Diplomatically Diminished
Wow Mao intelligence leak sows Discord amongst NATO and five-eyes and proves once again that the US is rapidly losing diplomatic space to manoeuvre and control global security and economic policy
UPDATE: The US is losing diplomatic space at a rapid rate. The incompetence of Biden-Blinken et al is no surprise to International Relations scholars. Since at least the Anchorage conference 12 months ago, the US has been exposed as diplomatically diminished and increasingly desperate. The balloon hysteria and failure to gain headway in Ukraine display the tightening diplomatic, economic, technological and military noose around the neck of the Biden administrations weakening foreign policy options.
The aggregate effect of the Russia, China, India, Africa, Middle East, and Lat-Am (Global South) resistance to US activities, coercion and belligerence is to force the US into negotiations over Ukraine and a humiliating realisation that it is China that is leading the peace process and setting the global economic agenda.
The most dangerous aspect of the severely diminished influence of the US is its political elites inability to turn from eternal escalation and fanatical fantasies about unipolarity toward multipolar consensus and the equitable distribution of global wealth and power.
The recent statements by French President Macron highlight Europe’s emerging realisation that its fears of US abandonment are less problematic than selfish US manipulation of the EU to abandon a balanced economic and political partnership with Russia, China and the US.
The EU’s politically and economically disastrous subservience to the rapidly crumbling US grand-strategy to remove or weaken Putin via Ukraine and embarrass and weaken China over Taiwan, proves once again that Charles de Gaulle was correct about NATO and that Mao Zedong correctly identified the US as a “paper tiger'“.
Biden is running out of diplomatic space
A torrent of purported Pentagon documents have appeared online revealing US spying on adversaries and allies and assessments of the Russia-Ukraine war. Unnamed US officials have told CNN and the New York Times that the documents appear to be real. Reuters reported that three unnamed US officials said Russia or pro-Russian elements are likely behind at least the first leakage of intelligence documents.
A number of documents resemble daily, non-public updates from the US military’s joint staff and appear to detail US and NATO aid to Ukraine, including notes on the progress of weapons aid. The documents on Russia and Ukraine don’t appear to include details on the warfare or plans of an expected Ukrainian offensive.
The documents do not provide specific battle plans, like how, when, and where Ukraine intends to launch its offensive. And because the documents are five weeks old, they offer a snapshot of time — the American and Ukrainian view, as of March 1, of what Ukrainian troops might need for the campaign.
To the trained eye of a Russian war planner, field general or intelligence analyst, however, the documents no doubt offer many tantalising clues. The documents mention, for instance, the expenditure rate of HIMARS — American-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket System munitions, which can launch attacks against targets like ammunition dumps, infrastructure and concentrations of troops, from a distance. The Pentagon has not said publicly how fast Ukrainian troops are using the HIMARs munitions; the documents do.
According to the New York Times, which first reported on the leaked documents, the materials also indicate the US has been spying on not just Russian but also Ukrainian leaders in an effort to monitor the war’s dynamics. Estimates of Russian troop deaths in certain documents are significantly lower than those given by US officials. One of the slides said 16,000 to 17,500 Russian soldiers had been killed while Ukraine had suffered as many as 71,500 troop deaths.
A document labeled “top secret” offers the “Status of the Conflict as of 1 Mar.” On that day, Ukrainian officials were at an American base in Weisbaden, Germany, for war game sessions, and a day later, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the supreme allied commander for Europe, visited the sessions.
Another document includes columns that list Ukrainian troop units, equipment and training, with schedules for January through April. The document contains a summary of 12 combat brigades that are being assembled, with nine of them apparently being trained and supplied by the United States and other NATO allies. Of those nine brigades, the documents said that six would be ready by March 31 and the rest by April 30. A Ukrainian brigade has about 4,000 to 5,000 soldiers, analysts said.
The document said that equipment delivery times would affect training and readiness to meet the timeline. Total equipment needed for nine brigades, the document said, was more than 250 tanks and more than 350 mechanized vehicles.
Additional documents include US intelligence agencies’ analyses, based on classified sources, about Russia and several countries, according to the Washington Post. Some materials reportedly appear to show how the US tracks Russian forces with satellite imagery and where the CIA has recruited agents.
