Quotes of the Day;

“All men make mistakes. But a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong. And he repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.” ​

– Sophocles

“Silence that covers you with honor is better than speech that earns you regret.​"

– Imam Ali

“Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.” 

– Voltaire

​1. FOLLOW-UP with updated report – Defense Primer: What Is Irregular Warfare?

2. Cutting Army Special Operations Will Erode the Military’s Ability to Influence the Modern Battlefield

3. DoD Memo: Review of Notification Process for Assumption of Functions and Duties of the Secretary of Defense

4. Marine Corps Provides Update on General Smith

5. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 8, 2024

6. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, January 8, 2024

7. 39 years ago, a KGB defector chillingly predicted modern America

8. Water in Chinese missiles' tanks is a fake story

9. Scanning the Horizon: If the Future is Unknowable, Why Bother with Forecasting?

10. With each strike, fears grow that Israel, the US and Iran's allies are inching closer to all-out war

11. The Russian Art of War: How the West led Ukraine to defeat

12. Tired Zelensky looks too weak to achieve victory

13. Putin’s Unsustainable Spending Spree

14. Can Republicans Find Consensus on Foreign Policy?

15. Blinken carries Arab message to Israel: keep Palestinian state hope alive

16. DOD leaders often overlook officers’ education in future assignments

17. Exhausted, on the Defensive and at ‘Hell’s Gate’ in Ukraine

18. Army sending additional 'data stewards' to commands, defining data roles

19. The Chinese Soldier Trained By Americans to Kill Americans

20. SECNAV Del Toro Names Next-Generation Hospital Ship Bethesda

21. Wanted: Airmen and Guardians Urged to Apply to Grueling Army Ranger School

22. Inside the daring plot to rescue an American soldier’s mother from Gaza

23. Opinion | So far, there’s no defense for Lloyd Austin’s hospital silence

24. The climate costs of war and militaries can no longer be ignored

25. India can unite Global South with developed world

26. The U.S. Military Must Transform and Coordinate

27. The Myth of an Apolitical Military: A Call to Action

28. The Great Scramble – Analysis of the politically "homeless" in America

29. Jason Statham’s ‘Beekeeper’ Clip Unleashes Fury with Everyday Tools

1. FOLLOW-UP with updated report – Defense Primer: What Is Irregular Warfare?

Access the 3 page (actually 2) UPDATED report HERE. 

A concise and useful overview of irregular warfare. The author ties in the importance of influence in irregular warfare which is important because as we all know we must learn to lead with influence to effectively conduct irregular warfare in support of political warfare in the gray zone of strategic competition short of traditional armed conflict.

Also note the author include​s the Unconventional Warfare definition that is found in the 2016 NDAA which has a one word difference than the DOD definition found in JP 1-02 and JP 30-05. Will the Joint Staff and DOD update the definition to match the one Congress put into law?

Defense Primer: What Is Irregular Warfare?

Introduction U.S. military doctrine distinguishes between two types of warfare: traditional warfare and irregular warfare. In Department of Defense (DOD) Joint Publication (JP) 1 Joint Warfighting, conventional warfare is characterized as “a violent struggle for domination between nation-states or coalitions and alliances of nation-states, fought with conventional forces.” The publication differentiates between that and irregular warfare (IW), which is defined as “a form of warfare where states and non-state actors campaign to assure or coerce states or other groups through indirect, non-attributable, or asymmetric activities, either as the primary approach or in concert with conventional warfare.” IW is a joint activity not limited to special operations forces (SOF); the IW operating environment includes all domains and the information environment (IE). According to JP 3-04 Information in Joint Operations, the IE is “the aggregate of social, cultural, linguistic, psychological, technical, and physical factors that affect how humans and automated systems derive meaning from, act upon, and are impacted by information, including the individuals, “organizations, and systems that collect, process, disseminate, or use information.”

Previous DOD doctrine characterized IW as “a violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant population(s).” IW actors may use nontraditional methods such as guerrilla warfare, terrorism, sabotage, subversion, criminal activities, and insurgency in their efforts to control the target population. In IW, a less powerful adversary seeks to disrupt or negate the military capabilities and advantages of a more powerful military force, which usually serves that nation’s established government. Because of its emphasis on influencing populations, actions to control the IE, to include actions in cyberspace, play a prominent role in IW. 

Unconventional Warfare. P.L. 114-92, Section 1097, National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY2016, defines UW as “activities conducted to enable a resistance movement or insurgency to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow a government or occupying power by operating through or with an underground, auxiliary, or guerrilla force in a denied area.” UW is a core component of IW. 

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

---------- Forwarded message ---------

From: David Maxwell <david.maxwell161@gmail.com>

Date: Sat, Jan 6, 2024 at 10:33 AM

Subject: Defense Primer: What Is Irregular Warfare?

To:

Read the entire report here:

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12565

Frankly, I am disappointed in this CRS report. It is at least 6 months out of date because it does not reference a key document. The newly released JP 1 Warfighting in which warfare, (conventional, nuclear, and irregular) is comprehensively defined and described. This report does not include the definition of IW from that joint publication and it should. This would not have happened if the late great Warlord, COL John Collins was still at CRS.

On the other hand I do think the CRS author is making an important point by emphasizing the importance of influence in irregular warfare. She is helping us get to what I think is the ideal in IW, e.g., learning to lead with influence. We must learn to lead with influence in political warfare and strategic competition in the gray zone short of traditional armed conflict (and we must also lead with influence in war as well).

I have pasted the entire section on Warfare from the new Joint Pub 1 below. I think it is important that this be studied and discussed and debated. It must be the common frame of reference for the entire joint force.

As an aside this is the final IW paragraph from Joint Pub 1.  

Joint Force Conduct of IW. IW is a joint force activity not limited to special operations forces activity. Most joint capabilities can be employed in an irregular context. All IW operations and activities require conventional force lead, facilitation, or participation.

I spoke to one of the authors last month (who coincidentally was a student of mine in my course at Georgetown, Unconventional Warfare and Special Operations for Policymakers and Strategist) to learn about the intent. Does this mean conventional forces lead all IW operations and activities. She said no and that the important word in the sentence is "or" as in "or participation."  The intent is to ensure that the conventional force understands they have a role in IW but it does not mean they have the exclusive or lead role in IW. They may in certain instances have the lead and may not in other instances. This is important to understand especially as we conduct irregular warfare in support of political warfare and strategic competition in the gray zone short of traditional and conventional armed conflict.  

She recalled the anecdote of the NDAA section 1099 and the requirement for DOD to develop a counter-unconventional warfare strategy. When we reviewed the legislation the stafferes were using an old definition of UW (the one that said that UW is broad spectrum of military and paramilitary activities...). We recommended they use the new J0int Definition from 2009 which is "activities conducted to enable a resistance movement or insurgency to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow a government or occupying power by operating through or with an underground, auxiliary, or guerrilla force in a denied area." 

We recommended they change the word "and" guerrilla force to "or" guerrilla force. This is how the 2009 UW working group wanted to define modern UW in that a guerrilla force is not required for the conduct of all UW operations. But the "traditionalists" want to emphasize that UW is based on the traditional employment of a guerrilla force (we believed underground activities were most relevant in modern UW and wanted to emphasize that. So we recommended the change in the NDAA. Unfortunately this did not influence the Joint Staff in any way. 

2016 NDAA Sec 1099: (d) Unconventional Warfare Defined.—In this section, the term “unconventional warfare” means activities conducted to enable a resistance movement or insurgency to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow a government or occupying power by operating through or with an underground, auxiliary, or guerrilla force in a denied area.

(Note the DOD definition uses AND guerrilla force while the NDAA uses OR. The use of OR makes UW more flexible and with potentially more broad application because it does not require a guerrilla force.)

Defense Primer: What Is Irregular Warfare?

January 5, 2024

Introduction

United States military doctrine distinguishes between two types of warfare: traditional warfare and irregular warfare. In Department of Defense (DOD) Joint Publication (JP) 1 Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States, traditional warfare is characterized as “a violent struggle for domination between nation-states or coalitions and alliances of nation-states.” The publication further states that “traditional warfare typically involves force-on-force military operations in which adversaries employ a variety of conventional forces and special operations forces (SOF) against each other in all physical domains as well as the information environment (IE).” According to JP 3-04 Information in Joint Operations, the IE is “the aggregate of social, cultural, linguistic, psychological, technical, and physical factors that affect how humans and automated systems derive meaning from, act upon, and are impacted by information, including the individuals, organizations, and systems that collect, process, disseminate, or use information.”

In DOD Directive 3000.07 and in other DOD doctrine, irregular warfare (IW) is characterized as “a violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant population(s).” These actors may use nontraditional methods such as guerrilla warfare, terrorism, sabotage, subversion, criminal activities, and insurgency in their efforts to control the target population. In IW, a less powerful adversary seeks to disrupt or negate the military capabilities and advantages of a more powerful military force, which usually serves that nation’s established government. Because of its emphasis on influencing populations, actions to control the IE, to include actions in cyberspace, play a prominent role in IW.

Missions of Irregular Warfare

IW includes, among other activities, the specific missions of unconventional warfare (UW), stabilization, foreign internal defense (FID), counterterrorism (CT), and counterinsurgency (COIN).

Continue reading the report at this link: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12565

Warfare from Joint Pub 1, Warfighting 27 August 2023 (pages II-5 through II-8)

1.  Warfare

a.  Introduction

(1)  Warfare is “the how”—or the ways—of waging armed conflict against an enemy. The character of warfare varies, influenced by evolving methods, technologies, and capabilities; the instruments of national power; and other social, infrastructural, physical, and temporal factors.

(2)  Understanding the changing character of war helps planners frame the context of warfighting. In a world where fragile critical infrastructure connects widely through cyberspace, and sabotage and terrorism have profound effects, adversaries can easily escalate a conflict. Inevitably, the dimensions of any particular security challenge may not align precisely with existing boundaries or command structures. Likewise, the conventions and conduct of war are continually changing. Although specified in the Geneva Conventions, exactly who is a combatant and what constitutes a battlefield shifting beyond previous norms. Adversaries, even though signatories to the Geneva Conventions, may not abide by them (e.g., targeting of civilians). Then again, warfare may become a more traditional contest between nations when it develops into a conventional force-on-force conflict. When considered in its totality, warfare may significantly affect operations throughout the entirety of an AOR and extend into others. Context helps leaders make informed choices about command and control (C2), force structure, force preparation, the conduct of joint campaigns and operations, and rules of engagement.

(3)  Translating operational success into strategic outcomes is the ultimate purpose of war. Tactical and operational military successes do not necessarily or naturally lead to strategic success. Therefore, while near-term success in tactical engagements and battles is essential to successful operations and campaigns that consolidate military gains and secure military victories, JFCs continue campaigning to establish the conditions and influence the behaviors necessary to achieve strategic objectives.

b.  Forms of Warfare. The US military recognizes two general forms of warfare— conventional and irregular—which may escalate to include the employment of nuclear weapons. JFCs choose to conduct warfare not in terms of an either/or choice but in various combinations that suit the strategic and operational objectives and that are tailored to a specific OE. In some cases, adversary actions force the JFC to select specific ways and means. Warfare does not always fit neatly into one of these subjective categories but incorporates all aspects of conventional warfare and irregular warfare (IW) when in tandem or parallel. Military activity (or inactivity) may be communicative if observed and perceived by actors as affecting them. A nation-state’s purpose for waging war is to impose its will on an enemy and avoid imposition of the enemy’s will. Winning a war requires creative, dynamic, and synergistic combinations of all US capabilities. Achieving strategic objectives often depends on the population indigenous to the OA accepting the imposed, arbitrated, or negotiated result.

(1)  Conventional Warfare. This form of warfare is a violent struggle between nation-states or coalitions, and alliances of nation-states, fought with conventional forces.

(a)  In conventional warfare, nation-states fight each other to protect or advance their strategic interests. Campaigning as a part of conventional warfare normally focuses on an enemy’s armed forces, their capabilities, and seizing key terrain to influence their government. In conventional warfare, enemies engage in combat against each other and employ a variety of similar functions and capabilities throughout the OE. In today’s OE, enemies are challenging traditional views of warfare that blur warfare lines in their rhetoric and their doctrine, including operations that may integrate IW, conventional warfare, and nuclear operations.

(b)  Nuclear war is an existential threat, and strategic nuclear deterrence requires a no-fail approach. Strategic deterrence is foundational to the success of all other missions and is the joint force’s priority mission for which it maintains the highest state of readiness. Therefore, the United States manages the risk of an escalation to nuclear war. This type of deterrence requires close coordination across all CCMDs to control escalation.

Additionally, the joint force supports counterproliferation of nuclear weapons and nuclear materials of concern.

For more information on nuclear operations, see JP 3-72, Joint Nuclear Operations.

(a)  Military victory typically results from defeating an enemy’s will, destroying or defeating an enemy’s warfighting capability, destroying the enemy’s war- sustaining capacity (e.g., defense industrial base), removing a hostile regime, or the seizure and holding of territory. Both conventional warfare and IW may consist of a tailored mix of capabilities, including cyberspace and space capabilities.

(b)  Conventional warfare may also encompass state-like entities that adopt conventional military capabilities and methods to achieve military victory.

(c)  The near-term outcomes of conventional warfare are often obvious, with the conflict ending in military victory for one side and military defeat for the other or resulting in stalemate. When considering forcible action, policymakers and senior military leaders must consider the operational continuity of effort, like preparedness for initiating offensive operations, consolidation, and the return to competition. These actions can ultimately determine whether military victory translates into enduring strategic objectives.

(2)  IW. IW is a form of warfare where states and non-state actors campaign to assure or coerce states or other groups through indirect, non-attributable, or asymmetric activities, either as the primary approach or in concert with conventional warfare. The term “irregular” highlights the character of this form of warfare, which seeks to create dilemmas and increase risk and costs to adversaries to achieve a position of advantage. IW may employ the threat or use of organized armed violence for purposes other than physical domination over an adversary. States and non-state actors may conduct IW when they cannot achieve their strategic objectives by nonmilitary activities or conventional warfare.

(a)  States and Non-State Actors. IW occurs between nations, states, or other groups. Other groups include organizations with no state involvement but that have capacity to threaten or use violence. States or other groups conduct IW to impose their will, with complementary methods contributing to the military defeat of an adversary.

(b)  Campaign. JFCs plan, conduct, and assess IW within military campaigns as part of a broader, long-term USG effort across relevant instruments of national power to protect and advance US national interests.

1.  Integrating military and nonmilitary means is essential to plan and conduct IW, as the military alone is often insufficient to achieve desired strategic objectives. The joint force plans and conducts IW in collaboration with relevant instruments of national power and with allies and partners.

2.  The intent of IW is to erode an adversary’s legitimacy and influence over a population and to exhaust its political will—not necessarily to defeat its armed forces—while supporting the legitimacy, influence, and will of friendly political authorities engaged in the struggle against the adversary.

3.  JFCs may conduct IW proactively to deny access or create dilemmas for an opponent’s government, economy, or civil society.

4.  In armed conflict, JFCs can conduct activities to support IW as an inherent aspect of joint operations.

5.  JFCs may conduct IW proactively to undermine an emerging threat and prevent them from becoming an enemy.

(c)  Assure or Coerce. IW can assure or coerce within the paradigm of strategic uses of military force. JFCs can assure allies and partners by demonstrating US commitment to their strategic interests. JFCs can employ IW in attempting to coerce opponents, such as deterring their future behavior and compelling them to modify their current behavior. IW operations and activities may have the following effects:

1.  Affecting the legitimacy and influence of the principal actors and their partners and opponents.

2.  Deterring, delaying, disrupting, or degrading opponents.

3.  Countering the coercive and subversive activities of opponents.

4.  Diverting, coercing, attriting, or exhausting opponents.

(d)  IW Variables. IW employs either indirect, non-attributable, or asymmetric military activities to achieve strategic objectives. Not all IW is indirect, non- attributable, and asymmetric, but IW includes one of these essential characteristics.

1.  Indirect activities target an adversary or support an ally or partner through one or more intermediaries (e.g., allies, partners, proxies, surrogates).

2.  Non-attributable activities target an opponent or support an ally or partner in ways that conceal the source of the activities or their sponsorship.

3.  Asymmetric activities target an opponent or support an ally or partner when a gross disparity in relative comprehensive power causes the weaker party to resort to irregular methodologies (e.g., disinformation, terrorism, insurgency, resistance to occupation) to erode or exhaust their opponent’s power, influence, and will. However, a stronger party may target opponents asymmetrically when the risks and cost associated with a direct, symmetric approach are unacceptable.

Joint Force Conduct of IW. IW is a joint force activity not limited to special operations forces activity. Most joint capabilities can be employed in an irregular context. All IW operations and activities require conventional force lead, facilitation, or participation.

2. Cutting Army Special Operations Will Erode the Military’s Ability to Influence the Modern Battlefield

A scathing analysis (with a good bit of data) of the Army Special Operations Command's planned cuts to the force.

Conclusion:

Army Special Operations Command’s plans to cut special operations support, civil affairs, and psychological operations units will make the military less prepared for modern competition and creates greater risk for the joint force in large-scale combat.

Cutting Army Special Operations Will Erode the Military’s Ability to Influence the Modern Battlefield - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Cole Livieratos · January 9, 2024

The U.S. Army is currently undergoing significant force structure changes as it wrestles with two major challenges. First, its current recruiting problems have reduced the number of active-duty soldiers by about 30,000 from 2021 through 2024. Second, it is trying to modernize its force structure and capabilities to confront challenges posed by China’s military. To do this, the service’s leaders have chosen to focus on capabilities most “relevant for large-scale combat operations.” As a result, Army leaders have chosen to reduce Army special operations forces, which they view as a force primarily meant for counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, by 3,000 slots.

By cutting special operations forces, the Army is making the contentious yet defensible decision to optimize for the less likely but potentially more catastrophic possibility of a large-scale war with a peer adversary. This decision assumes risk in the joint force’s ability to compete and engage in irregular warfare, which is historically more frequent than conventional wars and will be a critical component of any large-scale conflict.

Army Special Operations Command was granted discretion to decide which parts of its formation will be eliminated and has chosen to reduce support forces like intelligence and logistics as well as civil affairs and psychological operations. These forces are amongst the smallest yet most in-demand units in special operations. The command has spared Ranger, aviation, special forces, and other special mission units. In doing so, Army Special Operations Command is assuming risk in operations to understand and influence the modern battlefield.

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The result of these cascading decisions is the unintended reduction of Army capabilities that are not only critical to competition with China and other strategic rivals, but also capabilities that are often at their most effective during large-scale combat. These decisions may have a devastating impact on the Army and the joint force by reducing the ability of military forces to influence relevant populations, competitors, and adversaries at a time when information influence operations are becoming increasingly important.

Cutting civil affairs and psychological operations may make sense on paper, but this move will negatively impact the military’s capabilities in the conflicts that the United States is most likely to fight. As modern competition and irregular warfare evolve to create more avenues for influence operations through information technology, the skills and capabilities required to conduct effective irregular warfare should also evolve accordingly. The units with the requisite skills are not only the ones facing cuts, but they are already amongst the smallest parts of Army special operations as they did not enjoy the same growth as other special operations forces over the past two decades.

Examining Post-2001 Growth to Special Operations Forces

The frequently cited statistic that special operations forces doubled in size after 2001 is not true (though the command has almost doubled in size since its creation in 1987). Based on a review of Defense Manpower Reporting, budget justification documents from the Department of Defense Comptroller, and additional sources like posture statements and Congressional hearingshearings, total growth to U.S. Special Operations Command’s military and civilian personnel is a more modest 58.4 percent from 2001 through 2022. Counting only military personnel, U.S. Special Operations Command has grown 52.6 percent over the same period, numbers confirmed by Government Accountability Office reports. Of the command’s service components, the Army’s component added the most military personnel (approximately 10,000) but grew by the smallest percentage (37.4 percent growth). Naval Special Warfare Command grew by 67.4 percent, adding around 4,000 military slots; Air Force Special Operations Command increased 60.5 percent with 6,000 more military slots; and Marine Forces Special Operations Command was created in 2006 and has since added around 3,500 military personnel.

Source: Author created

One large change amidst the overall growth has been a shift away from reserve component forces towards active duty. In 2001, nearly 30 percent of all special operations forces resided in the reserve component. But as special operations grew, the slots for reserve component forces shrank by 5,000. That means that less than 10 percent of special operations currently reside in the reserve component. The shift was even more dramatic for Army special operations. In 2001, over 41 percent of their billets were in the reserve component. By 2022, this number dropped to just 12 percent. In this time, active-duty billets more than doubled from 15,000 in 2001 to over 31,000 in 2022.

Source: Author created

As the charts show, the most dramatic change came in 2006 when Army special operations shifted almost 10,000 reserve billets out of their command. These billets came from U.S. Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command — the same two branches that are now slated for further contraction. The loss of reserve forces was mostly replaced with active-duty forces across Army Special Operations Command’s various units. During the period of growth, active-duty civil affairs and psychological operations forces each added over 1,000 personnel to their units. The additional 12,000-plus slots went to the so-called “trigger-pullers,” the slang used for soldiers who lead raids and combat operations. Such forces, protected from the current round of cuts, include the Ranger Regiment, Army special operations aviation, special forces, and special mission units. In 2001, military personnel in civil affairs and psychological operations units comprised around 20 percent of U.S. Special Operations Command and 33 percent of Army Special Operations Command. By 2022, they were far less than 10 percent of U.S. Special Operations Command and 15 percent of the Army’s component.

Special operations leaders are understandably reluctant to reduce force structure. But after their growth over the past 20 years, the Army’s mandated cuts represent less than 5 percent of military personnel in U.S. Special Operations Command and less than 9 percent in Army Special Operations Command. The bigger concern is not the number of personnel being cut, but how the reduction of specific units will limit the military’s ability to operate in the increasingly important information environment during competition and conflict.

The Evolving Information Battlefield

The wars in Ukraine and Gaza demonstrate the tremendous effect of information influence operations in supporting military operations and shaping global opinion of the conflicts. In the Russo-Ukrainian war, such operations have been credited with convincing some 17,000 Russian personnel to desert from the military by eroding the will of Russian fighters. In the war between Israel and Hamas, messaging campaigns that use both truthful content and disinformation have supported military operations and targeted global and domestic public opinion about the conflict. Information campaigns are using artificial intelligence to increase the fog of war by muddling what is real and fake and to amplify social and political cleavages through disinformation. While new technologies may make these campaigns more potent, they do not replace the need for trained personnel to plan and implement them.

Combatant commanders recognize the growing importance of information influence operations as part of their campaigns, but the U.S. military does not have enough personnel who specialize in these operations to support commanders’ needs. The Departments of Defense and Army have signaled that information is critical to everything the military does with recent publications of a strategy and doctrine dedicated to information. While the Air Force, Navy, Army, and Marine Corps have created new operational units to focus on all aspects of information operations, the Army is poised to cut two of its branches that focus primarily on understanding and influencing the battlefield.

