Diplomacy & Crisis News

Although the moves are seen as precautionary, they could cause lasting damage to the global vaccine rollout.

Tehran is directly responsible for the violence carried out by its proxies and must be held accountable.

The UN World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday, highlighted the risks of separating newborns from mothers, with new research showing that up to 125,000 lives could be saved by keeping them together to ensure skin-to-skin contact. 

Accédez à l’article de Marc Julienne et Sophie Hanck ici.

Retrouvez le sommaire du numéro 1/2021 de Politique étrangère ici.

This week, Syria marks a grim anniversary: 10 years since the start of the country’s grinding conflict. Today, one decade into the catastrophe, about half the country’s population has been uprooted, with some 12 million people internally displaced or living as refugees.  

The UN human rights office (OHCHR) said on Tuesday it is “deeply disturbed” that the crackdown on peaceful protesters in Myanmar “continues to intensify”, with a soaring death toll on the streets, increasingly aggressive use of lethal force, arbitrary arrests, and reports of torture in custody. 

Social media has too often been used with “relative impunity” to spread hate, prejudice and violence against minorities, an independent UN human right expert said on Monday, calling for an international treaty to address the growing scourge.

Health officials from the UN and the European Union will meet this week on the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine after several more countries suspended its use, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday. 

Sebastien Roblin

North Korea, Asia

The regime likely wanted the MD 500s so it could use them to infiltrate across the demilitarized zone with South Korean markings.

Here's What You Need to Know: Pyongyang kept its substantial MD 500 fleet under wraps for decades.

On July 27, 2013, as a column of armored personnel carriers and tanks rumbled before the stand of Kim Jong-un to commemorate the end of a bloody war with the United States sixty years earlier, four small American-made MD 500E helicopters buzzed low overhead. You can see it occur at 3:13 in the this video. If you look closely, you can see they have been wired with antitank missiles on racks slung on the sides.

In fact, this was the first confirmation that Pyongyang has maintained the fleet of 87 U.S.-built helicopters it smuggled into the country more than a quarter century ago.

The MD 500 is a civilian version of the distinctive Army OH-6 Cayuse light observation helicopter, which entered U.S. military service back in the 1960s. The no-frills design has been nicknamed the “Flying Egg” due to its compact, ovoid fuselage. It was widely employed to evacuate casualties, escort friendly transport helicopters, scout for enemy forces up close, and provide light fire support to troops on the ground with miniguns and rocket pods. Exceptionally cheap—selling for $20,000 each in 1962!—they were agile and small enough to land in places other helicopters couldn’t.

However, they were also highly exposed to enemy fire: 842 of the initial 1,400 OH-6As were lost in action in Vietnam. Evolved MH-6 and AH-6 “Little Bird” special operations and mini gunship variants continue to see action with the U.S. military today in Africa and the Middle East.

Back in the 1980s, McDonnell Douglas received an order for 102 helicopters from the Delta-Avia Fluggerate, an export firm registered in West Germany under businessman Kurt Behrens. Between 1983 and 1985, the U.S. company Associated Industries transferred eighty-six MD 500D and -E helicopters and one Hughes 300 (an even smaller two-man type) via six shipments for export by Delta Avia to Japan, Nigeria, Portugal and Spain.

However, in February 1985, the U.S. Commerce Department revealed it had discovered some hair-raising anomalies in the company’s operations—and some fraudulent claims about the shipments’ destination. For example, fifteen helicopters unloaded at Rotterdam, ostensibly for special fitting, were then transported overland to the Soviet freighter Prorokov. The Prorokov then unloaded the helicopters in North Korea. Similarly, a freighter docked in Japan transferred two helicopters to a North Korean freighter in Hong Kong, with similar results. Furthermore, it turned out the Semler brothers running Associated Industries were secretly majority owners of Delta Avia.

Though eighty-seven helicopters had already been delivered, the remaining fifteen MD 500s were seized and the Semlers were tried in 1987 for violating a law forbidding export of nearly anything to North Korea. It was alleged that Fluggeratte was simply a front company to ship the aircraft to North Korea, and that it had been promised a profit of $10 million for completing the deal. It was also revealed that a London insurer was in the know, and that payments had been laundered through Swiss bank accounts.

McDonnell Douglas had been duped into shipping nearly a hundred scout helicopters to a country that still considered itself at war with the United States. However, the Semler brothers were let off with light sentences in exchange for guilty pleas, claiming they had been misled by Behrens as to the destination of the helicopters. They paid fines far below the value of the money they had received for shipping the helicopters. Behrens rather dubiously claimed the MD 500s did not fall under the export ban because they were not military types.

Later it was revealed that the CIA had been aware of the smuggling operation. It had been administered by a North Korean attaché in Berlin, and facilitated by a Soviet front trucking company in West Germany. However, the intelligence agency declined to inform civil authorities, because it didn’t want to reveal it had bugged the embassy.

Still, why would North Korea even want MD 500s? The civilian models certainly didn’t possess any advanced technology or specialized military gear that the North Korea or the Soviet Union would have been dying to get a hold of.

However, many countries would acquire both military and civilian MD 500s legitimately, due to their very low cost, and adapt them into military roles with gun pods and rockets. And it so happens that one of those countries was South Korea: Korean Air had delivered more than 270 MD 500s under a license for the Republic of Korea Army and Air Force.

