the conflict

Saturday, July 29th, 2023

William Arkin is afraid that the Biden administration has squandered the possibility of being a third actor in the Ukraine-Russia war:

The United States has aligned itself 100% with Ukraine. And as a result of that, I don’t see much movement or much interest even on the part of the U.S. government in Washington to be a third party, to actually be a negotiator, to find a peaceful resolution. So, really, no one is playing that role. The United Nations is not playing that role. Sweden is not playing that role anymore, now that it aspires to be a member of NATO. There is no neutral party that really is playing the role of trying to end the conflict between the two parties, who are essentially stalled right now in combat, where there’s not really much movement on either side, but the killing continues.

So, it was the case that in the minds of Russia, the expansion of NATO was provocative and may, in the theory of national security, been a strategic threat to Russia. And it is probably the case that when history is written, we will say that NATO was a little bit too greedy in its zeal to expand into Eastern Europe. But the reality is that that doesn’t excuse the Russian invasion, not in 2014 nor in 2022. And the reality for the CIA is that they need to understand what Putin’s intentions are, not only to understand the implications of Ukraine’s actions, particularly its increasing actions in Crimea and across the border in Russia, but also to understand what it is that Putin will settle for as part of a settlement and also what it is that Zelensky will settle for. So, it’s a tricky situation where I don’t really have a lot of confidence that the CIA is fully on top of what either of these two leaders think.

Posted in Policy, War | 11 Comments »

It was too “technically sweet” not to develop

Friday, July 28th, 2023

Oppenheimer opposed the H-bomb, which would be 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bombs that ended World War II, but not entirely for moral reasons:

At first, he thought it was infeasible. Then, when the math proved it feasible, he dropped his resistance, admitting that it was too “technically sweet” not to develop. (The film does not quote this rather famous line of his.) Still, he remained unenthusiastic, worrying that the H-bomb would divert money from Hiroshima-type A-bombs, which he thought the Army should continue building as weapons to be used on the battlefield if the Soviets invaded Western Europe. He argued that H-bombs were too powerful for battlefield targets—they could destroy only big cities—and, if the Russians built them, as they would if we did, a war would devastate American cities, too. He did eventually come to the view, as portrayed in the film, that this mutual vulnerability might deter both sides from using the weapons or even from going to war at all. But he was not opposed to nuclear weapons in general.

[…]

His hedged attitude toward the H-bomb threatened the project’s funding. And so its leading advocates set out to destroy him.

Posted in Policy, Science, Technology, War, Weapons | 9 Comments »

Abusers give vice a bad name

Thursday, July 27th, 2023

According to our prevailing civic religion, Bryan Caplan asks, who are we supposed to resent, stigmatize, and punish in response to drug and alcohol addiction?

First and foremost, the producer. Anyone who makes money off of human misery.

Second and secondarily, the typical user. Sure, they rarely experience severe personal blowback. But they normalize deviant behavior. And they put money into the pockets of the vendors of sin, allowing them to flourish.

Last and least, the “abuser” or “addict.” Personally, they may disgust us. Yet the bipartisan position is that archetypal abusers are victims who deserve general sympathy and taxpayer assistance.

I say that these priorities are confused at best.

Visualize a world full of moderate users of every alleged vice. You might not approve, but what’s the big deal? The moderate users do their jobs, live in homes, take care of their families, and keep their friends. They’re not perfect, but who is?

The picture doesn’t change if you add thriving legal businesses supplying all these moderate users with their desired products.

[…]

The difference between me and normal observers: I don’t consider extreme abusers or “addicts” to be victims. I consider them victimizers. They aren’t a symptom of a greater social problem. They are the greater social problem. Abusers have and continue to make evil choices. Granted, it logically possible to end up on Fentanyl Row through tremendously bad luck. Empirically, however, everything I’ve read on poverty convinces me that the root cause of such residence is almost invariably extraordinarily irresponsible behavior.

[…]

Abusers don’t just mistreat their families, friends, neighbors, and passersby. Even worse, they give vice a bad name. Abusers inspire the indiscriminate, unjust “wars” on innocent users. They inspire prohibition, which takes production out of the hands of ordinary businesspeople and into the hands of criminals.

