Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is, and you must bend to its power or live a lie.” – Miyamoto Musashi

“Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.”

~Bertrand Russell

"If we are to keep our democracy there must be one commandant: Thou shalt not ration justice."

– Justice Learned Hand

1. Intellectual Firepower: Reviewing the DoD Education System (RAND Report)

2. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin remains hospitalized Sunday

3. Mother and uncle of US soldier rescued from Gaza in secret operation

4. Blinken seeks to head off wider war as Israel pursues Gaza offensive

5. NATO signs off on $5.5 billion contract for hundreds of Patriot missiles

6. US Military (USSOCOM) Searching for New Long-Range Sniper Rifle in Bid to Keep Edge over Russia and China

7. Firearm-Related Suicides Among Women Veterans Are Rising. We Must Do More on Secure Gun Storage.

8. Lesson of the Strike That Killed Soleimani

9. Nord Stream Probe Faces Resistance From Poland

10. Congressional Negotiators Reach Agreement on $1.6 Trillion Government Spending Level for 2024

11. China Says It Detained a Foreign Consultant for Spying for Britain

12. Options for the United States regarding Piratical Attacks against Commercial Shipping in the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

13. The Terrorist-Aid Agency

14. Russia Acquires North Korean Missiles, Eyes Iranian Missiles

15. Israel Plans for Next Phase of Gaza War, Defense Minister Says

16. Chinese Warships Eavesdrop on Joint U.S., Philippine Naval Drills in South China Sea

17. Biden retains confidence in Austin despite hospitalization secrecy

18. Philippines turns to hackers for help as US warns of China cyber threat

19. Remaking Mistakes in Gaza

20. China’s Game in Gaza

21. Want A Bigger U.S. Navy? Invest In America’s Waterfront Communities

22. Biden has dangerously decayed deterrence — and every American is at risk by Michael R. Pompeo

23. Ukrainian forces destroy Russian orbital satellite jamming system – video

24. "Modern Jedburghs: Bridging History to Strengthen Ukraine's Defense" OpEd by Mike Robinson, Radio Free Ukraine

1. Intellectual Firepower: Reviewing the DoD Education System (RAND Report)

The 132 page report can be downloaded at this link in PDF: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA1600/RRA1694-1/RAND_RRA1694-1.pdf

This covers the intermediate and senior service level schools as well as "technical schools" such as NPS and JSOU (and a couple of others that I was not familiar with).

Excerpt:

The authors describe the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) officer professional military education (PME) system, review how it operates, compare it with civilian educational institutions, analyze effects of possible changes, and identify opportunities to further align the system to DoD's needs. The report contains detailed descriptive information about each educational institution in the system.

It is a generally positive report ("the services are generally satisfied with their education programs") though there are calls for improvements in education related to "talent management" and utilization assignments among others.

It provides useful data on all the major schools , admission and enrollment, faculty, degree produced (or not in a few cases)

In reading this I also came across the reference to 2022 DOD INSTRUCTION 1322.35, VOLUME 1 MILITARY EDUCATION: PROGRAM MANAGEMENT AND ADMINISTRATION which provides the guidance for PME management. It can be accessed here: https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/DD/issuances/dodi/132235_vol1.PDF?ver=1mKICMbRcNsQUXaPf5YUfw%3D%3D

The one aspect of this report that is missing is about students' responsibility to exploit additional learning opportunities which are present in nearly all PME institutions. I have heard many complaints about PME over the years about the curriculum and classes but when challenged most did not take advantage of the opportunities for research or the myriad electives available (in every PME institution you can get permission to take additional electives other than the minimum required.) If you do only the bare minimum for graduation requirements then you only get the bare minimum education. Every PME institution I have attended provided a lot of opportunities for education beyond the core curriculum (required by the JCS J7). But students have to seek it out as it will not be spoon fed to them. But at least half the PME experience (if not more) should be dependent on the student exploiting the educational opportunities available on his or her own initiative.

Intellectual Firepower: Reviewing the DoD Education System

rand.org · by Charles A. Goldman

In this report, the authors describe the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) officer professional military education system, review how it operates, compare it with civilian educational institutions, analyze effects of possible changes, and identify opportunities to further align the system to DoD’s needs. The report contains detailed descriptive information about each educational institution in the system.

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Research Questions

How does the DoD education system work?
How does the system operate, how does it compare with civilian institutions, and how does it interact with service talent management?
What are the effects of potential changes to DoD, service, and institution policies and practices?
How can the system be better aligned to DoD's needs?

The authors describe the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) officer professional military education (PME) system, review how it operates, compare it with civilian educational institutions, analyze effects of possible changes, and identify opportunities to further align the system to DoD's needs. The report contains detailed descriptive information about each educational institution in the system.

The services largely expressed satisfaction with the alignment of military educational institutions with their mission needs. Technical institutions focus on more scientific or applied content and have a more direct style of instruction, while strategic/operational institutions cover broader topics with more use of techniques, such as case studies, that allow students to appreciate complex interactions, past lessons, and applications to future uncertainties. Technical institutions have important input into student selection, and their graduates often are placed into relevant follow-on assignments. Strategic/operational institutions receive students selected by the services to meet talent management goals, and the relation of follow-on assignments can be unclear.

The schools and services would benefit from clearer expressions of demand that schools can use to guide development of curricula and adoption of teaching methods. The services can build on existing talent management efforts in specialized areas by increasing the overall match between PME graduates' educational outcomes and subsequent assignment opportunities. Although some schools use a variety of adjunct and visiting faculty, others show little or no use of these options. All schools should assess opportunities to use such faculty to expand their educational capabilities and stakeholder networks in support of meeting mission demands.

Key Findings

Military and civilian educational programs span two major types, strategic/operational and technical, each with different missions, audiences, and strategies

All military educational institutions in the study are accredited by civilian agencies. Strategic/operational-focused programs are also accredited by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Military educational institutions rely on service talent management processes to select students who can benefit from education, while civilian institutions dedicate significant resources to recruiting and admitting students.

Military educational institutions are transitioning to more–outcomes-based information to inform curriculum orientation, institutional planning, and program assessments

Considerable support resources and faculty commitment are dedicated to aid student graduation for both military and civilian educational institutions.
Services and schools report that postgraduation assignments often do not capitalize on the skills learned during officer PME experiences.

Faculty management practices vary

Some military educational institutions grant civilian faculty tenure; others use renewable term appointments.
Certain military educational institutions use few adjunct or visiting faculty, potentially missing opportunities to offer requisite expertise or develop connections to relevant agencies.
Faculty and student research is valued as an important part of professional development and enhancement to instruction in military educational institutions.

There is no broad indication of need or interest to increase or decrease the number of officers attending PME

Navy officials noted feeling compelled to provide officers for the joint PME system, despite the need for them to conduct Navy operations.
Civilian academic institutions can support aspects of officer education but, without adjustments, will not meet PME needs.

Chapter One
Introduction
Chapter Two
Overview of the PME System
Chapter Three
Inputs to PME: The Services, Resources, and Institutions
Chapter Four
Processes in PME: Teaching, Research, Engagement, and Service
Chapter Five
Outcomes: Qualified Officers and Institutions
Chapter Six
Opportunities for System Enhancement
Appendix
DoD Educational Institution Profiles

Research conducted by

RAND National Security Research Division

This research was sponsored by the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness and conducted within the Personnel, Readiness, and Health Program of the RAND National Security Research Division.

This report is part of the RAND Corporation Research report series. RAND reports present research findings and objective analysis that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors. All RAND reports undergo rigorous peer review to ensure high standards for research quality and objectivity.

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The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.

Document Details

Copyright: RAND Corporation
Availability: Available
Print Format: Paperback
Paperback Pages: 122
Paperback Price: $49.95
Paperback ISBN/EAN: 1-9774-1117-7
Document Number: RR-A1694-1
Year: 2024
Series: Research Reports

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Goldman, Charles A., Paul W. Mayberry, Nathan Thompson, Travis Hubble, and Katheryn Giglio, Intellectual Firepower: A Review of Professional Military Education in the U.S. Department of Defense. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2024. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1694-1.html. Also available in print form.

Goldman, Charles A., Paul W. Mayberry, Nathan Thompson, Travis Hubble, and Katheryn Giglio, Intellectual Firepower: A Review of Professional Military Education in the U.S. Department of Defense, RAND Corporation, RR-A1694-1, 2024. As of January 4, 2024: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1694-1.html

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rand.org · by Charles A. Goldman

2. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin remains hospitalized Sunday

I hope he gets well soon. There are a lot of questions surrounding all of this. Of course we must respect his privacy but the reporting that the White House and the DEPSECDEF were not informed of the situation is troubling. I am sure there were logical considerations for the withholding of information (more than privacy I would think) but given the national security challenges we face this is not a good look for the Pentagon nor for the White House (is the White House not sufficiently connected to the Pentagon to not miss the SECDEF for 3 or 4 days?) Again given the national security challenges that we face and the activities taking place around the world I would think the SECDEF's advice, input, and recommendations would be required on a near daily basis.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin remains hospitalized Sunday

militarytimes.com · by Tara Copp · January 7, 2024

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin remained in the hospital Sunday as more details emerged about key decision-makers, even President Joe Biden, being kept in the dark for days that the Pentagon chief had been in the intensive care unit at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

The Pentagon’s failure to disclose Austin’s hospitalization reflects a stunning lack of transparency about his illness, how serious it was and when he may be released. Such secrecy, at a time when the United States is juggling myriad national security crises, runs counter to normal practice with the president and other senior U.S. officials and Cabinet members.

A senior defense official said Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks was not notified until Thursday that Austin had been hospitalized since Jan. 1. Once notified, Hicks began preparing statements to send to Congress and made plans to return to Washington, the official said. Hicks was in Puerto Rico on leave but had communications equipment with her to remain in contact and had already been tasked with some secretary-level duties on Tuesday.

The Pentagon did not say if Hicks was given an explanation on Tuesday for why she was assuming some of Austin’s duties, but temporary transfers of authority are not unusual and the official said it is not uncommon for authorities to be transferred without a detailed explanation. Hicks decided not to return after she was informed that Austin would resume full control on Friday. The official was not authorized to provide details of the transfer of authority and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Biden also was not told of Austin’s hospitalization until he was informed on Thursday by his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan. That’s according to three people with knowledge of the hospitalization who were not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

In a statement issued Saturday evening, Austin took responsibility for the delays in notification.

“I recognize I could have done a better job ensuring the public was appropriately informed. I commit to doing better,” said Austin, acknowledging the concerns about transparency. “But this is important to say: this was my medical procedure, and I take full responsibility for my decisions about disclosure.”

Austin, 70, remained hospitalized due to complications following a minor elective medical procedure, his press secretary said, as it became increasingly clear how closely the Pentagon held information about his stay at Walter Reed. In his statement, Austin said he is on the mend and is looking forward to returning to the Pentagon soon, but he provided no other details about his ailment.

Sen. Roger Wicker, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the episode erodes trust in the Biden administration and called on the department to provide lawmakers with a “full accounting of the facts immediately.”

“I am glad to hear Secretary Austin is in improved condition and I wish him a speedy recovery. However, the fact remains that the Department of Defense deliberately withheld the Secretary of Defense’s medical condition for days. That is unacceptable,” Wicker said in a statement.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken voiced support for Austin at a news conference in Qatar on Sunday.

“He is an extraordinary leader in this country, in uniform and now out of uniform. And it’s been a highlight of my service to be able to serve alongside him,” Blinken said. “And I’m very much looking forward to see him fully recovered and working side by side in the year ahead.”

The Pentagon Press Association, which represents journalists who cover the Defense Department, sent a letter of protest on Friday evening, calling the delay in alerting the public “an outrage.”

“At a time when there are growing threats to U.S. military service members in the Middle East and the U.S. is playing key national security roles in the wars in Israel and Ukraine, it is particularly critical for the American public to be informed about the health status and decision-making ability of its top defense leader,” the PPA said in its letter.

Other senior U.S. leaders have been much more transparent about hospital stays. When Attorney General Merrick Garland went in for a routine medical procedure in 2022, his office informed the public a week in advance and outlined how long he was expected to be out and when he would return to work.

Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Michael Balsamo and Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.

About Tara Copp

Tara Copp is a Pentagon correspondent for the Associated Press. She was previously Pentagon bureau chief for Sightline Media Group.

3. Mother and uncle of US soldier rescued from Gaza in secret operation

I missed this report earlier. Small victories among a lot of tragedies.

Mother and uncle of US soldier rescued from Gaza in secret operation

By Ellen Knickmeyer, The Associated Press and Matthew Lee, The Associated Press

militarytimes.com · by Ellen Knickmeyer, The Associated Press · January 5, 2024

The mother and American uncle of a U.S. service member were safe outside of Gaza after being rescued from the fighting in a secret operation coordinated by the U.S., Israel, Egypt and others, a U.S. official told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

It is the only known operation of its kind to extract American citizens and their close family members during the months of devastating ground fighting and Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. The vast majority of people who have made it out of northern and central Gaza through the Rafah crossing into Egypt fled south in the initial weeks of the war. An escape from the heart of the Palestinian territory through intense combat has become far more perilous and difficult since.

Zahra Sckak, 44, made it out of Gaza on New Year’s Eve, along with her brother-in-law, Farid Sukaik, an American citizen, a U.S. official told The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to confirm the rescue, which had been kept quiet for security reasons.

Sckak’s husband, Abedalla Sckak, was shot earlier in the Israel-Hamas war as the family fled from a building hit by an airstrike. He died days later. One of her three American sons, Spc. Ragi A. Sckak, 24, serves as an infantryman in the U.S. military.

The extraction involved the Israeli military and local Israeli officials who oversee Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the U.S. official said. There was no indication that American officials were on the ground in Gaza.

“The United States played solely a liaison and coordinating role between the Sckak family and the governments of Israel and Egypt,” the official said.

A family member and U.S.-based lawyers and advocates working on the family’s behalf had described Sckak and Sukaik as pinned down in a building surrounded by combatants, with little or no food and with only water from sewers to drink.

There were few immediate details of the on-the-ground operation. It took place after extended appeals from Sckak’s family and U.S.-based citizens groups for help from Congress members and the Biden administration.

The State Department has said some 300 American citizens, legal permanent residents and their immediate family members remain in Gaza, at risk from ground fighting, airstrikes and widening starvation and thirst in the besieged territory.

With no known official U.S. presence on the ground, those still left in the territory face a dangerous and sometimes impossible trip to Egypt’s border crossing out of Gaza, and a bureaucratic struggle for U.S., Egyptian and Israeli approval to get themselves, their parents and young children out of Gaza.

Associated Press writer Tara Copp contributed to this report.

4. Blinken seeks to head off wider war as Israel pursues Gaza offensive

No one wants a wider war (except perhaps certain of our adversaries). But there may be a paradox - the more we focus on trying to prevent a wider war the more likely one is to occur. We have to seek (or help those who are fighting seek) decisive victory as the priority to prevent a wider war. By making prevention of a wider war the priority we appear weak and cede the initiative to the adversaries.

Blinken seeks to head off wider war as Israel pursues Gaza offensive

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/wrapup-blinken-uae-saudi-israel-monday-seeking-avert-wider-middle-east-war-2024-01-07/?utm

By Simon Lewis and Nidal Al-Mughrabi

January 8, 20246:30 AM ESTUpdated 33 min ago

Summary

LATEST DEVELOPMENTSPalestinian health officials say 73 Gazans killed in 24 hoursGerman minister urges Israel to protect West Bank PalestiniansGazans pushed to extreme south say they still fear attack

ABU DHABI/CAIRO, Jan 8 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was holding talks on Gaza in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia on Monday before heading on to Israel, seeking to kick start concerted peace efforts that he says are needed to avoid a wider conflagration.

