Diplomacy & Crisis News

David Axe

Marines,

The Marines imagine a future of war without the need for tanks.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The U.S. Marine Corps wants over the next 10 years to eliminate all of its tanks, a third of its tube artillery, some amphibious vehicles and aircraft as well as thousands of infantry and other personnel, all in an effort to reshape the service for island warfare in the Western Pacific.

In their place, the Corps would add scores of rocket-launchers, new high-tech communications systems and lots and lots of drones.

If lawmakers approve it, the proposal could result in the most sweeping change in decades to Marine Corps force-structure. The service would cut 12,000 people from its ranks, shrinking from today’s roughly 220,000 active and reserve Marines to around 208,000.

“The Marine Corps is not optimized to meet the demands of the National Defense Strategy,” Maj. Joshua Benson, a spokesman for Marine Corps Combat Development Command, told USNI News.

“In the summer of 2019, the Marine Corps began force-design activities focused on adapting capabilities to properly shape the Marine Corps’ contributions to naval warfare and the joint force. These planning efforts led to a modernized design that incorporates emerging technologies and significant changes in force structure to deliver a Marine Corps the nation needs by 2030.”

The proposed cuts, which Marine Corps commandant Gen. David Berger has championed, might appear to be draconian. “By the year 2030, the Marine Corps will see complete divestments of Law Enforcement Battalions, Tank Battalions and associated Military Occupational Specialties and all Bridging Companies,” Benson explained.

“Additionally, the Corps will reduce the number of infantry battalions from 24 to 21; artillery cannon batteries from 21 to five; amphibious vehicle companies from six to four; and reduce tiltrotor, attack and heavylift squadrons,” Benson said.

The Marine Corps also wants to shrink some F-35 squadrons, reducing their complement of stealth fighters from 16 planes to 10.

Observers expected the cuts. While extricating itself from the air- and ground-wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Marine Corps is working with the U.S. Navy to realign toward so-called “great power competition” with China.

To help deter China from expanding across the Western Pacific and defeat Chinese forces in battle, the Marines have created a new operating concept. Instead of storming enemy beaches from specialized vessels and fighting infantry battles ashore, the Corps would deploy from collections of cheaper support ships in order to establish airfields for F-35s and fire bases for anti-ship rocket batteries.

There arguably is no place in this new Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations concept for tanks and other armored vehicles and short-range tube artillery. The need for infantry shrinks, too.

On the other hand, the demand for long-range rockets, drones and communications could spike. With the money the Marines save from cutting tanks and infantry, Berger wants to triple the number of wheeled High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System launchers and double the number of drone squadrons.

The Marines are rushing to arm the HIMARS launchers and other vehicles with new anti-ship missiles. The Corps also is buying ground-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles with special seekers for targeting ships.

“Moving forward, we will continue to judiciously evaluate, wargame, experiment and refine our force design, improving service capabilities and lethality for deterrence, competition and conflict,” MCCDC stated.

David Axe served as Defense Editor of the National Interest. He is the author of the graphic novels War Fix, War Is Boring and Machete Squad.

This article first appeared in March 2020 and is being republished due to reader interest. 

Image: Reuters

Sarah Zipp, Sasha Sutherland

Japan Olympics,

The Olympics should be a place for inclusion, cultural exchange and equality. Let’s start dressing the part.

Team outfits and fashion were not supposed to be a big talking point at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. But protests over skimpy uniforms by two women’s teams in the months before the games have brought bikinis and high-cut leotards into the spotlight. Now these high-profile campaigns are leaving Olympians, fans and aspiring young athletes wondering: why are women expected to bare their bodies while men cover up?

In April, the German women’s gymnastics team ditched the traditional, high-cut leg-baring leotards for ankle-length unitards, protesting the “sexualisation” of their bodies. This dissent was intended to highlight and prevent sexual abuse in the sport, following recent high-profile cases in the US and UK. They continued their protest at the Tokyo Olympics.

In a similar move, the Norwegian women’s beach handball team were fined for defying the uniform rules at the European championships in July. In Tokyo, they too continued their protest by wearing fitted shorts. The team claimed bikini bottoms made them feel uncomfortable, made it difficult when managing their periods, and turned young athletes off their sport. For many, the last point is key to understanding the impact of sexist uniform policies.

Uniform rules in sport are designed for an idealised western femininity. These standards fail to understand that girls quit sport over body-baring uniforms, overlook different hair and skin types, ignore curvy and muscular body shapes and wilfully ignore the realities of periods. What these policies suggest is that women’s bodies are expected to be perfectly thin, perfectly hairless, able-bodied and period-free.

Transparent, research-based, written by experts – and always free.

About us

British runner Jessica Ennis-Hill wrote a heartfelt essay about her fear of exposing herself and how “skimpy kit” can traumatise young athletes. From body shaming to sexualisation, her experience exposes the unseen struggles of girls and women in sport and echoes research on girls in sport.

Overlooked and under-dressed

These campaigns reject sexist norms prevalent in sports and object to women’s uniforms being designed for the “male gaze”, leading to women being judged for their aesthetic appeal alongside their athletic talent.

Undoubtedly, these women are taking a brave and laudable stance. Yet their voices carry an influence that women of colour and advocates for athletes in non-western countries are often denied. With much less fanfare and media attention, they have been lobbying for changes to kit for decades, often on behalf of Muslim athletes and/or people of colour.

In table tennis, a rule change for full-length sportswear and head coverings – as opposed to shorts and T-shirts which leave arms and legs bare – was successfully lobbied to increase participation by Muslim athletes. This victory went largely unnoticed in the west, despite the fact that table tennis is a mainstay of the Olympics. Campaigns led by Muslim athletes led to similar rule changes in basketball and judo, where women were finally allowed to wear head coverings and long-sleeved tops underneath, as their faith required.

In contrast, swimming has rejected proposals to adapt uniforms for Muslim and black athletes, including a ban on “burkinis” and prohibiting use of the “soul cap” swim hat designed for natural black hair.

Athletes with disabilities also face different standards, which was made clear recently when a British Paralympian was criticised by an official  who called her outfit too “revealing”. It was the standard runner’s brief worn by most women.

Who makes the rules?

Modern sport was designed for and by white men. Globally, men are still making most of the rules, including those which police girls’ and women’s bodies. Regulations about uniforms vary by international federation, which is why the Norwegian team faced fines but the Germans did not.

Although the International Olympic Committee (IOC) does not directly control uniform policies, it has advocated fairer rules in its 2018 Gender Equality Review to “ensure competition uniforms reflect the technical requirements of the sport and do not have any unjustifiable differences”. This statement raises the question: what is the justifiable reason for requiring women to wear skimpy uniforms while men can cover up?

What does this mean for athletes and young girls with Olympic dreams? Beyond the general sexualisation of women athletes, there are six identifiable consequences that potentially harm girls and women in sport:

1. Girls drop out of sport – adolescent girls feel too uncomfortable because of unflattering/exposing uniforms.

2. Embarrassment – cameras can catch athletes accidentally exposing underwear, body hair and more. Mocking and body shaming on social media poses a real concern.

3. Period panic – fear of leaking menstrual blood or exposing period products in skimpy or white clothing is common.

4. Excluding athletes from non-western cultures – skin-exposing uniforms make it impossible for girls and women from Islamic and other religious communities to compete.

5. Promoting racial prejudice – uniform standards often make assumptions about body types and hair built around white physical stereotypes.

6. Battles over body hair – women and girls are pressured into waxing/shaving bikini lines, legs and any “unfeminine” body hair or risk ridicule and body shaming on social media.

We need more women in leadership

These uniform policies put women under added pressure to conform to western feminine ideals when they should be concentrating on their athleticism. This constricting paradox leaves little room for agency among athletes to challenge traditional, negative conceptions about muscular femininity.

International federations need to adjust technical rules to allow for athletes to choose clothing that suits their performance, personal comfort and cultural preferences. These choices can motivate adolescent girls to remain in sport, support athletes of colour and encourage participation from more conservative cultures.

Recruiting more women from diverse backgrounds to leadership positions in sport is a key step. Broadcasters and marketers should take note – in the same way athletes feel uncomfortable, many women viewers do not enjoy watching sports with objectified bikini-clad players.

Generations of athletes and advocates have struggled to make these changes. More recently, the movement has gathered strength to band together across cultures and sports. The Olympics should be a place for inclusion, cultural exchange and equality. Let’s start dressing the part.

Sarah Zipp is a Lecturer, Faculty of Health Science and Sport, University of Stirling

Sasha Sutherland is a Lecturer in Sport and Event Management, The University of the West Indies, Barbados

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters

Sebastien Roblin

WWII History, Europe

The 1941 raid at Vågsøy was planned with an unusual target in mind.

