Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes, too much upon constitutions, upon laws in upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies, in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no, law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it … What is this liberty that must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not the freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty and leads straight to its overthrow. Society in which men recognize no check on their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage view – as we have learned to our sorrow.”

– Learned Hand, “The Spirit of Liberty” speech at “I am an American Day” ceremony, Central Park, New York City, 21, May 1944

“A critic is a man who creates nothing, and thereby, feels qualified to judge the work of creative men. There is logic in this; he is unbiased – he hates all created people equally.”

– Robert a Heinlein.

“The most dangerous person is the one who listens, thinks, and observes”

– Bruce Lee

1. US Intelligence Shows Flawed China Missiles Led Xi to Purge Army

2. China to sanction 5 US manufacturers over arms sales to Taiwan - ministry

3. Analysis: China feels the country isn’t patriotic enough. A new law aims to change that

4. Opinion | Where have all the American China experts gone?

5. Pentagon’s Ukraine Coffers Run Dry, Threatening Kyiv’s Grip on Its Territory

6. Lloyd Austin Owes Americans an Explanation

7. Russia, China and the Threat to the North Pole

8. Today's Crises, Here and Abroad, Echo the Disasters of the Past | Opinion

9. Israel Signals It Has Wrapped Up Major Combat in Northern Gaza as War Enters Fourth Month

10. Myanmar says an ethnic alliance has seized a key city bordering China

11. Assessing and Addressing the Houthi Threat

12. Japanese Company’s Bid for U.S. Steel Tests Biden’s Industrial Policy

13. Is Israel Winning the War on the Tunnels in Gaza?

14. What It’s Actually Like Being a Woman in the CIA

15. Iraq moving to remove US-led military coalition, prime minister says

16. Israel’s talk of expanding war to Lebanon alarms U.S.

1. US Intelligence Shows Flawed China Missiles Led Xi to Purge Army

Is this accurate? This is quite a remarkable intelligence assessment. Or is China conducting some kind of disinformation or deception program? Is China giving us the picture we want to see?

“Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

"Using order to deal with the disorderly, using calm to deal with the clamorous, is mastering the heart."

-–Sun Tzu

“All warfare is based on deception.”

– Sun Tzu

What does this mean and if accurate how can we exploit this?

Excerpts:

The US assessments cited several examples of the impact of graft, including missiles filled with water instead of fuel and vast fields of missile silos in western China with lids that don’t function in a way that would allow the missiles to launch effectively, one of the people said.

The US assesses that corruption within the People’s Liberation Army has led to an erosion of confidence in its overall capabilities, particularly when it comes to the Rocket Force, and also set back some of Xi’s top modernization priorities, the people said. The graft probe has ensnared more than a dozen senior defense officials over the past six months, in what may be China’s largest crackdown on the country’s military in modern history.

US Intelligence Shows Flawed China Missiles Led Xi to Purge Army

China missiles filled with water, not fuel: US intelligence
Xi seeking to root out corruption, prepare military for combat

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-06/us-intelligence-shows-flawed-china-missiles-led-xi-jinping-to-purge-military?sref=hhjZtX76

By Peter Martin and Jennifer Jacobs

January 6, 2024 at 7:41 AM EST

US intelligence indicates that President Xi Jinping’s sweeping military purge came after it emerged that widespread corruption undermined his efforts to modernize the armed forces and raised questions about China’s ability to fight a war, according to people familiar with the assessments.

The corruption inside China’s Rocket Force and throughout the nation’s defense industrial base is so extensive that US officials now believe Xi is less likely to contemplate major military action in the coming years than would otherwise have been the case, according to the people, who asked not to be named discussing intelligence.

Xi JinpingSource: Bloomberg

The US assessments cited several examples of the impact of graft, including missiles filled with water instead of fuel and vast fields of missile silos in western China with lids that don’t function in a way that would allow the missiles to launch effectively, one of the people said.

The US assesses that corruption within the People’s Liberation Army has led to an erosion of confidence in its overall capabilities, particularly when it comes to the Rocket Force, and also set back some of Xi’s top modernization priorities, the people said. The graft probe has ensnared more than a dozen senior defense officials over the past six months, in what may be China’s largest crackdown on the country’s military in modern history.

At the same time, the US assesses that Xi hasn’t been weakened by the widening purge, according to the people. Rather, they said, his move to oust senior figures — including some promoted under his watch — shows his hold over the Communist Party remains firm and that he’s serious about improving discipline, eliminating corruption and ultimately preparing China’s military for combat over the long term.

Spokespeople for the White House National Security Council didn’t immediately comment. When asked about the US intelligence, Lieutenant Colonel Martin Meiners, a Pentagon spokesman, said the Department of Defense’s annual China report discusses Xi’s efforts to strengthen and accelerate anti-corruption investigations in the PLA, without providing more details.

China’s Defense Ministry couldn’t be reached for a comment on a weekend in Beijing.

The US assessments couldn’t be independently verified. In the past, US policy makers have been frustrated by the inability of intelligence agencies to provide insights into Xi’s inner circle after being surprised by decisions out of Beijing, including rapid moves to consolidate control of Hong Kong and militarize the South China Sea.

Xi has devoted billions of dollars to his aim of transforming the military into a modern force by 2027. Central to that was his elevation of the Rocket Force, which would play a pivotal role in any invasion of self-ruled Taiwan. In a potential warning for Beijing, Russia’s war efforts in Ukraine have been publicly hobbled by corruption, a problem that PLA researchers as far back as 2014 called “the number one killer that impairs the military’s ability to fight.”

More: Can China Fight? Putin’s War Underscores Xi’s Military Weakness

Evidence of Xi’s corruption purge has bubbled to the surface in recent months.

In the latest round on Dec. 29, China’s top legislative body unseated nine defense figures, including five linked to the missile force and at least two from the Equipment Development Department, which is charged with arming the military.

Days earlier, China’s main political advisory body publicly removed three executives from state-owned missile manufacturers. That spate of purges came after the October ousting of China’s former defense minister, Li Shangfu, who was only in the position for seven months.

Those are just the removals Beijing has made public. Unlike other parts of the Chinese system, the military doesn’t announce its corruption investigations. Another Rocket Force major-general was quietly removed from Beijing’s municipal legislature in November, Chinese news outlet Caixin reported.

Public signs of Xi’s push to eliminate graft in the armed forces first emerged in July, when China’s top military body announced a new mechanism to detect and prevent corruption risks. Days later, the Equipment Development Department launched a retrospective graft probe that overlapped with Li’s tenure as its chief.

In a rare move, the department listed eight issues it was investigating, including “leaking information” and helping certain companies secure bids. Soon after came reports three top Rocket Force chiefs had been probed and removed.

The Chinese military’s official newspaper pledged in a Jan. 1 editorial to wage a “war on graft” this year, signaling more purges could be on the cards.

2. China to sanction 5 US manufacturers over arms sales to Taiwan - ministry

If I were leading an American company I would remove all assets of China before we get sanctioned.

On the other hand is China doing us a favor? We do not want our defense companies doing business with China and allow them to obtain defense equipment and technology.

Excerpt:

The companies to be that will be sanctioned are BAE Systems Land and Armaments, Alliant Techsystems Operations, AeroVironment, Viasat and Data Link Solutions.

China will freeze the assets of these companies and ban people or organisations in China from engaging them, the spokesperson said.

China to sanction 5 US manufacturers over arms sales to Taiwan - ministry

Reuters

January 6, 20249:02 PM ESTUpdated 12 hours ago

https://www.reuters.com/world/china-sanction-5-us-manufacturers-over-arms-sales-taiwan-ministry-2024-01-07/

Trade visitors walk past an advertisement for BAE Systems at Farnborough International Airshow in Farnborough, Britain, July 17, 2018. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights

BEIJING, Jan 7 (Reuters) - China will sanction five U.S. military manufacturers in response to the latest round of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, a foreign ministry spokesperson said on Sunday.

U.S. arms sales to Taiwan are a frequent source of tension between Washington and Beijing. China views democratically governed Taiwan as its territory, a claim Taiwan's government rejects.

The sanctions come ahead of Taiwan's Jan. 13 presidential and parliamentary elections, which China has cast as a choice between war and peace.

The U.S. State Department last month approved $300 million sale of equipment to help maintain Taiwan's tactical information systems.

The spokesperson said in a statement the recent arms sales "seriously undermine China's sovereignty and security interests, seriously jeopardise peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait".

The companies to be that will be sanctioned are BAE Systems Land and Armaments, Alliant Techsystems Operations, AeroVironment, Viasat and Data Link Solutions.

China will freeze the assets of these companies and ban people or organisations in China from engaging them, the spokesperson said.

The U.S. embassy in Beijing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reporting by Yew Lun Tian; Editing by William Mallard

3. Analysis: China feels the country isn’t patriotic enough. A new law aims to change that

I would ask if this is taking a page from the Kim family regime playbook? Focus on ideological development and purity in the face of potential internal instability. But as noted this is not new to China.

But when has coercing patriotism through laws and regulation ever worked in any country?

I hope those who are responsible for designing, executing, and orchestrating the US information campaign for dealing with China can exploit this information.

Excerpts:

The push for a love of country and the Communist Party is far from new in China, where patriotism and propaganda have been an integral part of education, company culture and life since the People’s Republic was founded nearly 75 years ago.

And Chinese nationalism has thrived under Xi, the country’s most authoritarian leader in decades, who has pledged to “rejuvenate” China to a place of power and prominence globally and encouraged a combative, “wolf warrior” diplomacy amid rising tensions with the West.

Ultra-nationalism has flourished on social media, where anyone perceived as slighting China – from live-streamers and comedians to foreign brands – will face a fierce backlash and boycotts.

...

China has other legislation aimed at stamping out unpatriotic behavior, such as banning the desecration of national flags and insults to soldiers. And under Xi in recent years, any dissent in China – even in the form of online comments that don’t toe the party line – is enough to land people in trouble with authorities.

But the latest law appears to hint at the introduction of penalties for acts not already punishable under existing laws, according to Ye Ruiping, senior law lecturer from Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.

For example, it states that behaviors “advocating, glorifying and denying acts of invasion, wars and massacres” and “damaging patriotic education facilities” could be subject to punishments, she said.

Analysis: China feels the country isn’t patriotic enough. A new law aims to change that | CNN

CNN · by Chris Lau, Simone McCarthy · January 7, 2024

A volunteer lawyer teaches elementary school students about China's Patriotic Education Law in Huai'an, China, on December 28, 2023.

Costfoto/NurPhoto/Getty Images

Hong Kong CNN —

On a brisk December day, junior high school students in Fuzhou, southeast China, converged at a country park to study the thoughts of Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Unfurling a red banner that declared their outing a “walking classroom of politics and ideology,” they sought enlightenment by retracing the footsteps Xi took on his 2021 visit to the neighborhood, according to a state-affiliated local news outlet.

Another group of youngsters in the northern coastal city of Tianjin toured a fort to reflect on “the tragic history of Chinese people’s resistance to foreign aggression.”

The trips are part of a ramping up of nationalist education in China in recent years – now codified into a sweeping new law that came into effect earlier this week.

That “Patriotic Education Law,” aimed at “enhancing national unity,” mandates that love of the country and the ruling Chinese Communist Party be incorporated into work and study for everyone – from the youngest children to workers and professionals across all sectors.

It is meant to help China “unify thoughts” and “gather the strength of the people for the great cause of building a strong country and national rejuvenation,” a Chinese propaganda official told a news briefing last month.

The push for a love of country and the Communist Party is far from new in China, where patriotism and propaganda have been an integral part of education, company culture and life since the People’s Republic was founded nearly 75 years ago.

And Chinese nationalism has thrived under Xi, the country’s most authoritarian leader in decades, who has pledged to “rejuvenate” China to a place of power and prominence globally and encouraged a combative, “wolf warrior” diplomacy amid rising tensions with the West.

Ultra-nationalism has flourished on social media, where anyone perceived as slighting China – from live-streamers and comedians to foreign brands – will face a fierce backlash and boycotts.

Attendees sing a patriotic song in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province on September 15, 2019 at an event marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

AFP/Getty Images

The new rules mark the latest expansion of Xi’s efforts to deepen the party’s presence in all aspects of public and private life.

But this time, they also follow years of stringent Covid-19 controls in China, which ended late in 2022 after young people across the country took to the streets in unprecedented protests against Xi’s government and its rules.

They also come as the economy slumps and youth unemployment has reached a record high – raising the potential for more discontent.

