News and Commentary by Dave Maxwell. Edited and Published by Riley Murray.
1. Retired Marine general, trailblazing Navy admiral among new picks who will scrutinize bases with Confederate names
2. Violent propaganda an 'enormous challenge' for security agencies amid rising rightwing threat – report
3. Philippines’ Duterte Expects US to ‘Pay’ to Keep Military Pact Alive
4. Uyghur Group Defends Detainee Database After Xinjiang Officials Allege ‘Fake Archive’
5. The US and its allies must ensure Taiwan doesn’t fall to Beijing
6. Weed Out Violent Extremism
7. China Refuses to Give WHO Raw Data on Early Covid-19 Cases
8. China Scores a Public Relations Win After W.H.O. Mission to Wuhan
9. When Allies Go Nuclear - How to Prevent the Next Proliferation Threat
10. Keep faith in democracy, Taiwan president tells Hong Kongers in new year message
11. Biden: ‘China Going to Eat Our Lunch’ Unless US Moves on Infrastructure
12. The Pandemic’s Deadly Winter Surge Is Rapidly Easing
13. Confederate Military Base Names Just Met Their Gettysburg
14. The Pentagon Needs Budget Agility to Compete with China
15. The Law Professor Who Trained with the D.C. Police
16. “I Don’t Trust the People Above Me”: Riot Squad Cops Open Up About Disastrous Response to Capitol Insurrection
17. Want Unity For Real? Then America Needs to Get Back to Facts
18. How to Understand the Rage Economy
19. Dino Pick returns home after work in Washington, D.C. to clean up ‘ethical lapses’ in U.S. Special Operations.
1. Retired Marine general, trailblazing Navy admiral among new picks who will scrutinize bases with Confederate names
The Washington Post – by Dan Lamothe - February 12, 2021
I hope they focus on heroes among our soldiers and NCOs (and it appears they will). No disrespect to generals but they receive enough recognition.
Excerpts:
The most prominent candidate for the renaming is Master Sgt. Roy Benavidez, a Special Forces soldier who was awarded the Medal of Honor for a daring rescue of trapped and wounded comrades in Cambodia in 1968. Others include Gen. Roscoe Robinson Jr., the first African American to become a four-star general in the Army, and Sgt. 1st Class Alwyn Cashe, an Iraq War hero who is Black and expected to posthumously receive the Medal of Honor this year.
“Who we honor should represent our values,” Seidule said. “I don’t want to be like John Bell Hood. I want to be like Roy Benavidez.”
2. Violent propaganda an 'enormous challenge' for security agencies amid rising rightwing threat – report
The Guardian · by Daniel Hurst · February 12, 2021
A view from Australia.
3. Philippines’ Duterte Expects US to ‘Pay’ to Keep Military Pact Alive
https://www.benarnews.org/english/news/philippine/pay-demand-02122021144625.html - by Jojo Rinoza and Marielle Lucenio
Duterte practices his own form of blackmail diplomacy.
4. Uyghur Group Defends Detainee Database After Xinjiang Officials Allege ‘Fake Archive’
More important reporting from Radio Free Asia.
5. The US and its allies must ensure Taiwan doesn’t fall to Beijing
aspistrategist.org.au · by Malcolm Davis · February 11, 2021
Excerpts:
The loss of the US alliance would be catastrophic for our security, and a hegemonic China with grand imperial ambitions would force us to confront an ugly strategic choice. Acting alone, we’d need significant boosts to our defence spending to achieve a degree of self-sufficiency beyond the traditional levels of ‘self-reliance’ that past defence white papers have alluded to. That could include developing military capabilities normally not considered for our defence force to deter a nuclear-armed adversary. We may well see an intensification of the political and economic pressure Beijing applied to Australia for much of 2020.
A military crisis across the Taiwan Strait would be a serious test of our national resolve, the strength of our most vital strategic relationship and our commitment to the values we stand for. The outcome of such a crisis would shape the strategic environment of the Indo-Pacific region for decades.