Here's What You Need to Know: Nazi Germany was interested in fish oil’s ability to be distilled into glycerin to produce the nitroglycerine used in most high-explosive bombs and shells.

Two days after Christmas on the morning of December 27, 1941 the icy Arctic calm of the Norwegian islands of Vågsøy and Måløy was shattered 8:48 AM as four Royal Navy destroyers and the light cruiser HMS Kenya opened fire on the German garrison stationed there—kicking off with a star shell. 

As RAF Hampden bombers swarm overhead to attack, 570 elite British soldiers and Norweigian resistance fighters descended on the islands in assault landing craft, sub-machineguns and demolition charges ready at hand.

Eighteen months earlier, Nazi Germany had completed its conquest of Norway after a hard-fought campaign in which half of the destroyers of the Kriegsmarine were sunk. The Norwegian King and a gallant band of Norwegian resistance fighters managed to escape to the UK with assistance from the Royal Navy, while a fascist puppet government was installed under Vidkun Quisling, whose name has since become a byword for treasonous collaborationism.

Hitler was determined to maintain his grip on the sprawling but lightly populated Scandinavian nation and its valuable natural resources. 

Furthermore, when Germany began its invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Norway served as a convenient base for submarines, bombers and even battleships to interdict British convoys delivering military aid to relieve the beleaguered Soviets.

By 1941, Churchill was hard-pressed to find ways to relieve the pressure on the Red Army as German tanks advanced within a few dozen miles of Moscow, and Japan opened a devastating second front against the British Empire in the Pacific Theater. But one instrument at his disposal was his Commando units trained for lightning raids behind enemy lines, whose employment Churchill championed despite opposition from old-school military leaders.

The raid at Vågsøy was planned with an unusual target in mind: fish oil factories. The Nazis were interested less in the dietary benefits of the omega-3 fatty acids, so much as the oil’s ability to be distilled into glycerin to produce the nitroglycerine used in most high-explosive bombs and shells. And the Wehrmacht was running through a lot of bombs and shells in its war against the numerically superior Red Army.

Earlier in March 141, commandoes and Norwegian soldiers had raided the largely undefended Lofoten islands in Operation Claymore, destroying fish oil facilities, sinking ships and capturing over two hundred prisoners and valuable naval codes.

Vågsøy amounted to a tougher target with a garrison of 150 soldiers of the 181st Garrison Division supported by a coastal defense battery of four 130 millimeter guns, 4-5 light anti-aircraft guns and one tank.

While the primary target was Vågsøy, a separate force was dedicated to eliminating the battery on tiny Måløy island, and third force assigned to neutralize an eight-man outpost at Holveik. A pool of troops was to be kept afloat in reserve in case heavy resistance was encountered. You can see the landing zone in this map on a detailed article at the website Combined Ops.

The British were confident its elite Nos. 2 and 3 Commando battalion, could overwhelm these defenses.  The 576-man assault force, mounted two ferries, also include medical and elements of No.3 and No.6 Commando, and Independent Company 1 of Norweigian loyalist soldiers, led by the government in exile’s military leader Captain. Martine Linge. The raid, under command of Col. Dunford-Slater, was codenamed Operation Archery.

The commando force embarked at Scapa Flow on December 15 and began rehearsing for the raid due for Christmas Eve on December 24.  Weather-related damage, however, delayed departure until December 26, escorted by the light cruiser Kenya and the destroyers Onslow.

Meanwhile, a second raid on Lofoten island took place at the same time with troops from No. 12 commando and seven warships—intended to divert from the main effort at Vagsoy. 

At 7:39 AM on December 27, the Royal Navy force rendezvoused with submarine HMS Tuna, positioned to assist with navigation and entered the half-mile-wide Vaagsfjord.

When the bombardment began at 8:48 the German coastal guns were swiftly put out of action with bombs and naval gunfire, but the fourth scored a direct hit on the Kenya, killing four crew. In just fifteen minutes a hundred commandos swarmed over the island and captured—but Capt. Linge himself was killed in the action. The 1st was subsequently renamed Linge’s Company in his honor. 

The seizure of Holveik went more smoothly, as the defenders surprised while eating breakfast. To the north, the destroyer Orbis even cratered a road with shellfire to prevent motorized reinforcements from intervening.

Commandos landing at South Vagsoy discovered that in an unlikely twist, British intelligence had missed that 50 elite German mountain infantry were on the island after intense combat on the Eastern Front—leading to bloody house-to-house fighting with the commandoes.  The reserve Commandos were rushed to the scene, and Norwegian civilians soon began helping the Allied troops by running supplies to them and evacuating wounded soldiers.

A Reuters correspondent described the brutal house-to-house combat:

One officer had slipped on getting out of the boat and jammed his leg between it and the rocks, but he struggled on, limping badly. Another encountered immediate machine-gun fire, and with his men engaged and killed five of the enemy before setting fire to an ammunition dump. Later, he was killed trying with a corporal to storm a hotel from which a number of German officers were firing. A third officer was sniped in the back soon afterwards. At one time the entire troop was without an officer in command.

One man I saw fought brilliantly. He was the corporal who went with his captain to storm the hotel. After the officer had been shot he managed to chuck a grenade into the building, which then caught fire.

Many Germans were roasted to death in houses they made into strong points, and from which they doggedly refused to emerge, even when grenades or a fusillade of shots had set the rooms about them on fire. Resistance was particularly stubborn in the centre of town which, as the morning grew older, began to blaze as more and more houses holding snipers and small parties of the enemy came under heavy fire, including 2-inch and 3-inch mortar shells.

A famous photo shows one Lt. Denis O’Flaherty—having been shot in the eye, mouth and shoulder, being assisted back to shore by fellow soldiers.  Remarkably he would see action again with the Commandoes sporting a piratical eye patch during the D-Day landing in 1944.

Despite ongoing resistance, British pioneers and naval gunners swiftly went about demolishing everything of possible military or economic value, sinking 10 ships in port (including two armed trawlers) totaling 15,000 tons, dynamiting a power and wireless stations, and blowing up the lone German light tank in its garage.  For a good measure, they took around a hundred prisoners and even found seventy recruits to join the Norwegian loyalist army.

By noon, however, the German Bf. 109 fighters and Ju-88 fast-attack bombers were swooping in to join the battle, tangling with Blenheim and Beaufighter light bombers assigned to provide air cover. Blenheim bombers later blasted the German airfield at Stavanger at Herdla with 250-pound bombs.

At 1:45 PM, Col. Slater decided it was time to withdraw.  His forces were all embarked within an hour later as the raiding force made its escape.  By 4 PM, the last aerial skirmishes sputtered to a halt as the raiding force cruised back to Great Britain.

120 German troops and one civilian were killed or wounded in the raid for the loss of seventeen British and Norweigian dead and eight RAF bombers. Of course, there was also the destroyed fish oil facilities to account for.

But the raid may have had an outsized impact, as Hitler decided to divert two divisions totaling 30,000 troops to reinforce Norwegian defense—fearing the attacks heralded a large-scale invasion. Those troops would likely have inflicted greater damage holding the line in the Eastern Front had they not been sitting on their haunches in Norway, awaiting an Allied invasion that never came.

Even on the eve of the D-Day landing, German intelligence remained convinced that an Allied landing was just around the corner, and continued to dispatch reinforcements there. Thus the small-scale actions of bold commandoes like O’Flaherty and Captain Linge made a significant contribution to the Allied victory in World War II.

Sébastien Roblin holds a Master’s Degree in Conflict Resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States.

This article first appeared in November 2019.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Sebastien Roblin

History, Europe

The trenches in France stopped firing towards one another on November 11th, 1918 - but the rest of the world was only getting started.

Here's What You Need To Remember: The tragic and prolonged conflicts that raged after World War I “ended” serve as a cautionary tale as to how historical narratives are so often over-tidily trimmed of inconvenient details—and how cynicism and idealism alike can sabotage the quest for peace.

Countless history books record that “on the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918, the calamitous Great War finally came to an end.

Indeed, no longer would machinegun fire tear apart generations of young men on West European battlefields, nor would week-long artillery barrages torture the very land itself into a cratered, muddy moonscape.

But the supposed world peace brought about by Armistice Day was anything but universal. In 1919, across Eastern Europe to Central Asia, the violence begun in World War I raged on for as long as five more years—sucking in not only local actors, but troops from the United States, France, the UK and Japan, despite political pressure to bring them home.

Fundamentally at issue was the dissolution of both the Austro-Hungarian empire in Eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire in Central Asia. This was justified by London, Paris and Washington on the basis of recognizing the passions of aspiring nationalists who sought their own nation-state ungoverned by foreign occupiers.

