Lethal Minds Volume 16
Volume 16, Edition 1 01OCTOBER2023
LETHAL MINDS JOURNAL
Lethal Minds Volume 16
Volume 16, Edition 1 01OCTOBER2023
Letter from the Editor
There was a time when I dreaded the coming of fall. Into my twenties, fall meant being shut inside again, consigned to live by an hourly timeline of classes, resigned to again march to someone else's drum. As an older adult, fall was just the warning of winter, which in the Southeast means wet cold, and driving home from work in the dark. To a guy who at his fundament hates long pants and close-toed shoes and living by rules those imposed upon me without negotiation, it felt like death on an installment plan.
Ironically, I spent twenty-seven relatively rewarding years wearing boots and marching to the nation's drumbeat. I worried that on my transition from service, I would miss the sound of that drum and the meaning I derived from hearing it every day, in peace and war.
Now I am a free man, or at least as free a man as any of us can be as a father and husband with a mortgage and grocery bills. Discovering that I can write in a way that some people seem to value has offered me intrinsic rewards I value beyond the pay it offers. It gives me a flexible schedule. It gives me an outlet. And it gives me a community while also letting me spend a lot of time by myself, both requirements for an extroverted introvert.
As Editor in Chief of Lethal Minds Journal I get to stay connected to the people and issues that have mattered so much to me for decades.
As Editor in Chief of The Duffel Blog I get to help make those people laugh, often at things only we can truly understand.
As Editor in Chief of The Tom Beckbe Field Journal I get to have adventures afield and write about them. I get to find stunningly talented people to do the same.
And about fall? Since I retired, I've returned to hunting. Now fall is not a death, but a rebirth; a commencement of months when I will spend as much time as possible outside with my Labrador Jed. I’ll watch my daughter sleep in a duck blind while Jed and I look upwards in expectation. We will be chasing game, but mainly we're just being happy to be alive and learning new things, all the way through the end of turkey season next spring.
I don't get paid much for all that, and sometimes not at all, volunteering being its own reward. But it's all work I like with people who matter to me. I get a challenge. I regularly do things that folks stuck in commuter traffic pay for.
Put it all that way and it's a lot like the Marine Corps without a duty roster or a quad chart slide.
It's all because I put pen to paper a few years back. Maybe you could do the same. We want you here.
Fire for Effect,
Russell Worth Parker
Editor in Chief – Lethal Minds Journal
Submissions are open at lethalmindsjournal@gmail.com.
Dedicated to those who serve, those who have served, and those who paid the final price for their country. Submissions are open at lethalmindsjournal@gmail.com.
Dedicated to those who serve, those who have served, and those who paid the final price for their country.
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The Scuttlebutt Podcast is a free podcast and newsletter covering how to help you succeed outside of military service.
Recent episodes include:
23. Rich Jordan on Empowering A Team
41. How to use Chapter 31 Veterans Readiness and Employment benefits with Max
51. What If My Passion Has Nothing To Do With What I'm Doing Now with Bill Kieffer
In This Issue
Across the Force
A Vietnam Aviation Legacy
World Today
PLA NCO Corps
5G Cognitive Warfare
The Written Word
A Fistful of Sand
Grit
The Medicine
Poetry and Art
Last Meals
Cleatus Lebow
Opinion
Ukrainian Corruption and the Arsenal of Democracy
Across the Force
Written work on the profession of arms. Lessons learned, conversations on doctrine, and mission analysis from all ranks.
A Vietnam Aviation Legacy
By Colonel John T. Hoffman, USA, Retired
I went to South Vietnam in December of 1971 to fly CH-47s in the United States Army. I was assigned to the 203rd Assault Support Helicopter Company at Marble Mountain Army Airfield near DaNang. I arrived at Marble Mountain to find my unit was in the process of standing down, pending turnover of its aircraft to the Vietnamese Air Force. The unit was training VNAF helicopter pilots as a part of routine flight operations in support of U.S. Military units in I Corps. It was all quite peaceful and great flying until the the end of March 1972 when the North Vietnamese, supported by the Soviet Union, crossed the DMZ with five divisions and began an armored attack into South Vietnam . This became known as the 1972 Easter Offensive.
What followed for me was a year of intense combat flight operations as a pilot of various types of helicopters and a few fixed-wing aircraft in various combat operations over I Corps and III Corps. I operated out of airfields, some real and some imagined by someone as an airfield, across South Vietnam from Quang Tri to Saigon, DaNang to Bien Hoa. I flew as a pilot in three units, ending up, in August of 1972, as the Blues Platoon Leaders in F Troop 8th Air Cav.
With the rapid drawdown of U.S. Military in Vietnam in 1972, there was a shortage of aviators in-country who were also Ranger Qualified Infantry Officers. So, for my last six months, I functioned as both an Air Mission Commander in an Air Cavalry unit and as its infantry platoon leader. Our missions were varied and often intense, as our operations became more and more isolated from mutual support by other U.S. forces in-country.
We saw serious morale issues as the year unfolded and we maintained continuous combat operations against PAVN and Soviet forces on the ground. Ist Aviation Bde Hqs and the Embassy insisted that our operations were only administrative, not combat-related. Imagine the impact of this on our troops and aircrews as we lost both aircraft and aircrews to enemy action.
Our losses were hidden behind political lies designed to support the fiction that South Vietnamese forces were executing the defense against the NVA offensive alone. It was also an election year back home and the realities of actual U.S. Army military operations in South Vietnam, still in direct contact with the enemy, conflicted with the political posture in America after July of 1972. Finally, as the Paris Peace talks progressed and the last PAVN/Soviet gambit to bring indirect fires upon Saigon failed in late October of 1972, it was clear an agreement was in the offing, and direct combat engagements with the NVA nearly ceased by December 1972.
Most of us left country by late December. Interestingly, though, much of the F/8 Cav stayed in-country to fly the “peacekeepers” around until April of 1973. This is history few know about because, officially, we all left in July of 1972. In my own case, at some point in the summer of 1972, I was assigned, on paper, to the 18th Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg. I was an Officer with a regular commission while serving in RVN who was carried, like most of my fellow troops in-country then, as simply “unaccounted for.” Obviously, this was all an intentional deception (or perhaps more accurately, deceit) but on an astonishing scale.
In fact, I retired from service in the U.S. Army as a full Colonel in March of 2000. To this day, my official Army personnel record reflects the following statement, on 18th Airborne Corps stationary, for the period July-December 1972: “The whereabouts of Captain John T. Hoffman is unknown by this command.” There is no OER, no specific unit of assignment reflected and no explanation or adjudication, such as a UCMJ record of proceedings for that period of my service. There is only this one statement. Despite this, I was paid combat and flight pay every month by DFAS! It was many years later, in 2018, that a formally classified batch of documents surfaced in the National Archives facility in Maryland (not the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis) that contained some of my OERs and mission reports for my two units of assignment from that period in 1972.
I am not alone with this record and accountability dilemma. Almost all of my fellow personnel in-country from that period have the same issue. I could never get the U.S. Army Board of Corrections to address this issue and had to reconstruct my records for that period for every promotion board. A classmate of my father’s from West Point, Class of ’44, advised me in the 1980s that such records would never be corrected but that it would never be an issue for me. That was Lt Gen. Jack Hennessy, former Army Chief of Personnel. Well, he was wrong.
This narrative is not about political intrigue or ethical challenges for senior military leaders and politicians. This is about cancer.
It is a story few really understand, and the fact that the highest cancer rate, according to studies at Walter Reed in the late 1990s and early 2000s, has been in the U.S. Army aviator and crew population that served in South Vietnam. I learned this the hard way.