[…]

At minimum, you can impose the standard punishments for theft. Which is easy, because if you examine encampments, ill-gotten wares are in plain sight. Stealing shopping carts is a crime. Stealing bicycles is a crime. It’s crazy for cops to look the other way when shifty characters violate property rights in plain sight. And unless you oppose the very existence of public property, you can also consistently favor enforcement of laws against trespassing on, vandalizing, and defiling public property. Enforcing all of this doesn’t precisely make abuse illegal, but it comes close.

[…]

But in a strange sense, both gun control and prohibition grow out of softness. A system with the moral courage to harshly, swiftly, and surely punish violence would have little need of gun control. A system with the moral courage to harshly, swiftly, and surely punish abusers for stealing, trespassing, vandalizing, and defiling would have little need of prohibition. In both cases, we haphazardly punish millions of innocents because we refuse to decisively punish thousands of clear-cut criminals.

Posted in Crime, Economics, Policy | 4 Comments »

Desert warfare was strangely similar to war at sea

Wednesday, July 26th, 2023

Rommel immediately grasped the essence of the war in Libya and Egypt, Bevin Alexander explains (in How Hitler Could Have Won World War II) — everything depended upon mobility:

“In the North African desert,” he wrote, “nonmotorized troops are of practically no value against a motorized enemy, since the enemy has the chance, in almost every position, of making the action fluid by a turning movement around the south.”

This was why the Italians had been beaten almost without a fight — they had moved largely on foot; the British were in vehicles. Nonmotorized forces could be used only in defensive positions, Rommel saw. Yet such positions were of little consequence, because enemy motorized units could surround them and force them to surrender, or bypass them. In other words, foot soldiers in the desert had no impact beyond the reach of their guns.

Rommel discerned that desert warfare was strangely similar to war at sea. Motorized equipment could move at will over it and usually in any direction, much as ships could move over oceans. Rommel described the similarity thus: “Whoever has the weapons with the greatest range has the longest arm, exactly as at sea. Whoever has the greater mobility…can by swift action compel his opponent to act according to his wishes.”

Posted in War | No Comments »

These engineering works include concrete-lined trenches, barbed wire, dragon’s teeth, anti-tank ditches, and plenty of anti-tank and anti-personnel mines

Monday, July 24th, 2023

During World War II, German soldiers marveled at how skillfully Red Army troops used a shovel, and Russian engineers seem to have lost none of their skill:

“Russian constructions follow traditional military plans for entrenchment, largely unchanged since the Second World War,” British military intelligence said in a December statement about Russian activity in Luhansk.

The problem for Ukraine is that since late last year, Russian forces have been building up their defensive positions in eastern Ukraine and along the northern approaches to Crimea. These engineering works include concrete-lined trenches, barbed wire, dragon’s teeth, anti-tank ditches, and plenty of anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, and they “pose a major tactical challenge to Ukrainian offensive operations,” the RUSI report said.

Each Russian brigade has two engineer companies, which is roughly comparable to the engineer battalion attached to a US brigade combat team. One company focuses on building fortifications, while the other lays and clears mines.

There is an initial line of infantry foxholes. Behind this is a second line of trenches and concrete firing posts, screened by multiple obstacle belts — each a little over a half mile wide — and comprising barbed wire, dragon’s teeth, and anti-tank ditches about 20 feet wide and 13 feet deep.

The second line isn’t continuously manned but rather consists of company-size positions in wooded areas and on ridgelines, placed so that the defenses are entirely covered by fire.

The third line, about 3 miles back from the initial outpost line, consists of fallback positions and concealed areas for reserves. And these fortified zones may have several echelons of Russian units.

“The overall depth of defensive fortifications exceeds 30 kilometers (19 miles) on some axes,” the RUSI report, which was based on interviews with Ukrainian military officers, said.

[…]

Perhaps the most formidable part of Russian defenses is mines, which the Russians “have no shortage of,” the report said.

[…]

Clearing minefields is difficult because Russian mines have multiple triggers and anti-tampering devices. The RUSI report said it’s common for Russian antipersonnel mines “to be initiated by a seismic sensor and to have an immediately adjacent mine initiated by wires, which are laid out in a cross from the device.”

Russia has also laid “instant” fields of magnetically activated anti-tank mines that are deployed using multiple rocket launchers.

Posted in War, Weapons | 3 Comments »

Russia is recruiting former Afghan commandos who were trained by the US military

Monday, July 24th, 2023

The war between Russian and Ukraine has become a magnet for foreign fighters:

In a recent interview with the Nepal Express, two young Nepalis described their service. One was a student at a Russian university, while the other was a former Nepalese Army soldier who worked as a security guard in Dubai before visiting Russia as a tourist and then enlisting.

