Unlike the Soviet Union, Russia is not a global ground combat power.

Russia has employed heavily armed mercenaries from the notorious Wagner Group and a range of other (PDF) government-cozy (and perhaps government-run) companies as the tip of the Russian foreign policy spear. In effect, Russia has outsourced its foreign policy in Libya, Syria, the Central African Republic, Madagascar, Mozambique, Sudan, Ukraine, Yemen, Burundi, and other global hot spots.

Dmitry Utkin, former commander of the Russian military intelligence directorate's (GRU's) Spetsnaz special forces units, allegedly founded the Wagner Group in 2014. Wagner and an elite GRU Spetsnaz unit reportedly share a military base in the Russian town of Molkino.

RAND's work on will to fight—the disposition and decision to fight, act, or persevere in conflict and war—and on Russian state power suggests that Russia is using mercenaries due in great part to its inherent military and civil weaknesses. Russian mercenaries (in fact, all mercenaries) also have behavioral limitations and vulnerabilities to influence. Dependence on mercenaries also reflects a vulnerability in Russian national will to fight. Both of these weaknesses can be exploited.

Mercenary soldiers with the Wagner Group (formerly Moran Security Group, and then Slavonic Corps Limited) and other Russian mercenary groups like Patriot, took the lead in some of the more dangerous frontline operations in Syria while uniformed Russian soldiers guarded air and naval bases along Syria's coastline

Russia's military has strictly limited ability to project ground power worldwide. It has almost no organic ability to project and sustain ground power more than a few hundred kilometers beyond its own borders. Russian strategic lift is anemic compared to Soviet-era lift. Available forces are often tied down in one of the many frozen conflicts that ring Russia's western and southern borders.

In February 2018, Russian-hired mercenaries led (or at least closely accompanied) a Syrian militia force armed with artillery and heavy tanks to seize an oilfield near the city of Deir az-Zour in northeastern Syria. American Special Operations Forces and Marines decimated them with hours of precision air attacks, killing perhaps (PDF) hundreds and causing the rest of the force—including the mercenaries—to flee. As Russian-hired mercenary personnel retreated from the battlefield at Deir az-Zour, other teams of Russian private military actors had to call in helicopter teams to evacuate the wounded from the battlefield in the absence of state support.

Russian mercenaries have also performed poorly in Africa. In Mozambique, Wagner mercenaries stumbled through the kinds of partner-building efforts at which U.S. special operations forces tend to excel. They offended the locals and reportedly double-crossed allies to make money. Islamic State insurgents have successfully attacked and killed them on poorly secured roads. Mercenary disinformation tactics in Mozambique backfired. What was billed as a Russian power play in a former Soviet client state looks like a disaster in the making.

Wagner sent hundreds of trainers and security personnel to the Central African Republic to help Russian commercial interests secure mining rights and to support a complex regional diplomatic push to increase Russian influence. There has been little pretense in this operation: It is primarily a money-making venture. In one case, Wagner mercenaries reportedly helped the rebels they were hired to fight in order to help a Russian mining company gain access to diamond mines. Wagner has been linked to the suspicious deaths of three journalists who were nosing around its CAR operations. This Russian mercenary-led deployment has been partially successful in countering French influence, but it is not clear that reported successes on the ground outweigh the lasting, negative consequences of Wagner's cutthroat behavior.

Russia sent mercenaries and probably some active military forces to support Khalifa Haftar's anti-government forces in Libya. In early 2020, 1,000 Wagner mercenaries reportedly fled the front lines between pro- and anti-government forces after suffering a resounding defeat. Combat losses for Wagner in Libya are unknown but possibly significant.

as individuals and as a group, Russian mercenaries have repeatedly shown that they will pursue self-interest and commercial interests over state interests, and that they will quickly abandon partner forces—and perhaps each other—when the tactical risks fail to outweigh the financial rewards.

There is no shortage of genuine tough guys in groups like Wagner and Patriot. Under the will to fight factor of quality, many Russian mercenaries would earn high marks for fitness and resilience. But outright toughness and even elite military training alone cannot sustain the will to fight of an individual primarily motivated by money.

Together, the weaknesses within Russian mercenary forces and within the Russian state in relation to press-ganged youths, conscripts, and casualties may offer ready opportunities for exploitation in great-power competition. These broader weaknesses in Russian national will to fight could be examined to identify more ways to prevent Russia from aggressively undermining Western democracy.

Egypt is not collecting tolls on ships’ passage. And ships, including those operated by Evergreen, have begun to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope.

For now, the knock-on effect of the stoppage is the accumulation of insurance claims and late fees, and delays in the delivery of cargo. But in the longer term, much as it did in the mid-twentieth century, the 2021 blockage of the Suez Canal, combined with the effects of the pandemic, may precipitate a reckoning in how maritime transport operates.

China’s monopoly can be largely attributed to its relatively low energy costs and less stringent environmental regulations.

a single country, China, has gained control over much of the world’s production and processing of the cobalt, graphite, lithium, manganese, and nickel used in lithium-ion batteries, the type of electricity-storage devices favored by electric-vehicle manufacturers today.

