Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper."

– Edmund Burke

"The golden way is to be friends with the world and to regard the whole human family as one."

– Mahatma Gandhi

"We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one… The North Vietnamese used their armed forces the way a bull-fighter uses his cape — to keep us lunging in areas of marginal political importance."

– Henry A. Kissinger,

1. Congressional Medal of Honor Society Announces Passing of Medal of Honor Recipient Roger H. C. Donlon

2. Oct. 7 Was Worse Than a Terror Attack. It Was a Pogrom.

3. U.S. Secretly Alerted Iran Ahead of Islamic State Terrorist Attack

4. China doesn't have the military power to successfully invade Taiwan, the majority of 52 US experts said in a survey

5. World Court to rule on measures against Israel in Gaza genocide case

6. Exclusive: China presses Iran to rein in Houthi attacks in Red Sea, sources say

7. Pentagon, under scrutiny, halts work with condemned foreign militaries

8. To deter China, the US and Taiwan should seek asymmetric symmetry

9. How one Army unit uses cheap drones and ChatGPT to train others in modern warfare

10. Marines Can't Count on Navy Ships to Carry Them to Global Emergencies, One of the Service's Top Generals Says

11. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 25, 2024

12. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, January 25, 2024

13. China-Taiwan Weekly Update, January 25, 2024

14. Ukraine’s Belarusian Legionnaires – Fighting for Freedom, No Way to Go Home

15. Today’s Challenges Cry Out for New Approaches to US Security

16. Hold, Build, and Strike: A Vision for Rebuilding Ukraine’s Advantage in 2024

17. We Wanted to Implement Data-Driven Operations During an Army Exercise—Here’s What We Learned

18. It’s not your imagination. There has been more war lately.

19. The Next Global War by Hal Brands

20. Military Leaders Do What Makes Them Look Good

21. America Can’t Win the Tech Race Alone

22. In Norway, young people compete to serve in the military

23. For People Fleeing War, U.S. Immigration Fight Has Real-Life Consequences

24. ‘Decade of decline’ for U.S. military tees up likely campaign clash for 2024

25. SOF News Passing of Col (Ret) Donlon – MOH Recipient

1. Congressional Medal of Honor Society Announces Passing of Medal of Honor Recipient Roger H. C. Donlon

A great American and an example of servant leadership. I first met him in Korea when he was serving in Japan and was the honorary Colonel of the 9th Infantry and he came up to Camp Greaves for a regimental dining in. And then like all Special Forces officers who attended any school at Fort Leavenworth I benefited from his mentorship when he held court with SF officers. Many times I recall him pulling his famous compass from his pocket and telling us why he carried it. I never tired of hearing the lessons he imparted on us.

Congressional Medal of Honor Society Announces Passing of Medal of Honor Recipient Roger H. C. Donlon

https://www.cmohs.org/news-events/press-releases/congressional-medal-of-honor-society-announces-passing-of-medal-of-honor-recipient-roger-h-c-donlon/

POSTED IN: PRESS RELEASES

JANUARY 25, 2024

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C., Jan. 25, 2024 — The Congressional Medal of Honor Society regretfully announces that Roger H. C. Donlon, the first Recipient of the Medal of Honor for the Vietnam War, passed away January 25, 2024, in Leavenworth, Kansas, at the age of 89.

President Lyndon B. Johnson presented Donlon with the Medal of Honor in the East Ballroom of the White House in Washington, D.C. on Dec. 5, 1964, for his actions near Nam Dong, the Republic of Vietnam, on July 6, 1964.

On July 6, 1964, then-Captain Donlon was commanding officer at Camp Nam Dong, Vietnam, when a Viet Cong battalion launched a pre-dawn attack. During the next five hours, Donlon repeatedly exposed himself to heavy fire while defending against the enemy, moving ammunitions and weaponry to effective positions, aiding the wounded, and rallying his men. Throughout the battle, he was severely injured several times but persevered and insisted others receive medical attention before him. When the sun finally came up, the enemy retreated into the jungle. Donlon’s bravery and leadership had resulted in the defeat of the attackers and preserving the lives of the friendly Vietnamese camp defenders and fellow Americans.

Humble in every respect, Donlon didn’t feel what he had done was heroic: “In my situation and every other situation that leads to the Medal of Honor, there is absolutely no input from the recipient. It’s all done by observers. Heroism is a product of what other people see.”

Donlon was born in Saugerties, New York, on January 30, 1934. He grew up wanting to serve his country. He attended St. Mary’s Elementary School and graduated from Saugerties High School in 1952. He attended the New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse University for one year. Donlon then enlisted in the US Air Force from Dec. 1953 to July 1955, after which was admitted to the US Military Academy at West Point. He left the Military Academy in 1957 but enlisted in the US Army the next year. After graduating from Officer Candidate School at Fort Moore (then Fort Benning), Georgia, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant. He earned the “Green Beret” upon completion of the US Army Special Warfare School at Fort Liberty (then Fort Bragg), North Carolina. He retired as a Colonel in 1988.

He served on the Board of Directors/Trustees at People-to-People International and was one of the Founding Trustees of the Command and General Staff College (CGSC) Foundation.

Donlon’s military and civilian education include: Special Warfare Course; Infantry Advanced Course; CGSC; Foreign Services Institute; US Army Institute for Military Assistance, School of International Studies; Army War College; Received a Bachelor of General Studies from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and a Master of Science in Government from Campbell University; Held an Honorary Master of Military Arts and Sciences from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.

His honors include being inducted into the Fort Leavenworth Hall of Fame in May 1995; being recognized as the first recipient of the Outstanding Alumnus Award at the US Army War College in May 1997; and serving as “Honorary Colonel” of the First Special Forces Regiment from May 2004 to April 2010.

He is survived by numerous family members. Funeral arrangements are pending.

There are now 64 living Medal of Honor Recipients alive today.

About the Congressional Medal of Honor Society

The Congressional Medal of Honor Society, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, is dedicated to preserving the legacy of the Medal of Honor and its Recipients, inspiring Americans, and supporting the Recipients as they connect with communities across the country.

Chartered by Congress in 1958, its membership consists exclusively of those individuals who have received the Medal of Honor. There are 64 living Recipients.

The Society carries out its mission through outreach, education and preservation programs, including the Medal of Honor Museum, Congressional Medal of Honor Outreach Programs, the Congressional Medal of Honor Character Development Program, and the Congressional Medal of Honor Citizen Honors Awards for Valor and Service. The Society’s programs and operations are funded by donations.

As part of Public Law 106-83, the Medal of the Honor Memorial Act, The Medal of Honor Museum, which is co-located with the Congressional Medal of Honor Society’s headquarters on board the U.S.S. Yorktown at Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, was designated as one of three national Medal of Honor sites.

Contact: Kathleen Blomquist, mohcomms@cmohs.org

2. Oct. 7 Was Worse Than a Terror Attack. It Was a Pogrom.

Excerpts:

Even Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, who’s more dovish than the right-wing government, has pointed the finger at Palestinian civilians in Gaza. “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” Herzog said almost two weeks after the attacks. “It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”

For Avital and other Israelis, there is no longer any middle ground after Oct. 7.

“For us now, there is bad and good. Before we were sure there was something in the middle. Now we understand there is nothing in the middle. There are people who want to kill you and there are us, who just want to live a quiet life.”

Oct. 7 Was Worse Than a Terror Attack. It Was a Pogrom.

‘Let me know of one Palestinian in Gaza who tried to save a Jew and maybe I’ll change my mind’

DEBORAH DANAN

JANUARY 24, 2024

Tablet · by Deborah Danan · January 25, 2024

Eyal Barad was in the safe room of his home in Nir Oz for more than 12 hours on Oct. 7 while Palestinians went on a rampage of his Gaza envelope kibbutz, eventually kidnapping or murdering more than a quarter of its residents.

Every so often, Barad, 40, was forced to cover his 6-year-old daughter’s mouth with his hand to stifle her squeals. The little girl, who is autistic, thought the whole thing was a game. Most of the time, though, Barad was glued to his phone, watching the live feed of a camera he had recently installed outside his home to monitor speeding cars. Images from the feed, which I obtained, show Palestinian women and children—some appearing as young as 8 years old—taking part in the horror of that day.

Survivors’ accounts, video evidence, and the interrogation recordings of apprehended Palestinians paint a damning picture of the complicity of Gazan civilians both in the Oct. 7 attack, in which more than 1,200 people were murdered and 240 people were abducted to Gaza, and its aftermath. It is one that has sparked a debate in Israel that challenges the inclination to draw distinctions between ordinary Palestinian civilians of Gaza—often referred to in Israel as bilti me’uravim (uninvolved)—and their terror leaders. For many, Oct. 7 reeked of something that Jews have been familiar with for centuries; a phenomenon where not just a vanguard, but a society at large participates in the ritual slaughter of Jews.

Around 700 Palestinians stormed Barad’s kibbutz of Nir Oz—less than a five-minute drive from Gaza—that day, CCTV footage shows. The overwhelming majority of those, estimated by Eran Smilansky, a member of the kibbutz’s security squad, to be around 550, were civilians. They were largely unarmed and not in uniform. Some of those civilians carried out wholesale acts of terror themselves, including rape and abduction—and in some cases, the eventual sale of hostages to Hamas—while others abetted the terrorists. Others still simply took advantage of the porous border to loot Israeli homes and farms, including stealing hundreds of thousands of shekels in agricultural equipment.

‘The reality proves that there’s no such thing as a bilti me’urav (uninvolved) in Gaza. All of Gaza is Hamas.’

Copied link

Similar scenes played out in several of the more than 20 brutalized Israeli communities. In one video that has become emblematic of the debate around the “uninvolved,” an elderly Palestinian man with walking sticks is seen hobbling at an impressive clip along with the rest of the mob through the breached gate of Be’eri.

Differentiating between terrorists and civilians is tricky, particularly since Hamas terrorists often wear civilian clothing, a tactic evident in the ongoing war in Gaza. However, other indicators help make this distinction, such as the absence of weapons and the fact that many were filmed crossing the border barefoot or even on horseback. Even senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk readily admitted that Gaza civilians had taken part in the Oct. 7 atrocities.

One video shows a group of men in civilian clothing beating a soldier while a separate image shows another group of what appears to be civilian men celebrating atop the smoking husk of a burned-out tank. In the infamous 47-minute terror reel of the Oct. 7 atrocities, Palestinians in civilian clothing are seen beating elderly hostages with sticks. Another repeatedly screams “Allahu akbar!” as he decapitates a Thai farm worker with a garden tool.

Barad’s speed camera in Nir Oz includes images of a Palestinian girl riding a stolen bike. In another, a Palestinian woman is seen pointing out Barad’s neighbor’s home to a uniformed terrorist. An image captured later shows a resident of that home being hoisted onto a motorcycle to be taken into Gaza.

But it’s the testimonies of the survivors that provide the clearest evidence that Oct. 7 was not just a terrorist attack, but a pogrom.

Batya Holin is a photographer and peace activist from Kfar Aza, which alongside Nir Oz and Be’eri, was one of the heaviest-hit communities. Holin had developed a friendship with a Gazan photographer, Mahmoud, with whom she arranged a joint exhibit last year of photos of her kibbutz and his village in the Gaza Strip. On the morning of Oct. 7, Mahmoud called and interrogated Holin, asking her how many soldiers were in her vicinity. That was when Holin realized that Mahmoud had given the photos of her village to Hamas. “Whoever says there are people there who are uninvolved, here is the proof,” she told Israel’s Channel 13 News. “They are all involved. They are all Hamas.”

Echoing Holin’s testimony, former hostage Nili Margalit said that “civilians, regular people,” abducted her to Gaza in one of the kibbutz’s golf carts. Likewise, an NBC News investigation found that Noa Argamani was likely kidnapped by a civilian mob. A video of her abduction shows her unarmed captors wearing regular clothes. Argamani may have been later handed over or sold to Hamas.

Natali Yohanan, 38, recounted hearing a Palestinian woman enter her home with two men. The woman stayed there for several hours, intermittently cooking for her male companions, watching Netflix, and ransacking her clothes. The men would occasionally try to break open the safe room door, where Yohanan, her husband, and two young children, were hiding.

“She started singing and asked them, are you hungry? Are you thirsty? She went into my fridge and heated up food,” Yohanan said. “She was very relaxed and seemed happy. She stole my credit card, my passport, and my clothes—even some of my underwear—but the clothes she didn’t want she folded and put on the bed. It was so strange.”

Then there are the Gazans who worked at the kibbutzim. Yohanan’s husband, a farmer, is one of many people in the Gaza periphery communities who hired Palestinian workers from Gaza. Like many others I spoke to, Yohanan believed that the terrorists were acting on inside knowledge obtained by those Gazan workers. Israel had gradually raised the number of work permits in the months leading up to Oct. 7 with an estimated 18,500 Gazans working in Israel before the onslaught. The thinking behind the policy was that economic incentives to the residents of the Strip would sustain the fragile peace. Hanan Dann, from Kfar Aza, told me that he was “glad that workers from Gaza were coming to Israel to have jobs and meet Israelis, to see that we’re not all devils.”

In several of the devastated communities, detailed maps were found on the bodies of dead terrorists, maps that residents say could have only been drawn up by people with intimate knowledge of the area. Gazan workers relayed an extensive range of information to Hamas that enabled the terror group to plan its attack with extraordinary meticulousness, including the identities and residences of security heads, the locations of electric boards and communications systems and how to disable them.

More on the Communities Attacked on Oct. 7

The workers’ betrayal left an indelible mark on the surviving kibbutzniks, leading many to reexamine previously held beliefs about their Palestinian neighbors. Nir Oz, like many of the other ravaged kibbutzim in the area, was home to scores of peace activists, many of whom volunteered for a program known as Road to Recovery, driving sick Gazans to Israeli hospitals for treatment. Many now believe that while there are Gazans who want to live in peace, they do not represent the majority; or, as one survivor summed it up to AFP, “there are more who don’t want us alive.”

Irit Lahav, whose parents were from Nir Oz’s founding members, described the community as a “peace lovers’” kibbutz. “It broke my heart. How can we ever get over this sense of betrayal?” Lahav, who shuttled Palestinian cancer patients several hours from the border with Gaza to their treatments in central Israel, told me. “The Palestinian public simply hates us.”

Not everyone, however, was surprised by the involvement of Gazan civilians. “I don’t differentiate between them and Hamas,” Nir Shani told me. “Let me know of one Palestinian in Gaza who tried to save a Jew and maybe I’ll change my mind.” Shani’s teenaged son Amit was taken hostage and later released as part of a prisoner exchange at the end of November. Shani is from Be’eri, also home to lifelong peace activists, including Vivian Silver, the founder of Women Wage Peace, and Yocheved and Oded Lifshitz. Silver was murdered and the Lifshitzes were taken hostage. Yocheved was later released but Oded remains in Gaza. “They are people of peace who were always supporting Palestine,” the couple’s grandson Daniel said of them. He recounted how bystanders in Gaza spat on his grandmother, who was thrown over the back of a motorcycle after being pummeled in the ribs by her captors.

In one viral video, the near-naked and bloodied body of Shani Louk, an Israeli German who was abducted from the Nova music festival but who was later declared dead, is seen being paraded through the streets of Gaza in the back of a pickup truck. Hordes of Palestinian civilians are cheering, spitting and slapping Louk’s deformed figure while chanting “Allahu akbar.” The last tranche of hostages to be released in November’s truce saw crowds of Palestinians line the streets, jeering as the Red Cross ambulances passed by. The aunt of released hostage Eitan Yahalomi said that after the arrival of her 12-year-old nephew into Gaza, “all the civilians, everyone, beat him.”

IDF Sgt. Adir Tahar was murdered and decapitated during the invasion while manning a post near the Erez border crossing. His father, David, was forced to bury his son’s body without his head. An interrogation of two Palestinians by Israel’s Shin Bet security agency revealed that the remains of the head—which had been mutilated until it barely resembled a human skull—were kept in the freezer of an ice cream store in Gaza. One of the men had tried to sell the head for $10,000. The man in question was a Palestinian civilian and not a Hamas operative, Tahar told me. The Shin Bet did not respond to a request for confirmation in time for publication.

“The reality proves that there’s no such thing as a bilti me’urav (uninvolved) in Gaza,” Tahar said. “All of Gaza is Hamas.”

In several cases, Palestinian families held hostages in their homes. Released hostage Mia Schem said she was being held by a family in Gaza. “Entire families are in the service of Hamas,” she told Channel 13. Avigail Idan, the 4-year-old Israeli American whose parents were murdered, was also held in the homes of several Palestinian families. When former hostage Russian Israeli Roni Krivoi remarkably managed to escape his captors during an Israeli air raid, he hid alone for several days before being discovered by Gaza civilians, he said, who returned him to Hamas.

“There are no innocent civilians. Not one. They don’t exist,” Schem said. “All of them there are terrorists.”

Another hostage, 17-year-old Agam Goldstein-Almog, agreed with Schem. She said that she was brought to a school and “a nice lady offered us water, a mattress, and a place to sleep” and assured her the place was safe. “I turned to my mother and said, ‘Mom, there are good people in the world. And five minutes later they fired a barrage of rockets from the school [into Israel] and everyone was shouting, ‘Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar,’ and I told her, ‘Scratch that, they’re all the same.’”

“If we previously believed that there was a chance for peace, we’ve lost all faith in these people, especially after we were there and among the population,” Goldstein-Almog added.

There have been scores of examples of Gazan civilians in various professions who appear to be, at the very least, in the “service of Hamas.” From New York Times, Associated Press, and Reuters photojournalists breaking the Oct. 7 breach into Israel (with one spotted brandishing a grenade), to UNRWA staffers who have praised the attacks, kept hostages in their homes (a claim the U.N. agency strongly denies), and covered up the existence of tunnel shafts and weapons caches in their schools. One teacher at an UNRWA school in Khan Yunis, Jawad Abu Shamala, was a member of Hamas’ leadership in charge of its funds.

The director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, Ahmad al-Kahlout, confessed to Israeli security forces in December that his hospital doubled as a military facility for Hamas. He admitted to being recruited to the terror group and receiving military training, and added that there were other “doctors, nurses, paramedics, and clerks” who were also military operatives in Hamas’ Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. His last remarks in the video, released by the IDF, may suggest that he did not have a choice. Calling Hamas leaders “cowards,” al-Kahlout said, “they ruined us.” Similar claims can be found in several videos by ordinary Gazans, some of whom were silenced mid-sentence. One clip cited by The Wall Street Journal prompted Hamas to issue a warning against publishing any materials it deems “offensive to the image of the steadfastness and unity of our people in Gaza.”

Then again, a survey conducted in December by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that while about one in five Gazans polled blamed Hamas for their suffering in the war, 57% of Palestinians in Gaza (and 82% in the West Bank) continued to support Hamas’ decision to attack Israel. Moreover, support for the terror group overall (42%) has increased since Oct. 7.

While many Palestinians have occasionally expressed dissatisfaction with aspects of Hamas’ governance, such as electricity shortages or tax hikes, its actions as a “resistance” faction are viewed favorably. Take, for example, the words of a banker from Gaza City cited in the WSJ report: “I hate Hamas, the government. I never respected them. But the militants? I believe in them so much, they are sacrificing their souls for the sake of Palestine.”

Seasonal expressions of discontent are not a new phenomenon. There have been protests against the group in 2017, 2019, and as recently as last summer. Benny Avital, a member of Nir Oz’s civilian security team, told me that prior to Oct. 7, the protests in Gaza had fueled hopes that “the Gazan people will rise up against” their leaders.

Several notable Israelis have expressed similar sentiments. Singer-songwriter Idan Raichel, who in the past has described his music as a bridge for peace with Israel’s Arab neighbors, said last week that Gaza civilians should do more to “rise up against Hamas,” and the fact that they don’t means that “most of them should be treated as involved.”

Even Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, who’s more dovish than the right-wing government, has pointed the finger at Palestinian civilians in Gaza. “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” Herzog said almost two weeks after the attacks. “It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”

For Avital and other Israelis, there is no longer any middle ground after Oct. 7.

“For us now, there is bad and good. Before we were sure there was something in the middle. Now we understand there is nothing in the middle. There are people who want to kill you and there are us, who just want to live a quiet life.”

Tablet · by Deborah Danan · January 25, 2024

3. U.S. Secretly Alerted Iran Ahead of Islamic State Terrorist Attack

So the enemy of my enemy is not my friend? But I want to use that enemy to mke the other enemy my friend? Of course that enemy probably thinks I waited too long to pass on the intelligence since the operation was actually executed.

U.S. Secretly Alerted Iran Ahead of Islamic State Terrorist Attack

Washington passed actionable intelligence to Tehran about the plot that killed 84 and wounded many more

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-secretly-alerted-iran-ahead-of-islamic-state-terrorist-attack-af77a19a

By Michael R. Gordon

Follow, Vivian Salama

Follow and Warren P. Strobel

Updated Jan. 25, 2024 9:36 am ET

The blasts killed dozens of people earlier this month in Kerman, Iran. PHOTO: WANA NEWS AGENCY/REUTERS

WASHINGTON—The U.S. secretly warned Iran that Islamic State was preparing to carry out the terrorist attack early this month that killed more than 80 Iranians in a pair of coordinated suicide bombings, U.S. officials said.

The confidential alert came after the U.S. acquired intelligence that Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan, ISIS-Khorasan, known as ISIS-K, was plotting to attack Iran, they said.

American officials said the information passed to Iran was specific enough about the location and sufficiently timely that it might have proved useful to Tehran in thwarting the attack on Jan. 3 or at least mitigating the casualty toll.

Iran, however, failed to prevent the suicide bombings in the southeastern town of Kerman, which targeted a crowd that was commemorating the anniversary of the death of Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds force. Soleimani was killed in a January 2020 drone attack near the Baghdad airport ordered by then-President Donald Trump.

China doesn't have the military power to successfully invade Taiwan, the majority of 52 US experts said in a survey

Business Insider · by Matthew Loh

Military & Defense

Matthew Loh

2024-01-24T09:51:02Z

Facebook Email Twitter LinkedIn Copy Link

Read in app

Taiwanese soldiers stand guard as flares are fired during a military live-fire drill in Pingtung, Taiwan, in September 2022.Ceng Shou Yi/NurPhoto via Getty Images

A think tank surveyed 52 US experts on whether they thought China could successfully invade Taiwan.
Only 27% said they thought Beijing could pull off a successful amphibious assault.
Their belief that the US would intervene in an invasion may have led to their answers.

A new survey of leading experts from the US and Taiwan casts doubt on China's ability to invade Taiwan with its current military strength.

This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.

The survey, released on Monday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, gathered opinions from 52 US experts in November and December last year.

These included people with extensive experience in the US government, academics, and think-tank experts who had testified in Congress before, the center said.

And only 27% of them said they strongly or somewhat agreed the People's Liberation Army had the might to pull off an amphibious invasion, per the report.

A deciding factor for many of these experts could have been the belief that the US military would directly intervene in the event of such an attack.

"An overwhelming 96% of US experts were completely or moderately confident that if China invades Taiwan in the next five years, the US military would intervene to defend Taiwan," the report said.

CSIS also surveyed 35 experts from Taiwan, of whom only 17% said they agreed China had the power to successfully execute an amphibious invasion.

The survey came after multiple reports that China had been purging the PLA of corrupt officials, with cases of graft so severe that Beijing's considerations toward any major military action in the next few years may be affected.

Experts said a quarantine or blockade was more likely

When asked whether they thought China could effectively pressure Taiwan through a quarantine or blockade, the majority on both sides shifted in favor of Beijing.

Ninety-one percent of the US experts said they strongly or somewhat agreed China could create a quarantine of Taiwan, restricting the flow of goods in and out of the island through non-military means. Conversely, only 63% of Taiwanese experts said they agreed China was capable of this.

An example of this would be squeezing traffic to Taiwanese ports through a customs-inspections regime, the center said.

China could also impose a military blockade on Taiwan, which 81% of US experts said they agreed Beijing could do, while 60% of the experts from Taiwan concurred.

Both a quarantine and a blockade could escalate into an invasion, with China encircling Taiwan before it launches an assault, the report said.

Most US experts said Washington would intervene if China took either course of restrictive action, with 63% saying they were completely or moderately confident the US would step in during a quarantine and 79% saying they were confident Washington would intervene in the event of a basic blockade.

That confidence wasn't shared by experts in Taiwan. Only 40% of them said they were confident the US would intervene in a quarantine, and 60% said they were confident it would intervene during a basic blockade.

A pessimistic outlook for 2024

The majority of experts were pessimistic about the year ahead for cross-strait relations, with 58% of experts in Taiwan saying a crisis between both governments — such as large-scale military exercises and an escalation of threats from China — was likely or very likely in 2024.

US attitudes were even more negative. Sixty-eight percent of American experts said a crisis was likely to occur.

Taiwan's electing of William Lai Ching-te, its outgoing vice president, as the island's new leader earlier this month has stoked fears that China will double down on its aggression toward Taipei.

Lai is central to the Democratic Progressive Party, which largely campaigns on resisting Beijing. Taiwan's outgoing president, Tsai Ing-wen, has been increasingly hawkish toward China as Beijing, led by Xi Jinping, simultaneously heaped threats of invasion on the island.

Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan's former president under the Kuomintang party, met with Xi Jinping in 2015.ROSLAN RAHMAN/AFP via Getty Images

Lai's ascension as Taiwan's top leader is widely seen as a likely source of further conflict, though he has pledged to uphold the status quo. In a sign of the growing tensions ahead, Beijing has been issuing individual rebukes to countries around the world for congratulating Lai on his election victory.

Business Insider · by Matthew Loh

5. World Court to rule on measures against Israel in Gaza genocide case

World Court to rule on measures against Israel in Gaza genocide case

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/world-court-rule-urgent-measures-gaza-genocide-case-2024-01-26/?utm

By Stephanie van den Berg and Anthony Deutsch

January 26, 20243:27 AM ESTUpdated 3 hours ago

General view of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Netherlands January 23, 2020. REUTERS/Eva Plevier/FILE PHOTO Acquire Licensing Rights, opens new tab

Summary

Hearing starts at 1200 GMT, could last more than an hourSouth Africa requesting immediate halt to Gaza operationIsrael says court should throw out 'spurious' charges

THE HAGUE, Jan 26 (Reuters) - U.N. judges will rule on Friday on South Africa's request for emergency measures against Israel, including that it halt its military operations in Gaza, over which it faces allegations of state-led genocide at the World Court.

Friday's ruling at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) will not deal with the core accusation of the case - whether genocide occurred - but will focus on the urgent intervention sought by South Africa.

Among the measures South Africa requested is an immediate halt to Israel's military operation, which has laid waste to much of the enclave and killed more than 25,000 people, according to Gaza health authorities.

Israel has asked the court to reject the case outright. An Israeli government spokesperson on Thursday said they expected the U.N.'s top court to "throw out these spurious and specious charges".

South Africa argued two weeks ago that Israel's aerial and ground offensive was aimed to bring about "the destruction of the population" of Gaza.

Israel rejects the accusations, saying it respects international law and has a right to defend itself.

On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor about the war in Gaza. He reaffirmed U.S. support "for Israel's right to ensure the terrorist attacks of Oct. 7 can never be repeated", the U.S. State Department said in a statement.

Israel launched its war in Gaza after a cross-border rampage on Oct. 7 by Hamas militants. Israeli officials said 1,200 people were killed, mostly civilians, and 240 taken hostage.

The court will issue its ruling at 1 p.m. (1200 GMT) in a hearing expected to last about an hour.

The 17-judge panel will only decide on whether to impose provisional measures and whether there is a plausible risk that Israel's operation violates the 1948 Genocide Convention.

South Africa has asked it to issue nine emergency measures, which act like a restraining order while the court hears the case in full, which could take years.

Pretoria wants the court to order a halt to Israeli military action in Gaza, allowing in more humanitarian aid and for Israel to investigate and prosecute possible violations.

The court is not bound to follow South Africa's requests and could order its own measures if it finds it has jurisdiction at this stage of the case.

Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg; Editing by Anthony Deutsch and Alison Williams

6. Exclusive: China presses Iran to rein in Houthi attacks in Red Sea, sources say

Note the continued use of the "axis of resistance." We have lost the narrative. It may seem like a simple word but its fundamental use today is about resistance to the US, the global powers, the west, the rules based international order, and anyone who is perceived to be oppressing people in the Middle East (e.g., Palestinians) and throughout the Global South. We should have shaped the narrative and captured the use of resistance to denote those who are resisting oppressors and invaders (such as the people of Ukraine, Taiwan, the Uyghurs, the people of Afghanistan against the Taliban, etc). We need ot recapture the word "ressitance" and use it "correctly."

Exclusive: China presses Iran to rein in Houthi attacks in Red Sea, sources say

By Parisa Hafezi and Andrew Hayley

January 25, 20248:03 PM ESTUpdated 3 hours ago

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/china-presses-iran-rein-houthi-attacks-red-sea-sources-say-2024-01-26/?utm

[1/2]The Galaxy Leader cargo ship is escorted by Houthi boats in the Red Sea in this photo released November 20, 2023. Houthi Military Media/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights, opens new tab

SummaryCompanies

Iran-backed Houthis attacking commercial ships in Red SeaTrading powerhouse China has called for attacks to stopOil trade gives China leverage over Iran, analysts sayIran cares about China but weighs other priorities - sources

DUBAI, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Chinese officials have asked their Iranian counterparts to help rein in attacks on ships in the Red Sea by the Iran-backed Houthis, or risk harming business relations with Beijing, four Iranian sources and a diplomat familiar with the matter said.

The discussions about the attacks and trade between China and Iran took place at several recent meetings in Beijing and Tehran, the Iranian sources said, declining to provide details about when they took place or who attended.

"Basically, China says: 'If our interests are harmed in any way, it will impact our business with Tehran. So tell the Houthis to show restraint'," said one Iranian official briefed on the talks, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.

The attacks, which the Houthis say are in support of Palestinians in Gaza, have raised the cost of shipping and insurance by disrupting a key trade route between Asia and Europe used widely by ships from China.

The Chinese officials, however, did not make any specific comments or threats about how Beijing's trading relationship with Iran could be affected if its interests were damaged by Houthi attacks, the four Iranian sources said.

While China has been Iran's biggest trading partner for the past decade, their trade relationship is lopsided.

Chinese oil refiners, for example, bought over 90% of Iran's crude exports last year, according to tanker tracking data from trade analytics firm Kpler, as U.S. sanctions kept many other customers away and Chinese firms profited from heavy discounts.

Iranian oil, though, only accounts for 10% of China's crude imports and Beijing has an array of suppliers that could plug shortfalls from elsewhere.

The Iranian sources said Beijing had made it clear it would be very disappointed with Tehran if any vessels linked to China were hit, or the country's interests were affected in any way.

But while China was important to Iran, Tehran also had proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, besides the Houthis in Yemen, and its regional alliances and priorities played a major role in its decision making, one of the Iranian insiders said.

Asked for comment about meetings with Iran to discuss the Red Sea attacks, China's ministry of foreign affairs said: "China is a sincere friend of the countries of the Middle East and is committed to promoting regional security and stability and seeking common development and prosperity."

"We firmly support Middle Eastern countries in strengthening their strategic independence and uniting and collaborating to resolve regional security issues," it told Reuters.

Iran's foreign ministry was not immediately available to comment.

AXIS OF RESISTANCE

Military strikes by U.S. and British forces on Houthi targets in Yemen this month have failed to stop attacks on shipping by the group, which controls a large chunk of Yemen including the capital Sanaa and much of the country's Red Sea coast by the Bab al-Mandab strait.

The Houthis, who first emerged in the 1980s as an armed group in opposition to Saudi Arabia's Sunni religious influence in Yemen, are armed, funded and trained by Iran and are part of its anti-West, anti-Israel "Axis of Resistance".

A senior U.S. official said Washington had asked China to use its leverage with Iran to persuade it to restrain the Houthis, including in conversations Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan had this month with senior Chinese Communist Party official Liu Jianchao.

A senior Iranian official said while Chinese officials discussed their concerns thoroughly in the meetings, they never mentioned any requests from Washington.

On Jan. 14, China's foreign minister Wang Yi called for an end to attacks on civilian ships in the Red Sea - without naming the Houthis or mentioning Iran - and the maintenance of supply chains and the international trade order.

Victor Gao, chair professor at China's Soochow University, said China, as the world's biggest trading nation, was disproportionately affected by the shipping disruption and restoring stability in the Red Sea was a priority.

But Gao, a former Chinese diplomat and an adviser to oil giant Saudi Aramco, said Beijing would view Israel's treatment of the Palestinians as the root cause of the Red Sea crisis and would not want to publicly ascribe blame to the Houthis.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson declined to comment when asked about bilateral Iran-China discussions on the issue.

A diplomat familiar with the matter said China had been talking to Iran about the issue but it was unclear how seriously Tehran was taking Beijing's advice.

Two officials in the Yemeni government, an enemy of the Houthis, said they were aware that several countries, including China, had sought to influence Iran to rein the Houthis in.