JIAOZUO, CHINA - JUNE 05: Senior three students study in the classroom to prepare for the upcoming 2023 National College Entrance Exam (aka Gaokao) on June 5, 2023 in Jiaozuo, Henan Province of China.

Cheng Quan/VCG/Getty Images

More people than ever are taking China’s college entrance exam. But a dire job market awaits

Experts said Beijing may see the new legal framework as a way to drum up nationalism and consolidate power to ensure social stability amid the challenges ahead.

China has long relied on its people to buy into its vision like an unwritten “social contact,” but it is now “in for a bumpy ride in the coming years,” said Jonathan Sullivan, an associate professor specializing in Chinese politics at the University of Nottingham.

“There could be challenges to that if there’s a protracted economic downturn … they’re doing the work to make sure the politically correct way of thinking is completely locked down, consolidating beyond doubt that the party’s way is the only way for China, and that if you love China, you ought to love the party,” he said.

That message has been hammered home in once outspoken Hong Kong following the huge democracy protests that erupted there in 2019.

Since then, Beijing has made clear it wants a new generation of patriots incubated in the city, rolling out patriotic education rules and political restrictions that forbid anyone deemed unpatriotic from standing for office.

The introduction of the law also coincides with the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China this coming October 1. Officials will be under pressure to ensure a celebration of patriotism – and to stamp out any possibility for dissent.

A demonstrator holds a blank sign and chants slogans during a protest in Beijing on November 28, 2022.

Stringer/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Patriotic curriculum for all walks of life

Under the law, professionals – from scientists to athletes – should be nurtured to profess “patriotic feelings and behavior that bring glory to the country.”

Local authorities are required to leverage cultural assets, such as museums and traditional Chinese festivals, to “enhance feelings for the country and family,” and step-up patriotic education through news reports, broadcasting and movies.

Religious bodies should also “strengthen religious staff and followers’” patriotic sentiment and their awareness of the rule of law – a stipulation in line with China’s push to “sinicize” and tighten its control over religion.

The latest legislation follows a 2016 directive from the Ministry of Education to introduce across-the-board patriotic education at each stage and in every aspect of schooling, which plays a major part in the new unified law.

It also follows past efforts, such as smartphone apps for people to “learn about new socialist thought” - including a lesson on how “Grandpa Xi led us into the new era” - and for adults to read up and take quizzes on Xi’s latest theories.

The latter was deemed a success in terms of downloads – as all 90 million Communist Party members were ordered to use it alongside many employees of state-owned enterprises.

People wave Chinese flags to mark China's National Day in Hong Kong on October 1, 2023.

Vernon Yuen/NurPhoto/Getty Images

The new rules affirm that patriotic education will be blended into school subjects and teaching materials “at all grades and all types of institutions,” while parents at home are required to guide their children and encourage them to take part in patriotic activities.

“(This has to do) with Xi’s consolidation of power. He wants patriotic education to start early,” said Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

He said the move is aimed at cultivating a loyal mindset toward Xi from a young age, while also sending a message to the wider public that Beijing’s focus is now on consolidating Xi’s power following the economic boom of the past decade.

A man looks at a painting by Chinese painter Yue Minjun entitled " Hats Series, Armed Forces " during a Sotheby's auction preview in Hong Kong Thursday, April. 2, 2009.

Vincent Yu/AP

China’s military has become an untouchable nationalist symbol. Artists and comedians are finding out the hard way

The new law also orders cultural establishments such as museums and libraries to be turned into venues of patriotic education activities and tourist destinations into places that “inspire patriotism.”

Schools are required to organize trips for students to visit these sites, which officials call “walking classrooms of politics and ideology.”

Such trips were not uncommon in the past, but the law now officially imposes a legal mandate for schools to do so.

China has other legislation aimed at stamping out unpatriotic behavior, such as banning the desecration of national flags and insults to soldiers. And under Xi in recent years, any dissent in China – even in the form of online comments that don’t toe the party line – is enough to land people in trouble with authorities.

But the latest law appears to hint at the introduction of penalties for acts not already punishable under existing laws, according to Ye Ruiping, senior law lecturer from Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.

For example, it states that behaviors “advocating, glorifying and denying acts of invasion, wars and massacres” and “damaging patriotic education facilities” could be subject to punishments, she said.

CNN · by Chris Lau, Simone McCarthy · January 7, 2024

4. Opinion | Where have all the American China experts gone?

Opinion | Where have all the American China experts gone?

The Washington Post · by Rory Truex · January 3, 2024

Rory Truex is an associate professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University.

The United States is running critically low on China expertise.

At a time of heightened competition with Beijing, our education system is not generating enough American citizens with Chinese language ability, meaningful lived experiences in China and deep area knowledge. And despite the ever-present refrain in Congress about the China threat, the U.S. government is actively disinvesting in China studies.

The result is a serious and overlooked knowledge asymmetry that gives China — where fluency in English and U.S. culture is common — the upper hand in understanding its strategic rival.

I took a very well-trodden path to becoming a China scholar. I began studying Chinese in college and went to China every summer to study the language and teach English. After graduating I was accepted into a PhD program in political science and for my dissertation I conducted several months of fieldwork in Beijing and Hunan province over three years, funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation. During one trip, I did a lengthy homestay with a Chinese family in Beijing. Only after all these experiences did I feel I had anything close to a handle on China, and even then, it was only in my narrow area of study at the time — the Chinese legislative system.

This path hardly exists for the next generation of American China scholars, or if it does, it’s filled with so many bumps and potholes, it’s almost not worth going down at all. By most metrics, China studies in the United States is in decline, with fewer American students studying Chinese than before the pandemic and fewer still spending meaningful time in the country.

Enrollments in college Mandarin courses peaked around 2016, then fell by more than 20 percent by 2020, according to data from the Modern Language Association. In 2011-2012, 14,887 American college students went abroad to China. By 2018-2019, that number had declined to 11,639, and by 2020-2021, to just 382. Although some colleges have begun to rebuild their programs in China, the pace is cautious and uncertain.

This precipitous decline was driven, in part, by China’s draconian implementation of its “zero covid” policy, which ground foreign student and academic exchange to a halt for more than two years. Yet now that things have formally reopened, exchange has not rebounded much, in large part because of concerns over the safety of traveling to China. The State Department maintains a Level 3 travel advisory for the country, telling Americans to “reconsider travel” because of the “arbitrary enforcement of local laws, including in relation to exit bans, and the risk of wrongful detentions.” This assessment is probably a bit too pessimistic, but it is true that the Chinese government has (perhaps unwittingly) created a perception that the country is less welcoming to foreigners. In the past few years, we have seen the passage of nebulous and threatening security laws, the arbitrary detention of two Canadian citizens, the shakedown of a number of foreign companies and an ever-present propaganda campaign warning Chinese citizens that foreigners might be spies.

The United States has not helped matters. In their push for “decoupling” from China, certain government voices have advocated policies that have effectively gutted the ability of the United States to gain China expertise in the name of national security. Any American scholar with a research agenda that touches China risks coming under investigation by the U.S. government or being chastised by our officials on social media for aiding China’s rise. The Fulbright and Peace Corps programs, which boast some of America’s finest China experts among their alumni, were discontinued by the Trump administration. Confucius Institutes, which provided Chinese language education on many U.S. campuses, have largely been shuttered because of their ties to the Chinese government. But there have been no compensating increases in language funding or opportunities to make up for the loss.

The U.S. government funds foreign language and area studies chiefly through Title VI of the Higher Education Act of 1965. That funding was cut from $110.3 million in fiscal year 2010 to $68.3 by fiscal year 2011, and it has never been replenished. For 2022, the total amount of funding was $71.9 million, of which only about 15 percent goes to East Asia-related programming.

These developments combined have led to a significant problem for our country’s stock of China expertise. I am involved in training the next generation of China-focused social scientists: Each year I help review the pool of applicants and recommend admission for a few students who want to study domestic Chinese politics at Princeton at the PhD level. These days it is rare to see an application from an American student. At the social science conferences I attend, the vast majority of the most promising young scholars of Chinese politics are Chinese citizens. This is a welcome development for the quality of research on China, but it is not a healthy sign for the depth of American understanding of its strategic competitor.

Contrast this with the level of linguistic and cultural fluency with the United States in China. English language education is compulsory and included in college admissions, so almost all young Chinese can speak some English, and many attain fluency. Roughly 300,000 Chinese students per year study in the United States. The asymmetry is striking.

President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping appear committed to stabilizing relations, though it has been difficult to find manageable issues where cooperation is possible. Rebuilding academic exchange is one area filled with opportunity.

Washington and Beijing should respond energetically by restoring and expanding the Fulbright and Peace Corps programs in China. Seek assurances for American students and researchers traveling to China. Decrease the pressure on Chinese citizens traveling to the United States and tone down the absurd narrative that Chinese students and scholars are spies. Fund Chinese language programs more generously at American universities and high schools, and fund researchers studying China’s military, political system, economy, languages, culture and history.

In this moment of U.S.-China competition, we must do more than invest in weapons and semiconductors. We must invest in understanding.

The Washington Post · by Rory Truex · January 3, 2024

5. Pentagon’s Ukraine Coffers Run Dry, Threatening Kyiv’s Grip on Its Territory

Graphics at the link: https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/pentagons-ukraine-coffers-run-dry-threatening-kyivs-grip-on-its-territory-5862a95f?mod=hp_listc_pos3

Pentagon’s Ukraine Coffers Run Dry, Threatening Kyiv’s Grip on Its Territory

Funding for more weapons and ammunition is held up in fight over border policy; ‘We’re out of money’

Russia in recent days has launched some of the war’s biggest missile attacks; damage Jan. 3 in Kyiv. PHOTO: ANATOLII STEPANOV/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

By Lindsay WiseFollow

, Ian LovettFollow

, Doug CameronFollow

and Nancy A. YoussefFollow

Jan. 7, 2024 5:30 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/pentagons-ukraine-coffers-run-dry-threatening-kyivs-grip-on-its-territory-5862a95f?mod=hp_listc_pos3

The Washington stalemate over U.S. policy at the southern border is beginning to reverberate on the Ukraine battlefield, where Kyiv’s troops are running out of ammunition and the Pentagon says it can’t provide more without emptying its own arsenal.

In recent weeks, the Pentagon has run out of money to send more hardware and ammunition, just as Russia intensified its ground assaults and missile and drone attacks on Ukraine. The White House has asked for $45 billion to fund security assistance for Ukraine, but Senate Republicans are demanding border-policy changes in return.

“We’re out of money,” Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder said Thursday.

Short of congressional approval of more funding, the White House can either dip into the Pentagon’s arsenal with no guarantee the gear will be replaced, or leave Ukraine to rely on its own growing but still small arms industry and European allies.

Without an influx of weapons and ammunition, Ukraine could soon find itself in a dire situation. Ill-equipped to defend the 600-mile front, Ukrainian generals would have to choose between giving ground or sending outgunned troops into the trenches without artillery cover. In either case, Russia would be well-positioned to take more than the 20% of Ukraine’s territory it already holds. Officials in Kyiv and Washington warn that if Russia succeeds, other authoritarian leaders around the world would be emboldened by what they would perceive as U.S. weakness.

Ukraine’s counteroffensive last summer gained little ground in the country’s southeast at heavy cost. In October, as Ukraine ran low on shells and manpower—and Washington’s attention seemed to shift to the Israel-Hamas fighting in Gaza—the Russians went back on the attack.

Moscow has mobilized Russia’s economy for war against its much smaller neighbor, and Russia’s superior firepower is already yielding results. Its forces are consolidating control over Marinka in eastern Ukraine, a town of a few thousand inhabitants before the war that has been reduced to rubble by Russian bombardments.

Assault operations paused

The Pentagon’s dwindling funds have led the U.S. to trim the size of packages for Ukraine, and Ukrainian soldiers said they started to notice a shortage of artillery a few months ago.

“We’ve stopped all assault operations in the area,” said the 31-year-old commander of a drone squad working near Robotyne, a village on the southeastern front retaken by Ukrainian forces over the summer. “We’re focused on holding our ground and defending positions.”

Meanwhile, Russia has repeatedly demonstrated the need for Ukraine to have a stocked arsenal of air-defense missiles: A barrage of 99 missiles fired Tuesday was the second significant salvo in less than a week, after one of the largest missile attacks of the war the previous Friday.

In all, the U.S. has already provided around $44 billion in military assistance. That volume of arms transfers isn’t worked into the Pentagon’s regular annual budget, so the administration has relied on supplemental budgets passed by Congress, akin to those that funded the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Pentagon warehouses have been the biggest source of weapons for Ukraine. In addition, the U.S. has paid military contractors for missiles, shells, specialized vehicles and other systems to send directly to Ukraine. The Pentagon has authority to transfer about $4.2 billion in weapons from the U.S. arsenal to Ukraine, but no money to replenish those stocks. There are no imminent plans to announce additional aid packages, defense officials said.