The problem with this reasonable conceit was that despite the frequent brutality and increasing dysfunction of the multinational empires based in Vienna and Istanbul, they nonetheless by their very nature facilitated a degree of toleration and intermingling of diverse ethnic and religious minorities throughout their sprawling domains. Not only were new ethno-nationalist governments often uninterested in protecting minorities dwelling in their territories, but the fact that those communities were heavily intermixed—inevitably led to violent conflict between newborn nation-states.

Furthermore, a principle of national self-determination seen as fair when applied to Eastern Europe was not equally applied to nationalists among European colonial subjects in Africa or Asia, whose political ambitions would have come at the victor’s expense. Vietnamese nationalist Ho Chi Minh was shown the door when he petitioned for inclusion in the Versailles conference. Territory in China, which had supported France in the war, was awarded to Japan. In April 1919, British troops gunned down 1,600 Indians in a public garden in Amritsar protesting a law facilitating the arrest of Indian nationalists. That last act too contributed to another war begun in 1919—an opportunistic Afghan invasion of British India by King Amanullah under pressure to resist British political domination.

Armistice Day, of course, did nothing to stop the civil war raging within the shattered husk of Imperial Russia between the Whites and the Reds. The conflict had its roots in the decrepitude of Tsarist rule and the rise of international socialist ideology prior to World War I. The strain of the Great War triggered a largely peaceful revolution that installed a liberal-democratic “White” government in Moscow. A bloody civil conflict might have been averted had Imperial Germany not arranged for Lenin and his supporters to travel to Russia by sealed train in 1917. His political agitation led to a far bloodier second revolutionary act.

Not only did millions of Russians, East Europeans and Central Asians take up arms against each other during the civil war, but British, French and U.S. troops landed in the Arctic Arkhangelsk in a confused and half-hearted attempt to support the White cause. Later, a second force of U.S. and Japanese troops invaded Siberia, the former ostensibly seeking to facilitate the withdrawal of the Czech Legion, the latter looking to annex territory and support the Whites.

The Red versus White conflict reached its climax in 1919 with the defeat of White forces in Siberia and Ukraine, followed in 1920 by the evacuation of White troops and Kolchak’s execution. U.S. troops finally withdrew from Russia in 1920, but White-held Vladivostok did not fall until 1922. Conflict raged for two more years as Soviet troops reconstituted former Tsarist Russian territories in Central Asia, using aircraft, poison gas and primitive armored vehicles to crush upstart republics and ethnically cleanse through forced migration and executions “troublesome” minorities such as the Cossacks.

Over 1.5 million soldiers and eight million civilians died in the Russian civil war—the latter mostly due to famine as well as political terror campaigns waged by both sides—making it debatably the deadliest civil war of the twentieth century.

The revolution had a spill-over effect in Poland, which in 1919 regained formal independence over a century after it had been annexed out of existence by Germany, Austria and Russia. However, the nationalist government of Józef Piłsudski government dreamed of rebuilding a wider Polish-Lithuanian empire—an idea Poland’s neighbors were not on board with. In a darkly ironic turn, after suffering over a hundred years of foreign domination, Warsaw fought a half-dozen border wars with Ukraine, Germany, Czechoslovakia and the Baltics. Then in 1920, the Poles launched a full-scale offensive on Kiev (the capital of modern-day Ukraine), capitalizing on the chaos of the Russian civil war.

The war seesawed, however, as the Polish instigated a devastating Russian counterattack. The Poles were driven as far back as the gates of Warsaw before a renewed counter-counter-offensive left Poland closing hostilities in 1921 with additional territory in modern-day Western Ukraine and Belarus. The conquest backfired in the long-run, making potential allies leery of Warsaw. After World War II, the Soviet Union took back the lost territory and compensated the Poles with German land, from which the Germans were forcibly deported.

Though Paris, London and Rome didn’t formally dissolve the Ottoman Empire, they quickly seized valuable Middle Eastern territories for their own profit and deployed occupying forces on the Anatolian peninsula. At times the ostensible allies even competed with each other to seize the most territory. The Sultan’s government was rendered largely powerless and utterly dependent on the occupying forces.

In May 1919, the multi-ethnic city of Smyrna was handed over to a Greek occupation force, formerly subject to Ottoman rule and now its greatest enemy. The resulting sense of national humiliation led a resurgent nationalist movement led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a general who had successfully defeated British and French forces at Gallipoli during World War I. When Turks grew outraged at the terms of the Treaty of Sevres in 1920, Ataturk’s Grand National Assembly led an uprising against the foreign armies.

As pressure to bring the troops home caused France and the UK to shy away from deeper engagement in the conflict, the Turkish nationalists principally battled Greek troops. However, in October 1920, the Greek King was fatally bitten by a monkey in an altercation also involving his German Shephard Fritz. This led to a political purge of the Greek military which fatally compromised its effectiveness.

The Greco-Turkish War culminated in the Greek defeat in the Battle of Sakarya, the suppression of Armenian national army and the Turkish capture of Smyrna on September 1922. Four days later, a fire broke out in the Greek quarter—by many, but not all, accounts started by Turkish soldiers—utterly destroying only those parts of the city and killing over ten thousand Greeks and Armenians. Hundreds of thousands of refugees fled to the docks where they remained crowded for two weeks, subject to rape, theft, killing and starvation before roughly half were evacuated by British and U.S. ships.

Once again, the establishment of one national homeland took place at others’ expense: in the treaty, Ankara and Athens agreed to forcibly deport 1.6 million Orthodox Christians and 355,000 Muslims into each other’s territory, though religious minorities were allowed to remain in Istanbul and Western Thrace.

The tragic and prolonged conflicts that raged after World War I “ended” serve as a cautionary tale as to how historical narratives are so often over-tidily trimmed of inconvenient details—and how cynicism and idealism alike can sabotage the quest for peace.

Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring. This article first appeared in 2019.

Image: Wikipedia.

Sebastien Roblin

History, Asia

The F-84 wasn't the most sophisticated fighter, but it had incredible firepower, and was an incredible ground-attack fighter.

Here's What You Need To Remember: In June 1952, eighty-four Thunderjets obliterated 90 percent of the Sui-ho Dam complex, knocking out electricity throughout all of North Korea for two weeks.

In 1944, Alexander Kartveli, designer of the legendary Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter, began working on a jet-powered successor. Kartveli’s tubby-looking “Jug” proved a tough, hard-hitting ground attack plane and a fast, far-flying escort fighter in World War II. Unable to cram a turbojet in the Thunderbolt airframe, the Georgian engineer drafted a clean-sheet design dubbed the XP-84 Thunderjet with a J-35 turbojet spanning the fuselage from the intake in the nose to the tailpipe, with fuel stored in wingtip tanks.

Though a prototype briefly set a national speed record in 1946, early model Thunderjets (re-designated F-84s) required excessive maintenance and proved unstable due to weak wing spars for the thick wings and shaky wingtip fuel tanks. The Pentagon nearly canceled the jet prematurely when Republic finally introduced the F-84D model addressing the most glaring flaws by introducing sturdier wing spars, revised fuel tanks, a functioning ejection seat and a more powerful J-35A-17 engine.

Like the P-47, the Thunderjet was a “heavy”-feeling plane with high takeoff and landing speeds. It required longer mile-long runways and was less maneuverable than the Air Force’s earlier F-80 Shooting Star jet fighter. However, the F-84 was faster at 610 miles per hour, had a greater range of 800 miles, and was a hard-hitting and stable gun platform: in addition to its six extra-fast-firing M3 .50 caliber, it could lug thirty-two five-inch high-velocity rockets or two tons of bombs. Once the early models’ flaws were corrected, the Thunderjet also proved highly maintainable, its guts designed for easy access to mechanics.

However, Karteveli’s design used traditional straight rather than swept wings, which delay the formation of shockwaves when approaching supersonic speeds. This left the Thunderjet slower and less agile than the near-contemporary swept-wing F-86 Sabre and the Soviet MiG-15, which could attain speeds of around 680 miles per hour

Six months into the Korean War in December 1950, F-84Es of the 27th Fighter Escort Wing were dispatched to Taegu Air Base in South Korea to escort four-engine B-29 strategic bombers on raids targeting the Chinese border with North Korea. The F-84E model was lengthened fifteen inches to carry additional fuel and incorporated a radar-assisted gunsight

Thunderjets first encountered MiGs on January 21, 1952, when eight F-84s raiding Chongchan bridge were bounced by two flights of MiG-15s which shot an F-84 down. A MiG was claimed in return, but Soviet records reveal no corresponding losses. Two days later, F-84s and B-29s launched a massive raid targeting the airfield at Pyongyang. The MiGs, which excelled at high altitudes, were forced to dogfight strafing Thunderjets on the deck; three Communist jets were shot down and two more crippled.