Blinken began a five-day Middle East diplomatic effort in Jordan and Qatar on Sunday, his fourth visit to the region since deadly Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas militants in Gaza sparked a massive Israeli assault that shows no signs of ending.

Other Iranian-backed militant groups have weighed in, attacking Israeli forces on the border with Lebanon, U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria and commercial ships in the Red Sea. Israel has also cracked down on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Germany's foreign minister Annalena Baerbock was in Israel on Monday and the European Union's top diplomat Josep Borrell was in Lebanon in a sign of international concern. Baerbock said Israel had a duty to protect Palestinians in the West Bank after Blinken sounded the wider alarm in Doha on Sunday.

"This is a moment of profound tension for the region. This is a conflict that could easily metastasize, causing even more insecurity and suffering," Blinken said before heading to Abu Dhabi.

Following earlier pressure from Washington, Israel outlined a more focused approach to its war in Gaza ahead of the visit but Palestinian health officials say it is still killing scores of people every day, reporting 73 dead in the past 24 hours.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said the intensity of the offensive in Gaza signalled his country's determination to end Hamas rule of the enclave and deter other potential Iran-backed adversaries, including Hezbollah in Lebanon.

"My basic view: We are fighting an axis, not a single enemy," Gallant told the Wall Street Journal. "Iran is building up military power around Israel in order to use it."

'THEY MAY KILL US HERE'

Palestinians said Israel had bombarded areas in the east of the southern city of Khan Younis and central Gaza Strip all night amid clashes in those areas. One strike alone in Deir Al-Balah had killed 18 people and wounded dozens, they said.

Israel said it had bombed an arms cache and uncovered a tunnel shaft in the central part of the strip and killed at least 10 Palestinian fighters in Khan Younis.

On Monday morning, the Israeli army dropped leaflets on al Moghani in central Gaza Strip warning residents to evacuate several districts it said were "dangerous combat zones".

[1/11]U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken waves as he departs for Saudi Arabia, during his week-long trip aimed at calming tensions across the Middle East, in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, January 8, 2024. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/Pool Acquire Licensing Rights

Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes in the war at least once and many are now moving again, often sheltering in makeshift tents or huddled under tarpaulins.

For Aziza Abbas, 57, one of a handful of Gazans now camped close to the southern border with Egypt, there was nowhere else to go after what she said was bombardment around a school in which she had taken shelter after leaving her home in the north.

"They may kill us here, it doesn't matter to them," she told Reuters, saying she did not want to leave Gaza for Egypt, which has closed the border fearing an exodus.

The U.N.'s Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA said on Monday there had been 63 direct hits on its installations and only five out of 22 of its health centres were operating in the middle and southern parts of Gaza.

Israel, whose offensive has also caused acute shortages of food, water, and medicines, accuses Hamas militants of deliberately operating among civilians, allegations they deny.

Blinken said he would tell Israeli officials it is imperative they do more to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza and that Palestinian civilians must be allowed to return home and not be pressed to leave Gaza.

'CATASTROPHIC REPERCUSSIONS'

Jordan's King Abdullah urged Blinken to use Washington's influence over Israel to press it for an immediate ceasefire and warned of the "catastrophic repercussions" of Israel's continued military campaign.

The Israeli offensive has so far killed 22,835 Palestinians in Gaza, Palestinian health officials said on Sunday. On Monday, they said 99 people had been wounded in the previous 24 hours along with the 73 more dead.

Netanyahu said the war would not stop until Hamas returned more than 100 hostages still held of 240 people seized during its Oct. 7 attack on Israeli towns that killed 1,200 people.

Qatar's prime minister said on Sunday his country would continue trying to mediate the release of the hostages but the killing of a Hamas leader by an Israeli drone strike in Beirut last week had affected its ability to do so.

As part of his trip, Blinken aims to press hesitant Muslim nations in the Middle East to prepare to play a role in the post-war reconstruction, governance and security of Gaza, a State Department official said.

Reporting by Simon Lewis, Nidal al-Mughrabi and Emily Rose; additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi and Hatem Maher in Cairo, Ali Sawafta and James Mackenzie; writing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Philippa Fletcher; editing by Neil Fullick and William Maclean

5. NATO signs off on $5.5 billion contract for hundreds of Patriot missiles

1000.

I also did not get the memo on the name change from Raytheon to TRX. This is the first time I noticed the change.

NATO signs off on $5.5 billion contract for hundreds of Patriot missiles - Breaking Defense

If all options are exercised under the contract, the European nations will buy a combined total of 1,000 Patriot Guidance Enhanced Missiles (GEM-T), according to manufacturer RTX.

breakingdefense.com · by Tim Martin · January 5, 2024

A group of NATO allies are to jointly acquire up to 1000 patriot surface to air missiles. (RTX)

BELFAST — NATO’s procurement arm will help a group of European allies to acquire hundreds of Patriot surface-to-air missiles, a $5.5 billion purchase set to the backdrop of Ukraine’s use of the US-made air defense system against Russian targets.

NATO’s Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) said on Wednesday that it “will support” an alliance coalition including Germany, the Netherlands, Romania and Spain to buy the weapons, after awarding the contract to COMLOG, a joint venture between US giant RTX (formerly Raytheon) and MBDA Germany.

If all options are exercised under the contract, the European nations will buy a combined total of 1,000 Patriot Guidance Enhanced Missiles (GEM-T), according to a RTX company statement, also issued Wednesday.

GEM-T serves as a “complement” to the Patriot Advanced Capability -3 (PAC-3) missile and is designed to defeat tactical ballistic, cruise missiles or adversary aircraft, states RTX company literature. Specifically, a low noise front end of the GEM-T offers “increased seeker sensitivity for better acquisition and tracking.”

Capabilities aside, RTX added that the COMLOG contract also covers “updated components, addition of new suppliers, test equipment, and spares,” though a delivery timeline was not shared.

COMLOG will “expand production” of GEM-T missiles in Europe, explained RTX. NATO shared that the deal will lead to a Patriot production facility in Germany being established.

When the US decided to send Patriots to Ukraine in December 2022, the Washington, DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies said in an analysis that the move was based on a need to support Kyiv against Russian missile attacks, demonstrate political solidarity and “because the United States has few other air defenses to send.”

European Patriot operators Germany and the Netherlands have since followed in the footsteps of the US Department of Defense by supplying the air defense equipment to Kyiv. Ukraine also operates Soviet-era S-300 surface to air missile systems against Russia. Additionally, The US and Norway have provided Kyiv with National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS), while Germany has also supplied IRIS-T SLM (Surface Launched Medium Range) missiles.

Despite this arsenal of ground based weapon systems, Russia has coordinated a new airstrike campaign since the end of December and into the new year that has predominately targeted Kyiv and Kharkiv.

Writing on social media platform X (formerly Twitter) earlier this week, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia, starting on December 29, had launched 300 missiles and 200 Shahed drones against Ukraine, in the space of a “few days.”

He praised the efforts of his armed forces in countering the Russian airstrike campaign.

“Prior to Ukraine, no country in the world had ever successfully repulsed such combined attacks with the use of drones and missiles, including air-launched ballistic missiles,” added Zelensky. He also claimed that 10 Kh-47M2 Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missiles had been shot down during fighting on Tuesday.

6. US Military Searching for New Long-Range Sniper Rifle in Bid to Keep Edge over Russia and China

But we should not be chasing long distance records for the sake of holding the long distance records. Somehow I do not think a sniper rifle will be the war winner over China and Russia but I strongly support the continued development of capabilities because the sniper will always make an important contribution to warfighting in very discreet ways

Of course we do need long range precision fire from 7.62mm and Cal .50 up to air and missile delivered PGMs to have the right weapon for the right target. Sometimes it is 7.62mm and sometimes it may be ATACMS or a 2000 lb bomb.

US Military Searching for New Long-Range Sniper Rifle in Bid to Keep Edge over Russia and China

military.com · by Jared Keller · January 5, 2024

The U.S. military is looking to equip special operations forces with their longest-range sniper rifle ever fielded in an effort to maintain superiority against Russian and Chinese snipers in a future potential conflict.

According to a new notice published on Dec. 19, 2023, U.S. Special Operations Command is conducting market research for a so-called "Extreme Long Range-Sniper Rifle" (ELR-SR) capable of delivering precise fire at a range of up to 2,500 meters (2,730 yards), or just over a mile-and-a-half.

A modular sniper system capable of using multiple calibers of bullets, the ELR-SR would replace two guns in the U.S. armory: the widely used Barrett M107 .50 caliber sniper rifle, which has an effective range of 2,000 meters (or 2,187 yards), and the Mk 15 sniper rifle that is used primarily by Navy SEALs and has an effective range of 1,800 meters (or 1,970 yards), according to the notice.

For context, the long-standing record for longest-distance sniper shot was achieved by legendary Marine Corps Scout Sniper Carlos Hathcock in Vietnam in 1967 and was at 2,286 meters (or 2,500 yards), albeit set with an M2 .50 caliber machine gun rather than a conventional sniper rifle.

That record remained unbroken until 2002, when Canadian Army sniper Master Cpl. Arron Perry achieved a confirmed kill at 2,310 meters (or 2,526 yards) with a C15, which is the Canadian military's version of the TAC-50 that counts the Mk 15 as a descendant. Another Canadian Army sniper, Cpl. Rob Furlong, would break that record days later, also with a C15, with a confirmed kill at 2,430 meters, or 2,657 yards.

The current record for longest-distance kill is purportedly held by Ukrainian military sniper Vyacheslav Kovalsky, who reportedly took out a Russian soldier from a distance of 3,800 meters (or 4,156 yards) with a "Horizon's Lord" sniper rifle in 2023 during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, though The Wall Street Journal reported that Kovalsky's claim remains disputed by some tested marksmen and ballistics experts.

While praising existing sniper rifles in the U.S. inventory, U.S. Special Operations Command spokesperson Navy Lt. Cassandra Thompson told Military.com in an email that the intent is to keep up with "advancements developed by industry partners as well as the long-range shooting sports community."

The ostensible mission for this new long-range sniper rifle? To "increase effective range and probability of hit in support of the great power competition for Special Operations Forces in near peer conflicts," according to Thompson, invoking the Defense Department's preferred euphemisms for notional future conflicts with Russia and China.

As the U.S. struggles to reorient itself from fighting violent extremist organizations in the Middle East toward "great power" or "near peer" competitors like Russia or China, the Pentagon has invested significant effort in overhauling its sniper capabilities, with the Army and Marine Corps fielding both new designated marksman rifles (the M110A1 Squad Designated Marksman Rifle and M38 variant of the M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle, respectively) and new sniper rifles (the M110A1 Compact Semi-Automatic Sniper System and the Mk 13 Mod 7, respectively) in recent years.

The U.S. military has been worried about a sniper gap with Russia, in particular, for the better part of a decade: A 2016 Army report on the evolution of Russian tactics following the 2014 annexation of Crimea found that Russian snipers have become "far more advanced than the precision shooters U.S. formations have encountered over the last 15 years" during the U.S. military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, primarily because Russian sniper teams have access to "sophisticated weapons comparable to rifles in the U.S. inventory."

In response to the increased threat posed by Russian sharpshooters, the Army accelerated the deployment of qualified soldiers in designated marksman roles equipped with rifles designed for longer-range engagements, according to the report, culminating with the fielding of the M110A1 SDMR to its first unit in 2020.

Today, the Army, Marine Corps and SOCOM are all in the process of adopting the modular multi-caliber Barrett Multi-Role Adaptive Design (MRAD) sniper rifle which -- chambered in 7.62×51 mm NATO, .300 Norma Magnum and .338 Norma Magnum rounds -- can reach targets at up to 1,500 meters (or 1,600 yards) and will eventually replace the majority of the existing sniper systems in the respective services' arsenals in the coming years.

While the ELR-SR's planned range of 2,500 meters doesn't suggest that U.S. special operations forces will break records on each shot, it will potentially allow snipers to reach the enemy more consistently at distances previously beyond existing sniper systems.

The intent is to also shrink the size of the rifles that operators would need to carry. With an overall length of 56 inches and a weight of no more than 22 pounds unloaded, the ESL-SR is smaller than the M107, according to technical specs listed by the Army.

It's unclear which company may end up producing the ELR-SR for SOCOM, but it's worth noting that in December, Barrett unveiled a new long-range sniper rifle, the MRAD-Extreme Long Range (MRAD-ELR), that would meet many of the required specs.

The Dec. 19 notice for a new rifle comes on the heels of a major shakeup of the U.S. military's sniper community: The Marine Corps' last class of elite Scout Snipers graduated just days earlier amid a large redesign of the service's combat force.

military.com · by Jared Keller · January 5, 2024

7. Firearm-Related Suicides Among Women Veterans Are Rising. We Must Do More on Secure Gun Storage.

We should have seen this coming. I did not. We overlook way too much concerning our women servicemembers and veterans.

Firearm-Related Suicides Among Women Veterans Are Rising. We Must Do More on Secure Gun Storage.

military.com · January 5, 2024

The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Military.com. If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@military.com for consideration.

As gun ownership among women veterans has surged, so, too, have suicides where firearms are used.

In the recently released Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) 2023 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report, between 2020 to 2021, the suicide rate among women veterans jumped 24.1% -- far greater than the 6.3% increase among male veterans. Firearms were used in 51.7% of women veterans' suicides, more often than all other methods combined. The rate of women veterans dying by firearm suicide was nearly three times higher than for non-veteran women.

These grim statistics should serve as a wake-up call for the need to pay close attention to the risk of firearm suicide for women veterans. This work requires a hard look at how ready access to firearms during dark moments correlates with deadly outcomes.

There are wide-ranging reasons why rates of firearm suicides for women veterans are rapidly rising. Gun ownership among women in general has doubled over the past 15 years. Half of women veterans either personally own a firearm or live in a household with one, far more than non-veteran women. Those firearms are stored unsafely approximately 43% of the time, more so among those with thoughts of suicide.

Pair that with the surge of firearm purchases at the onset of COVID-19, especially among women. During the pandemic, veterans in general reported increased social distress, with younger and women veterans demonstrating the greatest increases. Women veterans with histories of post-traumatic stress or military sexual assault -- both of which correlate with suicide attempts and suicide mortality -- reported higher levels of perceived pandemic-related threats and increased access to firearms.

The VA is responding to these trends with a multipronged approach. It has placed ad campaigns to reach all veterans, including those who have no contact with VA's health or benefits services. The programming, which has been viewed hundreds of millions of times, focuses on locking up one's firearms or temporarily transferring them to friends, family or storage facilities during crises.

Further, the VA's entire clinical workforce is now trained in safety counseling for at-risk veterans who value firearm ownership. That's been a crucial initiative, since surveys indicate that therapists are the most frequently cited resource that women veterans identify when asked whom they turn to when experiencing suicidal thoughts.

Both the Trump and Biden White Houses also joined this mission. At the start of the pandemic, the Trump administration issued a task force report of the President's Roadmap to Empower Veterans and End the National Tragedy of Suicide (PREVENTS). It emphasized that suicidal impulses often subside quickly, and that regardless of preexisting mental health conditions, voluntarily reducing one's access to firearms saves lives. The Biden administration amplified that strategy to encourage increased time and distance between suicidal thoughts and a trigger.

Yet, the dramatic increases highlighted in VA's annual report prove that much more is needed. The VA can't do this alone, and greater involvement from the firearm community will be essential.

