Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

4– “Take responsibility for the face of the world. The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow. Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away, and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.”

– Timothy Snyder

"I could not understand why men who knew all about good and evil could hate and kill each other."

– Mary Shelley

"Perhaps a man's character is like a tree and his reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

– Abraham Lincoln

1. I served with Matthew Livelsberger in Afghanistan. He awed us (From a Marine)

2. Congress Didn’t Ban TikTok: The Supreme Court should uphold the law I wrote, which requires only finding a new owner.

3. 1,200,000 Drones: Ukraine's Unmanned Weapons are Transforming Warfare

4. Behind the Curtain: The information gods

5. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 9, 2025

6. Iran Update, January 9, 2025

7. Arab States Race Turkey for Influence in New Syria

8. Taiwan’s Lock-Kneed Soldiers Kick Up a Fuss Over Tabooed Tradition

9. Trump's Greenland bid is about race with China for Arctic control

10. The great paradox: strategic thinking in an unstrategic world (Review essay)

11. The Danger Posed by Today’s Angry Vets

12. Taiwan hypersonics aim for deep strikes on the mainland

13. The Pentagon finessed its pivot to Asia. Can it last during Trump?

14. Soldiers are turning to social media when the chain of command falls short. The Army sees it as a nuisance.

15. Trump, the 'America First' candidate, has a new preoccupation: Imperialism

16. Can Trump buy Greenland? Technically, yes. Here are his options.

17. Surge of Female Enlistments Helped Drive Army Success in Reaching 2024 Recruiting Goal

18. DOGE is dispatching agents across U.S. government

19. U.S. Ambassador Says China Is Aligned With ‘Agents of Disorder’

20. Trump vs. the Military

21. Mending Fences: Strengthening Homeland Defense through Integrated Civil-Military Air Surveillance

22. China takes aim at Philippine democracy

23. Urgent Defense Recommendations for the Trump Administration

24. America Cannot Surrender Its AI Dominance

25. New POTUS, New Policies: A Forecast of Five Futures for the Russia-Ukraine War

26. It’s Time to Rethink DoD’s Civil Harm Mitigation and Response

27. America Cannot Surrender Its AI Dominance

28. The US Army needs less good, cheaper drones to compete

29. Kellogg wants to broker Russia-Ukraine peace deal within 100 days of Trump inauguration

30. The Quad Plus the Philippines

31. Who’s Afraid of America First?

31. Trump plans to rebuild the US Navy in Korean shipyards. We already know this works well

1. I served with Matthew Livelsberger in Afghanistan. He awed us (From a Marine)

A nice tribute to MSG Livelsberger and all ODAs. (Every SF ODA I have ever seen has a guy like this on its team).

I served with Matthew Livelsberger in Afghanistan. He awed us

Newsweek · by Gord Magill · January 9, 2025

Matt didn't look like the pictures in the news.

We first met in the winter of 2017 in a metal Quonset hut in the Afghan desert. The first thing I noticed about Matt was his beard: Like the other special operations forces, Matt and his team enjoyed relaxed grooming standards.

After nearly four months, that had translated into a flowing blonde beard that nearly reached his chest. Along with his tall frame, he could have been mistaken for Thor in drab olive camouflage.

I was new to southern Afghanistan, where Marines had been redeployed in 2017 to stem Taliban advances on Helmand Province.

Before the 300-strong Marine contingent returned, the Afghan government had relied on U.S. Army Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) teams like Matt's to repeatedly deploy to hold the Taliban at bay.

The Marines that preceded me had developed a close relationship with Matt's ODA team. As Marines targeted Taliban foot soldiers with drones and strafing gun runs on the dusty, pockmarked roads during the day, Matt's ODA team paired with Afghan special operations forces to target Taliban mid-level leaders in their operation centers—colloquially known as "watoks"—as they retired for the evening.

Inset, Matthew Livelsberger's driver's license photo. Main image, Nathan Lowry (pictured furthest right) with his intelligence team at their base in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, mid-deployment. Inset, Matthew Livelsberger's driver's license photo. Main image, Nathan Lowry (pictured furthest right) with his intelligence team at their base in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, mid-deployment. Ethan Miller/Getty Images/Nathan Lowry

Usually, this meant a nighttime insert into a nearby field using helicopters, swift raids to capture or kill fighters in the mud compounds on the objective, and a hasty extract before Taliban forces could mount reinforcements.

We worked closely with Matt, who was an 18F Special Forces Intelligence Sergeant, to develop compounds of interest for Matt's team to strike.

But at the end of the day, the targets were Matt's decision. It was his responsibility to decide who lived or died.

As an 18F, Matt would go out on each raid, write his team's intelligence reports, grab a few hours of sleep and then begin planning the next operation. Matt's understanding of the Helmand terrain and intelligence operations was unparalleled but he didn't have the manpower or resources that a larger military unit enjoyed.

So every few weeks, he visited our postage stamp compound. He would amble around our operations center, ducking under the plywood overhangs while discussing drone coverage and communications intercepts with our intelligence specialists.

He awed us—most of us were on our first deployment to Afghanistan and Matt had served in combat multiple times and had fought the Taliban on the ground. Most of us had just seen them as we conducted air strikes through grainy ISR feeds.

Matt was eager to teach but despite his experience, was just as willing to learn from our Marines who could explain how the Taliban communicates or discuss the source coverage of our Taliban spies.

Then he would leave our compound, don his body armor and night vision goggles, and go out on the objective as we watched from the relative safety of our compound in the desert.

After one successful raid we collaborated on, he sent a message to us: "that was a good one, let's find more like those." And so we did. And he went back out again. Night after night, week after week.

Several months into my deployment, Matt and his team returned home in February 2018. A new team replaced his. Business continued as usual: Violence without purpose.

The Taliban lobbed rockets at our base and the ODA team we were co-located with—we responded with air strikes.

After they targeted our Afghan partner checkpoints in the evening, we targeted them with HIMARs rockets during the day. And the new ODA team increased their operational tempo in a national campaign effort to pressure the Taliban into negotiating.

A three-day national ceasefire brought hope in June, but continued fighting in July dashed reconciliation efforts with the Taliban. In August 2018 during a night raid in northern Helmand, a member of the new ODA team, Reymund Transfiguracion, died in an IED strike after rushing to save a wounded Afghan soldier.

The compound had been booby-trapped. Yet the ODAs kept going on raids, week after week.

Members of Nathan Lowry's intelligence team (he is pictured second from the right) and other officers in his unit, Task Force Southwest, at their base in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, shortly before they returned home. Members of Nathan Lowry's intelligence team (he is pictured second from the right) and other officers in his unit, Task Force Southwest, at their base in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, shortly before they returned home. Nathan Lowry

In October 2018, I prepared to come home: Despite all of the air strikes and rockets we fired (and the vehicle-borne IEDs, ambushes and insider attacks the Taliban attempted) nothing had changed.

Our deployment had been eleven months, long enough for yet another ODA team to rotate into Helmand. After one deployment, I was dispirited and jaded. I was done with Afghanistan and the Marine Corps.

As I monitored chat and emails in our intelligence operations center days before leaving, I saw a familiar name sending plans for upcoming operations in southern Afghanistan: "MLivelsberger."

Matt had rotated back into Afghanistan after a brief reprieve.

I was elated at first— if anyone could turn the tide in southern Afghanistan it would be men like Matt and his team, who knew Helmand intimately and were willing to risk everything with their Afghan partners at night, week after week.

But as I boarded the plane to return home, I also mourned for Matt and his teammates: I knew they would keep fighting until the war was over or until it killed them.

Nathan Lowry is a former Marine ground intelligence officer who served in Afghanistan, Africa, and Europe. He also served on the staff of the Afghanistan War Commission throughout 2024.

All views expressed are the author's own, and are not representative of the Afghanistan War Commission or the U.S. government.

Do you have a unique experience or personal story to share? See our Reader Submissions Guide and then email the My Turn team at myturn@newsweek.com.

Newsweek · by Gord Magill · January 9, 2025

2. Congress Didn’t Ban TikTok: The Supreme Court should uphold the law I wrote, which requires only finding a new owner.

"order in China and chaos in the west."

We need to understand this.

Unrestricted warfare. Three Warfares: Psychological Warfare. Legal warfare (Lawfare). Media or Public Opinion Warfare.

Excerpts:

If Mr. Xi decides to scuttle such a sale, it will be further evidence he perceives the Communist Party to be in a “smokeless war” against the West. In a 2023 address by Mr. Xi that had been kept secret until last week, the Chinese leader described, in Khrushchevian fashion, the arrival of a “new era” that can be defined as “order in China versus chaos in the West.”

Congress Didn’t Ban TikTok

The Supreme Court should uphold the law I wrote, which requires only finding a new owner.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/congress-didnt-ban-tiktok-trump-bytedance-0c9c87c4?mod=hp_opin_pos_4#cxrecs_s

By Mike Gallagher

Jan. 9, 2025 1:01 pm ET

Demonstrators gather for a press conference about their opposition to a TikTok ban on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 22, 2023. Photo: brendan smialowski/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Imagine it’s 1956. The first Cold War is raging. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev has told Western ambassadors: “We will bury you!” Out of nowhere, Pravda, the Soviet propaganda outlet, launches a bid to buy ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Such an effort would have been rejected by the American people and the government entities that protect their free speech.

Today, a more insidious version of this hypothetical is a reality. TikTok, a major source of news and information in America, is controlled by America’s geopolitical adversary, China. On Friday the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in TikTok v. Garland before deciding whether the company must comply with the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which I wrote and which requires ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese Communist Party-controlled owner, to divest itself of the platform by Jan. 19.

If TikTok vanishes from app stores this month, ByteDance will have no one to blame but itself. Rather than pursuing divestiture, it will have devoted the 270 days since the law went into effect to lobbying. Its actions suggest that ByteDance and the Communist Party believe it is easier to manipulate our system than comply with our laws. The justices must join bipartisan majorities in Congress in sending the message that ByteDance and the Chinese Communist Party are mistaken.

TikTok, however, has something in its back pocket that few would have predicted five years ago: a friend-of-the-court brief from Donald Trump. The president-elect recognizes the national-security threat TikTok poses under Chinese control. In the brief, Mr. Trump reiterates that “the national security concerns presented by ByteDance and TikTok appear to be significant and pressing.” He was ahead of the curve when he took on TikTok in his first term. His incoming national-security team, especially Mike Waltz, Marco Rubio and John Ratcliffe, have led the way in addressing the Chinese Communist Party’s cold war against America and the threat of TikTok.

Curiously, though, Mr. Trump’s brief compares the TikTok law to the social-media censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story. I share the president-elect’s concerns about censorship, which is why I drafted the law. There have been documented instances of censorship with the app in Beijing’s control.

The courts agree. Last month a panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld the law unanimously and dismissed TikTok’s Orwellian position that protecting the First Amendment somehow violates the First Amendment: “The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. Here the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States.” If the Supreme Court follows suit, TikTok will have no remaining legal recourse.

The best outcome for TikTok would be a sale to an owner that isn’t connected to a foreign adversary. The goal has never been to stop Americans from using TikTok but rather to let them use it safely. This position enjoys bipartisan and bicameral agreement in Congress and support from the executive branch and would raise no objection in the courts.

Contrary to TikTok’s claims, the Protecting Americans Act isn’t a ban on TikTok or any other app. It simply prevents foreign adversary entities, like ByteDance, from owning American social-media platforms. For almost a century, the U.S. has prohibited foreign control of radio and television stations—America would never have permitted the Soviet Union to buy or control such entities. Had social media existed at the time, it would have undoubtedly been included.

Limits on foreign social-media ownership are even more justified for two reasons. First, TikTok—unlike broadcast stations—doesn’t merely produce content. TikTok can manipulate the content that Americans themselves create, for example by censoring what TikTok’s communist overlords don’t want Americans to see or by amplifying inflammatory content.

Second, through TikTok, China can gain access to detailed data on hundreds of millions of American users. One only need look to the recent Salt Typhoon hacking operation of American telecom networks to understand this threat.

The law Congress passed isn’t the obstacle to saving TikTok. It is General Secretary Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party. Despite having six months to find a buyer, TikTok insists that divestment is impossible. That is only because Mr. Xi and the Chinese have imposed export restrictions preventing a sale and have blocked negotiations to facilitate divestment.

Mr. Trump can still force a sale. Potential purchasers are waiting in the wings. A consortium led by Project Liberty founder and investor Frank McCourt, joined by Canadian entrepreneur and “Shark Tank” co-host Kevin O’Leary, is ready to acquire TikTok, even without its algorithm.

If Mr. Xi decides to scuttle such a sale, it will be further evidence he perceives the Communist Party to be in a “smokeless war” against the West. In a 2023 address by Mr. Xi that had been kept secret until last week, the Chinese leader described, in Khrushchevian fashion, the arrival of a “new era” that can be defined as “order in China versus chaos in the West.”

Let’s free TikTok from Mr. Xi’s control and thereby prevent him from fomenting further chaos in America.

Mr. Gallagher, a Journal contributor, is head of defense for Palantir Technologies and a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute. As a Member of Congress from Wisconsin, he was chairman of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.

1,200,000 Drones: Ukraine's Unmanned Weapons are Transforming Warfare

19fortyfive.com · by David Hambling · January 9, 2025

Key Points and Summary: Ukraine’s drone warfare has reached unprecedented heights, with 1.2 million drones produced in 2024 alone. Key components include FPV kamikaze drones, reconnaissance quadcopters, and long-range strike UAVs like the Lyutyy, which boasts a 600-mile range.

-FPVs dominate Ukraine’s arsenal, making up over 90% of production and proving critical in anti-armor roles. Heavy bombers, hybrid drones, and fixed-wing UAVs offer flexibility for reconnaissance, precision strikes, and deep-target missions.

-Ukraine’s innovative drone strategies, driven by evolving technology and battlefield demand, are reshaping modern warfare and providing a blueprint for nations like the U.S. to update their drone forces.

Ukraine Reveals Drone Order of Battle

Large numbers of small drones have become a key component in Ukraine’s ground war. This development was formalized last year with the establishment of the Unmanned Systems Forces as a separate branch of the armed services, a move later copied by Moscow.

But the exact makeup of this force is a mystery. We know the composition of an armored battalion in terms of tanks, IFVs, artillery, and other hardware, but no information has been released on the uncrewed equivalent – until now.

Figures released last month by Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense give the total production of drones for 2024, providing insight into the proportions of different drones deployed. The total for the year is a staggering 1.2 million drones, the vast majority being small FPV kamikazes.

This is not a complete account of Ukraine’s drones. At the start of the war, before the military appreciated the value of these types, volunteers and fundraising groups supplied drones direct to army units, bypassing the military procurement process. This activity continues on an impressive scale. Fundraiser Serhii Sternenko has organized drives supplying more than 133,000 FPVs over the course of the war – that’s more drones than any NATO army possesses.

The official figures do give a good indication of the composition of the drone force and the proportion of the different types.

FPVs: The Expendable Drone

Unsurprisingly, more than 90% of the drones supplied have been small First Person View (“FPV”) kamikaze drones derived from racing quadcopters.

These are one-way loitering munitions which form the backbone of Ukraine’s anti-armor capability as well as destroying firing positions, artillery and logistics vehicles behind the lines. There are a huge variety of designs and they typically range from 7-inch to 12-inch frames.

During the year, FPVs have become significantly bigger. The first models seen in 2022 typically carried a 1.5 kilo / 3-pound warhead. Recent models have been more substantial, with a typical payload now being more like 2-3 kilos / 4-6 pounds, making them more effective against heavier armor and larger targets. Maximum range is around 12 miles, though they are mainly used at 3-6 miles.

The number of night-capable thermal FPVs was not stated but, if the published kill videos are any indication, these are a tiny fraction of the total. This year Ukraine also started using interceptor FPVs to target Russian reconnaissance drones. The number is not known but they have scored more than a thousand kills.

As for unit cost, according to Sternenko, the FPVs supplied by his organization range from $300-$460 for daytime models depending on size, with the nighttime versions being $700-$800. Those acquired under government contracts may be more expensive but in the same general range.

Ukraine Drone Procurement. Created by Author for use by 19FortyFive.com

Quadcopters: Eyes In The Sky And Bombs On High

The next most common type were reconnaissance quadcopters, a class which includes light bombers carrying a payload less than 2 pounds.

Ukraine acquired more than 40,000 of these, of which more than 12,000 – just over a third—were ‘night’ drones with thermal imaging capable of operating in darkness. The vast majority are repurposed and lightly modified commercial drones.

The quadcopters have become essential for surveillance, reconnaissance, intelligence gathering, damage assessment and directing artillery fire. They are also useful as light bombers, dropping grenades against personnel or demolishing abandoned vehicles.

In military service, the firmware is updated – or ‘hacked’ – to prevent the drone from broadcasting its location and remove limitations imposed by the Chinese manufacturers. They generally stay some distance back from Russian lines to avoid jamming, using zoom cameras to get a closeup view.

The DJI Mavic 3 appears to be one of the most popular types. Marketed as an “everyday commercial drone”, the Mavic 3 has a 45-minute flight time with a sophisticated autopilot, obstacle avoidance, and high-quality 4/3 CMOS camera with a 56x hybrid zoom. The Mavic 3T version has a thermal imaging camera with 640×512 resolution. while is inferior to military models, but allows the drone to keep working at night (with reduced range) when others are grounded. The Mavic 3T retails at around $4,000.

Fixed Wings: Reconnaissance for Deep Strike

The next most significant type are the fixed-wing, aircraft-type reconnaissance UAVs, of which 5,000 were supplied, including the Shark, GOR and Furia.

These have much longer range and endurance than quadcopters, and carry out reconnaissance missions deep inside Russian-held territory. These are the drones that find targets for HIMARS, Storm Shadow and other long-range weapons as well as artillery, and video the resulting strikes in realtime.

The A1-CM Furia has a seven-foot wingspan and flies for up to three hours on one battery charge. It can transmit data from up to 30 miles / 50 km away. It can navigate without satellite assistance, and carries day or night sensors. The estimated cost is around $70k.

Night Bombers

Heavy bombers are among Ukraine’s most feared drones.

The Russians call them ‘Baba Yaga’ after a witch from Slavic folklore and have an almost superstitious dread of them. Battlefield myths claim that they can only be destroyed by a flamethrower, and that Baba Yagas swoop down at night to carry off injured Russian soldiers in their metal claws.

Ukraine acquired more 2,000 of these reusable attack multicopters in 2024. There were several types from different makers, including Nemesis, Kazhan(“Bat”), and Vampire.

The bombers are much larger than consumer quadcopters, and typically have six or eight rotors, but can still be carried by one person. They generally typically fly at night at low altitude to avoid air defenses, hovering over targets to drop bomb s with high precision. The E620 Kazhan can carry a payload of as much as 44 pounds/ 20 kilos, or less over longer ranges (up to 8 miles).

Armament is typically 82mm or 120mm mortar bombs or TM-62 anti-tank mines converted into aerial bombs. Heavy bombers are also used as minelayers, placing anti-tank mines on tracks and roads as well as sealing up paths through minefields. The reported cost is around $20,000.

Ukraine Drones by the Numbers. Image created by author for 19FortyFive.com

Multipurpose Hybrids

The final tactical category are described as “reusable FPV copters” of which there were 5,000.

These fall somewhere between the kamikaze FPV and quadcopters. Lacking the more expensive electronics, in particular cameras and other sensors, they can be effective as bombers, minelayers and transports, ferrying supplies to the front lines when troops are otherwise cut off.

2024 saw the first use of ‘drone carrier’ drones, acting as motherships and communication relays for FPVs.

The largest known reusable FPV is the Queen Honet model produced by Wild Hornets, which has a 15-inch frame and can carry a payload of up to 15 pounds, but costs under $2,000.

Long Range Strike

The final category of drones are in a different class to the rest.

These are the long-range strike drones, effectively small, propeller-drive cruise missiles launched against strategic targets hundreds of miles away. These are the response to the Iranian-designed Shahed drones which Russia has been bombarding Ukraine with for more than two years.

Shahed-136 Drone. Image Credit: YouTube Screenshot.

Ukraine’s MoD bought more than 6,000 deep-strike drones, again of several types including Lyutyy (“Fierce”) and Firepoint. Analyst HI Sutton has identified more than 22 types of Ukrainian strike drone which range from converted Soviet reconnaissance drones and crude garage-built models made of plastic piping to modified light aircraft and advanced models with sophisticated electronics. Again many of these are made by private efforts and likely the MoD has selected the most capable for acquisition..

These drones have had considerable success at setting Russian oil facilities ablaze and hitting airbases and other strategic targets. They are not yet produced in the same volumes as the Russian Shaheds, but if plans to build 30,000 next year are realized they could have a major effect on the ailing Russian economy.

The most commonly seen type is the Lyutyy which has a twenty-three-foot wingspan and carries a payload of more than 100 pounds of explosive with a range of over 600 miles . The cost is reportedly around $200,000.

Future Forces

The breakdown given suggests that a notional drone company would have around 1,000 FPV, 5 long-range reconnaissance drones, 40 shorter-range quadcopters, 5 multipurpose hybrids and 2 bombers, with the long-range strike drones assigned to a higher echelon. This is the hardware expenditure for the year: the FPVs in particular are ammunition, and the attrition rate among other types, especially quadcopters, is likely to be high.

FPV teams can get through drones at a high rate. An extreme case is operator Timofiy Orel, awarded the “Hero of Ukraine” for his actions from January-May 2024, when he destroyed 42 tanks, 44 BMPs, 10 MT-LBs, and 28 BTR/APCs as well as eliminating more than 400 enemy personnel. This type of success is only possible in close partnership with reconnaissance drone operators finding targets.

Switchblade Drone. Image Credit: Industry Handout.

Less active FPV operators use several FPVs per day in action, and, as with artillery ammunition, the demand is always for more.

Finding an appropriate balance between low-cost, short-range systems and the more expensive, long-range reconnaissance and strike drones is a challenge. Drone technology is evolving fast. But the shape of future forces may now be emerging. And that will be important to every nation looking up update its drone force, including the US.

Author Profile: David Hambling

David Hambling is a London-based journalist, author and consultant specializing in defense technology with over 20 years’ experience. He writes for Aviation Week, Forbes, The Economist, New Scientist, Popular Mechanics, WIRED and others. His books include “Weapons Grade: How Modern Warfare Gave Birth to Our High-tech World” (2005) and “Swarm Troopers: How small drones will conquer the world” (2015). He has been closely watching the continued evolution of small military drones. Follow him @David_Hambling.

19fortyfive.com · by David Hambling · January 9, 2025

4. Behind the Curtain: The information gods

Two related articles below.

Jan 8, 2025 -Politics & Policy

Column / Behind the Curtain

Behind the Curtain: The information gods

https://www.axios.com/2025/01/08/media-information-facebook-x-instagram

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

Three massive, concurrent tectonic shifts are reordering in dramatic ways how America and the world will get, and consume, information in the years ahead:

Trust in traditional media is vanishing.
Where people are getting information instead has shattered into dozens of ecosystems.
The world's most powerful social platforms — X, Facebook, Instagram — no longer police speech or information.

Why it matters: In this new information world order, the people with the largest platforms and followings hold more power than ever in shaping reality. That's a seismic shift in how realities are formed in real time.

Meta's decision to dial back fact-checking, announced Tuesday, captures the sea change.

A few short years ago, Twitter (before it was X), Facebook and Instagram had robust teams monitoring news and information — and pulling down posts that were hateful or deemed fake or misinformation. On top of that, news organizations had more credibility than today — allowing them both to expose misinformation, and also help correct it for the public.
Now, the platforms' fact-checking teams have been dismantled, and traditional media is more delegitimized with a lot of consumers.

While that was happening, the common window through which most Americans learned about the country and the world — TV, newspapers, radio — was shattered into dozens of shards of glass, based on consumer's personal preferences.

So as President-elect Trump — a huge beneficiary of this new reality — takes office, the way we get informed has been upended in ways most have not fully reckoned with.

Rising powers:

Elon Musk (211 million followers on X), Mark Zuckerberg (118 million followers on Facebook, 15 million on Instagram) and others running the biggest, most influential platforms, and attracting the biggest personal followings. Trump has 97 million followers on X, if he ever returns in earnest. Plus his posts from his own platform, Truth Social (8.5 million followers), are instantly mirrored and amplified on X by official Trump accounts, fan accounts and news organizations.
New media entities, especially on the right, benefit from the new dynamics.
Any media company or person with a big following that trusts them to help make sense of the world around them (the mission of Axios). Tech execs tell us this shifting reality presents new opportunities for trusted names in media to help readers navigate the information landscape.
Most worrisome, malicious actors who want to spread misinformation at scale with scant policing. Russia, China and others are quite adept at this and now face less resistance.

Reality check: Trump, Musk, and Zuckerberg are beneficiaries — but are proactive architects, not passive winners.

Eye on the prize: Musk is trying to use this power to shape public opinion in the U.S., Britain and Germany in ways that help his political and business interests. Musk and Trump are of one mind on most topics — giving each more power.

Zuckerberg is basically using the Musk playbook: Align with and back Trump, make plain his company is moving in a more MAGA-friendly direction, and stop policing his platforms in ways that bother either Trump or his supporters.
Friends of Zuckerberg tell us this is what he long wanted to do, but felt he couldn't for internal and external reasons. Now it's easy.

Beyond replacing fact-checking, Meta also said it will bring back more political content to its platforms and end restrictions on certain topics "out of touch with mainstream discourse," Zuckerberg said in his announcement video, "like immigration and gender."

It also will adjust filters scanning for policy violations to tackle only illegal and "high severity" violations. Those include topics like terrorism, child sexual exploitation, drugs, fraud and scams.
The company's U.S. content review team will move to Texas from California. Zuckerberg said that will help Meta "build trust to do this work in places where there is less concern about the bias of our teams." X last year announced the creation of a safety unit in Texas.

What to watch: One company struggling in this new environment is the Washington Post, which is bleeding talent and facing an internal revolt.

We hear Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who owns the Post, wants to make it a publication for "all of America," with a heavy emphasis on social media, not traditional media popularity.
Relatedly, the Post said Tuesday that it'll abandon longtime efforts to promote its scoops to TV and other legacy outlets, to expand "beyond traditional media to reach new audiences."

Why it matters to you: The burden now falls on you to find sources of information you trust for reliable truth. That means better scrutinizing not only the publications you choose, but the individuals you follow on social media. That's a lot to ask — but it's the new necessity.

Axios' Sara Fischer and Scott Rosenberg contributed reporting.

Jan 7, 2025 -Politics & Policy

Column / Behind the Curtain

Behind the Curtain: The new gatekeepers

https://www.axios.com/2025/01/07/meta-x-misinformation-fact-checking-community-notes

Illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios

Never has it been easier to spread misinformation at scale — with less concern about media meaningfully policing it, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a "Behind the Curtain" column.

Why it matters: Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are of one mind. The most powerful global information platforms should be governed by free speech — and the people — not by the platforms themselves.

Both concluded it's too hard, too inherently biased, and too restrictive to put limits on speech. It's also cheaper to stop trying — and convenient to switch as Washington goes all-in on MAGA.

A decade ago, the mainstream media played the role of spotting and exposing misinformation spread under the guise of legitimate free speech. But faith in the traditional media is in the dumpster.

What's new: Meta made a far-reaching announcement Tuesday, with a post headlined, "More Speech and Fewer Mistakes." Facebook, Instagram and Threads will end their third-party fact-checking program — and move to a Community Notes model, where users add corrections and context.

Joel Kaplan — who last week was named Meta's chief global affairs officer, succeeding Nick Clegg — announced the changes Tuesday on the famous curvy couch at "Fox & Friends," a favorite show of President-elect Trump. "This is a great opportunity for us to reset the balance in favor of free expression," Kaplan said.
Mark Zuckerberg — Meta founder, chairman and CEO — says in a video: "We're going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms."

Between the lines: The truth is, it is an almost impossible task for companies to police speech without bias or unfairness. That leaves two other options — the government or individuals. Both X and Meta are choosing people, with an imperfect "community notes" mechanism to correct misinformation in real time.

X's Community Notes system "regularly allows blatant misinformation to be loudly amplified for hours or days before being noted," Axios' Dan Primack notes (on X!).

Global implications: Online misinformation that affects elections in the U.S. and Europe has also started wars and led to killings in Myanmar and elsewhere.

The bottom line: That opens most of social media up as a Wild West of expression, where high-quality, trustworthy information will commingle with garbage and misinformation. That's what free speech absolutists have long fought for.

That puts a heavy burden on us, as individual consumers of news, to be super-savvy in spotting and sharing what's real — and what's crap. It also gives a massive advantage to those with the biggest platforms or biggest followings — including Musk himself.

Go deeper: Watch Zuck's video ... More on Meta's move.

5. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 9, 2025

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 9, 2025

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-january-9-2025

Ukraine's Western partners reiterated their support for Ukraine and their commitment to the development of Ukraine's defense industrial base (DIB) at the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on January 9. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for all participants of the group to sign bilateral security agreements with Ukraine in order to strengthen Ukrainian forces and protect Ukraine's energy sector. Zelensky emphasized the importance of providing Ukraine with more air defense systems and stated that Ukraine wants to supply Ukrainian forces with a record number of domestically produced and internationally procured drones in 2025. Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov announced that the Ukraine Defense Contact Group approved eight roadmap documents that outline the Ukrainian forces' objectives through 2027 in key areas for international cooperation, including air defense, artillery, armored vehicles, drones, air force, and maritime security. Umerov stated that the roadmaps aim to ensure that the Ukrainian military is compatible with NATO and serve as the basis for medium- and long-term support for Ukraine. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told Bloomberg ahead of the January 8 Ramstein meeting that Russia has some advantages in the war but is also facing challenges, as evidenced by Russia's turn to North Korea and Iran for assistance in its war against Ukraine.