Analysts Gregory Brew of Eurasia Group and Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group said China had potential leverage over Iran because of its oil purchases and because Iran was hoping to attract more Chinese direct investment in future.

However, both said China had so far been reluctant to use its leverage, for several reasons.

"China prefers to free-ride on the U.S. safeguarding freedom of navigation in the Red Sea by bloodying the Houthis' nose," said Vaez, adding that Beijing was also aware that Iran did not have total control over its Yemeni allies.

Attacks by Yemen's Houthi militants on ships in the Red Sea are disrupting maritime trade through the Suez Canal, with some vessels re-routing to a much longer East-West route via the southern tip of Africa.

INFLUENCE NOT ABSOLUTE

Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam said on Thursday that Iran to date had not conveyed any message from China about scaling back attacks.

"They will not inform us of such a request, especially since Iran's stated position is to support Yemen. It condemned the American-British strikes on Yemen, and considered Yemen's position honourable and responsible," he said.

The four Iranian sources said it was unclear whether Iran would take any action following the discussions with Beijing.

The stakes are high for Iran as China is one of the few powers capable of providing the billions of dollars of investment Tehran needs to maintain the capacity of its oil sector and keep its economy afloat.

China's influence was evident in 2023 when it facilitated an agreement between Iran and regional rival Saudi Arabia to end years of hostilities.

Yet while there are robust economic ties between China and Iran, Beijing's influence on Tehran's geopolitical decisions was not absolute, one of the Iranian insiders said.

Some within Iran's ruling establishment have questioned the value of the partnership with Beijing, pointing to relatively low non-oil trade and investment volumes since China and Iran signed a 25-year cooperation agreement in 2021.

Iranian state media says Chinese firms have only invested $185 million since then. State media also said last year that Iranian non-oil exports to China fell 68% in the first five months of 2023 while Iran's imports from China rose 40%.

By contrast, Chinese companies committed last year to invest billions in Saudi Arabia after the countries signed a comprehensive strategic partnership in December 2022.

Two of the Iranian insiders said while China could not be ignored, Tehran had other priorities to consider and its decisions were shaped by a complex interplay of factors.

"Regional alliances and priorities as well as ideological considerations contribute significantly to Tehran's decisions," one of the people said.

The second person said Iran's rulers had to adopt a nuanced strategy when it came to the Gaza war, as well as the Houthi attacks, and that Tehran would not abandon its allies.

Iran's role as leader of its "Axis of Resistance" - which includes the Houthis, Lebanon's Hezbollah, Hamas and militias in Iraq and Syria - had to be balanced against avoiding getting sucked into a regional war over Gaza, the Iranian sources said.

Tehran's messaging to - and about - the Houthis required a measure of deniability about the extent of its control over them - but also an ability to claim some credit for their anti-Israel actions, one of the people said.

Reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Dubai and Andrew Hayley in Beijing; Additional reporting by Samia Nakhoul in Dubai, Trevor Hunnicutt, Humeyra Pamuk, Arshad Mohammed and Matt Spetalnick in Washington, Mohammed Alghobari in Aden, and Greg Torode in Hong Kong; Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Estelle Shirbon and David Clarke

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Andrew Hayley

Thomson Reuters

Andrew reports on energy and energy policy in China. He previously worked in investment banking in London, covering European high-yield debt transactions. Andrew speaks Mandarin and is learning Russian.

7. Pentagon, under scrutiny, halts work with condemned foreign militaries

I do not think people realize the complexity of this. One one hand I believe in the rule of law and that we must follow our laws to the letter, e.g., the Leahy Amendment and human rights vetting, no matter how much it frustrates operations and campaign plans.

Then there's the argument that we do not want to give up the ability to have situational awareness regions that are important to US interests. There is the argument that engagement provides the opportunity to influence current and future leaders.

Of course even Senator Leahy recognized that it is not alway black and white and either or because he (or whomever drafted the legislation) provided a waiver process for certain situations necessary to support US interests and national security concerns.

Then of course there are those who debunk the influence argument and they will cite the coups that took place even with a US military presence. Of course what we cannot cite is how many coups or other abuses were prevented because of long term engagement and the rise of leaders who were positively influenced over time by engagement with the US military (and US diplomats and intelligence personnel). We cannot prove a negative.

But I find this excerpt to be counter to my experience.

Excerpt:

The Pentagon’s Lawrence, citing the law’s boundaries, said joint exercises whose “primary purpose” is to enhance U.S. forces’ capability “are not considered assistance” and do not require Leahy vetting.

I assume Ms. Lawrence is talking about Joint/Combined Exercises and Training (JCET) and the old Special Forces exception (for "deployments for training" back in the 1980s until the term JCET was established) and the 51% rule (51% of the training had to benefit US forces and the primary purpose of training was NOT for e training of foreign forces). My experience was that even JCETs required vetting of the foreign units that were participating in training. The Leahy Amendment was always applied (at least in the Asia Pacific).

The conclusion sums up the complexity and arguments.

An essential question for the administration, Yager said, is: “Do we want to make human rights abusers better at what they do?” The U.S. government’s argument, she added, has always been “‘we’re mitigating what they do.’ And the human rights community’s argument has always been ‘you’re making them more savvy.’ And that is an ongoing tension that no one has been able to solve yet.”

Pentagon, under scrutiny, halts work with condemned foreign militaries

The Defense Department has reversed course on some — but not all — of its plans to train with those involved in coups or accused of human rights abuses

By Abigail Hauslohner and Alex Horton

January 26, 2024 at 5:30 a.m. EST

The Washington Post · by Abigail Hauslohner · January 26, 2024

The Pentagon has abruptly abandoned plans to train alongside the militaries of several countries either involved in the overthrow of democratic governments or accused of human rights violations, reversing course amid recent scrutiny.

The plans, disclosed to Congress in October and reviewed by The Washington Post, detailed the Pentagon’s intent to hold joint exercises this year with Sudan, Niger, Mali and other troubled African nations. Each is broadly prohibited under U.S. law from receiving American security assistance.

The documents, which have not been made public, account for millions of dollars in projected government spending. They revealed anticipated and ongoing partnerships with scores of foreign militaries, including about a dozen that have been condemned by the Biden administration and other governments for participating in coups or committing grave abuses, including extrajudicial killings and mass rape.

When pressed to explain why it partners with such countries, the Defense Department told The Post that at least six of the abusive militaries — those from Burkina Faso, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Niger and Sudan — were no longer slated to participate in the exercises. It is unclear whether the Pentagon also will sever plans to train with other countries that have experienced military coups or whose human rights records clash with President Biden’s stated commitment to advance human rights and democratic ideals.

One defense official, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the situation, said the U.S. military “never had an intention” to train with countries facing restrictions. A second defense official characterized the list submitted to Congress as fluid, saying it is possible other countries’ participation could be canceled, too.

The about-face appears driven, at least in part, by criticism from members of Biden’s own political party who, upon learning of the Pentagon’s plans, implored the administration to change course immediately. It’s the latest instance of fellow Democrats challenging aspects of the president’s foreign policy, having questioned his administration’s steadfast support for Israel amid soaring civilian casualties in Gaza and whether he has the authority to wage a new military campaign targeting militants in Yemen.

On Wednesday, Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) appealed directly to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, seeking assurances that no troops associated with coup governments would be allowed to participate in U.S.-led exercises. “We further request,” they told Austin in a letter viewed by The Post, “that foreign security force units receiving assistance … are subject to [human rights] vetting, as required by law.”

The first defense official declined to explain when a decision was reached to bar the six African countries from participating in the training exercises, saying the impetus was “due to legal and/or policy restrictions.” Another government official said that, as of Dec. 20, when the Defense Department last updated lawmakers on its joint exercises, all six countries remained on the list.

Joint training exercises, which are not widely publicized by the Pentagon, receive little public scrutiny. When The Post reviewed the Defense Department’s unclassified notifications to Congress, it found participating militaries — labeled “friendly” foreign forces — from some of the world’s least free societies, according to Freedom House, a Washington-based nonprofit that tracks abusive regimes worldwide.

In statements defending the Pentagon’s practices, both the White House and the Defense Department emphasized what officials consider a distinction between defense training programs and other forms of military aid the United States sends abroad. These exercises primarily benefit the American military units that participate, helping to ensure “seamless” coordination should a crisis occur, said Lisa Lawrence, a Pentagon spokeswoman. She acknowledged the “potential political challenges” that can complicate such partnerships but suggested that the pros outweigh the cons.

“In some cases,” Lawrence said, “it is more effective to remain engaged with certain partners so the partner remains aware of U.S. ethos, values, and concerns and uphold human rights standards.” She said that in the absence of American military interaction, these countries could turn to U.S. adversaries to “fill the void.”

Central African Republic, for instance, along with its record of significant human rights violations, has partnered with the Russian mercenary group Wagner. Some in Congress have sought to brand the group a foreign terrorist organization. CAR personnel are due to participate in at least three exercises with American military units this year, the notification documents show.

Sarah Harrison, a former Pentagon official now with the International Crisis Group, said permitting American personnel to hone the proficiency of potentially “tainted foreign forces” exposes a “glaring hypocrisy” that discredits the Biden administration.

“Not only is it a stain on the U.S.’s reputation,” Harrison added, but some of these military partnerships belie a core tenet of the president’s foreign policy. “They have all the information about atrocities. They have information about coups,” she said of the administration, “and still put these countries on the exercise schedule.”

A White House official said the United States “has never hesitated to stand up for human rights and democracy, and will continue to do so with allies, partners and adversaries alike.”

A who’s who of abusers

The Pentagon documents submitted to Congress in October and again in December comprised a who’s who of human rights abusers. U.S. troops were slated for training next month alongside the Sudanese armed forces — whom Secretary of State Antony Blinken has decried for committing “war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing” and other atrocities amid the country’s resurgent civil war.

Forces loyal to Eritrea’s longtime dictator were slated for participation in three exercises, according to the documents. They have been accused of extrajudicial killings and rape, and torturing people held in the country’s network of gulags. Ethiopia’s forces, also implicated by the Biden administration in a host of crimes, was due to participate in “live-fire and maritime exercises, and special operations and cyber courses,” according to a description of one of the several trainings. Both countries’ participation was canceled because they are accused of human rights abuse and undemocratic behavior, the first defense official said.

This month, U.S. troops were scheduled to begin a six-month course with the armed forces of Niger — as they did last year — even though the State Department concluded a military coup had occurred there, requiring suspension of “most U.S. assistance.”

In the spring, two State Department-labeled coup states, Gabon and Guinea, along with Central African Republic, are due to join about two dozen other countries for Flintlock, a counterterrorism exercise led by U.S. special forces.

The State Department announced in October that it was suspending most U.S. assistance to Gabon. Officials previously raised alarms about human rights there, referring in a report last year to “credible” claims its leaders sanctioned torture and imprisoned political opponents. The department has said Guinea’s ruling military regime presided over abuses, too, citing reports of unlawful killings and torture.

Azerbaijan — which a Biden administration official described during a November congressional hearing as having “no chance of business as usual” with the United States until it makes progress toward peace with Armenia — is due to participate in 10 exercises with American personnel this year. The oil- and gas-rich autocracy was cut off from a separate line of U.S. assistance after it annexed territory claimed by Armenia.

‘Partners with criminals’

Over the past few decades, Congress has passed laws and regulations meant to prevent American support for bad actors. Most prominently, they include Section 7008 of Congress’s annual appropriations bill, which restricts assistance to coup states.

A separate law prohibits the State Department and Pentagon from providing “any training, equipment, or other assistance to a unit of a foreign security force” if the U.S. government has “credible information that unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.” The legislation is known as the Leahy law, named for the former senator Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the driving force behind its passage.

“A key purpose of the Leahy law is to ensure the U.S. government and U.S. military personnel, as is the case here, are not tainted by or complicit with individuals or units of [abusive] foreign security forces,” said Tim Reiser, who drafted the law as Leahy’s foreign policy adviser. “We don’t want our diplomats or military personnel in these countries to be seen by the local population as partners with criminals.”

But the Leahy law has gaps. Notably, it requires that restrictions on U.S. assistance be applied to specific military or police units, something foreign policy experts say the government gets around by providing aid more broadly to a country. The administration exercises considerable discretion in how it applies the vetting, experts say. And ensuring compliance largely falls to Congress, where members must navigate an array of programs, some highly classified, run through multiple federal agencies.

A number of Democrats and Republicans who oversee military and foreign policy told The Post that they had not even seen the Pentagon’s joint exercises notifications, and were unaware of the extent to which the military intended to train alongside troops from restricted countries.

The Pentagon’s Lawrence, citing the law’s boundaries, said joint exercises whose “primary purpose” is to enhance U.S. forces’ capability “are not considered assistance” and do not require Leahy vetting.

Cardin and Warren state in their letter to Austin that such a view “ignores” the fact federal funds are underwriting the participation of problematic units in joint exercises, “as well as the obvious benefits to such foreign forces.” Leahy vetting should apply, they contend.

“Military personnel benefit from these exercises, but so do the foreign forces,” Reiser said, “because the point here is to build partnerships. To together, jointly counter whatever terrorist or jihadist or extremist threats exist in these countries. So it’s mutually beneficial. To say that it’s only for our benefit is nonsensical.”

Sarah Yager, Washington director of Human Rights Watch and a former Pentagon official, said there is little evidence joint military exercises lead to improvements in troubled societies. “We’ve had a bunch of coups,” she added, “so we’re pretty dubious that this actually provides a positive in this world.”

An essential question for the administration, Yager said, is: “Do we want to make human rights abusers better at what they do?” The U.S. government’s argument, she added, has always been “‘we’re mitigating what they do.’ And the human rights community’s argument has always been ‘you’re making them more savvy.’ And that is an ongoing tension that no one has been able to solve yet.”

The Washington Post · by Abigail Hauslohner · January 26, 2024

8. To deter China, the US and Taiwan should seek asymmetric symmetry

Very interesting and important discussion. I think this is an example of where our words (terms and definitions) constrain us, especially when we become wedded to them. We should ask whether our use of the terms asymmetric, irregular, unconventional hybrid, etc actually constrain us in some ways. rather than either/or we must have both/and. We need both symmetric and asymmetric, conventional and irregular, conventional and unconventional, and conventional and hybrid. What we need to be able to do is weight these depending on the conditions and objectives.. Sometimes we might need "equal parts" and sometimes we need more conventional than unconventional (and perhaps in rare cases we might need more unconventional than conventional).

Excerpts:

The rhetorical focus on asymmetric means to deter the People’s Liberation Army is one such example. The U.S. has in recent years mandated Taiwan acquire only asymmetric weapons systems. While not completely unfounded, this almost absolutist U.S. emphasis on asymmetry may be counterproductive, as an asymmetric strategy can be enhanced by conventional systems.

The debate on what constitutes an asymmetric capability lingers and has impacted Taiwanese requests for systems, such as F-16 jets, M1A2 tanks, E-2D battle management aircraft, High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, MH-60R helicopters, and the domestically produced indigenous defense submarine program, the Yushan amphibious assault ship, and a new class of frigates. Yet, an asymmetric strategy is not defined by the tactical weapons that create the effects necessary for strategic victory. An asymmetric strategy, through the effects its operational plans call for, is reflected in how the weapons in its inventory are deployed and employed.

Ukraine presents several illustrative examples in how it is implementing its strategy with weapons that are not traditionally considered asymmetrical. HIMARS is not an asymmetrical operational or tactical system in design or structure. Weighing in at 18 tons, carrying six Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System rockets, it is supported by an MTVR MK37 vehicle to load and unload a single HIMARS six-strong GMLRS pod. The MK37 has a gross vehicle weight rating of 31 tons.

Despite these non-asymmetric attributes, HIMARS is creating asymmetric effects in the hands of the Ukrainians. “We are seeing real and measurable gains from Ukraine in the use of these systems. For example, the Ukrainians have struck over 400 targets with the HIMARS, and they’ve had devastating effect,” said Gen. Mark Milley, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

To deter China, the US and Taiwan should seek asymmetric symmetry

Defense News · by Adm. Scott H. Swift (ret.) and Heino Klinck · January 25, 2024

On Oct. 19, President Joe Biden, in only his second address from the Oval Office, told Americans: “We’re facing an inflection point in history — one of those moments where the decisions we make today are going to determine the future for decades to come.” It is hard to argue with that assertion, given the wars raging in Europe and in the Middle East. But it still bears remembering that America’s biggest challenge in all domains of national power remains China.

That fact only amplifies the criticality of the decisions needed to strengthen deterrence in the Indo-Pacific region, even more relevant now across the Taiwan Strait since China’s preferred outcome in the recent Taiwanese presidential election did not materialize. All indications point to continued turbulence and tension in the most pivotal region of the world.

Deterrence has been failing all too routinely. Central to deterrence is an adversary’s perception of both the intent and the capability to respond in a compelling way to aggression. In the case of the defense of Taiwan, President Biden has been consistent in his public statements of U.S. support in case of Chinese aggression.

Yet, there has been a certain level of inconsistency in the commitments that the U.S., particularly from certain parts of the departments of State and Defense, has made with regard to providing Taiwan with the defense articles it needs to enhance deterrence vis-à-vis China’s overwhelming forces.

The rhetorical focus on asymmetric means to deter the People’s Liberation Army is one such example. The U.S. has in recent years mandated Taiwan acquire only asymmetric weapons systems. While not completely unfounded, this almost absolutist U.S. emphasis on asymmetry may be counterproductive, as an asymmetric strategy can be enhanced by conventional systems.

The debate on what constitutes an asymmetric capability lingers and has impacted Taiwanese requests for systems, such as F-16 jets, M1A2 tanks, E-2D battle management aircraft, High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, MH-60R helicopters, and the domestically produced indigenous defense submarine program, the Yushan amphibious assault ship, and a new class of frigates. Yet, an asymmetric strategy is not defined by the tactical weapons that create the effects necessary for strategic victory. An asymmetric strategy, through the effects its operational plans call for, is reflected in how the weapons in its inventory are deployed and employed.

Ukraine presents several illustrative examples in how it is implementing its strategy with weapons that are not traditionally considered asymmetrical. HIMARS is not an asymmetrical operational or tactical system in design or structure. Weighing in at 18 tons, carrying six Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System rockets, it is supported by an MTVR MK37 vehicle to load and unload a single HIMARS six-strong GMLRS pod. The MK37 has a gross vehicle weight rating of 31 tons.

Despite these non-asymmetric attributes, HIMARS is creating asymmetric effects in the hands of the Ukrainians. “We are seeing real and measurable gains from Ukraine in the use of these systems. For example, the Ukrainians have struck over 400 targets with the HIMARS, and they’ve had devastating effect,” said Gen. Mark Milley, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

What does this have to do with Taiwan? The U.S. position has been that it does not support Taiwan’s request for certain systems, as they are deemed not to be asymmetric platforms based on the definitions of select elements within the U.S. government. The Ukrainian HIMARS example underscores the point that strategies and operational concepts can be and, in Taiwan’s case, should be and are asymmetrical.

Moreover, in East Asia we can create an asymmetric symmetry by encouraging allies and partners to operate the same systems. There is commonality in combined operations and integrated strategies enabled by common tactical system employment. When extended to partners and allies, this has a multiplying effect.

There is truth in the dictum that states: “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” In fact, a senior U.S. Department of Defense official recently detailed the magnifying impact of P-8s — arguably not an asymmetric system — operating across the Indo-Pacific, with partners and allies as diverse as Australia, India, New Zealand and South Korea flying these aircraft along with the U.S. Navy. The same could be said about E-2Ds, F-16s and MQ-9 drones.

The scale and scope of Chinese military operations in the Western Pacific have grown exponentially. A day rarely passes where an allied aircraft or vessel is not harassed by the PLA in international airspace or waters. Even more common are the intrusions of Chinese military aircraft into Taiwan’s air defense identification zones.

China military ‘ready to fight’ after drills near Taiwan

China’s military has declared it is “ready to fight” after large-scale combat exercises simulating sealing off Taiwan.

By Huizhong Wu

While there are many urgent needs for Taiwan, one of the most critical is for it to acquire and operate a modern air battle-management solution. The daily competition in the air and sea above and around Taiwan is an asymmetric fight, given the quantitative and qualitative correlation of forces overwhelmingly favoring the PLA. Addressing this in the information domain from both operational and policy perspectives could flip the asymmetric script:

Taiwan’s first line of defense, its fighter aircraft, needs a modernized replacement – an airborne early warning platform for command and control.
A battle-management solution could provide a direct feed to a common operating picture. Any commonality in platforms between the U.S., Japan and Taiwan could enable synergies in early warning and targeting data.
A solution set that includes an over-the-horizon capability that could operate east of Taiwan could provide standoff from mainland China’s deployed assets.

Setting the stage for potential interoperability with the U.S. and Japan in case geopolitical events dictate that necessity is critical. A powerful signal would be sent to Beijing if Taiwan operated the same type of platforms as the U.S. Navy and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force. It would not be lost on PLA leadership that the potential existed for the three militaries to share a common operating picture. That in and of itself strengthens deterrence.

The U.S. could allow for the potential sharing of data between similar battle-management platforms without actually sharing data unless and until the government determines it is time to do so by maintaining the ability to control how, when and if platforms could interoperate. Having the option does not commit the U.S., but does allow for flexibility and a potential asymmetric coalition response.

The days of black-and-white definitions of asymmetry have passed. Let’s not continue to be hemmed in by them.

Adm. Scott H. Swift (ret.) served as the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and the 7th Fleet. Heino Klinck served as the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia. He is also the founder and principal of the consultancy Klinck Global.

9. How one Army unit uses cheap drones and ChatGPT to train others in modern warfare

I named our home wifi network "FBI Surveillance van" to keep our neighborhood on their toes.

But the CSA's comment here is the mindset we need to instil. We do not always need the most expensive hi tech equipment as our defense contractors would have us believe.

Excerpt:

Inexpensive technology can be “very, very effective,” Gen. Randy George said in an interview at the center.

The ultimate insult is when the work of this unit transitions to programs of record and is re-engineered and development by defense contractors and then ultimately frielded throughout the force, the cost to taxpayers might be 100 times more than what the unit spent to develop these capabilities.

How one Army unit uses cheap drones and ChatGPT to train others in modern warfare

Some lessons are basic: don’t name your field HQ’s WiFi “command post.”

defenseone.com · by Sam Skove

FORT JOHNSON, Louisiana—Army units learn fast that their cell phone signals stand out amid the vast, unpopulated pine forests of the Joint Readiness Training Center here.

The lesson is usually delivered when they are “killed” by the force playing their opposition, known as Geronimo, which uses cheap, commercial technology to target unwary soldiers. It’s a lesson U.S. forces should learn, says the Army’s chief of staff.

Inexpensive technology can be “very, very effective,” Gen. Randy George said in an interview at the center.

George cited a $75 decoy device built by Geronimo that mimics the electromagnetic signature of a command post. But that’s just the tip of the Geronimo’s home-built arsenal, which includes everything from computer code written by ChatGPT to a thermal-scoped, bomb-dropping version of the Army’s TS-M800 quadcopter.

The unit is not yet authorized to use FPV drones, commonly used as one-way attack drones in Ukraine, said chief warrant officer Christian Lehr, although he said he’s studied their use in Ukraine.

But Geronimo’s modified quadcopters can do plenty already. One TS-M800 carries scanners that can find cell and WiFi signals. By flying drones over the forest, Geronimo members told George on Monday, they could identify Army positions by picking up WiFI signals below.

In one case, an Army unit made Geronimo’s job even easier: they labeled their command post WiFi “command post.”

Even if an Army unit does mask itself well, a few slip-ups can quickly reveal its location or identity. In one instance, Lehr said, Geronimo noticed communication between different MAC addresses — unique identifiers used by networked devices.

They used ChatGPT to create software in the coding language Python that analyzed communication between MAC addresses. Based on their movement and communication patterns, Geronimo could deduce what types of units they were tracking.

“It's just a simple visualization tool; this is not Skynet,” Lehr said.

Such tools may be less secure than U.S. Army software, Lehr said. Still, commercial software can sometimes be the better option if it defeats an enemy before they can exploit a vulnerability.

“I don't care if you can hack into my stuff if you're dead,” he said.

Lehr also highlighted Geronimo’s use of cheap hardware like the Raspberry Pi hobbyist computer and spectrum-analysis devices like HackRF and RTL-SDR. Such devices are widely used in Ukraine to identify enemy drones.

Geronimo’s use of commercially available, open-source compatible technology also tamps down logistics burdens, he said.

“I would rather have an 80 percent solution that works 90 percent of the time than a Swiss Army knife that may or may not solve all my problems in a large-scale combat operations environment that’s not rapidly replaceable and that’s incredibly expensive to maintain,” Lehr said.

Geronimo’s use of drone bombers can be so effective that other units sometimes think the unit is cheating, Lehr said.

In one instance, Geronimo’s TS-M800 drone bomber acquired and attacked a target in 45 seconds, said Lehr. The speed was made possible in part by having a drone operator, intelligence officer, and artillery non-commissioned officer working side by side.

But the units that Geronimo is facing are learning to fight fire with fire.

On an upcoming rotation to the training center, units from the Third Infantry Division will once again test a device that mimics the electromagnetic signature of a company or battalion command post, Army Capt. Chris Flournoy told Defense One.

Flournoy said the devices may be transported from place to place by drone or an unmanned ground vehicle.

Units are also getting better at integrating technology into battle, said Geronimo Capt. Sean Murphy.

In one engagement, Geronimo forces gathered for an assault on an Army unit. As the Geronimo soldiers moved forward, their would-be prey followed them with small drones and engaged them, eventually piling on everything from mortars to artillery. Murphy believes his team was initially spotted and identified with electromagnetic sensors.

“Units are getting better at combined arms maneuver,” he said, referring to the coordination between infantry, artillery, and other types of units. “We were completely destroyed.”

defenseone.com · by Sam Skove

10. Marines Can't Count on Navy Ships to Carry Them to Global Emergencies, One of the Service's Top Generals Says

Marines Can't Count on Navy Ships to Carry Them to Global Emergencies, One of the Service's Top Generals Says | Military.com

military.com · by Drew F. Lawrence

The Navy's amphibious ships are not ready to deploy Marines around the world on time, a problem that has no short-term fix and degrades America's ability to deter adversaries and reassure allies at a time when it is needed most, according to one of the Marine Corps' top generals.

"There's a saying that wars are a come-as-you-are game," Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl, the commanding general of Marine Corps Combat Development Command and deputy commandant for combat development and integration -- the Marine who heads the service's modernization efforts, told Military.com on Thursday. "Well, this is where we are. And there is simply no immediate fix."

The readiness issue comes down to several factors, including overuse of amphibious ships during the last 20-plus years of war, according to Heckl, who said that maintenance took a back seat to the intense operational tempo that helped define the Global War on Terror. Now, according to the general, the Navy and its Marine passengers are reaping the consequences of those decisions, just as conflict in the Middle East boils over once again.

There is no good solution in sight, Heckl said, and the Corps is concerned that its expeditionary units could be in a position where they cannot meet the needs of a new crisis given the current state of the Navy's amphibious ships, a problem it has been faced with over the last two years.

"From a defense perspective, we lose a lot," Heckl said of the now "sporadic nature" of Marine expeditionary unit deployments, "whether it's reassuring allies and partners or whether it's campaigning with allies and partners to deter potential adversaries."

The relationship between Marines and their "amphibs" is meant to be a close one. Marine expeditionary units, or MEUs -- of which there are seven -- deploy on those ships as one of America's long arms of action and deterrence around the world. They are meant to be deployed with no gaps between rotations to ensure the U.S. has a rapid response force always on call, according to the Corps.

But one of those gaps meant Marines were unable to respond to an earthquake in Turkey and the evacuation of Americans from Sudan, an absence that led then-Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. David Berger to tell Congress in a hearing in April that he felt "like I let down the combatant commander."

Combined, the Marines and sailors deployed together make up an amphibious ready group, or ARG. That relationship is being tested amid a backdrop of renewed conflict in the Middle East and as the Navy struggles to keep a MEU afloat in the region. Marine Corps officials fear there could be a gap -- of months -- in coverage there because the amphibious ships their troops deploy on are not ready.

"There's considerable, considerable, considerable, big, large -- by months -- gaps between the MEUs now" because of the unavailability of amphibious ships, Heckl said. "If we're talking about months, months and months of gaps in between the crisis response force[s], we don't have a crisis response force."

Now, commanders in the region who are likely looking at vulnerable U.S. embassies to evacuate, for example and according to Heckl, may have to think twice about the assets they have to use, some of which continue to be strained because their replacements cannot deploy on time.

Military.com asked the Navy to respond, but it did not do so by publication.

The tension between the Navy and Marine Corps over not only the size of the amphibious fleet but its state of readiness has been an issue that has simmered away inside the halls of the Pentagon for years, often being discussed hand-in-hand with how large the Navy's overall ship count should be.

However, the issue of amphibious ship readiness has become noticeable in part because top Marine officials have been willing to speak more openly and clearly about the issue in the past year. For example, last March, Berger told Defense One that less than one-third of the Navy's amphibious fleet was deployable. Those assessments were also backed up by independent government investigations.

"I don't think there's any real, physical, tangible solution that will fix the amphib situation in the near term," Heckl said. "We're trying to find interim solutions, but they will not -- I repeat -- they will not be optimal. Whatever it is, if it isn't an amphibious warship, it's less than optimal and it's less than fully capable."

It wasn't always this way, according to the general.

"The Navy had ships ready to go and we weren't there," he said, adding that because the MEUs were not ready around the 2009 or 2010 timeframe, he believes the Navy did not see them as a priority. "Now, the roles are reversed: We have the MEUs, trained and ready to go, but we don't have the amphibious ships."

The lack of amphibious ship availability has created significant scar tissue for the Marine Corps over at least the last two years. Heckl pointed to several examples since 2022 in which Marines were hard-pressed to respond to crises because they didn't have a way to get there on time.

"Just look at the last couple of years -- whether it was no MEU out when Russia started forming up on Ukraine's border, to an earthquake in Turkey," he said. "The emergency evacuation of American citizens out of Khartoum in Sudan -- we had to rely on other countries. To now, with what's happening in Israel. ... Luckily, we had the crisis response force that was out, and they responded, and they've been there ever since."

The specific crisis response force that Heckl is referring to is the 26th MEU out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, a unit that is capable of conducting special operations, port seizures and embassy evacuations. It, as part of the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group, is currently at the center of these concerns for the Marine Corps.

The 26th MEU has been deployed to the Middle East and Mediterranean since departing the U.S. in July, and at one point over the fall, was headed to the waters off of Israel in response to Hamas' surprise attack on the country, which thrust the region into uncertainty and turmoil. According to Heckl, that unit is "looking at yet another extension" because of the amphibious ship situation.

"When you extend an ARG like that, it has a lot of ramifications, both material-wise and manpower. Material-wise, that ship is now staying underway longer than it had been planned and is probably impacting some maintenance avail[ability] that was scheduled," Heckl said.

"And then the manpower -- maintaining good faith and trust with our Marines," he added. "What happens to those Marines that had an end-of-active-service date, and now they're getting essentially involuntarily extended?"

Military.com previously reported that the Pentagon is weighing whether to keep the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group and the Marine Corps' 26th MEU deployed to the area for months more as they wait for a replacement.

Last week, Navy officials stressed that they have "several options to fulfill the missions in the region" and pushed back on the idea that one amphibious ship -- the USS Boxer -- being unready to deploy was causing issues for the already deployed USS Bataan.

The consideration comes as a fear proliferates within the Corps that, due to delays in the amphibious ships, there will be times when Marine expeditionary units may not be deployed consecutively, damaging the Corps' reputation as a "911" force.

"Our identity is elemental to who we are as Marines. We are soldiers of the sea. We are the nation's naval expeditionary force," Heckl said. "And we just can't lose that."

The problems are not contained to the Navy and its own internal issues. Heckl also pointed to a wavering industrial base that he says cannot keep up with the shipbuilding demand as part of the problem. The last 20 years of war, which saw back-to-back missions prioritized by leaders at the time, also left maintenance by the wayside for years, he said.

