Category: Headlines

Just In | The Hill 

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D), who was the target of a 2020 kidnapping plot that was thwarted by law enforcement, said the prison sentences for two of the leaders of the plan were “just” and called on both parties to tame violent threats and hateful rhetoric.

Whitmer, who was recently elected to a second term as Michigan governor, told CNN on the day of her inauguration that political violence from either side of the aisle was “unacceptable.”

“Whether it is someone harassing Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh or Congressman Fred Upton here in Michigan, or me, or our attorney general, or secretary of state, it’s unacceptable,” Whitmer told CNN. “But I do think it’s important that people on both sides of the aisle, who care more about our democracy than their political agenda, stand up and take it on.”

Two of the leaders of the plot to kidnap and kill Whitmer were sentenced last week to 19 years and 16 years in prison, respectively. Thirteen people were charged in the conspiracy.

Whitmer in the CNN interview also reiterated that she has grown irritated about the coverage of the plot to kidnap and kill her. She stressed that the group was planning to “assassinate me” but pointed out that the plan has been covered “as a kidnapping plot.”

She put that in contrast to the man who was arrested near Kavanaugh’s house and charged by the Justice Department with attempting or threatening to kidnap or murder a Supreme Court justice.

“There was one person who showed up on, you know, on a Supreme Court justice’s lawn and turned himself in, and it was covered as an assassination attempt,” Whitmer said. “And so I think that when you look at the facts of both of those, and you see how differently they’re covered, I do, you know, have concern about the language that we use, especially when women are a target as opposed to men.”

Whitmer admitted that she wasn’t “unfazed” in the aftermath of the assassination plot and said she wasn’t sure that she would be able to secure a second and final term as Michigan governor.

But Whitmer defeated her Republican opponent, Tudor Dixon, handily in November, winning 55 percent of the vote. Democrats in her state also won control in the legislature. Whitmer, who will now face a term limit as governor, did not speculate on what she would do after her time in office is up.

“I do not have plans to run for anything other than to spend the next four years serving this state,” Whitmer said.

​News, State Watch, democrats, Governor, kidnapping, Michigan, Whitmer Read More 

Just In | The Hill 

All sides’ strategic incentives in the Ukraine War point toward continued conflict in 2023. The war’s settlement will emerge from the battlefield, not primarily from negotiations. Russia, meanwhile, is planning another offensive to solidify its territorial position and prepare for another year of war.

Every weapon that the West refrains from sending to Ukraine in the next two months will be regretted in the next six.

In addition, the notion of Russia’s absolute incompetence must be eliminated. No military is perfect, and Russian forces have their problems — but Western analysts are far too optimistic about Russia’s initial failures.

Russian military improvements

Despite coordination and competence issues plaguing Russia’s military, its assault on Kyiv very nearly worked. Russia achieved operational shock, overloading Ukraine’s command-and-control system and converting a coherent military force into disaggregated units. It fixed around half of Ukraine’s military in the eastern Donbas region while achieving strategic surprise with a lightning dash on Kyiv — a shock purchased at the cost of effective planning and coordination at lower command echelons, but surprise nonetheless — and met its key objectives in Ukraine’s south in the first week.

Yet Russia’s trade of surprise over planning coherence proved decisive. Russian troops, lacking a clear picture of the overall campaign, encountered unexpected resistance and could not formulate reasonable tactical plans. Ukraine’s military, which had exercised for years and had extensive plans for a Russian war, was resilient enough to survive the war’s first days without coherent command-and-control. After Feb. 27, Ukraine re-established control over the operational space; Russia took another two weeks to do so, by which point the Kyiv offensive stalled and Russian forces were at risk of encirclement.

Russia’s effort since withdrawing from Kyiv has been marked by an attempt to regain operational control; its commanding officer in Ukraine, Gen. Sergey Surovikin, appears to have done so — as Ukraine’s military commander, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, implied in a recent interview.

War commonly reveals the limitations of peacetime officers; Zaluzhnyi cashiered ten Ukrainian commanders and lost one to suicide. At this point, Zaluzhnyi knows his theater and brigade commanders and their staffs exceedingly well — an exceptional advantage in high-end war, where operational control is crucial. Surovikin, however, has made far more progress than any of his predecessors toward creating a coherent Russian command; Russia’s retreat from Kherson was reasonably well-executed and took significant planning.

Russia’s current operational plan includes three aspects, two of which are well known; the other will be revealed in the next three months.

Russia’s strategic campaign is designed to cripple Ukraine’s power infrastructure. The goal is threefold. First, by doing so, Russia can sap Ukraine’s morale and perhaps trigger more refugees. Second, Ukraine must choose between employing its limited anti-air capabilities to protect critical infrastructure or the military; the longer Russia’s strategic strike campaign continues, the longer it can delay a Ukrainian offensive. Third, by degrading Ukraine’s power infrastructure, Russia can disrupt Ukrainian logistics and facilitate its own renewed offensives.