Thus, it seems that North Korea likely acquired the MD 500s so it could use them to infiltrate across the demilitarized zone with South Korean markings, conducting surprise raids and inserting spies and saboteurs. North Korea maintains more than two hundred thousand commandos in its Special Operations Forces, more than any other country in the world. In the event of a conflict with its southern neighbor, Pyongyang would deploy thousands of operatives behind South Korean lines via tunnels, submarines, stealthy motor boats and helicopters to disrupt communication and supply lines and spread panic. Indeed, upon learning of the MD 500 caper, South Korean president Chun Doo-hwan angrily upbraided Washington for inadvertently making infiltration easier.

Pyongyang kept its substantial MD 500 fleet under wraps for decades, though a North Korean colonel admitted to the purchase in a 1996 interview with Der Spiegel. Keeping the aircraft functioning and supplied with spare parts would have posed quite a challenge. After the unveiling in 2013, a quartet of the American-built helicopters was again on display at the 2016 Wonsan air show, one of the choppers performing stunts for the audience.

The MD 500s seen over Pyongyang were modified to carry four Susong-Po antitank missiles. These are locally produced derivatives of the Russian Malyutka-P (NATO codename AT-3 Sagger-C), an older missile semiautomatically guided by the firer via a control wire. An earlier version of the AT-3 made a name for itself blowing up Israeli Patton tanks during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. This suggests North Korea envisions an attack role for the handy little choppers.

South Korea, for its part, may have its own plans for its large MD 500 fleet, which includes fifty antitank types armed with TOW missiles. Korean Air is proposing to transform these Little Birds into drone helicopters! This could be a handy way to employ the copters in a battle zone where their survivability rate might not be very high.

Pyongyang is not the only nation to attempt such shenanigans using shell companies. Iran famously acquired parts from the United States for its F-14 Tomcat fighters for decades. In 1992, shell companies established by the United Kingdom managed to purchase several T-80 tanks from Russia at a generous $5 million a piece, supposedly for service in Morocco. Instead, they were thoroughly taken apart and evaluated by the British, and then sent to the United States. More recently in 2015, U.S. citizen Alexander Brazhnikov was arrested after using shell companies in Ireland, Latvia, Panama and five other nations to smuggle $65 million in restricted electronics to the Russian defense ministry, nuclear-weapons program and intelligence services.

Still, none of these episodes quite match North Korea’s rare feat in shipping over eighty-seven factory-fresh helicopters from the United States.

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 2013.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Mark Episkopos

NATO vs. Russia,

But if the Baltics have really been so vulnerable for so many years, why is it that the Russians have yet to attack?

Is NATO able to fend off a large-scale Russian invasion of the Baltic states? No, according to most experts.

A 2016 RAND Corporation report, “Reinforcing Deterrence on NATO’s Eastern Flank,” conducted a series of wargames simulating a Russian assault on the Baltic states. The report reached an “unambiguous” conclusion: Russia’s Western Military District (WMD) can steamroll NATO’s most vulnerable members at a moment’s notice, reaching the outskirts of Tallinn or Riga-- the capitals of Estonia and Latvia, respectively-- in sixty hours or less.

The report, authored by David Shlapak and Michael Johnson, attributed NATO’s crushing defeat to what is an entirely lopsided correlation of forces. The WMD (and to a lesser extent, Kaliningrad) units that would take part in the invasion not only vastly outnumber their NATO counterparts, but are qualitatively superior in most respects. The WMD has received a slew of modern hardware over the past decade, inducing the S-400 missile system, the new T-72B3M main battle tank (MBT), and BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicle (IFV’s).

The report argues that NATO’s light and under-equipped Baltic assets are little match for Russia’s motorized heavy divisions. The tactical disparity is so great, posit the authors, that NATO infantry wouldn’t even be able to retreat successfully from the Russian onslaught and would instead find themselves “destroyed in place.” Even when accounting for the effective use of NATO air power that could inflict noticeable losses on advancing Russian forces, NATO simply lacks the conventional means to resist a full-scale Russian invasion of the Baltic states.

The report further argues that this “Fait Accompli” presents western leaders and NATO high command with three unpalatable options:

1) a bloody and likely abortive counteroffensive to retake the Baltics;

2) to threaten nuclear retaliation, with all of the escalatory risks that entail;

3) or to “concede at least temporary defeat,” thrusting the future of the alliance into question.

The report ends with a proposed course of action by which NATO can avoid the Fait Accompli altogether: a military buildup of about “about seven brigades, including three heavy armored brigades—adequately supported by airpower, land-based fires, and other enablers on the ground and ready to fight at the onset of hostilities.” These forces are still not enough to defeat the Russian incursion outright but will deny Moscow a quick victory and impose severe losses on the invading army. The ensuing battle of attrition will favor the wealthier and more materially powerful west, establishing what the authors see as a sufficient deterrent against Russian aggression.

Five years later, the correlation of forces on NATO’s eastern flank has not drastically shifted. The Baltic states have gradually ramped up their defense spending and receive a steady stream of US military aid, but these modest measures are being offset by Russia’s continued military buildup on its western outskirts and in its Central European enclave of Kaliningrad. A 2021 paper, published by the Swedish Research Agency, largely replicated the 2016 RAND report’s conclusion that Russia’s military can overwhelm the Baltic region in a matter of days.

But if the Baltics have really been so vulnerable for so many years, why is it that the Russians have yet to attack?

