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Quotes of the Day:
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1. Mix-Up Preceded Deadly Drone Strike in Jordan, U.S. Officials Say
2. Biden: America ‘shall respond’ after drone attack kills 3 US troops
3. DoD Identifies Army Casualties
4. What is Tower 22, the military base that was attacked in Jordan where 3 US troops were killed?
5. Senate Democrats call on Pentagon to halt aid to human rights abusers and coup governments
6. Ukraine says it uncovered $40 million corruption scheme in weapons procurement
7. Options for a Post-War Future for Gaza
8. Trends in Maritime Challenges Indicate Force Design 2030 Is the Proper Path
9. Opinion - How Anxiety About War with China May Raise the Danger of It
10. Analysis | Ukraine’s hopes for victory over Russia are slipping away
11. Good Economic News Keeps Putting US Ahead in Cold War II
12. How Russia Stopped Ukraine’s Momentum
13. UNRWA is worse than you think
14. Iran’s New Best Friends
15. Weak US air defense exposed in Jordan drone attack
1. Mix-Up Preceded Deadly Drone Strike in Jordan, U.S. Officials Say
If this was done deliberately I think it might indicate a high level of sophistication among the enemy employing a newTTP. Or was it simply the bad luck of timing?
All kinds of things to think about if this is a new TTP? Have they penetrated our C4I systems to obtain flight schedules? Do they have some other kind of intelligence collection capabilities to obtain flight information? Or have they put in place radars that can track our drones so they have knowledge of our flights to mask attacks?
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Mix-Up Preceded Deadly Drone Strike in Jordan, U.S. Officials Say
Here’s what we know:
The three U.S. service members killed Sunday were the first known American military deaths since Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza began. The U.N. aid organization there said it will soon run out of money.
A U.S. drone was returning as another attacked the base, confusing air defenses.
Image
A satellite photo shows military outpost known as Tower 22 in northeast Jordan in 2023.Credit...Planet Labs PBC/Associated Press
Air defenses failed to stop a deadly attack on a U.S. military outpost in Jordan on Sunday because the hostile drone homed in on its target at the same time an American drone was returning to the base, two U.S. officials said Monday.
The return of the American surveillance drone to the remote resupply base prompted some confusion over whether the incoming drone was friendly or not, and air defenses were not immediately activated, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an internal investigation into the matter. Two other drones that attacked other locations nearby were shot down, they added.
The Wall Street Journal earlier reported the drone mix-up.
The attack on Sunday killed three U.S. service members, the first known American military fatalities from hostile fire in the turmoil spilling over from Israel’s war with Hamas. At least 34 others were injured in the strike, which Biden administration officials say used a drone launched by an Iran-backed militia in Iraq.
The drone strike on the outpost in northeast Jordan near its borders with Syria and Iraq, called Tower 22, escalated hostilities in the region that have been mounting since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, and the subsequent war in Gaza.
President Biden has vowed to retaliate, and met on Sunday with his senior national security aides to discuss possible targets in Syria, Iraq and Iran. Senior U.S. officials said striking Iran directly was less likely, though the U.S. military has drawn up plans to strike Iranian military advisers and trainers in Iraq and Syria in the event U.S. troops were killed by Iran-backed militias in the Middle East.
The one-way attack drone hit near the outpost’s living quarters, causing injuries that ranged from minor cuts to brain trauma, a U.S. military official said. Several U.S. service members were expected to be flown to Germany for medical care, other U.S. officials said.
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, on his first day back to work at the Pentagon since he was hospitalized for complications following prostate cancer earlier this month, on Monday condemned the attacks and vowed retribution.
“Let me start with my outrage and sorrow for the deaths of three brave U.S. troops in Jordan and for the other troops who were wounded,” Mr. Austin said before meeting with NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg. “The president and I will not tolerate attacks on U.S. forces, and we will take all necessary actions to defend the U.S. and our troops.”
About 350 Army and Air Force personnel are deployed to the Tower 22 border outpost. It serves as a logistics and resupply hub for the Al Tanf garrison nearby in southeastern Syria, where American troops work with local Syrian partners to fight remnants of the Islamic State.
— Eric Schmitt reporting from Washington
2. Biden: America ‘shall respond’ after drone attack kills 3 US troops
Biden: America ‘shall respond’ after drone attack kills 3 US troops
militarytimes.com · by Zeke Miller · January 28, 2024
COLUMBIA, S.C. — President Joe Biden said Sunday that the U.S. “shall respond” after three American troops were killed and dozens more were injured in an overnight drone strike at a U.S. installation in northeast Jordan near the Syrian border. Biden blamed Iran-backed militias for the first U.S. fatalities after months of strikes by such groups against American forces across the Middle East since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
According to a U.S. official, the number of troops injured by the one-way attack drone rose to at least 34.
“Eight personnel that received injuries required evacuation from Jordan to higher level care, but they are in stable condition,” U.S. Central Command said in a statement Sunday evening. “All other service members are being fully evaluated for follow-on care.”
Another official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details not made public, said a large drone struck the base, which two other American officials identified as an installation in Jordan known as Tower 22. It is along the Syrian border and is used largely by troops involved in the advise-and-assist mission for Jordanian forces.
An Oct. 12, 2023, satellite image of a US base known as Tower 22 in northeastern Jordan. Three American troops were killed and "many" were wounded on Jan. 28 in a drone strike at the installation. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
The small installation, which Jordan does not publicly disclose, includes U.S. engineering, aviation, logistics and security troops. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement that the troops were deployed there “to work for the lasting defeat of ISIS.”
Roughly 350 U.S. soldiers and airmen are based there, according to CENTCOM.
Three officials said the drone struck near the troops’ sleeping quarters, which they said explained the high casualty count.
The U.S. military base at al-Tanf in Syria is just 12 miles north of Tower 22. The Jordanian installation provides a critical logistical hub for U.S. forces in Syria, including those at al-Tanf, which is near where the borders of Iraq, Syria and Jordan intersect.
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No U.S. troops have been injured in the attacks since Dec. 7, according to the Pentagon.
Biden, who was traveling in South Carolina, asked for a moment of silence during an appearance at a Baptist church’s banquet hall.
“We had a tough day last night in the Middle East. We lost three brave souls in an attack on one of our bases,” he said. After the moment of silence, Biden added, “and we shall respond.”
With an increasing risk of military escalation in the region, U.S. officials were working to conclusively identify the precise group responsible for the attack, but they have assessed that one of several Iranian-backed groups was behind it.
Iran-backed fighters in east Syria began evacuating their posts, fearing U.S. airstrikes, according to Omar Abu Layla, a Europe-based activist who heads the Deir Ezzor 24 media outlet. He told The Associated Press that the areas are the strongholds of Mayadeen and Boukamal.
Biden earlier said in a written statement that the United States “will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner (of) our choosing.” Austin said “we will take all necessary actions to defend the United States, our troops, and our interests.”
Jordanian state television quoted Muhannad Mubaidin, a government spokesman, as insisting the attack happened across the border in Syria.
U.S. troops long have used Jordan, a kingdom bordering Iraq, Israel, the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, Saudi Arabia and Syria, as a basing point. Some 3,000 American troops typically are stationed across Jordan, but the number at Tower 22 wasn’t immediately known and isn’t routinely disclosed.
Since the war in Gaza began Oct. 7, Iranian-backed militias have struck American military installations in Iraq more than 60 times and in Syria more than 90 times, with a mix of drones, rockets, mortars and ballistic missiles. The attack Sunday was the first targeting American troops in Jordan during the Israel-Hamas war and the first to result in the loss of American lives. Scores of U.S. personnel have been wounded, including some with traumatic brain injuries, during the attacks.
RELATED
Senate votes to keep US troops in Syria amid Iran-backed attacks
The Senate voted down a resolution to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria amid dozens of attacks from Iran-backed proxies in the war-torn country.
The militias have said that their strikes are in retaliation for Washington’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza and that they aim to push U.S. forces out of the region.
The U.S. in recent months has struck targets in Iraq, Syria and Yemen to respond to attacks on American forces in the region and to deter Iran-backed Houthi rebels from continuing to threaten commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
“I am confident the Biden Administration will respond in a deliberate and proportional manner,” said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Republicans in Congress said the administration’s approach had failed to deter America’s adversaries in the region.
“We need a major reset of our Middle East policy to protect our national security interests,” said Republican Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., went further, urging the administration “to strike targets of significance inside Iran, not only as reprisal for the killing of our forces, but as deterrence against future aggression. The only thing the Iranian regime understands is force.”
Biden, who was in Columbia, South Carolina, on Sunday, was briefed in the morning by Austin, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, and principal deputy national security adviser Jon Finer, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. In the afternoon, he met virtually with Vice President Kamala Harris and his national security team for an update.
The president, in the written statement, called it a “despicable and wholly unjust attack” and said the service members were “risking their own safety for the safety of their fellow Americans, and our allies and partners with whom we stand in the fight against terrorism. It is a fight we will not cease.”
Syria is still in the midst of a civil war and long has been a launch pad for Iranian-backed forces there, including the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. Iraq has multiple Iranian-backed Shiite militias operating there as well.
Jordan, a staunch Western ally and a crucial power in Jerusalem for its oversight of holy sites there, is suspected of launching airstrikes in Syria to disrupt drug smugglers, including one that killed nine people earlier this month.
An umbrella group for Iran-backed factions known as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq earlier claimed launching explosive drone attacks targeting three areas in Syria, as well as one inside of “occupied Palestine.” The group has claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks against bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria since the Israel-Hamas war began.
Three officials with Iran-backed militias in Iraq, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with journalists, said the drone attack against the base in Jordan was launched by one of the Iraqi groups. No faction has yet officially claimed responsibility.
Officials said the U.S. military is not tracking any other attacks on its forces Sunday in the region.
Military Times editor Geoff Ziezulewicz contributed to this report.
3. DoD Identifies Army Casualties
I do not think the American public really has a sense of how much our Reserve forces are continuing to contribute to ongoing operations and how dependent we are on capabilities that reside in the Reserve force.
May these soldiers rest in peace.
DoD Identifies Army Casualties
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The Department of Defense announced today the death of three Army Reserve soldiers who were supporting Operation Inherent Resolve.
Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, 46, of Carrollton, Ga.; Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, of Waycross, Ga.; and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23, of Savannah, Ga., died Jan. 28, 2024, in Jordan, when a one-way unmanned aerial system (OWUAS) impacted their container housing units. The incident is under investigation.
Rivers, Sanders and Moffett were assigned to the 718th Engineer Company, 926th Engineer Battalion, 926th Engineer Brigade, Fort Moore, Ga.
For more information regarding Sgt. William J. Rivers, Spc. Kennedy L. Sanders, and Spc. Breonna A. Moffett, members of the media may contact Lt. Col. Addie Leonhardt, Chief of Public Information, U.S. Army Reserve Command Public Affairs Office, Fort Liberty, N.C., at Phone: 910-570-8337 Mobile: 910-622-3654 or by email at addie.l.leonhardt.mil@army.mil.
Army Reserves Inherent Resolve
defense.gov
4. What is Tower 22, the military base that was attacked in Jordan where 3 US troops were killed?
I am sure someone finds this information helpful though the bad guys must already know this.
Excerpt:
The base’s location offers a site for American forces to infiltrate and quietly leave Syria. A small American garrison at al-Tanf in Syria is just 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of Tower 22. That base is along a Syrian highway leading into Iraq and ultimately Mosul, once a prominent base of the Islamic State group. It’s also a potential weapons shipment route over the road for Iran.
What is Tower 22, the military base that was attacked in Jordan where 3 US troops were killed?
BY JON GAMBRELL
Updated 12:29 AM GMT+9, January 30, 2024
AP · January 29, 2024
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JERUSALEM (AP) — A little-discussed U.S. military desert outpost in the far reaches of northeastern Jordan has become the focus of international attention after a drone attack killed three American troops and injured at least 34 others there.
The base, known as Tower 22, sits near the demilitarized zone on the border between Jordan and Syria along a sandy, bulldozed berm marking the DMZ’s southern edge. The Iraqi border is only 10 kilometers (6 miles) away.
The area is known as Rukban, a vast arid region that once saw a refugee camp spring up on the Syrian side over the rise of the Islamic State group’s so-called caliphate in 2014.
At its height, over 100,000 people lived there, blocked by Jordan from coming across into the kingdom at the time over concerns about infiltration by the extremist group. Those concerns grew out of a 2016 car bomb attack there that killed seven Jordanian border guards
The camp has dwindled in the time since to some 7,500 people because of a lack of supplies reaching there, according to United Nations estimates.
The base began as a Jordanian outpost watching the border, then saw an increased U.S. presence there after American forces entered Syria in late 2015. The small installation includes U.S. engineering, aviation, logistics and security troops with about 350 U.S. Army and Air Force personnel deployed there.
The base’s location offers a site for American forces to infiltrate and quietly leave Syria. A small American garrison at al-Tanf in Syria is just 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of Tower 22. That base is along a Syrian highway leading into Iraq and ultimately Mosul, once a prominent base of the Islamic State group. It’s also a potential weapons shipment route over the road for Iran.
This satellite photo from Planet Labs PBC shows a military base known as Tower 22 in northeastern Jordan, on Oct. 12, 2023. Three American troops were killed and “many” were wounded Sunday, Jan. 28, 2024, in a drone strike in northeast Jordan near the Syrian border, President Joe Biden said. He blamed Iran-backed militia groups for the first U.S. fatalities after months of strikes against American forces across the Middle East amid the Israel-Hamas war. U.S. officials identified Tower 22 as the site of the attack. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
U.S. troops long have used Jordan, a kingdom bordering Iraq, Israel, the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, Saudi Arabia and Syria, as a basing point. Some 3,000 American troops typically are stationed across Jordan.
However, the U.S. presence in Jordan risks angering a population that’s already held mass demonstrations against Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip over civilian casualties in a conflict that’s already killed over 26,000 Palestinians. Estimates suggest some 3 million of Jordan’s 11.5 million people are Palestinian.
Widespread unrest could threaten the rule of King Abdullah II, a key American ally. Jordan initially denied the Tower 22 base existed within its border after the attack Sunday.
AP · January 29, 2024
5. Senate Democrats call on Pentagon to halt aid to human rights abusers and coup governments
It is not that simple. But these same people will be criticizing DOD, State, and the Intelligence Community when China and Russia have unfettered access to these areas and operate with impunity while we are blind and have no idea what is happening in opposition to our national interests.