After the events of 9/11, I was asked to come to Washington to take a position, initially with the FBI and then with the new U.S. Department of Homeland Security, first as a recalled officer and then as a White House Appointee. I worked in DC on various infrastructure security issues well into 2012. In my position, I was sometimes asked to provide testimony on the Hill. In late September of 2010, I was walking into a meeting where a colleague and I were about to brief several staffers from key U.S. House of Representatives members at the House Office building on Capitol Hill in Washington DC in preparation for a hearing. My cell phone rang as I approached the door to the meeting room. I started to ignore the call, but thought it might be my wife, Renee, back home in North Carolina. I stopped and looked at the phone’s screen to check the number displayed there. It was a DC number that I recognized as being from the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. My first thought was that this was not good. Actually, it was a very good call, one that saved my life. Though at the time, I felt a foreboding that chilled me to the bone as I stopped in my tracks just at the door to the meeting room and pressed the answer button on the phone.
The call was from my doctor at Walter Reed, Dr. Jay Wilder. He told me that my CT Scan results from the day before showed that the mass in my right lung, first detected in 2004 but assessed as a benign granuloma for several years, had grown significantly and was now cancer. After a few seconds of silence, I asked him what was next. He told me to call the Pulmonary Department at Walter Reed to schedule a consult. I thanked him for the quick referral and walked into the meeting room.
What followed was typical for many cancer patients: test after test, frequent labs to lose ever more blood, stress tests, pulmonary exams, schedule and re-schedule my surgery. The hospital was dealing with a serious patient load due to OIF operations and budgetary shutdowns. Then on April 30, 2011, surgeons at Walter Reed removed the lower right lobe of my right lung, but the procedure also limited the functionality of the middle and upper right lobes. They had found a large but non-metastatic adenocarcinoma tumor, which they removed. Despite my otherwise good health going into the process, I also suffered two heart attacks due to the procedure. Why did I have cancer at this point in my life? NIH provided the answer: exposure to defoliants. In fact, the chemical was found in my lung tissue.
This was, of course, a debilitating event for me, then sixty-four years of age. I had many recovery steps ahead of me, and the folks at Walter Reed informed me that I would need to be in the care of the Veterans Administration medical system as the Military Treatment Facilities, like Walter Reed, are not configured for such long-term follow-up geriatric cancer care. I had never been involved with the VA. However, the hospital team informed me that they would initiate my referral. That sounded good to me, I knew I was one of the lucky few to survive. I had served in Vietnam at the same time as my father, US Air Force Colonel George E. Hoffman, Jr., who died as the result of defoliant-caused lung cancer in August of 2010.
Then another shock came. The VA benefits office informed me that I was not eligible for VA care as I had not served in South Vietnam, so my cancer must be from another cause. WTF?!?!? I served with numerous buddies who would all provide statements, and I had records. The VA Benefits Office response was simple. It did not matter because they do not accept DoD personnel records from any source other than the St. Louis and the National Personnel Records Center. The VA informed me that NPRC stated there were no records of my service in South Vietnam. Further, the unit I claimed to have served in while in South Vietnam, F/8 Cav, was not in South Vietnam when I claimed to be in the unit. I was, as you can imagine, utterly dumbfounded. So, I reached out to NPRC myself and requested my records. They responded that they had no service records for me prior to 1977! They blamed a fire in 1973.
Now, rest assured, I was in a position to fix this, and I did. I had heard this happened to other unit members from that period. Nearly all were denied VA support in the 1980s and 1990s, and many died of cancer without VA assistance to themselves or their families. I had written several letters of reference for some of them. I saw the VA at that time as having the same anti-Vietnam veteran posture as other non-DoD governmental organizations.
But this was 2011, long after the Agent Orange Act of 1991, and I was surprised that this attitude persisted at this point in time. I decided it was time for me to reach a bit higher. I wrote a letter to then VA Secretary and former US Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki, for whom I had briefly worked at one point. I explained my personal situation and pointed out that the VA treating Vietnam Veterans in this fashion did not reflect well on the VA or himself. The response was pretty immediate. I was quickly in-processed into the VA system, where today I get excellent care. But the whole affair led me to a lot of research. What I found is simply appalling.
Few are aware, but the US Command in South Vietnam did not stop applying these defoliants in 1970, as claimed in testimony on the Hill in the 1970s. Indeed, the on-hand stocks of these chemicals had been used as an herbicide on security perimeters and on operating areas of all Army and Air Force air bases and airfields across South Vietnam from the 1960s into late 1971. This was finally documented in testimony on the Hill in 2007 after a detailed study of the use of these defoliants that examined records and previous assessments dating back to the late 1960s, as well as the final disposition records of the remaining defoliant stocks at the war's end. As a consequence, in addition to the US Air Force and US Army aircrews who flew the defoliant spray missions themselves, it is clear that all of the other aircrews, maintenance personnel and staff of aviation units who served in South Vietnam were constantly exposed to these chemicals every time an aircraft taxied, hovered, took off or landed on these airfields. This was because the soils on these airfields were well saturated with these persistent chemicals. Every aircraft operation would aerosolize these chemicals at some level. It is the aviation community with the highest incidence of defoliant-caused cancers within our larger Vietnam Veteran population.
Who knew what and when is an open question even today. But cancer rates, by the late 1980s, in the Vietnam veteran community were clearly blooming. The cancer legacy of these chemicals is clear, yet political and military leaders refused to accept this growing truth for twenty-eight years after the Paris Peace Agreement. But even the first legislative acknowledgment in 1991 was limited to certain times and locations for exposure. It would be another decade before all veterans who served in-country or off-shore would be provided full care for defoliant-related diseases by the VA.
This legacy of neglect is a stain on the record of the political and military leaders over several decades. I hope the lesson learned by our future generation of military leaders is this: If you do nothing else as a commander, be ethical and take care of the troops. All who step into harm’s way in defense of this nation are owed and deserve the care they earned!
For more information on my own experience, see: The Saigon Guns, Koehler Books 2023.
For more information on these Agent Orange defoliant reports and studies, see:
Congressional Research Service Report “US Agent Orange/Dioxin Assistance to Vietnam Updated” February 10, 2021, states:
“Bien Hoa airbase was the airport used for the most Agent Orange spraying missions during the war and is where the most herbicide was stored and used by the US military. One study of soil samples from the Bien Hoa airbase found a sample with a TEQ concentration at over 1,000 ppb—higher than typical samples at the Danang airbase, and 1,000 times higher than the international limit.67 (Page 26)
This same Congressional report lists both Bien Hoa Air Base and Marble Mountain Army Airfield as two of the 28 “Dioxin Hotspots” in Vietnam (page 34).
See: US Agent Orange/Dioxin Assistance to Vietnam (congress.gov)
See also: Defoliants in Vietnam: the long-term effects - PubMed (nih.gov)
See Also: AFD-100928-054.pdf (defense.gov)
The World Today
In-depth analysis and journalism to educate the warfighter on the most important issues around the world today.
PLA NCO Corps
By Sino_Talk
One of the aspects of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) modernization process is the creation of a Non-Commissioned Officers (NCO) corps mirroring the NCO corps of Western countries such as the United States or the United Kingdom. The new NCO corps would be in contrast to the current corps in that the NCOs would be allowed to take the initiative and be the ‘end-point commanders’ in future wars. While the PLA understands that they would need to remake the NCO corps if they were to become a ‘world-class military’ by 2049, they also understand they would need one that would be loyal to and controlled by the party.
Reforms of the NCO Corps
The PLA created the foundation of the new NCO corps in 1999 when it revised regulations related to active-duty personnel that created the 30-year career path currently in place for NCOs. The revisions involved breaking down the career path into three grades – junior, intermediate, and senior – and six service periods ranging from three to nine years. The grades and service periods roughly equate to the company/battalion, regiment, and brigade/division level units. Another revision to the regulations is how NCOs can only retire if they reach the age of 55 or served 30 years. The regulations had a profound impact on the enlisted force by increasing the number of NCOs while decreasing the number of conscripts in the PLA. Because of the minimalism and ambiguity of the regulations, the PLA’s ability to recruit and retain both qualified and talented individuals was negatively affected.