Experts have noted that the likelihood of such an invasion remains exceedingly low under present circumstances, in large part because capability does not imply intent. It is indisputably true that Russia can annex the Baltic states with negligible short-term costs, but the avalanche of medium to long-term military, economic, and political consequences-- up to and including an escalatory spiral that could trigger WWIII-- far outstrips any of the dubious, ill-defined benefits that could possibly come from such an endeavor.

Mark Episkopos is the new national security reporter for the National Interest.

David Axe

Artillery, Asia

Much of Pyongyang’s artillery is in range of the Seoul Greater Metropolitan Area, which begins just 25 miles south of the Demilitarized Zone.

Here's What You Need to Know: A North Korean artillery barrage could inflict as many as 250,000 casualties in Seoul alone.

Pyongyang back on May 9, 2019 launched a second “projectile,” South Korean officials said.

The May tests of at least one apparently nuclear-capable short-range missile startled foreign observers and threatened to elevate tensions between the United States and its allies South Korea and Japan on one side and, on the other side, North Korea and its main patron China.

But a less dramatic test of North Korea’s heavy artillery that occured at the same time as the May 4 rocket launch arguably is more important.

“On May 4, under the watchful eye of Kim Jong Un, North Korea launched a series of projectiles featuring two types of large-caliber, multiple launch rocket systems and a new short-range ballistic missile,” Michael Elleman wrote for 38 North, a North Korea-focused think tank associated with the Washington, D.C.-based Stimson Center.

“A few days later, North Korea released photographs of tested projectiles, which provides a basis for preliminary evaluations,” Elleman continued. “The 240-millimeter and 300-millimeter diameter MLRS systems are not new to North Korea, nor do they alter the country’s battlefield capabilities.”

It’s true that Pyongyang long has operated large-caliber artillery systems. But Elleman is wrong to downplay the significance of the May 2019 artillery test. That’s because North Korea’s roughly 13,000 artillery pieces arguably pose a greater immediate threat than do Pyongyang’s nukes to South Koreans and Americans living in South Korea.

In firing the artillery at the same time as it launched a ballistic missile, North Korea reminded the world of its enormous conventional firepower. North Korea previously tested, in November 2018, upgrades to its non-nuclear artillery.

Much of Pyongyang’s artillery is in range of the Seoul Greater Metropolitan Area, which begins just 25 miles south of the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas. Some 10 million people live in the Greater Seoul Metropolitan Area and another 15 million reside just outside of the metropolitan area. South Korea has prepared underground shelters for Seoul’s entire population.

“Though the expanding range of North Korea’s ballistic missiles is concerning, a serious, credible threat to 25 million [Republic of Korea] citizens and approximately 150,000 U.S. citizens living in the [Greater Seoul Metropolitan Area] is also posed from its long-range artillery.” U.S. Army general Vincent Brooks, head of U.S. Forces Korea, told a U.S. Senate committee in March 2018.

“North Korea has deployed at least three artillery systems capable of ranging targets in the [Greater Seoul Metropolitan Area] with virtually no warning,” Brooks warned. The 170-millimeter Koksan gun is the most numerous. It can fire a distance of 37 miles. North Korea also deploys truck-mounted launchers that can fire a volley of as many as 22 240-millimeter rocket out to a range of 37 miles.

The 300-millimeter KN-09 rocket artillery is the newest system. “The rocket was first tested in 2013, with subsequent tests performed in 2014 and 2016,” Elleman explained.

It has a reported range of [118 to 124 miles] and carries a light, conventional warhead. It is powered by a standard composite-type solid fuel. Photographs show that the rocket is steered during flight by four small canard fins mounted at the rocket’s front end, near the warhead section, which provides for precision strikes if the guidance unit includes a satellite navigation receiver to update the inertial navigation components.”

The KN-09 is fielded on a six-wheeled truck equipped with two launch pods, each having four launch tubes. Its primary mission is to strike rear echelon targets, some [31 to 62 miles] behind the primary line of battle.

"Even without using nuclear weapons, North Korea has the capacity to unleash a devastating level of violence against a significant portion of the ROK population through some mix of conventional artillery and possibly chemical munitions," according to a January 2019 report from RAND, a California think tank with close ties to the U.S. military.

A North Korean artillery barrage could inflict as many as 250,000 casualties in Seoul alone, RAND reported, citing a U.S. Defense Department estimate.

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 first appeared in 2019 and is being reposted due to reader interest.

This article first appeared in 2019.

Image: Reuters

Ethen Kim Lieser

Delta Force,

"My hands were tingling from the rucksack straps cutting into my shoulders, pinching the nerves and arteries, and restricting the blood flow to my arms.”

The Delta Force, officially known as 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (1st SFOD-D), is a U.S. special-missions unit that is primarily focused on counter-terrorism engagements.

Considered a tier-one counter-terrorist unit, it is specifically directed to kill or capture high-value units or dismantle terrorist cells. However, the Delta Force remains extremely flexible in its overall missions—having previously taken part in hostage rescues and covert missions working directly with the Central Intelligence Agency and even offering protective services for high-ranking officials.

Currently, the Delta Force receives its recruits from all across the Army, including many candidates from the Ranger Regiments and Special Forces Groups. To initially qualify, recruits must be enlisted in the Army, be male, have at least four years in service and two and a half years of service left on enlistment, and is within the rank of E4-E8. Keep in mind that there are no civilian-to-Delta enlistment programs available.