Senate Democrats call on Pentagon to halt aid to human rights abusers and coup governments
BY BRAD DRESS - 01/26/24 3:10 PM ET
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4431570-senate-democrats-call-pentagon-halt-aid-human-rights-coups/?utm
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) speaks to reporters during a Senate Artificial Intelligence Insight Forum Wednesday, September 13, 2023.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Ben Cardin (D-Md.) on Friday called for the Biden administration to halt plans for joint military exercises with military units of countries accused of human rights abuses, or democratic nations fallen to coups.
In a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the senators expressed concern the Pentagon is inviting units from countries overtaken by coups or that have participated in internationally condemned human rights abuses, including Sudan and Azerbaijan, to join American troops in military drills.
“We therefore request that [the Department of Defense] not invite foreign security force units to U.S. military exercises from the aforementioned countries, or countries in which the duly elected government has been deposed by coup d’etat,” they wrote.
The senators are concerned the trainings violate the Leahy Law, which prohibits U.S. assistance to foreign military units suspected of human rights abuses.
In the letter, the senators referred to a report this week from The Washington Post that detailed the Pentagon’s plans to train with countries — primarily African ones — that have recently suffered coups: Sudan, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Eritrea, Ethiopia.
The Post reported that the Defense Department initially defended the joint training drills as not a violation of the Leahy Law, because they do not provide direct assistance to countries and primarily benefit the U.S. military.
But the Pentagon has since abandoned plans to train with those African countries, according to an update from The Post.
Cardin, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the training drills with concerned countries would violate the Leahy Law because forces receive benefits from the training.
“I am concerned that not only has the Department of Defense invited countries sanctioned for coups against their elected governments and nations with abysmal human rights records to joint military training exercises, but has also provided U.S. taxpayer dollars and support for them to attend,” he said in a statement.
Warren, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said “training operations shouldn’t be used as a backdoor to prop up militaries who wouldn’t pass our human rights vetting.”
“It violates the law and our values to fund and support countries with egregious human rights records,” she said in a statement.
The Hill reached out to the Pentagon for comment on the letter.
6. Ukraine says it uncovered $40 million corruption scheme in weapons procurement
Ukraine says it uncovered $40 million corruption scheme in weapons procurement | CNN
CNN · by Maria Kostenko, Alex Stambaugh, Christian Edwards · January 28, 2024
The SBU said defense officials had ordered 100,000 mortar shells in 2022, but no arms ever arrived.
Serhii Nuzhnenko/Reuters
CNN —
Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) said it has discovered a mass corruption scheme in the purchase of weapons by the country’s military amounting to nearly $40 million (1.5 billion Ukrainian hryvnia).
The SBU said the embezzlement involved the purchase of 100,000 mortar rounds for Ukraine’s Armed Forces in the fall of 2022.
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry paid nearly all of the funds to arms supplier Lviv Arsenal, but the SBU said the ammunition was never received. Instead, it said some of the funds had been transferred to foreign accounts, including in the Balkans.
The investigation found that former and current high-ranking defense officials, the head and chief commercial of Lviv Arsenal, and a representative of a foreign commercial group were involved in the fraud.
The uncovery of a mass corruption scheme will have consequences for Ukraine as it continues to resist Russia’s unrelenting invasion while trying to navigate a path into the European Union, which has made combating corruption a precondition of Ukraine’s future membership.
A Ukrainian artillery crew fires on a Russian position in the Luhansk region of Ukraine, Jan. 13, 2024.
Finbarr O'Reilly/The New York Times/Redux
Related article ‘The enemy is amassing’: Ukrainian army officials give unvarnished account of the battlefield
Yurii Zbitnev, CEO of Lviv Arsenal, told local media that the person responsible for the ammunitions contract has been fired and that the company is working with the defense ministry to return the funds to the state so they can be “used for more appropriate purposes.”
The SBU said five people have been indicted – and that one of them, a former defense ministry official, was detained while trying to cross the Ukrainian border. It said authorities were working to detain other suspects and that those charged could face up to 12 years in prison.
“The Ministry of Defence continues to fight uncompromisingly against those who embezzle from weapons procurement. We have no place for corrupt officials.” Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Dmytro Klymenkov said in a statement Saturday.
Ukraine has been dogged by corruption scandals involving its defense ministry in recent years.
In December, a senior Ukrainian defense ministry official was detained over allegations he had embezzled 1.5 billion hryvnia ($40 million) in a separate case involving an artillery shells contract.
The reports came just months after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed all officials in charge of regional military recruitment centers. In September, Zelensky also fired then-Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, citing the need for “new approaches” amid continued scandals.
CNN reported in December that Zelensky was facing increasing pressure from the United States to do more to combat government corruption in Ukraine. Officials said Washington had issued several notices to Kyiv that certain kinds of economic aid would be tied to Ukraine’s progress in reforming its institutions.
CNN · by Maria Kostenko, Alex Stambaugh, Christian Edwards · January 28, 2024
7. Options for a Post-War Future for Gaza
Options for a Post-War Future for Gaza
divergentoptions.org · by Divergent Options · January 29, 2024
Dr. Jacob Stoil is the Chair of Applied History at the Modern War Institute, Senior Fellow of the 40th ID Urban Warfare Center, and Trustee of the U.S. Commission on Military History. He has worked extensively in Israel and the Middle East including in support of Task Force Spartan. He has published multiple policy and academic articles which can be found in publication such as the International Journal of Military History, Wavell Room, and Modern War Institute. He can be followed on X as @JacobStoil.
Dr. Mary Elizabeth Walters is an Assistant Professor of Military and Security Studies and Director of Military Theory at the Air Command and Staff College and Trustee for the Society for Military History. She can be found on X @mewalters101.
Dr. Nir Arielli is an Associate Professor of International History at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. He is a contributor to the regional foreign policy thinktank Mitvim. His key publications can be found here: https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/history/staff/556/dr-nir-arielli. He can be found on X @ArielliNir.
The views expressed in this article represent the personal views of the authors and are not necessarily the views of the Department of Defense, the Department of the Air Force, the Department of the Army, Army University, the U.S. Military Academy, or the Air University. Divergent Options’ content does not contain information of an official nature nor does the content represent the official position of any government, any organization, or any other group.
National Security Situation: Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on Israel has caused a state of war between Israel and Hamas, which is ongoing as of this writing.
Date Originally Written: January 11, 2024.
Date Originally Published: January 29, 2024.
Author and / or Article Point of View: The authors of the article are academics with research specialties in the transitional aspects of conflicts, Middle Eastern security, irregular warfare, and peacekeeping. They have academic backgrounds in military history and experience working with multiple national militaries and government agencies. Since October 2023, they have researched options for postwar possibilities in Gaza. The authors argue that planning and implementation for the Stabilization Phase following the fighting, known as “Phase IV” in U.S. Military Joint Doctrine, will be critical for the future security and stability of the region.
Background: In 2005 Israel withdrew all its civilian and military personnel from Gaza. Since then, rocket and terror attacks have continued to be launched from the territory. As a result, Israel has placed significant restrictions on goods entering Gaza, while Egypt largely closed its border with Gaza. Additionally, Israel has launched several military operations into Gaza over the last 15 years. Recently, Israel pursued a policy of “quiet in return for quiet” and allowed Qatar to provide funding to Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007[1]. On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a major attack across the border, murdering Israeli civilians, taking hundreds of hostages, and engaged in systematic rape[2]. In response, Israel invaded Gaza and has fought a multi-month campaign to destroy Hamas’s capability to operate from Gaza or launch major attacks on Israel. The operation has degraded Hamas, but also destroyed significant portions of Gaza, which now faces a humanitarian crisis. As the operation changes phases, it is necessary to plan for Phase IV.
Significance: The recent situation in Gaza has led to a cycle of violence costing thousands of lives over the last decade. The Hamas attack on October 7 and the subsequent war in Gaza have devastated both sides and have the potential to be game changing. Failing to establish a positive outcome from this war will cause a bleak future for Gaza, involving future rounds of violence between Israelis and Palestinians. The violence will likely worsen as both sides radicalize due to the escalating cycle of violence.
Option #1: Revitalizing the Palestinian Authority.
As Israeli operations in Gaza wind down, the Palestinian Authority Security Forces (PASF) enter Gaza and begin assuming security and policing responsibility. The international community continues to help, train, and mentor the PASF. Concurrently, the Palestinian Authority (PA) undergoes reforms and begins to assume governance roles in Gaza. International aid flows through the auspices of the PA to help it build legitimacy and capability. This option involves significant challenges as the PA lacks legitimacy both domestically and internationally, has little control over its current territory in the West Bank, and struggles with corruption. Additionally, the PASF will need to increase its ability to control Gaza. Finally, the PA has indicated it is unwilling to take control of Gaza on the back of Israeli tanks. However, elements of the U.S. government, as well as some U.S. partners, advocate for this option[3].
Risk: The main risk in Option #1 is that the PASF and PA do not prove up to the task or need more time to build capability than is available[4]. In 2007, Hamas defeated the PA and took over Gaza[5]. Another failure by PA would not only potentially return Gaza to the control of terrorists or to a state of war, but perhaps be the final nail in the coffin for the PA. In the West Bank territories under PA governance, the PASF already struggles to exercise authority in the many cities[6]. Following a failure in Gaza, it is unlikely there would be any trust in the PA for any future peace negotiations regarding Gaza or the West Bank. Moreover, it is possible that this instability in Gaza would spread to the West Bank, further damaging the PA’s already tenuous hold. Previously, members of the PASF have even participated in terror attacks[7]. Even if the PASF can create security, poor administration by the PA could lead to a similar result as if the PASF failed. Future terror attacks from Gaza could greatly radicalize the Israeli population and worsen future conflicts.
Gain: If the PA and PASF can manage then this option will allow Gaza to recover under Palestinian rule and speed forward the development of Palestinian self-government. Success here could build momentum and trust in the PA that would translate to the West Bank, boosting broader diplomatic efforts. This option also requires relatively little direct commitment from the international community and would allow the PA to leverage the United Nations (UN) and Nongovernmental Organization communities directly.
Option #2: Israeli Occupation.
Israeli forces conclude their military operations and transition to less intensive phases. They create buffer zones around key areas of the Gaza-Israel and Gaza-Egyptian border. These zones would be under Israeli military occupation and/or free fire zones. Alternatively, Israel returns to a version of the situation prior to its 2005 withdrawal, where it occupies ‘critical’ areas directly and operates militarily elsewhere in Gaza. Some residents of the towns and cities along the Gaza border that Hamas attacked on October 7 and elements within the Israeli government prefer this option[8]. The Israeli military and government have explicitly said they do not want a maximalist version of this option but would want freedom of action in Gaza and the potential for buffer zones[9].
Risk: Occupation is contrary to the expressed wishes of the U.S. and much of the international community. As a result, this option could alienate Israel from its international partners. The maximalist version of this option would make a final status solution difficult as there would be domestic pressure to reestablish Jewish settlements in Gaza. The maximalist version would also greatly retard Gaza’s recovery and likely prolong the humanitarian crisis. This would leave the Palestinian population in Gaza vulnerable to the growth of transnational criminal organizations and violent extremist organizations who, as in other conflict zones, will exploit the gap in governance and slow pace of recovery[10]. Finally, Israel would likely face a continuing insurgency in populated areas, which would require maintaining a significant military presence.
Gain: This option will allow Israel to create security on its borders and prevent a repeat of the October 7 attacks. It will prevent Hamas or a successor organization from establishing control of Gaza. It freezes the situation in its current state, which may provide time for a negotiated solution or for the development of a more robust PA capability. It requires little to no direct involvement from the international community and may allow Palestinian governance in areas not under Israeli control.
Option #3: Multinational Force Deployments.
A multinational force (MNF) conducts a gradual phased deployment to Gaza, taking responsibility for areas as Israel withdraws from them. The force needs to have three separate missions under a single coordinating authority which will provide a unified direction for the three components: security, reconstruction/humanitarian aid, and governance. This architecture would allow countries to provide contributions to the mission that best suits their capabilities. The security mission would not only be responsible for internal security in Gaza, but also for preventing transborder threats to Israel. As such, this option needs robust capabilities and rules of engagement. The reconstruction mission provides initial emergency aid and then oversees the reconstruction and development of Gaza, preventing the diversion of aid to terrorist organizations. The governance mission provides initial governance functions to prevent a governance void and then oversees the development of local governance structures. All three missions would have stakeholder-agreed, conditions-based triggers to gradually transition individual tasks to the PA as the PA’s capability increases.
Risk: The MNF could fail before it begins if countries contribute inadequate forces with insufficiently robust capabilities and rules of engagement. This option could also fail if Israel does not perceive the countries involved as capable of guaranteeing security. The history of the region is littered with MNFs failing to uphold their mandates. Following the 2006 war, the UN force in Lebanon received a mandate to help remove Hezbollah from the Israeli-Lebanon border. So far, the force of over 10,000 personnel has failed to stop Hezbollah from launching daily attacks across the border with Israel, including from near UN positions[11]. If the MNF fails to provide security for Israel or stability for Palestinians, then regional faith in the international community will likely collapse. The PA and PASF might not reach the required level of capability to take over from the MNF, leading to open ended commitment for the international community. A complete failure of the MNF could lead to casualties among the force and resumption of hostilities in Gaza.
Gain: A properly constructed MNF can buy the time necessary for the PA and PASF to gain competency while also helping bring Israel security. A phased entry will allow the MNF to build trust and legitimacy. This option will maximize the ability to provide humanitarian, reconstruction, and development aid to Gaza and offers the fastest way to reestablish governance. A successful MNF will build momentum towards the creation of solutions for the more challenging and sensitive territory of the West Bank, while also mitigating many of the risks inherent in alternative solutions.
Other Comments: None.
Recommendation: None.