In 2009, the Central Military Commission (CMC) implemented both a new plan and revised three regulations covering NCO service periods, management, and training/education. The new plan and revised regulations kept the enlisted force the same size but expanded the NCO corps while also further decreasing the number of conscripts. It also increased training and education opportunities for NCOs and raised the number of NCOs recruited from college graduates. The goal for both the 1999 and 2009 regulations and laws was to create a more professional and educated NCO corps. In 2014, the PLA created the new rank of Master Chief/Sergeant Major (shiguan zhang/士官长) in an attempt to retain experienced and trustworthy NCOs. These Master Chiefs and Sergeant Majors would act as the unit’s senior enlisted advisor and enlisted representative to the unit commander. They would also be responsible for helping unit commanders in training and leadership responsibilities.
NCOs filling Officers Billets
The PLA began to convert billets originally reserved for commissioned officers to NCO billets in 2004. These billets were in approximately 70 specialties such as trainers, vehicle commanders, and company quartermasters in aviation, communications, missile, vessel, and radar units in 2004. The NCOs in these new billets received both training and managerial training, which ranged from attending officer colleges to on the job training at factories. NCOs also held combat leadership positions reserved for officers and in some stances achieved the temporary rank of “acting company deputy commanders.” The PLA also enabled NCOs to assume more technical officer billets in various units such as aviation maintenance or operating radars. In December 2012, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) held a graduation ceremony for six NCOs in addition to 29 commissioned officers. However, the NCOs were called “acting chief mechanics,” showing they held the same billet as the commissioned officers.
While the NCOs filled the officer billets and were given increased opportunities, they still often face obstacles. One major obstacle is how the billets the NCOs fill are often still officially labeled as officer billets. The lack of officially labeling them as NCO billets create a ‘glass-ceiling effect’ that greatly hinder NCOs certain advancement opportunities. Another obstacle is the lingering societal biases and cultural stigma attached to the social standing of the enlisted force, including the NCO corps. The stigma and biases stem from how commissioned officers in the PLA historically viewed enlisted as being poorly educated conscripts. This viewpoint also extends to unwillingness of the officers to delegate authority to NCOs. The final impediment is how NCOs and officers do not know how to interact with each other on a daily basis. For example, Chinese officers will often be extremely amazed when seeing an enlisted man talking to a captain or major let alone a colonel or flag officer during visits to other nation’s militaries. These impediments point to a lingering hierarchical culture that is still cautious about trusting NCOs.
Issues with NCO Corps
While the modernization of the NCO corps by the PLA brought some notable improvements such as increased pay and improved training/education opportunities, it is still plagued with major issues. One of the most notable issues is the lack of representation of NCOs on party standing committees of various units. Party standing committees are CCP units stationed throughout the PLA from the company level upwards and are responsible for the daily political work and collective day-to-day leadership. The reason for the lack of representation is due to the use of quotas to control the number of party member NCOs who could sit on the committees. The quota system goes against the PLA Political Work Regulations requirement that NCO party members also have a seat on committees. Furthermore, Master Chiefs/Sergeant Majors who are party members may not be seen as equals to their officer counterparts on the committees. The lack of NCO representation on the party committees is also connected to issues of trust but also party loyalty.
Another major concern for the PLA is the potential to develop NCOs who are capable of independent thought that may not be acceptable to party thinking. While the PLA understands the need for NCOs that could take the initiative and be decisive, they also understand that there is the risk of the NCOs taking anti-party stances if independent thought is encouraged. For example, during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, the commanding officer of the Beijing garrison went against party orders to crush the protests. His rationale was that the PLA was for the people and the people were protesting because they wanted their grievances to be heard. The CMC responded by gathering a force that would obey the orders and sent them into the city, crushing the protests. During this time, the PLA enabled their officers to be free-thinking like their western counterparts. The inability of the garrison commander to follow the party orders caused significant unease within the party since the PLA is one of means the CCP uses to maintain power. The lesson the CCP took from the Tiananmen Square protest was that they could not have PLA officers who are capable of questioning orders. This lesson also extends to the NCO corps and the need to balance between being entrusted with decision-making but also making the decision that would be in the party’s best interest.
Conclusion
The PLA understands the need for the modernized NCO corps that is capable of fighting and winning wars but they also understand the need to maintain party control. The CCP recognizes one of the lessons that came from the Tiananmen Square protests is that it needs officers who are willing to obey party directives without hesitation. This lesson also extends to how the PLA is currently recreating its NCO corps. However, the PLA knows that the balance is more delicate than the one found in the officers corps since they would be ‘end-point commanders’ in a future war.
Bibliography
Allen, Kenneth., Corbett, Thomas, Lee, Taylor A., and Xiu, Ma. “Personnel of the People’s Liberation Army.” BluePath Labs, November 3, 2022. https://www.uscc.gov/research/personnel-peoples-liberation-army.
Clay, Marcus and Blasko, Dennis. People Win Wars: The PLA Enlisted Force, and Other Related Matters. War on the Rocks. July 31, 2020. https://warontherocks.com/2020/07/people-win-wars-the-pla-enlisted-force-and-other-related-matters/.
Feigenbaum, Evan A. and Hooper, Charles. What the Chinese Army Is Learning From Russia’s Ukraine War. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. July 21, 2022. https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/07/21/what-chinese-army-is-learning-from-russia-s-ukraine-war-pub-87552.
McCauley, Kevin. “Reforming the People’s Liberation Army’s Noncommissioned Officer Corps and Conscripts.” China Brief Vol. 11, Issue 20 (October 28, 2011). https://jamestown.org/program/reforming-the-peoples-liberation-armys-noncommissioned-officer-corps-and-conscripts/.
5G Cognitive Warfare
By Ben Phocas
In a recent WSJ article, author Seth Jones highlighted the growing fear amongst Taiwanese and other Indo-Pacific allies on the effects of a decrease in U.S. military support for the war in Ukraine. Within the US Congressional body and larger political sphere, there is a growing call, predominantly from more isolationist sections of the right, to halt U.S. aid to Ukraine. Regardless of whether their points are valid or not, division over this topic is growing. The countries Jones mentions in the article believe this division would drastically embolden the PRC to invade Taiwan and adopt a more aggressive expansionist policy across INDOPACOM. These fears are founded, and then some.
The growing political division is not only a potential indicator to the PRC of flagging U.S. resolve to defend its allies but provides a prime opportunity to be exploited by the PRC in the emerging domain of what Alcon S2 terms 5th Generation Warfare, or, as fellow Lethal Minds writer Jason Wang termed it, Cognitive Warfare.
5th Generation Warfare is categorized by using political manipulation, economic warfare, targeting armed forces, weaponized media, and cyber domain operations in order to sow discord and divisions within society. This emerging battlespace is described more generally by Mr. Wang as ‘Cognitive Warfare: activities conducted in synchronization with other efforts of warfare, affecting attitudes, behaviors, and cognition of an individual or group, resulting in some change.”
The range of potential actions is broad in this subject. The most aggressive and risky of these actions would be good old-fashioned political manipulation targeted at U.S. policymakers within the Legislative and Executive branches who could potentially use their position to advise against or vote against U.S. support to Taiwan. These coercive tactics could include direct bribery or threats, or the use of economic warfare. As seen in the documentary, ‘The American Factory’ Chinese private industrial investments have been lifelines in low-income areas of the US, and the sudden loss of these could economically cripple a politician's entire constituency, unless they follow the agenda of the ‘private’ firm that has large investments in their community. Political candidates that promote isolationist U.S. policy that would allow the PRC a free hand in INDOPACOM could quietly receive mystery donations or have their campaigns promoted extensively over social media.