To get started, one must attend infantry One Station Unit Training (OSUT), which combines Army Basic Training and Infantry AIT (Advanced Individual Training) in one fourteen-week course. This will give you the fundamental skills to make a successful transition from a civilian into a soldier. If you pass that, then you will attend Airborne Training at Fort Benning. Special Forces troopers who eventually want to join Delta Force must qualify for and complete this particular training.

Next up is the Special Operations Preparation Course (SOPC), which can take four weeks and typically leads up to the Special Forces Assessment and Selection (SFAS) program. The SFAS must be passed before being admitted to Special Forces training.

If the boxes are all checked by now, then you will aim to pass the individual skills phase of training. During this period, soldiers are trained on specialized skills necessary to be successful in any Special Forces engagement. The training period is forty days long and covers land navigation, cross-country map exercise, and small unit tactics.

Taking up another sixty-five days is the Military Operational Specialty (MOS) training phase, which culminates with a mission planning cycle that will put your leadership skills to the test. Your experience, training, and specialty as a soldier will largely dictate what responsibilities you’ll have during MOS.

For the thirty-eight-day Collective Training Phase, soldiers are trained in Special Operations (SO) classes, Direct Action (DA) Isolation, Air Operations, Unconventional Warfare classes, and receive isolation training. This is considered one of the most mentally and physically challenging training one will have to go through in the U.S. military.

To offer some sense of what an individual must overcome to be admitted into the Delta Force, here’s what author Eric Haney had to say about one particular long-distance hike in his book Inside Delta Force.

“I had covered just slightly over thirty miles by now, but still had more than twenty to go. It was getting more and more difficult to do speed computations in my head. My hands were tingling from the rucksack straps cutting into my shoulders, pinching the nerves and arteries, and restricting the blood flow to my arms.”

He continued: “I was bent forward against the weight of the rucksack. It felt like I was dragging a train behind me, and my feet hurt all the way up to my knees. I don’t mean they were just sore, I mean they felt like I had been strapped to the rack and someone had beaten the balls of my feet with a bat. I tried to calculate the foot-pounds of energy my feet had absorbed so far today, but I had to give up the effort. I only knew that the accumulated tonnage of all those thousands of steps was immense. And it was only going to get worse.”

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Minneapolis-based Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek, and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.

Kris Osborn

Taiwan and China, Asia

The PLA will soon be able to airlift full-scale Chinese Main Battle Tanks.

Here's What You Need to Remember: An ability to transport a Type T99 main battle tank would be massively significant to any kind of ground war effort, especially since the U.S. Army M1Abrams tanks need to deploy overseas by boat. Air deployment of a massive tank exponentially decreases deployment attack timelines and would enable a heavy mechanized force to strike on a vastly different timetable. 

The People’s Liberation Army will soon be able to airlift full-scale Chinese Main Battle Tanks on board an upgraded Y-20 cargo plane, now being outfitted with a first-of-its-kind domestically built engine. 

The new WS-20 engine, which has not as of yet been formally announced as having integrated onto the Y-20, was reportedly seen flying on the aircraft according to multiple news reports cited in the Chinese government-backed Global Times newspaper. 

“The Xi'an Aircraft Industry (Group) Company Ltd under the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China, the maker of the Y-20, released a photo that showed a turbofan engine with a high bypass ratio that had never been seen before, Beijing-based Aerospace Knowledge magazine reported on Saturday,” the Global Times reports. 

A new WS-20 equipped Y-20 would, according to the paper, be able to operate with much more thrust and less fuel as well as be able to take off and land on shorter runways. An increased ability to operate in more austere circumstances certainly increases the tactical scenarios in which a Y-20 could help deploy troops, equipment, supplies, weapons and even large platforms such as tanks. 

An ability to transport a Type T99 main battle tank would be massively significant to any kind of ground war effort, especially since the U.S. Army M1Abrams tanks need to deploy overseas by boat. Air deployment of a massive tank exponentially decreases deployment attack timelines and would enable a heavy mechanized force to strike on a vastly different timetable. 

“With the domestically made engines, the Y-20 can become capable of long-range or intercontinental flight while carrying heavy equipment like main battle tanks without stopping at a transit airfield for refuelling,” the Global Times reports. 

The U.S. Army’s massive emphasis upon rapid reaction deployment possibilities, something which could be described as an ability to optimize expeditionary warfare, rests in large measure upon the logistical reality that heavy mechanized vehicles such as an Abrams simply cannot travel by air. This circumstance helps explain why the Army is fast-tracking an air-droppable Mobile Protected Firepower light tank vehicle. Should major threats or some kind of large scale land war quickly become urgently needed, getting armored forces to the fight would become an instant priority.

The development almost immediately brings Taiwan to mind, given that an ability to air-deploy Type T99 tanks could give attacking Chinese forces a rapid forcible entry option, and possibly be trail closely behind or accompany some kind of amphibious assault. Tank-carrying aircraft transiting from mainland China to Taiwan could of course travel much more quickly and much less visible than tank-transporting ships. This could even, quite possibly, be part of why the U.S. has been moving to sell Abrams tanks to Taiwan, a clear way to enable massive armored defense against a possible Chinese invasion.

Perhaps having Abrams tanks on the island of Taiwan could impede or slow up any Chinese ground invasion long enough to allow time for the U.S. military to intervene. 

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 Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.  

Michael Rubin

Rwandan Genocide,

It is beyond dispute that Hutu militants carried out a deliberate, coordinated, and pre-planned assault to eliminate the Tutsi as a group.