Endnotes:
[1] Keinon, H. (2018, August 15). “quiet for quiet” arrangement emerges between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/quiet-for-quiet-arrangement-emerges-between-israel-and-hamas-in-gaza-564982 and Liebermann, O., Schwartz, M., Dahman, I., & Najib, M. (2018, November 11). Suitcases of $15M in cash from Qatar Bring Relief for Gaza. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/11/middleeast/gaza-qatar-humanitarian-intl/index.html
[2] Gettleman, J., Schwartz, A., Sella, A., & Shaar-yashuv, A. (2023, December 28). “screams without words”: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html
[3] Magid, J. (2023, December 15). Sullivan says Palestinian Authority must be “revamped” before it … https://www.timesofisrael.com/sullivan-says-palestinian-authority-must-be-revamped-before-it-can-govern-gaza
[4] Harris, K. D. (2023, December 3). Remarks by vice president Harris on the conflict between Israel and Hamas. The White House. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/12/02/remarks-by-vice-president-harris-on-the-conflict-between-israel-and-hamas
[5] Guardian News and Media. (2007, June 15). Hamas takes control of Gaza. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jun/15/israel4
[6] TOI Staff. (2023, November 25). 2 men executed in West Bank for allegedly spying for Israel, as … https://www.timesofisrael.com/2-men-executed-in-west-bank-for-allegedly-spying-for-israel-as-mob-cheers
[7] Khoury, J., Cohen, G., & Efrati, I. (2016, January 31). Palestinian police officer opens fire near Israeli settlement, wounds three soldiers. Haaretz.com. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2016-01-31/ty-article/three-israelis-wounded-in-west-bank-shooting/0000017f-da77-d432-a77f-df7fb2f40000
[8] Lidor, C. (2024, January 8). Sderot mayor rejects government decision to bring residents back … https://www.timesofisrael.com/sderot-mayor-rejects-government-decision-to-bring-residents-back-on-february-4
[9] Sokol, S. (2024, January 10). Netanyahu: Let me be clear — Israel has no intention of displacing … https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-let-me-be-clear-israel-has-no-intention-of-displacing-gazas-population
[10] de Boer, J., & Bosetti, L. (n.d.). Examining the interactions between conflict and organized crime. Our World. https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/examining-the-interactions-between-conflict-and-organized-crime
[11] United Nations. (n.d.). UNIFIL peacekeeping. United Nations. https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/unifil
divergentoptions.org · by Divergent Options · January 29, 2024
8. Trends in Maritime Challenges Indicate Force Design 2030 Is the Proper Path
Excerpts:
True defense professionals appreciate that the ability to make a compelling case between sustaining current technology or adopting future technology depends entirely on developing plausible models of future conflicts. As the old maxim asserts, all models are wrong and require validation either by experiment or real-world experience. Some of the detractors against Force Design 2030 have asserted that this lack of validation from practical experience is exactly the problem and force design should not proceed. It seems that criticism is diminishing as a result of these real-world examples from our own forces, our partners, and our adversaries.
Conversely, as seasoned military professionals with combat, contingency, and force design experimentation experience, we understand the need for continued experimentation, testing, and continuous refinement. From the very first Force Design 2030 memorandum, General Berger channeled Harvard Business School professor John Kotter when he described this initiative as a “process, not an event.” We do not claim that Force Design 2030 has all of the answers — there are still items of concern, such as contested logistics, that require more work — and that those answers are immutable. Even with contested logistics, though, the Marine Corps, along with the entire Department of Defense, has made pivotal progress over the past few years. Nonetheless, as long as there is a thinking enemy, the Marine Corps must adapt in the same innovative ways we are witnessing in real time in Ukraine and on battlefields around the world. We understand that the risk of failing to change impacts the future of our nation, our allies, and our partners to prevent our adversaries from reaching their objectives.
We are concerned about the quality of thinking, data, analysis, and synthesis that informs the decisions to reorganize the Marine Corps to meet its fundamental statutory obligations. It is because of that concern that we see that Force Design 2030 is indeed improving, not diminishing, the effectiveness of the Marine Corps to respond to the crises of today’s and tomorrow’s security environment. The current events impacting modern security challenges are providing empirical evidence to bear that observation out. We anticipate these real-world indicators will positively support the Force Design 2030 decisions when they are included in the congressionally directed report in the coming year.
Trends in Maritime Challenges Indicate Force Design 2030 Is the Proper Path - War on the Rocks
C. TRAVIS REESE, IAN BROWN, ZACH OTA, TRAVIS HORD, LEO SPAEDER, AND BRIAN STROM
warontherocks.com · by C. Travis Reese · January 29, 2024
As current and former marines, we embrace the changes of Force Design 2030. We’ve come to this conclusion after critically examining the implications of these changes as well as considering the risk of failing to reform the Marine Corps for the modern era. We’ve observed that over the last four years, the collective weight of study, experimentation, and real-world actions has reinforced the validity of the reforms being undertaken by the Marine Corps. We’ve all contributed to this effort in various ways. We come from a place of healthy skepticism and debate, often directly with the leaders charged with these reforms or with the authors of the concepts discussed in this article.
Before Gen. David Berger retired as the 38th commandant of the Marine Corps in July 2023, it seemed as though the debate over the reforms known as Force Design 2030 had been decisively settled. The Marine Corps transformation was the subject of an unprecedented revolt against the service by a faction of largely anonymous and unconfirmed numbers of retired Marine general officers. Despite the backlash, the plan was endorsed by civilian and uniformed leaders in the Department of Defense, bipartisan groups of U.S. senators and representatives, and policy analysts across the spectrum. The issue was even debated in the pages of War on the Rocks where the facts of Force Design 2030 were succinctly explained and reinforced with real-world examples of experiments that were producing tangible effects against our nation’s adversaries. Regardless of the intrigues of some former generals, the Marine Corps’ reforms continue. Even critical allies and partners briefed on the transformations endorsed the change as part of collective defense contributions.
The changes occurring in the Marine Corps ensure that it will be capable of fulfilling its assigned role in countering the range of threats posed by every adversary identified by the Department of Defense. We believe that recent events in the Black Sea, Red Sea, and Arabian Sea are confirmation that the thinking underpinning Force Design 2030 is accurate. Moreover, much like Marine veterans and House Armed Service Committee members Rep. Seth Moulton and Rep. Mike Gallagher, we believe the changes should be accelerated. With two real-world maritime crises now unfolding, it is becoming clear that the Marine Corps has adapted appropriately to modern challenges and that it is still the capable crisis response force that the nation has come to rely on.
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Not everyone agrees.
Despite broad support for Force Design 2030, in the just-passed National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024, a small proviso requires the Department of Defense to contract with a federally funded research and development center “for the conduct of an independent review, assessment, and analysis of the modernization initiatives of the Marine Corps.” This must be done within three months of the bill becoming law and be delivered one year after the contract. The bill suggests that some members of Congress are taking a second listen to the retired generals’ concerns. Critics of Force Design 2030 have often cited that the changes to the force are too focused on China to be applicable for other contingencies and that it diminishes the ability of the service to act as the nation’s crisis response force. The study requirement is interesting given that not one opponent of Force Design 2030 has commissioned a single study to validate their claims. They’ve merely made subjective assertions with no empirical assessment that the reforms should be halted and that legacy capabilities divested by the Marine Corps should be retained.
Rather than rehash the ground of previous debate, we believe it is wise to look at how current conditions, especially those in the maritime domain, faced by Ukraine in the Black Sea and the rest of the world in the Red Sea continue to illuminate the value of the choices made in Force Design 2030. The reasons we are focused on maritime examples all come back to the law, specifically Title 10 U.S.C. § 5063, which directs:
The Marine Corps, within the Department of the Navy, shall be so organized as to include not less than three combat divisions and three air wings, and such other land combat, aviation, and other services as may be organic therein. The Marine Corps shall be organized, trained, and equipped to provide fleet marine forces of combined arms, together with supporting air components, for service with the fleet in the seizure or defense of advanced naval bases and for the conduct of such land operations as may be essential to the prosecution of a naval campaign.
Notice the wording “within the Department of the Navy,” “provide fleet marine forces,” “for service with the fleet in the seizure or defense of advanced naval bases,” and finally, “for the conduct of land operations as may be essential to the prosecution of a naval campaign.” The law clearly stipulates the framework for the Corps’ actions on land and how it is to contribute to naval and, by extension, joint campaigns. For that reason, the lessons learned from ongoing maritime crises are instructive in helping to determine the accuracy of the transformation of the force along with the associated divestments of legacy capability to make those changes possible. We recommend that the congressionally directed Comprehensive Assessment of Marine Corps Force Design 2030 consider these developments, as it looks to frame not only what informed the original force design decisions, but also how those decisions are reinforced by current trends.
Concepts: Naval Campaigns and Maritime Key Terrain
The 2018 National Defense Strategy directed the Marine Corps to orient its focus on the Indo-Pacific and the pacing threat of China. At the outset, the Marine Corps conducted a deep self-examination that resulted in the service declaring that it was not trained, manned, or equipped to meet the challenges of the modern era. To resolve this concern, along with ensuring full compliance with its mission in law, the Marine Corps developed the twin concepts of expeditionary advanced base operations and stand-in forces. The first concept involves the employment of mobile, low-signature, naval expeditionary forces from a series of austere, temporary locations ashore or inshore to conduct sea denial, support sea control, or enable fleet sustainment. The stand-in forces concept is designed to confront any adversary that is trying to keep U.S. forces at extreme distances by attacking an adversary from locations inside the range of their weapons engagement zones. These concepts are focused on simultaneously denying the adversary maritime freedom of maneuver while facilitating the entry of naval and joint forces. To examine these concepts, the Marine Corps helped to develop the first joint scenarios selected by then- Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joe Dunford, both former Marine four-star generals. Those scenarios have been applied to at least 50 naval and joint wargames to date. This has been complemented by robust field experimentation both in live scenarios at training centers and in the real world.
The Ukrainian military is a good example and test case for these concepts. In the ongoing war with Russia, the Ukrainian military has executed an effective defense of its ports and waterway access and has conducted several offensive actions. Of particular note is the retaking of Snake Island, the destruction of the Russian capital ship Moskva, and the recent destruction of a Russian landing craft reported to be full of munitions and unmanned systems. Perhaps even more noteworthy than these three successes has been the outright denial of a Russian amphibious assault on Odesa, one of the most strategically important cities in Ukraine. In the opening weeks of the war, both Ukrainian and Western political leaders expressed grave concerns of Russia potentially seizing Odesa. Yet on the waterborne approaches to the city, as well as throughout hundreds of miles of the Black Sea, the Ukrainian military has, for two years now, proven adept at sea denial and sea control missions against the Russian Black Sea Fleet. This is even more impressive when one considers that the Ukrainian military has no serviceable navy (at least by current Western standards) to speak of but has been using land and limited waterborne actions in support of a broader maritime campaign. This has been done with small forces maneuvering in littoral craft or with land-based missiles, limited manned aviation, and low-signature (visual and electronic) unmanned aerial and sea-surface systems from key maritime terrain.
The Ukrainian model is nearly an exact template of that envisioned in the Marine Corps’ concepts, which are also expected to be enhanced by integrated action with the Navy. To date, the Ukrainian military has been able to keep the flow of grain and supplies moving out of Odesa through what was expected to be a completely denied space without a surface navy to protect those movements. This certainly preempted previous calls for nations to potentially escalate the conflict by providing armed escorts to grain shipments and challenge Turkey’s treaty control of the region. Keeping sea lanes of communication open and denying the ocean as a maneuver space to an enemy are vital goals in any conflict with a maritime aspect. From a Force Design angle, the question is not: Can it be done? The Ukrainians are doing it. The real question is: Why should this not be one of the roles of the land-based arm of a naval campaign, as per the Marine Corps responsibilities written in the law?
In classic evolution of military concepts and techniques, what is good for the goose is often good for the gander. It is a contest of measures and countermeasures fought to maintain advantage in every form, whether by achieving parity or asymmetry. The recent actions by the Houthis in Yemen in the Red Sea and Arabian Sea identify the kind of advantage that can be achieved by a land-oriented force on maritime chokepoints as predicted in the expeditionary advanced base of operations concept. To some degree, the Houthi actions and the test of the U.S. Navy response are helping to “red team” (that is, self-assess) our own concepts. Given that the Marine Corps has been exercising the expeditionary advanced base operations and stand-in forces concepts in the Indo-Pacific and European theaters, it is good to also be able to observe the Navy’s actions to further refine the integration and interoperability of the concepts.
Iran, too, may have decided to leverage the success of its proxy, the Houthis, to assert naval influence into the Arabian Sea. On Dec. 23, the MV Chem Pluto, a Japanese-owned tanker, was hit while travelling 200 nautical miles off the coast of India. The Department of Defense asserted that the strike was fired from Iran, which the Iranian leadership denied. However, in a twist to the plot, an Iranian frigate entered the Red Sea on Jan. 1 with no clarity on its role or presence. Will it have the capacity to integrate with the Houthi land-based maritime strike forces? Regardless, the Iranian vessels’ implied relationship with Houthi actions will likely function as a deterrent to shipping companies already rerouting around southern Africa as well as test the ability of other nations to manage escalation if the vessel is found in support of the Houthis’ attacks. In either case, more nations are realizing sea denial activities can be executed by mobile and low-signature land-based forces with limited conventional afloat naval forces as a means of power projection, not simply as a coastal defense.
Technology for Sea Control and Sea Denial
The hardest thing about future analysis is to reconcile projections with current, or emergent, conditions. Yet it seems in this instance that the future model of Force Design 2030 is nesting within the framework of expected technology advancement and its anticipated military application in the maritime domain.
For those who have paid attention to Force Design 2030, the echoes sound familiar: Ukraine combined motivated, competent, and initiative-based troops with long-range precision strike systems, unmanned platforms, small and mobile ground unit concepts, and robust reconnaissance visions. The strategic success of this approach has been made evident in Russia’s inability to strangle a key Ukrainian sea line of communication coming out of Odesa, as well as Moscow’s apparent decision to relocate the Black Sea Fleet’s long-term basing infrastructure out of Crimea entirely. Russian President Vladimir Putin has long held that Crimea is rightfully Russian territory but has been forced to reckon with the power of land-based operations as part of the prosecution of a naval campaign. Ukraine’s naval campaign, using many of the tools identified in Force Design 2030, has succeeded in stifling Russian naval operations in the Black Sea.
To date, the U.S. Navy has been effectively able to counter the missile and drone threat in the Red Sea with the suite of systems it currently has on hand and, increasingly, preemptive strikes on Houthi missile launching points. The Navy has been preparing responses to these challenges since Hizballah first launched an Iranian C802 at the Israeli Navy vessel INS Hanit during the Second Lebanon War in 2006. The Navy’s successes, however, have often come by employing $2 million missiles to shoot down $2,000 Houthi drones, which is clearly not a sustainable approach to keeping the Bab el-Mandeb Strait open over the long term.