Optimizing for Modern Competition and Conflict

In the event of major conflict, special operations forces have unique capabilities that can help support and enable the joint force. Special operations forces can also contribute to strategic objectives through other means by organizing and training guerrilla forces, operating through proxies, and conducting psychological warfare. All the while, special operations forces are critical for counterterrorism and crisis response missions that show no signs of abating.

Short of large-scale conflict, special operations forces can provide persistent engagement in foreign countries through irregular campaigning and shape strategic outcomes through what a recent report calls “strategic disruption.” This report outlines five categories conducted in special operations campaigning: enabling foreign actors to resist their government or an occupying power; building capacity of foreign security forces to support them against internal or external threats; using information and actions to influence beliefs and behaviors of foreign audiences; gaining strategically relevant information to understand operational environments; and operations to target key personnel, equipment, or infrastructure in foreign countries.

But special operations force structure is not equally prepared for each of these types of operations. Over the past two decades, special operations optimized its force for short-duration counterterrorism and crisis response missions that are most applicable to targeting. To a lesser extent, special operations forces were built to train and support partnered military forces (often to conduct short-duration counterterrorism missions). In addition to the growth to special operations forces outlined above, the Army created additional capabilities focused on supporting partnered forces. Thousands of soldiers are now assigned to the six brigades within Security Force Assistance Command to advise and support operations with partner and allied conventional forces. Special operations forces, along with other Army units, have therefore developed to focus on targeting and supporting partnered military forces.

Special operations forces are far less prepared for operations to better understand sensitive environments, influence foreign actors, and enable resistance movements. Though the required skills for the various types of missions overlap, counterterrorism and advising missions require different capabilities and ultimately a different force structure than campaigns centered on a competition for influence with a rival power. The former set of missions require the highest levels of tactical proficiency and maybe some language ability to build rapport with a partnered force. The latter demands skills to understand social, economic, political, and security dynamics in other countries and determine how limited military resources can be used effectively in these contexts to further U.S. national interests where they align with partner interests. Such campaigns require a range of tactical, cognitive, social, and linguistic skills that units focused on force rather than influence have not developed.

For example, a recent Government Accountability Office report found that most Army special operations units requiring foreign language skills failed to meet elementary proficiency goals. It is unreasonable to expect that every member of special operations reaches advanced language proficiency. But the debate around the role of language in special operations is enlightening because it is a tangible metric that serves as a useful proxy for the other cognitive and social skills that would be required to execute the types of irregular campaigns that U.S. Special Operations Command envisions and describes. Campaigning effectively in politically sensitive environments like Myanmar and Venezuela would not just require more than the 17.6 hours of language training per year that Army special operations forces complete (and 6.2 annual hours for Marine Corps special operations). It would require far more emphasis on non-tactical skills that the evidence shows are not currently a priority in special operations units.

One of the lowest priority missions in special operations based on resources like funding and personnel is information influence operations. Strategic competition is increasingly conducted through digital platforms and social media through information campaigns. This trend will likely accelerate with the advent of deepfake technology and generative artificial intelligence. Yet while countries like China and Russia are making unprecedented investments in disinformation and influence campaigns, the U.S. military is inexplicably moving in the opposite direction with its proposed cuts to psychological operations and civil affairs.

Cutting these capabilities could also be devastating in large-scale combat operations. Historically, civil affairs capabilities have been critical for helping commanders understand the social and political environment during combat operations and for consolidating gains and enhancing stability after major operations. Psychological operations have proven invaluable in supporting military deception and for eroding the will of enemy combatants and convincing them to surrender or desert. Due to low psychological operations capacity and a risk-averse attitude towards information influence operations, the U.S. military would be challenged to replicate the success of Ukrainian influence operations that have convinced thousands of Russian soldiers to stop fighting. Reducing civil affairs and psychological operations capabilities further is therefore a great risk to large-scale combat operations in addition to competition and irregular warfare.

To be sure, psychological operations and civil affairs forces have a host of problems to overcome within their own ranks to make further investment pay off. Active-duty psychological operations units were among those to fall short of language proficiency goals, an underwhelming performance by the Army’s “premier influence agents.” For the past several years, psychological operations battalion commanders have repeatedly shied away from group command, another troubling sign. But the position of psychological operations and civil affairs at the bottom of the special operations hierarchy contributes to the lack of resources and the frustrations that create these types of problems. With few colonels and no general officers, professional advancement for officers in these units is extremely limited. Demands more closely related to other special operations activities, such as airborne operations, become prioritized over training that would enhance influence-related skills, like language or social media analytics training.

Special operations and the Army already lack the capability and capacity for influence-related capabilities important for competition and conflict in the digital age. Rather than cutting them even more, the Army should be investing to shore up this critical gap.

More than Special Operations Forces at Stake

The debates over cuts to Army special operations forces are emblematic of problems across the entire service. The service has not reconciled its efforts to change its operational formations and capabilities with entrenched institutional structures that have become too parochial. For example, the Army has created new operational formations like Multi-Domain Task Forces and Theater Information Advantage Detachments. Information advantage efforts in the Indo-Pacific include psychological operations forces and are currently being led by a psychological operations colonel. But if the planned changes to Army special operations are executed, such efforts will be nearly impossible in the future with significantly fewer psychological operations forces and almost no psychological operations colonels.

Army Special Operations Command’s plans to cut special operations support, civil affairs, and psychological operations units will make the military less prepared for modern competition and creates greater risk for the joint force in large-scale combat.

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Cole Livieratos is an Army strategist and former psychological operations officer. He holds a Ph.D. in international relations and is authoring a book manuscript about the development of U.S. special operations forces and strategy in irregular warfare. He is currently a Council on Foreign Relations international affairs fellow examining the intersection of emerging technology and national security.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or any other branch or agency of the U.S. government.

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warontherocks.com · by Cole Livieratos · January 9, 2024

3. DoD Memo: Review of Notification Process for Assumption of Functions and Duties of the Secretary of Defense

A quick response to the recent incident.

The PDF of the memo is at this link: https://media.defense.gov/2024/Jan/08/2003371727/-1/-1/1/NOTIFICATION_PROCESS_FOR_ASSUMPTION_OF_FUNCTIONS_AND_DUTIES_OF_THE_SECRETARY_OF_DEFENSE__8_JAN_24.PDF

My flippant response: I would have thought Ranger Austin would have remembered to issue his 5 point contingency plan: e.g., where I am going, who I am taking, how long gone/time of return, who is in charge while I am gone and actions on enemy contact or if I do not return.

We just have to go back to the fundamentals of blocking and tackling that we learned at Ranger School.

DoD Memo: Review of Notification Process for Assumption of Functions and Duties of the Secretary of Defense

JAN. 8, 2024

The DOD director of administration and management, in consultation with the general counsel, will lead a review of the notification process for assumption of functions and duties of the Secretary of Defense.

4. Marine Corps Provides Update on General Smith

The Commandant and the Corps have been pretty transparent throughout his ordeal.

I wish him a quick recovery. I hope rehabilitation does not take too long.

Marine Corps Provides Update on General Smith

marines.mil

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HEADQUARTERS MARINE CORPS --

The Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Eric. M. Smith, underwent successful open heart surgery on Jan. 8 to repair a bicuspid aortic valve in his heart, which was the cause of his cardiac arrest on Oct. 29. He is in good condition and continues to recover at the hospital among family members and his doctors. Following his rehabilitation, Gen. Smith will return to full duty status as Commandant.

General Smith and his family are focused on his rehabilitation and appreciate everyone’s continued respect for their privacy ahead of his full recovery.

The Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Christopher J. Mahoney, continues to perform the duties of the Commandant during Gen. Smith’s rehabilitation.

Communication Directorate

Headquarters Marine Corps

Email:ontherecord@usmc.mil

marines.mil

5. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 8, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-january-8-2024

Key Takeaways:

• Ukrainian officials highlighted the need for more air defense systems after another large series of Russian missile and drone strikes against Ukraine on the night of January 7 to 8.
• Western provisions of air defense systems and missiles remain crucial for Ukraine as Russian forces attempt to adapt to current Ukrainian air defense capabilities and as Ukraine develops its defense industrial base (DIB).
• Ukrainian forces are adapting to battlefield difficulties from equipment shortages but are struggling to completely compensate for artillery ammunition shortages and insufficient electronic warfare (EW) capabilities.
• Russian authorities are reportedly illegally deporting Ukrainian civilians to Russia and holding them in penal colonies and pre-trial detention centers without charges, investigations, trials, access to lawyers, or designated release dates.
• A Russian insider source claimed that Russian officials dismissed First Deputy Head of the Main Directorate of the Russian General Staff (GRU), Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseyev, who was reportedly in charge of the Russian “Volunteer Corps” that was intended to replace the Wagner Group.
• ISW cannot confirm either Alekseyev’s dismissal in fall 2023 or the reports of shell shortages disproportionately affecting the Russian “Volunteer Corps.”
• Russian authorities continue efforts to consolidate control over the Russian information space ahead of the March presidential elections.
• Russian opposition outlet Verstka reported on January 8 that recent polling shows decreased domestic support for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine ahead of the March 2024 Russian presidential elections.
• Russian government and media officials recently have died, possibly under mysterious circumstances.
• A Russian state media outlet confirmed that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) detained three officers of its Directorate “M” in connection with a high-profile bribery scheme.
• Russian forces recently made confirmed advances near Donetsk City and Verbove, and positional engagements continued along the entire line of contact.
• The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on January 8 that there are more than 450,000 Russian military personnel in Ukraine as of December 2023.
• Russia continues to forcibly deport children from occupied Ukraine under the guise of vacations.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JANUARY 8, 2024

Jan 8, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 8, 2024

Christina Harward, Nicole Wolkov, Grace Mappes, Angelica Evans, Kateryna Stepanenko, George Barros, and Frederick W. Kagan

January 8, 2024, 6:30pm ET 

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

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

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

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 12:30pm ET on January 8. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the January 9 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Ukrainian officials highlighted the need for more air defense systems after another large series of Russian missile and drone strikes against Ukraine on the night of January 7 to 8. Ukrainian military officials reported that Russian forces launched a total of 59 missiles and drones against Ukraine including: eight Shahed-136/-131 drones; seven S-300/400 missiles; four Kh-47M2 Kinzhal hypersonic missiles; 24 Kh-101/555/55 and eight Kh-22 cruise missiles; six Iskander-M ballistic missiles; and two Kh-31P air guided missiles.[1] Ukrainian military officials reported that the Russian strikes targeted critical and civilian infrastructure, and military facilities in Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia, and Khmelnytskyi oblasts and that Ukrainian forces downed all eight Shaheds and 18 Kh-101/555/55 cruise missiles.[2] Ukrainian Air Force Spokesperson Colonel Yuriy Ihnat reported that the percentage of Russian air targets that Ukrainian forces shot down on the night of January 7 to 8 did not change in comparison to previous, more intense Russian strikes, but that Ukraine needs to intercept more Russian missiles and drones given the large number of such systems that Russia regularly launches.[3] Ihnat stated that only “specific means,” such as Patriot air defense systems, can down ballistic missiles and that Ukrainian forces have yet to down a Kh-22 cruise missile.[4] Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated in a virtual address to Sweden’s annual national Society and Defense Conference on January 8 that Ukraine needs to strengthen its air defense capabilities at the front to better protect Ukrainian positions against Russian strikes and in the rear to protect civilians.[5] Zelensky stated that Ukrainian forces have intercepted over 70 percent of the over 500 Russian missiles and drones launched over the past “several days” thanks to air defenses systems from Western partners but that this current interception rate is insufficient.[6] Zelensky stated that Russian forces will lose their power on the battlefield if Russian forces lose air superiority.[7]

Western provisions of air defense systems and missiles remain crucial for Ukraine as Russian forces attempt to adapt to current Ukrainian air defense capabilities and as Ukraine develops its defense industrial base (DIB). ISW assessed that Russian and Ukrainian forces are currently engaged in a tactical and technological offensive-defense race wherein both sides are constantly experimenting and adapting their long-range strikes and air defenses.[8] The continued and increased Western provision of air defense systems and missiles to Ukraine is crucial as Russian forces continue to experiment with new ways to penetrate Ukrainian air defenses. The inclusion of Western-provided air defense systems into Ukraine’s air defense umbrella has been essential to Ukraine’s ability to defend against Russian missiles, particularly ballistic missiles.[9] Western air defense systems and air defense missile provisions to Ukraine in the near- and medium-term are also essential to protecting Ukraine’s growing DIB as Russian forces continue to target Ukrainian industrial facilities.[10] US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller called the provision of US aid to Ukraine “critical” on January 4 because Ukraine is not yet able to defend itself but noted that US aid will not need to continue at previous levels because Ukraine is working to expand its DIB to “stand on its own feet.”[11]

Ukrainian forces are adapting to battlefield difficulties from equipment shortages but are struggling to completely compensate for artillery ammunition shortages and insufficient electronic warfare (EW) capabilities. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on January 8 that Ukrainian forces are struggling with artillery ammunition shortages on the frontline but that Ukrainian forces are using first person view (FPV) drones to compensate for these shortages until Ukraine receives more ammunition.[12] Ukrainian soldiers near Robotyne, western Zaporizhia Oblast told the WSJ that they are able to strike small Russian vehicles and soldiers transporting supplies with FPV drones and hinder Russian logistics, but that the FPV drones carry smaller payloads so that Ukrainian forces cannot use them to strike Russian field fortifications as they can with artillery. The New York Times (NYT) reported on January 7 that Ukrainian forces, particularly in western Zaporizhia Oblast, are struggling to overcome difficulties due to Russian ground attacks, FPV drone strikes, and EW capabilities.[13] A Ukrainian deputy battalion commander told NYT that Ukrainian morale is “all right” but that the soldiers are “physically exhausted.” The Financial Times (FT) reported on January 7 that Russian forces have an advantage in EW and are prioritizing the production of strike drones and reiterated the importance of bolstering Ukraine’s EW capabilities to counter Russian drones and missiles.[14] FT noted that Ukraine has heavily invested in its EW capabilities since the start of the full-scale invasion but that Russian forces retain the upper hand due to Russia’s pre-war EW capabilities.

Russian authorities are reportedly illegally deporting Ukrainian civilians to Russia and holding them in penal colonies and pre-trial detention centers without charges, investigations, trials, access to lawyers, or designated release dates. The BBC’s Russian Service reported on January 8 that Russian authorities have detained thousands of Ukrainian civilians in penal colonies and pre-trial detention centers in Russia and occupied Ukraine for “opposing the ‘special military operation.’”[15] BBC’s Russian Service reported that Russian authorities are holding the Ukrainian civilians without formal records of their detention, without initiating criminal or administrative cases, and without ongoing investigations, so the detainees do not “formally” exist in the Russian penitentiary system and have no access to lawyers. The BBC’s Russian Service reported that some former Ukrainian civilian detainees stated that Russian authorities treated them “like subhumans” and tortured them. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) reportedly responded to a request about one of the detained civilians, stating that Russian authorities are holding the detainee in accordance with “the requirements of the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.” The BBC noted that the Geneva Convention prohibits the taking of civilian hostages who are non-combatants.[16] The BBC reported that there is currently no mechanism in international law for the release of civilians from captivity, and the Geneva Convention only allows for POWs to be exchanged for other POWs.[17] The BBC’s Russian Service stated that the work of third parties, such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), that recently helped mediate a prisoner exchange that included the return of Ukrainian civilians, have proven vital for the return of the civilian detainees. The Ukrainian Ministry of Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories stated that there were 4,337 Ukrainians in Russian captivity as of November 2023, including 763 civilians, but the BBC noted that these numbers rely on data from the Red Cross, which does not always have access to places where Russian authorities hold Ukrainian civilians, including detention centers and penal colonies in occupied territories.[18] Ukrainian Commissioner for Human Rights Dmitry Lubinets stated that about 25,000 Ukrainian civilians are missing and that Russian forces may have kidnapped a significant number of the missing individuals.[19] The BBC quoted the Ukrainian “Find Ours” project as estimating that there may be about 7,500 Ukrainian civilians unlawfully detained in Russia and occupied Ukraine.[20] The BBC’s Russian Service stated that Russian and Ukrainian human rights activists have identified more than 30 penal colonies and pre-trial detention centers in which Ukrainian civilians have been reportedly detained.[21]

A Russian insider source claimed that Russian officials dismissed First Deputy Head of the Main Directorate of the Russian General Staff (GRU), Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseyev, who was reportedly in charge of the Russian “Volunteer Corps” that was intended to replace the Wagner Group. A Russian insider source, which has previously provided accurate information about Russian command changes, claimed in response to a source reportedly affiliated with Russian authorities (siloviki), that Russian officials forced Alekseyev to resign in fall 2023.[22] The siloviki-affiliated source originally claimed that Alekseyev’s irregular armed formation, the “Volunteer Corps,” was facing similar equipment and shell shortages that Wagner experienced in early 2023.[23] The siloviki-affiliated source claimed that almost all units of the “Volunteer Corps” have been experiencing an acute shortage of fuel and lubricants for the past two months, especially on the Bakhmut and Avdiivka frontlines. The siloviki-affiliated source added that the “Volunteer Corps” is struggling with these shortages even though it was integrated into the GRU organizational structure under the 462nd Special Purpose Training Center. The siloviki-affiliated source claimed that Alekseyev is assuring his subordinates that such shortages are temporary and that the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) is delaying weapon and supply provisions to the “Volunteer Corps” - in a similar fashion to his prior efforts to calm now-deceased Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin in the spring of 2023. A Russian political blogger (who has an audience of 150,000 followers) argued that the Russian MoD likely is not intentionally failing to provide military equipment and supplies to the Russian “Volunteer Corps” since that irregular formation cannot pose the same political threat to the Kremlin as Wagner and Prigozhin’s mutiny did in June 2023.[24] The blogger argued that the reported shell shortages indicate potential systematic supply shortages across all Russian forces or more likely suggest that the Russian MoD is withholding ammunition from certain units whose functions it deems to be “less relevant.” The blogger observed that elements of the Russian “Volunteer Corps” are primarily engaged in infantry assaults and that Russia is conserving means, such as the use of aircraft, in certain directions.

ISW cannot confirm either Alekseyev’s dismissal in fall 2023 or the reports of shell shortages disproportionately affecting the Russian “Volunteer Corps.” ISW last observed reports of Alekseyev awarding servicemen of the Russian “Hispaniola” Soccer Fan Volunteer Reconnaissance and Assault Brigade on November 30, 2023.[25] BBC’s Russian Service reported that Alekseyev was present during the negotiations with Prigozhin after his mutiny, and Radio Liberty reported that Wagner channels referred to Alekseyev as “one of the founders” of Wagner.[26] Alekseyev also accompanied Prigozhin around the Russian Southern Military District (SMD) headquarters in Rostov-on-Don during the mutiny and later recorded a video of himself asking Prigozhin to stop the mutiny.[27] BBC’s Russian Service reported that Alekseyev was one of the main managers of all “volunteer” irregular formations – including the Redut private military company (PMC).

Russian authorities continue efforts to consolidate control over the Russian information space ahead of the March presidential elections. Kremlin newswire ТASS stated on January 8 that the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office, Ministry of Digital Development, and Russian federal information monitoring service Roskomnadzor prepared a bill on the rapid blocking of illegal content on the internet using a specialized information system.[28] The Prosecutor General’s Office stated that it sent 555 demands to Roskomnadzor to block “fakes” that “discredit” the Russian Armed Forces and Russian authorities in 2023 and that Russian authorities deleted or blocked over 69,000 internet resources.[29] The Prosecutor General’s Office stated that the topics of these “fakes” included the war in Ukraine, decisions made by government authorities, and violations of the electoral process during the September 2023 elections.

Russian opposition outlet Verstka reported on January 8 that recent polling shows decreased domestic support for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine ahead of the March 2024 Russian presidential elections. Verstka, citing polling data from independent Russian opposition polling organizations Chronicles and the Public Sociology Laboratory and unspecified Kremlin sources, reported that the percentage of Russians who support Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine “without achieving the [war] goals” exceeded the percentage of Russians who support continuing the war for the first time at the end of 2023.[30] An unnamed source with reported connections to the Russian Presidential Administration told Verstka that fewer than 50 percent of respondents in a recent Kremlin-sponsored poll supported the continuation of Russia‘s war in Ukraine while more than 30 percent are in favor of peace negotiations.[31] Verstka stated that decreased support for the war has not yet led to a vocal anti-war political movement due to continued domestic political support for Russian President Vladimir Putin, however.[32] Chronicles stated on November 30, 2023, that data from its October 17–22, 2023 telephone survey indicates that respondents who are “consistent” supporters of the war – those who expressed support for the war, do not support the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine unless Russia achieves its war aims, and think that Russia should prioritize military spending – decreased from 22 percent to 12 percent between February 2023 and October 2023.[33] Chronicles stated that 40 percent of respondents supported a withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine without Russia having achieved its war aims and that this number has remained consistent at about 39 to 40 percent throughout 2023.[34] Independent Russian polling organization Levada Center reported on October 31, 2023, that 55 percent of respondents believe that Russia should begin peace negotiations while 38 percent favor continuing to conduct the war, noting that these numbers have largely remained consistent since July 2023.[35] The Levada Center released a poll on December 5, 2023, that showed that the Russian public continues to have questions about the end and outcome of the war as well as mobilization and prospects for peace consistent with increased domestic support for a Russian withdrawal from Ukraine and peace negotiations.[36]

Russian government and media officials recently have died, possibly under mysterious circumstances. Russian authorities found the editor-in-chief of the online editorial office of the Kuban branch of the Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK), Zoya Konovalova, and her husband dead in Krasnodar Krai on January 6, and the cause of death is reportedly poisoning.[37] Many Russian milbloggers and war correspondents are associated with VGTRK.[38] Vladimir Egorov, the deputy chairman of the Tobolsk City Duma and member of the United Russia party, died on December 27, 2023, after falling from a third-story window in his home.[39] A Russian source claimed that the most likely cause of death was a heart problem.[40] Russian news outlet RBK stated that Egorov was sentenced to correctional labor in 2016 for not collecting rent from businessmen after leasing municipal land, but the charges were dropped due to the statute of limitations.[41]

A Russian state media outlet confirmed that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) detained three officers of its Directorate “M” in connection with a high-profile bribery scheme. Kremlin newswire TASS cited Russian law enforcement agencies on January 8 as reporting the detention of FSB officer Alexander Ushakov and house arrests of officers Alexei Tsaryev and Sergei Manyshkin for accepting bribes totaling over five billion rubles ($55.6 million) and other unspecified crimes.[42] TASS’s report confirms part of a claim from a Russian insider source on November 28, 2023, that the FSB detained an ”Ushakov,” two unspecified Directorate “M” officers, and two unspecified Directorate “T” officers in connection with a five-billion ruble bribery case.[43] TASS reported that the FSB’s Directorate “M” is responsible for counterintelligence and combating corruption in various Russian government and law enforcement agencies, including the Russian Supreme Court, Prosecutor General’s Office, Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), Ministry of Justice, and Investigative Committee.[44]

Key Takeaways:

• Ukrainian officials highlighted the need for more air defense systems after another large series of Russian missile and drone strikes against Ukraine on the night of January 7 to 8.
• Western provisions of air defense systems and missiles remain crucial for Ukraine as Russian forces attempt to adapt to current Ukrainian air defense capabilities and as Ukraine develops its defense industrial base (DIB).
• Ukrainian forces are adapting to battlefield difficulties from equipment shortages but are struggling to completely compensate for artillery ammunition shortages and insufficient electronic warfare (EW) capabilities.
• Russian authorities are reportedly illegally deporting Ukrainian civilians to Russia and holding them in penal colonies and pre-trial detention centers without charges, investigations, trials, access to lawyers, or designated release dates.
• A Russian insider source claimed that Russian officials dismissed First Deputy Head of the Main Directorate of the Russian General Staff (GRU), Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseyev, who was reportedly in charge of the Russian “Volunteer Corps” that was intended to replace the Wagner Group.
• ISW cannot confirm either Alekseyev’s dismissal in fall 2023 or the reports of shell shortages disproportionately affecting the Russian “Volunteer Corps.”
• Russian authorities continue efforts to consolidate control over the Russian information space ahead of the March presidential elections.
• Russian opposition outlet Verstka reported on January 8 that recent polling shows decreased domestic support for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine ahead of the March 2024 Russian presidential elections.
• Russian government and media officials recently have died, possibly under mysterious circumstances.
• A Russian state media outlet confirmed that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) detained three officers of its Directorate “M” in connection with a high-profile bribery scheme.
• Russian forces recently made confirmed advances near Donetsk City and Verbove, and positional engagements continued along the entire line of contact.
• The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on January 8 that there are more than 450,000 Russian military personnel in Ukraine as of December 2023.
• Russia continues to forcibly deport children from occupied Ukraine under the guise of vacations.

