Will China Deploy Troops in Hong Kong ? posits  criteria for deployment of the hammer. Two of them have now been met:

• • Organizing efforts by civil servants, bringing political form to an amorphous movement.
  • Absent overt indications such as the above, concessions by Carrie Lam, that instead of diminishing the protests, result in escalated demands, contain the implied trigger for intervention.

(Reuters) Hong Kong official chides civil servants joining protests, satisfies the first element. In Beijing’s eyes, it risks establishment of a shadow government. A single concession was made,  the scrapping of the extradition bill, to no apparent effect.  The protestors have coalesced around the Five Demands. From (youngpost) Hong Kong protests: What are the ‘five demands’? What do protesters want?,

• Full withdrawal of the extradition bill.
• A commission of inquiry into alleged police brutality.
• Retracting the classification of protesters as “rioters”.
• Amnesty for arrested protesters.
• Dual universal suffrage, meaning for both the Legislative Council and the Chief Executive.

Other inducements run true to the China foreign policy tradition of a millennia, soft power. Had economic betterment of this highly educated and highly stressed population already occurred,  they might have been too complaisant  to risk their lives. Beijing may now have reasoned that for economic inducements to be effective, Hong Kong must have conducive public order.

To Beijing, events imply, If we wait, it will get worse, with the defection of civil servants risking a colour revolution. Hence, preparation: (Reuters) China quietly doubles troop levels in Hong Kong, envoys say.

There is one holdup: the plan. How can an action be surgical, when the protestors have themselves applied fairly sophisticated strategies to minimize the concept of “leadership” and replace predictability with randomness? The protestors wear masks, but this is effective only against a normal police state with limited manpower. China has, practically speaking, unlimited manpower.

Somewhere on the mainland, there are rooms with thousands of watchers, staring at video feeds, correlating appearances of masked figures the old way, attempting what AI probably cannot yet do.  With infinite patience, they catalog what they watch, aided by custom database programming and a little AI spice.

An historical example illuminates. In 1939, Ukraine harbored a pro-West and rather fascist insurgency led by Stepan Bandera.  Like Hezbollah today, the insurgency had its own counterintelligence operation. It  successfully identified Soviet  NKVD safe houses, where informants to the NKVD could meet with their handlers. How did they do it?

There were no surveillance cameras back then. Soviet NKVD agents wore standard issue high boots when in uniform. Western Ukrainians wore short boots. The Soviets forgot to change into short boots when they donned plain clothes. Sudoplatov, page 105.

They were given away by their shoes. Cataloging shoes and other articles of clothing, matching these to other biometrics and places of residence, reducing errors by cross-correlation — all this takes time. But Beijing figures they have only one chance to do it right. Space for the detained is not a problem. There is plenty of that in Xinjiang.

I feel sorry for the protestors. With so much idealism, dignity, and intelligence, they would honor the Athens of Pericles.

 

 

Reuters: U.S. withholding $105 million in security aid for Lebanon; Night Vision Goggles; Vox Populi concludes:

So we have a plausible explanation for the decision to deny aid, a conflict between State and the Pentagon. A short argument suggests that the aid is insufficient to prevent the intrusion of Russian influence.

(NY Times) White House Freezes Military Aid to Lebanon, Against Wishes of Congress, State Dept. and Pentagon contradicts this with factual authority. The NSC decision process that resulted in Lebanon aid cancellation, with  apparent objection by State and Defense, remains unexplained. The article echoes widespread suspicion of something like the Ukraine holdup. Quoting,

Though the president has denied it, senior administration officials have testified that there was indeed a quid pro quo, and the top American diplomat in Ukraine said he sent a cable telling Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that it was “folly” to withhold the aid.

This has become an open-source question of more than average interest.  The question of the hour is whether the  Lebanon aid cutoff is the result of

• Improper intrusion of politics, or something illicit.
• Proper, but ill advised decision making.
• A process that takes due measure of the concerns of the principals, though lacking broad consensus. With the opposition of State and Defense, it can’t be broad.

The NSC principals with the most at stake are the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Homeland Security,  the Director of National Intelligence, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Homeland Security Advisor. But the White House Chief of Staff, who is not a direct stakeholder, and the Homeland Security Advisor are most susceptible to pressure external to the deliberations of the NSC.

It is not impossible that Trump, acting through the White House Chief of Staff, dictated the cutoff. There is a significant and influential minority opinion,  prioritizing the danger of indirect aid to Hezbollah.  This would explain a decision that seems to lack consensus from the majority of stakeholders.

Receipt of new information is also possible. Such information could be in powerful opposition to personal links that have been established by State and Defense with their peers in Lebanon.

I’m not going to spell this one out. Those who have read this blog for a while, and have taken a shine to the craft of open source intelligence, may independently derive it. It will remain unstated, for reasons more important than writing an interesting article.

 

 

 

 

This article is written as a mystery. Did the authors meditate on the vanishingly small percentage of readers who could interpret?

