This piece was first published by RUSI in London.  The views do not represent those of RUSI.

EXPERT PERSPECTIVE –The international community is coming under increasing pressure to recognise the Taliban and to unfreeze Afghan funds held by the IMF or to risk a humanitarian crisis over the winter and a resurgence of international terrorism.

As Afghanistan heads deeper into winter the desperate need is to avoid a humanitarian crisis. The World Food Programme has launched an appeal to feed up to 23 million people and Médecins sans Frontières have followed suit in the healthcare field. Fortunately, the distribution mechanisms are in place inside Afghanistan; what is needed is for the international community to ensure that UN humanitarian programmes are fully funded. This will require Western capitals to get over the shock of their recent defeat. It goes without saying that hunger and health should not be used as instruments of political leverage.

Meanwhile, it is becoming ever more apparent that the Taliban do not have the skills to administer a country which is far more complex than the Afghanistan of 1996 – when they began their previous and disastrous spell in office. They will need international assistance to stabilise the economy, get people back to work and, in time, continue the gradual infrastructure improvements which have been underway since 2002. China will doubtless be willing to assist in some areas but Beijing has already made clear that it is adopting a cautious, gradualist approach. However, there are emerging indications that the Taliban’s intransigent views are beginning to relax; such as their approval of the polio vaccination scheme and their willingness to work with UN humanitarian agencies.

The Taliban will also need outside help in defeating the threat from the Islamic State’s Khorasan Province (ISK). Already the Taliban are finding it difficult to counter similar asymmetric tactics which they used so successfully against Western forces. This is likely one of the subjects which CIA Director William Burns discussed with the Taliban during his visit on 24 August and where there is a mutual interest.

What can the international community (not just the West) realistically expect from the Taliban, following the militant group’s stunning victory? Maximalist demands will inevitably get short shrift.

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First, the Taliban should form a more inclusive government. According to multiple sources, the Taliban were intending to form such an administration had Ashraf Ghani not fled the country on 15 August. I am sceptical that this was ever their intention but former president Hamid Karzai and former reconciliation chief Abdullah Abdullah may have remained in Kabul on this understanding and Fatima Gailani, a former negotiator, insists this was the Taliban’s intention.

An inclusive government would need to include women and non-Taliban representatives from the Hazara, Uzbek and Tajik communities. It need not comprise the failed politicians and bloodstained warlords of the past, least of all Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Abdul Rashid Dostum. It is surely time for a new generation of more technocratic Afghans to become involved in government. Some may be persuaded to return from abroad but they will need assurances for their safety.

Second, the international community should insist on female education at all levels be restored and for women to play a fuller role in society. The Taliban will baulk at this but they only need to look at Pakistan where women play an important role in an avowedly Islamic, if not Islamist, society.

Third, all neighbouring countries, as well as the wider world, want Afghanistan to commit to removing all terrorist bases and terrorists from its soil; not just ISK and Al-Qa’ida but also the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), anti-Iranian and anti-Indian groups, and Central Asian militant movements including the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

Fourth, the Taliban should commit to allow people to join their families in exile if they wish and also cease the continuing search for and punishment of those Afghans who served the Afghan government and Western allies since 2001.

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In an ideal world there would also be a fifth request: to remove Haqqani network members from the Taliban administration. However, that pass was sold when the US negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad engaged with the Haqqanis in Doha – another result of that calamitous dialogue. Furthermore, the current reality is that the Haqqanis control both Kabul and its airport and Sirajuddin Haqqani holds the key position of interior minister.

Instead, the Haqqanis need to be persuaded to prevent Al-Qa’ida regrouping in Afghanistan. Sirajuddin’s father was close to Osama bin Laden and the group retains its Al-Qa’ida connections. Pakistan is already using the Haqqanis to bring the TTP to the negotiating table. It remains to be seen how successful this will be. It is doubtful that the Haqqanis would be willing to take military action against a group from a similar area in the tribal borderlands. However, the Haqqanis could be useful as intermediaries, if not as enforcers.

Meanwhile, the wider Taliban, usually referred to as the ‘Kandaharis’, are increasingly exasperated by the entryist Haqqanis. Although they have worked together, there was never much love lost between the two. The Kandaharis have always distrusted the Haqqanis’ proximity to the Pakistani military. Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, Mullah Abdul-Ghani Baradar, whose willingness to negotiate with the Kabul government in 2008 and 2010 earned him eight years in a Pakistani prison, has been sidelined. There will doubtless be a reckoning

A lasting regret of the US’s careless withdrawal is that Washington did not conclude a broader settlement for Afghanistan involving China, Iran, Russia, India and the Central Asian Republics. From now on it is essential to include all the neighbours in the discussion of recognition and the conditions required. But first the Afghans must be helped to survive the winter.

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The EU Commission has released draft legislation aimed at tackling the destruction of woodland by introducing import restrictions on products not certified as ‘deforestation-free’.

The draft proposal, which the commission hopes will become binding rules for all member states, seeks to limit the import of beef, cocoa, coffee, palm, soy, and wood if it is not proven “deforestation-free.”

Outlining the legislation, the EU commissioner for climate action policy, Virginijus Sinkevicius, called it a “ground-breaking” proposal that will help fight “illegal deforestation” and “deforestation driven by agricultural expansion.”

The bill comes after nations at the COP26 summit agreed to work to end deforestation by 2030. It would impose two criteria on imports, requiring items to have been produced in accordance with the origin country’s laws, and not on land that has been deforested or degraded since the start of 2021.

It is not clear when the rules would come into effect; legislative proposals by the commission have to be debated and considered by both the EU Parliament and the Council of the EU before they are passed. The implementation of measures could potentially impact the EU’s trade relations with countries like Brazil, where clearing of the Amazon rainforest hit a new record in October.

During the recent COP26 climate summit, 110 world leaders – whose countries contain around 85% of the world’s woodland – committed to ending and reversing deforestation by 2030, pledging around £14 billion ($18.84 billion) of public and private funds towards the goal.

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Chris Inglis’ new White House office has a startup feel to it. There are desks, a few chairs, a coffee maker and a poster hanging on the wall.  But as the head of the newly established Office of the National Cyber Director, Inglis has to make due with what he has while still advising President Joe Biden on the smartest ways for the US to prevent and respond to cyberattacks.