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

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

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

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

Positional fighting continued along the Kupyansk-Kreminna line on January 8, but there are no confirmed changes to this front line. Positional fighting continued northeast of Kupyansk near Synkivka, Lake Lyman, and Ivanivka, and west and northwest of Kreminna near Terny and Zhytlivka.[45] Ukrainian Ground Forces Commander Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi noted that the situation in the Kupyansk direction remains difficult but that Ukrainian forces have a good command of the situation.[46] The Chechen Spetsnaz “Aida” Group reportedly continues to operate in forest areas near Kreminna.[47]

Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets reported that the Russian military command is withdrawing some elements of the 11th and 15th Motorized Rifle Regiments (2nd Guards Motorized Rifle Division, Western Military District [WMD]) to rear base areas in Belgorod and Kursk oblasts in order to fill these units out with additional personnel. Mashovets observed that separate assault detachments of the 11th and 15th Motorized Rifle Regiments are continuing to attack north of Synkivka and south of Olshana (13km northeast of Kupyansk) in the offensive zone of the Russian 25th Motorized Rifle Brigade (6th Combined Arms Army, WMD). Mashovets added that that the Russian command plans to finish the transfer of up to 5,000 personnel from training grounds located in Kursk Oblast — largely from the 346th Motorized Rifle Regiment of the Mobilization Reserve — to the base area of the 2nd Guards Motorized Rifle Division by January 16 to reinforce the division’s units. Mashovets added that the Russian command continues to strengthen its “Kursk” and ‘Belgorod” groupings of forces with forces and materiel deployed in the Kupyansk direction by transferring elements of the 11th Army Corps (Baltic Fleet) to Belgorod and Kursk oblasts – namely the elements of the 11th Tank Regiment and the 79th Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment (18th Guards Motorized Rifle Division). Mashovets assessed that the Russian command is likely pulling some companies, battalions, and batteries in the Kharkiv and Sumy directions starting January 4–5 — possibly as part of an “operational game.”[48]

Russian forces accidentally dropped an unguided bomb on a residential area in occupied Rubizhne, Luhansk Oblast. Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Head Leonid Pasechnik claimed that a FAB-250 bomb accidentally fell on a residential area in Rubizhne without inflicting casualties and that occupation officials evacuated the area.[49] Ukrainian Luhansk Oblast Head Serhiy Lysohor stated that the incident did cause casualties, however.[50]

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

Elements of the Luhansk People’s Republic’s (LNR) 6th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade (2nd Army Corps [AC]) reportedly continued to operate near Spirne (northeast of Bakhmut), and the frontline did not change in the Siversk (west of Lysychansk) direction as of January 8.[51]

Russian and Ukrainian forces continued positional engagements north and south of Bakhmut on January 8 but there were no confirmed frontline changes. A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced northwest of Bakhmut near Bohdanivka as Ukrainian forces withdrew further south, but ISW cannot verify this claim.[52] Positional engagements continued northwest of Bakhmut near Bohdanivka; west of Bakhmut near Khromove; and southwest of Bakhmut near Klishchiivka and Andriivka.[53] Elements of the Donetsk People’s Republic’s (DNR) 58th Separate Spetsnaz Battalion (1st AC) are reportedly operating in the Bakhmut direction.[54] Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets reported that elements of the Russian 1307th Motorized Rifle Regiment of Russian Territorial Forces (6th Motorized Rifle Division, 3rd AC) and 72nd Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade (3rd AC) have been unsuccessfully trying to capture dominant heights northwest of Klishchiivka by attacking northwest and east of the settlement, but that Russian forces only advanced a couple hundred meters towards these heights.[55]

A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces marginally advanced west of Avdiivka on January 8, but ISW has not observed visual evidence confirming this claim. The milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced up to one kilometer in width and 440 meters in depth in eastern Pervomaiske (west of Avdiivka).[56] Russian forces reportedly attacked near Avdiivka; northwest of Avdiivka near Stepove, Tonenke, Novobakhmutivka, and two kilometers east of the Avdiivka Coke Plant; west of Avdiivka near Sieverne and Pervomaiske; southwest of Avdiivka near Nevelske; and southeast of Avdiivka near the industrial zone.[57] Elements of the DNR’s 9thMotorized Rifle Brigade (1st AC), “Sparta” and ”Somali” battalions, and the “Pyatnyashka” International Brigade are reportedly operating in the Avdiivka direction.[58]

Russian forces recently marginally advanced west of Donetsk City. Geolocated footage published on January 7 shows that Russian forces advanced on Heorhiivka’s (6km west of Donetsk City) eastern outskirts.[59] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces captured two churches in Heorhiivka and advanced 300 meters, and that Russian forces also advanced on the opposite bank of the Osykova River from Marinka (directly west of Donetsk City).[60] Positional engagements continued west of Donetsk City near Marinka and Heorhiivka and southwest of Donetsk City near Novomykhailivka and Pobieda.[61] Elements of the Russian “Ruskiye Yastreby” (Russian Hawks) detachment of the 33rd Motorized Rifle Regiment (20th Guards Motorized Rifle Division, 8th Guards Combined Arms Army [CAA], Southern Military District [SMD]) are reportedly operating near Novomykhailivka.[62] Mashovets argued that the Russian military command will likely commit an additional battalion from the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade (Pacific Fleet) to battle in the Slavne (9km south of Donetsk City) — Volodymirivka (11km southeast of Vuhledar) direction.[63]

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

Russian and Ukrainian forces continued positional engagements in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on January 8, but there were no confirmed changes in this frontline area. Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that positional engagements continued near Novodarivka (southeast of Velyka Novosilka) and Pryyutne (southwest of Velyka Novosilka) and south of Chervone (southwest of Velyka Novosilka in eastern Zaporizhia Oblast).[64] Elements of the Russian 34th Motorized Rifle Brigade (49th Combined Arms Army [CAA], Southern Military District [SMD]) and elements of the 7th Company of the 37th Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade (36th CAA, Eastern Military District) reportedly continue to operate in the Velyka Novosilka area and near Urozhaine (south of Velyka Novosilka), respectively.[65]

Russian forces recently made a confirmed advance in western Zaporizhia Oblast. Geolocated footage published on January 8 indicates that Russian forces marginally advanced west of Verbove (east of Robotyne).[66] Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that positional engagements continued near Robotyne, west of Verbove, and north of Novoprokopivka (south of Robotyne).[67] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces can only reach their positions with armored tracked vehicles in the Zaporizhia direction due to worsening icy road conditions.[68] Zaporizhia Oblast occupation official Vladimir Rogov claimed that the poor weather conditions in Zaporizhia Oblast are inhibiting Russian and Ukrainian forces from using drones to adjust artillery fire.[69] Elements of the 7th Airborne (VDV) Division reportedly continue to operate near Verbove.[70]

Ukrainian forces continued to hold positions in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast on January 8, and there are no confirmed changes to this frontline area. Positional battles continued near Krynky in east bank Kherson Oblast.[71] Ukrainian Southern Operational Command Spokesperson Captain First Rank Nataliya Humenyuk reported that Russian forces are intensifying aviation operations in the Kherson direction after largely pausing aviation operations since Ukrainian forces downed three Russian Su-34 aircraft in the Kherson direction in late December 2023.[72] Humenyuk noted that Russian forces are unsuccessfully conducting unguided bomb strikes, as opposed to glide bomb strikes, on Ukrainian positions in east bank Kherson Oblast.[73] Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets reported that elements of the Russian 328th and 337th VDV Regiments (104th VDV Division) and elements of the 26th Motorized Rifle Regiment (70th Motorized Rifle Division [MRD], 18th CAA, SMD) are operating near Krynky.[74] Mashovets stated that the Russian military may soon deploy elements of the Russian 17th Tank Regiment (70th MRD, 18th CAA, SMD) to near Krynky from near Nova Mayachka (46km southeast of Kherson City and 18km southeast of Krynky).[75]

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

The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on January 8 that there are more than 450,000 Russian military personnel in Ukraine as of December 2023.[76] Russian President Vladimir Putin stated on December 14, 2023, that there are 617,000 Russian personnel in the “combat zone.”[77] Putin’s more comprehensive figure likely included more military personnel such as mobilized personnel, contract soldiers (kontraktniki), and volunteers (dobrovoltsy) in irregular formations operating along the frontline and in the rear.[78]

A Russian weapons expert provided additional information about the North Korean KN-23 ballistic missile in response to Western reporting that Russian forces launched the missiles at targets in Ukraine.[79] Russian weapons expert Vitaly Lebedev told a Russian milblogger on January 7 and 8 that the KN-23 ballistic missile system, which Lebedev referred to as the “Kimskander,” due to its comparability to the Russian Iskander-M ballistic missile system, can be deployed using both wheeled and tracked launching systems and from diesel-electric subs. Lebedev stated that the KN-23 missiles have gas-jet rudders that, like aerodynamic rudders, can significantly reduce the likelihood of interception due to high maneuverability. Lebedev added that KN-23 missiles have an autonomous inertial guidance system based on a gyro-stabilized platform and may also have an additional correction module with a satellite navigation system. Lebedev, citing unspecified North Korean press releases and South Korean, Japanese, and US military reports, stated that the KN-23 can change its trajectory, increasing the likelihood of the missile evading a missile defense system and hitting its target. US National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby stated on January 4 that North Korea provided Russia with ballistic missile launchers and an unspecified number of ballistic missiles and that Russian forces launched at least one of the North Korean missiles into Ukraine on December 30, 2023.[80] ISW previously assessed that Russia may be intensifying efforts to source ballistic missiles from abroad because these missiles appear to be more effective at striking targets in Ukraine in some circumstances.[81]

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

A Russian source claiming to be affiliated with Chechen “Akhmat” Spetsnaz published footage on January 8 purportedly showing Chechen forces testing a first-person viewer (FPV) drone with an encrypted communication system that protects the drone from electronic warfare (EW) interference.[82] The source claimed that the drone can carry a warhead weighing over four kilograms, is impervious to rain and snow, and can be operated from up to 300 meters away. The source claimed that Chechen forces also tested a drone designed to conduct strikes during Ukrainian unit rotations and a new EW system that successfully downed a drone from over 1.5 kilometers away. The source claimed that Chechen forces immediately deployed the drone to a trained crew in “one of the hottest positions on the front.”

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

Russia continues to forcibly deport Ukrainian children from occupied Ukraine under the guise of vacations. The Kherson Oblast occupation administration stated on January 7 that Russian authorities transferred a Ukrainian child from occupied Kherson Oblast to a children’s camp in occupied Crimea.[83] The Ukrainian Resistance Centers stated on January 8 that Russia has deported more than 19,500 Ukrainian children as of December 2023 but that this data is incomplete.[84]

Russian regional and occupation authorities continue infrastructure programs designed to integrate occupied Ukraine into Russia. Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) government chairperson Yevgeny Solntsev stated on January 8 that DNR and Rostov Oblast authorities plan to build a railway line between occupied Donetsk City and Rostov-on-Don, Rostov Oblast in 2024.[85] Solntsev stated that the railway line would significantly increase the delivery of goods to occupied Donetsk Oblast.[86]

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Nothing significant to report.

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

Nothing significant to report.

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

6. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, January 8, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-january-8-2024

Key Takeaways:

1. PIJ released a video on January 8 showing one of its Israeli hostages appealing for a renewed hostage exchange with Israel, which is an effort to pressure the Israeli government to agree to a ceasefire.
2. IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari reported on January 8 that the war “shifted to a stage” that will involve fewer ground forces and airstrikes in the Gaza Strip.
3. The IDF killed a senior commander in LH’s Radwan Unit, Wissam Hassan al Tawil, in an airstrike on January 8.
4. Tawil’s death in southern Lebanon indicates that LH is not complying with UNSC Resolution 1701, which mandates that LH cannot deploy military forces south of the Litani River. UNSC Resolution 1701 ended the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War.
5. Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba spokesperson Hussein Moussawi stated that the Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—conducted an attack targeting Haifa, Israel, on January 7 to signal to Israel its ability to attack targets “beyond [Haifa].”
6. An Iraqi official close to the Shia Coordination Framework claimed on January 7 that the framework recently “authorized” Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al Sudani to discuss the removal of US forces from Iraq with the US Government.

IRAN UPDATE, JANUARY 8, 2024

Jan 8, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Iran Update, January 8, 2024

Ashka Jhaveri, Kathryn Tyson, Amin Soltani, Johanna Moore, Annika Ganzeveld, Alexandra Braverman, and Brian Carter

Information Cutoff: 2:00pm EST 

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

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

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

Key Takeaways:

1. PIJ released a video on January 8 showing one of its Israeli hostages appealing for a renewed hostage exchange with Israel, which is an effort to pressure the Israeli government to agree to a ceasefire.
2. IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari reported on January 8 that the war “shifted to a stage” that will involve fewer ground forces and airstrikes in the Gaza Strip.
3. The IDF killed a senior commander in LH’s Radwan Unit, Wissam Hassan al Tawil, in an airstrike on January 8.
4. Tawil’s death in southern Lebanon indicates that LH is not complying with UNSC Resolution 1701, which mandates that LH cannot deploy military forces south of the Litani River. UNSC Resolution 1701 ended the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War.
5. Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba spokesperson Hussein Moussawi stated that the Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—conducted an attack targeting Haifa, Israel, on January 7 to signal to Israel its ability to attack targets “beyond [Haifa].”
6. An Iraqi official close to the Shia Coordination Framework claimed on January 7 that the framework recently “authorized” Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al Sudani to discuss the removal of US forces from Iraq with the US Government.

Gaza Strip

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

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

Palestinian militias are continuing to report attacks in the northern Gaza Strip to their higher headquarters after their fighters return to rear areas. The delays in reporting may indicate a loss of command and control over some units that are engaged with Israeli forces, as CTP-ISW previously assessed.[1] Hamas’ military wing, the al Qassem Brigades, claimed on January 8 that its fighters “returned from the [frontlines in northwest Gaza City]” and reported that they fired anti-tank rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) at an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Engineering Corps armored personnel carrier.[2] These fighters' inability to communicate with higher headquarters until returning to rear areas means that their commanders may be unable to transmit orders to fighters engaged with the IDF. These possible difficulties in command and control extend to other Palestinian militia groups fighting in the northern Gaza Strip. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s (PFLP) military wing, the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, claimed on January 8 that it reestablished ”contact with combat units” and confirmed that its fighters targeted three IDF vehicles with unspecified weapons in Tuffah in the northern Gaza Strip.[3]

The IDF continued clearing operations in the Central Governorate of the Gaza Strip on January 8. The IDF 179th Armored Brigade (assigned to the 99th Division) located a tunnel shaft, weapons, and thousands of dollars in an unspecified area in the central Gaza Strip.[4] The Golani Brigade (assigned to the 36th Division) and 188th Armored Brigade (assigned to the 36th Division) located a weapons production facility in Bureij that the IDF said was the largest weapons facility that Israeli forces have discovered since the Israel-Hamas war began.[5] The IDF reported that the facility included long-range rockets, explosives materiel, drones, light weapons, and tunnel shafts 30 meters underneath the facility. The al Qassem Brigades claimed that its fighters clashed with Israeli forces that attempted to recover a Hamas-held hostage in the central Gaza Strip on January 8.[6] The Golani Brigade called in an airstrike targeting a weapons depot containing long-range rockets in Maghazi.[7]

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s (DFLP) military wing, the National Resistance Brigades, was the only militia that claimed attacks on Israeli forces in the Central Governorate of the Gaza Strip on January 8. The militia said that its forces clashed with Israeli forces with “heavy weapons” northeast of Deir al Balah.[8]

The IDF 7th Armored Brigade expanded clearing operations in southern Khan Younis on January 8.[9] Israeli forces searched military infrastructure near civilian homes and uncovered a tunnel shaft in the area of a school.[10] Palestinian fighters fired RPGs at Israeli forces that returned fire with tanks and air support.[11] Israeli special operations forces (SOF) located more than ten Palestinian fighters who were launching rockets into Israeli territory and directed a drone strike on their position.[12] The IDF 55th Paratrooper Brigade (assigned to the 98th Division) targeted several Palestinian fighters who emerged from buildings in Khan Younis on January 8.[13] The Israeli Air Force conducted airstrikes on 30 targets, including underground tunnels and weapons depots, in Khan Younis on January 8.[14]

Palestinian militias continued attempts to defend against Israeli clearing operations in Khan Younis on January 8. The al Qassem Brigades claimed that it conducted four attacks on Israeli infantry and armor in Khan Younis on January 8.[15] The militia detonated an anti-personnel improvised explosive device and fired small arms targeting Israeli forces inside a school in Khan Younis City.[16] The al Quds Brigades clashed with Israeli forces using small arms and RPGs as Israeli forces advanced in the northern, eastern, and central areas of Khan Younis.[17] The Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades fired RPGs at Israeli forces in central and eastern Khan Younis City.[18]

CTP-ISW's map of IDF dispositions is based on Israel Defense Forces public announcements and reports from Israeli military correspondents who have traveled with the IDF into Gaza. We do not use information that has not been released by the IDF in these maps. The unit locations on this map are notional, and the map does not attempt to depict any unit’s precise location.

PIJ released a video on January 8 showing one of its Israeli hostages appealing for a renewed hostage exchange with Israel, which is an effort to pressure the Israeli government to agree to a ceasefire.[19] Palestinian militias’ demands for a renewed hostage-for-prisoner deal include the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip and an end to the war, neither of which are compatible with Israeli war aims.[20] Israeli Army Radio reported that the hostage referenced information in recent Israeli media.[21]

IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari reported on January 8 that the war “shifted to a stage” that will involve fewer ground forces and airstrikes in the Gaza Strip.[22] Hagari’s comments to the New York Times are consistent with the reports of Israeli forces withdrawing reservists from the Gaza Strip and transitioning to targeted raids in the northern Gaza Strip.[23] Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told the Wall Street Journal on January 7 that Israeli forces would shift from the “intense maneuvering phase of the war” to special operations.[24] Gallant cautioned that the conflict “will last for a longer time” as Israel has not abandoned its stated war objectives.

The World Health Organization (WHO) halted a medical aid delivery to the northern Gaza Strip on January 7 in the absence of safety guarantees.[25] This marked the fourth cancellation since December 26 of the mission to sustain operations at five hospitals in the north. The WHO said that heavy bombardment, restrictions on movement, and interrupted communications make delivering medical supplies regularly and safely across the Gaza Strip, particularly in the north “nearly impossible.”[26] Israeli forces are clearing areas in Bureij and Nuseirat In the central Gaza Strip.

Palestinian militias conducted three rocket attacks into Israel from the Gaza Strip on January 8. The al Qassem Brigades fired a rocket salvo targeting Tel Aviv.[27] The al Qassem Brigades have only conducted four rocket attacks into Israel from the Gaza Strip since December 21, indicating that Israeli operations have degraded Hamas’ rocket capability.[28] The al Quds Brigades separately fired rockets targeting Sderot and Nir Aam in southern Israel on January 8.[29]

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

West Bank

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

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

Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters 13 times across the West Bank on January 8.[30] This level of attacks is consistent with daily attack counts in the West Bank over the past week. The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades fired small arms targeting Israeli forces seven times in major cities in the West Bank including Jenin, Nablus, and Tulkarm.[31] The Tulkarm Battalion of the al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades fired small arms at Israeli forces at an Israeli checkpoint in Tulkarm.[32] Unspecified Palestinian fighters clashed with Israeli forces in Beit Ummar, north of Hebron.[33] The IDF said that it arrested ten wanted individuals and seized weapons during operations across the West Bank.[34]

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

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

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

The IDF killed a senior commander in LH’s Radwan Unit, Wissam Hassan al Tawil, in an airstrike on January 8.[35] LH-affiliated media Al Mayadeen reported that Tawil was a senior commander and that he is responsible for many attacks against IDF targets on the Israel-Lebanon border since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7.[36] LH said that Tawil assisted in planning and reconnaissance operations in southern Lebanon since 1992. He also participated in the planning for the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers along the Israel-Lebanon border, which sparked the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.[37]Tawil was involved in LH weapons manufacturing and oversaw the Radwan Unit’s operations in southern Lebanon, according to Israeli and Western reporting.[38] LH denied that Tawil was the commander of the Radwan Unit.[39] LH's Radwan unit was established by the IRGC Quds Force and is the group’s special operations forces unit focused on infiltrating Israeli territory.[40] Israeli media reported that the IRGC Quds Force, particularly the Sabeerin Commando Battalion, provides the Radwan Unit with military and financial support.[41] The Sabeerin Battalion specializes in military intelligence.[42] Anonymous LH officials told the Wall Street Journal that LH transferred Tawil from Syria to southern Lebanon approximately one month ago.[43] The IDF did not confirm if Tawil was the target of an Israeli airstrike.

Tawil’s death in southern Lebanon indicates that LH is not complying with UNSC Resolution 1701, which mandates that LH cannot deploy military forces south of the Litani River. UNSC Resolution 1701 ended the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War.[44] Multiple senior Israeli officials have said that Israel seeks a diplomatic agreement to implement UNSC Resolution 1701 and push LH military units north of the Litani River.[45] These officials have said that they will resort to military means if diplomatic means fail.[46] Israeli media reported in late December that LH began withdrawing its Radwan Unit from the Israel-Lebanon border, and some IDF officials reported that the IDF believed that airstrikes targeting LH fighters had forced LH to withdraw some of its forces northward.[47] Tawil’s presence in southern Lebanon suggests that at least some elements of the Radwan Unit, including senior leaders, remain in southern Lebanon to plan and execute attacks against Israel.