Should U.S. policymakers be more resilient to fraud, coercion, and bribery than expected, The PRC can engage in less overt, and less easily identifiable means of coercion through media manipulation and weaponization. Online and media personalities, both political and ‘influencers’ have millions of devoted, often obsessed followers. Say a social media personality such as Livvy Dunne, Charli D’Amelio, or already politicized celebrities, were to begin suddenly and loudly denouncing the ‘aggressive’ American foreign policy actions in INDOPACOM, perhaps coerced by threat to them and their families, or more likely in exchange for large sums of money or the rights to have their films and music played to the massive Chinese market.
Even if these figures could not be approached or swayed, apps like Tiktok, which is owned by a Chinese parent company and has over 220 million users in the U.S. alone, can have their algorithms easily manipulated to promote content that indirectly or directly challenges the U.S. response to a crisis in Taiwan. Millions of bot accounts, perhaps curated by the already existing force of Chinese social media censors, could create a chaff cloud of misinformation, confusion, and dissenting opinions. Social media has a powerful effect and can and has been the cause of riots, protests, and general confusion and skepticism. These would help set conditions for the PRC by eroding popular support for a U.S. intervention over Taiwan.
These interference opportunities, even if entirely unsuccessful in turning individuals to trumpet their cause, the fallout from the 2016 U.S. election shows that even the whisper of foreign interference in political processes creates a Mccarthy-esque witch hunt that consumes time, attention, and still erodes public trust in the election process and the victorious elected officials. The threat of PRC cognitive warfare targeting U.S. social divisions over the War in Ukraine, as a means to set conditions for military action in INDOPACOM, is real and could have disastrous consequences to the U.S. response and the outcome of the crisis.
The solution to divisive U.S. politics and hardening against 5th Gen cognitive warfare is so complex and multifaceted that few can even say how it can or should be done. However, there are some concrete steps that should be taken to better prepare for PRC cognitive warfare. The most immediate and direct solution is a ban of Tiktok, and a transparency campaign that highlights the danger of the app. Fear and skepticism grow in the absence of information, and information is a weapon. So the U.S. should focus on high-level transparency, and better learn to shape and counter the narrative that the PRC would attempt to sell to the US public.
The Written Word
Fiction and Nonfiction written by servicemen and veterans.
A Fistful of Sand
By Tyler Heisey
Afghan summers bring with them an incredibly dry heat that can feel like you are working inside of a convection oven. With the amount of water necessary to function at an optimal state, plus all the gear required to effectively execute one’s job, it can be challenging to quickly maneuver with all the required weight. In August of 2012, my squad was required to pack out two days’ worth of water, ammo, and food and set up a defensive position. During the movement to the position, one of the Marines we were replacing, Jorge, stepped on an IED, resulting in the loss of both of his legs. Once I realized what had occurred, I quickly dropped my main pack and moved to his position, as fast as possible.
Before I could reach his position, our beloved Corpsman Justin was already at work. Our varying weapon systems barked at the enemy from atop the hill directly above our position while we prepped the litter. The Lieutenant already had the bird enroute to our LZ. During minutes that felt like hours, I reassured my wounded buddy that he would be able to play basketball again as we carried him to the purple cloud of smoke awaiting Dust-offs arrival.
Throughout this multi-hour, incredibly complicated operation, no Allied soldier was killed. Everyone conducted their individual jobs exactly as they were trained to do, without anyone going “condition black” or simply standing up to quit by catching a round.
REREAD THOSE LAST FEW WORDS.
Simply stood up.
I wrote those words deliberately because if we examine the After-Action Reports on the veteran populace, there are thousands of veterans who have simply stood up and quit.
I am starting a series here at Lethal Minds, called “A Fistful of Sand.” A Fistful of Sand represents all the smaller aspects of an individual's mental health, things that we may not understand how to properly grasp without proper instruction.
This series will take on topics around our headspace and conceptualizing them in a field-stripped way that the warfighter understands and can hopefully think about and apply.
This topic is incredibly personal for me. I am a third award suicide survivor. Beside myself, I have a plethora of friends who have stood up and caught a round since my discharge in 2015. Suicide has risen to an epidemic level, to the point that many people across social media are discussing the subject. Since there has been an increase in discussion around the topics of mental health and suicide, this high volume of fire within the beaten zone of mental health is still missing the intended target. The enemy (individuals still taking their life) is still operating at a high level.
Suicide is a lot like an improvised explosive device. To really understand it, we must examine the entirety of this IED. The suicidal IED is made up of a variety of complex parts that must be individually disassembled and understood, to effectively deactivate it.
When it comes to our own individual headspace, we sometimes experience mental firefights. The enemy, our traumas, and hardships, can pin us down with memories, thoughts, feelings, or external stressors. We can forget that when we have taken fire in the past, that we had to find cover immediately while we ascertained where the fire was coming from. While the firefights in our minds do not result in loss of life, that incoming fire can still feel incredibly real and lethal.
Our individual lives come with highs and lows. The high of a cigarette after a PFT, the high of laying with your partner, or the high of ammo dumping at the range, are all great feelings that eventually subside with time. The lows can consist of feelings associated with an anniversary, being anxious for a job interview, or not getting the 20 pullups on a PFT. These lows also dissipate with time. Being able to address the highs and lows that life brings, sometimes at the cyclic rate, requires the ability to be where our boots are and withstand the enemy counterattack.
When our headspace is dealing with these hardships, this same mindset is required. We must, when overstimulated, take cover, and conduct a barrel change. This is the first step in combating these dysregulated thoughts or “negative” feelings that may envelop our mind.
Thoughts and feelings are finite, just like a can of 7.62. The thoughts and emotions do go away, just like the sun does come up every morning.
When those thoughts and/or feelings subside, even if temporarily, what is the next course of action? The immediate need is to get extra guns in the fight. This means we must seek that subject matter expert, that mental health professional, to acquire some close air support to take back control of this mental battlespace to regain fire superiority.
A Fistful of Sand is field stripped mental health topics for the warfighter, by the warfighter, so we can all continue to live a life that we all deserve.
Remember, WE are all on this patrol called life together.
Grit
By Andrew Bacon
I never knew SSG Kelly Richards.
Fort Carson, Fall 2020
Soldiers die in training. They die from vehicle rollovers, from parachute malfunctions, from lightning strikes and hypothermia and heat induced cardiac arrest. Each death is a tragedy and an unavoidable reality of a hazardous profession.
As I understood it when a soldier died in 3ABCT, the last duty of the brigade commander was to brief the family on the results of the investigatory report. Page after page of eyewitness testimony, medical examiner’s findings, investigating officer’s conclusions and recommendations all strive to give context to the irrevocable fact that someone’s son, daughter, sister, brother, husband, wife, father, or mother will never come home.
This mountain of paperwork needs to be summarized into a digestible product, an addendum given to the family along with the report. It takes the form of a PowerPoint, a standardized series of slides that concisely tells the soldier’s story. The copy I received still contained the details of the last brigade fatality to finish the process; a close friend of one of my soldiers, he had died in Iraq a few months before SSG Richards. I read through it, slowly, and began to replace the names, dates, and locations of one man’s final moments with another’s. Last to go was the narrative, the sequence of events that lead to an irrevocable conclusion. In brief, it read:
SSG Kelly Richards collapsed several steps after crossing the finish line during the final event of Expert Field Medic Badge (EFMB) training. He was unable to be revived despite the best efforts of on scene medics and later, after the medevac, hospital staff. He was 32 years old.
*
Ranger School, Summer 2017
From all I read, for all I heard, I never imagined that there would be so much standing. Hours of it at a time, in front of buildings blazing in the Georgia sun or on jagged basalt gravel under the shade of an awning. If you want to break a man, and have weeks to do it, make him stand and wait. Preferably in the heat, though as I later learned, the cold has its own joys.
So we stood, and the heat did its work. Days of monotony in that humid furnace called Camp Rogers, broken only by rare opportunities to eat, sleep, or rush off to another physical challenge. My body started to fail: Cramps locked me into a zombielike shuffle for minutes at a time. Mentally I began to dissociate, a small but growing feeling of space between stimulus and response, between my movements and my commands to move. None of this concerned me greatly. I was in Ranger School, the dreaded dream of every infantryman. Nothing would stop me; I was going to make it, I had to make it, until Malvesti.