In September, the VA joined with the National Shooting Sports Foundation and firearm trade advocates, manufacturers, retailers and range owners to advance joint efforts to promote secure firearm storage for suicide prevention. The industry's active engagement will be indispensable. Research confirms that messages advising citizens to store their firearms securely are accepted only when delivered by credible messengers through trusted channels. Specific attention to women veterans' reasons for gun ownership and storage practices must be tailored in this messaging. Women's gun organizations, such as A Girl & A Gun and Armed Women of America, are two natural avenues for reaching women.

Cable-style gun locks are currently provided gratis to any veteran who wants one, but surveys have determined that gun safes and lock boxes are preferred. A third of veterans who store their firearms loaded and unlocked don't own a lockbox or safe. A VA pilot program is offering these larger devices, cost free, to veterans who request them. Congress should make this program national, permanent and well-funded.

Studies show that suicidal patients have a four-fold reduction in attempts and/or death when care providers inquire about their access to firearms. This fact puts extra responsibility on the contracted pool of one million community providers and grantees who supplement VA's care. The annual report found that veterans treated by those providers were more likely to die by suicide than if care was furnished from the VA.

The VA's report concludes, "Veteran suicide rates will likely not significantly improve until there is increased collective engagement regarding the relationship between Veteran suicide and firearms." Indeed, it will take an all-of-nation effort -- firearm and veteran constituencies, along with the VA -- to protect the freedom to own firearms while also strengthening safe storage practices, especially during periods of crisis. That pathway forward will save lives.

Nancy G. Espinosa, a service-connected disabled veteran of the Army, Reserve and National Guard, was elected national commander for Disabled American Veterans in August 2023.

Russell B. Lemle, Ph.D., is senior policy analyst for the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute. He's authored numerous scientific publications and media commentaries, and testified to Congress, on veterans' health care and the prevention of firearm suicide. From 1993 to 2019, he served as chief psychologist for the San Francisco VA Health Care System.

military.com · January 5, 2024

8. Lesson of the Strike That Killed Soleimani

Important advice I think we must heed.

Instead of asking how we can prevent escalation, we should be asking what actions we can and must take to deter our adversaries and if they are not deterred on how to destroy their warfighting capabilities. The answer to the first question is found in the second.

We have to cash the checks of our deterrent rhetoric. It is time for actions to match words or we undermine our deterrent capabilities and I fear the strong public focus trying to prevent escalation weakens our deterrence. We have to demonstrate will and capability to make deterrence work.

Lesson of the Strike That Killed Soleimani

The Iranians are rational. They can be deterred if the U.S. has the will to use force when necessary.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/lesson-of-the-soleimani-strike-quds-iran-deterrence-war-gaza-attacks-on-americans-5c9bbfa1

By Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr.

Jan. 4, 2024 3:33 pm ET

Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani in Tehran, Sept. 18, 2016. PHOTO: OFFICE OF THE IRANIAN SUPREME LEADER VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

Four years ago this week, at the direction of the president, forces under my command struck and killed Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. He was arriving there to coordinate attacks on our embassy and coalition targets across the region. Our successful strike threw Tehran’s plan into disarray. The Iranian response—a barrage of missiles against Al Asad air base in western Iraq—was largely a punch that landed against air. The attack was designed to kill Americans, but commanders on the ground ensured there were no fatalities. I don’t minimize the injuries our forces absorbed in that attack, but it could have been much worse. The Iranians subsequently backed down.

Here is the lesson: The Iranians’ strategic decision-making is rational. Its leaders understand the threat of violence and its application. It takes will and capability to establish and maintain deterrence. We were able to reset deterrence as a result of this violent couplet. The Iranians have always feared our capabilities, but before January 2020, they doubted our will. The bombing of the memorial ceremony for Soleimani in Iran on Wednesday that killed dozens of civilians isn’t an example of deterrence but likely internal factions struggling for power.

After exchanging fire with the U.S. four years ago, Iran continued to pursue its long-term trifecta of strategic objectives: preserving the theocratic regime in Tehran, destroying Israel, and ejecting the U.S. from the Middle East. The mullahs’ actions, however, were muted and hidden behind proxies, from the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon to Hamas in Gaza and Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq and Syria. The Iranians remembered the result of a straightforward confrontation with the U.S.

Regrettably, the U.S. hasn’t remembered this lesson and the importance of matching demonstrable will with our capabilities. Even before Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, Iranian forces were launching missile and drone strikes on our bases across the region, acting through proxies that gave them a measure of deniability. Our response has consistently been tentative, overly signaled and unfocused.

Iranian leaders work with Lenin’s dictum that “you probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw.” Tehran and its proxies are pressing their attacks because they haven’t confronted steel. The ability to stop such probing generally depends on a swift and violent counterattack. Delaying and equivocating usually means the response needed to re-establish deterrence has to be much larger than it would have been if it had been applied in a timely manner. As a military officer, I have observed such hesitancy and lack of strategic clarity across several presidential administrations. In 2019, an early and sharp response to Iranian provocation might have ended the escalatory spiral well before the U.S. had to strike Soleimani and accept the possibility of theater war.

There is another issue at stake. If avoiding escalation is the highest U.S. priority, then it is only logical to withdraw our forces from the region. That would ensure attacks on our bases don’t continue but ultimately endanger the future of the Mideast. Language that describes avoiding escalation as our highest priority is, therefore, inaccurate and dangerous. It sends an unhelpful signal to our adversaries as well as our friends and allies.

A case in point is Houthi activity in and around the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait. In the National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy of the U.S. we emphasize the importance of free passage through such global choke points. Protecting this principle, and our strategic priority, is more important than avoiding escalation. Taking strong action against the Houthis isn’t likely to lead to theaterwide escalation. Iran is waging a hidden-hand war from Yemen because it is cheap and because there are few consequences for Tehran. A forceful response against the Houthis, designed to make them feel the pain of continuing their irresponsible behavior, wouldn’t ineluctably lead to a large-scale Iranian response. Pursuing this approach is especially consequential: The Chinese are watching to see how we respond to a threat involving a narrow strait.

Unfortunately, it is the U.S. that is being deterred, not Iran and its proxies. To reset deterrence, we must apply violence that Tehran understands. Paradoxically, if done earlier, this violence could have been of a far smaller and more measured scale. Indecision has placed us in this position. There is a way forward but it requires the U.S. to set aside the fear of escalation and act according to the priorities of our strategic documents and concepts. Iranians understand steel. They also understand mush. It is time to choose.

Gen. McKenzie, a retired U.S. Marine general, served as commander of U.S. Central Command, 2019-22. He is executive director of the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida and author of “The Melting Point: High Command and War in the 21st Century,” forthcoming in June.

9. Nord Stream Probe Faces Resistance From Poland

This remains a very curious case. Will we ever know who was responsible? Do we want to know?

Nord Stream Probe Faces Resistance From Poland

Investigators hope Warsaw’s new government will shed light on gas-pipeline attack after previous administration’s reluctance to disclose potentially crucial evidence

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/nord-stream-probe-faces-resistance-from-poland-962aa5f9?mod=latest_headlines

By Bojan Pancevski

Jan. 8, 2024 5:32 am ET

Gas emanating from a leak on a Nord Stream pipeline in late September 2022 in the Baltic Sea. PHOTO: DANISH DEFENCE COMMAND/REUTERS

BERLIN—Polish officials have resisted cooperating with an international probe into the sabotage of the Nord Stream natural-gas pipelines and failed to disclose potentially crucial evidence, according to European investigators working on the case.

Those Polish officials have been slow to provide information and withheld key evidence about the alleged saboteurs’ movements on Polish soil, investigators said. They are now hoping the new government in Warsaw, which took office in December, will help shed light on the attack.

European investigators have long believed the attack was launched from Ukraine via Poland. But they say Warsaw’s failure to fully cooperate has made it hard to establish whether the attack happened with or without the former Polish government’s knowledge, according to senior officials.

Some senior European officials say they are considering approaching the office of Donald Tusk, Poland’s new prime minister, for help in investigating the biggest act of sabotage on the European continent since World War II.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk fired the heads of all the intelligence services, including those involved in the Nord Stream probe, days after he took office late last year. PHOTO: PAWEL SUPERNAK/SHUTTERSTOCK

The Nord Stream pipelines, connecting Russia to Germany underneath the Baltic Sea, were blown up in September 2022. This added pressure on Germany and others to make themselves independent from Russian fuel supplies.

Any suggestion that Poland, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization member, might be concealing information about an attack on an ally could undermine trust in an alliance that is facing one of the biggest tests since its creation. For Moscow, any behavior by Poland hinting at an involvement in the sabotage may be seen as an aggressive act by NATO.

Investigators haven’t offered evidence linking the Polish government to the explosions and say that even if some Polish officials were involved, it could have been without the knowledge of the political leadership. Yet they say efforts by Polish officials to hinder their investigation have made them increasingly suspicious of Warsaw’s role and motives.

Most Western security officials believe that a Ukrainian crew, operating with or without sanction from Kyiv, was behind the sabotage. Ukraine has denied any involvement. Russia said it thought the U.S. was responsible for the attack, which the U.S. denied.

Days after taking up office, Tusk fired the heads of all the intelligence services, including those involved in the Nord Stream probe. European officials hope he will retain some police executives they think might have been under political pressure not to cooperate but might now be inclined to do so.

Polish prosecutors, who oversee the domestic investigation, said that they were cooperating with other countries but found no evidence of Polish involvement. The border guard and the internal security service declined to comment.

An investigation by Germany, Denmark and Sweden has so far found that the pipeline was blown up by a crew of six, including deep-sea divers, traveling on a leisure yacht called Andromeda. On its voyage, Andromeda stopped in all three countries, as well as Poland, according to investigators. The boat, leased in Germany via a Polish company, contained traces of octagon, the same explosive that was found at the underwater blast sites, they said.

The Andromeda yacht, in dry dock near Dranske, Germany. Investigators suspect that it is linked to sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines. PHOTO: SEAN GALLUP/GETTY IMAGES

After mining parts of the pipelines, the crew docked in Poland’s Baltic port of Kołobrzeg, where they spent a full day, according to investigators who tracked the boat by analyzing its navigation system data, the crew’s mobile-phone communications, satellite imagery and witnesses’ accounts.

A port official suspicious about the five men and one woman, all of whom spoke a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian, alerted police. On Sept. 19, Poland’s border guard checked the identification of the crew, who produced European Union passports and were allowed to continue their trip, sailing back up north, where they laid the rest of the mines, investigators say.

Polish authorities didn’t share this information with European investigators until March this year—and they only did so after being contacted by their German counterparts. Berlin was tipped off in January about the yacht’s stay in Poland by the Dutch military intelligence service, whose information came from someone in Ukraine.

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A number of Polish agencies declined to share with European investigators footage of the suspects taken by CCTV cameras while the yacht was moored there, those investigators said. The investigators have established that the boat and its crew were exposed to security cameras throughout their stay in the port.

While prosecutors and the border guard, two of Poland’s agencies investigating the case, appeared cooperative, officials from other branches including the internal security agency ABW, failed to answer queries, obfuscated or gave contradictory information, European officials said.

In one instance, Polish prosecutors told their European counterparts that no explosives were found on the Andromeda, although no forensic investigation had taken place. Yet the Polish internal security service told European investigators that the border guard officers who had checked the crew never boarded the boat, contradicting the prosecutor’s claim.

Polish prosecutors first said the Andromeda arrived in the port of Kołobrzeg around 4 p.m. on Sept. 19 and then left around 12 hours later. But investigators later found that the boat actually moored at 9 a.m. after traveling overnight from Denmark.

German investigators waited at least two months before obtaining a meeting with their Polish counterparts in mid-May last year, according to the European officials. They left the meeting with the impression that some Polish colleagues were unwilling or unable to cooperate.

Polish and German police otherwise cooperate closely. Officers from both countries even have police jurisdiction on each other’s territories near the border.

In September, Stanislaw Zaryn, a senior Polish official then involved in overseeing Poland’s security services, dismissed the findings that the Andromeda crew was behind the sabotage, saying the crew had no military training and were merely tourists “looking for fun.”

Around the same time, Poland’s internal security service circulated with European investigators alleged intelligence that the Andromeda had links with Russian espionage, which they alleged was behind the attack. Some investigators said they considered this to be disinformation.

Zaryn, who left office following the election, said in a recent interview that any Polish involvement was unlikely as Russia was plausibly behind the sabotage.

Drew Hinshaw contributed to this article.

Write to Bojan Pancevski at bojan.pancevski@wsj.com

10. Congressional Negotiators Reach Agreement on $1.6 Trillion Government Spending Level for 2024

I want to say this is good news. But a $1.6 Trillion budget and a $34 Trillion debt can hardly count as good news.

Congressional Negotiators Reach Agreement on $1.6 Trillion Government Spending Level for 2024

Deal paves the way toward full-year package averting a shutdown, but much work still needed

By Katy Stech Ferek

and Siobhan Hughes

Updated Jan. 7, 2024 6:47 pm ET

The agreement still faces challenges in Congress. PHOTO: MICHAEL REYNOLDS/SHUTTERSTOCK

WASHINGTON—Congressional leaders reached a bipartisan deal on Sunday setting a roughly $1.6 trillion federal spending level for the year, but the pact drew quick criticism from some conservatives and it remained unclear whether lawmakers would be able to quickly pass legislation averting a government shutdown.

The House and Senate now have less than two weeks to craft underlying bills funding the government, with several federal agencies set to run out of money later this month and the rest to follow in February, a tall order in a Congress that has struggled to pass major legislation on time.

The deal leaves unresolved some key battles and could open up more friction between House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) and his conservative flank, which has outsize power because of Republicans’ narrow majority and has repeatedly derailed bills in the chamber. Among other things, some House Republicans plan to fight for so-called policy riders, which can be used to advance conservative social policies and which Senate Democratic leaders have called nonstarters.

Johnson said the deal contains “hard fought concessions” from Democrats, including on the cancellation of unspent pandemic aid. Still, the overall number is above the levels that some conservatives had demanded. “These final spending levels will not satisfy everyone, and they do not cut as much spending as many of us would like,” Johnson said.

“This is total failure,” the House Freedom Caucus, an ultra conservative group of about three dozen Republicans, said on social media after news of the deal broke.

The deal for fiscal 2024 comes after months of disagreement over the top-line number, which was initially set at $1.59 trillion in debt-ceiling negotiations with President Biden last spring. Members in the Republican-led House had sought a lower number as they pressed for deep spending cuts, while the Democrat-led Senate wanted to add funding. The dispute tied up progress on passing the underlying annual spending bills, forcing short-term extensions and sparking GOP rebels to drive out then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.).

The new figure is about in line with the spring level. In separate statements Sunday, Johnson and Senate Democrats said defense spending levels would total $886 billion for the current fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1. Federal agencies have been operating with money given to them under two prior extensions. Both sides painted the agreement as a major step forward, but Congress will face challenges passing new legislation ahead of looming deadlines in coming weeks.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said the spending levels ‘will not satisfy everyone.’ PHOTO: MANUEL BALCE CENETA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The leaderships of the two parties framed the agreement on top-line nondefense spending differently, with the House speaker describing it as totaling $704 billion and Senate Democrats saying that total fiscal 2024 nondefense spending, which includes spending on veterans programs, would total $773 billion. The gap in part reflects different ways of treating some key features of the deal, which build on elements of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, last year’s law raising the debt ceiling.

The agreement allows Congress to “maintain important funding priorities for the American people and avoid a government shutdown,” said House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D, N.Y.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, N.Y.) in a joint statement.

Among other things, the deal would cut $20 billion in funds for the Internal Revenue Service, which got an influx of $80 billion in Biden’s signature Inflation Reduction Act in large part to audit wealthy people and corporations. Those $20 billion in savings were also included in a handshake agreement between Biden and McCarthy that were part of a side deal reached to pass last year’s debt deal. It is the sort of arrangement that infuriated spending hawks last year and explains why the $704 billion in nondefense spending amounts to a net spending level instead of a gross spending level.