[…]

“We were thinking of joining the French army,” said the ex-Nepali soldier. “There was a long process and it was difficult to enter Europe. Russia became easy.”

Ironically, Russia is also recruiting former Afghan commandos who were trained by the US military to fight the Taliban (and whose families probably fought the Soviet soldiers who occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s).

Like the Nepalis, the Afghans aren’t joining out of love of Russia or hatred of Ukraine. They are being hunted by the Taliban who now rule Afghanistan and need sanctuary and money to support their families, so the prospect fighting for Moscow — for $1,500 a month — is likely the least bad alternative.

Posted in Policy, War | No Comments »

A two-sided game reopens

Sunday, July 23rd, 2023

The exponential growth in electronic computational power has, Azar Gat (War in Human Civilization) notes, transformed naval and air warfare:

At sea, the heavily armored, big-gun capital ships have vacated the scene, and warfare is waged offensively by electronic guided missiles and defensively by electronic disruption and interception systems. Similarly, air warfare, once based on the kinetic capabilities of planes and their armament, now relies primarily on electronically guided weapons and electronic defensive systems. Both at sea and in the air, victory now depends on who is one step ahead of its rivals in these crucial techno-tactical spheres.

The medium in which land warfare takes place is immeasurably more complex than those of sea and air warfare, because of both the numbers of combatants involved and land’s complex topographical features. But at least since the early 1980s the direction has been clear to those who grasped the broader context. The revolution that land warfare is undergoing is no less profound and far reaching than that generated by the mechanization revolution and the introduction of the tank and other AFVs. It was J. F. C. Fuller, the leading pioneering theorist of mechanized warfare, who firmly placed the mechanization revolution in war within the context of the second industrial revolution and thereby helped people understand its full significance and scope. Incredibly, as early as 1928, he looked further ahead, predicting that the third revolutionary wave of the future — which would shape war, as well as all other fields of life — would be “electric and robotic” (the word electronic did not yet exist).

Let us focus on the tank, a product of the second mechanization revolution and the backbone of land warfare for about a hundred years. Ever since World War II, tanks have been optimized, primarily to fight other tanks, and second, to withstand hollow charges. Their main armament is a high velocity gun firing kinetic projectiles. Half of their 60-70-ton weight in most armies consists of heavy armor, which in turn requires a 1500 horsepower engine.

However, tanks will no longer come within kinetic firing range of each other, and will be discovered and attacked at much longer ranges. This is no different than with the mighty battleships of WWII’s Pacific theater, which never came within firing range of each other.

[…]

The wholesale destruction of the hapless Armenian army in the 2020 war against Azerbaijan, like the stranded and harassed Russian convoy en route to Kiev and the image of the Russian armored battalion massacred during its attempted river crossing in the Donbas, with the shattered bridge in the middle, starkly demonstrates the current reality. The same can be said of the rash retreat from the Saluki wadi by the Israeli army’s 401st Brigade Merkava Mark 4 tanks during the Second Lebanon War (2006) when faced with second-generation Russian Kornet anti-tank missiles fired by Hezbollah.

[…]

This does not mean that the tank and other fighting vehicles are history. But the answer is not to be found in further reinforcing the heavy armor or in improved tactical practices, clumsy as Russian tactics proved to be. Rather, the answer lies in a full-scale adjustment of land fighting vehicles to the ongoing electronic revolution — above all, in adopting active defense systems, such as the Israeli Trophy and Iron Fist, now purchased and installed by the US, German, and British armies. Active defense means electronic detection, disruption, and interception of incoming projectiles, launched from land or from the air — the same revolution that sea and air warfare have already undergone.

[…]

The current reality, in which being detected on the modern battlefield means almost assured destruction, will no longer hold. A two-sided game reopens. Thus, battlefield survival and success will depend on the question of which side possesses the last word in terms of offensive and defensive electronic systems and counter-systems for detection, attack, and disruption. As in air and sea warfare during the electronic age, it can also be expected that when one side holds a decisive advantage in these systems, we shall see crushing, almost one-sided victories in regular conventional land warfare.

[…]

While electronically guided projectiles are already widely and effectively used in the Ukraine War, electronic interception and disruption system are largely absent. The trench warfare stalemate that has attracted so much attention — as if we were back one hundred years to World War I — may be a function of this imbalance, as armored fighting vehicles are paralyzed by the lack of effective active defense.