Iranian-backed fighters, including LH, conducted nine attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel on January 8.[48] LH targeted Israeli military infrastructure and soldiers with anti-tank guided munitions, rockets, and other unspecified weapons.[49] The IDF reported it intercepted a "suspicious aerial target” that crossed from southern Lebanon into Israeli airspace near Kiryat Shmona.[50]

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

Iran and Axis of Resistance

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

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

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq conducted a one-way drone attack targeting US forces in Syria on January 8. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq targeted US forces stationed at the Rumaylan Landing Zone in Syria.[51]

The IDF said on January 8 that it killed a Hamas commander in Syria responsible for launching rockets from Syria into northern Syria.[52] The IDF targeted Hamas commander Hassan Akasha in Beit Jin, Rif Dimashq Governorate, Syria. This strike demonstrates that Hamas has the necessary infrastructure and personnel in southern Syria to target Israel.

Western media reported on January 8 that Israel intensified its air campaign in Syria over the last three months, killing 19 LH members there.[53] Reuters reported that the number of LH members killed in Israeli airstrikes over the last three months is double the amount of LH members killed during the rest of 2023 combined. Israeli media reported on December 28 that recent Israeli airstrikes in Syria targeted IRGC and IRGC-affiliated actors facilitating Iranian weapons shipments to LH.[54] Israeli media added on December 30 that Iran accelerated its weapons transfers to LH in anticipation of a wider war with Israel.[55] An Israeli airstrike targeting the IRGC’s military headquarters in Sayyidah Zainab, Syria, on December 25 killed a senior IRGC commander who oversaw Iranian materiel shipments to LH.[56]

President Ebrahim Raisi re-emphasized the Iranian regime narrative that the United States and Israel created ISIS at a meeting with the Speaker of the National Assembly of Tajikistan Rostam Imam Ali on January 8.[57] Raisi said that fighting terrorism, organized crime, and drugs is one of the “requirements” of Iranian-Tajik cooperation.[58] Raisi added that Iran and Tajikistan face “common issues” as neighbors of Afghanistan. The Afghan branch of the Islamic State, known as the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), claimed responsibility for the Kerman terrorist attack on January 4.[59] The Iranian Intelligence Ministry said on January 5 that one of the two bombers responsible for the attack was a Tajik national who traveled from abroad to conduct the attack.[60] An ISKP member and Tajik national conducted a separate terror attack targeting the Shah Cheragh Shrine in Shiraz, Fars Province in August 2023.[61] Iran opened a drone production facility in Tajikistan in May 2022 as part of its counterterrorism and security cooperation with Tajikistan.[62]

IRGC-affiliated media reported that Iranian security forces killed a purportedly Jaish al Adl-affiliated individual in Bampur City in Sistan and Baluchistan Province on January 8.[63] IRGC-affiliated media linked the individual to the December 15 Jaish al Adl attack on a police headquarters in Sistan and Baluchistan Province.[64] Jaish al Adl was also likely responsible for an IED attack near Zahedan on December 19.[65]Jaish al Adl also attacked a police station in Zahedan, Sistan and Baluchistan Province in July 2023.[66]

A UK-based, Middle East-focused outlet reported that LH Representative to Iraq Mohammad Hussein al Kawtharani traveled to Baghdad on January 5 to “coordinate an escalation in operations” against US forces in Iraq.[67] The outlet reported that Kawtharani told Iranian-backed Iraqi factions that the Axis of Resistance should do everything possible to remove the United States from Iraq. Kawtharani’s visit to Baghdad on January 5 marks his first trip to Iraq in two years.[68] His visit also coincides with LH Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah’s speech on January 5 in which Nasrallah called on Iranian-backed Iraqi militias to expel US forces from Iraq.[69] The US Treasury Department sanctioned Kawtharani in August 2013 for promoting LH’s interests in Iraq, including LH’s efforts to provide “training, funding, political, and logistical support to Iraqi sectarian armed groups.”[70] The US State Department announced in April 2020 that Kawtharani “facilitates the actions of groups operating outside the control of the Government of Iraq that have violently suppressed protests, attacked foreign diplomatic missions, and engaged in wide-spread organized criminal activity.”[71]

Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba spokesperson Hussein Moussawi stated that the Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—conducted an attack targeting Haifa, Israel, on January 7 to signal to Israel its ability to attack targets “beyond [Haifa].”[72] Moussawi made this statement in an interview with LH-affiliated outlet al Mayadeen on January 8. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed on January 7 that it conducted a long-range cruise missile attack targeting Haifa.[73] Moussawi claimed that the Islamic Resistance in Iraq seeks to disrupt US “plans” in the Middle East and Israeli “occupation efforts” in the Gaza Strip. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has previously claimed attacks on targets outside of Iraq and Syria. The group claimed an unspecified attack targeting a “vital target” in the Mediterranean Sea in late December 2023, for example.[74] CTP-ISW assessed at the time that the Islamic Resistance in Iraq and the Axis of Resistance more broadly were signaling their capability and willingness to attack maritime targets beyond just the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.[75]

An unspecified source told Iraqi media on January 7 that many “armed Iraqi factions” have vacated their headquarters and military sites in urban areas following the January 4 US self-defense strike that killed a senior Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba (HHN) official.[76] “Armed Iraqi factions” very likely refers to Iranian-backed Iraqi militias, given the context of the January 4 US strike that killed a senior HHN official. The unspecified source also told Iraqi media that some Iraqi militia leaders are periodically changing their place of residence to avoid being targeted. The United States reported that the HHN official, Mushtaq Jawad al Jawari, was “actively involved in planning and carrying out attacks against US personnel.”[77]

An Iraqi official close to the Shia Coordination Framework claimed on January 7 that the framework recently “authorized” Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al Sudani to discuss the removal of US forces from Iraq with the US Government. The Shia Coordination Framework is a loose coalition of Iranian-backed political parties. Members of the framework have increasingly pressured Sudani to order the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq in recent weeks. This statement is noteworthy given that the Shia Coordination Framework does not have the authority to direct Sudani’s actions.

Two unspecified small craft approached a commercial vessel 50 nautical miles southeast of Mokha, Yemen on January 8. Mokha, Yemen is controlled by the UAE-backed, pro-Yemeni government National Resistance Forces. The two boats did not display any weapons and did not engage the commercial vessel.[78]

7. 39 years ago, a KGB defector chillingly predicted modern America

Video at the link:  https://bigthink.com/the-present/yuri-bezmenov/

Now 40 years ago. I think I forwarded this in 2018 and 2023. But it is worth reading again (and watching the 13 minute video).

39 years ago, a KGB defector chillingly predicted modern America

bigthink.com

The Present — January 13, 2023

A disturbing interview given by a KGB defector in 1984 describes America of today and outlines four stages of mass brainwashing used by the KGB.

Key Takeaways

• A former KGB agent named Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov claimed in 1984 that Russia has a long-term goal of ideologically subverting the U.S.
• He described the process as “a great brainwashing” that has four basic stages.
• The first stage, he said, is called “demoralization,” which would take about 20 years to achieve.

<?xml encoding=”utf-8” ??>

This article was first published on Big Think in July 2018. It was updated in January 2023.

In 1954, early on in the Cold War, the Soviet Union created the Committee for State Security, more commonly known in the West as the KGB. The group came to oversee the Soviet Union’s internal security, secret police, and domestic and foreign intelligence operations.

Across the world, the KGB did whatever it could to thwart pro-Western and anti-Soviet political movements and figures. The group would assassinate political leaders with cyanide and other weapons. It would fund and arm leftist groups, especially those in developing nations. And the KGB successfully established moles in U.S. intelligence agencies, though the exact number still isn’t — and may never be — known for sure.

Also unclear were the group’s long-term plans involving the U.S. One glimpse, however, comes from a former KGB agent named Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov, who defected to Canada in 1970. He claimed to know details of a Soviet plan to undermine the U.S., not on the battlefield but in the psyche of the American public.

In 1984, Bezmenov gave an interview to G. Edward Griffin from which much can be learned today. His most chilling point was that there’s a long-term plan put in play by Russia to defeat America through psychological warfare and “demoralization.” It’s a long game that takes decades to achieve but it may already be bearing fruit.

Bezmenov made the point that the work of the KGB mainly does not involve espionage, despite what our popular culture may tell us. Most of the work,85%of it, was “a slow process which we call either ideological subversion, active measures, or psychological warfare.”

What does that mean? Bezmenov explained that the most striking thing about ideological subversion is that it happens in the open as a legitimate process. “You can see it with your own eyes,” he said. The American media would be able to see it, if it just focused on it.

Here’s how he further defined ideological subversion:

“What it basically means is: to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite of the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country.”

Bezmenov described this process as “a great brainwashing” that has four basic stages. The first stage is called “demoralization” which takes from 15 to 20 years to achieve. According to the former KGB agent, that is the minimum number of years it takes to re-educate one generation of students that is normally exposed to the ideology of its country — in other words, the time it takes to change what the people are thinking.

He used the examples of 1960s hippies coming to positions of power in the 1980s in the government and businesses of America. Bezmenov claimed this generation was already “contaminated” by Marxist-Leninist values. Of course, this claim that many baby boomers are somehow espousing KGB-tainted ideas is hard to believe but Bezmenov’s larger point addressed why people who have been gradually “demoralized” are unable to understand that this has happened to them.

Referring to such people, Bezmenov said:

“They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern [alluding to Pavlov]. You can not change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information. Even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still can not change the basic perception and the logic of behavior.”

Demoralization is a process that is “irreversible.” Bezmenov actually thought (back in 1984) that the process of demoralizing America was already completed. It would take another generation and another couple of decades to get the people to think differently and return to their patriotic American values, claimed the agent.

In what is perhaps a most striking passage in the interview, here’s how Bezmenov described the state of a “demoralized” person:

“As I mentioned before, exposure to true information does not matter anymore,” said Bezmenov. “A person who was demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures; even if I take him by force to the Soviet Union and show him [a] concentration camp, he will refuse to believe it, until he [receives] a kick in his fan-bottom. When a military boot crashes his balls then he will understand. But not before that. That’s the [tragedy] of the situation of demoralization.”

It’s hard not to see in that the state of many modern Americans. We have become a society of polarized tribes, with some people flat out rejecting facts in favor of narratives and opinions.

Once demoralization is completed, the second stage of ideological brainwashing is “destabilization”. During this two-to-five-year period, asserted Bezmenov, what matters is the targeting of essential structural elements of a nation: economy, foreign relations, and defense systems. Basically, the subverter (Russia) would look to destabilize every one of those areas in the United States, considerably weakening it.

The third stage would be “crisis.” It would take only up to six weeks to send a country into crisis, explained Bezmenov. The crisis would bring “a violent change of power, structure, and economy” and will be followed by the last stage, “normalization.” That’s when your country is basically taken over, living under a new ideology and reality.

This will happen to America unless it gets rid of people who will bring it to a crisis, warned Bezmenov. What’s more “if people will fail to grasp the impending danger of that development, nothing ever can help [the] United States,” adding, “You may kiss goodbye to your freedom.”

It bears saying that when he made this statement, he was warning about baby boomers and Democrats of the time.

In another somewhat terrifying excerpt, here’s what Bezmenov had to say about what is really happening in the United States: It may think it is living in peace, but it has been actively at war with Russia, and for some time:

“Most of the American politicians, media, and educational system trains another generation of people who think they are living at the peacetime,” said the former KGB agent. “False. United States is in a state of war: undeclared, total war against the basic principles and foundations of this system.”

You can watch the full interview here:

In this article

Related

8. Water in Chinese missiles' tanks is a fake story

Excerpts:

The leaked “intelligence” that Bloomberg cites as its ultimate source leads inexorably to major questions. Under close examination the claims cited in the report seem to be fake.

The story is technically naive when it comes to China’s missiles. China does not keep its liquid-fueled rockets filled with propellant. This means they are empty sitting in silos. If fuel was stored in a rocket booster the internal tanks and plumbing would soon be ruined by corrosion. The military fuels them if there are warning conditions requiring loading the missiles with fuel.

Water in Chinese missiles' tanks is a fake story

The idea that water is substituted for fuel is preposterous: Corrosion-prone rockets are kept empty until needed

asiatimes.com · by Stephen Bryen · January 8, 2024

According to what Bloomberg News describes as a US intelligence report, Chinese authorities discovered that some of their missiles’ fuel tanks were filled with water – and that this was a marquee example of corruption whose unraveling led to Chinese President Xi’s recent military purge.

Bloomberg reported that it got the information from unnamed people who were “familiar with” a US intelligence assessment and that those US sources also said that new Xinjiang missile field silos were fitted with lids that were not installed properly and would not work – taken as another example of corruption.

Pentagon officials and “experts” are telling the press that the import of the twin tales is that China is weak and cannot fight. Yet the sources “familiar with” the intelligence say they cannot validate the information they provided Bloomberg.

The leaked “intelligence” that Bloomberg cites as its ultimate source leads inexorably to major questions. Under close examination the claims cited in the report seem to be fake.

The story is technically naive when it comes to China’s missiles. China does not keep its liquid-fueled rockets filled with propellant. This means they are empty sitting in silos. If fuel was stored in a rocket booster the internal tanks and plumbing would soon be ruined by corrosion. The military fuels them if there are warning conditions requiring loading the missiles with fuel.

There would be no reason to put water in the missiles unless it was deliberate sabotage. If it was deliberate sabotage China would not just be purging this or that official, they would have been arrested, tried and shot. Sabotage or destruction of strategic nuclear missiles is a very serious crime and would be met by the harshest measures. The idea that some officials would just be dismissed from their job is not a response to anything of this level of criminal significance. Those guilty of such crimes would be subjected to the harshest measures.

The second part of the story apparently is focused on the Hami missile field. The claim is that the lids of the silos are not fitted for operation. But if there were no missiles yet for these silos, there would be no reason to fit them to function with installed missiles. Unfortunately, we do not know the status of these missile fields at present, although the Pentagon may know.

We do have photos of work being done on these silos in 2021, but the excavated areas are covered by tented structures (DOD experts call them domes), so you can’t see the covers or anything else. It would not be unreasonable to think the domes could still be there until the missiles are ready for installation. (Some of the silos are likely to never be filled with real missiles, but will be decoys.)

Identical shelter domes seen at Hami, Yumen, and Jilantai. Image: Federation of American Scientists

It is now well known that Xi Jinping uses corruption probes to root out his competitors and anyone that he thinks is a threat to his leadership. The purge of military and defense officials goes beyond just the Rocket Force and reaches into the PLA and as far up as the two previous defense ministers. It also includes some in the army, the submarine force and the Air Force.

Not just generals and ministers are being purged but also officers at the working level. Reaching down far into the ranks would seem odd unless the military officers are tied to politicians Xi wants to eliminate.

Water in missiles and bad silo lids comprise a fake story covering up the real political reasons behind Xi’s purge.

If the intelligence fellows cannot confirm the story, then “someone” told them. The only people who would try and sell this story are the Xi clique. Without their imprimatur, an effort would be made on the US side to confirm the information. I think US intelligence got it straight from the Chinese, who sought to explain to the Americans why Xi was cracking down on the military.

As I understand it from a number of serious China experts, the corruption stuff is the accusation being used in the ongoing power struggle. I think Xi is in some trouble.

Although the Chinese say the purges are because of corruption, that is almost impossible to believe. Most of the people purged are not put on trial, and one of the reasons is that there isn’t evidence.

The Pentagon could see a problem with the silo lids through overhead photography. But photography apparently has nothing to do with this story. Instead, it seems, the intelligence guys and their DOD customers just swallowed the whole fish: Well, you know, China is corrupt and this is the evidence.

You don’t get convictions with second-hand unattributed information, nor do you base your defense strategy around hokum.

Let’s conclude with a few facts that we actually know to be facts.

Known knowns

It is true that since 2021 China has been constructing a new missile launch site in eastern Xinjiang province at a place called Hami.

It is one of three silo-based launch sites in China. The others are at Yuman and Jilantai, although the Jilantai site is regarded as a training base. The Pentagon has been laser-focused on the new Hami site because it represents potentially a significant increase in China’s long range strategic rocket forces and could possibly signal a change in China’s nuclear doctrine.

Altogether, China “has 120 silos under construction at Yumen, another 110 silos at Hami, a dozen silos at Jilantai, and possibly more silos being added in existing DF-5 deployment areas, the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) appears to have approximately 250 silos under construction,” according to the Federation of American Scientists. Given that China has only around 20 DF-5s in service, it will take many years before these silos can be filled.

In 1966 China established its Second Artillery Corps with responsibility for its emerging strategic rocket forces. For many years the Second Artillery Corps was directed technologically by the National Defense Science and Technology Commission. In recent years that guidance was shifted to the General Armaments Department. Under Xi Jinping the Second Artillery Corps became the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force, the 4th Branch of the People’s Liberation Army. It is responsible for all nuclear and conventional missiles.

Leaders of the Rocket Force serve in the National People’s Congress. Recently, nine high-ranking PLA officers have been purged from the Congress, removing legal protections from prosecution, one of the benefits of membership in the body. The majority of those purged reportedly came from the rocket force.

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China’s long-range strategic nuclear missiles are almost all still liquid-fueled, although China is shifting to solid-fuel rockets. Some of China’s rockets are road-mobile, meaning they are not in silos or confined to launch fields. These rockets are mostly solid-fueled but most of them are not intercontinental in range.

The most important of China’s strategic rockets is the DF-5 (Dongfeng 5 or East Wind 5). The DF-5 is a two-stage intercontinental ballistic missile with a range of 7,000 to 10,000 km. The most recent version of this missile, the DF-5B, is said to have a MIRV (Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicle) warhead, although it is not known if this has been implemented on many installed systems.

As of 2017 there were about 20 of these missiles in service. The DF-5 reportedly is still in production although it is slated to eventually be replaced by the DF-41.

Reportedly it takes 30 to 60 minutes to fuel a DF-5. China’s DF-4 and DF-5 boosters use unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine instead of liquid oxygen for fuel because it is easily stored. At present, and prior to China actually having an intercontinental solid-fueled strategic rocket capability, China does not have a true launch-on-warning system, although defense experts believe they are moving in that direction, developing new long-range solid-fuel missiles such as the DF-31 and DF-41. The DF-41 is intended as a road-mobile system. The DF-31 carries only a single warhead.

Stephen Bryen, who served as staff director of the Near East Subcommittee of the

US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as a deputy undersecretary of defense

for policy, currently is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and the Yorktown Institute.

asiatimes.com · by Stephen Bryen · January 8, 2024

9. Scanning the Horizon: If the Future is Unknowable, Why Bother with Forecasting?

Excerpts:

Forecasting’s value, then, is in the ways it is distinguished from predictions. A prognostication that focuses primarily on a specific outcome is most likely a prediction. If it involves a phrase like “my gut tells me,” that is not indicative of the systematic analysis and clear fleshing out of assumptions that is central to forecasting. It may be an educated guess, but it’s a guess.

There are fundamental questions that offer an excellent starting point from which to build a forecasting model. What are the factors you have a good handle on? What are the factors you don’t have a good handle on? How might the former combine with the latter under alternative assumptions? What outcomes would that lead to? And what would be similar and different across those outcomes? By addressing these questions, prediction about the future will still be difficult, but forecasting will be less so.

Scanning the Horizon: If the Future is Unknowable, Why Bother with Forecasting? - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Collin Meisel, Caleb Petry · January 8, 2024

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As we rounded the corner into the new year, our media feeds were once again bombarded by that annual tradition: retrospectives on the past year, its lessons learned, and predictions of what’s to come in the year that follows. The latter category is sure to come with cautionary caveats—namely, that “prediction is difficult, especially about the future.” It’s an old saw—variously attributed to Neils Bohr, Yogi Berra, Mark Twain, and others—often trotted out by analysts when asked to opine what the future holds. And as the dramatic events in Ukraine have illustrated over the past two years, it’s especially applicable to forecasts of war.

The future is fundamentally unknowable, so why bother making forecasts about war or any other phenomena?

Forecasting, which is closely related to but distinct from prediction, allows us to unpack our assumptions of how the world works, consider and contrast outcomes driven by alternative assumptions, and reduce or at least highlight uncertainties. Despite the particularly unknowable nature of the international system and the yet-to-be-made decisions of its leading figures, there are some things we can know. Even better, we know why we know them.

To paraphrase another quote that has been misattributed to Mark Twain, it isn’t what we know that creates trouble, but what we know for sure that just ain’t so. In other words, it is important to distinguish between what we know and what is conventionally believed to be true but isn’t. We can use forecasting to do so. While forecasts fall far short of predicting the future to a tee, they can assist with long-term planning and help us better prepare for whatever futures may come.

Forecasting vs. Point Prediction

At the risk of waxing pedantic, prediction and forecasting are different, even if they are often treated as synonyms. Prediction is about making a specific statement about the future—an assertion that the United States will fight a war with China in 2025, for instance. A prediction’s emphasis is typically on the outcome in question. Forecasting is about stating a specific set of assumptions, which then lead to an outcome. Its emphasis is on understanding processes that lead to outcomes. It is a narrow but critical distinction.

When we make an accurate prediction, it may be because we have some deep understanding of how the world works and can understand the future. It could also be that we were just lucky. Or it may be that we have a framework that works now—but, aside from Newtonian physics and similar clock-like phenomena, that is no guarantee that our framework will continue to perform well in the future.

When we make an accurate forecast, we know so because we can trace its assumptions through a set of causal relationships to an outcome. And if our forecasts start to lose accuracy, we can interrogate our assumptions and adjust them accordingly. But more importantly, accuracy is far less relevant as an indicator of a forecast’s quality than it is for a prediction. Much simply cannot be known about the future. In these cases, rather than seeking predictive accuracy, we forecast across a range of plausible scenarios and draw lessons from the similarities and differences in their outcomes.

Knowability

As one of us describes in a chapter in a forthcoming volume on the future of war, edited by Jeffrey Michaels and Tim Sweijs, and as we both have learned from an ongoing forecast validation exercise conducted with our colleagues, future trends can be characterized by what we and our colleague Jonathan Moyer refer to as patterns of (un)knowability. In other words, there are characteristics that can make a trend particularly difficult to forecast.

Conceptual and computational complexity, respectively, describe how complicated it is to trace or mathematically describe something. Measurability describes how easily we can quantify something. Equilibration describes whether a trend possesses an internal balancing mechanism or at least exhibits a well-understood oscillation. Events that can be predicted accurately in aggregate but not individually—say, that 50 percent of all marriages in the United States this year will eventually end in divorce, but we don’t know which marriages—are described by stochasticity. Finally, how easily a trend or event can be affected by an individual or a small group’s actions describes its tractability.

War is particularly complex with its myriad actors and actions, and actors acting to thwart or support others’ actions amid imperfect information. We can arbitrarily choose to classify wars as conflicts with more than one thousand battle deaths. But any arbitrary cutoff point is likely to affect our analyses, and it is not even clear that an indicator like battle deaths or something like territory exchanged is even the appropriate measure. There is no clear supply or demand for war or another mechanism beyond complete annihilation that would lead toward stable equilibria. (Short-term stalemates, such as the present stalemate in Ukraine, may occur, but beyond force—and political—exhaustion, such as during the Korean War, they are fleeting.) The best efforts to statistically model war onset have found their occurrence to be stochastic. And the concentration of military resources into the hands of one or a few national leaders in most countries makes starting a war eminently tractable relative to, say, reversing a demographic decline.