However, thereafter the faster MiG-15s mostly engaged F-84s at high altitudes while escorting B-29s, repeatedly breaking through screens of up to fifty to 100 Thunderjets to ravage the B-29s they were escorting.

Henceforth, the UN forces in Korea switched heavy bombers to less-accurate night raids. F-86s focused on the MiG threat, while F-84s were relegated to ground attack missions, their tremendous firepower unleashed to strike frontline troops, blast rear-area depots, artillery batteries and convoys, cover helicopter search-and-rescue operations, and bombard key infrastructure targets. Over the course of the war, Thunderjets flew 86,000 missions and dropped 61,000 tons of bombs and napalm canisters—by one tally, accounting for 60 percent of ground targets destroyed by the U.S. Air Force during the war. The F-84’s robustness proved an asset, allowing it to survive punishing hits from heavy communist flak.

In June 1952, eighty-four Thunderjets obliterated 90 percent of the Sui-ho Dam complex, knocking out electricity throughout all of North Korea for two weeks. However, the raid, intended to pressure North Korean peace negotiators, backfired—inspiring anti-war opposition in the British parliament while conversely causing hawks in the U.S. to complain that the raid should have taken place sooner.

Nonetheless, in 1953, F-84s were hammering dams at Toksan and Chasan—causing huge floods that swamped bridges, railway lines and roads, and badly damaged crops. By then, the final F-84G model had arrived in theater, bringing with it an uprated J-35 engine and revolutionary new in-flight refueling capability. F-84s could connect their wingtip tanks to a probe trailed by a KB-29 tanker, allowing them to fly missions over Korea from bases in Japan.

Of 335 F-84Ds, Es and Gs lost to all causes during the Korean War, at least 135 were destroyed by flak. U.S. records claim a further 18 were shot down by MiGs, while Soviet and Chinese fliers claimed 65. A side-by-side comparison of loss records (broken down here) suggests a number closer to twenty-five F-84s lost in aerial combat (including a “maneuver kill,” two crashes due to battle-damage and one incident of mutual mid-air collision) in exchange for seven to eight MiGs.

But F-84s and MiG-15s continued to battle on other fronts of the Cold War. On March 10, 1953, a MiG-15 encountered a two-ship F-84 patrol apparently straying into Czech airspace near Merklin. Czech pilot Jaroslav Šrámek told an interviewer:

They banked sharply and flew off at full throttle. But because the MIG 15s were better the F-84s we were able to turn easily and manoeuvre into a position where I could fire a warning shot. The warning shot hit his backup tank on the right-hand side. Fuel started escaping from it. He tried to escape to the south. In view of the fact that I was higher than him I was able to catch him easily and my second round disabled him. After firing the shot I saw flames coming from his craft so I stopped and headed home."

Pilot Warren Brown ejected, and his crashed jet was found ten miles into the German side of the border.

The Republic of China Air Force received 246 F-84Gs which clashed repeatedly with their communist counterparts over the Taiwan Strait. In a series four 4-on-4 engagements in 1955 and 1956, ROCAF Thunderjets claimed five MiG-15 for no loss, though two Thunderjets were shot down in smaller-scale dogfights, and a third was lost to flak. However, on July 29, 1958, newer, ultra-maneuverable MiG-17s bounced four F-84s and shot down two over Nan’ao island, helping trigger the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis.

Of three-thousand F-84Gs built, Washington transferred over 200 each to Belgium, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Norway and even Communist Yugoslavia as part of the MDAP military assistance program. Particularly prolific operators included France (335) and Turkey (489), while Iran, the Netherlands and Thailand received smaller numbers.

F-84Gs became the first fighter operated by the Air Force’s Thunderbirds aerobatics in 1953. Thunderjets stationed in Europe, meanwhile, became the first single-engine aircraft modified to deliver a nuclear weapon—the 1,680-pound Mark 7 nuclear bomber with an adjustable yield as high as 61 kilotons. To avoid getting caught in the apocalyptic blast, the Thunderjet employed a Low Altitude Bombing System to semi-accurately “toss” their nuclear payload while climbing, then bank sharply to the side as the deadly warhead arced away.

The sturdy and steady F-84 also served as a platform to test new concepts—most importantly pioneering aerial refueling of jet fighters. But some of the ideas didn’t exactly pan out. An attempt to modify the F-84 to be towed behinds the B-29s it was meant to escort (and this extend range by saving fuel) ended in a deadly collision. F-84s were also tested with rocket-boosters so that they could perform “zero-length” takeoffs from truck trailers should a nuclear war destroy all the airfields.

By 1954, the superior swept-wing F-84F Thunderstreak model entered service, largely replacing the Thunderjet and also spawning the RF-84F Thunderflash photo-reconnaissance model, with intakes in the wing roots instead of the nose. Powered by a more powerful but finicky J65 turbojet, the Thunderstreak could attain speeds just shy of 700 miles per hour.

By the late 1950s, the Air Force began retiring all models of the F-84 in favor of the supersonic F-100 Super Sabre and F-105 Thunderchief, though F-84s served in Air National Guard units until 1970 and Portuguese Thunderjets saw action in a colonial war in Angola until 1974. The last Thunderflash was finally retired by the Greek Air Force in 1991—a long career for a tough jet that had seemed outdated nearly as soon as it entered service.

Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring. This article first appeared in 2019.

Image: Flikr. 

Kyle Mizokami

military, Americas

The average man-sized target is just twenty-four inches wide, leaving zero room for error in a two-mile shot.

Here's What You Need To Remember: In mid-2017, the sniping community was rocked by incredible news: a Canadian sniper team operating in the Middle East had made a successful kill at a distance of more than two miles. The team, deployed to fight the Islamic State, killed an ISIS fighter at a distance of 3,871 yards. The shot was a record-breaker and more than a thousand yards farther than the previous world record. The shot, which bordered on the impossible, was made only slightly less so by the skill of the snipers involved.

On June 22, 2017, the Globe and Mail reported that two snipers assigned to Joint Task Force 2, Canada’s elite special forces unit, had shot an Islamic State fighter in Iraq at a distance of 3,540 meters, or 3,871 yards. The sniper team was stationed on top of a highrise building when it took the shot, which took almost ten seconds to reach its target. The sniper and his spotter had used a McMillan TAC-50 .50 heavy-caliber sniper rifle. According to the Globe and Mail, the kill was verified by video “and other data.”

To understand the complexity of the shot, it’s best to start with a sniper maxim: sniping is weaponized math. Although a .50 caliber sniper rifle bullet can fly as far as five miles, a host of factors including gravity, wind speed and direction, altitude, barometric pressure, humidity and even the Coriolis Effect act upon the bullet as it travels. Even worse, these effects increase the farther the bullet travels. A successful sniper team operating at extreme distances must do its best to predict exactly how these factors will affect the bullet and calculate how to get the bullet back onto the target.

The first and most influential factor on a bullet is gravity. A bullet begins to lose energy as soon as it leaves the muzzle of a gun, and as it loses energy it loses the ability to counteract gravity. The farther and slower a bullet flies, the more Earth’s gravity will pull the bullet downward. This is known as “bullet drop,” and even the most powerful bullet, such as the .50 caliber round used by the TAC-50, will invariably experience it.

In most shooting situations, bullet drop is only a matter of a few inches or more. The Canadian snipers, on the other hand, had to deal with a phenomenal amount of bullet drop: at 3,450 meters, the bullet would be expected to drop 6,705 inches! Ryan Cleckner, a former U.S. Army Ranger sniper and author shows the ballistic data for the shot here. As the bullet is traveling subsonic at a spend of 940 feet per second, the bullet is diving an average of nearly two inches per foot of forward travel, with the problem getting much worse as distance increases.

In order to make the shot, the Canadian snipers had to counteract the staggering amount of drop. Being on a highrise building, or hilltop was a must. The rest of the drop correction had to be done within the rifle’s scope, which can be adjusted for the drop, and a scope mount that was angled upward for extreme long-distance shooting.

Cleckner’s data also provides other useful information. Bullet flight time, from the muzzle of the Canadian sniper’s gun to target was just over seven seconds. The bullet was traveling at 940 feet per second when it hit, which means it slowed to below the speed of sound. Finally, after traveling more than two miles the bullet hit with 1,472-foot-pounds of energy, greater than most M16 bullets at point-blank range.

Another major factor that would have affected the shot was windage. When shooting at extreme distances, even a mild wind of five miles an hour will have an effect on the flight of a bullet, slowly but surely nudging it off its flight path toward the direction of the wind. At 400 yards, a .50 caliber bullet will be nudged 2.5 inches off its path by a five-mile an hour wind. At 3,800 yards that balloons to an incredible 366 inches. In other words, the snipers had to assume their bullet would impact just over thirty feet in the direction of wind travel and plan accordingly.