[…]

Indeed, relying on electronic detection and interception systems enables a drastic reduction in the armor of fighting vehicles for what is necessary against small arms, shrapnel, and blasts. Thus there is an expected reduction in their weight to about 10 to 25 tons; a parallel reduction in engine size and weight; and design re-orientation to electronically guided defensive and offensive systems. This, I believe, is the direction in which land warfare and land weapon systems is heading in the electronic-computerized age.

Posted in Technology, War, Weapons | 12 Comments »

The assault on Crete guaranteed two catastrophes for Germany

Wednesday, July 19th, 2023

Hitler decided to use his highly trained parachute and glider troops to seize the relatively unimportant island of Crete, Bevin Alexander explains (in How Hitler Could Have Won World War II), but he refused to capture Malta, which lay directly on the seaway between Italy and Libya:

This absurd choice — made over the objections of Admiral Raeder, the navy high command, and elements in the OKW — marked Hitler’s final rejection of a Mediterranean strategy that could have brought him victory.

[…]

Once the Balkans had been seized by the Germans, Crete strategically fell into a twilight zone. For the British, long-range bombers based on Crete could reach the Ploesti oil fields in Romania, 675 miles north, but RAF bases on the island could be blasted by German aircraft a hundred miles away in southern Greece. For the Germans, occupation made no more sense, because aircraft based there would be farther from Cairo and Alexandria than planes in eastern Cyrenaica.

The situation was entirely different in regard to Malta. This small British-ruled island group (122 square miles), only 60 miles south of Sicily and 200 miles north of Tripoli, was a dagger sticking into Italian and German backs in North Africa. Here the British had based airplanes, submarines, and warships with the explicit purpose of interdicting traffic to Libya.

[…]

Officers examined the possibility of neutralizing Crete and Malta solely by air raids. But any successful bombing campaign lasts only as long as it is continued. The only certain way to eliminate a threat is to seize the ground with troops, and Admiral Raeder and the navy high command agitated for an assault on Malta. Capture of this island, they asserted, was “an essential precondition for a successful war against Britain in the Mediterranean.”

Raeder and his senior officers were trying to reverse a preliminary decision of February 22, 1941, when the OKW informed them that Hitler planned to delay the conquest of Malta until the autumn of 1941 “after the conclusion of the war in the east.” Thus Hitler was expecting to dispose of the Russians in a swift summer campaign, then turn back at his leisure and deal with the small problem of Malta!

[…]

Hitler’s final decision came on April 21, 1941, as the campaign in the Balkans was winding down. He decided to attack Crete, which was given the code name Operation Mercury. Malta would have to wait. Crete, Hitler declared, was more important. He wanted to eliminate all danger of British sea and air forces from southeastern Europe. British forces on Malta would be dealt with by the Luftwaffe. Furthermore, Barbarossa, the attack on Russia, was set for June 1941, and Mercury had to be completed before then.

With this decision Adolf Hitler lost the war. The assault on Crete guaranteed two catastrophes for Germany: it limited the Mediterranean campaign to peripheral or public relations goals, and it turned German strength against the Soviet Union while Britain remained defiant, with the United States in the wings.

Posted in War | 1 Comment »

Most burglars enter a home through the most obvious paths

Tuesday, July 18th, 2023

You might be tempted to point home security cameras at the spots around your home that are difficult to see:

You might think these hidden areas are a burglar’s preferred place to break and enter. But the fact is, most burglars enter a home through the most obvious paths. According to data collected by security company ADT, 34% of burglars enter through the front door and 22% use a first-floor window. You might imagine that these are spaces where your eyes or your neighbors can spot any malicious activity, but they are also the most used-routes for break-ins.

You obviously don’t want to place a camera behind obstructions, but camera obstructions aren’t always so obvious:

Outdoors, this might mean allowing space for tree branches to swing in the wind. Be careful of quick-growing plants that will require you to move your camera every year or two.

Consider your camera’s range of view inside, too. Will your camera see everything you want it to when interior doors are opened and closed? You’ll also want to avoid placing the camera in a spot where a pet might interact with it. If you place it on a shelf, will your cat knock it off?