Ukraine's Western partners announced additional military aid packages at Ramstein Air Base on January 9. Austin announced a new US military aid package for Ukraine under the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) valued at approximately $500 million. The package includes AIM-7, RIM-7, and AIM-9M air defense missiles; air-to-ground munitions; F-16 support equipment; and small-arms ammunition. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius announced that Germany will provide Ukraine with an unspecified number of IRIS-T air defense missiles. Polish Deputy Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz announced that Poland is also preparing a new aid package for Ukraine. UK Defense Secretary John Healey and Latvian Defense Minister Andris Spruds jointly announced that the drone coalition, including the UK, Latvia, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden, will provide Ukraine with 30,000 drones at an unspecified future time after the coalition signed contracts worth 45 million pounds ($55.4 million).

Key Takeaways:

Ukraine's Western partners reiterated their support for Ukraine and their commitment to the development of Ukraine's defense industrial base (DIB) at the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on January 9.

Ukraine's Western partners announced additional military aid packages at Ramstein Air Base on January 9.

Russian elites and high-ranking security officials are reportedly frustrated with Russian President Vladimir Putin's efforts to wage a full-scale war in Ukraine with half measures and are increasingly concerned with Putin's timeline to end the war.

High-ranking Russian security officials appear to be assessing that Russia needs to intensify its war in Ukraine rather than seek an exit via negotiations.

Russian elites' reported diagnosis of the main problem with Russia's conduct of the war is inaccurate, as Russia's failure to restore maneuver to the battlefield — not a shortage of manpower — is the main factor causing Russia's relatively slow rate of advance.

Meduza's report indicates that Russia's security elite — like Putin himself — is uninterested in a negotiated and peaceful resolution to the war in the near future.

A Russian opposition investigative outlet reported that Russian authorities have turned a pretrial detention center (SIZO) in Taganrog, Voronezh Oblast into a torture center for Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) and imprisoned Ukrainian civilians.

The UN condemned the recent surge in Russian executions of Ukrainian POWs.

The Armenian government approved a draft law on January 9, beginning Armenia's accession process into the EU.

Russian forces recently advanced near Borova and Pokrovsk and in Kursk Oblast.

Ukrainian forces recently advanced near Sudzha.

Russian officials continue to indicate that the Kremlin intends to further militarize the Russian government and Russian society in the long term.

6. Iran Update, January 9, 2025

Iran Update, January 9, 2025

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-january-9-2025

Fighting reportedly erupted along parts of the frontline between the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) in northern Syria amid indications of an upcoming SNA offensive against the SDF. Local, anti-SDF media reported on January 9 that the SDF and SNA exchanged artillery fire and “clashed” near the Balikh River, north of SDF-controlled Ain Issa. Three SNA-affiliated fighters were reportedly injured in the fighting. Local media reported artillery shelling and fighting along the M4 highway, west of Tal Tamr as well. The SNA has reportedly sent units to the frontlines in recent days, indicating that the SNA is preparing to attack the SDF. Such an attack would be part of the Turkish and SNA effort to coerce the SDF into disarming and disbanding. CTP-ISW cannot verify the local reporting about fighting along the frontline. Although it is unclear which side initiated the reported fighting, the SNA may nevertheless exploit the recent shelling to set conditions for further attacks on the SDF.

The SNA continued offensive operations against the SDF around Tishreen Dam on January 8, possibly in order to fix the SDF units there and prevent them from reinforcing other positions along the frontline. The SNA launched a “large-scale” attack against the SDF about five kilometers northwest of the dam. The SNA also ambushed SDF fighters around Tal al Zamalah, south of the dam. The SDF accused Turkey of providing air support to the SNA attacks. A Kurdish journalist reported that the SNA launched the attacks after receiving reinforcements from al Bab, Mare, and Jarabulus. The journalist previously reported that the SNA had sent ”significant” reinforcements to Jarabulus. SNA forces likely advanced within three kilometers of Tishreen Dam, given that geolocated footage posted on January 8 showed the SDF conducting drone strikes on SNA fighters in Khirbet Tueni, which is 2.8 kilometers northwest of the dam. It is unclear whether the SNA has retained any territorial gains from its attacks, however. The SNA has continued to conduct artillery and drone strikes targeting the SDF around Tishreen Dam and Qara Qozak Bridge. Fixing the SDF to these locations could impede any SDF effort to reinforce its positions elsewhere along the frontline.

Turkey conducted several airstrikes targeting SDF positions on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River near the SDF-SNA frontline on January 9. Local media reported that Turkey struck an SDF rocket launcher near al Jarniyah, which is along an SDF supply line. Turkish artillery and aircraft also struck SDF positions near Qara Qozak Bridge and north of the bridge. CTP-ISW has noted that Turkey is conducting airstrikes targeting SDF in support of SNA offensive operations but that these efforts could also be a precursor to a wider Turkish or Turkish-backed operation.

Key Takeaways:

Fighting reportedly erupted along parts of the frontline between the US-backed SDF and Turkish-backed SNA in northern Syria amid indications of an upcoming SNA offensive against the SDF.

The SNA continued offensive operations against the SDF around Tishreen Dam in northern Syria, possibly in order to fix SDF units there and prevent them from reinforcing other positions along the frontline.

SDF Commander Mazloum Abdi said that the SDF came to an unspecified agreement on Syrian unit with HTS, raising the question of whether HTS would accept a lesser objective than the Turkish one of destroying the SDF outright.

One of the seniormost IRGC commanders in Syria discussed in a leaked video plans to rebuild Iranian-backed proxy and partner militia networks in Syria that would oppose the HTS-led interim government.

The Iraqi federal government is considering integrating Iranian-backed militias into the Iraqi armed forces, which would facilitate Iranian infiltration and capture of the Iraqi security sector.

7. Arab States Race Turkey for Influence in New Syria

Arab States Race Turkey for Influence in New Syria

Saudi Arabia overlooks leadership’s jihadist past to send humanitarian assistance

By Benoit Faucon

and Summer Said

/ Photographs by Emanuele Satolli for WSJ

Updated Jan. 10, 2025 12:08 am ET

Saudi Arabia and other Arab states are jockeying for influence with Syria’s Islamist government, hoping to gain an advantage on rivals in the strategically positioned country despite misgivings about the jihadist past of its new leaders.

The kingdom, along with Jordan and Qatar, is rushing humanitarian aid and energy assistance to Syria’s war-weary population. The Arab states are betting that doing so could advance both narrow and strategic goals—from cutting the flow of drugs and radical fighters across Syria’s borders, to countering the influence of competitors such as Turkey and Iran.

“Governments in the region are worried by the new rulers’ Islamist pedigree but also that their popularity could have a contagious effect among their own population,” said Fabrice Balanche, a Syria expert and professor at University Lyon 2 in France. “They also want to have a seat in the new Syria.”

How the country’s political contours take shape after the rapid and unexpected fall of the Assad regime has wide-ranging ramifications for the region. In more than a decade of conflict, foreign actors—including former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s main backers, Iran and Russia—supported different factions to further their often competing agendas, turning Syria into a theater for proxy wars.

The Arab League suspended Syria from its ranks after the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, but Saudi Arabia had led a push to renew ties in recent years.

In the post-Assad vacuum, new Arab entrants are offering to help rebuild and to alleviate the country’s food and energy shortages, moves that analysts say are motivated by more than altruism. In recent days, Saudi Arabia opened a humanitarian air bridge to Syria, delivering food, shelter and medical supplies. The kingdom has also offered to train and equip Syria’s civilian police and replace sanctioned Iranian oil supplies to help ease Damascus’s energy crisis, proposals that are still under discussion.

Damaged buildings in Aleppo, Syria.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist group that led the assault that toppled the Assad regime, was formed as an offshoot of al Qaeda, which has sought to bring down the Saudi ruling family and began attacking the kingdom directly in 2003. HTS said it has shed its links to jihadists.

Many Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, fear the resurgence of Islamist groups such as al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic State in the Middle East. They have sought to prevent the spread of political Islam in the region since the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 resulted in the ouster of longtime leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. That void was filled in some cases by Islamist groups, including by a Muslim Brotherhood faction in Egypt, which was subsequently ousted in a military coup. Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. have since pumped billions of dollars into Egypt to support the general-turned-president, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi.

HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa was an anti-American jihadist in Iraq. He disavowed extremism years ago and has pledged to respect Syria’s ethnic and religious diversity as his group seeks international recognition—as well as funds to rebuild the country, restart the economy and resettle millions of refugees.

Syria’s new foreign minister chose Saudi Arabia for his first trip abroad last week, before beating a path to other Arab states, including Qatar, the U.A.E. and Jordan.

Still, Turkey has existing links with HTS and other groups that opposed Assad, giving Ankara a head start with Syria’s new government over its longstanding rival Saudi Arabia. Days after Assad fled Syria, Turkey sent officials and businessmen to Damascus, expressing interest in helping rebuild the country’s energy sector, according to statements by the new Syrian administration and the Turkish Energy Ministry.

Syria is also facing food and energy shortages.

Turkey is now in a stronger position to put pressure on Kurdish militias it opposes in Syria, and has an expanded platform to project power in the region.

Riyadh, which lost out to Tehran in the race to exert influence in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, is seeking to use aid in part as a way to counter Ankara’s moves in Syria, said analysts. The kingdom’s rivalry with Turkey reaches back into the Ottoman empire and into recent history during the struggle for influence in the Middle East in the fallout from the Arab Spring.

Saudi Arabia’s “goal is to counterbalance Turkey’s significant role in the new Syria,” said Fawaz Gerges, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics. He added that Riyadh also wants to ensure that Syria doesn’t descend again into violence and social upheaval, which would threaten regional stability.

Qatar long supported groups opposed to Assad and chose not to join Saudi Arabia and other Arab states when they normalized relations with Syria in 2023. Doha is in advanced talks with the country’s new government to provide energy and financial assistance, Middle Eastern officials said.

Qatar Airways, the Gulf state’s national airline, on Tuesday became the first international carrier to resume commercial flights to Damascus, after a 13-year hiatus. Jordan, despite its own economic troubles, is offering to supply electricity to Syria and is in talks to expand ties with the new government there.

The Gulf Cooperation Council, a Saudi-dominated bloc of hydrocarbon-rich countries in the Persian Gulf, intends to offer technical assistance to rebuild state institutions and help rehabilitate roads, electricity, schools, hospitals and homes in Syria, Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg, a GCC official in charge of political affairs, wrote in a leading newspaper, Arab News.

But not all Arab states are rushing to embrace the HTS-led government. The U.A.E. welcomed the Syrian delegation this week, but didn’t publicly offer any economic aid.

A damaged bridge on a road between Aleppo and the Syrian capital, Damascus.

The new rulers’ Islamist roots and past links to extremist groups “are quite worrying,” Anwar Gargash, a diplomatic adviser to the Emirati government, said at an Abu Dhabi conference in mid-December. If radical elements among the factions end up dominating, “this will all lead us to another crisis in the region,” he said.

Western powers are also wary about the direction that Syria’s new Islamist leaders could eventually take and are holding back on lifting sanctions on the country or removing the terrorist designation from its leadership.

Still, this week, the Biden administration said it was easing restrictions on humanitarian aid for Syria for six months. The U.S. lifted the $10 million bounty on HTS’s Sharaa after he pledged not to be a threat to the U.S. and its allies.

Most U.S. sanctions on Syria remain in place. The United Nations and others have said there are no immediate plans to remove sanctions on Sharaa and HTS, and added that any such decisions would depend on how democratic and inclusive the new regime turns out to be.

Stephen Kalin contributed to this article.

Write to Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com and Summer Said at summer.said@wsj.com

Appeared in the January 10, 2025, print edition as 'Arab States Send Aid in Bid For Influence in New Syria'.

8. Taiwan’s Lock-Kneed Soldiers Kick Up a Fuss Over Tabooed Tradition

Goose stepping armies do not win wars.

Stop the madness.

This confirms the adage, the only thing harder than getting a new idea into a military mind is getting an old one out.

Taiwan’s Lock-Kneed Soldiers Kick Up a Fuss Over Tabooed Tradition

Army old guard won’t stop goose-stepping even as island leaders and doctors deride the marching style as useless and an injury risk; ‘extremely bad decision’

https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/taiwans-lock-kneed-soldiers-kick-up-a-fuss-over-tabooed-tradition-6e782a5a?mod=latest_headlines

A small group of Taiwan army veterans practice goose-stepping during a regular meetup in Taipei. Photo: Joyu Wang/WSJ

By Joyu WangFollow

Jan. 10, 2025 5:30 am ET

TAIPEI, Taiwan—Once a month, under a highway overpass near military headquarters in Taipei, a small group of Taiwan army veterans band together in a coordinated act of defiance.

Lined up in a row, wooden dummy rifles on their shoulders, they move slowly in unison in a goose step, the now-taboo lock-kneed marching style their army adopted on the Chinese mainland nearly 100 years ago.

In their youth, the goose-steppers of Taiwan weren’t cooped up. For much of the history of the Republic of China, from the army’s founding to its midcentury flight to the island onward through decades of martial law, the practice was a feature of military training and national ceremony.

Defense Minister Wellington Koo, who took over the post in May, has called a halt to the tradition. As Taiwan tries to build up its military to defend the island against the threat of invasion by China, Koo says the foot-stomping marching style is outdated and has no benefit in modern warfare. Also on Koo’s blacklist: bayonet drills.

The army’s old guard is kicking back.

The lock-kneed marching style had its official swan song in Taiwan in June at a parade for the centennial of Whampoa Military Academy. Photo: Joyu Wang/WSJ

“This is an extremely, extremely, extremely bad decision,” said retired Army Lt. Gen. Lo Chi-chin, the 69-year-old head of the alumni association for Taiwan’s Army officer training school, Whampoa Military Academy.

Goose-stepping embodies the academy’s spirit and the rigor of its training, said Lo. “If you’re on a battlefield,” he said, “and one person tells you to move left, another tells you to move right, and someone else says to stay put, how do you think you’d handle that battle?”

In the West, the goose step—evoking Hitler and Mussolini, dictators stomping on Europe and Africa—has been ridiculed if not abandoned. But it remains a staple in parts of South America and Asia, including in a Chinese honor guard’s daily flag-raising ceremony at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. A prominent practitioner is North Korea, a dictatorship where massive synchronized parades are intended to display unity, discipline and strength.

In Taiwan, the goose step’s official swan song came last June. In the southern port city of Kaohsiung, goose-stepping veterans joined young cadets for the centennial of the Whampoa academy.

The multigenerational formation, with guest troops from Guatemala and Paraguay, marched before Taiwan President Lai Ching-te and other dignitaries, including Koo, who had already declared the parade to be goose-stepping’s last.

The Latin American guests appeared to outdo their hosts by lifting their straight legs past perpendicular. But what Taiwan’s contingent lacked in flexibility it made up for in panache: a zealous, white-gloved swinging of the arms and a slower, lower stop-motion kick, stomping down loudly with a bang.

Taiwan President Lai Ching-te, center, and Defense Minister Wellington Koo, right, attend Whampoa’s centennial. Koo called for a halt to the foot-stomping marching style, saying it has no benefit in modern warfare. Photo: Joyu Wang/WSJ

“Goose-stepping is just to demonstrate the military’s discipline,” said Rex Chou, a 60-year-old veteran who took part in the June march. “It has nothing to do with the word ‘authoritarianism.’ ”

Marchers require long hours of training to get mentally and physically in sync, said Chou, a regular at the Taipei weekend drills. Also vital, he said: Arm, leg and core strength.

Opponents of the practice say it simply has no use today.

“Let’s be real. Goose-stepping is not going to get a military ready for real battle,” said retired Maj. Gen. Yu Pei-chen, a former instructor at Whampoa and now a city councilor. “Why not use this time for combat training instead?”

Some physicians say goose-stepping can be harmful to the health of an army that depends heavily on infantry soldiers.

“Goose-stepping isn’t a good way to train—it’s too easy to end up with lower limb injuries, especially stress fractures,” said Lin Hsin-chin, a sports medicine doctor who prefers to take part in the martial art of jiu jitsu.

Military historians trace the origin of goose-stepping to the Prussian army in the 18th century—an era when synchronized advance had strategic purpose and built stamina for the battlefield. Goose-stepping eventually marched via Germany and Japan into the repertoire of Chinese warlords, and onward into the Republic of China’s Nationalist Army, according to Taipei-based military historian Chen Yu-shen.

For author George Orwell, the practice was “an affirmation of naked power.” The goose-step, he wrote in 1941, “is one of the most horrible sights in the world, far more terrifying than a dive-bomber.”

Echoes of autocracy strike a nerve in Taiwan, a democracy that survives in defiance of its large authoritarian neighbor, which claims the island as its own.

Hong Kong has moved in the opposite direction. As democratic freedoms withered under the thumb of Beijing, the police force in the territory began several years ago to adopt the goose-stepping style practiced on the Chinese mainland, abandoning the bent-kneed marching drills of the British colonial era.

Chiang Kai-shek reviews troops, circa 1950. Goose-stepping in Taiwan is closely associated with the anticommunist leader, who arrived in the late 1940s, and his political party, which ruled the island for decades. Photo: Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

For some Taiwanese, goose-stepping evokes the era of martial law that held sway over the island for nearly four decades under Chiang Kai-shek and his political party, the Kuomintang, or KMT.

In 2003, under Democratic Progressive Party President Chen Shui-bian, goose-stepping was officially dropped from military training. Cadets learned instead to simply march in unison.

But the goose step wasn’t completely stamped out. In the years that followed, the practice had its ups and downs. In 2016, Ho Chi-sheng pulled together about 500 veterans in a goose-step parade in front of the office of the newly inaugurated DPP president. The demonstration, he said, was sparked by a video circulating on social media showing cadets marching sloppily.

Ho wanted to create a display recalling Taiwan’s big National Day military parades of the 1980s. “This was the feeling of glory—our moment to shine,” the military veteran, now a human-resources manager, said.

Veterans also practice bayonet drills—another tradition on Koo’s blacklist. Video: Joyu Wang/WSJ

In 2023, Koo’s predecessor Chiu Kuo-cheng, a Whampoa alum, brought goose-stepping veterans back into the academy’s annual parade.

It wasn’t unexpected that Koo, the first civilian to head the Defense Ministry in over a decade, would once again give goose steppers the boot. A former lawyer, Koo once led a government body responsible for addressing the injustices of the KMT’s authoritarian past.

Shortly after taking the defense post, Koo told lawmakers that if “it doesn’t align with the core purpose of combat training, we’ll get rid of it.”

For Fan Tien-pei, a 60-year-old Whampoa alum who often leads training sessions under the Taipei overpass, synchronized goose-stepping and bayonet drills are the route to physical and mental fitness.

“Without this kind of display,” said Fan, “you just can’t picture a unit being ready for battle.”

“ ‘That’s so dumb,’ ” former cadet Chen Yuan-te, 26, said a comrade once told him about goose-stepping. Chen is too young to have learned the march, but said he’d probably feel it was silly, too, if he had to do it.

Write to Joyu Wang at joyu.wang@wsj.com

9. Trump's Greenland bid is about race with China for Arctic control

This does beg the question - what other actions are we taking to effectively compete with China in the Arctic? It seems like for all the reporting I have surveyed we are far behind China (and Russia) in a number of areas, not the least of which are ice breakers.

And the other strategic issue is that is our national security strategy going to be based on "going it alone?"

Excerpts:

Rather than investing in strengthening security cooperation with Denmark and the rest of its NATO and European allies to face down Russia and China in the Arctic and beyond, Trump and his team may well think that the US can get away with this. Given that what is at stake here are relations with the United States’ hitherto closest allies, this is an enormous, and unwarranted, gamble.

No great power in history has been able to go it alone forever – and even taking possession of Greenland, by hook or by crook, is unlikely to change this.

Trump's Greenland bid is about race with China for Arctic control - Asia Times

Minerals and strategic location are important, but threatening tariffs or military force is a disaster in the making

asiatimes.com · by Stefan Wolff · January 9, 2025

When Donald Trump first offered to buy Greenland in 2019, he was widely ridiculed and nothing much came of it, apart from a canceled state visit to Denmark. Fast forward six years and Trump’s renewed “bid” for the world’s largest island is back on the table.

And with renewed vigor at that. In an interview on January 7, the incoming US president refused to rule out the use of force to take possession of Greenland and he dispatched his son, Don Jr, “and various representatives” there on January 8, 2025, to underline his seriousness. With Elon Musk on board for the scheme as well, money may not be an obstacle to any deal that Trump envisages.

Trump is not the first US politician to try to buy Greenland. The earliest documented attempt to acquire the island goes back to 1868.

The last serious pre-Trump effort is that by President Harry S Truman’s government in 1946. Trump’s renewed interest in Greenland thus stands in a long tradition of American efforts of territorial expansion.

Even without this historical background, Trump’s latest bid is less irrational today than it may have seemed back in 2019. On the one hand, Greenland is exceptionally rich in so-called “critical minerals.” According to a 2024 report in the Economist, the island has known deposits of 43 out of 50 of these minerals. According to the US Department of Energy, these minerals are essential for “technologies that produce, transmit, store and conserve energy” and have “a high risk of supply chain disruption”.

The latter certainly is a valid concern given that China – a key supplier of several critical minerals to global markets – has been increasing restrictions on its exports as part of an ongoing trade war with the US. Access to Greenland’s resources would give Washington more supply chain security and limit any leverage that China could to bring to bear.

Strategic value

Greenland’s strategic location also makes it valuable to the US. An existing US base, Pituffik Space Base, is key to US missile early warning and defense and plays a critical role in space surveillance. Future expansion of the base could also enhance US capabilities to monitor Russian naval movements in the Arctic Ocean and the north Atlantic.

US sovereignty over Greenland, if Trump’s deal comes to pass, would also effectively forestall any moves by rivals, especially China, to get a foothold on the island. This may be less of a concern if Greenland remains part of NATO member Denmark which has kept the island economically afloat with an annual grant of around US$500 million.

Greenland’s independence – support for which has been steadily growing – could open the door to more, and less regulated, foreign investment. In this case, China is seen as particularly keen to step in should the opportunity arise.

Add to that the growing security cooperation between Russia and China and the fact that Russia has generally become more militarily aggressive, and Trump’s case looks yet more credible. Nor is he the only one to have raised the alarm bells: Canada, Denmark and Norway have all recently pushed back against an increasing Russian and Chinese footprint in the Arctic.

So, the problem with Trump’s proposal is not that it is based on a flawed diagnosis of the underlying issue it tries to address. Growing Russian and Chinese influence in the Arctic region in general is a security problem at a time of rising geopolitical rivalry. In this context, Greenland undeniably poses a particular and significant security vulnerability for the United States.

The flaws in Trump’s plan

The problem is Trump’s “America first” tunnel vision of looking for a solution. Insisting that he wants Greenland and that he will get it – even if that means exceptional tariffs on Danish exports (think Novo Nordisk’s weight-loss drugs) or the use of force.

Predictably, Greenland and Denmark rejected the new “offer.” And key allies, including France and Germany, rushed to their ally’s defense – figuratively for now.

Rather than strengthening US security, Trump is arguably effectively weakening it by, yet again, undermining the western alliance. Not only does the irony of doing so in the north Atlantic appear to be lost on Trump. But it also seems that there is an even more fundamental problem at work here in that this kind of 19th century-style territorial expansionism reflects Trump’s isolationist impulses.

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“Incorporating” Greenland into the US would likely insulate Washington from the disruption of critical mineral supply chains and keep Russia and China at bay. And signaling that he will do it whatever the cost is an indication that, beyond the kind of bluster and bombast that is normally associated with Trump, his approach to foreign policy will quickly do away with any gloves.

Rather than investing in strengthening security cooperation with Denmark and the rest of its NATO and European allies to face down Russia and China in the Arctic and beyond, Trump and his team may well think that the US can get away with this. Given that what is at stake here are relations with the United States’ hitherto closest allies, this is an enormous, and unwarranted, gamble.

No great power in history has been able to go it alone forever – and even taking possession of Greenland, by hook or by crook, is unlikely to change this.

Stefan Wolff is a professor of international security at the University of Birmingham.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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asiatimes.com · by Stefan Wolff · January 9, 2025

10. The great paradox: strategic thinking in an unstrategic world (Review essay)

The Great Paradox: Strategic Thinking in an Unstrategic World by David Richards

Excerpts:

Given these failures in governance and the friction and tensions between the United States and the West and China and Russia with the threat of possible escalation of ongoing armed conflicts, can sound strategic thinking compensate for what we call an unstrategic world? In his last book co-written with the well-known academic Julian Lindley-French, "Retreat from Strategy," David developed themes that are applied to "Paradox."

The thrust of "Paradox" relies on an examination of presidential strategic thinking since World War II to determine where it succeeded and where it did not. Especially regarding the key purpose of protecting and advancing long-term national security, our argument is that the West lacks an overarching strategy and a political decision-making process compatible with sound strategic thinking. The inevitable result is strategies that are aspirational and not executable or affordable. Why? This is the paradox.

We propose to reverse this paradox through sound strategic thinking that produces relevant strategies for the coming decades of the 21st century.

...

One further example makes our case. The current U.S. national defense strategy aims to contain/compete with; deter; and if war comes, win or prevail over a number of potential adversaries headed by China and Russia. Beyond the essential task of deterring an existential thermonuclear war, where have Russia or China been contained or deterred? Further, the aspirational national defense strategy is neither affordable nor able to currently meet recruiting goals. And no one wins a nuclear war.

What must be done we hope will be made clear in Paradox.

Voices Jan. 8, 2025 / 7:57 AM

The great paradox: strategic thinking in an unstrategic world

https://www.upi.com/Voices/2025/01/08/strategic-thinking-book/3031736274542/?utm

By Harlan Ullman

The U.S. Capitol Building is seen in Washington in 2023. Eighty percent of Americans believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction, reflecting a crisis of trust in institutions. File Photo by Pat Benic/UPI | License Photo

Jan. 8 (UPI) -- Much of my 2025 will be devoted to co-authoring a book with my great English friend, David Richards. The title is The Great Paradox: Strategic Thinking in an Unstrategic World. Richards' more formal title is General The Lord Richards of Herstmonceux, a peerage conferred for his long and distinguished service culminating as chief of the U.K. Defense Staff, equivalent to the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

David and I first met more than 20 years ago in Kabul, where he was commanding NATO's International Security Assistance Force for Afghanistan. His views on dealing with the Taliban based on reconciliation at the tribal level conflicted somewhat with NATO and U.S. doctrine. Sadly, David would be proven correct.

One of the reasons for this book was the dramatic failings and failures of government, both democratic and autocratic. Whether one loved or hated presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump, some 80% of Americans believed the United State was headed in the wrong direction. A similarly large proportion had lost trust and confidence in government and most institutions, even in the private sector. And America's $36 trillion debt is nearly 1 1/2 times GDP -- an economically unsustainable level.

The U.K. had gone through a string of Tory prime ministers. Despite the victory of Labor in the last election, it has not fared much better in governing. Germany and France are in political disarray. And South Korea is running out of presidents to impeach.

Life is no better in Moscow or Beijing. Vladimir Putin has bankrupted his country to wage a war in Ukraine that might well become Russia's next Afghanistan. Nearly a million Russians have left to avoid the draft. And last year's birth rate of about one-half million babies, the lowest on record since 1945, makes demographics a critical issue.

Xi is not much better off. The Communist Party's compact with the people is that to retain power, public needs will be met economically, socially and culturally. That is not happening. Two rather obscure measures of this malaise confirm this observation: the large increase in the number of stabbing deaths of local officials and the large percentage of 20-to-30-year-old males not seeking work.

Given these failures in governance and the friction and tensions between the United States and the West and China and Russia with the threat of possible escalation of ongoing armed conflicts, can sound strategic thinking compensate for what we call an unstrategic world? In his last book co-written with the well-known academic Julian Lindley-French, "Retreat from Strategy," David developed themes that are applied to "Paradox."

The thrust of "Paradox" relies on an examination of presidential strategic thinking since World War II to determine where it succeeded and where it did not. Especially regarding the key purpose of protecting and advancing long-term national security, our argument is that the West lacks an overarching strategy and a political decision-making process compatible with sound strategic thinking. The inevitable result is strategies that are aspirational and not executable or affordable. Why? This is the paradox.

We propose to reverse this paradox through sound strategic thinking that produces relevant strategies for the coming decades of the 21st century.

Characteristics common to these failures were a profound lack of knowledge and understanding of the conditions for using force; failure to challenge underpinning basic assumptions while ignoring possible unintended consequences; groupthink that dismissed other options; arrogance about the superiority of American thinking; and an over-reliance on technology.

Yes, the Cold War was won. Why? The USSR could not maintain its irrational political structure under communism without what the USSR's last president, Mikhail Gorbachev, would call "perestroika," or radical restructuring, and "glasnost," or openness. By injecting reality into an otherwise sclerotic and corrupt process, the USSR would collapse.

Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq 2 were colossal strategic failures. But Sierra Leone, the Falklands and the first Gulf War were stunning successes. We explain why.