“Unfortunately there are only microscopic concessions made by the D.C. Cartel in this new spending ‘deal,’” said Rep. Matt Rosendale (R., Mont.) on social media.

Still, Johnson can also point to Republican spending wins. The deal minimizes a longstanding maneuver of generating paper savings by canceling a certain amount of mandatory spending and then applying the savings to discretionary spending. The canceled spending comes from mandatory funds that were never going to be spent in the first place.

After Biden and McCarthy set the $1.59 trillion top-line amount last spring, Senate and House negotiators subsequently went their separate ways, muddying the path toward a budget deal. Some House lawmakers proposed funding agencies at closer to $1.471 trillion to force spending cuts. Senate lawmakers, meanwhile, proposed to allocate more money by adding in emergency funds and $69 billion for nondefense spending.

The agreement on a top line is a major step toward passing a deal keeping the government open ahead of a Jan. 19 deadline, when funding for several agencies expires. Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.), who leads the chamber’s appropriations committee, said she would work “with my colleagues around the clock in the coming days” to pass the remaining bills.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer praised the deal. PHOTO: TOM WILLIAMS/ZUMA PRESS

The House and Senate still need to finalize all of 12 spending bills for federal agencies for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1. Money continues to flow to the agencies through congressionally approved extensions, the latest one which has two expiration dates.

Money runs out after Jan. 19 for agencies such as the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Transportation and Housing and Urban Development, while the rest of the federal government would lose funding after Feb. 2. A shutdown would stop paychecks for federal workers and the military, and bring nonessential functions to a halt.

Before Sunday’s announcement, lawmakers were unable to finalize individual bills without an overall funding number. A congressional aide said passing individual spending bills without having a top-line agreement would be like buying a car without knowing your annual salary.

House Republicans who have passed seven bills have struggled to pass their remaining five bills, which have provisions that both far-right conservatives and moderates have protested.

Republican moderates, for example, have objected to steep cuts to Amtrak railroad grants in a housing and transportation bill.

China Says It Detained a Foreign Consultant for Spying for Britain

By Daisuke Wakabayashi

Jan. 8, 2024, 5:53 a.m. ET

The New York Times · by Daisuke Wakabayashi · January 8, 2024

The Ministry of State Security says the consultant collected intelligence and found people on behalf of MI6, Britain’s spy agency.

A Chinese paramilitary police officer stands guard outside the British Embassy in Beijing.

China’s top intelligence agency said Monday that it had detained the head of an overseas consulting agency for working as a spy for the British government to collect Chinese state secrets.

The Chinese Ministry of State Security said it caught a consultant with the surname Huang, who collected China-related intelligence and found personnel on behalf of MI6. The British intelligence agency recruited and trained Huang — who is from an unspecified “third country” — in the United Kingdom and other places, the ministry said in a post on its official WeChat account. The British government equipped the individual with “special spy equipment,” the ministry wrote.

“After meticulous investigation, the national security agency promptly discovered criminal evidence that Huang was engaged in espionage activities, and took criminal coercive measures against Huang in accordance with the law,” the state security ministry wrote.

The post said that Huang provided the British government with 14 state secrets, and three pieces of intelligence. The statement did not specify the company that Huang worked for or the person’s nationality.

While the agency has made allegations of other individuals who had been caught spying for the U.S. government in previous WeChat posts, this is the first time that Beijing has accused the British of espionage in the public forum.

The British Embassy in Beijing did not respond to requests for comment.

The statement came four months after the revelation that a researcher who worked in Britain’s Parliament had been arrested on suspicion of spying for Beijing. The researcher, who has denied that he is a spy, worked with lawmakers on policy matters about China. China’s foreign ministry has repeatedly condemned the assertion that the researcher was part of a growing Chinese spy ring in Britain as “entirely groundless.”

The announcement on Monday by the state security ministry was also the latest sign of China targeting consulting and advisory firms with foreign ties. Last year, there were reports of raids, detainments and arrests at prominent consulting firms including American companies such as the Mintz Group and Bain & Company.

The crackdown seemed to focus on firms that provide hard-to-obtain information that foreign investors use to assess potential business risks in China before an investment. Such information is especially valuable in China, where reliable information is hard to come by.

Changes to China’s counterespionage laws have also broadened the law’s already sweeping definition of what constitutes spying. Foreign businesses expressed concern that they could be targeted for espionage over normal business practices such as gathering information on competitors, markets and industry.

Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute in London, said the fact that this accused spy came from an industry that China has already deemed problematic makes the accusations of serious espionage less convincing, because people working in such firms are convenient targets.

Whether this person actually has anything to do with the British spy agency will be almost impossible to confirm since MI6 is unlikely to say anything and the Chinese are unlikely to provide additional evidence to bolster its case, he said.

“If the Chinese really have a case, they really have to come up with a bit more either in public or in private with the Brits,” Mr. Tsang said. “If not, it would not be taken too seriously.”

Claire Fu contributed reporting.

Daisuke Wakabayashi is an Asia business correspondent for The Times based in Seoul, covering economic, corporate and geopolitical stories from the region. More about Daisuke Wakabayashi

The New York Times · by Daisuke Wakabayashi · January 8, 2024

12. Options for the United States regarding Piratical Attacks against Commercial Shipping in the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

Options for the United States regarding Piratical Attacks against Commercial Shipping in the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

divergentoptions.org · by Divergent Options · January 8, 2024

Peter Mitchell is a U.S. Army officer and instructor of strategy at West Point. He can be found on Twitter @peternmitchell and writes for the Modern War Institute. Divergent Options’ content does not contain information of an official nature nor does the content represent the official position of any government, any organization, or any group.

National Security Situation: Commercial shipping in the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait is being threatened by piratical attacks. These attacks threaten U.S. interests.

Date Originally Written: January 2, 2024.

Date Originally Published: January 8, 2024.

Author and / or Article Point of View: The author is an instructor of strategy at West Point. This article is written from the point of view of the United States considering its maritime options in the Red Sea.

Background: The Bab-el-Mandeb Strait links the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea via the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. Twelve percent of global trade and 30% of global container traffic traverses the Suez Canal each year. These figures represent over $1 trillion U.S. Dollars worth of cargo. Fifty ships traverse the Suez Canal on an average day. Over one billion tons of cargo were shipped through the Suez Canal in 2019, four times the tonnage transiting the Panama Canal during the same period[1].

Significance: Traffic continues to flow through the Suez Canal in spite of the imminent threat from Houthi corsairs and Somali pirates. A major successful attack however will turn off this trade route like a spigot and cause civilian merchants to seek a safer and less insurance-costly route around the Cape of Good Hope on the southern tip of Africa[2]. A container ship sailing from Guangzhou, China to Rotterdam in the Netherlands travels 10,000 nautical miles using the Suez Canal; this same voyage would be 13,500 nm around the Cape of Good Hope. Depending on the ship’s speed, this difference can mean 8 to 12 days of additional travel along the southern route[3]. American global power projection rests on maintaining free and open sea lanes. To ensure that trade is not throttled and future pirates in other vulnerable locations emboldened, these threats to shipping in the Red Sea must be addressed. Currently the U.S. Navy is building a multinational coalition to escort Suez Canal shipping under the name Operation Prosperity Guardian, but other options are available.

Option #1: The U.S. Navy executes Operation Prosperity Guardian with Allies and Partners.

Risk: Operation Prosperity Guardian participants are not as enthusiastic about this operation as the U.S. due to problematic associations with the Gaza War[4]. Notably, the only Middle Eastern country to participate in this current mission is Bahrain. The defensive scope of the operation also puts the participants in a reactive mode. While this reactive mode may address tactical level threats, it will not solve the long-term strategic problem by robbing the Houthis of their will to attack shipping. The operation is also limited in regional scope and does not address increasing piracy in the Straits of Malacca and Southwestern Pacific[5].

Gain: Option #1 is a safe option to execute, as it follows closely in the established multinational Horn of Africa escort mission that the United States has provided since 2009 via Operation Allied Protector and Operation Ocean Shield[6]. Low risk however, also entails low gain. In the two previously named operations, the pirates went to ground until the military escorts left for other missions, then resumed their deprecations[7].

Option #2: The U.S., Allies, and Partners encourage civilian shipping corporations to form collective security arrangements with each other, similar to the anti-piracy measures taken by trade leagues of the late medieval period such as the Hanseatic League[8]. Merchant ships would be empowered to take private security measures, arm their ships, and sail in convoy.

Risk: Option #2 will directly increase the cost of shipping which could be passed on to the consumer. Corporations could engage in cartel activity by refusing to engage in security agreements with smaller competitors to force them out of the market. The corporations also expose themselves to risk to public relations and legal suit if they kill pirates on the high seas, even in self-defense.

Gain: Option #2 reduces need for government-provided escorts. This option enables a quicker response to pirate threats since the merchant ships would be defending themselves. Option #2 is a proactive and durable counterpiracy outcome as even the most motivated pirate would hesitate before attacking a commercial ship armed with heavy machine guns.

Option #3: The U.S. and its Allies and Partners encourage China to build a bilateral escort for all merchant ships traveling from Europe to Asia. China should be motivated to do this as sixty percent of Chinese trade destined for Europe transits the Suez[9]. China is Europe’s largest trading partner, while exports to Europe make up 9% (top third) of all Chinese exports[10]. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is also eager to show its global projection ability.

Risk: Option #3 would require a carefully crafted intelligence sharing program to allow for coordination without over or under sharing information. Chinese hawks could interpret this offer as the U.S. attempting to gather intelligence about the PLAN’s capabilities and limitations. The U.S. Navy (USN) would have limited control over how China uses force in its counter-piracy rules of engagement. While Option #3 could garner tactical success, naval cooperation does not necessarily mean better strategic relations between the U.S. and China. Additionally, other Western Pacific countries with significant maritime interests such as Japan might not be excited by this option and require diplomatic engagement.

Gain: Option #3 would be the first major bilateral cooperation between the USN and the PLAN on a significant maritime policing operation. This option could set precedent for future cooperation between the USN and the PLAN in the Strait of Malacca or elsewhere. Bilateral arrangements are easier to make and keep up than complex multilateral agreements with over ten countries such as Operation Prosperity Guardian. China is increasingly seen as an ‘honest broker’ in the Middle East. This bilateral operation could encourage Iran to decrease aid to the Houthis for fear of disrupting Tehran’s relationship with Beijing[11].

Option #4: The French decisively dealt with the longstanding (over seven centuries) issue of the Barbary corsairs operating with impunity from the North African coast by taking the fight directly to the pirates. The Houthis and Somalis operate from ports and hidden coves along the coast. A unilateral or multilateral force could systematically eliminate these pirate bases of operation and destroy all unauthorized ships, docks, and havens on either side of the Red Sea all the way through the Bab el-Mandeb. Troops then would need to be stationed in a semi-permanent colonial status to ensure compliance from the locals.

Risk: Option #4 risks ruining the livelihoods of law-abiding fishermen and merchants along with the smugglers and pirates. Despair would inevitably drive more people into piracy and terrorism. This option does little to address the threat of anti-ship missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles launched from the Yemeni hinterland. This option could cause extreme public relations friction as the violence it causes is posted on social media worldwide. If undertaken by the United States, the shrinking U.S. military incurs risk to its force as it is already stretched thin by other global commitments.

Gain: Option #4 proves a drastic (and expensive) solution that would have significant long-lasting results. This option provides a dramatic display of political will by the country that fields the unilateral or multilateral force that destroys the pirate basing.

Other Comments: None.

Recommendation: None.

Endnotes:

[1] Panama Canal Annual Report, 2019 https://pancanal.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/2019-AnnualReport-Rev02.pdf

[2] “Suez disruption: a new inflation risk on the horizon.” Reuters. Accessed January 2, 2024. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/suez-disruption-new-inflation-risk-horizon-2023-12-19/.

[3] “The Importance of the Suez Canal to Global Trade,” New Zealand Foreign Affairs and Trade, April 18, 2021, https://www.mfat.govt.nz/assets/Trade/MFAT-Market-reports/The-Importance-of-the-Suez-Canal-to-Global-Trade-18-April-2021.pdf

[4] Phil Stewart, “US allies reluctant on Red Sea task force,” Reuters, accessed January 3, 2024, https://www.reuters.com/world/us-allies-reluctant-red-sea-task-force-2023-12-28/.

[5] Dean Crossley, “Malacca and Singapore Straits – Increase of Piracy,” West of England P&I, last modified March 2, 2023, https://www.westpandi.com/news-and-resources/news/march-2023/malacca-and-singapore-straits-increase-of-piracy-i/.

[6] NATO, “Operation Ocean Shield, https://web.archive.org/web/20150702050518/http://www.manw.nato.int/page_operation_ocean_shield.aspx

[7] “Live Piracy Map,” ICC Commercial Crime Services, https://www.icc-ccs.org/piracy-reporting-centre/live-piracy-map

[8] Ernst Danenell, “The Policy of the German Hanseatic League Respecting the Mercantile Marine.” The American Historical Review 15, no. 1 (1909): 47–53. https://doi.org/10.2307/1835424.

[9] “China’s Growing Maritime Presence in Egypt’s Ports and the Suez Canal.” Middle East Institute. November 3, 2023. https://www.mei.edu/publications/chinas-growing-maritime-presence-egypts-ports-and-suez-canal.

[10] “China-EU – International Trade in Goods Statistics – Statistics Explained.” European Commission. Accessed January 2, 2024. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=China-EU_-_international_trade_in_goods_statistics.

[11] Nectar Gan, “China Wants to Be a Peace Broker in the Middle East. How Has It Responded to the Israel-Gaza War?,” CNN, last modified October 11, 2023, https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/11/china/china-response-israel-hamas-war-intl-hnk/index.html.

divergentoptions.org · by Divergent Options · January 8, 2024

13. The Terrorist-Aid Agency

Excerpts:

On January 14, 2021, outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted, “UNRWA is not a refugee agency; it’s [sic] estimated <200,000 Arabs displaced in 1948 are still alive and most others are not refugees by any rational criteria.” He continued, “Taxpayers deserve basic truths: most Palestinians under UNRWA’s jurisdiction aren’t refugees, and UNRWA is a hurdle to peace. America supports peace and Palestinian human rights; UNRWA supports neither. It’s time to end UNRWA’s mandate.”

Three months later, in April 2021, the Biden administration renewed funding for the agency without addressing Pompeo’s concerns. A true debate about the agency has never been aired. The current war, not to mention the heated discussions about the “day after,” has made that debate crucial and urgent.

The three most important stakeholders here are the United States, Germany, and Israel. America is the top funder of UNRWA, and the White House is invested heavily in a “day after” that affords Gazans a political horizon. Germany is the second largest funder. Recent internal debates have surfaced about Berlin’s unwillingness to continue to fund the group. Finally, Israel must agree to any agency that operates inside Gaza once Hamas is removed. Israel’s Arab peace partners have a role to play, too, if they choose to take part.

When the guns fall silent, hopefully soon, Gaza will need a fresh start. It is now time to empower another aid organization that embraces the challenges of Gaza among its other files. This should be non-negotiable on the “day after.”

The Terrorist-Aid Agency

commentary.org · by Jonathan Schanzer

The Israeli Defense Forces announced Thursday that it discovered hundreds of weapons in a West Bank kindergarten run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). This was only the latest bit of bad news for the UN agency, which is has taken a lot of heat—deservedly—for serving as a willing partner to Hamas in Gaza since the terrorist group conquered the territory in 2007.