Posted in Crime | 2 Comments »

The prisoner population consisted of four forgers, three madmen, and another

Friday, July 14th, 2023

Back in 2004, Jerry Pournelle described the original Bastille Day:

On July 14, 1789, the Paris mob aided by units of the National Guard stormed the Bastille Fortress which stood in what had been the Royal area of France before the Louvre and Tuilleries took over that function. The Bastille was a bit like the Tower of London, a fortress prison under direct control of the Monarchy. It was used to house unusual prisoners, all aristocrats, in rather comfortable durance. The garrison consisted of soldiers invalided out of service and some older soldiers who didn’t want to retire; it was considered an honor to be posted there, and the garrison took turns acting as valets to the aristocratic prisoners kept there by Royal order (not convicted by any court).

On July 14, 1789, the prisoner population consisted of four forgers, three madmen, and another. The forgers were aristocrats and were locked away in the Bastille rather than be sentenced by the regular courts. The madmen were kept in the Bastille in preference to the asylums: they were unmanageable at home, and needed to be locked away. The servants/warders were bribed to treat them well. The Bastille was stormed; the garrison was slaughtered to a man, some being stamped to death; their heads were displayed on pikes; and the prisoners were freed. The forgers vanished into the general population. The madmen were sent to the general madhouse. The last person freed was a young man who had challenged the best swordsman in Paris to a duel, and who had been locked up at his father’s insistence lest he be killed. This worthy joined the mob and took on the name of Citizen Egalité. He was active in revolutionary politics until Robespierre had him beheaded in The Terror.

The national holidays of the US, Mexico, and France all celebrate rather different events…

(This isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned thus.)

Posted in Policy, War | 2 Comments »

He had not absorbed Raeder’s strategic insight

Wednesday, July 12th, 2023

In 1940, the German high command sent a panzer expert, Major General Wilhelm von Thoma, to North Africa to find out whether German forces should help the Italians, Bevin Alexander explains (in How Hitler Could Have Won World War II) — and also, unofficially, to look over the Italian army in action (or rather inaction):

Thoma reported back that four German armored divisions could be maintained in Africa and these would be all the force necessary to drive the British out of Egypt and the Suez and open the Middle East to conquest. At the time Germany possessed twenty panzer divisions, none being used.

Hitler called Thoma in to discuss the matter. He told Thoma he could spare only one panzer division, whereupon Thoma replied that it would be better to give up the whole idea. Thoma’s comment angered Hitler. He said his concept of sending German forces to Africa was narrowly political, designed to keep Mussolini from changing sides.

Hitler’s comments to Thoma reveal he didn’t see the road to victory through Suez that Raeder had pointed out to him. If he had, he would have insisted on committing German troops.

Hitler’s interest was focused on keeping Mussolini happy and on wild schemes like assaulting Gibraltar. He had not absorbed Raeder’s strategic insight. His mind remained fixed on Russia. He was hoarding his tanks to use there. That’s why he couldn’t spare more than a single panzer division for Africa.

Posted in Policy, War | 4 Comments »

Notorious Russian sub commander assassinated on his morning jog

Tuesday, July 11th, 2023

A Russian submarine commander blamed for atrocities in Ukraine was gunned down on his morning jog in Krasnodar:

Stanislav Rzhitsky, a commander of a submarine in Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and the deputy head of mobilization efforts in Krasnodar, was shot four times in the back and chest in broad daylight on Monday morning, according to local media reports.

[…]

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate on Tuesday confirmed Rzhitsky’s murder but did not claim responsibility for it, noting only that he had commanded a Russian submarine “involved in missile attacks on Ukraine.” They said he’d been shot seven times with a Makarov pistol.

[…]

The Krasnodar submarine, equipped with Kalibr cruise missiles, was blamed by Ukrainian media for an attack on Vinnytsia last year that killed 27 people. Rzhitsky was also listed in a Ukrainian database that names and shames all those accused of involvement in war crimes.

But Ukrainian authorities say Rzhitsky had also made enemies in the Russian military after refusing to carry out any more missile strikes on Ukraine due to the risks to the civilian population. In a statement, the Department of Strategic Communications of the Armed Forces of Ukraine claimed Rzhitsky was “eliminated by his own for refusing to further carry out the command’s combat orders.”

[…]

But it appears he may have inadvertently made it quite easy for his killer or killers to find him: Rzhitsky regularly posted his running routes on the popular exercise app Strava, and he usually stuck to the same route, according to Baza.