Russia’s continuous pressure along the front-line also is a delaying action. Russian pressure in the east, particularly against Bakhmut, is nowhere near as overwhelming as it was in the summer’s Donbas offensive. But Ukraine must defend the current contact line or risk providing Russia a staging ground.

Yet static defense, even when conducted with great skill, requires men and materiel; Ukraine may not be taking excruciating losses as it allegedly did during the battle of Severodonetsk, where Russia possessed a 60:1 artillery advantage. Ukrainian troops in Bakhmut are well-entrenched and Russia’s artillery advantage is closer to 3:1, a figure belied by the far greater accuracy of Ukraine’s Western-supplied weapons.

Nevertheless, every unit committed to defending the new line is a unit unavailable for a major offensive. By compelling Ukraine to defend everywhere, Russia complicates Ukrainian force concentration, thereby buying more time.

A future Russian offensive

Russia’s future offensive plans are a “known unknown.” Gen. Surovikin likely has, at minimum, the political objective to conquer all of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts. However, recrossing the Dnipro River will be exceptionally difficult. At a maximum, Surovikin may be charged with again subjugating Ukraine entirely.

Surovikin will have learned from Russia’s mistakes. He will deploy more effectively than his predecessors, with some 200,000 fresh troops along the front. He will time his assault with the most punishing — and, given the high rate of Russian missile attacks, perhaps the final — strategic bombardment of the war, perhaps destroying Ukraine’s power system and adding another factor to Ukrainian planning.

Russia’s most dangerous course of action is an assault from Belarus across the Pinsk Marshes that cuts Ukraine’s supply lines to the West. This is possible, albeit relatively unlikely. The marshes are only passable at scale if they freeze. Thus far, temperatures are slightly too high to guarantee frozen ground. Even if the ground freezes, Russian advances will remain rail-bound and many major lines running north-south to Belarus are single-tracked — rich targets for a Ukrainian counterattack.

Russia’s more likely course may be another assault on Kyiv. Russia has massed significant equipment in Belarus and is training its 200,000 soldiers; those men will not be nearly as competent as Ukrainian troops, who have fought for ten months — but they will greatly outnumber the force that initially assaulted Kyiv.

If Russia can move quickly enough — a major “if,” considering the war’s course — it can force Ukraine into the operational dilemma it has sought to create since February: Hold the Donbas and lose the northeast, or leave the Donbas and potentially hold the northeast.

Surovikin almost certainly will design this campaign to provide long-term breathing room for Russia, first consolidating control around major settlements en route to Kyiv and pummeling them into submission before finally assaulting Kyiv.

Ukraine’s responses

Ukraine is bound by similar considerations as Russia. The weather is now near-freezing but, along the front lines, the ground remains intermittently cold and wet rather than developing a hard winter pack. Hence, Ukraine may need to wait until spring to attack in the south, giving Russia — with a bit of luck and a cold snap in January — the ability to push from the north.

Ukraine has not stood idle, however. Although Russia keeps Ukrainian forces engaged along the front line, Ukraine has taken three critical steps.

First, it has kept around half of its brigades out of contact. Front-line strength is difficult to gauge, but Ukraine looks to have mitigated the mass it deployed across the front, leveraging its defensive depth, better artillery ratio and better-trained manpower to rotate units more effectively, preserving some degree of reserve for an attack.

Second, Ukraine has begun to demonstrate its ability to attack within Russia, hitting launch sites for Russia’s long-range strike campaign. This will be critical to any long-term peace settlement.

Third, Ukraine has improved its position on the ground at a lower cost than Russia. Yes, the fighting along the Svatove-Kreminna line is brutal, but Ukraine has been more judicious than Russia in Bakhmut and has begun to close the noose around Kreminna. In the long-term, Ukraine is collecting marginal tactical and operational improvements that will enable a major strategic-level offensive.

The question for Ukraine is whether to push in the south, the most strategically consequential area, or the east, potentially the most fruitful area. Breaking the Zaporizhzhia line and pushing to Melitopol would jeopardize Russian supply routes to Crimea. But Russia has created multiple defensive lines there and would fight hard; casualties would be high, and Ukraine has yet to overextend itself and invite a counterattack. Alternatively, a breakthrough along the Svatove-Kreminna line could unravel Russia’s position in the east, squeezing its logistics into Donetsk and Luhansk and forcing thousands of Russian troops into a small pocket. It may also expose Ukrainian forces to a Russian counterstroke, given the ground in the Donbas’ north.

Regardless, another counteroffensive is entirely feasible in coming months.

Western policy

Western planners are in the unenviable position of planning without an articulated set of political goals. From now until May 2023, the West’s objective should be to give Ukraine the tools it needs to mitigate any strategic dilemma Russia might impose.

The foremost strategic dilemma is bombardment — hence, the relevance of air defenses. The more air-defense systems Ukraine receives, the more it can move to the front line without sacrificing coverage of critical infrastructure. Patriot PAC-3s will greatly improve Ukraine’s defense of its infrastructure, as would additional National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) and, ideally, mobile point-defense systems alongside Ukraine’s German-supplied Gepard anti-air vehicles.