Ukraine still has some U.S. arms on the way: Defense companies are continuing to sell Kyiv weapons paid for with U.S. tax dollars under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.

As of late November, RTX, formerly known as Raytheon, and

Lockheed Martin had secured the largest portion of the $27 billion spent by the Pentagon on new contracts to arm Ukraine and refill the U.S. armory. RTX said it still expects another $4 billion in Ukraine-driven contracts over the next two years on top of the $3 billion already secured.‘We’ll do the right thing’

The supplemental request under debate on Capitol Hill totals $110.5 billion to fund security assistance for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. Most of the roughly $45 billion earmarked for Ukraine would run through 2025; it includes $12 billion for direct sales of weapons, $18 billion to refill Pentagon and allied stockpiles and around $4 billion to boost domestic production.

“I’m confident that ultimately we’ll do the right thing,” Sen. Todd Young (R., Ind.) said shortly before lawmakers headed home for Christmas.

Although a bipartisan group of negotiators in the Senate missed an initial end-of-year goal to reach an agreement on border-policy changes to unlock more Ukraine aid, the lawmakers met remotely over the Christmas recess and resumed meeting in person in the Capitol last week. The group has reached agreement on some issues but continues to haggle over several key provisions, according to people familiar with the conversations.

Even if senators can pass a border deal, it’s uncertain if or when the House might take it up.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La) will be constrained by a narrow two-vote GOP majority. Johnson, who visited the border last week, has said that any deal on Ukraine aid was contingent on changes in U.S. immigration policy largely outlined in a border-security bill passed last spring by the Republican-controlled House. The bill would continue building former President Donald Trump’s border wall, reinstate a policy requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico and make it nearly impossible to claim asylum at the southern border.

The lead Republican negotiator in the Senate, Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, has warned that the House border bill can’t pass his Democratic-led chamber.

On the front in Ukraine, with shells running low, artillery gunners can’t fire on small groups of enemy soldiers, enabling Russian troops to approach Ukrainian lines and threaten entrenched infantry. The Ukrainians are adapting by using explosive drones in place of artillery to strike Russian vehicles and infantry. The drones are cheaper than shells and more accurate, but less powerful and more labor intensive.

“They have 140 million people. We have 40 million. They have stores of Soviet weapons—even if they’re not great, they still fire,” said Serhiy Knish, a 55-year-old veteran who left the military in November. “Aid from the West is why we can still stand as a country.”

Write to Ian Lovett at ian.lovett@wsj.com, Lindsay Wise at lindsay.wise@wsj.com, Doug Cameron at Doug.Cameron@wsj.com and Nancy A. Youssef at nancy.youssef@wsj.com

6. Lloyd Austin Owes Americans an Explanation

Lloyd Austin Owes Americans an Explanation

The secretary of defense has taken “full responsibility” for failing to inform the public of his hospitalization, but that’s not enough.

By Tom Nichols

The Atlantic · by Tom Nichols · January 7, 2024

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was hospitalized this week, and apparently, the president of the United States didn’t know about it—for days.

Austin was admitted to Walter Reed Hospital following complications from an “elective procedure” on New Year’s Day, according to a statement from the Pentagon. “Elective” could mean almost anything that is not serious or urgent, but something went wrong, and Austin ended up in the Intensive Care Unit for four days, NBC News reported. In itself, the secretary’s incapacity is not a crisis; the Pentagon’s chain of command has multiple people who can take over for him. And there might be good reasons to keep such news, at least temporarily, away from the public (and America’s enemies).

But what possible reason could there be for Austin’s failing to inform President Biden and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, as Politico reports he did?

The most benign explanation (based on what little we know so far) would be that Austin’s health issues developed so rapidly that his subordinates assumed he’d be released, when in fact he was being held over repeatedly in hour-by-hour medical decisions for more treatment. Meanwhile, a competent and efficient Pentagon staff might have extended their acting duties beyond the one day they initially expected, while everyone involved mistakenly thought someone else was keeping the White House in the loop.

The more worrisome possibility is that Austin and his staff did not want to release the news that Austin was incapacitated to anyone—including the president and his staff. If Austin’s illness was kept under wraps by his aides to shield him from criticism or scrutiny, that’s evidence of a dysfunctional staff environment, in which actions to protect the boss’s equities overtake both necessary procedures and plain good sense. The fact that Austin’s hospitalization, according to Politico, was “a closely guarded secret, kept from even senior Pentagon officials and congressional leaders,” suggests that this strange episode was the result of more than just an oversight.

For now, all we know is that Austin has taken “full responsibility” for the Defense Department’s failure to inform the public. Austin is a retired four-star Army general, and it is not surprising that his instinct as a former military commander was to move quickly and accept responsibility for the actions of those under his command. The public, however, deserves better answers to important questions.

Who, for example, was in charge and able to execute the secretary’s duties during his illness—including taking Austin’s place in the nuclear chain of command? When the president orders the use of nuclear weapons, the secretary of defense confirms those orders to the U.S. Strategic Command. (The secretary has no veto, but he or she must verify that the orders are authentic and came from the president.) In theory, Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks would take Austin’s place as the acting secretary, but the Pentagon, according to the Washington Post, has been “ambiguous about what happened in this case,” saying only that Hicks “‘was prepared to act for and exercise the powers’ of the defense secretary, if required.”

“If required?” The Pentagon was already having a busy week: While Austin was in the hospital, the United States launched an airstrike in Iraq, killing one of the leaders of an Iranian-backed militia. Austin apparently signed off on the strike before his hospitalization, but what if something had gone wrong and a crisis erupted? What if the White House couldn’t find its own secretary of defense quickly in a deteriorating military situation?

Or, in an even more hair-raising possibility, what if something else had gone wrong—something far more catastrophic?

At approximately 3 am on November 9, 1979, President Jimmy Carter’s national-security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was awakened by a call from his military aide, Major General William Odom. NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, had detected the launch of a massive nuclear strike from the Soviet Union against the United States. Brzezinski was about to call the president—he chose not to wake his wife, knowing that she, and everyone else in Washington, D.C., would be dead within a half hour—when Odom called back. It was all a terrible mistake. Someone had goofed, and fed a mock-attack training tape into NORAD’s computers.

Had anyone involved taken one more step, Carter would have needed an immediate link to his secretary of defense, Harold Brown, both to confirm the attack and order retaliation. Imagine, at such a moment, what might have happened if no one at the White House could locate Brown—especially if the attack turned out to be real.

Fortunately, the United States did not suffer such a crisis, real or mistaken, while Austin was out of commission. But if Biden and Sullivan had needed to find Austin in a hurry, precious minutes would have been lost in the ensuing confusion. Merely apologizing for keeping the public in the dark isn’t enough. President Biden, Congress, and the American people, need to know exactly what just happened over the past five days.

The Atlantic · by Tom Nichols · January 7, 2024

7. Russia, China and the Threat to the North Pole

A major aspect of strategy is all about prioritization of resources and capabilities and accepting risks.

Russia, China and the Threat to the North Pole

The U.S. needs more icebreakers and other Arctic defenses.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-china-and-the-threat-to-the-north-pole-icebreaker-appropriations-arctic-74489e23?mod=hp_opin_pos_4#cxrecs_s

By Mark Green

Jan. 5, 2024 1:56 pm ET

A U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker on a research cruise in the Chukchi Sea of the Arctic Ocean. PHOTO: DEVIN POWELL/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Despite a slow-burn conflict growing in the Arctic, the U.S. military presence in the region has waned substantially following the Cold War. The Coast Guard is our first line of defense there, but the service may not be ready for the mission.

While the U.S. sits on the sidelines, adversaries like Russia and China are investing in their economic and military capabilities in the High North. We must address growing U.S. vulnerabilities before it’s too late. We should begin by passing an appropriations package that includes funding for a commercially available icebreaker.

The Coast Guard is the primary enforcer of U.S. sovereignty in the region. It performs search-and-rescue operations, enforces U.S. laws in our waters off Alaska, and operates the nation’s icebreaker fleet, which allows the U.S. access to polar regions.

Vice Adm. Peter Gautier, deputy commandant for operations for the Coast Guard, testified before the House Homeland Security Committee in November that the Coast Guard needs as many as nine icebreakers to maintain U.S. power and presence in the Arctic. We have only two aging icebreakers, which require regular substantial repairs.

In 2012 the Coast Guard established the Polar Security Cutter program to modernize our outdated icebreaker fleet and to deliver the first new icebreaker by 2024. But a lack of U.S. shipbuilding expertise and business infrastructure is delaying construction until at least 2028, according to a Government Accountability Office report.

Today, the Arctic Ocean is more navigable than ever, empowering allies and adversaries to take a new and more urgent interest in the region. As one of only eight Arctic states, the U.S., along with our North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies, benefits from proximity to natural resources, including an estimated 30% of the world’s undiscovered natural-gas reserves, shipping routes, fishing waters and a chance at development. This interest also makes the High North a flashpoint in a new era of great-power competition.

Amid this strategic importance, the Coast Guard has a more daunting mission to maintain strength and deterrence in the region while warding off escalation by adversaries.

Mainland Russia is less than 60 miles from the west coast of Alaska. Russia’s regional dominance in the Arctic is amplified by its proportion of Arctic coastline, and it operates more than 50 icebreakers—nearly half of all icebreakers in the world. Once Sweden joins NATO, Russia will be the only non-NATO Arctic state. Isolated by its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has increased collaboration with China in the region as part of its new unlimited relationship, even going so far as to establish a joint maritime agreement for travel along the Northern Sea Route to share intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance information.

In 2021 China proclaimed itself a “near-Arctic state,” despite having no sovereign Arctic territory. Alongside Russia, China has stepped up its activity in Arctic waters, including in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone. In 2021 the U.S. Coast Guard reported that a formation of four Chinese warships had entered the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone off the Aleutian Islands. In July a Chinese and Russian flotilla sailed in the waters off the coast of Alaska in a show of power. Adm. Gautier testified that China’s “military has expanded its capability at an absolutely extraordinary rate,” and these surface action groups are becoming the norm.

With time running short and the High North barreling toward Cold War-level tensions, the Homeland Security Committee is conducting rigorous oversight of the Polar Security Cutter acquisition program for shipbuilders.

The Coast Guard needs the resources and clarity today to advance our interests in the region. The U.S. can’t afford to wait until 2028 for a new icebreaker. The House and Senate appropriations committees must pass legislation authorizing the purchase of a commercially available icebreaker to start filling the U.S. icebreaker void and matching our adversaries’ presence in the Arctic.

The Arctic plays a crucial role in our security, and failing to focus on the region has put us on a collision course on the world stage. The U.S. needs to reassert our interests as adversaries work to expand economically and militarily.

Mr. Green, a Republican, represents Tennessee’s Seventh Congressional District and is chairman of the Homeland Security Committee.

Today's Crises, Here and Abroad, Echo the Disasters of the Past | Opinion

Published 01/05/24 09:00 AM ET

Harlan Ullman

themessenger.com · January 5, 2024

Are we hearing echoes from the past that could be precursors of future catastrophe? At home and abroad, it seems we indeed are witnessing events that recall the historic moments which led both the United States and the world into bloody cataclysms in earlier eras.

On April 12, 1861, just before sunrise, Confederate soldiers opened fire on the Union’s Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, beginning the Civil War. The inhuman practice of slavery was, of course, the overarching moral question and a root cause of the Civil War — but another root cause was the ambiguity of where or how states’ rights could override federal law.

Texas recently passed three three laws aimed at halting illegal immigration, one of them authorizing police to arrest suspected illegals entering the state. The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit, arguing that Texas cannot have separate laws in conflict with the federal government’s. This sets up a potentially titanic legal battle over the Tenth Amendment and the Declaration of Independence — much as occurred in 1861 over states’ rights.

The Tenth Amendment states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The Declaration of Independence asserts: “When Government becomes destructive, it is the right of the people to alter and abolish it and establish a new one.” On both counts, Texas may offer an interesting argument.

Texas sees the massively uncontrolled flow of people seeking entry to the United States as intolerable, and rightly observes that immigration policies are not working. Clearly, a physical attack against the Union will not follow this time. But when the nation is so politically divided over virtually every issue, what can states do when the federal government cannot cope with a self-evident crisis and the Constitution has no answer? The courts undoubtedly will side with the Justice Department, and the immigration crisis will remain unresolved.