"We simply did things that I think, otherwise, we would not have done. We deferred maintenance, we extended or just delayed maintenance ... on ships," he said. "And those things -- and I'm sure the leaders at the time went in eyes wide open -- but they had to have known, and we certainly know now, that that comes with a price tag to be paid in the future. And we're paying it now."

military.com · by Drew F. Lawrence

11. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 25, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-january-25-2024

Key Takeaways:

Ukrainian and Russian authorities opened criminal investigations into the January 24 Russian Il-76 military transport aircraft crash in Belgorod Oblast.
Russian forces conducted a series of missile and drone strikes against Ukraine on the night of January 24 to 25.
The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) reportedly conducted a successful drone strike on a Rosneft oil refinery in Tuapse, Krasnodar Krai on the night of January 24 to 25.
Russian forces are reportedly increasing their use of chemical weapons in Ukraine in continued apparent violations of the Chemical Weapons Convention, to which Russia is party.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated that Russia’s war in Ukraine is “directed against the very existence of Ukraine as a sovereign state.”
Russian authorities issued prison sentences in a number of high-profile cases on January 25, including that of imprisoned Russian ultranationalist and former officer Igor Girkin.
The Kremlin is reportedly no longer offering pardons to convict recruits and is significantly changing the terms of their service, likely in response to the reduction of the pool of convicts suitable for recruitment into Russian force generation efforts.
A Russian insider source claimed that the Russian military command recently replaced the Deputy Commander of the Southern Military District (SMD) and appointed a new SMD Chief of Staff, although ISW cannot confirm this claim.
Russian forces recently made confirmed advances near Avdiivka amid continued positional engagements along the entire line of contact on January 25.
Bloomberg reported on January 24 that labor shortages in Russia have increased wages in civilian sectors enough to compete with relatively lucrative military salaries, likely making military service even less appealing to Russian citizens.
Crimean occupation head Sergei Aksyonov signed a decree on January 25 that introduces a “special regime” for entry and exit between occupied Crimea and occupied Kherson Oblast reportedly in an effort to “localize threats to the security of the population and military and other facilities” in occupied Crimea.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JANUARY 25, 2024

Jan 25, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 25, 2024

Riley Bailey, Angelica Evans, Christina Harward, Kateryna Stepanenko, George Barros, and Frederick W. Kagan

January 25, 2024, 9pm ET

Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Click here to see ISW’s 3D control of terrain topographic map of Ukraine. Use of a computer (not a mobile device) is strongly recommended for using this data-heavy tool.

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 2:00pm ET on January 25. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the January 26 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Ukrainian and Russian authorities opened criminal investigations into the January 24 Russian Il-76 military transport aircraft crash in Belgorod Oblast. The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) announced on January 25 that it opened an investigation to clarify the circumstances of the crash, and the Russian Investigative Committee stated that it opened a criminal case on charges of “terrorism” in connection with the Il-76 crash after claiming that an initial investigation determined that a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile downed the aircraft.[1] Ukrainian and Western media reported that the UN Security Council (UNSC) held an emergency meeting to discuss the Il-76 crash at Russia’s request on the evening of January 25 after Russian sources claimed that France rejected Russia’s request for the meeting in France’s capacity as rotating UNSC Chair.[2] Ukrainian Human Rights Commissioner Dmytro Lubinets warned that Russia intends to co-opt the Il-76 crash to destabilize Ukraine domestically and reduce Western support Ukraine.[3] Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Spokesperson Andriy Yusov noted that Russia has not provided any evidence of Russian claims that Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) were on the aircraft.[4] Russian State Duma Defense Committee Chairperson Andrei Kartapolov claimed that Russian authorities gave Ukraine a 15-minute warning before the Il-76 aircraft entered the area where it was shot down.[5] Ukrainian officials continue to deny that they received a written or verbal Russia request to secure the air space around Belgorod City, however.[6] A Kremlin-affiliated Russian milblogger insinuated that Russia should not provide any data from the crash site or evidence of the claimed presence of Ukrainian POWs on the aircraft because the international community has previously dismissed Russian evidence, referring to the international investigation into the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 by Russian-backed proxies in occupied Donetsk Oblast[7] Kartapolov stated that Russia will continue POW exchanges because Russia ”cannot abandon [its] guys,” a notable reversal from Karatpolov’s calls for all POW exchanges to pause indefinitely immediately following the[8] ISW continues to offer no assessment of the circumstances of the Il-76 crash at this time and cannot independently verify Russian or Ukrainian statements on the incident.

Russian forces conducted a series of missile and drone strikes against Ukraine on the night of January 24 to 25. Ukrainian military officials reported on January 25 that Russian forces launched 14 Shahed-136/131 drones from Krasnodar Krai and occupied Crimea, four S-300 missiles from Belgorod Oblast, and another S-300 missile from occupied Donetsk Oblast.[9] Ukrainian air defenses destroyed 11 Shaheds.[10] Ukrainian Southern Operational Command reported that Ukrainian air defenses also intercepted a Kh-59 missile over Mykolaiv Oblast.[11] Ukrainian officials reported that Russian drones struck an enterprise in Kryvyi Rih, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and an industrial facility and residential buildings in Odesa City, and that Russian S-300 missiles struck civilian targets in Rohan, Kharkiv Oblast and Druzhkivka, Donetsk Oblast.[12]

The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) reportedly conducted a successful drone strike on a Rosneft oil refinery in Tuapse, Krasnodar Krai on the night of January 24 to 25. Ukrainian outlet Suspilne reported on January 25, citing an unspecified source, that the SBU conducted a drone strike on the refinery and that Ukraine will continue to target economically and militarily important objects in Russia.[13] Geolocated footage published on January 24 shows a fire at the Rosneft oil refinery in Tuapse, and additional footage reportedly shows drones operating in the area before and after residents reported explosions at the refinery.[14] Russian sources claimed on January 25 that the refinery had 112 tons of gasoline and 200 tons of fuel oil at the time of the strike.[15] Russian milbloggers claimed that the SBU strike shows that Ukrainian forces are not ”suckers” and that rear areas are not ”safe place[s]” in modern war.[16]

Russian forces are reportedly increasing their use of chemical weapons in Ukraine in continued apparent violations of the Chemical Weapons Convention, to which Russia is party. Spokesperson for the Ukrainian Center for the Research of Trophy and Prospective Weapons and Military Equipment of the Ukrainian General Staff Captain Andrii Rudyk stated on January 25 that Russian forces began using RG-VO grenades with chloroacetophenone, a type of tear gas used for riot control (also known as a Riot Control Agent [RCA]), in December 2023 and that Ukrainian officials observed 81 instances of Russian forces using the RG-VO grenades in December 2023.[17] The Ukrainian General Staff reported on January 13 that Russian forces began using a new type of special gas grenade containing CS gas (2-Chlorobenzalmalononitrile – also an RCA) on December 14 and that Russian forces have used chemical weapons at least 51 times in the first two weeks of 2024.[18] The Russian 810th Naval Infantry Brigade previously acknowledged on December 22 that the brigade deliberately uses chemical weapons by dropping K-51 grenades with CS gas from drones onto Ukrainian positions near Krynky in the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast.[19] Rudyk stated that the RG-VO grenades can kill personnel in a dugout or an enclosed room within five minutes and that a study found that a recently used Russian RG-VO grenade was manufactured in an unspecified but likely Russian factory in 2023.[20] Rudyk added that Russia may be trying to gauge international reactions to the Russian use of chemical weapons in Ukraine in order to expand the type of weapons Russian forces are using.[21] Russia is party to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which prohibits the use of RCAs as a method of warfare.[22]

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated that Russia’s war in Ukraine is “directed against the very existence of Ukraine as a sovereign state.”[23] Scholz stated at a press conference with Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico on January 24 that Russian President Vladimir Putin “can end this war at any time” and warned that “if Ukrainians stop defending themselves, it will be the end of Ukraine.” Scholz warned against accepting the idea that the lack of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine is prolonging the war, noting that there was “no shortage of discussions” in the run-up to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Kremlin officials continue to indicate that Russia is not interested in negotiating with Ukraine in good faith and that Russia’s maximalist objectives — which are tantamount to full Ukrainian and Western surrender — remain unchanged.[24]

Russian authorities issued prison sentences in a number of high-profile cases on January 25, including that of imprisoned Russian ultranationalist and former officer Igor Girkin. A Moscow court sentenced Girkin to four years in prison on “calls for extremism” charges and banned Girkin from administering websites for three years.[25] Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) “Vostok” Battalion Commander Alexander Khodakovsky stated that despite his disagreements with Girkin, he “would prefer to see him free” and noted Girkin’s “significance for events in Donbas.”[26] A volunteer in a Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) brigade similarly claimed that his personal issues with Girkin “in no way undid everything [Girkin] did.”[27] A Russian milblogger claimed that there is something “wrong” with the fact that one of the Russian Spring leaders in Donbas from 2014 is in prison and not fighting on the front.[28]

The Second Western District Military Court in St. Petersburg sentenced Daria Trepova to 27 years in prison on charges of commissioning a terrorist attack, illegally trafficking explosive devices, and forging documents in the case of the assassination of Russian milblogger Maksim Fomin (Vladlen Tatarsky).[29] Moscow Duma Deputy Andrei Medvedev claimed that this verdict is a “precedent” that will guide future sentences and that will make “many who want to work with [Ukraine]...wonder if it is worth it.”[30] Kremlin newswire TASS stated that the Izmailovsky Court of Moscow sentenced former Penza Oblast Governor Ivan Belozertsev to 12 years in a maximum-security prison colony for taking bribes worth more than 30 million rubles (about $337,000) from former Russian Senator Boris Shpigel.[31] The court also sentenced Shpigel to 11 years.[32]

The Kremlin is reportedly no longer offering pardons to convict recruits and is significantly changing the terms of their service, likely in response to the reduction of the pool of convicts suitable for recruitment into Russian force generation efforts. The BBC reported that Russian officials likely ended recruitment into “Storm-Z” units in August 2023 and began recruiting convicts into “Storm-V” units based on new contract terms in September 2023.[33] Russian officials previously recruited convicts through promises of pardons and six-month contracts, and “Storm-V” units reportedly provide no promise of pardon or even parole and extend convicts’ contracts indefinitely until the end of the war.[34] Russian officials likely extended the contracts on the basis of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s partial mobilization order as the Russian military does for mobilized personnel. The BBC reported that Russian military registration and enlistment offices formally release convict recruits in a procedure that is no longer legally equivalent to “parole/conditional release,” suggesting that convict recruits are legally still considered prisoners.[35] Russia has heavily relied on convict recruits to maintain a level of force generation that is roughly equivalent to Russian losses in Ukraine, and which is likely helping enable Russian forces to conduct regular operational-level rotations.[36] Russian officials reported that as of October 2023 the Russian prison population was 266,000 people — a notable reduction of 54,000 prisoners from January 2023.[37] The loss of convict recruits to attritional assaults in Ukraine and the relatively short terms of their service contracts may have prompted the Kremlin to enact more restrictive terms of service in order to retain more convict recruits at the front in Ukraine. The contract terms for service in new “Storm-V” units are far less attractive and may dampen efforts to recruit convicts, although Russian officials have routinely used coercive measures to force convicts to sign contracts.[38]

Russian officials may have also changed the status of convict recruits in order to relieve force generation burdens on the Russian federal budget. Russian opposition outlet Vazhnye Istorii reported on January 25 that Storm-Z personnel addressed a letter to Putin asking him to resolve a widespread lack of promised payments, payments for injuries, and documents on the expungement of criminal records for Storm-Z personnel.[39] Vazhnye Istorii reported that a response from a Russian military prosecutor’s office to a Storm-Z fighter stated that Putin’s recent decree promising single payments in cases of injury or death do not apply to Storm-Z fighters.[40]

A Russian insider source claimed that the Russian military command recently replaced the Deputy Commander of the Southern Military District (SMD) and appointed a new SMD Chief of Staff, although ISW cannot confirm this claim. The Russian insider source, who has previously provided accurate reports regarding several other Russian command changes, claimed on January 25 that the Russian command appointed 8th Combined Arms Army Commander (CAA) Colonel General Gennady Anashkin as SMD Chief of Staff and replaced SMD Deputy Commander Lieutenant General Aleksey Zavizion with Lieutenant General Andrey Sychevoy.[41] The change in command positions within the SMD is particularly notable given that several formations of the SMD, particularly elements of the 8th CAA, are committed to ongoing localized offensive operations in Donetsk Oblast.[42] Changes in command do not necessarily translate to battlefield effects, although such changes may present temporary challenges to Russian command and control (C2). The Russian Command previously dismissed Sychevoy as Western Grouping of Forces Commander in late August 2022, following the successful Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kharkiv Oblast, and from an unspecified command position in October 2023 and replaced Zavizion as Chief of Staff of the Western Military District (WMD) in late June 2022.[43]

Key Takeaways:

Ukrainian and Russian authorities opened criminal investigations into the January 24 Russian Il-76 military transport aircraft crash in Belgorod Oblast.
Russian forces conducted a series of missile and drone strikes against Ukraine on the night of January 24 to 25.
The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) reportedly conducted a successful drone strike on a Rosneft oil refinery in Tuapse, Krasnodar Krai on the night of January 24 to 25.
Russian forces are reportedly increasing their use of chemical weapons in Ukraine in continued apparent violations of the Chemical Weapons Convention, to which Russia is party.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated that Russia’s war in Ukraine is “directed against the very existence of Ukraine as a sovereign state.”
Russian authorities issued prison sentences in a number of high-profile cases on January 25, including that of imprisoned Russian ultranationalist and former officer Igor Girkin.
The Kremlin is reportedly no longer offering pardons to convict recruits and is significantly changing the terms of their service, likely in response to the reduction of the pool of convicts suitable for recruitment into Russian force generation efforts.
A Russian insider source claimed that the Russian military command recently replaced the Deputy Commander of the Southern Military District (SMD) and appointed a new SMD Chief of Staff, although ISW cannot confirm this claim.
Russian forces recently made confirmed advances near Avdiivka amid continued positional engagements along the entire line of contact on January 25.
Bloomberg reported on January 24 that labor shortages in Russia have increased wages in civilian sectors enough to compete with relatively lucrative military salaries, likely making military service even less appealing to Russian citizens.
Crimean occupation head Sergei Aksyonov signed a decree on January 25 that introduces a “special regime” for entry and exit between occupied Crimea and occupied Kherson Oblast reportedly in an effort to “localize threats to the security of the population and military and other facilities” in occupied Crimea.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
Russian Technological Adaptations
Ukrainian Defense Industrial Base Efforts
Activities in Russian-Occupied Areas
Russian Information Operations and Narratives
Significant Activity in Belarus

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Positional engagements continued near Kupyansk, but there were no confirmed changes to the front in this area on January 25. Positional engagements continued northeast of Kupyansk near Synkivka and southeast of Kupyansk near Krokhmalne.[44] The spokesperson for a Ukrainian unit operating in the Kupyansk-Lyman direction stated that Russian forces continue conducting attacks with infantry groups of up to 20 personnel with unspecified mechanized support and that the intensity of Russian artillery fire in the area almost doubled in the past day.[45] The Ukrainian spokesperson stated that Russian forces are conducting personnel rotations almost weekly but that there is no noticeable increase in the number of Russian personnel in the area.[46]

Russian forces reportedly advanced along the Svatove-Kreminna line, but there were no confirmed changes to the front in this area on January 25. Positional engagements continued northwest of Svatove near Stelmakhivka; northwest and west of Kreminna near Yampolivka, Makiivka, Torske, and Terny; southwest of Kreminna near Dibrova and the Serebryanske forest area; and south of Kreminna near Bilohorivka.[47] A prominent Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces near Svatove are trying to establish control over Berestove (northwest of Svatove) and the nearby heights.[48] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced towards Terny and east and south of Bilohorivka, but ISW has not observed visual confirmation of these claims.[49] A Russian source claimed that Ukrainian minefields are complicating Russian offensive operations near Bilohorivka.[50] Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets stated that elements of the Russian 20th Combined Arms Army (Western Military District [WMD]) and the 25th Combined Arms Army (reportedly either Central Military District or Eastern Military District) have not advanced to Terny or cut off the P07 Torske-Yampolivka-Terny-Nevske road after resuming offensive operations in the area 1.5 weeks ago.[51] Mashovets stated that elements of the Russian 252nd Motorized Rifle Regiment and 237th Tank Regiment (both of the 3rd Motorized Rifle Division, 20th Combined Arms Army, WMD) abandoned several unspecified positions near Makiivka.[52]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Positional engagements continued near Bakhmut on January 25. Positional fighting occurred northwest of Bakhmut near Vasyukivka and Bohdanivka, west of Bakhmut near Ivanivske, and southwest of Bakhmut near Klishchiivka and Andriivka.[53] Elements of the Russian 98th Airborne (VDV) Division's 331st and 217th VDV regiments, elements of the Volunteer Assault Corps, the 200th Motorized Rifle Brigade (Northern Fleet), and 4th Motorized Rifle Brigade (Luhansk People‘s Republic [LNR] 2nd Army Corps) are reportedly operating west and northwest of Bakhmut.[54] Elements of the 72nd Motorized Rifle Brigade (3rd Army Corps, Western Military District) and other unspecified elements of the LNR 2nd Army Corps and 3rd Army Corps are reportedly operating near Klishchiivka and Andriivka.[55]

Russian forces recently advanced north of Avdiivka and on Avdiivka’s southern outskirts, and Ukrainian forces reportedly recently made marginal gains south of the settlement. Geolocated footage published on January 25 indicates that Russian forces recently advanced southwest of Stepove (northwest of Avdiivka) and along Sportyvna street in the southernmost residential area of Avdiivka.[56] Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets stated that Ukrainian forces recently advanced up to 100 meters near the ”Tsarska Okhota” restaurant area, although ISW has not observed confirmation of this claim.[57] Russian sources claimed on January 25 that Ukrainian forces have been counterattacking to regain previously lost positions near the “Tsarska Okhota” restaurant area for the previous three days.[58] Positional fighting continued northwest of Avdiivka near Novobakhmutivka and Stepove, on Avdiivka’s southern outskirts, south of Avdiivka near Opytne and Spartak, west of Avdiivka near Sieverne, and southwest of Avdiivka near Nevelske and Pervomaiske.[59] Ukrainian National Guard Spokesperson Colonel Ruslan Muzychuk stated that Russian forces are using slightly fewer armored vehicles near Avdiivka and are relying more on small infantry groups to conduct reconnaissance and assaults.[60] Muzychuk stated that during the day Ukrainian forces observed Russian forces near Avdiivka conduct 10 assaults employing varying tactics and that Russian forces in the area routinely employ a combination of various tactics during offensive operations.[61] Elements of the 132nd Motorized Rifle Brigade (1st Donetsk People‘s Republic [DNR] Army Corps) are reportedly operating near Krasnohorivka, elements of the 1st Motorized Rifle Brigade (1st DNR Army Corps) and the 55th Motorized Rifle Brigade (41st Combined Arms Army, Central Military District) are reportedly operating near Opytne and Spartak, and elements of the “Veterany” Reconnaissance and Assault Brigade (Volunteer Assault Corps) are reportedly operating near the “Tsarska Okhota” restaurant area.[62] Elements of the 9th Motorized Rifle Brigade (1st DNR Army Corps) are also reportedly operating in the Avdiivka area.[63]

Russian forces appear to be preparing to fight their way through Avdiivka after failing to encircle the settlement. Russian forces have recently focused offensive operations on the southern residential area of Avdiivka and have made marginal gains there.[64] Russian forces are still attacking against Avdiivka’s northern and southern flanks but at a tempo far below the scale of the initial waves of Russian mechanized assaults on Avdiivka's flanks in fall 2023.[65] The overall tempo of Russian offensive operations suggests that Russian forces have prioritized fighting through Avdiivka block-by-block from the town’s southern residential area instead of trying to further encircle the settlement from further southwest or to the north, where Russian forces have made only limited gains. Russian forces may seek to replicate attritional light infantry frontal assaults to make tactical gains by brute force, as Russian forces did during the Battle of Bakhmut after breaching Bakhmut’s city limits. Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs Major Maxim Morozov stated on January 25 that Russian forces have accumulated 40,000 personnel near Avdiivka and are preparing to intensify offensive operations against the city.[66] It is unclear if the rate of Russian advance in Avdiivka will increase substantially. Future combat in the city will likely resemble recent instances of urban warfare in eastern Ukraine, wherein Russian forces conduct attritional assaults for marginal gains.[67] Ukraine’s hypothetical loss of Avdiivka would not threaten to unhinge Ukraine’s defense of Donetsk Oblast, even if Russian forces eventually manage to make costly tactical gains in the town over the coming months.

Ukrainian forces reportedly recently advanced southwest of Donetsk City. Mashovets stated on January 25 that Ukrainian forces recently advanced 500 meters to 1.5 kilometers along a section of the frontline south of Novomykhailivka (southwest of Donetsk City), although ISW has not seen confirmation of this advance.[68] Mashovets stated that elements of the 39th Motorized Rifle Brigade (68th Army Corps, Eastern Military District) had previously established footholds at elevated positions near Novomykhailivka but that the Russian command continued to commit degraded elements of the 39th Motorized Rifle Brigade without resting, reequipping, or reinforcing the force, allowing Ukrainian forces to recapture territory in the area.[69] Positional fighting occurred near Heorhiivka (west of Donetsk City), Pobieda (southwest of Donetsk City), and Novomykhailivka.[70] Elements of the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade (Pacific Fleet) and the 255th Motorized Rifle Regiment (20th Motorized Rifle Division, 8th Guards Combined Arms Army, Southern Military District) are reportedly operating near Novomykhailivka.[71]

Ukrainian forces reportedly struck a Russian drone training facility near occupied Ilovaisk, Donetsk Oblast, on January 25.[72] Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces struck a drone training facility operated by Russian military unit no. 78528 near Pokrovka (east of Ilovaisk), killing 24 Russian personnel.[73] A Russian source suggested that poor operational security led to the Ukrainian strike.[74]

Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

A Ukrainian source reported on January 25 that Ukrainian forces marginally advanced in eastern Zaporizhia Oblast, but ISW has not observed visual evidence to confirm this report. Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets reported that Ukrainian forces pushed back Russian forces by 150 meters northeast of Zavitne Bazhannya (12km south of Velyka Novosilka).[75] Mashovets specified that elements of the Russian 60th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade (5th Combined Arms Army [CAA], Eastern Military District) and 37th Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade (36th CAA, EMD) are operating near Zavitne Bazhnnya. Positional engagements continued east and west of Staromayorske (south of Velyka Novosilka) and south of Zolota Nyva (southeast of Velyka Novosilka).[76] Elements of the 40th Naval Infantry Brigade (Pacific Fleet) are reportedly continuing to operate in the southern Donetsk direction (an area from Novomykhailivka to the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area).[77]

Ukrainian forces reportedly recently advanced northwest of Robotyne but ISW have not observed recent changes to the frontline as of January 25. Mashovets reported that Ukrainian forces advanced up to one kilometer in depth southwest of Myrne (16km northwest of Robotyne) within the defense zone of the Russian 69th Covering Brigade (35th CAA, EMD).[78] Mashovets reported that Ukrainian forces were able to repel an attack by elements of the Russian 70th Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment (42nd Motorized Rifle Division, 58th CAA, Southern Military District) back towards Novoprokopivka (south of Robotyne) after these elements attempted to attack Ukrainian positions near Robotyne.[79] Mashovets added that Ukrainian forces continue holding positions 1.5 to two kilometers (presumably in frontage) on the Russian main defensive line northwest of Verbove (east of Robotyne) despite continuous pressure from the Russian 76th Airborne (VDV) Division. Positional battles occurred southeast and west of Robotyne and near Verbove.[80]

Positional fighting continued on January 25 in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast near Krynky, but neither side made any confirmed advances.[81] One Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces made an unspecified advance in the Krynky area, but other Russian sources noted that the frontline did not change.[82]

Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)

Bloomberg reported on January 24 that labor shortages in Russia have driven up private sector wages enough to compete with relatively lucrative military salaries, likely making military service even less appealing to Russian citizens. Bloomberg reported that Russian civilian wages increased between eight and 20 percent in 2023 and that Russian skilled and semi-skilled workers can now opt for civilian sector jobs with salaries comparable to or greater than military salaries. Kremlin-affiliated outlet Izvestiya reported on December 24, 2023 that data from the Russian Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) and the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences indicated that Russia’s labor shortage in 2023 amounted to about 4.8 million people, and ISW assessed at that time that Russia’s labor shortages will likely continue to exacerbate competing Kremlin efforts aimed at increasing Russian economic output and generating new forces.[83] ISW previously assessed that Russia continues to face shortages in both skilled and unskilled labor, a problem that is further compounded by the Kremlin’s inconsistent rhetoric towards Russians who fled Russia because of the war and migrant workers in Russia.[84] Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Deputy Chief Major General Vadym Skibitskyi stated during an interview on January 15 that the main motivation for Russians to join the military is “the salary,” particularly for Russians from poorer Russian federal subjects.[85] Reported increases in civilian salaries to rival military salaries will likely worsen Russia’s force generation issues.

Deputy Chairperson of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev chaired a meeting of the Military-Industry Commission working group on January 25 and discussed increasing the effectiveness of Russian counterbattery warfare and the development and production of radar systems and artillery reconnaissance.[86]

A Russian insider source claimed on January 25 that former Wagner Group personnel who joined Rosgvardia are recruiting personnel for an unspecified claimed Wagner “revival”.[87] The insider source claimed that former Wagner personnel are attempting to attract other former mercenaries to fight in Ukraine and are advertising that recruitment will begin around February 10 in Kozachiye Lageri, Rostov Oblast. Wagner-affiliated Russian milbloggers previously claimed in October and November 2023 that significant elements of the Wagner Group that previously fought in Ukraine became detachments of Rosgvardia and retained its structures and commanders.[88] ISW cannot confirm the insider source’s claim.

Russian Technological Adaptations (Russian objective: Introduce technological innovations to optimize systems for use in Ukraine)

A Russian milblogger claimed on January 25 that the Russian “Perseus” drone production project and the “NPO TsVBP” research and development organization are partnering to produce drones and remote-controlled tracked vehicles with domestically produced speed controllers and electronic components.[89]

Ukrainian Defense Industrial Efforts (Ukrainian objective: Develop its defense industrial base to become more self-sufficient in cooperation with US, European, and international partners)

Click here to read ISW’s new analysis on Ukrainian long-term efforts to develop a self-sufficient DIB with US and European support.

Ukrainian Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov stated on January 25 that Ukraine will receive 2,020 first-person view (FPV) drones equipped with Ukrainian-made ammunition weighing up to four kilograms to Ukrainian forces during an unspecified time period.[90] Fedorov stated that he expects Ukraineto receive 3,000 strike drones with thermal imaging optics.

The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) stated on January 25 that the SBU, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office, and the Ukrainian MoD have returned almost 1.5 billion Ukrainian hryvnia (almost $40,000,000) to the Ukrainian budget after the SBU exposed a Ukrainian official trying to embezzle budget funds allocated for the purchase of artillery shells for Ukrainian forces.[91] Ukrainian Defense Minster Rustem Umerov stated that the Ukrainian MoD continues to work to expose such schemes and return embezzled funds to the state budget.[92]

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense (MoD) announced on January 25 that Sweden and the United Kingdom are joining the Latvian-created coalition to provide Ukraine with drones and that the UK will co-lead the coalition with Latvia.[93]

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius stated on January 24 that Germany plans to provide Ukraine over 80 Leopard tanks, over 230,000 rounds of ammunition, and an unspecified number of armored personnel carriers, drones, mine clearing systems, radar systems, and reconnaissance systems in 2024.[94] Pistorius stated that Germany also plans to train more Ukrainian personnel in Germany in 2024.

Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Dmytro Klimenkov stated on January 25 at a meeting with Permanent Secretary of the Estonian Ministry of Defense Kusti Salm and Director of the Estonian Center for Defense Investments Magnus-Valdemar Saar that Estonia plans to provide Ukraine with military aid worth 0.25 percent of Estonia’s GDP over the next four years.[95]

Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian citizens into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Crimean occupation head Sergei Aksyonov signed a decree on January 25 that introduces a “special regime” for entry and exit between occupied Crimea and occupied Kherson Oblast reportedly in an effort to “localize threats to the security of the population and military and other facilities” in occupied Crimea.[96] The decree stipulates that people must cross the border at three designated automobile and two railway checkpoints. The decree also specifies that military columns must move between the two areas along specially designated roads in cooperation with the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). The decree stipulates that people at the checkpoints must present identification documents and that military personnel and law enforcement officers must present combat orders or service certificates.

Russian occupation officials continue efforts to prepare for the March 2024 presidential election and ensure high voter turnout numbers. Zaporizhia Oblast occupation official Vladimir Rogov stated that members of the election commission will begin door-to-door visits on February 17 to spread information about election procedures.[97] Rogov stated that residents of occupied Zaporizhia Oblast without Russian passports will be able to vote by using other identity documents. Ukrainian Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov stated that occupation officials’ door-to-door visits are part of efforts to force locals to vote and that workers from other countries whom Russian authorities have brought to occupied Ukraine will also be able to vote.[98] The Ukrainian Resistance Center stated on January 25 that Russian occupation authorities are looking for residents to participate in “election commissions” in exchange for money.[99] A Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) news outlet claimed on January 25 that Artem Zhoga, whom the Kremlin has previously portrayed as asking Putin to run for re-election in 2024, visited occupied Luhansk City to meet with Russian military personnel, their families, and residents as part of a campaign event for Russian President Vladimir Putin.[100] Zhoga reportedly stated that one of the goals of his visit was to convey that Putin cares about occupied Luhansk Oblast.

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Russian President Vladimir Putin demonstratively traveled to Kaliningrad on January 25 amidst the Kremlin’s recent efforts to set information conditions for future Russian aggression against Baltic countries.[101] Putin notably condemned Russia’s ”neighbors” who are removing Soviet World War II memorials and monuments dedicated to 19th Century Russian poet Alexander Pushkin and noted that these removals show “stunning ignorance” with bad consequences.[102] Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitri Peskov claimed that Putin’s visit to Kaliningrad and his tour of the Kant Baltic Federal University is not a message to NATO but rather part of Putin doing his job.[103] Putin last travelled to Kaliningrad seven months into the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in September 2022.[104] Putin also reiterated Kremlin narratives about a multipolar world order and Russia’s development. Putin similarly discussed growing Russian-Indian relations, likely in an attempt to woo India.[105]

Kremlin officials continued to push a false narrative that the West and NATO are escalating tensions with Russia by supporting Ukraine as part of efforts to deter Western military aid to Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated the Kremlin narrative that Russia would not have launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine if the West had not backed Ukraine in 2014 during a press conference at the United Nations on January 24.[106] Peskov stated that the West continues to inflict pressure on Russia and that NATO’s current exercises best show the West’s anti-Russia policy.[107]

Russian sources intensified a known Russian information operation by amplifying a tired narrative that the United States is opening its 13th biological laboratory, now in Gyumri, Armenia — a narrative that Russia used to shape the Russian information space in winter 2022 before launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.[108] ISW previously observed the Kremlin use information operations targeting Ukraine and the US during the COVID-19 pandemic to advance long-standing objectives abroad.[109]

Significant Activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks and Wagner Group activity in Belarus)

A Russian milblogger posted footage on January 24 purportedly showing Wagner Group instructors training internal troops of the Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) in an unspecified location in Belarus.[110]

Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.

12. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, January 25, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-january-25-2024

Key Takeaways:

Iraq: The United States and the Iraqi federal government will soon begin negotiations on Iraq's current security arrangement with US-led coalition forces, which could involve US forces withdrawing from Iraq. Iranian-backed Iraqi actors praised the US and Iraqi decision to begin negotiations about the status of US-led coalition forces in Iraq.
Yemen: Houthi Supreme Leader Abdulmalik al Houthi falsely claimed that Houthi attacks on maritime traffic in the Red Sea have not significantly impacted maritime trade. Abdulmalik separately reiterated the false Houthi narrative that the anti-shipping attacks have only targeted Israel-linked vessels and further claimed that the Houthis have allowed almost 5,000 non-Israel-linked vessels to freely operate in the Red Sea.
Northern Gaza Strip: Israeli forces continued to engage Palestinian fighters throughout the northern part of the strip. CTP-ISW previously assessed that Hamas and other Palestinian militias are reinfiltrating areas that Israeli forces previously cleared.
Central Gaza Strip: Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine conducted a combined attack targeting an Israeli supply line. The operation marks the third claimed indirect fire attack targeting Israeli supply lines in recent days.
Southern Gaza Strip: Israeli forces continued conducting clearing operations in Khan Younis. Palestinian fighters continued conducting a deliberate defense against Israeli clearing operations in western and southern Khan Younis.
Political Negotiations: US Central Intelligence Agency Director Bill Burns will meet with the Qatari prime minister and the Egyptian and Israeli intelligence chiefs in the coming days to broker a deal for the release of hostages and a pause in fighting in the Gaza Strip.
West Bank: Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters four times in the northern West Bank, primarily around Jenin and Tubas.
Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights: Iranian-backed militias, including Lebanese Hezbollah, conducted four attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel.
Iran: The Wall Street Journal reported that the United States secretly warned Iran that the Islamic State was preparing to conduct the January 3 terrorist attack in Kerman.

IRAN UPDATE, JANUARY 25, 2024

Jan 25, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Iran Update, January 25, 2024

Annika Ganzeveld, Amin Soltani, Ashka Jhaveri, Alexandra Braverman, Kathryn Tyson, Johanna Moore, Andie Parry, and Nicholas Carl

Information Cutoff: 2:00 pm ET

The Iran Update provides insights into Iranian and Iranian-sponsored activities abroad that undermine regional stability and threaten US forces and interests. It also covers events and trends that affect the stability and decision-making of the Iranian regime. The Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) provides these updates regularly based on regional events. For more on developments in Iran and the region, see our interactive map of Iran and the Middle East.