The latest UNRWA revelation, coupled with the organization’s horrible record, is important in the context of the “day after debates.” Gazans will need help after this war. Assistance must be provided. But UNRWA simply cannot provide that assistance. Another agency—any other agency—should do it.

UNRWA was established after Israel’s War of Independence. As a result of the war launched by the surrounding Arab states, some 800,000 Palestinians left their homes. In 1949, the UN established UNRWA to address the problem. In retrospect, it was bizarre that a separate agency was established solely to deal with Palestinian refugees, especially as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees is now responsible for literally every other refugee population on the planet.

Over the years, it became clear why UNRWA was not operating within the construct of UNHCR. Rather than re-settling the refugees, UNRWA deliberately created more than 5.9 million of them. UNRWA’s numbers are mathematically impossible, of course. The original refugees numbered, at most, 800,000 in 1948. The widening numbers problem derived from UNRWA’s recognition of the descendants of the original male refugees—most of whom have passed away.

As UNRWA began cynically to multiply its clients, the agency played an important role in the anti-Israeli narrative. Textbooks used by UNRWA promote hatred and incitement against Israel and Jews. Palestinians living on UNRWA’s payroll became living symbols of the Palestinian refusal to acknowledge the reality of Israel. The agency tacitly endorsed what the Palestinians call the “right of return” of all refugees—and their descendants—to their homes from 75 years ago in modern day Israel.

As the UN’s largest donor, the U.S. became UNRWA’s leading patron. Between 1950 and 2018, U.S. taxpayers contributed about $6 billion to UNRWA. Strangely, Washington never used its financial leverage to demand reform—not before Hamas took over Gaza, and not after.

It is by now undeniable that some Hamas members were on the UNRWA payroll, including one UNRWA teacher who reportedly held Israeli hostages. The Israelis have ascertained this during the waves of arrests in Gaza over the last three months. But you don’t need to interrogate anyone to know that. Hamas over the years has used UNRWA schools as human shields, building military tunnels under them, storing rockets within them, and firing rockets from their compounds. And all of this was before Congress began to hear about escalating waste, fraud, corruption, and poor management.

On January 14, 2021, outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted, “UNRWA is not a refugee agency; it’s [sic] estimated <200,000 Arabs displaced in 1948 are still alive and most others are not refugees by any rational criteria.” He continued, “Taxpayers deserve basic truths: most Palestinians under UNRWA’s jurisdiction aren’t refugees, and UNRWA is a hurdle to peace. America supports peace and Palestinian human rights; UNRWA supports neither. It’s time to end UNRWA’s mandate.”

Three months later, in April 2021, the Biden administration renewed funding for the agency without addressing Pompeo’s concerns. A true debate about the agency has never been aired. The current war, not to mention the heated discussions about the “day after,” has made that debate crucial and urgent.

The three most important stakeholders here are the United States, Germany, and Israel. America is the top funder of UNRWA, and the White House is invested heavily in a “day after” that affords Gazans a political horizon. Germany is the second largest funder. Recent internal debates have surfaced about Berlin’s unwillingness to continue to fund the group. Finally, Israel must agree to any agency that operates inside Gaza once Hamas is removed. Israel’s Arab peace partners have a role to play, too, if they choose to take part.

When the guns fall silent, hopefully soon, Gaza will need a fresh start. It is now time to empower another aid organization that embraces the challenges of Gaza among its other files. This should be non-negotiable on the “day after.”

Jonathan Schanzer is senior vice president for research at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. Follow him on X @JSchanzer.

commentary.org · by Jonathan Schanzer

14. Russia Acquires North Korean Missiles, Eyes Iranian Missiles

The irony is some of these missiles are of original Russian design, modified by north Korea and sold to Iran and others (who also modifies them usually with north Korean help). And then they are sold back to Russia. Go figure.

Russia Acquires North Korean Missiles, Eyes Iranian Missiles

fdd.org · by Krystal Bermudez · January 5, 2024

Latest Developments

Russia has received several dozen short-range ballistic missiles from North Korea and may soon get close-range ballistic missiles from Iran, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on January 4. Russia used some of these missiles against Ukraine in a pair of missile barrages over the last week, Kirby added. Missile remains recovered after those strikes indicate Russia received the KN-23 short-range ballistic missile.

Meanwhile, “Russian negotiations to acquire close-range ballistic missiles from Iran are actively advancing,” Kirby warned. Although that deal has not yet been completed, Moscow could receive the missiles as early as this spring, U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal. The officials revealed that a Russian delegation visited an Iranian training ground in mid-December to observe Iranian ballistic missiles, including the Ababil, which Tehran displayed for the first time at an August 2023 defense expo in Moscow. That trip followed a September 2023 visit to Iran by Russia’s defense minister, who was shown the close-range Iranian Ababil and short-range Iranian Fateh-110 missiles, among other weapons.

Expert Analysis

“While Russia has significantly increased its production of missiles since the war began, Moscow’s preferred expenditure rate still outstrips production, and Ukraine is shooting down a high percentage of Russian missiles. Missiles from North Korea and potentially Iran, alongside Iranian Shahed one-way attack drones, can supplement Moscow’s stocks and support its ongoing strike campaign. These missiles, especially if supplied in greater numbers, can also exacerbate pressure on Ukraine’s interceptor stocks and stretch Ukraine’s limited number of air defense systems that can reliably intercept ballistic missiles.” — John Hardie, Deputy Director of FDD’s Russia Program

“Iran’s improving missile capabilities, to include more precise close- and short-range ballistic missiles, are emboldening the regime to take more risks, be they diplomatic or military. The widening radius of Iranian projectile proliferation is an urgent national security challenge for both the United States and Europe. No longer are Iranian drones and missiles going to be a Middle Eastern problem. A firmer and more united trans-Atlantic response against expanded Iranian drone proliferation coupled with a defense of the lapsing UN missile embargo could have deterred this forthcoming deal.” — Behnam Ben Taleblu, FDD Senior Fellow

Rogue Nations Help Russia Bombard Ukraine

In recent days, Russia has launched large-scale missile and drone barrages that apparently targeted defense-industrial facilities and critical infrastructure in Ukraine. Ukrainian and Western officials had previously warned that Moscow was stockpiling missiles to reprise last winter’s strike campaign against Ukraine’s power grid and other critical infrastructure. According to Kyiv, Russia has already attacked Ukraine with thousands of Shahed drones that were shipped from Iran or assembled in Russia under a license deal with Tehran.

Lapsed Missile Embargo

Home to the largest ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East, Iran was subject to an eight-year prohibition on ballistic missile testing and transfers per UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which codified the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. The United States and the deal’s European signatories allowed the resolution’s missile injunctions to lapse in October. Despite reports last year that Iran was planning to furnish Russia with ballistic missiles, Tehran has so far refrained from delivering any ballistic missiles to Moscow. After the lapse of the embargo, the Russian Federation issued a statement claiming it was no longer bound by any UN restrictions on Iranian missiles.

Related Analysis

“Iran Aids Russia’s Imperialist War Against Ukraine,” by John Hardie

“Iran and Russia Deepen Ties as Russian Defense Minister Visits Tehran,” FDD Flash Brief

“Arsenal: Assessing the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Ballistic Missile Program,” by Behnam Ben Taleblu

“Iran is Now at War with Ukraine,” by John Hardie and Behnam Ben Taleblu

fdd.org · by Krystal Bermudez · January 5, 2024

15. Israel Plans for Next Phase of Gaza War, Defense Minister Says

An axis to counter alliances.

Israel Plans for Next Phase of Gaza War, Defense Minister Says

Yoav Gallant says, ‘We are fighting an axis, not a single enemy’

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israels-yoav-gallant-we-are-fighting-an-axis-not-a-single-enemy-2408ef96?mod=middle-east_news_article_pos1

By Gordon Fairclough

Jan. 7, 2024 10:00 pm ET

Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant offers a stark assessment of the dangers he says his country is facing, signaling a potentially lengthy conflict in Gaza. PHOTO: ARIEL HERMONI/ISRAEL MOD/ZUMA PRESS

TEL AVIV—Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said the scale and severity of the Oct. 7 assault on Israel by Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas deeply shook Israelis’ sense of security and profoundly altered the way they view the world around them.

“October 7 was the bloodiest day for Jewish people since 1945,” Gallant, a general-turned-politician, told The Wall Street Journal. “The world needs to understand. This is different.”

More than 1,200 people were killed after hundreds of Hamas fighters poured across the border from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel in a raid that included terrorist attacks on a music festival and small agricultural communities. More than 200 others were kidnapped. Scores are still being held hostage.

The gravity of the threat, Gallant said, underlies the ferocity of Israel’s response and its determination not only to destroy Iran-backed Hamas, but also to act with enough force to deter other potential adversaries allied with Tehran, including Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon.

In wide-ranging comments, Gallant staunchly defended Israel’s conduct of the war, which is entering its fourth month, and offered a stark assessment of the dangers he said his country is facing, signaling a potentially lengthy conflict in Gaza and an enduring shift in Israel’s defense posture.

“My basic view: We are fighting an axis, not a single enemy,” Gallant said. “Iran is building up military power around Israel in order to use it.”

Ahead of a visit to Israel by Secretary of State Antony Blinken of the U.S., which has urged Israel to do more to avoid civilian casualties, Gallant indicated Israeli forces would be shifting from what he called the “intense maneuvering phase of the war” toward “different types of special operations.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Jordan on Sunday, a stop in a wider Middle East trip aimed at stepping up diplomatic efforts to contain the war in the Gaza Strip. PHOTO: EVELYN HOCKSTEIN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

But, he cautioned, the next chapter in the conflict “will last for a longer time” and he stressed that Israel wouldn’t abandon its goals of destroying Hamas, designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and others, as a fighting force, ending its control of Gaza and freeing the remaining hostages.

Gallant—who was briefly fired and then reinstated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after he warned that upheaval over a controversial judicial-overhaul plan pushed by the government posed risks to national security—has tried to stake out a middle ground on the war and its aftermath.

The defense minister is one of three members of Israel’s war cabinet, along with Netanyahu and National Unity party head Benny Gantz.

After calls last week by far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition for a return of Jewish settlers to Gaza and Israeli occupation of the strip, Gallant’s office outlined a postwar vision of Palestinian self-governance coupled with freedom for the Israeli military to act against security threats.

As Gallant sees it, a multinational task force led by the U.S., with European and Middle Eastern partners, should oversee the “rehabilitation” of Gaza.

Gazan authorities said more than 22,000 people have been killed in the war. The number doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians. Swaths of the enclave have been destroyed in the fighting, which has also precipitated a humanitarian crisis, with severe shortages of food and medicine.

All of that has drawn criticism from aid organizations and foreign capitals, which have called on Israel to do more to protect civilians and ensure access to aid and healthcare.

“We’re close to the next phase in the north, including Gaza City,” where Israeli troops have largely established control, at least above ground, Gallant said. Israeli officers said they are still working to destroy a large network of underground tunnels used by Hamas fighters.

As the fight—now centered on Khan Younis—moves south, Israel’s military will be operating on an extremely crowded battlefield. Most of the strip’s 2.2 million people are now jammed into the southern end of the enclave, raising the risk of higher civilian losses in fighting there.

Swaths of the Gaza Strip have been destroyed in the fighting, which has also precipitated a humanitarian crisis, with severe shortages of food and medicine. PHOTO: HAITHAM IMAD/SHUTTERSTOCK

“We need to take into consideration the huge number of civilians,” Gallant said, adding that military tactics would need to adjust. “It will take some time,” Gallant said. “But we aren’t going to give up.”

Israeli officials said the shift to lower-intensity operations would be gradual and would happen at different times in different parts of Gaza.

Israeli officers said the most delicate phase of fighting would likely be around Rafah, a Gaza city on the enclave’s border with Israel that is now packed with people displaced by fighting elsewhere. They said Hamas militants also were sheltering there and were being resupplied via tunnels from Egypt.

Israel is in talks with Egypt over control of a critical corridor along the border that Israel said has been used by Hamas to smuggle weapons and people. Israel said its destruction is critical to demilitarizing Gaza.

Israeli officials also said they consider improving flows of humanitarian assistance to be central to the war effort. The worse the situation becomes for civilians, the more public pressure Israel’s allies put on it to end the fighting.

“We see humanitarian aid as a strategic necessity,” said one Israeli official. “It will let us go after terrorists and separate them from civilians.”

Gallant said his other immediate concern is Israel’s northern border, where large numbers of Israeli soldiers have been deployed in case of conflict with Hezbollah. Tens of thousands of Israeli civilians have evacuated from their homes in the north of the country.

The U.S. and others have been engaged in shuttle diplomacy aimed at striking a deal between Israel and Hezbollah. Israel wants all Hezbollah forces to be pulled back from border areas.

Buildings were destroyed by strikes in southern Lebanon close to Israel’s northern border last week. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Friday there would be a military response to a suspected Israeli strike that killed Hamas leader Salah al-Arouri in Beirut last week.

“The priority isn’t to get into a war” with Hezbollah, Gallant said. But, he said, “Eighty-thousand people need to be able to go back to their homes safely.” If no agreement is negotiated to make that possible, he said, Israel wouldn’t shrink from military action.

“We are willing to sacrifice,” he said. “They see what is happening in Gaza. They know we can copy-paste to Beirut,” the Lebanese capital.

Gallant said Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault represented a major failure of deterrence. He said intelligence indicates that Hamas leaders didn’t expect Israel would mount a large-scale ground operation in response.

“They didn’t take it seriously, even when we first went in,” Gallant said. He said Israel’s ultimate aim is to persuade its enemies that any future attack would provoke ruinous consequences.

“Should Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran be allowed to decide how we live our lives here in Israel?” Gallant asked. “This is something we don’t accept.”

Anat Peled and Carrie Keller-Lynn contributed to this article.

Write to Gordon Fairclough at Gordon.Fairclough@wsj.com

16. Chinese Warships Eavesdrop on Joint U.S., Philippine Naval Drills in South China Sea

Of course they do. It would be news if they were not.

Chinese Warships Eavesdrop on Joint U.S., Philippine Naval Drills in South China Sea - USNI News

news.usni.org · by Dzirhan Mahadzir · January 5, 2024

USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) sets anchors in Manila, Philippines on Jan. 5, 2023. US Navy Photo

The Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group and Philippine Navy concluded joint drills in the South China Sea on Thursday while being under observation by a People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) frigate, which claimed, despite being in the despite being within the Philippine exclusive economic zone (EEZ), that it was conducting lawful activities in its own “territorial sea.”

Meanwhile, North Korea has resumed artillery firing drills in a previously demilitarized maritime buffer zone, prompting Seoul to respond with firing drills by Republic of Korea Marine Corps units and evacuating two islands near the North Korean firing zone.

The drills, known as Maritime Cooperative Activity (MCA), began on Wednesday and saw the CSG, consisting of carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) with embarked Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 2, cruiser USS Princeton (CG-59) and destroyers USS Kidd (DDG-100) and USS Sterett (DDG-104), carrying out joint activities and sailing with Philippine Navy offshore patrol vessels BRP Gregorio del Pilar (PS-15, ex-USCGC Hamilton WHEC-715) and BRP Ramon Alcaraz (PS-16, ex-USCGC Dallas WHEC-716) and landing platform dock BRP Davao del Sur (LD-602). A Philippine Navy AW109 helicopter also conducted a deck landing on Carl Vinson.

PLAN ships were in the vicinity observing the drills with a frigate already in the designated exercise area when the Philippine ships arrived there near dawn on Wednesday, according to the Philippines Daily Inquirer, which also reported that a PLAN destroyer also showed up following radio calls between Gregorio del Pilar and the PLAN frigate. During the calls, the Philippine Navy ship stated that the PLAN ship was sailing within the Philippine EEZ and asked what its intention were, and received the response, “Philippine warship 15, this is Chinese Navy warship 570 conducting lawful activities in our territorial seas, over,” according to the Inquirer report. The PLAN frigate reportedly did not respond to a subsequent radio call and, at 8 a.m., a PLAN destroyer with hull number 174 appeared in the exercise area as well. China claims much of the South China Sea as its territorial waters.