Many critics of Force Design 2030 claim it has left the nation without sea-based expeditionary forces capable of crisis response and only focused on China in the Indo-Pacific. With this critique in mind, it’s worthwhile to discuss what the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit has been doing over the past nine months, predominantly in the Middle East’s maritime chokepoint regions and often leveraging a combination of preexisting and new technologies. To start, the Marine expeditionary unit has spent the majority of this period operating closely with the Navy from the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group. Yet a small element of its Marines deployed early, flying to the Middle East to fulfill an urgent request from commander, U.S. Central Command, for counter-drone capabilities. Thankfully, Force Design 2030, building on the Future Force 2025 initiative of the 37th commandant, Gen. Robert Neller, has greatly increased the service’s counter-drone capabilities. In addition to providing urgently needed counter-drone capabilities, in August 2023, two of Bataan Amphibious Ready Group/26th Marine Expeditionary Unit’s three ships deployed to the Strait of Hormuz at the secretary of defense’s direction to help deter Iran from further aggression against commercial shipping. During this period, around 100 Marines were postured, with advanced small arms weaponry, communications, and sensing equipment, to embark on and protect commercial vessels. The policy and legal challenges to that mission did not alter the fact that the Marines were prepared to embark for that assignment.
Further, for almost three months now, parts, and at times all, of this combined Navy–Marine Corps unit has, as a result of the ongoing conflict in Gaza, been in either the Red Sea or the eastern Mediterranean Sea on call ready to respond to a variety of potential contingency missions, including interdicting illegal weapons shipments at sea as well as evacuating tens of thousands of American citizens. Importantly, while U.S. policymakers have not yet tasked this unit to be involved in the recent strikes against Houthi positions in Yemen, the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group/26th Marine Expeditionary Unit is more than capable of executing amphibious raids against known or suspected launch sites or facilitation nodes, and is certified to do so. Additionally, if tasked to seize one or more of the Houthi positions, the Marines are also more than capable of defending the location(s) and turning the site(s) into an advanced naval base. Moreover, due to forthcoming Force Design 2030 capability additions, within the next few years the Marines will also be able to defend these site(s) from even longer ranges and with greater lethality, employing a variety of loitering munitions and weaponized unmanned surface vessels.
The broad lessons from the Black Sea and Middle East directly apply to the Indo-Pacific. The largest Marine Corps force geographically closest to China, III Marine Expeditionary Force, has been the primary focus of some of the more “radical” Force Design 2030 restructuring. Marine littoral regiments, the most well-known Force Design 2030 initiative, have proven so valuable to the mutual security of allies that Japan and the Philippines have facilitated the persistent presence of these units in the Indo-Pacific. Even traditionally organized Marines from I Marine Expeditionary Force, armed with Force Design 2030 capabilities, are bolstering deterrence and strengthening defense relationships through rotational deployments in Australia, Oceania, and Southeast Asia.
Marines in the Indo-Pacific have been able to simultaneously modernize ready forces while responding to crises, such as when the America Amphibious Ready Group/31st Marine Expeditionary Unit responded to the July 2023 volcanic eruption of Mount Bagana in geopolitically contested Papua New Guinea. The responsiveness, maneuverability, and versatility of the Marine expeditionary unit coupled with the amphibious ready group remain unparalleled in the Department of the Navy. Collectively, these stand-in forces are offering relevant, realistic, and impactful options for the Department of Defense to deter conflict, respond to crises, and win a high-intensity conflict, which will be enhanced by Force Design 2030 capabilities as the operations, activities, and investments in the Indo-Pacific are showing.
Counterarguments
A central complaint from many who oppose Force Design 2030 is a belief that the Marine Corps has compromised its capacity to perform in the modern era through divestment of legacy capability and an unquestioning adoption of unproven and risky technology. Their case is derived by comparing the combat systems and organization of the Marine Corps of the past 50 years and insisting that their efficacy in prior conflicts is determinative to the future ability of the Corps to perform on the modern battlefield. This is closely coupled with a belief that the Marine Corps has moved away from its statutory roles, missions, and organization to execute these reforms.
We contend that the continuously evolving indicators from observable security challenges are serving to reinforce the trajectory of the Marine Corps — based on what the American people require the service to be capable of doing, particularly as defined in Title 10 U.S.C. § 5063. The foundational argument behind Force Design 2030 was that by preparing to compete, campaign, and fight against the pacing threat of China as outlined in the 2018 National Defense Strategy, the Marine Corps would be ready to face the broader spectrum of future crises, especially those that occur in the maritime environment.
The People’s Liberation Army’s investments in anti-access/area denial capabilities are not niche threats; rather, they represent the direction that is being taken by America’s adversaries. The Houthis have used cruise missiles, antiship ballistic missiles, and drone swarms to try to close the Bab el-Mandeb and Suez Canal. Ukraine has wrested the Black Sea from the Russian Black Sea fleet using antiship cruise missiles, precision strike weapons, and small naval drones. The technologies in use by the pacing threat are proliferating, and Force Design 2030 is how the Marine Corps is staying ahead of the threat environment. By focusing on the “industry leader,” the Marine Corps is ensuring it is prepared to fulfill its statutory mission requirements. Maritime anti-access/area denial capabilities are not just for America’s adversaries: They are a key requirement to defend U.S. allies and partners around the world. Marine Corps investments in these capabilities, coupled with Ukraine’s, the Houthis’, and Iran’s real-world demonstration of their efficacy, provide the landward littoral contribution to integrated deterrence through maritime-focused maneuver for major problem sets like the Taiwan Strait.
The formal order that established the current structure of the Marine Air-Ground Task Force states that “the most probable employment of Marine Corps combatant forces will be in the execution of force-in-readiness missions,” but this is self-description, not federal mandate. The same order also notably states that as a force-in-readiness, the Corps would be used in “limited wars” as “the landing forces in amphibious operations.” This is a far cry from the heavy ground combat Cold War organization the critics have established is still essential to a modernized Marine Corps in 2030. The Marine Corps does provide many complementary, overlapping, and redundant capabilities to the joint force but must maintain them with a decidedly maritime focus. If Congress were to decide to change the Marine Corps’ mission written in law and halt Force Design 2030 for a new emphasis on extended land campaigning with the Army, then so be it. We’re Marines and, as such, we eagerly embrace complying with the law. However, given what’s in the law today, the challenging fiscal realities constraining defense spending, and the security environment indicators cited above, it seems to be bearing out that Force Design 2030 is the right path forward in creating a highly maneuverable littoral force with a lighter, but lethal, mix of land-, air-, and waterborne mobility.
Perhaps this exegesis feels tangential to discussions and critiques of Force Design 2030, but it is in fact central to the misunderstandings and misrepresentations pushed by the retirees. It is a mystery as to why the various retiree factions seemingly fail to see how their logic of pushing the Corps toward parity with the Army capabilities and missions inherently undermines “their” Corps’ Title 10 raison d’etre, but that mystery is beyond the scope of this article. This article seeks to correct the error that Force Design 2030 will result in diminished crisis response capability and in the capacity for the Marines to meet the threats presented by all of the Nation’s adversaries in those landward locations where they are called in support of a naval campaign.
Yet for all its capabilities, the Navy–Marine Corps’ crisis response teams are of course challenged by the diminishing availability of their premier power-projection platform, the amphibious warship. It’s important to briefly address this challenge, as the critics consistently blame it on Force Design 2030, despite the challenge being a total fleet problem more than a decade in the making. Less than a third of the U.S. Navy’s amphibious warships were ready for deployment in 2023, and all U.S. Navy surface combatants, including destroyers, cruisers, and even aircraft carriers, require an estimated $1.8 billion in deferred maintenance. Although Marine Corps units generally increased their readiness in the initial stages of ongoing modernization efforts, the lack of ready amphibious ships limits America’s responsiveness to crises, even as the Marine Corps begins to test new, and littoral-capable, vessels this spring. Fortunately, recent and ongoing Pentagon and congressional fiscal decisions are addressing these challenges. Importantly, these decisions will result in the Navy–Marine Corps team having a much more capable amphibious fleet than the one that exists today.
Conclusion
True defense professionals appreciate that the ability to make a compelling case between sustaining current technology or adopting future technology depends entirely on developing plausible models of future conflicts. As the old maxim asserts, all models are wrong and require validation either by experiment or real-world experience. Some of the detractors against Force Design 2030 have asserted that this lack of validation from practical experience is exactly the problem and force design should not proceed. It seems that criticism is diminishing as a result of these real-world examples from our own forces, our partners, and our adversaries.
Conversely, as seasoned military professionals with combat, contingency, and force design experimentation experience, we understand the need for continued experimentation, testing, and continuous refinement. From the very first Force Design 2030 memorandum, General Berger channeled Harvard Business School professor John Kotter when he described this initiative as a “process, not an event.” We do not claim that Force Design 2030 has all of the answers — there are still items of concern, such as contested logistics, that require more work — and that those answers are immutable. Even with contested logistics, though, the Marine Corps, along with the entire Department of Defense, has made pivotal progress over the past few years. Nonetheless, as long as there is a thinking enemy, the Marine Corps must adapt in the same innovative ways we are witnessing in real time in Ukraine and on battlefields around the world. We understand that the risk of failing to change impacts the future of our nation, our allies, and our partners to prevent our adversaries from reaching their objectives.
We are concerned about the quality of thinking, data, analysis, and synthesis that informs the decisions to reorganize the Marine Corps to meet its fundamental statutory obligations. It is because of that concern that we see that Force Design 2030 is indeed improving, not diminishing, the effectiveness of the Marine Corps to respond to the crises of today’s and tomorrow’s security environment. The current events impacting modern security challenges are providing empirical evidence to bear that observation out. We anticipate these real-world indicators will positively support the Force Design 2030 decisions when they are included in the congressionally directed report in the coming year.
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C. Travis Reese retired from the Marine Corps after nearly 21 years of service. While on active duty he served in a variety of billets including tours in capabilities development, future scenario design, and institutional strategy. Mr. Reese is now the director of wargaming and net assessment for Troika Solutions in Reston, VA.
Ian T. Brown recently retired from the Marine Corps after 20 years of service. He frequently writes (and wargames) on modern and future war concepts. Ian currently works as a wargame analyst in the private sector.
Zach Ota is an infantry officer and an international affairs officer in the Marine Corps. Lt. Col. Ota is also a non-resident fellow at the Brute Krulak Center for Innovation and Future Warfare who advances issues involving maritime security, alliances and partnerships, and military history in the Pacific. Lt. Col. Ota currently serves as a future operations planner at U.S. Pacific Fleet and U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Pacific.
Travis Hord is an infantry officer currently attending the Joint Advanced Warfighting School. Lt. Col. Hord contributed to future concept and capability development while assigned as a planner at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory.
Leo Spaeder is the commanding officer of Combat Logistics Battalion 12 in Okinawa, Japan and a non-resident fellow at Marine Corps University’s Brute Krulak Center for Innovation & Future Warfare. In previous assignments, Lt. Col. Spaeder participated in scenario design and capability development related to Force Design 2030.
Brian Strom is an intelligence officer in the Marine Corps. Major Strom currently serves as the Marine Corps Forces Pacific Target Intelligence Officer and as part of the U.S. Pacific Fleet staff.
The opinions of the authors expressed here are theirs alone and do not represent the United States Marine Corps or Department of Defense.
Commentary
warontherocks.com · by C. Travis Reese · January 29, 2024
9. Opinion - How Anxiety About War with China May Raise the Danger of It
Excerpts:
There is a fine line between deterring China and provoking it. My take is that while we should do significantly more to help Taiwan boost defenses and deter aggression, we should do so quietly, without needlessly humiliating China. Sometimes Americans loudly embrace Taiwan in ways that inflame tensions at times when we should be hoping to lower them.
Let me also make the case that we think too much in terms of an invasion — when the greater risk may be China’s taking lesser nibbles to pressure Taiwan, leading to the possibility of accidents and escalation that could drag us into an unintended world war, as happened in 1914.
It’s disorienting to go from talking to American security experts, deeply worried about war with China, to Taiwan, where most people seem to perceive the risks as lower. Taiwan’s outgoing president, Tsai Ing-wen, said at The New York Times’s DealBook Summit in November that China was probably too overwhelmed with domestic problems to take on an invasion. And the former Taiwan president Ma Ying-jeou, on the other end of the political spectrum, agreed, telling me: “I don’t think China is in any mood to start a war to conquer Taiwan.”
Many prominent people in Taiwan told me that while they appreciate American moral and military support, they also fear that hotheaded, China-bashing Americans don’t understand the region and may make things worse.
Opinion - How Anxiety About War with China May Raise the Danger of It - The New York Times
nytimes.com · by Nicholas Kristof · January 27, 2024
Nicholas Kristof
How to Lower the Risk of War With China
Jan. 27, 2024, 7:00 a.m. ET
Credit…An Rong Xu
By Nicholas Kristof
Opinion Columnist, reporting from Taipei, Taiwan
Michael Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is concerned enough about the risk of war between the United States and China that he is listening to the audiobook version of Barbara Tuchman’s “The Guns of August,” the classic history of how the major powers in 1914 stumbled into World War I.
“I think this is the most dangerous time since I was a kid in 1962,” during the Cuban missile crisis, he told me. “The world war potential is really, really significant.”
I came to Taiwan to gauge that risk and assess how to manage it better. For what it’s worth, I greatly respect Admiral Mullen — few people know as much about global hot spots and how wars happen — but my best guess is that Americans may be overestimating the risk of conflict, particularly of an all-out invasion of Taiwan by China.
Moreover, I worry that American anxiety about the risk of war with China may inadvertently exacerbate it. “The Guns of August” is, as Mullen noted, a useful prism for reminding us how miscalculation, misunderstanding and escalation created a world war that no one wanted. So we should be alert not only to the risk that China poses to peace in the region but also to the risk we Americans unintentionally pose, and to the possibility that our legitimate efforts to confront China can lead to accidents at sea or air that lead to war.
There is a fine line between deterring China and provoking it. My take is that while we should do significantly more to help Taiwan boost defenses and deter aggression, we should do so quietly, without needlessly humiliating China. Sometimes Americans loudly embrace Taiwan in ways that inflame tensions at times when we should be hoping to lower them.
Let me also make the case that we think too much in terms of an invasion — when the greater risk may be China’s taking lesser nibbles to pressure Taiwan, leading to the possibility of accidents and escalation that could drag us into an unintended world war, as happened in 1914.