Malvesti is an obstacle course, a condensed Tough Mudder with fewer shocks and more waterboarding. It is night, the air is hot and humid and cut by the brilliant white of stadium lights. We are two long lines of shaved heads shuffling towards another test.
Finally, it’s my turn. “Flutter Kicks” a dispassionate voice intones as hose water hits my face, forces its way into my nose and mouth. Time starts to stretch as my muscles burn and my breaths become shallow and rapid when I can get them. This pattern repeats for the next two obstacles until I’m finally over the last wall.
“Bear crawl”
My coordination is off, I feel like I am barely here. My knee hits the ground. I can’t coordinate my arms and legs to do what I want them to do, what I need them to do.
An RI appears out of nowhere. “What the fuck Ranger”
I can’t get my mouth to form a response as I stare at him, hyperventilating.
“Do you need to see a medic?” Again, I can’t get the words out. Not the litany of “I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine” that echoes in my skull and across the great distance that seems to separate me from what I’m seeing.
Peney aid station. Ambulance. Emergency room.
I keep blacking out. The ER doc is not amused.
“We’re trying to evaluate you for a serious brain injury. You need to stay awake.” (Like I’m doing this on purpose).
A night hooked up to an IV. The next morning the doctor comes to visit. My thoughts are slow and muddled, the feeling of mental distance lessened but remains.
“You have rhabdomyolysis, hyponatremia, and acute kidney injury. Basically, your muscles were breaking down so quickly that the byproducts clogged up your kidneys, causing them to shut down. And your body was low on electrolytes, causing your cells to swell. Maybe 40 more minutes and you would have died.”
I am young. I am invincible. All I want to know is:
“When can I go back?”
*
Fort Carson, Fall 2020, Later That Week
Battalion commander’s office, “Have you read Grit by Angela Duckworth?”
“Yes Sir, I have.”
“Well this is going to require grit. I need you to work through the weekend. And I need you to make it…more badass.”
Inwardly, I was fuming. I had taken the MCAT twice, applied to medical school twice, almost died in Ranger School and gone back…twice. Compared to those challenges, compared to what SSG Richards had demonstrated, working through the weekend wasn’t worthy of the word grit.
“What exactly do you mean by ‘badass’, Sir?” (In an organization where the difference between clear and control can induce hours of debate, his word choice was comically opaque.)
“You know Bacon…badass…more personal.”
Not the best guidance, but enough to work with. I needed to know the man hidden behind the official language of Army reports, so I spent the weekend reaching out to members of his medic platoon. What I heard was impressive:
This had been his third attempt at EFMB, a four day assessment that involves a physical fitness test, land navigation lane, three medical task testing lanes, and a 12 mile road march event. During one of the lanes, SSG Richards ran out of the medical tape necessary to secure a dressing. On his aid bag he had a strip of the needed material, using it as a name tape. Thinking quickly, he ripped it off, secured the dressing, and passed the lane.
To have that clarity of thought under the pressure of a ticking clock, the mental fatigue of adhering to the rigorous step by step procedure required to pass, and whatever self-doubt he may have brought to the course, is by itself impressive. One of the medics had a photo of the name tape, and I included it in the presentation.
Another medic had obtained the last photo of SSG Richards alive. In it he is on the road march that would claim his life. It is his eyes that I remember best. In my mind they are staring through the camera, through the photographer, with the thousand-yard stare of someone who has pushed himself beyond his earthly limitations. This too, I included.
The first of the final two photos was one of him with his platoon where he stands amongst the soldiers he helped guide and mentor. The other was from the ceremony where my battalion renamed our aid station on Camp Buehring in his honor. These stories and photos were all we had left to give.
My commander was right. The presentation needed to be more badass.
*
Any large military unit is in a constant state of flux: new soldiers arrive from different posts; older soldiers leave to take other positions or transition to the civilian world. On paper, the formation remains unchanged, but the names and faces, the component parts, are entirely different.
As my time with the battalion came to a close, one of my last duties was to give a speech on our regimental birthday, a summarization of our values and our history. In part it read:
Dedication and sacrifice are not confined to conflict. SSG Kelly Richards understood this as he strove to win the coveted Expert Field Medic Badge in August, 2019. Flying from Kuwait to Korea, he joined 127 soldiers who had all gathered for this one effort, one chance to better themselves and their unit. At one point, SSG Richards lost the medical tape needed to secure a wound dressing vital to passing his assigned lane. Thinking quickly, he ripped the name tape off his aid bag. That small strip of tape allowed him to secure the dressing and pass. His tenacity, and the value he ascribed to the training, were demonstrated one last time during the final event, a 12 mile, 35 lbs ruck. He crossed the finish line under the three-hour time limit and collapsed, dying shortly thereafter. This was his third attempt. He, and 10 others, received their EFMBs.
Soldiers die. They die from IEDs, from gunshots, from RPGS and suicide bombers and shrapnel. But they also die in training. That sacrifice should not go unnoticed. Their stories deserve to be told.
I never knew SSG Kelly Richards, but I wish I had.
The Medicine
By Aren Brandfass
This year makes thirty. Thirty years since patriotism and wanderlust and a burning curiosity about the world pulled me from my parent’s home at seventeen and into the machinery of the US Marine Corps. In the convening years that turned into decades, I was caught up in a whirlwind, the forces of which would blow me back and forth across the planet, in and out of conflict and in and out of other people's lives. I went away to wars, and then, in ways that I wouldn't understand until much later, the wars got into me. Like so many of my comrades, I became inexplicably enthralled with this thing that demanded so much of us that it made all other things in our lives seem insignificant by comparison. I poured the full force of my attention and willpower into something that would ultimately prove temporary, with no thought to an eventual future without it. I became a professional in a profession that should have long ago been rendered obsolete, and became battered and drained in the process. And just when I thought the winds of this thing were inescapable and that I would always be caught in its tempest, I was deposited gently, lovingly at the feet of the Maestros in a jungle in Peru.
Earlier this year, I went to Tarapoto, Peru, with a veteran group to participate in a healing retreat centered around the ceremonial drinking of Ayahuasca plant medicine administered by the maestros of the Shipibo people. Ayahuasca is a South American psychoactive brew traditionally used by Indigenous cultures and folk healers in the Amazon and Orinoco basins for spiritual ceremonies, divination, and healing of various psychosomatic complaints. Some call it a "psychedelic," and others call it an "entheogen." At this place I found myself for 6 days in July, they refer to it simply and with reverence as "La Medicina," the medicine.
I have a thousand stories about a thousand different adventures and generally have no trouble recounting them when I have the ear of an interested listener. But this trip is different. How do you talk about an experience outside of space and time? Something intensely personal. Something that lays bare all your hidden secrets, biggest failures, deepest wounds, and most shameful lies? I don't know, but I know that I need to try. I learned in the Marines to "repeat all calls from posts more distant to the guardhouse than my own" (General Order #4, haha), and I think some people might need to hear about this.
I signed up for this program because I was stuck, and previous attempts to dislodge myself had failed. I was becoming desperate. I would either become unstuck or acquiesce to living a bifurcated life, half in my current timeline and half in the lingering tumult of war that continued to spin me though my combat was long over. I had experimented with psychedelics before and had found them interesting, strange, and possibly useful. However, the results I was getting were too inconsistent to make me believe there were any actual answers there. My experiments mainly were solo encounters with one substance or another, with only advice from friends or comments on Reddit forums as my guide. At its most useful, I would come away from a "trip" with some insights about life and a general feeling of connectedness to the people around me. At its least useful, I would spend the night in my living room trying to avoid demons by listening intently to the Allman Brothers through noise-canceling headphones. I had never attempted Ayahuasca nor participated in any healing ceremonies administered by experienced practitioners of an ancient tradition. So, with all that in mind, I accepted the gracious offer from a veteran nonprofit called the Heroic Hearts Project to participate in one of their 6-day retreats at a picturesque resort in the jungle called La Medicina, Peru.