Other environmental factors played a hand in the shot. Air pressure (generally a function of altitude), temperature, and humidity are factors most shooters at ranges of 500 yards or less rarely encounter, become major issues at 3,800 meters. These factors are mitigated by the use of wind sensors, barometric pressure readers, and a knowledge of local weather conditions. To complicate matters, these conditions may change so that a shot taken on a cold morning will be much different in the heat of the afternoon and snipers must recalculate the shot accordingly.

Earth itself, and the position of the shooter and target on the globe become factors at long range. The Coriolis Effect dictates that bullets shot in the northern hemisphere drift to the right, while those shot in the southern hemisphere drift to the left, and this phenomenon increases the farther one gets to the poles. Furthermore, shooting east with the rotation of the earth will cause bullets to strike high while shooting west will cause the same bullet to strike low.

Even the construction of the rifle itself affects the shot. A high-quality barrel will naturally be more accurate and the rifle involved in the shot, the McMillan TAC-50, is one of the best around. The barrel rifling, a spiral-like pattern that makes the bullet spin in flight, stabilizing it, imparts “spin drift.” According to Cleckner, a rifle with a right-hand spiral twist will send a bullet up to ten inches to the right at 1,000 yards. How much spin drift would affect the shot at 3,800 yards was essential information for the Canadian snipers.

In taking their record-breaking shot, the Canadian sniper team had to consider all of these factors—merely misjudging one would have caused a clean miss—and it is an incredible testament to their skill that they were successful. The average man-sized target is just twenty-four inches wide, leaving zero room for error in a two-mile shot. The shot took place at the extreme edge of viability, given the current levels of sniper technology. While the JTF-2 shot will almost certainly be equaled, it seems unlikely it will be decisively beaten for the foreseeable future.

Kyle Mizokami is a defense and national security writer based in San Francisco who has appeared in the Diplomat, Foreign Policy, War is Boring and the Daily Beast. In 2009 he cofounded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch. You can follow him on Twitter: @KyleMizokami. This article was first published in January 2018.

Image: Reuters

Caleb Larson

Guns,

The Model 929 is well worth its high pricetag. 

Here's What You Need to Remember: For those that are in the market for a precision revolver but want to retain the ubiquitous 9x19mm, the Model 929 is a solid choice and further evidence of Smith & Wesson’s excellence in gunsmithing.

Despite being a revolver, the Model 929 can fire the ubiquitous 9x19mm pistol cartridge, blending several different pistol technologies.

No conversation about American-built revolvers — or firearms in general — is complete without mentioning a few words about Smith & Wesson. And it’s quite easy to see why. The company has been in the gunsmithing business for almost 170 years. Smith & Wesson offers both semi-automatic pistols as well as rifles — although their revolvers are perhaps even more noteworthy as some of the best, highest-quality revolvers in existence today. 

One of Smith & Wesson’s more interesting revolvers? Their Model 929.

The Model 929 is built around Smith & Wesson’s N-frame, a large revolver frame that is sufficiently robust to handle some of the stiffest magnum cartridges on the market today, including the hot .357 Magnum, as well as the even more powerful .44 Magnum. The Model 929 however is chambered in the ubiquitous 9x19mm cartridge, a pistol cartridge that the large Model 929 would have no trouble handling.

Thanks in part to the 9x19mm’s relatively small size, as well as the N-frame’s rather large size, the Model 929 can accommodate eight rounds of 9x19mm in its cylinder with the help of moon clip adaptors, included with the Model 929. Although the revolver’s frame and barrel are made of robust stainless steel, the revolver’s cylinder is made of a titanium alloy, which helps to reduce the revolver’s weight without sacrificing strength. 

In addition to a lighter cylinder, the Model 929 also ships with synthetic grips that feature prominent finger grooves for a firm grip. Coupled with the revolver’s relatively long 6.5-inch barrel — complete with removable compensator — the Model 929 is fully capable of handling the 9x19mm cartridge.

The Model 929 is part of Smith & Wesson’s Performance Center lineup of better-than-stock firearms. Firearms with the Performance Center designation are accurized for more precise shooting, and feature “hand-cutting and fitting to fine-tuning for precision, these firearms are top performers. Products from the Performance Center are the ultimate expression of old-world craftsmanship blended with modern technology.”

Smith & Wesson’s Model 929 is certainly a high-quality revolver, though it is not exactly cheap. The revolver retails for over $1,200 on the Smith & Wesson website — though it is backed by the company’s lifetime service policy, guaranteeing the revolver from any defects.

In the Model 929, Smith & Wesson has built a precise and high-quality revolver interestingly chambered in the rimless 9x19mm pistol cartridge. For those that are in the market for a precision revolver but want to retain the ubiquitous 9x19mm, the Model 929 is a solid choice and further evidence of Smith & Wesson’s excellence in gunsmithing.

Caleb Larson is a multimedia journalist and Defense Writer with The National Interest. He lives in Berlin and covers the intersection of conflict, security, and technology, focusing on American foreign policy, European security, and German society.

This article is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Kris Osborn

military, Americas

The Army is hoping to discover a new way of conducting warfare through the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft program.

What would it mean to future warfare if an armed, high-tech utility helicopter could deliver troops for attack under hostile fire, MEDEVAC injured soldiers on the brink of death, conduct high-risk reconnaissance missions in dangerous areas, and bring critical supplies to the edge of combat —all while traveling three hundred miles per hour?

The Army is hoping to find out with the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) program, a developmental effort to engineer and deliver a new utility helicopter for the 2030s. The helicopter will change air combat paradigms with unprecedented speed, fuel efficiency, targeting, weapons, autonomy and artificial-intelligence-enabled computing. 

The new FLRAA aircraft is now amid digital design development, testing and further technical refining through Army developmental deals with both Sikorsky-Boeing and Bell Helicopter developers. Ideally, the new FLRAA will fly twice as fast and twice as far as an existing Black Hawk. 

This technical ability could easily translate into speeds as fast as three hundred knots and a combat radius close to five hundred kilometers. The tactical advantages of this kind of range and speed are too numerous to fully delineate. Primarily, it will eliminate the risk associated with needing forward-arming and refueling points. FLRAA aircraft will not have to stop mid-mission at small manned outposts vulnerable to enemy fire in order to refuel, due to more fuel-efficient engines and much faster speeds. 

Sikorsky’s DEFIANT X, and Bell’s V-280 Valor, are described as compound helicopter configurations aimed at engineering an aircraft able to maneuver and hover in position like a helicopter, yet also succeed in reaching and sustaining airplane-like speeds. The DEFIANT X, for example, advances what is referred to as a “coaxial rotor system.” The DEFIANT X's predecessor, called SB > 1 DEFIANT is reported by Sikorsky developers to have reached speeds greater than 230 knots, adding that innovators continue to push the envelope beyond that through prototyping and digital design modeling with the DEFIANT X. 

Developers of the DEFIANT X have worked on specific innovations to decrease or even remove what’s called “Retreating Blade Stall,” by building rigid, counter-rotating rotorblades. The rigid rotor blades are designed to mitigate pockets of instability in the air called “blade stall” which could otherwise destabilize flight trajectory. The concept is to enable rapid, flexible and decisive maneuvering such that arriving infantry can stop at an objective, unload infantry and then immediately leave a danger zone. 

“In a traditional helicopter, as you move through the air the lift across the rotor disc becomes uneven based on the relative wind created by your forward speed,” Jay Macklin, Sikorsky’s business development director for the Future Vertical Lift program told the National Interest. “As you accelerate the ‘advancing blade’ (on the right side of the helicopter) feels more relative wind than the ‘retreating blade.’ To account for this imbalance the retreating blades must increase their pitch angle so that the lift is equal on the right and left sides of the helicopter. At some point, this pitch angle becomes so great that the blade stalls [stops producing lift], hence the name, ‘retreating blade stall.’”

Sikorsky engineers have said that a coaxial rotor system spins its upper and lower blades in opposite directions such that there is not a “retreating side” that creates a flight imbalance. The retreating blade side is referred to in a Lockheed-Sikorsky-Boeing paper as a “reverse velocity region” which “cannot produce lift,” especially at higher speeds. Offsetting this potential instability, therefore, can help enable and sustain much higher speeds without compromising lift.

Achieving and maintaining unprecedented “lift” is also fundamental to design concepts and requirements assessments for the DEFIANT X, as the new utility helicopter will need to operate with an ability to “sling load” major combat items such as an M777 155-millimeter mobile Howitzer cannon. Air dropping that kind of weapon can, of course, deliver critical suppressive firepower up at higher altitudes unreachable by wheeled vehicles.