But while war itself may be particularly unknowable, many of the structural pressures that make war more or less likely are knowable. These include relative balances of power, global economic growth, and growing populations faced with increased resource scarcity, among other “lateral pressures”—or forces pressuring a society toward war. In other words, we do not know that war will happen (a prediction), but we do understand what will make it more or less likely (a forecast).

Forecasting in Action

Our team has used forecasts to better understand the implications of the rise and eventual decline of China, developments intertwined with our forecasted relative US decline. We have used them to better understand postconflict recovery pathways in Yemen and Ukraine. And, among many other topics, we have used them to anticipate geopolitical shifts in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

While these forecasts can give us an idea of what to expect for the future, we can also act on our forecasts to make sure they don’t come true. This is referred to as a self-denying forecast or, more colloquially, a self-defeating prophecy. An example might be climate change, assuming world leaders can join together and collectively make drastic reductions to carbon emissions. Another might be avoiding a US-China war: if all signs lead to war, leaders may actively seek to ease tensions, taking advantage of the tractability of whatever processes or trends they can influence to counteract the pressures leading to war. If war does not happen, predictions of war will have failed, but forecasts of war would arguably be a success in that they helped us understand what was leading to war and how to stop it.

Forecasting’s value, then, is in the ways it is distinguished from predictions. A prognostication that focuses primarily on a specific outcome is most likely a prediction. If it involves a phrase like “my gut tells me,” that is not indicative of the systematic analysis and clear fleshing out of assumptions that is central to forecasting. It may be an educated guess, but it’s a guess.

There are fundamental questions that offer an excellent starting point from which to build a forecasting model. What are the factors you have a good handle on? What are the factors you don’t have a good handle on? How might the former combine with the latter under alternative assumptions? What outcomes would that lead to? And what would be similar and different across those outcomes? By addressing these questions, prediction about the future will still be difficult, but forecasting will be less so.

Collin Meisel is the associate director of geopolitical analysis at the University of Denver’s Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures. He is also a geopolitics and modeling expert at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies and a nonresident fellow with the Henry L. Stimson Center’s Strategic Foresight Hub.

Caleb Petry is a model development research associate at the University of Denver’s Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures.

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

Image credit: Cpl. Patrick Crosley, US Marine Corps

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Collin Meisel, Caleb Petry · January 8, 2024

10. With each strike, fears grow that Israel, the US and Iran's allies are inching closer to all-out war

The paradox is that if we act in ways that are out of fear of all-out war we might actually cause an all-out war. It is a weakness that will lead to all-out war. Not decisive action and strength.

With each strike, fears grow that Israel, the US and Iran's allies are inching closer to all-out war

AP · January 8, 2024

In the last week alone, an Israeli airstrike has killed a Hezbollah commander in Lebanon, Hezbollah struck a sensitive Israeli base with rockets and Israel killed a senior Hamas militant with an airstrike in Beirut.

Each strike and counterstrike increases the risk of the catastrophic war in Gaza spilling across the region.

In the decades-old standoff pitting the U.S. and Israel against Iran and allied militant groups, there are fears that any party could trigger a wider war if only to avoid appearing weak. A U.S. airstrike killed an Iran-backed militia leader in Baghdad last week, and the U.S. Navy recently traded fire with Iran-aligned Houthi rebels in the Red Sea.

The divisions within each camp add another layer of volatility. Hamas might have hoped its Oct. 7 rampage across southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza would drag its allies into a wider conflict. Israelis increasingly talk about the need to change the equation in Lebanon even as Washington aims to contain the conflict.

As the intertwined chess games grow more complicated, the potential for miscalculation rises.

GAZA IS GROUND ZERO

Hamas says its Oct. 7 attack was a purely Palestinian response to decades of Israeli domination. There is no evidence that Iran, Hezbollah or other allied groups played a direct role or knew about it beforehand.

Palestinians search for bodies and survivors in the rubble of a house destroyed in an Israeli airstrike, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

But when Israel responded by launching one of the 21st century’s most devastating military campaigns in Gaza, a besieged enclave home to 2.3 million Palestinians, the so-called Axis of Resistance — Iran and the militant groups it supports across the region — faced pressure to respond.

The Palestinian cause has deep resonance across the region, and leaving Hamas alone to face Israel’s fury would have risked unraveling a military alliance that Iran has been building up since the 1979 Islamic Revolution put it on a collision course with the West.

“They don’t want war, but at the same time they don’t want to let the Israelis keep striking without retaliation,” said Qassim Qassir, a Lebanese expert on Hezbollah.

“Something big has to happen, without going to war, so that the Israelis and Americans are convinced that there is no way forward,” he said.

HEZBOLLAH THREADS THE NEEDLE

Of all Iran’s regional proxies, Hezbollah faces the biggest dilemma.

If it tolerates Israeli attacks, like the strike in Beirut that killed Hamas’ deputy political leader, it risks appearing to be a weak or unreliable ally. But if it triggers a full war, Israel has threatened to wreak major destruction on Lebanon, which is already mired in a severe economic crisis. Even Hezbollah’s supporters may see that as too heavy a price to pay for a Palestinian ally.

Hezbollah has carried out strikes along the border nearly every day since the war in Gaza broke out, with the apparent aim of tying down some Israeli troops. Israel has returned fire, but each side appears to be calibrating its actions to limit the intensity.

A Hezbollah supporter passes next to a portrait that shows top Hamas official Saleh Arouri who was killed Tuesday in Beirut by apparent Israeli strike, during a ceremony to mark the fourth anniversary of the assassination of slain Iran’s Quds force General Qassem Soleimani assassination, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

A Hezbollah barrage of at least 40 rockets fired at an Israeli military base on Saturday sent a message without starting a war, though it may have triggered Monday’s strike.

Would 80 rockets have been a step too far? What if someone had been killed? How many casualties would warrant a full-blown offensive? The grim math provides no clear answers.

And experts say it might not be a single strike that does it.

Israel is determined to see tens of thousands of its citizens return to communities near the border with Lebanon that were evacuated under Hezbollah fire nearly three months ago. After Oct. 7, it may no longer be able to tolerate an armed Hezbollah presence on the other side of the frontier.

Israeli leaders have repeatedly threatened to use military force if Hezbollah doesn’t respect a 2006 U.N. cease-fire that ordered the militant group to withdraw from the border.

“Neither side wants a war, but the two sides believe it is inevitable,” said Yoel Guzansky, a senior researcher at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. “Everybody in Israel thinks it’s just a matter of time until we need to change the reality” so that people can return to their homes, he said.

US DETERRENCE ONLY GOES SO FAR

Members of the Abu Sinjar family mourn their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, at their house in Rafah, southern Gaza, Friday, Jan. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

In this image provided by the U.S. Navy, the USS Carter Hall and USS Bataan transit the Bab al-Mandeb strait on Aug. 9, 2023. (Mass Communications Spc. 2nd Class Moises Sandoval/U.S. Navy via AP)

The U.S. positioned two aircraft carrier strike groups in the region in October. One is returning home but is being replaced by other warships. The deployments sent an unmistakable warning to Iran and its allies against widening the conflict, but not all seem to have received the message.

Iran-backed militant groups in Syria and Iraq have launched dozens of rocket attacks on U.S. bases. The Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have attacked international shipping in the Red Sea, with potential consequences for the world economy. Iran says its allies act on their own and not on orders from Tehran.

Washington has struggled to put together a multinational security force to protect Red Sea shipping. But it appears hesitant to attack the Houthis on land when they appear close to reaching a peace deal with Saudi Arabia after years of war.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials have said the window for its allies to get both Hezbollah and the Houthis to stand down is closing.

HOW DOES THIS END?

The regional tensions are likely to remain high as long as Israel keeps up its offensive in Gaza, which it says is aimed at crushing Hamas. Many wonder if that’s possible, given the group’s deep roots in Palestinian society, and Israel’s own leaders say it will take many more months.

The U.S., which has provided crucial military and diplomatic support for Israel’s offensive, is widely seen as the only power capable of ending it. Iran’s allies seem to believe Washington will step in if its own costs get too high — hence the attacks on U.S. bases and international shipping.

Civil defense workers search for survivors inside an apartment following a massive explosion in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock are all back in the region this week, with the aim of trying to contain the violence through diplomacy.

But the most important messages will likely be sent by rocket.

“The Americans do not want an open war with Iran, and the Iranians do not want an open war with the United States,” said Ali Hamadeh, an analyst who writes for Lebanon’s An-Nahar newspaper. “Therefore, there are negotiations by fire.”

___

Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue in Beirut and Julia Frankel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

___

Find more of AP’s coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

AP · January 8, 2024

11. The Russian Art of War: How the West led Ukraine to defeat

Very interesting analysis here with a very provocative conclusion that we should consider.

This is an excerpt from a book that is being translated into English.

Excerpts:

Russia operates within a framework of Clausewitzian thinking, in which operational successes are exploited for strategic ends. Operational strategy (“operative art”) therefore plays an essential role in the definition of what is considered a victory.

...

The Ukrainian conflict was inherently asymmetrical. The West wanted to turn it into a symmetrical conflict, proclaiming that Ukraine’s capabilities could be enough to topple Russia. But this was clearly wishful thinking from the outset, and its sole purpose was to justify non-compliance with the Minsk Agreements. Russian strategists have turned it into an asymmetrical conflict.

Ukraine’s problem in this conflict is that it has no rational relationship with the notion of victory. By comparison, the Palestinians, who are aware of their quantitative inferiority, have switched to a way of thinking that gives the simple act of resisting a sense of victory. This is the asymmetrical nature of the conflict that Israel has never managed to understand in 75 years, and which it is reduced to overcoming through tactical superiority rather than strategic finesse. In Ukraine, it is the same phenomenon. By clinging to a notion of victory linked to the recovery of territory, Ukraine has locked itself into a logic that can only lead to defeat.

...

In an asymmetrical situation, each protagonist is free to define his or her own criteria for victory, and to choose from a range of criteria under his or her control. This is why Egypt (1973), Hezbollah (2006), the Islamic State (2017), the Palestinian resistance since 1948 and Hamas in 2023 are victorious, despite massive losses. This seems counter-intuitive to a Western mind, but it is what explains why Westerners are unable to really “win” their wars.

In Ukraine, the political leadership has locked itself into a narrative that precludes a way out of the crisis without losing face. The asymmetrical situation now working to Ukraine’s disadvantage stems from a narrative that has been confused with reality, and has led to a response that is ill-suited to the nature of the Russian operation.

The Russian Art of War: How the West led Ukraine to defeat | MR Online

https://mronline.org/2024/01/05/the-russian-art-of-war-how-the-west-led-ukraine-to-defeat/

mronline.org · by Chen Zhang · January 5, 2024

We are very happy to bring you this excerpt from Colonel Jacques Baud’s latest book, The Russian Art of War: How the West Led Ukraine to Defeat (L’art de la guerre russe: Comment l’occident conduire l’ukraine a la echec). This is a detailed study of the two-year old conflict in which the West has brutally used the Ukrainians to pursue an old pipedream: the conquest of Russia.

The book is being translated into English, and we will update this page when it is published. In the meantime, we provide a generous excerpt, along with a detailed Table of Contents, to give you a taste of this very important and much-needed book.

Russian Military Thought

Throughout the Cold War period, the Soviet Union saw itself as the spearhead of a historical struggle that would lead to a confrontation between the “capitalist” system and “progressive forces.” This perception of a permanent and inescapable war led the Soviets to study war in a quasi-scientific way, and to structure this thinking into an architecture of military thought that has no equal in the Western world.

The problem with the vast majority of our so-called military experts is their inability to understand the Russian approach to war. It is the result of an approach we have already seen in waves of terrorist attacks—the adversary is so stupidly demonized that we refrain from understanding his way of thinking. As a result, we are unable to develop strategies, articulate our forces, or even equip them for the realities of war. The corollary of this approach is that our frustrations are translated by unscrupulous media into a narrative that feeds hatred and increases our vulnerability. We are thus unable to find rational, effective solutions to the problem.

The way Russians understand conflict is holistic. In other words, they see the processes that develop and lead to the situation at any given moment. This explains why Vladimir Putin’s speeches invariably include a return to history. In the West, we tend to focus on X moment and try to see how it might evolve. We want an immediate response to the situation we see today. The idea that “from the understanding of how the crisis arose comes the way to resolve it” is totally foreign to the West. In September 2023, an English-speaking journalist even pulled out the “duck test” for me: “if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.” In other words, all the West needs to assess a situation is an image that fits their prejudices. Reality is much more subtle than the duck model….

The reason the Russians are better than the West in Ukraine is that they see the conflict as a process; whereas we see it as a series of separate actions. The Russians see events as a film. We see them as photographs. They see the forest, while we focus on the trees. That is why we place the start of the conflict on February 24, 2022, or the start of the Palestinian conflict on October 7, 2023. We ignore the contexts that bother us and wage conflicts we do not understand. That is why we lose our wars…

In Russia, unsurprisingly, the principles of the military art of the Soviet forces inspired those currently in use:

• readiness to carry out assigned missions;
• concentration of efforts on solving a specific mission;
• surprise (unconventionality) of military action vis-à-vis the enemy;
• finality determines a set of tasks and the level of resolution of each one;
• totality of available means determines the way to resolve the mission and achieve the objective (correlation of forces);
• coherence of leadership (unity of command);
• economy of forces, resources, time and space;
• support and restoration of combat capability;
• freedom of maneuver.

It should be noted that these principles apply not only to the implementation of military action as such. They are also applicable as a system of thought to other non-operational activities.

An honest analysis of the conflict in Ukraine would have identified these various principles and drawn useful conclusions for Ukraine. But none of the self-proclaimed experts on TV were intellectually able to do so.

Thus, Westerners are systematically surprised by the Russians in the fields of technology (e.g., hypersonic weapons), doctrine (e.g., operative art) and economics (e.g., resilience to sanctions). In a way, the Russians are taking advantage of our prejudices to exploit the principle of surprise. We can see this in the Ukrainian conflict, where the Western narrative led Ukraine to totally underestimate Russian capabilities, which was a major factor in its defeat. That is why Russia did not really try to counter this narrative and let it play out—the belief that we are superior makes us vulnerable….

Correlation of Forces

Russian military thought is traditionally linked to a holistic approach to warfare, which involves the integration of a large number of factors in the development of a strategy. This approach is materialized by the concept of “correlation of forces” (Соотношение сил).

Often translated as “balance of forces” or “ratio of forces,” this concept is only understood by Westerners as a quantitative quantity, limited to the military domain. In Soviet thinking, however, the correlation of forces reflected a more holistic reading of war:

There are several criteria for assessing the correlation of strengths. In the economic sphere, the factors usually compared are gross national product per capita, labor productivity, the dynamics of economic growth, the level of industrial production, particularly in high-tech sectors, the technical infrastructure of the production tool, the resources and degree of qualification of the workforce, the number of specialists and the level of development of theoretical and applied sciences.

In the military field, the factors compared are the quantity and quality of armaments, the firepower of the armed forces, the fighting and moral qualities of the soldiers, the level of staff training, the organization of the troops and their combat experience, the character of the military doctrine and the methods of strategic, operative and tactical thinking.

In the political sphere, the factors that come into consideration are the breadth of the social base of state authority, its organization, the constitutional procedure for relations between the government and legislative bodies, the ability to take operational decisions, and the degree and character of popular support for domestic and foreign policy.

Finally, when assessing the strength of the international movement, the factors taken into consideration are its quantitative composition, its influence with the masses, its position in the political life of each country, the principles and norms of relations between its components and the degree of their cohesion.

In other words, the assessment of the situation is not limited to the balance of forces on the battlefield, but takes into account all the elements that have an impact on the evolution of the conflict. Thus, for their Special Military Operation, the Russian authorities had planned to support the war effort through the economy, without moving to a “war economy” regimen. Thus, unlike in Ukraine, there was no interruption in the tax and welfare mechanisms.

This is why the sanctions applied to Russia in 2014 had a double positive effect. The first was the realization that they were not only a short-term problem, but above all a medium- and long-term opportunity. They encouraged Russia to produce goods it had previously preferred to buy abroad. The second was the signal that the West would increasingly use economic weapons as a means of pressure in the future. It therefore became imperative, for reasons of national independence and sovereignty, to prepare for more far-reaching sanctions affecting the country’s economy.

In reality, it has long been known that sanctions do not work. Logically enough, they have had the opposite effect, acting as protectionist measures for Russia, which has thus been able to consolidate its economy, as had been the case after the 2014 sanctions. A sanctions strategy might have paid off if the Russian economy had effectively been the equivalent of the Italian or Spanish economy, i.e., with a high level of debt; and if the entire planet had acted in unison to isolate Russia.

The inclusion of the correlation of forces in the decision-making process is a fundamental difference from Western decision-making processes, which are linked more to a policy of communication than to a rational approach to problems.

This explains, for example, Russia’s limited objectives in the Ukraine, where it does not seek to occupy the entire territory, as the correlation of forces in the western part of the country would be unfavorable.

At every level of leadership, the correlation of forces is part of situation assessment. At the operational level, it is defined as follows:

The result of comparing the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the forces and resources (sub-units, units, weapons, military equipment, etc.) of one’s own troops (forces) and those of the enemy. It is calculated on an operational and tactical scale throughout the area of operations, in the main and other directions, in order to determine the degree of objective superiority of one of the opposing camps. Force correlation assessment is used to make an informed decision about an operation (battle), and to establish and maintain the necessary superiority over the enemy for as long as possible, when decisions are redefined (modified) during military (combat) operations.

This simple definition is the reason why the Russians committed themselves with forces inferior to those of Ukraine in February 2022, or why they withdrew from Kiev, Kharkov and Kherson in March, September and October 2022.

Structure of the Doctrine

The Russians have always attached particular importance to doctrine. Better than the West, they have understood that “a common way of seeing, thinking and acting”—as Marshal Foch put it—gives coherence, while allowing for infinite variations in the conception of operations. Military doctrine is a kind of “common core” that serves as a reference for designing operations.

Russian military doctrine divides military art into three main components: strategy (strategiya), operative art (operativnoe iskoustvo) and tactics (taktika). Each of these components has its own characteristics, very similar to those found in Western doctrines. Using the terminology of French doctrine on the use of forces:

• The strategic level is that of conception. The aim of strategic action is to lead the adversary to negotiation or defeat.
• The operative level is that of cooperation and coordination of inter-force actions, with a view to achieving a given military objective.
• The tactical level, finally, is that of maneuver execution at weapon level as an integral part of the operational maneuver.

These three components correspond to levels of leadership, which translate into leadership structures and the space in which military operations are conducted. For simplicity’s sake, let us say that the strategic level ensures the management of the theater of war (Театр Войны) (TV); a geographically vast entity, with its own command and control structures, within which there are one or more strategic directions. The theater of war comprises a set of theaters of military operations (Театр Военных Действий) (TVD), which represent a strategic direction and are the domain of operative action. These various theaters have no predetermined structure and are defined according to the situation. For example, although we commonly speak of the “war in Afghanistan” (1979-1989) or the “war in Syria” (2015-), these countries are considered in Russian terminology as TVDs and not TVs.

The same applies to Ukraine, which Russia sees as a theater of military operations (TVD) and not a theater of war (TV), which explains why the action in Ukraine is designated as a “Special Military Operation” (Специальная Военая Операция—Spetsialaya). A Special Military Operation” (Специальная Военная Операция—Spetsial’naya Voyennaya Operatsiya—SVO, or SMO in English abbreviation) and not a “war.”

The use of the word “war” would imply a different structure of conduct than that envisaged by the Russians in Ukraine, and would have other structural implications in Russia itself. Moreover—and this is a central point—as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg himself acknowledges, “the war began in 2014” and should have been ended by the Minsk Agreements. The SMO is therefore a “military operation” and not a new “war,” as many Western “experts” claim.

The Special Military Operation in Ukraine

The Correlation of Forces

Consider all the factors that directly or indirectly influence the conflict. Conversely, as we have seen in Ukraine and elsewhere, Westerners have a much more political reading of the war, and end up mixing the two. This is why communication plays such an essential role in the conduct of war: the perception of the conflict plays an almost more important role than its reality. This is why, in Iraq, the Americans literally invented episodes that glorified their troops.

Russia’s analysis of the situation in February 2022 was undoubtedly considerably more pertinent than that of the West. They knew that a Ukrainian offensive against the Donbass was underway and that it could endanger the government. In 2014-2015, after the massacres in Odessa and Mariupol, the Russian population was very much in favor of intervention. Vladimir Putin’s stubborn clinging to the Minsk Agreements was poorly understood in Russia.

The factors that contributed to Russia’s decision to intervene were twofold: the expected support of Ukraine’s ethnically Russian population (which we will call “Russian-speaking” for convenience) and an economy robust enough to withstand sanctions.

The Russian-speaking population had risen up en masse against the new authorities following the coup d’état of February 2014, whose first decision had been to strip the Russian language of its official status. Kiev tried to backtrack, but in April 2019, the 2014 decision was definitively confirmed.

Since the adoption of the Law on Indigenous Peoples on July 1, 2021, Russian speakers (ethnic Russians) are no longer considered normal Ukrainian citizens and no longer enjoy the same rights as ethnic Ukrainians. They can therefore be expected to offer no resistance to the Russian coalition in the eastern part of the country….

Since March 24, 2021, Ukrainian forces have been stepping up their presence around the Donbass and have increased the pressure against the autonomists with their fire.

Zelensky’s decree of March 24, 2021 for the reconquest of Crimea and the Donbass was the real trigger for the SMO. From that moment on, the Russians understood that if there was military action against them, they would have to intervene. But they also knew that the cause of the Ukrainian operation was NATO membership, as Oleksei Arestovitch had explained. That is why, in mid-December 2021, they were submitting proposals to the USA and NATO on extending the Alliance: their aim was then to remove Ukraine’s motive for an offensive in the Donbass.

The reason for the Russian Special Military Operation (SMO) is indeed the protection of the populations of Donbass; but this protection was necessary because of Kiev’s desire to go through a confrontation to enter NATO. The extension of NATO is therefore only the indirect cause of the conflict in Ukraine. The latter could have spared itself this ordeal by implementing the Minsk Agreements—but what we wanted was a defeat for Russia.

In 2008, Russia intervened in Georgia to protect the Russian minority then being bombed by its government, as confirmed by the Swiss ambassador, Heidi Tagliavini, who was responsible for investigating this event. In 2014, many voices were raised in Russia to demand intervention when the new regime in Kiev had engaged its army against the civilian population of the five autonomist oblasts (Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Lugansk and Donetsk) and applied a fierce repression. In 2022, it could be expected that the population of Russia would not understand the government’s inaction, after no efforts were made from the Ukrainian and Western sides to enforce the Minsk Agreements. They knew that they did not have the means to launch an economic retaliation. But they also knew that an economic war against Russia would inevitably backfire on Western countries.