It’s disorienting to go from talking to American security experts, deeply worried about war with China, to Taiwan, where most people seem to perceive the risks as lower. Taiwan’s outgoing president, Tsai Ing-wen, said at The New York Times’s DealBook Summit in November that China was probably too overwhelmed with domestic problems to take on an invasion. And the former Taiwan president Ma Ying-jeou, on the other end of the political spectrum, agreed, telling me: “I don’t think China is in any mood to start a war to conquer Taiwan.”
Many prominent people in Taiwan told me that while they appreciate American moral and military support, they also fear that hotheaded, China-bashing Americans don’t understand the region and may make things worse.
“Quite a few Americans, opinion leaders or particular members of Congress, made ridiculous statements over Taiwan,” President Ma told me.
Efforts to help the island sometimes backfire. One example often comes up in conversations in Taiwan: Nancy Pelosi’s high-profile visit to Taiwan in 2022, when she was speaker of the House. It was a gesture of moral support, but it didn’t obviously boost Taiwan’s defenses. And China’s response was to move military ships closer to Taiwan in ways that increase the risk of conflict.
For that reason, 62 percent of Taiwanese said in a poll last year that they thought the Pelosi visit had made Taiwan less secure.
Just as American officials read fiery speeches by Chinese officials and grow alarmed, imagine what Chinese leaders thought when an American Air Force general, Michael Minihan, declared last year that he anticipated war with China soon: “My gut tells me we will fight in 2025.”
Beijing must also have been unnerved when Ely Ratner, a senior Pentagon official, described Taiwan as a strategic asset for the United States. The implication was that America may try to use Taiwan as a military bulwark against China; what such comments and high-level visits like Pelosi’s have in common is that they aggravate the paranoia in Beijing.
Instead, we need to solidify the status quo. That means China doesn’t use military force against Taiwan, and Taiwan isn’t seen as slipping away forever into America’s orbit. Taiwanese officials, including President-elect Lai Ching-te, are prudent enough to say they will maintain that status quo — messy and unsatisfactory though it is — and Washington should as well.
But perhaps the single best way to discourage Xi Jinping from attacking Taiwan is to help Ukraine against Russia. The more the West is united in making Russia pay a stiff price for Vladimir Putin’s invasion, the less inclined Xi will be to take a whack at Taiwan. Yet some Republicans who in theory are hostile to China nonetheless resist funding for Ukraine.
As for President Biden, he has done an excellent job in leading the Western alliance against Putin. But he let himself be intimidated by Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling, especially early in the war, refusing to provide some advanced arms to Ukraine for fear that Putin would respond with tactical nuclear weapons. Xi may thus have absorbed the lesson that nuclear threats work.
Granted, my argument that the risk of war is overblown may be wrong. A rule of thumb in following China is always to distrust people who assert with confidence what will happen. “A China expert is an oxymoron,” Winston Lord, a former ambassador to China, likes to say. In truth, there are legitimate reasons to fear what China might do.
“Xi Jinping has been different from his predecessors in how he talks about Taiwan, in ways that we would be unwise to ignore,” noted Matt Pottinger, a Chinese speaker who was deputy national security adviser under President Donald Trump. Xi has shown greater urgency about “recovering” Taiwan, and has linked this to his own legacy, while matching his talk with a military modernization that targets Taiwan and the United States.
“When I look at the military China is building, it is not a general-purpose military,” said Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall III. “It is designed around the goal of being able to take Taiwan and keep the U.S. out.”
Also ominous: The Times has reported that China appears to have inserted malware into computer networks that operate electrical grids, telecommunications and water supplies that serve United States bases, including those that would respond to an attack on Taiwan.
Yet the basic reason to be skeptical that war is coming is that it’s not in China’s interest or Xi’s (although it’s also true that plenty of nations have started wars that didn’t serve their interests).
An amphibious operation to conquer Taiwan would be an enormous challenge and might well fail. Taiwan is nearly 100 miles from China, without many beaches to offer easy landing. A surprise invasion in Normandy was possible in 1944, but would not be feasible in an age of satellites and drones.
China’s military is inexperienced — the People’s Liberation Army’s last “combat” came when it fired on fellow citizens during the 1989 pro-democracy protests — and deeply corrupt. Well-connected Chinese friends have told me how officers are regularly promoted based on the bribes they pay. Xi is a risk taker, but even he must know that an all-out invasion would be a dangerous roll of the dice.
“Just out of prudence, I think he’s unlikely to do something in the next few years as the alarmists have been promoting in Washington,” said Joseph Nye, a retired Harvard professor with long experience in Pacific strategy.
One step that might make Chinese aggression more likely to succeed — and thus a greater possibility — is a Trump victory in November. Trump has expressed uncertainty about helping Taiwan, and it’s difficult to imagine him coordinating allies to press China to back off.
Alexander C. Huang, a Taiwan strategist, said he took part in a war game set in early 2025 that assumed that Trump was president. The war game was supposed to last three hours, but it was over after two — even before shots were fired — because China and America were making demands that Taiwan couldn’t meet and that were beyond the scope of the game. These included a timetable for unification in China’s case and pressure to spend more on the military from the U.S. War games should always be regarded with some skepticism, and Taiwan did not end here in ashes — but given the possibility of a Trump election, the war game did conclude ominously.
“Taiwan was toast,” Huang said.
In the United States, there are calls to adopt a formal policy of defending Taiwan, replacing the present “strategic ambiguity” of a U.S. response (which Biden has in any case undercut by saying four times that the United States would defend Taiwan).
For the United States to formally say that America would back Taiwan militarily would be a mistake, I believe, partly because of its effect on Taiwan. If Taiwan were confident that the American cavalry would ride to the rescue, it might be less worried about provoking China and do less to defend itself.
The truth is that Taiwan hasn’t been willing to make deep sacrifices for its own security. It’s a wonderful place, partly because it’s much more Athens than Sparta. It allocates a smaller share of G.D.P. to defense than the United States, Israel or Estonia; it is only now requiring a year of military conscription (for men); and it is phasing out nuclear power plants, which are critical for resilience in a blockade because they provide homegrown power when imports provide 98 percent of energy.
In any case, a tighter squeeze on Taiwan — including a blockade — seems a more likely scenario than a sudden invasion. China could hold high-intensity military exercises that rattle Taiwan. It could cut undersea cables carrying the internet to Taiwan. It could also seize one of the Taiwan-controlled islands, like Taiping.
China broached one alarming idea last year: It announced inspections of ships traveling from Taiwan to the Taiwan-controlled islands of Kinmen and Matsu. It never actually conducted inspections, but the announcement offered a clue to what it may be planning.
What if Xi moved toward a partial blockade of Taiwan, saying: The world recognizes that Taiwan is a part of China, so ships bound for Taiwan are now subject to Chinese customs inspections. The Chinese Coast Guard will board ships periodically, to ensure that papers are in order.
This kind of gradual approach, a salami slicing of Taiwan’s autonomy, is how China neutered Hong Kong.
Maj. Gen. Sun Li-fang of the Taiwan armed forces told me that China is particularly ramping up its efforts to demoralize the Taiwanese people and gain an advantage through what’s called “cognitive warfare,” including manipulation of public opinion and the release of fake photos and information. He described it as an update of the strategy for how to win without fighting a battle depicted by the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu in “The Art of War.”
“The threat is not just coming from guns, artillery, rockets, missiles, warships,” General Sun said. “They’re trying to influence our minds as well.”
What Taiwan needs is more practical help — anti-ship missiles, military training, coordination with allies, better cyberdefenses. Meanwhile, the United States needs to boost the capacity of industry to produce munitions rapidly in a crisis.
The Biden administration has worked very effectively with Japan, South Korea, Australia and the Philippines to prepare for joint action to constrain China. That enhances deterrence. Washington could also do more to help Taiwan cultivate cyberwarfare: If the grid goes out in Taipei, Shanghai should lose power, too. If Taipei’s internet cables are cut, then China’s great firewall should cave so ordinary Chinese are able to read about their leaders’ corruption.
Maybe the best recommendation I heard came from Mark Liu, the chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. He offered this useful advice for Americans aiming to help Taiwan’s security: “Do more. Talk less.”
That advice might have helped the major powers in August 1914 avoid a cataclysmic and unnecessary war. It remains sound counsel today.
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Nicholas Kristof became a columnist for The Times Opinion desk in 2001. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes, for his coverage of China and of the genocide in Darfur. @NickKristof
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nytimes.com · by Nicholas Kristof · January 27, 2024
10. Analysis | Ukraine’s hopes for victory over Russia are slipping away
Analysis | Ukraine’s hopes for victory over Russia are slipping away
The Washington Post · by Ishaan Tharoor · January 29, 2024
It’s hard to ignore the sense of desperation in Ukraine’s corridors of power. Nearing two years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion, authorities in Kyiv maintain their long-standing entreaty to partners in the West: Deliver us more arms, more aid, more political commitments.
President Volodymyr Zelensky toured Western capitals at the end of last year, pleading for support amid growing international fatigue with the conflict and paralysis in U.S. Congress over new supplemental funding for Kyiv. Around the same time, his top general, Valery Zaluzhny, bemoaned the “stalemate” that had set into place after the much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive in 2023 failed to make strategic headway against Russia’s deep defensive lines.
U.S. officials and their Western counterparts, as my colleagues reported over the weekend, anticipate a lean year ahead, where Ukraine’s increasingly exhausted forces focus more on consolidating their defense than chipping away at Russia’s land-grabs. The Kremlin controls roughly a fifth of Ukraine’s internationally-recognized territory — including Crimea, which it illegally annexed in 2014, and a broad sweep of Ukraine’s southeast. The U.S. view of the course of the conflict undercuts Zelensky’s stated ambition of driving Russia out by this October.
Last week, Pentagon officials came empty-handed to a monthly 50-nation coordinating meeting for Ukraine, with future U.S. money for arms and aid snared by domestic politics. On the front lines, reports indicate stocks of ammunition and artillery shells are running low for many Ukrainian units.
“We get asked what’s our plan, but we need to understand what resources we’re going to have,” Ukrainian lawmaker Roman Kostenko told my colleagues. “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.”
Looming far away from the battlefield is the political drama in Washington. House Republicans have already stymied the latest tranche of funding that President Biden is trying to allocate for Kyiv. Analysts believe Russian President Vladimir Putin is holding out for a potential return to power of former president Donald Trump, the likely Republican presidential candidate for the November election. Trump may scale back support for Ukraine and take a friendlier view of the Kremlin’s security concerns in Eastern Europe.
As my colleagues reported, the Biden administration and European allies are working on a longer-term, multilateral plan aimed at warding against this scenario and future-proofing support for Ukraine. That includes pledges of economic and security assistance that stretch into the next decade, and may pave the way for Ukraine to get integrated into Western blocs like the European Union and NATO. Biden is set to unveil the U.S. plank of this strategy in the spring.
“The policy holds risks, including political ones, if Ukrainians begin to blame their government for stagnant front lines,” my colleagues wrote. “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.”
But, in the near term, both the shortfalls on Ukraine’s front lines and divisions in Washington may cement the fate of the war. “While the first half of 2024 may bring few changes in control of Ukrainian territory, the materiel, personnel training, and casualties that each side accrues in the next few months will determine the long-term trajectory of the conflict,” wrote Jack Watling, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank. “The West in fact faces a crucial choice right now: support Ukraine so that its leaders can defend their territory and prepare for a 2025 offensive or cede an irrecoverable advantage to Russia.”
The West may have already squandered its best chance to enable Ukraine to fully liberate its territory. In his new book, “Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine’s War of Independence,” Wall Street Journal international correspondent Yaroslav Trofimov outlines how Western governments slow-rolled military support to Ukraine out of fear of triggering a possible nuclear-armed escalation with Russia. The United States and its allies have sent Ukraine an unprecedented flow of aid, but critics say the overly careful calibration of that support undermined the Ukrainian war effort.
“The United States and its partners held back from supplying Ukraine with Western-made capabilities at a time when they would have had the biggest effect, and prohibited Kyiv from using Western weapons to strike military targets on Russian soil,” Trofimov wrote, in an adapted excerpt from his book published in The Washington Post. “By the time many of these Western systems did arrive, in the second year of the war, Russia had built up defenses, mobilized hundreds of thousands of troops and switched its industries to wartime footing. The best window of opportunity for a clear and quick Ukrainian victory had disappeared.”
Other experts aren’t so sure, and contend that the Biden administration had a responsibility to avoid a spiraling confrontation with Russia. “More aid, sooner, would have been better — but there’s no guarantee it would have brought a decisive Ukrainian victory,” wrote Bloomberg Opinion columnist Hal Brands. “The best guarantee of that outcome would have been threatening direct military intervention, a strategy that virtually no one wanted to pursue because the risks were so obvious and, potentially, so severe. Indeed, it would have required Biden to more aggressively cross Russia’s red lines at the very moment when uncertainty about Putin’s response was at its peak.”
Instead, Ukrainians and their boosters lament what could have been after Ukrainian forces surprised virtually everyone in repulsing Russia’s initial offensive on Kyiv and defiantly standing their ground in the early months of the war. “He opened his mouth like a python and thought that we’re just another bunny,” Zelensky told Trofimov in a 2022 interview, referring to Putin. “But we’re not a bunny and it turned out that he can’t swallow us — and is actually at risk of getting torn apart himself.”
Russia, though, has also stood its ground, withstood international sanctions and is preparing for fresh offensives in Ukraine, on top of its incessant, indiscriminate missile barrages into Ukrainian cities. Kyiv knows its ability to resist hinges on foreign backing. “We wouldn’t survive without U.S. support, it’s a real fact,” Zelensky said in a television interview this month.
The Washington Post · by Ishaan Tharoor · January 29, 2024
11. Good Economic News Keeps Putting US Ahead in Cold War II
Except most of the public does not believe this good economic news.
Good Economic News Keeps Putting US Ahead in Cold War II
By Hal Brands
Bloomberg Opinion
January 25, 2024
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/good-economic-news-keeps-putting-us-ahead-in-cold-war-ii/
Amid cascading crises — a stalemated war in Ukraine, a febrile and violent Middle East, a clash for primacy with China — it is easy to despair for America’s global position. Optimism might come from a reminder that the underlying indices of US power look quite good.
For all the talk about China’s ascent and America’s decline, the reality is that in economic terms the US is actually rising relative to its chief adversary. Which means that relinquishing its global leadership, as one well-known presidential candidate advocates, would not be a concession to necessity but a retreat of choice.
