Here’s How Scared of China You Should Be | The Islamist Roots of French Disorder | Chinese Academics for Good Governance, and more

Ukraine Has a Breakthrough Problem  (Barry R. Posen, Foreign Policy)
It is the stated policy of the Ukrainian government to retake all of the territory that Russia has seized since 2014, including Crimea. To achieve this goal through military action, the Ukrainian military must accomplish one of the most daunting of military tasks: It must break through dense, well-prepared defensive positions, find some running room, and then either move quickly toward an important geographic objective such as the Sea of Azov, hoping to unravel the remains of the defending Russian army along the way, or quickly attempt to encircle a portion of Russia’s sizable forces in hopes of annihilating them.
To fail at this kind of campaign will mean that Ukraine is likely destined for a long war of attrition—an inauspicious one, pitting it against a much more populous country. Ukraine naturally wishes to avoid the attritional war by succeeding at its breakthrough campaign. But military history suggests the challenges here are also more daunting than have been commonly understood—at least among the public in the West.

Chinese Academics Are Becoming a Force for Good Governance  (Joy Y. Zhang et al., Issues)
As the life sciences in China have rapidly advanced over the past two decades, the country’s scientific community has become more adept at shaping policy for responsible research.

U.S. Warns China Over Atoll Dispute with Philippines in South China Sea  (Gavin Blair, The Times)
A Chinese coastguard ship used a water cannon to stop a supply boat from reaching a Philippine-occupied shoal, prompting the U.S. to warn Beijing that it is obliged to come to the defense of its ally if it is attacked.
Two Philippine boats, escorted by coastguard ships, were sailing to resupply the Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea with troops, food, water and fuel. The atoll is claimed by Manila and Beijing but the Philippine navy maintains a presence there.

Xi Rebuilt the Military to His Liking. Now a Shake-up Threatens Its Image  (Chris Buckley, New York Times)
As Xi Jinping has entrenched his hold on power in China, he has likened himself to a physician, eradicating the toxins of corruption and disloyalty that threaten the rule of the Communist Party. And his signature project for over a decade has been bringing to heel the once extravagantly corrupt military leadership.
But recent upheavals at high levels of the People’s Liberation Army forces suggest that Mr. Xi’s cure has not endured. Last week, he abruptly replaced two top generals in the Rocket Force, an unexplained shake-up that suggests suspicions of graft or other misconduct in the sensitive arm of the military that manages conventional and nuclear missiles.

The Mystery of Chernobyl’s Post-Invasion Radiation Spikes  (Kim Zetter, Wired)
Soon after Russian troops invaded Ukraine in February 2022, sensors in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone reported radiation spikes. A researcher now believes he’s found evidence the data was manipulated.

The Islamist Roots of French Disorder  (Liam Duffy, New Statesman)
The most destructive, spectacular and costly riots in France’s recent history, surpassing even the infamous unrest of 2005, are over. To the Anglophone media and its audiences they were an expression of the anger felt among the children of France’s former overseas possessions – a generational resentment fueled by experiences of poverty, discrimination and painful colonial legacies. Others have noted the opportunistic, even recreational quality of rioting, but the anger – the rage – against France among parts of its youth is real and goes deeper than one specific event. Socio-economic woes are crucial in explaining this tide of feeling. Yet any analysis which takes this into account but omits the specific and sustained delegitimization of France contained within that feeling is incomplete.

It Should Not Have Been a Surprise: The Threat from Putin’s Russia  (Andrew Hoehn and Thom Shanker, RealClearDefense)
A virtue of American democracy is that it is difficult to take our nation to war – which is right, since going to war is the grimmest decision a democracy can make. For western democracies, war and peace are binary, clear lines between one and the other, like an on/off switch.
Not so for Putin. For years, Putin has guided Russia into various stages of conflict with the West, and across the entire spectrum of aggression. To him, conflict is a rheostat that he can dial up or dial down, in gradations. Russians are comfortable living in that in-between. And in that world, with our freedoms and desire for clear lines of conflict and peace, we are outmatched, unready. In contrast, the Russians have kept key aspects of their society psychologically in a near-war and now, a war footing.