Inglis has already had numerous conversations with the president, who has made clear that the government has a role to play in the defense of the private sector and in assisting the private sector in defending critical infrastructure.  And the president knows, says Inglis, that means the government needs to get its own cyber house in order. 

But like any real startup, Inglis’ resources are scarce.  More than three months after being confirmed by the Senate, he still doesn’t have the full staff he needs to take on his timely and critical mission.  That’s because the funding for his office – some $21 million, part of the $1 trillion infrastructure bill making its way through Congress – is still stuck in the political spin cycle.  Why does it matter?

“The threat is greater than I can ever remember,” Inglis told me during last month’s AFCEA and INSA Intelligence & National Security Summit in National Harbor, Maryland. “The audacity, the brazenness, the thresholds that have been crossed at every turn; we’re in a difficult place.”

While he’s waiting for Congress to act, he says he’s spending about fifty percent of his time defining his role, being careful not to duplicate the work already being done by other agencies and departments, while spending another fifty percent building relationships that will be important later.  Eventually, he’s expected to have a staff of some 75 people who will be expected to work hand in glove with CISA, the National Security Council’s cyber staff, the OMB and others.  The remaining fifty percent of his time, Inglis jokes, is spent figuring out how to attract the country’s best talent.   

“People are starting to flow into the organization. I’m confident that we’re coming up to a breakout moment, not for the National Cyber Director, but the contribution that we can and should make. I’m sobered by the nature of the challenge, I’m optimistic we can make a difference.”

Optimistic he is.  And he’s not even complaining about being given a critical task for US national security and then having to wait for politics to play out before being able to act on it.

“It has been a semi-silver lining in that we would not have had time to think about how we want to apply the resources coming our way.”

While Inglis has been waiting, he and his small team have had time to think about the four things they’d like to focus on right away. 

First, is streamlining the roles and responsibilities in government of who handles what when it comes to protecting the public and private sectors from cyberattacks.  He also spoke during his confirmation hearing about the importance of allocation of resources and while the Office of the National Cyber Director doesn’t have the authority to move money, it does have what Inglis calls the responsibility to account for cyber money.

“One of the most critical gaps in cyber is that the physical digital infrastructure is not built to a common standard. The executive order related to this requires that within a certain amount of time we have to install basic procedures like multifactor authentication and encryption of stored material. That is a challenge and a potential vulnerability for us. We need to make sure that we make these investments necessary to buy down the lack of investment for years.

The second gap is in talent related to number of people required to occupy these jobs. It’s not simply the folks with IT or cyber in their name, but general cyber awareness. There is some expenditure of resources of time, attention, and money to get awareness right on the part of the truly accountable parties like agency and department heads. We have to make sure they don’t see cyber as a cost center, but an enabler on the part of all the users as they understand what their roles are and what the accountability is.

He admits there is still a level of education needed within government to get there.

“That is usually the case in both the government and the private sector,” he said.  “We need to think this way about cyber and invest in cyber so that we can enable the mission, not hold it back. I think that education is the most important and effective way to handle this. Then, it is to make sure that the accountability is aligned and harmonized. We tend to take risk in one place and expect someone in another place to be the mitigator of a risk they don’t understand was taken in the first place. We need to operate in a collaborative fashion and get away from divisions of effort which are an agreement not to collaborate and allow adversaries to pick us off one at a time.”

Inglis says that unity of effort must start at home.  “The executive order issued in May has begun to lay out common expectations about the hardware, software, and practices that we need to begin in those spaces,” he said.  “Externally, if we have sector risk management agencies who engage the private sector for the purposes of supporting and engaging the critical components of that infrastructure, we need to make sure you don’t need a Ph.D. in government to know who to deal with and what you’re going to get from them.”

He is arguing for the government to also put ‘valuable material’ on the table.  “That could be our convening power,” said Inglis. “We could perhaps address and reduce liability or give companies a clue as to what might be around the corner because the government has access to exquisite intelligence. If that setup is possible, we also need a venue where collaboration takes place. Information doesn’t collaborate, people do.”

Inglis likes to point to the example of CISA and the Joint Cyber Collaborative.  “They put people from the private sector and the public sector side by side to co-discover threats that hold us at common risk. That project sets up the possibility of implicit collaboration in what we then do with that common operational picture. The government could take ideas that private sector companies turn into proprietary systems and enrich and classify them to deal with it in their system.”

Using what he calls “all the tools in the toolkit,” Inglis also notes the importance of international relationships, which fits nicely into the White House’s International Summit on Ransomware last week in Washington, which zeroed in on tighter cryptocurrency standards, among other things. “Beyond the Five Eyes, what do other like-minded nations think about what is expected behavior in this? What are governmental actions that are appropriate,” he asked.  

Inglis has been an active participant in the president’s recent actions in cyber.  He took part in a White House meeting with tech leaders in August that was hosted by President Biden, who Inglis says, spent the first hour sharing his vision about how the country should focus on collaborative integration.  “The companies represented weren’t only companies like Microsoft and Apple, but people who operate in the critical infrastructure space,” said Inglis.  “The people component, educators, were represented reflecting the president’s view that cyberspace is not just technology, it is also the people component. They are a major link in the chain, and we need to get the roles and responsibilities right.”

While he’s waiting for the funding he needs to get his office fully staffed, Inglis said he’s also putting thought into reconciling resources with aspirations.  Managing expectations is going to be important.  Frustration has been growing for years over what some see as a lack of government response to some of the largest hacks in history.  The phrase ‘time and place of our choosing’ as a definition of response has grown old and some Americans are weary of a government that isn’t responding in a more public way to the beating it sees the US taking in cyberspace.

So, I asked Inglis whether there should be red lines in cyber.

“Red lines are both good and bad,” he answered.  “They are clear and crisp, and everybody knows what they are. The downside is that because of that, an adversary knows exactly how far they can go. It means that you set up a somewhat permissive environment. Red lines also don’t have context; sometimes there is a reason that a defender would make the ransomware payment. As a matter of policy, the U.S. government does not pay ransomware, but I imagine there will be a situation at some point where a hospital is against the Russian state and actual life and safety is at risk. If there is no other way to get the material back, in order to get back in the business of saving lives, they would want to rethink if a red line is a red line in that particular situation. I think the right thing to do here is not to establish hard thresholds of things with scripted responses, but outline what we are prepared to defend and what principles we will exercise in defense of those things. We commit to defending the private sector when it is held at risk by a nation state in cyberspace as much as in the kinetic space and make that clear to adversaries. I think that would be more helpful in changing decision calculus and creating a useful ambiguity about when and where we will come in.”