Throughout the war, the United States has provided Ukraine with information on command posts, ammunition depots and other key nodes in the Russian military lines. Such real-time intelligence has allowed the Ukrainians to target Russian forces, kill senior generals and force ammunition supplies to be moved farther from the Russian front lines, though U.S. officials say Ukraine has played the decisive role in planning and execution of those strikes.
The New York Times also reports that other materials suggest the US is spying on Israel and South Korea, and include national security details on the Middle East and China. Another document detailed internal discussions among South Korean officials about US pressure for Seoul to change its policy of not supplying weapons to Ukraine, per Reuters. A South Korean presidential official said South Korea planned to discuss the leak with Washington, according to the New York Times.
Israel denied allegations in the documents that leaders of its Mossad intelligence service had encouraged agency staff and Israeli citizens to participate in last month’s protests against the government’s proposed judicial reforms. “The report that was published overnight in the American press is mendacious and without any foundation whatsoever,” the Israeli prime minister’s office posted on behalf of the Mossad.
Read more here.
Under the spy glass
Leaked docs: Ukrainian killed in action outnumber Russians 4:1
Perhaps the most notable piece of information contained in the leaked documents relates to military death tolls, with Ukrainian and Russian losses estimated at about a 4:1 ratio. According to one document, 71,500 Ukrainian troops have been killed in action.
That figure is close to the 100,000 KIA’s cited by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a November 2022 speech, before her comments were retracted. It also tracks closely with statements by one of Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky’s top advisers, Mykhailo Podolyak, who told the BBC in June of last year that Ukraine was losing between 100 and 200 soldiers per day (200 deaths per day over the course of 370 days between the launch of Russia’s military operation and the date of the documents would total 74,000.)
Other American and EU state officials have offered dramatically different figures placing Russian KIA’s over the six figure mark. For instance, Norway’s defense chief has charted 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers dead to Russia’s 180,000, while Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Miley asserted that Russian losses are “significantly well over 100,000.”
Another key detail in the documents pertains to the size of the front lines in Donetsk: Russia maintains 91 battalions in the “Donetsk axis” with around 23,000 total personnel, while Ukraine maintains eight brigades and 40 battalions, with 10,000 to 20,000 total personnel.
The documents also outline expectations of weapons deliveries to Ukraine from the US and other NATO countries along with training schedules for Ukrainian forces as a Spring counteroffensive approaches. The timeline spans from January through April, detailing twelve Ukrainian brigades under construction and the weapons they have been or will be supplied. Nine brigades are said to be armed and trained by the US and NATO allies, and six are said to be ready by the end of March, while the rest will be in action by the end of April. The brigades are said to require 253 tanks, 381 mechanized vehicles, 480 motor vehicles and more.
While the documents distributed on Telegram contain important details about NATO and Ukrainian military capacity, and highlight the astounding depth of American involvement in the war, their publication raises the possibility that Ukraine and its Western patrons may have more serious problems than a few leaked documents.
Read more here.
The United States spies on its allies
US and European officials scrambled to understand how dozens of classified documents covering all manner of intelligence gathering exposed how the United States spies on friends and foes alike. According to one defense official, many of the documents seem to have been prepared over the winter for Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other senior military officials, but they were available to other U.S. personnel and contract employees with the requisite security clearances.
The series of detailed briefings and summaries open a rare window on the inner workings of American espionage. Among other secrets, they appear to reveal where the CIA has recruited human agents privy to the closed-door conversations of world leaders; eavesdropping that shows a Russian mercenary outfit tried to acquire weapons from a NATO ally to use against Ukraine; and what kinds of satellite imagery the United States uses to track Russian forces, including an advanced technology that appears barely, if ever, to have been publicly identified.
Photographs of at least several dozen pages of highly classified documents, which looked to have been printed and then folded together into a packet, were shared on Feb. 28 and March 2 on Discord, a chat platform popular with gamers. The documents were shared by a user to a server called “Wow Mao.” On Wednesday, images showing some of the documents were also circulating on the anonymous online message board 4chan and made their way to at least two mainstream social media platforms, Telegram and Twitter.