An important element of Russian military and political thinking is its legalistic dimension. The way our media present events, systematically omitting facts that could explain, justify, legitimize or even legalize Russia’s actions. We tend to think that Russia is acting outside any legal framework. For example, our media present the Russian intervention in Syria as having been decided unilaterally by Moscow; whereas it was carried out at the request of the Syrian government, after the West had allowed the Islamic State to move closer to Damascus, as confessed by John Kerry, then Secretary of State. Nevertheless, there is never any mention of the occupation of eastern Syria by American troops, who were never even invited there!

We could multiply the examples, to which our journalists will counter with the war crimes committed by Russian forces. This may well be true, but the simple fact that these accusations are not based on any impartial and neutral investigation (as required by humanitarian doctrine), nor on any international one, since Russia is systematically refused participation, casts a shadow over the honesty of these accusations. For example, the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines was immediately attributed to Russia, which was accused of violating international law.

In fact, unlike the West, which advocates a “rules-based international order,” the Russians insist on a “law-based international order.” Unlike the West, they will apply the law to the letter. No more, no less.

The legal framework for Russia’s intervention in Ukraine has been meticulously planned. As this subject has already been covered in one of my previous books, I will not go into details here…

The Objectives and Strategy of Russia

On February 23, 2023, Swiss military “expert” Alexandre Vautravers commented on Russia’s objectives in Ukraine:

The aim of the Special Military Operation was to decapitate Ukrainian political and military governance in the space of five, ten, maybe even two weeks. The Russians then changed their plan and their objectives with a number of other failures; so they change their objectives and their strategic orientations almost every week or every month.

The problem is that our “experts” themselves define Russia’s objectives according to what they imagine, only to be able to say that it has not achieved them. So. Let us get back to the facts.

On February 24, 2022, Russia launched its “Special Military Operation” (SMO) in Ukraine “at short notice.” In his televised address, Vladimir Putin explained that its strategic objective was to protect the population of Donbass. This objective can be broken down into two parts:

• “demilitarize” the Ukrainian armed forces regrouped in the Donbass in preparation for the offensive against the DPR and LPR; and
• “denazify” (i.e. “neutralize”) the ultra-nationalist and neo-Nazi paramilitary militias in the Mariupol area.

The formulation chosen by Vladimir Putin has been very poorly analyzed in the West. It is inspired by the 1945 Potsdam Declaration, which envisaged the development of defeated Germany according to four principles: demilitarization, denazification, democratization and decentralization.

The Russians understand war from a Clausewitzian perspective: war is the pursuit of politics by other means. This then means that they seek to transform operational successes into strategic successes, and military successes into political objectives. So, while the demilitarization evoked by Putin is clearly linked to the military threat to the populations of the Donbass in application of the decree of March 24, 2021, signed by Zelensky.

But this objective conceals a second: the neutralization of Ukraine as a future NATO member. This is what Zelensky understood when he proposed a resolution to the conflict in March 2022. At first, his proposal was supported by Western countries, probably because at this stage they believed that Russia had failed in its bid to take over Ukraine in three days, and that it would not be able to sustain its war effort because of the massive sanctions imposed on it. But at the NATO meeting of March 24, 2022, the Allies decided not to support Zelensky’s proposition.

Nevertheless, on March 27, Zelensky publicly defended his proposal and on March 28, as a gesture of support for this effort, Vladimir Putin eased the pressure on the capital and withdrew his troops from the area. Zelensky’s proposal served as the basis for the Istanbul Communiqué of March 29, 2022, a ceasefire agreement as a prelude to a peace agreement. It was this document that Vladimir Putin presented in June 2023, when an African delegation visited Moscow. It was Boris Johnson’s intervention that prompted Zelensky to withdraw his proposal, exchanging peace and the lives of his men for support “for as long as it takes.”

This version of events—which I have already presented in my previous works—was finally confirmed in early November 2023 by David Arakhamia, then chief negotiator for Ukraine196. He explained that Russia had never intended to seize Kiev.

In essence, Russia agreed to withdraw to the borders of February 23, 2022, in exchange for a ceiling on Ukrainian forces and a commitment not to become a NATO member, along with security guarantees from a number of countries….

Two conclusions can be drawn:

• Russia’s objective was not to conquer territory. If the West had not intervened to push Zelensky to withdraw his offer, Ukraine would probably still have its army.
• While the Russians intervened to ensure the security and protection of the population of the Donbass, their SMO enabled them to achieve a broader objective, which involves Russia’s security.

This means that, although this objective is not formulated, the demilitarization of Ukraine could open the door to its neutralization. This is not surprising since, conversely, in an interview with the Ukrainian channel Apostrof’ on March 18, 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky’s advisor Oleksei Arestovitch cynically explains that, because Ukraine wants to join NATO, it will have to create the conditions for Russia to attack Ukraine and be definitively defeated.

The problem is that Ukrainian and Western analysis is fueled by their own narratives. The conviction that Russia will lose has meant that no alternative contingency has been prepared. In September 2023, the West, beginning to see the collapse of this narrative and its implementation, tried to move towards a “freeze” in the conflict, without taking into account the opinion of the Russians, who dominate on the ground.

Yet Russia would have been satisfied with a situation such as that proposed by Zelensky in March 2022. What the West wants in September 2023 is merely a pause until an even more violent conflict breaks out, after Ukrainian forces have been rearmed and reconstituted.

Ukrainian Strategy

The strategic objective of Volodymyr Zelensky and his team is to join NATO, as a prelude to a brighter future within the EU. It complements that of the Americans (and therefore of the Europeans). The problem is that tensions with Russia, particularly over Crimea, are causing NATO members to put off Ukraine’s participation. In March 2022, Zelensky revealed on CNN that this is exactly what the Americans told him.

Before coming to power in April 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky’s discourse was divided between two antagonistic policies: the reconciliation with Russia promised during his presidential campaign and his goal of joining NATO. He knows that these two policies are mutually exclusive, as Russia does not want to see NATO and its nuclear weapons installed in Ukraine and wanted neutrality or non-alignment.

What is more, he knows that his ultra-nationalist allies will refuse to negotiate with Russia. This was confirmed by Praviy Sektor leader Dmitro Yarosh, who openly threatened him with death in the Ukrainian media a month after his election. Zelensky therefore knew from the start of the election campaign that he would not be able to fulfill his promise of reconciliation, and that there was only one solution left: confrontation with Russia.

But this confrontation could not be waged by Ukraine alone against Russia, and it would need the material support of the West. The strategy devised by Zelensky and his team was revealed before his election in March 2019 by Oleksei Arestovitch, his personal advisor, on the Ukrainian media Apostrof’. Arestovitch explained that it would take an attack by Russia to provoke an international mobilization that would enable Ukraine to defeat Russia once and for all, with the help of Western countries and NATO. With astonishing precision, he described the course of the Russian attack as it would unfold three years later, between February and March 2022. Not only did he explain that this conflict was unavoidable if Ukraine is to join NATO, but he also placed this confrontation in 2021-2022! He outlined the main areas of Western aid:

In this conflict, we will be very actively supported by the West. Weapons. Equipment. Assistance. New sanctions against Russia. Most likely, the introduction of a NATO contingent. A no-fly zone, and so on. In other words, we won’t lose it.

As we can see, this strategy has much in common with the one described by the RAND Corporation at the same time. So much so, in fact, that it is hard not to see it as a strategy strongly inspired by the United States. In his interview, Arestovitch singled out four elements that would become the pillars of the Ukrainian strategy against Russia, and to which Zelensky returned regularly:

• International aid and arms supplies,
• International sanctions,
• NATO intervention,
• Creation of a no-fly zone.

It should be noted that these four pillars are understood by Zelensky as promises whose fulfillment is essential to the success of this strategy. In February 2023, Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of Ukraine’s Defense and National Security Council, declared in The Kyiv Independent that Ukraine’s objective was the disintegration of Russia. The mobilization of Western countries to supply Ukraine with heavy weapons then seems to give substance to this objective, which is consistent with what Oleksiy Arestovich had declared in March 2019.

A few months later, however, it became clear that the equipment supplied to Ukraine was not sufficient to ensure the success of its counter-offensive, and Zelensky asked for additional, better-adapted equipment. At this point, there was a certain amount of Western irritation at these repeated demands. Former British Defense Minister Ben Wallace declared that Westerners “are not Amazon.” In fact, the West does not respect its commitments.

Contrary to what our media and pseudo-military experts tell us, since February 2022, it has been clear that Ukraine cannot defeat Russia on its own. As Obama put it, “Russia [there] will always be able to maintain its escalation dominance.” In other words, Ukraine will only be able to achieve its goals with the involvement of NATO countries. This means that its fate will depend on the goodwill of Western countries. So, we need to maintain a narrative that encourages the West to keep up this effort. This narrative will then become what we call, in strategic terms, its “center of gravity.”

As the months went by, the course of operations showed that the prospect of a Ukrainian victory was becoming increasingly remote, as Russia, far from being weakened, was growing stronger, militarily and economically. Even General Christopher Cavoli, Supreme American Commander Europe (SACEUR), told a U.S. congressional committee that “Russia’s air, naval, space, digital and strategic capabilities have not suffered significant degradation during this war.”

The West, expecting a short conflict, is no longer able to maintain the effort promised to Ukraine. The NATO summit in Vilnius (July 11-12, 2023) ended in partial success for Ukraine. Its membership is postponed indefinitely. Its situation is even worse than it was at the beginning of 2022, since there is no more justification for its entry into NATO than there was before the SMO.

Ukraine then turned its attention to a more concrete objective: regaining sovereignty over its entire 1991 territory.

Thus, the Ukrainian notion of “victory” rapidly evolved. The idea of a “collapse of Russia” quickly faded, as did that of its dismemberment. There was talk of “regime change,” which Zelensky made his objective by forbidding any negotiations as long as Vladimir Putin was in power. Then came the reconquest of lost territories, thanks to the counter-offensive of 2023. But here, too, hopes quickly faded. The plan was simply to cut the Russian forces in two, with a thrust towards the Sea of Azov. But by September 2023, this objective had been reduced to the liberation of three cities.

In the absence of concrete successes, narrative remains the only element Ukraine can rely on to maintain Western attention and willingness to support it. For, as Ben Wallace, ex-Defence Minister, put it in The Telegraph on October 1, 2023: “The most precious commodity is hope.” True enough. But Western appraisal of the situation must be based on realistic analyses of the adversary. However, since the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, Western analyses have been based on prejudice.

The Notion of Victory

Russia operates within a framework of Clausewitzian thinking, in which operational successes are exploited for strategic ends. Operational strategy (“operative art”) therefore plays an essential role in the definition of what is considered a victory.

As we saw during the battle of Bakhmut, the Russians adapted perfectly to the strategy imposed on Ukraine by the West, which prioritizes the defense of every square meter. The Ukrainians thus played into the hands of the attrition strategy officially announced by Russia. Conversely, in Kharkov and Kherson, the Russians preferred to cede territory in exchange for the lives of their men. In the context of a war of attrition, sacrificing potential in exchange for territory, as Ukraine is doing, is the worst strategy of all.

This is why General Zaluzhny, commander of the Ukrainian forces, tried to oppose Zelensky and proposed withdrawing his forces from Bakhmut. But in Ukraine, it is the Western narrative that guides military decisions. Zelensky preferred to follow the path laid out for him by our media, in order to retain the support of Western opinion. In November 2023, General Zaluzhny had to openly admit that this decision was a mistake, because prolonging the war will only favor Russia.

The Ukrainian conflict was inherently asymmetrical. The West wanted to turn it into a symmetrical conflict, proclaiming that Ukraine’s capabilities could be enough to topple Russia. But this was clearly wishful thinking from the outset, and its sole purpose was to justify non-compliance with the Minsk Agreements. Russian strategists have turned it into an asymmetrical conflict.

Ukraine’s problem in this conflict is that it has no rational relationship with the notion of victory. By comparison, the Palestinians, who are aware of their quantitative inferiority, have switched to a way of thinking that gives the simple act of resisting a sense of victory. This is the asymmetrical nature of the conflict that Israel has never managed to understand in 75 years, and which it is reduced to overcoming through tactical superiority rather than strategic finesse. In Ukraine, it is the same phenomenon. By clinging to a notion of victory linked to the recovery of territory, Ukraine has locked itself into a logic that can only lead to defeat.

On November 20, 2023, Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, painted a gloomy picture of Ukrainian prospects for 2024. His speech showed that Ukraine had neither a plan to emerge from the conflict, nor an approach that would associate a sense of victory with that emergence: he was reduced to linking Ukraine’s victory to that of the West. In the West, however, the end of the conflict in Ukraine is increasingly perceived as a military, political, human and economic debacle.

In an asymmetrical situation, each protagonist is free to define his or her own criteria for victory, and to choose from a range of criteria under his or her control. This is why Egypt (1973), Hezbollah (2006), the Islamic State (2017), the Palestinian resistance since 1948 and Hamas in 2023 are victorious, despite massive losses. This seems counter-intuitive to a Western mind, but it is what explains why Westerners are unable to really “win” their wars.

In Ukraine, the political leadership has locked itself into a narrative that precludes a way out of the crisis without losing face. The asymmetrical situation now working to Ukraine’s disadvantage stems from a narrative that has been confused with reality, and has led to a response that is ill-suited to the nature of the Russian operation.

mronline.org · by Chen Zhang · January 5, 2024

12. Tired Zelensky looks too weak to achieve victory

Tired Zelensky looks too weak to achieve victory

The Telegraph · by Richard Kemp 6 January 2024 • 6:01pm

With splits emerging in Ukraine, the president must focus on setting out a convincing strategy to defeat Vladimir Putin

Credit: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service

Today Volodymyr Zelensky faces the greatest test of his leadership, greater even than the days almost two years ago when Russian invasion forces rolled across the border. Back then, when he was offered a ride to safety by the West and asked for ammunition instead, he led a country united in a fight for its life.

That’s not so much the case now. There are growing public divisions between Zelensky and other political leaders, such as former President Petro Poroshenko and Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, as a blame game builds over failures in the war so far. Worse still, Zelensky and the Commander-in-Chief, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, also seem to be in conflict. When Zaluzhnyi admitted that the war had reached a stalemate, Zelensky publicly rebuked him.

Apart from the overriding need for national unity in war, this suggests that Ukraine lacks a clear strategy for the future prosecution of the conflict. Zelensky continues to insist that Ukraine will regain all its territory taken by Russia; although, after apparently over-promising on the summer offensive, he no longer seems to talk of timelines. Demoralised by the failure of that counter move, some are now talking in terms of some kind of peace accords. It has even been suggested that a potential peace agreement could be put to a referendum.

When I was last in Kyiv, there was certainly discussion among some political leaders about the idea of a peace deal in which Russia would accept Ukrainian membership of Nato in exchange for guarantees that there would be no Ukrainian efforts to re-take occupied territory. Such talk might well be mere exasperation, but it is mana from heaven for Biden and many European leaders who want nothing more than such a peace agreement and as soon as possible.

Any serious consideration of peace talks pretty much guarantees Ukraine’s defeat. Putting aside domestic politics in the US and EU that have, for the time being at least, essentially stifled further military aid, Biden and the Europeans have refused so far to equip Ukraine to win the war.

That brake was applied out of the unfounded fear of provoking Russia into escalating against them. With any hint of peace talks in prospect from the Ukrainian side, to that would be added the new fear of Russia refusing to acquiesce or if it did, of pulling out. “Provocative” weapons supplies would dry up for the long term. Putin is only too well aware of that, which is why he has repeatedly said he would be prepared to talk peace.

Zelensky needs to put a stop to this. With this year’s elections unlikely to go ahead in the midst of conflict, he should form a national unity government to help control the increasingly corrosive domestic dissent that can only weaken Ukraine’s war effort. He should also set out his country’s unified strategic vision.

So far he has not put forward any real strategy – beyond suggesting that the centre of gravity would shift to Crimea and the Black Sea while defending against potential Russian advances in the east, which is not good enough if he expects the West to keep putting its hands in its pockets.

Nor is it adequate to tell the West that Ukrainians are fighting not just for their own country, but for the whole of Europe which will itself be under threat from Moscow if Putin succeeds in this war. That is certainly true, but there is no sign that the US president or Western European leaders really believe it. If they did, they would long ago have pulled out all the stops to contain Putin and to supply Ukraine with the massive amounts of weaponry it needs to defeat Russia.

Zelensky may be drained by almost two years of war, but he must now focus on regaining the initiative.

The Telegraph · by Richard Kemp 6 January 2024 • 6:01pm

13. Putin’s Unsustainable Spending Spree

I do not think Putin is the only one on an unsustainable spending spree.

Excerpt:

Russia’s economy is more endangered than the growth statistics indicate, and the upcoming election may provoke further fateful decisions that could exacerbate long-term challenges, if Putin decides to buy voters’ loyalty by splashing even more cash before polling day. Overheating—often a precursor to recession—is a growing threat, especially when institutions designed to mitigate shocks are either dysfunctional or being obliterated by the exigencies of war. With the war unlikely to end soon, the financial and economic costs will mount and are likely to bite Russia several years from now. This process could be speeded by a major global recession or a slowdown of the Chinese economy, which would hit Russia hard due to its heavy dependence on revenues from commodities exports. The specter of a bitter economic hangover looms large unless a new and sustainable Russian economic model emerges. But that remains highly unlikely. For Putin, the war is now an organizing principle of his domestic and foreign policy. To abandon the war without something that the Kremlin can define as victory would be impossible. A long conflict over Ukraine not only satisfies Putin’s geopolitical ambitions and vision but is also turning into his regime’s survival strategy. The trouble will be that his political goals are incompatible with the economic ones. Eventually, something will have to give.

Putin’s Unsustainable Spending Spree

How the War in Ukraine Will Overheat the Russian Economy

By Alexandra Prokopenko

January 8, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Alexandra Prokopenko · January 8, 2024

After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, its economy seemed certain to suffer as a coalition of Ukraine’s allies, led by the United States, imposed an unprecedented program of sanctions. Many figures, including U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and EU Sanctions Envoy David O’Sullivan, predicted that these would force Russian President Vladimir Putin to choose between the war and a struggling economy. But Russia’s economy has defied these predictions. Thanks to record state spending, the Russian economy will grow faster than the global economy in 2023. Whereas the latter is forecast by the IMF to grow by three percent, the former is predicted by the Russian government to grow by 3.5 percent. When the exact figures come in, Russia’s economic growth in 2023 will likely turn out to have exceeded three percent, and Putin will no doubt boast about this in speeches ahead of this spring’s presidential election.

Rather than signaling economic health, however, these figures are symptomatic of overheating. The Russian economy’s problems, in fact, are such that Putin is facing an impossible trilemma. His challenges are threefold: he must fund his ongoing war against Ukraine, maintain his populace’s living standards, and safeguard macroeconomic stability. Achieving the first and second goals will require higher spending, which will fuel inflation and thus prevent the achievement of the third goal. High oil and gas revenues, adept financial management by the Russian authorities, and lax enforcement of Western restrictions have all played their part in Russia’s economic growth, but they mask growing imbalances within the economy.

Ahead of the Russian election, Putin is unlikely to mention that over a third of Russia’s growth is due to the war, with defense-related industries flourishing at double-digit growth rates. Civilian industries, which are also involved in producing products for the front—such as footwear, clothing, and medicine—lag slightly behind. Russia’s bright 2023 economic landscape concealed dangerous tradeoffs made in pursuit of short-term gains. Even if Moscow’s financial leadership succeeds in cooling down the economy by the end of 2024, major problems caused by the war are inevitable. These include discontent over underfinanced public health, mounting shortages of tools and equipment due to the tightening sanctions regime, and major dislocations caused by mammoth investment in the defense industry. Future generations will pay a heavy price for the current state of affairs, although for now this is the last thing on the Kremlin’s mind.

PLOUGHSHARES INTO SWORDS

The war has wrought major changes on the Russian economy. Moscow has had to adjust its policy to fund its armed conflict against Kyiv, maintaining its military apparatus and police force, and integrating the territories it has annexed from Ukraine. These priorities have necessitated significant spending commitments that collectively threaten Russia’s economic stability. The Kremlin will spend six percent of GDP (more than eight percent when combined with spending on national security) on the war in 2024. This is more than the 3.8 percent of GDP that the United States spent during the Iraq war, although it falls short of the prodigious sums the USSR allocated during the years of stagnation and its invasion of Afghanistan (18 percent of GDP).

Military spending has even eclipsed social spending—currently less than five percent of GDP—for the first time in Russia’s post-Soviet history. This pivot toward a militarized economy threatens social and developmental needs. The four annexed regions of Ukraine have already received the equivalent of $18 billion, and in 2024 almost $5 billion is expected to be transferred from the federal budget to regional budgets. No other regions in Russia receive this level of investment, which only increases interregional inequality. Rather than restore dilapidated housing in Russia, the Kremlin prefers to spend money on building houses and roads in annexed territories, to replace the houses and roads that Russian troops destroyed during their brutal invasion.

Rather than signaling economic health, Russia’s growth is symptomatic of overheating.

Russian industry has been transformed, with defense sectors now overshadowing civilian industries. The defense sector’s enterprises are now operating at a fever pitch and, as a consequence, any surge in demand is likely to force prices to rise due to the sector’s inability to increase supply. The military sector is receiving a disproportionately high amount of government spending and it is also siphoning off labor from the civilian workforce, leading to an abnormally low unemployment rate of 2.9 percent. Before the war, Russia’s unemployment rate typically stood at around four to five percent. The military and public sectors now employ 850,000 more people than in late 2022–23. The invasion of Ukraine also prompted about 500,000 Russians to emigrate in 2022, driving shortages of qualified specialists and blue-collar workers.

Meanwhile, living standards have risen across Russia, and the percentage of Russians living below the poverty line has dropped to 9.8 percent, the lowest since 1992. Naturally, there are regional variations, and areas that have sent a significant number of their men to fight in Ukraine—including Chechnya, Buryatia, Altai Krai, Altai Republic, and Dagestan—have witnessed the fastest income growth in low-income groups. This relative increase in prosperity can be expected to continue as Moscow disburses funds to the families of the deceased and wounded.

Overall, the Kremlin wishes to maintain an illusion of normalcy and even increasing prosperity for its citizens. The distortions in the labor market have pushed up salaries in military industry, as well as in civilian manufacturing, because of the need to compete to attract workers from well-paying military plants. Moscow is, meanwhile, making high payments to soldiers and people mobilized to fight in Ukraine, which are driving consumption. At the same time, thanks to a supply of cheap credit, the government is handing out subsidized mortgages, that are, for the moment, shielding families from economic reality.

THINGS ARE SELDOM WHAT THEY SEEM

The interplay between military spending, labor shortages, and rising wages has created an illusion of prosperity that is unlikely to last. Moscow’s options to deal with the growing labor shortage are unpleasant. It can institute round-the-clock production, encourage the hiring of women and teenagers in traditionally male-dominated professions, or try to find more migrants to fill the growing number of vacancies. But these proposed changes would only make the situation worse.