During the 6-day retreat, veterans participate in 3 separate Ayahuasca ceremonies administered by a Maestro and Maestra of the Peruvian Shipibo people and facilitated by two western guides. Before, in between, and after the ceremonies, classes on integration, yoga, breathing, and dieta (food and behavior restrictions complimentary to the medicine) are offered, all in a beautiful resort in the high jungle. We ate simple but delicious food carefully prepared by the friendly staff. We enjoyed each other's company and little else in the EMF-and-electric-device-free environment.
Much harder to describe than the accommodations are the ceremonies themselves. The gist is that the ceremony occurs in a circular hut called a Maloka, with participants occupying mats arranged along the outer wall like hours on a clock. In the center are the Maestro and Maestra, who sing songs called Icaros for the entire 4 or 5-hour ceremony. Everyone drinks the Ayahuasca, including the Maestros and the facilitators. The Ayahuasca is administered one at a time to participants who come to the center, drink, and then return to their mats to wait for the singing and for the medicine to start its work on them. After a period of singing to the entire group, the Maestro and Maestra rotate around the Maloka, serving each participant with a personal healing ceremony.
The Icaros song is hard to describe, but I experienced it as a beautiful, powerful, rhythmic series of sounds that seemed to reverberate through the Maloka in a way that made it impossible to locate. Because we were fortunate to have a male Maestro and a female Maestra, most reported experiencing discernable feminine and masculine energies during the ceremony. The Maestros are incredibly intentional about everything they do, and the preparation of the medicine and their tools and the cleansing of the space takes a while. The medicine affects each person differently, but I generally felt the effects within minutes of ingestion.
For me personally, most of the first ceremony was a battle. I saw in vivid detail things I had been avoiding dealing with in my life. I anticipated this, so I spent time before the trip thinking about and confronting things that I had tucked into the dark corners of my consciousness. Despite this, what I was shown during the ceremony were the things that my subconscious was hiding from me, things that I couldn't let myself deal with. I'll spare you the fine details, but after a lot of struggle, I relented, and decided to communicate directly with the medicine. What I told it was utterly incongruent with an ancient shamanic practice like Ayahuasca, but it's what popped into my mind at the time. To borrow a phrase from the IT world, I told the medicine that I was granting it complete "admin rights" to my system. I surrendered and let the Maestros and the medicine do their thing. Most of what I saw that first night concerned my treatment of others and my judgments on the world. I left the Maloka that night with empathy that I didn't walk in there with, which has stuck with me to this day.
During the second ceremony, I received a gift. I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes and felt it happen to me, but the Maestros seem to be able to scan each person and identify what needs to be confronted or released. Using the Icaros songs and other things I don't have words for or understand, they pull what is hurting you from your body and soul. I know how that sounds; believe me. During my ceremony with the Maestro, I was confronted with images of war. I saw people that I had hurt and maimed and killed. I saw people I failed to help and people I treated like servants, though I was a guest in their land. I saw myself change from a scared teenager along for the ride in his first combat to someone decades later who zealously drove others to violence. I experienced all of this as a form of hell, and I could barely endure it. Then the Maestro changed his song's tone and tempo, and the visions disappeared. He grabbed my hands and bathed them in the scented agua florida. He rubbed them together, opened them, closed them, and pushed them back toward me. At that moment, I saw blood being washed from my hands. In closing my hands, I had the experience of him closing the book on my wars. A tremendous burden was lifted from me, and I cried softly in relief.
As he moved on to the next participant, I was overcome with gratitude. I wanted to remain upright, to sit erect with my hands folded in prayer as a tribute to the Maestro and the medicine. Once I did this, my whole experience changed. I went from being overwhelmed and hiding in my blankets to actively participating in the ceremony. I became acutely aware that there's a latent rhythm to the universe and that breathing in time with it is blissful. So I would breathe, feel this rhythm, sit upright, and be rewarded with an overwhelming cascade of epiphanies. Epiphanies about my life, the world, people I knew, the future, everything. Most of these were slippery or would be so quickly replaced by another that I couldn't hold them. Still, I developed techniques to keep some of them in the front of my mind so that I would remember. These things are personal, but I took from that Maloka some of the most profound realizations of my life. These weren't just vagaries or abstract concepts; these were things that were immediately actionable and would improve my life. The remainder of my time in the ceremonies was spent this way: I did my level best to sit upright and breathe as I honored the work my fellow travelers and the Maestros were doing. Thomas Aquinas wrote, "Joy is a human being's noblest act." I began to experience the ceremony as the joyful witnessing of a genuinely noble undertaking...a trial to improve oneself for personal benefit and as a service to our fellow man.
It wasn't lost on me that twelve of us veterans were in the group. Twelve is about the size of a rifle squad, which was fitting because, by the end of the week, I had that very familiar feeling of being around people I had gone through the fire with. During the ceremony, you share not only the physical space of the Maloka but the spiritual space that, at different times and for different people, is a paradise or a battleground. I heard and felt my fellow travelers battling with their pasts, traumas, and the versions of themselves they no longer wanted to be. The things they wouldn't release willingly were pulled from them forcefully, and I was honored to bear witness to that process. When the sun came up the mornings after the ceremonies, I would see these people and be reminded of reuniting with separated teammates after firefights. In combat, we would laugh and recount the events, "Dude, I saw that RPG go right over your head," etc. At La Medicina, we'd see each other and say, "Man, you were really going through it last night; good for you." These words were different in context, but not in spirit, and like the people I was in combat with they are anchored in my memory to a critical, transcendent event in my life. These were existential battles going on. One takes place in battlegrounds on the other side of the world, and the other takes place in the consciousness and soul of each individual. Our group has stayed in touch after the trip, and how I feel about these people is evidence of a lasting change in me. Ordinarily cold and stand-offish, I feel a warmth for them that generally takes years for me to develop and is usually limited to the people in my small, close circle.
I returned from La Medicina changed in ways that I'm still discovering. I experienced things in those ceremonies that unlocked and opened doors to a healthier, happier, and more productive life. I knew leaving there that the real test would be to see if I could walk through those doors. I'm pleased to report that so far, I have. The simple act of conscious breathing that I learned out there remains my primary tool for staying calm and centered, and this equanimity affects my partner and children in positive ways. I've been able to share the gifts I received out there in the form of being a calmer, more loving presence in their lives. I now have a meditation and prayer practice centered around gratitude, which has become the stable platform from which I build my happiest days.
I've recommended this experience to fellow veterans, but only with the following caveats: You are very likely to have an intense, challenging experience that will, at times, be unpleasant. It might even be horrifying, hellish. You will encounter your shadow and be made to contend with all of your bullshit. The walls and shields you've constructed to keep those things at bay won't work there, and you'll be defenseless. But the good news is that by the end of the week, you might not need them anymore. Anyone interested in applying or finding out more can contact the good people at The Heroic Hearts Project: https://heroicheartsproject.org/
I'm certainly glad that I did.
Poetry and Art
Poetry and art from the warfighting community.
Last Meals
By Deadlined Poetry
A bittersweet home cooked meal the night prior
An elephant in the room ignored one last time
The last goodnights whispered for a time
A quiet beer in the solitude of the night
A final family breakfast at a solemn table
Small talk to distract from this today’s reality
Reassuring promises and tears held at bay
A spoiled appetite and a cigarette with coffee for lunch
The last meals are the most bittersweet
The final sunset of normalcy
Before the sunrise of uncertainty
Last Meals Continued
Todays the end
The end of the new normal
Your duffel is packed and the connex sealed
The final foreign sunset your show
Before an uncertain dawn
So you sit
The day before uncertainty
Staring into your last meal
Served on a non descript white plate in the AC
Or a flimsy cardboard tray on the hood of a humble
Government contracted food fills your belly
For the last time
Taste like shit, but you’ve accepted it
Finding comfort in the smallest things
You’ve been here so long
So focused on the tasks at hand
This place is all you now know
Home isn’t home when you live a world away
Just a semi tangible memory
Cleatus Lebow
By Terry Creekmore
The old man shuffled through a gas station in the flat north Texas land.