Global power rests on economic power. For years, it seemed inevitable that a booming China would someday overtake the US. But now, America’s economic lead is increasing. In 2023, its gross domestic product was $26.95 trillion against China’s $17.7 trillion — the largest gap between the two countries since 2010. (US government statistics published on Thursday, taking into account fourth-quarter figures, put American GDP at $27.94 trillion — making the gap even larger.)
Of course, GDP is just a snapshot of a country’s productive prowess. But when one measures accumulated wealth, China fares even worse. America’s national wealth was $140 trillion to China’s $85 trillion in 2022 — the second straight year the gap between them grew.
Other figures point the same direction. In 2022, the US produced 11.9 million barrels of oil per day, compared to 4.1 million for China, continuing a trend that has seen American oil production be at least twice the size of China’s since 2014. As the US becomes a more vital player in global oil production, China becomes more dependent on imports across long, sometimes dangerous supply lines.
What about debt? In mid-2023, total US outstanding credit was 253% of GDP — at first glance, a depressingly high number. But depressing compared to what? China’s outstanding credit was 307.5% of GDP, even though the country was far less indebted than the US not so long ago. Given that China is a poorer country, with much poorer people, than the US, its debt weighs far more heavily on its economy than America’s does.
When it comes to investing in the future, government data show the US spends nearly twice as much as China on research and development — $886 billion to $456 billion — and the incremental gain in America’s total outpaced that of China in 2022.
China is, at least, winning the race to old age — a poisoned chalice indeed. China’s median age surpassed America’s in either 2020 or 2021, and as its population shrinks, the gap between the two countries slowly narrows.
These statistics are all part of a bigger story the world is beginning to understand: The age of Chinese stagnation is here. As Michael Beckley and I wrote in 2022, China is suffering from deeply rooted economic problems, with no easy escape.
Growth is becoming more expensive as the country runs short on resources, from arable land to usable water. One of history’s worst peacetime demographic crunches may halve China’s population by century’s end, while forcing the country to bear ever-heavier costs of supporting its older population.
Perhaps a decisive shift toward market reform and liberalization could lift sagging productivity — but as President Xi Jinping insists on rigid conformity in Chinese politics, he chokes off economic spontaneity, too.
This is why China will struggle to keep pace with, let alone overtake, America in economic power in the coming decades. When one adds in these rivals’ respective coalitions — Russia, Iran and North Korea on China’s side, the world’s advanced democracies on Washington’s — the economic balance looks more lopsided still.
But don’t pop the champagne just yet. A China stuck in second place can use trade and investment to woo diplomatic partners, especially in the Global South. And a China that never equals America’s global military power can still wreak havoc on a vital region. The military balance in the Western Pacific is one area where Beijing is gaining ground rapidly.
As China puts fleets of new ships to sea, augments the world’s most awesome conventional missile force, and expands its nuclear arsenal, it gains better options for smashing the status quo. And as Xi realizes that China may never surpass the US economically, the temptation to use more coercive measures to achieve his ambitions — such as unification with Taiwan — may also grow.
One danger, then, is a China whose relative economic descent makes it more violent. Another is an America that gives up global responsibilities out of misplaced perception of decline.
Former President Donald Trump’s argument that the US must shred its alliances and shed its obligations is of a piece with his view that the country is in stark decline — that America’s benighted policies have let its rivals eat its lunch. As so often with Trump, the numbers say otherwise.
Whatever strategic problems it faces — and they are legion — America’s economic position is strong and getting stronger, compared to the rival that matters most. The US has the wherewithal to outcompete China and sustain an eminently favorable global order. The question, as false fears of decline inform false counsels of retrenchment, is whether it still has the vital combination of political judgment and geopolitical will.
12. How Russia Stopped Ukraine’s Momentum
Excerpts:
What does this mean for the future of warfare more broadly? Offensive maneuver is not dead. But it has never been easy. It typically requires both a permissive defender and a well-prepared attacker. This sometimes happens: it did in 1940, 1967, and 1991 and probably will again in some times and places. But it is not easy to create a permissive enemy by fiat. And to exploit a permissive enemy properly requires expensive training, equipment, and officer preparation. The payoff can be great when these conditions combine: Germany conquered France in a month, Israel defeated Egypt in six days, and the United States reconquered Kuwait in 100 hours. But the conditions are not always right.
This pattern poses a dilemma for the United States. The U.S. military has long privileged quality over quantity. This has produced a military with the skills and equipment to exploit offensive opportunities when they present themselves, as they did in Kuwait in 1991 and may do again in the future. But if the conditions are not right and attrition warfare results, today’s U.S. military is not built to sustain the losses this could produce. The United States suffered fewer than 800 casualties in 1991 and just over 23,000 in 20 years of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. But in less than two years of warfare in Ukraine, each side has already suffered over 170,000 casualties. The United States has produced about 10,000 Abrams tanks since 1980; in Ukraine, the two sides together have already lost over 2,900 tanks. The United States is starting to ramp up weapon (and especially ammunition) production now. But to produce expensive weapons in the numbers needed to sustain Ukraine-scale losses will be exceptionally costly. And how will the United States replace today’s long-service professional personnel in the face of Ukraine-level casualties?
If quality can ensure quick, decisive victories, the traditional U.S. approach is sound. But if the lesson of Ukraine’s 2023 offensive, in light of past experience, is that deep and well-prepared defenses remain robust, as they have been for the last century, then quality alone may not be enough to ensure the kind of short wars of quick decisive breakthroughs that U.S. defense planning has long tended to presuppose. Quality is necessary for opportunity but may be insufficient in itself for success. And if so, the United States may need to rethink its balance of quality and quantity in a world where permissive conditions happen sometimes but cannot be guaranteed.
How Russia Stopped Ukraine’s Momentum
A Deep Defense Is Hard to Beat
January 29, 2024
Foreign Affairs · by Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle · January 29, 2024
Many held high hopes for Ukraine’s 2023 summer offensive. Previous Ukrainian successes at Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson encouraged expectations that a new effort, reinforced with new Western equipment and training, might rupture Russian defenses on a larger scale and sever the Russian land bridge to Crimea. If it did, the thinking went, the resulting threat to Crimea might persuade Putin to end the war.
The results fell far short of such hopes. Although the summer brought some Ukrainian successes (especially against Russian warships in the Black Sea), there was no breakthrough on land. Limited advances were bought at great cost and have now been significantly offset by Russian advances elsewhere on the battlefield. It is now clear that the offensive failed.
Why? And what does this mean for the future of the Ukraine War and the future of warfare more broadly? Robust answers will require data and evidence that are not yet publicly available. But the best answer for now lies in the way the two sides, and especially the Russian defenders, used their available forces. By late spring, the Russians had adopted the kind of deep, prepared defenses that have been very difficult for attackers to break through for more than the last century of combat experience. Breakthrough has been—and still is—possible in land warfare. But this has long required permissive conditions that are now absent in Ukraine: a defender, in this case Russia, whose dispositions are shallow, forward, ill prepared, or logistically unsupported or whose troops are unmotivated and unwilling to defend their positions. That was true of Russian forces in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson in 2022. It is no longer the case.
The implications of this for Ukraine are grim. Without an offensive breakthrough, success in land warfare becomes an attrition struggle. A favorable outcome for Ukraine in a war of attrition is not impossible, but it will require its forces to outlast a numerically superior foe in what could become a very long war.
QUESTIONABLE EXPLANATIONS
Some blame the United States for Ukraine’s failed offensive. Not all of Kyiv’s requests for assistance were granted. For example, if the United States had provided F-16 fighters, the long-range missiles known as ATACMS, or Abrams tanks sooner and in larger quantity, they argue, Ukraine could have broken through. More and better equipment always helps, so surely the offensive would have made more progress with more advanced weapons. But technology is rarely decisive in land warfare, and none of these weapons were likely to transform the 2023 offensive.
The F-16, for example, is a 46-year-old platform that would not be survivable in Ukraine’s air defense environment. The United States and NATO are replacing it with more advanced F-35 fighter jets precisely because it is too vulnerable. Although the F-16 has been modernized since its introduction in 1978 and it would be an upgrade to Ukraine’s even older and less survivable Soviet-era MIG-29s, a fleet of F-16s would not give Ukraine air superiority in any way that could create a breakthrough on the ground.
ATACMS missiles would have enabled Ukraine to strike deeper targets, especially in Russian-held Crimea, and this would have reduced the efficiency of the Russian logistical system in particular. But all weapons have countermeasures, and the Russians have already proved adept at countering the GPS guidance that ATACMS uses to hit its targets. The shorter-range HIMARS missile system was highly effective for Ukraine when first introduced to the war in 2022 but is now much less so, in part because the Russians have reduced their reliance on large supply nodes within the weapon’s reach but also because they have learned to jam the GPS signals that both missile systems use for guidance.
War-winning weapons are very rare in land warfare.
American Abrams tanks are far superior to Ukraine’s fleet of mostly Soviet-era T-64s and T-72s. But so are the German Leopard 2 tanks that Ukraine used in the summer offensive. The Leopard 2s performed well but were hardly invulnerable superweapons. Of the fewer than 100 Leopard 2s in Ukrainian service, at least 26 have been knocked out; others cannot be used due to repair and maintenance issues. Like all tanks, the Leopard 2 and Abrams depend on tight combined-arms coordination with infantry, artillery, and engineers at scale to survive on the battlefield, and they require an extensive support infrastructure to sustain themselves in combat. Ukraine proved unable to provide these in 2023. Weakly supported Leopard 2s led the initial summer assaults but made little headway. More such advanced tanks would have helped, but the offensive offers little evidence that better tanks would have been decisive.
Others trace the problem to a broader military revolution in which new technology is held to be making the battlefield too lethal for successful offensive maneuvers, regardless of F-16 fighters, ATACMS missiles, or Abrams tanks. Drones, satellite surveillance, and precision weapons are the technologies that most military revolution theorists now emphasize. Yet all were present for Ukraine’s offensive successes in 2022 as well as its offensive failure in 2023. And the realized lethality of these new systems in actual use has not been radically greater than that of previous generations of weapons in more than a century of great-power combat experience. The Ukraine war experience shows little evidence of any new age of technologically determined defense dominance.
Still others emphasize training and strategic decision-making. The brigades that Ukraine committed to the summer offensive were mostly inexperienced formations that received just five weeks of Western training before the operation. By contrast, British infantry in World War II were given 22 weeks of instruction, then further training in their combat units, and were only then committed to combat. Five weeks is not enough time to master the complexities of modern battle. Some U.S. officers also believe that the Ukrainian general staff diluted the country’s combat power by dividing its efforts across three fronts rather than a single axis, leaving the troops on each front too weak to make headway. Between the diffusion of effort and the limited training of key units, in this view, the Ukrainians were left without the ability to use the assets at their disposal effectively.
INTRINSICALLY DIFFICULT
There is some truth to the training and decision-making arguments. As I argued in a previous Foreign Affairs essay, variations in how forces are used have usually been more important than variations in materiel, so explanations based on force employment have considerable face validity. But these arguments imply that if Ukrainian forces had been better trained and focused, they would have broken through in 2023. Perhaps. But while the Russians have shown little skill or motivation on the offensive, they are now competent defenders. Russian defenses in 2023 were deep, well prepared, fronted by extensive minefields, backed by mobile reserves, and garrisoned by troops who fought hard when attacked. Breakthroughs of defenses like these have historically proven very difficult even for well-trained attackers with a focused main effort.
The German Wehrmacht of World War II is commonly considered among the modern era’s most proficient armies at the tactical and operational levels of war. Yet the German breakthrough attempt at Kursk in southwestern Russia in 1943 failed when confronted with deep, well-prepared Soviet defenses. Erwin Rommel’s German Afrika Corps failed to break through deep Allied defenses at Tobruk in Libya in 1941 despite its air superiority and a major advantage in tanks, and Rommel failed to break through deep Allied defenses at Alam el Halfa in Egypt in 1942.
In fact, it has been very rare historically for attackers to break through defenses of this kind. During World War II, Allied armies with air superiority and crushing numerical advantages still failed against such defenses in Operations Epsom, Goodwood and Market Garden and the battles of Monte Cassino, the Siegfried Line and Villers-Bocage in 1944-45. Nor did this pattern end in 1945. Iraqi armored offensives became bogged down against even moderately deep Iranian defenses in the siege of Abadan in 1980-81, and Iranian offensives failed to penetrate Iraqi defenses in depth at Basra in 1987. More recently, the 1999 battle of Tsorona between Ethiopia and Eritrea and the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon in 2006 showed a similar pattern, with mechanized offensives making slow progress when they encountered deep, prepared defenses.
Offensive maneuver is not dead. But it has never been easy.
Offensive breakthroughs do happen. But they typically require a combination of offensive skill and a permissive environment created by shallow, forward defensive deployments or unmotivated or logistically unsupported defenders or both. The German invasion of France in 1940 knocked France out of the war in a month, and the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 advanced to the gates of Moscow in a season, but both offensives were enabled by shallow, ill-prepared defenses that committed too much of their combat power forward where it could be pinned down, away from the point of attack. The American offensive in Operation Cobra in Normandy in 1944 broke through an atypically shallow, forward German defense. The Israeli offensive in the 1967 War broke through Egyptian defenses in the Sinai in less than six days, but this was enabled by poor Egyptian combat preparations and motivation.
The American offensive in Operation Desert Storm of 1991 reconquered Kuwait in 100 hours, but this was enabled by fatally flawed Iraqi fighting positions and the limited skills of Iraqi soldiers. Similarly, Ukrainian offensives at Kyiv and Kharkiv in 2022 broke through shallow, overextended Russian defenses, and the Ukrainian offensive at Kherson in 2022 overwhelmed a logistically unsustainable Russian defense that was isolated on the western side of the Dnipro River.
By 2023, however, the Russians had adapted and deployed a more orthodox defense in depth without the geographical vulnerability that had undermined them at Kherson. And these better-designed defenses were garrisoned by troops who fought. Russia’s poor performance and weak combat motivation in 2022 had led many to expect Russian incompetence or cowardice or both in 2023, but the Russians had learned enough from their failures to present a much tougher target by then. Perhaps an attacker with U.S.-level skills and training could have broken through, as those who emphasize training or operational decision-making tend to imply. But a large advantage in skill and motivation is needed to breach defenses like these. Ukraine did not enjoy this in 2023, and it is unclear whether even American troops would have the skill differential sufficient for a task this difficult.