(Reuters) U.S. withholding $105 million in security aid for Lebanon. Quoting,

The administration had sought approval for the assistance starting in May, arguing that it was crucial for Lebanon, an important U.S. partner in the volatile Middle East, to be able to protect its borders. The aid included night vision goggles and weapons used in border security.

The circumstances, which are not explained to the article authors, have superficial resemblance to the blocking of Ukraine aid:

The officials did not say why the aid was blocked. One of the sources said the State Department did not give Congress a reason for the decision….The State Department declined to comment.

But it’s nothing of the kind. The issue of aid is caught between:

• Diplomatic and strategic benefits of military aid.
• Risk of appropriation of U.S. military equipment by hostile parties, primarily Hezbollah.

Lebanon is divided by ethnicity and religion. But other than the size of the groupings, the workings of society are quite similar to  tribal Iraq. In both countries, the primacy of the tribes and religious groupings are challenged by protests that have more resemblance to the European revolutions of 1848 than Arab Spring. More than uprisings against tyrants, these are protests against systems.

A detailed analysis of Lebanon’s alliances show only the groupings of the moment. Without troubling to identify the exact moment Michael Aoun, the Maronite Christian president, became a Hezbollah ally, we have the handshake of March 7, 2019. (AP) Lebanon’s president says Hezbollah part of Lebanese people.

Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri resigned three days ago. (CNN) Lebanon’s Hariri resigns after nearly two weeks of nationwide protests.  In 2017, Hariri, who is also a Saudi citizen, was held hostage in Saudi Arabia, in an apparent attempt to pressure Hariri not to conciliate with Hezbollah. That strategy has failed.

This is the picture of the moment. It has an infinity of details to get lost in. The vox populi is doubtless being manipulated by unseen hands. We’ve seen enough of that domestically to understand how it works. The situation is fluid, so fluid that the attempt to foster pro-U.S. sentiment, even in limited sectors, is like building a castle out of quicksand.

Fearing further expansion of Russian influence, it is natural to look to the Lebanese Army. Historically, it is no Rock of Gibraltar. While back in the day, it reflected the primacy of Maronite power, it is divided by ethnic composition. It looks good only by comparison to Hezbollah.  (CNN) A New Jersey man scouted US landmarks for potential Hezbollah attacks, charges allege.

Perhaps the country’s preservative gift is the  beauty of Lebanon’s geography, with an open business climate that formerly bridged the West and the Middle East. This is now mostly a memory, but perhaps the persistence of it staves off complete chaos. The Lebanese share a dream.

Let us return to military aid. The question centers around a curious gadget, a vacuum tube. If you’re old enough, you may remember the soft glow of these tubes from the backs of TV sets and radios. Vacuum tubes have been completely replaced by solid state devices, with a few isolated exceptions. Sensor technology is one of them.

Night vision goggles contain a special kind of tube, with two ends. One end is a cold cathode, which releases electrons in response to very small amounts of light, such as that provided by a moonless night. The electrons are accelerated to the other end of the tube, where they hit a phosphor, which glows in response to each hit. The result is the grainy image.  I used a slightly obsolete Generation 2.5 intensifier to examine my back yard on a moonless night, and found a herd of deer.

For stationary surveillance, there are even more sensitive imagers, which require no visible light at all, responding to the long-IR “heat” given off by the human body. This is sensor technology.

The vacuum tubes and other parts in these systems are not off-the-shelf. Even if an adversary acquires samples, manufacturing the duplicate is a challenge. The U.S. possesses a technological lock on the most advanced sensor technology.  more so than even MANPADs such as the Stinger.

Treated well, goggles have a long lifetime.  Unlike other military technologies, they require no infrastructure, networking, or support. Goggles augment the sensory capabilities of the individual soldier. To detect, see, and engage in total darkness is a capability we would like to deny all but our closest allies.

For the future, the Pentagon’s concerns can be mitigated. It is highly feasible to build in a short lifetime for the intensifier tube, the central device of the goggles. The shorter the leash, the better.

So we have a plausible explanation for the decision to deny aid,  a conflict between  State and the Pentagon. A short argument suggests that the aid is insufficient to prevent the intrusion of Russian influence:

• Hezbollah, a terror organization and Iran proxy, has no collaborative points with the U.S.
• Hezbollah has collaborative value to Russia with the security of southern Syria.
• Saudi Arabia, whose interests coincide with the U.S., and with some shared culture, failed to project into Lebanon. Their man, Hariri, has just been  booted.
• Aoun’s alliance with Hezbollah  prefers Hezbollah as genuinely Lebanese. Hariri is not.

I’m reminded of the remark of one rueful Russian, who compared the U.S. and Russian interventions in Afghanistan. He said, paraphrasing, “Maybe the richest country in the world can buy the poorest [Afghanistan]”.

If State wants influence in Lebanon, try bank bailouts. Soft power beats hard. See Pivot to Asia; Soft Power, 1 of many, which is also relevant to (Reuters) China cites ‘early harvest’ benefits in Guadalcanal deal.

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