But far more is needed.

Ukraine requires a significant amount of ammunition; the West has significant ammunition reserves, but it must place production facilities far closer to Ukraine — ideally, in Poland — and scale up production by a factor of at least three to five to meet monthly Ukrainian needs. It also must deliver more armored vehicles, specifically German Leopard-2 Tanks; the U.S. must twist Germany’s arm until those tanks reach Ukraine. But keeping the Russians at bay will not win the war. Ukraine should be given the offensive capability to take the war to Russia: a defensive war risks repeating the stalemates and slaughter that characterized World War I.

Finally, the U.S. should quietly broker a variety of co-production and design contact between Ukraine and Eastern European NATO to expand the production of long-range weapons like the Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship cruise missile. Ukraine already has caused significant psychological damage with its deep strikes and disrupted Russian operational cohesion. Adding a cruise missile force capable of hitting Russian ships throughout the Black Sea would break Russia’s stranglehold on Crimea, while producing weapons with a land-attack option would erode Russia’s long-term position.

In 1942, the U.S. increased its production of munitions by over 400 percent, far more than any of that war’s combatants. There is no bar to repeating this achievement except the continued sporadic delivery of critical war supplies to Ukraine. A resolute articulation of Western war goals, along with appropriate funding, can drive Russia from Ukraine. If the U.S. wants Ukraine to win, it should act like it.

Seth Cropsey is founder and president of Yorktown Institute. He served as a naval officer and as deputy undersecretary of the Navy and is the author of “Mayday: The Decline of American Naval Supremacy” (2013) and “Seablindness: How Political Neglect Is Choking American Seapower and What to Do About It” (2017).

​National Security, Opinion Read More 

Just In | The Hill 

Israel conducted a missile strike on Syria’s international airport in its capital of Damascus on Monday, killing two soldiers and injuring two others, the Syrian Army said. 

The attack happened shortly after midnight and put the airport out of service, according to the army. Israel has previously targeted airports and ports in parts of Syria held by the government under Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to prevent arms shipments that Iran sent to militant groups that it backs, including Hezbollah. 

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks human rights abuses in Syria and has been described as supporting the Syrian opposition to Assad, said four people were killed in the strike, but the conflicting reports could not be immediately reconciled. 

The Observatory said a runway used for civilian flights has been fixed, but one used for cargo transport is out of service. It said that Iranian-backed groups use the cargo runway. 

Syria’s transport ministry said some flights have resumed while repair work in other parts of the airport continue. 

The Observatory said Israeli missile strikes also hit an arms depot close to the airport. 

Israel previously struck the Damascus Airport in June, causing significant damage to infrastructure and runways. The airport was shut down for two weeks before reopening following repairs. 

Israeli airstrikes have also hit Syria’s international airport in Aleppo, shutting it down for days. 

Israel has conducted hundreds of missile strikes against government-held areas of Syria in recent years but has rarely publicly acknowledged them. It has said the presence of thousands of Iran-backed fighters working to help Assad in the Syrian Civil War near Israel’s northern areas justifies the attacks. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

​International, airport, Bashar al-Assad, Damascus, Hezbollah, Iran, Israel, missile strike Read More 

Just In | The Hill 

Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) predicted on Monday that a “true” conservative would emerge to challenge House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in his quest to become Speaker and doubled down on a promise to vote against McCarthy one day ahead of the leadership election.

“I think you’ll see on the second ballot an increasing number of members vote for a true candidate who can represent the conservative center of the conference, can motivate the base,” Good said on Fox News.

McCarthy, who launched an unsuccessful bid for Speaker in 2015, has been busy trying to nail down the 218 votes necessary for victory. But dissent from some on his right has taken his campaign for the position down to the wire.

In advance of the Speaker vote on Tuesday, McCarthy has offered key concessions to his detractors. This includes allowing a move to “vacate the chair”, which would trigger a vote on the ousting of the Speaker, with the approval of just five Republicans.

McCarthy also greenlit the creation of a House subcommittee on the “Weaponization of the Federal Government,” which would increase scrutiny on the Biden administration and federal agencies.

Good did not offer a suggestion for who might be the alternative to McCarthy. While Good said he expected “10 to 15” members to vote for Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) on the first ballot, he did not name another candidate that could emerge to challenge McCarthy on the second ballot.

In response to a question about who that person might be, Good said he would “resist” naming someone because that person would face retaliation.

“If we were to put forth a name right now or over the last few weeks, that person would have suffered all the attacks and retaliation,” Good said. “You’ll see that name tomorrow on the second ballot.”

McCarthy, who needs a majority of voting members to become Speaker, can only afford to lose no more than four Republicans because of the GOP’s slim 222 to 212 majority.

​News, House, congress, house, McCarthy, republicans, Speaker Read More