Both Democratic and Republican administrations consistently condemn Holocaust and genocide denial. It is ironic, then, that beginning with the Obama administration and continuing through Trump’s term, the State Department appears to be driving revisionism about the 1994 Rwanda genocide.

That the 20th century witnessed numerous genocides against ethnic and religious communities is one of the darkest marks of the century. While genocide did not originate in the 20th century, the willingness of the world to confront and acknowledge such crimes with the hope to ensure they never happen again differentiates that century from those that came before.

The reality that Adolf Hitler killed six million Jews is not up for serious debate. Nor do scholars and diplomats allow the fact that the Nazis also targeted non-Jews—homosexuals, Roma, the mentally and physically handicapped, Jehovah’s witnesses, and those of African descent—obfuscate the fact that, for the Nazis, the desire to eradicate Jews everywhere was the Holocaust’s defining feature.

The same holds true for the Armenian genocide. On October 29, 2019, the U.S. House of Representatives passed Resolution 296 by a margin of 405-11. The Resolution declared, “It is the policy of the United State to commemorate the Armenian Genocide through official recognition and remembrance; [and] reject efforts to enlist, engage, or otherwise associate the United States Government with denial of the Armenian Genocide or any other genocide….”

That it took the United States so long was the result both of Jewish interest groups which feared diluting the uniqueness of the Holocaust, historical ignorance about premeditated intent, and the strength of the Turkish lobby that fears Turkey might be held to account and forced to make reparations. Taken together, though, such reluctance was a black mark and compromised moral clarity. Turkish nationalists may bluster, but there is no denying the Armenian genocide as the first of the twentieth century. That anti-Turkish ethnic cleansing occurred in parts of the Balkans does not mitigate or excuse what Turks and their proxies did to Armenians.

That Turkey and Azerbaijan both launched a surprise attack on the Armenian-populated enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh on the 100th anniversary of Turkey’s invasion of independent Armenia and that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Azerbaijani dictator Ilham Aliyev engaged in racist, eliminationist rhetoric underlies the importance of not sweeping genocide under-the-rug; denying genocide only encourages its perpetrators to keep trying.

The State Department, however, appears not to learned its lesson when it comes to Rwanda. Beginning under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton but continuing through the Trump administration, the policy of the United States has been to refuse to recognize the 1994 Rwandan genocide as anti-Tutsi in nature. This is rooted both in the logic that others died in the violence and that the promise of a more clear accounting of genocide could be leverage to extract concessions from Rwanda.

Such a position is both extralegal and ahistorical. Article II of the Convention for the Prevention of Genocide defines genocide as the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” by engaging in acts such as “killing members of the group,” “causing serious bodily or mental harm” or “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

As for the 1994 violence, it is beyond dispute that Hutu militants carried out a deliberate, coordinated, and pre-planned assault to eliminate the Tutsi as a group. Certainly, Hutus also died in the violence, but these victims were those whom Hutu extremists saw as political obstacles or those who refused to cooperate in the killings. These Hutu were honorable, but they do not change the goals of the genocide. The fact that non-Jews (including many Germans) died in the Holocaust and that non-Armenians died in the Armenian genocide is not cause to dismiss the true intent of either.

Likewise, recognizing the reality that events in 1994 constituted an anti-Tutsi genocide does not erase the fact that some Tutsis in the Rwandan Patriotic Front may have committed war crimes. Most of these were individual in nature and of the sort that occurs in nearly every armed conflict rather than state or group policy. As J. Peter Pham, former U.S. special envoy for the Great Lakes Region, explained to me, “Even the most anti-Paul Kagame analyst – and there are quite a number of claimants to that title, especially in Europe – has never claimed that the future Rwandan President of the Rwandan Patriotic Front organized a genocide of the Hutus.” Subsequent developments in the region—be they Kagame’s consolidation of power, the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or Hollywood anger at the terrorism trial of Paul Rusesabagina—do not change what Hutu génocidaires planned and executed.

The refusal of the United States, however, to acknowledge the anti-Tutsi nature of genocide has real-world policy implications. It empowers the cynical moral equivalency of those like Brian Endless, director of the African studies and Africa diaspora program at Loyola University Chicago, for example, who claims absent any research conducted in Rwanda that more Hutus than Tutsis died in 1994 as a means to undermine the moral capital of Kagame’s administration.

In effect, such efforts to deny genocide to spite Kagame would be analogous to promoting Holocaust denial because of animosity toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or to suggest that Armenians killed more Turks in 1915 than vice versa out of frustration with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

The continued refusal by Washington to designate properly the genocide is problematic for three reasons: First, lack of moral clarity undermines U.S. diplomatic capital in the region. Second, it opens the United States to charges that its policy is inherently racist for diminishing deliberately a genocide perpetrated primarily against Africans. Lastly, it enables Hutu extremists such as those in the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda to avoid the pariah status that Neo-Nazis and anti-Armenian Grey Wolves today share. To refuse to address the genocide with moral clarity only encourages deniers and revisionists who would turn to violence in pursuit of political power.

Perhaps diplomats fear that Kagame might seek political capital from formal genocide recognition. Historical accuracy, however, should trump handwringing about short-term politics. President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have said they seek to return gravitas and morality to American foreign policy. Ending denial and revisionism about the 1994 Rwanda genocide in the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs would be a good place to start.

Dr. Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, where he specializes in Iran, Turkey, and the broader Middle East. He also regularly teaches classes at sea about Middle East conflicts, culture, terrorism, and the Horn of Africa to deployed US Navy and Marine units.