Inglis said he’s also thinking a lot about present and future resilience.  It’s a worthwhile focus, given that the White House estimates that nearly half a million public and private sector cybersecurity jobs are currently unfilled. 

“That is a massive problem,” said Inglis. “However, the more insidious problem is that the 320 million people in the United States who use the internet who have no idea how to properly take their place on the front lines of this issue. There is an awareness issue that requires us not to make Python programmers out of them but to make sure they understand the nature of this space.”

Everyone has heard the old saying that time is money, but in Inglis’ case, time is security so I asked him point blank whether he thought government was moving has quickly as it should on the cyber problem.

“Government is moving at speed; the question is if it is at the necessary speed. I don’t think anyone is moving at the necessary speed. Some are moving at light speed, but at the end of the day, we need an integrated, collaborative approach. While we won’t have unity of command, I think there needs to be a universally felt sense of urgency so that we will all get our heads in the game.”

Congress, are you listening?  Oh, and by the way, that poster in Inglis’ office? It reads, ‘Hours Since the Last Surprise.”

“As a startup with maybe too few resources at the start and who often didn’t understand how all the wickets are run, we have our occasional surprise,” said Inglis.  “When we encounter those surprises and go to someone with the deep and sharp expertise to help us navigate that, we get what we need. However, we are not a full functioning, full featured, fully capable organization yet. We’re trying to build somebody else’s airplane while we’re free falling from our own. We have a parachute, and we can land safely, but it is a bit of a challenge at times.”

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As part of a special series on climate in partnership with The Intelligence Project at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and Cipher Brief Expert and Senior Editor Kristin Wood, The Cipher Brief is focusing on the national security implications of climate change. 

This report is derived from a half-day conference in April 2021 co-sponsored by the Intelligence Project and the Environment and Natural Resources Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, along with the Center for Climate and Security and The Cipher Brief. It explores the requirements of the U.S. IC to fulfill the mission prescribed by President Biden, DNI Haines, and Secretary Kerry. The IC must rise to challenge, unshackled from the past, to re-imagine its role in combatting climate change.

The Authors

Calder Walton, Asst. Director, Belfer Center’s Applied History Project and Intelligence Project, Harvard University

Calder Walton is Assistant Director of the Belfer Center’s Applied History Project and Intelligence Project. Calder’s research is broadly concerned with intelligence history, grand strategy, and international relations. The

Sean Power, Masters in Public Policy Candidate, Harvard Kennedy School

Sean Power is a Masters in Public Policy 2021 candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School. Prior to HKS, he managed the analyst program at Kobre & Kim LLP, where he assisted on matters involving government enforcement defense and internal investigations.

The Report

The U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Avril Haines, has stated that climate change needs to be at the center of U.S. foreign policy and national security. It is a threat multiplier that impacts every function of government and society: territorial integrity, economic well-being, social stability, and military capabilities are all impacted by climate change, directly and indirectly. However, in addressing climate change, the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) is currently unsure of its mission space and hitherto has been relying on boilerplate responses to it. In an exclusive discussion, the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, Secretary John Kerry, who should be a principal consumer of intelligence about climate change within the U.S. government, stated that the U.S. IC must deliver significantly more.

The increasing effects of climate change are arising at a moment when the nature of intelligence itself is undergoing a revolution—from the collection of hidden secrets to collation of non-obvious (but knowable) data frequently hiding out in the open. This watershed in intelligence and national security requires bold, innovative, ideas for the U.S. IC to adapt and anticipate security threats derived by climate change. It must establish its mission space and alter its own architecture to ensure it is providing its customers with intelligence about them needed. Its mission will not be about spies disseminating secrets to policymakers; rather, it will require a new intelligence and national security paradigm that must reach across society, allowing the general public to consume climate intelligence and hold policymakers to account.

Background

The twenty-first century presents globalized threats that will require globalized solutions, the greatest of which is climate change. As the Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated, no country is immune from actor-less threats like novel disease outbreaks and climate change. When combined with other security threats like transnational terrorism and ubiquitous cyberattacks, it becomes clear that existing national security frameworks are insufficient. New relationships and lines of communication will need to be forged, both within the U.S. government, in the private sector, and internationally with allies and adversaries. The U.S. IC needs to determine the requirements of its customers regarding climate change and how its unique collection and analytical capabilities fit into this new mission space.

The IC has incorporated climate change into its analysis and threat assessments for decades, but climate has not received the attention it requires given the magnitude of the threat it poses. On January 27, 2021, President Biden issued an executive order on tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad, establishing that “climate considerations shall be an essential element of United States foreign policy and national security.” The order also called for the Director of National Intelligence to prepare a National Intelligence Estimate on the national and economic security impacts of climate change within 120 days.

The Climate Change, Intelligence, and Global Security conference at Harvard’s Belfer Center earlier this year, brought together senior climate experts, current and former intelligence officers, and leaders in the private sector and academia to discuss the climate threat and generate innovative ideas on role the IC will play in combatting that threat. Led by Paul Kolbe, Director of the Intelligence Project, Kristin Wood, Intelligence Project Non-Resident Fellow, and Erin Sikorsky, Deputy Director of the Center for Climate and Security, the conference facilitated an urgent opportunity for productive dialogue on the climate threat.

Climate change as a threat to international security

Policymakers and the public need to understand that climate change impacts seemingly unrelated challenges and magnifies existing threats. The direct effects of climate change are readily apparent around the world—melting glaciers, rising sea levels, thawing permafrost, longer droughts, hotter heat waves, persistent wildfires, torrential rains, and catastrophic storm systems. These effects create disastrous consequences for humans like crop failures, fishery collapses, water insecurity, and the inundation of coastal regions, all of which lead to mass migration and displacement. These situations lead to fragile states and regions where increased conflict over scarce resources allows malign actors thrive. In this way, climate change is a threat multiplier that touches every aspect of international security.

Professor John P. Holdren, the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, noted that the big picture on how climate change will impact the planet is clear, but the detailed effects are difficult to predict with precision and confidence, in part because we do not know exactly how human societies will react. This uncertainty exacerbates the security threat posed by climate change. We know it will increase the number of displaced persons in the world, but we do not know when they will be displaced, how many there will be, or where they will go.