Note: CTP and ISW have refocused the update to cover the Israel-Hamas war. The new sections address developments in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, as well as noteworthy activity from Iran’s Axis of Resistance. We do not report in detail on war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We utterly condemn violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

Click here to see CTP and ISW’s interactive map of Israeli ground operations. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report. Click here to subscribe to the Iran Update

Key Takeaways:

Iraq: The United States and the Iraqi federal government will soon begin negotiations on Iraq's current security arrangement with US-led coalition forces, which could involve US forces withdrawing from Iraq. Iranian-backed Iraqi actors praised the US and Iraqi decision to begin negotiations about the status of US-led coalition forces in Iraq.
Yemen: Houthi Supreme Leader Abdulmalik al Houthi falsely claimed that Houthi attacks on maritime traffic in the Red Sea have not significantly impacted maritime trade. Abdulmalik separately reiterated the false Houthi narrative that the anti-shipping attacks have only targeted Israel-linked vessels and further claimed that the Houthis have allowed almost 5,000 non-Israel-linked vessels to freely operate in the Red Sea.
Northern Gaza Strip: Israeli forces continued to engage Palestinian fighters throughout the northern part of the strip. CTP-ISW previously assessed that Hamas and other Palestinian militias are reinfiltrating areas that Israeli forces previously cleared.
Central Gaza Strip: Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine conducted a combined attack targeting an Israeli supply line. The operation marks the third claimed indirect fire attack targeting Israeli supply lines in recent days.
Southern Gaza Strip: Israeli forces continued conducting clearing operations in Khan Younis. Palestinian fighters continued conducting a deliberate defense against Israeli clearing operations in western and southern Khan Younis.
Political Negotiations: US Central Intelligence Agency Director Bill Burns will meet with the Qatari prime minister and the Egyptian and Israeli intelligence chiefs in the coming days to broker a deal for the release of hostages and a pause in fighting in the Gaza Strip.
West Bank: Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters four times in the northern West Bank, primarily around Jenin and Tubas.
Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights: Iranian-backed militias, including Lebanese Hezbollah, conducted four attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel.
Iran: The Wall Street Journal reported that the United States secretly warned Iran that the Islamic State was preparing to conduct the January 3 terrorist attack in Kerman.

The United States and the Iraqi federal government will soon begin negotiations on Iraq's current security arrangement with US-led coalition forces, which could involve US forces withdrawing from Iraq. US-led coalition forces have been deployed to Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi federal government since 2014 to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).[1] US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced on January 25 that the US-Iraq Higher Military Commission (HMC), which is comprised of US and Iraqi federal government officials, will soon hold “working group meetings” to evaluate the status of the US-led Global Coalition’s mission to defeat ISIS.[2] Unspecified sources told Western media that the United States dropped a condition requiring Iranian-backed Iraqi militias to stop attacking US forces in Iraq before negotiations start.[3] Austin said that US defense professionals will advise the HMC on the “threat from ISIS, operational and environmental requirements, and the Iraqi Security Forces’ (ISF) capability levels.”[4] Austin added that the HMC meetings will “enable the transition to an enduring bilateral security relationship” between the United States and Iraq.[5] This statement is consistent with previous statements from Mohammad Shia al Sudani administration officials that the Iraqi federal government seeks to establish “bilateral relationships” with the United States and International Coalition countries.[6]

The Iraqi Foreign Affairs Ministry confirmed on January 25 the start of negotiations about the presence of US-led coalition forces in Iraq in the near future.[7] The ministry announced that the HMC meetings aim to “initiate the gradual and deliberate reduction of [International Coalition] advisers on Iraqi soil” and "end the coalition's military mission against ISIS.” The ministry additionally expressed support for establishing comprehensive relations with coalition countries.[8]

US forces and military infrastructure in Iraq provide critical logistical support that enables the presence of US forces in Syria. A US military withdrawal from Iraq would therefore necessitate the withdrawal of US forces from Syria.[9] CTP-ISW continues to assess that the United States and its partners in Syria have successfully contained but not defeated ISIS and that a US withdrawal from Syria would very likely cause a rapid ISIS resurgence in Syria within 12 to 24 months.[10] A resurgent ISIS would then be able to threaten Iraq. The ISF still faces significant deficiencies in fire support, intelligence, and logistics that will impede its ability to defeat ISIS alone.[11]

Iranian-backed Iraqi actors praised the US and Iraqi decision to begin negotiations about the status of US-led coalition forces in Iraq. The Shia Coordination Framework—a loose coalition of Iranian-backed political parties—released a statement on January 25 lauding the Sudani administration’s efforts to “redraw” Iraq’s relationship with the US-led Global Coalition.[12] This statement is consistent with CTP-ISW's assessment that Iranian-backed Iraqi actors have used military and political pressure in recent months to expel US forces from Iraq. The framework expressed support for the “transition to comprehensive bilateral relations with the coalition countries in the political, economic, cultural, security and military fields,” although it is not clear whether the framework shares Sudani’s interpretation of bilateral relations. CTP-ISW previously assessed that Sudani is attempting to retain some US presence in Iraq and that his approach conflicts with Iranian-backed Iraqi actors’ maximalist demands to immediately remove all US forces from Iraq.

Iranian-backed militias and political factions in Iraq would likely frame a US departure from Iraq as a victory for Iran and its so-called “Axis of Resistance.” An Iraqi parliamentarian affiliated with the Iranian-backed Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah, Mustafa Sanad, claimed on January 25 that US-led coalition forces “will leave [Iraq] under the influence of weapons.”[13] Iranian-backed Iraqi militias have attacked US positions in Iraq and Syria over 150 times since the Israel-Hamas war began to impose a cost on the United States for supporting Israel and to erode willingness to remain militarily in the Middle East.[14] Sanad’s statement highlights Iranian and Axis of Resistance leaders’ theory that relatively low levels of militant pressure will gradually diminish the willingness of the US political establishment to sustain deployments in the Middle East.[15]

Houthi Supreme Leader Abdulmalik al Houthi falsely claimed that Houthi attacks on maritime traffic in the Red Sea have not significantly impacted maritime trade. Abdulmalik made the statement in a speech on January 25 criticizing recent US strikes targeting Houthi military targets.[16] Major shipping companies have rerouted their operations away from the Red Sea in response to Houthi attacks, disrupting supply chains and driving higher inflation rates.[17] Maritime traffic through the Suez Canal decreased by 30 percent in early January 2024 compared to the previous year.[18] Reuters reported on January 11 that Houthi attacks caused a 40 percent decrease in US dollar revenues from the Suez Canal from 2023 to 2024.[19] Approximately 10 to 12 percent of global trade passes through the Suez Canal, generating roughly eight billion dollars of revenue.[20] Abdulmalik claimed that the Houthis have used 200 drones and 50 missiles thus far in their anti-shipping attack campaign, which, if true, demonstrates the relatively little the Houthis had to spend to disrupt a major corridor for international trade.

Abdulmalik separately reiterated the false Houthi narrative that the anti-shipping attacks have only targeted Israel-linked vessels and further claimed that the Houthis have allowed almost 5,000 non-Israel-linked vessels to freely operate in the Red Sea since the onset of their attack campaign.[21] The Houthis have repeatedly targeted merchant vessels with no obvious connections to Israel, as CTP-ISW has continually reported.[22]

Gaza Strip

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

Erode the will of the Israeli political establishment and public to launch and sustain a major ground operation into the Gaza Strip
Degrade IDF material and morale around the Gaza Strip.

Several Palestinian militias attacked Israeli forces in the northern Gaza Strip on January 25. Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) fired rockets at Israeli infantry northwest of Beit Hanoun.[23] The militia previously fired a rocket salvo from Beit Hanoun toward southern Israel on January 15.[24] Separately, Hamas and the Palestinian Mujahideen Movement, which is a Palestinian faction aligned with Hamas and that has expressed close ties with Iran, fired rockets at a group of Israeli forces in a combined attack northwest of Gaza City.[25] The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is a secular Palestinian faction fighting with Hamas, mortared Israeli forces in eastern Jabalia.[26] Hamas and other Palestinian fighters have contested Israeli raids in this area throughout January 2024. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) 5th Brigade (assigned to the 143rd Division) killed an unspecified number of Palestinian fighters and located weapons in the northern Gaza Strip.[27]

PIJ and the PFLP conducted a combined attack targeting an Israeli supply line in the Central Governorate of the Gaza Strip on January 25.[28] The PIJ operation marks the third indirect fire attack that the group has claimed targeting Israeli supply lines in recent days.[29] The IDF Yiftach Brigade (assigned to the 99th Division) raided several buildings in the central Gaza Strip.[30] Israeli forces identified Palestinian fighters in a building in the area and directed a helicopter strike targeting it.[31]

Palestinian fighters continued conducting a deliberate defense against Israeli clearing operations in western and southern Khan Younis on January 25. Hamas’ military wing fired rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) targeting two Israeli tanks west of Khan Younis City.[32] PIJ’s military wing fired small arms and mortars and RPGs and detonated an explosively formed penetrator (EFP) targeting Israeli armor and infantry in western and southern Khan Younis.[33] The military wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), which is a leftist Palestinian militia aligned with Hamas in the war, clashed with the IDF in western Khan Younis.[34] The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades—the self-proclaimed militant wing of Fatah—fired small arms and ”appropriate weapons” at the IDF in western Khan Younis City.[35]

The IDF continued to conduct clearing operations in Khan Younis on January 25. The IDF 89th Commando Brigade (assigned to the 98th Division) conducted several raids in Khan Younis.[36] The IDF Egoz Unit fired an Iron Sting precision mortar and killed three fighters. The Egoz Unit also eliminated four fighters in clashes in a building in Khan Younis. The IDF said that the Egoz Unit adapted a method of sniper fire to target Palestinian fighters exiting tunnels. The Maglan Unit (assigned to the 98th Division) raided the military headquarters of a commander of PIJ’s information unit.[37] The Maglan Unit also raided a Hamas military headquarters and located military equipment and weapons. IDF paratroopers expanded raids and eliminated multiple fighters in the al Amal neighborhood of Khan Younis.[38] The paratroopers directed an airstrike on four fighters approaching IDF soldiers in the area. A Palestinian journalist published footage of what the journalist said was the IDF Givati Brigade (assigned to the 162nd Division) demolishing buildings in Khan Younis.[39]

US Central Intelligence Agency Director Bill Burns will meet with the Qatari prime minister and the Egyptian and Israeli intelligence chiefs in the coming days to broker a deal for the release of hostages and a pause in fighting in the Gaza Strip.[40] An unspecified senior Israeli official told Axios that Burns’ meeting is crucial to reaching a breakthrough in talks on a new deal that would include a two-month pause in fighting in exchange for Hamas releasing all Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip.[41] Another senior Israeli official said that Hamas must recognize that Israel will not agree to ending the war or releasing Hamas’ desired number of Palestinian prisoners as part of the deal.[42] The United States, Egypt, and Qatar have in recent days pushed a new diplomatic effort to end the Israel-Hamas war.[43]

Israel proposed a two-month pause in fighting on January 21 in exchange for Hamas releasing the remaining hostages in the Gaza Strip.[44] Hamas reportedly rejected the Israeli proposal, likely because it did not include measures to end Israel’s plan to destroy Hamas. Egypt also rejected the proposal because it did not include an agreement to end the war, according to the Wall Street Journal.[45]

The military wing of the DFLP fired mortars targeting IDF vehicles at the Karm Abu Salem site in southern Israel.[46]

Recorded reports of attacks; CTP-ISW cannot independently verify impact.

West Bank

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

Draw IDF assets and resources toward the West Bank and fix them there

Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters four times in the northern West Bank on January 25. Israeli forces conducted operations around Jenin governorate and identified road-buried improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Jenin refugee camp.[47] PIJ fighters detonated an IED targeting an Israeli armored vehicle in the camp.[48] PIJ claimed it damaged the vehicle and wounded Israeli soldiers inside. The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the self-proclaimed militant wing of Fatah, claimed it targeted Israeli forces with explosives and small arms fire in Jenin City.[49] The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades also posted footage showing Palestinian fighters targeting Israeli forces at the Tayasir checkpoint in Tubas.[50] Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian fighter in Bir al Basha, who fired on Israeli forces.[51] Hamas later claimed that the Palestinian fighter was a Hamas member.[52]

This map is not an exhaustive depiction of clashes and demonstrations in the West Bank.

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

Draw IDF assets and resources toward northern Israel and fix them there
Set conditions for successive campaigns into northern Israel

Iranian-backed militias, including Lebanese Hezbollah, conducted four attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel on January 25.[53] Hezbollah launched two one-way attack drones at Israeli Iron Dome air defense batteries in Kfar Blum.[54] Hezbollah has only claimed one other attack on Iron Dome batteries during the Israel-Hamas war.[55] Hezbollah drone attacks into Israel are relatively rare, as the group more commonly uses anti-tank munitions in its regular attacks on Israeli targets.

The IDF Air Force struck a Hezbollah military runway 10 miles from the Israel-Lebanon border shortly after Hezbollah conducted the drone attack into Israel.[56] The IDF said that Hezbollah’s air unit uses the runway and its facilities to conduct attacks into Israel.[57] Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant released Israeli intelligence in September 2023 that demonstrated the IRGC’s role in constructing the airstrip.[58]

Recorded reports of attacks; CTP-ISW cannot independently verify impact.

Iran and Axis of Resistance

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

Demonstrate the capability and willingness of Iran and the Axis of Resistance to escalate against the United States and Israel on multiple fronts
Set conditions to fight a regional war on multiple fronts

Iranian-backed Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah called for expanding the scope of militia attacks to include additional US interests in Iraq and the Middle East in response to the January 23 US airstrikes targeting three Kataib Hezbollah facilities.[59] The United States conducted the airstrikes in response to a Kataib Hezbollah ballistic missile and rocket attack targeting Ain al Asad airbase that left four US personnel with traumatic brain injuries.[60] Kataib Hezbollah is part of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias that have conducted over 150 attacks targeting US forces in Iraq and Syria since the Israel-Hamas war began.[61]

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed responsibility for four attacks targeting US positions in Iraq and Syria on January 24 and 25.[62] The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed attacks targeting US forces at US Conoco Mission Support Site in northeastern Syria, Erbil International Airport in Erbil Province, Iraq, and Ain al Asad airbase in Anbar Province, Iraq, on January 24.[63] The group did not specify what munitions it used in these attacks. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq separately claimed a drone attack targeting US forces at Erbil International Airport on January 25.[64]

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq also claimed that it conducted a drone attack targeting the Israeli port of Ashdod, south of Tel Aviv, on January 25.[65] The group targeted Ashdod for the first time on January 23.[66]

The United States and United Kingdom sanctioned four Houthi officials on January 25.[67] The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) stated that the US and UK designated these individuals for supporting the recent Houthi attacks targeting commercial vessels in the Red Sea. The US and UK designated the following individuals:

Houthi “Defense Minister” Mohamed al Atifi
Houthi “maritime forces commander” Muhammad Fadl Abd al Nabi
Houthi “coastal defense forces chief” and “naval college director” Muhammad Ali al Qadiri
Houthi “procurement director” Mohammad Ahmad al Talibi

OFAC noted that Talibi coordinates with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) to smuggle Iranian-provided drones, missiles, and other weapons components into Yemen.[68] US outlet Semafor reported on January 15 that the IRGC Quds Force has overseen the transfer to Yemen of the drones and missiles that the Houthis have used in their attacks targeting maritime shipping in the Red Sea.[69] Semafor also reported that the IRGC Quds Force placed drone and missile operators and trainers as well as intelligence personnel on the ground in Houthi-controlled Yemen to direct Houthi drone and missile attacks and provide tactical intelligence support to the Houthis.[70] UK outlet Daily Telegraph reported on January 10 that the IRGC trained a group of 200 Houthis at the Khamenei Academy of Naval Sciences and Technology in northern Iran prior to the Houthi attacks.[71]

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that the United States secretly warned Iran that the Islamic State was preparing to conduct the January 3 terrorist attack in Kerman.[72] WSJ reported that the United States passed actionable intelligence to Tehran prior to the attack. Anonymous US officials said that the information provided regarding the location and time were specific enough that the regime could have thwarted the attack. The Islamic State killed at least 94 people in the Kerman attack.[73]

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a joint statement on the Israel-Hamas war and Iranian-Turkish relations after Raisi’s visit to Ankara on January 25.[74] The joint statement condemned Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip. The statement noted the need for “decisive measures” to stop Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip. Raisi and Erdogan expressed their desire for unspecified “competent courts” to try Israeli military and political leaders. The two leaders also expressed Iran’s and Turkey’s willingness to jointly combat terrorism.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi discussed the Israel-Hamas war with Nigerien Prime Minister Ali Lamine Zeine on January 25.[75] Raisi condemned the humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip.

Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian threatened in a press conference on January 25 that any country normalizing ties with Israel will pay a “heavy price” on January 25.[76] Abdollahian was responding to a reporter asking whether Iran supported the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Iran and Saudi Arabia resumed diplomatic relations in March 2023.[77]

The Iranian deputy foreign affairs minister discussed the Israel-Hamas war with the Norwegian deputy foreign affairs minister on January 24.[78] The Iranian deputy foreign affairs minister condemned the war and called for an immediate ceasefire. Norway’s special representative for Yemen and the Middle East also attended the meeting.

The Iranian Foreign Affairs Ministry senior adviser discussed the Israel-Hamas war in separate meetings with senior Turkish and UN officials during the latest round of Astana talks in Kazakhstan on January 25.[79] The Iranian official criticized the United States over its support for Israel. He said that all regional countries have been negatively impacted by the Israel-Hamas war. Representatives from Iran, Russia, and Turkey released a joint statement at the end of the talks on January 25, condemning Israeli airstrikes in Syria.[80] Israeli airstrikes in Syria on January 20 killed at least five IRGC officers in Syria.[81]

13. China-Taiwan Weekly Update, January 25, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/china-taiwan-weekly-update-january-25-2024

Key Takeaways

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Kuomintang (KMT) are preparing for the election of the speaker and deputy speaker of the Legislative Yuan. The party that secures the role will steer legislative processes in a divided legislature.
PRC Premier Li Qiang appealed to foreign business leaders to invest in China at the World Economic Forum (WEF) summit in Davos, Switzerland. The PRC is increasingly emphasizing economic cooperation with Europe as fraying relations with the US threaten to dampen the PRC’s growth.
The Philippines and PRC began bilateral negotiations over South China Sea disputes on January 17. The CCP's track record of engaging in dialogue while driving crises in the region to achieve its political objective indicates that the Philippine-PRC dialogue will not change the party’s behavior in the region.
A loss of Compacts of Free Association (COFA) funding for Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands would enable the CCP to expand its leverage points over these countries.
Tuvalu is considering switching its diplomatic recognition from the ROC to the PRC.

CHINA-TAIWAN WEEKLY UPDATE, JANUARY 25, 2024

Jan 25, 2024 - ISW Press

China-Taiwan Weekly Update, January 25, 2024

Authors: Nils Peterson, Matthew Sperzel, and Daniel Shats of the Institute for the Study of War

Editors: Dan Blumenthal and Frederick W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute

Data Cutoff: January 25 at 10 am ET

The China–Taiwan Weekly Update focuses on the Chinese Communist Party’s paths to controlling Taiwan and relevant cross–Taiwan Strait developments.

Key Takeaways

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Kuomintang (KMT) are preparing for the election of the speaker and deputy speaker of the Legislative Yuan. The party that secures the role will steer legislative processes in a divided legislature.
PRC Premier Li Qiang appealed to foreign business leaders to invest in China at the World Economic Forum (WEF) summit in Davos, Switzerland. The PRC is increasingly emphasizing economic cooperation with Europe as fraying relations with the US threaten to dampen the PRC’s growth.
The Philippines and PRC began bilateral negotiations over South China Sea disputes on January 17. The CCP's track record of engaging in dialogue while driving crises in the region to achieve its political objective indicates that the Philippine-PRC dialogue will not change the party’s behavior in the region.
A loss of Compacts of Free Association (COFA) funding for Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands would enable the CCP to expand its leverage points over these countries.
Tuvalu is considering switching its diplomatic recognition from the ROC to the PRC.

Taiwan

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Kuomintang (KMT) are preparing for the election of the speaker and deputy speaker of the Legislative Yuan. The party that secures the role will steer legislative processes in a divided legislature. The legislative candidates who won seats in the January 13 elections will take office at the beginning of the new legislative session on February 1. The members will vote on a new speaker and deputy speaker.[1] The speaker is responsible for guiding legislative processes, such as setting the legislative agenda, voting on laws, and presiding over sessions. Control over legislative proceedings means the speaker can prioritize or delay legislation based on political alignment and steer debates on policies proposed by the executive branch.[2]

Han Kuo-yu and Johnny Chiang Chi-chen announced their candidacies for speaker and deputy speaker, respectively, on January 18 and received the KMT’s nomination on January 24 after a short-lived internal challenge to Chiang for the deputy spot.[3] Han is a divisive figure in Taiwanese politics. He rose to prominence in the KMT after a surprise 2018 victory in the mayoral race in Kaohsiung, a DPP stronghold, and ran an unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2020 against President Tsai Ing-wen of the DPP. Han’s PRC-friendly platform contributed to popular dissatisfaction in Kaohsiung and his subsequent recall from the mayor’s office.[4] Chiang is a former chairman of the KMT who worked to review the party’s cross-strait policy after Han lost the 2020 presidential election. He represents a younger and more moderate wing of the party and advised the KMT’s 2024 presidential candidate Hou Yu-ih in formulating his cross-strait policy.[5]

The DPP legislative caucus said that it would support You Si-kun and Tsai Chi-chang, who are the incumbent speaker and deputy speaker. The caucus has not completed the nomination process as of January 25, however.[6]

A KMT speaker would exacerbate the obstacles that the divided legislature will pose to incoming president Lai Ching-te’s agenda. The legislature is divided, with the KMT holding the largest number of seats but without a majority party. This alone will challenge the incoming DPP administration’s ability to pass legislation. The DPP last led a minority government under President Chen Shui-bian from 2000 to 2008, during which the KMT-led opposition frequently blocked arms procurement from the United States and other policies favored by the DPP.[7] Han Kuo-yu would likely facilitate similar obstructionism if he becomes the speaker. DPP legislative caucus leader Ker Chien-ming claimed that if Han becomes speaker of the LY, “there is a high possibility he will be controlled by the CCP.”[8]

The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) will be the crucial “swing vote” between the two major parties in the selection of the next speaker and deputy speaker. The KMT’s 52 seats (plus two KMT-aligned independents) and DPP’s 51 seats do not grant either a majority in the 113-member body. The TPP’s 8 seats will make its votes the deciding factor.[9]

The KMT has been trying to win TPP support before the new legislative session begins. Han and Chiang said that Chiang would step aside if the TPP nominates a deputy speaker candidate to run with Han.[10] Han said on January 24 that he agreed with some legislative reforms proposed recently, such as those pushed by the TPP.[11] Fu Kun-chi, the KMT legislator who briefly announced his candidacy for deputy speaker on January 21 before dropping out, also reached out to the TPP and offered to cooperate on its preferred parliamentary reforms.[12] The TPP legislators-elect Huang Shan-shan and Huang Kuo-chang said the priority of the TPP caucus was to implement reforms to increase government transparency and give the Legislative Yuan more oversight over the Executive Yuan, Taiwan’s executive branch. They expressed appreciation for the KMT outreach and show of support. The incoming TPP legislators said on January 15 and 18 that they would support speaker candidates who could explain how they would implement their preferred reforms.[13] Han and Chiang can win without TPP support if the TPP abstains or fields its own candidates. The KMT outreach to the TPP shows that it is concerned about the possibility of the TPP endorsing the DPP candidates instead.

ISW has not noted reports of significant DPP efforts to win TPP support for its candidates, the incumbents. Huang Kuo-chang said on January 24 that he was unclear about the attitude of the DPP toward parliamentary reform.[14] DPP legislative caucus leader Ker Chien-ming criticized the eight TPP legislators-elect for using their decisive positions to “sow chaos.”[15] DPP incumbent speaker You Si-kun said that he had once proposed reforms similar to what the TPP wanted, but there was no consensus on them within the DPP. He also said that he was friends with TPP Chairman Ko Wen-je and would fight for TPP support, but did not know if he would get it.[16] You also said that “any combination is possible,” however, including a scenario in which a TPP candidate becomes the next speaker as a possible compromise.[17] The five TPP legislators of the previous legislative session voted for You in 2020.[18]

The PRC Ministry of State Security (MSS) said on January 17 that it will step up efforts to counter alleged Taiwanese infiltration of the PRC. The MSS claimed on its official WeChat account that Taiwan’s intelligence and defense agencies had been “infiltrating China since the DPP came to power in 2016.” It claimed to have dismantled multiple Taiwanese espionage networks in 2018 and 2020 and vowed to intensify counterintelligence and “anti-separatist” efforts related to Taiwan. The MSS accused Taiwan’s intelligence agencies of acting like “thugs for ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces,” “hyping up rumors” about the PRC interfering in Taiwan’s elections, suppressing people who oppose the DPP, and colluding with “external forces.” It echoed statements by the Taiwan Affairs Office that the DPP does not represent Taiwan’s “mainstream public opinion.”[19]

The MSS made the post in response to Lai Ching-te’s victory in the January 13 presidential election. The timing and framing suggest the announced espionage crackdown is partly meant to punish Taiwan for electing the CCP’s least favored candidate. It is also probable that the MSS claims about Taiwanese infiltration are related to the December 2023 leaks from Taiwanese intelligence about a secret top-level CCP meeting in which Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning, who is the fourth-ranked member of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee, discussed how to increase the effectiveness and subtlety of PRC efforts to interfere in Taiwan’s election. An unnamed senior Taiwanese official leaked the information to Western media.[20]

The PRC continued to send high-altitude balloons into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) after a four-day hiatus. Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (MND) reported PRC high-altitude balloons flying across the Taiwan Strait every day this month except January 16-19. The MND reported a record high of 6 PRC high-altitude balloons violating its Air Defense Identification Zone in one day on January 21. At least one flew directly over Taiwan’s territory.[21] This pattern of activity is consistent with the ISW assessment that the PRC is trying to normalize using balloons in tandem with other aerial and naval ADIZ violations as part of a broader effort to wear down Taiwan’s threat awareness. The break in balloon flights after an uninterrupted streak of daily incursions in the first half of January suggests the recent increase in balloon activities was related to Taiwan’s January 13 election.

China

PRC Premier Li Qiang appealed to foreign business leaders to invest in China at the World Economic Forum (WEF) summit in Davos, Switzerland. Li addressed an audience of global business executives and politicians, painting a rosy picture of the PRC’s economic health and urging the world to cast off skepticism over its challenging economic prospects. Li announced that the PRC met its 2023 growth target, remains committed to financial liberalization, and promised a responsible economic growth model.[22]

Li’s speech was tailored to resonate with an international business audience, highlighting the PRC’s economic potential on the merits of its size while ignoring the broader global political environment. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s speech, by contrast, took a distinct focus on geopolitical issues. Von der Leyen hailed freedom and democracy as the drivers of innovation and highlighted challenges posed by growing disinformation and disregard for national sovereignty.[23]

The contrast between Li and von der Leyen’s speeches captures the challenges of EU-PRC relations, which are subject to the push and pull of ideological confrontation and economic opportunities. The EU adopted an economic security package on January 24 in response to “growing geopolitical tensions and profound technological shifts.”[24] The initiatives in the package align with von der Leyen’s calls to “de-risk” the EU’s relationship with the PRC, especially in high-tech areas, a strategy she first proposed in March 2023.[25] The measure includes plans to increase screening of foreign investment into the EU, strengthen export controls, manage risks associated with outward investment in certain technologies, support research and development of dual-use technologies, and enhance research security.

The PRC, however, is increasingly emphasizing economic cooperation with Europe as fraying relations with the US threaten to dampen the PRC’s growth. Li advocated for economic cooperation with French and German officials in June 2023 during a visit to France and Germany.[26] CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping and French President Emmanuel Macron stressed the importance of strong economic ties during a meeting in April 2023.[27] Li told von der Leyen that the PRC wanted to import more EU products and urged the EU to ease high-tech export restrictions on the PRC during a meeting between the two on the sidelines of the summit in Davos.[28] Von der Leyen previously announced an investigation into electric vehicle subsidies in the PRC as part of the EU’s de-risking efforts during her September 15 State of the Union speech.[29]

A reporter from CCP-operated China Daily highlighted the contrasting sentiments expressed by Li and von der Leyen in a request for comment by the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), referencing von der Leyen’s de-risking strategy without mentioning her by name. MFA spokesperson Mao Ning responded that fragmentation would only weaken the global economy. Mao extolled the potential of the PRC economy and appealed to foreign companies to heed Premier Li’s calls to invest. [30]Li’s attendance at the WEF summit provided the PRC with an opportunity to directly lobby the business community where diplomatic efforts have yielded limited progress in strengthening inward investment. Li participated in a luncheon with the heads of 14 multinational companies, including Siemens, Volkswagen, and JPMorgan Chase. The PRC MFA described the meeting as a productive discussion about the benefits of investing in China, noting Li’s promises of strong returns.[31]

The Philippines and PRC began bilateral negotiations over South China Sea disputes on January 17. PRC Assistant Foreign Minister Nong Rong and Philippine Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Theresa Lazaro co-chaired the eighth meeting of the China-Philippines Bilateral Consultation Mechanism (BCM) on the South China Sea.[32] The PRC MFA stated that the two sides agreed to “continue to properly manage sea-related conflicts and differences through friendly consultations.”[33] The CCP-controlled English language outlet Global Times reported on January 18 that the Philippines has not sent vessels near Second Thomas Shoal in over a month, the longest period without “provocations” since August 2023.[34]

The Philippine-PRC dialogue will not change the party’s behavior in the region, based on the CCP's track record of engaging in dialogue while driving crises to achieve its political objectives. In 2012 the party engaged in negotiations with the Philippines to end a standoff at the Scarborough Shoal, which Manilla administered at the time, while steadily increasing the number of Chinese Coast Guard ships near the shoal.[35] This resulted in the Philippines withdrawing its ships from the shoal in mid-June 2012 under a now-disputed agreement that the PRC would do the same.[36] The CCP subsequently kept its ships near the shoal and achieved its political objective of gaining de facto control of the Scarborough Shoal by July 2012.[37] In 2016 the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) Arbitration Tribunal unanimously ruled in favor of the Philippines by rejecting the legitimacy of PRC claims to territory inside of the nine-dash line and land reclamation activities.[38] The CCP has ignored the ruling by continuing land reclamation efforts and maritime coercion in the South China Sea over the last eight years.

The Philippines and Vietnam are expected to sign a memorandum of understanding between their coast guards when President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. visits the country in late January.[39] This would provide one mechanism for the Philippines to leverage in attempts to prevent CCP coercion in the South China Sea from increasing.

Compacts of Free Association

A loss of Compacts of Free Association (COFA) funding for Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands would enable the CCP to expand its leverage points over these countries. These COFAs govern the United States’ relationship with Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands while also granting the United States extensive military access throughout their territories. The United States renewed COFAs with Palau and Micronesia in May.[40] It then did so with the Marshall Islands in October.[41] The signed agreements are now before Congress for funding consideration. Congress previously funded the COFAs for a twenty-year period in 2003.[42] The total cost for all three of the twenty-year agreements would be roughly $7 billion spread over the period 2024 to 2043, according to the Congressional Research Service.[43] Deputy Secretary of State nominee Kurt Campbell stated during his Senate confirmation hearing on December 7 that “if we don’t get it [COFA funding] you can expect that literally the next day Chinese diplomats — military and other folks — will be on the plane…trying to secure a better deal for China.”[44] The US House of Representatives Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party also called for renewing the COFAs in a mid-December report.[45] President Biden signed the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act into law on December 22, but it did not include COFA funding.[46] Funding the COFAs is a key part of the US Pacific Partnership Strategy to “fulfill our [United States] historical commitments and strengthen our enduring relationships with the full Pacific Islands region, including our special relationship with the Republic of Palau, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia.”[47] Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr expressed concern in a December 27 interview with ABC Australia over the lack of Congressional-approved funding for the COFA agreement, in part because the 2010 Palau Compact Review Agreement was not funded by the US Congress until 2018.[48]

These three island countries control key sea lanes that provide a secure route connecting American allies and partners, such as the Philippines and Taiwan, to the US territory of Guam and Hawaii. Palau and the Marshall Islands are 2 of the 12 countries that maintain official diplomatic relations with Taiwan.[49]

The loss of COFA funding would present an opportunity for the CCP to expand its economic influence with these vital Pacific Island countries. For example, this funding loss would cause severe financial pressure in Palau because COFA funding accounts for $36.9 million of the national government’s annual $124.2 million revenue as of fiscal year 2023.[50] This is an economic vulnerability that the CCP could partially fill by encouraging PRC nationals to vacation in Palau. The CCP cut tourism to Palau over the last decade to nearly zero as punishment for maintaining full diplomatic relations with Taiwan.[51] The reversal of this CCP policy would provide the party with economic leverage to wield over Palau in the event of future policy disagreements. The expansion of the CCP’s economic influence in Palau would also provide the party a leverage point to coerce the countries into switching diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to the People's Republic of China (PRC). The PRC aims to coerce countries into switching diplomatic recognition to falsely argue that Taiwan is a province of the People’s Republic of China rather than a legitimate country named the Republic of China.

