(Note: I will be traveling overseas for the next week so my daily news and commentary will be off schedule).

Quotes of the Day:

“The strategy and tactics being used against us are so foreign to our thought patterns, and the problem [that] this new type of warfare presents is so vast and complex, that it is difficult for us to hurdle the mental roadblocks and come up with the right answer, even when that answer is very plain.” 

– The Orlando Committee, proposing the creation of the Freedom Academy

"Time ripens all things. No man's born wise." 

– Cervantes

“If a country is lost to communism through propaganda and subversion it is lost to our side as irretrievably as if we had lost it in actual warfare.” You can replace “communism” with autocracy and it remains accurate and true."

 – George Gallup (1962) with modification from Matt Armstrong in 2022

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 26, 2024

2. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, January 26, 2024

3. A Hush Heard Around the World – Why Taiwan’s Election Didn't Spark a Crisis With China

4. Ukraine Is Desperate for Artillery Rounds to Battle Russia

5. Is This Amelia Earhart’s Long-Lost Plane?

6. UNRWA Is Investigating Charges of Workers’ Involvement in Oct. 7 Attacks

7. U.S. war plans for Ukraine don’t foresee retaking lost territory

8. Houthis Attack U.S. Warship as China Urges Iran to Rein In Rebels

9. How Leaders and Diplomats Are Trying to End the Gaza War

10. Tip of the Spear - December 2023 | SOF News

11. Weekend Listening: The Right Way to Fight Illiberalism

12. Ukraine invites China's Xi to 'peace summit' - Zelenskiy's top adviser

13. Germany unearths pro-Russia disinformation campaign on X

14. Inside the Heritage Foundation’s Plans for ‘Institutionalizing Trumpism’

15. Junta Battalion Controlling Myanmar-China Trade Route Surrenders to KIA

16. Master Sergeant Half-Mast and the Scrolling Soldier: A Proposal to Renew PS Magazine

17. Is Congress Really Going to Abandon Ukraine Now?

18. China success, Western failure in revolutionary Myanmar

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 26, 2024

https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-january-26-2024

Key Takeaways:

• The Kremlin and US officials rejected rumors about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s willingness to engage in meaningful negotiations amid continued indications from the Kremlin that Russia seeks nothing less than full Ukrainian and Western capitulation.
• Russian demands for Ukrainian “neutrality” and a moratorium on NATO expansion have always been and continue to be one of Putin’s central justifications for his invasion of Ukraine, and any hypothetical concession on these demands would represent a major strategic and rhetorical retreat on Putin’s behalf that Putin is extremely unlikely to be considering at this time.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated boilerplate Kremlin narratives that blame Ukraine for the war while also highlighting Russian forces in the Soledar direction.
• The circumstances of the January 24 crash of a Russian Il-76 military transport aircraft in Belgorod Oblast remain unclear.
• The European Union (EU) will provide Ukraine with an additional five billion euros to meet “urgent military needs” in the near future.
• The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) continues efforts to expand Russia’s influence and subsume previous Wagner Group operations in Africa.
• Russia reportedly imported $1.7 billion worth of advanced microchips and semiconductors in 2023, primarily from the West, skirting Western sanctions intended to deprive Russia of such technology.
• Russian forces advanced near Avdiivka amid continued positional engagements throughout the theater.
• Elements of Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin’s alleged personal private military company (PMC) may have deployed to Ukraine.
• Russian opposition media reported on January 26 that Viktor Filonov, a Russian soldier in the 234th Airborne Regiment (76th VDV Division) serving in Ukraine, adopted a Ukrainian child from occupied Donetsk Oblast.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JANUARY 26, 2024

Jan 26, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 26, 2024

Riley Bailey, Christina Harward, Angelica Evans, Grace Mappes, George Barros, and Frederick W. Kagan

January 26, 2024, 8:10pm 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 26. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the January 27 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment. 

The Kremlin and US officials rejected rumors about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s willingness to engage in meaningful negotiations amid continued indications from the Kremlin that Russia seeks nothing less than full Ukrainian and Western capitulation. Bloomberg reported on January 25 that two unspecified sources close to the Kremlin stated that Putin signaled to senior US officials through indirect channels that Putin is open to negotiations, including those that would provide “security arrangements” for Ukraine.[1] Bloomberg reported that an unidentified intermediary “conveyed signals” to US officials in December 2023 that Putin may be willing to drop his insistence on Ukraine’s “neutral status” and even may ultimately abandon his opposition to Ukraine’s NATO accession.[2] This report may refer to the same supposed backchannel communications reported by the New York Times in late December 2023 about Putin’s supposed interest in a ceasefire.[3] Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitri Peskov denied Bloomberg’s report on January 26, stating that reports about Russian readiness to give up its demands that Ukraine not join NATO are ”incorrect“ and “untrue.“[4] Bloomberg reported that US National Security Council Spokesperson Adrienne Watson stated that US officials are not aware of these alleged overtures, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated on January 19 that he does not see any indication that Putin is serious about looking for a way to end the fighting in Ukraine.[5] 

Putin and Kremlin officials have increasingly stressed in recent weeks that Russia has no interest in negotiating with Ukraine in good faith, that Russia’s maximalist objectives in Ukraine remain the same, and that Putin continues to pursue his overarching objective to weaken and dismantle NATO.[6]  Former White House Official Fiona Hill told Bloomberg on January 26 that Russian actors want the West to create the idea of such a channel in order to scare Ukraine and frame the US as the only other relevant actor in Ukraine besides Russia.[7] Kremlin officials routinely frame the Russian war in Ukraine as a struggle against the West in order to deny Ukraine’s agency in potential negotiations and to set conditions that seek to convince the West to ignore centering Ukraine’s interests in any negotiations.[8]

Russian demands for Ukrainian “neutrality” and a moratorium on NATO expansion have always been and continue to be one of Putin’s central justifications for his invasion of Ukraine, and any hypothetical concession on these demands would represent a major strategic and rhetorical retreat on Putin’s behalf that Putin is extremely unlikely to be considering at this time. Russian calls for Ukrainian “neutrality” are demands that Ukraine amend its constitution to remove commitments to seeking NATO membership and to commit itself permanently not to join NATO or the European Union (EU).[9] Demands for this ”neutral status” are a nested goal within Putin’s decades-long effort to demand changes to the NATO alliance that would weaken the alliance to the point where it would be unable to deter or defeat future Russian aggression in eastern Europe.[10] Putin has long highlighted a permanent moratorium on NATO expansion as one of those goals, which would require a change in NATO’s charter that would, in turn, require a new treaty between member states and effectively grant Russia a veto over future NATO membership.[11] Any Kremlin concessions on these demands would also amount to a significant Russian defeat, as Putin has increasingly used public appearances to reiterate that the invasion’s initial objectives remain the same and to frame the war in Ukraine as a larger geopolitical confrontation with the collective West.[12] These concessions would also be inconsistent with the Kremlin’s apparent growing public confidence about Russian prospects in Ukraine and the attainability of Putin’s maximalist war objectives.[13] Putin is highly unlikely to offer these concessions as he will not stop pursuing his objective to control Ukraine and weaken NATO, barring a decisive defeat.[14]

Russian actors may be feigning interest in offering concessions on Ukraine’s place in Western institutions in an effort to prompt preemptive Western concessions on Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Reports about Putin’s openness to negotiations through back channels have not mentioned Russian openness to relinquishing any occupied Ukrainian territory. Russian officials continue to indicate that Putin’s maximalist objectives do not exclude Russia’s annexation of occupied Ukrainian territories or additional territorial conquests in Ukraine.[15] Ukraine’s accession into the EU and NATO are long processes that would not unfold in the immediate aftermath of any negotiated ceasefire, and Russia may seek to temporarily feign acquiescing on these demands to more immediately solidify control of occupied territories. ISW continues to assess that any ceasefire would benefit Russia, giving it time to reconstitute and regroup for future offensive campaigns in pursuit of the same maximalist objectives and further territorial conquest in Ukraine.[16] There is no reason to assess that Putin would not renege on any commitment to permit Ukraine to integrate into Western political, economic, and military institutions as long as the Russian military can pursue his objectives to prevent Ukraine from doing so. Putin has already violated Russia’s previous commitments not to violate Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, including Crimea, made in 1991 and 1994.

Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated boilerplate Kremlin narratives that blame Ukraine for the war while also highlighting Russian forces in the Soledar direction. Putin continued to claim on January 26 during a meeting with students at the St. Petersburg State Maritime Technical University who fought in the war in Ukraine that Ukraine “refused” to implement the Minsk Agreements, Ukraine committed “genocide” against Russians in “[Russia’s] historical territories” in Ukraine, and the West “deceived” Russia multiple times by expanding NATO – all of which he claimed forced Russia to invade Ukraine in 2022.[17] Putin’s comments continue to indicate that the Kremlin is framing NATO expansion and Ukraine‘s existence as an independent, sovereign state as existential threats to Russia that Russia must eliminate with force. Putin further falsely claimed that Russia’s full-scale invasion was a “response to [Ukraine’s] use of armed force” after Ukraine ”started the war in Donbas in 2014” and that Russia had to “protect [its] interests.”

Putin highlighted Russian forces fighting in the Soledar direction in Ukraine during a conversation with a veteran who reportedly fought in the area. Putin claimed that Ukrainian forces are unsuccessfully counterattacking from all sides in the Soledar direction and that Russian forces are advancing ”almost every day, little by little.” Putin claimed that Russian units in the area work ”harmoniously [and] confidently.” The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) published footage of elements of the 106th Airborne (VDV) Division participating in the capture of Vesele in the Soledar direction on January 18, and Putin was likely trying to keep attention on recent Russian successes in the area.[18] Putin’s comment that units in the Soledar direction are ”harmonious” is also possibly an attempt to suppress recent claims of mistreatment within the 106th Division’s 119th VDV Regiment and the subsequent allegations that a faction of Putin’s inner circle organized these public claims of mistreatment as part of an ongoing ”clan war” with another Kremlin faction.[19]

The circumstances of the January 24 crash of a Russian Il-76 military transport aircraft in Belgorod Oblast remain unclear. Ukrainian officials continued to warn that Russia is attempting to use the Il-76 crash to reduce Western support for Ukraine and noted that Russia has not provided any new evidence from the crash site.[20] Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Spokesperson Andriy Yusov stated that Russian authorities rejected the creation of an international commission to investigate the circumstances of the crash.[21] Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated Russian allegations that Ukrainian authorities knew about the presence of Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) on the Il-76 aircraft prior to shooting the plane down and stated that the Russian Investigative Committee will publicize all details of the crash in the coming days.[22] The Russian Investigative Committee stated that its preliminary investigation confirmed initial reports that a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile launched from Liptsy, Kharkiv Oblast, downed the aircraft, and Russian media reported that investigators are decrypting the Il-76’s black boxes.[23] UN Deputy Secretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo stated on January 25 that the UN cannot verify Russian or Ukrainian reports about the circumstances of the Il-76 crash.[24]

The European Union (EU) will provide Ukraine with an additional five billion euros to meet “urgent military needs” in the near future. EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Joseph Borrell announced on January 26 that EU member states should reach an agreement to provide an additional five billion euros ($5.4 billion) from the European Peace Fund to Ukraine in the coming days.[25] Borrell added that the EU will discuss the use of frozen Russian assets to aid Ukraine before the next EU Council on Foreign Affairs meeting in early 2024. The 50 billion euros would reportedly be dispensed over 2024-2027.[26]

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) continues efforts to expand Russia’s influence and subsume previous Wagner Group operations in Africa. The Russian MoD-controlled Africa Corps stated on January 26 that a Russian MoD delegation arrived in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.[27] A prominent Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that the MoD delegation will discuss the rights and powers of the Russian military contingent in Burkina Faso and future cooperation between Burkina Faso and Russia.[28] The milblogger claimed that Burkina Faso will likely become the “main coordination center” between Sahel Alliance members Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali and that the formalization of Russia’s military presence in the Sahel suggests that this relationship will likely last for years.[29] The milblogger also claimed that Russian media is also operating in Burkina Faso to “compete with French media” and “create a loyal information space.”[30]

The Russian Officers’ Union for International Security (OUIS) Director Alexander Ivanov told Kremlin newswire TASS that several hundred Russian military personnel in the Central African Republic (CAR) would be “sufficient and effective.”[31] Ivanov claimed that such a Russian military contingent would strengthen Russia’s position in CAR and the region and would show that cooperation between CAR and Russia is ”of a strategic long-term nature.” Ivanov labeled previous claims by a CAR presidential advisor that the Russian military base in CAR could accommodate 10,000 personnel “a clear exaggeration.”[32] Russian Ambassador to CAR Alexander Bikantov told Russian outlet RIA Novosti that the creation of a Russian military base in CAR will protect CAR’s national sovereignty.[33] Bikantov stated that the Russian and Central African Republic MoDs are discussing the base’s location and have yet to determine the timing of the Russian military contingent’s arrival and the number of Russian personnel. The US Treasury Department sanctioned OUIS and Ivanov on January 26, 2023 for acting as a Wagner Group front company operating in CAR, and Ivanov’s statements to Russian state media about future Russian MoD forces in CAR suggest that the Russian MoD has been successful in co-opting some former Wagner Group structures in CAR.[34]

Russia reportedly imported $1.7 billion worth of advanced microchips and semiconductors in 2023, primarily from the West, skirting Western sanctions intended to deprive Russia of such technology. Bloomberg reported on January 25 that classified Russian customs service data shows that Russia imported over one billion dollars worth of advanced US and European-produced chips and that more than half of the semiconductors and integrated circuits that Russia imported in early 2023 were manufactured in the US and Europe.[35] Bloomberg’s report does not definitively indicate whether Western companies violated sanctions or provide identities of the likely intermediaries that trafficked the technology to Russia. Russia reportedly imported $2.5 billion worth of Western-made microchips and semiconductors in 2022 and Russia’s demand for this technology would have likely increased during 2023, given Russia’s ongoing efforts to expand its military equipment and weapons production capabilities, particularly for drone and missile production.[36] Western sanctions are likely the driving force behind Russia’s decreased import of microchips and semiconductors despite ongoing Russian efforts to evade such sanctions. ISW previously assessed that China, Iran, Belarus, and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) member states have likely been heavily involved in various Russian sanctions evasion schemes.[37]

Key Takeaways:

• The Kremlin and US officials rejected rumors about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s willingness to engage in meaningful negotiations amid continued indications from the Kremlin that Russia seeks nothing less than full Ukrainian and Western capitulation.
• Russian demands for Ukrainian “neutrality” and a moratorium on NATO expansion have always been and continue to be one of Putin’s central justifications for his invasion of Ukraine, and any hypothetical concession on these demands would represent a major strategic and rhetorical retreat on Putin’s behalf that Putin is extremely unlikely to be considering at this time.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated boilerplate Kremlin narratives that blame Ukraine for the war while also highlighting Russian forces in the Soledar direction.
• The circumstances of the January 24 crash of a Russian Il-76 military transport aircraft in Belgorod Oblast remain unclear.
• The European Union (EU) will provide Ukraine with an additional five billion euros to meet “urgent military needs” in the near future.
• The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) continues efforts to expand Russia’s influence and subsume previous Wagner Group operations in Africa.
• Russia reportedly imported $1.7 billion worth of advanced microchips and semiconductors in 2023, primarily from the West, skirting Western sanctions intended to deprive Russia of such technology.
• Russian forces advanced near Avdiivka amid continued positional engagements throughout the theater.
• Elements of Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin’s alleged personal private military company (PMC) may have deployed to Ukraine.
• Russian opposition media reported on January 26 that Viktor Filonov, a Russian soldier in the 234th Airborne Regiment (76th VDV Division) serving in Ukraine, adopted a Ukrainian child from occupied Donetsk Oblast.

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)

Russian and Ukrainian forces continued positional engagements along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on January 26. Positional fighting continued northeast of Kupyansk near Synkikva, southeast of Kupyansk near Tabaivka, northwest of Svatove near Stelmakhivka, southwest of Svatove near Makiivka, west of Kreminna near Torske and Terny, near Kreminna itself, and south of Kreminna near Bilohorivka (12km south of Kreminna) and Hryhorivka.[38] Elements of the 1st Guards Tank Army (Western Military District) are reportedly operating in the Kupyansk direction and elements of the 7th Motorized Rifle Brigade (2nd Luhansk People’s Republic [LNR] Army Corps) are reportedly operating near Bilohorivka.[39]

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

Ukrainian and Russian forces continued positional engagements near Bakhmut on January 26, but there were no confirmed changes to the front in this area. A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced on the outskirts of Ivanivske (west of Bakhmut), although ISW has not observed visual evidence of this claim.[40] The milblogger claimed that Russian forces withdrew from central Bohdanivka, but retain control over the settlement’s northeastern outskirts.[41] Ukrainian and Russian sources stated that positional fighting continued northwest of Bakhmut near Bohdanivka, west of Bakhmut from Khromove and near Ivanivske, and southwest of Bakhmut near Klishchiivka and Andriivka.[42] The Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that unspecified elements of the Russian Volunteer Corps, the 200th Motorized Rifle Brigade (Northern Fleet), and the 98th Guards Airborne (VDV) Division are operating near Bohdanivka.[43]

Russian forces recently marginally advanced near and in Avdiivka amid continued positional fighting in the area on January 26. Geolocated footage published on January 25 indicates that Russian forces recently marginally advanced north of Stepove (3km northwest of Avdiivka) and along Sportyvna Street in the southernmost residential area of Avdiivka.[44] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced near the ”Tsarska Okhota” restaurant area in Avdiivka’s southern outskirts.[45] Positional fighting continued northwest of Avdiivka near Novobakhmutivka and Stepove, northeast of Avdiivka from Kamianka, near Avdiivka’s southeastern outskirts, and southwest of Avdiivka near Vodyane, Pervomaiske and Nevelske.[46]

Positional fighting continued west and southwest of Donetsk City, but there were no confirmed changes to the front in the area on January 26. A prominent Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced near Heorhiivka (west of Donetsk City) and Novomykhailivka (southwest of Donetsk City), although ISW has not observed visual confirmation of these claims.[47] Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that positional fighting continued west of Donetsk City near Heorhiivka and southwest of Donetsk City near Pobieda and Novomykhailivka.[48] Elements of the Russian 150th Motorized Rifle Division (8th Combined Arms Army, Southern Military District) are reportedly operating near Heorhiivka.[49]

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

Positional engagements continued in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on January 26, but there were no confirmed changes to the front in this area. Ukrainian and Russian sources stated that positional engagements continued southeast of Velyka Novosilka near Zolota Nyva; southwest of Velyka Novosilka near Pryyutne and Chervone; and south of Velyka Novosilka near Staromayorske.[50]

Positional engagements continued in western Zaporizhia Oblast on January 26, but there were no confirmed changes to the front in this area. Ukrainian and Russian sources stated that positional engagements continued near Robotyne and Verbove (east of Robotyne).[51] Elements of the Russian 56th and 108th Airborne (VDV) Regiments (both of the 7th VDV Division) are reportedly operating in the Zaporizhia direction.[52]

Positional engagements continued in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast on January 26, but there were no confirmed changes to the front in this area. Ukrainian and Russian sources stated that positional engagements continued near Krynky.[53] A Russian source claimed that Russian forces pushed Ukranian forces from a number of unspecified positions in Krynky, but ISW has not observed visual confirmation of this claim.[54] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces need constant electronic warfare (EW) coverage to protect Russian forces from Ukrainian first-person view (FPV) drones near Krynky and are therefore struggling to give Russian drone operators time ”windows” without disruption from Russian EW operations so that Russian pilots can fly their own drones.[55]

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

Elements of Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin’s alleged personal private military company (PMC) may have deployed to Ukraine. A Russian milblogger claimed on January 26 that the Russian 28th Regiment of the 70th Division is currently operating near Krynky in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast and that the regiment is nicknamed “Sobyaninsky” and consists of volunteers from Moscow.[56] A Russian insider source claimed on December 2, 2023 that Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin began efforts to create his own private military company (PMC) shortly after the Wagner Group’s rebellion in June 2023.[57] ISW cannot independently verify the insider source’s claims nor the Russian milblogger’s implication that Sobyanin’s alleged PMC may be connected to the 28th Regiment.

Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) officials highlighted the successes and priorities of Russia’s defense industrial base (DIB) at the Unified Day of Acceptance of Military Products on January 26. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu stated that the expansion and modernization of DIB facilities and increased labor productivity allowed Russia to significantly increase its production of unspecified, weapons and ammunition currently in high demand.[58] Shoigu also stated that Russia should focus particular attention to increasing the range and accuracy of high-precision weapons, increasing weapons’ resistance to electronic warfare (EW), and improving Russian EW systems.[59] Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexei Krivoruchko claimed that Russian DIB enterprises plan to supply over 36,000 pieces of various military equipment; over 16.5 million unspecified weapons; and over one million pieces of man-portable weapons, body armor, and communications equipment to Russian forces in 2024.[60] Krivoruchko stated that the Russian MoD’s main tasks in 2024 include making the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) system operational, delivering Tu-160M strategic missile carriers and S-500 anti-aircraft missile systems to the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS), and delivering the Prince Pozharsky nuclear submarine to the Russian Navy.[61]

Construction began on a new Russian icebreaker on January 26. Russian President Vladimir Putin took part in the ceremony marking the start of construction of the Leningrad icebreaker at the Baltic Shipyard in St. Petersburg on January 26.[62] The construction of the icebreaker is part of the federal “Development of the Northern Sea Route” project, and the Leningrad will be the sixth Project 22220 nuclear icebreaker. Putin announced that Russia will begin construction of the Stalingrad, another Project 22220 icebreaker, in 2025.

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

Alexei German, the general director of Russian development company Hardberry-RusFactor, stated on January 26 that the company created the “Lovkiy” tiltrotor drone.[63] The drone reportedly has a flight speed of up to 200 kilometers per hour, a flight range of up to 50 kilometers, a flight altitude of up to five kilometers, and a flight duration of 1.5 hours. German stated that Hardberry-RusFactor increased the payload of the drone and constructed it out of carbon fiber after a prototype underwent tests in the war in Ukraine. German claimed that Ukrainian air defenses cannot detect the drone. German stated that Hardberry-RusFactor is looking for investors to start mass production of the drone.

Kremlin newswire TASS stated on January 26 that the Kalashnikov Concern modernized the Supercam 350 drone.[64] The new SKAT 350M drone reportedly has a new wing design with improved aerodynamics and modernized ground control equipment. TASS stated that the Kalashnikov Concern will present the SKAT 350 M for the first time at the World Defense Show 2024 in February in Saudi Arabia.

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.

Ukraine continues to foster joint defense production agreements with partner states. The Ukrainian Ministry of Strategic Industries announced on January 26 that Ukraine and Belgium signed six documents on defense industry cooperation during a joint defense industry seminar with defense companies from both states.[65] The Ukrainian and Belgian Ministries of Defense (MoDs) also signed a Memorandum of Understanding for a long-term Ukrainian and Belgian partnership to support Ukrainian strategy. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis stated during a meeting with Ukrainian National Defense and Security Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov on January 26 that Ukraine and Lithuania can jointly produce drones on Lithuanian territory.[66]

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)

Russian opposition media reported on January 26 that Viktor Filonov, a Russian soldier in the 234th Airborne (VDV) Regiment (76th VDV Division) serving in Ukraine, adopted a Ukrainian child from occupied Donetsk Oblast.[67] Russian officials reportedly transferred a seven-year-old Ukrainian boy from an orphanage in occupied Donetsk Oblast to Russia in November 2022, and Filonov and his wife later adopted the boy.[68] Russian opposition outlet Sever Realii reported that Filonov is suspected to have participated in the killings of civilians in Bucha, Kyiv Oblast, during the Russian occupation of Bucha in February and March 2022.[69] Filonov’s wife, Maria Filonova, is reportedly the head of the Pskov headquarters of the veterans’ organization ”Committee of Families of Soldiers of the Fatherland.”[70] Russian officials have previously illegally ”adopted” Ukrainian children from occupied Ukraine, and the continued pattern of these adoptions suggests that Russian officials and now military personnel may be adopting children to set administrative and cultural precedents to escalate Russia’s campaign to deport Ukrainians, specifically children, to Russia.[71] ISW continues to assess that the deportation and adoption of Ukrainian children likely amounts to a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.[72]

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated boilerplate Kremlin rhetoric blaming the West for deteriorating relations with Russia during a press conference on Russian diplomacy in 2023 on January 26.[73] Lavrov blamed Finland for “destroying the entire system” of Russian-Finnish relations and claimed that Russian-French relations are experiencing a “deep crisis.” Lavrov also reiterated false claims attempting to spoil further Western military assistance to Ukraine and accusing the West of interference in Russian domestic affairs.

The Russian information space is attempting to manipulate domestic US political events to sow domestic political instability in the US and interfere with US policy debates about further US military assistance to Ukraine. The Russian ultranationalist community seized on Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s January 26 response to the US Supreme Court’s January 22 ruling, flooding the information space with false claims that Abbott has declared Texan independence and war against the US government.[74] These claims are very likely part of a deliberate Russian information campaign. Russian Security Council Deputy Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev amplified this narrative, which an unusually large number of Russian bloggers seized on with abnormally high numbers of posts.[75] The Russian ultranationalists’ narratives about Texas mirror previously observed Russian information operations aimed at Ukraine that sought to undermine faith in the Ukrainian government and to support disruptive secessionist movements.[76] Russian information actors have repeatedly leveraged and amplified political events in the US to spread conspiracy theories that aim to foment internal instability and undermine US institutions and leadership abroad.[77]

Pro-Kremlin actors continue information operations aimed at undermining domestic political support in Western states for further military assistance provisions to Ukraine. German outlet Der Spiegel reported that the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) uncovered a Russian disinformation campaign on X (formerly Twitter) wherein over 50,000 fake accounts posted over one million German-language tweets between December 20, 2023 and January 20, 2024 condemning German support for Ukraine.[78]

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)

Nothing significant to report.

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. 

2. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, January 26, 2024

https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-january-26-2024

Key Takeaways:

• Iraq: The Islamic Resistance in Iraq released a statement rejecting the US and Iraqi decision to begin negotiations over the status of US-led coalition forces in Iraq and vowed to continue attacking US forces. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq will likely continue to attack US forces in Iraq and Syria to pressure the Mohammad Shia al Sudani administration to order the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.
• Yemen: The Houthis conducted multiple attacks on a US Navy warship and two commercial vessels in the Gulf of Aden. CENTCOM reported that the Houthis fired one anti-ship ballistic missile targeting the USS Carney. two missiles exploded within a few hundred meters of the Panama-flagged commercial tanker Achilles around the same time as the attack on the USS Carney.
• Northern Gaza Strip: The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) destroyed military infrastructure and clashed with Palestinian fighters in the northern Gaza Strip. Hamas and other Palestinian fighters have contested Israeli raids in certain areas of the northern Gaza Strip throughout January 2024.
• Central Gaza Strip: Palestinian militias conducted multiple attacks on Israeli forces in the central Gaza Strip. Hamas’ military wing detonated explosives in a tunnel entrance targeting Israeli infantrymen near the Maghazi refugee camp.
• Southern Gaza Strip: Palestinian militias conducted seven indirect fire attacks from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel.
• West Bank: Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters in three locations across the West Bank. The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the self-proclaimed militant wing of Fatah, and the Tubas Battalion of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad military wing claimed that they targeted Israeli forces with explosives and small arms fire in Tubas.
• Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights: Iranian-backed fighters, including Lebanese Hezbollah, conducted six attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel on January 26. Hezbollah conducted three attacks targeting Israeli forces using rockets and other unspecified munitions.
• Iran: The Iranian regime denied a recent Wall Street Journal report 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 26, 2024

Jan 26, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Iran Update, January 26, 2024

Ashka Jhaveri, Annika Ganzeveld, Kathryn Tyson, Peter Mills, Johanna Moore, and Brian Carter

Information Cutoff: 2:00 pm EST

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 Islamic Resistance in Iraq released a statement rejecting the US and Iraqi decision to begin negotiations over the status of US-led coalition forces in Iraq and vowed to continue attacking US forces. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq will likely continue to attack US forces in Iraq and Syria to pressure the Mohammad Shia al Sudani administration to order the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.
• Yemen: The Houthis conducted multiple attacks on a US Navy warship and two commercial vessels in the Gulf of Aden. CENTCOM reported that the Houthis fired one anti-ship ballistic missile targeting the USS Carney. two missiles exploded within a few hundred meters of the Panama-flagged commercial tanker Achilles around the same time as the attack on the USS Carney.
• Northern Gaza Strip: The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) destroyed military infrastructure and clashed with Palestinian fighters in the northern Gaza Strip. Hamas and other Palestinian fighters have contested Israeli raids in certain areas of the northern Gaza Strip throughout January 2024.
• Central Gaza Strip: Palestinian militias conducted multiple attacks on Israeli forces in the central Gaza Strip. Hamas’ military wing detonated explosives in a tunnel entrance targeting Israeli infantrymen near the Maghazi refugee camp.
• Southern Gaza Strip: Palestinian militias conducted seven indirect fire attacks from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel.
• West Bank: Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters in three locations across the West Bank. The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the self-proclaimed militant wing of Fatah, and the Tubas Battalion of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad military wing claimed that they targeted Israeli forces with explosives and small arms fire in Tubas.
• Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights: Iranian-backed fighters, including Lebanese Hezbollah, conducted six attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel on January 26. Hezbollah conducted three attacks targeting Israeli forces using rockets and other unspecified munitions.
• Iran: The Iranian regime denied a recent Wall Street Journal report that the United States secretly warned Iran that the Islamic State was preparing to conduct the January 3 terrorist attack in Kerman.

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.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) destroyed military infrastructure and clashed with Palestinian fighters in the northern Gaza Strip on January 26. The IDF Navy provided fire support to the IDF Nahal Brigade (assigned to the 162nd Division), which was operating in Beit Lahia as of January 7.[1] The IDF 5th Brigade (assigned to the 143rd Division) killed six fighters and directed IDF Air Force strikes on Hamas military infrastructure in the northern Gaza Strip.[2]

Hamas and other Palestinian fighters have contested Israeli raids in certain areas of the northern Gaza Strip throughout January 2024. Hamas’ military wing clashed with the IDF in the Sheikh Ijlin neighborhood, Gaza City.[3] Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s (PIJ) military wing claimed that it shot down an Israeli drone conducting intelligence activities near Shujaiya in the northern Gaza Strip.[4]

Palestinian militias conducted multiple attacks on Israeli forces in the central Gaza Strip on January 26. Hamas’ military wing detonated explosives in a tunnel entrance targeting Israeli infantrymen near the Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.[5] The group also fired Yasin-105 anti-tank rockets and detonated an explosively-formed penetrator (EFP) targeting Israeli Merkava tanks in the same area.[6] PIJ’s military wing fired a tandem-charge anti-tank rocket targeting IDF armor east of the Maghazi refugee camp.[7] PIJ mortared Israeli infantry and vehicles east of the Maghazi camp.[8] The group mortared IDF infantry near the Bureij refugee camp and al Musaddar village in the central Gaza Strip.[9]

The IDF 98th Division continued operations in Khan Younis on January 26. The IDF 636th Reconnaissance Unit is using drones to target and track Palestinian fighters in Khan Younis.[10] The unit has located about 200 tunnel shafts and destroyed 10 rocket launchers and other Palestinian militia-affiliated infrastructure. The 89th Commando Brigade (assigned to the 98th Division) directed an airstrike targeting four Palestinian fighters who fired anti-tank munitions at Israeli forces in Khan Younis.[11] The Givati Brigade (assigned to the 162nd Division) used sniper weapons and tank fire to kill six Palestinian fighters during clearing operations in Khan Younis.[12]

Several Palestinian militias including Hamas continued to execute a deliberate defense against the Israeli ground operations in Khan Younis, particularly west of the city. The 98th Division began an “expanded” ground operation in western Khan Younis on January 22.[13] Hamas, PIJ, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) claimed several attacks targeting Israeli personnel and armor with IEDs, mortars, and rockets in western Khan Younis.[14] The DFLP is a leftist Palestinian militia aligned with Hamas in the war. The military wing of the al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, which is the self-proclaimed military wing of Fatah, clashed with and fired mortars at Israeli forces in Khan Younis.[15]

Al Jazeera reported that the Israeli military believes that Hamas has returned to providing services in areas where the IDF has reduced its presence.[16] An Israeli Army Radio journalist similarly reported on January 16 that Hamas is trying to restore its control over the civilian population in the northern Gaza Strip, in part, by rehabilitating local police there.[17] The reporting is consistent with CTP-ISW’s assessment that Palestinian militias are likely infiltrating into areas of the northern Gaza Strip where Israeli forces previously conducted clearing operations.[18] Hamas’ return to providing services in areas that Israeli forces previously cleared undermines Israeli efforts to destroy Hamas.

The US State Department temporarily paused funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) on January 26 following evidence that its staff were involved in the October 7 attack.[19] Israeli authorities provided evidence to UNRWA that showed 12 staff members participated in the October 7 attack. Israel also provided evidence showing the use of the agency’s vehicles and facilities during the attack.[20] UNRWA reported on January 26 that it would terminate the staff member’s contracts “immediately” and launch an investigation into the allegations.[21] The United States will review the allegations and the steps that the UN is taking to address them.[22]

Palestinian militias conducted seven indirect fire attacks from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel on January 26. PIJ fired rockets targeting five locations in southern Israel, including Ashkelon, Sderot, and Nir Aam.[23] The Mujahideen Brigades fired rockets at what it claimed is an IDF headquarters for the Gaza Division’s ”Northern Brigade” and at Nahal Oz.[24] The Palestinian Mujahideen Movement is a Palestinian faction aligned with Hamas and has expressed close ties with Iran.[25]

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 in three locations across the West Bank on January 26. The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the self-proclaimed militant wing of Fatah, and the Tubas Battalion of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad military wing claimed that they targeted Israeli forces with explosives and small arms fire in Tubas, on January 25 and 26.[26] Hamas’ military wing and the al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades fired small arms targeting Israeli forces near Jenin and Qalandiya respectively.[27] The IDF reported that Israeli forces arrested five wanted persons across the West Bank and seized small arms and ammunition on January 26.[28]

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 fighters, including Lebanese Hezbollah, conducted six attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel on January 26.[29] Hezbollah conducted three attacks targeting Israeli forces using rockets and other unspecified munitions.[30] Hezbollah targeted Israeli forces at the Gonen barracks using an Iranian-made Falaq-1 rocket system.[31] Hezbollah said that this was the first attack in which it used the Falaq-1 during this war. The IDF intercepted an unspecified aerial target over Kfar Rosh HaNikra.[32] 

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

The Houthis conducted multiple attacks on a US Navy warship and two commercial vessels in the Gulf of Aden on January 26. CENTCOM reported that the Houthis fired one anti-ship ballistic missile targeting the USS Carney.[33] Carney intercepted the missile and suffered no casualties or damage.[34] UK Maritime Trade Operations reported that two missiles exploded within a few hundred meters of the Panama-flagged commercial tanker Achilles around the same time as the attack on the USS Carney.[35] The Houthis claimed that they fired multiple anti-ship missiles that hit and set the British-owned Marshall Islands-flagged commercial oil tanker Marlin Luanda on fire on January 26.[36]

Reuters reported on January 25 that unspecified Iranian sources said that China asked Iran to prevent Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.[37] China warned that if Houthi attacks harmed Chinese interests, it would impact China’s business with Iran. Houthi spokesperson Mohammad Abdulsalam said on January 25 that Iran has not conveyed any message from China to the Houthis regarding scaling back attacks in the Red Sea.[38]

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq launched two one-way attack drones targeting US forces stationed at Ain al Assad Airbase on January 25 and 26.[39] The Islamic Resistance in Iraq said both attacks are part of its ongoing campaign to expel US forces from Iraq.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq released a statement on January 26 rejecting the US and Iraqi decision to begin negotiations over the status of US-led coalition forces in Iraq and vowed to continue attacking US forces.[40] The United States and the Iraqi federal government announced on January 25 that they will soon begin negotiations on Iraq's current security arrangement with US-led coalition forces.[41] These negotiations could precipitate the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. US-led coalition forces are currently deployed in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government to fight ISIS.[42] The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed that the announcement of the start of negotiations is a US attempt to “buy time to carry out more crimes” against Iraq.[43] The group also vowed to continue attacking US forces in the region and claimed that the United States only understands “the language of force.”[44] The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has conducted over 150 attacks targeting US forces in Iraq and Syria since the Israel-Hamas war began.[45] A senior leader of Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed proxy militia that is part of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, also described the upcoming negotiations as a US effort to “deceive” Iranian-backed Iraqi militias on January 26.[46]

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq will likely continue to attack US forces in Iraq and Syria to pressure the Mohammad Shia al Sudani administration to order the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. The Iraqi federal government has executive agreements with the United States that govern the US force presence in Iraq. This means that Prime Minister Sudani is the only individual who can order the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.[47] Iranian-backed Iraqi militias conduct attacks targeting US forces with the expectation that the United States will respond with self-defense strikes. The militias subsequently frame these self-defense strikes as “violations” of Iraqi sovereignty to mount pressure on the Sudani administration to order the withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq also stated that the United States and Iraq should not hold talks until the United States proves its commitment to withdrawing US forces from Iraq, removes its military aircraft and drones from Iraq, and removes US advisers from the Joint Operations Command (JOC).[48] The Joint Operations Command coordinates the efforts of regional operations commands across Iraq and US advisers work alongside the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) in an advise and assist role to help the ISF fight ISIS.[49] US advisers assist the ISF at the strategic and operational levels. Removing US advisers from the JOC would further hamper the ISF’s ability to defeat ISIS. The ISF already faces deficiencies in planning, fire support, intelligence, and logistics that prevent it from defeating ISIS alone.[50]

Kataib Sayyid al Shuhada Secretary General Abu Ala al Walai called on Iranian-backed Iraqi militias to launch the “second phase” of operations against the United States and Israel on January 23.[51] Walai made this call following the January 23 US airstrikes that targeted three Kataib Hezbollah facilities in Iraq.[52] Walai specified that the “second phase” of operations will block Israeli maritime activity in the Mediterranean Sea and render Israeli ports inoperable. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq conducted separate attacks targeting the Israeli port Ashdod, south of Tel Aviv, on January 23 and 25.[53] Israeli officials did not confirm the attacks. CTP-ISW cannot verify that these attacks occurred.