Climate change also impacts the effective functioning of the U.S. military: to meet traditional security threats and protect Americans at home and abroad. U.S. bases around the world function as launching pads for everything from quick tactical operations to large-scale disaster relief missions. When severe weather damages those bases or limits their ability to operate at full capacity, America’s security is put at risk. Disasters like the flooding at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, headquarters for U.S. Strategic Command, and Hurricane Michael’s destruction of Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida show that this threat knows no geographic bounds. Their effects are costly as well—the Air Force requested nearly $5 billion to rebuild those two bases alone.

The overall impacts of climate change on international security are inevitable, consequential, and predictable. Previously the U.S. government has undertaken more extensive, and expensive, actions on the basis of proportionally less intelligence about security threats. The U.S. IC must give climate change the proportional attention it deserves.

Role of U.S. intelligence in addressing climate change

Climate change poses an existential, global, non-state security threat, making it fundamentally different from past threats. Its unprecedented nature will require unprecedented thinking by the U.S. IC and requirements from it. Former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Sue Gordon stated clearly that it is not enough to just say that the U.S. IC should focus more on climate— rather, the challenge lies in determining what its specific contribution will be, and then evaluating what changes need to occur to make that contribution happen. Answering these questions will require difficult, but necessary, upfront work. Without that work, the U.S. IC is likely to lead with its current capabilities, rather than identifying and developing capabilities needed to meet the nature of the new threat we face.

The U.S. IC must play to its strengths in carving out its climate mission. Intelligence is no longer just about stealing secrets; it is about providing policymakers with decision advantages to influence events, which is the same as the past, but with a key difference that doing so now requires mastery of is a vast eco-space of openly-available information. To accomplish its mission, the U.S. IC must leverage its analytic tradecraft to present objective assessments about climate change to policymakers. This means collecting intelligence, assessing it, removing bias, and delivering timely and relevant assessments to customers. The U.S. IC must also leverage its global relationships with partners and competitors in performing these tasks. These relationships lie below politics and can help elicit understanding that allows policymakers to distinguish facts on the ground from prevailing political rhetoric of the day.

The U.S. IC’s workforce and technology will need to advance and adapt to serve the climate mission. It does not need to have the foremost climate experts, but it does need to have dialogue with them, and develop its own climate expertise. Like other threats, the IC needs personnel that are devoted to understanding this new threat and understand its place in larger risk frameworks. Predictive models are critical to understanding climate science, and the IC should invest more resources into artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities (AI/ML) that can inform them. Intelligence professionals will not need to advance science, and scientists will not need to assess national security; but collaborations between the IC and the federal science community are necessary and will benefit both by allowing them to identify and meet shared objectives.

Climate change intelligence cannot be siloed. As DNI Haines promised, it must be integrated into traditional security threat assessments, and those emerging threats from other globalized challenges, bio-hazards, cyber capabilities, and weaponized information, if we want to understand how they interact and manifest around the globe. Compared to the twentieth century, when intelligence was dominated by governments, the twenty-first century offers more democratic forms of intelligence: the private sector offers major capabilities to collect and analyze intelligence. It has disrupted and transformed the nature of intelligence. The IC’s advantage in this new environment will come from thinking deeply about these issues and using its unique analytical and collection capabilities to identify patterns and trends others might overlook.

The future of intelligence cooperation and climate change

Climate change is an indiscriminating challenge unlike anything humanity has encountered before. Understanding how it is different helps illustrate the need for intelligence cooperation among states, large and small, to combat it. Carol Dumaine, Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, noted that the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted many of the ways in which the climate threat is unique. It is non-state, non-adversarial, non-linear, boundary-less, and its root causes can be found in human economic activity. Unlike pandemics, however, combatting climate change will require something we have never done: decades of consistent cooperation across states with an eye towards tackling a systemic problem that will persist for centuries.

The U.S. IC needs to determine how it will work with other countries to combat the shared threat of climate change. The big first step is determining what the security collective is trying to accomplish. One area ripe for collaboration is foresight and early warning systems. During the Cold War the famous “red telephone” connected the White House and the Kremlin, enabling direct communication to avoid nuclear brinksmanship. Similar innovate thinking will be needed on climate change cooperation. Lt. Gen. Richard Nugee, Climate Change and Sustainability Strategy Lead for the UK Ministry of Defence, emphasized that the biggest danger on climate change is not a morass of bureaucracy, but instead a lack of imagination in understanding its impact and generating solutions for it.

Relying on existing partnerships, such as the Five Eyes alliance or NATO, will not be sufficient. Those agreements will play a role, but they do not include some of largest contributors to greenhouse gases or the countries that will suffer the largest initial impacts from climate change. Intelligence communities are by nature competitive and adversarial, but when it comes to climate change they will need to be cooperative. The U.S. IC needs to identify areas of cooperation even with adversaries like China and Russia. Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, Senior Fellow and former Director of the Intelligence Project, tasked the U.S. IC to look for a peace dividend—areas where collaboration on climate will yield multilateral benefits. Even though spying will still exist, as it always had, we cannot let espionage stand in the way of climate collaboration.

Any collaboration on climate intelligence will certainly require American leadership. That means America needs to treat the climate threat with the seriousness it deserves. Climate change is siloed into a one-page length analysis in the 27-page Annual Threat Assessment issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in April 2021. The six pages focusing on China and Russia make no mention of how those are contributing to climate change or working to combat it. The IC must continually reinforce that climate is a serious and central threat. We cannot wait until the impacts are painfully obvious for every individual across the globe to treat it with the seriousness it requires.

The private sector, intelligence, and climate change

The threat from climate change reinforces the fact that intelligence is no longer a domain solely for governments. Mekala Krishnan, Partner at the McKinsey Global Institute, underscored that the private sector is also seeking to take climate risk out of a sustainability silo and integrate it into all aspects of decision making affected by risk and finance. Companies are thinking about how climate interacts with physical capital, natural resources, labor supply, and food supply—the factors of production in an economy that fundamentally affect our lives and livelihoods. One of the most important factors in a country’s national security is the health of its economy. The U.S. IC needs to be working with the private sector to understand what the economic effects of climate change will be.

In many respects, the U.S. government is still one of the few parties that can afford the costs to collect data on climate change, much like space exploration and early Internet research. The private sector can innovate ways to extract insights from that public data. Harnessing that with government capabilities will require innovative public-private partnerships with a shared strategy to help combat climate change. The U.S. IC must develop a level of transparency on climate data that will allow the private sector to identify where incentives for research and development exist. It will not matter how good the climate intelligence collected by the U.S. IC is if it does not get into the hands of public and private users in the right shape and form.