In a reminder that the United States also spies on its allies, another document reports that South Korea’s National Security Council in early March “grappled” with a US request that the country provide artillery ammunition to Ukraine, without unduly provoking Moscow. South Korea’s national security adviser suggested possibly selling the munitions to Poland, which controls the main weapons supply routes, since it was the US goal to get the material to Ukraine quickly, the report said, citing signals intelligence.
Senior Pentagon leadership restricted the flow of intelligence Friday in response to the revelations, two U.S. officials said. One described the clampdown as unusually strict and said it revealed a high level of panic among Pentagon leadership. Many of the leaked documents are labeled “NOFORN,” meaning they cannot be released to foreign nationals. But others were cleared to be shared with close US allies, including the Five Eyes alliance of the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. US intelligence about British and Canadian activities is contained in some of the documents, suggesting that the fallout from the leaks will not be limited to the United States.
The 50 pages reviewed by The Washington Post involved nearly every corner of the US intelligence apparatus. The documents describe intelligence activities at the National Security Agency, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, law enforcement agencies and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) — arguably the most secretive intelligence agency in the government, responsible for a multibillion dollar constellation of spy satellites.
The documents primarily concern the war in Ukraine and demonstrate how the United States is making assessments about the state of the conflict and where it’s headed. That analysis informs major policy decisions by the Biden administration, including what weapons to provide Ukraine and how to respond to Russia’s battlefield strategy.
For instance, a Feb. 23 overview of fighting in Ukraine’s Donbas region forecasts a “grinding campaign of attrition” by Russia that “is likely heading toward a stalemate, thwarting Moscow’s goal to capture the entire region in 2023.”
That confident statement, which is printed in boldface type, is supported by information obtained from “NRO-collected and commercial imagery,” a new generation of infrared satellites, signals intelligence and “liaison reporting,” a reference to intelligence from a friendly government, about the high rate of Russian artillery fire, mounting troop losses and the military’s inability to make significant territorial gains over the past seven months.
US officials said these more detailed disclosures could help Moscow thwart some avenues for collecting information. For example, the Feb. 23 battlefield document names one of its sources as “LAPIS time-series video.” Officials familiar with the technology described it as an advanced satellite system that allows for better imaging of objects on the ground and that could now be more susceptible to Russian jamming or interference. They indicated that LAPIS was among the more closely guarded capabilities in the US intelligence arsenal.
The documents also demonstrate what has long been understood but never publicly spelled out this precisely: The US intelligence community has penetrated the Russian military and its commanders so deeply that it can warn Ukraine in advance of attacks and reliably assess the strengths and weaknesses of Russian forces.
A single page in the leaked trove reveals that the US intelligence community knew the Russian Ministry of Defense had transmitted plans to strike Ukrainian troop positions in two locations on a certain date in February and that Russian military planners were preparing strikes on a dozen energy facilities and an equal number of bridges in Ukraine.
The documents reveal that US intelligence agencies are also aware of internal planning by the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency.
One document describes the GRU planning a propaganda campaign in African countries with the goal of turning public support against leaders who support assistance to Ukraine and discrediting the United States and France, in particular. The Russian campaign, the report states, would try to plant stories in African media, including ones that tried to discredit Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
The documents point to numerous intelligence successes by the United States. But they also show how depleted Ukrainian forces have become after more than a year at war. A senior Ukrainian official on Saturday said the leaks had angered Kyiv’s military and political leaders, who have sought to conceal from the Kremlin vulnerabilities related to ammunition shortages and other battlefield data. The official said he was also concerned that more revelations of classified military intelligence were forthcoming.
US intelligence leaks could ignite diplomatic controversies.
The documents show that the United States has gained access to the internal plans of Russia’s notorious Wagner Group, a private military contractor that has supplied forces to Russia’s war effort, and that Wagner has sought to purchase arms from Turkey, a NATO ally.
In early February, Wagner personnel “met with Turkish contacts to purchase weapons and equipment from Turkey for Vagner’s efforts in Mali and Ukraine,” one report states, using a variation on the spelling of the group’s name. The report further states that Mali’s interim president, Assimi Goïta, “had confirmed that Mali could acquire weapons from Turkey on Vagner’s behalf.”