One further example makes our case. The current U.S. national defense strategy aims to contain/compete with; deter; and if war comes, win or prevail over a number of potential adversaries headed by China and Russia. Beyond the essential task of deterring an existential thermonuclear war, where have Russia or China been contained or deterred? Further, the aspirational national defense strategy is neither affordable nor able to currently meet recruiting goals. And no one wins a nuclear war.

What must be done we hope will be made clear in Paradox.

Harlan Ullman is UPI's Arnaud de Borchgrave Distinguished Columnist, a senior advisor at Washington's Atlantic Council, the prime author of "shock and awe" and author of "The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large." Follow him @harlankullman. The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

11. The Danger Posed by Today’s Angry Vets

Do not paint veterans with too broad a brush.

Excerpts:

In the immediate aftermath of these incidents, it seemed that they might be linked, even coordinated. This proved not to be the case. The primary connection between them was that they were perpetrated by angry vets who were apparently beset with personal issues and traumas and whose disillusionment found expression in extreme ideological views.

The angry military veteran is a common trope. In pop culture, we’ve met him again and again, from “Taxi Driver” to “The Deer Hunter” to “First Blood.” The trajectory is familiar: He joins the armed forces with ideals about the righteousness of his country and its cause. He goes off to war, witnesses its horrors and returns disillusioned not only with the cause but with the society that sent him to fight. He starts his journey as a believer and ends stripped of belief.

This makes him vulnerable, because the absence of belief (as G.K. Chesterton observed about religion) doesn’t lead him to believe in nothing. It leaves him open to believing in anything, and that anything is often dark.

But there is a second part of this essay from Eliot Ackerman (himself a veteran).

Excerpt:

Trump has elevated a certain type of disillusioned veteran in his second administration while passing over those who remain skeptical of unnecessary wars yet accept the historic role the U.S. must play abroad. Veterans like Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, who chaired the House Select Committee on China, or Matt Pottinger, who served on the National Security Council in the first Trump administration, strike a different tone in their rhetoric. They hold clear-eyed views of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while acknowledging that the U.S. remains, as President Reagan put it, “the last best hope of man on earth.”

....

If there is one essential quality that Trump looks for in his appointments, it is loyalty. That loyalty isn’t to our country’s “abstract” values, or even to the Constitution. It is to Trump himself. If you want a veteran who will deliver that type of personal loyalty, you need one who has been thoroughly disillusioned, whose experience of war has uprooted every ideal. Because if you’re Trump, that absence of belief won’t result in a belief in nothing. It will result in a belief in anything. And that anything will be you.

The Danger Posed by Today’s Angry Vets

The disillusionment that at least partly motivated the shocking acts in New Orleans and Las Vegas is a force in Trump’s inner circle too, and it threatens to undermine America’s role in the world

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/the-danger-posed-by-todays-angry-vets-b6622fd0?mod=latest_headlines

By Elliot Ackerman

Jan. 9, 2025 9:00 pm ET

Matthew Alan Livelsberger, the Special Forces soldier who detonated a Tesla Cybertruck in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day, left a suicide note. “Fellow Servicemembers, Veterans and All Americans. TIME TO WAKE UP!” he wrote in a phone recovered at the scene. “We are being led by weak and feckless leadership who only serve to enrich themselves.”

Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the Houston-based military veteran who killed 15 and wounded dozens more that same night in New Orleans, didn’t leave a note. But his message was clear in the videos he made before the attack and the ISIS flag he flew from the back of the pickup truck he drove into a crowd on Bourbon Street. Jabbar was raised Muslim, but his family remains baffled about his transformation into a radical Islamist.

In the immediate aftermath of these incidents, it seemed that they might be linked, even coordinated. This proved not to be the case. The primary connection between them was that they were perpetrated by angry vets who were apparently beset with personal issues and traumas and whose disillusionment found expression in extreme ideological views.

Investigators inspect the Tesla Cybertruck driven by Matthew Livelsberger, an active-duty Army soldier, that exploded in Las Vegas. Photo: lvmpd/Reuters

The angry military veteran is a common trope. In pop culture, we’ve met him again and again, from “Taxi Driver” to “The Deer Hunter” to “First Blood.” The trajectory is familiar: He joins the armed forces with ideals about the righteousness of his country and its cause. He goes off to war, witnesses its horrors and returns disillusioned not only with the cause but with the society that sent him to fight. He starts his journey as a believer and ends stripped of belief.

This makes him vulnerable, because the absence of belief (as G.K. Chesterton observed about religion) doesn’t lead him to believe in nothing. It leaves him open to believing in anything, and that anything is often dark.

Having fought in Iraq and Afghanistan myself, I can attest that coming home from war is a challenge. When the society that sent you to fight becomes ambivalent about the cause you and your comrades sacrificed for, it’s easy to become angry.

Disillusioned veterans are at the center of post-Vietnam War movies like "The Deer Hunter," "First Blood" and "Taxi Driver" (clockwise from top).

Everett Collection (3)

Of course, only a handful of veterans turn that anger in a destructive direction. Some of our most prominent political leaders of recent decades, like John McCain and John Kerry, could be characterized as angry veterans. But their anger never turned to cynicism. Their experiences led them to find new ways to uphold and reinvigorate our national ideals. It was McCain and Kerry’s leadership, for instance, that led to the normalization of relations between the U.S. and Vietnam in 1995.

But recently another type of angry military veteran has come to prominence in our public life. These vets champion the politics of disillusionment. Through the authority of their war experience they argue that the U.S. should fight to uphold not its values but only its interests.

“I left for Iraq in 2005, a young idealist committed to spreading democracy and liberalism to the backward nations of the world,” Vice President-elect JD Vance wrote in 2020. “I returned in 2006, skeptical of the war and the ideology that underpinned it.” At the Republican National Convention this past summer, he declared his stark new view of what Americans should go to war for: “People will not fight for abstractions,” he said, “but they will fight for their home.”

Sen. John Kerry visits workers at a Ford assembly plant in Vietnam, January 1998. Kerry, a Vietnam War veteran, championed better relations between the U.S. and Vietnam. Photo: Richard Vogel/Associated Press

This is a remarkable statement by an American leader—a rejection of our longstanding national creed. Abraham Lincoln saw things very differently on the battlefield at Gettysburg, where he held out the hope of a nation “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Without these values, the U.S. becomes like every other nation, conceived in blood and soil—not liberty—and willing to fight only for its own narrowly conceived interests. It’s a cynical view, but it’s currently ascendant.

Pete Hegseth, an Iraq and Afghan war veteran who is president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Defense Secretary, is probably the greatest proponent of this view. In his 2024 book, “The War on Warriors,” he writes that “Busy killing Islamists in shithole countries—and then betrayed by our leaders—our warriors have every reason to let America’s dynasty fade away.”

What new principles should replace the old ones? According to Hegseth, “If we’re going to send our boys to fight—and it should be boys—we need to unleash them to win. They need to be the most ruthless. The most uncompromising. The most overwhelmingly lethal as they can be. We must break the enemy’s will. Our troops will make mistakes, and when they do, they should get the overwhelming benefit of the doubt.”

Pete Hegseth, left, talks to potential enlistees as a National Guard captain in Stillwater, Okla., in 2012. Hegseth is now President Trump’s nominee to lead the Defense Department. Photo: SCOTT KEELER/TAMPA BAY TIMES/ZUMA PRESS

Hegseth began his political career as the executive director of the neoconservative group Vets For Freedom, which advocated for a sustained troop commitment in Iraq and for the democratizing goals of the occupation. But as the Republican party became more isolationist, so did Hegseth. He came to Trump’s attention after advocating pardons for U.S. war criminals, in one case a soldier convicted of killing two civilians and, in the other, one who summarily executed a prisoner.

Few would argue that the American military shouldn’t focus on lethality, but Hegseth takes the dangerous step of equating the lethality of American arms with an unapologetic amorality in how they’re used.

Hegseth and Vance, along with a less well-known crop of angry veterans entering the Trump administration, overlook the fact that our armies have achieved their greatest victories when they have fought for our values—in the War of Independence, the Civil War and World War II. It is when we have compromised our values on the battlefield that we have lost. The angry veterans populating the Trump administration have the construct backward. They discount America’s greatest asset, our ideals, in the supposed service of a more brutally effective military.

Trump has elevated a certain type of disillusioned veteran in his second administration while passing over those who remain skeptical of unnecessary wars yet accept the historic role the U.S. must play abroad. Veterans like Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, who chaired the House Select Committee on China, or Matt Pottinger, who served on the National Security Council in the first Trump administration, strike a different tone in their rhetoric. They hold clear-eyed views of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while acknowledging that the U.S. remains, as President Reagan put it, “the last best hope of man on earth.”

Vice President-elect JD Vance speaks at the Republican National Convention, July 2024. Vance is a Marine veteran who served in Iraq. Photo: Jae C. Hong/Associated Press

American ideals have at times led us astray over the past century, whether in the domino theory of the 1960s or the strategy of pre-emption of the early 2000s. A healthy tension has always existed between our obligations at home and the cost of exporting our values abroad.

But the world won’t simply shrink away over the next four years while we turn inward. The U.S. will be called upon to project power. With Trump at the helm, our strategic vision may extend no further than securing our homeland and taking advantage of opportunities for material gain. It’s a narrow worldview—one unlikely to serve our interests.

If there is one essential quality that Trump looks for in his appointments, it is loyalty. That loyalty isn’t to our country’s “abstract” values, or even to the Constitution. It is to Trump himself. If you want a veteran who will deliver that type of personal loyalty, you need one who has been thoroughly disillusioned, whose experience of war has uprooted every ideal. Because if you’re Trump, that absence of belief won’t result in a belief in nothing. It will result in a belief in anything. And that anything will be you.

Elliot Ackerman, a Marine veteran, is the author of numerous books and a senior fellow at Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs.

12. Taiwan hypersonics aim for deep strikes on the mainland

Everytime we do not do something out of fear of escalation it seems that we in fact contribute to escalation. Is there an "escalation paradox?" Does our fear of escalation actually cause escalation? Or does our fear of escalation just lead to strategic failure as we tie our operational hands?

Excerpts:

In a December 2019 RAND dissertation, John Meyers says that advocates stress that such strikes are crucial to targeting high-value Chinese assets, including missile sites and command centers, to blunt its military effectiveness and avert heavy US losses in a potential conflict.

On the other hand, Meyers says that critics point out that China’s nuclear arsenal poses a significant escalation threat, as even limited strikes might be misinterpreted as the precursor to a broader campaign, raising the likelihood of nuclear retaliation.

Moreover, he mentions that critics argue that striking the homeland of a nuclear-armed state could severely damage US credibility, violate international norms and alienate allies, complicating global support. He adds that critics warn of the risks of prolonged conflict, as China could double down on a war it perceives as existential.

Meyers says that while proponents argue these strikes are necessary for restoring operational balance, detractors highlight their escalatory nature and strategic hazards. He notes that the debate reflects a critical dilemma for US military planners: balancing tactical gains against the risks of nuclear escalation and geopolitical fallout.

Taiwan hypersonics aim for deep strikes on the mainland - Asia Times

Ching Tien hypersonic missile capable of hitting Beijing and beyond while new mobile launch platform enhances survivability

asiatimes.com · by Gabriel Honrada · January 10, 2025

Taiwan’s latest hypersonic missiles allow for precise long-range strikes on China’s vital infrastructure and military installations, a significant advancement in the self-governing island’s defense strategy amid rising tensions with Beijing.

Last month, multiple media sources reported that Taiwan is developing hypersonic missiles capable of striking targets deep into northern China, with ranges extending beyond 2,000 kilometers.

The National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST) has already mass-produced the Ching Tien supersonic cruise missile, with a 1,200–2,000 kilometer range, and is working to upgrade it into the Ching Tien hypersonic cruise missile.

Taiwan reportedly began producing the Ching Tien hypersonic cruise missile in late 2024 and delivered small quantities to the Taiwanese Air Force and Missile Command. In the future, Taiwan aims to deploy 10 sets of mobile systems with 20 missiles at Pingtung County, south of the island, according to reports.

The Ching Tien hypersonic cruise missile will reportedly transition from bunker-style launch systems to mobile platforms, enhancing survivability and strike capability. The Taiwanese military considers 12×12 chassis trucks from Czech manufacturer Tatra as primary launch vehicles, while US-made Oshkosh M983 trucks are an alternative.

The Ching Tien missile series, first deployed last year, represents Taiwan’s inaugural strategic weapon capable of reaching targets as far as Hohhot, Inner Mongolia. The project, reportedly part of an NT$13.5 billion (US$411 million) budget under the codename “Feiji No 2,” underscores Taiwan’s push to bolster deep-strike capabilities amid escalating regional tensions.

Efforts also involve developing advanced materials and rocket engines to refine the missiles further, with the NCSIST leveraging domestic expertise to achieve hypersonic speeds. This initiative aligns with Taiwan’s strategic pivot toward more mobile and survivable defense systems.

Asia Times has previously reported on Taiwan’s long-range missile projects. Taiwan has unveiled the Hsiung Feng IIE (HF-2E) long-range cruise missile, targeting critical Chinese installations and cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

This missile, with a reported range of up to 1,200 kilometers, demonstrates Taiwan’s intent to counter potential naval blockades and preemptive strikes by China.

Developed by the NCSIST, the HF-2E employs advanced navigation and propulsion systems to achieve high accuracy, comparable to the US Tomahawk missile. Taiwan is also advancing the Yung Feng supersonic cruise missile and reportedly tested the Ba Dan ballistic missile, though US opposition has limited its progress.

Additionally, Taiwan aims to increase annual missile production to nearly 500 units, focusing on indigenously manufactured systems to ensure strategic autonomy.

In a 1945 article this month, Christian Martin mentions that the missile’s range gives Taiwan the ability to strike deep into mainland China, potentially targeting key energy infrastructure such as liquid natural gas terminals, oil ports, petroleum refineries, gas power plants and nuclear power plants.

Martin says that these sites, located primarily on or near China’s west coast, are within the Ching Tien’s reach, making them potential targets in the event of a conflict.

He notes that Ching Tien’s deployment sends a strong message to China, emphasizing Taiwan’s capability to inflict significant damage on critical infrastructure and deter a potential invasion or debilitating blockade.

Further, Ian Easton mentions in a decade-old report for Project 2049 Institute that Taiwan’s military has built a robust counterstrike doctrine targeting vulnerabilities in the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) reconnaissance-strike network.

Emphasizing interdiction of critical nodes, Easton notes that Taiwan maintains precision strike capabilities to disrupt PLA command centers, communication hubs and infrastructure.

According to Easton, Taiwan’s doctrine prioritizes intelligence-driven, politically calibrated strikes focusing on PLA assets such as command centers, airbases and naval facilities.

Aside from missiles, he notes Taiwan integrates unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) systems for surveillance, electronic warfare and targeting support while testing advanced unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAV) for countering PLA radar and missile sites.

Easton mentions that the Taiwanese Navy fields subsonic and supersonic missiles for maritime and coastal targets while ground forces deploy heavy guns and rocket artillery capable of area saturation.

He says these systems collectively enhance Taiwan’s ability to deter and counter PLA operations, highlighting a strategic shift towards resilient, precision-guided and technologically advanced deterrence measures.

The Ching Tien, alongside Taiwan’s other missiles, may form the backbone of a proposed “pit viper” strategy, emphasizing counterstrike capabilities to deter aggression by threatening China’s key cities and infrastructure.

Such strikes may also be a form of psychological warfare. Taiwan may be taking a page from Ukraine’s playbook in the Russo-Ukrainian War by bringing the war to Russia through long-range strikes deep in Russian territory.

Ukraine has hoped such strikes would break the “social contract” between the Russian leadership and people, especially in cities such as Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Such a social contract may imply that as long as the Russian leadership keeps the conflict out of people’s lives, the latter will continue to support the war.

However, Taiwan may note that such Ukrainian strikes have apparently had limited effects on Russian popular opinion and support for the wider war effort. Such strikes may have given the Russian leadership a strong argument for its people to continue supporting the war despite high casualties among Russian soldiers.

Similarly, China’s leadership could use Taiwanese strikes to make its case for the Chinese people to support an invasion and seizure of Taiwan. China may need such support in case a possible decapitation operation against Taipei’s leadership fails, leading to a protracted conflict with the US and its allies supporting Taiwan.

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In February 2024, Asia Times reported that the PLA might need a minimum of 300,000 to 400,000 soldiers to seize Taiwan following swift air and missile strikes aimed at eliminating Taiwan’s leadership.

But should these decapitation strikes fail, the PLA may need to send up to 2 million troops to take control of Taiwan, with that massive number required to ensure numerical superiority against defending Taiwanese forces.

The risk of retaliation strikes against mainland China has triggered debates for and against an invasion.

In a December 2019 RAND dissertation, John Meyers says that advocates stress that such strikes are crucial to targeting high-value Chinese assets, including missile sites and command centers, to blunt its military effectiveness and avert heavy US losses in a potential conflict.

On the other hand, Meyers says that critics point out that China’s nuclear arsenal poses a significant escalation threat, as even limited strikes might be misinterpreted as the precursor to a broader campaign, raising the likelihood of nuclear retaliation.

Moreover, he mentions that critics argue that striking the homeland of a nuclear-armed state could severely damage US credibility, violate international norms and alienate allies, complicating global support. He adds that critics warn of the risks of prolonged conflict, as China could double down on a war it perceives as existential.

Meyers says that while proponents argue these strikes are necessary for restoring operational balance, detractors highlight their escalatory nature and strategic hazards. He notes that the debate reflects a critical dilemma for US military planners: balancing tactical gains against the risks of nuclear escalation and geopolitical fallout.

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asiatimes.com · by Gabriel Honrada · January 10, 2025

13. The Pentagon finessed its pivot to Asia. Can it last during Trump?

Can Pentagon and finesse be used together?

Have we really pivoted to Asia? Some pivoted to Asia decades ago and were ridiculed by those who focused on Europe and the Middle East. Now Asia is cool and everyone has transitioned to be an Asia excerpt.

Excuse my exasperation.

But the real question is whether the Trump administration will accept the gift from the Biden Administration of the silk web of friends, partners, and allies that have aligned their major interests around a free and open INDOPACIFIC which paradoxically began during the first Trump administration. President Trump should draw a through line from his first administration and take credit for much of the work done in Asia and rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater the new Trump Administration should embrace all the positive work that has been done in Asia.

It would be wise for the Trump national security team to go back to the 2017 NSS and review and identify what has been accomplished by the Biden administration that actually supports the 2017 NSS (and the lesson here could also be that it takes a long time to achieve effects desired in an NSS. Rarely can significant effects of an NSS be achieved while a president is in office for one term or two).

Here is a key excerpt from the Indo-Pacific from the 2017 NSS (page 46)

U.S. allies are critical to responding to mutual threats, such as North Korea, and preserving our mutual interests in the Indo-Pacific region. Our alliance and friendship with South Korea, forged by the trials of history, is stronger than ever. We welcome and support the strong leadership role of our critical ally, Japan. Australia has fought alongside us in every significant conflict since World War I, and continues to reinforce economic and security arrangements that support our shared interests and safeguard democratic values across the region. New Zealand is a key U. S. partner contributing to peace and security across the region. We welcome India’s emergence as a leading global power and stronger strategic and defense partner. We will seek to increase quadrilateral cooperation with Japan, Australia, and India.

The Biden Administration executed the Trump Administration NSS and the incoming Trump Administration should rightly take credit for it.

I recommend the press, pundits, policymakers, and public review the 2017 NSS and identify the commonalities that exist today.

https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf

The Pentagon finessed its pivot to Asia. Can it last during Trump?

Defense News · by Noah Robertson · January 9, 2025

MANILA, Philippines — In late July 2021, as Lloyd Austin arrived at Malacañan Palace, the grand presidential estate in the heart of Manila, his team feared a catastrophe.

America’s new defense secretary was here to see Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines’ combative president, famous for once swearing at Barack Obama. Duterte was threatening to end a deal that let the U.S. military access the country, a huge blow to the Pentagon’s effort to recompete with China.

“There was no sense that the secretary was walking into an engagement where there was hope,” said a member of his team, granted anonymity to describe the meeting.

Seated in a large hall that U.S. officials thought resembled a throne room, Duterte began with a lecture rattling off his many gripes about America: its fickleness, its ingratitude, its colonial history.

Austin listened. And when the time came to speak, he didn’t argue. The secretary thanked Duterte for what the Philippines did for America, and brought up his own father’s history fighting there during World War II. “I can’t imagine a world where the United States and the Philippines aren’t friends,” Austin said.

Duterte seemed surprised to avoid an argument, and pleased. The next day, he restored the agreement.

Over the next four years, Austin would make 11 more trips to the region, playing the Pentagon’s part in a competition with China that spanned the entire U.S. government. He would watch leaders change in all of America’s core allies in the Indo-Pacific and split his time supporting Ukraine and Israel. And the entire time, he would contend with a much more powerful and much more restive Chinese military.

In interviews with dozens of officials at the top of the U.S. government and its allies, it became clear this midsummer visit was the start of a much larger strategy to help America keep pace, one reliant on other countries also concerned about China’s rise. But that strategy was always meant to have two parts: countering China abroad while building American strength at home. Four years later, many of the Pentagon’s domestic goals — chief among them a fragile defense industry — remain unsolved.

The result is a steadier competition with China but one that leaves America unusually dependent on other countries. In Washington, Democrats and Republicans alike have supported the Pentagon’s recent work around Asia, but the return of Donald Trump, a president less personally committed to U.S. allies, will test its endurance.

I: ‘Alarm’

“The common theme I hear with regard to China’s actions under Xi Jinping’s leadership is alarm,” said Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, at an Armed Services Committee hearing in March 2021.

He could have been speaking for much of Washington. By early that year, members of the U.S. government were growing more alert to China’s rapid military buildup, the largest in peacetime since World War II. And they were worried.

Donald Trump’s administration had warned of the problem. Thirty years after the Cold War, it argued, America had picked the wrong enemies — too much Baghdad, not enough Beijing.

The incoming Biden team agreed.

Now in March 2021, America’s top military officer in the region appeared before Sullivan’s committee with a fresh piece of intelligence. Xi wanted his military strong enough to invade Taiwan, which China considers an illegal, breakaway part of its own territory, by as early as 2027.

“The threat is manifest during this decade,” said Adm. Phil Davidson, the retiring head of Indo-Pacific Command. “In fact, in the next six years.”

Austin’s team would later consider this comment a sideshow, though it didn’t dispute what Davidson said. Still, few moments better describe the early concern that America was losing ground.

“In my mind, 2021 seems to be the year that the Joint Staff and others really started to go, ‘Oh my God,’” said retired Rear Adm. Mike Studeman, then head of intelligence for INDOPACOM, referring to the nation’s board of top military officers.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at Philippine navy headquarters as part of his visit to Subic Bay, Philippines, July 2024. (DOD)

The concern wasn’t about Taiwan alone. Throughout that year, the Biden administration concluded that China was striving for much more: to push America from its leading place in the world, said Rush Doshi, a top China and Taiwan official on the National Security Council from 2021 to 2024. Beijing’s growing ambitions came from a sense that America was faltering amid the coronavirus pandemic, the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and, later, a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

From the White House, Doshi and his colleagues helped design a strategy across the government meant to help the U.S. compete. The plan was based on a frank assessment of the country’s relative power. China had spent the last 30 years designing a force that could exploit American weaknesses, a point Doshi had forcefully argued in his book, which became part of the government’s yearlong debate. Where the U.S. had large bases and aircraft carriers, China had scores of missiles, mines and submarines. Where America had advantages in precision, China had an edge in mass.

“The challenge was: ‘OK, what are the steps that you’re going to have to take to change that?’” said Ely Ratner, who helped shape the Pentagon’s role in this strategy as its head of policy for the Indo-Pacific.

The Biden team, which was made up largely of academics like Ratner, thought about this like a math problem. If China had solved many of the challenges America’s military once posed, they needed to change the equation.

Many of their priorities had been laid out in a separate report for Congress Ratner had published a year before. America needed to firm up its group of allies, spread its own forces more widely across the region, and develop new ways to fight, enabled in part by a more innovative and more reliable defense industry.

II: Backlash

In its fifth-floor Pentagon corridor, the staff of Indo-Pacific Security Affairs — the office Ratner leads, directing policy for the region — hosts a regular happy hour. Employees unwind and share cocktails, some with themed names like “Whiskey on the ROCs,” a pun on Taiwan’s formal name, the Republic of China.

They call it the “Nine-Dash Lounge.”

The name is a nod to a U-shaped line China’s government claims as a map of its rightful territory. The graph juts off the coast and covers nearly all of the South China Sea, through which almost a third of the world’s maritime trade passes.

By the 2010s, it became clear these weren’t only claims. China had seized disputed reefs in the waterway, dredged up land and then used them to build military outposts. And by 2021 China was pressing further, surrounding more sites — all despite a 2016 ruling from the United Nations declaring the actions illegal.

The behavior infuriated countries in the region, one key reason Duterte listened when Austin visited in the summer. Beijing’s aggression in the South China Sea had become a pattern seen elsewhere in border skirmishes with India and arbitrary tariffs on Australia.

“Were China not acting the way it does, then there would be less of an alliance to speak of” with the U.S., said Gilberto Teodoro, now the Philippines secretary of national defense. “There would be less of a need.”

For decades, America has maintained a set of one-on-one alliances with countries in the region, like friends at a party who know the host but not each other. Their militaries would struggle to work together if a war broke out, and because they could often rely on U.S. protection, many have spent relatively little on defense.

Washington now saw a chance to help change that. In a pattern that would repeat itself for the next four years, it began inviting its allies and partners — what the government calls friendly countries not bound by a treaty — to meet and plan together. Soon after Austin returned from Asia over the summer, the leaders of India, Japan, Australia and America, collectively known as “The Quad,” gathered for the first time.

“It was trying to network our alliances together so that the sum of them was more than the individual parts,” said Siddharth Mohandas, the Pentagon’s head of East Asia policy from 2021 to 2023.

These ad-hoc groupings would later widen and mature. Even historic rivals like Japan and South Korea now regularly meet alongside the U.S. And America’s most powerful allies in the region — Japan and Australia — are hosting more drills together and allow each other’s military to access their land.

“The only way that we are going to remain competitive with the Chinese is to bring our allies and partners into it,” said a former senior U.S. defense official.

III: Promises

In August 2021, around 50 officials from the U.S., Britain and Australia gathered in the Pentagon library for multiple days of meetings. Through masks and over cheap lunches, they discussed a proposal that, earlier that year, had been so secret that only several members of the U.S. government knew it existed.

The question was whether to share the technology that propelled nuclear submarines, something so sensitive the U.S. had only ever given it to Britain before.

By the summer meetings, the plan had advanced enough that the three governments wanted to announce something. But they didn’t know how far to go. As an idea, it made sense. Australia was one of America’s closest allies. Nuclear-powered submarines were one of America’s most powerful weapons. Providing them could help grow a clear U.S. advantage over China, but the U.S., and the Pentagon in particular, was wary of overpromising.

“A lot of folks didn’t want to commit us too early in case we couldn’t deliver,” said Doshi, who was heavily involved in the talks and later an 18-month review meant to address these concerns.

The negotiations eventually led to AUKUS, a deal named after the three countries involved, who pledged to share the submarines and develop advanced technology together.

“There were skeptics, certainly, within the [Defense] Department at first,” said the former defense official. The secretary, though, made clear that once the pact was announced there was no going back.

“We cannot fail. If we fail, China will win,” the official remembers Austin saying.

Through a spokesperson, the secretary declined an interview. His staff confirmed the descriptions of private conversations included in this story.

AUKUS marked a change in how Washington was approaching its allies in the region. It wasn’t enough to have other countries meeting more often together, or even for their militaries to train more often. The U.S. needed to share weapons that were once off limits — a pattern put on trial when Japan asked for Tomahawk cruise missiles before embarking on a massive defense expansion the next year.

A U.S. Marine Corps amphibious combat vehicle plashes off the amphibious dock landing ship Harpers Ferry during Exercise Balikatan 24 in Naval Detachment Oyster Bay, Philippines, on May 4, 2024. (Lance Cpl. Peyton Kahle/Marine Corps)

“They could have done what previous administrations have done, which is to say that we’re not going to stand in the way but we’re also not going to support you,” said Chris Johnstone, a former Pentagon and National Security Council official for East Asia, of the build-up.

Instead, Washington followed Tokyo. The U.S. agreed to sell the missiles and later to restructure its own forces in the country so that, for the first time, they could fight as true military partners.

“The Japan part of this is part of a larger story, but it’s one of the U.S. deciding we need more capable allies,” Johnstone said. “The United States can’t do it alone.”

IV: Posture

In February 2023, Lloyd Austin was back in Manila, this time to meet with a new leader in Malacañan. The year before, Duterte had been replaced with Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the son of a former president once forced out during pro-democracy protests.

The key “deliverable,” as Washington calls the major announcements it makes on these trips, was a huge expansion in the sites America’s military could access — three in the north, facing Taiwan, and one on an island beside the South China Sea.

“It’s a really big deal,” Austin said at a press conference, announcing the agreement.

For decades, U.S. forces in the region have been packed into a few bases, mostly in Japan, South Korea and Guam. As Austin visited in 2023, that posture was quickly becoming obsolete. For one, these sites were still far from the two places most likely to lead to a conflict: Taiwan and the South China Sea. And China had also built weapons to counter them: hundreds of missiles that could reach American bases, a number that almost doubled from 2022 to 2023, according to Pentagon figures.