The loss of COFA funding would also exacerbate the CCP narrative put forth by the propaganda outlet Global Times that the United States only cares about Palau for security reasons rather than mutually beneficial cooperation. [52] The Palau Senate passed a resolution in November rejecting the permanent deployment of a US Patriot missile defense battery.[53] This was the first instance of lawmakers challenging President Surangel Whipps Jr’s request for the United States to construct an over-the-horizon radar system in Palau.[54] In a December 27 interview with ABC Australia, Whipps tied this Palau Senate resolution to a narrative among unspecified portions of Palau that the United States actions were not in the best interests of Palau, as seen by the repeated delay in COFA funding.[55] The associated fiscal challenges that Palau faces without COFA funding buttresses the CCP’s narrative, which in turn creates hurdles for deploying mutually beneficial United States defense resources to the country.

The loss of COFA funding would also provide the CCP an opportunity to expand influence efforts targeting Micronesian political elites. The CCP has completed infrastructure projects throughout the country, such as houses for the country’s president, vice president, speakers of congress, and chief justice.[56] Axios reported that former Micronesian officials confirmed receiving gifts from the PRC, such as money, while on official state visits to the country.[57] The lack of COFA funding would exacerbate the appeal of CCP monetary gifts or infrastructure projects that target the Micronesian political elite. Micronesian President Wesley Simina also stated in late November that his country would be at a “fiscal cliff” without US Congressional approval of COFA funding. This would mean that “we [Micronesia] will have to find different sources of funding… and that’s not out there available immediately.”[58] The loss of COFA funding would also provide opportunities for external powers such as the CCP to enhance their economic influence in the country by filling these funding gaps.

The COFA funding also makes up $35.2 million of the Marshall Islands national government's annual $173.9 million revenue as of fiscal year 2023.[59] The loss of COFA funding would expose the country to similar severe fiscal challenges as Palau and Micronesia.

COFA Funding as Share of Government Revenue in Freely Associated States[60]

Percentage of total government revenue, FY2023*

The CCP may use these revenue shortfalls to incentivize Palau and the Marshall Islands to switch diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to the PRC. Australia evacuating refugees it paid Nauru to host led to a budget shortfall.[61] The CCP then reportedly offered Nauru USD 100 million per year in 2024 to successfully switch recognition from the PRC to the ROC, according to a Reuters report that cited an unspecified senior Taiwanese official.[62] This follows a regional trend of the PRC offering incentives such as a commercial aircraft to Kiribati or USD 8.5 million to the Solomon Islands, both in 2019, to successfully incentivize them to switch diplomatic recognition from the ROC to the PRC.[63]

Tuvalu

Tuvalu is considering switching its diplomatic recognition from the ROC to the PRC. The Tuvalu Ambassador to the Republic of China Bikenibeu Paeniu stated in a January 19 interview with The Australian that there were rumors Tuvalu would go down the same path as Nauru and switch recognition at some point after Tuvalu’s January 26 election.[64] Tuvalu’s Finance Minister Seve Paeniu also stated that Tuvalu expects to review diplomatic ties with Taiwan after the election as his country seeks additional financial support for development.[65] The Tuvalu government said Bikenibeu Paeniu’s comments did not represent its official stance and reaffirmed its ties to Taiwan.[66] Tuvalu is the only one in the Asia-Pacific region that maintains relations with the ROC and does not have a COFA with the United States.

Israel-Hamas War

The PRC has chosen not to engage with Iran to stop Houthi maritime shipping attacks. The Financial Times reported that US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken asked the PRC to pressure Iran to stop Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. The report also stated that unspecified US officials had seen little evidence of China acting upon these requests.[67] The PRC has only explicitly condemned the Houthis one time since the shipping attacks began. The PRC abstained on January 10 from UN Resolution 2722 which condemned Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.[68] In explanatory remarks, Permanent Representative of China to the United Nations Zhang Jun did however “call on the Houthi armed forces to immediately stop harassing civilian ships and respect the freedom of navigation of all countries.”[69]

The CCP has maintained rhetoric calling for regional calm instead of acting to resolve the Houthi shipping attacks. PRC Minister of Foreign Affairs Spokesman Wang Wenbin called on January 4 for all parties to “play a constructive and responsible role” in keeping the Red Sea safe.[70] The PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokeswoman Mao Ning also expressed concern on January 12 about the alleged ”escalation of tensions in the Red Sea” after United States-led strikes on Houthi positions on January 11.[71] A joint PRC MFA and Arab League statement on January 16 called on “all parties to cool down the situation…and effectively maintain regional peace and stability.”[72] Wang also called on January 24 for “a stop of causing disturbance [sic] to civilian ships” in the Red Sea while also implying American-led strikes against Houthi positions in Yemen were illegitimate because “the [UN] Security Council has never authorized the use of force by any country on Yemen.”[73] The bigger problem from the CCP’s perspective is not the hostilities instigated by the Houthis, but rather the United States-led counterstrikes. The party views the willingness of the United States and allies to strike Houthi positions as risking wider regional escalation, which would threaten PRC economic interests, such as increasing shipping costs and disrupting oil supplies from the region.

North Korea

The PRC MFA has messaged since mid-December that “trying to solve the problem [on the Korean Peninsula] through military deterrence and pressure will not work…[and] dialogue and consultation” are how to resolve the issue.[74] Head of the CCP International Liaison Department Liu Jianchao reiterated these points during a January 19 meeting with the North Korean Ambassador to the PRC Ri Ryong-nam. The officials also agreed to deepen the PRC and North Korea’s “mutually beneficial cooperation” this year, which will be the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries.[75] The PRC MFA repeated its call on January 25 for “meaningful dialogue” over “legitimate concerns” in response to the North Korean ballistic missile test on January 24.[76] The CCP has not criticized North Korea for launching ballistic missiles, alleged underwater nuclear drones, or labeling South Korea as its “primary foe.”

14. Ukraine’s Belarusian Legionnaires – Fighting for Freedom, No Way to Go Home

Another application of unconventional warfare.

Ukraine’s Belarusian Legionnaires – Fighting for Freedom, No Way to Go Home

The recruiting plan is to create a sort of foreign legion inside a foreign legion, so that Belarusians can take the fight to Russia in Ukraine before liberating their home from Moscow’s grip.

by Stefan Korshak | January 26, 2024, 12:51 pm

kyivpost.com · January 26, 2024

In one foreign regiment that’s been fighting the Russian army in Ukraine for two years and counting, hundreds of soldiers have no homeland to go back to.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine’s force of volunteer Belarusians, formally known as the Kastus Kalinoŭski Regiment, is manned overwhelmingly by men and women born in and citizens of Ukraine’s northern neighbor.

Belarus’s authoritarian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, a close ally of Russia and a supporter of the Kremlin’s assault on Ukraine, has declared all Belarusians fighting on Ukraine’s side traitors and collaborators with a “Fascist” regime in Kyiv.

During a day of Kyiv Post interviews at a Ukraine army training area (regimental staff requested the location not be published for security reasons), soldiers in the regiment said they had no choice but to cut practically all ties with their homes, because the Lukashenko regime would hunt them and their families down if it could.

Almost all interviewees requested their identities not be made public. One rare exception was Daniel Olenius, 28, a former resident of Rechytsa, a town in the Gomel region. The Belarusian authorities had been tracking him for years, he said, because he protested against the Lukashenko’s police state tactics and his frequent visits to Poland. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Olenius said, left few him options but to help Ukrainians resist a Kremlin that had sponsored Lukashenko and oppression in Belarus for more than two decades.

Death Toll from Russian Strike on Kharkiv Rises to 11

Overnight, more civilians were injured in further Russian missile attacks on the city.

“I have no ties with my parents, no contact with them,” Olenius said. “I don’t know when I can return home. The thing now, is to fight.”

Olenius joined up in autumn 2022 and for the next year served as a radio operator. The hairiest and most rewarding work he did, he said, was helping evacuate casualties. The regiment has sufficient communications equipment including NATO issue radios, Olenius said. Now he’s in logistics.

The Kastus Kalinoŭski Regiment was formed in early March 2022 when 400 to 500 Belarusian volunteers linked up through social media and travelled to Ukraine to fight the Russian army. It was bitter, urban combat in those days, mostly around Kyiv and the frontline towns f Bucha and Irpin.

By early 2024, 56 Belarusian citizens had died in Ukrainian military service, most while assigned to the Belarusian Regiment, a unit spokeswoman said.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) has not made public formal organizations or standardized equipment lists for the probably dozens of small- and medium-sized foreign volunteer units now deployed by Kyiv against Russia. Soldiers interviewed by Kyiv Post said their contracts give them standard AFU pay. One fighter, a Frenchman, said his Ukrainian salary – provided it’s paid – compares favorably with the Foreign Legion.

According to interviewees, soldiers in the Belarusian regiment are not part of a formal AFU unit per se, but rather formally employed by the International Legion, a parent organization managed and financed by the AFU’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR). Individual foreign unit missions vary dramatically in the AFU from formation to formation, with some international units permanently assigned to regular AFU brigades, some small groups employed as specialist teams, and others formed into conventional units armed and equipped by Kyiv for specific wartime jobs.

In the case of the AFU’s Kastus Kalinoŭski Regiment, the AFU armed the Belarusians along the lines of a NATO-standard light infantry battalion, without heavy weapons like tanks and self-propelled artillery, but with plenty of man-portable firepower like the French-German Milan guided anti-tank missiles, the US-Belgian M2 .50 caliber heavy machine guns, and medium 120mm mortars.

Two fighters assigned to a Belarusian foreign legionnaire unit fighting on the side of Ukraine prepare an M2 .50 machine gun for operation at a Ukrainian training area. Image published in April 2023 by the Center for Belarusian Communications.

Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, AFU high command has for the most part deployed its Belarusians into hot spots where the Russian army was pushing hard, particularly inside a town or a city. In September 2023, during battles around Bakhmut, Belarusian infantry patrols were among the first Ukrainian forces to counterattack, helping to contain a major Russian offensive and capturing key high ground and a village called Klishchiivka.

In June 2022 the Belarusians were one of a host of small infantry units thrown by the Ukrainian high command, over several months, into bitter, house-to-house fighting in the Donbas cities Severodonetsk and Lysychansk. During the latter battle, the regiment took heavy losses including Ivan Marchuk, a battalion commander and a regiment co-founder. Prior to the Russo-Ukrainian war Marchuk served in the French Foreign Legion.

Mark (nom de guerre) is a 43-year-old 120mm mortar section commander with the regiment since its founding. Like many long-service soldiers, he started out as an infantryman. He told Kyiv Post the regiment prides itself as an outfit that fights hard, in part because none can return to Belarus.

Belarusian fighters in Ukrainian army service at a 2022 memorial ceremony. Image provided by the Kastus Kalinoŭski Regiment.

In his case, Mark said, years of police raids and bribe demands forced him to leave a successful business in Minsk. His wife was eight months pregnant at the time. Contact with relatives in Belarus is dangerous because of probable retaliation by police.

“Our son was born a refugee,” he said. “No one can say when he can come home.”

Andriy Yusov, senior HUR spokesman, in April comments singled out the Kalinoŭski regiment as one of the most effective foreign formations fighting for Ukraine today.

“This is an extremely efficient unit. They conducted many successful operations and executed many missions successfully,” Yusov said, in April comments to the Center of Belarusian Communications think tank. The Kalinoŭski Regiment… has proved itself very well in terms morale, motivation and combat capacity. This unit is an integral component of the defense security forces of Ukraine,”

The working regimental language is Russian, but some Belarusians interviewed by Kyiv Post spoke excellent Ukrainian. Mark said weapons are available but “there could be more” mortar ammo.

In part to fill losses, and in part to buff soldier skill, the Kalinoŭski regiment is now raising a contingent of non-Belarusian foreign fighters. One new recruit, a Polish national identifying himself as Yura, served as senior NCO in the Polish army and 10 years after that in private military companies, primarily in combat engineering.

“I (as a Pole) work very smoothly with the Belarusians. We are all soldiers, and we usually understand each other because we are all in the same profession, and we approach the job in much the same way,” Yura said. “But for sure it helps that Polish is so close to the languages they speak in the regiment.”

A French national identifying himself with the nom de guerre Snow told Kyiv Post that the unit seems well run, but in-processing for new recruits is slow and some soldiers go two or three months without receiving pay.

Ivan “Brest” Marchuk, commander of one of the two battalions in a Ukrainian light infantry unit formed from Belarusian volunteers, died in combat on June 26, 2023, in the Donbas city Lysychansk, during house-to-house fighting against Russian forces using tanks and artillery. A reported six other Belarusians were killed or taken prisoner in the battle. Image published by the Ukrainian news magazine Oboz.ua.

Snow told Kyiv Post he was frustrated that he had travelled across Europe and deserted the French Foreign Legion only to sit for months at a training base doing nothing, with a war on, and without pay because his paperwork is delayed.

A regiment spokeswoman confirmed to Kyiv Post that new members of the regiment experience pay delays of a month or more, but that the finances are eventually sorted out. Kyiv Post requested a HUR spokesman comment on pay delays for foreign fighters.

An HUR representative contacted Kyiv Post and said comment on allegations about regimental pay issues would be possible only in a direct interview. Kyiv Post has agreed to the condition and will publish GUR comment in due course.

More information and background on the Regiment in Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian and English can be found here.

kyivpost.com · January 26, 2024

15. Today’s Challenges Cry Out for New Approaches to US Security

I certainly support Chris' 3 recommendations.

Today’s Challenges Cry Out for New Approaches to US Security • Stimson Center

A new foreign policy agenda that sets priorities and shares burdens with other global actors can lead to a more credible grand strategy

By Christopher Preble

In Grand Strategy

January 25, 2024

stimson.org · January 25, 2024

The leading danger to the United States in 2024 “is not an overseas conflict or foreign threat but a homegrown one,” Paul Stares explains in a summary of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Preventive Priorities Survey. The Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer similarly warns of “the US vs. itself,” and Robert Manning and Mathew Burrows of the Stimson Center count the possibility of political violence in the United States as among the top risks this year, along with fights over combating climate change and “out of control AI.”

And yet, U.S. foreign policy seems stubbornly fixed on autopilot, with a sprawling security apparatus postured for confrontation. The deep polarization of American society cannot be cured by foreign war, just as climate change and infectious diseases cannot be deterred by bombs and bullets, but the United States continues to overinvest in military capabilities. This disconnect between our urgent priorities and the tools needed to attain them can only be solved by a fundamental rethink of U.S. grand strategy.

The dominant strategic paradigm – what some call primacy or others call liberal hegemony – hinges on overwhelming potential rivals, chiefly through the threat or use of force, in order to reassure allies and partners who might otherwise be inclined to defend themselves. According to this view, the United States is “the indispensable nation,” the lynchpin of global order. Unsurprisingly, primacy requires vast expenditures on military personnel and equipment. The Pentagon’s budget is approaching $1 trillion annually — and spending on national security already exceeds that amount if one counts care for the nation’s veterans in the total (as we should).

The fixation on military power and foreign entanglements exacerbates the already yawning divide between the American people and the elites who purport to represent them. This, too, partially explains the perilous state of U.S. politics. Americans are increasingly focused on problems at home and want resources redirected accordingly. Advocates for the strategic status quo dismiss such concerns, claiming that there is no alternative to U.S. global dominance, and calling for education campaigns to cure the public of its ignorance. Americans can be excused for thinking that they are being talked down to.

But the so-called experts are wrong. The United States should, above all else, set priorities, with a laser focus on the overarching goals of advancing security, prosperity, and freedom for the American people. In other words, policymakers should be thinking of ways to achieve a narrower set of objectives while minimizing costs and risks. The United States now operates in a multipolar world of many capable actors. As such, the time is ripe for redistributing defense burdens and costs, including by calling on allies and partners to do more.

U.S. policymakers should also rebalance the U.S. foreign policy toolkit by elevating nonmilitary instruments of national power. Specifically, the United States should:

Invest in Diplomacy, Including Public Diplomacy. For most of American history, U.S. leaders relied on diplomacy to extend U.S. influence and secure vital U.S. interests. Today, too few Americans even know what diplomacy is. That must change. The United States also needs a new approach for communicating U.S. purpose to foreign audiences, a unique challenge in an age of persistent misinformation and disinformation. Expanded person-to-person interactions and cultural exchanges can help.
Lean Into US Economic Power. U.S. economic power can be an instrument of leverage, for example through sanctions or punitive tariffs, but the positive aspects of trade should not be neglected. And while some blame foreign competition for the loss of manufacturing jobs, a dynamic economy constantly sheds old jobs and creates new ones. After all, the vast majority of Americans once grew their own food; now a tiny fraction of the population feeds not just this country, but much of the rest of the world. Erecting barriers to trade to save certain jobs is as foolhardy as banning the reaper. A diversity of trading partners enhances supply chain resilience and is thus advantageous to both U.S. security and U.S. prosperity.
Restore the United States as a Magnet for the World’s Talent. Generations of Americans migrated here to be educated, find employment, and raise families. Those who now want to slam that door shut would forfeit one of the United States’ greatest advantages. If U.S. universities, for example, are forced to turn away foreign students, that would cripple U.S. innovation. Most new startups are begun by immigrants, many of whom first came to the United States to get a high-quality education. Achieving consensus on immigration reform to ensure that the United States continues to attract a young, skilled population, is critical for economic growth and global competitiveness.

Unifying Americans and addressing challenges at home is an admittedly hard task in today’s highly partisan atmosphere. But a new foreign policy agenda that advances U.S. national interests, sets priorities, and shares burdens with other global actors, can help close the gap between the American people and U.S. elites. Untangling domestic problems is not a distraction from U.S. objectives abroad: It is a necessary precondition to a credible U.S. grand strategy that aligns ends and means.

Christopher Preble is a senior fellow and director of the Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center. He is the principal author of the just-released Stimson paper “A Credible Grand Strategy: The Urgent Need to Set Priorities” from which this essay is adapted.

stimson.org · by Joaquin Matamis · January 25, 2024

16. Hold, Build, and Strike: A Vision for Rebuilding Ukraine’s Advantage in 2024

Excerpts:

The West is advantaged in terms of technological innovation and financial resources, but much depends on political will. For example, although Europe missed its goal of 1 million shells this year, it has put $2.2 billion toward production and might well meet it by 2025. Western sluggishness is not the same as inaction, with some efforts gaining momentum. Yet despite the ability to out-innovate and out-produce Russia, it is Moscow that has leapt ahead in scaling production of drones and mobilizing its defense industrial base. Russian leadership is now visibly overconfident. They see the current trendline in this war as favoring them. Hence, the next year will prove important in demonstrating that even at the peak of its defense spending, and defense-industrial output, Russia is still unable to achieve its objectives in this war. Meanwhile, the costs will mount, and, ideally, it is Moscow that will face growing uncertainty in 2025.

Failure does not mean the war will resolve itself into a frozen conflict. Ukraine may begin losing the war this year, as Russian advantages multiply into 2025 and 2026. In 2024, the West faces a critical choice. Otherwise, as our colleague Jack Watling recently argued, the West will cede an irrecoverable advantage to Russia in this war. A defeat would see Moscow impose its will on Ukraine and walk away from the war believing that it had effectively exhausted and defeated the West. Despite the strategic cost to Russia, Ukraine would lose territory and would bear a higher burden for the war in population and economic losses. While Russia will pose an enduring military threat to European security in either scenario, a Russia that suffers a costly defeat is clearly preferable to an emboldened Moscow that is able to recover without having to worry about Ukraine’s armed forces.

This is a sobering reality, but this outcome is not inevitable. However, it will take hard political choices to bring this situation about both in Ukraine and in the West. Key decisions have to be made this year, the earlier the better, in order to put the war on a more positive trajectory. To succeed, Ukraine and the West must align expectations and articulate a clear vision for the next 18 months: what we are building toward, how, and what the theory of success is moving forward. Without a long-term strategy, it will be difficult to achieve unity of effort and manage scarce resources. If in 2024 Ukraine is able to exhaust Russian forces at the peak of Russian defense spending, then retake the initiative and inflict a series of defeats on the Russian military in 2025, it could establish the necessary leverage over Moscow in this war. This would require putting Russia’s military position in jeopardy, replacing Russian confidence with uncertainty. The goal is war termination, on favorable terms for Ukraine, and in a manner that ensures a durable peace or the Ukrainian ability to secure it down the line. A defeat would see Ukraine irrevocably lose territory, with Russia able to impose the peace on its own terms in a manner that would limit Ukraine’s sovereignty. Attaining the necessary advantage to achieve this is feasible by 2025. Much depends on sustained Western support and choices made now.

Hold, Build, and Strike: A Vision for Rebuilding Ukraine’s Advantage in 2024 - War on the Rocks

MICHAEL KOFMAN, ROB LEE, AND DARA MASSICOT

warontherocks.com · by Michael Kofman · January 26, 2024

This winter, Ukraine’s military is visibly running on fumes, as recent reporting shows M109 Paladin artillery outside Bakhmut receiving only smoke shells for ammunition. When we were last there in November, shell hunger was widespread along the front, and the situation has only gotten worse. Following months of hard fighting, Ukraine’s offensive in 2023 proved a missed opportunity. The current situation is also not sustainable long term. It is clear Ukraine and the West need a new strategic vision. This means planning beyond the next six months or the next offensive operation. While the current state of the war has been described as a stalemate, spurring an animated debate over what that means, Russia holds material, industrial, and manpower advantages in 2024, along with the initiative. However, with tailored Western support, Ukraine could hold against Russian forces this year and rebuild the necessary advantage to conduct large-scale offensive operations in 2025, recreating another opportunity to deal Russia a battlefield defeat. Conversely, without major adjustments, or if Western support falters, the current path holds a high risk of exhaustion over time and Ukraine being forced to negotiate with Moscow from a position of weakness.

Currently, Ukraine is focused on reconstitution and digging in to defend against continued Russian attacks. Western supplies of artillery ammunition have diminished significantly, leading to shell hunger across the front. After spending several months on the offensive, Ukraine lacks enough artillery ammunition and combat-effective units to go back on the offensive any time soon. Russian forces have seized the initiative along stretches of the front, but they too have struggled to make progress. Although Ukraine’s summer offensive failed to achieve its minimum goals, Russia’s winter offensive last year, and lackluster attacks this fall, also failed to achieve a breakthrough. The year 2023 ended with Russia taking marginally more territory than Ukraine, but it is still far from its official goal of seizing the entire Donbas. Territorial control is one measure of progress toward one’s objectives, but the balance of attrition, capacity for reconstitution, defense industrial mobilization, and the ability to employ force effectively at scale are more important determinants of long-term success. This is why what happens in 2024 is likely to determine the future trajectory of the war.

Become a Member

Uncertainty over Western military and economic assistance means Ukraine needs to further husband its resources and make hard decisions in 2024. Yet despite this gloomy reality, with Western support Ukraine can regenerate combat power and possibly retake the advantage in 2025. If this year is used wisely, core problems are addressed, and the right lessons are applied from the 2023 offensive, Ukraine can take another shot at inflicting a major defeat on Russian forces. However, this demands a new strategy, premised on three central elements: hold, build, and strike. Holding will require a well-prepared defense, consolidating, and rationalizing the Ukrainian armed forces’ diverse park of equipment. Building focuses on reconstituting force quality, training, and expanding defense industrial capacity. Finally, the strike element will degrade Russian advantages and create challenges for Russian forces far behind the front lines, as Ukraine works on rebuilding its capacity to resume offensive operations. Ideally, Ukraine can absorb Russian offensives while minimizing casualties and position itself to retake the advantage over time.

A Better Vision

The strategic context in 2024 is starkly different from that of 2023. Kyiv is unlikely to have the artillery ammunition, manpower, or equipment for another strategic offensive. Conversely, Russia will be materially advantaged in 2024, and Russian spending on national defense, at 10.8 trillion rubles, is a substantial increase over previous years, bringing it officially to 6 percent of gross domestic product (various estimates put the real figure at 8 percent). This may not be enough to offer Moscow a decisive edge on the battlefield, but Russia has made a structural shift in the economy toward significantly increased spending on national defense, converting energy export revenue into defense industrial mobilization. No less important, in 2023, Russia was able to replace its losses and generate additional combat power over time. This included managing to recruit contract soldiers for new formations (not just mobilizing soldiers). Russian forces may experience similar difficulties in overcoming Ukraine’s defenses in 2024 as they did in 2023, but Russian advantages will begin to mount over the course of this year and the next.

This is why the strategy should begin with a hold to hedge against Russian offensives this year, and relative advantages in materiel. This consists of, first, building a more fortified defense-in-depth, which will make it easier to defend the nearly 1,000-kilometer front line, allowing Ukraine to rotate forces, free up its best units, and reduce the ammunition required to defend. Ukraine has started to dig in, but these efforts are nascent when compared to the defense-in-depth fortified positions established by Russian forces. Russia has dedicated engineering brigades that construct and improve fortifications, whereas in the Ukrainian military, defenses are the responsibility of each maneuver brigade. Stronger defenses, including underground bunkers and tunnels, will also compensate for Russia’s advantage in artillery and glide bombs. This will also require the right policies in place, since defenses have to be coordinated with regional authorities, property issues must be addressed, and so forth. This may be surprising, but in Ukraine, farming and business activity carries on close to the front, as two of us observed during our field research.

Holding is about not just positional defense, but also consolidation. This year can be used to consolidate and rationalize the force. With Western support and transfer of industrial capacity like 3D printing machines, Ukraine can increasingly maintain and produce new components for Western kit. Ukraine has a combination of military– and volunteer-run repair and upgrade facilities involved in helping to maintain the force. However, Ukraine received a diverse arsenal of equipment from Western countries, with 14 different types of artillery as just one example. In 2023, this diversity was further increased with Western tanks (Leopard, Challenger, and Abrams variants), infantry fighting vehicles, various types of mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, and so on. This makes for a logistical and maintenance nightmare, which reduces the amount of equipment that is serviceable at any one time. Given the critical role played by private charities like Come Back Alive and the Prytula Foundation, greater cooperation between them and Western governments and defense companies would help keep Western equipment serviceable.

Second, Ukraine will have to revisit its policies on mobilization and recruitment to address long-standing issues in the structure and quality of its forces. This is currently under debate, but time is of the essence, and it is slipping away. So far, Ukraine’s lawmakers have rejected a proposal to mobilize 450,000 to 500,000 men. What’s clear is that Kyiv will have to consider not just the numbers being mobilized, but the average age, to restore force quality. The Ukrainian military will struggle to conduct offensive operations if the average age continues to climb well into the 40s. Some of the older mobilized soldiers are in poor physical shape and have health issues that limit their ability to fight. Brigades may appear to have large rosters, but many of the soldiers in practice can’t effectively conduct assaults or perform other combat-related functions, limiting their offensive potential. Policies also need to address sustainable rotation, so that personnel can expect to be taken off the line. Ideally, Ukrainian brigades will have a rotation of battalions on the line, in reserve, and being formed. Most important, the system needs to preserve an experienced core of soldiers and junior leaders in every unit as the basis of new formations and training efforts.

Third, working with Western countries, Ukraine can scale up and reform existing training programs, restoring combat effectiveness to its forces. This means expanding local training efforts, revising Western programs, combining training materials, and looking for ways to address the growing deficit of professional military education for officers and junior leaders. These programs need to include not just the tactical requirements of Ukraine’s combat operations, but also the ability to operate as units, and staff training for the brigades. Although Ukrainian servicemen and officers have significant combat experience, they often lack training in the fundamentals, which becomes a greater problem as they swiftly get promoted to replace combat losses. Increased horizontal connections between the Ukrainian and U.S. militaries at the brigade level and below would help ameliorate these issues as well. Company, battalion, and brigade commanders and their staffs cannot be properly trained in a short period of time, which further necessitates looking to 2025 for Ukraine’s next strategic offensive.

As in most wars, the burden of this war falls heavily on the infantry. Infantry mans trenches in defense regardless of the weather, and they suffer the highest rate of attrition. Although ammunition and equipment were a constraint, Ukraine’s summer offensive culminated due to attrition among its infantry forces. This led to commanders forming assault groups piecemeal this fall from soldiers with different specialties, such as artillerymen, to continue offensive operations. A larger pool of trained infantry is critical to reduce the burden on the current force, some of whom have been fighting for nearly two years with minimal time away from the front. Without addressing these issues, problems with morale and exhaustion will grow over time, threatening any future offensives. Manpower management for both sides will be a key factor as the war stretches into 2025 and beyond.

Fourth, Ukraine can work with Western partners to significantly increase production of drones, as well as counter-drone electronic warfare systems, that will allow it to partially offset deficits in artillery ammunition and reduce its vulnerability to future disruptions in aid. Ukraine can produce first-person-view strike drones in large numbers, but they require funding and ammunition for them, which is a problem that is much easier to solve with Western help than the slowly increasing production of 155mm rounds. European nations could fund drone production facilities in Ukraine or in bordering states. This could partially compensate for the lack of artillery ammunition being provided. Larger quantities of mines, including artillery-fired scatterable mines, would also strengthen Ukrainian defenses.

The West should focus on providing proven capabilities needed in larger quantities that reduce casualties like protected mobility, air defense, or mine-clearing equipment. Ukraine still has a deficit of basic armored vehicles, especially tracked armored personnel carriers, to properly equip many of its units, which leads to unnecessary casualties. This is particularly an issue for National Guard and Territorial Defense brigades that are frequently employed as a normal Ukrainian mechanized brigade out of necessity but are not properly equipped for such a role. Armored vehicles are also needed to serve as ambulances. In some cases, it takes several hours before wounded soldiers can be evacuated because artillery fire is too intense, and there aren’t enough armored vehicles to spare. The transfer of greater quantities of M113 or armored Humvees, which are easy to maintain, would have an outsized effect.

Lastly, Western defense companies are more innovative than Russia’s defense industry, but they need the proper demand signals from Western governments to become more engaged. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense is also working through long running issues in contracting, and is trying to address them under new leadership. Foreign defense companies are testing weapons in Ukraine, but often in relatively small numbers and without a sense of urgency. To fix this, Western governments may need to sign contracts for the production of systems for Ukraine, which, ideally, Western militaries may also need themselves. For example, these can include jamming-proof modules and terminal guidance software for drones, electronic warfare systems, and remotely operated means of detecting and destroying mines. Such efforts dovetail with Ukrainian commander-in-chief Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhny’s call for technological innovation as one pillar of the approach to break out from the relatively static battlefield dynamic.

A defensive-only strategy will not prove sufficient, but Ukraine will have to make careful choices. Strategy often reveals itself best in what you choose not to do. While there is a general consensus that Ukraine should pursue an “active defense,” what that means in practice needs to be defined. It should not translate into operations whose purpose is to simply fight for initiative or to apply pressure at the cost of manpower and ammunition that Ukraine cannot afford to expend. Conducting localized offensives may seem appealing, but only under the right conditions to attain a better position at low cost. Fighting for the initiative makes little sense if there are no resources to exploit it. In theory, localized offensives maintain pressure on Russian forces, limiting their freedom of action, but in practice, they could impede rebuilding the combat power of the Ukrainian military. It is also unlikely that localized offensives would prove more effective, or efficient, at constraining Russian force regeneration than just maintaining a good defense. From a manpower, equipment, and ammunition perspective, offensive operations require considerably more resources, of which Ukraine will be in short supply, compared to maintaining a defense. They can also be counterproductive for morale and recruitment, because soldiers intuitively know when taking the next tree line is not in the service of a wider operation or a strategy.

In 2024, the best defense is not likely to be a good offense, but rather one that maximizes efficiency and creates the right opportunities down the line. Ukraine can play to its advantages while defending, leveraging improved long-range strike capabilities — enabled by Western intelligence support — to target Russian bases and critical infrastructure far behind enemy lines. Essentially, the active component of the strategy is comprised of an extended strike campaign that helps set the conditions in 2025. Ukraine can steadily decrease Russia’s airpower advantage by targeting bases in Crimea and near its borders. Kyiv now holds the initiative in the northern parts of the Black Sea and can build on the success of a strike campaign against Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. To this end, the West should help Ukraine ramp up production of its own long-range strike drones and revisit policies constraining the Ukrainian ability to employ Western-supplied missiles, which de facto make Russia a sanctuary.