At the same time, the IC cannot be everywhere at once, collecting troves of climate data at significant cost. Richard Jenkins, CEO of Saildrone, noted that the private sector has the capability to deploy significant private money to develop and test new technologies that advance climate data collection, which the government can purchase at great value and incorporate into climate intelligence analysis. New technology is democratizing intelligence; it will force the U.S. IC to change how it interacts with the private sector— for the better.

Conclusion

In a moderated discussion with Dr. Calder Walton, Secretary Kerry stated unambiguously that the U.S. IC needs to start providing policymakers with a decision advantage on climate change in order for the U.S. government to lead the world on meeting this unprecedented threat. That starts with treating climate change seriously. The U.S. IC will need to determine its requirements, play to its strengths, and adapt its workforce to best serve its mission. It will need to cultivate deeper cooperation with allies and adversaries, develop new relationships with the private sector, and approach climate change with a fresh mindset to seek and find what others overlook.

When it comes to climate change, the U.S. IC should also reframe who its customers are, not just policymakers, to whom it gives secret briefings, but also the public. By publicly disseminating assessments, the U.S. IC can effectively democratize intelligence about climate change, with the public holding policymakers to account for their actions or inactions on the basis of shared intelligence.

The Cipher Brief is proud to be continuing our coverage on Climate with a series of webcast briefings beginning in July 2021.

Read also:

The Climate and US National Security Conversation with Admiral Jim Stavridis (Ret.)

How to Integrate Climate in Future National Security Risk

Russia’s Climate Problem and Opportunity

Why the Intelligence Community Needs a Climate Change Task Force

 

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Reuters has apologized for its poor choice of photo to illustrate a story about a monkey brain study that was deemed offensive and racist in China.

On Thursday, Reuters published a story titled “Monkey-brain study with link to China’s military roils top European university.” The report was about a Chinese professor studying how a monkey’s brain functions at extreme altitude.

The study was done with the help of Beijing’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) with the aim of developing new drugs to prevent brain damage, Reuters said.

The news agency promoted the story on Twitter with a photo of smiling Chinese soldiers in an oxygen chamber.

The tweet prompted outrage in China, with people calling it racist on social media. Reuters responded on Friday night by deleting the original tweet because the photo of Chinese soldiers was unrelated to the story and “could have been read as offensive.”

“As soon as we became aware of our mistake, the tweet was deleted and corrected, and we apologize for the offense it caused,” Reuters said in a statement to the Global Times, China’s state-run newspaper.

It was not the first time the leading Western news agency had run into trouble in China. In July, the Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka criticized Reuters for using a photo of Chinese weightlifter and Tokyo 2020 Olympics gold medalist Hou Zhihui that the country’s state media described as “ugly” and “disrespectful to the athlete.”

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At least two people were wounded by police gunfire in the Dutch city of Rotterdam after a protest over renewed Covid-19 restrictions spiraled into a violent riot, seeing demonstrators torch a squad car and clash with officers.

A large crowd of protesters showed up at Rotterdam’s iconic Coolsingel street on Friday evening to denounce a new round of pandemic measures, including an ongoing partial lockdown, a ban on New Year’s Eve fireworks displays, as well as fears the government will impose a ‘2G’ pass system allowing only the vaccinated and those who’ve recently recovered from the virus to enter a long list of public places.

At least two people were wounded during the demonstration, a local police spokesperson told Reuters, adding the injuries were “probably” due to officers’ “warning shots” but also noting that “direct shots were fired because the situation was life-threatening” to law enforcement.

Footage of the heated protest circulated online, some clips showing a police squad car fully engulfed in flames after it was apparently torched by rioters.

Demonstrators were also seen launching fireworks at police, who appeared to respond with large quantities of tear gas, which at one point blanketed the area.

Local law enforcement said that officers deployed a mobile riot control unit to Coolsingel and unleashed water cannon on protesters who refused to clear the streets, also noting that some arrests were made after an emergency order was imposed to cordon off the area.

The Dutch government announced the fireworks ban earlier on Friday, saying it is meant to “prevent, as much as possible, extra strain on healthcare, law enforcement and first responders.” However, while private displays are prohibited, officials said that local governments may still put on fireworks shows so long as their Covid-19 restrictions allow it.

The Netherlands currently has a ‘3G’ rule in place, allowing the vaccinated, the recently recovered, as well as those who test negative for the virus to enter most public spaces. But as the country remains under a partial three-week lockdown to rein in growing infections, officials are now mulling the stricter ‘2G’ scheme, prompting the intense demonstrations seen on Friday night.

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Rotterdam Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb has described an anti-lockdown protest in his city as an “orgy of violence.” The Dutch demonstration devolved into a violent riot that saw police open fire on protesters.

Aboutaleb described the events of Friday night as an “orgy of violence,” after protesters packed Rotterdam’s central Coolsingel shopping street to voice their opposition to an ongoing partial lockdown, a ban on New Year’s Eve fireworks displays, and the possibility of a two-tiered system of freedom in the Netherlands, one of liberty for the vaccinated and restrictions for those without the jab.

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A police squad car is seen engulfed in flames during a protest in Rotterdam, Netherlands, November 19, 2021.
2 wounded after shots fired at Covid protest in Netherlands

The protest soon got out of hand, and police said on Saturday that 57 people were arrested. Protesters were seen torching police vehicles and launching fireworks at police, who shot at them in response.

Aboutaleb said that the cops had been “forced” to use their weapons. “On a number of occasions the police felt it necessary to draw their weapons to defend themselves,” he told reporters. “They shot at protesters, people were injured.”

Police say at least seven people were injured. Two of these injuries were caused by police bullets, and the victims are still in hospital. One officer was hospitalized, while several others were treated at the scene for minor injuries.

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The Chinese foreign ministry has lashed out at Lithuania after the small Baltic Sea nation approved the opening of the Taiwan Representative Office in Vilnius. Beijing says it undermines its One China policy.

Beijing was disappointed that Lithuania had proceeded to grant Taiwan permission to open its ‘representative office’ in Vilnius despite “China’s strong opposition and repeated persuasion,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a press briefing on Friday. Taiwan had opened its mission in Vilnius the previous day. 