Kris Osborn

U.S. Army, Americas

The military wants remote-controlled robots that could carry anti-tank missiles into battle.

Key point: The Robotic Combat Vehicle could be a game-changer. Here is how the Army hopes to use them for more dangerous tasks.

Tank-killing robots, armed with Javelin Missiles, wireless remote firing technology, .50-cal machine guns and long-range infrared targeting sensors are now arriving to the Army as part of the service’s ambitious program to engineer a new class of light, medium, and heavy robots for war.

Technological advances with autonomy, weaponization, sensing, and manned-unmanned teaming are fast impacting the tactical equation, and informing the Army’s strategic approach to anticipated future conflict.

This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Forward-operating Robotic Combat Vehicle - Light platforms, for example, will be able to advance on enemy positions, send back real-time video sensor information and, if directed by a human, attack.

Several weapons-makers RCV-L vehicles are now starting to arrive, such as an armed robot made by QinetiQ and Pratt Miller Defense, a tracked, hybrid-electric unmanned ground system engineered with a remotely operated, wireless gun targeting system.

A statement from Qinetic said their delivered RCV-L is the first of four planned vehicle deliveries to the Army’s Combat Capabilities Development Command Ground Vehicle Systems Center (GVSC).

“This unit is the first of four vehicles developed in support of the Manned-Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T) Soldier Operational Experiment, planned for 2022. The GVSC team now plans to add Autonomous Mobility as well as Government Furnished Software for the Tethered UAS Multi-Mission Payload and CROWS-J Lethality package,” the QinetiQ statement reads.

Increasingly networked and autonomous tank-killing robots would certainly impact any kind of tactical ground war, given the technical maturation of drone-manned-vehicle networking. A small, fast, highly-mobile tracked robot, armed with Javelin anti-tank missiles could of course more safely conduct reconnaissance operations and, when directed by human commanders, open fire on enemy tanks while soldiers retain command and control at a safe stand-off distance. By itself, a Javelin anti-tank missile can hit ranges out to at least several miles, a circumstance which extends the attack envelope for well-networked ground forces.

A large part of this will also be cross-domain air-ground-sea drone coordination, given the Army’s evolving emphasis upon massively decreasing sensor to shooter time.

Ground robots are increasingly being configured to network with aerial drones, manned vehicles, command and control centers and even satellites with vastly improved range, speed, connectivity and data processing.

The fundamental premise of this kind of tactical approach was recently demonstrated in a large-scale Army live-fire experiment in September called Project Convergence at Yuma Proving Grounds, Ariz. The exercise, succeeding in drastically reducing sensor-to-shooter time through the use of interconnected helicopters, drones, AI systems and armored ground vehicles. Several attack scenarios were entertained, including the use of mini-drones called air-launched effects, satellite networking and ground attack infantry carriers.

Through the live-fire event, the Army succeeded in decreasing sensor to shooter time from 20 minutes down to 20 seconds, advancing the concept that combat attack is no longer understood as a “kill-chain,” but rather, a vast, integrated “kill web.”

Kris Osborn is 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 Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Rachel Bucchino

Joe Biden Taxes,

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is working with other countries on an agreement that would establish a global minimum tax on multinational corporations in efforts to find new streams of revenue to help fund President Joe Biden’s future legislative actions.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is working with other countries on an agreement that would establish a global minimum tax on multinational corporations in efforts to find new streams of revenue to help fund President Joe Biden’s future legislative actions.

If a deal is reached, the agreement could be one of Yellen’s biggest accomplishments in her Cabinet post, according to The Washington Post, and could be key to Biden’s term in the White House. The $1.9 trillion relief package that became law last week was financed through additional federal borrowing, which largely boosted the national deficit.

Yellen is participating in negotiations with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) with more than 140 countries, with the intention to revise global tax rules to align with the digital economy. One goal is for countries to focus on a nonbinding global minimum tax.

But the Biden administration is already expected to implement tax hikes in its next major legislative package, such as the big-spending infrastructure and jobs bill currently in-the-works with Democrats.

On Biden’s presidential campaign trail, he proposed increasing the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent, after former president Donald Trump sharply knocked it in 2017 from 35 percent to 21 percent.

Republican lawmakers and critics, however, have sounded the alarm over raising the rate, as it could interfere with U.S. competitiveness and trigger American countries to relocate overseas.

Several countries worldwide have recently followed the United States’ leadership in dropping tax rates, a movement that economists have dubbed a “race to the bottom.” On average, the tax rate stands at 24 percent among other countries, according to the Tax Foundation.

“It would be a mighty feat for Secretary Yellen to successfully cajole all our major trading partners to agree to a minimum corporate tax rate. It is both anti-competitive and not in self-interest of small, open economies to adopt a corporate tax system that discourages firms from doing business within their borders,” Alex Brill, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said. “Taxes are necessary, of course, to all these countries, but why insist on a tax that broadly discourages business activity and investment?”

But other economists have noted that American companies were already actively looking to move overseas prior to Trump’s 2017 tax cuts due to the lower rates in other countries.

“Before the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017, there was strong anecdotal evidence that American corporations were actively moving operations overseas to take advantage of lower tax rates compared to the US. So now that the Biden Administration is looking for additional revenue sources, including increased corporate tax rates, it certainly stands to reason that they want to pursue, via Secretary Yellen, international coordination to harmonize tax policies internationally,” Peter Ireland, an economics professor at Boston College, said.