6. Weed Out Violent Extremism
ausa.org · February 12, 2021
From my friend and mentor, LTG Jim Dubik.
Conclusion:
Whatever ends up as the Army’s plan, this much is clear: Participation in domestic violent extremist groups is as incompatible with military service as is participation in foreign-rooted groups.
Though some claim First Amendment rights, this amendment does not protect criminal activity or anyone participating in groups that promote violence. No one has the right to be a member of a domestic violent extremist group—especially anyone serving in uniform.
Addressing this problem will take time; success will not come from merely issuing a directive. It will take sustained, focused leadership from officers and sergeants at every echelon of command and in every Army organization. “Not in my squad” should become the motto to the deradicalization effort.
The Army has helped build America before. The Army became a model for racial desegregation, as it was for incorporating women into the ranks and expanding their opportunities.
Helping America deradicalize is yet another chapter in the Army’s long history of not just reflecting America but building America. Deradicalizing must be done and it can be done. The Army and the nation will be better for it.
7. China Refuses to Give WHO Raw Data on Early Covid-19 Cases
WSJ · by Jeremy Page and Drew Hinshaw
Excerpts:
Chinese officials and scientists provided their own extensive summaries and analysis of data on the cases, said the WHO team members. They also supplied aggregated data and analysis on retrospective searches through medical records in the months before the Wuhan outbreak was identified, saying that they had found no evidence of the virus.
But the WHO team wasn’t allowed to view the raw underlying data on those retrospective studies, which could allow them to conduct their own analysis on how early and how extensively the virus began to spread in China, the team members said. Member states typically provide such data—anonymized, but disaggregated so investigators can see all other relevant details on each case—as part of WHO investigations, said team members.
8. China Scores a Public Relations Win After W.H.O. Mission to Wuhan
The New York Times · by Javier C. Hernandez · February 12, 2021
This needs to be called out:
But instead of scorn, the W.H.O. experts on Tuesday delivered praise for Chinese officials and endorsed critical parts of their narrative, including some that have been contentious.
9. When Allies Go Nuclear - How to Prevent the Next Proliferation Threat
Foreign Affairs · by Chuck Hagel, Malcolm Rifkind, Kevin Rudd, and Ivo Daalder · February 12, 2021
Conclusion:
For more than 50 years, the United States’ alliances have helped stop the spread of nuclear weapons. But faced with worsening regional threats and growing uncertainty about U.S. staying power, U.S. allies are beginning to reassess their security arrangements—including their nuclear dimensions.
Biden has made rebuilding U.S. alliances a fundamental priority from the moment he took office. The president was right to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to NATO in a call with the alliance’s secretary-general and key European allies, and he was right to do the same regarding Australia, Japan, and South Korea in calls to those countries’ leaders.
Now, however, comes the hard work of transforming relationships in more fundamental ways—bolstering deterrence and defense capabilities all around, bringing Asian and European allies into the U.S. nuclear planning process, and broadening arms control efforts beyond Russia. This is hardly an impossible agenda, but it could hardly be more urgent. At stake is nothing less than a decades-long success: preventing the spread of the world’s deadliest weapons.
10. Keep faith in democracy, Taiwan president tells Hong Kongers in new year message
Reuters · by Reuters Staff · February 10, 2021
11. Biden: ‘China Going to Eat Our Lunch’ Unless US Moves on Infrastructure
voanews.com – by Steve Herman – 11 February 2021
Cynical excerpt:
"Infrastructure is the best idea that never happens," according to Bipartisan Policy Center President Jason Grumet, who expressed optimism the subject might achieve more legislative traction during the Biden administration. "There is a broad-based agreement that in addition to the resources that have been invested in a kind of immediate urgency around surviving the winter, there is now an agreement that there needs to be some deeper investment."
The desire for huge government spending to overcome the economic damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic is in addition to a "very strong view that we as a nation are trying to run a 21st-century economy on a 20th-century infrastructure and that simply diminishes our national competitiveness," especially with respect to China, Grumet told VOA.