Sikorsky-Boeing data on the DEFIANT X says that the aircraft can handle the additional weight without having to grow the rotor diameter or the engine size. So, any additional equipment, survivability features, payload (including external lift) can be handled without a significant and costly redesign of key dynamic components. On this point, a Sikorsky write up says the DEFIANT X’s predecessor was able to slingload a fifty-three thousand pound Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System. 

One of the key things often emphasized by major Army weapons developers, such as Army Futures Command Commander Gen. John Murray, is that new technologies continue to change tactics and maneuver formations. That being said, will a new FLRAA reshape approaches to Combined Arms Maneuver? It certainly seems likely, should one consider that a faster helicopter might also be able to maneuver much more successfully in operations such as air assault raids of high-speed infantry delivery in a contested landing zone. 

The DEFIANT X builds upon Sikorsky’s history of developing coaxial rotor blades to break new ground with its X2 Technology Demonstrator in 2010 by hitting 250 knots. Bell developers have told the National Interest that their V-280 has hit 305 knots. X2 Technology Demonstrator set new records by flying more than 250 knots in 2010. Sikorsky’s S-97 Raider helicopter in 2019 hit 207 knots. Sikorsky continues to expand the envelope as they prepare the RAIDER X prototype—a scaled version of the S-97—for the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft competition.

Kris Osborn is the defense editor for the National Interest. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Master's Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.

Image: Flickr / The U.S. Army

Comme le rappelait Lénine lorsqu'il analysait les alliances impérialistes durant la première guerre mondiale, « une chaîne vaut ce que vaut son maillon le plus faible ». Or la chaîne censée envelopper et étouffer l'Organisation de l'Etat islamique ne compte pas seulement un mais plusieurs éléments (...) / Arabie saoudite, États-Unis, États-Unis (affaires extérieures), France, Golfe, Irak, Iran, Proche-Orient, Syrie, Turquie, Monde arabe, Islam, Religion, Terrorisme, Violence, Fondamentalisme - 2014/10

Indéfinissables classes moyennes : se retrouvent sous cette étiquette l'employé et le cadre supérieur, le technicien et l'avocat, l'instituteur et le professeur d'université, et même... certains dirigeants d'entreprise. Un double mouvement traverse toutes ces catégories : d'un côté, une partie d'entre (...) / France, Économie, Idées, Inégalités, Société, Travail - 2002/12

On 30 May 2021, Cato Institute’s Ted Galen Carpenter, on the pages of The National Interest, published an article under the title “Ukraine’s Accelerating Slide into Authoritarianism.” In his outspoken statement, the author painted a dark picture of Ukrainian politics allegedly beset by deeply anti-democratic and ultra-nationalist tendencies. These putative features, Carpenter argued, makes this post-Soviet state unfit for US support. Why the Cato Institute’s fellow – who seems to have neither much interest for, nor ever published any research on, Ukraine – came out with a categorical judgement on this country remains a mystery.

Carpenter’s assessment of Ukraine’s recent history and call for an end to Washington’s backing for Kyiv triggered reactions within the US and outside. The first came from Moscow although Russia was only mentioned en passant in Carpenter’s text. One day after the text had appeared in the United States, the influential Russian state-owned online resource inoSMI (Foreign Mass Media) published a Russian translation of Carpenter’s article, on 31 May 2021. The inoSMI editor introduced Carpenter’s article: “U.S. officials love to portray Ukraine as ‘a courageous democracy that reflects the threat of aggression from an authoritarian Russia’. But the idealized picture created by Washington has never really matched the darker reality, and the gap between the two, with Ukraine sliding increasingly toward authoritarianism, has now become a real chasm, the article notes.”

During June 2021, an interactive debate regarding Carpenter’s attack on Ukraine developed. On the pages of the The National Interest, a response to Carpenter’s initial article was published by Doug Klain of the Atlantic Council. Somewhat later, I published a second rebuttal to Carpenter with the Atlantic Council’s Ukraine Alert. In Ukraine, this text was translated into Russian as well as Ukrainian and republished by the Kyiv website Gazeta.ua. Further responses to Carpenter appeared on the Kyiv resource Khvylia (Wave) in Russian language, and on Berlin’s Center for Liberal Modernity website Ukraine verstehen (Understanding Ukraine) in German language. On 28 June 2021, Carpenter responded to Klain’s and my critique of his initial text with a second article titled “Why Ukraine Is a Dangerous and Unworthy Ally,” again published in the web version of The National Interest, and subsequently reposted on the Cato Institute’s website.

While none of the responses to Carpenter was re-published in Russia, his rebuttal to them was again, within one day, translated by the Kremlin-controlled inoSMI (Foreign Mass Media) website. Carpenter’s new article was reposted in Russian, on 29 June 2021, and introduced by an inoSMI editor: “In May [2021], an author of The National Interest took the liberty of criticizing the Zelensky regime for its authoritarian tendencies. In response, the German ‘Ukrainianist’ Andreas Umland and similar ‘Maidanists’ [a term referring to Kyiv’s Independence Square] criticized Carpenter so much that he decided to get even with them in this article. One cannot remain silent: accusations of ‘Russian disinformation’ are reminiscent of McCarthyism. The defenders of the Kyiv regime have a powerful lobbying organization behind them, the Atlantic Council.”

Also on 29 June 2021, a number of Russian-language outlets published sympathetic reviews of Carpenter’s article, for instance, the major daily Izvestiia (Messages) as well as popular internet resources Lenta.ru and Gazeta.ru. Among other Kremlin-controlled outlets, the website of the Crimean TV channel Pervyi sevastopol’skii (“Sevastopol’s First”) not only briefly reviewed Carpenter’s June article. It had already earlier introduced his May 2021 initial attack on Ukraine, in The National Interest. Among other Russian-language video resources, the Youtube channels “Oleg Kalugin” and “Kognitive Dissonanz” published Russian audio reviews of Carpenter under the titles “On Ukraine’s Lobbyists in the US” (29 June 2021), and “Senior Research Fellow of the Cato Institute […] Ted Carpenter on Ukraine…” (1 July 2021). Carpenter’s two TNI articles on Ukraine were introduced by numerous Russian outlets including Yandex.ru, RIA.ru, MK.ru, Sputniknews.ru, Regnum.ru, News.ru, Tsargrad.TV, KP.ru, PolitRos.com, Life.ru, Argumenti.ru, Actualcomment.ru, RUnews24.ru, PolitExpert.net, Versia.ru, Ridus.ru, 360TV.ru, Riasev.com, Inforeactor.ru, Glas.ru, Riafan.ru, Newinform.com, SMI2.ru, Iarex.ru, TopCor.ru, InfoRuss.info, Profinews.ru, Rusevik.ru, Alternatio.org, News2.ru, News22.ru, and others.

In English, the debate around Ukraine was, on 28 June 2021, reviewed by Jon Lerner of the Hudson Institute, in The National Interest. The English versions of the Russian websites TopWar.ru and Oreanda.ru, published brief reviews of Carpenter’s arguments under the titles “Strategically, Ukraine is a ‘trap’ for the United States” and “American Political Scientist Called Ukraine a Dangerous and Unworthy Ally.” Oreanda.ru remarked that, in Ukraine, “a coup in 2014 was carried out with the help of ultra-nationalist and neo-Nazi groups. Carpenter noted that these organizations with their ‘ugly values,’ continue to influence Kiev’s [sic] politics. Supporters of an alliance with Ukraine try not to notice these facts, the article says. The author of the material noted the deplorable situation with human rights and freedoms in this country.”

The Ukrainian news agencies UAzmi.org and UAinfo.org quoted, on 1 July 2021, an ironic comment by the prominent Odesa blogger Oleksandr Kovalenko who had written on 30 June 2021 about Carpenter’s writings for The National Interest: “Interestingly, he used as arguments what we have regularly heard from Russian propagandists since 2014, namely that neo-Nazism is rampant in Ukraine, rights and freedoms of citizens are trampled in Ukraine, there is no freedom of speech in Ukraine, wild monkeys and crocodiles are in Ukraine… In fact, a full set of Kremlin fakes about Ukraine is heard from the mouth of an American expert on the pages of a respected and influential publication in the midst of the international exercise SeaBreeze-2021.” Ukraine’s leading English-language newspaper Kyiv Post, on 2 July 2021, declared Carpenter – with reference to his articles in The National Interest – Ukraine’s “Foe of the Week.”

The varying responses in Russia, the US, Ukraine and elsewhere indicate the problem with Carpenter’s arguments. What raises eyebrows about his statements on Ukraine is less their critical tone. Rather, it is surprising that Carpenter chose to remark certain sensitive political topics that have been also popular in Russia’s state-controlled mass media during the last seven years, if not before. There are good reasons to criticize, for instance, Ukraine’s dysfunctional presidentialism, underdeveloped party-system, or incomplete cooperation with the International Criminal Court (a topic dealt with on the pages of The National Interest). Yet, these are neither prominent themes in Russian propaganda nor are they issues that Carpenter raises. The Kremlin rarely speaks about such problems as they often also apply to Russia. Carpenter, one suspects, does not mention these and similar topics because he does not read Ukrainian. Judging from the contents of his two articles, he may not have even read much of the freely available English-language scholarly literature on post-Euromaidan Ukraine.  