“I’m very confident that they can wipe out all the U.S. bases with one strike,” said Tom Shugart, a former Navy officer and Chinese military analyst, who has studied the vulnerability of American bases in the region.

To protect its forces, the U.S. would need to spread them farther apart. But to do that, other countries had to agree, which was no easy task when those same missiles might then target their land.

The careful touch required in these negotiations was on display during Austin’s trip to Manila that February. Other parts of the U.S. government — such as the State Department and National Security Council — would lay the groundwork, at times visiting themselves to negotiate in person. And when Austin would arrive he would use a gentle tone: addressing local concerns, often asking what he could do for his counterparts rather than the other way around.

“The important thing is that the Biden administration and Lloyd Austin have engaged on a basis of equality amongst partners, not [by] stating the relative disparity between power and size,” said Teodoro.

Over the course of 2023, the U.S. negotiated the use of military sites in the Philippines, northern Australia, Papua New Guinea and Japan, where it upgraded a much more powerful and mobile Marine regiment. It’s now discussing another access agreement with Fiji and Japan on its southwestern islands, critical territory in a conflict over Taiwan.

“We finished the promise of the Asia pivot. We really did move along the force structure to the Indo-Pacific in what was envisioned under [Barack Obama’s presidency],” said Ike Harris, a former Navy officer and China adviser in Ratner’s office.

V: Supply and Demand

Thousands of soldiers were pouring into the Philippines in April 2024 ahead of Balikatan, the country’s largest annual military drill. And like many of these exercises in recent years, this one has added more countries and grown far more complex.

But what became the story of the exercise that year wasn’t only what arrived in the Philippines. It’s also what the U.S. left behind. During the drill, it brought a new missile launcher known as Typhon, with a range of 300 miles. It’s the first deployment in what the U.S. hopes will be a series across the region. The next up is Japan, though Tokyo has yet to give its consent, a U.S. official said.

China noticed. Top officials in Beijing have likened the launcher’s deployment to the Cuban Missile Crisis, a claim American officials find rich given the number of similar missiles China has already.

One American missile system compared to hundreds of similar missiles in Chinese stocks — it’s the kind of gap leaving so many officials in Washington still fretting over its military balance. The administration entered office arguing America’s supply of key weapons, such as missiles, ships and drones, needed to expand. It has, but slowly.

In early 2023, a think tank report found that during a war with China the U.S. would likely expend all of its long-range missiles within a week. That wasn’t even a year into the war in Ukraine, much less the war in Gaza — both of which the U.S. has helped support and which have sapped American inventories.

Pentagon officials counter that they’ve spent tens of billions on the U.S. defense industry alone in their last four years in office and that Congress hasn’t passed its defense bills on time. They’ve signed longer-term contracts for six munitions important for a fight against China, and they’ve begun joint ventures with other countries to spread the load.

“We’ve been focused on growing production capacity and maximizing procurement of everything that you could imagine that would be relevant to an Indo-Pacific fight,” said Kathleen Hicks, the deputy secretary of defense, who listed out a host of long-range missiles.

Part of her answer to the problem has been to buy far more drones, the kind of more affordable weapon America could leverage against China’s advantage in numbers. In 2023, Hicks launched Replicator — an initiative named after a gun in Star Trek that can zap anything into existence. Its goal was to send thousands of these drones to American forces in the Pacific within two years, while also teaching the Pentagon to buy such equipment faster.

The program is moving on track, multiple officials said, and it represents the kind of creative approach the U.S. needs to restore a clear military edge.

Others, including some who served in the Biden administration, were far more critical. Replicator aims to deliver 2,500 to 3,000 such systems, over half of which would be a relatively short-range kamikaze drone called the Switchblade 600, according to a congressional aide. The program was never meant to be all the Pentagon was buying in this area, but those numbers would barely matter in Ukraine.

In comparison, over the last four years, China has added hundreds of nuclear warheads and missiles to its arsenal, and reached a shipbuilding industry that’s more than 200 times that of America’s. The U.S. supply of the exact same weapons has been hamstrung by runaway prices and long delays. Multiple other congressional aides referenced this split-screen while raising a familiar critique of the Biden Pentagon: It hasn’t budgeted enough money to buy weapons, build military infrastructure in the region or even train partners, especially Taiwan.

“The U.S. military industrial base, to quote that famous philosopher my father, is fercockt,” said America’s ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel, using a Yiddish word that sounds like what it means.

“We have allowed failure to be a business model, and we reward it,” Emanuel said.

VI: Intercepts

Early in the summer of 2024, Austin walked outside his hotel, past the pool and into an ornate room often used as a wedding venue. He was in Singapore for Asia’s largest annual defense summit, and for the first time in almost 18 months, he would meet with a counterpart from China.

Adm. Dong Jun was the third person to hold his role in as many years, due to an anti-corruption purge throughout the Chinese military. This was the first — and only — time he and Austin would meet in person.

In the summer of 2022, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi became the highest-ranking U.S. official in 30 years to visit Taiwan. China was furious, scrambling its military around the island and creating a new normal that continues today. Beijing later cut off all military talks with the U.S., most notably refusing a call from Austin when the military shot down a spy balloon that drifted across the country in 2023.

China's Defence Minister Dong Jun (C) walks out after a meeting with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue summit in Singapore, May 2024. (Nhac Nguyen/AFP via Getty Images)

Before a meeting between Xi and Biden in 2023, Chinese ships and jets had been buzzing dangerously close to American and allied forces — including a fighter that flew within 10 feet of a U.S. bomber.

Now in Singapore, Austin and Dong read their prepared statements, which on the Chinese side are highly scripted. Dong brought up a U.S. ship that transited the Taiwan Strait, patrols America conducts as a reminder that it may come to the island’s defense. He continued with a talking point: The U.S. was either insincere or “its front-line forces were out of control.”

Austin cut in. The comment suggested he couldn’t command his own forces.

“Are you insulting me — the leader of the most powerful military in the world?” Austin asked, per multiple people in the room.

“It was a lot of scrambling to get the meeting back on the rails,” said one U.S. official who was present. Dong’s staffers explained they didn’t mean any offense and soon returned to talking points.

And Austin, who was concerned that China’s aggressive behavior could spark an accidental war, confronted Dong about its intercepts of U.S. allies, especially Australia.

“You say you don’t want a war, but you’ve got to act like it,” Austin said.

Just weeks later, Chinese coast guard ships blocked a mission to resupply a Philippine outpost in the South China Sea, seizing vessels and cutting off a Filipino sailor’s thumb. The incident came close to what Marcos said in Singapore would be an act of war, potentially drawing the U.S. into a conflict.

In November, when Austin and Dong attended another conference in Laos, the Chinese admiral refused to meet.

VII: Slideshow

Richard Marles, the deputy prime minister and defense minister of Australia, is an amateur historian — an admirer of Abraham Lincoln and a student of the U.S. Civil War. He speaks of the two countries’ alliance with similar gravitas. Australia and the U.S. bonded during World War II, he said, when Washington had to divide resources between the European and Pacific theaters.

“That underpins what has been a historic anxiety from the perspective of Australia: Are we getting enough U.S. attention?” Marles said in an interview.

In his opinion, over the last four years that focus has been “excellent.” But Marles, who has become a close friend of Austin’s, has seen it change before. And many of America’s allies in the region worry it won’t last.

Marles last saw the secretary at a meeting with their Japanese counterpart last November. Shortly before, Donald Trump had won reelection and nominated Pete Hegseth, a former Army officer and Fox News host, to replace Austin. Local reporters at almost every stop on the four-country trip asked how the U.S. could reassure its partners it was here to stay.

To this question, officials in the Pentagon and allied governments argue that America has no reason to change its policy, since both parties now urge tough measures on China. Others in the administration note how the first Trump term laid the groundwork for much of Biden’s China strategy.

“I’m optimistic it will endure since some of it builds on past Trump policy,” said Doshi, the National Security Council official. “That said, it could come crashing down if the incoming team takes aim at American allies in Asia.”

The main difference comes down to the leader in charge. In his first term, Trump argued U.S. partners were free-riding on its military bills and threatened to end its defense commitments. He’s now threatening massive tariffs on American allies and adversaries alike.

“Both sides are going to have to start from zero again,” said Chad Sbragia, a top China official in Trump’s Pentagon, of Washington and Beijing. “How do we reach a stable relationship?”

Last December, Austin stopped in Tokyo during his 13th and final trip to the Indo-Pacific. At one point, Japanese officials played him a slideshow with highlights from their alliance over the last four years. It showed Austin with his three previous counterparts, set to “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing,” the Aerosmith song from the 1998 movie Armageddon in which the U.S. destroys an asteroid threatening to end all human life.

Ratner, present for this last trip, argued that the administration had also accomplished its mission: recovering in a race America once appeared to be falling behind. Since Davidson warned of the chance of war by 2027, China’s economy and corruption problems have both worsened. The Pentagon now assesses Beijing may not meet its military goals by then.

This is little comfort to Ratner. Keeping America’s edge will take more attention and money, he said, increasing a pace this team helped reach.

“That’s the challenge for the next administration,” Ratner said.

About Noah Robertson

Noah Robertson is the Pentagon reporter at Defense News. He previously covered national security for the Christian Science Monitor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and government from the College of William & Mary in his hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia.

Defense News · by Noah Robertson · January 9, 2025

14. Soldiers are turning to social media when the chain of command falls short. The Army sees it as a nuisance.

Whether we like it or not, social media and instant communications are a fact of life.

Rather than push back on this we have to learn to use this positively. And we need thicker skin. Soldiers always gripe. it is just that now the gripes are amplified through the megaphone of social media. And as noted in the article "rants can get results." Let's deal with the world as it really is rather than we wish it would be. And we cannot go back to some overly romanticized time in the past.

Soldiers are turning to social media when the chain of command falls short. The Army sees it as a nuisance.

Despite the Army's insistence that soldiers should bring issues to their chain of command, rank-and-file troops are heading online to resolve problems when their unit leaders can't, or won't.

Patty Nieberg

Posted 19 Hours Ago

taskandpurpose.com · by Patty Nieberg

When trash bins overflowed at Fort Liberty and continued to pile up for weeks last winter, soldiers at the North Carolina Army base sent photos to a soldier-run Instagram account to highlight the unsightly issue. Comments flooded in, many of them jokes at the Army’s expense. Within days of that initial social media post, which prompted news coverage, base officials responded and the garbage was removed.

The de facto smoke pit of the digital era, social media in the military has long been a gathering place for service members and veterans. But it’s also a tool of last resort for rank-and-file troops who feel that the only way to fix a problem they’re facing is to post about it publicly and break with a longstanding cultural norm in the military to keep issues in-house.

The Army, as an institution, has seen social media as a crucial recruiting tool in recent years, but when it comes to how the branch uses these platforms to engage with its own members, some current and former soldiers say the strategy is unclear at best and adversarial at worst. Recently, Army leaders have been reluctant to embrace newer forms of media as a way to receive feedback from soldiers. Instead, the preference, and oft-repeated talking point, has been that soldiers should run their problems through their chain of command.

Where Army leaders are missing the mark, critics say, is in not asking why some soldiers today feel they need to raise these concerns in online forums like Reddit, or community pages on Facebook and Instagram, and on other platforms and apps.

Communities like U.S Army W.T.F! Moments, whose Facebook page boasts a digital audience of 1.6 million followers and more than 2 million daily viewers, and the Army and Military Reddit forums, with audiences of 315,000 and 488,000 members, respectively, “would not be needed if the official channels worked,” said Ken Ramos, a retired psychological operations sergeant major and admin for U.S Army W.T.F! Moments.

Over the last few years, soldiers have used social media to shed light on quality-of-life issues they faced while living in military-owned and operated housing. Their concerns were confirmed by a September 2023 federal watchdog report which found “serious health and safety risks” in the barracks ranging from mold and rat infestations causing junior enlisted troops to feel “expendable.” Other problems ranged from broken locks to malfunctioning security cameras which left some feeling vulnerable to sexual assault and break-ins — an issue brought up in the October arrest of a soldier for a string of break-ins and sexual assaults that occurred at a Fort Cavazos, Texas barracks. The watchdog report caught the attention of Congress, which stood up a panel to improve troop housing and dining on base, with the idea that it would help with recruiting and retention problems.

The laundry list of quality-of-life issues even led Rob Evans, a former Army sergeant in the Reserve and National Guard, to create a Yelp-like app called Hots&Cots to give junior enlisted troops a way to flag issues at base dining facilities or in their barracks — places their leaders rarely visit.

During a roundtable with a handful of reporters at the October 2024 Association of the United States Army conference in Washington D.C., Task & Purpose asked Lt. Gen. Omar Jones, head of Army Installation Management Command if he knew of Hots&Cots. Jones said he was aware of the app but does not pay it much attention.

“I empathize with why service members and their families may choose to use alternate channels to seek assistance when they feel unheard,” Jones said in a statement after the roundtable, adding that soldiers need to use their chains of command and submit work order requests through official channels like the Defense Department-wide Interactive Customer Evaluation, ICE, and the Army Maintenance Activity, ARMA, portals. He emphasized that using official channels puts information into a database that his team can “track and follow up on” and helps leadership hold “housing providers and ourselves accountable.”

From left, Chief of Staff the Army Gen. Randy George and Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Weimer take notes at the Leader Solarium during the Association of the United States Army 2024 Annual Meeting and Exposition at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., Oct. 16, 2024. Army photo by Sgt. Daniel Hernandez.

The Army’s “preference” is that soldiers bring their concerns to their chain of command and take advantage of open door policies, which are designed by each commander, Heather Hagan, spokesperson for the service said in a statement to Task & Purpose. According to Army command policy regulation, open door policies put the onus on soldiers to make leadership aware of any personal or professional problems that a soldier “has been unable to resolve,” and require commanders to notify soldiers about their specific policy.

“Any issue or accusation worth bringing to the attention of millions of people outside the organization should first be brought to the chain of command’s attention,” Hagan said. “If soldiers are concerned about retaliation or getting in trouble for reporting an issue, there are many anonymous ways they can report them to their leaders.”

The tension highlights an issue at the heart of the Army and broader military’s struggle with new media platforms — an old guard mentality to the way troops talk about issues they’re dealing with. Evans, with his app, said he’s not trying to “circumvent” Army processes but “supplement” those official channels, adding that “there are ways to engage with junior enlisted that I think those other components are missing.” For example, there are certain features that Hots&Cots has that official reporting systems, such as ICE, do not have — like the ability to include photos and videos in a submission, he said.

“To be very frank, it needs to be updated. It’s a pretty old and outdated site,” Evans said. “I would be curious to know how many of the higher leaders actually have tried to utilize it and navigate ICE to file an issue and what their experience has been like.”

Hagan said that social media can bring “new ideas and solutions to the forefront” but emphasized that “engaged leaders” are the most effective resource.

When a siloed community goes public

All ranks of the enlisted and officer corps have turned to online platforms to commiserate about quality-of-life issues or even reached out to online communities on Reddit on issues as serious as mental health and suicide.

Evans called social media “the new water cooler” for soldiers — a forum where they can talk or complain about issues central to rank-and-file life. Online communities, like the popular Army and Military Reddit pages, are giving them a sense of community in a world that can be both lonely, and incredibly strict, with military regulations dictating everything from what to wear, to how exactly to clean and keep one’s barracks room, to what you can and can’t do in your free time.

“People can feel very isolated even in the barracks,” said a former military intelligence NCO who helps moderate the Army Reddit page, adding that soldiers from multiple units can live in the same barracks “which means you might not live in a building with anyone you work with.”

The written and unwritten layered social dynamics underpinning military life add to the challenges of building community, he said. The Army’s fraternization regulation requires that soldiers avoid “undue familiarity” between those of significantly different rank and warns that “even one instance of such behavior” like visiting bars, nightclubs, eating establishments, or each other’s homes outside of work-related social gatherings “could amount to undue familiarity.”

“If you’re a first sergeant, how many first sergeants are on that base? How many people are you allowed by reg to be friends with?” the Reddit moderator said. “Same thing for officers. In a standard company, you’re gonna have for each platoon an XO [executive officer] and the commander. You might not be drinking buddies with your commander so you’ve got like three other lieutenants. I hope you like those three people. Otherwise you have no one to socialize with.”

The U.S Army W.T.F! Moments Facebook page has a mix of service members, veterans and military families that make up its audience. While the majority of traffic used to “be just a bunch of joes complaining about, ‘oh, they’re making me work late!’” Ramos said, now he’s getting a lot more inbox traffic from leaders like chiefs of staff or brigade commanders who are asking moderators for insight or help on issues impacting their soldiers.

“It’s because they don’t want to admit that there’s a problem in the organization from their bosses — that’s what it is,” Ramos said. “I totally understand a lieutenant colonel does not want to piss off his rater.”

When rants get results

As with any aspect of the military, a unit or service’s culture is heavily influenced by a commander’s personality. Some leaders have been more willing to embrace and leverage non-traditional online spaces. During his tenure, former Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael “Tony” Grinston and his public affairs team hosted town halls on Reddit to hear from soldiers and in one instance helped an Army couple squash an almost $600,000 medical bill they received for their newborn daughter’s civilian health care while having military-provided health insurance.

Grinston’s former spokesperson, Master Sgt. Will Reinier, said that in a “perfect world” soldiers turn to their chain of command but sometimes “the soldier can feel like they’re on an island and they don’t have anyone else to turn to.” In those situations, they may look to online communities for advice, answers to rudimentary questions or if their immediate superior doesn’t “have the experience or ability to resolve an issue,” he said.

“[Grinston] was not asking to replace anybody’s chain of command but we did notice that the reality of it was that there were a lot of soldiers posting their issues on social media platforms and not taking into account their chain of command,” Reinier said. “His guidance was essentially: It doesn’t matter if it’s online or in person, if the soldier’s having a problem, we need to try to figure out what the problem is and then be able to connect them with a leader who can help.”

For issues with the barracks or base dining facilities, Evans said soldiers have moved away from submitting formal work orders and requests because they have “lost faith in the system and getting issues resolved.”

He gave the example of one soldier who was told by the Department of Public Works, which responds to barracks work orders, “to go spray bleach on the mold” and clean it themselves. The Environmental Protection Agency however, Evans noted, does not recommend using bleach to address mold.

But with the help of his app, Evans has developed informal working relationships with several bases where complaints on Hots&Cots led to an immediate fix for situations where help seemed out of reach or newer programs with growing pains were improved — like at Fort Carson, Colorado’s dining facility.

A Hots&Cots user reported that kiosks at Fort Carson, Colorado, were empty on Oct. 14, 2024. Photo via Hots&Cots.

Responding to complaints about a lack of healthy food options for soldiers leaving work after normal business hours, the base introduced grab-and-go kiosks. In recent months, photos posted to Hots&Cots, and elsewhere on social media, highlighted the kiosks’ barren shelves. In response to the attention, base officials began working with moderators from Hots&Cots and Reddit and solved supply chain issues that were causing the lack of food, a Fort Carson official said.

There were also growing pains that came with introducing a new meal option for soldiers. At the kiosks, soldiers are able to use their meal cards to buy one item from each category: Entree, sides, snacks, dairy, dessert and beverages. Moderators from Reddit saw comments from soldiers about not being able to get milk and yogurt or cheese at the same time because both fell under the dairy category.

“I alerted the team to it. No one had ever made that complaint and so we got that resolved,” the Fort Carson official said. “We were able to leverage the feedback that Rob was getting and action it for the benefit of the soldiers.”

Quality-of-life issues are personal for Evans but he sees it as an important problem that fell by the wayside during the military’s focus on readiness and strategy over the last two decades fighting wars abroad. Now, it’s seen by Defense Department officials and Congress as a roadblock hampering recruiting and retention as the services deal with the toughest recruiting environment in generations.

“There was a part of my life that we didn’t have running water in our house or I had food insecurities and I had cockroaches in my house. Part of me joining the military was to improve my life to get away from that stuff. I’m sure I’m not the only one,” Evans said. “When you join the military expecting a better quality of life and you just kind of get transplanted back into that same situation, you may start questioning, why did I do this for a better quality of life when I’m not really improving it?”

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Patty Nieberg

Senior Staff Writer

Patty is a senior staff writer for Task & Purpose. She’s reported on the military for five years, embedding with the National Guard during a hurricane and covering Guantanamo Bay legal proceedings for an alleged al Qaeda commander.

taskandpurpose.com · by Patty Nieberg

15. Trump, the 'America First' candidate, has a new preoccupation: Imperialism

Ouch. I was wondering when we were going to start hearing the "I" word.

President-elect Trump is shaking the international relation tree and it will be interesting to see where the leaves land and how all this shakes out.

As I think through this we could be at a pivotal time. We have to ask what comes next after Bretton Woods and San Francisco (UN) are upended? How will the world order be reshaped through disruption? More than the "America First "candidate, I think the President-elect is going to be the "Disruption President" and I think he will wear the badge of honor proudly. It is going to be a fascinating ride as we witness history in the making.

Trump, the 'America First' candidate, has a new preoccupation: Imperialism

AP · by JILL COLVIN · January 9, 2025

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump ran on a return to his “America First” foreign policy platform. The U.S., he said, could no longer afford to be the world’s policeman. On his watch, he pledged, there would be no new wars.

But since winning a second term, the president-elect has been embracing a new imperialist agenda, threatening to seize the Panama Canal and Greenland — perhaps by military force — and saying he will use economic coercion to pressure Canada to become the nation’s 51st state.

“Canada and the United States, that would really be something. You get rid of that artificially drawn line, and you take a look at what that looks like and it would also be much better for national security,” Trump said of the world’s longest international border and the U.S.'s second-largest trade partner.

Such talk of undermining sovereign borders and using military force against allies and fellow NATO members — even if said lightly — marks a stunning departure from decades-old norms about territorial integrity. And it is rhetoric that analysts say could embolden America’s enemies by suggesting the U.S. is now OK with countries using force to redraw borders at a time when Russia is pressing forward with its invasion of Ukraine and China is threatening Taiwan, which it claims as its own territory.

“If I’m Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping, this is music to my ears,” said John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser-turned-critic, who also served as ambassador to the United Nations.

Trump’s language, reflecting a 19th century world view that defined European colonial powers, comes as international allies were already grappling with the implications of his return to the world stage.

Gerald Butts, outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s former top adviser and a longtime close friend, said Trump seems more emboldened than when he first took office in 2017.

“I think he’s feeling a lot less unencumbered than he was the last time. There are no restraints. This is maximum Trump,” he said.

Butts is part of a WhatsApp group with others who staffed heads of state and government during the first Trump term. “Someone joked that the big fear the last time was that he didn’t know what he was doing and the big fear this time is that he does,” he recounted.

Manifest Destiny?

Trump’s swaggering rhetoric also marks a continuation of the kind of testosterone-heavy energy that was a signature of his campaign, particularly as he worked to win over younger male voters with appearances on popular podcasts.

Charlie Kirk, a key Trump ally who joined Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., on a trip to Greenland this week, argued on his podcast Wednesday that it was imperative for the U.S. to control Greenland. The island is an autonomous territory of Denmark, a longtime U.S. ally and a founding NATO member.

Beyond the country’s strategic location in the Arctic and its rich resources, Kirk said, “there is this other component. It makes America dream again, that we’re not just this sad, low-testosterone, beta male slouching in our chair, allowing the world to run over us.”

“It is the resurrection of masculine American energy. It is the return of Manifest Destiny,” said Kirk, whose Turning Point group helped with Trump’s get-out-the-vote effort.

Negotiating tactics or invented threats?

Trump allies have long argued that his bluster and most audacious statements are all part of his complex negotiating tactics. Aides note that nearly half of U.S. shipping containers travel through the Panama Canal and that key canal ports are controlled by a Hong Kong–based firm.

Greenland is home to the Pituffik Space Base, the northernmost U.S. post, which plays a key role in missile warnings and space surveillance. And China and Russia have been making their own investments in the Arctic at a time when new potential shipping routes are opening as ice caps melt.

Canada, Trump’s team notes, spends far less on defense than its southern neighbor.

“Every decision President Trump makes is in the best interest of the United States and the American people. That’s why President Trump has called attention to legitimate national security and economic concerns regarding Canada, Greenland and Panama,” said Trump-Vance Transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt.

But Michael McFaul, the Obama-era ambassador to Russia who now serves as director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, said Trump’s language is counterproductive to U.S. national security interests.

“President Trump is about to take over at one of the most dangerous times in American history,” he said. “We will be best at addressing those threats with allies. Allies are our superpower. And so I wish he would focus on the real threats and not invent threats.”

Allies balk

Trump’s trolling is not the negotiating ploy of “crazy genius,” McFaul said, and will have consequences.

“We’ve got serious enemies and adversaries in the world, and we’re better off with the Canadians and the Danes with us than pissed off with us,” he said.

Indeed, Canadian officials have responded with increasing anger.

“The joke is over,” Dominic LeBlanc, the country’s finance minister and point person for U.S.-Canada relations, said Wednesday. “It’s a way for him, I think, to sow confusion, to agitate people, to create chaos knowing this will never happen.”

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum responded with sarcasm Wednesday to another Trump proposal: to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.” Standing before an old map, she quipped that North America should be renamed “América Mexicana,” or “Mexican America,” because a founding document dating from 1814 that preceded Mexico’s constitution referred to it that way.

“That sounds nice, no?” she said.

Denmark and Panama have responded similarly, with Panama’s foreign minister, Javier Martínez-Acha, saying, “The sovereignty of our canal,” which the country has controlled for more than 25 years, “is not negotiable and is part of our history of struggle and an irreversible conquest.”

Will the threats backfire?

Mike O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said he has been surprised by Trump’s recent comments given his previous relative disinterest in using force.

While Trump boasted that he had a bigger and more powerful “nuclear button” than North Korea and bombed Iranian general Qassim Soleimani during his first term, he also cast himself during the campaign as a president who had started no new wars and who would be able to prevent World War III.

O’Hanlon noted that NATO members are sworn to defend each other if they are attacked, creating what would be an unprecedented situation were Trump to actually try to forcefully take Greenland.

“You could make a strong argument that the rest of NATO would be obliged to come to Denmark’s defense,” he said. “It does raise the possibility, at whatever crazy level, of direct military force.”

Bolton has long criticized Trump for lacking a coherent policy strategy, saying his approach is “transactional, ad hoc, episodic and really viewed from the prism of how it helps Donald Trump.”

He said Trump has never liked Trudeau, and was clearly enjoying trolling the Canadian leader as he railed against the nations’ trade imbalance. Canada, a resource-rich nation, sells more goods to the U.S. than it buys.

But Bolton said the president-elect’s expansionist talk about Canada and Greenland is likely to backfire, adding: “When you do things that make it less likely you’re going to achieve the objectives, that’s not master bargaining, that’s crazy.”

___ Gillies reported from Toronto. Associated Press writer Juan Zamorano in Panama City contributed to this report.

AP · by JILL COLVIN · January 9, 2025

16. Can Trump buy Greenland? Technically, yes. Here are his options.

I wonder why no one brings up the Louisiana Purchase or the Alaska Purchase?

As we have learned the president elect is a negotiator and disruptor.

I think the key desired result is at the end of this article. We will likely get increased use of basing as well as access to resources without absorbing Greenland. Greenland will enhance our strategic capabilities that will allow us to more effectively compete with China.

Excerpts:

If Trump can’t buy Greenland, or rope it into a defense deal, the president-elect might be able to add more U.S. bases there.

The U.S. and NATO allies have significant gaps in surveillance coverage in parts of the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. The U.S. could add more sophisticated sensors to add to the early warning radars that the Pentagon already has in place at Pituffik Space Base, on the northwestern tip of the island.

“Norway keeps an eye on it, we keep an eye on it,” said Jim Townsend, a former senior Pentagon official who worked on NATO and Arctic defense policy. “That fills a gap. That’s important.”

Gray, the former Trump administration official, said that preventing Russia and China from exploiting Greenland is in everyone’s interest.

“The Chinese are experts at exploiting these developing, lightly populated countries and using them for their own purposes,” he said. “[Denmark] understands that a Greenland that’s susceptible to coercion is not in their interest or our interest.”

Can Trump buy Greenland? Technically, yes. Here are his options.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/09/can-america-buy-another-country-00197197?utm

Here is what the president-elect can do with the autonomous territory.

A Trump aircraft arrives in Nuuk, Greenland, on Jan. 7. | Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images

By Jack Detsch

01/09/2025 05:00 AM EST

Donald Trump’s gambit to buy Greenland may sound ridiculous, but it’s not impossible.

If the president-elect is really determined to control the world’s largest island, he could try to buy it outright if the autonomous territory declares independence from Denmark. He could seek to make it a commonwealth like Puerto Rico. Or he could even weave Greenland into a deal like the United States has with Micronesia and the Marshall Islands that gives the U.S. military unfettered access in exchange for defense and financial assistance.

“There are tons of variations in terms of what is administered by the Interior Department,” said Alex Gray, the National Security Council chief of staff during the first Trump administration. “It’s not a one-size fits all and we have precedent for doing a lot of options.”

If he can’t buy Greenland, he could try to add more bases to snoop on nearby Russia and China. And if the Greenlanders agree — which they may not — he could find ways to exercise more authority on the island.

Here is what the incoming president could do to change the U.S. relationship with Greenland — and the barriers in his way.