Because of the labor shortage, Russian companies are already forced to pay higher salaries to their remaining workers or to poach workers for more money from competitors or other sectors. Wages rose in 2023 more than the national average in the Novosibirsk, Samara, Sverdlovsk, Nizhny Novgorod, and Tula regions, where a large number of defense companies are concentrated. As a consequence, the workforce in other regions and civilian manufacturing have been dislocated by workers seeking high wages, exacerbating labor shortages in nonmilitary production and pushing salaries and costs up.

Russia’s war economy has also brought changes to the composition of the Russian middle class, traditionally composed of educated specialists, businesspeople, and IT professionals. Increasingly, however, middle-class Russians are becoming soldiers and police officers—and thus state dependents. This shift is due to war mobilization and the expansion of law enforcement agencies, particularly the Federal Security Service. This change carries economic risks, as it obliges the government to continue to make expensive payments to these groups even when faced with budgetary challenges. These payments are an economic time bomb: high wages are extremely difficult to reduce, and doing so for the main pillar of Putin’s rule—the army and security forces—is not an option.

Increases in wages and state payments have stimulated Russian consumption. Retail sales, in particular, grew by 10.5 percent in November 2023 despite inflation. Putin’s directive to secure the availability of consumer goods has led to greater imports of these goods, discouraging domestic production. He cannot increase domestic production without triggering price hikes or shortages. This would be dangerous: Russians are already feeling the pinch, and complaints about high prices are at the top of the list of grievances to regional and federal authorities.

TROUBLE AT HOME

Only a stable economy that prioritizes maintaining predictable macroeconomic conditions can reliably finance Russia’s war and maintain payments to the population at current levels. Growing spending on war and subsidized loans to people and businesses undermine that stability. Moscow has been particularly proactive in issuing these loans and, as of November 1, 2023, their total value is more than $130 billion. That is approximately 14 percent of the loan portfolio within the Russian banking system and seven percent of GDP. The mortgage lending sector is a particular liability, as it is now driven by soft-loan programs that account for 70 percent of new mortgages. These loans are most in demand among the middle class in Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as in the Krasnodar region.

As the Russian economy has become more focused on the war, Russians have also become unsustainably reliant on war-related payments. The government refuses to curtail subsidized mortgages due to a powerful lobby of property developers. Although the terms have been slightly tightened, and the down payment raised by five percent, the program has remained. The arguments from the Central Bank that these loans create an additional inflation pressure, cementing inequality and distorting property prices, have been ignored by the Kremlin. These subsidized loans are paid for by all income categories, meaning that working-class taxpayers are subsidizing middle-class mortgages. More than 60 percent of loans are issued to people who will spend more than half of their income repaying them. Increasingly, the loan programs are being accessed by recipients of war-related payments. If the war ended, it would become extremely difficult for them to service their loans, especially in the face of rising prices.

International sanctions have had the unexpected and beneficial effect of insulating Russia from external shocks by cutting it off from international financial markets. But, because of the war and the breakdown of relations with the West, Moscow finds itself more dependent on oil than ever. The Russian government is working on the assumption that it will receive almost $119 billion (6.4 percent of GDP) in oil and gas revenues in 2024, which would amount to more than a third of the treasury’s total revenues. Moscow’s 2024 budget also assumes both an average Russian oil price of about $70 per barrel and that Western countries will fail to limit the Kremlin’s oil and gas revenues. These presumptions make Russia vulnerable to fluctuations in oil prices as well as Western countries’ efforts to restrict Moscow’s exports.

A Russian military recruitment board in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, December 2023

Alexander Manzyu / Reuters

Inflation is also fast becoming a problem. Russia’s inflation rate has already surpassed seven percent, forcing the Bank of Russia to maintain interest rates at 16 percent. Despite these high interest rates, businesses and households continue to borrow, indicating high inflation expectations. This means that the key rate will not return to single digits any time soon. This has prompted industrial giants such as AvtoVAZ and Russian Railways to seek subsidies to service their corporate debt. The Russian energy company Rosneft’s CEO, Igor Sechin, has gone further, urging Putin to influence the independent central bank’s decisions. He has not done so. Despite the attacks from oligarchs, the government, and even Putin’s economic aide Maxim Oreshkin, the central bank governor Elvira Nabiullina has maintained her independence in monetary policy decision-making. For the Kremlin, high interest rates constitute an image problem, undermining Putin’s narrative that the Russian economy is stable. A healthy economy, after all, does not need a double-digit key rate.

Volatility in the value of the ruble is further evidence of macroeconomic instability. Since 2022, it has oscillated between 50 and 100 rubles to the dollar. This has been caused in large part by Moscow’s abandonment of the budget rule under which it bought and sold foreign currency from its National Wealth Fund to make up for shortfalls and surpluses in oil and gas revenues. This rule prevented spending from ramping up but was ended in the aftermath of the invasion of Ukraine. Its abandonment left the value of the ruble at the mercy of trade flows. A three-digit dollar exchange rate not only stokes inflation; it triggers public concern.

The authorities cannot remove the main reason for the ruble’s weakening, which is spending on imports, although they can implement control over capital flows. To fight prices, they can also restrict exports of certain products, and threaten heavy fines to force retailers to limit markups. Such steps are likely, lest the destruction of the ruble’s reputation leads to dollarization of savings of both business and households, and further capital outflows. Restricting prices will lead to their acceleration in the future.

THE GATHERING STORM

Putin is apparently sincere in his belief that the Russian empire and the Soviet Union both collapsed largely because of poor financial management. The modern Russian economy is run by professional technocrats, and Putin listens to their opinions. So far, the situation looks stable in the short term: the availability of yuan and gold reserves means Moscow needs not worry about financing external debt. The cost of domestic borrowing has increased and fiscal space has narrowed, but Russia’s low prewar debt-to-GDP ratio means that debt is unlikely to prove a significant risk in upcoming years. The government may also turn to domestic capital markets to provide financing for state spending as they privatize state property, especially parts of the military industry.

Still, the war is shaking the foundations of Russia’s economic stability. It has already taken its toll on pillars of economic policy crucial for macroeconomic stability, including the budget rule, freedom of capital flows, and—to some extent—the independence of the central bank.

Most of the self-inflicted wounds to the national economy cannot be healed without ending the war and the sanctions regime. Structural problems—particularly dependency on oil revenues, an inability to live without foreign, predominantly Chinese, imports, and negative demographic trends that have been exacerbated by the war—will not go away any time soon. To solve these problems would require years of structural reforms that attract investment and improve human capital. But the Kremlin is unable and sometimes unwilling to take these steps because of Putin’s obsession with political control.

Russia’s economy is more endangered than the growth statistics indicate, and the upcoming election may provoke further fateful decisions that could exacerbate long-term challenges, if Putin decides to buy voters’ loyalty by splashing even more cash before polling day. Overheating—often a precursor to recession—is a growing threat, especially when institutions designed to mitigate shocks are either dysfunctional or being obliterated by the exigencies of war. With the war unlikely to end soon, the financial and economic costs will mount and are likely to bite Russia several years from now. This process could be speeded by a major global recession or a slowdown of the Chinese economy, which would hit Russia hard due to its heavy dependence on revenues from commodities exports. The specter of a bitter economic hangover looms large unless a new and sustainable Russian economic model emerges. But that remains highly unlikely. For Putin, the war is now an organizing principle of his domestic and foreign policy. To abandon the war without something that the Kremlin can define as victory would be impossible. A long conflict over Ukraine not only satisfies Putin’s geopolitical ambitions and vision but is also turning into his regime’s survival strategy. The trouble will be that his political goals are incompatible with the economic ones. Eventually, something will have to give.

• ALEXANDRA PROKOPENKO is a Nonresident Scholar at Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin and Researcher at the Center of Eastern European and International Studies.

Foreign Affairs · by Alexandra Prokopenko · January 8, 2024

14. Can Republicans Find Consensus on Foreign Policy?

I don't think there is a foreign policy political party in the US.

Can Republicans Find Consensus on Foreign Policy?​

The GOP Must Reconcile Its New Populism and Old Internationalism

By Gerald F. Seib

January 9, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Gerald F. Seib · January 9, 2024

The current wars between Russia and Ukraine and between Israel and Hamas have sharpened some startling new global realities. China and Russia’s friendship has deepened. The profiles of Iran and North Korea as regional troublemakers and weapons exporters are rising. The world’s great powers are competing for influence in the global South. And in the United States, a long-simmering conflict between nationalism and internationalism within the Republican Party has reached a boil.

This is the most consequential moment for Republican foreign policy since 1952, when Dwight Eisenhower defeated his isolationist challengers to secure the party’s presidential nomination. Eisenhower would make an active U.S. role in global affairs a central tenet of Republicanism. In later years, a consensus formed around President Ronald Reagan’s muscular internationalism, advocacy of free trade, and belief in the virtues of immigration. But for much of the last decade, those principles have been giving way to an “America first” populism that is critical of globalization and inclined to pull back from the world. Former President Donald Trump, again a leading presidential candidate, has driven skepticism of international engagement into the heart of the party. These ideas will not simply melt away should Trump lose this year’s election, but they also do not yet represent a new consensus. As Republican politicians spar over foreign policy in the coming months, the key question is whether they can blend elements of Reagan-era internationalism and Trump-era “America first” impulses into a coherent strategy and view of the world.

The clash between these two strands of foreign policy thinking is playing out most clearly in Congress, where aid to Ukraine has become a topic of fierce debate. Although Republican leaders in the Senate continue to support military assistance in principle, in December they conditioned additional funds for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan on concessions from Democrats on immigration policy, effectively stalling passage of a new aid package. Many of their counterparts in the House, meanwhile, oppose further funding for Ukraine. In September, 104 House Republicans voted to strip military aid for Ukraine from a spending bill.

But the Republican foreign policy drift is not limited to Ukraine, and it is not happening only in Congress. In an August interview on Fox Business News, Trump proposed a ten percent tariff on “everybody” who exports products to the United States—and a steeper one on countries that impose higher tariffs themselves. That position is a decisive move away from Republican orthodoxy under Reagan, who once declared that “[U.S.] trade policy rests firmly on the foundation of free and open markets.” Other Republican hopefuls are following Trump’s lead. One of Trump’s challengers for the Republican presidential nomination, Vivek Ramaswamy, has thrust himself into the vanguard of a new, less interventionist Republican foreign policy and has adopted elements of Trump’s “America first” approach. Ramaswamy has insisted that the United States defend Taiwan only as long as American industries are dependent on the island’s semiconductor industry. Like many other Republicans, he has questioned the logic of Washington’s support for Kyiv and decried “the useful idiots who preach a no-win war in Ukraine.”

Still, many of the Republican Party’s leading foreign policy thinkers—its national security establishment—believe that an amalgam of the party’s current, conflicting impulses is both necessary and possible. In conversations I have had with members of this group, including past national security advisers and former secretaries of state and defense, most argued that common ground exists and that rank-and-file Republicans are less inclined to neo-isolationism than some of their leaders’ public statements suggest.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, for example, told me that support for the policies of “appeasement” and “even isolationism” are rising within the party, but he insisted that such views, loud as they may be, “are not in the majority.” Stephen Hadley, who served as national security adviser under President George W. Bush, contended that Republicans’ competing ideas “can be squared, and there can be a dialogue between the wings” of the party. Similarly, Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, argued that although there is “strong tension” between the Reagan and Trump approaches, “to the extent that there’s a synthesis to be had, Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy, taking into account changed circumstances and changed times, is what most Republicans would follow and subscribe to.”

Achieving this synthesis requires consensus on a set of core issues. The formula that emerged from my conversations includes a more hardheaded view of China and a steady commitment to helping Taiwan defend itself, a strategy and a defense budget designed to meet the new Chinese-Russian axis, free-trade arrangements that exclude Beijing, a clear recognition of the economic benefits of legal immigration, and requests for greater burden sharing by U.S. allies. For this new Republican foreign policy consensus to be politically viable, the party must make a persuasive case that the United States needs to maintain an active role in the world. Republicans must consistently explain to voters the economic and security benefits that Americans reap from engagement—a rhetorical shift whose execution will require leadership and courage within the party.

THE AGE OF INTERNATIONALISM

Tensions among Republicans over U.S. international commitments are hardly new. In 1941, when President Franklin Roosevelt pushed the Lend-Lease Act through Congress to provide military supplies to the United Kingdom during World War II, a majority of Republican lawmakers opposed the move. Republicans rallied around Roosevelt and his successor, President Harry Truman, after the United States entered the war, but the party’s isolationist wing began to reassert itself once the hostilities were over. When the Senate voted on the United States’ entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949, Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, a party elder and a long-standing skeptic of foreign entanglements, voted against ratification along with ten other Republican senators.

Skeptics of international engagement remained a powerful force in the party and might have become dominant were it not for one man: Eisenhower. By the 1952 presidential campaign, Eisenhower was, by dint of his success as the supreme Allied commander in World War II, both an avowed internationalist and a hot political property. He succumbed to pressure to enter the race—and chose to run as a Republican. In the book Eisenhower 1956, the historian David Nichols asserts that “a major reason Ike had decided to run for president was to defeat the isolationist wing of the Republican Party.”

The Republican primary became a struggle between Eisenhower and Taft, the leader of the isolationist forces. When Eisenhower prevailed, the Republican Party platform at the nominating convention unapologetically declared the United States’ intent to be an engaged global leader. It pledged support for the United Nations and free trade, vowed to roll back the Soviet Union, and promised that the United States would “become again the dynamic, moral and spiritual force which was the despair of despots and the hope of the oppressed.”

Similar thinking guided the Republican mainstream for more than six decades. The party’s subsequent leaders included President Richard Nixon, the ultimate internationalist and the engineer of the United States’ opening to China, and Reagan, whose anticommunist impulses translated into vigorous engagement with allies and action against perceived Soviet proxies around the globe. Moreover, Reagan held and often articulated a view of the United States as a model of freedom and democracy—a “shining city upon a hill”—that should both spread its gospel and welcome immigrants who could enrich the American experience.

International engagement served important Republican constituencies, too. Establishing relations with China was hugely beneficial to the party’s business wing, which gained both a giant export market and a source of components and manufactured goods. Economic globalization also opened markets, including China’s, for American farmers in the Republican-dominated states of the Midwest. Voters who held strong anticommunist feelings saw the party’s aggressive stance toward the Soviet Union—and support for anticommunists across Central America and Africa—as both a moral imperative and a strategic necessity.

THE RISE OF “AMERICA FIRST”

By the 1990s, however, support for internationalism began to erode. When the communist and Soviet threats dissipated, so did the glue that held Republicans together on national security matters. China’s entry into the World Trade Organization—which leaders of both parties backed—caused the U.S. manufacturing base to shrink and American manufacturing jobs to disappear. In his presidential campaigns of 1992 and 1996, the longtime Republican political adviser and commentator Patrick Buchanan questioned the virtues of engagement and advanced his own version of “America first” trade and immigration barriers.

Still, the desire for a muscular U.S. presence in the world remained. In an example of the prevailing ideas of the time, then Nebraska Senator (and later Defense Secretary) Chuck Hagel wrote an essay in Foreign Affairs in 2004 outlining the pillars of a Republican foreign policy. His list included supporting alliances, expanding free trade, backing the diplomatic corps, promoting democratic reform in the Middle East, deepening relations with China, and strengthening energy security.

With the exception of energy security, Republicans have shifted away from all those tenets in the years since. In particular, fatigue over long and unsatisfying wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—both initiated by a Republican president—turned nation building and democracy promotion from principled aspirations to dubious propositions.

Thus was a door opened for Trump. “Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo,” he declared in 2016, on accepting the Republican presidential nomination. Trump openly questioned the value of the United States’ alliances, even suggesting that Washington would not honor its treaty commitment to defend its NATO partners if they were attacked. At a NATO summit in Brussels in 2018, he nearly withdrew the United States from the alliance but was dissuaded at the last minute by his chief of staff, John Kelly. Trump sought to build a physical wall along the United States’ southern border and a virtual wall around its economy, introducing tariffs and trade restrictions that targeted friends and foes alike.

Trump and his party’s lingering skepticism of foreign engagement is obvious. In a video released last year, Trump said that, if reelected, he would “clean house of all of the war-mongers” in the Pentagon and State Department. A notable exception to this general attitude, however, is the Republican Party’s strong support for Israel in its fight against Hamas, driven in part by the deep bond that many in the party’s large evangelical Christian wing feel toward the Jewish state. Even as they declined to pass military aid for Ukraine in late 2023, House Republicans overwhelmingly approved aid for Israel—although, in a break with tradition, they insisted on budget cuts elsewhere to fund the assistance. Trump, after initially criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following Hamas’s October 7 attack and calling the leaders of Hezbollah, the Iranian-supported militant group based in Lebanon, “very smart,” soon changed his tune. “I will defend our friend and ally the state of Israel like nobody has ever defended,” Trump told Jewish donors in late October.

A NEW PLAYBOOK

It is not clear to what extent Republican lawmakers shape their foreign policy positions in direct response to Trump. Populist impulses might fade if he were no longer dominating the party, but they could also now be baked into Republican thinking. There is no way to know for sure as long as Trump remains in the picture. Even so, the party’s most experienced leaders believe it is possible to temper populist attitudes and prevent a more substantial drift toward isolationism.

The first task is to convince Republican voters—and by extension all Americans—that international engagement is not merely an altruistic idea but a strategy with tangible benefits. “We need to adopt the Reagan philosophy that says the world depends on America, and that’s a good thing,” Mike Pompeo told me. Pompeo, who served as secretary of state under Trump, argued that the U.S. dollar dominates global finance as “a direct result of American leadership” and is by itself “sufficient justification for America to lead.” Moreover, he asserted, to sell an active role in the world to the public, political leaders must articulate clear goals for U.S. policies—the kinds of objectives that “can be communicated to the American people in a way that, whether they’re sitting in Arizona, Alabama, or Vermont, they can say, ‘I get that.’”

A new foreign policy consensus must also grapple with the consequences of the emerging Chinese-Russian axis. “We’re in a new era of foreign policy,” said John Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security adviser. “The post–Cold War era is over, and I think it ended with Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow [in 2023].” That trip helped crystallize an emerging, if still loose, alignment among China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, all operating in opposition to the United States. In this changed global equation, U.S. alliances become more important, not less. But getting allies to contribute more to the collective defense of the West and of democratic systems—and advertising to voters the extent of allies’ actual contributions—is also essential to retaining public support for overseas missions and to refuting isolationist arguments.

Updating the Republican formula also means recognizing the biggest change of the last two decades: China is not what Reagan-era Republicans hoped it would become. Former Secretary of State James Baker, who served under Reagan and his successor, President George H. W. Bush, was blunt about the effects of incorporating China into the world economy, including its membership in the World Trade Organization. “We thought it would ameliorate their behavior,” Baker told me. “And we were totally wrong.” A new approach need not eschew engagement with Beijing in all areas, but it does have to be hard-nosed in challenging Chinese aggression. “We need to stand up to them and stop letting them take advantage of us,” Baker argued. “And remember that peace through strength is the way to get there. That means minding your defense budget.”

“America first” populism is critical of globalization and inclined to pull back from the world.

The new wariness of China calls for a renewed commitment to Taiwan. There is already broad support for continuing to help Taiwan build its own defenses. Beyond such aid, there is some disagreement on how best to avoid conflict. Baker advised that Republicans stick with “strategic ambiguity” regarding Taiwan. That strategy, which has guided U.S. policy for years, entails avoiding a flat declaration of how the United States would respond if China were to attack Taiwan. An open security guarantee, the theory goes, could embolden Taiwan to be more provocative, and declining to protect Taiwan could encourage a Chinese takeover. Cotton, meanwhile, argued that Washington should end the ambiguity and make clear to Beijing that the United States would not stand by if China were to take military action: “I think, as usual, the simplest way to deter conflict is to be absolutely clear about our commitment should conflict occur.”

On economics, reaching a new consensus should not require abandoning the free-trade principles that have long been a hallmark of Republican foreign policy. But those principles do need refreshing. Primarily, Republican policymakers should seek to work around China by crafting bilateral or regional trade agreements with partners also wary of Chinese economic coercion. Cotton pointed out that even Reagan was not the free-trade absolutist that many remember him to be. “Reagan slapped a bunch of tariffs and quotas on things like automobiles, motorcycles, electronics, and steel to protect American jobs and to protect production and vital American industries,” Cotton noted. Only after Reagan’s term did Republican trade policies turn more toward economic libertarianism—which means there is space to revive certain protective policies without rejecting free trade entirely.

Immigration poses a particular challenge for Republican internationalists. Long before Trump, the sunny Reagan-era view of the economic benefits that immigrants bring to the United States was becoming difficult to sustain as the number of undocumented immigrants in the country more than doubled in the 1990s. But even as views of immigration have hardened, there is precedent for Republican leaders offering solutions. Under both Reagan and George W. Bush, Republicans proposed comprehensive reforms to secure the United States’ southern border and discourage employers from hiring undocumented immigrants while also updating and even expanding legal avenues for immigrants to enter the American workforce. But the border security element of the Reagan-era policy was never really implemented, and Bush was unable to get his party behind his administration’s plan. Today, with immigration policy snared in crisis, renewing efforts to overhaul the system is the best—and perhaps the only—way forward. A politically feasible reform effort would likely need to include a combination of tough border security and a more sensible system of legal immigration that addresses workplace needs.

THE CHALLENGES AHEAD

The real crucible for internationalist Republicans may be the debate over sustaining aid to Ukraine. Some Republicans made their opposition to additional funding clear when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Congress in September. Kansas Senator Roger Marshall released a statement saying he would not support sending “another cent” to help Ukraine fight off Russia’s invasion—and he skipped the meeting with Zelensky, remarking, “My priority is securing our American homeland, not sitting through another charade.” Republican leaders must contend with war fatigue among their voters, too. A Wall Street Journal poll in August found that 65 percent of self-identified Republicans agreed with the idea that the United States is doing too much to help Ukraine. Just 12 percent of Democrats thought the same.

“There are a lot narratives out in social media and cable that average Americans are listening to that feed this notion that [supporting Ukraine] is a waste of money, that it risks war with Russia, and I don’t think the Republican leadership does a very good job of countering those narratives,” asserted Robert Gates, who was deputy national security adviser under President George H. W. Bush and later served as head of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon. But Gates also sees a sufficient reservoir of support for Kyiv within Republican ranks. Although “the ones who are the most radical get the most attention,” he said, “there still are a lot of House Republicans who believe in American international leadership” on Ukraine.

Making the case to Republican voters is possible. The conservative commentator Marc Thiessen has laid out perhaps the most comprehensive “America first” argument for supporting Ukraine, writing in The Washington Post that helping Ukraine will, among other things, deter China from aggressive action, deter the United States’ enemies from threatening the West, and restore the Reagan Doctrine of fighting foreign aggressors not by deploying the U.S. military but by assisting like-minded forces far from American shores.

Republican leaders must contend with war fatigue among their voters.