Two other pages from the leaked intelligence file speak to Wagner’s plans for hiring Russian prisoners to fight in Ukraine and note that the Russian military has become dependent on the private soldiers. Like the report on meetings involving Turkey, these cite their sources as coming from “signals intelligence,” a reference to electronic eavesdropping and communications intercepts.
A summary of analysis from the CIA’s World Intelligence Review, a daily publication for senior policymakers, says that Beijing is likely to view attacks by Ukraine deep inside Russian territory as “an opportunity to cast NATO as the aggressor,” and that China could increase its support to Russia if it felt the attacks were “significant.”
However, a Ukrainian attack on Moscow using weapons provided by the United States or NATO would probably indicate to Beijing that “Washington was directly responsible for escalating the conflict” and provide possible justification for China to arm Russia, the analysis concludes.
The documents also show that Washington is keeping a close eye on Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon. One briefing from February succinctly notes that in recent days Iran had conducted tests of short-range ballistic missiles. Another takes stock of a newly published report by the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran’s efforts to expand its facilities for enriching uranium.
Those reports appear offered as routine updates to policymakers. But another, which purports to derive from signals intelligence and “diplomatic reporting,” offers a dim assessment on behalf of the US intelligence community of the IAEA’s ability to carry out its nuclear security mission. The reports also provide updates on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, including missile tests.
The original source of the leak remains unclear. The Post identified the user that shared the images in February and March who, according to a review of previous social media posts, is based in southern California. A Twitter account using the same handle and avatar image as the Discord account wrote on Friday they had “found some info from a now banned server and passed it on.”
Read more here.
Macron: Europe must resist pressure to become ‘America’s followers
The ‘great risk’ Europe faces is getting ‘caught up in crises that are not ours,’ French president says in interview.
Europe must reduce its dependency on the United States and avoid getting dragged into a confrontation between China and the U.S. over Taiwan, French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview on his plane back from a three-day state visit to China.
After spending around six hours with Chinese President Xi Jinping during his trip, Macron emphasized his pet theory of “strategic autonomy” for Europe, presumably led by France, to become a “third superpower.”
“the great risk” Europe faces is that it “gets caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its strategic autonomy” (Macron, 2023)
Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party have enthusiastically endorsed Macron’s concept of strategic autonomy and Chinese officials constantly refer to it in their dealings with European countries. Party leaders and theorists in Beijing are convinced the West is in decline and China is on the ascendant and that weakening the transatlantic relationship will help accelerate this trend.
“The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers,” Macron said in the interview. “The question Europeans need to answer ... is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction,” he said.
Macron and Xi discussed Taiwan “intensely,” according to French officials accompanying the president, who appears to have taken a more conciliatory approach than the U.S. or even the European Union.
“Stability in the Taiwan Strait is of paramount importance,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who accompanied Macron for part of his visit, said she told Xi during their meeting in Beijing last Thursday. “The threat [of] the use of force to change the status quo is unacceptable.”
Xi responded by saying anyone who thought they could influence Beijing on Taiwan was deluded.
Macron appears to agree with that assessment.
“Europeans cannot resolve the crisis in Ukraine; how can we credibly say on Taiwan, ‘watch out, if you do something wrong we will be there’? If you really want to increase tensions that’s the way to do it,” he said.
Macron also argued that Europe had increased its dependency on the US for weapons and energy and must now focus on boosting European defense industries.
He also suggested Europe should reduce its dependence on the “extraterritoriality of the US dollar,” a key policy objective of both Moscow and Beijing.
Macron has long been a proponent of strategic autonomy for Europe.
“If the tensions between the two superpowers heat up ... we won’t have the time nor the resources to finance our strategic autonomy and we will become vassals,” he said.
Russia, China, Iran and other countries have been hit by U.S. sanctions in recent years that are based on denying access to the dominant dollar-denominated global financial system. Some in Europe have complained about “weaponization” of the dollar by Washington, which forces European companies to give up business and cut ties with third countries or face crippling secondary sanctions.
While sitting in the stateroom of his A330 aircraft in a hoodie with the words “French Tech” emblazoned on the chest, Macron claimed to have already “won the ideological battle on strategic autonomy” for Europe.
As one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and the only nuclear power in the EU, France is in a unique position militarily. However, the country has contributed far less to the defense of Ukraine against Russia’s invasion than many other countries.
Read more here.