Buy it

People in Trump’s orbit really are starting to think seriously about the negotiations that would lead to the island becoming a U.S. territory, Gray said, part of an effort to reorient American foreign policy toward the Western Hemisphere as China and Russia turn their eyes toward the region.

“I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility that he could do a direct purchase,” he said.

Gray did have to go pretty far back for a model. He pointed to Denmark’s 17th century purchase of St. Croix from France. The territory was purchased by the U.S. as part of a 1916 treaty and is now part of the Virgin Islands.

It’s not a completely new idea. The U.S., decades ago, offered to buy Greenland from Denmark, a long-secret plan that was revealed in the 1990s.

Greenland’s prime minister Mute Egede, addresses a press conference in Nuuk, Greenland, on March 15, 2024. | Leiff Josefsen/AFP via Getty Images

But even if Greenland could be sold, many Greenlanders question whether they would want to become part of the U.S. The island’s prime minister, who has called for independence from Denmark in the next decade, has said that Greenland is “not for sale and never will be for sale.”

And even Trump’s allies acknowledge that a negotiation over Greenland’s fate would be tricky because of the huge economic implications: Greenland has billions worth of unexplored minerals and hydrocarbons buried underneath its melting Arctic ice sheets.

On paper, Greenland has many of the powers of an independent nation already. It is a self-governing region of Denmark, giving the island widespread autonomy. This means it can elect its own leaders while Copenhagen handles its foreign policy and national defense.

“Denmark doesn’t claim to own it,” said Scott Anderson, a former State Department lawyer and national security expert. “I am quite confident that the government of Denmark, as we’ve seen them say things, doesn’t think it has the legal authority to sell Greenland to anyone.”

The U.S. hasn’t bought territory outright since snapping up the Philippines from Spain at the end of the 19th century. And international law has made it taboo — if not outright illegal — to buy, sell, or steal territory.

“If it’s not internationally recognized as valid and legitimate, then that’s going to cause all sorts of complications in actually benefiting from that relationship with Greenland,” Anderson said.

Take it

A military invasion, which Trump won’t rule out, would rile the world.

“That would be taking a page from the Saddam Hussein and Putin playbook,” said Brian Finucane, a former legal adviser at the State Department under three presidents. “This rhetoric from Trump is concerning because he is the incoming U.S. president and his words by themselves have foreign relations consequences.”

Strike a deal

Even if Greenland decides to become independent, the U.S. could still find a way to exercise more control over the island.

The U.S. has deals like that, called Compacts of Free Association, with Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau in the western Pacific islands.

Such a deal would give the U.S. exclusive military access and the right to determine which other nations can base their troops to Greenland. It could give the Pentagon a larger foothold in the region while pushing back on Chinese access to Arctic shipping routes as the Polar ice caps melt and Russia’s air and naval bases in Murmansk, on the nearby Kola Peninsula.

It’s similar to the relationship that Greenland has with Denmark, except that all three Pacific countries are independent nations. The Trump administration previously considered the idea of signing a COFA with Greenland during his first term.

Some former U.S. officials argue that the model could ease pressure on Copenhagen, since the island is about 50 times the size of Denmark. The country’s active-duty military is smaller than New York City’s police force.

“Denmark understands that Greenland is going to get independence,” said Gray. “They understand they don’t have the ability to defend Greenland post independence.”

But after Trump’s tacit threat of military action to take Greenland triggered warnings from both Germany and France, the U.S. even helping the island distance itself from Denmark could have diplomatic ramifications.

Flex some muscle

If Trump can’t buy Greenland, or rope it into a defense deal, the president-elect might be able to add more U.S. bases there.

The U.S. and NATO allies have significant gaps in surveillance coverage in parts of the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. The U.S. could add more sophisticated sensors to add to the early warning radars that the Pentagon already has in place at Pituffik Space Base, on the northwestern tip of the island.

“Norway keeps an eye on it, we keep an eye on it,” said Jim Townsend, a former senior Pentagon official who worked on NATO and Arctic defense policy. “That fills a gap. That’s important.”

Gray, the former Trump administration official, said that preventing Russia and China from exploiting Greenland is in everyone’s interest.

“The Chinese are experts at exploiting these developing, lightly populated countries and using them for their own purposes,” he said. “[Denmark] understands that a Greenland that’s susceptible to coercion is not in their interest or our interest.”

Nahal Toosi contributed to this report.

Filed under: Military, Donald Trump, Donald Trump 2024, NATO, Denmark

17. Surge of Female Enlistments Helped Drive Army Success in Reaching 2024 Recruiting Goal

I did not expect this.

Surge of Female Enlistments Helped Drive Army Success in Reaching 2024 Recruiting Goal

military.com · by Steve Beynon · January 9, 2025

Last year marked the first time in several years that the Army achieved its ambitious recruiting goals -- primarily due to an increase in female recruits, according to internal service data reviewed by Military.com.

Nearly 10,000 women signed up for active duty in 2024, an 18% jump from the previous year, while male recruitment increased by just 8%, the data shows. The hike comes as the service continues to struggle with recruiting men, who have traditionally filled the bulk of its ranks but have become more of a challenge to enlist in recent years.

The numbers mark the continuation of a trend reported in a Military.com investigation that found a yearslong Army recruiting slump was centered around men, while female recruiting numbers have remained relatively strong. They also point to young women as an increasingly vital recruiting pool, especially as young men are struggling to meet the Army's eligibility requirements.

Female applicants may have an advantage over their male counterparts for a variety of reasons.

They are less likely to have criminal records, accounting for just 30% of juvenile arrests, according to data from the Justice Department. They're also outpacing men in higher education, with nearly half of women aged 25 to 34 holding bachelor's degrees compared to 37% of men, according to Pew Research data from late 2024.

Since 2013, male enlistments have dropped about 22%, from 58,000 men recruited that year to 45,000 last year.

The increase in female recruits comes despite the Army not changing much about its recruiting strategy. The service's public-facing social media and ad campaigns still predominantly feature men -- by as much as two to three times more, especially when it comes to speaking roles, according to a review of marketing materials from the past four years.

"It's not about pandering to women; it's about creating a professional environment accessing the best talent, where we've been undervaluing pursuing women," Katherine Kuzminski, an expert on the military and veterans at the Center for a New American Security, told Military.com in an interview.

Applicants with a college background are increasingly important: Nearly 5,000 new recruits who enlisted in the service last year had higher education, a 14% increase from 2023. College-level degrees are becoming more expected among enlisted troops, particularly as they advance through leadership ranks.

On the ground, Army recruiters broadly do not consider demographics when it comes to outreach, and efforts are generally not employed strategically, something the service is aiming to remedy in the coming years. That move is not to satisfy any vague diversity goals, officials have explained, but to become more surgical with courting potential applicants who are more likely to be eligible for service.

Meanwhile, the Army's biggest recruiting challenge isn't just convincing men to sign up -- it's finding eligible ones. Academic standards have become a major barrier for recruits, with a significant portion failing to meet the minimum requirements for enlistment.

The Army requires a high school diploma, and many roles demand strong scores on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB, a standardized test that assesses math, science and language skills and with which applicants often struggle. That trend coincides with falling test scores that schools have been seeing for decades but which were worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2022, the Army started the Future Soldier Preparatory Course, a pre-basic training camp that takes otherwise ineligible applicants and gets them up to snuff for service -- either to meet academic or body fat standards. The lion's share are recruits who came up short on the entrance test, and roughly 70% are men, according to internal Army data.

Studies have shown a troubling trend in U.S. education: Boys are falling behind girls in nearly every academic category, including reading and writing. That achievement gap starts in elementary school and often widens over time. By high school, boys are less likely to graduate on time compared to their female peers, and the differences are even more pronounced among male minorities.

As more women enlist into the Army and the percentage of eligible male candidates shrinks, women are increasingly rising through the ranks and taking on senior leadership roles.

military.com · by Steve Beynon · January 9, 2025

18. DOGE is dispatching agents across U.S. government

DOGE is dispatching agents across U.S. government

Federal officials are already dealing with surrogates from Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s nongovernmental body before Donald Trump is sworn in again.

January 10, 2025 at 6:00 a.m. ESTToday at 6:00 a.m. EST

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/01/10/musk-ramaswamy-doge-federal-agencies/

Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk, with Musk’s son X, visit Capitol Hill last month. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)

By Faiz Siddiqui, Jeff Stein and Elizabeth Dwoskin

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are sending representatives to agencies across the federal government, four people familiar with the matter said, to begin preliminary interviews that will shape the tech executives’ enormous ambitions to tame Washington’s sprawling bureaucracy.

In recent days, aides with the nongovernmental “Department of Government Efficiency" tied to President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team have spoken with staffers at more than a dozen federal agencies, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media. The agencies include the Treasury Department, the Internal Revenue Service and the departments of Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, and Health and Human Services, the people said.

At the same time, Musk and Ramaswamy have significantly stepped up hiring for their new entity, with more than 50 staffers already working out of the offices of SpaceX, Musk’s rocket-building company, in downtown Washington, two of the people said. DOGE aims to have a staff of close to 100 people in place by Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, they said.

While much about DOGE remains unclear — including who is paying the salaries of these staffers or exactly how DOGE representatives work with the formal transition team — the agency outreach reflects intensifying efforts by Musk and Ramaswamy to propose what they say will be “drastic” cuts to federal spending and regulations. Even as the scale of their project grows, Musk and Ramaswamy are encountering a slew of obstacles, including reluctance among congressional Republicans to approve deep budget cuts and a skeptical career civil service.

Two government employees said remarks Musk and Ramaswamy have made about the civil service have made them wary of the entire DOGE effort. Longtime civil servants — some who have built their careers learning the intricacies of the federal bureaucracy — are an awkward fit with Silicon Valley’s fast-moving and disruptive culture. Many in Washington regard the tech entrepreneurs as arrogant or naive about the complexity of reining in government.

The U.S. presidential transition process traditionally involves teams from the incoming administration working with existing agency staff and officials on the transfer of power, including regular briefings. This year’s changeover is far smoother than it was four years ago, when the process was complicated by Trump’s refusal to recognize the results of the election. But the uncertain status of DOGE relative to the rest of the Trump transition team has raised new questions about who precisely is speaking for the incoming administration.

In a potential nod to the myriad challenges facing DOGE, Musk has begun tempering certain promises in his bid to achieve sweeping reform by reinventing the federal bureaucracy, eliminating entire agencies, shrinking the federal workforce and slashing historic sums from the federal budget. In an interview Wednesday night at CES, the tech trade show in Las Vegas, he said DOGE may fall short of his initial aim to cut $2 trillion in federal spending.

“I think we’ll try for $2 trillion. I think that’s like the best-case outcome,” he said. “But I do think that you kind of have to have some overage. I think if we try for $2 trillion, we’ve got a good shot at getting $1 [trillion].”

The idea of a commission to cut waste and regulation, long discussed among conservatives, was taken up by Musk and Trump during last year’s presidential election. Musk put $277 million toward electing Trump and other Republicans in 2024, and Trump has made the billionaire one of his most powerful advisers. After the election, Trump named Musk and Ramaswamy as DOGE’s co-leaders, assigned to identify government waste that the White House Office of Management and Budget would try to cut.

For a project named as a joking reference to a meme-based cryptocurrency, DOGE has taken numerous steps since the election to build a very real Washington operation. Over the past several weeks, DOGE has been deluged by applications that have poured in through direct messages on X, Musk’s social media site, where the group put out a public call for “super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.”

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That led to swarms of applicants who sought to bring their experience and credentials to the attention of Musk or Ramaswamy. In a blog post, Vinay Hiremath, co-founder of the tech company Loom, described four “intense and intoxicating” weeks of DOGE-related work after he became involved.

Although he ultimately decided not to relocate to Washington for a job with DOGE, Hiremath said he had been added to multiple groups on the encrypted messaging app Signal, where DOGE is conducting much of its initial work. Hiremath did not respond to requests for comment.

The crowdsourced callouts were followed by postings for more specific roles: Just after Christmas, DOGE said it was looking for IT, HR and financial staffers for full-time, salaried positions. This week, it put out a request for software engineers and information security engineers for full-time roles, advising applicants to send over “a few bullet points demonstrating exceptional ability” along with their cellphone numbers.

On X, some users have listed their IQ scores in replies to Musk and DOGE and said they included them in their applications.

Key leadership roles have also fallen into place. Steve Davis, the Boring Company president who oversaw steep cost-cutting at Twitter (now X) after Musk bought it, is helping to oversee the entire effort, and deputies have been recruited to focus on narrower aspects of its agenda, such as legislation and regulation, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Emil Michael, a former Uber executive, is one of the people overseeing the effort to cut regulations, according to one person familiar with the matter, also speaking on the condition of anonymity to reflect matters not yet made public. Trump has announced the appointment of Katie Miller, former press secretary and communications director for former vice president Mike Pence, to DOGE. Trump also said in December that Bill McGinley, the former White House Cabinet secretary whom he’d previously named as White House counsel, would serve instead as DOGE counsel.

It remains unclear exactly how DOGE will drive change. The White House budget request applies to spending in fiscal 2026, which doesn’t begin until Oct. 1. Spending for the rest of the current fiscal year is being hashed out on Capitol Hill by congressional Republicans who already have voted overwhelmingly to boost spending for the Defense Department — an agency DOGE has vowed to target.

Numerous party officials, meanwhile, are quietly wary of approving big spending cuts at the same time they are working to extend the expiring provisions of Trump’s 2017 tax legislation, which would reduce revenue by trillions of dollars. And it’s not clear how much weight Musk’s star power will carry on Capitol Hill, where federal spending is often prized for its benefits to hometown constituents. The limits of Musk’s influence were revealed in late December when Congress revised a stopgap spending bill he criticized but passed separate legislation to implement many of the specific provisions he lambasted.

As Musk’s emissaries begin to make contact with federal officials, critical questions remain unresolved about the group’s authority and responsibilities. The two federal employees expressed confusion about what DOGE is assigned to do — including whether it has Trump’s full backing.

“Every administration has to establish a relationship with its career people, because it’s the career people who keep the government going,” said Bill Hoagland, senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank. “I think this is an important foray, but given what they have stated, it will be difficult for some career individuals to be cooperative with the DOGE people, who are not elected and are more advisers than political appointees.”

Jacob Bogage and Dan Diamond contributed to this report.

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Comments

By Faiz Siddiqui

Faiz Siddiqui is a technology reporter with The Washington Post's Business Desk covering companies such as Tesla and Twitter. His area of coverage has also included ride-hailing and the race to build autonomous cars. Prior to that, he covered the D.C. Metro and local transportation scene.follow on X@faizsays

By Jeff Stein

Jeff Stein is the White House economics reporter for The Washington Post. He was a crime reporter for the Syracuse Post-Standard and, in 2014, founded the local news nonprofit the Ithaca Voice in Upstate New York. He was also a reporter for Vox.follow on X@jstein_wapo

By Elizabeth Dwoskin

Lizza joined The Washington Post as Silicon Valley correspondent in 2016, becoming the paper's eyes and ears in the region. She focuses on social media and the power of the tech industry in a democratic society. Before that, she was the Wall Street Journal's first full-time beat reporter covering AI and the impact of algorithms on people's lives. follow on X@lizzadwoskin

19. U.S. Ambassador Says China Is Aligned With ‘Agents of Disorder’

Another phrase added to the lexicon of "axis of upheaval" and "axis of tyranny" and "axis of chaos" and "Dark Quad:" "The Agents of Disorder"

U.S. Ambassador Says China Is Aligned With ‘Agents of Disorder’

R. Nicholas Burns, the top U.S. diplomat in Beijing, says the Biden administration is making a final push to urge China to reconsider its tilt toward Russia, Iran and North Korea.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/10/business/nicholas-burns-ambassador-china.html?searchResultPosition=1

U.S. ambassador to China R. Nicholas Burns, at left, with Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, and President Biden during a meeting in November with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and other top officials. Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times

By Keith Bradsher

Reporting from Beijing

Jan. 10, 2025, 12:13 a.m. ET

Want to stay updated on what’s happening in China and Iran? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

The United States ambassador to China, R. Nicholas Burns, said the Biden administration is making a last push to try to persuade China to stop transferring equipment to Russia for the war in Ukraine.

Mr. Burns, in an interview at the U.S. embassy in Beijing, asserted that nearly 400 Chinese companies have supplied Russia with so-called dual use products, those with both military and commercial applications. He also said China has supplied 90 percent of the microelectronics used in the Russian war effort.

With less than two weeks remaining before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office, Mr. Burns is raising the administration’s concerns about Russia, as well as China’s alignment with Iran and North Korea, with Chinese ministers in a series of meetings this week and early next week. He leaves the country this coming Tuesday.

More broadly, Mr. Burns said that China’s policies toward Russia, Iran and North Korea were inconsistent with Beijing’s desire to play a leading role in international initiatives of global order, like the World Trade Organization and the Paris agreement on climate change.

“Their actions are disruptive because they’re aligning themselves with the most unreliable agents of disorder in the international system,” he said. “So the Chinese can’t have it both ways; they’ve got to make a decision here.”

He also said that China, which buys huge quantities of oil from Iran, should use its influence to insist that Iran stop the Tehran-backed Houthi militia from attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

Mr. Burns met this week with senior officials including Ma Zhaoxu, the executive vice foreign minister, and Liu Jianchao, who runs the international department of the Chinese Communist Party and is expected to become the next foreign minister. He has more meetings next week.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs had no immediate response. But in recent news briefings, Chinese officials have denied supplying Russia or Ukraine with any dual-use products, like drones with military uses.

“China never provides weapons to the parties to the conflict and strictly controls the export of dual-use articles, and China’s scope and measures of export control over drones are the most stringent worldwide,” Lin Jian, a foreign ministry spokesman, said on Dec. 17.

Chinese officials have also taken the position that while the West has imposed sanctions on oil sales by Iran because of its nuclear weapons development program, the United Nations has not done so. So China has felt no legal obligation to avoid buying Iranian oil, which sells at a steep discount to world prices because other countries shun it.

China has quadrupled imports of Iranian oil in the nearly two years since brokering Iran’s peace deal with Saudi Arabia, and last year it bought more than 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports, according to Kpler, a firm in Vienna that specializes in tracking Iran’s oil shipments. Oil sales to China by Iran’s state-owned oil sector represent more than 5 percent of the entire Iranian economy, and they pay for much of the operations of the Iranian government.

Iran has experienced a series of setbacks, including an Israeli air raid against Tehran’s air defenses and the defeat by Israel of Iran’s main ally in Lebanon, Hezbollah. China responded by sending one of its four vice premiers, Zhang Guoqing, to meet President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran in Tehran last month.

“China supports Iran in safeguarding its national sovereignty, security, territorial integrity and its legitimate rights and interests,” Mr. Zhang said in Tehran.

Andon Pavlov, a senior analyst at Kpler, said Thursday that the Biden administration is expected to expand its blacklist of tankers that have carried Russian or Iranian oil, and that China is likely to bar these vessels from its ports. Reuters reported this week that officials in Shandong Province, the main Chinese entry point for Iranian oil, have begun barring blacklisted tankers from its ports.

But Mr. Pavlov said that Iran’s methods for shipping oil to China are so opaque that it is hard to predict the effectiveness of such measures.

Mr. Burns’s discussions with senior Chinese officials this week and next are part of a broader recent diplomatic effort by the Biden administration. In November, President Biden met with Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, at a conference in Peru, and in August, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, met with Mr. Xi in Beijing.

While Mr. Burns declined to predict possible Trump administration policies toward China, he said that communication between the two countries’ militaries to prevent accidental confrontations had improved. And last October, for the first time in 13 years, China allowed the recovery of the remains of World War II-era American military personnel missing in action.

He also praised China’s recent actions to limit exports of chemicals used to make fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that has been the main cause of drug overdose deaths in the United States. China has arrested 300 people in the fentanyl industry, closed many online stores selling the precursor chemicals to produce fentanyl, and banned the export of 55 precursor chemicals and synthetic drugs, Mr. Burns said.

Li You contributed research.

Keith Bradsher is the Beijing bureau chief for The Times. He previously served as bureau chief in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Detroit and as a Washington correspondent. He has lived and reported in mainland China through the pandemic. More about Keith Bradsher

20. Trump vs. the Military

The election is over. There is no need for a phoney culture war over wokism any longer. The Trump administration should appoint national security professionals to implement policies in accordance with the administration's vision and the military will salute and move out. There is no need to continue the culture war. Just quietly, effectively, and professionally implement the policies without scapegoating. The Trump campaign did a great job mobilizing its base and capturing those who desired change by focusing on the actions of their "enemies" in the opposition party. Now that it is going to be in charge it no longer has to pander to the base and should focus on mobilizing support of the entire nation. One way to do that is to simply implement the necessary policies that are desired by those who sought change and then let the military do its job. There is no need to create a "we-they" between the administration and the military. I fear what is lost on the incoming administration is that there is broad support within the military to do things it wants to do and there will be no resistance within the military. There is no longer any need to vilify the "other." The military is not Trump's enemy and those who think it is do not know or understand our military.

Excerpts:

These countries’ recent histories are a cautionary tale for the United States as it heads into a second, probably less restrained Trump administration. To be clear, Trump has the legal right to fire senior military officers in whom he has lost confidence. The officer corps must obey the president’s lawful commands, even if officers judge them unwise. And some of Trump’s anger, during his first term, at reports that civilian officials and uniformed officers had “slow-walked” his orders is understandable. It is the military’s job to help the president make informed decisions. Officers can try vigorously to persuade the president of their point of view, but they cannot simply substitute their own judgment for that of the president, even if they think his policy is wrong headed.

But the fact that a presidential purge of the armed forces would be lawful would not make it any less awful. Transforming the professional U.S. military into a patronage force, bound by loyalty to the president and ideological litmus tests rather than by fealty to the Constitution and the institution, would not make the United States more secure or its democracy stronger. Persistent populist and partisan attacks on the top brass will not reverse the military’s recruitment crisis, and it may well deepen it. Greater civilian interference in the military justice system would undermine the discipline that underpins battlefield effectiveness. Politicizing promotions and appointments would degrade both the quality of the military’s officers and their advice to civilian policymakers.

If Trump really cared about winning until we all tired of winning, he would leave the U.S. military’s professionalism and its autonomy over its core functions untouched. But if the history of populist leadership is any guide, he will not—to the detriment of democratic civil-military relations as well as the United States’ national security.

Trump vs. the Military

Foreign Affairs · by More by Ronald R. Krebs · January 10, 2025

Why Populists Turn Against Their Armed Forces—and Degrade National Power

Ronald R. Krebs

A navy honor guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia, August 2024 Daniel Becerril / Reuters

Ronald R. Krebs is Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota.

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During his successful 2024 reelection campaign, incoming U.S. President Donald Trump promised to purge the military of “woke” generals. Soon after his November victory, The Wall Street Journal reported that his transition team had drafted an executive order to establish a so-called warrior board of retired senior military officers tasked with identifying serving generals and admirals who ought to be dismissed. In the meantime, according to other media reports, Trump’s team has been drawing up its own list of generals to remove from their posts and perhaps even court-martial.

That the Trump administration would put the military in its sights should not come as a surprise. When they first take office, populists often try to curry favor with the armed forces by encouraging the public to venerate officers and soldiers, especially fallen ones. But this love affair with the military is typically short-lived, because populists cannot abide strong, independent institutions that might prevent them from doing as they please. In countries such as Hungary, India, Israel, Poland, and Turkey, populist leaders eventually turned on the military. They variously attacked senior officers as incompetent or treasonous elites, purged those they deemed disloyal and appointed political allies in their stead, seized control of traditionally autonomous military functions, and redesigned military command structures. Their rhetorical attacks undermined public trust in the top brass, and their efforts to politicize the military rendered their countries’ armed forces less capable of contending with national security threats.

Nobody should be fooled by the Trump team’s claim that it aims, by culling top officers, to strengthen the U.S. military. The purpose would be precisely the opposite; weakening the professional military, in fact, is a move many populist leaders make as they consolidate power. If, like his fellow populists around the globe, Trump uses his second term to undermine the military’s independence and professionalism and transform it into a more politicized force, both American democracy and the U.S. armed forces’ war-fighting capacity will suffer.

MARTIAL ARTS

No matter where they stand on the ideological spectrum, populist leaders build support by making direct appeals to the populace and by claiming to speak on their behalf. They contrast the morally pure “people” with corrupt elites. They claim exclusive knowledge of the authentic people’s interests. Populist discourse recognizes neither the real diversity of interests in a political community nor the possibility of a loyal opposition. To criticize populists and their agenda is to criticize the sovereign people themselves. A populist leader thus seeks to eradicate, weaken, or capture all institutions that mediate between the will of the putative people and the outputs of government. These include a country’s media, its nongovernmental organizations, its judges—and its military.

Populists’ eventual assault on the military is often unexpected, because they start by courting senior military officers. In most countries, the armed forces are large, disciplined organizations that command a significant portion of the national budget, are trusted by the public, and control the large-scale deployment of force. Rather than confront these powerful institutions at the start, prudent populists begin consolidating their power by taking on more fragile nonstate institutions such as the press, universities, and NGOs that lack deep pockets and powerful defenders. Cultivating senior officers is also politically useful at this stage. Populists confront a thorny problem: how to draw power from the public while keeping it obedient. Militarism offers a solution: by romanticizing the nation’s soldiers and officers and promoting them as a model, populists seek to create a nation of soldier-like citizens—mobilized but unfailingly loyal.

Those who have died on the battlefield are ideal subjects for populist propaganda. They cannot refute politicians who claim that they marched to battle cheerfully and faced their demise without hesitation, and they cannot publicly argue that their suffering may have been a meaningless sacrifice. Many populist leaders therefore begin their careers by putting a celebration of the military, and especially the commemoration of the fallen, at the center of the nation’s civil religion. During its 2014 campaign, for instance, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party endorsed the construction of the National War Memorial at Delhi’s India Gate, a project the military had proposed more than half a century earlier. Once he became prime minister, Modi made building the memorial a priority.

Populists’ eventual assault on the military is often unexpected.

In 2003, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, then Turkey’s prime minister, inaugurated an annual Canakkale Victory and Martyrs’ Day, celebrating the Ottoman Empire’s World War I victory over Allied forces at Gallipoli. The Turkish film and TV industry followed his lead by churning out content about the triumph. Erdogan sponsored the construction of a $50 million visitors’ center and museum at the site of the battle, which opened in 2012, and since then, government-subsidized Canakkale “Martyrs’ Tours” have flourished. In 2022, on the 107th anniversary of the naval triumph, Erdogan opened the world’s longest suspension bridge—officially named the 1915 Canakkale Bridge—to, in his words, “keep alive the memory of [the] martyrs.”

After the populist Law and Justice party took power in Poland in 2015, it encouraged Poles to venerate the anti-Communist partisans who fought the Soviet army during World War II and the Communist Polish government until 1947. It honored them with a day of remembrance, published hagiographies, and constructed a mausoleum to their memory in the national military cemetery in Warsaw. New school curricula devoted significant attention to portraying the partisans as an inspiration to young Poles. In Russia, meanwhile, President Vladimir Putin has created a cult centered on World War II, known in Russia as the “Great Patriotic War.” He revived and rebranded Red Army Day as Defender of the Fatherland Day and remilitarized the annual Victory Day celebrations in Red Square, which had lost their militaristic flavor in the post‒Cold War 1990s. At these events, Putin prominently valorized living veterans as role models for contemporary Russian citizens.

And in Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban has embraced military symbols and rhetoric. In 2011, a year after he took office, he reestablished the ceremonial guard that, between World War I and World War II, protected the Hungarian crown in the parliament; later, he created special new military units for the parliament and the presidential palace. Under Orban, Hungary’s schools have adopted a defense-oriented curriculum intended—according to one of Orban’s defense ministers—to provide young Hungarians with “a sense of belonging in an increasingly impersonal world.”

ARMED ROBBERY

But populists’ romancing of the military typically proves fleeting. Professional officers are not, in fact, dependable foot soldiers because their allegiances lie elsewhere: with the constitutional regime or with the armed forces as an institution. And thus once weaker institutions have been brought to heel, populists often seek to take over the military if they can, chasing out professionals and promoting loyalists. If this angle of attack fails, populists seek to degrade the military’s standing and legitimacy by launching political attacks on senior officers, portraying them as incompetent or as mere politicians in uniform.

Immediately after Poland’s Law and Justice party took power in 2015, it began weakening the independent judiciary in part so that the Polish government could more easily dismiss insufficiently loyal military officers. In 2023, Poland’s defense minister manufactured a scandal to undermine the public’s trust in the military, accusing the armed forces of failing to inform him about a wayward Russian cruise missile that had landed in Polish territory. In Turkey, some five years after its electoral victory, the Erdogan-led regime imprisoned and convicted hundreds of retired and active-duty officers, purportedly for plotting the government’s overthrow. Erdogan then altered the military’s promotion processes to stall the careers of officers he felt he could not trust and installed his allies in key senior positions. The failed coup that a faction of the Turkish military launched in 2016 revealed how effective Erdogan had been in diminishing the Turkish military’s once awesome power. The coup attempt gave Erdogan an excuse to seize control over military education, the promotion of high-ranking officers, the military justice system, and Turkey’s Supreme Military Council.