The Balochi militant group Ansar al Furqan claimed that it fired small arms targeting a police station in Zahedan, Sistan and Baluchistan Province on January 25.[54] The Zahedan Law Enforcement Commander announced that two “terrorist operatives” fired small arms at the police station and subsequently fled.[55] This incident is part of a rise in terrorist activity and insecurity in southeastern Iran since December 2023. Jaish al Adl—a Balochi Salafi-Jihadist group that operates along the Iranian border with Pakistan—conducted a two-stage attack targeting a police station in Rask, Sistan, and Baluchistan Province, in December 2023.[56] Eleven police officers died in the attack. The Afghan branch of the Islamic State also conducted a terrorist attack in Kerman Province on January 3, killing over 90 individuals.[57]

The Iranian ambassador to Pakistan and the Pakistani ambassador to Iran returned to their posts following the exchange of strikes between Iran and Pakistan between January 16-18.[58] Pakistan recalled its ambassador to Iran and expelled the Iranian ambassador to Pakistan following the IRGC’s drone and missile strikes on Jaish al Adl targets in Pakistan on January 17.[59] The Pakistani armed forces responded late on January 17 with strikes targeting Baloch separatists in three locations near Saravan, Iran.[60] The return of the Iranian and Pakistani ambassadors to their posts is part of Iranian and Pakistani efforts to de-escalate tensions and restore bilateral relations in the aftermath of the strikes.

The Iranian regime denied a recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report that the United States secretly warned Iran that the Islamic State was preparing to conduct the January 3 terrorist attack in Kerman.[61] The United States provided Iran with intelligence, including the location of the attack, that the Iranian regime could have used to thwart the attack.[62] “Informed [Iranian] sources” denied the WSJ reporting on January 26.[63] An unidentified security official also claimed that a US warning to Iran would have been meant to protect the United States from Iran’s “response [to the attack].”[64] This statement is consistent with Iranian officials’ efforts to place blame for the January 3 attack on the United States and Israel.[65] 

3. A Hush Heard Around the World – Why Taiwan’s Election Didn't Spark a Crisis With China

Excerpts:

The EU’s diplomats have shown themselves equal to Chinese subtlety by avoiding easy point-scoring. They issued a statement that “welcomed the election and congratulated all the voters who took part in this democratic exercise.” When the People’s Daily’s resident patriot, columnist “Zhong Sheng,” at last stirred himself to grumble on January 23, it was mainly to grouse about the United States “and a few other countries” who had congratulated Lai himself on the victory.

It will be argued in Washington that the Europeans are free riders on the huge American commitment to security in East Asia. A second Trump administration would certainly say so. Yet it is possible to strengthen America’s hand with policies that offer incentives to China so it is worthwhile to keep the peace.

It is worth recalling how high the stakes are. A survey of experts by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington says that China is more likely to try to blockade or quarantine Taiwan than to invade it.

Anyone who thinks that might fall short of a crisis need only look at the missile strikes in the Red Sea as attentively as China and Russia are doing. There are four months left until Lai is inaugurated as president on May 20. They must not be wasted.

A Hush Heard Around the World

Why Taiwan’s Election Didn't Spark a Crisis With China 

By Michael Sheridan

January 24, 2024

Fears that Taiwan’s election would spark a crisis with China were wrong. Here’s why.

cepa.org · by Michael Sheridan · January 24, 2024

There was a hush on the streets of Taipei after election day in mid-January. The voters had chosen Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party as their president, a move which some believed would trigger a crisis with China.

It had denounced Lai and his deputy, the eloquent Hsiao Bi-khim, as “separatists” who stood for “Taiwan independence.” Fire and fury surely awaited.

But the hush continued. The official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported the result in a flatly worded dispatch of fewer than 100 words noting that the two had been elected to serve as “leader and deputy of the Taiwan region.” This was reproduced in the People’s Daily without comment. The rest of the state media took its downbeat cue from there.

Only a party newspaper in Fujian, the province that faces Taiwan across the strait, added the once-obligatory quotation from an official that the island was undoubtedly part of China.

The Chinese military went on staging flights around Taiwan and floated observation balloons into its airspace. Otherwise, no crisis.

So what happened? The reality is that this is, at best, a pause. But it is a space in which the European Union (EU) and its allies can work to strengthen links with a thriving Chinese capitalist democracy of some 23 million people who live under the threat of invasion by the People’s Republic, a population of more than 1.3 billion.

The heavy lifting on security will still be borne by the United States, Japan, and a handful of powers ready and able to send air and naval forces to the area. But the subtleties of Taiwanese politics and the sophistication of China’s response can be better understood.

Taken together, they create a possibility for economic as well as military deterrence, offering incentives to avoid a war that because of its global consequences would make the Middle East and Ukraine seem mere provincial disputes.

First, there is no mystery about China’s reason for moderation. The Taiwan polls came just as its prime minister, Li Qiang, was about to take the stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos with a message that China was open for business. The economy is slowing and President Xi Jinping’s regime sees the restoration of growth as a priority. This was not the time to rattle sabers or global investors.

The second reason for Chinese restraint is that the election results were not, in fact, that bad from Beijing’s point of view. Lai’s victory was achieved because his two opponents split the vote between the candidate of the traditional Kuomintang Party and an insurgent former mayor of Taipei. He won with 5.6 million votes, about 40% of the ballots cast, in a first-past-the-post contest.

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It was a similar story in the Legislative Yuan, the parliament in Taipei. Here the Democratic Progressive Party lost its majority. This caused the head of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, Chen Binhua, to remark that “the DPP no longer represents mainstream public opinion in Taiwan since it won less than 50% of the popular vote.”

In practice, therefore, the new president will be constrained and the uneasy status quo may continue. Further evidence that Beijing takes a sanguine view came from the commentator Victor Gao, a reliable echo of regime opinion, who told the Global Times that China “has momentum on its side.”

The EU, which just unveiled new measures on economic security and investment, has every interest in strengthening business and cultural links with Taiwan as it seeks a new balance in dealing with China. Its role can be pivotal.

That was not lost on Premier Li Qiang at Davos, where he made a conciliatory pitch to the EU’s Ursula von der Leyen, a champion of “de-risking” from the People’s Republic. China wants high-grade technology, but at present Taiwan is far ahead of it. It is the world’s leading maker of semiconductor chips vital to everything in the modern economy, manufacturing more than 90% of the world’s most advanced chips. That makes the island both a hostage and a prize.

The EU has run a model policy in Taiwan. It is the largest foreign investor, with bilateral trade in goods of about €50bn ($54bn) annually. The EU’s mission in Taipei says innovative information technology, artificial intelligence, smart mobility, and green energy all offer new opportunities for European business. Nobody says that sort of thing about China.

Europe has also deepened its institutional links with Taiwan, which joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2002 and is seen by Brussels as “a like-minded member of WTO.” Some 15 EU states have missions in Taipei; in effect informal embassies. The Union finances a European Business and Regulatory Co-operation program specifically designed to align commercial collaboration. Taiwanese research institutions can join EU framework programs. In a quiet way, the two are genuine partners.

The EU’s diplomats have shown themselves equal to Chinese subtlety by avoiding easy point-scoring. They issued a statement that “welcomed the election and congratulated all the voters who took part in this democratic exercise.” When the People’s Daily’s resident patriot, columnist “Zhong Sheng,” at last stirred himself to grumble on January 23, it was mainly to grouse about the United States “and a few other countries” who had congratulated Lai himself on the victory.

It will be argued in Washington that the Europeans are free riders on the huge American commitment to security in East Asia. A second Trump administration would certainly say so. Yet it is possible to strengthen America’s hand with policies that offer incentives to China so it is worthwhile to keep the peace.

It is worth recalling how high the stakes are. A survey of experts by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington says that China is more likely to try to blockade or quarantine Taiwan than to invade it.

Anyone who thinks that might fall short of a crisis need only look at the missile strikes in the Red Sea as attentively as China and Russia are doing. There are four months left until Lai is inaugurated as president on May 20. They must not be wasted.

Veteran foreign correspondent Michael Sheridan is working on a biography of Xi Jinping, ‘The Red Emperor’, to be published by Headline Books, part of the Hachette group, in 2024. He is the author of ‘The Gate to China: A New History of the People’s Republic and Hong Kong’ (2021).

Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.

Europe's Edge

CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America.

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cepa.org · by Michael Sheridan · January 24, 2024

4. Ukraine Is Desperate for Artillery Rounds to Battle Russia

Ukraine Is Desperate for Artillery Rounds to Battle Russia

If you asked Ukrainian military leaders what is one piece of security aid that is indispensable to their efforts, you would likely hear “artillery rounds.” 

The National Interest · by Stavros Atlamazoglou · January 25, 2024

As we have discussed here on the National Interest, the war in Ukraine is all about artillery.

Both sides are using long-range fires profusely. Military analysts estimate that approximately 80 percent of all the casualties in the fighting have been caused by artillery fire.

In numbers, that translates to about 400,000 killed and wounded from artillery shells (the Russian forces have taken more than 320,000 losses, and the Ukrainians about 200,000).

Artillery is vital in supporting offensive operations but is also the cornerstone of a good defense. The intensity and duration of the conflict in Ukraine caught the U.S. and NATO defense industries off guard. With dwindling stockpiles, there is a push for more artillery rounds across the transatlantic alliance to continue supporting Ukraine.

Billions for Artillery Rounds in Ukraine War

This week, NATO announced a $1.2 billion contract for artillery rounds.

“Russia’s war in Ukraine has become a battle for ammunition. So it is important allies refill their own stocks as we continue to support Ukraine.” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said during a news conference in Brussels.

The war in Ukraine has challenged NATO’s defense industry and production capabilities. Over the past months, the members of the transatlantic alliance have gone on a shopping spree, signing contracts worth over $10 billion to replenish their weapon system and ammunition stocks. Specifically, recent contracts include a $5.5 billion agreement for 1,000 MIM-104 Patriot air defense missiles and $4 billion for 155mm artillery rounds, anti-tank missiles, and tank munition.

“This demonstrates that NATO’s tried and tested structures for joint procurement are delivering,” said the Secretary General. “Russia’s war in Ukraine has become a battle for ammunition, so it is important that Allies refill their own stocks, as we continue to support Ukraine,” the NATO chief added.

Around this time last year, the European Union came to an agreement to send 1 million artillery rounds to Ukraine. Fast forward to December, and Kyiv had received only 300,000 shells. During intense offensive operations, the Ukrainian military can go through that number of rounds in just a few weeks.

The United Kingdom has provided approximately 300,000 artillery rounds of all calibers to Ukraine. Moreover, starting in June, the British Ministry of Defense has an order with BAE Systems for an eight-fold increase in the production of 155mm rounds.

“MOD contract is for significant initial quantities of 155mm shells which will reinstate and build sovereign capability and stockpiles,” James Cartlidge, a Minister of State for Defense, recently revealed.

On the other side of the pond, the U.S. has sent the Ukrainian military more than 2 million 155mm rounds, including high-precision shells, cluster munitions, and special mine rounds. In addition, the Pentagon has provided Kyiv with hundreds of artillery pieces, including M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), M270 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS), M109 Paladin self-propelled 155mm howitzers, and M777 towed 155mm howitzers.

About the Author

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a seasoned defense journalist specializing in special operations and a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ). He holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University and an MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). His work has been featured in Business Insider, Sandboxx, and SOFREP. Email the author: [email protected].

The National Interest · by Stavros Atlamazoglou · January 25, 2024

5. Is This Amelia Earhart’s Long-Lost Plane?

Is This Amelia Earhart’s Long-Lost Plane?

The latest adventurer to hunt for it says a fuzzy sonar image shows the twin-engine aircraft Earhart was flying when she vanished in 1937

https://www.wsj.com/science/amelia-earhart-lost-plane-found-843e9e9c?mod=hp_lead_pos7

A sonar image of what might be Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed 10-E Electra. PHOTO: DEEP SEA VISION

By Nidhi SubbaramanFollow

Jan. 26, 2024 9:00 pm ET

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When she disappeared on her most ambitious trip—what she hoped would be a record-setting journey around the world—it sparked a decadeslong mystery: What happened to Amelia Earhart?

Now, a commercial real-estate investor from Charleston, S.C., thinks he might have found a vital clue.

Tony Romeo, a pilot himself and a former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, is the latest in a string of adventurers to plumb the Pacific Ocean in search of the plane Earhart was flying in 1937 when, at the peak of her fame, she vanished.

In December, Romeo—who sold his commercial properties to fund his search—returned from an expedition with a sonar image of an aircraft-shaped object resting on the ocean floor. He believes it’s Earhart’s Lockheed 10-E Electra, and experts are intrigued.

The location where Romeo said he captured the image is about right, said Dorothy Cochrane, a curator in the aeronautics department of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, and sonar experts who have viewed the image agree that it’s unusual enough to take a closer look.

Romeo said he plans to return to get better images. “This is maybe the most exciting thing I’ll ever do in my life,” he said. “I feel like a 10-year-old going on a treasure hunt.”  

At the dawn of the modern aviation age, Earhart’s record-breaking run as a pioneering pilot made her an international celebrity. She was the first woman to fly solo, nonstop across the continental U.S. and the Atlantic, and the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to the mainland over the Pacific.

“For her to go missing was just unthinkable,” Romeo said. “Imagine Taylor Swift just disappearing today.”

Amelia Earhart was an international celebrity in her time. Her successful trans-Atlantic flight garnered a parade through New York City. In Ireland, a gaggle of men awaited her autograph.

KEYSTONE-FRANCE/GAMMA-KEYSTONE/GETTY IMAGES; BETTMAN ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

Since Earhart vanished, voyagers on at least a half-dozen trips have sunk millions into hunts for her lost plane.  

People can’t quit Amelia. They also can’t seem to find her.

In 1999, Dana Timmer, an America’s Cup sailor, helmed a deep-water search near Howland Island, a dot of land between Australia and Hawaii where Earhart was last expected to land. Timmer saw a promising shadow on sonar, but never raised the cash to go back and verify his find. 

In 2009, a team put together by Ted Waitt, founder of the Gateway computer company, hauled in a handful of junk including a metal drum and a 6-inch-wide cable. “We’re confident we know where #Earhart isn’t,” the group tweeted after the expeditions. 

Nauticos, an ocean exploration firm, launched three searches, in 2002, 2006 and 2017, but found nothing but a piece of pipe and other shipping trash, said David Jourdan, the company’s president and founder. 

Fateful Flight

For years adventurers have searched the Pacific Ocean along the final stretch of Amelia Earhart's flight route in hopes of finding her missing plane.

Completed path

Planned path

Speculated path

Oakland

Earhart departs in May 1937

Karachi

Miami

Honolulu

San Juan

Bangkok

Dakar

Singapore

Khartoum

Howland Island

Object found within 100 miles of the island

Fortaleza

Earhart disappeared after departing Papua New Guinea in July

Note: Flight path is simplified.

Sources: Smithsonian Institution (Oakland departure); Sammie L. Morris, Purdue University (Miami to Oakland route)

Emma Brown/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

“It’s the only thing in my career that I’ve ever looked for and not found,” said Tom Dettweiler, a sonar expert who participated in two of the Nauticos searches and was part of the team that found the Titanic off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, in 1985.

Excluding the Waitt group, which declined to disclose costs to the Journal, the missions collectively cost at least $13 million when adjusted for inflation. 

Romeo and two of his brothers, all pilots, thought they’d bring their airmen’s read to “the perfect riddle” of where Earhart disappeared. “We always felt that a group of pilots were the ones that are going to solve this, and not the mariners,” Romeo said.

They tried to imagine Earhart’s strategy by drawing on clues about her direction, location and fuel levels based on radio messages received by Itasca, the U.S. Coast Guard vessel stationed near Howland Island to help Earhart land and refuel. Then Romeo and his team plotted a search area based on where they thought Earhart was most likely to have gone down. 

Romeo said he sold his real estate interests in 2021 and spent $11 million to fund the trip and buy the high-tech gear needed for the search—including an underwater “Hugin” drone manufactured by the Norwegian company Kongsberg. 

Romeo’s expedition began in early September from Tarawa, Kiribati. The team used a submersible drone equipped with sonar to scan the ocean floor. VIDEO: DEEP SEA VISION

“That’s the vehicle I would choose to use,” said Larry Mayer, an oceanographer and director of the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping at the University of New Hampshire.

Romeo’s expedition began in early September from Tarawa, Kiribati, a port near Howland Island, with a 16-person crew aboard a research vessel. 

In outings that lasted 36 hours each, the unmanned submersible scanned 5,200 square miles of ocean floor. About 30 days in, it had captured a fuzzy sonar image of an object the size and shape of an airplane resting some 5,000 meters underwater within 100 miles of Howland Island. But the team didn’t discover the image in the drone’s data until about 90 days into the trip. By then, it wasn’t practical to turn back, Romeo said.

Experts who have seen the image said they want to see clearer views of the object with details such as a serial number that matches Earhart’s vessel.  

A sonar image—reflecting varying levels of brightness—of the airplane-shaped object resting 5,000 meters underwater about 100 miles from Howland Island. PHOTO: DEEP SEA VISION

“Until you physically take a look at this, there’s no way to say for sure what that is,” said Andrew Pietruszka, an underwater archaeologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California, San Diego, who leads deep ocean searches for lost U.S. military aircraft and the soldiers who went down with them.