Ireland added that rallying support from other countries, as well as from members of Congress, to support an OECD agreement will likely be a “challenge.”

“Getting other countries to sign on is going to be a challenge, in the same way that getting members of Congress to sign on will be tough, when many are naturally concerned about the adverse effects of higher taxes on companies in their own districts,” he said.

Any agreement made by the Biden administration under the OECD regarding tax policy would likely need to be approved by Congress, an issue that will certainly see hurdles in chambers with razor-thin margins.

“But this [is] always the big challenge when it comes to fiscal policy: tax cuts and spending increases are hugely popular, tax increases much less so. President Biden and Secretary Yellen need to work against the political dynamics that would otherwise lead to spiraling federal deficits. It's going to be hard, but they have to try,” Ireland said.

Yellen addressed the concerns about boosting corporate taxes by referring to the Treasury Department's efforts in negotiating with the OECD. She said during her confirmation hearing, “A global minimum tax could stop the destructive global race to the bottom on corporate taxation and help discourage harmful profit-shifting.”

“It’s necessary for U.S. companies to be globally competitive, and that’s why these OECD negotiations are so important,” Yellen added.

Rachel Bucchino is a reporter at the National Interest. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report and The Hill.

Kris Osborn

H-20 Stealth Bomber, Asia

There's plenty of evidence, just to the naked eye, to demonstrate China’s overt “copycat” maneuver. 

Here's What You Need to Remember: It is not clear if the H-20 could succeed in rivaling a U.S. B-2 given the extent of upgrades and adaptations the Air Force has undertaken with the 1980s platform. The B-2 will soon have air-defense evading Defensive Management Systems sensors, a thousand-fold faster computer processor and weapons upgrades to include an ability to drop the B-61 Mod12 nuclear bomb.

China’s emerging “B-2 copycat” H-20 stealth bomber is expected to introduce an entirely new sphere of threat dynamics to the U.S., as it further cements China’s nuclear triad and massively extends its nuclear attack range to include major portions of the continental U.S. 

The new H-20 bomber,  likely to formally arrive in a matter of months, reportedly has a range of up to 7,500 miles according to the UK’s Sun, making it possible for a single sortie from mainland China to reach targets over the U.S. without needing to refuel. This is a substantial development, as refuelers can of course help reveal the position or presence of a stealth bomber, and uninterrupted stealth bomber attack missions with that kind of reach raise the possibility of undetected nuclear attack upon major U.S. targets.  

An essay in the Asia Times states the following:  “According to the South China Morning Post, which cited a London-based Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies report, the state-of-the-art H-20 can carry a massive weapons payload of 45 tonnes and fly great distances without mid-air refuelling.”

While the exact composition of its stealth properties or radar-signature reducing technologies may not be fully known, available photos and renderings reveal an aircraft which one could say seems in some respects to be indistinguishable from a U.S. B-2. There is nothing surprising about this, given China’s well known and well-documented habit of stealing or copying U.S. weapons designs, it seems particularly apparent in the case of the H-20. It features a similar rounded upper fuselage, blended wing body, curved upper air inlets and essentially no vertical structures.  There appears to be a fair amount of evidence, simply available to the naked eye, to demonstrate China’s overt “copycat” maneuver. 

The B-2 is known for its long-endurance flights as well; during Operation Enduring Freedom in the opening days of the Afghan war, U.S. B-2 flew 44-hour missions from Whiteman AFB, Miss., to Diego Garcia, a small island off of the Indian coastline. From there, B-2s flew bombing missions over Afghanistan in support of U.S. ground forces. 

While this mission likely required refueling, it does speak to the merits and tactical advantages of long-endurance bombing. 

It is also not clear if the H-20 could succeed in rivaling a U.S. B-2 given the extent of upgrades and adaptations the Air Force has undertaken with the 1980s platform. The B-2 will soon have air-defense evading Defensive Management Systems sensors, a thousand-fold faster computer processor and weapons upgrades to include an ability to drop the B-61 Mod12 nuclear bomb.  The B-2, which is expected to fly alongside the new B-21 until sufficient numbers of B-21s arrive, will be a much different plane in a few years when compared to its 1980s origins, as the Pentagon hopes to ensure the platform remains relevant and powerful for many years into the future. 

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 Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.  

Image: xuehua.us.

Ahead of national elections in September, the CDU has to decide where to go from here.

Kris Osborn

Hypersonic Missiles, The Americas

Hypersonic weapons could soon fire from U.S. Navy destroyers and take off at speeds five times the speed of sound.

Here's What You Need to Remember: A high-speed hypersonic weapon could not only be used to destroy land targets such as fixed infrastructure  or force concentrations from safe standoff distances before an enemy can respond, but also possibly be used as a counter-air weapon able to hit fighter jets traveling themselves at speeds faster than the speed of sound. 

Hypersonic weapons could soon fire from U.S. Navy destroyers and take off at speeds five times the speed of sound from deck-mounted Vertical Launch Systems, fire from airborne bombers and shoot up from the ground near the boundaries of space. 

One particular program now approaching this kind of tactical ability is a DARPA/Air Force program called the Tactical Boost Glide program, a weapon DARPA data explains consists of a rocket accelerating to high speed and then separating from the payload which then “glides unpowered to its destination.” 