In India in 2019, Modi established a new post—chief of the defense staff (CDS)—and then filled the position with his handpicked candidate. When that first CDS died in a helicopter crash in 2021, Modi redesigned the appointment rules to allow his preferred candidate—another political loyalist—to take the deceased CDS’s place. In Hungary in 2023, Orban engineered a purge of his country’s upper military ranks, summarily dismissing hundreds of officers so that their successors would owe him their professional survival. Israel’s populist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has largely avoided public clashes with the Israel Defense Force’s leadership, but politicians in his orbit have regularly attacked top officers as elites bent on subverting the will of the people. His allies have crusaded against particular senior officers, publicly undermined the military justice system, and called for replacing generals they perceive as left-wing with younger, more nationalist, and often more religious colleagues.

TARGET PRACTICE

When Trump entered the Oval Office for the first time in 2017, he appointed retired generals—“my generals,” as he called them—to his cabinet in unprecedented numbers. As Trump’s first term wore on, however, he soured on the military officers in his in cabinet when they did not demonstrate absolute loyalty, and all of them ultimately resigned or were fired. Meanwhile, the military’s power, prestige, and independence painted a target on senior officers’ backs. Behind the scenes, Trump reportedly verbally assaulted, in the crudest terms, sitting generals he came to see as the embodiment of the so-called deep state.

Toward the end of his term, Trump’s disdain for active-duty military officers emerged into the open. During the nationwide protests that erupted after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, Trump fumed when military officers declined to show him sufficient public fealty. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, for example, ran afoul of Trump when he publicly apologized for allowing himself to appear in the president’s photo op after protesters were cleared from Lafayette Square. So did Secretary of Defense Mark Esper—himself a former officer—when he contradicted Trump’s claims that the president could invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy U.S. troops to the streets.

In September 2020, in the heat of the presidential campaign, The Atlantic reported that Trump had called U.S. soldiers who died in service “suckers” and “losers.” At a news conference that month, Trump lashed out, directly blaming the top brass’s corruption for soldiers’ deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan: “I’m not saying the military’s in love with me,” he snapped. “The top people in the Pentagon probably aren’t, because they want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes . . . stay happy.” The military’s leadership was responsible, he declared, for “one cold-hearted globalist betrayal after another.”

As Trump’s first term wore on, he soured on the military officers in his in cabinet.

After Trump’s November 2020 defeat at the polls, he and his supporters worked more publicly to tarnish the U.S. military’s reputation. As “critical race theory” became a focus of right-wing politics, conservative politicians and pundits repeatedly blamed the military’s “wokeness” for its battlefield struggles over the past two decades; the calamitous withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 gave this line of attack fresh vigor. Accusations that the military’s leadership was negligent and that its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs had eroded its fighting capability and caused a recruitment crisis became standard Republican rhetoric.

Indeed, making such claims became a way of auditioning for a national security role in a second Trump administration. For instance, Florida Representative Michael Waltz, whom Trump has picked to be his incoming national security adviser, introduced a bill in 2023 to audit the military’s DEI programs and end the teaching of critical race theory at West Point. Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, declared during a November 2024 podcast interview that “the dumbest phrase on planet Earth in the military is ‘our diversity is our strength’” and that “any general . . . involved . . . in any of the DEI woke shit has got to go. . . . That's the only litmus test we care about.” During the 2024 campaign, Trump himself pushed this line. Last June, for instance, he said in a television appearance that “‘woke’ in the military” was a serious problem: “their purpose [should be] to win wars, not to be woke.”

These attacks have inflicted real damage on the U.S. military. According to numerous national polls, Americans’ once sky-high confidence in the armed forces has fallen substantially. In July 2023, just 60 percent of respondents to a Gallup survey agreed with the statements that they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of trust in the military, compared to 74 percent in 2018. Among self-identified Republicans, the drop was particularly striking: although 90 percent expressed trust in the military in 2018, just 68 percent did in 2023. The incoming Trump administration may well be right that its core constituents will not object to sacking supposedly left-wing and professionally incompetent top brass. If Trump and his supporters have succeeded in painting senior U.S. military officers as merely a band of unelected and unaccountable political activists, then the Trump team is justified in treating them as they would any political appointees—keeping them in office as long as they are useful and loyal and firing them when they are not.

POPULAR AFFRONT

Both venerating the military—as populists do at the start—and undermining the military’s independence and professionalism carry a high cost. My own research, based on surveys that coauthors and I conducted in France, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States between 2018 and 2021, found that respondents who saw soldiers as patriots and good citizens—whether because they have that prior belief or because they have been experimentally prompted to hold such a view—were more likely to support prospective military operations. This research also showed that holding romanticized beliefs about soldiers made people more likely to think that soldiers are eager to be deployed, which, in turn, made them less inclined to oppose a military operation. By contrast, when people believe that soldiers have joined the military for extrinsic reasons, such as the lure of pay and benefits, they are less likely to agree that soldiers should be sent into harm’s way.

Putting soldiers on a pedestal is thus dangerous for soldiers, making it easier for politicians to sell the public on deployments. It has no upside, as it does not prompt public support for more generous benefits in exchange for service. And it is bad for democracy, because it gives civilians incentives to be deferential to those in uniform.

But if populists’ excessive praise endangers soldiers, so does their subsequent denigration of senior officers. Populist leaders’ attacks undermine public trust in the armed forces, which in turn can harm both recruitment and retention as serving in the military loses its cachet. If potential recruits are led to see a military’s top brass as corrupt or elitist, they are less likely to want to entrust their lives to such leaders. Good data on what motivates enlistment is very hard to come by, but Hungary and the United States have both fallen far short of their recruitment targets in recent years, as has Poland, despite widespread fear of a revanchist Russia. According to a Turkish Army document that was leaked in 2022, the force was “having a hard time finding a combat-ready armored/mechanized brigade that we can send into battle” because of a troop shortage. Given how many factors can affect enlistment, populist attacks on the professional military cannot definitively be blamed for these recruitment challenges, but they have quite likely contributed to the problem.

Worse, populists’ recent efforts to erode their armed forces’ professionalism and autonomy, install loyalists, and bend the military to their will more generally have undercut military effectiveness by denying promotions to otherwise qualified officers and chasing them out of the institution. The 2016 postcoup purge of the military in Turkey hollowed out the officer corps: the most qualified officers are less likely to rise up the ranks and may resign out of frustration. Today, the Turkish Air Force is still short on pilots, and the army has been compelled to appoint generals who lack the historically requisite staff-officer education and experience.

Finally, when the military is politicized, officers have strong incentives not to provide civilians with frank advice, and the public debate on military affairs becomes impoverished. In a democracy, as Eliot Cohen has put it, civil-military relations should be an “unequal dialogue” in which civilians’ preferences, judgment, and decisions must reign supreme. But it must be a dialogue, or else the choice to employ military force will be ill informed and potentially disastrous. In India in 2022, for example, despite reports that it had misgivings, the military service chiefs publicly endorsed the Modi government’s revision of manpower policy, which shortened initial terms of service and limited most soldiers to a single term. It even reportedly silenced many vocal veterans who thought the scheme would endanger battlefield efficacy and militarize Indian society. The Indian Armed Forces was silent as a promised military modernization never materialized and the technological capabilities of India’s military dropped far behind China, its regional adversary.

WAR, NOT GAMES

These countries’ recent histories are a cautionary tale for the United States as it heads into a second, probably less restrained Trump administration. To be clear, Trump has the legal right to fire senior military officers in whom he has lost confidence. The officer corps must obey the president’s lawful commands, even if officers judge them unwise. And some of Trump’s anger, during his first term, at reports that civilian officials and uniformed officers had “slow-walked” his orders is understandable. It is the military’s job to help the president make informed decisions. Officers can try vigorously to persuade the president of their point of view, but they cannot simply substitute their own judgment for that of the president, even if they think his policy is wrong headed.

But the fact that a presidential purge of the armed forces would be lawful would not make it any less awful. Transforming the professional U.S. military into a patronage force, bound by loyalty to the president and ideological litmus tests rather than by fealty to the Constitution and the institution, would not make the United States more secure or its democracy stronger. Persistent populist and partisan attacks on the top brass will not reverse the military’s recruitment crisis, and it may well deepen it. Greater civilian interference in the military justice system would undermine the discipline that underpins battlefield effectiveness. Politicizing promotions and appointments would degrade both the quality of the military’s officers and their advice to civilian policymakers.

If Trump really cared about winning until we all tired of winning, he would leave the U.S. military’s professionalism and its autonomy over its core functions untouched. But if the history of populist leadership is any guide, he will not—to the detriment of democratic civil-military relations as well as the United States’ national security.

Ronald R. Krebs is Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Ronald R. Krebs · January 10, 2025

21. Mending Fences: Strengthening Homeland Defense through Integrated Civil-Military Air Surveillance

Excerpts:

The United States is not currently prepared to face a growing number of national security threats and challenges, including from the air. Lacking a comprehensive homeland air defense network, the Department of Defense should move with urgency to mend America’s hole-riddled aerial fence. Affordable and realistic fixes could be achieved by integrating civil and military sensors into a better aerial threat common operating picture.

There are a number of steps the Department of Defense can take now. First, it should assess civil sensors to determine which provide the most value, and prioritize and pursue civil partnerships accordingly. As part of this effort, it should review the Federal Aviation Administration’s Radar Divestiture Program and determine whether radars slated for decommissioning should be retained, using Defense Department funds if necessary.

Second, the department should review authorities for military employment of civil systems in wartime, and recommend changes where appropriate. Federal law provides for the Coast Guard to be transferred to the Defense Department during war. Executive orders and law establish similar measures for the Federal Aviation Administration and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. More such arrangements may be necessary.

Finally, it should develop software to extract track data from civil sensor data and deploy off-the-shelf hardware suites, with associated funding, personnel, and training for installation, maintenance, and operations. This would require relatively little effort. Indeed, the entire project might be delegated to a government laboratory or defense contractor.

In both World War II and the Cold War, hundreds of thousands of civilian volunteers turned up to help plug the holes in America’s aerial fence. Today, civil technology could play a similar role in securing the skies. If history is any indication, the American public will answer the call to action.

Mending Fences: Strengthening Homeland Defense through Integrated Civil-Military Air Surveillance - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Thane C. Clare · January 10, 2025

A 1953 advertisement for the U.S. Air Force’s civilian Ground Observer Corps described America’s air defenses as a “10 mile high fence full of holes.” Seventy years later, the United States again finds itself unable to reliably detect and identify threats from the air. One need look no further than the 2023 Chinese spy balloon incident, the unattributed aerial incursions over Langley Air Force Base and other U.S. military installations at home and overseas, and recent reports of mysterious drone activity over several U.S. states to see the urgency of the issue.

Vulnerability to aerial attack poses a serious threat to America’s ability to defend its citizens or to sustain a war effort. Lest this sound alarmist, U.S. military commanders have testified as much, and independent analysis confirms a “near-complete lack of homeland cruise missile defense and related forms of air defense.” Meanwhile, Russia and China have fielded “robust and redundant” integrated air defense systems within their own borders, ominously suggesting that the two countries are preparing for the possibility of reciprocal homeland strikes in wartime.

With storm clouds gathering over the Taiwan Strait and the ever-present risk that Russia’s war on Ukraine could escalate unpredictably, the United States should move swiftly to mend its aerial fence. To get a running start, the Department of Defense should rapidly integrate all relevant civil sensors into its homeland air defense network. From weather radars to 5G towers and FM radio stations, U.S. territory is dotted with thousands of transmitters and receivers that could contribute to aerial surveillance. Such integration would be both feasible and affordable. It would also reflect a long tradition of civil-military cooperation in watching America’s skies.

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A Fence Full of Holes

For nearly seven decades America has lived with the prospect of nuclear warheads plunging down from hundreds of miles above. As a result, the Department of Defense has focused on building a ballistic missile defense umbrella over the United States. From the Nike interceptors of the late 1950s to the 1980s’ Strategic Defense Initiative and today’s Ballistic Missile Defense System, cumulative U.S. investment in countering exo-atmospheric missile threats is estimated at more than $450 billion in 2024 dollars.

Far less attention has been paid to endo-atmospheric threats like cruise missiles, balloons, and drones. If ballistic missiles are likened to enemy paratroopers that can land with little warning far behind friendly lines, threats flying at hundreds or thousands of feet in altitude (rather than hundreds of miles) are akin to ground troops menacing a nation’s flanks. Comprehensive surveillance of those aerial flanks is the first requirement of an effective fence. Unfortunately, comprehensive aerial surveillance is exactly what the United States lacks.

From the 1950s onward, the main U.S. and Canadian homeland air radars (the Distant Early Warning Line and its replacement, the North Warning System) have been oriented to detect Soviet or Russian bombers approaching over the North Pole, leaving the coasts and internal airspace largely unguarded. The end of the Cold War put the brakes on any new investments in America’s aerial fence, with then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Colin Powell declaring in 1993 that the United States no longer needed a dedicated air defense force. While the 9/11 terrorist attacks understandably led to major investments in transportation security, homeland air defense against military attack remained a low priority. Air defense investments that the Defense Department did make were intended for U.S. forces involved in distant “regional” conflicts, inspiring the rueful title of a 2022 paper, “North America is a Region, Too.” The department has moved in recent years to develop over-the-horizon radars capable of detecting aerial threats to the United States, but tangible investments have been deferred to the point that these radars are unlikely to become operational before 2030.

Consequently, the Federal Aviation Administration — not the Department of Defense — provides the lion’s share of the surveillance infrastructure for the “world’s largest and busiest airspace.” Air traffic radars, though numerous, are not ideally suited to detect modern threats. Mechanically rotating radars cannot scan fast enough to reliably track fast, low-altitude cruise missiles, which is why U.S. warships and missile defense batteries use electronically steered phased array radars. Additionally, the radar horizon prevents the detection of low-flying targets at a distance, leaving significant holes in U.S. air surveillance, especially below 5,000 feet, including several complete gaps in radar coverage below 1,000 feet along every coastline. This is precisely the vulnerability that Chinese and Russian cruise missiles and drones could exploit.

Moreover, U.S. air traffic control radars are aging, with some being more than 70 years old. The Federal Aviation Administration has embarked on a modernization program that will reduce reliance on radar in favor of a transponder-based system called the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast. This requires that both military and civilian aircraft transmit their own GPS position data to receivers on the ground. As a result, the Federal Aviation Administration will retire 14 percent of the terminal radars that monitor airspace near airports by the end of 2025, adding yet more holes to the aerial fence.

Despite their limitations, these air traffic control radars do in fact make an important contribution to U.S. air surveillance. Yet, the Department of Defense’s command-and-control system can ingest air tracks from only 40 percent of them, requiring operators to use separate military and Federal Aviation Administration systems simultaneously to monitor the same airspace. The fence therefore relies not on the latest AI algorithms, but on operators “yelling missile status updates” to each other inside an operations center. Moreover, since air defense “shooters” — primarily aging F-15 and F-16 fighter aircraft — are spread thin, any delay or errors in integrating the air picture could do great harm as operators work to vector scarce interceptors toward rapidly closing targets.

Arrayed against this flimsy air defense shield is a growing range of airborne threats. Perhaps the most severe is Russia’s combat-tested Kalibr cruise missile, launched from Severodvinsk-class submarines — and soon to be a continuous presence off U.S. shores. China, too, is developing submarine-launched land attack missiles. The speed, stealth, and terrain-hugging flight of modern cruise missiles make them difficult to detect. Yet, they are not invulnerable: Ukraine’s wartime experience shows that such missiles can be shot down by determined defenders — but only if they are detected in time.

Drones pose similarly vexing challenges to air defense. Stealthy, long-range variants such as China’s GJ-11 and Russia’s S-70 could be used to attack U.S. territory. Adversaries could also attack using smaller platforms such as the Iranian Shahed-136 that Russia has employed in Ukraine, perhaps launched from ships operating in the U.S. littorals or even within the homeland. The dazzling drone-based light show that kicked off the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics portends the kind of militarized drone swarms that China is rapidly developing.

Watching the Skies, Together

The United States should focus more eyes on the sky, and it should do so quickly. The Department of Defense cannot afford to wait decades for its acquisition system to deliver the perfect solution. Fortunately, civil-military air defense cooperation has been a longstanding American tradition. During World War II, federal, state, and local authorities cooperated to deploy hundreds of thousands of air raid wardens to supplement Army air defenders. After the war, the Defense Department initially estimated a need for 160,000 Ground Observer Corps volunteers to scan the skies for Soviet bombers. When the Soviet Union acquired the atomic bomb, the Air Force redoubled Ground Observer Corps activity, and more than 300,000 civilian volunteers helped to provide 24-hour, year-round visual surveillance until 1958, when the first national air defense network came online.

Today, as in the past, the Department of Defense could achieve rapid and meaningful improvements by harnessing existing civilian resources. This is not an entirely new idea. For example, a 2022 Center for Strategic and International Studies report claims that civil sensors “could supply raw data, which when fused with others nationwide and processed through machine learning, could identify anomalous activity and nominate possible tracks.” Indeed, this vision of AI-enabled air surveillance is implicit in the Defense Department’s plan to link all sensors to all shooters through its Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control concept. Unfortunately, this capability will likely take years to come online.

Moreover, exquisite battlespace awareness at the headquarters level does not automatically yield total battlespace awareness for air defense shooters, which, with few exceptions, cannot receive raw data from offboard sensors. Thus, any AI-generated air surveillance data must be translated into standard data link message formats to provide essential target data such as position, altitude, course, and speed to front-line shooters.

Fortunately, there is no need to wait years for an ideal but hard-to-implement solution. With little more than a modest investment in software development, along with link terminals that cost less than $250,000 apiece, the U.S. military could consolidate and verify tracks generated by civil sensors, then distribute them over standard data links using procedures familiar to U.S. air defenders in cockpits and command centers across the force. Rather than waiting for AI to produce a detection capability that could be achieved sooner and more affordably with off-the-shelf capabilities, those more advanced techniques could be focused on the tougher challenges of target classification, identification, and prioritization.

A Land of Opportunity

As quickly as possible, the Department of Defense should deploy the ability to generate air tracks from civil sensors at the source, rather than in still-hypothetical data fusion clouds, and to incorporate those tracks into the air defense picture using off-the-shelf data link hardware. Specifically, track data could be extracted from civilian sensor network nodes, or directly from individual sensors themselves, using algorithms tailored to each sensor, run on computing systems that the Defense Department could provide at negligible cost using off-the-shelf components. These tracks could then be incorporated into the air defense picture via Link 16, using equipment already mass-produced for U.S. and NATO forces.

The first priority is to incorporate all of the Federal Aviation Administration’s more than 600 air traffic control radars into the homeland air defense network. In addition, weather radars such as the Federal Aviation Administration’s Terminal Doppler Weather Radar and Next Generation Radar could make a substantive contribution. Designed to detect near-ground weather hazards, these radars could help to fill the low-altitude surveillance void that currently exists.

A potential limitation of weather radars is that they prioritize extremely fine target resolution rather than the rapid search rates needed to detect fast-moving threats. One such radar, for instance, can “determine the shape of a 6-millimeter raindrop from more than 8 miles away.” Fortunately, the precision/speed tradeoff can be adjusted with software modifications: Weather radars could be programmed to scan more rapidly, though at a cost in precision. While this would result in degraded weather-forecasting performance, it could be a reasonable tradeoff under attack.

Regarding maritime sensors, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration uses the Integrated Ocean Observing System to monitor ocean currents up to 200 nautical miles offshore. With suitable processing, high-frequency radars like this could be redirected to detect airborne objects at low altitudes. In fact, Canada has deployed a similar system to monitor its coastlines. The Defense Department should partner with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to extract air tracks from its maritime radars, and Canada’s co-leadership of the North American Aerospace Defense Command provides a fine opportunity to merge capabilities.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather satellites could also produce air targeting data using processors at the downlink sites. Future weather satellites could be configured to detect solid objects on demand, transmitting data directly to the ground receiver. The proven rapid launch capabilities of the U.S. Space Force and the speedy development cycles of U.S. satellite manufacturers suggest that such modifications to weather satellites could be achieved in months rather than years.

Additional low-altitude aerial sensors could help too. U.S. Customs and Border Protection employs a variety of sensors to detect illicit air traffic approaching the United States, including the Tethered Aerostat Radar System, which is optimized for detecting low-altitude threats. Associated terminals are installed at North American Air Defense Command centers, but are not integrated electronically — leaving operators once again to shout updates to one another. The Department of Defense should field a translation capability to bring Customs and Border Protection data into the common air picture. Since the terminals are already physically co-located, this might not even require dedicated algorithms or link hardware — only a simple network interface.

The U.S. military also partners with numerous universities to fund cutting-edge research facilities such as the University of Oklahoma’s Advanced Radar Research Center. Research radars, some of which might provide exquisite capabilities, could easily be enlisted in a “Radar Observer Corps.”

Finally, the Defense Department could take advantage of the ubiquitous emissions from cellular towers, radio and television stations, and even geostationary satellites such as those of Sirius XM satellite radio. NATO-sponsored researchers have demonstrated that low-cost, off-the-shelf recievers combines with simple processing can detect small aerial targets via reflected satellite TV transmissions. Further, the 5G sector is rapidly deploying multi-static beamforming technology to improve connectivity by detecting airborne obstructions and rerouting beams around them. Collaboration between the Department of Defense, Federal Aviation Administration, and U.S. telecommunications companies could produce a nationwide ability to pull tracks from the 5G airwaves.

Move Out!

The United States is not currently prepared to face a growing number of national security threats and challenges, including from the air. Lacking a comprehensive homeland air defense network, the Department of Defense should move with urgency to mend America’s hole-riddled aerial fence. Affordable and realistic fixes could be achieved by integrating civil and military sensors into a better aerial threat common operating picture.

There are a number of steps the Department of Defense can take now. First, it should assess civil sensors to determine which provide the most value, and prioritize and pursue civil partnerships accordingly. As part of this effort, it should review the Federal Aviation Administration’s Radar Divestiture Program and determine whether radars slated for decommissioning should be retained, using Defense Department funds if necessary.

Second, the department should review authorities for military employment of civil systems in wartime, and recommend changes where appropriate. Federal law provides for the Coast Guard to be transferred to the Defense Department during war. Executive orders and law establish similar measures for the Federal Aviation Administration and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. More such arrangements may be necessary.

Finally, it should develop software to extract track data from civil sensor data and deploy off-the-shelf hardware suites, with associated funding, personnel, and training for installation, maintenance, and operations. This would require relatively little effort. Indeed, the entire project might be delegated to a government laboratory or defense contractor.

In both World War II and the Cold War, hundreds of thousands of civilian volunteers turned up to help plug the holes in America’s aerial fence. Today, civil technology could play a similar role in securing the skies. If history is any indication, the American public will answer the call to action.

Become a Member

Thane C. Clare is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Image: Lt. Scott Handlin via DVIDS.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Thane C. Clare · January 10, 2025

22. China takes aim at Philippine democracy

Excerpt:

A stable, democratic Philippines is vital to US interests and regional security. America and its Indo-Pacific partners and allies must do more to help the country build resilience against Chinese aggression not only in its territorial waters, but also in its politics.

China takes aim at Philippine democracy | The Strategist

aspistrategist.org.au · by Adam Nelson · January 8, 2025

In April 2024, a spokesperson for former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte suggested that the Philippines and China had entered into an undisclosed ‘gentleman’s agreement’ between 2016 and 2022. China would not challenge the status quo in the West Philippine Sea, and the Philippines would send only basic supplies to its personnel and facilities on the Ayungin Shoal. But now, the Philippines is emerging as an essential player in resisting China’s strategic ambitions in the region, with President Ferdinand Marcos’s administration asserting Philippine maritime claims through naval confrontations and new legislation.

This comes at a time when the country is facing a quieter, but equally serious, threat at home. The recent, high-profile case of Alice Guo—a former mayor accused of graft, money laundering, and espionage—shows how domestic corruption leaves the Philippines vulnerable to Chinese infiltration and subterfuge. How the Philippines navigates this challenge could shape not only its future but also the broader stability of Southeast Asia.

In addition to conducting aggressive military manoeuvres in the surrounding seas, China is also pursuing strategic investments and subtler forms of manipulation to push Philippine leaders (at all levels of government) into a more China-friendly stance. This is in keeping with its global strategy of building influence through clandestine business alliances, economic incentives, and investments targeting other countries’ elites. As the Philippines approaches critical elections in 2025 and 2028, China will try to befriend or otherwise gain sway over anyone who is open to its overtures.

Given these efforts, one cannot rule out a future Philippine government that adopts China’s own model of governance, state control and mass surveillance. Such a government might not only consult China’s authoritarian playbook to quash dissent; it could also leverage China’s resources and international political support to evade scrutiny and accountability. Institutions meant to serve the Philippine people would become tools for monitoring and restricting opponents and critics, and China will have secured itself a valuable foothold in Southeast Asia.

China has been stepping up its information operations globally, using the Philippines as a testing ground for tactics designed to propagate anti-American narratives and build pro-Chinese sentiment. Through platforms such as Facebook and TikTok, which many Filipinos rely on for news, Chinese accounts amplify content that casts doubt on Philippine-US relations and erodes social trust within Philippine society.

By exploiting internal instability, Chinese influence operations aim to distract Philippine authorities from China’s own aggression in the surrounding seas. One potential source of disruption is the lead-up to the elections in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). Should an ongoing peace process there falter, the region would inevitably demand much more of the national government’s attention and resources.

What can be done? Even if US investments do not match the scale of China’s infrastructure projects in the Philippines, Western strategic aid can help by presenting a clear alternative to China’s debt-driven model. Such a strategy would not only support Philippine sovereignty but also strengthen America’s network of alliances in the Indo-Pacific.

Specifically, to counter Chinese interference, the US and its allies should direct investments and support to advance five priorities. First, since corruption is a national security threat, they should fund programs to ensure disclosures of beneficial ownership (who ultimately owns private businesses), debt transparency, and the integrity of public procurement and tendering processes. This would not only create a level playing field for all businesses; it would also help safeguard Philippine institutions and political processes from covert foreign manipulation.

Second, the integrity of elections must be strengthened. Long-term election monitoring can help expose and counter covert foreign influence efforts and misuses of resources, ensuring transparency beyond election day. If sufficiently supported, citizen-led observation efforts can reinforce the sense that the process is fair, making electoral institutions more resilient against external pressures.

Third, the Philippines’ allies need to protect the BARMM peace process, such as by funding initiatives that strengthen local governance and security institutions in the region.

The peace process, and the country more broadly, would also benefit from enhanced information security, including targeted support for local initiatives to improve the public’s digital news literacy.

Lastly, the Philippines needs help countering Chinese surveillance of its citizens and officials. US support for cybersecurity and programs to protect digital rights can frustrate Chinese influence tactics and provide more transparency on major digital platforms.

A stable, democratic Philippines is vital to US interests and regional security. America and its Indo-Pacific partners and allies must do more to help the country build resilience against Chinese aggression not only in its territorial waters, but also in its politics.

aspistrategist.org.au · by Adam Nelson · January 8, 2025

23. Urgent Defense Recommendations for the Trump Administration

Make the US a maritime nation again.

Sustain a navy and raise an army.

Article I, Section 8:

"The Congress shall have Power To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;"

"To provide and maintain a Navy;"

Urgent Defense Recommendations for the Trump Administration

By Brent Ramsey

January 10, 2025

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/01/10/urgent_defense_recommendations_for_the_trump_administration_1083745.html?mc_cid=710925ae63

President-elect Trump has made recent statements in favor of the need for a much stronger Navy. Here are recommendations for things he must consider.

Provide full support to the Commission on the Future of the Navy. It is urgent to establish a current baseline requirement for the Navy to know what the mission is, what deficiencies we have, and what needs to be done to field the Navy needed to defend the nation. The Commission is to “undertake a comprehensive study of the structure of the Navy and policy assumptions related to the size and force mixture of the Navy, in order— (I) to make recommendations on the size and force mixture of ships; and (II) to make recommendations on the size and force mixture of naval aviation.” The Navy of 2025 is significantly smaller than it has been since the beginning of WWII at approximately 296 combat force ships. In contrast, at the end of the Cold War under Ronald Reagan the Navy had 592 combat force ships. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has massively increased the size of its People’s Liberation Army Navy to the extent that it now is larger than our Navy. The Congressional Research Service report of August 2024 shows:

CRS

Due to worldwide commitments and shortfalls due to maintenance and industrial capacity, the US is now able to keep only 50-70 ships in the 7^th Fleet of INDOPACOM versus the PRC’s 400 ships. The PRC has made clear its intent to dominate the INDO Pacific including all its neighbors including Taiwan and treaty allies like Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea. It is expected that the Commission will strongly recommend a much larger Navy. The latest Congressional Research Service Report on the growth of the PLAN can be found at the link. The Trump Administration quickly must propose, and the Congress must fund a large increase in shipbuilding funds for combatants to build the ships the nation urgently needs.