Rather, the Cato Institute’s researcher makes far-reaching claims about an alleged prevalence of ultra-nationalism and putative slide to authoritarianism in today Ukraine – claims also pushed daily in Russian state media and by pro-Kremlin public figures for many years. No wonder that Kremlin-guided newspapers, TV channels and websites have eagerly quoted and reviewed Carpenter’s two articles in The National Interest. Here comes a senior American commentator working at a leading Washington think-tank, publishing in one of the most influential US political magazines, and repeating exactly those talking points that the Kremlin has been spreading to justify its thinly veiled hybrid war against Ukraine for seven years now. This not enough, Carpenter uses the Kremlin’s favorite narratives to unapologetically call for an end of US support for Ukraine. What more could Moscow hope for?

Carpenter’s insistence on the large role of ultra-nationalism in Ukraine is absurd. Unlike various other European parliaments elected via a proportional representation system, the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada (Supreme Council) does not have a far-right faction any more since late 2014. It had such a faction only for two years from 2012 to 2014. In 2019, Ukraine’s far right – for the first time in its history and unlike many other nationalists around the world – went with a united list into parliamentary elections. Despite such rare harmony, the list of the right-wing Freedom Party which also included representatives of the other two major ultra-nationalist groups, the Right Sector and National Corps, received 2.15% – a result roughly equal to, or even below of, what many single far right parties in European countries receive in national elections. In the 2019 presidential elections, the candidate of the united far right gained 1.62%. Whoever has followed European elections during the last years may note that radical nationalists, in a number of NATO member countries including some older democracies, have received larger or significantly larger support than the Ukrainian united far right.

During its entire post-Soviet history, Ukraine has indeed – as Carpenter indicates – been exceptional in terms of support for ultra-nationalism. However, it has been distinct not for the political strength, but for the electoral weakness of the far right, as the tabled results of various far right presidential candidates and parties, since the introduction of proportional representation in 1998, show. The only period during which the far right was able to gain notable nation-wide support was during the notorious presidency of Viktor Yanukovych in 2010-2014. Yanukovych both triggered nationalist mobilization with his pro-Russian policies and promoted Ukraine’s extreme right, as a convenient sparring partner during elections.  

Vote shares of major Ukrainian far-right parties in presidential elections and the proportional-representation parts of parliamentary elections, 1998–2019 (in percent)

Party or alliance Bloc “Natsionalnyy front” [National Front] (KUN, UKRP & URP) / URP / KUN UNA / Pravyi sektor [Right Sector] Bloc “Menshe sliv” [Fewer Words] (VPO-DSU & SNPU) / VOS National election   1998 (parliamentary) 2.71 (NF) 0.39 (UNA) 0.16 (MS) 1999 (presidential)       2002 (parliamentary)   0.04 (UNA)   2004 (presidential) 0.02 (Kozak, OUN) 0.17 (Korchyns’kyy)   2006 (parliamentary)   0.06 (UNA) 0.36 (VOS) 2007 (parliamentary)     0.76 (VOS) 2010 (presidential)     1.43 (Tiahnybok) 2012 (parliamentary)   0.08 (UNA-UNSO) 10.44 (VOS) 2014 (presidential)   0.70 (Iarosh)* 1.16 (Tiahnybok) 2014 (parliamentary) 0.05 (KUN) 1.81 (PS) 4.71 (VOS) 2019 (presidential)     1.62 (Koshulyns’kyy) 2019 (parliamentary)     2.15 (VOS)**

* In the 2014 presidential election, Dmytro Iarosh formally ran as an independent candidate but was publicly known as the leader of Pravyy sector (PS).

** The 2019 Svoboda list was a unified bloc of most of the relevant Ukrainian far-right political parties, but was officially registered only as a VOS list.

Abbreviations: KUN: Konhres ukrains‘kykh natsionalistiv (Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists); UKRP: Ukrains‘ka konservatyvna respublikans‘ka partiia (Ukrainian Conservative Republican Party); URP: Ukrains‘ka respublikans‘ka partiia (Ukrainian Republican Party); VPO-DSU: Vseukrainske politychne ob‘‘ednannia “Derzhavna samostiynist’ Ukrainy” (All-Ukrainian Political Union “State Independence of Ukraine”); SNPU: Sotsial-natsionalna partiia Ukrainy (Social-National Party of Ukraine); OUN: Orhanizatsiia ukrainskykh natsionalistiv (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists); UNA: Ukrains’ka natsionalna asambleia (Ukrainian National Assembly); UNSO: Ukrains’ka narodna samooborona (Ukrainian National Self-Defense); VOS: Vseukrains’ke ob’’ednannia “Svoboda” (All-Ukrainian Union Svoboda).

There was in 2014, to be sure, something close to panic among many anti-fascists around the world concerning Ukraine’s far right. The Ukrainian ultra-nationalists had still their faction in parliament, been highly visible during the Euromaidan revolution, and entered the first post-Euromaidan government for several months with four ministers. Above all, the Russian propaganda machine and its various Western branches were, on a daily basis, hammering into worldwide public opinion the idea that former President Yanukovych had been thrown out of power by a fascist coup in Kyiv (while, in fact, Yanukovych left Kyiv after violence had already ended, and was officially deposed by the same parliament that had earlier supported him). To be sure, few non-Russian observers bought the Kremlin’s horror story in full. Yet, a widespread approach among Western politicians and commentators has since been that there can be no smoke without fire, and, if Russia is so concerned, the Ukrainian ultra-nationalists must be a relevant problem.

The few academic experts who had researched Ukraine’s far right before it became a popular theme, and studied it from a cross-cultural perspective warned, however, already in 2014 that the media hype around this topic was misplaced. The Russian historian Viacheslav Likhachev (Zmina Human Rights Center, Kyiv), Ukrainian political scientist Anton Shekhovtsov (Center for Democratic Integrity, Vienna) and American sociologist Alina Polyakova (Center for European Policy Analysis, Washington, DC) had researched pre-Euromaidan and non-Ukrainian permutations of the far right before 2014. From their historical and comparative points of view, they and others warned early on that alarmism is inapt and spoke out against an emerging mainstream Western opinion that ultra-nationalism is a major issue in Ukraine.

Some of these researchers explicitly predicted in 2014 that the prospects of Ukraine’s far right are limited. And, indeed, it has since turned out to be again only a tertiary national political force, as it had been before its only notable electoral success (10.44%) of 2012. Today, the overall domestic political impact of Ukrainian right-wing extremists is lower than in many far richer and securer countries of Europe. Even the highly publicized participation of many radical nationalists in Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s hybrid war since 2014 has not had much effect on their electoral fortunes. In 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky with his openly Jewish family background won, against a powerful incumbent, in Ukraine’s presidential elections with a result of 73%.

This leads to the second main point in Carpenter’s two unfortunate portrayals of Ukraine – allegedly authoritarian tendencies disqualifying Ukraine to receive US support. Here again, Carpenter’s argument is bizarre. Ukraine has indeed been exceptional, within the post-Soviet context, yet in the opposite sense in which it has been presented in The National Interest.

Already early in its post-Soviet history, Ukraine passed, after its emergence as an independent state in 1991, one of the crucial tests that political scientists use to determine the democratic potential of a nation: Is an electorate able to kick out a country’s top official and most powerful politician via popular vote? In 1994, the Ukrainians deposed their incumbent regent in a presidential election. As a result Ukraine’s first President Leonid Kravchuk (1991-1994) was replaced by its second head of state, Leonid Kuchma (1994-2005).

The much older and richer Federal Republic of Germany, founded in 1949, passed this particular democracy test only four years after Ukraine. In 1998, the Germans, for the first time in history, deposed a sitting Federal Chancellor, the CDU’s Helmut Kohl (1982-1998), via parliamentary elections that were won by the SPD. The Social Democrat’s then leader (and today employee of the Russian state) Gerhard Schroeder became the new head of government until 2005 when he too was deposed via popular vote. (There had, to be sure, in 1969 been the replacement of then incumbent Federal Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger by the SPD’s Willi Brandt. Yet, this was the result of a change of Germany’s governing coalition and not of that year’s parliamentary elections that had been won by Kiesinger’s CDU/CSU.)