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Chinese star Peng Shuai is reportedly missing. © Visual China Group via Getty Images
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Zhao called the move a violation of the One China principle, which he said is undermining China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, while grossly interfering in its internal affairs. The spokesman reminded Lithuania that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory and the Beijing government has sole legal authority. 

As to what necessary measures China will take, you may wait and see. The Lithuanian side shall reap what it sows.

In a “stern warning” to the Taiwanese authorities, Zhao then added that “seeking ‘Taiwan independence’ by soliciting foreign support is a totally misguided attempt that is doomed to fail.”

In August, Lithuania announced that the diplomatic outpost would be named the “Taiwan Representative Office,” angering China. Taiwan’s diplomatic branches – in countries that have de facto relations with the island’s authorities – are normally called “Taipei Economic and Cultural Offices.”

China demanded that Lithuania recall its ambassador from China, which it did. Beijing then withdrew its envoy to the Baltic state.

Chinese officials have repeatedly called on Western nations, notably the UK and US, to stop interfering in Beijing’s internal affairs, stressing that they consider Taiwan to be part of China.

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President Joe Biden admitted during his address from the White House this week that, “The scenes we’re seeing in Afghanistan, they’re gut-wrenching, particularly for our veterans, our diplomats, humanitarian workers, for anyone who has spent time on the ground working to support the Afghan people.”

Yet the voices of the veteran community aren’t always heard in mainstream media, which tends to prioritize finger pointing and political bickering instead of focusing on the impact of such events on the people who served there, or the people who lost loved ones there. The depression and rage that flowed through the veteran community – as the US flag came down from the Embassy in Kabul, and as the U.S. failed to secure even a safe route out of the country for its own people, much less the Afghans who have supported the US-led effort there for the past 20 years –  was swift and devastating to many in the veteran community, who often don’t engage with media, but turn to each other for support via chatrooms.

A statement released by former President George Bush and former First Lady Laura Bush read, “Many of you deal with wounds of war, both visible and invisible. And some of your brothers and sisters in arms made the ultimate sacrifice in the war on terror. Each day, we have been humbled by your commitment and your courage. You took out a brutal enemy and denied Al Qaeda a safe haven while building schools, sending supplies, and providing medical care. You kept America safe from further terror attacks, provided two decades of security and opportunity for millions, and made America proud. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts and will always honor your contributions.”  

The Cipher Brief reached out to two veteran leaders, Matthew Griffin and Scott Chapman, who wrote a fictitious letter they titled ‘Writing in Taliban’ as a way to share their outrage over recent events and how they believe – based on their unique on-the-ground experience – the Taliban will communicate this ‘victory’ to their followers.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War 

Matthew ‘Griff’ Griffin, Former Army Ranger

 Matthew “Griff” Griffin is a former Special Operations Army Ranger and a West Point Graduate.  He served four combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq with the 2nd Ranger Battalion. Griff departed the military in 2006 and co-founded Combat Flip Flops; manufacturing fashion and lifestyle products in war zones, with profits supporting girl’s education, land mine clearance, and veteran’s charities.

Scott Chapman, Former Army Ranger

Scott Chapman served in 2nd Battalion 75th Ranger Regiment from 2001-2005.  He deployed to Iraq during the 2003 invasion and to Afghanistan 4 times.  After the military, Scott worked as a contractor providing security support to the Intelligence community where he deployed 17 times mostly at Forward Operating Bases (FOB) providing security support for Intelligence personnel and operations.  Scott’s final duty rotation was at the US Embassy Annex in Kabul where he worked as a mentor for Local Guard Forces. 

Author’s Note:  We’ve spent the past week trying to find a way to communicate our thoughts to the American people in a manner that would intentionally evoke some of the anger, rage, action, and understanding that we feel.  Writing in the voice of a Taliban felt right. If reading our letter from the Taliban makes you angry, cry, or contemplative–then our goal is achieved.  Our hope is that it inspires you to take action by reaching out to your elected officials.  They’ve been repeating the same failed playbook since World War II with your sons, daughters, and tax dollars.  If you want this to keep happening, do nothing.  If you don’t, then do something.  If we all do a little, together we do a lot.

‘Written in Taliban’

OPINION/PERSPECTIVE — The first time I saw you was in the Khyber Pass.  You came with your technology, elite fighters fueled by revenge, and the hubris to believe you could disprove history.

This was a war that you didn’t have the stomach to fight.  But I’m glad you tried.

We bled you the same way we bled the Soviets in our Holy Land.  We bled you the same way the Vietnamese bled you in their homeland.  We did it patiently and deliberately.

Patience.  Something Westerners never learn.

Our history is millennial.  We don’t yearn for an early victory when the Infidel ravages our Holy Land.  Our victory is celebrated decades from now.  We’ve endured, then ravaged every standing military that crossed our borders.   Why?  How?  We’re patient.

In 30 days, we’ll be stronger, richer, and have control over precious natural resources that you need for your pathetic life dictated by comfort.  We will have women, riches, land, guns, and ownership of one of the greatest chapters in military history.

You lose.

If you want to try again, we welcome the challenge.  You will fail regardless of how much money you burn in our deserts. For pity, here is free advice that may contribute to your future success; should you ever decide to invade again.

You recruit your warriors and supporters from a drug addicted, distracted, disillusioned population that’s obsessed with comfort and entertainment.  A population obsessed with altering their mundane reality.  Alcohol, marijuana, pills, and our new favorite — Tide Pods.  Every time your doctors prescribe opiate painkillers, you line our coffers with gold.  Your population’s thirst for our pristine heroin has never been more lucrative for our warrior tribes.   We will keep feeding you poison for as long as you keep your hands out.

If your population wasn’t so spineless, undisciplined, and self-loathing, then you might be able to compile a raiding party with enough tenacity to outthink ours.  Our fighters are born into war.  Raised in it.  It’s a way of life that evades your “first world” nations. They live a life of such immense misery and pain that they’re willing to fight barefoot in the snow for the opportunity to martyr themselves. They yearn for the opportunity to die.  When they do have the blessed opportunity to sacrifice themselves, they sit above Mohammed at the right hand of God.  Blessed in Allah for eternity

What honors do your fighters receive?  Their empty sacrifice is remembered in the form of a “three-day weekend.”  The majority of your population uses this sacred time to get drunk and grow more fat as a way to celebrate their fallen warriors.  Sadly, we pay tribute to their death more honorably.