It has long been recognized that the US industrial base has eroded greatly since the end of the Cold War. In recognition of this fact, some in Congress and DOD itself have called for rebuilding the industrial base. Efforts have begun but they are slow and weak. We urgently need to build up the defense industrial base for shipbuilding, aircraft manufacturing, and missile production of all types. Our inventories and production capabilities for ships, aircraft and missiles are degraded and we are at risk of not being able to defend the nation. To its credit, DOD has documented this need in the form of a National Defense Strategic Industrial Base Development plan, but that effort is not treated as a priority and is seriously underfunded. It is urgent to increase spending on rebuilding the US’s critical industrial base infrastructure. More information on what DOD proposes is at the link.
Ship Maintenance funding and facilities are sorely lacking to maintain the existing fleet of approximately 296 combat force ships. Up to 40% of our submarines are awaiting maintenance and cannot deploy. The Navy is seriously short of docks to repair nuclear submarines. The US used to be a powerhouse shipbuilding nation, but that capability has been allowed to fall into ruin. There are plenty of defunct properties that could be repaired and put back into use. We must urgently fund more ship repair and maintenance funding for the Navy. The Admiral in charge of Fleet Forces Command admitted that the Navy is deficient in its goal to be able to sortie 75 ships quickly to meet a national crisis largely because too many ships are in long term maintenance or awaiting maintenance before they can put to sea. The GOA has reported in detail on these deficiencies in their 2024 report found at the link. Ship maintenance funding must be substantially increased.
The wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East have seriously depleted US stocks particularly in missiles. Congress must appropriate a substantial increase in funds immediately to restock vital missile supplies and build up even further to be ready to fight China in the near term. China threatens its neighbors in the Pacific and plans to take Taiwan by 2027 according to reports on statements made by President Xi. China’s provocations against Taiwan increase apace including the recent cutting of undersea cables that provide communications to Taiwan. The US must build up its supplies of all variants of the Standard missile, the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile and anti-air missiles like the sidewinder. The AF and Army have missile shortages too. The Heritage Foundation has reported on this serious deficiency and their full report can be seen at this link.
The US is at an extreme disadvantage to China in the matter of rare earth metals that are critical to high technology particularly within Defense industries. China has cornered the market on both the exploration and mining of rare earths at home and around the world. They also dominate in manufacturing and use in industrial applications, especially in weapons systems. Most advanced weapons systems used by the US military depend on critical components containing rare earth metals. For example, the F-35, the most advanced stealth aircraft in the world used by the US and 18 partner nations has many components that rely on rare earths to function. According to DOD “the F-35, for instance, requires more than 900 pounds of rare earth elements. Each Arleigh Burke DDG-51 destroyer requires 5,200 pounds, and a Virginia class submarine needs 9,200 pounds.” China has started restricting the US’s access to select rare earths and this only will increase as tensions between the US and China increase. Congress must act to incentivize the exploration and mining of rare earths in the US and creation of a supply chain to provide needed rare earths to defense industries. The extent of this problem is covered in detail at the link.
Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) for the nation is inadequate. The PRC is rapidly expanding its Ballistic Missile numbers, including the perfection of hypersonic delivery systems. Russia and the DPRK have advanced missile and warhead technology that potentially also threatens the US especially considering how unstable their political situations are. Iran is known to be pursuing nuclear weapons and has developed ballistic missiles that can be used potentially against the US. Our technology lags that of both China and Russia when it comes to hypersonic technology. The US is investing little money in advancing our BDM systems. For example, the FY 2025 budget proposed a paltry $28B for BMD. In contrast, the Biden administration in FY24 was funded to the tune of $1.4 trillion for environment, climate, and infrastructure spending. The rationale for most “experts” for minimal spending on BMD is that MAD (mutual assured destruction) continues to be a valid deterrent to nuclear war. This unthinkable nuclear holocaust scenario is the explanation used to invest little in actual BMD. But, in this increasingly unstable world is MAD still valid? Can we trust that the terrorist state of Iran, or a desperate Russia, China or North Korea would not use nuclear ballistic missiles against the US? The President and the Congress should assess the state of the threat of our increasingly unstable enemies launching nuclear missiles at the US and determine if adequate funds are going to BMD. We better not guess wrong or hundreds of millions of American citizens will pay the price.

CAPT Brent Ramsey, (USN, ret.) has written extensively on Defense matters. He is an officer with Calvert Group, Board of Advisors member for the Center for Military Readiness and STARRS, and member of the Military Advisory Group for Congressman Chuck Edwards (NC-11).

24. America Cannot Surrender Its AI Dominance

America Cannot Surrender Its AI Dominance

The Biden administration’s last-minute AI regulations will undermine American technological competitiveness.

The National Interest · by Robert C. O’Brien · January 7, 2025

The twenty-first century will be defined by the great power competition between the United States and China. The winner of that competition will likely be the nation that dominates the tech sector. During his first term, President Donald Trump defeated Communist China’s effort to control the global 5G market by installing Huawei as essentially the world’s sole telecommunications provider.

Huawei did not take its loss lying down. The company took advantage of four years of Biden administration weakness to reconstitute as an Artificial Intelligence (AI) enterprise. Now, like it attempted to do with 5G, China seeks to make the rest of the world reliant on Huawei’s AI technology. As the great Yogi Berra once said, “It’s Déjà Vu all over again.”

President-elect Trump is about to take office again with a plan for an unprecedented era of American economic prosperity. But on its way out the door, the Biden administration is trying to hamstring Trump while giving Communist China a gift in the form of the Interim Final Rule on “Export Control Framework for AI Diffusion.” This proposed rule would create a global export control regime on AI and related hardware that has been on the market for years. This regime would restrict free commerce by preventing U.S. companies from freely selling mainstream AI hardware and software to American partners and allies abroad.

The consequence of the rule will be that Huawei fills the AI supplier void. China would thereby control the market for the most important technology of this century. Huawei would have the global monopoly it wanted for 5G in the more important AI sector.

The hardware and software that power AI and are targeted by Biden’s rule-making are at the heart of the transition in computing from a CPU-based model to a GPU-based model. This transition is designed to speed up the work of computers while reducing costs, such as those for energy. It is an area where we still lead China.

Instead of controlling “frontier AI,” the most advanced AI applications, the new Biden rules would allow frontier AI to be developed and sold unchecked by Chinese companies such as Huawei. American technology firms, with vastly diminished global markets, would be relegated to second-tier status. If U.S. companies are prevented by their government from meeting the demand for AI hardware and software, then Chinese companies will step in to meet this demand. There is little doubt that China will subsidize these firms and support their sales efforts diplomatically.

In addition to hobbling cutting-edge American technology companies, the new rule would exacerbate the worst elements of the outgoing administration’s Green New Deal and the so-called Inflation Reduction Act by allowing bureaucrats to pick winners and losers among U.S. companies. The next big breakthrough in tech will not be decided by the free market but rather by an unelected bureaucrat in Washington who claims to “know better” if Biden’s rule is allowed to stand.

In November, the American people decisively rejected an era of American weakness and chose President-elect Trump to reassert American economic might. The Biden administration is attempting a last-minute sabotage of President Trump’s second term by preventing American companies from leading and winning the race for AI and modern computing. This Biden endeavor must be rejected.

Robert C. O’Brien served as the twenty-seventh U.S. National Security Advisor under President Trump from 2019-2021.

Image: Shutterstock.com.

The National Interest · by Robert C. O’Brien · January 7, 2025

25. New POTUS, New Policies: A Forecast of Five Futures for the Russia-Ukraine War

Excerpts:

The five scenarios we imagined are:

Never Bet Against the (White) House
Ukraine Stays the Course
Chechnya 3.0 – Ukrainian Style
Ukraine on Steroids
Nuclear Wildcard

...

Tell me how this ends

How the Russia-Ukraine war ends has profound implications for global security, the European balance of power, and norms of international conduct. We explored five scenarios – from negotiated settlement to nuclear wildcards – to illustrate the complex interplay of ends, ways and means and some of the tradeoffs that decision-makers must consider. While the United States, as Ukraine’s largest arms supplier, can play a significant role in determining how this ends, many others closer to the conflict have a vote – especially Moscow and Kyiv.

New POTUS, New Policies: A Forecast of Five Futures for the Russia-Ukraine War

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/01/10/new-potus-new-policies-a-forecast-of-five-futures-for-the-russia-ukraine-war/

by Michael Posey, by Chase Metcalf

01.10.2025 at 06:00am

Introduction

The American people recently re-elected former President Donald J. Trump. President-elect Trump’s return to the Oval Office will likely change the future of the Russia-Ukraine War. In June 2024, President-elect Trump said, “I would tell Zelensky no more — you got to make a deal,” Mr. Trump said of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. “I would tell Putin, if you don’t make a deal, we’re going to give him a lot.” Using President-elect Trump’s quote alongside an “Ends-Ways-Means” formulation for strategy, we forecasted five future scenarios we believe could come to fruition during the next few years. We applied Art Lykke’s strategy model, which seeks to employ a risk-informed balance of ends (objectives), ways (concepts), and means (resources) that further a nation’s interests. In crafting our forecasts, we take the perspective of Ukraine for the End-Ways-Means strategy formulation.

Also inherent in the President-elect’s quote is the notion that Kyiv and Moscow have agency in the outcome but not the decision by the United States. President Zelensky’s response to the future POTUS plan was, “I believe that President Trump really wants a quick decision” to end the conflict, Zelensky remarked, but he added, “It doesn’t mean that it will happen this way.” He stressed that a peace process must be just and not risk leaving Ukraine vulnerable. Knowing that other actors have agency, we argue that the United States can influence the outcome but not impose a solution. Based on President Zelensky’s “Victory Plan,” we will assume Ukraine’s current ends remain the liberation of all occupied Ukrainian territory and the ability to ensure Ukraine’s future security.

The five scenarios we imagined are:

Never Bet Against the (White) House
Ukraine Stays the Course
Chechnya 3.0 – Ukrainian Style
Ukraine on Steroids
Nuclear Wildcard

In ‘Never Bet Against the (White House), Ukraine’s ends change. In the ‘Ukraine Stays the Course,’ Ukraine’s means and the ends remain the same. In the remaining forecasts, Ukraine’s means either increase, decrease, or radically increase (by acquiring a nuclear weapon), forcing a change in how the war is fought conceptually (the ways).

As a disclaimer, which scenario occurs depends on several factors. First, and most importantly are the choices of the two principal combatants – Russia and Ukraine. A second factor would be choices made by the rest of “The Axis of Upheaval” (China, Iran, and the DPRK) if Russia escalates the conflict or refuses to compromise. A third major factor would be the status of the U.S. commitment to NATO and other NATO nations’ perception of that commitment. A strong commitment to NATO might make those nations most supportive of Ukraine to date more willing to continue supporting Ukraine. However, it might cause them to feel secure in their future and prioritize ending the war. Conversely, a perceived lack of commitment could also drive nations to act, perhaps through a change in military posture or increased support to Ukraine to tie up Russian forces and prevent Russia from turning on other former Soviet states. NATO nations that are closest to the Russian-Ukraine war feel its effect the most. Therefore, Nordic, Baltic, and Eastern European states are giving the highest percentage of their GDP to aid Ukraine. However, the U.S. gives the largest amount of aid to Ukraine. So, with a new Presidential administration, it is worth examining these five potential future scenarios.

Five Futures

1. Never Bet Against the (White) House

In this scenario, we see a change of Ukraine’s ends prioritizing a negotiated settlement, making warfighting ways and means irrelevant. In this scenario, the POTUS-elect crafts a masterful negotiation. Both Ukraine and Russia agree to settle, with each conceding from their original goals. This is the only scenario we imagine the desired end state changes for Ukraine. Dr. William Spaniel notes that Russia will be sprinting as far west as possible before January to maximize leverage based on the POTUS-elect’s plan despite the harsh winter months.

The presence or lack of a Western security guarantee will influence Kyiv’s decision to change its desired end state to accept a negotiated settlement short of Russian withdrawal. Without a security guarantee, Kyiv must accept the significant risk of Russia renewing war when the timing works for Moscow. Putin is unlikely to accept security guarantees that involve a NATO presence or arming of Ukraine, or that lack a clause requiring all parties– including Russia- to agree on any future military intervention.

Worldwide support for Ukraine remains. A November 2024 global poll of 30,000 participants in 29 countries by The Economist shows that 54% of respondents want Ukraine to win, with only 20% supporting Russia. Most participants supported Ukraine over Russia in 25 of the 29 countries. However, the opinion of those in Ukraine gives the best indicator of their will to fight. While the people of Ukraine undoubtedly demonstrate resolve, recent polls show that an increasing number of Ukrainians (38%) are willing to surrender some territory, a significant increase from the start of the war. However, while most Ukrainians may be tired of the war, the majority (58%) remain reluctant to give up any territory. Despite the will of the Ukrainian people, all wars must end, and this admittedly imperfect scenario may be the least bad alternative for Ukraine.

In all subsequent forecasts, we surmise that the ends do not change for Ukraine. The Ukrainian people have shown a remarkable “Will to Fight” for their national survival and territorial integrity. In On War, Prussian military strategist and philosopher Carl von Clausewitz reminds us that one’s resistance is a “product of two inseparable factors the means at his disposal and the strength of his will.”

The implications for NATO and the United States are an opportunity to reduce human suffering, including that brought about by Russia’s violation of international humanitarian law, preventing further loss of life as the conventional war would end. However, any negotiated settlement likely requires at least some compromise that would appear to reward Russian aggression with the message it might send China. More importantly, an end to the conventional war would free Russia to accelerate the rapid rebuilding of its military, augmenting its capabilities to threaten NATO. Finally, it is nearly certain, given Putin’s rejection of Ukrainian identity, that any negotiated settlement that did not result in a Moscow-friendly government would lead Moscow to continue a campaign of irregular warfare to emplace one.

2. Ukraine Stays the Course

This option see no change in ends, ways, or means. In this scenario, funding for Ukraine remains constant as U.S. aid does not decline or other nations make up any decline in U.S. support. A direct comparison of Russian and Ukrainian military capacity paints a grim picture for Ukraine, given Russia’s larger population, economy, defense budget, and sheer military force. However, the advantage arguably shifts to Ukraine if NATO nations have the political will to mobilize and use their transforming military capacity, even without the United States.

In this scenario, Ukraine’s theory of victory remains unchanged. Through attrition of the Russian military and deep strikes, Ukraine seeks to exhaust Russia. While experts debate how long both sides can sustain the war, neither side appears ready to compromise. Therefore, in this scenario, we expect a prolonged stalemate with fighting continuing at or near the current intensity as both sides seek to alter the military balance.

In a prolonged stalemate, Ukraine’s primary risk is exhaustion, given its smaller population and dependency on Western support. For the West, implications would center on escalation of the conflict, vertically or horizontally, as each side would be forced to seek ways to break the stalemate and end the war before their resources run out. Additionally, this scenario would require substantial mobilization of Western will and defense industrial capacity to sustain the Ukrainian effort – something that is far from certain given the pace at which Europe has mobilized its defense industry to date.

3. Chechnya 3.0—Ukrainian Style

In this scenario, Ukraine’s warfighting means are significantly reduced, forcing them to change their ways. In this scenario, a loss of U.S. funding and an inability or unwillingness by NATO nations to provide sufficient resources prevent Ukraine from maintaining the conflict at its current intensity level. Russia’s conventional military advantage compels Ukraine to revert to irregular warfare or an insurgency to exhaust Russia.

In Chechnya 3.0, the Ukrainian theory of victory shifts to that of most insurgencies – making the cost of occupation exceed the benefit. A sustainable insurgency would likely be based in a Ukrainian rump state or by a government in exile hosted in a NATO country such as Poland. NATO nations, especially those along NATO’s eastern flank, arguably have an interest in maintaining an active insurgency to tie up Russian forces and prevent their use against former Soviet states. This scenario would be susceptible to the status of U.S.-NATO relations and how that relationship influences nations’ risk calculus. Noteworthy, given the President-elect’s statements tying U.S. support to meeting the 2% threshold, is the fact that as of 2023, seven of the top ten nations in terms of defense spending as a percent of GDP come from the Nordic, Baltic, or Eastern European countries. In fact, through most of 2024, only Slovenia appears to be spending less than 2% of its GDP on defense.

For Ukraine, the principal risks in this scenario include the suffering of its population under what would likely be a brutal Russian occupation. Further, Ukraine could lose its national identity if too many Ukrainians determine it is better to collaborate than suffer. For the West, implications of this scenario include the potential for escalation if Russia perceives Western complicity in a Ukrainian insurgency, the shift in the Russia-NATO frontline if Ukraine ceases to exist, and the ability of Russia to rebuild its conventional forces depending on the intensity of the insurgency. Finally, there is a possibility that in this scenario, a sub-set of nations is prepared to support Ukraine, potentially undermining NATO unity, thus eroding the deterrent power that is core to the alliance.

4. Ukraine on Steroids

In this option, Ukraine’s military means increase and improve, allowing for a change in ways. Furthermore, in this scenario, Moscow is unwilling to negotiate out of a sense they can win militarily or are outright unwilling to compromise. As a result, the United States and NATO partners bolster their support and loosen constraints on Ukraine, allowing them to fight differently.

In this scenario, Ukraine’s theory of victory would remain one of attriting Russian forces while exhausting Russian means and will, but Ukraine’s ability to implement this strategy would increase. Depending on how the means are increased, this could include Ukraine regaining the operational initiative and an expanded ability to strike targets at depth in Russia with greater precision and intensity. Additionally, this scenario could include greater diplomatic isolation of Russia if the war’s continuation is considered Russia’s fault.

The principal risk for Ukraine in this scenario is vertical escalation. Suppose Moscow truly believes the annexed territories are part of Russia or that their retention is critical to regime survival. In that case, the probability of vertical escalation rises if Ukraine generates real military success and would even meet conditions for nuclear escalation. For the West, the implications include the risk of escalation as many experts argue Russia sees this conflict as part of a broader struggle against a U.S.-dominated global order. A separate, if less likely, risk is one of the Russian state’s collapse in the event of Russian military defeat or internal Russian power struggle if Putin is perceived to have failed. That said, it is important to note that Russian nuclear saber-rattling has proven largely rhetorical to date, but that could change in the future.

5. Nuclear Wildcard

Means are dramatically changed, making predictions highly speculative. In an implausible, but not impossible, scenario Ukraine acquires a nuclear weapon(s). Alternatively, this could involve threats of or actual formalization of extended deterrence by another nation seeking to influence the outcome of the conflict. Though no one has suggested this to date, this could occur if Russia appears to be on the verge of a military victory, which could be seen as leading to a larger conflict in Europe. This scenario could also increase in likelihood if Russia refuses to negotiate and third-parties want to ramp up the pressure on Russia to compromise.

In this scenario, Ukraine’s theory of victory would greatly depend on the extent of Ukrainian control over and scale of any nuclear capability. If Ukraine were to acquire a limited nuclear capability or be dependent on third-party extended deterrence, they could threaten nuclear use to compel Russia to negotiate an end to a conflict that Russia appeared to be winning. In a highly unlikely scenario where Ukraine acquires multiple nuclear weapons, it might employ one to create a battlefield opportunity or political shock sufficient to change Russian calculations about the logic of the war.

Escalation is the principal risk for Ukraine and a major implication for the West in this scenario. Of course, Ukraine and any nation that aided them in acquiring a nuclear capability would be violating the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and at risk of severe diplomatic or other sanctions. Further, any use of a nuclear weapon would erode existing norms related to their employment and undermine non-proliferation efforts going back decades. Though a highly improbable scenario, as both sides see this conflict as existential, it is worth considering as a thought experiment.

Tell me how this ends

How the Russia-Ukraine war ends has profound implications for global security, the European balance of power, and norms of international conduct. We explored five scenarios – from negotiated settlement to nuclear wildcards – to illustrate the complex interplay of ends, ways and means and some of the tradeoffs that decision-makers must consider. While the United States, as Ukraine’s largest arms supplier, can play a significant role in determining how this ends, many others closer to the conflict have a vote – especially Moscow and Kyiv.

Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, Department of the Navy, or Department of Defense.

Tags: Conflict termination, Military strategy, Russia-Ukraine War, Russo-Ukrainian War, strategy

About The Authors

Michael Posey
Michael Posey is an active-duty Naval Flight Officer. He teaches in the Department of Military Strategy, Planning, and Operations at the Army War College and is part of the Ukraine War Integrated Research Project.
View all posts
Chase Metcalf
View all posts

26. It’s Time to Rethink DoD’s Civil Harm Mitigation and Response

Excerpts:

Recommendations

The incoming Secretary of Defense should immediately pause the implementation of CHMR pending further review and analysis. He should direct the development of a concept outlining the required capabilities and capacities to address this function. Finally, DoD should conduct a Joint Capabilities Based Assessment to reform and rehabilitate existing capabilities with DOTmLPF-P recommendations and determine the need for new capabilities and programs. The CBA should start with all joint force capabilities with primary or secondary roles to protect civilian populations in military operations. While CA is an obvious capability involved in this, the CBA should look at the roles of Judge Advocate General, Military Police, and any capability involved in joint targeting.

Senior advocacy for the consideration of civilians in military operations is needed. Often in the U.S. military, this function is viewed as separate from warfare instead of a natural component of it. Two decades of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism created a hangover effect for DoD and the services. Historically these operations have produced a “backlash” and public sentiments of “never again.” Yet over the past two centuries, the U.S. found itself in dozens of military operations requiring stabilization and even occupation.

Future conflicts will occur amongst civilian populations and the DoD needs to prepare the joint force for this. Simply adding a new concept, without defining its dependencies and connections with the existing force simply creates more confusion and complication. Failing to apply DOTmLPF-P corrections to existing forces before layering more positions and concepts on top of it will prove counter-effective to the overall intent.

It’s Time to Rethink DoD’s Civil Harm Mitigation and Response

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/01/10/its-time-to-rethink-dods-civil-harm-mitigation-and-response/

by Tony Vacha

01.10.2025 at 06:00am

When catastrophic failures occur in the federal government, elected or politically appointed executives frequently create ‘patchwork structures’ for solutions. The federal government is addicted to adding structures and funding to solve problems. Rather than fixing accountability where the failures occur and then implementing reforms, they create new umbrella organizations to oversee the failed function or capability. For example, after the intelligence failures leading to 9-11, the Bush administration created a new bureaucracy, the Director of National Intelligence. Adding structures, personnel, and funding does not inherently fix problems. Rather, it can create uncertainty in roles and responsibilities and further obfuscate accountability. Repairing and rehabilitating existing capabilities with new plans, policies, and programs is, arguably, a more efficient remedy. As physicist Ernest Rutherford famously stated, ‘Gentlemen we’ve run out of money, so now we have to think.’

The latest example of this dynamic is the Department of Defense’s (DoD) nascent initiative for Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response (CHMR). Protecting civilians in military operations is vital to the U.S.’s national security. It is a codified requirement in international and U.S. law and in DoD policies starting with Department of Defense Directive (DoDD) 5100.01, Functions of the Department of Defense and Its Major Components . Beyond the legal requirements, protecting civilians is essential to maintain the credibility the U.S. Armed Forces and the legitimacy of their missions. The CHMR plan highlights the function “is not only a moral imperative, it is also critical to achieving long-term success on the battlefield.”

In response to public criticism over targeting practices and civilian casualties, DoD embarked on ways to improve the protection and consideration of civilians. The Department developed a new program that will invest hundreds, if not thousands, of new positions and new resources into Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response (CHMR). This includes establishing a new Center of Excellence and adding civilian positions throughout the Department, the Services, and all the Joint Combatant and Functional Commands.

The normal process for determining required capabilities in DoD is defined in the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS). A sponsor, usually a proponent or a Center of Excellence, conducts a Capabilities Based Assessment (CBA) to determine the required capabilities in a function, such as mitigating and preventing harm to foreign civilian populations in military operations. The study uses analytical rigor to determine if capability gaps exist in existing capabilities or future requirements. The study should also identify any capabilities with overlaps or redundancies to streamline the function. The final output of the CBA are recommendations for changes in doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, facilities, and policy (DOTmLPF-P) for programs not requiring materiel (new acquisitions program) solutions. The change recommendations are presented to the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) for validation.

Mitigating or preventing harm to civilians in military operations is not a new concept. Instead of using JCIDS to look at this function, the DoD used its modus operandi to create a ‘patchwork structure’ to solve a problem the U.S. military has developed solutions for throughout the past two-hundred years. The U.S. military was the progenitor of protecting civilians starting with the General Orders No. 100, Instructions for the Government of the Armies of the United States in the Field (Lieber Code) during the American Civil War. Written by Francis Lieber and promulgated by President Abraham Lincoln, the code established the required command responsibilities for the treatment of civilians in the occupied South. Lieber, an attorney and immigrant understood the how the horrors of war affect civilian populations since he witnessed it as a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars. Within the next fifty years, the Lieber Code served as a starting point for the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907.

As World War II loomed, Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall recognized the need for a capability solely focused on foreign civilian populations and the occupation of conquered territory. Marshall understood the requirements of protecting civilians and preventing their interference in military operations. He served as a Second Lieutenant in the Army’s 30th Infantry Regiment during the turbulent counterinsurgency in the Philippine Insurrection. After World War I, he served in the U.S. Army’s military occupation of the Rhineland. Marshall, seeing the requirements in a global conflict, directed the establishment of the School of Military Government at the University of Virginia in May 1942 to train civil affairs and military government personnel for the war.

Since World War II, Civil Affairs (CA) has stood as the Department of Defense’s lone capability focused solely on foreign civilian populations. If there is fault in the Department’s ability to accurately understand foreign populations and the impacts of U.S. military operations among them, then it is a failure of the Department’s CA capabilities. Specifically, it is a failure of the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) and the Department of the Army (DA). DoDD 5100.01 directs both USSOCOM and DA to conduct Civil Affairs Operations for the joint force.

The failure to conduct a CBA to look at existing capabilities within DoD before going to organizational models is emblematic of government waste and breeds inefficiencies. Instead of studying where system failures occur in considering foreign civilian populations, DoD implemented organizational and personnel solutions without identifying overlaps and redundancies. DA is currently cutting Regular Army CA positions to provide staff support to corps and division headquarters, while DoD is adding hundreds of Full Time Equivalents (FTEs) in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and at multiple Flag Officer organizations including Combatant Commands and Functional Commands. Some of these Commands already have uniformed and civilian FTEs assigned in CA roles and functions.

In an even greater example of wasting resources, is the creation of Civil Protection (CP) Center of Excellence (CoE) (CP CoE) to serve as the proponent for CHMR and “expedite and institutionalize the advancement of knowledge, practice, and tools for preventing, mitigating, and responding to civilian harm.” According the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response – Action Plan (CHMR-AP), the CP CoE will provide “direct support to operational commands” as well as “support policy, doctrine, and force development” and finally conduct “research and analysis.”

As currently conceived, the CHMR concept and its CoE is duplicative of existing capabilities in DoD. The joint and Army proponent for stability is the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI) at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. They serve as the proponent for the publication of Joint Publication (JP) 3-07, Joint Stabilization Activities and the Army’s Field Manual 3-07, Stability. USSOCOM is the Joint proponent for Civil Affairs forces and publishes JP 3-57, Civil-Military Operations. The U.S. Army Special Warfare Center and School (USAJFKSWCS), under the United States Special Operations Command (USASOC), is the Army proponent for Civil Affairs forces and publishes FM 3-57, Civil Affairs. Finally, JP 1, Volume 1, Joint Warfighting, directs “all members of DoD components to comply with the law of war during all armed conflicts.” It directs Commanders to “act consistent with the…the principles of military necessity, humanity, distinction, proportionality, and honor.”

How is the CHMR concept distinct from current capabilities that focus on the law of warfare, stability, civil-military operations, and civil affairs? What unique DOTmLPF-P recommendations, beyond simply adding new positions, does the CHMR concept provide to commanders and warfighters? When staff planning is required at a joint or service headquarters for operations, who provides input to commanders on civil considerations? Arguably, this presents the potential to simply add more confusion to commanders and their staffs in an already overlooked aspect of warfare.

Recommendations

The incoming Secretary of Defense should immediately pause the implementation of CHMR pending further review and analysis. He should direct the development of a concept outlining the required capabilities and capacities to address this function. Finally, DoD should conduct a Joint Capabilities Based Assessment to reform and rehabilitate existing capabilities with DOTmLPF-P recommendations and determine the need for new capabilities and programs. The CBA should start with all joint force capabilities with primary or secondary roles to protect civilian populations in military operations. While CA is an obvious capability involved in this, the CBA should look at the roles of Judge Advocate General, Military Police, and any capability involved in joint targeting.

Senior advocacy for the consideration of civilians in military operations is needed. Often in the U.S. military, this function is viewed as separate from warfare instead of a natural component of it. Two decades of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism created a hangover effect for DoD and the services. Historically these operations have produced a “backlash” and public sentiments of “never again.” Yet over the past two centuries, the U.S. found itself in dozens of military operations requiring stabilization and even occupation.

Future conflicts will occur amongst civilian populations and the DoD needs to prepare the joint force for this. Simply adding a new concept, without defining its dependencies and connections with the existing force simply creates more confusion and complication. Failing to apply DOTmLPF-P corrections to existing forces before layering more positions and concepts on top of it will prove counter-effective to the overall intent.

Tags: CHMR, civilian harm, U.S. Department of Defense

About The Author

Tony Vacha
Donald “Tony” Vacha retired as an Army Colonel with thirty-four years of service in Infantry, Civil Affairs and Force Development assignments. He finished his career as the Civil Affairs Planning Chief at the U.S. Army Europe and Africa. He served as a Doctrine Analyst at the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. He served as the lead capability developer to create the 38G Functional Specialist career field in Civil Affairs. He is a graduate of the U.S. Army War College. He currently resides in Whispering Pines, North Carolina with his wife.

27. America Cannot Surrender Its AI Dominance

America Cannot Surrender Its AI Dominance

The Biden administration’s last-minute AI regulations will undermine American technological competitiveness.