June 28, 1914, was the day that Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were gunned down in Sarajevo, provoking World War I. Today, Russia’s war in Ukraine is less likely to escalate in such a manner, but Israel’s war in Gaza against the Iran-backed terror group Hamas is a different proposition. Two days ago in Iran, explosions killed 84 people and wounded many others who were marking the fourth anniversary of the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, former commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force.

Although the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the bombings, Iran may conclude that one of its two mortal enemies — Israel (the other being the United States) — somehow had a hand in the attack. Israel has been technically brilliant in the covert operations it has conducted against Iran, from stealing the most classified details of its nuclear programs to assassinating its scientists. The rationale for such an attack would be self-evident: Iran has supported Hamas in its war with Israel, though not as strongly as is commonly believed — but Hezbollah is the true first-team Iranian foil, and it has threatened Israel in the past and is doing so now.

Iran may decide to move more quickly on its nuclear weapons program, or to use the Yemen-based Houthis to increase attacks on shipping in the Gulf, or to mobilize Hezbollah for an all-out engagement with Israel. And, once again, the echo with the past — in which a regional conflict begets global conflagration — is strong.

This echo is reinforced by the war in Ukraine, which seems to be moving in Russia’s favor at the moment, as well as the forthcoming Taiwan elections that could trigger action by Beijing to “reunify” Taiwan and China, depending upon who is elected.

Short of a major war, rarely has international politics been confronted by so many conflicts in so many geostrategically vital regions at once.

Exacerbating these dangers, however, is the larger concern about governing in the U.S. The Texas laws to halt illegal entry into America are an unmistakable sign that the federal government is failing. Congress seems incapable of acting on aid for Ukraine and Israel, let alone reforms to alleviate the crisis at our southern border. The debt ceiling and budget impasse will come due this month, and a government shutdown — perhaps lasting months — is possible. With all this happening, about three-fourths of Americans understandably do not wish to have a rerun of the 2020 presidential election this fall.

Even more sobering, echoes of 1929 might be heard as well — especially if the government shuts down with devastating impact. Recall that in September 1929, the gyrations on Wall Street began that led to the October stock market crash and the Great Depression.

Could these potential crises be contained through competent leadership? Possibly. But where have all the great leaders gone — and does anyone care? This year will answer these questions, for better or worse.

Harlan Ullman is senior adviser at the Atlantic Council. He is the author of “Shock and Awe,” “Anatomy of Failure: Why America Loses Every War It Starts,” and his latest book, “The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large.”

themessenger.com · January 5, 2024

9. Israel Signals It Has Wrapped Up Major Combat in Northern Gaza as War Enters Fourth Month

Israel Signals It Has Wrapped Up Major Combat in Northern Gaza as War Enters Fourth Month

In recent weeks, Israel had already been scaling back its military assault in northern Gaza and pressing its offensive in the territory’s south

Published 01/07/24 06:20 AM ET|Updated 22 min ago

Associated Press

themessenger.com · January 7, 2024

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military signaled that it has wrapped up major combat in northern Gaza, saying it has completed dismantling Hamas' military infrastructure there, as the war against the militant group entered its fourth month Sunday.

The military did not address troop deployments in northern Gaza going forward. Its spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said late Saturday that forces would “continue to deepen the achievement” there, strengthen defenses along the Israel-Gaza border fence and focus on the central and southern parts of the territory.

The announcement came ahead of a visit to Israel by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Biden administration officials, including Blinken, have repeatedly urged Israel to wind down its blistering air and ground offensive in Gaza and shift to more targeted attacks against Hamas leaders to prevent harm to Palestinian civilians.

In recent weeks, Israel had already been scaling back its military assault in northern Gaza and pressing its offensive in the territory’s south, where most of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians are being squeezed into smaller areas in a humanitarian disaster while being pounded by Israeli airstrikes.

The war was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel in which the militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took some 250 people hostage.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted the war will not end until the objectives of eliminating Hamas, getting Israel’s hostages returned and ensuring that Gaza won’t be a threat to Israel are met.

Israel's retaliation by air, land and sea has killed more than 22,700 Palestinians and wounded more than 58,000, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. The count of the dead does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. Health officials say about two-thirds of those killed have been women and minors. Israel blames Hamas for the heavy civilian casualties because the group operates in heavily populated residential areas.

On Sunday, officials at Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis received the bodies of 18 people, including 12 children, who were killed in an Israeli strike late Saturday. More than 50 people were injured in the strike on a home in the Khan Younis refugee camp, which was set up decades ago to house refugees from the 1948 Mideast war over Israel's creation and morphed into a neighborhood of the city.

Another airstrike hit a house between Khan Younis and the southern city of Rafah, killing at least seven people whose bodies were taken to the nearby European Hospital, according to an Associated Press journalist at the facility.

Israeli forces were also pushing deeper into the central city of Deir al-Balah, where on Saturday residents in several neighborhoods were warned in flyers dropped over the city that they must evacuate their homes.

The international medical charity Doctors Without Borders, known by the acronym MSF, said it was evacuating its medical staff and their families from Deir al-Balah's Al Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital because of the growing danger.

“The situation became so dangerous that some staff living in the neighboring areas were not able to leave their houses because of the constant threats of drones and snipers,” said Carolina Lopez, the group’s emergency coordinator at the hospital.

She said a bullet penetrated a wall of the hospital’s intensive care unit on Friday, and that “drone attacks and sniper fire were just a few hundred meters from the hospital” over the past couple of days.

The group had about 50 Palestinian and international medical staff in the hospital. Lopez said the hospital has received between 150 and 200 injured people daily in recent weeks. “On some days, we have received more dead than injured,” she said. “No one and nowhere is safe in Gaza.”

Hagari, the military spokesman, said the scattered fighting in northern Gaza was to be expected, along with rockets sporadically being launched from there toward Israel. He said Hamas no longer operates in an organized manner in the area, but that militants “without a framework and without commanders” are still present. The military has said it has killed more than 8,000 Hamas fighters, without presenting evidence.

A plume of smoke follows an Israeli airstrike in the northern part of the Gaza Strip as Israel continues its bombardment and ground offensive on November 9, 2023.Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Hagari said Israeli forces would act differently in the south than they had in northern Gaza, where heavy bombardment and ground combat leveled entire neighborhoods.

He said the urban refugee camps currently being targeted by the military are packed with gunmen and that “an underground city of sprawling tunnels” was discovered underneath Khan Younis. He said the military is “applying the lessons we learned,” but did not elaborate. Echoing Israeli political leaders, he said the fighting “will continue throughout 2024.”

His comments about changing the way the forces are fighting appeared to be a nod to Blinken, who is on his fourth Mideast trip in three months.

In addition to appeals for scaling back high-intensity combat, Blinken has called for more aid to reach Gaza and urged Israel's leaders to come up with a vision for post-war Gaza.

Two U.S. senators who inspected aid deliveries over the weekend described a cumbersome process that is slowing relief to the Palestinian population in the besieged territory — largely due to Israeli inspections of cargo trucks, with seemingly arbitrary rejections of vital humanitarian equipment. The system to ensure that aid deliveries within Gaza don’t get hit by Israeli forces is “totally broken,” said Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Jeff Merkley, both Democrats.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration and Netanyahu remain far apart on who should run the territory after the war, with the Israeli leader repeatedly rejecting the Washington-floated idea of having a reformed Palestinian Authority, an autonomy government in parts of the occupied West Bank, eventually administer Gaza.

In a further complication of Blinken's mission, a new escalation of cross-border fighting between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah has put strains on a U.S. push to prevent a regional conflagration. Saturday's fighting was described by Hezbollah as an “initial response” to the targeted killing of a top Hamas leader in a Hezbollah stronghold of the Lebanese capital of Beirut last week. The strike was presumed to have been carried out by Israel.

themessenger.com · January 7, 2024

10. Myanmar says an ethnic alliance has seized a key city bordering China

Myanmar says an ethnic alliance has seized a key city bordering China

NPR · by By · January 6, 2024

This photo provided by Kyaw Ko Lin shows a view of Laukkaing city in Shan state, Myanmar on Nov. 20. Myanmar's military government has acknowledged that it withdrew its forces from the city. Kyaw Ko Lin via AP

BANGKOK — Myanmar's military government has acknowledged that it withdrew its forces from a key city on the northeastern border with China after it was taken over by an alliance of ethnic armed groups it has been battling for months.

The fall of Laukkaing late Thursday is the biggest in a series of defeats suffered by Myanmar's military government since the ethnic alliance launched an offensive Oct. 27. It underlines the pressure the government is under as it battles pro-democracy guerrillas in the wake of a 2021 military takeover as well as ethnic minority armed groups across the country.

Ethnic armed organizations have battled for greater autonomy for decades, but Myanmar has been wracked by what amounts to civil war since the army seized power in February 2021 from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, sparking nationwide armed resistance by pro-democracy forces.

The Three Brotherhood Alliance that took Laukkaing is composed of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, the Ta'ang National Liberation Army and the Arakan Army. The MNDAA is a military force of the Kokang minority, who are ethnic Chinese.

Photos and videos on social media showed a vast amount of weapons that the alliance claimed to have captured.

Laukkaing is the capital of the Kokang Self-Administered Zone, which is geographically part of northern Shan state in Myanmar.

Myanmar government spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun told the Popular News Journal, a pro-army website, on Saturday that the military and its local commanders relinquished control of Laukkaing after considering many aspects, including the safety of the family members of the soldiers stationed there.

He said the military also took into consideration Myanmar's relationship with China, which is just across the border from Laukkaing. China, which has good relations with both the military and the ethnic alliance, has been seeking an end to the fighting.

Beijing protested after artillery shells landed in its territory on Wednesday, wounding five people. Zaw Min Tun said the alliance had fired the shells and that it tried to blame the military in order to damage its relationship with China.

A statement posted by the alliance on social media late Friday declared that the entire Kokang region had become a "Military Council-free area," referring to Myanmar's ruling junta,

It said 2,389 military personnel — including six brigadier generals — and their family members had surrendered by Friday and that all were evacuated to safety.

Video clips circulating on social media purportedly showed the soldiers and their family members being transported in various vehicles. The Shwe Phee Myay News Agency, an online news site reporting from Shan state, reported that many of them were taken to Lashio, the capital of Shan's northern region, under an agreement with the MNDAA for their repatriation.

It's unclear whether the Three Brotherhood Alliance will try to extend its offensive outside of Shan state, but it has vowed to keep fighting against military rule.

The alliance cast its offensive as a struggle against military rule and an effort to rid the region of major organized criminal enterprises. China has publicly sought to eradicate cyberscam operations in Laukkaing that have entrapped tens of thousands of Chinese nationals, who have been repatriated to China in recent weeks.

But the offensive was also widely recognized as an effort by the MNDAA to regain control of the Kokang Self-Administered Zone by ousting a rival Kokang group backed by the military government from its seat of power.

Peng Deren, the MNDAA commander, said in a New Year's speech published by The Kokang, an affiliated online media site, that the alliance had seized over 250 military targets and five border crossings with China. He said more than 300 cyberscam centers were raided and more than 40,000 Chinese involved in the operations were repatriated.

NPR · by By · January 6, 2024

11.Assessing and Addressing the Houthi Threat

Excerpts:

The Biden administration should redesignate the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization. In 2021, the Biden administration revoked the designation of the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO). While the dire humanitarian situation in Yemen was portrayed as the chief reason for this decision, the administration’s desire to hew to the misguided Iran policy bequeathed to it from the Obama administration likely played a major role in the decision. Redesignating the Houthis as a terrorist organization would send a strong signal to regional allies and foes alike that Washington is serious about fighting the militia.

The US should do more to address the security concerns of its Gulf partners and allies. Saudi Arabia is concerned that a tough response to the Houthi threat could lead to a reloaded war along its border with Yemen, a concern shared by Washington’s other Gulf allies. To address this concern, the Biden administration should supply its allies and partners in the Gulf with adequate military capabilities, including offensive countermeasures. Simultaneously, it should signal that any hostile proxy campaigns by Iran in the region would not go unpunished. Addressing the concerns of its regional partners would help Washington counter Chinese influence in the region while simultaneously striking the Houthi militia and its backers in Tehran.

MENA Defense Intelligence Digest | ww

Can Kasapoğlu

hudson.org ·

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Defense Intelligence Digest is a monthly political-military and geopolitical assessment series from Hudson Institute. Below, Hudson Senior Fellow Can Kasapoğlu offers an overview of the contemporary Middle Eastern strategic agenda.