QUALITY VERSUS QUANTITY
The resilience of deep, prepared defenses in modern warfare will make it very hard for Ukraine to achieve a decisive breakthrough any time soon. For more than a century, this has required conditions that seem unlikely for Ukraine at this point. The commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, General Valery Zaluzhnyi, has characterized the war as stalemated, but believes that new technology can enable a Ukrainian breakthrough. He’s right on the first point, but probably not the second. War-winning weapons are very rare in land warfare. The difficulty of offensive maneuver in 2023 was not a product of any radical new technology, and it is unlikely that any radical new technology will overturn it. The enemy’s adaptation and the ubiquity of cover and concealment on land limit the ability of new weapons to punch through robust defenses, and Russia’s defenses are now quite robust. Ukraine’s prognosis depends heavily on the future of Western assistance, but even with continued aid, the conflict is likely to remain an attritional war of position for a long time to come, absent a collapse in Russian will to fight or a coup in Moscow. Success for Ukraine will thus require patience for a long, hard war on the part of both Ukraine and its Western allies.
What does this mean for the future of warfare more broadly? Offensive maneuver is not dead. But it has never been easy. It typically requires both a permissive defender and a well-prepared attacker. This sometimes happens: it did in 1940, 1967, and 1991 and probably will again in some times and places. But it is not easy to create a permissive enemy by fiat. And to exploit a permissive enemy properly requires expensive training, equipment, and officer preparation. The payoff can be great when these conditions combine: Germany conquered France in a month, Israel defeated Egypt in six days, and the United States reconquered Kuwait in 100 hours. But the conditions are not always right.
This pattern poses a dilemma for the United States. The U.S. military has long privileged quality over quantity. This has produced a military with the skills and equipment to exploit offensive opportunities when they present themselves, as they did in Kuwait in 1991 and may do again in the future. But if the conditions are not right and attrition warfare results, today’s U.S. military is not built to sustain the losses this could produce. The United States suffered fewer than 800 casualties in 1991 and just over 23,000 in 20 years of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. But in less than two years of warfare in Ukraine, each side has already suffered over 170,000 casualties. The United States has produced about 10,000 Abrams tanks since 1980; in Ukraine, the two sides together have already lost over 2,900 tanks. The United States is starting to ramp up weapon (and especially ammunition) production now. But to produce expensive weapons in the numbers needed to sustain Ukraine-scale losses will be exceptionally costly. And how will the United States replace today’s long-service professional personnel in the face of Ukraine-level casualties?
If quality can ensure quick, decisive victories, the traditional U.S. approach is sound. But if the lesson of Ukraine’s 2023 offensive, in light of past experience, is that deep and well-prepared defenses remain robust, as they have been for the last century, then quality alone may not be enough to ensure the kind of short wars of quick decisive breakthroughs that U.S. defense planning has long tended to presuppose. Quality is necessary for opportunity but may be insufficient in itself for success. And if so, the United States may need to rethink its balance of quality and quantity in a world where permissive conditions happen sometimes but cannot be guaranteed.
Foreign Affairs · by Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle · January 29, 2024
13. UNRWA is worse than you think
UNRWA is worse than you think
For far too long this UN agency has provided moral cover to the anti-Semitic haters of Israel.
29th January 2024
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I long ago lost faith in the left. But even I wouldn’t have believed it if you’d told me that one day they would spend Holocaust Memorial Day cheering an organisation whose members stand accused of slaughtering Jews. That as everyone else was lighting candles for the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis, they would be swarming the internet to praise and even fundraise for a group whose staff are suspected of massacring Jews. That on the very day we remember the worst act of anti-Semitism in history, they’d be heaping love and cash on an organisation whose people allegedly played a part in the worst act of anti-Semitism of the 21st century. The left is bad, I know, but are they that bad, I’d have wondered?
Now we know the answer to that question. It’s yes. Yes they are.
This is the story of UNRWA – the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. On Friday, it announced that it was investigating allegations that 12 of its employees in Gaza took part in the Hamas pogrom of 7 October. Israel alleges that these UNRWA staff, people literally on the payroll of the UN, carried out acts including abduction, distributing ammunition, coordinating attacks and actual murder. UNRWA says it has dismissed the suspects and is investigating the claims.
In response, some Western nations, including the US, the UK and Australia, have suspended funding to UNRWA. As well they might. Who wants their hard-earned tax dollars going to an organisation that reportedly harbours neo-fascists? Which allegedly counts among its workforce Jew-haters of such a twisted, devoted nature that they’re willing to assist in the worst anti-Semitic rampage since the Holocaust? Suspending the flow of money to UNRWA while officials figure out whether its staff really did take part in that racist, rapacious onslaught against Jewish men, women and children seems a reasonable decision to me.
The woke left sees it differently. UNRWA is great, they say. It’s essential to the wellbeing of Palestinians, especially in wartorn Gaza, they cry. And every government that has suspended donations is now complicit in Israel’s ‘genocide’. These are the murky depths of doublespeak to which the left has now sunk: to express concern about a group’s possible links to genocidal terrorism is ‘genocidal’; to try to keep your money out of the pockets of people who allegedly helped to coordinate the worst act of racist violence of the 21st century is ‘racist’. War is peace, freedom is slavery, not wanting Jews to be butchered is fascism. The moral contortionism is painful.
Most striking is the left’s attempts to downplay the seriousness of the charges against UNRWA. These people pose as ‘anti-fascists’ yet they seem alarmingly blasé about the possibility that a UN agency employed people of such an intense fascistic persuasion that they were happy to take part in an orgy of anti-Jewish murder. It’s ‘10 or 12 individuals’ from a ‘workforce of 13,000’, said LBC’s James O’Brien. This is a man who said the right-wing media’s defence of Boris Johnson during Partygate was proof that Britain is moving in a ‘fascistic direction’. It seems a handful of pro-Boris thinkpieces is fascism, but ‘10 or 12’ UN employees allegedly kidnapping and murdering Jews is not something we should overreact to.
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The Guardian’s Owen Jones dismissively says these are ‘allegations against 0.04 per cent of [UNRWA’s] staff’. Is there an acceptable number of alleged Jew-killers for a UN agency to employ? If 12 isn’t a particularly big deal, how about 50? Or 100? A hundred alleged pogromists would still only be 0.77 per cent of UNRWA’s workforce – is that cool?
Mehdi Hasan speaks of ‘the alleged acts of a handful of UNRWA employees’ and slams the ‘demonisation campaign’ against UNRWA. This is the same Mehdi Hasan who once said Donald Trump’s description of lefties as ‘vermin’ was ‘right out of Hitler’s Nazi propaganda playbook’ and that Trump should ‘terrify’ us all. If a privileged member of America’s media elites can feel ‘terrified’ of Trump’s bluster, surely Jews can feel terrified of Jew-killers, even if it is ‘just’ 12. To a Jew, a ‘handful’ of murderous anti-Semites is still a terrible thing.
The speed with which the woke left went from handwringing over racists to saying, ‘Well, it’s only 12 racists’, has been mind-blowing. These are the kind of people who denounce gender-critical feminists as ‘fascist-adjacent’ if some alt-right arsehole attends one of their demos. Who will damn the entire Tory party as irretrievably Islamophobic if one of its lowly local councillors makes a joke about Muslims. Who insisted that Wayne Couzens – the London police officer who murdered Sarah Everard – was not a ‘bad apple’ but rather was symptomatic of the entire sexist, murderous rot of the Metropolitan Police. ‘Sarah Everard’s killer isn’t one bad apple – the whole police force is rotten’, cried Novara Media in 2021 – a mag whose fanboys are no doubt all over social media saying the 12 alleged Jew-killers in UNRWA were just bad apples. Funny that.
When a British cop was unveiled as a misogynistic murderer, the left cried ‘Defund the police!’. Yet when 12 employees of UNRWA were accused of taking part in a carnival of racist rape and murder they said the opposite: fund UNRWA; give it more money. In response to Britain and other nations’ suspension of donations to UNRWA, the activist class took to X to drum up support for UNRWA. They seem blissfully unaware of how horrendous, how sick, these optics are. It boils down to this: within hours of Israel saying, ‘We believe UNRWA staff participated in the mass murder of Jews’, leftists were on social media saying, ‘Give money to UNRWA’. In all my years observing the left’s abandonment of reason and Enlightenment, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as appalling as that.
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Most importantly, they’re just wrong to push the ‘bad apples’ argument about UNRWA. To haughtily tweet about the tiny percentage of UNRWA staff who are alleged to have bloodied their hands on 7 October. To go around saying ‘10 or 12’ possible pogromists does not a wicked organisation make. For the truth is that UNRWA has long been morally and politically compromised. The Wall Street Journal reports on intelligence dossiers that suggest up to 10 per cent of UNRWA’s employees have links with ‘Islamist militant groups’. A study of a Telegram channel made up of 3,000 UNRWA-employed schoolteachers found thousands of messages praising Hamas’s pogrom and expressing hatred for Jews. Analysts have found that some UNRWA-run schools ‘glorify terrorism, encourage martyrdom, demonise Israelis and incite anti-Semitism’. The truth about UNRWA, as a writer for Haaretz put it, is that it is ‘riddled with Hamas’.
And yet on Saturday, Holocaust Memorial Day, we had the chilling spectacle of the West’s supposed anti-fascists rattling the tin for UNRWA. We witnessed the self-righteous woke classes helping to fundraise for an organisation that is ‘riddled’ with links to a terror outfit that was founded with the express purpose of killing Jews and destroying Israel. The very people who claim to hate racism spent a day when we remember the victims of the worst act of state racism in history drumming up support for a UN agency that is ‘riddled’ with supporters of an avowedly racist terror group. We must be nearing the nadir of woke, surely?
To be clear, there are few easy options when it comes to UNRWA. Even Israeli observers admit that UNRWA, for good or ill, remains ‘essential’ to the functioning of Gaza. This is an organisation that oversees vast swathes of social and educational life in Gaza, as well as providing health and welfare. And yet the bourgeois illusion that UNRWA is a good, neutral body that just happens to have a few bad actors in its ranks is dangerously simple-minded. In truth, UNRWA has helped to institutionalise a Palestinian politics of grievance, increase both local and global hatred for Israel, and provide spaces in which Gazan Islamists have been able to indoctrinate a new generation with their Jew hate that masquerades as ‘Palestinian liberation’. Liberating Gaza from UNRWA ought to be at least a medium-term goal of everyone who cares about Israelis and Palestinians.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His new book – A Heretic’s Manifesto: Essays on the Unsayable – is available to order on Amazon UK and Amazon US now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy
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14. Iran’s New Best Friends
Excerpts:
Ultimately, the best way for the United States to try and stabilize the Red Sea is through swift diplomacy. If Washington can pressure Israel to cease bombing Palestinian civilians and facilitate humanitarian aid into Gaza, it will weaken the immediate pretext for Houthi operations. The United States may also be able to lower tensions by leveraging the region’s existing diplomatic infrastructure—an array of informal and formal communication channels between competing parties (such as talks that run through Oman)—to shore up the Saudi-Houthis truce. Washington should, similarly, work to preserve Riyadh’s agreement with Tehran.
The United States must try to contain its growing conflict with Iran, as well, namely by revisiting and updating the understanding it had with the Islamic Republic before October 7. According to that informal agreement, Iran limited its nuclear advances and reined in its partners in exchange for easing sanctions enforcement. As the Red Sea evolves into a potential long-term global conflict zone, Iran and the United States need to communicate rules of engagement to prevent direct clashes.
These are short-term steps to manage the regional conflict, designed to preserve stability until the upcoming U.S. presidential elections. Whoever wins will need a proactive, comprehensive policy that recognizes the central importance of the Palestinian cause to the Middle East and that addresses the game-changing Houthi-Iranian partnership in the Red Sea. But even this policy should be based on relentless diplomacy, rather than military strikes. Tehran wants the Houthis to draw Washington back into a cycle of hubris and humiliation, where the mighty United States works to punish ragtag militias only to eventually withdraw with its tail between its legs. The Islamic Republic and the Houthis, in other words, are laying a trap for Washington. U.S. officials must not fall into it.
Iran’s New Best Friends
The Houthis Have Become Key Partners in Tehran’s Quest for Regional Dominance
January 29, 2024
Foreign Affairs · by Religious Statecraft: The Politics of Islam in Iran · January 29, 2024
Since November, the Red Sea has become the site of escalating attacks by Yemen’s Houthi movement, the armed group that governs most of Yemen’s population. These assaults, which the Houthi rebels say are designed to pressure Israel to end the war in Gaza, mark the emergence of a new conflict zone in the already volatile Middle East. By effectively closing the sea to cargo ships, the strikes have disrupted global trade and earned the Houthis unprecedented international attention.
The attacks have done an especially good job of earning the Houthis attention—and support—from Iran. Traditionally, the militia has been a second-tier partner for the Islamic Republic, which tends to work more closely with Hezbollah and other militia groups that share its anti-American ideology. But Iran desperately wants to increase its power in the Red Sea so it can stop the U.S. Navy from seizing its oil tankers as they evade Western sanctions, and the Houthis have proved that they can project power across the entire body of water. They have also proved they can distract and damage Iran’s three main regional rivals: Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The Houthis are fast becoming a central part of Tehran’s “axis of resistance.” In fact, they could soon be its most pivotal member.
For the Houthis, this deepening partnership comes at the perfect time. The group has already made itself the sole political and military force in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa. With additional moral and material support, external and internal alike, it could capture the whole country and become a proper state actor. In fact, the attacks on Red Sea ships are part of the Houthis’ state-building mission. By declaring that its strikes are in defense of the Palestinians, the Houthis are trying to bolster their popularity among Yemenis. By holding up global commerce, the group hopes it can transform the Arab world’s most impoverished country into a powerful military force.
Unfortunately, Washington has no easy way to thwart either the Houthis’ or the Iranians’ plans. The current U.S. strategy—launching missiles at Houthi weapons stockpiles and training facilities—may temporarily disrupt the militia’s ability to strike ships. But the attacks unintentionally advance the group’s agenda by allowing it to claim it is fighting imperialism, and they help Iran by fortifying its political foothold in the Middle East. Washington should therefore cease the strikes. It should, instead, work to halt the war in Gaza. The United States should also try to strengthen the region’s diplomatic agreements and shore up its security framework. Otherwise, the Houthi-Iranian partnership will only grow stronger, as will Tehran’s leverage in the region.