The search for Earhart’s plane is particularly challenging because of the remoteness of her last known location. “It’s very deep water, and the area that she could’ve possibly been in is huge,” Dettweiler said.  

This was also Earhart’s challenge. 

On July 2, 1937, she and navigator Fred Noonan took off from Lae, Papua New Guinea, nearing the end of their historic trip. They planned to refuel at Howland, an uninhabited island where a runway and refueling station had been built ahead of their arrival, before flying on to Honolulu and finishing in Oakland, Calif. 

The world was watching.

Tony Romeo spent $11 million to search for Earhart’s lost plane. PHOTO: DEEP SEA VISION

Earhart and Noonan took off from Lae into a strong headwind. Operators listened to Earhart’s radio messages as she flew across the Pacific toward Howland, a half-degree north of the equator. The Coast Guard’s Itasca, stationed near the island, estimated their progress by the strength of the radio transmissions. 

The last messages came in so strong that a radio operator looked skyward, expecting to see her fly overhead, according to Laurie Gwen Shapiro, a journalist who is working on a biography of Earhart.

She was nowhere to be seen. 

After 16 days, the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ended their search, and on Jan. 5, 1939, Earhart was declared dead.

Most experts who have studied Earhart’s last broadcasts expect to find her craft within range of Howland Island, but in the absence of its discovery, a host of theories have emerged. In one improbable scenario, Earhart was captured by a foreign military. In another, she made a secret return to the U.S. and lived a quiet life out of the spotlight under a new name. In a third, she was a spy. 

“That’s just nonsense,” said Cochrane, the National Air and Space Museum curator. “None of that is practical.” 

For now, the world is still waiting for an answer. 

“It was one of the great mysteries of the 20th century and still now into the 21st century,” Cochrane said. “We’re all hopeful that the mystery will be solved.”

Earhart and Fred Noonan board the Lockheed 10-E Electra in San Juan, Puerto Rico, during their around-the-world flight attempt. PHOTO: BETTMANN ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

Write to Nidhi Subbaraman at nidhi.subbaraman@wsj.com

Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the January 27, 2024, print edition as 'Image Renews Buzz on Amelia Earhart’s Plane'.

6. UNRWA Is Investigating Charges of Workers’ Involvement in Oct. 7 Attacks

I think a number of my colleagues at FDD have the right to say, "I told you so."

UNRWA Is Investigating Charges of Workers’ Involvement in Oct. 7 Attacks - The New York Times

By Farnaz Fassihi, Edward Wong, Russell Goldman and Ronen Bergman

Reporting from the United Nations, Washington and Tel Aviv

• Jan. 26, 2024
• Updated 9:56 p.m. ETBy Farnaz Fassihi, Edward Wong, Russell Goldman and Ronen Bergman
• Reporting from the United Nations, Washington and Tel Aviv
• T

nytimes.com · by Gaya Gupta · January 26, 2024

LIVE See more updates: Israel-Hamas War

Jan. 26, 2024, 11:48 a.m. ET

U.N. Aid Agency Investigates Claim That Workers Were Involved in Oct. 7 Attack

The United States temporarily cut off aid to UNRWA, the agency that aids Palestinians, citing allegations that 12 of its workers were involved the Hamas-led assault.

By Gaya Gupta

• Jan. 26, 2024Updated 11:48 a.m. ET

The United Nations agency that aids Palestinians, known as UNRWA, said on Friday it had dismissed several workers accused of being involved in the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on Oct. 7 and had launched an investigation into the allegations.

The U.S. State Department said it had “temporarily paused additional funding” to the agency, noting the allegations involved 12 UNRWA workers.

The U.S. secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, spoke on Thursday with the U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, and called for “a thorough and swift investigation,” the State Department said. Mr. Blinken also told the U.N.’s leader that the United States was asking Israel, which made the initial allegation, for more information.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, said in a statement that he had immediately dismissed the UNRWA workers to “protect the Agency’s ability to deliver humanitarian assistance.” He added that any UNRWA worker who was involved “will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution.” He did not say how many UNRWA workers had been accused.

“These shocking allegations come as more than 2 million people in Gaza depend on lifesaving assistance that the Agency has been providing since the war began,” he said. “Anyone who betrays the fundamental values of the United Nations also betrays those whom we serve in Gaza, across the region and elsewhere around the world.”

UNRWA, a U.N. relief agency, distributed flour to displaced Palestinians at its headquarters in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, in November.Credit…Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times

UNRWA, or the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, is one of Gaza’s largest employers, with around 13,000 staff members who drive the enclave’s education, health and food assistance operations. During the war, it has played a critical role in overseeing the distribution of food and medical aid in Gaza.

United Nations officials have repeatedly said ordinary residents of Gaza are at risk of starvation and are experiencing a spike in infectious diseases as the weather gets colder.

Josep Borrell Fontelles, the E.U.’s top diplomat and vice president of the European Commission, said he was “extremely concerned” about the allegation that U.N. employees had been involved in the terrorist attacks. He said that the Commission was in contact with UNRWA and expected it to take immediate measures against the staff involved.

is a reporting fellow on the Live team at The Times.

nytimes.com · by Gaya Gupta · January 26, 2024

7. U.S. war plans for Ukraine don’t foresee retaking lost territory

Excerpts:

But the success of the strategy depends almost entirely on the United States, by far Ukraine’s largest donor of money and equipment, and coordinator of the multilateral effort. This spring the administration hopes to release its own 10-year commitment, now being compiled by the State Department with the blessing of the White House — assuming that President Biden’s $61 billion request for supplemental Ukraine funding is approved by a recalcitrant Congress.

The shaky ground on which that assumption currently rests — with House Republicans appearing to dig in ever deeper in refusing the money — has worried both Western allies and Ukraine itself.

“Definitely the leadership and the engagement of the U.S. in the long term, but also in this very important phase, is paramount,” a senior European official said. “The supplemental is a must-have to continue ... not only on the ground, but as a show of Western resolve ... to make [Putin] understand that he will not win.”

“We wouldn’t survive without U.S. support, it’s a real fact,” Zelensky said in a television interview last week.

..

The U.S. document, according to U.S. officials closely involved in the planning, is being written with four phases in mind: fight, build, recover and reform.

What is needed most immediately for the “fight” phase is “artillery ammunition, some replacement of vehicles” lost in the counteroffensive, “a lot more drones,” said Eric Ciaramella, a former CIA intelligence analyst and now a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who has consulted with administration officials. “A lot of electronic warfare and counter-drone technology — where the Russians have achieved an edge. They need more air defense systems to cover more cities.”

Although Ukraine is still anxiously awaiting the promised delivery of fighter aircraft and more armored vehicles this year, these are “expensive systems with single points of failure,” Ciaramella said. “I think the Ukrainians are realizing there is no silver bullet, having seen a million-dollar tank destroyed by a $10,000 mine” during the counteroffensive.

The “build” phase of the strategy is focused on pledges for Ukraine’s future security force on land, sea and air, so that the Ukrainians “can see what they’re getting from the global community over a 10-year period and ... come out of 2024 with a road map to a highly deterrent military,” the first senior administration official said. At the same time, some of the requested supplemental money is targeted at developing Ukraine’s industrial base for weapons production that, along with U.S. and allied increases, can “at least keep pace with Russian” production.

The plan also includes additional air defense to create protective “bubbles” around Ukrainian cities beyond Kyiv and Odessa and to allow key parts of the Ukrainian economy and exports, including steel and agriculture, to recover. Biden last fall named former commerce secretary Penny Pritzker as U.S. envoy to lead an effort to rebuild Ukraine’s economy and mobilize public and private investment.

U.S. war plans for Ukraine don’t foresee retaking lost territory

The Biden administration is working on a long-term strategy for supporting Kyiv — despite the funding impasse in Congress. But those plans do not anticipate significant gains by Ukraine against Russia in 2024, officials say.

By Karen DeYoung, Michael Birnbaum, Isabelle Khurshudyan and Emily Rauhala

January 26, 2024 at 6:01 p.m. EST

The Washington Post · by Karen DeYoung · January 26, 2024

Still smarting from last year’s failed counteroffensive in Ukraine, the Biden administration is putting together a new strategy that will de-emphasize winning back territory and focus instead on helping Ukraine fend off new Russian advances while moving toward a long-term goal of strengthening its fighting force and economy.

The emerging plan is a sharp change from last year, when the U.S. and allied militaries rushed training and sophisticated equipment to Kyiv in hopes that it could quickly push back Russian forces occupying eastern and southern Ukraine. That effort foundered, largely on Russia’s heavily fortified minefields and front line trenches.

“It’s pretty clear that it will be difficult for them to try to mount the same kind of major push on all fronts that they tried to do last year,” a senior administration official said.

The idea now is to position Ukraine to hold its position on the battlefield for now, but “put them on a different trajectory to be much stronger by the end of 2024 … and get them on a more sustainable path,” said the senior official, one of several who described the internal policymaking on the condition of anonymity.

The U.S. planning is part of a multilateral effort by nearly three dozen countries backing Ukraine to pledge long-term security and economic support — both out of necessity, given the disappointing results of last year’s counteroffensive and the conviction that a similar effort this year would likely bring the same outcome, and as a demonstration of enduring resolve to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Each is preparing a document outlining its specific commitments spanning up to a decade in the future. Britain made its 10-year agreement with Ukraine public last week, signed by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv. It outlined contributions to “Maritime Security, Air, Air Defense, Artillery and Armor” as well as fiscal support and access to its financial sector. France is expected to be next, with an upcoming visit to Ukraine by President Emmanuel Macron.

But the success of the strategy depends almost entirely on the United States, by far Ukraine’s largest donor of money and equipment, and coordinator of the multilateral effort. This spring the administration hopes to release its own 10-year commitment, now being compiled by the State Department with the blessing of the White House — assuming that President Biden’s $61 billion request for supplemental Ukraine funding is approved by a recalcitrant Congress.

The shaky ground on which that assumption currently rests — with House Republicans appearing to dig in ever deeper in refusing the money — has worried both Western allies and Ukraine itself.

“Definitely the leadership and the engagement of the U.S. in the long term, but also in this very important phase, is paramount,” a senior European official said. “The supplemental is a must-have to continue ... not only on the ground, but as a show of Western resolve ... to make [Putin] understand that he will not win.”

“We wouldn’t survive without U.S. support, it’s a real fact,” Zelensky said in a television interview last week.

Future-proofing Ukraine against Trump

According to U.S. officials, the American document will guarantee support for short-term military operations as well as build a future Ukrainian military force that can deter Russian aggression. It will include specific promises and programs to help protect, reconstitute and expand Ukraine’s industrial and export base, and assist the country with political reforms needed for full integration into Western institutions.

Not incidentally, a U.S. official said, the hope is that the long-term promise — again assuming congressional buy-in — will also “future-proof” aid for Ukraine against the possibility that former president Donald Trump wins his reelection bid.

As the White House continues to try to persuade lawmakers, a second senior administration official emphasized that the strategy doesn’t mean that the Ukrainians are just going to build their own defensive trenches “and sit behind them” all year. “There is still going to be swapping of territory” in small cities and villages with minimal strategic value, “missile launches and drones” from both sides, and Russian “attacks on civilian infrastructure,” this official said.

Rather than the massive artillery duels that dominated much of the fighting in the second half of 2022 and much of 2023, the West’s hope for 2024 is that Ukraine will avoid losing any more territory than the one-fifth of the country now occupied by Russia. Additionally, Western governments want Kyiv to concentrate on tactics where its forces have had greater recent success — longer-distance fires, including with French cruise missiles promised for delivery within the next few months; holding back Russia’s Black Sea Fleet to protect naval transit from Ukraine’s ports; and tying up Russian forces inside Crimea with missile strikes and special operations sabotage.

Zelensky insists that Ukraine remains on the offensive. Plans for 2024 are “not just defense,” he said in a recent video address. “We want our country to retain the initiative, not the enemy.”

But U.S. policymakers who have met recently with him in private say Zelensky has doubts about how ambitious to be in the coming year without clarity about U.S. aid.

“We get asked what’s our plan, but we need to understand what resources we’re going to have,” Ukrainian lawmaker Roman Kostenko said. “Right now, everything points to the possibility that we will have less than last year, when we tried to do a counteroffensive and it didn’t work out. ... If we will have even less, then it’s clear what the plan will be. It will be defense.”

“Nobody is taking offensive actions out of the equation,” said Serhii Rakhmanin, another member of parliament. “But in general ... it’s very hard to imagine a serious, global strategic offensive operation in 2024. Especially if we look at the general state of foreign aid, not just from the U.S.”

Even those who believe that Ukraine could eventually beat back Russia concede that 2024 will be lean and dangerous. “Most probably there are not going to be huge territorial gains,” Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics said in an interview. “The only strategy is to get as much as you can to Ukraine to help them first of all to defend their own cities ... and second to help them simply not to lose ground.”

“We are a little taken hostage by time,” agreed Kusti Salm, permanent secretary of the Estonian Defense Ministry. “It’s just a question of whether we can walk through this valley of death.”

‘You have to have something to fight with’

Along the front line, the Ukrainian military has started preparing accordingly, aiming to replicate Russia’s layered defenses of trenches and minefields in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region that hampered last year’s counteroffensive.

“Normal soldiers aren’t very interested in [Ukrainian] politics and foreign politics,” said a Ukrainian commander in the eastern Donetsk region, who was not authorized to speak publicly. “But when you feel for yourselves that it’s not enough, like now with ammunition, mortars, shells, that immediately triggers worry. You can fight, but you have to have something to fight with.”

U.S. policymakers say they expect the war will eventually end through negotiations — but also that they don’t think Putin will be serious about talks this year, in part because he holds out hope that Trump will win back the presidency in November and dial back support to Kyiv.

Trump, who has long touted a special relationship with Putin, said months ago that if he is returned to the White House, he “will have that war settled in one day, 24 hours.” Zelensky, in last week’s television interview, called that claim “very dangerous” and invited Trump to Kyiv to share whatever plan he might have.

The long-term strategy to transform Ukraine for the future has its roots in a G-7 declaration of support last summer in which Western leaders promised to build a “sustainable” military force interoperable with the West, and to strengthen Ukraine’s “economic stability and resilience.”

Even so, the policy holds risks, including political ones, if Ukrainians begin to blame their government for stagnant front lines. Likewise, in Western capitals, officials are keenly aware that their citizens’ patience with funding Ukraine’s war is not infinite.

Amid the planning, Washington also seems to be readying the argument that, even if Ukraine is not going to regain all of its territory in the near term, it needs significant ongoing assistance to be able to defend itself and become an integral part of the West.

“We can see what Ukraine’s future can and should be, irrespective of exactly where lines are drawn,” Blinken said earlier this month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “And that’s a future where it stands strongly on its own two feet militarily, economically, democratically.”

‘No silver bullet’ for arming Ukraine

In conversations with lawmakers, administration officials have emphasized that only about half of the requested $61 billion is targeted at the current battlefield, while the rest is directed toward helping Ukraine undergird a secure future without massive Western aid.

The U.S. document, according to U.S. officials closely involved in the planning, is being written with four phases in mind: fight, build, recover and reform.

What is needed most immediately for the “fight” phase is “artillery ammunition, some replacement of vehicles” lost in the counteroffensive, “a lot more drones,” said Eric Ciaramella, a former CIA intelligence analyst and now a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who has consulted with administration officials. “A lot of electronic warfare and counter-drone technology — where the Russians have achieved an edge. They need more air defense systems to cover more cities.”

Although Ukraine is still anxiously awaiting the promised delivery of fighter aircraft and more armored vehicles this year, these are “expensive systems with single points of failure,” Ciaramella said. “I think the Ukrainians are realizing there is no silver bullet, having seen a million-dollar tank destroyed by a $10,000 mine” during the counteroffensive.

The “build” phase of the strategy is focused on pledges for Ukraine’s future security force on land, sea and air, so that the Ukrainians “can see what they’re getting from the global community over a 10-year period and ... come out of 2024 with a road map to a highly deterrent military,” the first senior administration official said. At the same time, some of the requested supplemental money is targeted at developing Ukraine’s industrial base for weapons production that, along with U.S. and allied increases, can “at least keep pace with Russian” production.

The plan also includes additional air defense to create protective “bubbles” around Ukrainian cities beyond Kyiv and Odessa and to allow key parts of the Ukrainian economy and exports, including steel and agriculture, to recover. Biden last fall named former commerce secretary Penny Pritzker as U.S. envoy to lead an effort to rebuild Ukraine’s economy and mobilize public and private investment.

Enticing foreign investment back into Ukraine will also require additional efforts to stem corruption, U.S. officials acknowledge. Zelensky has taken some steps, including firing and in some cases arresting allegedly corrupt military procurement officials and judges; other initiatives have been demanded by the European Union as it considers eventual E.U. membership for Ukraine.

But as conversations and planning for the future continue, not every Ukraine backer thinks this is the right moment to shift focus away from sending Ukraine what is necessary to confront the Russians as quickly and decisively as possible on the battlefield this year.

“Whatever strategy you use, you need all the weapons you can think of,” former NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said during a visit last week to press Republican lawmakers to approve Ukraine funding.

“You cannot win a war by pursuing an incremental step-by-step approach,” he said. “You have to surprise and overwhelm your adversary.”

Khurshudyan reported from Kyiv and Rauhala from Brussels. Kamila Hrabchuk and Anastacia Galouchka in Kyiv contributed to this report.

The Washington Post · by Karen DeYoung · January 26, 2024

8. Houthis Attack U.S. Warship as China Urges Iran to Rein In Rebels

Houthis Attack U.S. Warship as China Urges Iran to Rein In Rebels

Tehran tells Beijing it doesn’t control Yemeni rebel group

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/china-urges-iran-to-lean-on-houthis-to-halt-red-sea-attacks-iranian-officials-say-2b0fb57b?mod=latest_headlines

By Nancy A. Youssef

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 and Benoit Faucon

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Updated Jan. 26, 2024 10:29 pm ET

Tribesmen loyal to the Houthis march during a protest against Israel and the U.S. on the outskirts of San’a, Yemen. PHOTO: YAHYA ARHAB/SHUTTERSTOCK

A Yemeni rebel group launched missiles at a U.S. destroyer and a British tanker, as China pressed Iran to lean on the Houthis to halt their attacks in the Red Sea that have sent global shipping costs surging.

The Marlin Luanda, a fuel tanker sailing on behalf of trading giant Trafigura Group, was struck by a missile in the Gulf of Aden, in one of the most significant attacks yet by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on an oil-carrying vessel.