Obama, in 2009, emphasized "shovel-ready" projects that would benefit from his $800 billion stimulus plan. Congress eventually allocated only about $28 billion of that package for transportation infrastructure.
Trump, in 2018, proposed spending $200 billion over a decade to spur $1.5 trillion, mostly for private sector infrastructure projects, but Congress never voted on it. Before leaving office, his administration proposed a $1 trillion infrastructure spending plan, although it was never publicly released.
12. The Pandemic’s Deadly Winter Surge Is Rapidly Easing
defenseone.com · by The COVID Tracking Project
Seems some reason for hope and optimism.
13. Confederate Military Base Names Just Met Their Gettysburg
defenseone.com · by Kevin Baron
14. The Pentagon Needs Budget Agility to Compete with China
defenseone.com · by Bryan Clark
I am no acquisition or budget expert but is it true there is no incentive to identify and cancel failing programs? Are acquisition programs like bureaucracies? Is their "prime directive" to ensure the survival of the bureaucracy or acquisition program?
15. The Law Professor Who Trained with the D.C. Police
The New Yorker · by Isaac Chotiner · February 13, 2021
As an aside Professor Brooks, in addition to being a former State and Pentagon official, is also married to a retired Special Forces officer.
16. “I Don’t Trust the People Above Me”: Riot Squad Cops Open Up About Disastrous Response to Capitol Insurrection
ProPublica · by Joaquin Sapien, Joshua Kaplan
A sad situation that led to tragedy on so many levels.
17. Want Unity For Real? Then America Needs to Get Back to Facts
Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts. Bring back Dragnet.
18. How to Understand the Rage Economy
The Intercept · by Murtaza Hussain · February 13, 2021
An interesting concept, the "rage economy."
Excerpts:
The collective psychological impact of new technologies like social media has been written about in a wave of books over the past few years. Equally significant has been the underlying economic shift that has gradually transformed even traditional media outlets into something wholly different. Journalism traditionally relied on an advertising-based revenue model, and that economy also subtly incentivized a particular lens through which the world was depicted: an upbeat-as-possible, unifying worldview that made advertisers happy and promoted the needs of consumerism, even as it often overlooked or suppressed stories that fell outside its parameters.
When advertisers suddenly flocked to social media, the traditional economic model that underpinned the media and allowed even smaller papers to afford luxuries like foreign correspondents suddenly collapsed. Today established news outlets not only struggle to find advertisers after Facebook and Google swallowed up the market, but they must also compete with a seemingly infinite number of other websites, companies, and even individuals committing “acts of journalism” or just putting out entertainment, thus forcing them to battle for a finite slice of an attention economy that they cannot possibly corner.
19. Dino Pick returns home after work in Washington, D.C. to clean up ‘ethical lapses’ in U.S. Special Operations.
https://www.montereycountyweekly.com/people/face_to_face/dino-pick-returns-home-after-work-in-washington-d-c-to-clean-up-ethical-lapses/article_9ef19d8e-665e-11eb-8a7a-aba95f73419c.html? – by Asaf Shalev – 8 February 2021
Well done, Dino.
"The United States has a strategy based on arithmetic. They question the computers, add and subtract, extract square roots, and then go into action. But arithmetical strategy doesn't work here. If it did, they would already have exterminated us with their airplanes."
- Gen Vo Nguyen Giap
"In order to win victory we must try our best to seal the eyes and the ears of the enemy, making him blind and deaf, and to create confusion in the minds of the enemy commanders, driving them insane."
- Mao Tse-Tung, On The Protracted War (1938)
"What a society gets in its armed forces is exactly what it asks for, no more and no less. What it asks for tends to be a reflection of what it is. When a country looks at its fighting forces it is looking at a mirror: if the mirror is a true one the face that it sees will be its own."
- General Sir John Hackett, The Profession of Arms