Executive Summary

Through its Yemeni proxy the Houthis, Iran can successfully target global supply chains, threatening freedom of navigation and maritime security with strikes in the Bab al-Mandab.

The multinational effort to thwart these disruptions, Operation Prosperity Guardian, has failed to establish credible deterrence in the Red Sea, as Houthi attacks on commercial vessels have led shipping companies to suspend their operations there.

Data and experience gleaned from the Houthis’ attacks allow Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps to hone its operations, while the presence of an Iranian spy vessel in the region presages an intensifying campaign.

To effectively safeguard maritime security and global trade, the United States and its allies should target the critical capabilities of the Houthi forces and deter Iran from escalation.

Identifying the Core Security Challenge

Since mid-November 2023, the Houthi militia, Iran’s proxy in Yemen, has launched a disruptive campaign against maritime traffic through the Bab al-Mandab, a critical chokepoint connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean beyond. Houthi strikes have endangered traffic through the Suez Canal, so many leading shipping companies have suspended their activities in the region.

To address this worsening situation, in mid-December 2023, a US-led multinational coalition launched Operation Prosperity Guardian. Saudi Arabia and Egypt are notably absent from this coalition, with Bahrain the sole Gulf country currently supporting the effort.

Despite the naval buildup, Operation Prosperity Guardian has been unable to stop the Houthi attacks. Although Washington and London have pressed Tehran to rein in the Houthis, Iran has boldly turned down this diplomatic request, while the Houthi leadership has made menacing threats against US Navy assets in the region.

The failure to establish credible deterrence has emboldened Iran, and the Houthi threat is only growing.

Why It Matters

Houthi aggression marks the most serious threat to maritime shipping and trade in decades. Between seven to nine million barrels of oil navigate the Bab al-Mandab every day. The Suez Canal is also a major trade route, ensuring economic transactions among Asia, Europe, and North Africa. Altogether, about 12 percent of global maritime trade moves from the Bab al-Mandab to the Suez Canal every year, including some 30 percent of annual global container trade, worth around $1 trillion.

Already, Houthi attacks have caused major companies to halt their operations in the Red Sea. These companies shepherd a large portion of international maritime traffic, with the Maersk Group accounting for 19.7 percent, CMA CGM 18 percent, and Hapag Lloyd AG 8 percent of overall global shipping. Most of these multinationals have suspended their Red Sea operations and re-routed their northbound and southbound vessels, which has delayed estimated arrival times as container ships navigate longer routes around the Cape of Good Hope. The deteriorating security situation has triggered a rapid increase in insurance costs, placing an additional burden on maritime trade. The tense situation threatens global supply lines that are already struggling to recover from pandemic-era disruptions.

Unchecked, the Iran-backed Houthi aggression could catalyze catastrophic outcomes across multiple continents. In 2021, when the 1,300-foot Ever Given cargo vessel became stuck in the Suez Canal, an estimated $10 billion worth of cargo was lost every day. The situation unfolding in the Bab al-Mandab is more serious than that incident by several orders of magnitude.

Maintaining free maritime navigation is a geopolitical imperative for the United States and its allies. This strategic priority was highlighted in the 2022 US National Security Strategy, which stated that “the United States will not allow foreign or regional powers to jeopardize freedom of navigation through the Middle East’s waterways, including the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab.” The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Strategic Concept further declares that member nations will deter and defend against all threats in the maritime domain, uphold freedom of navigation, secure maritime trade routes, and protect main lines of communication.

Houthi information operations suggest that the militia, in coordination with Iran, has intentionally positioned itself as the most active and dangerous member of the so-called Axis of Resistance. The militia’s rhetoric has recently ranged from threatening Israel to openly challenging the US military.

Defense Intelligence Assessment of the Escalating Situation

The Houthi militia launched its current campaign of attacks in November 2023, when it deployed an air-mobile tactical assault team to capture the Galaxy Leader cargo ship near the Yemeni port city of Hodeida. In early December 2023, the USS Carney successfully saved several commercial platforms from a massive Houthi missile and drone barrage.

Between November 19 and December 31, 2023, the Houthis conducted 23 major attacks on global trade and shipping activity. These attacks demonstrated the Iran-backed long-range strike capabilities of the Houthi forces, centered on missile warfare and drone warfare assets, as well as asymmetric naval warfare platforms like those used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

The anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) is one notable offensive asset that the Houthis employ. Acquired via Iranian know-how derived from illegal military transfers, Houthi forces have launched ASBMs at passing vessels on several occasions, marking the first publicly known combat use of the munition. While the precise anti-ship ballistic missiles used in the strikes remain unidentified, open-source intelligence assessments suggest that the Houthis operate two principal ASBM systems: the Asef, an anti-ship derivative of Iran’s Fateh-313 tactical ballistic missile, and the Tankel, the anti-ship variant of Iran’s Raad-500 Zohair tactical ballistic missile. These assets possess roughly 280 miles and 310 miles of range, respectively. The Asef, which closely resembles the Iranian Khalij Fars missile, has a large warhead that weighs 1,400 pounds (650 kilograms). The Houthis also possess a smaller ASBM, al-Falaq, derived from the Iranian Fateh-110 tactical ballistic missile.

The Houthi use of Iran-sponsored ASBM systems should be of grave concern to the US and its allies. Ballistic missiles lack the maneuverability and sea-skimming features that a high-end anti-ship cruise missile can offer. Anti-ship ballistic missiles, however, possess one advantage cruise missiles lack: they travel at high speeds. Some even can leave and then re-enter the atmosphere, and they attack targets with overwhelming velocity. They are difficult to intercept and carry devastating warheads.

Because ships are moving targets, an ASBM, especially one lacking high-end technological features, can often fail to strike a target set with precision. This is why a kill chain—especially drone surveillance over the target area married to sharp signals intelligence—is essential for a successful hit. In a narrow naval setting, an area salvo from multiple ASBMs augmented by loitering munitions and anti-ship cruise missiles can improve the Houthi forces’ odds of a successful strike.

The Hormuz-1 and the Hormuz-2 baseline is another Iranian system worth monitoring for potential transfers to Yemen. Derived from Iran’s family of solid-propelled tactical ballistic missiles, the Hormuz-1 and Hormuz-2 are reportedly anti-radiation ASBM assets that can reach up to Mach 5 speed. The anti-radiation ASBM configuration turns one of the vessel’s most critical defensive sensors, its powerful radar system, into a weakness: as the hostile missile targets radar emission sources, a targeted warship can deactivate its radar to evade a lock.

In the last days of 2023, Houthi forces launched ASBMs against the Maersk Hangzhou container vessel. Following the interception of the missiles by the USS Gravely and the USS Laboon, Houthi speedboats engaged the container vessel, closing to within meters of the ship. In response, the US Navy’s helicopters destroyed at least three Houthi platforms, causing the death of ten militia fighters. Houthi spokesmen responded with threatening rhetoric, portraying the incident as an extension of the ongoing war in Gaza.

Iran, the Puppeteer behind the Plot

Iran is the supplier of the Houthis’ drone and missile warfare capabilities. But in addition to weapons systems, Iran is providing key intelligence to the militia. Open-source evidence suggests that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has been passing critical intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance (ISTAR) data to its Yemeni proxy. One crucial asset in this effort is the Iranian vessel Behshad. Nominally, Behshad is a cargo vessel: its International Maritime Organization (IMO) ship identification number is 9167289, and it is currently located in the Red Sea. In reality, the platform is a high-end intelligence asset that replaced another Iranian ship, the Saviz, several years ago.

Naval warfare occurs in a highly time-sensitive arena. Real-time intelligence means everything in a theater where nearly all the targets are mobile and difficult to strike. The success of Houthi raiding parties and long-range strike capabilities depends on the flow of high-end ISTAR data from the Behshad.

Complicating matters even further, Tehran has also sent the IRIS Alborz to the Red Sea. This surface combatant is an Alvand-class frigate equipped with Noor anti-ship missiles and other weapons systems, and it was last dispatched to the Gulf of Aden amidst the conflict in Yemen in 2015. Should the Alborz actively assist Houthi piracy activity, she could find herself a legitimate target for the US-led coalition patrolling the waters.

Plotting a Way Forward

Stabilizing global shipping lanes in the Bab al-Mandab will require the United States to plot a different course of action than the one it has taken thus far. To do this, it should take several important steps.

Operation Prosperity Guardian needs new rules of engagement. Missile and drone warfare require an offense-dominant regime. Piracy likewise favors the offense. The Houthis may miss nine out of every ten ships they attack, but one successful hit could be enough to disrupt maritime trade in a critical transit area. The US-led effort in the region should become more than a naval air and missile defense campaign tasked with responding to stress calls from civilian vessels. Establishing credible deterrence requires that the operation take offensive action and preventive military measures against the Houthis’ critical capabilities. While the US Navy’s recent elimination of three Houthi speedboats could serve as an important turning point, it should be the beginning rather than the apogee of the coalition’s pivot to a more offensive orientation.

The US and its allies should do more to deter Iran. A credible deterrence strategy should deter the puppet master and the puppet simultaneously. Open-source defense intelligence suggests that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has been more effective in equipping the Houthis over the last two years, beginning in 2022 with its transfer of high-end systems that allowed the Houthis to launch medium-range ballistic missiles at Israel. Unchecked, Tehran will only continue to boost its proxies in Yemen. Iran can use the Houthis’ position overseeing a critical maritime chokepoint to continue to threaten global trade and security. As such, the US and its allies should do more to deter Tehran and the Houthi militia alike.

The Biden administration should redesignate the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization. In 2021, the Biden administration revoked the designation of the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO). While the dire humanitarian situation in Yemen was portrayed as the chief reason for this decision, the administration’s desire to hew to the misguided Iran policy bequeathed to it from the Obama administration likely played a major role in the decision. Redesignating the Houthis as a terrorist organization would send a strong signal to regional allies and foes alike that Washington is serious about fighting the militia.

The US should do more to address the security concerns of its Gulf partners and allies. Saudi Arabia is concerned that a tough response to the Houthi threat could lead to a reloaded war along its border with Yemen, a concern shared by Washington’s other Gulf allies. To address this concern, the Biden administration should supply its allies and partners in the Gulf with adequate military capabilities, including offensive countermeasures. Simultaneously, it should signal that any hostile proxy campaigns by Iran in the region would not go unpunished. Addressing the concerns of its regional partners would help Washington counter Chinese influence in the region while simultaneously striking the Houthi militia and its backers in Tehran.

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hudson.org · by Thomas J. Duesterberg

12. Japanese Company’s Bid for U.S. Steel Tests Biden’s Industrial Policy

Japanese Company’s Bid for U.S. Steel Tests Biden’s Industrial Policy

By Jim Tankersley

Jim Tankersley is an economics reporter based in Washington.

Jan. 7, 2024, 5:02 a.m. ET

The New York Times · by Jim Tankersley · January 7, 2024

The president is under pressure from Democrats and Republicans to block the sale to Japan’s Nippon Steel, which could upset a key foreign ally.

U.S. Steel announced plans to be acquired by Japanese competitor Nippon Steel in a $14.1 billion takeover bid.Credit...Gjp/Associated Press

Jan. 7, 2024, 5:02 a.m. ET

U.S. Steel is an iconic example of the lost manufacturing muscle that President Biden says his economic policies will bring back to the United States.

But last month, the storied-but-diminished company announced plans to be acquired by a Japanese competitor. That development has put Mr. Biden in an awkward bind as he tries to balance attempts to revitalize the nation’s industrial sector with his efforts to rebuild international alliances.

Mr. Biden’s administration has expressed some discomfort with the deal and is reviewing the proposed $14.1 billion takeover bid by Japan’s Nippon Steel. The company is offering a hefty premium for U.S. Steel, which has struggled to compete against a flood of cheap foreign metal and has been weighing takeover offers for several months.

The proposal has quickly become a high-profile example of the difficult political choices Mr. Biden faces in his zeal to revive American industry, one that could test the degree to which he is willing to flex presidential power in pursuit of what is arguably his primary economic goal: the creation and retention of high-paying union manufacturing jobs in the United States.

Mr. Biden is under pressure from the United Steelworkers union and populist senators from both parties, including Democrats defending crucial swing seats in Ohio and Pennsylvania this fall, to nix the sale on national security grounds. The senators contend that domestically owned steel production is critical to U.S. manufacturing and supply chains. They have warned that a foreign owner could be more likely to move U.S. Steel jobs and production overseas.

“This really should be a no-brainer,” Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, said in an interview last week. “I don’t know why it would be difficult to say, my gosh, we’ve got to maintain steel production in this country, and particularly a company like this one, where you have thousands of workers in good union jobs.”