IN THE SAME BOAT
Before Ali Abdullah Saleh—the longtime ruler of Yemen—was toppled during the Arab Spring protests in 2011, the Houthis were a strong but localized group of rebels. They ran a campaign against Saleh’s corruption, and they were known for their anti-United States and anti-Israel stance. But their support was largely confined to the country’s Zaidi Shia population in the north. The Houthis and Saleh later formed a tactical alliance, with the latter aiding the former in capturing Sana’a in 2014. (In 2017, the Houthis ambushed and killed Saleh after he attempted to switch sides in favor of the Saudi-led coalition.)
Yet as Yemen descended into warfare, the Houthis became a highly motivated and formidable military force, capturing large amounts of land. Today, Houthis control two-thirds of Yemen’s 34 million people and a third of the country’s territory—land they took even in the face of an intensive bombing campaign by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The group has held on despite a dire humanitarian crisis and hundreds of thousands of civilian causalities.
The Houthis have triumphed, in part, thanks to Iran, which helped the militia develop sophisticated weapons and taught the group how to use them. The Houthis, in turn, began advancing Iranian interests across the region. For example, the group carried out several brazen attacks against Saudi and Emirati oil facilities. These strikes prompted Riyadh to de-escalate tensions, leading to a truce with the Houthis and a Chinese-brokered rapprochement with Iran in 2022.
The Houthis are certainly not puppets of Iran. The media descriptions that portray them as Iranian proxies overshadow the group’s agency. According to U.S. security officials, for example, Iran advised the group not to capture Sanaa, but in 2014, it did so anyway. With the substantial political payoff that comes from signaling support for the Palestinians, the Houthis may well have launched the Red Sea attacks regardless of Iran’s counsel. Similarly, the proxy narrative overstates Iran’s role, missing the Islamic Republic’s own limits as a patron. In their internal debates, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders and analysts note that multiple political and militant entities across the Middle East reach out to Tehran, and that the government is unable to respond to many of them. The IRGC deepened its ties with the Houthis only after the group proved it was an effective battlefield force, much to the Iranians’ surprise.
The Houthis can help Iran fight back against U.S. and Israeli naval operations.
But even if the Houthis are not Iran’s puppet, they are its partner. In addition to forcing the Saudis to seek a truce, intensified Houthi strikes on Israeli cities help divide Israel’s attention and forces, providing Hamas (another Iran ally) with breathing space. By opening a new front, the Houthis also increase the cost of any Israeli attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as the cost of bombing IRGC and Iranian-allied forces in Syria. And unlike with Hamas, Hezbollah, or various groups in Syria, the geographical distance between Israel and Houthi territory makes it hard for Israel to retaliate.
The Houthis have also helped Iran with its nonmilitary needs. Tehran is trying to impose a de facto economic blockade on Israel, and the Houthis are the centerpiece. The group has, most obviously, held up Red Sea shipments that involve Israel (although many of the ships it has targeted have little to no connection to that country). But it has also launched drone attacks against Israel’s Eilat port. These attacks have been largely intercepted, yet concern among shippers has led many to stop servicing the facility. As a result, Eilat has seen an 85 percent decline in its activities.
Officials in Tehran hope the Houthis can aid Iran even more. The country has been caught in a multiyear naval standoff with the United States, in which Washington routinely confiscates Iranian oil in international waters. Tehran has also had to contend with Israeli forces, which have attacked Iranian ships in the Red Sea. The Houthis can help Iran fight back against U.S. and Israeli naval operations. By partnering with the Houthis to retaliate against these states’ vessels, Iran can deter both countries from seizing its own oil and weapons shipments. In fact, such coordination is already underway. As a senior U.S. Navy commander told the Associated Press, Iran is directly involved in the Houthis’ recent naval attacks, including by funding, supplying, and training the fighters who conducted them.
For Iran, partnering with the Houthis has dangers. The tense standoff between the Houthis and the United States has pushed the region toward the brink, and there are hawks in Washington who are urging the Biden administration to strike IRGC forces and bases. Yet after decades of warfare across the Middle East, Iran is undeterred: concessions to Washington, Tehran believes, would only invite more U.S. pressure. As Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared in 2019, “whenever we resisted, we achieved a positive result.” Iran is poised to press ahead with the Houthis in the Red Sea, regardless of the risks.
HARD TO HANDLE
The Houthi-Iranian partnership is hardly one-sided. The group, too, has plenty to gain. Iran's drive to enhance its naval capabilities aligns with the Houthis’ own military aspirations, providing the group with a crucial advantage in acquiring more low-tech, cost-effective support for their agile forces in the Strait of Bab al-Mandab. The Houthis have demonstrated proficiency in utilizing Iran's expanding ballistic and drone capabilities, and Iran anticipates the group will be similarly effective in upping its naval abilities.
A stronger Houthi military will help the group at home. The more the Houthis can target ships and Israeli territory, the more they can enhance their standing among Yemenis. The Palestinian cause is wildly popular among Yemen’s people, and so by positioning itself as a powerful Palestinian ally, the Houthis gain credibility, including in areas outside Houthi control. This helps the group expand its influence, and it could aid the Houthis in capturing and unifying the rest of the country. There is a reason why the Houthis have repeatedly posted sleekly edited videos of their pro-Palestinian operations.
This strategy mirrors the Islamic Republic’s own modus operandi during the 1980s. The Iranian population was hostile to the United States and Israel, and so after winning the Iranian Revolution, Iran’s theocrats used anti-American and pro-Palestinian rhetoric—along the war with Iraq—to consolidate power. Iran also used these techniques to become a regional player, capitalizing on broader grievances toward its adversaries to forge alliances with local nonstate armed groups. The Houthis, too, believe their pro-Palestinian framing and anti-Israel operations will garner them international popularity and recognition, particularly in the Arab world. The group’s leaders contend that by pressuring Israel and the United States to agree to a cease-fire, they are enforcing the will of the international community.
Tehran wants the Houthis to draw Washington into a cycle of hubris and humiliation.
For Washington, there are few good ways to undercut the Houthis’ strategy. The United States’ retaliatory strikes are unlikely to stop the group; in fact, they may empower it, feeding its claims that it is standing up to Israel and its patrons. U.S. attacks could also lead to escalation that engulfs the region and causes a global economic crisis. For these reasons, some U.S. allies, such as France, have hesitated to confirm their participation in the attacks. Saudi Arabia—Washington’s primary regional partner—has refused to join altogether. The United States asked China to partake in its security initiative. But even though it is heavily reliant on the Red Sea for commerce, Beijing declined. Given its own rivalry with the United States, China may not want to rein in attacks in the Red Sea, which distract Washington from operations in East Asia. Even if it did, China does not wield significant influence over Iran’s multifaceted axis of resistance.
Ultimately, the best way for the United States to try and stabilize the Red Sea is through swift diplomacy. If Washington can pressure Israel to cease bombing Palestinian civilians and facilitate humanitarian aid into Gaza, it will weaken the immediate pretext for Houthi operations. The United States may also be able to lower tensions by leveraging the region’s existing diplomatic infrastructure—an array of informal and formal communication channels between competing parties (such as talks that run through Oman)—to shore up the Saudi-Houthis truce. Washington should, similarly, work to preserve Riyadh’s agreement with Tehran.
The United States must try to contain its growing conflict with Iran, as well, namely by revisiting and updating the understanding it had with the Islamic Republic before October 7. According to that informal agreement, Iran limited its nuclear advances and reined in its partners in exchange for easing sanctions enforcement. As the Red Sea evolves into a potential long-term global conflict zone, Iran and the United States need to communicate rules of engagement to prevent direct clashes.
These are short-term steps to manage the regional conflict, designed to preserve stability until the upcoming U.S. presidential elections. Whoever wins will need a proactive, comprehensive policy that recognizes the central importance of the Palestinian cause to the Middle East and that addresses the game-changing Houthi-Iranian partnership in the Red Sea. But even this policy should be based on relentless diplomacy, rather than military strikes. Tehran wants the Houthis to draw Washington back into a cycle of hubris and humiliation, where the mighty United States works to punish ragtag militias only to eventually withdraw with its tail between its legs. The Islamic Republic and the Houthis, in other words, are laying a trap for Washington. U.S. officials must not fall into it.
-
MOHAMMAD AYATOLLAHI TABAAR is a Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, Associate Professor of International Affairs at Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government and Public Service, and a Fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. He is the author of Religious Statecraft: The Politics of Islam in Iran.
Foreign Affairs · by Religious Statecraft: The Politics of Islam in Iran · January 29, 2024
15. Weak US air defense exposed in Jordan drone attack
Weak US air defense exposed in Jordan drone attack - Asia Times
US Army was seeking better interceptor system before lethal drone attack on US base that killed three troops and injured over 34
asiatimes.com · by Gabriel Honrada · January 29, 2024
A drone attack on a US base in Jordan that left three US troops dead and 34 wounded underscores the urgent need to upgrade and revolutionize the US Army’s air defenses.
It is unclear why US base defenses failed to intercept the drones, which were allegedly launched by Iran-backed militias from neighboring Syria on Sunday. Iran has sought to distance itself from the attacks, labeling allegations it had a hand in the assault as “baseless” while claiming regional “resistance movements” do not take orders from it, according to its UN Permanent Mission.
Before the lethal attack, Defense News reported that the US Army is seeking suggestions on how to procure a second interceptor for its Indirect Fire Protection Capability (IFPC) system, designed to defend fixed and semi-fixed sites from rockets, artillery, mortars, cruise missiles and drones.
Defense News notes that the first interceptor to be used in the IFPC system is Raytheon Technologies’ (RTX) AIM-9X missile and that the US Army completed a risk-reduction flight demonstration, launching an RTX-made AIM-9X Sidewinder interceptor from the IFPC launcher and sending it to target in December.
The report mentions that the IFPC Increment 2 (IFPC Inc2) program office aims for a competitive award for a second interceptor in fiscal 2025 and plans to take a selected vendor or multiple vendors through a technology demonstration in the FY26 through FY27 timeframe. It also says the US government intends to award a development, qualification and test effort following this demonstration.
Defense News notes that one of the significant driving factors for a second interceptor is magazine capacity, as the IFPC system can currently hold 18 AIM-9X missiles in the launcher. It says that the magazine could only fit six if the US Army decides to use an AIM-120D, which can achieve a range of more than 180 kilometers.
The report also says that the US Army is also looking for missiles that can reach certain altitudes and ranges with a rocket motor that can decrease flight time to its target.
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RTX and Lockheed Martin have submitted proposals, with Israeli companies such as Rafael Advanced Defense Systems also having solutions like the Tamir-2 interceptor.
The proliferation of low-cost drones, rockets and cruise missiles, not to mention Sunday’s lethal attack on the US base, has given new impetus to improve existing counter-rocket, artillery and mortar (C-RAM) systems.
Artillery rockets, shells and mortars have a fixed ballistic trajectory, so it is possible to compute an exact mid-air interception point. However, that does not apply to swarming drones and cruise missiles with decentralized flight paths.
Gun-based systems such as the 20-millimeter US C-RAM, which has seen action in Iraq, may have limited protection against such threats. Global Security noted in July 2022 that the C-RAM system has shown a 60-70% shoot-down capability during tests, which may not be enough against a drone swarm attack and cruise missiles coming from different directions.
A June 2020 US Congressional Research Service (CRS) report says that while the evolving C-RAM mission led to the development of the IFPC program, the advent of swarming drones and cruise missiles led to the IFPC Inc2 program, which uses existing interceptors and missiles to defeat cruise missiles and drones.
The CRS report also says that the US Army is looking at lasers and microwaves for IFPC in addition to kinetic-based systems such as missiles and guns. However, prohibitive costs and limited magazine depth remain the most significant issues for existing missile-based C-RAM systems.
Alex Hollings notes in a November 2023 Sandboxx article that one AIM-9X missile costs US$472,000, and one AIM-120D costs about a $1 million per round, vastly more than the cheap, mass-produced swarming drones they are intended to be used against, which can cost just around US$20,000 in case of the Iranian-made Shahed type-drones used in Ukraine and Yemen.
This month, Asia Times pointed out the unsustainability of that kind of missile versus drone warfare. While it could be said that a successful missile intercept destroyed a target drone, it can also be claimed that the drone successfully wasted expensive interceptor missiles that are difficult and costly to replace.
Michael Marrow notes in a September 2023 Breaking Defense article that RTX has a manufacturing capacity of 500-800 AIM-120D missiles a year, with orders ramping up demand to 1,200, which is the company’s ceiling for production of that type.
Those missiles can be slow to produce. A June 2023 Defense Brief article mentions that RTX received a US$264 million contract to supply 571 AIM-9X missiles to the US Navy, US Air Force and other international customers, with the project expected to be finalized by August 2026. Those dates suggest a three-and-a-half-year production period for the batch of missiles.
US missile production may also be hamstrung by logistics issues. Asia Times noted in March 2023 that the US depends on China as the only source for a half-dozen chemical ingredients used in its military explosives and propellants, and other countries of concern for another dozen, putting into question the security of US weaponry supply chains.
While directed-energy weapons such as lasers may be the future of C-RAM systems, the technology still faces significant hurdles.
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US laser weapon programs have yet to deliver on their promise of negligible cost per shot and that current laser weapons still face challenges in size, weight, cooling and power requirements.
Proponents of laser weapons have made frequent predictions about when they would be fielded, nearly all of which have gone unrealized. Still, advances in solid-state laser (SSL) technology and more realistic goals, such as using lasers for counter-drone missions rather than ballistic missile defense, make laser weapons look increasingly feasible.
Other issues hobbling US laser weapons development include technology maturity issues, failure to deliver specialized facilities for maintaining sensitive components and the lack of a defense industrial base to produce laser weapons at scale.
In a Breaking Defense article this month, Sydney Freedberg Jr mentions that even a limited scaling-up of US laser weapons research has exposed significant supply chain problems.
Freedberg points out multiple weak points in the US laser weapon supply chain, such as dependence on China for rare-earth metals, esoteric techniques for polishing and coating laser-reflective mirrors, and limited suppliers for critical materials and technologies for laser weapons.
He also points out that while lasers have the potential to defeat drones, cruise missiles and even hypersonic weapons, the challenge is integrating them into an integrated air defense system (IADS) that can employ different weapons for multiple types of targets and conditions.
asiatimes.com · by Gabriel Honrada · January 29, 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
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