“Firefighting equipment on board is being deployed to suppress and control the fire caused in one cargo tank on the starboard side,” a Trafigura spokesperson said in a statement. “We remain in contact with the vessel and are monitoring the situation carefully.”

In conversations in Tehran and Beijing, Chinese officials asked their Iranian counterparts to rein in their Yemeni ally, an Iranian official and an Iranian government adviser said. Iran officials told the Chinese that they weren’t in control of the group and that turmoil in the region would end if Israel agreed to a cease-fire, the Iranians said.

China hasn’t commented directly on its talks with Iran, but a spokesman for its foreign ministry in Beijing said Friday the country had “actively deescalated the situation, called for an end to the disturbance to civilian ships, and urged relevant parties to avoid fueling the tensions.”

A spokesman for the Iranian delegation at the United Nations didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Administration officials have asked Beijing to convey messages to Iran about avoiding a broader conflict in the region, since the Oct. 7 start of Israel’s war in Gaza. The U.S. says Iran supplies the Houthis with weapons, funding and other support. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan met in Thailand Thursday with Beijing’s top foreign-policy official, Wang Yi, to discuss the matter. 

On Friday, a U.S. destroyer, the USS Carney, shot down a ballistic missile fired toward it from a Houthi-controlled area of Yemen, the Pentagon said, marking the second time the U.S. has announced that the group has targeted one of its military vessels. 

In each instance, the rebels have targeted Navy destroyers within days of coalition attacks aimed at Houthi sites. The strikes by the U.S. and U.K. are intended to weaken the group and secure ships passing through the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea.

The exchange of fire caused no damages or casualties, U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for U.S. military operations in the Middle East, said in a tweet.

Destroyer USS Carney in the Middle East in December. PHOTO: MASS COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST 2ND CLASS AARON LAU/U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Yahya Saree, a Houthi spokesman, in a statement confirmed the group had fired on the Marlin Luanda “in support of the injustice against the Palestinian people and as a response to the American-British aggression on our country.”

The ship’s managing company, Oceonix Services in London, couldn’t be reached for comment.

Early Saturday Yemen time, the U.S. launched a strike against a “Houthi anti-ship missile aimed into the Red Sea and which was prepared to launch,” said Centcom, adding that the missile was destroyed in self-defense.

The U.S. is trying to stop the attacks by the Iranian-backed group without escalating tensions in an already volatile region. The Houthis have said their campaign will continue until Israel halts the fighting in Gaza and humanitarian aid is let in. The Houthis may be targeting U.S. Navy ships shortly after major strikes to demonstrate they haven’t been stopped, U.S. officials said.

China is Iran’s largest oil buyer, giving it leverage on the heavily-sanctioned Islamic Republic. Last year, Beijing also brokered a deal to normalize relations between Tehran and Saudi Arabia after years of tensions.

The Houthis began attacking ships traveling through the Red Sea and on the Gulf of Aden at the end of November in what they said was a response to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, rattling global markets and upending international shipping routes.

Though eager to protect global shipping, the Biden administration has been reluctant to respond too forcefully to the Houthis lest it trigger a war in the region, in part because of the group’s backing from Tehran, Western security officials and advisers have said.

The U.S. led a coalition that has launched two major assaults on Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen, including one last week, while the U.S. alone has launched at least six other limited strikes. Targets included rocket launchers, missile depots, an underground weapons storage facility, warehouses, drones used by the Houthis and radar, missile and air surveillance sites, some of them near the capital San’a, U.S., British and Houthi officials have said.

Days after the first major coalition assault, which targeted more than a dozen sites, the USS Laboon, another American destroyer, shot down an antiship cruise missile launched by the Houthis, Central Command said. There were no reports of damages on the Laboon or casualties, the Pentagon said then.

The U.S. has so far refused to say the impact of the coalition assaults on the Houthis except to say they have had “good effects,” destroying roughly 30% of Houthi capabilities. Despite that, the Houthis have continued launching attacks on commercial ships passing, more than 30 in all. And the Houthis have been defiant after each strike, saying that they would keep attacking ships.

Houthi fighters overthrew the Yemeni government in 2014, leading Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations to mount a military campaign against the rebels. Months of talks between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis have produced a road map that the U.S. hopes could lead to resolution of the conflict. But those talks have since stalled.

Privately, U.S. defense officials have said that strikes alone are unlikely to deter the Houthis, who both have survived a decade of war and, since their attacks on nearby waters, enjoyed an elevated status in a region angered by Israel’s war in Gaza.

Biden administration officials have said that Beijing is pressing the Iranians, but they don’t know the exact substance of those conversations. The U.S. says Iran supplies the Houthis with weapons, funding and other support.

The Carney has come under Houthi attacks in the past, but in those instances, the U.S. has stopped short of saying its military ships were the targets. And some of those strikes have come as the destroyer responded to distress calls from nearby commercial ships also under Houthi attack. In December, the Carney struck a drone that was headed toward the destroyer, “although its specific target is not clear,” the Pentagon said at the time.

Shortly after that shootdown, the M/V Unity Explorer, a Bahamas-flagged bulk cargo ship, came under ballistic-missile attack and sent a distress call, leading the Carney to move toward the ship in response, Central Command said.

As the Carney was assessing the damage on the commercial ship, it spotted a second drone operating nearby and shot it down, Central Command said.

Saleh al-Batati contributed to this article.

Write to Nancy A. Youssef at nancy.youssef@wsj.com and Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com

9. How Leaders and Diplomats Are Trying to End the Gaza War

How Leaders and Diplomats Are Trying to End the Gaza War

Top American, Israeli and Arab officials are seeking to forge three parallel but related deals that could end the war in Gaza, finalize its postwar status, and, most ambitiously, set commitments for the creation of a Palestinian state.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/27/world/middleeast/gaza-war-israel-hamas-negotiations.html

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Smoke from an Israeli airstrike this past week in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.Credit...Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstoc​k

By Patrick Kingsley and Edward Wong

To understand the secret negotiations, New York Times reporters spoke to more than a dozen diplomats and officials from seven nations and the Palestinian Authority.

Jan. 27, 2024, 5:01 a.m. ET

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Top officials from at least 10 different administrations are trying to forge a head-spinning set of deals to end the Gaza war and answer the divisive question of how the territory will be governed after the fighting stops.

The narrowest set of major discussions is focused on reaching a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. This would involve the exchange of more than 100 Israeli hostages held by Hamas for a cease-fire and thousands of Palestinians detained in Israeli jails.

A second track centers on reshaping the Palestinian Authority, the semiautonomous body that administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. American and Arab officials are discussing overhauling the leadership of the authority and having it take control of Gaza after the war ends, assuming power from Israel and Hamas.

In a third track, American and Saudi officials are pushing Israel to agree to conditions for the creation of a Palestinian state in exchange for Saudi Arabia forging formal ties with Israel for the first time ever.

The demands and outcomes discussed in all three processes are linked, and the talks are mostly seen as long shots. The war began with the Hamas terrorist attack of Oct. 7 that killed about 1,200 people, Israeli officials said. The Israeli counterattack has left more than 25,000 Palestinians dead in Gaza, say Health Ministry officials there. President Biden has given Israel full support for the war.

Image

Palestinians taking a break on Friday while heading to camps near Rafah. Israel has asked those still in Khan Younis to move closer to the Egyptian border. Credit...Haitham Imad/EPA, via Shutterstoc​k

Significant obstacles need to be overcome in each set of negotiations. Most notable, Israel’s government says it will not allow full Palestinian sovereignty, raising doubts about whether progress can be made on the major fronts. And the Israeli military campaign has not destroyed Hamas, so it is unclear how Hamas would be persuaded to step aside while it still controls part of Gaza.

The United States is the power trying to stitch it all together. Brett McGurk, the top White House official on the Middle East, was in the region this past week, and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke to him by phone several times while on a trip in Africa, a senior State Department official said. The Biden administration wants to ensure a top U.S. official is speaking face-to-face at all times with Israeli and Arab leaders.

Officials are tossing around many ideas, most of which are provisional, long shots or strongly opposed by some parties. Several contentious suggestions are:

• Transferring power within the Palestinian Authority from the incumbent president, Mahmoud Abbas, to a new prime minister, while letting Mr. Abbas retain a ceremonial role.
• Sending an Arab peacekeeping force to Gaza to bolster a new Palestinian administration there.
• Passing a U.N. Security Council resolution, backed by the United States, that would recognize the Palestinians’ right to statehood.

The following is a road map to the three tracks, based on interviews with more than a dozen diplomats and other officials involved in the talks, all of whom spoke anonymously in order to discuss them more freely.Editors’ Picks

1. Hostages and a Ceasefire

The Americans see an end to the war as the first thing the parties need to deliver. Those talks are entwined with negotiations for the release of more than 100 hostages seized during the rampage of Oct. 7 and held by Hamas and its allies. Hamas has said it will not release the hostages until Israel agrees to a permanent cease-fire, a stance that is incompatible with Israel’s stated goal of fighting until Hamas is removed from Gaza.

Officials from the U.S., Israel, Egypt and Qatar are discussing a deal that would pause the fighting for up to two months. In November, the parties agreed to a brief pause that resulted in Hamas releasing more than 100 hostages.

Image

Protesters in Tel Aviv on Wednesday demanding the release of the Israeli hostages.Credit...Oded Balilty/Associated Pres

In one proposal, the hostages would be released in phases during a pause of up to 60 days in exchange for Palestinians jailed by Israel. Some officials have suggested Israeli civilians would be released first, in exchange for Palestinian women and minors detained by Israel. Then captured Israeli soldiers would be exchanged for Palestinian militant leaders serving long-term sentences.

Diplomats on various sides say they hope that more detailed discussions could be held during the pause about a permanent truce that might involve the withdrawal of most or all Israeli troops, the departure of Hamas’s leaders from the strip and a transition of power to the Palestinian Authority. For now, Israel and Hamas have each rejected some of those conditions.

To try to advance these negotiations, William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, plans to meet in Europe in the coming days with senior Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari counterparts.

Israel-Hamas War: Live Updates

Updated 

Jan. 26, 2024, 6:42 p.m. ETJan. 26, 2024

Jan. 26, 2024

• What is UNRWA, the aid agency with some employees accused of involvement in the Oct. 7 attack?
• Houthi militants claim a hit on an oil tanker off Yemeni coast that set it on fire.
• Palestinian American plaintiffs ask a federal judge to halt U.S. support for Israel.

Some observers hope that the World Court’s call on Friday for Israel to comply with the Genocide Convention will give momentum and political cover to Israeli officials who are pushing internally to end the war.

2. Overhaul the Palestinian Authority

The Palestinian Authority briefly controlled Gaza after Israeli troops left in 2005, but Hamas forced it from power two years later. Now, some want the authority to return to Gaza and play a role in postwar governance. To make that idea more appealing to Israel, which opposes it, there is a push by the United States, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states to overhaul the authority and change its leadership.

Under its current president, Mahmoud Abbas, 88, the authority is widely perceived as both corrupt and authoritarian. Mediators are encouraging him to take a more ceremonial role and to cede executive power to a new prime minister who could oversee Gaza’s reconstruction and reduce corruption. U.S. officials say the goal is to make the authority a more plausible administrator of a future Palestinian state. Israeli officials also assert that the authority needs to change its education system, which they say does not promote peace, and end welfare payments to those convicted of violence against Israelis.

Image

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met with Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Authority, this month in Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.Credit...Pool photo by Evelyn Hockstei​n

Some critics of Mr. Abbas want him replaced by Salam Fayyad, a Princeton professor credited with modernizing the authority during a stint as prime minister a decade ago, or Nasser al-Kidwa, a former Palestinian envoy to the U.N. who broke with Mr. Abbas three years ago. But diplomats say Mr. Abbas is pushing for a candidate over whom he has more influence, like Mohammad Mustafa, his longtime economic adviser.

Some officials have proposed an Arab peacekeeping force to help the new Palestinian leader keep order in a postwar Gaza. Israeli officials reject that notion, but have floated the idea of a multinational force under Israel’s oversight in the strip. American diplomats told the Israelis this month that Arab leaders oppose their idea.

3. Saudi Normalization With Israel

In the most ambitious set of talks, the Biden administration has revived discussions with Saudi Arabia to have the Saudis agree to formal diplomatic relations with Israel.

The three-way deal had been under discussion before the Oct. 7 attacks, and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia seemed amenable to it because the Biden administration was offering a U.S.-Saudi defense treaty, cooperation on a civilian nuclear program and greater arms sales. Under that arrangement, American officials say, the Saudis would have accepted Israel’s relatively minor concessions on the Palestinian issue in return for Saudi recognition.

That recognition would be an important political win for American and Israeli leaders because of Saudi Arabia’s status as a leading Arab and Muslim nation.

Since the war began, however, Saudi Arabia and the United States have raised the price for Israel, now insisting that Israel commit to a process that leads to a Palestinian state and includes Palestinian governance of Gaza. U.S. officials have also told the Israelis that Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations would agree to give money for the reconstruction of Gaza only if Israeli leaders commit to a pathway to Palestinian statehood.

Image

The site of an Israeli strike on a mosque on Wednesday in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.Credit...Fadi Shana/Reuter​s

These new terms were first voiced publicly by Mr. Blinken after he met with Prince Mohammed in a desert tent camp in Saudi Arabia this month. He delivered them to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel after flying from there to Tel Aviv. He reiterated them again in a public talk at Davos, Switzerland, as did Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser.

Mr. Netanyahu has publicly rejected that proposal — pledging recently to maintain Israel’s military control of the entirety of the West Bank and Gaza. Many Israelis support that, although some U.S. officials wonder whether it is an opening bargaining position by Mr. Netanyahu.

To reassure the Saudis and the Palestinians, some officials have suggested a U.N. Security Council resolution, backed by the United States, that would enshrine the Palestinians’ right to sovereignty. But the idea has yet to gain traction.

There is also the question of whether the Biden administration can deliver a Senate-approved mutual defense treaty to Prince Mohammed. Some Democratic senators have already raised concerns about that. And the chances of Republican senators opposing it are expected to grow as the November U.S. presidential election draws closer.

Patrick Kingsley reported from Abu Dhabi, and Edward Wong from Washington. Reporting was contributed by Aaron Boxerman, Adam Rasgon and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem; Ronen Bergman from Tel Aviv; Farnaz Fassihi from New York; and Julian E. Barnes from Washington.

Patrick Kingsley is the Jerusalem bureau chief, covering Israel and the occupied territories. He has reported from more than 40 countries, written two books and previously covered migration and the Middle East for The Guardian. More about Patrick Kingsley

Edward Wong is a diplomatic correspondent who has reported for The Times for more than 24 years from New York, Baghdad, Beijing and Washington. He was on a team of Pulitzer Prize finalists for Iraq War coverage. More about Edward Wong

10. Tip of the Spear - December 2023 | SOF News

Tip of the Spear - December 2023 | SOF News

sof.news · by DVIDS · January 26, 2024

The United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) has posted online its December 2023 issue of Tip of the Spear. This is a news rollup of the major SOF component commands and the Theater Special Operations Commands (TSOCs). Some interesting reading in the articles listed below.

• SOCAFRICA’s Silent Warrior 23
• Exercise Flintlock 2024
• NSW Trains with Romanian SOF
• SOCNORTH’s SOF Symposium
• Navy SEALs train with Indian MARCOS
• From “Silent Ones” of Vietnam to Today’s SWCC
• U-28A Crews Awarded DFC
• MARSOC Small Unit Tactics Training
• Foreign Air Attaches Visit AFSOC
• SOCAFRICA Units train in Tanzania
• 10th SFG(A) Combat Dive Training
• 20th SFG(A) Conducts SF Readiness Evaluation
• USSOCOM Visits House SOF Caucus

****

Tip of the Spear, United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), December 2023, PDF, 40 pages. https://www.dvidshub.net/publication/issues/69480

Photo: Combat Divers assigned to 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) prepare to dive into the Columbia River in Astoria, Oregon, Nov 6, 2023. Photo by U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Michael Wood.

sof.news · by DVIDS · January 26, 2024

11. Weekend Listening: The Right Way to Fight Illiberalism

Weekend Listening: The Right Way to Fight Illiberalism

thefp.com · by Bari Weiss · January 27, 2024

In the past few months, many people were shocked to see the moral rot that has taken hold inside American universities.

For example, they were surprised to learn that:

• A tenured Columbia professor praised Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel as “awesome.”
• At UC–Irvine, a professor said “the Zionists have been exposed for the criminals and bloodthirsty animals that they are. This is a gift from Allah to the world.”
• At Virginia Tech, a professor said Hezbollah terrorism is just “a form of anti-imperialism that unfortunately the Western left shies away from too much.”
• And as Francesca Block of The Free Press reported this week, an NYU adjunct professor told students at The New School “we know it’s not true” that Hamas committed rape and beheaded babies on October 7. He even jokes about being antisemitic.

I could go on and on. We’ve covered many of these stories at The Free Press.

As antisemitism has spread at our universities, many started asking how this could happen when campuses are famously sensitive to microaggressions. How could schools that provide students emotional support animals and cry closets allow this kind of thing?

Perhaps DEI—diversity, equity, and inclusion—wasn’t actually about those words, but about something else. It’s about replacing the principles of good-faith debate and truth-seeking scholarship with an illiberal orthodoxy that puts a premium on identity over ideas.

Well now, it seems, people have finally had enough. States are second-guessing DEI’s place on college campuses and beyond. On January 1, a Texas law shutting down DEI offices at all state colleges went into effect.

In Utah, Governor Spencer Cox—just three years after championing DEI—now rails against colleges that mandate faculty and staff sign diversity statements as a condition of employment. The University of Utah has since eliminated all diversity statements and questions in its hiring process.

In fact, lawmakers in more than a dozen red states have either passed or proposed higher education reform packages that curtail DEI initiatives.

Among them, of course, is Florida, which passed the Stop Woke Act nearly two years ago. Although a court placed part of that law on hold, the State Board of Education this month approved rules that limit public funding of DEI on college campuses.

Our guests on this episode of Honestly, Christopher Rufo and Yascha Mounk, say the DEI ideological overhaul has consumed our schools for quite some time. The question now is: What should we do about it?

Those are not questions with simple answers, and certainly not ones on which Christopher and Yascha agree.

Christopher is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a board member at New College of Florida, and maybe the country’s most influential conservative activist and biggest cheerleader of Florida’s Stop Woke Act. He thinks that using the power of the law to stop DEI is essential.

Yascha, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an international affairs professor at Johns Hopkins University, is on the other side of the political spectrum.

While he thinks that DEI—and woke ideology more broadly—is concerning, he doesn’t think the answer to its illiberalism should come in the form of bans and legislation.