Unremarkable but for the hat he wore as I paused and shook his hand.
USS Indianapolis the hat said on its brim.
I’d read the books and heard the tales as I stared in awe at him.
Cleatus Lebow was 87 years old when I shook his hand that day
But his life was defined by a mere four days and the memories were there to stay
Four days that few remember
Four days he could not forget
Four days that haunt the nightly dreams of those survivors who live with regret
~ Heroes walk among us still today and their stories need to be told ~
Normandy, Bastone, the Canal and Iwo will make your blood run cold
Few remember and fewer still care about those events so long ago
But few have endured the terror and pain of the hero Cleatus Lebow
The Indy was a proud ship that now only sails in lore
She delivered the bomb to Tinian and helped end the greatest war
It only took twelve minutes for her to sink beneath the waves
Nine hundred men in the water but only 300 would be saved
The heat the cold the thirst the sharks all took a terrible toll
The men who survived would forever be seared to the marrow of their soul
~ Heroes walk among us still today and their stories need to be told ~
Pusan, Inchon and the Chosin Few
Battling in that terrible cold
So many heroes of that forgotten war are quietly growing old
Yet their sacrifice and bravery have never been extolled
Few remember and fewer still care about those events so long ago
But few have endured the terror and pain of the hero Cleatus Lebow
The navy needed a scapegoat so they court-martialed Captain McVay
The justness of the verdict is still argued to this day
The letters and the guilt and the ridicule made the holidays particularly strained
So in the fall of 1968 he put a bullet through his brain
Another victim of those terrible days
When the sea and the sharks made a living hell and sanity lost its way
~ Heroes walk among us still today and their stories need to be told ~
Route Pack six, Ia Drang and Khe Sanh but the nation was so cold
There are just some things you can’t apologize for and this is certainly one
The spitting the jeers the taunts and the tears they just can’t be undone
Now they are old. Most of them gone. Only thirty-six survive
Those four days are history now and only our memories keep them alive
We can never repay the debt we owe as that generation fades away
All we can do is to keep the faith and from that we will never stray
~ Heroes walk among us still today and their stories need to be told ~
Firefighters, Fallujah and Seal Team Six
the bravery never gets old
The torch has been passed and now this generation is writing its own history
Honor and tradition can still to be found in the deserts and the mountains and the sea
But they have big shoes to fill because the Indy is forever on patrol
Crewed by the souls of 900 sailors on a mission beyond their control
Few remember and fewer still care about those events so long ago
But all of us owe our freedom to heroes like Cleatus Lebow
Opinion
Op Eds and general thought pieces meant to spark conversation and introspection.
Ukrainian Corruption and the Arsenal of Democracy
By Hunter Keeley
A friend of mine recently circulated a clip of a renowned and controversial cultural critic, Jordan Peterson, bemoaning the corruption in Ukraine. Dr. Peterson, a Canadian whose doctorate is in neither economics nor public policy, observed that “everybody knew perfectly well before we started flag waving how corrupt Ukraine was, and now 113 billion dollars have been dumped into that economy with, what I presume, has been an extraordinary lack of oversight, and so, my sense is strong that god only knows that money has been funneled into truly reprehensible criminal enterprises.”
As the Ukraine War prolongs, the debate amongst NATO nations regarding the quantities of aid yet to be provided to Ukraine will intensify. No country has been unscathed by the multitude of headwinds facing the global economy today, some of which are a result of the war itself, and every country faces difficult opportunity costs as they ponder their ongoing support for Ukraine. They must weigh the immediate well-being of their own citizens against vast packages of war materiel destined for foreign war, which, for many, has already become old news.
The degree to which military aid to Ukraine is defrauded, or is perceived to have been defrauded, will have a corresponding impact on that debate. Politicians may find it difficult to support further aid packages if their constituents believe their tax dollars are being redirected to pad the pockets of Ukrainian businessmen. Naturally, in the course of any mobilization of the DOD or equivalent organization, much less a $100 billion one, there will be some inherent level of skimming, waste, or graft. The presence of corruption alone, therefore, is not a reasonable qualifier to reduce levels of aid to Ukraine. Rather, the West needs to evaluate what level of corruption exists in the supply chains and networks which move materiel from here to Ukraine and determine whether that level is acceptable.
Chalk it up to the fog of war, but it is near-impossible to gather an accurate picture of anything Ukrainian at the moment, much less something as nebulous as corruption. Indeed, if corruption could be instantaneously recognized and measured, it would be rather easy to do away with. The best bet to approximate corruption afflicting military aid in Ukraine today is to assess corruption in the state of Ukraine a few years hence, estimate the impact of the war on the corruption, evaluate the U.S.’ oversight in disbursing aid, and predict whether corrupt actors are in place to take widespread advantage of that aid.
In 2021, Transparency International ranked Ukraine 122 out of 180 countries on its Corruption Perceptions Index. Transparency International aggregates 13 separate corruption-related indicators to inform its rankings, and reports that the origins of Ukrainian corruption are varied. For one, many post-Soviet countries struggled to move on from the relationships-based civic structure in which bribes were just the price of doing business. Take that attitude to the affairs of the state, and an oligarch class is generally the result. Organized crime is also entrenched in Ukraine. The Global Organized Crime Index pegs Ukraine as a source and transit point for human trafficking, arms trafficking, and drug smuggling. The country has its own organized crime syndicates and is also used as a throughpoint to Europe for Russian Mafias. Despite the gloomy picture, most corruption and crime-watching organizations believe that Ukraine has made significant progress in recent years. Particularly since 2014, the country made strides in removing bad actors from its government. That year, the tinder of perennial corruption was ignited by the Russian double dealings of Ukraine’s ex-president Yanukovich into the Maidan Revolution of Dignity.
The Ukrainian military is not immune to the corruption which has plagued Ukrainian society. After the Soviet Union dissolved, Ukraine found itself in possession of a 780,000-man army and the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal. Ukraine’s military then suffered a prolonged deterioration, intensifying under President Yanukovich’s rule from 2010 to 2014, during which the military was gutted, perhaps deliberately, in favor of strengthening the Berkut, a special police force that was disbanded after Yanukovich fled to Russia following the Maidan. In February 2014, the Russian annexation of Crimea and the appearance of Putin’s Little Green Men in the Donbas provided the impetus for change. Shortly thereafter, Ukraine declared NATO accession to be a formal goal and enlisted the help of the alliance to reform its military. Since then, Ukraine’s armed forces have professionalized remarkably. However, corruption is still an endemic problem. Several senior Ukrainian defense ministers have been recently removed from their posts due expressly to allegations of corruption, but the Ukrainian Army of February 2022 was unrecognizable from that of February 2014. Nowhere is Ukraine’s progress more evident than on the battlefield. The ultimate meritocracy, combat, has exposed rank corruption in the military, just not the Ukrainian one.
Despite historic struggles with corruption, progress over the past decade has forged a Ukrainian society newly capable of waging prolonged war. And, while not without its flaws, the Ukrainian military is now organized to defend, not to enrich. Having surpassed all expectations as to its tenacity and cohesion, Dr. Peterson and Co. now wonder whether this country might still be so reprobate as to be undeserving of access to the West’s arsenal. Actually, there is reason to believe that two sources of Ukraine’s corruption may be welcome casualties of Russia’s Invasion.