The National Interest · by Robert C. O’Brien · January 7, 2025

Robert C. O’Brien served as the twenty-seventh U.S. National Security Advisor under President Trump from 2019-2021.

Image: Shutterstock.com.

The National Interest · by Robert C. O’Brien · January 7, 2025

28. The US Army needs less good, cheaper drones to compete

The US Army needs less good, cheaper drones to compete

It seems obvious. So what is stopping it from happening?

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/01/05/the-us-army-needs-less-good-cheaper-drones-to-compete?utm

Photograph: US Army

Jan 5th 2025

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N UKRAINE BOTH sides are deploying millions of low-cost drones, which play a role in combat as both scouts and weapons. The US Army, long considered a leader in this field, has been following events in Ukraine closely. But the Pentagon is acquiring only small numbers of drones at high cost. Why are American drones so expensive, and can prices be brought down?

A typical FPV (“first-person view”) attack drone costs Ukraine’s army less than $500. Based on racing quadcopters, these are typically made by small suppliers. Some are assembled at kitchen tables through a government initiative which shows people how to make drones at home. Though rough and ready, they can knock out a Russian tank, artillery piece or bunker from several miles away.

The nearest American equivalent is the Marine Corps’ new Bolt-M made by Anduril. This is a slicker, more polished quadcopter with more on-board intelligence and requiring less operator skill, but it performs the same basic task of hitting a target with a 1.5kg warhead. The cost though is “low tens of thousands” of dollars. The similar Rogue-1 comes in at an eye-watering $94,000 apiece. In Ukraine, FPVs are so numerous that two or more may pursue each Russian footsoldier. The US cannot issue drones quite so lavishly when each costs as much as a sports car.

Critics accuse American companies of “gold plating”, adding unnecessary expenses to push prices up, or of excessive profits. Certainly there have been cases of gross overcharging, such as when the Pentagon has bought hammers for $48 apiece when the same hammers cost $9 from another supplier. But the situation with drones is more complicated.

One issue is sourcing. Ukrainian drones are typically assembled from cheap components made in China. The Pentagon has banned its forces from acquiring Chinese drones, both because it worries about security and because it does not want its supply chain to be controlled by a potential future adversary. Higher specifications also quickly push prices up. Most Ukrainian drones only have daylight cameras; a few are fitted with thermal imagers for night operations, which add hundreds of dollars to the price. All American military drones come with far more expensive high-resolution imagers.

For reconnaissance, Ukrainian operators typically use the Chinese DJI Mavic 3 Pro, which sells for around $3,000. The US Army’s new Short-Range Reconnaissance quadcopter will carry out similar missions. The current version costs around $20,000. The difference is partly accounted for by the need to meet US military requirements such as resistance to shock and vibration, extreme temperatures and radio interference. New capabilities, including better GPS, higher-resolution thermal imaging, automated target tracking and obstacle avoidance are pushing the price up to around $40,000. Experience suggests this type of cost spiral keeps going. And the more expensive such drones become, the less expendable and less useful they are.

And while Ukraine maintains a fleet of about 40,000 reconnaissance quadcopters, the Pentagon is acquiring about 1,000 a year, so economies of scale are not kicking in. Chinese drone-maker DJI has dominated the consumer drone market since the 2010s and produces several million drones each year. In the 2010s commercial drone-makers were forced out of business in America, or into supplying the niche market for government drones. Teal and Skydio, which supply the US Army reconnaissance drones, both followed this route.

George Matus, the boss of Teal, believes America needs to build up its drone infrastructure. An ecosystem of companies making flight controllers (the brains of the drone), cameras, communications and other components could enable drone manufacture at prices and quantities to rival China. Mr Matus believes this could all be achieved for the cost of a single high-tech jet fighter. Some companies are also drawing on alternate supply chains in Europe and Taiwan.

Since 2023 a Pentagon initiative called Replicator has been exploring how to produce large numbers of small drones rapidly at low cost, and how to learn from the Ukrainian experience. Replicator faces a deeply entrenched culture of expensive excellence. The American way has been to make world-beating systems, like the F-35 fighter jet and the M1 Abrams tank, regardless of cost. Making “good enough” hardware in bulk is a departure which faces resistance. In June, Replicator announced a contract to buy SwitchBlade loitering munitions, exactly the sort of expensive legacy drones that it was expected to replace.

Going on and on

Russia’s drone industry is ramping up. Vladimir Putin estimated Russia would make 1.4m drones in 2024. Meanwhile China has reportedly placed an order for almost 1m attack drones from one supplier (some experts dispute this). The low cost of this technology, and the fact that drones and their components can be bought easily, mean the technology is rapidly proliferating. Small drones played an important role in aiding Syria’s rebel offensive in December, for instance. Elon Musk, the tycoon tapped by Donald Trump to find government savings, has drawn attention to the wastefulness of America spending $100m on a manned jet in lieu of cheap, expendable drones. In truth, the two platforms perform wildly different tasks. But unless the Pentagon succeeds in rebalancing its arsenal, America could be heavily out-droned in any future conflict. ■

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Ukraine at war

United States

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Against expensive excellence”

29. Kellogg wants to broker Russia-Ukraine peace deal within 100 days of Trump inauguration

I always worry when national security professionals set dates.

Kellogg wants to broker Russia-Ukraine peace deal within 100 days of Trump inauguration - Euromaidan Press

euromaidanpress.com · by Yuri Zoria · January 9, 2025

Former US Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s nominee for special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, has set a goal to find a solution to the Russia-Ukraine war within 100 days after the 20 January inauguration. He said it in his remarks on Fox News on 8 January.

This comes as US President-elect Trump has previously promised to end Russia’s war in Ukraine in one day. As he pushes for peace negotiations, some of his aides have suggested proposals requiring Ukraine to cede large portions of its territory to Russia.

Speaking to Fox News, Kellogg emphasized Trump’s commitment to ending the war quickly, claiming Trump “wants this war to end, it’s carnage, and he knows it’s a tough one.”

“And I think they’re going to come to a solvable solution in the near term. And when I say by the near term, you know, I would like to set a goal on a personal level and professional level, I would say let’s set it at 100 days,” Kellogg said, stressing further need to “figure a way we can do this in the near term to make sure that this solution is solid, it’s sustainable and that this war ends to and so that we stop the carnage.”

The former national security adviser emphasized firstly Russian casualties, which have been almost exclusively among their invading army, and only then the Ukrainian ones, which include not only military casualties but also massive losses among civilians due to the Russian deliberate attacks on Ukrainian cities.

“When you look at the damage, when you look at what’s happening within Ukraine, and just the casualties alone are enormous, the Russian casualties, the Ukrainian casualties, the damage to their cities, this is a war that needs to end,” Kellogg told Fox News.

Addressing concerns about potential concessions, Kellogg stressed that Trump’s approach allegedly aims to protect Ukrainian interests.

“He’s not trying to give something to Putin or to the Russians. He’s actually trying to save Ukraine and save their sovereignty, and he’s going to make sure that it’s equitable and that it’s fair,” he said.

euromaidanpress.com · by Yuri Zoria · January 9, 2025

30. The Quad Plus the Philippines

Access the 15 page report here: https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/files.cnas.org/documents/Quad-Plus-IPS-2025-final.pdf

January 09, 2025

The Quad Plus the Philippines

A Strategic Partnership for a Peaceful South China Sea

By: Lisa Curtis, Evan Wright and Nathaniel Schochet

Introduction

As the United States increasingly looks to multilateral partnerships to meet challenges in the Indo-Pacific, the Quad (Australia, India, Japan, and the United States) has become a focal point for collaboration. So far, the Quad has largely steered away from security and defense issues to avoid giving the impression that it is a formal defense alliance. However, due to the intensifying security threats in the Indo-Pacific, including increased maritime aggression from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), there is a growing need for the four countries to coordinate defense activities and enhance military—particularly naval—cooperation to ensure freedom of navigation and peace in the global commons.

The threat to the Indo-Pacific global commons has become particularly acute in the South China Sea, where China has conducted aggressive maritime activities against the Philippines because of a maritime dispute over the Second Thomas Shoal—an underwater reef in the Spratly Islands. In 1999, the Philippines grounded a World War II–era ship, the BRP Sierra Madre, there to reinforce its claim to the area.1 Beijing seeks to coerce Manila into giving up the Second Thomas Shoal by disrupting Philippine resupply missions to its small contingent of marines stationed there. China escalated its coercive activity against the Philippines in 2024 by causing several ship collisions between PRC and Philippine vessels, attacking Philippine ships with water cannons, and allowing its personnel to wield knives and axes during confrontations between the two countries’ coast guards, resulting in serious injuries to Philippine personnel.2 There is a growing risk that a potential crisis in the South China Sea could spark a larger conflict. Given China’s burgeoning nuclear arsenal, there is a chance that a regional conflict could involve weapons of mass destruction (WMD) signaling or use.

There is a growing need for the Quad countries to coordinate defense activities and enhance military cooperation to ensure freedom of navigation and peace in the global commons.

While this paper does not propose the formal expansion of Quad membership, it does examine opportunities for increasing informal engagement and cooperation between the Quad countries and the Philippines (Quad Plus) with the aim of promoting regional stability. It examines how enhancing dialogue and cooperation among the five nations on maritime security and naval activities could help prevent conflict in the South China Sea by raising the costs of PRC maritime aggression. It then evaluates the opportunities for Quad Plus cooperation on economic and technology issues to reduce regional dependencies on China that enable Beijing to employ economic coercion in service of its global security objectives. Reducing China’s ability to use economic coercion in its regional relationships would also help mitigate the chances of regional conflict by denying China additional levers to press its expansive maritime and territorial claims. Finally, the paper presents U.S. policy recommendations for implementing a Quad Plus agenda that enhances multinational deterrence and stability in the Indo-Pacific over the next several years.

Findings Summary

Involving the Philippines in Quad activities, especially naval and maritime cooperation, could help deter PRC aggression in the South China Sea and prevent the escalation of military tensions that could result in conflict involving the threat or use of WMD. By presenting a united front in support of the Philippines and against maritime aggression in the South China Sea, the Quad would raise the costs for China to continue its dangerous and escalatory actions. These joint activities could include increasing the number and regularity of joint maritime patrols in the South China Sea, enhancing maritime domain awareness, countering PRC disinformation and misinformation, sharing best practices to counter PRC influence operations, and coordinating public messaging regarding China’s maritime aggression. If tensions in the South China Sea continue to build, it may be advantageous to hold an official Quad Plus dialogue with the Philippines at the senior working diplomatic level to send a clear signal to Beijing that any aggression toward the Philippines will be met with a coordinated response from the Quad.

Peacetime contingency planning and coordination among the Quad nations and the Philippines should also prepare them to collectively deal with a potential crisis in the Indo-Pacific, should deterrence fail. Ultimately, a coordinated response from the five nations could be critical to defusing the situation and preventing conflict from erupting or escalating.

Enhanced collaboration among the Quad countries and the Philippines could also help develop alternative and resilient supply chains that would reduce opportunities for China to employ economic coercion to achieve its security objectives. With the world’s fourth largest copper reserves, fifth largest nickel deposits, and an estimated $1 trillion worth of untapped gold, zinc, and silver reserves, the Philippines is poised to play a role in reducing global dependence on China for critical minerals, if the government can attract more Philippine private sector and foreign investment into the exploration, extraction, and processing of its abundant mineral resources.3 Quad investment in the processing of Philippine minerals, in particular, could facilitate the environmentally sustainable growth of the sector and help curb China’s ability to leverage its dominance in critical minerals for geostrategic advantage.

Similarly, the Philippines’ expected growth in the semiconductor industry (10–15 percent annually over the next three years) means it can play a role in the Quad’s Semiconductor Supply Chain Initiative, announced in September 2021, which aims to identify vulnerabilities in global semiconductor supply chains and bolster their resilience.4 Given the role of semiconductors in developing advanced weapons systems, ensuring resilient semiconductor supply chains through cooperation with partners and allies, like the Philippines, will contribute to U.S. national security and integrated deterrence.

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31. Who’s Afraid of America First?

No one should be afraid of America First.

What concerns me is "America Only."

Excerpts:

Since the collapse of the Soviet empire, the United States has not faced such an existential threat. China is a formidable peer competitor and Putin’s Russia is dangerous, but neither poses the same kind of threat that the Soviet Union did. So why should Americans, in the famous formulation of President John F. Kennedy, “bear any burden or pay any price” to uphold international order? Consequential as it was, the half century when the United States had no choice but to consistently and continually engage itself abroad—and the era of the “war on terror” in the early years of this century—may be exceptions rather than the rule. Indeed, with the Nixon Doctrine, U.S. policy toward much of Asia had already reverted to a less interventionist stance even during the later decades of the Cold War.

Rather than hankering after the imagined common values of a bygone age, then, U.S. allies and partners would do well to regard the foreign policy of Trump’s second administration as a return to the natural position of the United States. Emulating their Asian counterparts, Western countries should learn to deal with Washington not as a superpower with almost unlimited willingness to defend them but as an offshore balancer that will use its forces discriminatingly to advance American interests first.

Who’s Afraid of America First?

Foreign Affairs · by More by Bilahari Kausikan · January 7, 2025

What Asia Can Teach the World About Adapting to Trump

Bilahari Kausikan

January/February 2025

Illustration by Tyler Comrie; Photo source: Reuters

Bilahari Kausikan is former Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Singapore.

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To many countries in Europe, the return of Donald Trump to the White House is seen as a momentous, almost apocalyptic, shift that is likely to disrupt alliances and upend economic relations. Meanwhile, American adversaries such as China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia anticipate that the incoming administration will mark an opportunity to advance their anti-Western agendas. Yet there is another region of the world, one that includes many U.S. allies, partners, and friends, that views Trump’s return more calmly.

Across a large part of Asia, from Japan and South Korea in the north, through Southeast Asia—the linchpin connecting the Indian and Pacific Oceans—to the Indian subcontinent in the south, a second Trump administration does not arouse the same strong emotions that it does among many in the West. For these countries, there is far less concern about Trump’s autocratic tendencies and contempt for liberal internationalist ideals. The region has long conducted relations with Washington on the basis of common interests rather than common values. Such an approach fits neatly with Trump’s transactional foreign policy because it involves balancing mutual benefits rather than sustaining the liberal international order. Indeed, much of Asia views the liberal order with ambivalence. When Asian countries talk about a “rules-based order,” the phrase tends to carry significantly different meanings than it does in the West.

For Asia, far more than a radical deviation from existing U.S. foreign policy, Trump’s return to power amplifies and accelerates a trend that has been underway since the Vietnam era. The United States is not in retreat and has not embraced isolation. Instead, it is expanding the geographic scope of the approach that U.S. President Richard Nixon first introduced in East Asia during the Cold War, by unilaterally redefining the terms of its global engagements and by becoming more circumspect about when and how it gets involved internationally. Having dealt with such a United States for almost half a century, Asia is not unduly agitated about a second Trump administration. This is not to discount important concerns in the region, including about tariff policies and Taiwan. But it does mean that Asian countries are more accustomed to Trump’s transactionalism, and their experience holds important lessons for other U.S. partners and allies as they adjust to Washington’s recalibration of the way it works with the world.

HESITANT HEGEMON

For many Asian states, Trump’s “America first” approach echoes the strategy Washington has used toward much of Asia for more than five decades. In 1969, as he attempted to disengage the United States from an unwinnable war in Vietnam, Nixon unveiled a new strategy aimed at U.S. allies, partners, and friends in the region. “Except for the threat of a major power involving nuclear weapons,” Nixon said, in announcing that summer what came to be known as the Nixon Doctrine, “the United States is going to encourage and has a right to expect that [military defense] will be handled by, and responsibility for it taken by, the Asian nations themselves.”

As Nixon saw it, the Vietnam War was a sobering lesson for American policy. Rather than getting dragged into other Asian quagmires, Washington would maintain stability as an offshore balancer, without deploying troops on the ground. This meant that the United States would provide a nuclear umbrella of extended deterrence, as well as a military presence centered on air and naval bases in Japan and Guam, but countries in the region—with the partial exception of South Korea because of the unique threat from North Korea—would be expected to provide for their own security. No longer could they count on Washington to directly intervene as it did in Vietnam.

That approach has mostly characterized U.S. policy in Asia ever since. From the Asian perspective, the post-9/11 “war on terror” and the long U.S. war in Afghanistan pursued by the George W. Bush administration were stark exceptions to the general orientation of the United States in the region. Whereas critics of U.S. foreign policy see a quasi-imperialist, trigger-happy hegemon, Asian observers tend to see a fundamentally cautious power that is reluctant to deploy military power and that will calculate its own interests carefully before acting. The United States is vital for maintaining stability, but Asian countries do not consider it completely reliable because, as an offshore balancer, its decisions will always cause the region to doubt its intentions: if Washington decides to get involved, Asian leaders may worry they will be pulled into larger geopolitical struggles; if it decides not to, they may fear abandonment.

Since the early years of this century, the United States has begun to apply this approach to other regions, as well. Neither President Barack Obama nor Trump during his first term succeeded in disengaging from Bush’s nation-building adventures, but President Joe Biden was able to cut the Gordian knot when he ordered the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. More recently, in the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the United States has provided overall deterrence and military support to allies but committed no American forces on the ground. Of course, Joe Biden has been more consultative as president than Trump ever was or will likely be, and he has taken steps to strengthen U.S. alliances in Asia through the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, and the AUKUS defense agreement with Australia and the United Kingdom. But Biden consults allies and partners to determine what they are prepared to do to advance the United States’ agenda and has not made new U.S. security guarantees to defend them: call it polite transactionalism.

Trump with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Osaka, Japan, June 2019 Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

More readily than other parts of the world, Asia will accept Trump’s approach to foreign policy because the region has already dealt with the United States in this way. Indeed, the distinction between offshore balancing and naked transactionalism is one of degree rather than kind. Trump will be less consultative, more unpredictable, less generous in providing assistance, and will demand that allies and partners pay more for American protection, but the result may not be so very different. There is only one United States, and it will remain vital for maintaining stability regardless of who occupies the White House. Most Asian countries will therefore accept what is possible under the incoming administration, particularly since they did not regard the pre-Trump United States with unqualified confidence. Nor did they experience the first Trump administration as all bad.

Consider the differences toward the region between Trump and his immediate predecessor, Obama. Throughout his time in office, Obama made eloquent speeches about the United States’ commitments to Asia, but many leaders in the region saw him as weak when it came to confronting American adversaries, particularly China. In 2015, Chinese leader Xi Jinping stood next to Obama at the White House and publicly promised not to militarize the South China Sea. But the next year, Beijing proceeded to do exactly that—and Obama did nothing. U.S. partners across the region took note. On the other hand, in 2017, many Asian leaders quietly cheered when, at their first summit, Trump told Xi during dinner that he had ordered a cruise missile attack on Syria that night after the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons. This was in stark contrast to Obama’s unwillingness to respond after Assad had used chemical weapons in 2013.

Some of Trump’s actions during his first term suggest that his emphasis on peace through strength aligns with the instincts of many Asian governments. The issues that could lead to conflict in the region have no definitive solutions, but they need to be managed through firm deterrence and adroit diplomacy. When North Korean leader Kim Jong Un threatened to target Guam with his missiles in 2017, Trump responded by threatening to rain “fire and fury” on Pyongyang, effectively putting an end to North Korean testing of long-range missiles on any trajectory near Guam. In doing so, Trump restored the deterrence that had been lost during the Obama administration, when Washington let the North Korean situation fester for eight years and called it “strategic patience.” Then, in 2018, Trump met Kim in Singapore, opening a diplomatic track as well. Ultimately, that summit, and a subsequent meeting in Vietnam, did not lead to a breakthrough because Trump lacked the patience to persevere with his own strategy and failed to set realistic goals. The Trump administration was mistaken to think that North Korea would ever give up its nuclear weapons, but it was not wrong to try to manage the threat through deterrence and diplomacy. The firmness was there, but not the adroitness.

Viewing the president-elect from this perspective, leaders in East Asia and Southeast Asia have no strong reason to fear Trump 2.0. The main pieces of U.S. policy toward the region are already in place, some of them with strong bipartisan support as the Biden administration extended and expanded the approach of the first Trump administration on priority issues such as dealing with China. Any new policies in these areas are unlikely to be fundamental shifts of direction. Of course, even marginal changes can be disruptive, and this does not mean that the new Trump administration won’t have a significant impact on the region or isn’t cause for concern. Three issues in particular bear close monitoring: Taiwan, tariffs, and regional leadership.

THE TAIWAN CONUNDRUM

Breaking with the United States’ decades-old “strategic ambiguity” policy, Biden on four occasions said that the United States would defend Taiwan against Chinese aggression. Trump will not repeat such statements. During the 2024 campaign, his comments on Taiwan suggested that it falls within his general views on allies and trade: the island, he has said, is a long way away from the United States and difficult to defend and should pay more for U.S. protection, and he has accused Taipei of stealing America’s semiconductor industry. The danger is that he may come to see Taiwan as a mere pawn in a larger game with China. Trump will certainly want to cut trade deals with Beijing using tariffs and the threat of a trade war as leverage. This could be extremely disruptive. But the dangers and uncertainties will multiply exponentially if he mixes trade and security by throwing Taiwan into any possible deal.

Trump has also promised to end the war in Ukraine. How he tries to do so will be closely watched throughout Asia, and particularly in China. Nevertheless, it is important not to draw a straight line from how Trump treats Ukraine to what Beijing may conclude about how he will treat Taiwan. The geopolitical circumstances of Ukraine and Taiwan are not identical, as China itself has pointed out. More crucially, Taiwan lies at the core of the Chinese Communist Party’s legitimating narrative, and a failed or stalled Chinese military venture against it would shake the foundations of party rule. Precisely because “reunification” with Taiwan is so important to them, China’s leaders will not gamble with it, particularly since recurring corruption scandals at the top of the Chinese military have cast doubts on its competence and capabilities. Military action is not Beijing’s preferred option for “reunification,” even if the Chinese leadership continues to try to advance China’s capability to use force in order to achieve that goal.

Biden’s unambiguous statements in support of Taiwan have fanned a growing sense of entitlement in Taipei—the conviction that the United States and its allies will have to defend the island from Chinese aggression. It has also reinforced Taiwan’s overblown assessment of its own strategic significance in the world economy, rooted in an exaggerated belief in the indispensable role of its chip industry, particularly the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. TSMC is undoubtedly a remarkable company that dominates advanced semiconductor fabrication—but it is, after all, only a contract manufacturer. The fact that it can produce chips better than any other company does not mean that no one else can produce them. In any case, TSMC has been shifting some of its activities from Taiwan to the United States and Japan and may also explore relocating some parts of its operations to India, Europe, and Southeast Asia. These moves may lessen the economic importance of Taiwan itself in the long run.

If Trump pulls back from Ukraine—for example, by conditioning further U.S. backing on Kyiv’s willingness to negotiate with Moscow—or if his administration takes serious steps to improve America’s own semiconductor manufacturing capabilities, it would signal to Taipei that it cannot count on unlimited support from Washington. Such steps could prevent Taiwanese domestic politics from drifting in a potentially destabilizing direction, perhaps by taking a more overtly pro-independence stance that would force Beijing to react by stepping up military exercises around Taiwan or moving against the South China Sea island of Taiping, which is occupied and administered by Taiwan.

The effect of the war in Ukraine on other countries in Asia should not be overstated. Australia, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea have taken strong and clear positions of principle against Russian aggression in Ukraine. But most of the region is ambivalent. The Muslim-majority states of Southeast Asia, in particular, see double standards at work in Washington’s denunciation of Russia, pointing to U.S.-initiated or -supported wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, and Lebanon, among other conflicts. Many Asian states will also seek to protect their national interests by calculating costs and benefits. If that balance seems right, they will do what they must to maintain relations with the United States, with Trump’s attitude toward Taiwan and Ukraine remaining second-order considerations. Of far greater concern is China. That issue alone has driven even traditionally nonaligned countries such as India, Indonesia, and Vietnam to move closer to Washington, a trend that began during the first Trump administration and grew under Biden.

LOOKING FOR A LEADER

For many Asian countries, trade policy is perhaps the most worrisome element of Trump’s return. Trump has boasted that “tariff” is his favorite word, and foreign governments would be wise to take him seriously, particularly if more trade hawks, such as Jamison Greer, whom Trump has nominated as U.S. trade representative, are given major roles in U.S. trade policy. Trump will use tariffs as leverage with China, probably starting from the premise that China had not fulfilled its commitments under the trade deal reached at the end of his first term. The Trump administration seems certain to impose new tariffs on China and very likely also on other countries that have significant trade surpluses with the United States, including Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Beijing will retaliate in some way since it will not want to appear weak. China’s own troubled economic condition may constrain it, but herein lies another concern. Beijing’s economic problems are essentially driven by collapsing confidence in the country’s economic management. This is a political crisis, as well, because it stems from doubts among many in the Chinese business and intellectual elite, as well as its middle class, about the direction that Xi has taken the country. By privileging political control and security over economic efficiency, he has moved the state in a more Leninist direction, slowing growth and straining China’s post-Mao social compact, according to which Chinese were given more space to pursue economic and other activities, as long as they did not openly defy the party.

Coupled with a new Trump trade war, the resulting economic slowdown could create a vicious circle. Across China, local governments have incurred massive debt underwritten by a real estate bubble that has now burst. The collapse of the real estate sector has eroded consumer confidence, making it difficult to boost domestic demand. As a consequence, Beijing has relied on state-directed investment to drive growth, causing overcapacity in key export sectors: Chinese companies are flooding markets with cheap electric vehicles and batteries, increasing trade tensions with the West and raising the prospect of more tariffs and geopolitical tensions. These tensions add to China’s economic problems and make it more difficult for Beijing to make significant policy changes without appearing weak. By exporting its overcapacity, China also increases the likelihood that the United States and other countries will impose tough tariff regimes on it, thus further undermining consumer confidence and causing even greater reliance on state-directed investment and exports. If this cycle locks the Chinese economy into a long-term slowdown, how a frustrated Beijing chooses to react will have security as well as economic consequences across Asia and, indeed, the world.

For many Asian countries, trade policy is the most worrisome element of Trump’s return.

Mutual nuclear deterrence makes it highly improbable that friction between China and the United States will lead to military conflict. But there is also little that anyone can do to mitigate Washington’s intensifying competition with Beijing. Amid these rising tensions, few Asian governments see relations with the United States or China as a binary choice: they will instead try to work more closely with each other to hedge against the uncertainties generated by Xi’s economic policies and Trump’s return. But in doing so, they face another issue: Who will effectively lead the region?

Trump’s 2017 decision to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership was a shock to U.S. allies and friends that still reverberates across Asia. But the region quickly adapted after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe rallied TPP members to go ahead without Washington and transform the trade pact into the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. Abe also moved swiftly to establish a close personal relationship with Trump, which probably also helped soften the American president’s approach to Japan and other U.S. partners in East Asia during his first term.

Today, however, the three most important U.S. allies—Australia, Japan, and South Korea—all have politically weak leaders. The new Indonesian president, Prabowo Subianto, wants to take Indonesian foreign policy in a more activist direction, but he has yet to establish himself regionally or internationally. When Prabowo visited the United States in November after the election, he spoke with Trump by telephone. “Wherever you are, I’m willing to fly to congratulate you, personally, sir,” Prabowo gushed. Trump responded positively to this display of deference, but no meeting occurred. The region clearly needs someone to step forward and lead as the late Abe did, but there is no obvious candidate.

AMERICA WAS ALWAYS FIRST

Asia’s long experience with Washington suggests that Trump is not sui generis. Large, continent-sized countries such as the United States tend to look inward more than outward. Trump’s reluctance to involve the country in foreign commitments reflects a strand of thinking that has been present in U.S. foreign policy since George Washington warned against permanent alliances in his 1796 Farewell Address. Before World War II, the United States engaged in external affairs only episodically, and none of those episodes lasted very long. It took a direct attack on American soil at Pearl Harbor in 1941 to force Washington to confront the threats posed by fascism in Europe and militarism in Japan; after World War II, the existential threat posed by the Soviet Union led the United States into the Cold War. The 50 years between 1941 and 1991, when the Soviet Union imploded, was the longest period of sustained external engagement in U.S. history.

Since the collapse of the Soviet empire, the United States has not faced such an existential threat. China is a formidable peer competitor and Putin’s Russia is dangerous, but neither poses the same kind of threat that the Soviet Union did. So why should Americans, in the famous formulation of President John F. Kennedy, “bear any burden or pay any price” to uphold international order? Consequential as it was, the half century when the United States had no choice but to consistently and continually engage itself abroad—and the era of the “war on terror” in the early years of this century—may be exceptions rather than the rule. Indeed, with the Nixon Doctrine, U.S. policy toward much of Asia had already reverted to a less interventionist stance even during the later decades of the Cold War.

Rather than hankering after the imagined common values of a bygone age, then, U.S. allies and partners would do well to regard the foreign policy of Trump’s second administration as a return to the natural position of the United States. Emulating their Asian counterparts, Western countries should learn to deal with Washington not as a superpower with almost unlimited willingness to defend them but as an offshore balancer that will use its forces discriminatingly to advance American interests first.

Bilahari Kausikan is former Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Singapore.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Bilahari Kausikan · January 7, 2025

32. Trump plans to rebuild the US Navy in Korean shipyards. We already know this works well

Graphics at the link.

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Trump plans to rebuild the US Navy in Korean shipyards. We already know this works well

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