In the 2010 and 2019 national elections again, Ukrainian voters kicked out their sitting heads of state with embarrassing results for the two moderately nationalist incumbents. The then respectively highest office holders, the outgoing Presidents Viktor Yushchenko and Petro Poroshenko, manifestly wanted second terms in Ukraine’s highest political office. Yet, the one-term presidents were spectacularly beaten by opposition candidates, and duly stepped down after their crushing defeats.

Over the last thirty years, Ukraine has conducted dozens of highly competitive rounds of presidential, parliamentary, and local elections most of which fulfilled basic democratic standards. This experience is in sharp contrast to almost all other post-Soviet states that had been part of the USSR when it was founded in 1922. What is special about Ukraine, as a successor country of the original Soviet Union, is the opposite of what Carpenter asserts: It is not the relative authoritarianism, but the relative democratism of Ukraine that is remarkable, and that makes this state more worth of all-Western (and not only US) support than other founding republics of the USSR.

Carpenter’s confusion about these issues becomes especially visible in his second TNI article and rebuttal to Klain and me of June 28, 2021. He compares various post-Soviet states and comes to a strange conclusion: “Umland stresses that other countries emerging from the former Soviet Union are noticeably more autocratic than Ukraine, noting that [in a recent Freedom House democracy ranking in which Ukraine had received 60 out of 100 points] Russia received a rating of twenty points and Belarus received eleven points [out of 100 possible ‘Global Freedom Scores’]. He could have added that Kazakhstan was in the same dismal category with twenty-three points. But no one expects the United States to defend such countries militarily or praise them as vibrant democracies. Umland, Klain, and other fans of Kiev [sic] expect Washington to do both.” However, that is exactly the point: If Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan had achieved the same Global Freedom Scores as Ukraine, in the quoted Freedom House table, they should be treated like Ukraine. If they were – in Freedom House’s parlance – “partially free” and not “unfree,” the three countries would be worth Western support – including assistance by the US (which, by the way, received 83 points in this ranking).

What is, however, most surprising in Carpenter’s two The National Interest articles is not what he writes about, but the preeminent security issue he is entirely silent about – the narrowly understood national interest of the US in Ukraine’s fate as a former atomic power and today non-nuclear weapons state. As indicated in my first rebuttal to the Cato Institute fellow in June 2021, the US played a major role in the nuclear disarmament of Ukraine in the early 1990s. Together with Moscow, Washington pressured Kyiv then to give up not only a major part of the huge arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that Ukraine had inherited from the USSR when achieving independence in 1991. Russia and United States made sure that Ukraine would be deprived of all of its strategic and tactical nuclear war heads and ammunition. Today, Moscow’s and Washington’s concerted efforts from a quarter of a century ago look like direct preparations of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and start of a covert war in Eastern Ukraine in 2014.

The only relevant political concession that Washington made back in the Nineties to Kyiv was that it agreed to supplement Ukraine’s accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as non-nuclear-weapons state with the – now infamous – 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances signed by Ukraine, Russia, the United States and United Kingdom. The latter country also underwrote this fateful document although Great Britain had not taken part in the trilateral negotiations about Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament with the US and Russia. London supported this deal, however, with its official signature because the UK had, in 1968, been one of the – together with US and USSR – three founding countries of the world-wide non-proliferation regime and has since been a depositary state of the NPT. At a CSCE summit at Budapest in December 1994, Washington, Moscow and London assured Kyiv, in connection with its signing of the NPT, of their respect of Ukrainian sovereignty, integrity and borders.

With its attack on Ukraine since 2014 and especially with its overt annexation of Crimea (as well as also with some earlier and other actions), Moscow has been now for several years undermining the logic of the non-proliferation regime. It is not any longer clear that countries which refrain from possessing, building or acquiring nuclear weapons would be secure and especially be protected from countries that do hold atomic arms. Russia’s officially allowed possession of nuclear weapons, moreover, not only gave it a key military advantage vis-à-vis Ukraine. It was also the major reason why the West – unlike in Yugoslavia, Iraq or Libya – has not militarily intervened in the Russian-Ukrainian war.

A widely discussed June 2021 incident with a British war ship near the port of Sevastopol in the Black Sea had thus a more than symbolic meaning. The UK’s destroyer “HMS Defender” passed, on a trip from Odesa to Batumi, by Crimea without making a detour to avoid Black Sea waters claimed by Russia. This behavior of Great Britain was a peculiar form of validation of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum and 1968 NPT. Having received Kyiv’s permission to pass Ukrainian waters, the “Defender” defended not only general international law by taking the shortest path from the shores of Southern mainland Ukraine to its destination at Georgia’s Black Sea coast. The British vessel also upheld the logic of the non-proliferation regime built on the premise that the borders of non-nuclear weapons states are as respected as those of the official nuclear-weapons states under the NPT.

With his explicit demand to end US support for Ukraine, Carpenter calls not only for a betrayal of a beacon of democracy in the post-Soviet space. He also proposes to sweep under the carpet the normative and psychological foundations of humanity’s non-proliferation regime. If – after Russia as the legal successor of the USSR – a second founding country of the 1968 NPT would signal to the world that Ukraine’s territorial integrity and political sovereignty are of secondary importance, this could have far-reaching consequences for the international order. This is especially so as Kyiv once possessed an atomic arsenal that was significantly larger than those of Great Britain, France, and China taken together.

The Kremlin’s manifest violation of the logic of the non-proliferation regime since 2014 can be seen as a temporary and singular aberration of one guarantor of the NPT from a key international norm. An, as Carpenter proposes, US withdrawal from support of the Ukrainian state would, however, create a pattern in the behavior of the non-proliferation regime’s founders. It could signal to political leaders around the world that international law in general and the NPT in particular provide no protection for non-nuclear weapons states. Reliable national security can only be achieved through the production or acquisition of weapons of mass destruction. As the ultimate instruments of deterrence, nuclear war heads may, moreover, come in handily, if a government decides – like the Kremlin did in 2014 – to annex to its state a neighboring territory, and wants to scare away third parties from getting involved.

That Carpenter does not even mention these issues in his two articles in The National Interest is – even more than other aspects of his argument – odd. In so far as Carpenter presents himself, in his articles, as concerned about core national interests of the US, one would think that preventing nuclear proliferation is on his agenda. Yet, Carpenter did not even take an interest in this topic after it was explicitly mentioned in the first rebuttals to his initial May 2021 article.

In fact, the discussion about the grave repercussions of Moscow’s violation of the 1994 Budapest nuclear deal and the resulting implications for US foreign policy has been ongoing for more than seven years now. The debate has been taking place not the least on the websites of various DC institutions – from the Wilson Center for International Scholars to the oldest US journal of its kind, World Affairs (founded in 1837). One would have thought that the Cato Institute’s fellow had taken notice of, and addressed in his deliberations, the gist of the numerous US publications on this topic.

Andreas Umland is Research Fellow at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Senior Expert at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future, Associate Professor of Political Science at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, and General Editor of the book series “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society”  as well as Collector of the book series “Ukrainian Voices” both published by ibidem Press in Stuttgart.

Should the US Support Ukraine? A Debate in Washington, DC, and Elsewhere

Si la démocratie s'est répandue sur le continent noir, elle demeure fragile. L'année 2010, qui marque le cinquantième anniversaire de l'indépendance de seize pays africains, offre l'occasion d'esquisser un bilan de la démocratisation entamée dans les années 1990. / Afrique, Cameroun, République (...) / Afrique, Cameroun, République démocratique du Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Nigeria, Élections, Parti politique, Politique, Guinée - 2010/02

La brève hospitalisation, en Suisse, du président guinéen Lansana Conté a relancé, fin mars, les spéculations sur son éventuel décès en fonctions. Le retour du chef de l'Etat n'a pas apaisé une crise qui est aussi sociale, comme l'a révélé la grève générale de février. Un coup d'Etat aurait des effets (...) / Afrique, Armée, Pauvreté, Guinée, Afrique de l'Ouest - 2006/04

The case for a pandemic trust fund.

Les images de civils s'agrippant aux avions américains pour quitter Kaboul et des talibans installés dans le bureau présidentiel resteront les symboles d'une guerre ingagnable. La France, engagée au Sahel dans le même genre d'entreprise, devrait en tirer les leçons. Les insurgés afghans sont arrivés (...) / Afghanistan, Conflit afghan, Guerre d'Afghanistan 2001-2021, Géopolitique, Relations internationales, Armée, États-Unis (affaires extérieures), Fondamentalisme, État - 2021/09

Why Turkey’s ruling party views environmentalism as a threat.

Many former officials expect U.S. intelligence to dry up.

More than 55 million people globally are living with dementia, and that number continues to grow, according to a new UN health agency report launched on Thursday, which notes that only one-quarter of the world’s countries have national policies, strategies or support plans in place.

Days after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the new regime is consolidating power.

New restrictions on how much time minors can spend gaming reflect broader ideological concerns.