The hull numbers of the two PLAN ships corresponded to Luyang III-class destroyer CNS Hefei (174) and Jiangkai II class frigate CNS Huangshan (570). Both ships are part of the PLAN’s South Sea Fleet. In a social media post on Thursday, the Armed Forces of the Philippines released photos and videos of the MCA, which included two videos of Huangshan shadowing Philippine Navy ships on Wednesday.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Southern Theater Command, under which the South Sea Fleet falls, issued a release on Wednesday night stating that naval and air forces were organized to conduct routine patrols in the South China Sea on Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday, the command issued a statement saying it organized a routine joint naval and air exercise in the South China Sea but provided no further details.

On Thursday, China Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Wang Wenbin criticized the U.S. –Philippine drill during his daily press conference. “We would like to stress that the US and the Philippines’ muscle-flexing, provocative military activities in the South China Sea are not conducive to managing the situation on the sea and handling maritime disputes. We urge relevant countries to stop the irresponsible moves, and respect regional countries’ effort to uphold peace and stability in the South China Sea,” said Wang.

The Carl Vinson CSG is now docked in Manila on a scheduled port visit, having arrived there on Friday, according to a Navy release.

Meanwhile, North Korea conducted a firing drill on Friday morning, firing close to 200 shells into the waters off its west coast. South Korea claimed the shells landed in the northern side of the sea border in the Yellow Sea but within a maritime buffer zone agreed to by the two Korea’s under the 2018 Comprehensive Military Agreement (CMA). That agreement, however, was scrapped by North Korea in November last year following Seoul’s decision to suspend a part of the agreement after North Korea’s Nov. 21 satellite launch.

The firing prompted South Korea to issue an emergency evacuation order for civilians on the South Korean western border islands of Yeonpyeong and Baengnyeong. At 3 p.m. that day, ROK Marine Corps units stationed on both islands carried out live firing into the nearby waters with their tanks and self-propelled artillery in response.

In an English-language statement carried by state media Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the North Korean military claimed 13 companies and a platoon force of the southwestern coastal defense under the 4th Corps of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) staged a naval live-shell firing drill from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m on Friday. It was carried out with 47 artillery pieces firing a total of 192 shells. “The claim of the military gangsters of the Republic of Korea that the KPA fired naval artillery shells into the waters north of Paekryong Island and Yonphyong Island, a so-called buffer zone in the West Sea of Korea, is a far-fetched assertion to mislead the public opinion, and their evacuation and firing in return are also a trite method to throw the responsibility for the escalating tension on the KPA’s drill,” said the statement.

The South Korean military on Friday had issued a release stating that since Dec. 29 the ROK Army and U.S. Army conducted combined firing drills in Pocheon-si, Gyeonggi-do Province, which lies close to the border. The KPA warned that if its enemies commit an act that may be regarded as a provocation under the pretext of counteraction, the KPA will respond with tough counteraction on an unprecedented level.

news.usni.org · by Dzirhan Mahadzir · January 5, 2024

17. Biden retains confidence in Austin despite hospitalization secrecy

Biden retains confidence in Austin despite hospitalization secrecy

By Missy Ryan, Dan Lamothe and Matt Viser

January 7, 2024 at 7:29 p.m. EST

The Washington Post · by Missy Ryan · January 8, 2024

President Biden retains confidence in Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, officials said Sunday, despite widespread surprise and consternation following the Pentagon chief’s failure to disclose a prolonged hospitalization to the White House or the public last week.

Officials have scrambled to piece together information about the episode that landed Austin, a former Army general, in intensive care at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington on Jan. 1. The hospitalization was not made public until after 5 p.m. on Jan. 5, when a Pentagon spokesman announced that Austin, 70, had required care for a complication resulting from an elective medical procedure. Neither Austin nor the Pentagon has provided additional detail.

The days-long silence, a departure from the disclosure that routinely occurs regarding the whereabouts and health conditions of the president and top Cabinet members, elicited bewilderment and frustration across the Biden administration and among leading members of Congress. Even top officials at the White House, including national security adviser Jake Sullivan, were not informed of Austin’s hospitalization until late afternoon Jan. 4.

Austin, who Pentagon officials said is recovering well, acknowledged the misstep in a statement released Saturday evening, saying he recognized that he “could have done a better job” keeping the public informed. “I commit to doing better,” he said.

While it remained unclear Sunday when Austin would be released from Walter Reed, Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder said Austin had been monitoring the U.S. military’s global activities and had received updates from his aides since resuming his duties on Friday evening.

A senior official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the situation, noted what he described as “an exceptionally close relationship” between Austin and Biden, whose son Beau served as military lawyer under Austin when he was a top commander in Iraq.

“There’s a lot of trust there on both sides, and this episode has not diminished that trust one bit,” this person said. “The president is looking forward to the secretary’s continued service.”

A White House official said Biden had “full confidence” in Austin and was looking forward to him being back at the Pentagon.

But numerous questions remained about the incident a week into Austin’s hospitalization. White House officials declined to say what Biden or his top aides, even now, knew about Austin’s current condition or the reason he was hospitalized.

The incident raised troubling questions about management of weighty military decisions at a moment when the United States is grappling with heightened tensions with Iranian-backed proxies in the Middle East. On Jan. 4, with Austin in the hospital, the U.S. military conducted a strike on a militant target in Baghdad. U.S. forces have also tangled in recent days with Houthi militants in the Red Sea.

It occurred on a week when many officials were just returning from holiday leave, potentially adding to the confusion surrounding Austin’s hospitalization. Officials said that Austin, who typically attends an Oval Office security brief once a week when his and the president’s travel schedules allow, had participated on a national security call Jan. 1, the same day he was admitted to Walter Reed.

Biden himself, who had been on vacation in St. Croix, returned to the White House late the following night. Sullivan had joined him for the trip. Biden’s national security adviser informed him on Jan. 4, after being notified by the Pentagon, that Austin had been hospitalized, officials said.

Ryder said that the Pentagon had not been able to inform the White House of Austin’s hospitalization earlier because his chief of staff Kelly Magsamen, who ultimately made the notification, had been ill. Asked why someone else did not make the notification, Ryder said he had no information to provide.

While multiple officials expressed frustration that Austin had not been more forthcoming about his absence — one said the handling of the incident showed “unbelievably bad judgment” on Austin’s part — they attributed it chiefly to Austin’s intensely private nature and perhaps a misunderstanding of the need for disclosure his position demands.

“You want a defense chief who’s discreet, who’s not going to jam the president,” another senior official said. “But in rare cases like this one, where more transparency was warranted, it served him poorly.”

If Biden himself was frustrated or concerned, he took little noticeable action as a result. On the evening of Jan. 6, after news of Austin’s condition was made public and consternation spread around the capital, Biden spoke by phone with Austin in what officials described as a warm conversation and the president wished him well in his recovery.

Biden has also long felt a sense of loyalty to Austin. After Austin’s return from Iraq, where he attended Catholic Mass with Beau Biden, he and the younger Biden stayed in touch.

While policy differences have put Biden’s Cabinet members on different sides of major issues — over the Afghanistan withdrawal or around the influx of people entering the country illegally, for example — Biden’s administration has had few personnel scandals.

Almost every seat in his Cabinet is filled by the same person he picked more than three years ago, with loyalty going both ways. The decisions by Austin, though, have placed him under further scrutiny.

The Pentagon’s handling of the episode drew immediate criticism from Republicans including Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who said it illustrated the administration’s contempt for Congress.

By Sunday criticism had emerged from at least one prominent Democrat in the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), who expressed his concerns in a joint statement with committee chair Rep. Mike D. Rogers (R-Ala.).

“Several questions remain unanswered including what the medical procedure and resulting complications were, what the Secretary’s current health status is, how and when the delegation of the Secretary’s responsibilities were made, and the reason for the delay in notification to the President and Congress,” the lawmakers said. They asked for more information.

The extent of the secrecy about Austin’s whereabouts was underscored by the fact that Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, who would typically assume the duties of the Pentagon chief were he to become incapacitated or otherwise unavailable, did not find out about the hospitalization until Jan. 4.

That was despite the fact that Austin granted Hicks, who was vacationing in Puerto Rico, “operational responsibilities that require constant secure communications capabilities” on Jan. 2., officials said. That occurs occasionally, Ryder said, and is “not tied chiefly to health-related matters.”

Hicks, still in the Caribbean, “immediately engaged staff on the drafting of a public statement and congressional outreach” after she was notified the afternoon of Jan. 4, a senior defense official said. She also made plans to return to Washington the next day.

Later on Jan. 4, Hicks learned that Austin “was preparing to resume full communications capability and the associated operational responsibilities on Friday,” the official said. Hicks decided it was better to remain in place, in Puerto Rico, to maintain agile communications in the meantime.

Hicks made some “routine operational and management decisions” for the Defense Department while Austin was hospitalized and was fully authorized to support Biden on military matters, “should the need have arisen,” the senior defense official said. But Hicks was still left unaware of Austin’s predicament for several days.

Hicks returned from her vacation on Jan. 6, another defense official said.

Peter Feaver, an expert on civil-military affairs at Duke University, called the situation a “gift” to Republicans after years of Democratic scrutiny of chaos during the Trump administration. The decision to withhold the information for so long, and such senior levels, is “baffling,” he said.

“The second thing is that the president has a legitimate right to know where his Cabinet officers [are] and how to reach them at all times,” he said.

Austin will likely have to answer questions from lawmakers about the episode, Feaver predicted.

John Hudson in Doha, Qatar, and Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report.

The Washington Post · by Missy Ryan · January 8, 2024

18. Philippines turns to hackers for help as US warns of China cyber threat

Philippines turns to hackers for help as US warns of China cyber threat

Stars and Stripes · by Cliff Venzon and Ditas Lopez · January 8, 2024

The Philippines, embroiled in tensions with China over the South China Sea, may face an increased threat of cyber attacks at the hands of their adversary. (Dreamstime/TNS)

(Tribune News Service) — While recent tensions in the South China Sea have highlighted the Philippines’ maritime vulnerabilities, the more insidious risk of state-sponsored cyberattacks – and a lack of resources to handle them – may be the country’s bigger challenge.

In a November report, a Chinese group known as Stately Taurus was blamed for an attack that had compromised a Philippine government agency for five days earlier in 2023, coinciding with clashes between the two countries’ ships in the South China Sea. Stately Taurus’s operations “align with geopolitical topics of interest to the Chinese government,” according to Palo Alto Networks, the U.S. cybersecurity firm that produced the report.

Philippine officials say it is difficult to pin any cyberattack on one specific country. Still, online security breaches in the Southeast Asian nation are widespread. Over 60,000 user accounts were compromised in the third quarter of last year, according to cybersecurity company Surfshark, putting the Philippines among the world’s 30 most-attacked countries. In September, state insurer Philippine Health Insurance Corp. suffered a huge data leak.

Hackers defaced the website of the country’s House of Representatives just weeks later.

“Cyberattacks are a bigger threat than the firing of water cannons,” said Sherwin Ona, a cyberdefense consultant to the National Security Council and an associate professor at De La Salle University in Manila.

The government’s cyber response team has 35 members. The group is so understaffed that it is sometimes forced to work with anonymous “black hat” hackers, who may have previously attacked government websites but are willing to offer tips on looming threats, said Jeffrey Ian Dy, undersecretary at the Department of Information and Communications Technology.

“Do we even have the capability, with just 30 people looking at each and every weakness? We do not,” Dy said, adding that the team would ideally number about 200. “We do our best to defend the republic.”

Shortage of funds is the primary obstacle, he said. The Philippines lacks a competitive pay scale to recruit and retain cyber talent within government agencies, according to research backed by the United States Agency for International Development.

Government agencies are not the only ones taking increasing notice of the threat. Romeo Brawner Jr., the Philippine armed forces’ chief of staff, announced plans in October to recruit more “cyber warriors” to combat what he described as near-daily threats, including from unidentified foreign forces.

“Worldwide, cyber is really becoming a very important domain in warfare,” Brawner said at the time. “This new breed of warriors don’t necessarily have to be muscled; what we need are individuals who are intelligent and very skillful in [the] cyber domain.”

In recent months, governments around the world have warned of China’s potential digital threat.

In its latest Annual Threat Assessment, the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that “China probably currently represents the broadest, most active, and persistent cyber espionage threat to U.S. Government and private-sector networks.” In May, the U.K.’s spy agency warned of fresh threats from China’s nation-state hackers.

China’s Foreign Ministry said it opposed “baseless rumors and slanders” and that the country’s stance on cybersecurity was consistent and clear, in an emailed response to Bloomberg News’s request for comment. China usually says it is a victim of hacking when it is accused of carrying out cyberattacks. It also calls the U.S. the world’s top hacker.

Ona said that the experience of Taiwan, which has been subject to massive cyberattacks from China, is particularly instructive for the Philippines. “China is using Russia’s playbook and uses it against its adversaries,” he said.

With assistance from Manolo Serapio Jr., Margi Murphy, Jamie Tarabay, Philip Glamann and Zheping Huang.

Visit bloomberg.com.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Stars and Stripes · by Cliff Venzon and Ditas Lopez · January 8, 2024

19. Remaking Mistakes in Gaza

Excerpts;

To prevent both a humanitarian crisis and even more long-term enmity, reconstruction efforts should begin immediately after major combat operations end. Some reports estimate that 70 percent of Gaza’s buildings are damaged or destroyed, a figure that exceeded any U.S. operation in Iraq, even the fierce fighting in Fallujah and Ramadi. To meet short-term needs, generally successful policies such as solatia payments for those who suffered property damage or accidental injury or death as well as the Commander’s Emergency Response Program to meet urgent humanitarian needs could be adopted by Israeli forces. In addition, as high-intensity combat operations wind down, Israel should be more selective with targeting and its use of ordinance. The United States learned insurgent math the hard way, that every innocent you kill creates 10 new insurgents.

I know firsthand that taking advice about planning for what comes next won’t be easy. In the waves of anger and passion after the 9/11 attacks, many Americans were angry when France, one of their oldest democratic allies, begged Washington not invade Iraq, or at least to make proper plans for it. Rather than heed the advice, Americans cancelled vacations to the City of Light and three cafeterias in the U.S. House of Representatives renamed French fries as “freedom fries.” Decades later, this ally’s advice appears far more reasonable than American actions. Please take it from citizens and soldiers of a country that didn’t plan for post-conflict in Iraq, and now must live with the repercussions: you don’t want to make the same mistakes.

Remaking Mistakes in Gaza - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Frank Sobchak · January 8, 2024

I led a special forces company outside Mosul in 2005 training Iraqi soldiers and hunting insurgents, an exercise in futility that left me pondering what brought me there. A decade later, I helped write the U.S. Army’s history of the war, a cathartic experience that provided me with many of the answers I sought. Our research spanned five years, and we declassified more than 30,000 pages of documents and conducted more than 300 interviews with individuals ranging from privates to presidents to understand what went wrong. Worried about the dirty laundry that we aired, the Army initially tried to block its publication, and only relented when the Wall Street Journal prepared an expose about its intransigence. Among the most important factors that we concluded caused the American defeat was the failure to plan for what would happen after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Now nearly another decade removed, I feel sadness and frustration as it appears that Israel, one of America’s closest allies in the Middle East, is making that same central mistake. Fearing that history is about to rhyme, if not repeat, I feel compelled to offer painful advice that I wish the United States had known before the invasion of Iraq. While I have no doubt that Israel will defeat Hamas, if it does not quickly develop a plan for the post-war environment, it could win the war but lose the peace just like the United States did in Iraq. Sharing such advice with a friend is never easy. Genuine differences in objectives, frustration against others who don’t completely understand the situation, and even national pride often get in the way of being able to accept counsel, whether it be good or bad. The nightmarish depravity of the Oct. 7 massacre makes taking outside advice about the war against Hamas even harder. Domestic politics, particularly Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s precarious governing coalition and personal legal troubles, further complicates the situation and makes strategic planning difficult. But the topic of how wars end is of utmost importance. And America certainly knows what not to do.

