“There’s a lot of planning and thinking going on behind the scenes,” Sagan said.

Read the rest at the Financial Times

Nearly every Latin American country opposed the U.S. war in Afghanistan in 2001. Most also opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Why is the region more divided on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine today? Despite the Latin American consensus opposing unilateral uses of force against weaker states, governments across the region have refused to impose sanctions on Russia to respond to its invasion of Ukraine. There are even some countries, like Brazil, whose diplomats in U.N. forums have condemned Russia while the executive ponders whether to help Vladimir Putin’s administration economically. Does Latin America solidly condemn interventions only when the United States is the intervener?

Read the rest at War on the Rocks

This commentary first appeared in Foreign Policy.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been a double disaster for President Vladimir Putin, as he faces a poorly performing military combined with an inability to shield his country from economic punishment. Both of these possibilities historically have also been sources of apprehension for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). But China’s leadership turned its anxiety into action about 10 years ago, deliberately working to fix many of the problems and minimize the risks currently plaguing Russia in Ukraine.

One result is that the Chinese military is more likely to perform well even though it has not fought a war since 1979, when it lost thousands of troops in a punitive but brief invasion of Vietnam. Adding to that, China’s economy is both far larger and deliberately more diversified than Russia’s. A sanctions effort like the one presently aimed at Russia would be much harder to sustain against China. These two observations do not mean deterrence won’t hold, only that the unfolding events in Ukraine will likely do little to make Beijing more cautious.

Nearly everyone overestimated Russia’s military capabilities—including probably Putin himself. During its invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s air-ground coordination has been ineffective, and Russian forces have shown risk-adverse tendencies in the air. Russia has also struggled with logistics and keeping its military supplied. Notably, it appears that Russia acted on bad intelligence and therefore did not believe initial strikes that maxed out its firepower were necessary. Furthermore, many Russian weapons platforms are outdated (for example, its Cold War-era tanks), and modern Su-57 fighter jets and T-14 Armata tanks only exist in comparatively small numbers.

The Chinese military used to clearly exhibit the same deficiencies. But over the past decade, it has embraced significant reforms, creating a much more capable fighting force that should give even the United States pause.

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First, while Russia allowed its conventional capabilities to atrophy, Chinese military spending has exploded over the past three decades, increasing by 740 percent (in comparison to Russia’s 69 percent) from 1992 to 2017. According to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, China spent almost four times on its military in 2020 than Russia ($244.9 billion to $66.8 billion). In 1999, less than 2 percent of its fighter jets were fourth-generation, 4 percent of its attack submarines were modern, and none of its surface ships were. Twenty years later, not only did China have much more of everything, but the majority was the most advanced, modern versions available—with China exhibiting advantages over Russia, even in combat aircraft, a traditional area of weakness for China.

Indeed, People’s Liberation Army (PLA) commentators often refer to China’s economic might as one of the reasons their military would outperform Russia’s—Russia has been “stingy” with its military modernization and production of precision-guided munitions primarily because of a lack of resources. By contrast, China has more than 2,200 conventionally armed ballistic and cruise missiles, making the PLA Rocket Force the world’s largest ground-based missile force. Estimates place the number of missiles positioned against Taiwan alone at around 1,000.

Russia’s poor performance does remind us that it takes more than just a lot of fancy systems to win a war (though having more advanced systems and more of them surely would have helped). The human element of Russia’s failures is front and center. Putin probably did not have an open and honest communication channel with the military, which was fearful of providing unfavorable information to the erratic leader. Russian troops were largely considered incompetent, but Putin thought superior technology could overcome human deficiencies.

Chinese President Xi Jinping identified similar training and competency issues in the PLA 10 years ago. But under his command, the PLA has been proactively implementing significant reforms to avoid similar pitfalls. And unlike Putin, who apparently believed technology could overcome deficiencies in personnel, Xi came to the opposite conclusion. When he came to power, he took one look at the military and recognized that with all its fancy equipment, the PLA probably could not fight and win wars and perform the missions it had been assigned. Of particular importance, according to China’s national military strategy, was to fight local wars under informationalized conditions. This meant that the network between platforms and people—the ease of connectivity—was the main feature of modern warfare. China needed the best equipment; an advanced command, control, computers, communication, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) network; and tons of precision-guided munitions. But perhaps most importantly, it needed troops that could leverage these systems to conduct seamless operations across services and top-down through the chain of command.

What followed was a series of slogans—the two incompatibles, two inabilities, two big gaps, the five incapables—all designed to point out the organizational and personnel issues of the military and focus leadership attention and resources on fixing the issue. A massive military reorganization followed with moves such as reorganizing effective combat units to be smaller so that they can mobilize more quickly and can remain self-sufficient for long periods of time. This means, in contrast with the Russian military, the PLA will likely have less reliance on generals at the front lines. China also established theater commands to facilitate joint operations and prioritized realism in its military exercises to help it prepare for real combat. Part of all of this was Xi’s demand that the military communicate its failures and weaknesses so that they could be addressed. Moreover, to improve command and control, China has moved toward engaging in multidomain joint operations all while standing up a new joint operations center that will ensure that, unlike with the Russian military, orders will be communicated and understood at the lowest levels. Indeed, the main reason that Xi has not yet made a play for Taiwan is likely his desire to hone this command and control structure and practice joint operations in realistic conditions for a few more years—a cautious and pragmatic approach that the situation in Ukraine only encourages further.

The PLA itself acknowledges that it still has some distance to go with training, particularly with regard to joint operations, but it looks as if the hard work is paying off. The complexity and scale of China’s national military exercises are eye-opening. It takes a great deal of planning, synchronization, and coordination to take service-level operations to the joint level. China appears to have made great strides in this area. The United States has observed, for example, China executing deep-attack air operations in its exercises that have combined intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) with multi-domain strike; lift for rapid mobility and advanced fighter manuevers. Russia has relied heavily on artillery and tanks, now and historically, while the PLA is showing a more balanced approach to combined arms operations.

For all these reasons, we should not expect the Chinese military to perform as poorly in its first real military operation since 1979. The PLA is structurally superior to the Russian military. And the Chinese know it. Granted, it’s hard to know whether some of the outlandish claims in the Chinese media are true—that the PLA Air Force would actually “be able to take out the Ukrainian air force in one hour.” But one thing is for certain—the Chinese military is learning lessons from Ukraine, whether it is to stockpile more precision-guided munitions, ensure solid command and control, or cut off internet access to prevent the leaking of information to the West, which will only serve to improve its warfighting capability in the future.

On February 24, the first day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, large parts of American satellite company Viasat’s KA-SAT network of high speed satellite services experienced disruptions resulting in partial network outages throughout Ukraine and several European countries. Tens of thousands of terminals suffered permanent damage and many were still offline more than two weeks later. Viktor Zhora, deputy chief of Ukraine’s State Service of Special Communication and Information Protection, described the satellite outage as “a really huge loss in communications in the very beginning of war.” Among others relying on KA-SAT are Ukraine’s military, intelligence, and police units.

Read the rest at The National Interest

While Ukrainians fight or flee Russia’s bombardment of their cities, many Europeans feel a palpable, renewed nuclear fear. Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the country’s nuclear forces on high alert. Russian troops forced Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant employees to work a 600-hour shift at gun point. They also attacked the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, causing structural damage and starting a fire. Meanwhile, Romanians have spent millions for the emergency production of radiation-blocking iodine pills, Poland has signaled its willingness to host US tactical nuclear weapons, and officials from the Baltics have urged NATO to commit to intervene if Russia uses weapons of mass destruction.

Read the rest at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

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