Christopher and Yascha both recently published books that investigate the changing cultural trends of the American left. Christopher’s book is America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything. And Yascha is the author of The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time.

What I appreciate about this debate on Honestly is that while each has a different perspective, they don’t dismiss each other’s arguments (well, mostly anyway).

I talked to them about how we arrived at this new doctrine on power, identity, and justice, and what the right way forward should be. Below are some highlights from our debate, but you can listen to the full version of the conversation here:

On how to describe DEI’s capture of higher education:

Bari Weiss: Some people call it wokeness, which sort of automatically brands you as being on the right. Other people call it critical theory or identity politics or postmodern neo-Marxism. There’s a lot of disagreement about how we actually describe this thing that all of us are witnessing. So I want to start there. What is it that we’re actually talking about?

Christopher Rufo: I think it’s an ideological syndrome. So it’s a cluster of traits, ideas, concepts, narratives, and bureaucratic arrangements that have really revolutionized American society over the past 50 years. I trace the immediate origins back to the year 1968, and the argument that I make in my book, America’s Cultural Revolution, is that all of the ideas from the radical left of that era—the late 1960s, early 1970s—have infiltrated universities and then started to move laterally through bureaucracies in the state sector, in K–12 education, in HR departments, and even the Fortune 100 companies. And what you see over the course of this process is some very kind of multisyllabic, complex ideological concepts from the originators of these ideas in that period. And now they’ve filtered out through bureaucratic language, through euphemisms, to become what we now know as DEI. That’s the ultimate bureaucratic expression of these ideologies.

You can call it—any of those labels that you just suggested, I think, are correct in general, at least facets of this ideology. But at this point, it’s not just an idea. It’s actually an administrative, cultural, and bureaucratic power that has manifested itself and entrenched itself as a new, let’s say, hegemonic cultural force in American life.

Yascha Mounk: I think the best way to boil down the ideas of this ideology is in three propositions. Number one, that identity categories like race, gender, and sexual orientation are the key prism for understanding society. But to understand how we talk to each other today, or to understand who won the last election, or to understand how political revolutions happen, you have to look at things like race, gender, and sexual orientation.

Number two, that universalist values and neutral rules, like those enshrined in the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, are just meant to pull the wool over people’s eyes, that they actually were always designed to perpetuate forms of racist and sexist discrimination, that as Derrick Bell, the founder of critical race theory, claimed, America in the year 2000 remained as racist as it had been in 1950 and 1850.

And third, which follows rather needlessly if you grant the first two premises, that therefore, in order to make any kind of progress in our society, we have to rip up those universal rules and aspirations and make how we all treat each other, and how the state treats all of us, explicitly depend on the kind of identity group into which we are born. I think if you understand that that is the core of the ideology, what you call it is less important.

On whether it’s accurate to say cultural Marxism is taking place:

YM: I think where we probably have genuine disagreements is in the extent to which it’s helpful to think of this ideology as being Marxist. So, Chris, correct me if I’m wrong: I think you would refer to it sometimes as a form of cultural Marxism. So the idea, broadly speaking, is that you take, sort of, the Marxist political ideology—you take out the class and you sort of put in identity categories like race and gender and sexual orientation. And broadly speaking, you get the ideas we’re talking about. I think that’s wrong for a number of reasons.

First, because I just don’t think that there’s very much left of Marxism when you take out the economic categories. It’s a little bit like saying “when you take the bat out of baseball.” You’ve just gotten rid of too much for it to be meaningful. Secondly, because of the history of the thinkers who really do, I think, make up this tradition. Michel Foucault joins the French Communist Party, which very much is listening to Moscow in 1950, but he leaves it in 1953 in disgust. Derrick Bell says he barely read any Marx in college, and after that he never had time. The people he really read were people like [W.E.B] Du Bois and others. And when you go back to the core thinkers of the Marxist tradition, to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and the Frankfurt School and others, they simply don’t help you understand contemporary progressive politics.

Then, of course, the thing we haven’t really mentioned, the idea of intersectionality, which comes to be interpreted as the claim that if you stand at [a] different intersection of identities than me, then I really can’t understand you, and I just have to defer my political judgment to you. That comes out of Kimberlé Crenshaw. And that, I think, is an area where we have a genuine intellectual disagreement.

CR: I personally don’t use the term cultural Marxist that Yascha has done. I don’t do so in the book, although I think that the basic concept, if we leave the moniker aside, is that Marxism—the basic categorical distinctions—moved away from a purely orthodox materialist science or material determinism toward entities of culture, family, law, in a kind of Gramscian direction. [Herbert] Marcuse was a Marxist, and he was the most influential philosophical figure of the New Left, which is the prototype of the radical left we see today.

His doctoral student, Angela Davis, was a member of the Communist Party, is a devoted Marxist, and really took the Marxist tradition and applied it to racial categories. Then within academia, most notably her long career at UC–Santa Barbara, and then her mentees, the third generation, were the founders of Black Lives Matter. They said themselves, “we are trained Marxists.” If you read a law review article written by one of the BLM founders, if you listen to their interviews and speeches, and then if you listen to their interviews with Angela Davis, they make very clear: “we are mobilizing along racial lines. We think that that’s the best rhetorical approach to score political victories. But the ultimate goal is the abolition of capitalism.” And you see this absolutely everywhere: in training programs and academic work, and even critical race theory.

On what’s at stake in the Marxism argument. And if DEI is Marxist, why do Fortune 500 companies employ it?

BW: But tell me what’s at stake, actually, in this argument, because I could go with both sides of the argument. But for the average person who’s looking at this ideology and just saying “This is bad. I look at the way that it segregates Americans. I look at the anti-Americanism all over it. I look at the anti-capitalism that’s definitely explicit in large parts of it, and I just think it’s bad.” And then they hear the two of you having a disagreement about whether it’s Marxist or not. They might wonder, why does it really matter in the end, if we can all agree that it’s a bad thing and that it’s bad for America?

CR: What I think is really at stake—I think in Yascha’s interpretation, it appears to be this cerebral, abstract intellectual problem within academia. And if we can only have the right ideas and engage in debate, then the great ideas will win, and then the bad ideas will decay, and then everything will be fine. But if you take seriously the written words over the course of a half-century of these political objectives, of these thinkers and their activists, who have certainly seized territory in many, many institutions, you’re going to say it’s not just an intellectual debate.

In fact, they want to, as critical race theorists have written, eliminate First Amendment protections for any speech they deem harmful, for any speech they deem racist. They want to eliminate the right to individual equality, as codified in the Fourteenth Amendment and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and have a system of racial categorization and a racial spoils system in which power, privilege, wealth, and property are redistributed along the lines of racial identity. And they want to abolish the system of free enterprise, free markets, entrepreneurial capitalism that has created a massive blessing, not just for the United States but all over the world, and have it all run by a quote, unquote, “anti-racist bureaucracy.” And I think what is really at stake is: if you value the right to free speech, if you value the right to private property, if you value the right to be treated equally as an individual, if you value the United States Constitution—that’s what’s at stake.

YM: One of the things that you cannot understand if you think of these ideas as Marxist, is why it is that Fortune 500 companies have proven so willing to adopt them? Why is it that corporate DEI trainings have so easily been able to incorporate these ideas? They certainly never incorporated the ideas of Karl Marx. Diversity training certainly never said, “the true nature of American society is capitalists exploiting workers, and you should form a union and go on strike.” That certainly would not be conformable with what a Fortune 500 company would allow its diversity trainers to say. So why is it that they are willing to have people come in and talk this kind of language?

CR: Why would Fortune 100 companies do this? The answer to that is actually very important. It’s because they felt pressure from the cultural left on these kind of so-called racial equity issues. And they had already satisfied everything that they needed from the economic right: tax cuts, deregulation, free trade abroad. And so what they did is made a gamble and really a co-optation strategy. And more accurately, they were paying the tax—or really kind of like labor unions and factories in the mid-century period would pay the Mafia protection money. They adopt DEI policies for a number of reasons.

One, to limit legal liability because of frivolous racial discrimination claims. Two, to buy off activist groups to leave them alone and not harass them and jeopardize their reputation. And then three, because there is internal pressure to, let’s say, “do something.” And these are the offerings that are on the table. It doesn’t mean they are Marxists. Obviously not.

At The Free Press, we believe in having hard conversations out loud. If you want to hear more of them, and want to support our work, become a subscriber today:

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The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through Bookshop.org links in this article.

thefp.com · by Bari Weiss · January 27, 2024

12.  Ukraine invites China's Xi to 'peace summit' - Zelenskiy's top adviser

Ukraine invites China's Xi to 'peace summit' - Zelenskiy's top adviser

https://www.reuters.com/world/ukraine-invites-chinas-xi-peace-summit-zelenskiys-top-adviser-2024-01-26/​,

By Olena Harmash

January 26, 20247:14 AM ESTUpdated a day ago

Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks at an event on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco, California, U.S., November 15, 2023. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/Pool/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights, opens new tab

Summary

• Switzerland has agreed to host Ukraine 'peace summit'No date or venue yet fixedZelenskiy has invited world leaders but not PutinUkraine keen to maintain global interest in ending war

KYIV, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Ukraine has invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to participate in a planned "peace summit" of world leaders in Switzerland, a top diplomatic adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, as Russia's invasion approaches its second anniversary.

China has close ties with Russia and has refrained from criticising its invasion of Ukraine but has also said the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries must be respected and has offered to help mediate in the conflict.

"We are definitely inviting China to participate in the summit, at the highest level, at the level of the President of the People's Republic of China," the adviser, Ihor Zhovkva, told Reuters in an interview this week.

"China's participation will be very important to us. We are working with the Chinese side. We involve our partners in the world so that they convey to the Chinese side how important it is to participate in such a summit."

China's Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a "no limits" partnership in Beijing just three weeks before Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. Since then, China has dramatically increased its Russian energy imports.

Putin says the invasion was necessary to protect Russia's own security, while Kyiv and the West say it is an unprovoked war of aggression and a land grab.

Neutral Switzerland agreed to host the Ukraine peace summit on Ukraine at Zelenskiy's request but no date or venue has yet been set. Zhovkva said teams were still working on the details.

PEACE PLAN

Zhovkva also said the national security advisers of a record 82 countries had taken part in talks this month in the Swiss town of Davos that focused on Ukraine's 10-point peace plan.

Russia has not been invited to the planned summit and has previously said Ukraine's 10-point plan will come to nothing.

That plan envisages the restoration of Ukraine's territorial integrity, withdrawal of all Russian troops, protection of food and energy supplies, nuclear safety, and the release of all prisoners of war.

"We will talk about a certain road map (at the summit) to implement this (peace) formula," said Zhovkva.

Ukraine is scrambling to maintain international support amid signs of war weariness among its Western allies after the failure of Kyiv's counteroffensive last year to bring a breakthrough on the battlefield. The frontlines have remained little changed and the war in Gaza has recently become a more pressing focus of global attention.

Zhovkva hailed the participation of many countries from the Global South at the Davos talks, saying Ukraine hoped to maintain this level at the summit.

China's representative participated in a meeting on Ukraine in Saudi Arabia last summer, and Xi and Zelenskiy have also spoken by phone.

Beijing last year put forward its own 12-point plan for peace in Ukraine that involves declaring a ceasefire but does not stipulate that Russia should withdraw from any of the territory it has seized.

Editing by Gareth Jones

13. Germany unearths pro-Russia disinformation campaign on X

No surprise. I am sure it is happening in other countries and not just Germany. The question is what are governments, companies, and populations going to do about it?

Germany unearths pro-Russia disinformation campaign on X

Investigators uncover concerted onslaught on Berlin’s support for Ukraine involving more than 1m posts

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates
• Europe live – latest updates

The Guardian · by Kate Connolly · January 26, 2024

Digital forensic experts in Germany have uncovered a vast, pro-Russia disinformation campaign against the government using tens of thousands of fake accounts on the social media platform X.

The German foreign ministry, which commissioned the study after suspecting it was being targeted by bots, said the findings highlighted the need for governments to systematically tackle the growing number of disinformation campaigns and recognise the effect they could have on elections.

Using specialised monitoring software, the experts uncovered a huge trail of posts over a one-month period from 10 December, which amounted to a sophisticated and concerted onslaught on Berlin’s support for Ukraine. More than 1m German-language posts were sent from an estimated 50,000 fake accounts, amounting to a rate of two every second.

The overwhelming tone of the messages was the suggestion that the government of Olaf Scholz was neglecting the needs of Germans as a result of its support for Ukraine, both in terms of weapons and aid, as well as by taking in more than a million refugees.

Der Spiegel, which had access to the findings, reported that the fake accounts had matching comments attached to them, often using hashtags popular at the time, such as #Oktoberfest or #Bundesliga, in a concerted effort to reach as wide an audience as possible.

In one of the most impactful fake messages, in terms of the number of people it reached and the amount of feedback it generated, Annalena Baerbock, the foreign minister, appeared to be declaring from her own account on X that government support for Ukraine was crumbling. A small Cyrillic figure that had crept into the post apparently mistakenly was the only obvious factor immediately identifying it as fake.

The posts are typically linked to well-known media sites, using a link shortener so that the false domain names are not immediately obvious.

The analysts said they were convinced the source of the campaign was in Russia, making a connection to the Russian-led Doppelgänger campaign that first emerged in 2022, affecting the UK, France and Italy. Among the faked posts then were mock-up versions of reports from the Guardian and Daily Mail, among other publications.

The discovery of the Doppelgänger campaign led to the imposition of sanctions by the EU last summer on two Russian IT companies, Structura National Technologies and Social Design Agency, over their involvement in it. According to US authorities, the two companies are believed to be responsible for a similar Russian disinformation campaign in Latin America.

German minister warns of ‘massive’ danger from Russian hackers

Read more

Facebook’s parent company, Meta, spoke at the time of the “largest and most persistent” Russian online operation to date and blocked numerous accounts involved as a result.

The analysis showed that the operators of the message-sending system appeared to take breaks at the weekends and on Russian holidays, when the number of posts noticeably reduced.

The concern in the German government, which has already been the target of misinformation campaigns and computer hacks, is how this method might be used to affect the outcome of the upcoming European elections, as well as three state elections in eastern Germany where the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is leading in the polls.

Analysts were struck by the similarity in tone of messages reacting to the fake posts and the rhetoric used by the AfD. The party is highly critical of the government’s Ukraine policy as well as its management of everything from energy policy to education. The AfD has known links to the Kremlin and has taken a sympathetic approach towards Vladimir Putin.

The Guardian · by Kate Connolly · January 26, 2024

14. Inside the Heritage Foundation’s Plans for ‘Institutionalizing Trumpism’

A fascinating interview that foreshadows how the US government (and professional civil service) will be remade if Trump is elected.

Inside the Heritage Foundation’s Plans for ‘Institutionalizing Trumpism’

“People will lose their jobs,” the think tank’s president says about federal workers. “Hopefully their lives are able to flourish in spite of that.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/21/magazine/heritage-foundation-kevin-roberts.html?referringSource=articleShare&smid=nytcore-ios-share&utm

By Lulu Garcia-Navarro

• Jan. 21, 2024

Since taking over the Heritage Foundation in 2021, Kevin D. Roberts has been making his mark on an institution that came to prominence during the Reagan years and has long been seen as an incubator of conservative policy and thought. Roberts, who was not well known outside policy circles when he took over, has pushed the think tank away from its hawkish roots by arguing against funding the war in Ukraine, a turnabout that prompted some of Heritage’s policy analysts to leave. Now he’s looking ahead, to the 2024 election and beyond. Roberts told me that he views Heritage’s role today as “institutionalizing Trumpism.” This includes leading Project 2025, a transition blueprint that outlines a plan to consolidate power in the executive branch, dismantle federal agencies and recruit and vet government employees to free the next Republican president from a system that Roberts views as stacked against conservative power. The lesson of Trump’s first year in office, Roberts told me, is that “the Trump administration, with the best of intentions, simply got a slow start. And Heritage and our allies in Project 2025 believe that must never be repeated.”

You’ve taken the Heritage Foundation, once a bastion of the Reagan doctrine of peace through strength, in a different direction. Under you, Heritage has vocally opposed recent aid packages to Ukraine. It has criticized the Biden administration for what you’ve said is a lack of transparency when it comes to how the money is being spent and how you believe those packages are impacting the administration’s domestic priorities. Can you explain some of your thinking on that pivot?

Yeah, sure. But perhaps it would be helpful to start with my perception of those examples you mentioned relative to the Reagan principle of peace through strength. We believe that the manner in which the Ukraine aid packages have been put together, the manner in which they’ve been debated or really not debated in Congress, the manner in which they’ve not been analyzed, the manner in which there’s no transparency, the fact that there’s no strategy actually is a violation of the principle of peace through strength. So while much ink has been spilled about Heritage no longer believing in peace through strength, that’s not true. But I don’t want to dismiss the part of your question about the shift in the conservative movement toward more skepticism, if not restraint, in foreign policy, and I think a lot of that is prudent. Because what the American people are saying, conservatives in particular, but not exclusively conservatives, is why are we prioritizing any other place internationally above the problems we have in the United States?

I hear you that there are a lot of problems at home to be solved, and they’re costly problems. But we had Russia invade a sovereign country on the doorstep of a democratic Europe. Does it not seem to you squarely within the U.S. national interest to stop Russian aggression?

Yes, comma, if we do so in a way that is responsible with the people’s money, that articulates what the end game is, that is solely focused on military aid. And frankly, also recognizes that the United States of America, in both Democrat and Republican administrations, had a role in creating this conflict. Now, Putin and Russia deserve the blame. I’ve been very clear about that. Having said that, it was our saber-rattling about Ukraine entering NATO that is one of the many factors that led to this. And so, yes, it’s on the doorstep of a democratic Europe. We want the Ukrainians to win. But it would also be really helpful if the Germans, and the French in particular, would do more to support their neighbor.

I want to ask a bit of a related question. The Heritage Foundation recently hosted an event in Washington for allies of Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary. And as you know, he recently vetoed a proposed European Union funding package for Ukraine. You’ve said you want the E.U. to be stepping up more when it comes to providing aid to Ukraine. So do you agree with what he did?

I’ll say I can’t answer that question — but not to be evasive, which you’ve probably learned I’m not, but because there are Hungarian and European political considerations there that have to do with accession to NATO as well. So that’s a thorny issue. Ultimately, though, two things: Whether the European Union as a body sends money is almost immaterial to us. We want the individual European nation-states sending that money. We’re not fans of the current European Union as it’s constituted. But the other thing, and sorry to be a little argumentative here, but your lead-in to that question is just incorrect. You referenced hosting a meeting of allies of Viktor Orban. We host think-tank leaders from around the world all the time. And where that phrase might lead someone to is a characterization that is just baseless. And there was a lot of that that week.