U.S. Steel executives say the deal would benefit workers and give the merged companies “world-leading capabilities” in steel production. They announced last month that Nippon Steel had agreed to keep the company’s headquarters in Pittsburgh and to honor the four-year collective bargaining agreement that the steelworkers’ union ratified in December 2022.

Other supporters of the takeover bid say blocking the sale risks angering a key American ally. Mr. Biden has courted Japanese collaboration on a wide range of issues, including efforts to counter Chinese manufacturing in clean energy and other emerging technologies, and welcomed Japanese investment in new American manufacturing facilities including for advanced batteries.

Wilbur Ross, a former steel company executive who served as commerce secretary under President Donald J. Trump, wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal that there is “nothing in the deal from which the U.S. needs defending. Attacks by Washington pols only create unnecessary geopolitical tensions, and those, not the acquisition itself, could endanger American national security.”

Adding to the cross-pressures on Mr. Biden: It is unclear what would happen to the 123-year-old U.S. Steel if the administration scuttles the deal and whether doing so would actually guarantee greater job security for the company’s nearly 15,000 North American employees.

U.S. Steel executives say the deal with Nippon Steel would benefit workers, but skeptics of the deal are urging President Biden to review it to prevent lost steel production and jobs.Credit...Lawrence Bryant/Reuters

U.S. Steel has faced challenges for decades because of intensifying foreign competition, particularly from China, which has flooded the global market with cheap, state-subsidized steel. American presidents have spent years trying to bolster and protect domestic steel makers through a mix of subsidies, import restrictions and so-called Buy America requirements for government purchases.

“No U.S. industry has benefited more from protection than the steel industry,” Scott Lincicome, a trade policy expert at the libertarian Cato Institute think tank, wrote in a 2017 research paper.

In recent years, presidents have increased those protections further. Mr. Trump imposed tariffs on imported steel, including from Japan. Mr. Biden has partially rolled back those levies in an attempt to rebuild alliances. Mr. Biden also included strict Buy America provisions in sweeping new laws to invest in infrastructure, clean energy and other advanced manufacturing.

Those efforts have not come close to bringing back the levels of domestic steel production that the United States enjoyed in the 1970s — or even of recent decades. Raw steel production reached higher levels under Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama than it has under Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump.

Employment in the industry fell steadily in the 1990s and mid-2000s. In 2022, there were just over 83,000 workers in iron and steel mills in the United States, which was less than half the number from 1992.

Senators including Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, both Democrats, and Mr. Hawley and J.D. Vance of Ohio, both Republicans, urged Mr. Biden to review the proposed U.S. Steel sale to guard against lost steel production and jobs. Mr. Brown cited Nippon Steel’s failure to notify or consult with union leaders ahead of making its bid for the company.

“Tens of thousands of Americans, including many Ohioans, rely on this industry for good-paying, middle-class jobs,” he wrote in a letter to Mr. Biden last month. “These workers deserve to work for a company that invests in its employees and not only honors their right to join a union, but respects and collaborates with its work force.”

The calls for an administrative review of the deal largely focused on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which is known as CFIUS and headed by Janet L. Yellen, the Treasury secretary. The committee scrutinizes possible sales of American firms to foreign ones for possible national security threats, then issues recommendations to the president, who can suspend or block a deal.

Shortly before Christmas, Mr. Biden appeared to grant the request for review, while stopping short of saying he would block it.

Lael Brainard, who chairs the White House National Economic Council, said in a news release that Mr. Biden welcomed foreign investment in American manufacturing but “believes the purchase of this iconic American-owned company by a foreign entity — even one from a close ally — appears to deserve serious scrutiny in terms of its potential impact on national security and supply chain reliability.”

The administration, Ms. Brainard said, “will be ready to look carefully at the findings of any such investigation and to act if appropriate.”

Steelworkers cheered the move. David McCall, president of United Steelworkers International, said in a statement that Mr. Biden was “demonstrating once again the president’s unwavering commitment to domestic workers and industries.”

Independent experts say it would be well within historical norms for the committee to evaluate the sale. That will likely include a detailed economic analysis of whether the deal could lead to diminished steel production capacity in the United States, said Emily Kilcrease, a CFIUS expert and senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

But Ms. Kilcrease said that based on the committee’s past decisions, she expected the review to stop well short of a recommendation to kill the sale. Instead, she said, CFIUS might require an agreement from Nippon Steel to maintain certain levels of U.S. employment or production as a condition of the sale’s going through.

“I would be shocked if this deal got blocked,” she said.

Mr. Hawley said the choice was ultimately Mr. Biden’s — and a test of his commitment to the industry.

“If the administration wants to block the sale, they absolutely have grounds to do it and the legal authority,” he said. “So it’s just a question of, do they want to? And will they have the guts to do it?”

Jim Tankersley writes about economic policy at the White House and how it affects the country and the world. He has covered the topic for more than a dozen years in Washington, with a focus on the middle class. More about Jim Tankersley

The New York Times · by Jim Tankersley · January 7, 2024

13. Is Israel Winning the War on the Tunnels in Gaza?

Excerpts:

This wouldn’t be the first time that armies have flooded enemy tunnels during a war. But doing so in the traditional method, via tunnel pits, has only limited impact. To succeed in destroying the structure and producing what’s known in the trade as a “hard kill,” water must be injected directly from the sea into the horizontal sections of the tunnels at high volume and pressure—enhancing the force exerted on the cement. Only an approach that includes these three elements—high volume, high pressure, and direct horizontal injection—can bring about the complete destruction of the tunnel structure.

There is some fear that the horizontal pumping of seawater into the tunnels could, incidentally if not intentionally, contaminate groundwater sources. The coastal aquifer, the only source of water accessible to Palestinians in Gaza, is already known to be polluted and unfit for consumption due to over-abstraction. The possibility of causing irreversible damage to the aquifer would have to be compared to the potential damage inflicted to civilian life aboveground by other methods of tunnel destruction—including aerial bombing.

The seawater method might not be deployed in all situations. Some of the tunnels are too far from shoreline, while others are deliberately disconnected from the main clusters. In tunnels where hostages are thought to be held, Israel might refrain from using this method altogether. Still, this approach makes it possible, at least in theory, for Israel to achieve its goal of destroying substantial parts of the tunnel infrastructure.

As Israel moves to destroy the underground network, troops remain under fire, and additional tunnels are discovered each day. Completing this job could take a few more months. In a tunnel war requiring stamina, time, and perseverance, ending the war prematurely could mean defeat. To avoid such an outcome, Israel’s ability to determine its own timetable is key.

Is Israel Winning the War on the Tunnels in Gaza?

Destroying Hamas’s underground network has been slow and cumbersome.

By Daphné Richemond-Barak, Assistant Professor in the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy at Reichman University in Israel.

Foreign Policy · by Daphné Richemond-Barak · January 12, 2024

January 6, 2024, 6:00 AM

In the 10 weeks since Israel launched its ground campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, its troops have detected and mapped the path of a series of underground tunnels—part of a vast network built by Hamas over nearly two decades.

The network—which Hamas fighters use to hide themselves and their captives, plan operations, store weapons, and ambush Israeli soldiers—is a crucial part of the group’s military infrastructure. It has proven to be Israel’s greatest vulnerability in the war. Destroying it is essential to degrading Hamas’s military capabilities and preventing attacks similar to the one that the group carried out on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people. Yet the process has been painstakingly slow and cumbersome.

As the new year begins, a question now looms large for military planners and for analysts seeking to draw lessons from this campaign: How close is Israel to destroying the tunnel network? And how much longer will it take for its troops to prevail over this threat?

Tunnel warfare has always been one of the deadliest and most complicated forms of combat. During World War I, many thousands of British troops died seeking to destroy German underground positions. Years later, the U.S. struggled to defeat deeply entrenched enemies in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Armies faced with these subterranean threats have typically deployed their most powerful weapons, including B-52s, flamethrowers, thermobaric weapons, bunker-buster bombs, and other aerial precision-guided missiles. Often, these measures have fallen short of eliminating an enemy operating from caves, tunnels, and other artificial or human-made subterranean structures.

Israel has learned this the hard way. The discovery in 2014 of cross-border tunnels dug by Hamas between the Gaza Strip and Israel brought home the significant security risk that they pose, particularly when they come near the civilian population.

Israel’s military operation against Hamas that year was the first war in the 21st century in which tunnels became the focal point of military operations—a development that would later shape the Syrian civil war. It left Israel keenly aware that tunnels could be used to kidnap soldiers and civilians, infiltrate Israeli territory, and carry out brutal attacks. But the Israeli focus on tunnels, if there was a concerted one at the time, was largely devoted to cross-border tunnels—and less so on Hamas’s ever-growing subterranean military buildup inside the Gaza Strip.

After the 2014 war, Israel shifted to a more strategic approach and ramped up its efforts. It created elite units specialized in tunnel warfare, built its own tunnel structures for training soldiers, improved tunnel detection with mobile units and targeted research and development, came up with unique tactical solutions to enhance preparedness, and boosted cooperation with partners and allies.

As a result, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) went into the current war possessing the most advanced military capabilities in the detection, mapping, neutralization, and destruction of tunnels. And yet, this neither deterred Hamas from digging nor lessened the challenge of fighting in a subterranean environment. Even the most specialized units of the IDF have suffered losses because of booby trapped tunnel entrances.

These units have also uncovered a new generation of Hamas tunnels. The group’s rudimentary structures of the early 2000s were reinforced with wood planks. The current networks are deeper and more hardened, resembling the large infiltration tunnels of North Korea. Hamas used advanced civilian boring technologies to dig them, taking its subterranean capabilities to the next level.

Hamas’s growing reliance on the tunnels and its elaborate construction effort have paid off. Never in the history of tunnel warfare has a defender been able to spend months in such confined spaces. The digging itself, the innovative ways Hamas has made use of the tunnels, and the group’s survival underground for this long have been unprecedented.

For Israeli soldiers, advancing in this dangerous terrain has required a systematic approach. The IDF’s aerial campaign and early ground operation sought to gain control of the surface and reduce the risks that urban warfare poses to combatants and civilians. Buildings were destroyed to limit sniper attacks and ambushes, and northern Gaza was largely evacuated to reduce civilian casualties. Troops proceeded to clear the ground with armored bulldozers to expose tunnel openings.

These openings, known as tunnel pits, are essentially deadly holes in the ground. They can vary in size and shape and are usually camouflaged and booby-trapped. They lead down to tunnel shafts—the part of the subterranean structure used to penetrate deep into the ground and access the broader network of tunnels.

During their sweep, Israeli soldiers uncovered hundreds of tunnel pits, making the advance slow and complicated. These pits enabled Hamas fighters to pop out of the ground, fire automatic weapons or rocket launchers at the forces, and disappear within seconds. The IDF sealed or destroyed many of these openings as a temporary measure, so that forces could continue their advance and secure the grounds.

The next step was to map and learn more about the tunnel network. Soldiers remained at the surface until they could safely enter tunnels to gather intelligence and search for hostages—some 240 of which were taken during Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

The troops first sent in robots and drones equipped with video cameras into the tunnels, and dogs that could detect the presence of explosives or people. These and other measures helped expose the scale and scope of the network and allowed the entry of the soldiers into the tunnels—before moving to the destruction phase. Skipping any of these steps would have been fatal for IDF soldiers, Israeli hostages, and Palestinian civilians.

Time is the most precious resource in the endeavor, as the troops operate in a complex military environment that combines urban warfare, tunnel warfare, and search-and-rescue operations. Locating the rest of the tunnels, working around booby traps, and avoiding surprise attacks all require a slow and methodical approach. In Gaza, as in previous underground wars, the tunnels have unsettled the forces, caused significant casualties, delayed the end of the war, and made victory less certain.

Already, it has become clear that Israel cannot possibly detect or map the entirety of Hamas’s tunnel network. For Israel to persuasively declare victory, in my view, it must destroy at least two-thirds of Hamas’s known underground infrastructure.

To get there, Israel has reportedly decided to pump large volumes of seawater into the tunnels. Tunnel warfare has traditionally spawned military innovation, and this war is no exception. At the strategic level, seawater flooding is an attempt by the IDF to gain some military advantage in a terrain that the enemy has exploited, undeterred, for decades. At the operational level, the flooding could represent an expansion of the anti-tunnel arsenal, which to date consisted almost exclusively of bunker-buster bombs. These bombs have a limited capacity to penetrate the ground and cannot be used in all terrains.