Chinese companies now control almost half of the DRC’s cobalt output, which constitutes over two-thirds of the world’s production. Perhaps of greater concern, China has come to dominate the refining and processing of those minerals. Eighty percent of the cobalt sulphates and oxides used for lithium-ion battery cathodes are processed in China.

OPEC and Russia bargained for months, but talks finally broke down after Moscow refused to limit its oil production to help stabilize oil prices in the wake of the slump in global oil demand caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Calculating that it could hurt Russia enough to force it back to the negotiating table, Saudi Arabia boosted its daily oil output by 20 percent, flooding the market with oil. Not to be intimidated, Russia responded with a short-term increase in its own oil output (possibly to strike back at Saudi Arabia or to force some American shale-oil companies out of business or both). As a result, oil prices collapsed. The futures price for West Texas Intermediate crude touched a remarkable -$37 per barrel. Although beneficial for oil consumers, the Russia-Saudi Arabia oil price war was a reminder of the influence that state-driven oil producers still had over the world’s energy security.

Though China controls a smaller share of the world’s production of lithium than that of other minerals, it has been buying up stakes in lithium mines around the globe.

Moving up the value chain, it is expected to build 101 of the 136 lithium-ion battery manufacturing plants that are currently planned over the next decade

n 2010, China abruptly restricted its rare-earth metal exports to Japan, nominally to protect the environment. But after a lengthy review, the World Trade Organization ruled against China’s restrictions. Since then, worries about relying on China as a strategic-minerals supplier have continued to grow. Sometimes, China feeds those fears. In one 2019 incident, China’s state-run Global Times flaunted the country’s dominance over rare-earth metals as a strategic weapon against other countries with the headline “China gears up to use rare-earth advantage.” Such not-so-veiled threats from government-linked media only fan suspicions that China will behave no better than Russia or Saudi Arabia—and possibly worse.

In 2019, the U.S. Department of State launched the Energy Resources Governance Initiative to “promote resilient and secure energy resource mineral supply chains” for all kinds of renewable energy and battery storage technologies.  The initiative’s membership has grown to include Australia, Botswana, Canada, Peru,

the world appears to be swapping its old dependency on OPEC and Russia, a fractious bunch that until recently was losing power to American oil-shale upstarts, for a new one on China, a single country with a one-party government

OUR is now a celebrated anti-trafficking charity, claiming to have worked in 26 countries, with the stated aim of bringing together "the world's experts in extraction operations and in anti-child trafficking efforts to bring an end to child slavery." It brought in more than $21 million in donations in 2019, the most recent year for which tax filings are available, and has enjoyed the support of high-powered backers

a common pattern for anti-trafficking NGOs working abroad, according to sex worker activists with Thailand’s Empower Foundation.

while OUR often claims to partner with local law enforcement on trafficking investigations and rescues, the extent of that “partnership” is often a modest donation OUR gives the agency, which in return credits it in press releases about any investigation, rescue, bust, or arrest that used the money.

OUR’s overseas operations, and the “jump team” it says conducts them, are the jewel in its crown: the subject of innumerable fundraising emails, interviews with Ballard, two documentaries, and Sound of Freedom, an upcoming feature film starring Jim Caviezel as Tim Ballard. (The casting of an actor most famous for playing Jesus Christ is perhaps not coincidental; while OUR is not an expressly religious organization, it heavily employs the language and imagery of faith, and Ballard, a devout Mormon, has said he was directly called by God to "Find the lost children.") OUR routinely claims that its overseas jump teams are made up of former members of the military, CIA, and law enforcement who undergo rigorous training.

nothing OUR did seemed recognizably informed by professional military or intelligence practice. There was, they said—contrary to the process for operations laid out on OUR's website—no meaningful surveillance or identification of targets; no development of assets; no validating that people they sought to rescue had in fact been trafficked, or that people they were targeting were indeed traffickers; and no meaningful follow-up with people who had been rescued on the missions in which they took part.  

“They’d go and just push for pimps to show up with girls.” If presented with sex workers of legal age, OUR would insist on younger girls—a method that several experts said could, when combined with a lack of intelligence-gathering and vetting, potentially lead to girls being trafficked who otherwise wouldn't have been.

Typically, after arranging for the women and girls to be brought to them, OUR's operators would call local police, who would make arrests. The operators would then leave the country.“They conflate sex work and trafficking,” said a former military member who has worked with OUR. “They’re making it worse.” 

Much research has been published demonstrating how these types of rescues are severely undermining the agency of trafficked persons and disempowering the individuals the involved organizations are claiming to help.

“There’s so many of these organizations here I don’t know one from the other,” Mai Janta, a sex worker leader of the organization, told VICE World News, laughing. 

it faces an ongoing investigation by Davis County, Utah attorney general Troy Rawlings, as Utah’s Fox 13 reported last October. While Rawlings hasn’t publicly described the contours of the investigation, people familiar with it have told both Fox 13 and VICE World News that his office is looking into whether OUR has made misleading statements in its fundraising appeals

Before the training began, candidates were given a psychological examination. On his way to his, William passed a candidate exiting an exam, who said, “If you mention God, you're a shoo-in.” 