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A Costly Lesson

The war in Iraq provides a case study for what happens when a powerful nation carries out regime change without properly planning and preparing for what happens after combat operations end. American planners chose not to develop a concrete post-war plan for a variety of reasons. One line of thought held that extensive planning was unnecessary because Iraq could be liberated rather than occupied, with Iraqis, aided by expatriates, rising up against Saddam. Others believed that it would be too difficult to guess what would be needed during reconstruction, so it would be more effective to wait until Iraqi forces were defeated to make plans. Another perspective held that the Iraqi government and infrastructure would still be largely functioning, so a sizeable effort would be unnecessary. With those assumptions, U.S. Central Command leaders extensively focused their efforts on taking Baghdad and showed little interest about what would come next. When the State Department attempted to compensate for the lack of attention on post-conflict planning by forming the Future of Iraq Project, the George W. Bush administration largely ignored its findings and decided to give the lead for reconstruction to the Department of Defense.

In the chaos that ensued, the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs, which the Defense Department slated to take charge, began standing up barely weeks before it would bear responsibility for 25 million Iraqis. Before it had even become fully functional, the Bush administration abolished that organization and replaced it with yet another agency, the Coalition Provisional Authority. With little preparation for the mission and minimal coordination, Ambassador Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, issued two of the most fateful orders of the war: disbanding the Iraqi military and commanding the de-baathification of the Iraqi state. Nearly overnight, those orders put hundreds of thousands of Iraqis out of work and caused key government functions to vanish.

The consequences of American failures to create a viable post-conflict plan were an extended insurgency, a vicious civil war, and an expansion of Iranian power — one that now threatens Israel more than ever before. The Islamic State, which grew from the embers of the feeble militant group Tawhid wal-Jihad, killed tens of thousands across Iraq and Syria, and still threatens the region. Pro-Iranian militias, part of the Hashd al-Shaabi, have nearly a numeric parity with Iraqi government forces. To achieve these disastrous results, 4,492 American servicemembers gave their lives, and the United States spent more than $2.1 trillion, not counting future costs from debts taken out to cover war expenses or veterans’ health benefits. The estimate of Iraqi deaths varies widely, in part due to the brutality of the civil war and the mayhem of the war with the Islamic State, but reliable estimates range from 186,000 to 3.4 million. Failure has a massive price tag in bodies and dollars.

Despite such clear evidence of the danger of waging war by a strategy of “ready, fire, aim,” some Israelis have proposed simply leaving Gaza after Hamas has been destroyed. If American experiences over the last 30 years are instructional, such a strategy is only likely to allow the group to metastasize into something even worse. As difficult as it is to conceive, someone will have to manage, govern, and reconstruct Gaza, most likely while battling some degree of an insurgency. Israel and its allies should be talking about who will do that and how they will be funded. And they should be talking about it right now.

Planning Is Paramount

Like American officials before the Iraq war, Israeli leaders have been coy about Gaza’s future. They have told the world more about what they won’t do, such as reinstate the Palestinian Authority, than what they plan to do. That said, the most common refrain has been that Israel will take control over Gaza’s overall security after the war, which begs the question of who will assert political control and almost guarantees a long insurgency. A few Israeli leaders have proposed reoccupying or annexing parts of the territory to create a buffer or prevent it from becoming a terrorist haven again — ignoring that this was unsuccessful in Gaza and Lebanon previously. One extremist proposed that Gaza be flattened, “from the sea to the border fence, completely empty, so that everyone remembers what was once there.” While that option is clearly neither legal nor practical, such strawman proposals gain media attention because Israel has offered no other concrete strategy for what comes after the shooting stops. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has demanded, correctly, that Gaza be deradicalized like Germany and Japan after World War II, without recognizing that America began planning for the postwar environment two years before Germany’s surrender. In some ways, the haphazard American preparations for postwar Iraq seem detailed compared to Israeli conversations about Gaza after the fighting ends.

The United States, for its part, has publicly suggested that the Palestinian Authority should reaffirm control. That proposal was so politically sensitive that one negotiator observed, “No one, not even the United States, can talk to them [Israel] about this.” Other proposals have another country or international force serving as peacekeepers or as an interim ward before restoring some semblance of Palestinian governance. Such an option is nothing more than a fantasy. Destroying Gaza and then leaving is not a viable option, at least if Israel doesn’t want to face intense international pressure as well as likely repeat attacks similar to Oct. 7.

As in nearly all instances of particularly high-stakes decision-making, the best choice of what to do will almost certainly be unsavory, politically difficult, and, quite honestly, bad. All these choices will require tremendous amounts of political will, financial support, and the assistance of allies and “frenemies.” Many of the options, such as a return of the Palestinian Authority, would require extensive negotiations, and the longer there is an interregnum between the fall of Hamas and another non-Israeli entity taking control of Gaza, the more likely that the strip sprouts toxic ideologies in the future. Obtaining critical money for reconstruction from Arab and European states will likely require Israel to have a legitimate Palestinian partner and to commit to a two-state solution. And for all these options, the conduct of the war, including the number of civilian casualties and level of destruction, will have an impact on their feasibility. That is why having these discussions now is of paramount importance. If no plans are developed soon, the default effects will likely be similar to those of the Coalition Provisional Authority’s de-baathification decision, which dissolved the government and left anarchy in its wake.

To be sure, there are contrasts between America’s war in Iraq and Israel’s in Gaza. The length and bitterness of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict provide decades of traumatic memories to both sides that limit policymakers’ freedom of maneuver. Geography is important too. Iraq is half a world away from America and for all intents and purposes after the war the United States did not have to deal with the mess it made. Israel doesn’t have that luxury, giving it even more impetus not to bungle what happens when the guns fall silent. Iraq was a war of choice for the United States, but it squandered precious planning time. Israel was surprised on Oct. 7, putting it under even more pressure to developing viable plans quickly. Despite those different contexts, a guiding central principle remains. If no plan is created soon to fill the void of governance in Gaza after high-intensity combat ends, forces of chaos will take over, just like they did in Iraq. And time is running out.

What comes next will be especially challenging, and Israel should steel itself for a long, hard slog. Politicians will claim that reconstruction can be done quickly and inexpensively, but America lost far more soldiers in the years after major combat operations ended in Iraq than in the short time it took to achieve regime change. Occupying Gaza unilaterally, which is what it seems that Israel will have to do at least for some time since it has closed off other viable alternatives, will require more than 80,000 soldiers if it is done correctly, based on a 2010 planning estimate from the Institute for Defense Analyses.

Israel should aim to minimize the phase where it goes it alone in Gaza because finding legitimate local partners and foreign allies is critical. It is also easier said than done and in Iraq the United States struggled with both challenges extensively. Many allies deployed forces for only a short span of the conflict, and some, due to national caveats that prohibited them from certain operations such as leaving secure areas, proved to be more of a burden than an advantage. In terms of creating acceptable domestic security forces and a viable political system, America failed at both, but in doing so learned many lessons. Like deradicalization, building capable military and police forces are exceptionally challenging multi-generational tasks, and Israel does not have units specifically organized and trained to conduct security force assistance, which makes the task more difficult. To have the best chance of success, a cadre of professional advisors is necessary, ideally inside the Israel Defense Forces, which would require the formation of new units during wartime, itself a complex task.

Rebuilding Gazan politics will be equally long and complicated. Although there is an incentive to select expatriates for leadership roles to bring in new blood, that worked exceptionally poorly in Iraq and should not be repeated in Gaza. Individuals who have not lived in Gaza or the West Bank will have neither the legitimacy nor the understanding of local politics to govern, especially in the myriad of crises that Gaza is likely to experience. While this means that members of the Palestinian Authority will likely have to take up most of the civil posts, there might have to be some posts filled with former employees of the Hamas government. In Iraq, the Coalition Provisional Authority decided to restrict former Baath party members from government positions based on the assumption that de-Baathification should create a “clean state” like de-Nazification in World War II. That order proved catastrophic, as the United States tried to stand up civil functionality with few technocrats able to serve in key positions. It was alsonot historically accurate, as the allies made the stomach-churning decision to employ some former Nazis.

To prevent both a humanitarian crisis and even more long-term enmity, reconstruction efforts should begin immediately after major combat operations end. Some reports estimate that 70 percent of Gaza’s buildings are damaged or destroyed, a figure that exceeded any U.S. operation in Iraq, even the fierce fighting in Fallujah and Ramadi. To meet short-term needs, generally successful policies such as solatia payments for those who suffered property damage or accidental injury or death as well as the Commander’s Emergency Response Program to meet urgent humanitarian needs could be adopted by Israeli forces. In addition, as high-intensity combat operations wind down, Israel should be more selective with targeting and its use of ordinance. The United States learned insurgent math the hard way, that every innocent you kill creates 10 new insurgents.

I know firsthand that taking advice about planning for what comes next won’t be easy. In the waves of anger and passion after the 9/11 attacks, many Americans were angry when France, one of their oldest democratic allies, begged Washington not invade Iraq, or at least to make proper plans for it. Rather than heed the advice, Americans cancelled vacations to the City of Light and three cafeterias in the U.S. House of Representatives renamed French fries as “freedom fries.” Decades later, this ally’s advice appears far more reasonable than American actions. Please take it from citizens and soldiers of a country that didn’t plan for post-conflict in Iraq, and now must live with the repercussions: you don’t want to make the same mistakes.

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Dr. Frank Sobchak is a retired special forces colonel who served in various assignments in war and peace during a 26-year military career. He is the chair of Irregular Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at the U.S. Military Academy, and a fellow (contributor) for the MirYam Institute. He is a co-author of the acclaimed two-volume The U.S. Army in the Iraq War and has been published in the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, Newsweek, Time, the Jerusalem Post, Defense One, the Hill, and the Small Wars Journal. His X handle is @abujeshua.

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Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Frank Sobchak · January 8, 2024

20. China’s Game in Gaza

Excerpts:

In its attempts to contain the war between Israel and Hamas, the Biden administration has developed a strategy of hugging Israel closely, continually reiterating its support for the Jewish state and refraining from overt public criticism in order to influence the way it prosecutes the war. In public and private, however, the Biden administration is also encouraging the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to develop a realistic military strategy in Gaza, pay attention to international law, and do more to mitigate the unfolding humanitarian crisis. By leaning in, the administration seems to be setting itself up to act as a broker for a political process between Israelis, Palestinians, and their Arab neighbors after the violence subsides.

Everyone should hope that this strategy succeeds, but in the court of global public opinion, the limits of the U.S. approach and of Biden’s influence on Netanyahu have been striking. With every civilian casualty from an Israeli airstrike, the West’s arguments in defense of a rules-based order ring hollower in the global South. This could have enduring consequences for Ukraine, which derives the legitimacy for its struggle from the order-breaking nature of Russia’s aggression. And if, at some point in the future, Xi makes the fateful decision to invade Taiwan, he will surely hope that his stance on the Gaza war has made it more likely that the global South will line up behind Beijing rather than Washington.

China’s Game in Gaza

How Beijing Is Exploiting Israel’s War to Win Over the Global South

By Mark Leonard

January 8, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Mark Leonard · January 8, 2024

Over the past year, as Western diplomats shuttled frantically from one end of the world to the other in their struggle to contain an ever-growing succession of wars, crises, and other calamities—from Ukraine to Darfur to Nagorno-Karabakh to the Democratic Republic of the Congo—China leaned in to the disorder. Hamas’s October 7 attack and Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip have presented Beijing with yet another crisis to exploit. While the United States discredits itself with the countries of the global South through its seemingly unqualified support for Israel, Beijing has carefully calibrated its response to the war, paying close attention to public opinion in the developing world.

Six months ago, I warned in Foreign Affairs that while the West is seeking to preserve the existing rules-based international order by tweaking some of its elements and inviting in a few additional actors, Chinese strategists are increasingly focused on surviving in a world without order. And they are offering to help other countries build their own sovereignty and freedom of maneuver as Western dominance recedes.

Since Hamas’s brutal attack, the Biden administration has tried to reconcile public support for Israel with private pressure to more carefully target its attacks in Gaza and to be more open to a political settlement with the Palestinians. Beijing, on the other hand, has been much less constrained by the need for balance. By calling for a two-state solution, refusing to condemn Hamas, and making symbolic efforts to support a cease-fire, it has taken advantage of global anti-Israeli sentiment in a bid to elevate its own standing in the global South. In its painstaking attempts to mirror global public opinion as closely as possible, China is following a broader strategy: embracing the global conflagrations that so bedevil Western policymakers.

WEASEL WORDS

Just as an artificial intelligence model improves its response to a prompt with each new batch of data t is trained on, each new global crisis has given China a further opportunity to hone its rhetoric toward the global South. In this light, comparing China’s response to the war in Gaza with its response to the war in Ukraine is instructive.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022, China took some time to find its feet. It fumbled its initial response, waiting before issuing somewhat confusing statements. In most of its messages, Beijing underlined the inviolability of Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty. It also sought to emphasize its closeness to Russia and acknowledged the country’s “reasonable security concerns,” criticizing the United States and NATO. Beijing was intentionally vague to avoid alienating everyone, but its execution was clumsy.

By the time Hamas launched its brutal attack on Israel, however, Beijing had sharpened its approach and was able to respond rapidly. As it became clear that public opinion in the global South was overwhelmingly weighted against Israel, China immediately sought to leverage the crisis to expose what it sees as American double standards. On October 8, China’s foreign ministry released a statement calling for a cease-fire and endorsing the two-state solution. What wasn’t included in the statement was any criticism of Hamas or condemnation of the massacre it carried out, even though four of the terrorist group’s victims had been Chinese nationals.

China’s anti-Israeli rhetoric extends to its diplomatic outreach.

The researcher Tuvia Gering has painstakingly documented the rise in anti-Israeli rhetoric, some of it anti-Semitic, that the Chinese Communist Party is encouraging in response to the war, through both official and unofficial channels. In late October, China Daily, a propaganda outlet, declared, “The U.S. is siding with the wrong side of history in Gaza.” Elsewhere, Chinese state television rolled out an anti-Semitic canard made a few years ago by one of its reporters: that Jews account for three percent of the U.S. population but “control more than 70 percent of its wealth.”

This sort of language should be understood as a conscious attempt to echo the narratives that dominate the debate in the global South. By aligning with majority opinion in such countries as Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa, China can present itself as an alternative to what it sees as a warmongering, hegemonic, and hypocritical America.

And China’s anti-Israeli rhetoric extends to its diplomatic outreach. On November 20, a group of Arab foreign ministers embarked on a tour to the countries that are permanent members of the UN Security Council. Their first stop was in Beijing, where they were welcomed by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. The choice to travel east before their meetings in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States was surely intentional. It can be read as evidence of China’s increasing cachet in the Middle East since negotiating a détente between Iran and Saudi Arabia last March. Even though the meeting in Beijing produced no concrete results, this never seems to have been the goal. Instead, it was a way for the Arab countries to signal that they have choices apart from just the United States. And China relishes playing the role of alternative partner.