However, a long-range strike campaign is a way of applying pressure and creating challenges for the Russian military, not a substitute for a major ground offensive. Ukraine will still have to overcome Russian defenses in the south, and achieve a breakthrough, to put Russian forces in Crimea in a precarious position. Even if successful, taking down the Kerch Strait Bridge or other ground lines of communication is unlikely to lead to a collapse of Russian positions in the south without the added pressure of a sustained ground campaign. That said, in the coming months Ukraine will have to avoid being fixed into unfavorable attritional fights that would undermine any prospects for success in the long term. Russia has more resources, and Western support is increasingly uncertain, so Ukraine cannot afford to fight in 2024 as it did in 2023.

Learning From the Missed Opportunity of 2023

To understand how best to plan for 2024 and 2025, it is important to briefly revisit why the offensive of 2023 did not repeat the successes of the fall of 2022. Ukraine achieved a breakthrough in Kharkiv in September 2022 against a premobilized Russian military with severely degraded forces, which did not prepare strong defenses. Once Ukrainian forces broke through the first line of defense, they quickly exploited and pushed deep behind Russian lines, even with relatively light forces. Although Ukraine achieved an important victory in Kherson, it was a difficult fight. Russian lines did not collapse, despite an unfavorable geography, defending with their logistical supply lines across the Dnipro River, under regular high-mobility artillery rocket system fire. In 2023, Ukrainian forces faced a large mobilized Russian military defending behind a much more densely fortified line that summer than they faced in Kherson or Kharkiv Oblasts in 2022. As we argued in December 2022, Ukraine was unlikely to face similarly favorable conditions in 2023.

Compared to 2022, when Russian brigades and regiments were often holding the front line with two or three understrength battalions, some of their regiments were defending with six or more that summer with additional battalions for rotation. They also continued to build new armies with contract soldiers such as the 40th Army Corps and 25th Combined Arms Army deployed that summer. They could sustain far greater attrition without breaking, and the network defenses made it difficult for Ukraine to exploit tactical successes. Russian forces also did not face the same logistics issues that summer as they did in Kherson, and overall Russian performance appeared improved on the defense when compared to the offense.

Although much ink had been spilled on this subject, including by us based on field work in Ukraine, in the end there were three factors that proved most significant in determining the outcome.

First, Ukraine lacked a decisive advantage in fires over the Russian military, and Russian forces were not sufficiently degraded through attrition prior to the launch of the assault, which meant there was no clear advantage to be exploited. Second, Ukraine could not effectively scale its employment of forces, operating at the level of two or three reinforced companies per brigade. This meant it could not exploit breaches or generate momentum. Combined arms integration was also lacking, though this proved tangential to first-order issues. Third, Ukraine lacked the enablers necessary to break through a well-prepared defense or to counter key Russian capabilities, like attack helicopters. In looking toward 2025, the West needs to think through on how to help Ukraine address all three categories of issues.

While their performance varied, the new NATO-trained brigades did not have sufficient time to develop unit cohesion or train as a unit. Furthermore, battalion and brigade commanders and staffs often struggled to effectively employ units above the company level. These results aren’t surprising given that the new Ukrainian brigades with mobilized soldiers were tasked with breaching very strong defenses, among the most difficult missions possible in combat, after a very compressed training timeline. In addition to the need for more training for new units, instead of forming new brigades, it may be preferable to attach newly trained battalions and companies to existing brigades or battalions, respectively. That way, these units will benefit from an experienced commander, adjacent infantry units, and supporting capabilities such as artillery and engineers.

However, insufficient training to operate at scale was not the only problem. Without the requisite fires advantage or enablers, addressing training alone would not have changed the outcome. It is a necessary, but not sufficient, ingredient for future success. Ultimately, Ukraine was unable to sufficiently degrade or suppress Russian anti-tank capabilities, which made it impossible to mass armor effectively, and small dismounted infantry assaults won’t lead to a breakthrough against strong defenses. There were also choices in overall strategy that compounded the risk. Pursuing a three-pronged offensive, with some of the best forces allocated to Bakhmut, split Ukraine’s artillery and most experienced troops. After the initial breaching operation failed, and Ukrainian forces significantly adjusted tactics, the strategy remained the same for the next four months.

The Bakhmut axis was overly resourced relative to the main axis of advance. Ultimately, rather than fixing Russian forces in a way that would enable Ukraine’s success, the Bakhmut offensive compounded the problem. Even with the forces committed to Bakhmut, Russia still retained sufficient reserves, including arguably its most elite unit, the 76th Air Assault Division, to prevent Ukraine’s tactical breakthrough in Robotyne in August from achieving operational or strategic effects. Given the strength of Russia’s defenses and airpower advantages, reaching the coast was probably a bridge too far, but the minimal goal, Tokmak, may have been achievable. Additionally, the transfer of cluster munitions and Army tactical missile systems, which were used to destroy or damage a number of helicopters in October, before the offensive could have given Ukrainian ground forces a temporary reprieve from Russian attack helicopters during the potentially decisive initial breaching attempt. This is not to say that a different approach would have resulted in success, but an overly deterministic reading of this history is also inaccurate because it denies agency to Ukraine and to the Western countries involved.

In planning for the next major operation, which will likely not be until 2025, the West and Ukraine should avoid planning for the last offensive. Technology and tactics have evolved in this war every few months. While at the beginning of the offensive the problem was minefields and entrenchments, backed by armor, artillery, and combat aviation, by the end of it, first-person-view drones had become one of the primary challenges. Meanwhile, the primary counterbattery threat to Ukrainian artillery is from Lancet kamikaze drones. One of the key challenges for the prospects of future Ukrainian offensives is artillery ammunition availability. Ukraine was able to achieve a fire rate of approximately 225,000 artillery shells per month last summer, more than twice the approximately 90,000 rounds it fired per month last winter; however, that was only made possible by a likely one-time transfer of artillery shells from South Korea to the United States to backfill deliveries to Ukraine. Even with that ammunition, the President Joseph Biden administration was forced to release cluster munitions to extend Ukraine’s offensive into the fall (arguably, these would have made the most difference ahead of the offensive). Western artillery production capacity is not sufficient to meet Ukraine’s expenditure rates even just for defensive purposes, necessitating continued deliveries of cluster munitions from stockpiles to close the gap this year.

Western-provided artillery ammunition in the future is unlikely to support a fire rate that exceeds Russia’s, at a rate of 10,000 per day or more — which will be sustainable by 2025 in excess of that number. Since Ukraine was unable to overcome Russia’s defenses last summer with a quantitative advantage with artillery ammunition, the prospects for future offensives will be worse unless Ukraine and its supporters can compensate by developing other advantages. This means that the volume of artillery fire will have to be supplemented with drones and other precision strike capabilities in the future. Alternatively, following Russian adaptation to high-mobility artillery rocket system fire strikes against logistical nodes, the West may have to come up with other ways to degrade the Russian rate of fire or reduce its efficacy. Russian electronic warfare improvements have reduced the effectiveness of NATO-provided global positioning system–guided munitions, such as the high-mobility artillery rocket system guided multiple launch rocket system and Excalibur artillery shells, which also needs to be addressed with future precision-guided munition deliveries. The planning should not only evolve, based on the experience in 2023, but it should also be cognizant of the adaptations and technological innovation on the battlefield that could increase or offset those requirements.

The War Is Far From Over

While a cursory look at material resources shows the war favors Russia this year, this does not automatically mean Russia will make major advances this year or that it is now slated to win the war. Moscow’s minimal war aims require it to seize more territory than it currently occupies, to capture the Donbas, and to lay claim to a host of territories it annexed but does not control. Russian forces cannot simply sit and defend to achieve these goals, and, as recent offensives illustrate, they too are struggling to break out of the current deadlock. Despite increased recruitment, Moscow still lacks sufficient manpower to rotate the personnel that were initially mobilized in 2022, which means it still faces a dilemma on how to sustain force presence in Ukraine. In 2023, the Russian military prioritized replacing losses and generating new combat formations over sustainability of deployments and their force posture in Ukraine. Hence, these remain issues they will have to resolve in 2024. Offensives like in Avdiivka take a heavy toll on equipment, costing hundreds in armored fighting vehicles. Despite high levels of spending on defense production, the Russian military is still replacing much of its lost kit by drawing on a finite pool of Soviet equipment. Russia’s ammunition situation is improving, especially due to supplies from North Korea and Iran, but it is still far from the advantage Russian forces held in 2022.

The West is advantaged in terms of technological innovation and financial resources, but much depends on political will. For example, although Europe missed its goal of 1 million shells this year, it has put $2.2 billion toward production and might well meet it by 2025. Western sluggishness is not the same as inaction, with some efforts gaining momentum. Yet despite the ability to out-innovate and out-produce Russia, it is Moscow that has leapt ahead in scaling production of drones and mobilizing its defense industrial base. Russian leadership is now visibly overconfident. They see the current trendline in this war as favoring them. Hence, the next year will prove important in demonstrating that even at the peak of its defense spending, and defense-industrial output, Russia is still unable to achieve its objectives in this war. Meanwhile, the costs will mount, and, ideally, it is Moscow that will face growing uncertainty in 2025.

Failure does not mean the war will resolve itself into a frozen conflict. Ukraine may begin losing the war this year, as Russian advantages multiply into 2025 and 2026. In 2024, the West faces a critical choice. Otherwise, as our colleague Jack Watling recently argued, the West will cede an irrecoverable advantage to Russia in this war. A defeat would see Moscow impose its will on Ukraine and walk away from the war believing that it had effectively exhausted and defeated the West. Despite the strategic cost to Russia, Ukraine would lose territory and would bear a higher burden for the war in population and economic losses. While Russia will pose an enduring military threat to European security in either scenario, a Russia that suffers a costly defeat is clearly preferable to an emboldened Moscow that is able to recover without having to worry about Ukraine’s armed forces.

This is a sobering reality, but this outcome is not inevitable. However, it will take hard political choices to bring this situation about both in Ukraine and in the West. Key decisions have to be made this year, the earlier the better, in order to put the war on a more positive trajectory. To succeed, Ukraine and the West must align expectations and articulate a clear vision for the next 18 months: what we are building toward, how, and what the theory of success is moving forward. Without a long-term strategy, it will be difficult to achieve unity of effort and manage scarce resources. If in 2024 Ukraine is able to exhaust Russian forces at the peak of Russian defense spending, then retake the initiative and inflict a series of defeats on the Russian military in 2025, it could establish the necessary leverage over Moscow in this war. This would require putting Russia’s military position in jeopardy, replacing Russian confidence with uncertainty. The goal is war termination, on favorable terms for Ukraine, and in a manner that ensures a durable peace or the Ukrainian ability to secure it down the line. A defeat would see Ukraine irrevocably lose territory, with Russia able to impose the peace on its own terms in a manner that would limit Ukraine’s sovereignty. Attaining the necessary advantage to achieve this is feasible by 2025. Much depends on sustained Western support and choices made now.

Become a Member

Michael Kofman is a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Previously he served as director of the Russia Studies Program at the Center for Naval Analyses, where he conducted research on the capabilities, strategy, and military thought of the Russian Armed Forces.

Rob Lee is a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia Program and a former Marine infantry officer.

Dara Massicot is a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Previously she served as a senior analyst for Russian military capabilities at the Department of Defense.

Image: Ukrainian Ministry of Defense

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Michael Kofman · January 26, 2024

17. We Wanted to Implement Data-Driven Operations During an Army Exercise—Here’s What We Learned

Excerpts:

At little cost to the Army, we developed and demonstrated a clear proof of concept for embracing the National Defense Strategy’s “innovation ecosystem” to support data-driven decision-making. We encourage the Army to invest in these efforts, improve them, and then bring the training to additional units. Multiple capability areas need at least a basic level of data analysis and would benefit from this type of training. We also note that refinement and improvement of our training is important—data, tools, and methods are not static.

We also encourage the Army to use common commercial software, not exquisite, military-specific software. Commercial software is often cheaper, easier to learn, and easier to find (both the software and those already trained to use it). In addition, when commercial software is properly selected, it is more likely to receive ongoing development, patches, and updates as part of the license, allowing soldiers to benefit from rapidly evolving, best-in-class software capabilities. A marked contrast to the buggy, difficult-to-use, slow-to-improve software commonly seen in the Defense Travel System and other government-only software systems. The advent of large language models such as ChatGPT provide even more capabilities that could be tested in future exercises and wargames.

Our Army experience, including during deployments, influenced the instructional design and datasets selected for the training, but it is important to note that many of the skills required to create and deliver the training came from our civilian backgrounds, not from the Army. By combining Army experiences with capabilities from our civilian professions, we attempted to create training that would better prepare our units and ourselves for future mobilizations. As the Army and joint force continue to build their data-related capabilities, we strongly urge leadership to build similar data analytic courses, include related training in professional military education, and consider further harnessing the existing civilian data skills offered by members of the reserve components.

We Wanted to Implement Data-Driven Operations During an Army Exercise—Here’s What We Learned - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Michael Schwille, Scott Fisher, Eli Albright · January 25, 2024

Share on LinkedIn

Send email

“The United States’ technological edge has long been a foundation of our military advantage. . . . Because Joint Force operations increasingly rely on data-driven technologies and integration of diverse data sources, the Department will implement institutional reforms that integrate our data, software, and artificial intelligence efforts and speed their delivery to the warfighter.”

“[Goal #1] The IC [intelligence community] will improve its ability to provide timely and accurate insights into competitor intentions, capabilities, and actions by strengthening capabilities in language, technical, and cultural expertise and harnessing open source, ‘big data,’ artificial intelligence, and advanced analytics. . . . In response to changing mission needs, the IC will foster a culture that embraces innovation and the application of tools, data, processes, and standards necessary to transform labor- and time-intensive work into more efficient and productive human-machine partnerships.”

Strategic documents from both the Department of Defense and intelligence community illustrate the importance of harnessing the value of data. But has it, as the National Defense Strategy describes as the objective, reached the warfighter? The short answer is no. For soldiers, a brief look at the courses available in ATRRS (Army Training Requirements and Resources System) shows little data-specific training. The branch schoolhouses (where soldiers learn how to perform their jobs) are also largely barren. Professional military education (which provides training as people move up the promotion ladder) also offers little on “data-driven technologies and integration of diverse data sources” or how to integrate “data, software, and artificial intelligence efforts” to support the warfighter. Indeed, there is a gap between what strategy calls for and what is actually available to soldiers.

In the absence of training, innovate. During the summer of 2023, the United States Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command conducted its annual Command Post Exercise–Functional (CPX-F) with Army Reserve civil affairs, psychological operations, and information operations units. The exercise offered an opportunity to experiment—can Army units, psychological operations and information operations battalions in this case, train their soldiers to use data in ways envisioned by strategic documents?

In the months leading up to the exercise, the three of us worked with leadership of the brigade and battalions involved in the exercise to break down this challenge into three key questions:

The National Defense Strategy aside, how willing is the Army to actually allow outside data, software, tools, and processes anywhere near its IT systems? In other words, just how ardent is our embrace of the innovation ecosystem?
How capable are Army systems of delivering enough reality in a virtual training environment to effectively assess data-related skills?
How long does it take to train a unit on basic data skills so unit members can effectively integrate data analysis into operations?

Question 1: Why Should I Allow Your Software Anywhere Near My System?

Months prior to the exercise we identified the need for a capability to visualize and make sense of data representing the information environment. In previous iterations of the exercise this was largely an analog process—a small batch of posts, news articles, and social media messages would be posted in the virtual environment; analysts would find and read the content, take notes, and brief relevant findings using whiteboards and static PowerPoint slides.

For this iteration we wanted an environment more reflective of real-world conditions, where the amount and speed of information flow is too large for an analyst, or even a large group of analysts, to read every post, news article, and message to assess value. For example, monitor all social media posts related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a useful assignment, but hardly possible without the type of big data analytic capabilities mentioned in the National Defense Strategy and National Intelligence Strategy.

Based on these assessed needs, we evaluated several data analysis tools. Ultimately, we selected an existing commercial software tool called Tableau for several reasons. First, unlike many exquisite, purpose-built government systems, Tableau must survive in a competitive commercial environment, forcing it to provide both ease of use and up-to-date capabilities. Second, it was already approved for government use, including the ability to secure multiple user accounts. Third, it is industry-defining software—several soldiers already knew how to use it from their civilian careers. And finally, it was already in use across multiple commands, which meant training on the software could realistically be used in support of real-world missions.

Unfortunately, and to exactly no one’s surprise, there were multiple issues incorporating new software into the exercise. First, we had to convince senior leaders of the value of bringing data analytics into the exercise, both why it was important and how we were going to do it. Next, we had to get the software approved for use during the exercise by those running the exercise. We initially reached out to the 91st Training Division for approval. The request was sent from there up to the 84th Training Command. The 84th was willing to approve but needed approval from the US Army Reserve Command to have the software installed on the exercise network. The process took thirty days from initial request to approval, as the 91st had not gone through a software request before. To restate—it required an entire month and approval from the highest level of the Army Reserve to install government-approved software on government computers. In addition, a division-level training organization had never received a software request prior to ours. Ultimately, embracing the process and winning approval was a clear positive, but the process needs to become quicker and more efficient to better align with the goals outlined by senior leaders in the strategy documents.

Once the software was approved and purchased and licenses were provided, the software had to be installed on the exercise network laptops. Once loaded on the exercise network, the unit’s signal and communications team had to figure out how to incorporate software into the system without documentation or an example to follow. The personnel at Command Post Exercise–Functional were willing to help but did not have knowledge on how to install third-party software and integrate it with exercise systems and services.

These efforts were driven by reservists from the 15th Psychological Operations Battalion, often acting on their own time between drills. Without persistence and a large investment by the unit in planning and preparation, we would not have gotten the software approved, purchased, loaded, and ready for data analysis. Overall, the experience serves as a proof of concept through trial and error.

This pre-exercise process led to three key early findings:

Across the force there is little understanding of big data and what it can provide.
Adding capabilities to use during the exercise (i.e., software and data) is a struggle, even when we purchased our own government-approved software and brought our own data.
There is concern about crossing from data analysis into the intelligence function, and hence operating outside of an ATO (authority to operate).

Question 2: Can Army Training Systems Deliver Enough Realistic Information?

High-quality training requires enough realistic information to truly test data skills. So, can Army systems provide it? Barely, and only if pushed. The virtual information environment used during the exercise was the Information Operations Network, a closed intranet colloquially known as ION. ION can create a notional information environment—with social media messages, video postings, news sites, and a basic search function—but offers only a limited number of online personas and a limited ability to populate an information environment. A dynamic environment (one that changes and adapts based on activities performed by the training audience, not a simple, linear rollout of precooked scenarios) is needed to test soldiers, maintain their interest, evolve the story arc of the exercise, and show how effects in the information environment translate to the operational environment. However, ION offers only limited content created in a dynamic fashion and requires a heavy lift from either contractors or soldiers acting as a red cell to populate the information. In our case, we took several psychological operations soldiers and had them generate content, which all had to be approved by exercise control before going live on ION. That is, to meet our requirement for dynamism, we had to utilize members of the training audience to augment exercise control so that we could meet our training objectives.

This led to three key findings:

Improved virtual tools (which may require greater investment) are needed to provide dynamic training exercises that more accurately mirror real-world information and operational environments, tempos, and activities.
It is imperative for leaders to provide guidance on dynamic activities and responses to ensure training objectives are met.
There must be multiple personnel with the authority to disseminate created content to avoid bottlenecks.

Question 3: Training People on Data Analysis Takes Forever, Right?

How long does it take to train an entry-level data analyst—specifically, one able to sort through large quantities of information (i.e., big data)—to uncover mission-relevant insights? In our case, as psychological operations and information operations officers, how long does it take to train an analyst capable of sorting through tens of thousands of social media messages, online news articles, and other publicly available information to create operationally relevant target audience and narrative analysis?

It took less than twelve hours across two days to train twenty soldiers, ranging in rank from private to lieutenant colonel. The all-star of the exercise ended up being a junior enlisted soldier with zero data analysis experience prior to the training we provided.

As mentioned above, the Army offers little data-related training, so we relied on our civilian skill sets to create the course. We developed the training—the instructional design, scenarios, datasets, Tableau files, and related slides—months before the exercise, content we then used during our campaign to win approval to use outside software on government systems. The training was scenario driven throughout, using real-world data on extremism, Twitter/X data on Russian efforts to influence US elections in 2016 (data originally used by the Senate Intelligence Committee to investigate Russian activities), and two decades of English-language content from the Russian foreign ministry. Each scenario required soldiers to use the data and software to provide operationally relevant findings they briefed to leadership. Soldiers successfully gave their first briefings less than three hours into the training. The concluding briefs were observed by a general officer, who praised the soldiers’ ability to find and visualize answers in the data. Per a brief survey administered after the conclusion of the course, 100 percent of those surveyed found the training valuable and 100 percent thought the Army or individual units should offer similar training outside of the exercise.

After the training, soldiers were successfully able to run analytics on the exercise platform by importing raw data from the ION website to the analysis software (Tableau). Analysts were, for example, able to quickly sort thousands of posts on Twitter/X and Facebook to find key players in the information space. The analysts said without the capabilities provided by the software and training, they would not have been able to piece together network diagrams, identify key leaders, and track who held large influence on social media.

Within hours of the start of the exercise, our soldiers were able to employ the tools and training to provide relevant, data-driven insights (a process that had taken days in the analog era). Based on that initial success, we asked the exercise controllers for more noise (essentially, more junk messages that analysts would have to filter), but the soldiers swiftly overcame the increased flow. We repeated this process several times, but no matter how much we increased the amount and rate of information flow, the pre-exercise training held and the soldiers were able to quickly and effectively analyze data to provide operationally relevant findings to the commander for data-driven decision-making.

This is our key finding and proof of concept: with minimal training and using off-the-shelf commercial tools, soldiers can quickly and effectively produce operationally relevant data analysis.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Data analysis does not require months or even weeks of training to generate useful insights. In two days, our training audience, including nearly every rank from private to lieutenant colonel, was able to develop functional data analysis and visualization skills.

At little cost to the Army, we developed and demonstrated a clear proof of concept for embracing the National Defense Strategy’s “innovation ecosystem” to support data-driven decision-making. We encourage the Army to invest in these efforts, improve them, and then bring the training to additional units. Multiple capability areas need at least a basic level of data analysis and would benefit from this type of training. We also note that refinement and improvement of our training is important—data, tools, and methods are not static.

We also encourage the Army to use common commercial software, not exquisite, military-specific software. Commercial software is often cheaper, easier to learn, and easier to find (both the software and those already trained to use it). In addition, when commercial software is properly selected, it is more likely to receive ongoing development, patches, and updates as part of the license, allowing soldiers to benefit from rapidly evolving, best-in-class software capabilities. A marked contrast to the buggy, difficult-to-use, slow-to-improve software commonly seen in the Defense Travel System and other government-only software systems. The advent of large language models such as ChatGPT provide even more capabilities that could be tested in future exercises and wargames.

Our Army experience, including during deployments, influenced the instructional design and datasets selected for the training, but it is important to note that many of the skills required to create and deliver the training came from our civilian backgrounds, not from the Army. By combining Army experiences with capabilities from our civilian professions, we attempted to create training that would better prepare our units and ourselves for future mobilizations. As the Army and joint force continue to build their data-related capabilities, we strongly urge leadership to build similar data analytic courses, include related training in professional military education, and consider further harnessing the existing civilian data skills offered by members of the reserve components.

Michael Schwille is a political scientist at RAND, where his primary research interest is the integration of information into combined arms warfare. He is also a lieutenant colonel in the US Army Reserve, where he is qualified as a civil affairs, psychological operations, and information operations officer. He has conducted multiple deployments to the Middle East and Africa and is currently the commander of the 15th Psychological Operations Battalion.

Scott Fisher is a professor of security studies for New Jersey City University, where his research focuses on information warfare, US security challenges in East Asia, and open-source intelligence. He is a major in the US Army Reserve, with deployments as an information operations officer to Afghanistan, East Africa, and US European Command in Germany. He is currently special projects officer for the 151st Theater Information Operations Group at Fort Totten, New York.

Eli Albright is the S6 for the 15th Psychological Operations Battalion and an IT professional with five years of experience managing IT infrastructure for large corporations and the US Army Reserve.

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, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Maj. Xeriqua Garfinkel, US Army

Share on LinkedIn

Send email

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Michael Schwille, Scott Fisher, Eli Albright · January 25, 2024

18. It’s not your imagination. There has been more war lately.

Excerpts:

Some scholars, notably the neoconservative writer Robert Kagan, have emphasized the role of US foreign policy — and particularly US military power — in upholding the “rules-based international order” that underpinned the long peace. Increasingly isolationist tendencies in American politics over the last several years, the argument goes, are chiefly responsible for causing increasing global instability. Former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen articulated a version of this critique last week, telling Politico that “recent global events in the Taiwan Strait, in the Middle East, in Ukraine are all results of American hesitance to actually lead.”

There really is an increasing willingness on both the left and right in American politics to reconsider US military commitments after two decades of the war on terror, as seen most dramatically in the controversial withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, which began under former President Donald Trump and concluded under President Joe Biden. Still, the benefits of what’s been referred to as Pax Americana can be overstated. There’s a good case to be made that US interventions in Iraq and Libya are the cause of or at least a contributing factor to ongoing instability in the Middle East and North Africa. And for all the talk of US decline and the emergence of a multipolar world, America’s military resources and its centrality to the global financial system are still mostly unmatched. When global demands were growing for a military coalition to protect Red Sea shipping from the Houthis in Yemen, there wasn’t much question about which country would lead it.

But it is true that we live in a world where US primacy is increasingly challenged by nuclear-armed powers like Russia and China, the latter of which now has the world’s largest military in terms of manpower and is arming up at a rapid pace. The upshot of such a renewed period of great power rivalry, notes Uppsala’s Öberg, is that “we tend to see many more proxy wars.”

It’s not your imagination. There has been more war lately.

Why the “long peace” may be ending.

By Joshua Keating Jan 25, 2024, 10:20am EST

Vox · by Joshua Keating · January 25, 2024

An Israeli soldier in northern Gaza on January 7, 2024.

Noam Galai/Getty Images

Joshua Keating is a senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy and world news with a focus on the future of international conflict. He is the author of the 2018 book, Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood, an exploration of border conflicts, unrecognized countries, and changes to the world map.

Is the world becoming more violent, or does it just seem that way?

Yes, the gruesome scenes from Gaza and Ukraine, not to mention less-covered but still deadly conflicts from Myanmar to Sudan to Haiti, paint a picture of a world on fire. Yes, we just experienced a moment when a country with nuclear weapons (Pakistan) was hit by a missile strike from a bordering country (Iran). But it’s also true that media coverage of deadly global events can obscure more positive long-term global trends.

Until recently, there was a good case to be made that we were living through just such a trend. The period since the end of World War II has been referred to as the “long peace” for the historically anomalous absence of interstate war. And this wasn’t just a fortunate accident — around a decade ago, books such as Harvard psychologist Stephen Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature and international relations scholar Joshua Goldstein’s Winning the War on War argued that traditional armed conflict was becoming obsolete.

For Americans, the first decade of the 21st century may have been dominated by the 9/11 attacks and the bloody and controversial wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but by some measures, it was one of the most peaceful periods in recorded history, with fewer recorded battlefield deaths than the world had seen in a century. (Even American losses in the war on terror were small compared to the worst of US history — a little more than 7,000 US service members were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined, fewer than half the number killed in World War II’s Battle of the Bulge.)

In the decade that followed, due largely to the raging conflict in Syria, the number of civilian and military deaths in state-based conflicts around the world climbed from just over 25,000 in 2011 to just short of 116,000 in 2014, according to data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program and Peace Research Institute Oslo. But that’s still lower than many years in the 1970s and 1980s, when global totals often exceeded 200,000 annually, let alone the more than 400,000 who died on average per year in the late 1940s. By 2020, the number had fallen back below 54,000.

But the decline in deaths was just one factor — something fundamental seemed to have changed about the nature of war in the post-Cold War era. When wars have happened over the past few decades, they’ve almost always been fought within states, involving nonstate actors like rebel groups or terrorist organizations. While they can certainly be brutal — just look at Syria or the Rwandan genocide, the latter of which cost the lives of some 800,000 people — these conflicts usually don’t involve enough people or firepower to produce casualties on the level of interstate conflicts, meaning wars between two or more countries.

Conflicts on the order of the Napoleonic and French Revolutionary wars of the early 19th century (2.5 million deaths) or the 1980s Iran-Iraq war (as high as 1 million) seemed unthinkable. And the exceptions, like the initial US campaign against Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime in 2003 or Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, tended to be brief and fairly one-sided. It was easy to look at the trends and think, as experts like Pinker and Goldstein did, that truly destructive interstate war was a thing of the past — something too irrational to endure in an era of globalization and interconnection.

Lately, however, the picture has looked less promising.

Uppsala’s data shows a dramatic increase in the number of different conflicts around the world starting around 2011 — the year of the Arab Spring uprisings, which led to deadly conflicts in Syria, Libya, and Yemen.

Then came 2022, which, according to Uppsala and PRIO, saw more than 204,000 war deaths. That made it the deadliest year for conflict since the mid-1980s. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine made the biggest headlines: It was the kind of industrialized nation-state versus nation-state conflict, complete with tank assaults and trench warfare and artillery duels, that the world had rarely seen this century.

But it wasn’t even the deadliest war of 2022. That dubious honor went to Ethiopia’s war with separatists in the Tigray region, which led to between 300,000 and 600,000 deaths over the course of two years. Though Uppsala and PRIO haven’t yet released numbers for 2023, it’s unlikely the outlook has improved given the brutal toll in Gaza since October 7 as well as conflicts elsewhere.

“At this point, we can be sure that it’s not just random based just on the numbers we’re seeing,” Magnus Öberg, director of the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, told Vox.

So does the recent uptick in war — both the number of conflicts and how deadly they are — suggest that the long peace is over and that war is making a comeback? And if so, why?

The challenge is that understanding why the world seems to be getting more violent requires understanding why it had been getting more peaceful — and there’s little consensus there. (In fact, some scholars have argued that conflict didn’t decline at all, and that the long peace thesis is based on cherry-picked data.)

But there are a number of plausible explanations for both war’s earlier decline and why that decline may be reversing.

War doesn’t pay

One simple suggestion for the long peace: War isn’t worth it. Thanks to global supply chains and increasing economic interconnectedness, any benefits of war are outweighed by the costs of disruption. The most famous expression of this so-called “capitalist peace” idea is New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s “Golden Arches Theory,” which holds that “No two countries that both have a McDonald’s have ever fought a war against each other.”

While it made some sense when Friedman formulated it in 1996, the rule has been violated many times since — and never more clearly than in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, two countries that, yes, both had McDonald’s. If Russian President Vladimir Putin hadn’t made the decision to invade in 2022, there’s no reason to think European countries wouldn’t still be buying Russian gas at the same or even increased rates via either a vast network of pipelines that crosses Ukraine itself or the newly constructed Nord Stream pipeline. The war has cost Russia dearly in trade, investment, and squandered opportunities for economic development, not to mention the lives of more than 40,000 of its soldiers.

A police officer stands in front of a heavily damaged residential building three days after a Russian missile attack in Kyiv, on January 5, 2024.

Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images

Putin’s willingness to put territorial ambitions and security interests (as he perceives them) ahead of dollars-and-cents calculations is a stark warning for those who suggest, for example, that Taiwan’s indispensable role in global semiconductor production would make an invasion too expensive for China to attempt. And rather than acting as a deterrent to war, the global financial system has just as often become another forum for conflict, one in which countries use sanctions, export controls, and other means to inflict pain on one another — a practice known as “weaponized interdependence.”

The global cop is off the beat

Some scholars, notably the neoconservative writer Robert Kagan, have emphasized the role of US foreign policy — and particularly US military power — in upholding the “rules-based international order” that underpinned the long peace. Increasingly isolationist tendencies in American politics over the last several years, the argument goes, are chiefly responsible for causing increasing global instability. Former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen articulated a version of this critique last week, telling Politico that “recent global events in the Taiwan Strait, in the Middle East, in Ukraine are all results of American hesitance to actually lead.”

There really is an increasing willingness on both the left and right in American politics to reconsider US military commitments after two decades of the war on terror, as seen most dramatically in the controversial withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, which began under former President Donald Trump and concluded under President Joe Biden. Still, the benefits of what’s been referred to as Pax Americana can be overstated. There’s a good case to be made that US interventions in Iraq and Libya are the cause of or at least a contributing factor to ongoing instability in the Middle East and North Africa. And for all the talk of US decline and the emergence of a multipolar world, America’s military resources and its centrality to the global financial system are still mostly unmatched. When global demands were growing for a military coalition to protect Red Sea shipping from the Houthis in Yemen, there wasn’t much question about which country would lead it.

But it is true that we live in a world where US primacy is increasingly challenged by nuclear-armed powers like Russia and China, the latter of which now has the world’s largest military in terms of manpower and is arming up at a rapid pace. The upshot of such a renewed period of great power rivalry, notes Uppsala’s Öberg, is that “we tend to see many more proxy wars.”

Then there’s the role of increasingly assertive “middle powers.” Consider the “Axis of Resistance” groups Iran uses to project power throughout the Middle East, or Turkey’s involvement in the conflict in Libya, or how Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have become entangled in the conflict in Sudan. This can intensify war because outside patrons keep belligerents on the battlefield longer, prolonging conflicts.