Orban has become this darling of the right. You yourself have met with him. You’ve praised him on social media.

He’s a very impressive leader.

At CPAC last year, he said Hungary is “the place where we didn’t just talk about defeating the progressives and liberals and causing a conservative Christian political turn, but we actually did it.”

It’s all true. It should be celebrated.

Is that part of the attraction for you?

Those policy wins are very appealing to us. But you use the word “attraction” like, you know, there’s some strange affinity here — that, to be fair, Lulu, many of your colleagues in the media like to insinuate. And that’s just absurd on its face. There are policy wins on family policy, on foreign policy, on public safety, on education that we laud and have for 51 years in South Korea, in Taiwan, in England, in Germany, in France, in Africa.

When I used the word “attraction," I wasn’t trying to suggest anything illicit.

Fair enough. Thanks for having fun.

That said, Orban brags about turning Hungary into an “illiberal democracy” — his words. He’s anti-L.G.B.T. He’s anti-immigrant. He said explicitly that he wants to prevent Europe from becoming “mixed race.” Over his four terms, he presided over a pattern of democratic backsliding in Hungary.

I’ve not seen that.

That is the estimation of members of the European Union.

They’re incorrect.

He’s also very open about being a Christian nationalist. And you’ve said in a previous interview, “Modern Hungary is not just a model for conservative statecraft but the model.”

Politics Across the United States

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I think there are lessons from a lot of countries, including Hungary, including Poland, for similar reasons. It’s interesting, just as a side note, that people get infatuated with the American right’s affinity for Mr. Orban, but they don’t understand the same affinity we have for at least the previous government in Poland, for the same reasons.

Tell me those reasons. What is it exactly that he has done that you find laudable?

That actually gets to the heart of the question, rather than framing that I would disagree with. The focus on family policy broadly. The motivation to realize that Hungary has to do something, as most countries in the world outside Africa do, to reverse the decline in the birthrate. Our analysts have suggested that at least a couple of the policies they passed haven’t worked, at least not yet. But we’ve applauded a lot of economic policy, attracting investment from abroad. As you probably know, if you listened to my CPAC Budapest speech, we have not just criticized them in private meetings, but I have publicly criticized them for investments from China and Iran and Russia, because that’s what friends need to do in order to make them more appealing to the center-right in the United States. And the reason we want them to be more appealing to the center-right in the United States is because of these good lessons.

I’d like to talk about domestic politics, and I want to hear about your vision for this country and specifically the next administration. Project 2025 is Heritage’s big project in advance of the next election, a plan for if a conservative takes over the presidency. How would you describe its purpose?

It’s a presidential-transition project, which means that if there’s a conservative who wins — and I mean, frankly, if President Biden wanted to use it, we would love it. It just seems unlikely. Maybe someone in the center. I think if Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Senator Joe Manchin somehow wins the election, and I think both will be running, they might be open to it. But the point is to hasten the hiring of aligned personnel and hasten the implementation of conservative policy. And that includes hastening the overturning, via executive order, of what we believe are wrong policies of the current administration.

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Roberts at a news conference with members of the House Freedom Caucus in September, during the continuing fight over funding the government.Credit...Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters

Do you know something I don’t know about Joe Manchin?

I’ve been perhaps the greatest speculator on the American right that he’s running, but I don’t know for sure.

I thought we might get something there.

Yeah. Sorry. I wish I could. I saw him at Fox News a few weeks ago, and I asked him, and it was neither a yes nor a no. But that told me something.

One priority for both your organization and the Republican Party writ large is reducing the size of the federal work force. What do you envision when you say, as you have said, you want to destroy the administrative state?

I envision the destruction that I’m referring to, which I presume is the real focus of your question, as a political entity being significantly weakened. People will lose their jobs. Hopefully their lives are able to flourish in spite of that. Buildings will be shut down. Hopefully they can be repurposed for private industry. But the administrative state — most importantly, what we’re trying to destroy is the political influence it has over individual American sovereignty, and the only way to do that, or one of the ways to do that, is to diminish the number of unelected bureaucrats who are wielding that power instead of Congress.

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So the goal is to try to essentially fire a lot of career civil servants, many of whom have decades of experience in government —

Many of whom have decades of experience putting government power above American sovereignty. We’re not saying they’re bad people. We’re not saying we want any harm to come to them. Let me be really clear about that. This is Heritage, you know, not some fringe group on the right. We’re talking about destroying political power. And they have political power. And they wield it. They absolutely wield that over the appointees of the president of the United States, whom the American people elected. And for conservatives, one of our greatest frustrations is that thousands of times in the last decades, they have blocked conservative innovation. So we want them out of there. We want Schedule F. I don’t know what the right number is in terms of the reduction in the number of federal employees, but it’s substantial.

I just want to explain what Schedule F is. It’s an executive order that would reclassify tens of thousands of government workers, taking away their employment protections. And some estimates say that hundreds of thousands of federal workers would be impacted. I think the civilian federal work force is something around two million.

Yes, ultimately. That estimate in terms of the number affected seems high to me. I’ve seen 50,000. I ultimately don’t know the precise number, but that’s a comfortable range.

In a recent podcast episode, you were speaking with Jesse Kelly, the right-wing radio host, and the episode was about, and I’m quoting here, “the secret Communist movement inside America.” And you were not talking about Chinese government infiltration. You said about those employed in the U.S. government, “These men and women, these Communists, really, are in positions where they’re dictating with the power, the authority of law, what other Americans do.” You use the word “Communist” a lot to describe those you might disagree with politically inside this country.

Well, at least a few of them must be Communists. I think there are far more Chinese Communists who’ve infiltrated our government than American Communists, but at the very least, they’re socialists. So if I were to revise that, I would say they were socialists, not Communists.

When you’re saying there are Chinese Communists, are you talking about people of Chinese descent?

I’m talking about Chinese Communist Party agents.

Inside the U.S. government?

Oh, no doubt. But usually when I’m talking about that, I’m talking about the Confucius Institutes in colleges. Also talking about, yes, unfortunately, a level of C.C.P. espionage in this country, no doubt.

To go back for a moment, the proposals we’ve been talking about end up concentrating more power in the executive branch and specifically under the president. There’s a term for that, right? The unitary executive theory, a reading of constitutional law that holds that the president has the authority to control the entire executive branch, including agencies that currently operate with more independence, like the Department of Justice. Why is it better for an agency like the D.O.J. to not be independent?

I’ll back up a half step. Unitary executive theory is something we don’t just agree with. We believe it is the proper constitutional understanding of our government, provided — and this is a vital thing for us — that the legislative branch is much more active and maybe even proactive and ambitious in the assertion of its authority. If you were to ask me, “What’s the real diagnosis of the emergence of the administrative state?” It isn’t even just the effectiveness of people on the left, maybe a few of them Communists. It’s that Congress actively abdicated its authority over some of these decisions because of a lack of political courage, and many Republicans, too. So we have to correct that in order to get the executive branch back in some sort of equilibrium. But the Department of Justice — we just disagree wholly that the Department of Justice is independent of the president or the executive branch. That was not an understanding until the modern era.

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Roberts welcoming Senator Marco Rubio of Florida to a Heritage Foundation event in Washington in 2022.Credit...Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Former President Trump has said that if he’s re-elected, he’ll “appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of America, Joe Biden, and go after the Biden crime family.” Do you think that’s good conservative policy, to go after your political opponents as a foundational campaign promise?

No, I think it’s a waste of time.

But if the Department of Justice came under a future President Trump, he would be entitled to use the department in that way.

Two things. The first is that I can think that it’s a waste of time but also acknowledge that that’s in his authority. But the second thing is that Congress can step in and say, No, in fact your authority doesn’t extend to that. There are checks and balances. Part of what I’m arguing for is that the legislative branch has not upheld its end of the bargain. That’s what we have to get back to.

This Department of Justice has been accused of being politically motivated in its actions against Donald Trump. But it has also gone after a Democratic senator, Bob Menendez. And isn’t that the point? That an independent Department of Justice that is not the tool of partisan politics can go after both Democrats and Republicans and anyone else who might have done wrong?

Yeah, but it could do that under presidential authority. The key is that the American people in Congress are the check on the president abusing his authority that way.

Congress hasn’t been much of a check on anything these days.

Admittedly. I mean, I readily concede that. In fact, I have friends in Congress who are tired of hearing me say that — that you guys have to have more courage about this, including if President Trump is re-elected.

Do you believe that President Biden won the 2020 election?

No.

Can you tell me why?

Sure. I think there are unknowns. I don’t know the outcome, but that’s why I can’t say yes definitively. And I am no conspiracy theorist at all, as some of the election-integrity people on the right will tell you. Still a lot of unknowns about two counties in Arizona, multiple counties in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. Is it possible he won? Sure. But can I say definitively that he won? No. Having said that, I was very vocal at the end of 2020 and early 2021 that that’s what we knew and the election needed to be certified. And so let’s move on.

Pretty much every bit of evidence has shown there was no substantial fraud.

We have an election-fraud database at Heritage that shows a lot of instances of fraud. What I’m not saying is that the examples in that database prove that Biden didn’t win. I’m not certain that he won.

I know you don’t endorse candidates, but given that Trump is both the front-runner for the Republican Party’s nomination and currently under four different indictments, would a conviction on any of those counts be enough to give you pause that he’s the right person to be enacting Heritage’s agenda?

I will honestly and happily leave that to voters to decide, because Heritage has no influence on the outcome of the election. I do think the American people’s assessment of that in a general election might very well be different from the assessment of Republican primary voters thus far. And I think someone can be a fan of President Trump and recognize that reality. Just objectively looking at polls, right?

There are members of your own party — Liz Cheney most prominently, but others as well — who have been warning about how dangerous Trump would be for America if he is re-elected. I recently heard Trump’s former defense secretary, Mark Esper, echo that. Esper, I should note, was once the chief of staff at Heritage. So I wonder what you think when you hear conservatives saying that Trump is unfit to serve or that he is a true threat to America.

I understand the question but largely disagree with the assessment that others, including Secretary Esper, have made. And certainly all due respect to him, especially as a Heritage alum. I know him to be a good guy. This is the same secretary who, in the summer of 2020, refused to agree with President Trump in handling Black Lives Matter riots, and wherever someone may be on the motivation of some people in Black Lives Matter, those riots were awful. They were far worse than Jan. 6. A lot of the people in Jan. 6 were just knuckleheads. The amount of ink that has been spilled, the amount of political gain that Congresswoman Cheney has made as a result of that is just atrocious. And I think the far bigger threat to our republic is the Biden family.

I understand your position, but are you not concerned when you hear Trump make threats to retaliate against his political enemies?

I don’t like threats of political retaliation by either side. What I’m reacting to is, you know, your framing is one-sided. Somehow I have to respond to Trump. I have to respond to what Esper, who was a terrible defense secretary, said. But where’s the framing on Biden?

I guess the reason I asked you these questions is because you lead a conservative organization. And so the idea is that you have influence on certain parts of the political discussion. And you know, again, I’ll cite Trump, who called his political opponents “vermin.” Do you see Heritage as trying to put the brakes on that kind of fear-mongering that is driving this very dangerous polarization?

My point here is that Heritage tries to put the brakes on all of that on the left and on the right — that it isn’t just a Trump problem. Every example that someone gives of Trump, I could, if I wanted to play a game, offer an example of Biden. Our point at Heritage is that all of this is nonsense.

I recently heard you tell a British interviewer that while he overstepped a bit, Joe McCarthy largely got things right. That’s the Joe McCarthy who, as a senator in the 1950s, oversaw a sweeping campaign to attack and root out ideological opponents. Can you tell me what you think he got right?

Yeah. I was referring to his motivation, and his motivation was, as you know, that real Communists, like capital-C Communists, had infiltrated the federal government, which we learned in hindsight he was right about. Obviously, at least some of his tactics were terrible, but what he got right was the motivation. And perhaps if he had not used those tactics, or maybe if he had been a political leader not prone to those kinds of tactics, the result would have been a lot more fruitful and effective for American society.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity from two interviews.

15. Junta Battalion Controlling Myanmar-China Trade Route Surrenders to KIA

Junta Battalion Controlling Myanmar-China Trade Route Surrenders to KIA

irrawaddy.com · by Saw Reh · January 26, 2024

The Kachin Independence Army (KIA) said it captured another Myanmar junta base in northern Shan State on Wednesday after defeating Infantry Battalion 123 in Nam Hpat Kar (Nampaka) village, Kutkai Township.

The base is crucial for control of the Lashio-Muse road, KIA information officer Colonel Naw Bu told The Irrawaddy. The Lashio-Muse road is a key route for border trade with the country’s biggest trading partner, China.

The fighting lasted for nearly one month before combined forces of KIA Brigades 4, 6 and 10 and the Kachin People’s Defense Force (KPDF) seized the base on Wednesday.

“We launched the attack on December 9. We seized several hill-top outposts guarding the main base some time ago, before capturing the main base on Wednesday,” said Naw Bu.

Nam Hpat Kar is located between Kutkai town, which is occupied by the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), and the 105-mile border trade zone in Muse, occupied by the Arakan Army (AA).

The KIA seized an anti-aircraft gun and a howitzer from the junta base in Nam Hpat Kar, according to sources on the ground.

The ethnic army said more than 200 junta soldiers were deployed at the base.

It took time to gain control of Nam Hpat Kar because the base was huge and soldiers there were fresh, a military analyst commented.

KIA forces transport an anti-aircraft gun seized from the Nam Hpat Kar base.

“It normally takes time [to defeat junta positions]. Not every junta soldier will surrender easily,” said the analyst, adding that Laukkai in neighboring Kokang region had only fallen after a long siege.

“Nam Hpat Kar was not besieged for long as it was a new target. So, junta soldiers there had not suffered much. No one surrenders after just a few gunshots. People will only surrender after their morale is sapped by continuous attacks and they are convinced there is no escape.”

The analyst said junta troops in the border trade town of Muse have been cut off by the KIA’s seizure of Nam Hpat Kar.

Fighting between the ethnic Brotherhood Alliance and junta troops for control of Muse – the key border trade zone between Myanmar and China – is raging despite a China-brokered truce agreed by both sides on Jan. 12.

“Even before Operation 1027 was launched [by the Brotherhood Alliance in October], the KIA had seized a junta hilltop outpost in the east of Mong Paw in Muse Township. Mong Paw is adjacent to Nam Hpat Kar. So, the KIA has taken control of an area populated by Kachin people in northern Shan State,” the analyst explained.

The KIA has seized at least eight junta positions in northern Shan State, including a bridge 12 km to the north of Nam Hpat Kar, since launching its offensive on Dec. 20.

The ethnic army has also seized Man Wein Gyi village in Kachin State’s Mansi Township, which borders Namkham Township in northern Shan State.

Your Thoughts …

irrawaddy.com · by Saw Reh · January 26, 2024

16. Master Sergeant Half-Mast and the Scrolling Soldier: A Proposal to Renew PS Magazine

I think only old soldiers can relate to this. (but we are fading away.....)

Master Sergeant Half-Mast and the Scrolling Soldier: A Proposal to Renew PS Magazine - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Theo Lipsky · January 26, 2024

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PS Magazine, the Army’s soon-shuttering preventive maintenance magazine, has taught American soldiers how to maintain the service’s massive inventory of equipment for over seventy-three years. Via engaging comics it has dispensed lessons to millions of soldiers on a staggering array of mechanical topics.

Before closing it down, the Army must ask whether PS Magazine and Master Sergeant Half-Mast have one more lesson to teach us—that the Army can embrace unconventional, new media to reach and hold the attention of the scrolling soldier, be she a literal or metaphorical wrench-turner. Rather than shutter PS Magazine, the Army can adapt it for social media. The audience of PS Magazine has not disappeared. It has simply leapt to a new medium, and the magazine can make that leap too. Indeed, it once was that leap. To understand how, one must recall how PS got started.

The Origins of PS

PS Magazine founder Will Eisner’s artistry predated his Army service. In the 1930s a young Eisner created “The Spirit,” a comic about a crime-busting “costumed character,” for newspapers concerned about losing readers to the insurgent comic books. “The Spirit” was a massive success. But then, in 1941, the Army drafted Eisner. He shortly found himself at Aberdeen Proving Ground, where his identity as the comic’s creator won him instant celebrity.

News of Eisner’s talents reached the nearby Army Ordnance Corps, which scooped him up to work for Army Motors, its instructional maintenance newsletter. Eisner quickly assessed that Army Motors failed to reach its audience because it was text-heavy and dry despite printing valuable information. As a fix he created its cartoon mascot, a walking cautionary tale named Private Joe Dope. Joe was a hit with the GIs.

Eisner left the Army after the war but did not stay away long. In the early ‘50s the Army asked him and his new company, American Visuals, to create a successor to Army Motors. This time, Eisner fully embraced comics. Rather than serve as a complementary illustration to longer text, Eisner and his team’s drawings took center stage. PS Magazine was born. The Ordnance Corps heralded “The Return of Joe Dope,” and so began a legendary seventy-year run.

The Lessons of PS

The parallels with the present day are clear. Like social media today, comic books were a dominant medium among young people in the 1950s. Nine out of ten high schoolers consumed comics regularly. Like social media today, concern about comics grew so great that Congress investigated their “delinquency producing effect” in 1954. And like the Army that invited Eisner back, today’s Army is much concerned with reaching soldiers. So what can we learn?

It is worth noting first that PS Magazine’s cartoon-centric approach was not without controversy. In a laudatory 1954 piece, not long after that congressional investigation into horror comics, the Ordnance Corps’s chief of preventive maintenance acknowledged that “twenty years ago it is unlikely that approval or even consideration would have been a given to an official publication written in an informal style, using humor and cartoons.”

But PS Magazine’s runaway success vindicated that “informal style.” The Ordnance Corps explained in the same 1954 piece that PS writers maintained “a knowledge of military idioms, slang, and lapses into the vernacular.” The writers also avoided the deadening paragraphs of definitions and references that plagued Army prose elsewhere, “a frequent malpractice noted in formal documents.”

Its carefully cultivated connection with soldiers also explained PS’s success. Comics, which the editorial staff called “articles,” began with an inquiry soldiers sent to PS regarding a maintenance issue. Even if a given edition did not have space to print the resultant comic, the editorial staff sent an informed answer to the inquiring soldier. In this way PS averaged over a hundred answered inquiries each month. It sustains the practice today.