Ukraine’s economy entered freefall during the invasion and has stabilized, for lack of a better word, at approximately two-thirds of its original level. However, two areas of economic activity have flatlined, and not rebounded: port activity and trade with Russia. The ports of Odesa, Chornomorsk, and Yuzzhny were technically opened in a deal to allow Ukrainian grain exports to reach Africa, but Russia broached the deal’s terms with missile strikes and formally left the agreement in July. So, Ukraine’s ports remain shuttered. And, it goes without saying that import/export activity in the Ukraine-Russia border has collapsed. As it happens, trade by the Black Sea and trade by the Ukraine-Russia border happen to have been two focal points of Ukrainian corruption. The “truly reprehensible criminal enterprises” that once thrived by moving contraband into Europe through Ukraine’s porous ports and lengthy Russian border no longer have the opportunity to do so.
It is an open question whether these heads of the hydra of corruption might have rapidly reconstituted themselves elsewhere. However, the speed with which the war has progressed and the established relationships between NATO countries and Ukraine’s military theoretically reduce the space for organized criminals to infiltrate the military aid supply chain.
In addition to the closing of primary avenues by which bad actors made a quick buck in Ukraine, the war has created existential pressure on Ukrainian society, realigning incentives in the process. The greed, selfishness, and game theory on which corruption blooms are crowded out in a fight for survival. During times in which the system of which they profit is under existential threat, parasitic bureaucrats can be incentivized to temporarily pause their malingering in favor of long-run profits. Furthermore, even the most Scrooge-ian pilferer might hesitate to skim when their own relative or neighbor is fighting in the trenches.
Alongside the evaporation of conventional criminal opportunities and the realignment of incentives, the Ukrainian Government is officiating its own wartime anti-corruption program. Aware that negative perceptions about its ability to put military aid to legitimate use will reduce its chances of receiving that aid in the first place, and that legitimate corruption will sap the war effort, Zelensky’s cohort has been unsparing in removing suspect officials from power. Outside of allegations by Russian news outlets of the massive resale of American weaponry across the world, the high-profile cases of war-related corruption have included, but are not limited to, a Ukrainian oligarch’s $250 million embezzlement scheme, massive overpayments for food, and a $2.7 million bribe to a supreme court chief. At each turn, the individuals involved have been investigated and removed from office.
The West has also required Ukrainians to strictly track ammunition expenditure and the destruction or loss of weapons. In tandem with whatever in-person inspections the tactical situation permits, Ukrainian compliance with these requirements has thus far passed official muster. That being said, accurate reporting of this kind is difficult in an active war.
Into these conditions, the West has dedicated billions of military aid. Compared to locales into which the U.S. has given aid in the past, even a 2014 version of Ukraine is an estimable beneficiary. Of the 70-some billion dollars that poured into Afghanistan during the Global War on Terror, some analyses indicate as much as a third was ultimately received by the Taliban themselves, and another third went to other criminal syndicates. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, the rationale for pumping aid into Afghanistan in the first place might seem dubious. Nonetheless, the worst version of Ukraine is, by historical standards, a relatively ethical recipient of aid.
Dr. Peterson has given no indication he was equally outraged over aid to Afghanistan as he is over aid to Ukraine. Given his selective indignation, it appears that Dr. Peterson is angry at something else altogether, and has found a convenient rationale in the potential for American aid to be wasted in Ukraine. He does not actually ascribe to the principle that, ‘if aid might be wasted by corrupt officials, then it should not be proffered.’ Reasonably so, for rarely are those countries in need of foreign assistance also free of corruption. In dealing with this uncomfortable fact- that countries that need help are inherently likely to misappropriate that help- a potential donor should do exactly what the United States has already done in Ukraine: monitor to a reasonable extent the employment of that aid, require the enforcement of punitive action against identified corrupt officials, and encourage the development of an honest and transparent civil service.
A more convincing concern over aid to Ukraine is the opportunity cost of that money. The 66 billion USD of American aid that has already found its way to Ukraine could theoretically have been spent elsewhere, whether to address homelessness, climate change, or the dearth of domestic chip-fabrication sites. While American public opinion on the matter has swayed back-and-forth, since the Wagner coup in June, 65% of Americans are in favor of continuing military assistance for Ukraine. Even as record levels of inflation assail their economy, Americans prioritize being the ‘Arsenal of Democracy’ over their own well-being.
If Western aid for Ukraine has proven its efficacy on the battlefield, is honorably employed relative to aid recently sent to Afghanistan, and is generally in line with the will of the American People, why do its detractors continue to see corruption as rendering Ukraine ineligible to receive Western support? As determined above, Dr. Peterson isn’t actually angry about American aid being misappropriated by Ukrainians. Instead, the risk to Western aid posed by Ukrainian corruption is the apparently logical reason Dr. Peterson happens to have arrived at in his efforts to draw aspersions on Western support for Ukraine.
Dr. Peterson’s true contention regarding the war lies elsewhere. In a viral lecture posted on YouTube, Dr. Peterson places the Russian invasion in the context of today’s culture war. He theorized that Russia may have been motivated to “invade and potentially incapacitate Ukraine merely to keep the pathological West out of that country, which is a key part of the historically Russian sphere of influence.” Russia, part of the West in Dr. Peterson’s mythos, is simply seeking to protect Ukrainians and their ‘Russian culture,’ from the forces of degeneracy, and therefore, has launched a war that has wounded or killed over half a million, or so, says Dr. Peterson.
Dr. Peterson might truly believe that Russia invaded Ukraine to protect itself and its Ukrainian cousins from degenerate ‘woke-ness.’ He might have been tricked by Russian propaganda into thinking so. In fact, he might be right; the march of the ‘degenerate West’ towards Russian borders may be the actual reason for the war in Ukraine. Whatever the case, the words of a former American president who, in the face of similar arguments, first devised the ‘Arsenal of Democracy’ strategy, seem to be newly relevant:
“There are also American [and Canadian] citizens, many of them in high places, who, unwittingly in most cases, are [...] doing exactly the kind of work that the dictators want done in the United States. These people not only believe that we can save our own skins by shutting our eyes to the fate of other nations. Some of them go much further than that. They say that we can and should become the friends and even the partners of the Axis powers. Some of them even suggest that we should imitate the methods of the dictatorships. But Americans never can and never will do that. [...]
The experience of the past two years has proven beyond doubt that no nation can appease the Nazis. No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it. There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness. There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb. We know now that a nation can have peace with the Nazis only at the price of total surrender. [...]
The American appeasers [...] tell you that the Axis powers are going to win anyway; that all of this bloodshed in the world could be saved, that the United States might just as well throw its influence into the scale of a dictated peace and get the best out of it that we can. They call it a ‘negotiated peace.’ Nonsense!”
There is a necessary and valuable debate the American polity must have regarding our support for Ukraine. The origins of that discussion are not to be found in Dr. Peterson’s confused skepticism of on whose side in this war the West should be on. Part of that debate must also center on how to ensure American aid to Ukraine is not wasted or embezzled. And that discussion should not stem from the absurd notion that if a nation has corrupt officials, it somehow should be disqualified from receiving aid. The United States should, with clear eyes and moral purpose, continue to evaluate its existing program of aid to Ukraine and iterate and improve that program in order to facilitate the Ukrainian Nation’s ability to prosecute a war of resistance against the Russian invader.
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This ends Volume 16, Edition 1, of the Lethal Minds Journal (01OCTOBER2023)
The window is now open for Lethal Minds’ seventeenth volume, releasing November 1st, 2023.
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I would argue that political manipulation, economic warfare, targeting armed forces, weaponized media, and cyber domain operations are simply warfare itself, and the cognitive warfare is the authorities and distribution of power that make us see this as an emerging battlespace, rather than recognizing the battlespace we have been fighting in for a very long time. When the most limiting factor on our operations is our own rules, we deter ourselves.
And with regard to corruption in Ukraine, we need to remember that to some degree it is also a relic of Kremlin interference as it tried to discredit and undermine Ukraine. Corruption and a border dispute with Russia became two regularly cited barriers to NATO membership for Ukraine.