Eroding norms

One simple but counterintuitive argument for the decline of war, or at least interstate war, is that war is technically illegal. The UN Charter forbids “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” Even if the rule has frequently been violated in the years since the UN’s founding, it’s true that wars of territorial conquest have become far more rare than they were before 1945. (When Russia first annexed Crimea in 2014, then-US Secretary of State John Kerry accused the country of behaving in a “19th-century fashion.”)

When countries do use or threaten to use force against one another, they generally at least pay lip service to international law in order to justify their actions. Tellingly, in announcing the start of his “special military operation” in Ukraine, Putin invoked the UN Charter’s right to “individual or collective self-defense,” arguing that he was acting to protect the rights of Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine. Notably, he cited US interventions in Iraq, Libya, and Syria as precedent.

That wasn’t accidental. Oona Hathaway, a Yale University professor of international law, told Vox that the US has inadvertently undermined the rules-based order that it helped build and protect. “The US really led the way in pioneering this idea that states can use military force against nonstate actors located in the territory of other states, and they can do so without the consent of the state,” Hathaway told Vox.

It’s hard to believe now, but there was a time when Sen. John McCain, who was no one’s idea of a dove, argued that pursuing Osama bin Laden in Pakistani territory would violate that country’s sovereignty. Today, the idea of attacking an armed group on another country’s territory has been more or less normalized, as shown by the recent Iran-Pakistan skirmish.

Nuclear nightmares

There’s also the ironic concept of “nuclear peace”: the idea that the dangers of nuclear war are so great that major powers deliberately skirt conflict in order to avoid catastrophe. For all that his rhetoric has frequently involved nuclear weapons, Putin has not actually come close to deploying them in Ukraine, nor has he used conventional weapons against any of the NATO member countries directly supplying weapons to Ukraine. Putin knows that these countries are bound by a mutual defense treaty to the US and fall under the so-called “nuclear umbrella.” When troops from China and India — two nuclear states with modern militaries — fight over disputed territory in the Himalayas, they deliberately do so with sticks and bricks rather than guns, keeping the risk of escalation minimal.

But Ukraine also shows how nuclear weapons can enable conflict. The fact that Putin controls the world’s largest nuclear arsenal is the chief reason he can be confident his military won’t have to face US and NATO troops on the battlefield. Without that arsenal, it’s reasonable to think the US might have intervened directly to protect Ukraine’s sovereignty from invasion, as it did Kuwait’s in 1990. Even a NATO-imposed “no-fly zone” to protect Ukraine is considered too dangerous precisely because of the unknowable risk that a single Russian warplane downed by NATO fighters might lead to nuclear annihilation.

At the same time, nuclear deterrence may be losing its potency. Ukraine’s experience — it gave up the Soviet nuclear weapons that were left on its territory after independence in exchange for security guarantees from Russia and the US — may convince other countries facing potential invasion threats that they need to maintain nuclear arsenals of their own. China, which has been building its nuclear arsenal, may soon become the third country in the world with more than 1,000 nuclear warheads, complicating Cold War-era models of deterrence and armed control that assumed just two nuclear superpowers. And whatever the reason, Iran — which has been making renewed progress on its own nuclear program — did not appear particularly deterred from launching a missile strike at the territory of nuclear-armed Pakistan earlier this month.

The democratization of destruction

The first attempted lethal strike by a remotely piloted aerial drone took place in Afghanistan in 2001, during the first months of the US war on terror. In the years that followed, drones became one of the primary tools for US counterterrorism, symbolizing the near-omnipotent ability of the United States to strike targets at will, nearly anywhere in the world, all without putting a single one of its service members at risk.

Members of the Sudanese armed popular resistance, which supports the army in the ongoing conflict with paramilitaries, in Gedaref, Sudan, on January 16, 2024.

Ebrahim Hamid/AFP via Getty Images

And drone warfare has since gone global. A 2020 New America study found that as of that year, at least 10 countries had conducted drone strikes, and 38 possessed armed drones.

Starting in 2020, the Armenia-Azerbaijan war and Ethiopia’s war in Tigray showed how drones could be used to devastating effect on a conventional battlefield, as opposed to limiting use to counterterrorism operations. And both sophisticated drones supplied by the US and off-the-shelf models rigged to help with surveillance or to drop explosives have been a major factor in the war in Ukraine for both sides.

It’s not only nation-states that have taken advantage. Militant groups have employed large numbers of what one US military commander dubbed “Costco drones” to attack US bases in Iraq and Syria. Mexican drug cartels are increasingly using bomb-dropping drones as well.

And drones aren’t the only military tool that seems to be democratizing. For years, defense analysts have been debating whether China’s military would be capable of using ballistic missiles — which fly higher and faster than cruise missiles and are more difficult to intercept — to target ships in a potential war with the United States, something that had never actually been done in a combat setting. In December, Houthi rebels targeting shipping in the Red Sea went ahead and did it. This week, Mexico’s government called for an investigation into how military-grade US weapons, including grenade and rocket launchers, ended up in the hands of cartels.

The bottom line is that more actors — from small, poor countries to nonstate militant groups — now have access to the sort of capabilities that were once reserved for superpowers.

Crime: The wars below the surface

One criticism of the decline of war thesis has been that it leaves out a large portion of the world’s armed conflict, which is carried out by groups that don’t wear uniforms and don’t have an explicitly political agenda.

For instance, the signing of a peace agreement between the Colombian government and the country’s left-wing FARC rebels in 2016 ended more than half a century of brutal fighting and brought some excited headlines touting the fact that there were now no ongoing wars of any kind in the entire Western Hemisphere. The last time two countries in the region went to war with each other was the short-lived Soccer War between El Salvador and Honduras in 1969.

Yet of the 10 countries with the world’s highest homicide rates, eight are in Latin America or the Caribbean, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. Criminal organizations and drug cartels can pose as much of a threat to political order as any politically motivated rebel group, as shown earlier this month in Ecuador, where armed gangs attacked key sites throughout the country. The chaos caused by gang violence in Haiti has become sufficiently dire that a UN-organized peacekeeping force is in the works. Warlike levels of violence are one of the main drivers of the region’s high-levels of mass migration as well.

None of this is war, in the traditional sense, but neither is it peace.

Is war back?

Joshua Goldstein, author of Winning the War on War, told Vox that there is “clearly something different going on than what has been [happening] during the post-Cold War era,” but cautioned that it’s too soon to say whether it’s a “long-term or a short-term reversal.”

Tourists visit the Triangle Fortress on Taiwan’s frontline island of Kinmen on December 6, 2023.

Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images

Goldstein pointed out that even as new conflicts have emerged in Ukraine, Gaza, and elsewhere, a number of long-running wars have also come to an end. The US withdrew from Afghanistan, ending a two-decade war, in 2021. The conflict in Syria has gone from a raging inferno to a low boil, as the Bashar al-Assad regime has consolidated control over much of the country and has normalized relations with many of the regional powers that were backing armed efforts to overthrow him just a few years ago. An uneasy ceasefire has been held in Yemen for the last two years, a welcome respite in a conflict that has directly killed more than 150,000 as well as far more through disease and malnutrition, although it remains to be seen how long that can last given the Houthis’ recent activities and the international coalition assembled to stop them.

None of the outcomes of these wars are particularly welcome for the United States — or for most of the people in those countries, given which groups and authoritarians ended up in power — but they do show that seemingly intractable conflicts can end even as new ones emerge.

It’s clearly not realistic to think that war will simply disappear. But as grim as the global headlines have been in recent weeks, it’s also misguided to assume that a return to the global carnage of the past is simply inevitable.

Vox · by Joshua Keating · January 25, 2024

19. The Next Global War by Hal Brands

Ominous.

Difficulty mobilizing for multi theater war? I think we are going to have trouble mobilizing, period.

Excerpts:

Thus, the United States would have great difficulty mobilizing for a multitheater war, or even mobilizing for protracted conflict in a single region while keeping allies supplied in others. It might struggle to generate the vast magazines of munitions needed for great-power conflict or to replace ships, planes, and submarines lost in the fighting. It would surely be hard-pressed to keep pace with its most potent rival in a potential war in the western Pacific; as a Pentagon report puts it, China is now “the global industrial powerhouse in many areas—from shipbuilding to critical minerals to microelectronics,” which could give it a crucial mobilization advantage in a contest with the United States. If war does engulf multiple theaters of Eurasia, Washington and its allies might not win.

It isn’t helpful to pretend that there is an obvious, near-term solution to these problems. Focusing U.S. military power and strategic attention overwhelmingly on Asia, as some analysts advocate, would take a toll on American global leadership in any circumstances. At a time when the Middle East and Europe are already in such profound turmoil, it could be tantamount to superpower suicide. But although dramatically ramping up military spending to drive down global risk is strategically essential, it seems politically inexpedient, at least until the United States suffers a more jarring geopolitical shock. In any case, it would take time—time Washington and its friends might not have—for even sizable increases in defense outlays to have a tangible military effect. The Biden administration’s approach seems to involve muddling through in Ukraine and the Middle East, making only marginal, selective increases in military spending, and betting the house that China doesn’t become more bellicose—a policy that could work well enough, but could also fail disastrously.

The international scene has darkened dramatically in recent years. In 2021, the Biden administration could envision a “stable and predictable” relationship with Russia—until that country invaded Ukraine in 2022. In 2023, U.S. officials deemed the Middle East quieter than at any time this century—just before a devastating, regionally destabilizing conflict broke out. U.S.-Chinese tensions aren’t particularly febrile at the moment, but sharpening rivalry and a shifting military balance make for a dangerous mix. Great catastrophes often seem unthinkable until they happen. As the strategic environment deteriorates, it’s time to recognize how eminently thinkable global conflict has become.

The Next Global War

How Today’s Regional Conflicts Resemble the Ones That Produced World War II

By Hal Brands

January 26, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by The Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China · January 26, 2024

The post-Cold War era began, in the early 1990s, with soaring visions of global peace. It is ending, three decades later, with surging risks of global war. Today, Europe is experiencing its most devastating military conflict in generations. A brutal fight between Israel and Hamas is sowing violence and instability across the Middle East. East Asia, fortunately, is not at war. But it isn’t exactly peaceful, either, as China coerces its neighbors and amasses military power at a historic rate. If many Americans don’t realize how close the world is to being ravaged by fierce, interlocking conflicts, perhaps that’s because they’ve forgotten how the last global war came about.

When Americans think of global war, they typically think of World War II—or the part of the war that began with Japan’s strike on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. After that attack, and Adolf Hitler’s subsequent declaration of war against the United States, the conflict was a single, all-encompassing struggle between rival alliances on a global battlefield. But World War II began as a trio of loosely connected contests for primacy in key regions stretching from Europe to the Asia-Pacific—contests that eventually climaxed and coalesced in globally consuming ways. The history of this period reveals the darker aspects of strategic interdependence in a war-torn world. It also illustrates uncomfortable parallels to the situation Washington currently confronts.

The United States isn’t facing a formalized alliance of adversaries, as it once did during World War II. It probably won’t see a replay of a scenario in which autocratic powers conquer giant swaths of Eurasia and its littoral regions. Yet with wars in eastern Europe and the Middle East already raging, and ties between revisionist states becoming more pronounced, all it would take is a clash in the contested western Pacific to bring about another awful scenario—one in which intense, interrelated regional struggles overwhelm the international system and create a crisis of global security unlike anything since 1945. A world at risk could become a world at war. And the United States isn’t remotely ready for the challenge.

WAR AND REMEMBERANCE

American memories of World War II are indelibly marked by two unique aspects of the U.S. experience. First, the United States entered the war very late—more than two years after Hitler rocked Europe by invading Poland, and more than four years after Japan initiated the Pacific War by invading China. Second, the United States joined the fight in both theaters simultaneously. World War II was thus globalized from the moment the United States entered it; from December 1941 onward, the conflict featured one multicontinent coalition, the Grand Alliance, fighting another multicontinent coalition, the Axis, on multiple fronts. (The exception was that the Soviet Union remained at peace with Japan from 1941 until 1945.) This was a world war in its fullest, most comprehensive sense. Yet history’s most terrible conflict didn’t start that way.

World War II was the aggregation of three regional crises: Japan’s rampage in China and the Asia-Pacific; Italy’s bid for empire in Africa and the Mediterranean; and Germany’s push for hegemony in Europe and beyond. In some ways, these crises were always linked. Each was the work of an autocratic regime with a penchant for coercion and violence. Each involved a lunge for dominance in a globally significant region. Each contributed to what U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, in 1937, called a spreading “epidemic of world lawlessness.” Even so, this wasn’t an integrated mega-conflict from the outset.

The fascist powers initially had little in common except illiberal governance and a desire to shatter the status quo. In fact, the vicious racism that pervaded fascist ideology could work against the cohesion of this group: Hitler once derided the Japanese as “lacquered half-monkeys.” And although these countries, beginning in 1936, would seal a series of overlapping security pacts, through the late 1930s they were as often rivals as allies. Hitler’s Germany and Prime Minister Benito Mussolini’s Italy worked at cross-purposes in crises over Austria in 1934 and Ethiopia in 1935. As late as 1938, Germany was supporting China in its war of survival against Japan; the next year, it signed a tacit alliance with the Soviet Union, then fighting an undeclared conflict against Tokyo in Asia. (Moscow and Tokyo later signed a non-aggression pact in April 1941, which held until 1945.) Only gradually did regional crises merge, and rival coalitions cohere, because of factors that might sound familiar today.

First, whatever their specific—and sometimes conflicting—aims, the fascist powers had a more fundamental similarity of purpose. All were seeking a dramatically transformed global order, in which “have not” powers carved out vast empires through brutal tactics—and in which brutal regimes surpassed the decadent democracies they despised. “In the battle between democracy and totalitarianism,” Japan’s foreign minister declared in 1940, “the latter . . . will without question win and will control the world.” There was a basic geopolitical and ideological solidarity among the world’s autocracies, which thrust them—and the conflicts they sowed—closer together over time.

World War II began as a trio of loosely connected contests for primacy in key regions.

Second, the world developed a perverse form of interdependence, as instability in one region exacerbated instability in another. By humiliating the League of Nations and showing that aggression could pay, Italy’s assault on Ethiopia in 1935 paved the way for Hitler’s remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936. Germany then paid it forward in 1940 by crushing France, putting the United Kingdom on the brink, and creating a golden opportunity for Japanese expansion into Southeast Asia. Particular tactics also migrated from theater to theater; the use of terror from the air by Italian forces in Ethiopia, for instance, prefigured its use by German forces in Spain and Japanese forces in China. Not least, the sheer number of challenges to the existing order disoriented and debilitated its defenders: the United Kingdom had to tread carefully in dealing with Hitler in crises over Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 because Japan threatened its imperial holdings in Asia and its Mediterranean lifelines were vulnerable to Italy.

These two factors contributed to a third, which was that programs of extreme aggression polarized the world and divided it into rival camps. In the late 1930s, Germany and Italy banded together for mutual protection against Western democracies that might try to frustrate their respective ambitions. In 1940, Japan joined the party in hopes of deterring the United States from interfering with its expansion in Asia. Through multiple, mutually reinforcing programs of regional revisionism, the three countries declared, they would create a “new order of things” in the world.

This new Tripartite Pact didn’t ultimately deter Roosevelt, but it did convince him, as he wrote in 1941, that “the hostilities in Europe, in Africa, and in Asia are all parts of a single world conflict.” Indeed, as the Axis cohered and its aggression intensified, it gradually forced a vast array of countries into a rival alliance dedicated to frustrating those designs. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and Hitler declared war on Washington, they brought the United States into conflicts in Europe and the Pacific—and turned those regional clashes into a global struggle.

PAST IS PRESENT

The parallels between this earlier era and the present are striking. Today, as in the 1930s, the international system is facing three sharp regional challenges. China is rapidly amassing military might as part of its campaign to eject the United States from the western Pacific—and, perhaps, become the world’s preeminent power. Russia’s war in Ukraine is the murderous centerpiece of its long-standing effort to reclaim primacy in eastern Europe and the former Soviet space. In the Middle East, Iran and its coterie of proxies—Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and many others—are waging a bloody struggle for regional dominance against Israel, the Gulf monarchies, and the United States. Once again, the fundamental commonalities linking the revisionist states are autocratic governance and geopolitical grievance; in this case, a desire to break a U.S.-led order that deprives them of the greatness they desire. Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran are the new “have not” powers, struggling against the “haves”: Washington and its allies.

Two of these challenges have already turned hot. The war in Ukraine is also a vicious proxy contest between Russia and the West; Russian President Vladimir Putin is buckling down for a long, grinding struggle that could last for years. Hamas’s attack on Israel last October—enabled, if perhaps not explicitly blessed, by Tehran—triggered an intense conflict that is creating violent spillover across that vital region. Iran, meanwhile, is creeping toward nuclear weapons, which could turbocharge its regional revisionism by indemnifying its regime against an Israeli or U.S. response. In the western Pacific and mainland Asia, China is still relying mostly on coercion short of war. But as the military balance shifts in sensitive spots such as the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea, Beijing will have better options—and perhaps a bigger appetite—for aggression.

As in the 1930s, the revisionist powers don’t always see eye-to-eye. Russia and China both seek preeminence in central Asia. They are also pushing into the Middle East, in ways that sometimes cut across Iran’s interests there. If the revisionists do eventually push their common enemy, the United States, out of Eurasia, they might end up fighting among themselves over the spoils—just as the Axis powers, had they somehow defeated their rivals, surely would have then turned on one another. Yet for now, the ties between revisionist powers are flourishing and Eurasia’s regional conflicts are becoming more tightly interlinked.

Russia and China are drawing closer through their “no limits” strategic partnership, which features arms sales, deepening defense-technological cooperation, and displays of geopolitical solidarity such as military exercises in global hot spots. And just as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939 once allowed Germany and the Soviet Union to rampage through eastern Europe without risking conflict with each other, the Sino-Russian partnership has pacified what was once the world’s most militarized border and enabled both countries to focus on their contests with Washington and its friends. More recently, the war in Ukraine has also enhanced other Eurasian relationships—between Russia and Iran, and Russia and North Korea—while intensifying and interweaving the challenges the respective revisionists pose.

Eurasia’s regional conflicts are becoming more tightly interlinked.

Drones, artillery ammunition, and ballistic missiles provided by Tehran and Pyongyang—along with economic succor provided by Beijing—have sustained Moscow in its conflict against Kyiv and its Western backers. In exchange, Moscow appears to be transferring more sensitive military technology and know-how: selling advanced aircraft to Iran, reportedly offering aid to North Korea’s advanced weapons programs, perhaps even helping China build its next-generation attack submarine. Other regional tussles are revealing similar dynamics. In the Middle East, Hamas is fighting Israel with Chinese, Russian, Iranian, and North Korean weapons that it has been accumulating for years. Since October 7, Putin has declared that conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East are part of a single, larger struggle that “will decide the fate of Russia, and of the entire world.” And in another echo of the past, tensions across Eurasia’s key theaters stretch U.S. resources thin by confronting the superpower with multiple dilemmas simultaneously. The revisionist powers aid each other simply by doing their own things.

One crucial difference between the 1930s and today is the scale of the revisionism. As bad as Putin and Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are, they haven’t devoured huge chunks of crucial regions. Another crucial difference is that East Asia still enjoys a tenuous peace. But with U.S. officials warning that China could become more belligerent as its capabilities mature—perhaps as soon as the second half of this decade—it is worth considering what would happen if that region erupted.

Such a conflict would be catastrophic in multiple respects. Chinese aggression against Taiwan could well trigger a war with the United States, pitting the world’s two most powerful militaries—and their two nuclear arsenals—against each other. It would wrench global commerce in ways that make the dislocations provoked by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza look trivial. It would further polarize global politics as the United States seeks to rally the democratic world against Chinese aggression—pushing Beijing into a tighter embrace with Russia and other autocratic powers.

Most critically, if combined with ongoing conflicts elsewhere, a war in East Asia could create a situation unlike anything since the 1940s, in which all three key regions of Eurasia are ablaze with large-scale violence at once. This might not become a single, all-encompassing world war. But it would make for a world plagued by war as the United States and other defenders of the existing order confronted multiple, interlocking conflicts spanning some of the most important strategic terrain on Earth.

GATHERING STORMS

There are lots of reasons that this scenario might not happen. East Asia could remain at peace, because the United States and China have immense incentives to avoid a horrific war. The fighting in Ukraine and the Middle East could subside. But thinking through the nightmare scenario is still worthwhile, since the world could be as little as one mishandled crisis away from pervasive Eurasian conflict—and because the United States is so unprepared for this eventuality.

Right now, the United States is straining to support Israel and Ukraine simultaneously. The demands of these two wars—fights in which Washington is not yet a principal combatant—are stretching U.S. capabilities in areas such as artillery and missile defense. Deployments to the waters around the Middle East, meant to deter Iran and keep critical sea lanes open, are taxing the resources of the U.S. Navy. Strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen are consuming assets, such as Tomahawk missiles, that would be at a premium in a U.S.-Chinese conflict. These are all symptoms of a bigger problem: the shrinking ability and capacities of the U.S. military relative to its numerous, interrelated challenges.

During the 2010s, the Pentagon gradually shifted away from a military strategy meant to defeat two rogue-state adversaries at the same time, opting instead for a one-war strategy aimed at defeating a single great-power rival, China, in a high-intensity fight. In one sense, this was a sensible response to the extreme demands such a conflict would entail. But it has also left the Pentagon ill equipped for a world in which a combination of hostile great powers and serious regional threats are menacing multiple theaters at once. It has also, perhaps, emboldened more aggressive U.S. adversaries, such as Russia and Iran, which surely realize that an overstretched superpower—with a military desperate to focus on China—has limited ability to respond to other probes.

Of course, the United States wasn’t ready for global war in 1941, but it eventually prevailed through a world-beating mobilization of military and industrial might. President Joe Biden evoked that achievement late last year, saying the United States must again be the “arsenal of democracy.” His administration has invested in expanding the production of artillery ammunition, long-range missiles, and other important weapons. But the harsh reality is that the defense industrial base that won World War II and then the Cold War no longer exists, thanks to persistent underinvestment and the broader decline of U.S. manufacturing. Shortages and bottlenecks are pervasive; the Pentagon recently acknowledged “material gaps” in its ability to “rapidly scale production” in a crisis. Many allies have even weaker defense industrial bases.

The world could be as little as one mishandled crisis away from pervasive Eurasian conflict.

Thus, the United States would have great difficulty mobilizing for a multitheater war, or even mobilizing for protracted conflict in a single region while keeping allies supplied in others. It might struggle to generate the vast magazines of munitions needed for great-power conflict or to replace ships, planes, and submarines lost in the fighting. It would surely be hard-pressed to keep pace with its most potent rival in a potential war in the western Pacific; as a Pentagon report puts it, China is now “the global industrial powerhouse in many areas—from shipbuilding to critical minerals to microelectronics,” which could give it a crucial mobilization advantage in a contest with the United States. If war does engulf multiple theaters of Eurasia, Washington and its allies might not win.

It isn’t helpful to pretend that there is an obvious, near-term solution to these problems. Focusing U.S. military power and strategic attention overwhelmingly on Asia, as some analysts advocate, would take a toll on American global leadership in any circumstances. At a time when the Middle East and Europe are already in such profound turmoil, it could be tantamount to superpower suicide. But although dramatically ramping up military spending to drive down global risk is strategically essential, it seems politically inexpedient, at least until the United States suffers a more jarring geopolitical shock. In any case, it would take time—time Washington and its friends might not have—for even sizable increases in defense outlays to have a tangible military effect. The Biden administration’s approach seems to involve muddling through in Ukraine and the Middle East, making only marginal, selective increases in military spending, and betting the house that China doesn’t become more bellicose—a policy that could work well enough, but could also fail disastrously.

The international scene has darkened dramatically in recent years. In 2021, the Biden administration could envision a “stable and predictable” relationship with Russia—until that country invaded Ukraine in 2022. In 2023, U.S. officials deemed the Middle East quieter than at any time this century—just before a devastating, regionally destabilizing conflict broke out. U.S.-Chinese tensions aren’t particularly febrile at the moment, but sharpening rivalry and a shifting military balance make for a dangerous mix. Great catastrophes often seem unthinkable until they happen. As the strategic environment deteriorates, it’s time to recognize how eminently thinkable global conflict has become.

HAL BRANDS is Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the co-author of The Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China.
MORE BY HAL BRANDS

Foreign Affairs · by The Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China · January 26, 2024

20. Military Leaders Do What Makes Them Look Good

Conclusion:

I can’t change this system of successive bottlenecks based around personalities that defines the military. What I can do is help the future officers I teach see that they can’t just come in and stomp around to express “leadership”: they have to gather information, find out what the real situation is and what their people are really thinking, and be able to explain their decision, which they need to be able to justify, not merely say it’s them exhibiting “leadership.” Synthesize data, reach a position, be able to justify it, and respond to dissent as a way to show why you got to where you got. And be willing to change your mind if the data suggests you should.

Military Leaders Do What Makes Them Look Good

By Bruce Fleming

January 26, 2024

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/01/26/military_leaders_do_what_makes_them_look_good_1007615.html?mc_cid=7eca6988c0&mc_eid=70bf478f36

This is an excerpt from Bruce Fleming's new book, Saving Our Service Academies (Post Hill Press).

“Leaders to Serve the Nation,” say banners placed all over the Yard of the US Naval Academy, where I have been an English professor since 1987, and that pop up on the Web. This implies perhaps that all graduates are leaders? That leaders cannot be got elsewhere? That only Naval Academy graduates serve the nation? That all of them do? We present ourselves as a leadership institution—though, of course, West Point claims the same. Its website says, “The Preeminent Leadership Development Institution.” I guess “leadership” is what you learn at a military institution.

And everywhere else, it seems. It’s all colleges, as well as most high schools, elementary schools, after-school programs, and even summer camps. Every state university has, and most private ones have a “leadership” program, and some give degrees in it. Google “university leadership”—your eyes will blur if you look at them all. With all these leaders, who will follow?

I have seen many superintendent admirals come and go at Annapolis over more than 30 years. Almost every one was more clueless about where he was than the last, at an educational institution that was strange to them and not on board a ship under deployment (always a “he,” by the way, until 2023). So what would they do if inserted into a world as strange as, say, Afghanistan? I think we saw. But almost to a man they have puffed out their chest, spoken loudly, and exhibited what they call “leadership,” which largely seems to consist of doing what makes them look good.

According to the reports of former students, it’s also the way of the broader military, where your commanding officer can decide that s/he doesn’t like you for whatever reason, or that his or her job is in jeopardy if s/he doesn’t show him/herself pitiless on anything that is in the public gaze. The saying goes that military justice is to justice as military music is to music. That’s not a flattering comparison. I’ve talked to countless young officers, my former students, who were accused of something (today’s hot-button topic is actions with alleged sexual connotations) and even if found not guilty, were hounded and harassed until they left, their superiors unwilling to be seen as soft. No wonder people quickly realize that what makes life in the military tolerable is a happy superior officer, something to be bought at all costs. If s/he isn’t happy, ain’t nobody happy, and you’re the one who suffers. By contrast, if the entire mission fails, say because you didn’t tell them what they didn’t want to hear, the blame is diluted, and you personally are spared.

The push was on until 2023 by a number of US senators to take the adjudication of any cases with an element of alleged sexual misconduct out of the hands of officers. The military understandably resisted this, as it destroys the almost completely personal nature of military “justice,” which is its most fundamental principle. The fear on the part of politicians is apparently that the “good old boy” network is letting scofflaws off that a civilian tribunal would find guilty. In fact, the opposite is more often the rule. Commanding officers (and keep in mind that people change places continually in the military, so many of these “rotate in” after the fact and have no knowledge of the specific cases they are asked to deal with) are unwilling, especially as new arrivals, to seem at all approving of those who have even been accused (even if found innocent) of any of the marquee offenses of our day. These newly arrived commanding officers, rather like the eternally new superintendents at the US Naval Academy, will almost always protect their own careers by throwing these young—and frequently innocent—officers to the sharks. The mere accusation was enough for someone in charge to refuse to forward the junior officers’ promotion papers. The young officer is not merely guilty until proven innocent, he (as it most likely is) is guilty although found innocent.

In 2023 this became a done deal. I think it highly likely that because politicians have succeeded in prying adjudication of alleged sexual-related misconduct from the military, it will be to the benefit of officers, not the contrary. Yet the personalized “I don’t like this person because s/he makes me look bad” way of dispensing “justice” in the military is deeply engrained in the system.

The military is intrinsically prone to say, “Yes, sir/Yes, ma’am” and acquiesce to what the superior officer wants. But officers and enlisted alike can be taught and encouraged to question, to reason, to keep their eyes open, and not to ignore evidence they’d rather not see. And from the other direction, down the chain of command, they can be taught not to punish subordinates who say things they don’t want to hear, or that suggest that their own efforts are not producing the results they want them to. In Afghanistan, as in Vietnam, the military wanted to hear and to believe that things were getting better, and that we were winning. News that suggested otherwise from below—say from seasoned enlisted who had lived the battle—wouldn’t have had much chance at making it past the multiple layers of buffer officers, all of whom wanted to tell their immediate superiors what these wanted to hear, leading back to the top.

This is part of a discussion I have with the midshipmen about “leadership,” a word the students hear incessantly. USNA claims to teach “leadership.’ Can it do so? Does it? The consensus and summary of these discussions over decades is this: leadership, when abstracted from a particular subject matter, is a set of facts about real people who enter a room, not a body of knowledge. It’s what you’d expect would be required of a person who needs to earn the respect of the people he or she is trying to encourage what he or she needs to happen. Namely: competence, confidence, interpersonal skills, positive demeanor, boundless energy, and the ability to focus, prioritize, and keep going no matter what. It’s a combination of many factors: body posture, facial gestures, use of language, ease with self and subject matter, and that most intangible of intangibles, does the person seem to like those who will be led? If the leader doesn’t like the led, why should the led like the leader? Is “led” even the right word, rather than, say, inspired?

Thus, many things follow that are nowadays frowned upon as subjects for judgment, starting with body (in shape? standing up straight) appearance (attention to uniform), and also whether or not they make you nervous and irritable, or happy, to be around. A jittery or apologetic or nervous person cannot lead a fly. These are joined to what the person says and how it is said. The result is like going to a play: everything contributes to whether the experience is a success for the viewer or not. A good leader, midshipmen tell me, has to be comfortable in his or her skin, not looking for insults, and ready to praise others while showing s/he can do those things too. Leaders have skills that turn out to be identical to the skills of good social interaction, except that they’re the one in front—which means you know they are looking at you and waiting for you to inspire them. Can these ways of interacting with others be taught if they’re not evident to you already? In a classroom? At any institution over any other? I don’t think so, and the insistence of the service academies that they produce “leaders” shows how functionless they have become and how hungry for justification.

In fact, there are a number of factors that work against successful leadership in the military. One such factor is that many people go into the military in order to have their rank elicit the show of respect they would not otherwise get in real life. They aren’t leaders; they are people handed power that they abuse. Abuse of power is an endemic problem in the military, because of the way the power is structured as a series of pyramids, each of which ends in the choke point of one individual, who is part of a pyramid above, and so on.

The military is a series of bottlenecks. A lot of individuals try to please one individual, who is one of many individuals trying to please another individual further up the chain of command, and so on. And the very top has to deal with politicians. It has everything to do with individual personalities and prejudices and very little to do with rationality. It isn’t about thinking; it’s about following orders. If you are the top of your pyramid, you are an individual within that pyramid. But not for the next pyramid up. You have to please the man or woman in charge of you, who has to please the one in charge of him/her, and so on. Subordinates give options to a superior, who decides. There is little discussion, no attempt to forge a consensus, no putting things up for a vote, and no decision by committee.

This structure of individual whim at increasing levels is largely what passes for “leadership” in the military. I’ve got the stripes, and I say what’s what. The military is the happy hunting ground of personal desire passing for rational decision making, or supplanting it entirely. It’s a fundamental weakness of the military that personal whim is massaged into a smug sense of personal “leadership” on the part of so many officers, and almost to a (wo)man, the brass. Most feel offended when their desires are thwarted, or their dictates even questioned. That’s why things go wrong so often in the military. And they don’t seem prepared to justify what they do with rationality; at least, I’ve never gotten them to justify what they do or why they do it at Annapolis. And talking with graduates convinces me that things are the same in the fleet.

The military needs more rationality and less “leadership.” It would be stronger with more thinking, more collective brainstorming, more encouragement of divergent views, and more justification by rationality—outside, of course, of battle situations, where you just have to act.

But there is plenty of time for discussion in the military, and it shouldn’t be seen as threatening to the officer in charge, but rather welcomed. We need to get people to be able to say: “I have looked at the available evidence, and this is the best course of action because X, Y, and Z.” Not just: “Because I have the rank and I say so.” We civilians need the military to be less about working individual will and more about justifying courses of action.