For PS to survive it must do as the Army did in 1951. PS’s underlying model is thus a good one, both for readiness and for the American soldier. But PS was born a print publication, and like many print publications, it has recently struggled, even after going all digital with an app in 2017. To get important information to a young audience, it met the soldiers where they were in 1951. Today, that place is on social media. This leap would not be a difficult one.

Platforms such as Instagram (where PS’s present account has posted twice in the past year) are ready venues. Anyone who has walked an Army maintenance bay today knows phones are at hand, and social media apps are already on them, unlike Army apps. Instagram’s very interface, with paneled galleries, lends itself to PS’s comics. With only a little work, historical PS comics on equipment still in service may find a ready audience in the scrolling soldier.

Social media platforms also offer PS a chance to experiment with video or reels as a format for its vital maintenance lessons. Like comics once upon a time, video and particularly reel engagement are surging by several measures across most popular social media platforms. It is not hard to imagine engaging content wherein a maintainer walks through a tricky but important service on a common platform.

There are undiscovered Will Eisners in today’s Army, in motor pools and clerks’ offices and armament shops. The Army should heed the example of its own Ordnance Corps circa 1941 by going out and finding them. In many cases they have already announced themselves, gaining millions of views with their creativity on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok. Their help, should they grant it as Eisner did, would make a transition to a social media–borne PS smoother.

The Pitfalls of Social Media

Social media is not without risks particular to the military. This has been argued elsewhere, including by this author. Social media flattens communication but does a poor job of systematically revealing truth. At its worst it can incentivize its users to undermine institutions for illusory, short-term gratification that does not solve problems but does addict those who engage. That said, PS Magazine is precisely the sort of publication postured to circumvent these issues.

The key differences are twofold. First, the dialogue that social media most degrades is fundamentally different than that which PS Magazine hosts. Social media can wreak havoc on intraprofessional dialogue and threaten civil-military relations. But PS is concerned with technical information far less likely to suffer cross contamination from greater online discourse and far more immediately useful to the average soldier and officer.

Second, though PS Magazine employed an informal medium and it solicited inquiries, its content was not crowdsourced. Comic manuscripts were written in coordination with ordnance professionals at Aberdeen Proving Ground. A draft manuscript was reviewed by manufacturers, relevant schools, as well as research and design agencies. Final drafts required the approval of, among others, the responsible ordnance national maintenance point before publication.

In this way PS achieved the best of both worlds. Unlike a lot of social media content, and despite its youthful comics, PS content was and is far from uncontrolled. An impressive array of stakeholders vet it and so it is highly reliable. A 1964 article described this approach as “hard-core technical articles overlaid with a thin veneer of deliberate and studied spontaneity.” The Army can migrate to social media while honoring this tradition if it takes care to do so.

PS Magazine and the Scrolling Soldier

Maintenance matters. In 1950, the Army painfully relearned the consequences of low equipment readiness in the opening battles of the Korean War. In response, the Army took a risk with a controversial new medium, the comic, and gave a brilliant former soldier named Will Eisner the editorial license he needed to teach soldiers about their equipment in their own language. Through PS’s success, the magazine, Eisner, and Master Sergeant Half-mast taught us all a lesson.

That lesson is worth heeding now. Amid once-every-forty-year material modernization, a Department of Defense–wide problem of information inaccessiblility, and an epidemic of information overload, reliable and relatable content is essential. The Army needs PS Magazine more than ever. Rather than close PS, the Army should take inspiration from its founder, Will Eisner, and modernize it for the scrolling soldier.

Theo Lipsky is an active duty US Army captain. He holds a BS from the United States Military Academy.

The views expressed above are his and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: US Army Sustainment Command

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Theo Lipsky · January 26, 2024

17. Is Congress Really Going to Abandon Ukraine Now?

Is Congress Really Going to Abandon Ukraine Now?

The U.S. rallied the world to help the Ukrainians. Are Americans really going to leave them to their fate?

By Anne Applebaum

The Atlantic · by Anne Applebaum · January 27, 2024

As I write this I am in Warsaw, 170 miles from Poland’s border with Ukraine. The front line, where Ukrainians are right now fighting and dying, is another 450 miles beyond that. Not so far, in other words. A long day’s drive. I am well within range of Russian missiles, the kind that have hit Kyiv, Odesa, and Lviv so many times over the past two years.

Tens of millions of other people—Poles, Germans, Romanians, Finns, Estonians, Swedes, Slovaks, Lithuanians, Czechs, Latvians, Norwegians—are also in range of Russian conventional missiles, whether launched from Belarus, Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine, or Russia itself. Anyone in Europe could also be hit by Russian nuclear weapons, of course, as Russian television propagandists so frequently like to remind us. Dmitri Medvedev, a former Russian president, in recent months has threatened Poland with the loss of its statehood, threatened Sweden and Finland with nuclear and hypersonic missiles, and said the Baltic states belong to Russia anyway.

Most of the time, the possibility of Russian aggression doesn’t affect anybody or change anything. No one talks about it. Life goes on as normal. In Finland and Romania, preparations for presidential elections are under way. In Germany, farmers are on strike. Lithuania is holding an international light festival.

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The moment the Ukrainians start to lose, all of that will change. For the past few months, Western observers have been tossing around the word stalemate, as if the Russian invasion of Ukraine had settled into some kind of dull, permanent stasis. In fact, the battlefield is dynamic. The front line is constantly changing, and the changes, both material and psychological, are starting to favor Russia. The Ukrainians are just as brave as they were a year ago and just as innovative. Their drones recently hit a Russian gas depot near St. Petersburg, hundreds of miles from Ukraine, among other targets. With no navy of their own, they have pushed much of the Russian Black Sea fleet away from their shores. But on the ground, in the southern and eastern parts of their country, they are rationing ammunition. They’ve never had sufficient missiles and bullets, and now they are at risk of not having enough to keep fighting at all.

Were their front line to fall back dramatically, the horrific violence alone would trigger a shock wave through the rest of Europe. Russian occupation of more territory would continue to mean what it has meant for the past two years: torture chambers, random arrests, and thousands of kidnapped children. But an even deeper, broader shock wave would be triggered by the growing realization that the United States is not just an unreliable ally, but an unserious ally. A silly ally. Unlike the European Union, which collectively spends more money on Ukraine than Americans do but can’t yet produce as many weapons, the U.S. still has ammunition and weapons to send. Now Washington is on the verge of refusing to do so, but not because the White House has had a change of heart.

The looming end of American aid to Ukraine is not a policy decision. For two years, the Biden administration successfully led an international coalition to provide not soldiers but rather military aid to Ukraine. Officials convened regular meetings, consulted with allies, pulled in military support from around the world. Majorities in the U.S. continue to support Ukraine. Majorities in both houses of Congress do too. But now, for reasons that outsiders find impossible to understand, a minority of Republican members of Congress, in a fit of political pique, are preparing to cut it all off. They might succeed.

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Many different, bad choices led to this moment. Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s decision last summer to cut Ukraine out of a larger budget bill was the first. The strange idea to link Ukraine aid to controversial changes to U.S. immigration law and border policy was the second. The ballots cast by voters in Iowa and New Hampshire then put Donald Trump on a seemingly unstoppable path to the Republican presidential nomination; Trump’s telephone calls to Republican senators, telling them to kill the Ukraine/border legislation, suddenly mattered. His motives are blatantly selfish: He wants the U.S.-Mexico border to remain chaotic so that he can use the issue in his campaign. He doesn’t want Biden to benefit from any perceived solution or progress. And he doesn’t care if Ukraine runs out of ammunition as a result.

To the outside world, none of the logic behind any of these decisions makes sense. All they can see is that the American political system has been hijacked and rendered dysfunctional by a radical, pro-Russian faction led by Trump—a disgraced ex-president who used violence and deceit to try to remain in office.

By abandoning Ukraine in a fit of political incompetence, Americans will consent to the deaths of more Ukrainians and the further destruction of the country. We will convince millions of Europeans that we are untrustworthy. We will send a message to Russia and China too, reinforcing their frequently stated belief that the U.S. is a degenerate, dying power. Less than a year ago, when Biden made his surprise trip to Kyiv, the U.S. projected confidence and unity as the leader of a functional alliance. Now, suddenly, we don’t.

Elected legislators don’t get that many opportunities to make a real mark on the world. But right now, the actions of just a few congressional Republicans could help stop a series of bad decisions from morphing into a worse one. This is their chance to make America serious again. Do they have the courage to take it?

The Atlantic · by Anne Applebaum · January 27, 2024

​18. China success, Western failure in revolutionary Myanmar

Excerpts:

In the end, Indonesia had little to show for its year of quiet diplomacy as it handed ASEAN’s char to little Laos. In December, Rohingya boat people were attacked by local students after landing in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, an onslaught orchestrated by Jakarta political elites that marked a depressing conclusion to Indonesia’s chairmanship.

China was clearly the international actor with the most discernable influence on Myanmar. For three years, the cry resonated that the resistance needs weapons from the outside to fight the SAC. Misguided hope that the Americans would supply those weapons “like Ukraine” via Thailand obscured the reality that one Myanmar neighbor was quietly supplying the resistance: China.

Operation 1027 couldn’t have happened without tacit Chinese support for the 3BA. Beijing certainly didn’t “outmaneuver” the West or ASEAN; it simply just paid more attention and invested more diplomatic effort. Beijing’s brokering of the Haigeng Agreement ceasefire in Kunming on January 12 certainly won’t end the conflict or save the SAC, but it does illustrate that China has influence, even if evinces no love or trust from anyone in Myanmar.

Thailand in part pursued a manipulative role toward Myanmar in the past year, frustrating Indonesia’s efforts with a series of unilateral visits by senior Thai officials to SAC leaders in Naypyidaw. There was much hope that the Move Forward Party led by Pita Limjaroenrat would adopt a more pro-resistance friendly foreign policy, and dejection that they were not allowed to form a government after winning the Thai election.

China success, Western failure in revolutionary Myanmar - Asia Times

Rebel gains on junta forces owe more to China’s tacit support than the West’s ineffectual soft and quiet diplomacy

asiatimes.com · by David Scott Mathieson · January 27, 2024

Myanmar all but fell from the international conscience in 2023, with the world subsumed by the Ukraine war, conflict in the Middle East and the dumpster fire of domestic American politics Myanmar, which competed with Sudan for most neglected conflict, was further marginalized by misconceptions that its post-coup civil war had settled into a grinding post-coup stalemate.

That dramatically changed with Operation 1027 in late October, when ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) overran multiple military outposts in the country’s north, seizing big depots of weapons and sending State Administration Council (SAC) military troops into retreat. The lighting attacks renewed global media interest in the conflict while shaking diplomats from their natural state of torpor.

The year ended with overly optimistic predictions of an imminent resistance victory by the Three Brotherhood Alliance (3BA) as fighting spread further in Arakan, Karenni, Sagaing and Chin states and regions. 1027 clearly demonstrated that Myanmar’s struggle against a new era of military rule is not a stalemate and is gaining not losing momentum in various areas of the country.

In contrast to the battlefield, international action was consistently ineffectual. There was hope in 2021 that the world would help: it didn’t. 2022 was a period of anger against the United Nations (UN) and feeble efforts of international engagement.

But 2023 was a year of gritty self-reliance, determination and confidence, liberated from any expectation the world was coming to help the revolution. Many younger revolutionaries welcome Western humanitarian assistance and sanctions but realize that is all that will be offered. Revolutionary Myanmar needs to do it alone.

A member of the Karenni People Defense Force (KPDF) holds up their weapon as they take part in military training at a camp near Demoso in Kayah state. Photo: Asia Times Files / AFP / Stringer

2023 started with optimism that Indonesia, as chair of the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), could recharge regional efforts at engaging the SAC, in line with the bloc’s April 2021 Five Point Consensus (5PC).

Yet it was a pedestrian performance by Indonesia and its Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi. This was despite multiple secretive conclaves in Jakarta and Singapore of foreign peace entrepreneurs, the exiled National Unity Government (NUG) and the key Karen, Karenni, Kachin and Chin EAOs, collectively known as the K3C.

The key Arakanese, Ta’ang and Kokang EAOs behind 1027 were notably absent, being more closely enveloped in China’s orbit, but also indifferent to hapless international diplomatic efforts. The ham-fisted approach of using the ASEAN AHA Center to expand humanitarian aid in Myanmar achieved next to nothing.

In the end, Indonesia had little to show for its year of quiet diplomacy as it handed ASEAN’s char to little Laos. In December, Rohingya boat people were attacked by local students after landing in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, an onslaught orchestrated by Jakarta political elites that marked a depressing conclusion to Indonesia’s chairmanship.

China was clearly the international actor with the most discernable influence on Myanmar. For three years, the cry resonated that the resistance needs weapons from the outside to fight the SAC. Misguided hope that the Americans would supply those weapons “like Ukraine” via Thailand obscured the reality that one Myanmar neighbor was quietly supplying the resistance: China.

Operation 1027 couldn’t have happened without tacit Chinese support for the 3BA. Beijing certainly didn’t “outmaneuver” the West or ASEAN; it simply just paid more attention and invested more diplomatic effort. Beijing’s brokering of the Haigeng Agreement ceasefire in Kunming on January 12 certainly won’t end the conflict or save the SAC, but it does illustrate that China has influence, even if evinces no love or trust from anyone in Myanmar.

Thailand in part pursued a manipulative role toward Myanmar in the past year, frustrating Indonesia’s efforts with a series of unilateral visits by senior Thai officials to SAC leaders in Naypyidaw. There was much hope that the Move Forward Party led by Pita Limjaroenrat would adopt a more pro-resistance friendly foreign policy, and dejection that they were not allowed to form a government after winning the Thai election.

Yet there was also frustration in Bangkok that the NUG was doing little to effectively engage Thailand on multiple humanitarian and political fronts, unlike EAOs who pursue discreet and generally effective interactions. Thai academic Surachanee Sriyai wrote in The Irrawaddy that “(a)part from its oft-cited legitimacy from the 2020 election, the NUG has been described as ‘unconvincing’ by many sources as the potential leader of the future Myanmar.”

The West, meanwhile, failed Myanmar in three crucial ways. First, it failed at an international system level, especially from the United Nations. The Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths move to throw the Secretary General’s Special Envoy Noeleen Heyzer under the bus in May pretty much put paid to the credibility of the UN’s mediation efforts: Heyzer hasn’t been replaced and it would make little difference if a successor was announced.

Griffiths paid a debasing visit to coupmaker Senior General Min Aung Hlaing soon after, managed to obtain some more visas for foreign UN staff and self-stamped the trip a success. It was anything but, though. The UN country team remained divisive and uncoordinated, managing to deliver aid only when and where it is safe to do so and generally became increasingly irrelevant inside the country.

Debasing visit: Myanmar’s Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and the UN’s Martin Griffiths embrace in Naypyidaw. Image: New Light of Myanmar

But the West also failed in its inability to generate new and better ideas that could work in real-world Myanmar. It did, however, produce several bad initiatives. Finland invited SAC officials to Helsinki for a secret meeting (which went nowhere). Switzerland convened a workshop with the SAC and leaders of insignificant, illegitimate and barely armed EAOs who signed the farcical 2015 Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA).

Both were castigated by Myanmar civil society organizations for groveling to the SAC. And both served to discredit the West at large while raising speculation about what other secretive initiatives may be festering. All in all, the attempts at quiet diplomacy showed the limitations of Western capacity to foster innovative thinking on supporting the real resistance forces: so many pointless strategy workshops in hotel conference rooms, so little time.

The international human rights system also let down Myanmar despite producing multiple reports on mass atrocities, many of them of high quality and some deplorably poor and opportunistic funding grabs. They were met largely by silence. Trust in international rights promotion, justice initiatives, laudable but likely ineffectual universal jurisdiction campaigns and strategic advocacy likewise waned, following a global pattern.

Second, many Western countries failed domestically to construct more effective unilateral approaches or make Myanmar a more prominent issue within their foreign policy outlook. The highly anticipated Burma Act in the United States has produced literally nothing, and whilst humanitarian assistance is important, diplomatic capital is tokenistic and governance support wasteful.

Canberra largely gave up on Myanmar by inexplicably imposing no further sanctions on the SAC and indefensibly accepting only a handful of asylum seekers. The EU, Britain, Canada and others were likewise transfixed by multiple global crises and demonstrated declining interest in “complicated” Myanmar.

Third, the West failed to support the NUG and the broader resistance complex to perform more effectively in international forums. One can make the argument that it is not the West’s role to strengthen the exiled government comprised mainly of members of the National League for Democracy-led government toppled in the February 2021 post-election military coup.

Yet if there is a clear desire to have the resistance succeed, then more effective support programming to do so could and should be devised. It is utterly absurd, to the point of cruelty, to have Western diplomats insist the NUG have a “plan” for a post-SAC collapse when it is clear the international community itself doesn’t have anything resembling such a plan.

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Yet the NUG’s credibility as an international representative of the revolution failed to improve over the past year. Foreign Minister Zin Mar Aung has still not managed to generate a higher profile for Myanmar, amidst clearly fierce competition globally with the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.

But the NUG must also realize that it needs to control the narrative with more confidence. A November profile in the New York Times of the NUG’s “teeny office” in Washington DC was both embarrassing and counterproductive to the resistance. The question stands then: is it even worth making the NUG more effective internationally or is it better to concentrate on the most crucial domain inside Myanmar?

Where the international community could do real damage is if it tries to meddle with the now clearly gathering domestic momentum. In the wake of Operation 1027, there were two broad Western pathologies at play: over-optimism of imminent victory, understandable but unhelpfully premature, and countervailing destructive alarmism of a looming collapse into anarchy.

No anarchy here: Protesters hold posters in support of the National Unity Government (NUG) during a peaceful demonstration against the military coup on ‘Global Myanmar Spring Revolution Day’ in Taunggyi, Shan state, on May 2, 2021. Photo: Asia Times Files / AFP / Stringer

This has led many diplomats to adopt narratives of defeatism, raising the potential for Swiss and Finnish tomfoolery that the regime should be included in any resolution. It must be apparent by now that pursuing “SAC-positive” diplomacy, or a “SAC-adjacent” mentality, will not work.

The energy, innovation and sacrifice on the frontlines across Myanmar was simply not matched internationally, even as thousands of people from Myanmar in exile, around the borders and further afield, work in multiple ways to depose the Myanmar military by raising money, forging political alliances and procuring drone technology.

Far from pursuing chaos, many revolutionaries in Myanmar are fighting for an end to military rule and the establishment of progressive new political arrangements. And they’re not waiting for the West’s help or blessing.

David Scott Mathieson is an independent analyst working on conflict, humanitarian and human rights issues

asiatimes.com · by David Scott Mathieson · January 27, 2024

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