“Before I went to this training,” he said, “I was counting down the days. I was expecting a world-class training, because these are supposed to be the best operatives.” Instead, he didn't feel like he was learning anything, and certainly not like he was being prepared to rescue children from dangerous traffickers. William wasn't taught, among other things, basic self-defense, signs to look for in a trafficker or trafficking survivor, surveillance technique, or secure communication. Topics that were covered included how to compartmentalize your discomfort if you find yourself in a gay bar, and the instructors' many war stories, including one that involved someone being stabbed dozens of times.

real estate brokers seem to have figured heavily in the world of OUR’s operators

Empower says that more than 50,000 sex workers have been a formal part of its operations over the years, and that members include sex workers from Thailand and migrant sex workers from Laos, Myanmar, China, and Cambodia. Its members are often extremely familiar with the various rescue operations that come to the country intent on “saving” trafficked women and girls; many organizations, working with local police, have conducted raids on massage parlors, legal brothels, and other places where they work. Most of these groups hail from the U.S., United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia, said Janta, and often have a clear religious focus. 

“They say they’re helping but really want to change your religion and your job,”

Beyond individual organizations, the entire raid-and-rescue model has fallen out of favor with responsible anti-trafficking organizations

“From our point of view, they come into our workplaces and make a relationship with the employer as well as the police. If there are no underage workers they continually ask and ask for the employer to find them some underage workers,” Janta added. “So they create a situation where there are underage workers, where there weren’t before.” 

“Just because they’re Americans or American missionaries, does not mean they’re actually representing the U.S. and U.S. interests,”

OUR's future seems, by all appearances, to be bright. Sound of Freedom, the film about the founding of OUR starring Jim Cavizel and Mira Sorvino as Tim Ballard and his wife Katherine, has been screened in theaters and awaits broad release. Celebrity backers like NFL players Corbin Kaufusi and Josh Allen enthusiastically promote OUR's work. And the public's continued fascination with QAnon and related conspiracy theories about pedophilia and child sex trafficking—from which OUR has publicly distanced itself—has led to huge interest in, and funding for, groups vowing to combat them. 

“We didn’t see them,” said Laovilawanyakul. “But we could’ve used their money for this time. They could have spent some of their money helping people get through COVID.”

“Instead of donating money to anti-trafficking orgs in the hope that it will help after something bad has happened, think about support for us all to be more secure and able to defend ourselves,” she said. “Scholarships, apprenticeships, family payments for mothers, support for teenagers who have left home.” Losing the ability to make a living has dislodged many women and girls from their villages and forced them into journeys as migrant sex workers.“If us and our families are secure,” Janta added, “we can defend ourselves and build our own lives without the need for rescue.”

In January, India also joined the other Quad members and Canada in Sea Dragon, an anti-submarine warfare exercise

New Delhi has also signed agreements with the US and Australia to let them refuel at Indian bases

“They were . . . making the statement that their co-operation with the US and Japanese navies was a reminder to China that if you put pressure on the land borders, you better be prepared to meet us in the naval realm.” 

The Financial Times this week reported that the four countries were developing a strategy to engage in vaccine distribution diplomacy in the Indo-Pacific, as a form of soft power to counter China’s vaccine efforts.

“unrealistic” to see the Quad as a formal military alliance

India publicly insists that the Quad is not aimed at China. Some Indians worry that the US is driving it into an alliance that India does not want.

India can calibrate its co-operation since it was not a US treaty ally, like Australia and Japan. “India can set the pace . . . The more India gets positive, the more expansive the agenda on the security side can become.”

the Air Force and Lockheed baked failure into the F-35’s very concept. “They tried to make the F-35 do too much,”

Pentagon leaders have hinted that, as part of the U.S. military’s shift in focus toward peer threats—that is, Russia and China—the Navy and Air Force might get bigger shares of the U.S. military’s roughly $700-billion annual budget. All at the Army’s expense.

The Gulf Stream is separate from the jet stream that has helped to bring extreme weather to the northern hemisphere in recent weeks, though like the jet stream it is also affected by the rising temperatures in the Arctic. Normally, the very cold temperatures over the Arctic create a polar vortex that keeps a steady jet stream of air currents keeping that cold air in place. But higher temperatures over the Arctic have resulted in a weak and wandering jet stream, which has helped cold weather to spread much further south in some cases, while bringing warmer weather further north in others, contributing to the extremes in weather seen in the UK, Europe and the US in recent weeks.

Research in 2018 also showed a weakening of the AMOC, but the paper in Nature Geoscience says this was unprecedented over the last millennium, a clear indication that human actions are to blame. Scientists have previously said a weakening of the Gulf Stream could cause freezing winters in western Europe and unprecedented changes across the Atlantic.

As well as causing more extreme weather across Europe and the east coast of the US, the weakening of the AMOC could have severe consequences for Atlantic marine ecosystems, disrupting fish populations and other marine life.