The benefits of teaching officers-to-be to think independently can be huge. And the price of not doing it can be even higher. You want thinking officers who can question what they are told—especially since those doing the telling are typically not on the field and hence unable to see what the situation is. The joke about admirals is that when people attain that rank, they will never eat a bad meal again, or hear the truth: they are pampered and told what they want to hear. And then they give the orders that subordinates must carry out and follow, and which may lead to death.

I can’t change this system of successive bottlenecks based around personalities that defines the military. What I can do is help the future officers I teach see that they can’t just come in and stomp around to express “leadership”: they have to gather information, find out what the real situation is and what their people are really thinking, and be able to explain their decision, which they need to be able to justify, not merely say it’s them exhibiting “leadership.” Synthesize data, reach a position, be able to justify it, and respond to dissent as a way to show why you got to where you got. And be willing to change your mind if the data suggests you should.

Bruce Fleming has taught at the U.S. Naval Academy since 1987.

21. America Can’t Win the Tech Race Alone

Conclusion:

No nation today can achieve technological self-sufficiency. No nation can even assume it will maintain its current advantages indefinitely—whether those advantages lie in space technology, advanced semiconductor development, or generative AI models. To stay in the game, Washington needs more tools than are currently at its disposal. It needs to help key U.S. partners build technical capabilities and local capacity, ensuring that those partners make technology investments that are favorable to the United States. If the United States is to succeed in the competition between two globe-spanning tech ecosystems, investments of American capital and expertise cannot stop at the water’s edge.

America Can’t Win the Tech Race Alone

Keeping Its Edge Over China Will Require U.S. Investment in Innovation Abroad

By Christopher Thomas and Sarah Kreps

January 26, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Christopher Thomas and Sarah Kreps · January 26, 2024

When it comes to global competition, according to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, “technological innovationhas become the main battleground.” In 2015, Beijing announced its Made in China 2025 plan, a policy that aimed to transform China into a high-tech manufacturing powerhouse and reduce its dependence on foreign technology and imports. China has also introduced the Digital Silk Road, a program in which Chinese infrastructure investment is linked to recipient countries’ adoption of Chinese technologies, as part of its Belt and Road Initiative. At the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing in October, Xi announced a new AI governance program and reiterated his support for international cooperation on science and technology.

In some ways, the United States is mirroring China’s plans. Washington aims to accelerate innovation and stay as far ahead of Beijing as possible on artificial intelligence capabilities and advanced semiconductors. To spur domestic innovation and manufacturing, the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act committed $52.7 billion in U.S. semiconductor research, development, manufacturing, and workforce training. And in its tech policies abroad, the United States is taking what the government calls a “small yard, high fence” approach, using export controls and similar tools to limit the ability of Chinese companies to use foundational technologies such as AI chips and semiconductor equipment. In October, the United States upped the ante by closing gaps in a previous set of export controls, expanding licensing requirements, and subjecting additional Chinese companies to trade restrictions, tightening a policy that China had already referred to as a “technology blockade.”

This reliance on subsidies and export controls has risks. China has responded by placing its own export restrictions on key materials in semiconductor and electric vehicle production and by limiting access to Chinese markets for Micron Technology, a U.S. semiconductor manufacturer. Moreover, the United States’ efforts to reshore production are hindered by bureaucratic red tape. Amid concerns about the environmental impact of new manufacturing sites and insufficient staff to process hundreds of project proposals, none of the funds allocated in the CHIPS and Science Act had been disbursed a year after its passage. Meanwhile, the domestic semiconductor industry faces a personnel challenge: too few Americans have the necessary education in STEM fields, and the United States loses many of the international students it educates to Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and other countries whose fast-tracked talent visas are more plentiful and less onerous than U.S. visa offerings.

Washington’s technology strategy focuses narrowly on domestic investment, ignoring the fact that the real competition is happening beyond U.S.—and Chinese—borders. Technological ecosystems, not national industries, are the real competitors. The United States’ success therefore depends not only on innovation and production at home but also on the decisions made by corporations and entrepreneurs in Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and other countries across the world. To strengthen and integrate these critical components of its broader ecosystem, Washington needs to both invest directly and encourage private investment in technology development abroad. A new type of government-financed tech fund dedicated to this purpose would help the United States build mutually beneficial partnerships, resilient supply chains, and a network with the resources and innovative capacity to lead the world in the technologies of the future.

CLASH OF ECOSYSTEMS

Because technology competition is not just a race between two countries or two sets of companies, it will not be won by a government lab or a company delivering singular, specific technological capabilities. The mark of a successful technology is that it is delivered as a product or service to thousands of businesses or millions of consumers. Achieving this scale requires an ecosystem of companies working together. The world’s two emerging technology ecosystems, one U.S.-based and one Chinese-based, are global, fuzzily defined, and often overlapping networks of research, development, manufacturing, software, standards, and supply chains that collectively produce goods for governments, business, and consumers to use. In this complex competition, the winning ecosystem will be the one whose collective capabilities are the most technologically advanced, cost-effective, and reliable.

The sheer volume of technology use and innovation happening outside the U.S. and Chinese hubs makes a networked approach necessary. The rest of the world accounts for more than 65 percent of all Internet and phone users, 60 percent of engineering graduates, and 50 percent of research and development expenditures. It is not only the United States and China that wish to stimulate their technology industries or stand at the forefront of progress in artificial intelligence and semiconductors. But governments and entrepreneurs in other parts of the world often face challenges in accessing capital—gaps they seek outside investment to fill. The United States and China are such dominant players in this field, too, that public- and private-sector technology actors elsewhere will need to pick a side when they choose which standards to follow, which software to deploy, which AI models to train, which semiconductor suppliers to use, and which customers to serve.

The Chinese government is starting to cater to its global tech ecosystem rather than focus only on its national technology industry. The incentives built into the Digital Silk Road initiative, as well as loan guarantees and subsidies for technology purchases, are encouraging foreign governments across Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East to adopt Chinese technologies. Meanwhile, China’s high-quality, low-cost 5G networks, electric vehicles, and smartphones are appealing to budget-conscious consumers around the world. For countries with ambitions to advance their digital and AI technologies, Chinese financing and foundational Chinese technologies are a welcome solution.

TIME TO INVEST

The U.S. government is not yet competing on the same level. Nor do its current institutions or traditional tools of economic statecraft give it the flexibility and capacity to do so. To step up its game, the United States will need a new investment fund with a new approach. A global tech fund with a mandate to support critical technologies would help Washington attract governments, private investors, and consumers around the world to the U.S. technology ecosystem and make this ecosystem’s supply chains more resilient.

Current U.S. policies essentially amount to a subsidy program; the global tech fund, by contrast, would operate as an investment fund with an independent, professional, experienced team compensated at market rates. Modeled on successful public-private investment projects such as Digital Invest—a program implemented by the U.S. Agency for International Development that offers government seed funding to bring in private investment capital—the fund would align public investment and priorities with private development incentives. Through Digital Invest, the U.S. government has provided $8.45 million and raised $275 million for investments in digital finance and Internet service provision in emerging markets. The global tech fund would have a similarly self-sustaining structure that would include a mandate to earn an adequate return on investment for taxpayers.

The fund, using a combination of venture capital, private equity, and debt financing, would take on the “tipping point” risk—providing the up-front capital outlay that gives an investment enough momentum to deliver results—for investments that improve the resilience of the United States’ and its partners’ electronics, semiconductor, battery, and green energy supply chains. These tipping point investments would support not just American technologies but also related research, development, and manufacturing abroad. To increase its impact and to ensure balance between public- and private-sector interests, every dollar the global tech fund invests should be matched by at least four dollars of co-investment from the private sector (or much more, following the model of the Digital Invest program). And while the fund would need the flexibility to take a long-term, market-driven investment approach, its performance would also be overseen by a cross-agency government advisory committee—ensuring it remains responsive to national tech priorities.

As a preliminary estimate, the fund would likely need to invest $10 billion to $30 billion each year if it is to be competitive in the battle between the U.S.-based and Chinese-based tech ecosystems. By comparison, China invests more than $200 billion annually in capital expenditures for electronics manufacturing. A meaningful U.S. investment in alternative manufacturing locations—just one of many priority areas for the fund—would alone require billions of dollars in annual outlays.

STRENGTHENING THE NETWORK

When the United States issues subsidies and imposes market restrictions to support domestic industry, it often does so at the expense of countries and companies that play important roles in its wider tech ecosystem. With the global tech fund, however, Washington could forge win-win partnerships. For example, with the Inflation Reduction Act providing powerful financial incentives for electric vehicle batteries to be manufactured domestically, Japanese or Korean companies must adjust their supply chains in order to qualify for U.S. subsidies—an effort the global tech fund could support by pooling resources with Japanese and Korean investors. Similarly, the CHIPS and Science Act has prioritized U.S. manufacturing while ignoring the need for supply chain resilience among the United States’ European allies, whose overall economic health and ability to guard against foreign influence should both be matters of concern to Washington. The global tech fund and European companies and governments could jointly invest in European semiconductor supply chains that use American technologies and equipment.

The global tech fund could also seek similar arrangements in parts of the world where U.S. economic and technology ties are not as deep as they are in East Asia or Europe. In Southeast Asia or Latin America, for instance, the fund could work with regional partners to invest in energy supply chains, focusing particularly on electric batteries and green energy. It could support the United Arab Emirates’ and Saudi Arabia’s AI investments to ensure that Arabic large language models run on American technologies. In any number of countries with top-tier electrical engineering programs, it could finance startups whose next-generation wireless encoding technologies could become the building blocks for 6G standards. It could invest in refining capacity in Australia, Indonesia, and other countries with reserves of critical minerals, such as graphite or germanium, to help the United States diversify its supplies away from China. All parties would benefit in these cases—technological integration based on U.S. standards and software would give the United States influence, the U.S. tech industry would become more resilient, and U.S. financing would help recipient countries position themselves for success in the tech economy.

The global tech fund’s investment would also help the United States mitigate one of the downsides of tech competition: the loss of access to Chinese engineering, scientific expertise, and operational capability. For Chinese technical leaders and entrepreneurs looking to invest and move their companies outside of China, the fund could sponsor the transfer of research and development and manufacturing centers, business operations, and even company headquarters to U.S.-aligned countries. Such a program would be of considerable interest to Mexico, for example, given that the country is already an attractive location for electric battery and new energy component manufacturing.

No nation today can achieve technological self-sufficiency. No nation can even assume it will maintain its current advantages indefinitely—whether those advantages lie in space technology, advanced semiconductor development, or generative AI models. To stay in the game, Washington needs more tools than are currently at its disposal. It needs to help key U.S. partners build technical capabilities and local capacity, ensuring that those partners make technology investments that are favorable to the United States. If the United States is to succeed in the competition between two globe-spanning tech ecosystems, investments of American capital and expertise cannot stop at the water’s edge.

CHRISTOPHER THOMAS is Chairman of Integrated Insights and formerly served as Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Managing Partner of McKinsey’s Asia Semiconductor Practice, and China Head at Intel.
SARAH KREPS is John L. Wetherill Professor and Director of the Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Foreign Affairs · by Christopher Thomas and Sarah Kreps · January 26, 2024

22. In Norway, young people compete to serve in the military

In Norway, young people compete to serve in the military

Other countries mulling wider national service plans should learn about the Norwegian model.

defenseone.com · by Elisabeth Braw

In this handout image provided by the Royal Court Of Norway, Princess Ingrid Alexandra visits the Army's Brigade North on October 25, 2022, in Setermoen, Norway. Simen Løvberg Sund - Handout / Getty Images

Get all our news and commentary in your inbox at 6 a.m. ET.

Stay Connected

Ideas

Other countries mulling wider national service plans should learn about the Norwegian model.

January 25, 2024 10:00 AM ET

By Elisabeth Braw

Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council

January 25, 2024 10:00 AM ET

Princess Ingrid Alexandra of Norway has just begun a year of military service after qualifying for one of the country’s sought-after conscription slots. That’s right: even though military service is mandatory in Norway, the fact that it’s also highly selective has made it a prestigious assignment for Norwegian 18- and 19-year-olds. Countries considering reintroduction of military service would do well to adopt the Norwegian model—and to expand it to all parts of society that are critical to the nation’s security.

Her father, Crown Prince Haakon, was pleased when her imminent service—in an engineering battalion in northern Norway—was announced on Jan. 1.

“I myself have a defense background and have learned a lot from it and think it has been a good experience to have with me. So I hope it will be the same for her,” Haakon told Norwegian Public Broadcasting.

The princess, who is second in line to the throne, reported for duty two weeks later, joining some 9,900 other young Norwegians doing conscription each year. This year’s figure hasn’t yet been released, but last year 9,840 men and women were selected for military service. That’s a mere 17 percent of the children born in 2004, the cohort eligible for military service in 2023.

The Norwegian armed forces select the best candidates, first through online assessments and then through physical tests. For the 2023 conscription cohort, 24,600 men and women were selected for the physical tests, and from among them the final 9,840 were selected—36 percent of them women. Being accepted to military service in Norway is far harder than getting into most universities, and that turns military service from a dreary task everyone dreads to a prestigious assignment people compete to be selected for.

Norway’s selective military service began as an accident of history. When the Cold War ended, the armed forces didn’t need as many conscripts as before. Reducing the numbers had the same effect on interest that any rarity has: it suddenly made military service more attractive. And today, at a 17 percent acceptance rate, the armed forces indisputably get Norway’s best and brightest 19-year-olds, while the lucky 19-year-olds get a standout entry on their CV.

So successful is the program that about one-quarter of the conscripts opt for a career in the armed forces. Had they not been selected for military service, many of them would not have known they might want a future in the military. Conscription allows the armed forces to reach all parts of society more effectively than any clever advertising campaign. (I have written about this in a range of publications; see, for example, “Competitive National Service: How the Scandinavian Model Can Be Adapted by the UK,” published by RUSI in 2019.)

Now that other Western countries such as Germany are discussing reintroduction of military service, they would do well to learn from the Norwegians. Sweden already has: it suspended military service in 2010 and reinstated it eight years later using a model similar to Norway’s. With the exception of frontline states with small or very small populations, like Finland and Estonia, today Western countries don’t need mass armies. They do, however, need highly trained soldiers. Indeed, they also need well-trained citizens who can be part of national defense in other parts of society. Consider healthcare: when Covid struck, hospitals and care homes were quickly overwhelmed. Or critical national infrastructure: if, say, a pipeline, power plant or sanitation plant is struck by a cyber attack, the companies’ own employees are in no position to handle the chaos such a disruption generates. Just as the military can call up reservists in contingencies during crises (conscripts who don’t become professional soldiers join the reserves), other critical parts of society should be able to call on similar reserves. The UK has an organization, the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, that deploys experts to contingencies, and the Scandinavian countries have Home Guards and auxiliary military organizations that take on some of these tasks—but not all. No Western country so far has full-fledged non-military national service. (In Denmark, conscripts can request assignment to the Danish Emergency Management Agency.)

Imagine the possibilities if every 18-year-old had the chance to be assessed for selective training with institutions ranging from the military to healthcare, power plants and water authorities. Like Norway’s conscription, such service would be a unique opportunity for every teenager to be assessed on their talent and aptitude, with educational background an irrelevant factor in the selection. If done well, national service is beneficial not just to the country but also to the individuals selected for it. Who wouldn’t want hard-to-attain professional qualifications in addition to the vaunted entry on their CV that identifies them as being one of their country’s top achievers?

National service also teaches its participants to get along with fellow soldiers of all kinds of backgrounds. It’s the ultimate social integrator. Countries shouldn’t launch national service solely to facilitate societal integration, but the fact that it happens naturally is an excellent side benefit of the intense teaching for which military service exists. Though Princess Ingrid Alexandra could conceivably have tried to get out of the selection process, she didn’t, because national service is the thing to do. Not just in Norway.

23. For People Fleeing War, U.S. Immigration Fight Has Real-Life Consequences

For People Fleeing War, U.S. Immigration Fight Has Real-Life Consequences

The Biden administration has allowed more than a million people into the United States temporarily under a program that Republicans in Congress want to limit.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/23/us/politics/parole-immigration-biden-congress.html?referringSource=articleShare&smid=nytcore-ios-share&utm_source=pocket_saves

Share full article

“We have restarted our life in America now. We lost our old life. We lost everything,” said Artem Marchuk, whose family immigrated to the United States after Russia invaded Ukraine.Credit...Rosem Morton for The New York Time

By Zolan Kanno-Youngs

Zolan Kanno-Youngs reported from Baltimore and has covered refugee and border policy since the Trump administration.

Published Jan. 23, 2024

Updated Jan. 25, 2024

Artem Marchuk needed to escape Ukraine or die. He didn’t see any other options.

He and his wife and children had been living in Bakhmut, the site of the war’s deadliest battle. Even when they made it out of the city, nothing in Ukraine felt safe.

“My kids were very hungry,” Artem’s wife, Yana, said in an interview from the family’s home in Baltimore, where the U.S. government resettled them in 2022. “There was darkness everywhere.”

The Marchuks are among more than a million people whom the Biden administration has allowed into the United States over the past three years under an authority called humanitarian parole, which allows people without visas to live and work in the United States temporarily. Parole has been extended to Ukrainians, Afghans and thousands of people south of the U.S.-Mexico border fleeing poverty and war.

Now the program is at the heart of a battle in Congress over legislation that would unlock billions of dollars in military aid for some of President Biden’s top foreign policy priorities, such as Ukraine and Israel.

Republicans want to see a severe crackdown on immigration in exchange for their votes to approve the military aid — and restricting the number of people granted parole is one of their demands.

For Mr. Marchuk, the fact that a program that saved his family has become a bargaining chip on Capitol Hill feels wrong. Although the latest version of the deal would mostly spare Ukrainians seeking parole, he feels a deep sense of solidarity with other people — regardless of their nationality — who may be left behind if Congress imposes limits on the program.

Americans, he said, should welcome people like his family. Mr. Marchuk, a former technology executive in Ukraine, said he has found work helping other refugees with the advocacy organization Global Refuge, as well as driving for DoorDash, UPS and Amazon since he arrived in Baltimore.

“Refugees deliver these packages,” said Mr. Marchuk, 36. “American citizens who have an education,” he said, very often don’t want to work as drivers.

Image

Mr. Marchuk’s daughter, Milana, playing at home. The family is hoping that Artem’s mother and other family members can join them in the United States.Credit...Rosem Morton for The New York Time

The Marchuk family also strongly supports defense funding for Ukraine.Credit...Rosem Morton for The New York Times

What is humanitarian parole?

Humanitarian parole has existed since the 1950s to help vulnerable people fleeing failing states and conflict, but Mr. Biden has used it more than his predecessors, immigration experts say. By law, the United States may grant parole if there are “urgent humanitarian” needs or a “significant public benefit” for doing so.

People who want to enter the country under parole must first have a sponsor in the United States and then undergo vetting by U.S. immigration authorities.

There are important differences between parole and the U.S. refugee program, which is the more typical path for people seeking sanctuary in the United States.

People who have parole status are not put on a pathway to a green card, or permanent residency, as refugees are. Instead, they are allowed to stay only for a limited time, usually about two years, though the administration can extend it.

Once the status expires, people must leave the United States, apply for another immigration program or take the risk of staying in the country illegally.

A political bargaining chip.

The Biden administration has made parole a key part of its immigration policy, using it to help those from Ukraine and Afghanistan, as well as people from Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, whose economies have all but collapsed.

Image

Hennadii Lutsenko, a friend of Mr. Marchuk, studies English two to three hours a day.Credit...Rosem Morton for The New York Times

Image

“They need to take people from Ukraine without problems because it’s very dangerous,” said Dominika Lutsenko.Credit...Rosem Morton for The New York Times

More than 176,000 Ukrainians and 77,000 Afghans have come to the United States under the program. And last year, the Biden administration began granting parole to 30,000 migrants a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who have financial sponsors in the United States. The White House argued that its strategy was designed to discourage migrants from crossing the border illegally by creating a more orderly, legal pathway.

Republicans have sought to limit nearly all of those programs, saying Mr. Biden is taking advantage of an authority that is supposed to be used in only extraordinary circumstances.

“They’ve abused the hell out of the statute,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said this month. “I have zero confidence that we would have achieved much if we don’t limit the use of parole.”

Some Republicans say parole often amounts to a loophole that fuels illegal immigration. They want to crack down on a practice known as “catch and release,” in which migrants are briefly detained when they arrive in the United States but are then quickly granted parole and released to await immigration court hearings.

The particulars of the deal in Congress are still being negotiated. A deal that is being discussed in the Senate seeks to reduce parole numbers by tightening immigration enforcement at the southern border.

That would not have a direct impact on the route that many Ukrainians took to America, since they generally do not arrive by the southern border. (Some Ukrainians do make it to the United States that way, however.)

But there is still deep uncertainty about whether the program will survive without changes.

Even some congressional Democrats who oppose substantially changing the parole program have acknowledged they may need to give in to some Republican demands to limit the program if they have any chance of passing the military aid package.

Republicans in the House, including Speaker Mike Johnson, have threatened to block any deal that does not impose a hard cap on the number of migrants who can receive parole, as well as the elimination of group-based parole, like the program for Ukrainians that the Marchuks used to get into the United States.

Keeping close tabs on the negotiations in Congress, Mr. Marchuk said he finds himself being pulled in two directions. He sees the parole program as a lifeline for desperate families. But he desperately wants Congress to provide military aid for Ukraine, too.

He said it might be the only hope for his sister, who is on the front lines in Ukraine, to survive the war.

‘They’re talking about lives.’

As lawmakers debate the merits of the parole program, some immigrants in the United States say all the political talk glosses over the calamities in their home countries.

“People are dying left and right, being kidnapped and it’s just impossible,” said Valerie Laveus, who came to America from Haiti nearly 20 years ago and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2008. “I am concerned because I feel like a lot of times these people are having these conversations and they’re forgetting the human factor. They’re forgetting that they’re talking about lives.”

Image

Migrant families from Haiti crossing the border into Yuma, Ariz. Last year, the Biden administration began granting parole to 30,000 migrants a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who have financial sponsors in the United States.Credit...John Moore/Getty Images

Ms. Laveus said her brother, Reginald Daniel, waited years for a U.S. visa but got caught up in the growing backlog. She knew she had to help him flee, particularly after he began suffering seizures because of brain swelling from a gunshot wound to the head.

When Mr. Biden announced early last year that Haitians would be eligible for parole, Ms. Laveus immediately filed the paperwork to prove she would be able to financially support her brother and his son for two years.

“When my brother came, he was skin and bones,” Ms. Laveus said. “If I took a picture of how he looked and I gave you a picture of how he looks now, you would see the striking difference.”

Mr. Daniel is now training to work in security, and his son has attended a military academy in Florida. While Ms. Laveus is optimistic for her brother and nephew, she also is “very leery and worried” about what the congressional talks could mean for their opportunity to apply for future immigration status.

Mr. Biden’s allies say restricting use of parole would very likely backfire.

“It means that people in desperate circumstances, who need protection, who need to leave, who need to flee their options, will be more limited, which increases the likelihood they choose the dangerous option of coming to the border,” said Cecilia Muñoz, one of Mr. Biden’s top immigration officials during the transition and co-chair of Welcome.US, an organization that helps Americans sponsor the resettlement of refugees to the United States.

Karoun Demirjian contributed reporting from Washington.

Audio produced by Tally Abecassis.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent covering a range of domestic and international issues in the Biden White House, including homeland security and extremism. He joined The Times in 2019 as the homeland security correspondent. More about Zolan Kanno-Youngs

24. ‘Decade of decline’ for U.S. military tees up likely campaign clash for 2024

‘Decade of decline’ for U.S. military tees up likely campaign clash for 2024

New Heritage survey finds Pentagon stressed, services struggling to rebuild

washingtontimes.com · by Mike Glenn

Infantry Marines from the 26th Expeditionary Unit stand next to an armored vehicle on the USS Bataan in the Aegean Sea, Greece, Friday, Jan. 19, 2024. The Bataan, an amphibious assault ship, is leading a U.S. Navy task force in … Infantry Marines from the 26th Expeditionary … more >

By - The Washington Times - Wednesday, January 24, 2024

The Army doesn’t have enough soldiers, the Navy’s fleet is half the size it was during the Cold War, and Air Force pilots aren’t getting the flight time needed to maintain their edge.

That is the stark conclusion of the latest ranking of U.S. military strength from The Heritage Foundation. The think tank says a “decade of decline” has left U.S. armed forces with a “weak” rating for the second consecutive year despite a congressional allocation of more than $800 billion last year on national defense.

The state of the military and its growing challenges in Europe, Asia and the Middle East will likely be key topics of discussion and debate in a presidential election year. The conservative Heritage Foundation has emerged as an influential force in the campaign of Republican front-runner Donald Trump, with its Project 2025 initiative created to, in the think tank’s words, “build now for a conservative victory through policy, personnel, and training.”

The dismal ratings result from years of prolonged deployments, poorly defined priorities, wildly shifting security policies, and a “profound lack of seriousness” across the national security establishment while threats to U.S. interests surge, Heritage officials said in releasing the latest ranking Wednesday.

“The military is too small, it’s too old in terms of the equipment it uses and it’s too unready,” said retired Marine Corps Lt. Col. Dakota Wood, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation and editor of the military strength index. “All the equipment was bought with 1980s money and fielded in the 1990s. Just about all the primary end items are 30 years old or older.”

Sen. Roger F. Wicker of Mississippi, the ranking Republican on the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee and the likely chairman if Republicans win control of the Senate in November, said the Heritage report’s title, “A Decade of Decline,” was “absolutely appropriate.”

“We are now living in the most dangerous moment since World War II. We need to be reminded of that,” said Mr. Wicker, who spoke at the event releasing the report.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, part of a Heritage panel Wednesday outlining the findings, said the parlous state of the U.S. military should be a central part of the discussion in the presidential campaign, which looks to be on track to pit Mr. Trump in a rematch with President Biden. The top national security issues affecting the country are the U.S.-Mexico border, the state of the military and regional threats in Europe, the Middle East and the Far East, he said.

“The Democrat, Biden, is ignoring all five. It’s almost like he’s spitting into the wind,” Gen. Kellogg said.

Joe Kent, a retired Army Special Forces officer running for Congress in Washington state, said the porous U.S.-Mexico border is a national security priority for many Americans.

Images of the U.S. military’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan also resonate with voters, he said.

“That really did remind a lot of people who said, ‘What happened with this great military that was accomplishing all those great things — we thought — and what was it all for?’” Mr. Kent said. “Didn’t we just fight a war for 20-plus years in the Middle East? Now we’re being told we have to go secure shipping lanes? I think this will become a major campaign issue.”

Strong, marginal and weak

Of the Pentagon’s various service branches, the Heritage report rated only the Marine Corps as “strong.” The Space Force, America’s newest military service, received a “marginal” rating. The Army also was listed as “marginal,” and the Navy was rated as “weak.” The Air Force ranked as “very weak” because of low readiness and proficiency levels owing to a lack of flight hours, available pilots and funding for fuel and maintenance, the Heritage analysts said.

Since 2017, the Air Force has fielded only 32 active fighter squadrons. During the Cold War, it maintained 29 squadrons in Europe alone, The Heritage Foundation said.

The Heritage analysts said the Navy has a severe capacity problem. About 290 ships are in the fleet, down from nearly 600 during the Cold War. Navy leadership, however, keeps roughly the same number deployed at any one time, doubling the workload on ships, people and supporting maintenance yards, Heritage analysts said.

Ship maintenance in the Navy is consistently delayed in part because the number of service yards has been cut in half since the end of the Cold War to just four, according to the Heritage report.

China’s shipbuilding capacity is 230 times larger than that of the U.S., Mr. Wicker said, and Beijing last year launched 30 ships, including a new aircraft carrier.

The senator said U.S. forces are being stressed at a time when adversaries are probing for weaknesses.

“Then there’s Russia. The good thing coming out of Ukraine is that it has awakened NATO,” Mr. Wicker said. “Strengthening NATO and making sure that they understand they need to pay their way is a good thing.”

Although defense spending as a percentage of gross domestic product is “far lower” than it was throughout the Cold War, the military isn’t being asked to do less. Budget increases during the Biden administration haven’t kept up with inflation, meaning a loss in real buying power, Heritage officials said.

“There’s bloat and waste within the defense budget that is sucking up funding that would be better spent on military capability,” Heritage said in its report. “Our spending priorities do not reflect the immediacy of the challenges we face. We should be focusing spending on lethality — ships, planes, and munitions.”

Struggling allies

Although the Biden administration and the Pentagon frequently cite U.S. allies as force multipliers, the militaries of nations such as Germany, France and Britain are also far short of their Cold War predecessors, according to the Heritage Foundation report.

Germany’s defense minister said last year that Berlin’s armed forces weren’t capable of defending the country. Germany won’t be able to field a fully equipped and ready division until 2025, and a second won’t be ready before 2028.

France has just over 220 tanks, down from more than 1,300 during the Cold War, about 250 jet fighters, down from a high of 686, and 19 large surface warships, down from 41. A “senior defense leader” has questioned whether the French military could operate longer than four days in high-intensity combat, Heritage said.

The British have the smallest army since 1710 and would be hard-pressed to field a single combat-ready division. Only 157 of its top-of-the-line Challenger II tanks could be made ready for operations in 30 days.

“The total UK military force is smaller than the U.S. Marine Corps: 160,000 vs. 174,000,” Heritage said.

Meanwhile, China is fielding modern aircraft, ships, submarines and missiles at an alarming rate, made possible by double-digit increases in defense spending for the past decade. It has more than 360 warships and will likely have more than 400 by 2030, according to the report.

Russia, amid a bloody war in Ukraine, is nevertheless producing more tanks and missiles than before the invasion. Heritage said it typically fires as much artillery ammunition in two or three days as found in the entire British inventory.

“They really stumbled out of the gate when they moved into Ukraine, but they’ve learned a lot,” Col. Wood said. “Russia is not out of this game. They haven’t used their bombers and still have a very capable submarine fleet — even if their surface fleet is pretty much junked out at this time.”

Mr. Wicker said the report’s findings strongly suggest that Mr. Biden’s budgets haven’t been sufficient to address U.S. defense shortcomings.

“I think we are going to have to go big,” Mr. Wicker said. “Increasing our defense budget by 3 to 5%, I do not think is enough.”

• Mike Glenn can be reached at mglenn@washingtontimes.com.

Click to Read More and View Comments

Click to Hide

washingtontimes.com · by Mike Glenn

25. SOF News Passing of Col (Ret) Donlon – MOH Recipient

I am including this because COL Donlon deserves the honor but also SOF News provides a number of resources about COL DOnlon that readers may find helpful.

Passing of Col (Ret) Donlon – MOH Recipient

https://sof.news/history/roger-donlon-moh/

January 25, 2024 SOF News History 0

Colonel (Ret) Roger H.C. Donlon passed away on Thursday, January 25, 2024, at the age of 89. He first enlisted in the Air Force and then served in the Army. Much of his military service was with Special Forces. During the Vietnam War he deployed with an A-team of the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne); during which he was awarded the Medal of Honor.

Donlon graduated from high school in 1952 and enlisted in the U.S. military. He attended the U.S. Military Academy Preparatory School and qualified in 1955 to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. However, after attending West Point for two years he left to earn his commission through the Officer Candidate School (OCS) in 1959. In 1963 he joined Special Forces. He served for more than 30 years as an Infantry, Special Forces, and Foreign Area Specialist.

On July 6, 1964, his Special Forces detachment (A-726) was attacked by a force of an estimated 900 enemy troops in the early morning hours. The SF team, along with 60 Chinese Nungs and a few hundred South Vietnamese irregulars, defended Camp Nam Dong, South Vietnam. The camp was near the border of Laos. During the battle Captain Donlon repeatedly exposed himself to heavy enemy fire – defending against the enemy, moving ammunition and weaponry, aiding the wounded, and rallying his men. He was wounded several times during the fight.

For his actions that day he was awarded the Medal of Honor. His was the first MoH award for the Vietnam War. On April 10, 2008, he was inducted (swcs.mil, PDF) into the Special Forces Regiment as a Distinguished Member.

In addition to the Medal of Honor, he was awarded the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star Medal, Purple Heart, Vietnam Cross of Gallantry, CIB, and the Parachutist Badge. He attended the Special Warfare Course, Command and General Staff College, and the Army War College.

****

References:

Congressional Medal of Honor Society

Press Release, January 25, 2024

Congressional Medal of Honor Society – Roger H.C. Donlon

https://www.cmohs.org/recipients/roger-h-donlon

Roger Dolan – National Medal of Honor Museum

https://mohmuseum.org/medal_of_honor/roger-donlon/

Special Forces Taps

Obituary

Roger Donlon – Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Donlon

Battle of Nam Dong – Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nam_Dong

“Outnumbered Green Berets Defend Camp Nam Dong”, Military Heritage, Volume 22, No. 3, Fall 2020. https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/outnumbered-green-berets-defend-camp-nam-dong/

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

Access NSS HERE

Company Name | Website