A September 2019 Congressional Research Service report described the TBG as “a wedge-shaped hypersonic glide vehicle capable of Mach 7+ flight that ‘aims to develop and demonstrate technologies to enable future air-launched, tactical-range hypersonic boost glide systems.’”

DARPA also seeks to engineer a ground-launched hypersonic weapon able to “penetrate modern enemy air defenses,” the report - “Hypersonic Weapons: Background and Issues for Congress” -- states.

Lockheed Martin’s emerging Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) offers an example of a hypersonic boost-glide vehicle which is propelled up in to the air before relying upon its massive speed of descent to impact and destroy a target. The LRHW, which has now been revealed by Lockheed images, is engineered to travel 60-miles per minute up toward the outer layer of the earth’s atmosphere before gliding at hypersonic speeds to its target. 

What would it mean for a Navy ship to have this kind of range and strategic attack envelope? Surely such a weapons system would change the tactical equation for maritime warfare as it would enable surface warships to destroy enemy land, sea and air targets operating at otherwise unreachable distances or traveling at speed quite difficult to track. 

A high-speed hypersonic weapon could not only be used to destroy land targets such as fixed infrastructure  or force concentrations from safe standoff distances before an enemy can respond, but also possibly be used as a counter-air weapon able to hit fighter jets traveling themselves at speeds faster than the speed of sound. In this respect, an otherwise “hard to target” platform such as an enemy stealth fighter might be vulnerable to attack. This expands the operational scope of Navy ships and of course favors the possibility of successful disaggregated tactical attacks wherein approaching offensive platforms can network in a successful way and integrate coordinated strikes while safer from enemy fire. 

Ship-launched hypersonic weapons could also support ballistic missile defense weapons such as an SM-3 or SM-6 by adding new dimensions to a protective envelope. Vertical Launch Systems might need to be reconfigured to incorporate new kinds of propulsion technology or rocket systems to fire off hypersonics at the needed speeds. Also, a hypersonics could bring a huge defensive advantage to Navy ships by working to intercept attacking enemy anti-ship missiles. 

Kris Osborn is the new 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 Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.

Kris Osborn

U.S. Navy, Asia

This drone helicopter is an important asset and that is why China has made their own version.

Key point: This drone can take off from a destroyer to scout ahead or deal with a sea mine. It can also launch its own missiles.

Once again, a Chinese weapons platform looks nearly identical to a U.S. system built several years prior. While the particular technological inspiration, specs of design engineering of China’s new unmanned helicopter may not be known, any quick look at the aircraft immediately reveals that it looks almost identical to the U.S. Navy’s FireScout drone. 

This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

A Chinese-government backed newspaper is reporting that China’s AR-500C prototype unmanned helicopter completed its first flight, reaching a record-breaking elevation. 

“During the 15-minute flight, the drone completed a series of tests including climbing, hovering, rotating and other operations maneuvers, before steadily landing,” the Global Times states. 

The AR-500C is a rounded helicopter with a sensor beneath the nose, a horizontal structure on the tail and a single rotor blade on the top. These characteristics appear nearly identical to the configuration of the U.S. FireScout drone. The Chinese paper adds that the high altitude drone will be able to perform risky missions in the mountainous regions along the China-India border. The AR-500C can carry a payload of 80 kilograms and deliver supplies in high-risk, high altitude areas, according to the report. 

However, an external resemblance, while significant, suggests little or nothing about the mission scope, networking or sensor capabilities of the Chinese prototype, raising questions as to whether there are any ways in which it might prove comparable to the FireScout in terms of performance. 

The U.S. Navy FireScout is a vertical-take-off-and-landing maritime drone able to launch from a Littoral Combat Ship or DDG 51 destroyer. Not only does the U.S. FireScout conduct forward targeting and surveillance, but the platform has also been configured with special surface-oriented countermine technologies. 

The Fire Scout has been both deploying and conducting training missions onboard Navy Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) for several years. LCS’ Fire Scout drone is an indispensable part of the ship’s surface, countermine and anti-submarine warfare missions; it is equipped with advanced mine-hunting sensors, aerial surface scanners and target-locating EO/IR cameras. The networking is intended to expand not just to ship command and control but other nodes involved in maritime warfare scenarios such as other surface ships, aircraft or even small unmanned surface vehicles. 

The Fire Scout is also now operating with an advanced mine-hunting sensor, designed for combat and surveillance missions in littoral waters, called the Coastal Battlefield Reconnaissance and Analysis, or COBRA.

Given that the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship is engineered to use its shallow draft, speed and maneuverability to conduct combat operations in littoral waters near enemy coastlines, having an improved technological capacity to find and detect enemy mines and submarines near the surface expands its mission envelope and provides needed protection for offensive ship operations.The 31-foot long Fire Scout can fly at airspeeds up to 110 knots and reach altitudes of 20,000 feet; the aircraft weighs 3,150 pounds at its maximum take-off weight and is powered by one Rolls-Royce heavy fuel turboshaft engine, Navy officials said.

The Fire Scout has an electro-optical/infrared sensor called Bright Star 2, which has laser range-finding and laser designation, Navy developers said. The MQ-8B Fire Scout can stay up on a mission for up to five hours and also uses Automatic Identification System, or AIS, technology to help locate and identify ships. The Navy has also been integrating a new maritime search radar to its larger Fire Scout variant—the MQ-8C—in order to extend its ISR capacity and provide better targeting support to nearby offensive operations. The existing electro-optical and infrared cameras on the Fire Scout have a range of six-to-ten miles.

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 Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.