Posted in War | 7 Comments »

There are clandestine rules of the road

Monday, July 10th, 2023

One of the biggest secrets of the Ukraine war, William Arkin says, is how much the CIA doesn’t know:

The Agency is as uncertain about Volodymyr Zelensky’s thinking and intentions as it is about Vladimir Putin’s. And as the Russian leader faces his biggest challenge in the aftermath of a failed mutiny, the Agency is straining to understand what the two sides will do—because President Joe Biden has determined that the United States (and Kyiv) will not undertake any actions that might threaten Russia itself or the survival of the Russian state, lest Putin escalate the conflict and engulf all of Europe in a new World War. In exchange, it expects that the Kremlin won’t escalate the war beyond Ukraine or resort to the use of nuclear weapons.

[…]

“There is a clandestine war, with clandestine rules, underlying all of what is going on in Ukraine,” says a Biden administration senior intelligence official who also spoke with Newsweek. The official, who is directly involved in Ukraine policy planning, requested anonymity to discuss highly classified matters. The official (and numerous other national security officials who spoke to Newsweek) say that Washington and Moscow have decades of experience crafting these clandestine rules, necessitating that the CIA play an outsize role: as primary spy, as negotiator, as supplier of intelligence, as logistician, as wrangler of a network of sensitive NATO relations and perhaps most important of all, as the agency trying to ensure the war does not further spin out of control.

“Don’t underestimate the Biden administration’s priority to keep Americans out of harm’s way and reassure Russia that it doesn’t need to escalate,” the senior intelligence officer says. “Is the CIA on the ground inside Ukraine?” he asks rhetorically. “Yes, but it’s also not nefarious.”

[…]

Neither the CIA nor the White House would give specific responses for confirmation, but they asked that Newsweek not reveal the specific locations of CIA operations inside Ukraine or Poland, that it not name other countries involved in the clandestine CIA efforts and that it not name the air service that is supporting the clandestine U.S. logistics effort.

[…]

Intelligence experts say this war is unique in that the United States is aligned with Ukraine, yet the two countries are not allies. And though the United States is helping Ukraine against Russia, it is not formally at war with that country. Thus, much of what Washington does to aid Ukraine is kept secret – and much of what is normally in the realm of the U.S. military is being carried out by the Agency.

[…]

“The view advanced by many that the CIA is central to the fighting — say, for instance, in killing Russian generals on the battlefield or in important strikes outside Ukraine, such as the sinking of the Moskva flagship – doesn’t play well in Kyiv,” says one retired senior military intelligence official granted anonymity to speak with Newsweek. “If we want Kyiv to listen to us, we need to remind ourselves that the Ukrainians are winning the war, not us.”

[…]

“There are clandestine rules of the road,” says the senior defense intelligence official, “even if they are not codified on paper, particularly when one isn’t engaged in a war of annihilation.” This includes staying within day-to-day boundaries of spying, not crossing certain borders and not attacking each other’s leadership or diplomats. “Generally the Russians have respected these global red lines, even if those lines are invisible,” the official says.

[…]

“The CIA has been operating inside Ukraine, under strict rules, and with a cap on how many personnel can be in country at any one time,” says another senior military intelligence official.

[…]

Newsweek was unable to establish the exact number of CIA personnel in Ukraine, but sources suggest it is less than 100 at any one time.

[…]

Now, more than a year after the invasion, the United States sustains two massive networks, one public and the other clandestine. Ships deliver goods to ports in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland, and those supplies are moved by truck, train and air to Ukraine. Clandestinely though, a fleet of commercial aircraft (the “grey fleet”) crisscrosses Central and Eastern Europe, moving arms and supporting CIA operations.

[…]

Russian intelligence is very active in Ukraine, intelligence experts say, and almost anything the U.S. shares with Ukraine is assumed to also make it to Russian intelligence. Other Eastern European countries are equally riddled with Russian spies and sympathizers, particularly the frontline countries.

[…]

As billions of dollars worth of arms started flowing through Eastern Europe, another issue that the CIA is working on is the task of fighting corruption, which turned out to be a major problem. This involves not only accounting for where weapons are going but also quashing the pilfering and kickbacks involved in the movement of so much materiel to Ukraine.

[…]

From Poland, CIA case officers are able to connect with their many agents, including Ukrainian and Russian spies. CIA ground branch personnel of the Special Activities Center handle security and interact with their Ukrainian partners and the special operations forces of 20 nations, almost all of whom also operate from Polish bases. CIA cyber operators work closely with their Polish partners.