2024-11-25 Mon
Published:
- Europe is under attack from Russia. Why isn’t it fighting back? – POLITICO
- Tulsi Gabbard’s Ties to Russia Are Far More Dangerous Than You Realize, Experts Say
- Europe Needs More Conventional Forces, Not Its Own Nukes
- Evolving Norway’s Role in the NATO Alliance - Luftled
- Stafford Beer once said he had stopped doing simulation games with management consulting clients because they were too powerful; he didn’t like the thought of factories being built and closed based on what worked in a rule set he’d come up with over a coffee break.
News
24.11.2024 Europe is under attack from Russia. Why isn’t it fighting back? – POLITICO
Part of the reason for Europe’s passivity can be attributed to fears in Western capitals about being drawn into a conflict for which they’re not prepared, said Daniel Byman, an expert in terrorism and unconventional warfare at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.
“Most countries don’t want to be openly confronting Russia more than they already are,” he said. “They’re worried about escalation, a back-and-forth cycle that will make things worse.” […] Even at their most dangerous, however, Russia’s destabilization campaign seems carefully calibrated not to trigger a collective response from NATO under the Western military alliance’s mutual defense provision, known as Article 5.
Instead, the Kremlin appears to be slowly ratcheting up the pressure to see what it can get away with. “Russia is testing the limits of Article 5 to stir up uncertainty,” Roderich Kiesewetter, a German lawmaker and former general staff officer in the German military, said earlier this year. […] The “big problem” with invoking Article 5 in the current situation is that “there is no clear definition among allies about what hybrid warfare means,” said Marek Kohv, a former defense and intelligence official who is now with the Estonia-based International Centre for Defence and Security think tank.
“The other main issue is attribution,” Kohv said. “It’s usually coming a little bit later.”
Another obstacle is the membership in NATO of countries like Hungary and Turkey, “countries that have shown sympathy to Russia,” said the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Byman, making it more difficult for the consensus-based military alliance to make meaningful decisions against Moscow.
24.11.2024 Tulsi Gabbard’s Ties to Russia Are Far More Dangerous Than You Realize, Experts Say (Daily Boulder)
Gabbard’s deeply troubling record of promoting Russian propaganda and undermining U.S. foreign policy reached a disturbing new level during her visit to the Syria-Turkey border in 2015. There, in a conversation with Syrian children who had survived Assad’s brutal airstrikes, Gabbard asked: “How do you know it was Bashar al-Assad or Russia that bombed you, and not ISIS?” […] Her endorsement of Russian aggression wasn’t limited to Syria. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Gabbard once again echoed Kremlin talking points, even suggesting that NATO’s policies were to blame for Russia’s invasion. She lent credibility to the baseless Russian narrative about U.S.-funded biolabs in Ukraine — a lie straight from the Kremlin playbook. And Russian state media lavished praise on her, calling her a “superwoman.”
This pattern of aligning with autocrats and undermining U.S. interests makes her potential appointment as DNI not just concerning, but alarming. Experts fear her openness to foreign disinformation and her track record of minimizing Russia’s threat to U.S. democracy would severely compromise the integrity of America’s intelligence community.
Charles Lister, a Middle East expert, warns that Gabbard’s history of denying the Syrian regime’s war crimes and promoting Russian propaganda raises grave questions about her fitness to lead U.S. intelligence. “Her views are so extreme and disconnected from reality that her appointment as DNI could destabilize American intelligence operations globally,” Lister says.
Her close ties to Russia and her dismissal of atrocities in Syria show a dangerous susceptibility to misinformation — a mindset that would jeopardize the accuracy and security of intelligence briefings. “Could we trust her to deliver the truth, or would she present a distorted version of reality?” asks Larry Pfeiffer, a former U.S. intelligence official. “Her judgment is clearly compromised.”
21.6.2024 Europe Needs More Conventional Forces, Not Its Own Nukes
Disagree here to some extent.
The threat of a conventional armed attack on NATO is higher than at any time since the Cold War. Estonian prime minister Kaja Kallas has said: “It’s a question of when they will start the next war.” Several European leaders have warned that Russia could attack NATO allies “within five years.” Despite Russia’s staggering losses in Ukraine, deputy U.S. secretary of state Kurt Campbell said recently that “Russia has almost completely reconstituted militarily.”
The nature of conventional deterrence means that European allies cannot rely on Healey’s Theorem, which only applies because of the catastrophic potential of nuclear threats. Instead, they must have sufficient capable forces in place and the political will to use them. During the Cold War, NATO allies invested heavily in conventional, forward-based “shield forces” in West Germany and central Europe. These forces boost the credibility of nuclear deterrence by deterring any incursion which could lead up the escalation ladder toward nuclear use.
Evolving Norway’s Role in the NATO Alliance - Luftled
Given the commitments made in the new LTP, as well as the accession of its neighbours to NATO, Norway can contribute to the future of the Alliance in several important ways:
- as a watchful guardian on the northern flank, emphasising the need for situational awareness in the maritime and air domains.
- as a steadfast supporter of Sweden and Finland as possible frontline nations (alongside Norway’s own direct land border with Russia) in any future conflict with Russia, emphasising the importance of strategic depth, logistics, and sustainment.
- as a contributor of niche technical expertise and industrial capacity to the development of innovative new capabilities for Norway and its allies.
Other stuff
Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social on Bluesky:
Stafford Beer once said he had stopped doing simulation games with management consulting clients because they were too powerful; he didn’t like the thought of factories being built and closed based on what worked in a rule set he’d come up with over a coffee break.