PLAYING TO THE CROWD

Since the start of Israel’s campaign in Gaza, which the Biden administration has largely endorsed, distrust of the United States has deepened across the Arab world. Opinion polls show that Arab publics now favor China over the United States. This is part of a long-term trend, but one that is being exacerbated by the war in Gaza. Polling conducted in the fall of 2023 in eight major non-Western countries—Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa—by the European Council on Foreign Relations (which I direct) found that China, in contrast to Western powers, is much more closely aligned with public opinion in the global South. Whether it is believing in the likelihood of Russia winning its war with Ukraine, the likelihood that the EU might fall apart, or the fragile state of American democracy, China’s official positions take great care to reflect the sentiments of the average Brazilian or Turk.

China’s attempt to mirror global public opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is part of a much broader strategy aimed at winning over the global South. First and foremost, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza underpin China’s argument that the world is becoming ever more disorderly. In Beijing’s view, the United States’ support for Israel’s campaign in Gaza demonstrates that its much-vaunted rules-based order was always a self-serving sham. Whereas the United States was quick to condemn Russian war crimes in Ukraine and China’s treatment of the Uyghurs, it has remained silent when confronted with what the rest of the world views as identical behavior by Israel (whether that conception is grounded in fact or not).

The strategy was on full display on November 20, when the Chinese leader Xi Jinping participated in a virtual BRICS summit focused on the war in Gaza. The meeting brought the original members of the bloc, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, together with its newest additions, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The summit was a clear attempt to present the grouping as a new alternative to Western organizations such as the G-7. As with Wang’s meeting with Arab leaders, the optics of the meeting were far more important than the substance, and again, the group proposed no practical steps to end the violence, either in the short term or in the long term.

Opinion polls show that Arab publics now favor China over the United States.

Moreover, China’s stance on the war in Gaza is an attempt to make a virtue of its relative isolation. China has just a single treaty ally in the entire world—North Korea. In the Middle East, the United States has been steadfast in its commitment to Israel’s security since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. China, by contrast, is free to pick and choose its partners in the region depending on the issue—for example, buying Iranian oil while cooperating with Saudi Arabia on ballistic missile technology or building infrastructure in Syria while trying to bind Turkey into the Belt and Road Initiative. Thanks to this relative freedom, China has been able to prioritize the performative aspect of its response to the war in Gaza over everything else; unlike the United States, it has no long-standing ally to accuse it of betrayal.

Finally, China is not trying to unite these countries in a Chinese-led anti-Western alliance, as many in Washington seem to believe. Whereas the United States talks about how other countries should align with its positions and follow global rules, China presents itself as a champion of a “multicivilizational world” and a partner for development and sovereignty. Indeed, Beijing’s selling point is precisely that in a world of fragmentation, it is not forcing other countries to choose sides.

Here again, China is very much in line with global public opinion. According to a European Council on Foreign Relations poll of major non-Western countries conducted in December 2022 and January 2023, substantial majorities across the world do not think that their countries will ever have to choose between China and the United States. For example, only 14 percent of Indians expect a bipolar world in ten years in which they might be forced to choose between Chinese- and U.S.-dominated blocs. So even though the United States demands ever-closer alignment from those countries caught in between, China’s perceived nonalignment has allowed it to become the favored partner for infrastructure investment and economic development in many parts of the world.

THE DISCREDITED ORDER

In its attempts to contain the war between Israel and Hamas, the Biden administration has developed a strategy of hugging Israel closely, continually reiterating its support for the Jewish state and refraining from overt public criticism in order to influence the way it prosecutes the war. In public and private, however, the Biden administration is also encouraging the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to develop a realistic military strategy in Gaza, pay attention to international law, and do more to mitigate the unfolding humanitarian crisis. By leaning in, the administration seems to be setting itself up to act as a broker for a political process between Israelis, Palestinians, and their Arab neighbors after the violence subsides.

Everyone should hope that this strategy succeeds, but in the court of global public opinion, the limits of the U.S. approach and of Biden’s influence on Netanyahu have been striking. With every civilian casualty from an Israeli airstrike, the West’s arguments in defense of a rules-based order ring hollower in the global South. This could have enduring consequences for Ukraine, which derives the legitimacy for its struggle from the order-breaking nature of Russia’s aggression. And if, at some point in the future, Xi makes the fateful decision to invade Taiwan, he will surely hope that his stance on the Gaza war has made it more likely that the global South will line up behind Beijing rather than Washington.

MARK LEONARD is Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress, Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of The Age of Unpeace.

Foreign Affairs · by Mark Leonard · January 8, 2024

21. Want A Bigger U.S. Navy? Invest In America’s Waterfront Communities

An interesting perspective that I had not thought about. But there is some history to back up the author's argument.

Excerpts:

In World War II, the four Henry J. Kaiser shipyards in Richmond, California built 747 ships, launching almost a quarter of the U.S. Liberty Ship fleet. It was a massive industrial undertaking, and it was all backed by the City of Richmond. With the city center just a twenty-minute walk from the shipyard, workers lived and played within easy reach of their workplace. Henry Kaiser, with the help of funding from the U.S. Maritime Commission, added in a comprehensive health care system, childcare and housing. An array of public/private partnerships helped found functional corporate villages that still exist today—complete neighborhoods with schools, fire houses and police stations—just outside the shipyard gates.

These seemingly quaint experiments in mixing corporate interests with civics are relevant today. If Disney’s balance sheet can justify building 1,400 low-cost housing units for their workforce—just minutes away from Disney’s massive Florida-based recreation complex—then the U.S. Navy and big Navy shipbuilders—with the added benefit of help from Congress—can do the same.

A corporate neighborhood is no frivolous perk. Done right, it is a calculated investment in enhancing workplace performance. Even a mundane, bare-bones corporate neighborhood of austere apartments and basic, solid amenities can do a lot to make shipyards—and many other big defense industrial base endeavors—work more efficiently.

Put another way, an inviting neighborhood is how you build committed corporate families and generate third or fourth-generation workers.

Want A Bigger U.S. Navy? Invest In America’s Waterfront Communities

Forbes · by Craig Hooper · January 7, 2024

Long commutes and the daily fight for parking takes a toll on waterfront stakeholders.

Huntington Ingalls Industries

On the American waterfront, too many U.S. sailors and naval shipbuilders are voting with their feet, leaving their service or shipyard behind. Lacking a concerted effort to build functional waterfront communities—a set of well-planned, modern neighborhoods near shipbuilding centers—too many early-career waterfront workers, after experiencing the rigors of shipyard life, will exercise their options and get out of the business.

Facing massive recruiting shortfalls, the challenge for the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Coast Guard and the maritime industry is to make waterfront workers want to stick around, building the friendships and teams needed to take on big tasks. But that “sticky” route to a strong esprit de corps is impossible without efforts to both stabilize residential areas around the waterfront and ease worker commutes.

Put bluntly, when sailors and shipyard employees cannot—for whatever reason—live near their workplace or get from their house to their workstation within twenty minutes, work suffers.

For the Defense Department, having sailors and soldiers stuck living hours away from their ships or base workstation is a national security threat.

It’s no fun for waterfront workers, either. Long workdays, followed by ever-longer commutes to-and-from the coast or base, is a recipe for isolating drudgery.

Grim Navy accounts of the 2022 USS George Washington suicide epidemic show just how lonely and bare modern waterfront life becomes without a strong community focus. It is easy to forget that a solid community is a force multiplier for the warfighter. For far too long, both the U.S. government and the large corporations that operate on the waterfront have done all they can to both get out of big urban areas and to leave the community-building business entirely—rolling as many community-building efforts back onto the worker as possible.

The current rush to get sailors shipyard housing shows that both public and private-sector leadership have been slow in realizing just how much community matters. Senior officers and executives, able to isolate themselves more effectively than ever before, are often out of touch with their lower-ranking workers and indifferent to the mundane struggles of their workforce. Few executives dare to explore local mass transit options or even deign to join the daily shift-change traffic scrum to grab a good parking spot or to exit quickly.

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That is a mistake.

Modern technology may have loosened historical industry and community ties, but old-school fishing villages and quaint port towns exist for a reason. Even today, nobody can do business for the sea without solid backing from a community ashore.

If waterfront workers lack immediate access to a safe and stable community, companies can do a lot to build it. These days, shipyards and some of America’s larger defense enterprises are so big they can, with a good mix of encouragement, government stimulus and rigorous, attentive management, generate sustainable corporate neighborhoods right outside the workplace gates.

Corporate towns have a long history. Well over a century ago, as a pastoral Germany began industrializing, Fredrich Krupp AG, desperate for workers ready to build steel, cannons, ammunition and armor plate, transformed Germany’s Ruhr region into a “company” town. As Germans flowed in, Krupp enterprises offered the new workers “a health service, a relief fund…a pension scheme, hospitals and homes for the aged.” Along with low-cost housing colonies, Krupp employees had access to non-profit retail outlets, including “a bread factory, a wine store, a butcher plant, a hotel, and a charity fund for families left destitute by the periodic flooding.”

In World War II, the four Henry J. Kaiser shipyards in Richmond, California built 747 ships, launching almost a quarter of the U.S. Liberty Ship fleet. It was a massive industrial undertaking, and it was all backed by the City of Richmond. With the city center just a twenty-minute walk from the shipyard, workers lived and played within easy reach of their workplace. Henry Kaiser, with the help of funding from the U.S. Maritime Commission, added in a comprehensive health care system, childcare and housing. An array of public/private partnerships helped found functional corporate villages that still exist today—complete neighborhoods with schools, fire houses and police stations—just outside the shipyard gates.

These seemingly quaint experiments in mixing corporate interests with civics are relevant today. If Disney’s balance sheet can justify building 1,400 low-cost housing units for their workforce—just minutes away from Disney’s massive Florida-based recreation complex—then the U.S. Navy and big Navy shipbuilders—with the added benefit of help from Congress—can do the same.

A corporate neighborhood is no frivolous perk. Done right, it is a calculated investment in enhancing workplace performance. Even a mundane, bare-bones corporate neighborhood of austere apartments and basic, solid amenities can do a lot to make shipyards—and many other big defense industrial base endeavors—work more efficiently.

Put another way, an inviting neighborhood is how you build committed corporate families and generate third or fourth-generation workers.

It's how good navies get made.

Forbes · by Craig Hooper · January 7, 2024

22. Biden has dangerously decayed deterrence — and every American is at risk by Michael R. Pompeo

Biden has dangerously decayed deterrence — and every American is at risk

New York Post · Michael R. Pompeo · January 8, 2024

As Americans rang in the new year, regimes hostile to the United States made clear just how much President Biden has let US deterrence decay.

In his end-of-year press conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated his commitment to subjugating Ukraine in his effort to rebuild the Soviet Union — emphasizing, “The level of our ties with China is at an all-time high.”

North Korea’s Chairman Kim Jong Un laid out his plan to accelerate nuclear-weapons production in 2024, saying conflicts elsewhere compelled his nation to “sharpen the treasured sword.”

And amid Iran’s multifront attacks on the Jewish state, the ayatollah’s officials declared America “will not be spared” if Israel’s campaign to eliminate Hamas continues — and we’ll be “faced with extraordinary problems” if we oppose Houthi disruption of commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

Four years ago, such statements would have been rightly seen as mere bluster.

Kim had stopped long-range-missile testing, Iran was isolated and weak, and the Trump administration’s model of deterrence kept Putin’s Ukraine ambitions at bay.

But the Biden administration’s complete lack of commitment to maintaining deterrence has encouraged these dangerous actions and placed the American people in peril.

Ukrainian forces destroy Russian orbital satellite jamming system – video

pravda.com.ua · by VALENTYNA ROMANENKO

Ukrainian troops have discovered and destroyed a Russian Tіrada-2 electronic warfare system on the Donetsk front.

Source: Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces on Telegram

Details: The Russian Tirada-2 electronic warfare system was reportedly discovered by operators from the 3rd Separate Regiment of the Special Operations Forces in the course of reconnaissance operations on the Donetsk front.

The system is designed to disable communications satellites. The Russians completed its development in the autumn of 2018, and by spring 2019, Tіrada-2 was observed in occupied Luhansk Oblast.

Having determined the coordinates of the target, operators from the Special Operations Forces fired on it using a rocket unit of the Armed Forces. It is noted that due to the precision of the strike, the electronic warfare system was completely destroyed.

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pravda.com.ua · by VALENTYNA ROMANENKO

24. "Modern Jedburghs: Bridging History to Strengthen Ukraine's Defense" OpEd by Mike Robinson, Radio Free Ukraine

I have never heard of this organization and I checked with a few Ukraine hands actually doing work in Ukraine and they have not heard of it either.

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7149870611622678528/

Mike Robinson

• 1st

Director RFU; CEO at LaVERDAD Marketing & Media (retired)

56m •

"Modern Jedburghs: Bridging History to Strengthen Ukraine's Defense" OpEd by Mike Robinson, Radio Free Ukraine

As director of Radio Free Ukraine, an all volunteer 501c3 and as a former Special Forces officer with experience leading multiple Mobile Training Teams (MTTs) of Jedburghs, I've witnessed firsthand the impact of employing Jedburgh mentors in empowering Ukrainians to defend their nation.

In our Warrior2Warrior professional development sessions, experienced Special Forces veterans and other subject matter experts serve as leaders alongside Ukrainian counterparts, imparting invaluable knowledge on force protection and organizing Territorial Defense Forces and civilian Irregular Defense Auxiliary Forces.

Jedburgh teams, a vital part of the OSS during World War II, exemplify the effectiveness of unconventional warfare. Their mission to supplement existing circuits, organize resistance, and engage in sabotage operations resonates with our present efforts in Ukraine. The historical success of Jedburghs in diverting German military assets away from major battlefronts serves as inspiration for our contemporary endeavors.

The roots of the Jedburgh legacy run deep, with post-war careers of veterans like William E. Colby, Major General John K. Singlaub, and Colonel Aaron Bank influencing the formation of Special Forces. The tactics and techniques honed by Jedburgh teams in the 1940s continue to shape the training of modern Special Forces.

Our Mobile Training Teams, following the Jedburgh model, provide small teams of Subject Matter Expert Jedburghs who move in and out of Ukraine. Their role is crucial in training Territorial Defense Forces, offering practical guidance through professional development sessions, and reinforcing the resilience of local communities.

Operation JEDBURGH, with its emphasis on guerrilla warfare and sabotage, finds echoes in our current strategy to empower Ukrainians in the face of adversity. The commitment of these brave men, willing to "surprise, kill, and vanish," parallels the dedication of our contemporary Jedburgh Mentors working alongside Ukrainian forces.

The legend of how Operation JEDBURGH got its name, rooted in historical references to guerrilla tactics, adds a touch of mystique to our mission. The selection of codenames, reminiscent of a small Scottish town known for its fierce warriors, reflects the enduring spirit of those engaged in unconventional warfare.

In conclusion, the legacy of the Jedburghs lives on in the work we do today, bridging history to strengthen Ukraine's defense. As we continue to draw inspiration from the past, our commitment to empowering local forces remains unwavering. The spirit of the Jedburghs, characterized by adaptability, resilience, and a relentless pursuit of freedom, serves as a guiding light in our modern-day endeavors.

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8
Timothy Parnell and 7 others

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

Access NSS HERE

Company Name | Website

Intellectual Firepower: Reviewing the DoD Education System

Intellectual Firepower

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Research Questions

Key Findings

Military and civilian educational programs span two major types, strategic/operational and technical, each with different missions, audiences, and strategies

Military educational institutions are transitioning to more–outcomes-based information to inform curriculum orientation, institutional planning, and program assessments

Faculty management practices vary

There is no broad indication of need or interest to increase or decrease the number of officers attending PME

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