This wouldn’t be the first time that armies have flooded enemy tunnels during a war. But doing so in the traditional method, via tunnel pits, has only limited impact. To succeed in destroying the structure and producing what’s known in the trade as a “hard kill,” water must be injected directly from the sea into the horizontal sections of the tunnels at high volume and pressure—enhancing the force exerted on the cement. Only an approach that includes these three elements—high volume, high pressure, and direct horizontal injection—can bring about the complete destruction of the tunnel structure.

There is some fear that the horizontal pumping of seawater into the tunnels could, incidentally if not intentionally, contaminate groundwater sources. The coastal aquifer, the only source of water accessible to Palestinians in Gaza, is already known to be polluted and unfit for consumption due to over-abstraction. The possibility of causing irreversible damage to the aquifer would have to be compared to the potential damage inflicted to civilian life aboveground by other methods of tunnel destruction—including aerial bombing.

The seawater method might not be deployed in all situations. Some of the tunnels are too far from shoreline, while others are deliberately disconnected from the main clusters. In tunnels where hostages are thought to be held, Israel might refrain from using this method altogether. Still, this approach makes it possible, at least in theory, for Israel to achieve its goal of destroying substantial parts of the tunnel infrastructure.

As Israel moves to destroy the underground network, troops remain under fire, and additional tunnels are discovered each day. Completing this job could take a few more months. In a tunnel war requiring stamina, time, and perseverance, ending the war prematurely could mean defeat. To avoid such an outcome, Israel’s ability to determine its own timetable is key.

Foreign Policy · by Daphné Richemond-Barak · January 12, 2024

14. What It’s Actually Like Being a Woman in the CIA

Conclusion:

While Mundy’s book is a compelling and very good read, The Sisterhood is probably misnamed. It’s true that female CIA officers find comfort in their female friendships and can be supportive of each other as they advocate for equal rights in a male-dominated environment. But years of fighting for scraps—not just against their male counterparts, but against each other—has extracted a price. A climate of suspicion and unhealthy competition remains, and ultimately, this weakens U.S. national security.

What It’s Actually Like Being a Woman in the CIA

Ex-spy Valerie Plame on the “secret history” of women in the agency.

JANUARY 6, 2024, 7:00 AM

By Valerie Plame, a former covert CIA operations officer.

Foreign Policy · by Valerie Plame · January 12, 2024

In 2003, senior White House officials outed me as a covert CIA agent. They leaked my identity after my then-husband, U.S. Ambassador Joe Wilson, wrote an op-ed stating that the George W. Bush administration lied about the threat posed by Iraq ahead of its decision to invade the country.

The book cover of Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA by Liza Mundy.

The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA, Liza Mundy, Crown, 480 pp., $32.50, October 2023

I have spent a lot of time in the decades since processing the trauma of that experience. It endangered my assets, ended my covert career, and unsettled my family. Even events that happened much later took me back to that time, such as then-President Donald Trump’s 2018 pardon of Scooter Libby, former Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, who was convicted of perjury and lying to the FBI during its investigation into the leak. In those years, I was called a liar, a traitor, and—in the words of one Republican congressman—a “glorified secretary.”

Yet when I read journalist Liza Mundy’s new book, The Sisterhood: The Secret History of the Women at the CIA, uncomfortable memories came up that I had not grappled with since my time as a spy. The book touched me in ways I did not expect. I realized that I had mostly repressed the toll inflicted on me and my female colleagues from the many years of working in a man’s world.

On the bottom half of the image, seen facing the camera from the waist up, a woman in a tan suit jacket raises her right hand shoulder level. Barely visible behind her are the heads of various seated spectators. The background is a white wall decorated with a large golden eagle from the Great Seal of the United States.

Former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson is sworn in before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in Washington on March 16, 2007. Mark Wilson/Getty Images

When I was a child, the U.S. government passed Title IX, which prohibited sex-based discrimination in any school that received federal funding. By the time I was a teenager, my suburban Philadelphia high school had a variety of sports teams for me to choose from that were just as robust as what the boys had. I was fortunate to have parents who never suggested that my gender should dictate what I could pursue. In fact, my father made it a point to tell me that I could “do anything I wanted to, if I put my mind to it.” Even my college years passed in ignorance of the sexism ingrained in U.S. society.

Then, as a young woman, I joined the CIA. Suddenly, it became clear that the real world operated on a different set of principles.

The CIA that I entered at the height of the Cold War was very much a man’s world. The agency had only recently started to recruit women into intelligence operations, rather than into secretary positions and other support roles. A deep network of male officers still called the shots.

As I began the rigorous training to become a field operations officer, I looked around at the women already in the CIA. The more senior ones—none of whom were in the highest ranks—tended to be unmarried, childless, sometimes embittered, and tough as nails. Even then, I recognized that my opportunity to succeed came at the expense of their trailblazing.

A woman in a white blouse and sunglasses faces the background, twisting her body with her head looking over her right shoulder. She sits at a table with multiple Mediterranean buildings in the background on a sunny day.

Plame early in her career in the Mediterranean. Courtesy of the author

I also knew I didn’t want to become like them. Couldn’t I be a successful officer and have a family? The terms “sexual harassment” and “gender discrimination,” much less “microaggression” and “unconscious bias,” had no meaning to my small cohort of female ops officers. We simply had to accept the casual misogyny that the agency’s alpha males tossed around.

Sometimes, it was explicit: My friend was told by her boss, the station chief at her first assignment in Africa, that she should go home, get married, and have a baby—and what the hell did she think she was doing in operations anyway? Other times, it was implicit: Promotions went to young male bucks over female colleagues who were just as successful in running and recruiting spies.

The contributions of female spies to the CIA—and the barriers they faced—are the focus of Mundy’s deeply researched and highly readable book. The Sisterhood starts off slowly, with a recap of women who entered the U.S. intelligence services during World War II. Thousands of women flocked to the job opportunities that the war opened up at the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA’s predecessor, as men were sucked into the giant war-fighting machine. These OSS workers were the among first women in U.S. history to be formally recruited into intelligence work.

As Mundy recounts, these early recruits were told to report to an unassuming brownstone in Washington’s Foggy Bottom neighborhood. The men were instructed to change into Army fatigues in an attempt to strip them of social class, job, or military rank before the interview process. The women were taken to another room and asked to remove their coats and hats; since they were women, Mundy writes, “no further equalization was thought to be needed.”

Many of the women recruited into the OSS in the 1940s were highly educated, sophisticated, and multilingual. The test designed for female recruits assessed how well they could file papers. Yet once they were inside the agency, a few of these women moved into field intelligence operations. They demonstrated verve, bravery, and intellect at every turn as they set up effective spy rings, solicited intelligence from Nazi and other Axis officials, and passed important intelligence back to Washington.

After the war, a collective amnesia seemed to settle over Washington. As the country quickly forgot the vital role of women in the war effort, women were once again relegated to support jobs. The 1950s and 1960s looked something like Mad Men, where secretaries wore white gloves and pantyhose to the office and deferred to their male bosses. President Harry S. Truman established the CIA in 1947, but the agency did not begin to hire more than primarily white men with Ivy League degrees for another couple decades. It was not until the 1970s and 80s that it recruited women of equal intelligence, nerve, and—as my father would say—moxie to do clandestine work. I was a beneficiary of this sea change. I joined the CIA because I wanted to serve my country, it would get me overseas, and it seemed like it would be a lot more interesting than what my peers were doing.

Mundy’s book picks up steam as she delves deeper into the era when women were admitted, grudgingly, into the heart of secret CIA missions. She follows a few of them closely, including Lisa Manfull, a top student at Brown University from a cosmopolitan family, who was hired in 1968 to join the CIA’s career training program at a lower paygrade than male recruits. Manfull eventually became a successful clandestine operative despite higher-ups trying to keep her in desk jobs for years. Mundy also highlights fearsome agency legend Eloise Page, who started as a secretary to the OSS’s founder and became the CIA’s first female station chief in 1978.

Right background, a woman in seen in profile and wearing a navy suit sits at a desk facing three 1990-era square computer monitors in dark room. The left foreground shows a large audio control panel filled with buttons.

A technician works on a tape recording inside the CIA headquarters on Feb. 1, 1993. Larry Downing/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images

Despite not being allowed to take the full operational courses at “The Farm,” the CIA training facility in Virginia, into the 1970s, these women proved their worth. They succeeded in work as varied as negotiating with terrorists who highjacked a plane in Malta and dealing adroitly with intelligence “walk-ins”—when a potential foreign agent shows up unexpectedly at an officer’s home or an embassy with promises to provide intelligence in return for something they desire.

The 1991 confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas were a catalyst for change. During the hearings, the all-white, all-male Senate Judiciary Committee listened as Anita Hill, a Black woman, calmly testified that Thomas had sexually harassed her a decade earlier. The Senate ultimately confirmed Thomas—and Hill faced criticism and death threats from the public—but the hearings brought a newfound awareness of gender-based discrimination to Washington. They influenced the election of 1992, which media outlets dubbed “The Year of the Woman” after a record number of women won seats in the Senate.

In 1992, the CIA also commissioned a “Glass Ceiling Study,” which found that men rose to much higher ranks than women in the organization. Women filled 40 percent of the agency’s professional positions but only 10 percent of the jobs in the Senior Intelligence Service, comprised of top agency executives. Mundy writes that female CIA employees responded to the study with a sense of relief—maybe, they thought, the agency’s culture would finally change. The men, by and large, seemed puzzled by it.

china-spying-illustration-foreign-policy-hp

China Has Been Waging a Decades-Long, All-Out Spy War

While the West was distracted, the Chinese government began an intelligence assault that never stopped.

U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez is seen in a circle inside the viewfinder of a camera as he speaks during a news conference. A blurry red recording light is seen to the right.

The Rise of the New Spycraft Regimes

U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez’s indictment should remind the West not to underestimate the intelligence capabilities of smaller powers.

U.S. Marines keep watch as unseen Afghan National Army soldiers participate in an improvised explosive device training exercise in Lashkar Gah in the Afghan province of Helmand on Aug. 28, 2017.

The CIA Is Better Than the U.S. Military at Creating Foreign Armies

The failure of the Afghan army is a reminder that Pentagon-led security cooperation programs are more expensive and less effective than those led by spies.

Then-CIA officer Janine Brookner sued the agency in 1994 for federal sex discrimination after being falsely accused of professional misconduct and threatened with a demotion and criminal sanctions. The lawsuit ended with a cash settlement and Brookner’s resignation. Brookner went on to law school and used her degree to specialize in federal discrimination cases. Around the same time, female case officers filed a class action suit, claiming that the CIA had a pattern of sex-based discrimination; in the 1995 settlement, Mundy recounts, the CIA admitted that it “discriminated systematically against its women secret agents for years,” as the Los Angeles Times reported at the time.

Mundy is at her sharpest when she writes about the women in Alec Station, a CIA unit that followed al Qaeda when few in Washington thought it was a threat. The analyst who led the unit, Mike Scheuer, filled his overlooked and underfunded team with women. Scheuer had no qualms about hiring women. As he told Mundy, women were “experts at minutiae, putting pieces of information together” that men might miss.

As the search for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden intensified, the women tracking him diligently compiled intelligence, but the George W. Bush administration seemed to put their increasingly dire predictions on the back burner. On Aug. 6, 2001, CIA analyst Barbara Sude wrote a memo titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US.” The Bush cabinet did not meet until Sept. 4, 2001, to discuss the threat. A week later, 9/11 happened.

The grief and guilt of the women who had warned the U.S. government for years about a potential attack is palpable in Mundy’s book. As one undercover case officer told Mundy, “For two years of my life, I was trying to do the right thing, and people died, and you felt like it was your fault. … And it really, it affected us a lot.” Their rage was channeled into the hunt for bin Laden that ultimately led to his capture.

A silhouette of a woman with dark hair wearing in a gray suit jacket with her back to camera. Her right hand is raised a little bit above shoulder level as she raises it to swear an oath. The background is blurred.

Gina Haspel is sworn in as the CIA director during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in Washington on May 9, 2018. Zach Gibson/Getty Images

Mundy’s book left me both inspired and disheartened. Many of the women in her book are now retired or dead. At great personal cost, they poured their lives into their intelligence careers. As I read it, I found myself empathizing with their hardships and remembering my own.

On the first day of my initial overseas assignment, I was told to go see the chief of station, a highly respected CIA officer. As I nervously entered his paneled office, he leaned back in his chair, feet on the massive wooden desk and unlit cigar in his mouth. He didn’t say anything to me. He merely took the cigar out of his mouth and motioned with it for me to turn around, a little twirl. Confused, I spun around and faced him again with a quizzical look. He broke into a smile. “Oh, you’ll do,” he said. I realized he was evaluating how I looked. It was crushing.