The colored pieces of cloth you pin on their chests are similar to the jewelry worn by our women.  What good are accolades and vanity if you don’t have the stomach to endure a fight?   We don’t offer the burden of healthcare to our fighters as they often want to die for Allah.  Your fighters fight to live.  Their inability to reconcile the inevitable outcome of our patience leads them to kill themselves.  Your medications, counselors and non-profits will never undo the pain and suffering you’ve forced them to endure.  It will never remove the pain we’ve caused your broken nation.  You are your own worst enemy.

We will give your fighters credit.  Some are creative, tenacious, and fierce. They outgun us in every way possible.  But again, we simply wait them out.  Allah is patient.  You cycle them through our Holy Lands every 3 to 12 months for their combat rotations.  After their tour is complete, they return to the comfort of their warm beds and endless entertainment.  If you left them here, in our Holy Land, with no way out but to win, then you might of have had a chance of success.  The longer you poisoned our Holy Land with your presence, your “rules of engagement” only strengthened our position. There is only one rule in war – that is to win.

Your commanders made you fight with your hands tied behind your back. Your rules also confused our fighters too.  “We’re clearly the enemy; why are they letting us go?”  Thank you for your compassion as it allowed our fighters to kill more Infidels.  We began to feel as if your commanders were on our side.  We’re thankful your most vicious dogs were never allowed off their leash.

Your showcase Generals make us laugh.  You spend millions of dollars flying them around our country, inventing new ways to win while ignoring the guidance of our most capable foes.  Your Generals make decisions to minimize risk to their fragile reputation with the ultimate goal of securing a lucrative retirement–jobs with suppliers that fuel your losing force. A self-serving circle that’s built on the backs of your youngest and most naive fighters.

Your retired Generals “earn” tens of thousands of dollars talking to your political, industrial, and financial leaders about “teams, winning, and discipline.”  It’s a mockery of the war they refused to fight.  It’s a mockery of the Infidel warriors who died in our lands. We urge you to continue following their vacuous personalities so we can further watch your once great nation collapse.

Your statesman and elected officials are spineless, narcissistic, and more cowardly than your Generals.  They crave power over you above all else.  They come to our country, hide behind blast walls, and only heed the word of the indigenous leader they put in power.   I believe your soldiers call this a “self-licking ice cream cone.”

They’ve burned billions of dollars in a wasted effort to bring clean water, electricity, business, education, agriculture, and exports to a region that didn’t ask for it.  You should have saved yourself the effort and simply given the money directly to us.  Don’t worry; your diplomatic friends gave us plenty of your American tax dollars.  If you want to give it another shot with your “soft power,” send those with real experience, not fancy degrees and silver tongues.

Over the next few months, we will make the world understand that you failed worse than any fighting force that’s ever invaded our lands.  Today we celebrate victory.

As you evacuate your embassy, our fighters will be standing in the shade.  Our RPG marksmen will be patient.  We thank you for the parting gifts.  You’ll find surface-to-air missiles staged in the back of Toyota pickup trucks that you purchased for us.  We saw what Extortion 17 did to your nation and the morale of your fighting force.  Do your citizens even remember that victory? We’ll be repeating and improving upon our victory while your citizens and sympathizers evacuate in disgrace.  Every one of your foes around the world will know exactly how to break you. You are welcome to fly your empty drones, target our cell phones, and send your spies.  But they, too, will ultimately fail.  We’ll use their failures to show the world that you’re not all-powerful.  You’re a false front–an empty shell. You lie, cheat, steal, and are easily defeated because you lack the spine to fight.  This is your history now.  We’re grateful Allah gave us the opportunity to show the world how to defeat the Infidels.

We look forward to seeing you again across the battlefield.

Praise be to God,

The Taliban

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of veteran views on this issue.  Stay tuned for more and read different informed, national security perspectives in The Cipher Brief

 

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Mark Kelton, Former Deputy Director, CIA’s Counterintelligence, National Clandestine Service

Cipher Brief Expert Mark Kelton is a retired senior Central Intelligence Agency executive with 34 years of experience in intelligence operations. Before retiring, he served as CIA’s Deputy Director for Counterintelligence.  He is a partner at the FiveEyes Group and is Board Chair of Spookstock, a charity that benefits the CIA Memorial Foundation, the Special Operations Warrior Foundation and the Defense Intelligence Memorial Foundation.

EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — Winston Churchill’s 04 June 1940 speech in which he vowed that he and his countrymen would “fight on the beaches “and would “never surrender” in the face of a seemingly inevitable Nazi invasion is rightly renowned as perhaps history’s most famous address by a wartime leader.  Less well known, however, is the cautionary tone the new Prime Minister struck in that same appearance before the House of Commons, as he sought to temper the joy and relief engendered by the seemingly miraculous extraction of the British army from the beaches of Dunkirk.  “We must,” Churchill warned, “be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory.”  “Wars” he admonished, “are not won by evacuations.”

Shortly before the 2011 Abbottabad operation that killed Osama bin Laden, I was asked by my HQ, my views on mounting an assault on the target we knew as Abbottabad Compound 1, (AC1) given that we were not sure it sheltered the terrorist leader.  After expressing my 95% confidence that the Al Qaeda (AQ) leader was in fact, there, I allegorically added that we must strike as ‘you cannot leave Hitler in his bunker and end the war’.  I was fortuitously, right in my assessment that the murderer of so many innocents was present within AC1.  Sadly, however, his death did not bring our war with radical Islamic terrorism to a conclusion.  As was the case after Dunkirk, our enemy was unwilling to quit the field or to limit his unbounded war aims.

Likewise, we should have no expectation that the withdrawal of our forces from the Afghan theater of combat signals an end to the conflict with terrorists who started that war by attacking us on September 11, 2001.  We cannot unilaterally declare an end to the War on Terror by leaving Afghanistan – however much we might wish to do so – for the very simple reason that our enemies do not share that desire.  As former Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta put it, “I understand that we’re trying to get our troops out of there, but the bottom line is, we can leave a battlefield, but we can’t leave the war on terrorism, which still is a threat to our security.”

The Taliban parading of the American-made weapons and accoutrements of their defeated foes was, in a manner akin to that of ancient Rome, intended not only to celebrate victory.  It was also meant to humiliate the vanquished.   Such triumphal demonstrations – and what will be a galling celebration of the anniversary of 9/11 as their own holiday to follow – will evoke enthusiastic responses from Islamic extremists and will draw many new adherents to the cause that lies at the core of Taliban legitimacy and belief.

As was the case when we left Iraq and later had to go back into the region to crush the ISIS Caliphate that metastasized in the wake of our departure, there is every prospect that the Taliban’s success will breathe new life into Islamic extremist groups.  And there is no reason to believe that the “new” and now much more heavily armed Taliban – an organization that refused to break with AQ over the course of a brutal twenty-year battle, will be any less receptive to working with Islamic terror groups than were their pre-9/11 forebears.

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“We are going to have to maintain very, very intense  levels of indicators and warnings and observstion and ISR [Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance] over that entire region to monitor potential terrorist threats”, said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Mark Milley in a recent interview, adding it will not be easy.

As CIA Director William Burns said during Senate testimony in April, “Our ability to keep (the) threat…in check in Afghanistan from either al Qaeda or ISIS…has benefited greatly from the presence of U.S. and coalition militaries on the ground and in the air fueled by intelligence provided by the CIA and our other intelligence partners.” With the withdrawal of the American military, Burns said, “the U.S. government’s ability to collect and act on threats will diminish.”

Much discussed ‘over the horizon’ intelligence collection against Afghan terror targets will not fill the void left by the loss of our ability to monitor and attack terrorist targets from in-country bases.  With Afghanistan bordered by countries unlikely to be willing to host a significant US presence, intelligence collection missions will now have to be launched from bases well beyond the horizon with all that implies for the quantity, quality and timeliness of intelligence collected.  Such operations will also be commensurately more expensive and difficult to mount.  Moreover, the intimate knowledge of our adversaries that we have painstakingly built over the course of nearly 20 years on the ground, began aging the moment we departed Afghanistan.  Absent an intelligence presence on the ground, our ability to collect on terrorist groups operating in and from that country will only degrade further as time goes on.

After acknowledging that we “could see a resurgence of terrorism out of the region in the coming 12-36 months”, Milley went on that we will, “as opportunities present themselves… have to continue to conduct strike operations if there’s a threat to the United States.”  However, as our pre-9/11 experience showed, such remote strikes can delay our terrorist enemies’ plans, but will not deter them from their intent to strike the US homeland.

As such, Secretary Panetta is undoubtedly correct in his conclusion that US involvement in Afghanistan is not over.  “We’re going to have to go back in to get ISIS,” Panetta said.  “We’re probably going to have to go back in when al-Qaeda resurrects itself, as they will, with this Taliban.”  And, as was the case with our operations to destroy ISIS’s so-called Caliphate after we precipitously left Iraq, there can be no doubt that should we have to go back into Afghanistan, our task will be greatly complicated by the manner in which we left that country, abandoning our allies and bases there.

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The US withdrawal from Afghanistan will have profound geo-strategic implications for America’s position in the region and in the world.  Our Chinese, Russian and Iranian adversaries will seize the opportunity to fill the void left in the wake of our departure.

The Taliban has already indicated it will engage with China, which covets Afghanistan’s mineral wealth.  Entry into a transactional relationship with the cash-strapped Taliban regime and granting access to Afghan mineral resources – and possibly use of Bagram Air Base – in exchange for financial aid and Chinese support for the Taliban in international organizations would suit Beijing, which would evince no concerns about human rights and the like.

For their part, Central Asian countries will look away from Washington and ever more towards their old masters in Moscow and a rising China to ensure their security and economic well-being.   Islamabad, while publicly celebrating the victory of their Taliban proxies and its role in guiding it, must at the same time worry that the extremism embodied by the victors will gain renewed traction beyond its frontier provinces with all that implies for the security of the Pakistani state.

Caught by surprise by Washington’s decision to leave and the conduct of the withdrawal, even our closest and oldest allies are questioning US resolve.  They will surely think twice before acceding to any future US request to join in joint operations.  Our decision to quit Afghanistan, and its messy execution, will also evoke questions about the validity of American assurances to other nations under threat from aggressors.  It will not have been lost on them that the withdrawal of American air, intelligence, planning expertise and logistical support ensured the collapse of an Afghan Army that was dependent on the US.

Our adversaries, too, will see the chaotic nature of our departure as well as the abandonment of Americans, allied citizens and Afghans to uncertain fates as signs of weakness and enfeeblement.   This possibility is particularly dangerous in that they could seize this moment of US distraction to engage in opportunistic adventurism that could include movement by China against Taiwan; a Russian attempt to resolve its impasse with Ukraine forcibly; stepped-up Iranian prosecution of its proxy war with Israel; or a further ramping up by North Korea of its nuclear program.  Any such eventuality would force the US to respond vigorously or risk further erosion of its international credibility.

Finally, the costs involved in remotely monitoring and trying to deter threats emanating from a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan mean that we will be unable to shift intelligence and military resources away from the War on Terror to confront the threat posed by peer competitors to the degree we had hoped.

Aristotle is said to have pronounced, “You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.”  Likewise, the courage shown by so many – and the heroic conduct of US military and CIA personnel in particular – in seeking to extract American citizens from Afghanistan and to honor our obligations to Afghans who worked and fought alongside us for so long, cannot obviate the dishonor attendant to having left so many behind.  Bloody Taliban outrages and reprisals against the latter are a certainty.

It will not be long before Kabul’s new rulers recognize that the Americans now under their control, are potentially useful pawns in trying to extract diplomatic, financial and other concessions in exchange for their freedom.  The effectiveness of our efforts hereafter to extract our own people and our Afghan allies from the clutches of the Taliban and how we respond to any attempts to use them as leverage against us, will determine the depth of the stain on our national honor already attendant to the disastrous end of our Afghan campaign.

In that same famous speech, Churchill solemnly told his countrymen that: ‘The Battle of France is over: The Battle of Britain is about to begin.”  He went on that “we would be well advised to gird our loins for the continued warfare to come.”

As we approach the 20th anniversary of 9/11, we should honor our sacred dead from that horrible day.  But we should likewise prepare ourselves for the battles with Al Qaeda and its murderous kindred of Cain that will surely come.

Recent polls would indicate that Americans support the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, if not the way in which it was conducted.  One wonders how those polled would have responded if the question had been ‘Do you support a withdrawal from Afghanistan even if it markedly increases the chance of terror attacks and atrocities directed at your fellow citizens at home and abroad?’  I fear we will find out soon enough.

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