Thankfully, as Mundy shows, a lot has changed since then. Female CIA officers today have it better but still face quiet discrimination and barriers to success, as nearly all professional women do. Although the professional advances women have made are heartening, Mundy lets some women in the agency off the hook.

For instance, she glosses over the 2018 confirmation hearing of the CIA’s first female director, Gina Haspel, who admitted to a significant role in one of the agency’s darkest hours: the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” otherwise known as torture, in the aftermath of 9/11. The same can be said for Freda Bikowsky, an ex-CIA analyst known as the “queen of torture” who helped in bin Laden’s capture. I would have liked to see Mundy acknowledge that female officers in positions of power and responsibility—just like their male counterparts—have caused harm, exercised terrible judgement, and failed to mentor other women.

While Mundy’s book is a compelling and very good read, The Sisterhood is probably misnamed. It’s true that female CIA officers find comfort in their female friendships and can be supportive of each other as they advocate for equal rights in a male-dominated environment. But years of fighting for scraps—not just against their male counterparts, but against each other—has extracted a price. A climate of suspicion and unhealthy competition remains, and ultimately, this weakens U.S. national security.

Books are independently selected by FP editors. FP earns an affiliate commission on anything purchased through links to Amazon.com on this page.

Foreign Policy · by Valerie Plame · January 12, 2024

15. Iraq moving to remove US-led military coalition, prime minister says

Iraq moving to remove US-led military coalition, prime minister says

BY BRAD DRESS - 01/05/24 1:30 PM ET

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4391371-iraq-moving-to-remove-us-led-military-coalition-prime-minister-says/

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani on Friday said he would set up a dialogue to discuss the removal of the U.S. military presence in his country after an American strike killed an Iraqi militia leader in Baghdad on Thursday.

In an address, al-Sudani said the agreement under which American troops are based in Iraq states the equal sovereignty of both countries, which was violated by the U.S. strike.

“We have repeatedly emphasized that in the event of a violation or transgression by any Iraqi party, or if Iraqi law is violated, the Iraqi government is the only party that has the right to follow up on the merits of these violations,” al-Sudani said in remarks shared by his office.

“We affirm our firm and principled position in ending the existence of the international coalition after the justifications for its existence have ended,” he added.

The prime minister said he was in the process of setting up a bilateral dialogue with the U.S. to discuss the removal of some 2,500 American troops in his country.

“It is a commitment that the government will not back down from, and will not neglect anything that would complete national sovereignty over the land, sky, and waters of Iraq,” he said.

The U.S. strike on Thursday killed Mushtaq Taleb al-Saidi, the leader of an Iranian-backed militia group Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba (HHN), after landing near a security headquarters in Baghdad.

HHN is part of the Popular Mobilization Forces, a network of Iranian proxy groups and militias in Iraq. Iranian-backed groups have repeatedly attacked U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria and the Red Sea since the breakout of the Israel-Hamas war.

Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Thursday the U.S. is in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government to defeat the U.S.-designated terrorist group ISIS, but he stressed forces will take action to protect themselves.

“This was a necessary, proportionate act,” Ryder said, adding Iraq is an “important and valued partner,” which the U.S. seeks to maintain good ties with.

Al-Sudani, who is closely aligned with Iranian-backed militias, on Friday condemned the U.S. for the strike and said the Popular Mobilization Forces are “an official presence affiliated with the state.”

16. Israel’s talk of expanding war to Lebanon alarms U.S.

Israel’s talk of expanding war to Lebanon alarms U.S.

An American intelligence assessment found that it would be difficult for Israel to succeed in a war against Hezbollah amid ongoing fighting in Gaza

By John Hudson, Yasmeen Abutaleb and Shane Harris

January 7, 2024 at 1:30 a.m. EST

The Washington Post · by John Hudson · January 7, 2024

ISTANBUL — President Biden has dispatched his top aides to the Middle East with a critical objective: Prevent a full-blown war from erupting between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

Israel has made clear it views as untenable the regular exchange of fire between its forces and Hezbollah along the border and may soon launch a major military operation in Lebanon.

“We prefer the path of an agreed-upon diplomatic settlement,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Friday, “but we are getting close to the point where the hourglass will turn over.”

U.S. officials are concerned that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may see an expanded fight in Lebanon as key to his political survival amid domestic criticism of his government’s failure to prevent Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, which killed an estimated 1,200 people and resulted in some 240 hostages being taken to Gaza.

In private conversations, the administration has warned Israel against a significant escalation in Lebanon. If it were to do so, a new secret assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) found that it will be difficult for Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to succeed because its military assets and resources would be spread too thin given the conflict in Gaza, according to two people familiar with those findings. A spokesperson for the DIA did not offer comment.

More than a dozen administration officials and diplomats spoke to The Washington Post for this report, some on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive military situation between Israel and Lebanon.

Israel-Gaza war

(Oded Balilty/AP)

Secretary of State Antony Blinken left late Thursday to the Middle East for the fourth time since Israel launched its war in Gaza after the Oct. 7 cross-border Hamas attack. The trip comes amid fears of a wider war in the region.

For context: Understand what’s behind the Israel-Gaza war.

End of carousel

Hezbollah, a longtime U.S. adversary with well-trained fighters and tens of thousands of missiles and rockets, wants to avoid a major escalation, according to U.S. officials, who say the group’s leader, Hasan Nasrallah, is seeking to steer clear of a wider war. In a speech on Friday, Nasrallah vowed a response to Israeli aggression, while hinting that he might be open to negotiations on border demarcation with Israel.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to arrive in Israel on Monday where he will discuss specific steps to “avoid escalation,” his spokesman, Matt Miller said before boarding a plane to the Middle East.

“It is in no one’s interest — not Israel’s, not the region’s, not the world’s — for this conflict to spread beyond Gaza,” Miller said. But that view is not uniformly held within Israel’s government.

Since Hamas’s October assault, Israeli officials have discussed launching a preemptive attack on Hezbollah, U.S. officials said. That prospect has faced sustained U.S. opposition due to the likelihood it would draw Iran, which supports both groups, and other proxy forces into the conflict — an eventuality that could compel the United States to respond militarily on Israel’s behalf.

Officials fear that a full-scale conflict between Israel and Lebanon would surpass the bloodshed of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war on account of Hezbollah’s substantially larger arsenal of long-range and precision weaponry. “The number of casualties in Lebanon could be anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000 and entail a massive evacuation of all of northern Israel,” said Bilal Saab, a Lebanon expert at the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank.

Hezbollah may strike deeper into Israel than before, hitting sensitive targets like petrochemical plants and nuclear reactors, and Iran may activate militias across the region. “I don’t think it would be limited to these two antagonists,” he said.

The threat of a wider conflict continued to grow Saturday as Hezbollah launched about 40 rockets into Israel in response to its suspected assassination of senior Hamas leader Saleh Arouri and six others in an airstrike in suburban Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, days earlier.

In recent weeks, Israel’s regular shootouts with Hezbollah along the border have grown more aggressive, drawing private rebukes from Washington, said U.S. officials.

According to U.S. intelligence reviewed by The Post, the IDF has hit the positions of the U.S.-funded and trained Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) more than 34 times since Oct. 7, officials familiar with the matter said.

The United States views the LAF as the principal defender of Lebanon’s sovereignty and a key counterweight to the influence of Iran-backed Hezbollah.

On Dec. 5, four rounds of Israeli tank fire resulted in the killing of one LAF soldier and the injury of three others. On Dec. 8, Israeli artillery fire containing white phosphorous hit LAF facilities, injuring an LAF soldier who inhaled the noxious fumes. On Nov. 4, Israeli fire against an LAF position at Sarda left a “large hole in a LAF structure,” according to the U.S. intelligence. Some details of these attacks were reported previously by CNN.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the Israeli strikes, but the White House National Security Council confirmed that Washington has conveyed to Israel that attacks on LAF and Lebanese civilians are “completely unacceptable.”

A National Security Council official said the Biden administration has been “very direct and tough” with the Israelis on the issue and has said Lebanese Armed Forces injuries and fatalities are not acceptable.

The official also said a priority was maintaining the credibility of the Lebanese Armed Forces and that the international community should be doing everything it can to bolster and support them, as they would be a vital component of any “day after” scenario in Lebanon in which Hezbollah is weakened and poses less of a threat to Israel.

The official emphasized, though, that Hezbollah is a “legitimate threat” to Israel and said the Jewish state has a right to defend itself.

An Israeli official told The Post that Israel does not deliberately target LAF positions and blamed Hezbollah for ratcheting up tensions.

“Hezbollah began firing into Israeli territory, unprovoked, on October 8th and has continued to do so on a daily basis, firing thousands of projectiles. Israel was forced to respond in self-defense,” the official said.

“As a result of Hezbollah’s aggression, tens of thousands of Israelis were forced to leave their homes. The state of Israel will not return to the prewar status quo in which Hezbollah poses a direct and immediate military threat to its security along the Israel-Lebanon border,” the official added.

When Israeli officials first floated the idea of attacking Hezbollah during the opening days of the Gaza conflict, U.S. officials immediately raised objections, said a senior administration official.

Israeli officials initially were convinced that the Lebanese militant group was behind the Hamas incursion and had received bad intelligence that a Hezbollah attack was imminent in the days after Oct. 7, according to two senior U.S. officials. There were deep fears in Israel that the government would miss the signs of another violent assault.

Biden was on the phone up to three times a day, the senior administration official said, in part working to dissuade Israel from attacking Hezbollah — a move that would have resulted in “all hell breaking loose,” the official said. The Israelis’ deep fears about the threat influenced Biden’s decision to fly to Tel Aviv less than two weeks after the Hamas attack, according one of the senior officials.

The risk that Israel might launch an ambitious attack on Hezbollah has never gone away, said White House and State Department officials, but there has been broader concern about an escalation in recent weeks, particularly as Israel announced the temporary withdrawal of several thousand troops from Gaza on Jan. 1 — a decision that could open up resources for a military operation in the north.

“They have a freer hand to escalate,” said a U.S. official.

Another U.S. official said that the forces Israel withdrew from Gaza could be deployed to the north after sufficient time to rest and prepare for another wave of combat. But Israel’s air force is also overworked, having conducted constant strikes since the war began in October, said the official, explaining the Defense Intelligence Agency’s assessment that an escalation in Lebanon would spread Israeli forces thin.

Pilots are tired, and airplanes have to be maintained and refitted, the official said. They would face more dangerous missions in Lebanon than in Gaza, where Hamas has little in the way of antiaircraft defenses to shoot down attacking planes.

On Thursday, Biden sent special envoy Amos Hochstein to Israel to work on an agreement to reduce tensions at the Lebanese-Israeli border. The near-term goal is to develop a process to start negotiating a land demarcation agreement that could delineate where and how the two sides deploy forces along the border in an effort to stabilize the situation.

U.S. and French officials are in discussions with the Lebanese government over a proposal that would have the Lebanese government take control of part of the Lebanon-Israel border, rather than Hezbollah, to help assuage Israeli concerns, according to two people familiar with the conversations.

The White House declined to detail the plan.

“We continue to explore and exhaust all diplomatic options with our Israeli and Lebanese partners,” said the National Security Council official. “Getting Israeli and Lebanese citizens back into their homes, living in peace and security is of the utmost importance to the United States.”

U.S. officials concede that Hezbollah is unlikely to agree to a border deal while scores of Palestinians in Gaza are being killed or injured as a result of Israel’s military campaign there.

Within the administration, there are differing perceptions about Netanyahu’s interest in a negotiated resolution to the Hezbollah conflict. One senior U.S. official said the Israeli leader’s pledge to create a “fundamental change” to address the border fighting with Hezbollah is mere bluster aimed at extracting concessions from the Lebanese group. Others said that if the Gaza war ends tomorrow, Netanyahu’s political career will end with it, incentivizing him to broaden the conflict.

“The political logic for Netanyahu is to rebound after the historic failure of Oct. 7 and have some kind of success to show to the Israeli public,” said Saab, the Lebanon expert. “I’m not sure going after Hezbollah is the right way to do it because that campaign will be far more challenging than the one in Gaza.”

When asked if political incentives are driving Netanyahu’s military ambitions, a senior Israeli government official said only that “the prime minister will continue to take the necessary steps to secure Israel and its future.”

Before flying to Jordan, Blinken said reducing tensions at the border “is something that we’re very actively working on.”

“It’s clearly a strongly shared interest” among countries in the region, he said.

Abutaleb and Harris reported from Washington.

The Washington Post · by John Hudson · January 7, 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

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

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