But even if persuasive arguments blending the Republican Party’s nationalism and internationalism can be made, it is not clear who can act as their public champion. Many of the party elders who normally would constitute the GOP national security establishment walked away or were pushed away during Trump’s presidency, and they remain on the peripheries as the 2024 presidential campaign begins. And it is not just senior figures who are in a diminished position. “The Trump era created a gap in experience for a younger generation of Republican policymakers who were unwilling to work in his administration,” said Robert Zoellick, a former deputy secretary of state and U.S. trade representative. Many foreign policy specialists with an internationalist bent fall into this category, and many missed the usual tour inside the government that would have burnished their credentials and set them up for higher-ranking positions today.

That leaves Republican congressional leaders and the crop of presidential candidates. So far, the primary campaign has done more to sow confusion than to create clarity about where the party is headed on foreign policy. Trump has questioned U.S. support for Ukraine, and Ramaswamy has echoed Trump’s nationalist views. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, long considered Trump’s main rival in the field, has straddled the nationalist and internationalist positions on Ukraine and trade. Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, meanwhile, have made forceful cases for international engagement more or less in the Reagan mold.

There is no assurance that Republicans will coalesce around a new approach—and the outcome of the debate depends heavily on who emerges as the party’s leader in 2024. If Trump is reelected president, the party may be in for what the analyst Walter Russell Mead has called a “Trumpier” second term in foreign policy, with less fealty to traditional alliances and international organizations and diminished concern for climate issues. But if Haley were to win the Republican primary, for example, a far different path for the party would open up. A loss to President Joe Biden could also lead to a broad reexamination of Trump’s “America first” impulses.

Then comes the challenge of putting the pieces together. As a starting point for a new Republican internationalism that includes engaging with allies and standing up to despots abroad, Bolton suggested starting with the most basic of Reagan’s tenets. “I think we know what the formula is,” Bolton said. “It’s peace through strength.”

• GERALD F. SEIB is former Executive Washington Editor and “Capital Journal” columnist at The Wall Street Journal. He is currently a Senior Mentor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Foreign Affairs · by Gerald F. Seib · January 9, 2024

15. Blinken carries Arab message to Israel: keep Palestinian state hope alive

I am well out of my depth here, but I will ask this. What are the Arab states doing to help peacefully achieve a two state solution?

Blinken carries Arab message to Israel: keep Palestinian state hope alive

By Arafat Barbakh, Simon Lewis and Nidal Al-Mughrabi

January 9, 20245:33 AM ESTUpdated an hour ago

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/blinken-diplomatic-push-israel-it-says-gaza-war-continue-through-2024-2024-01-09/?utm427fb43baccfcf3

[1/10]U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets Israel's President Isaac Herzog, during his week-long trip aimed at calming tensions across the Middle East, at David Kempinski Hotel, in Tel Aviv, Israel, January 9, 2024. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/Pool Acquire Licensing Rights

Summary

• LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:Blinken tells Israeli foreign minister "different and much better future" is possibleBlinken due to meet Israeli war cabinetPresident Herzog calls genocide case against Israel at ICJ "atrocious"Israel says 40 Hamas militants killed near Khan Younis

GAZA/TEL AVIV/CAIRO, Jan 9 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on his latest mission to rein in the Gaza war, told Israeli leaders on Tuesday there was still a chance of winning acceptance from their Arab neighbours, if they create a path to a viable Palestinian state.

On his fourth trip to the region since October in a so far largely fruitless quest to tamp down the violence, Blinken said he would share what he had heard in two days of talks with Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

His talks would include a meeting with the Israeli war cabinet formed in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks by Palestinian militants from Hamas, which rules Gaza, that Israel says killed 1,200 people.

The Israeli offensive has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians, destroyed much of Gaza and displaced most of the population of 2.3 million at least once, creating a dramatic and worsening humanitarian crisis.

Blinken had already said he would press Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government on the "absolute imperative" to do more to protect Gaza's civilians and allow humanitarian aid to reach them. His boss, President Joe Biden, said overnight that Washington was quietly pushing Israel to begin withdrawing some of its forces.

Blinken's meetings around the region have focused on trying to chart a longer-term approach to the decades-old Israel-Palestinian conflict, as part of a path toward ending the Gaza war. After his meetings with Arab allies, he said they wanted integration with Israel - a long-term Israeli aim - but only if that included a "practical pathway" to a Palestinian state.

"I know of your own efforts, over many years, to build much greater connectivity and integration in the Middle East, and I think there are actually real opportunities there," he told his Israeli counterpart Israel Katz on Tuesday.

"But we have to get through this very challenging moment and ensure that October 7 can never happen again and work to build a much different and much better future."

HEAVY FIGHTING IN SOUTH GAZA

After weeks of U.S. pressure to tamp down its assault, Israel says its forces are transitioning from full-blown warfare to a more targeted campaign in the northern half of Gaza, while still maintaining intensive combat in southern areas.

It said troops had killed around 40 Palestinian fighters and raided a militant compound and tunnel shafts since Monday during expanded operations in Khan Younis in the south.

The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said 57 Palestinians killed by Israeli air strikes and 65 wounded had arrived in the past 24 hours at the already badly overstretched Al Aqsa hospital in the centre of the 45 km (28 mile) long Gaza Strip.

The vast humanitarian crisis has put pressure in particular on the United States, Israel's closest ally, to press for the assault on Gaza to be scaled back.

The U.N. humanitarian office OCHA said that "as casualties rise, the ability to treat them continues to be in jeopardy".

It said three hospitals in central Gaza and Khan Younis, including Al Aqsa, were "at risk of closure due to the issuance of evacuation orders in nearby areas and the ongoing conduct of hostilities nearby".

BIDEN HEARS SHOUTS OF 'CEASEFIRE NOW'

Late on Monday, the medical charity MSF said a shell had broken through the wall of one of its shelters in Khan Younis housing over 100 staff and their families, critically wounding the 5-year-old daughter of an MSF staffer.

Biden, confronted on Monday by protesters shouting "Ceasefire now!" while visiting a church in South Carolina, said he had been "quietly" working to encourage Israel to ease its attacks and "significantly get out of Gaza".

Israel's relentless bombardment and its restrictions on humanitarian access to Gaza have prompted South Africa to file a lawsuit in the International Court of Justice, accusing Israel of genocidal actions against Palestinians. Hearings are due to begin on Thursday.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog told Blinken there was "nothing more atrocious and preposterous" than the court case, noting that Israel's Hamas enemies are sworn to its destruction.

The conflict has spread to Lebanon, where the Hezbollah militia has been firing rockets across the Israeli border in support of Hamas. Both groups are supported by Iran, Israel's sworn enemy.

Three members of Hezbollah were killed on Tuesday in a strike on their vehicle in south of Lebanon, two sources familiar with the group's operations told Reuters, after a top Hezbollah commander was killed in the area on Monday.

Hezbollah said it had launched a drone attack against Israeli command headquarters in response to the killings of senior Hezbollah figure Wissam Tawil and of deputy Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut last week. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for the attacks.

Reporting by Arafat Barbakh and Fadi Shana in Gaza, Simon Lewis in Tel Aviv, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo and Dan Williams in Jerusalem; writing by Jonathan Landay, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Kevin Liffey Editing by Peter Graff

16. DOD leaders often overlook officers’ education in future assignments

My question is who is the PME champion? We have not had one since the late Congressman Ike Skelton. Who in Congress has picked up the torch? And who in DOD is a real PME champion? A lot of talk and criticism but no real action according to this excerpt.

Excerpts:

Goldman said faculty members interviewed by the RAND team said they would be open to updating classwork and research assignments to better respond to leadership needs, but thus far little effort has been made to start those changes.

“We didn’t find people telling us, ‘This is wrong or it’s not well adapted.’ But the services have not, for the most part, clearly articulated what knowledge and skills they need officers to have at different levels,” he said.

“And that leads to people in the system perceiving PME as a kind of a check-the-box exercise … and not learning something that they can then use in a future career.”

Report authors said they are hopeful that Pentagon planners and lawmakers will use their research to help find ways to fix that issue. The full report on professional military education is available on the RAND web site.

DOD leaders often overlook officers’ education in future assignments

militarytimes.com · by Leo Shane III · January 8, 2024

Thousands of officers complete professional military education programs each year, but Defense Department leaders frequently don’t consider that expertise and experience in students’ future leadership assignments, according to a new analysis of the system by an outside think tank.

The review — mandated by Congress and conducted by the RAND Corporation — said the ongoing education programs are robust and well-utilized, offering significant value to the military services. But researchers said too often that extra coursework is seen as an end to itself, and not used to help guide officers to career paths where they can put the knowledge to work.

“Services and schools repeatedly reported that post-graduation assignments often do not build on the skills that graduates learn during their PME experiences,” the report stated. “This disparity has been consistently reported and is also a source of frustration for military students.”

In 2022, more than 11,000 service members were enrolled in degree programs at military educational institutions like the College of Naval Warfare, the Air Command and Staff College, and the National Defense University. Thousands more attended non-degree programs in those military-sponsored schools or degree programs at civilian-run universities.

RELATED

New in 2024: Air officer, enlisted training gets a makeover

At every level of an airman's career, education will start to look a little different.

Each of the military services require some level of additional education work for officers as they advance through the ranks. But Congress commissioned the study on the state of professional military education amid concerns about “inadequacy of accountability, jointness, and responsiveness to ever-evolving DoD priorities.”

The military education work generally falls into two categories: technical skills and strategic or operational studies. RAND researchers said most of the technical offerings are directly applicable to officers’ future assignments, and are used to ensure that individuals have the proper certification and training for those posts.

But Charles Goldman, a senior economist at RAND and one of the report authors, said the other offerings are often overlooked entirely in the military career process.

“There’s a lot of room for improvement in the link between talent management and education,” he said. “There’s not that much evidence that the general education that’s being imparted through these PME institutions is really being considered in assigning and tracking officers into different careers.”

Goldman said faculty members interviewed by the RAND team said they would be open to updating classwork and research assignments to better respond to leadership needs, but thus far little effort has been made to start those changes.

“We didn’t find people telling us, ‘This is wrong or it’s not well adapted.’ But the services have not, for the most part, clearly articulated what knowledge and skills they need officers to have at different levels,” he said.

“And that leads to people in the system perceiving PME as a kind of a check-the-box exercise … and not learning something that they can then use in a future career.”

Report authors said they are hopeful that Pentagon planners and lawmakers will use their research to help find ways to fix that issue. The full report on professional military education is available on the RAND web site.

About Leo Shane III

Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.

17. Exhausted, on the Defensive and at ‘Hell’s Gate’ in Ukraine

Photos at the link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/08/world/europe/ukraine-troops-exhausted-defensive.html?utm

Exhausted, on the Defensive and at ‘Hell’s Gate’ in Ukraine

The country’s forces along a broad stretch of the front say that, with Russia pushing forward, the war has never been so dangerous.

By Carlotta Gall and Vladyslav GolovinPhotographs by Mauricio Lima

• Jan. 8, 2024

ZAPORIZHZHIA REGION, Ukraine — Under the cover of darkness, leaning forward under the weight of packs and rifles, a squad of soldiers walked along a muddy lane and slipped into a village house.

They were Ukrainian infantrymen of the 117th Separate Mechanized Brigade, assembling for a last briefing and roll call several miles from Russia positions before heading to the trenches on the front line. Stolid men in helmets and rubber boots, they listened in silence as an intelligence officer briefed them on a new route in to their positions.

“Morale is all right,” said the deputy battalion commander, who uses the call sign Shira, standing nearby to see the men off. “But physically we are exhausted.”

Ukrainian troops along most of the 600-mile front line are officially in defensive mode. Only in the southern region of Kherson are they still on the offensive in a tough assault across the Dnipro River.

But the fighting has not eased and Russian forces are now on the offensive.

The capture of the town of Robotyne in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region was as far as Ukrainian troops managed to advance in their summer counteroffensive. No breakthrough occurred. Now, in the trenches around Robotyne, Russian units are attacking daily. Ukrainian troops try to counterattack immediately if they lose ground, commanders said.

Image

Soldiers with Ukraine’s 117th Separate Mechanized Brigade at a briefing last month before heading to the trenches in the Zaporizhzhia region​.

A destroyed Ukrainian armored personnel carrier stuck in the mud outside the town of Orikhiv, Ukraine. Orikhiv was a command center for Ukraine’s counteroffensive last summer, but is now an empty shell, its main street deserted​.

“It is something like a game of Ping-Pong,” said a Ukrainian National Guard platoon commander who uses the call sign Planshet, meaning “tablet.” “There is a portion of 100 to 200 meters of ground always being taken and retaken,” he said.

Indeed, Ukrainian soldiers and commanders interviewed in recent weeks along a broad stretch of the central and eastern front said that Russian attacks were so intense that operating near the frontline has never been so dangerous.

Russia has in recent days turned its focus to bombing Ukraine’s big cities to wear down civilians; for weeks its ground forces have been mounting attacks to claw back territory lost last summer and to seize long-prized Ukrainian redoubts along the eastern front.

Well accustomed to Russian artillery fire, soldiers said that since March they had suffered the additional devastating power of glide bombs, half-ton explosives unleashed from planes that smash through underground bunkers.

“They would send them two by two by two, eight in an hour,” said a 27-year-old soldier known as Kit, of the 14th Chervona Kalyna National Guard Brigade. Like others interviewed, Kit identified himself by his call sign, according to military protocol. “It sounds like a jet coming down on you,” he said, “like hell’s gate.”

Image

Hanna Yarotska, second from left, and her husband mourning her son, Yaroslav Yarotskyi, 25, last fall in Boryspil, in north-central Ukraine. He and eight other soldiers were killed by a Russian kamikaze drone​.

Image

Elaborate graves of Ukrainian soldiers in the military section of the cemetery in Brovary, in northern Ukraine​.

The destruction wrought by glide bombs is visible in towns and villages near the front line. The town of Orikhiv, about 12 miles north of Robotyne, once served as a command center for the counteroffensive. Now it is an empty shell, the main street deserted, the school and other buildings split asunder by massive bomb craters.

A lone workman, Valera, was riding a bicycle through the town. He said he had stayed despite the heavy bombardment because he had paid work, fixing generators. He lived off humanitarian aid and was feeding 20 stray cats at his home, he said.

Soldiers moved cautiously in the area, mostly living in basements and staying undercover, out of sight.

That is because the latest menace is Russia’s use of F.P.V. kamikaze drones, which has forced Ukrainian soldiers largely to abandon vehicles in frontline areas and operate on foot.

A cheap commercial drone, the F.P.V. — for first person view — has become the latest weapon of the moment in the Ukrainian war. It can fly as fast as a car, carries a lethal load of explosives and is guided to its target by a soldier sitting in a bunker several miles away.

Both the Russian and Ukrainian armies are using them to hunt and attack targets because they cut out the delay of relaying back coordinates and requesting artillery strikes. Ukrainian soldiers said they often use the drones instead of artillery because shells were increasingly in short supply and the drones are a cheap, quick weapon for attacks on nearby Russian vehicles, bunkers and infantry.

Image

Bomb craters and damaged buildings litter Orikhiv​.

Image

Debris from a shelled compound lying scattered last month over a playground in Kurakhove, in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine​.

Military units from both sides post videos online of their successful strikes, which end with a scrambled black screen at the moment of detonation. Several Ukrainian drone units allowed journalists from The New York Times to watch live operations from positions near the front line as they tracked Russian soldiers and attacked selected targets.

One unit showed videos of a hit that destroyed Russian surveillance cameras and an antenna on an office building. Another targeted a Russian bunker in a tree line, although the drone was deflected by Russian electronic jamming before impact.

Only one in several drones hits its target, and many are lost to jamming and other interference, soldiers said.

For those on the receiving end of F.P.V. drones, defending and supplying the front line have become increasingly risky.

“It is extremely dangerous to go by car,” said a Ukrainian National Guardsman, who uses the call sign Varvar. Men of his unit said that since September they had been leaving their armored vehicles and walking in six miles to positions. “You can only go in on foot,” Varvar said.

Image

Three Ukrainian soldiers with severe concussions receiving first aid in December after coming under Russian shelling in a trench in Zaporizhzhia​.

Image

A soldier with frostbite was warned his toes might need amputation​.

The men of the 117th Brigade, who were deploying to the front line in the Zaporizhzhia region on a recent night, faced a four-mile hike through rain and mud, the intelligence commander said. If they were wounded and captured, Russian troops would execute them, he warned them.

The long, arduous slog to carry in ammunition and food to supply troops and to carry out the wounded was one reason Ukraine could not sustain its counteroffensive, a company commander, Adolf, 23, said.

Ambulances and supply vehicles came under fire from kamikaze drones so often that his unit stopped using them, resorting instead to a four-wheeled buggy that volunteer engineers rigged up to carry a stretcher. The buggy was hidden under some trees beside his command post several miles from the front line.

Ukrainian units are dealing out the same treatment with F.P.V. drones on Russian lines and say they were the first to start using drones to attack targets. But the Russians have copied the tactic and flooded frontline areas with drones in recent weeks, to lethal effect, Ukrainian soldiers and commanders said.

“My impression is Russia is interested in drones at the state level,” the soldier known as Kit said, but in contrast, Ukraine still largely relied on volunteers and civilian donors for its drone program. “My sense,” he said, “is the government should be doing more.”

Carrying ammunition last month to the Ukrainians’ firing position in the Zaporizhzhia region. The threat of drones means Ukrainian soldiers have largely abandoned using vehicles in frontline areas

Image

Ukrainian artillery crew members in Zaporizhzhia waiting for a call to fire toward Russian-held territory​.

The Russians were employing subterfuge as well, Planshet said, playing tapes of gunfire on drones to make Ukrainian soldiers think they were under attack, leave the bunkers and reveal their positions.

Some members of his platoon said the Russians used drones to drop smoke grenades into their trenches. One soldier, who uses the call sign Medic, said it seemed like a kind of tear gas.

“It causes a very strong pain in the eyes and a fire, like a piece of coal, in your throat and you cannot breathe,” he said.

Several soldiers donned gas masks to treat the men affected, but when two men in the platoon crawled from the bunker to flee the gas, they were killed by grenades dropped from Russian drones hovering above, soldiers said.

The toll is heavy for all units along the front. Almost everyone has been wounded or survived a narrow escape in recent months, soldiers said.

“We are short of people,” said an intelligence commander of the 117th Brigade who uses the call sign Banderas, after the actor. “We have weapons but not enough men.”

Yet many remain optimistic. Farther east in the Donetsk region, Maj. Serhii Betz, a battalion commander of the 72nd Separate Mechanized Brigade, set out before dawn on a recent day, driving down muddy roads rutted with ice to check on his drone units close to the front line. He invited New York Times journalists along.

The teams work underground, in bunkers lined with tree trunks and covered with earth. On a computer monitor, the commander switched on a livestream drone feed from a neighboring brigade where a battle was unfolding.

“Russian tanks entering the village,” a commander said over a walkie-talkie. “Is everything ready?” the major asked the drone team. “A tank is a cool target to destroy; let’s help our brothers.”

Mice scurried through their bunker, rustling in a rubbish bag, as the newly deployed team, fresh from training, fiddled with wiring and switches to get an F.P.V. airborne over the Russians’ positions for their first strike.

They were too slow, and their first two flights crashed, downed by Russian electronic jamming.

But the major was satisfied. “We are developing,” he said.

Image

The ruins of a school in central Orikhiv, where destruction wrought by glide bombs is clearly visible​.

Olha Konovalova contributed reporting from the Zaporizhzhia region, and Christiaan Triebert from Auriac-du-Périgord, France.

Carlotta Gall is a senior correspondent, covering the war in Ukraine. More about Carlotta Gall

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 9, 2024, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Weary Soldiers at ‘Hell’s Gate’ Endure Fierce Russian Attacks. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

​18. Army sending additional 'data stewards' to commands, defining data roles

​"Those who rule data will rule the entire world​,"

–​ Masayoshi Son

He Who Rules The Data, Rules The World: A Brief History Of Data Governance

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2017/11/16/he-who-rules-the-data-rules-the-world-a-brief-history-of-data-governance/?sh=5d4d8b4e39b5

'If you control the code, you control the world. This is the future that awaits us​."  

–​ Marc Goodman

​But I still fond of this Jim Morrison (yes of the D0ors) quote:

“Whoever controls the media, controls the mind,”

Army sending additional 'data stewards' to commands, defining data roles - Breaking Defense​

The Army first put out guidance two years ago on the idea of creating “data stewards” for its commands who would act as “kind of our spokesman for our supply side,” and will start codifying it in fiscal 2024, David Markowitz told Breaking Defense.

breakingdefense.com · by Jaspreet Gill · January 8, 2024

Sgt. Victor Sanchez, a fire direction coordinator assigned to Alpha Battery, 1st Battalion, 258th Artillery Regiment, 27th Infantry Brigade Combat Team of the New York Army National Guard, operates an advanced field artillery tactical data system to calculate aiming data to relay to the howitzer teams during an air assault artillery raid on Fort Drum, N.Y. on June 9, 2017. (US Army National Guard photo by Sgt. Alexander Rector)

WASHINGTON — This year, the Army will begin sending chief data officers to various commands who will act as a point of contact for “what data they need to get their mission done,” a service official told Breaking Defense.

“Additionally, if there’s data that … doesn’t need to be shared, they’re identified as the person within that command to make those decisions about what needs to be shared, curated, kept,” David Markowitz, Army chief data officer and analytics officer, said in an interview.

Markowitz said the Army first put out guidance two years ago on the idea of creating “data stewards” for its commands who would act as “kind of our spokesman for our supply side,” and will start codifying it in fiscal 2024. There are already chief data officers at Army Materiel Command, 18th Airborne Corps, Army Cyber Command, Army Corps of Engineers and Army National Guard, which the service wants to support and “standardize,” Markowitz added.

“So in the Army, we’re trying to better institutionalize our data community where we’ll have both commands who understand what commands want and senior leaders want and can request data from the Army, as well as what we spent the last kind of two years doing, which is making sure we produce the data that’s needed,” Markowitz said. “Make sure [data is] standardized across and making sure there’s an interaction between those who are producing data and those who need it for their daily functions.”

Markowitz added the service is also drafting a new policy memo this month that will define the roles and responsibilities of who is in charge of the Army’s data distribution. That memo will be followed up with new guidance on what data platforms in the service “are kind of the official place to do your work within the Army.”

“We want to make sure that is codified so that if you have some places to go, you don’t necessarily build your own app and have all that cybersecurity overhead,” Markowitz said. That includes low-code and no-code safe spots for data analytics and integration.

Army Spokeswoman Madison Bonzo told Breaking Defense on Jan. 5 that the draft memo is “being updated to include command chief data officer positions” and is expected to be completed later this year.

Data management has been something the Army has struggled with and stood out to be the service’s biggest challenge during Project Convergence in November 2022, the Army’s contribution to the Pentagon’s sprawling Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control initiative.

At the time, service officials said they had too much data to work with and Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said that the service needed to figure out how to process data as quickly as it can.

Wormuth, who made turning the Army into a data-centric service a top priority, said then that the service could get additional “top down sort of guidance” from the Office of the Secretary of Defense on how to better standardize data so it’s accessible and shareable across platforms and services.

breakingdefense.com · by Jaspreet Gill · January 8, 2024

19. The Chinese Soldier Trained By Americans to Kill Americans

Quite a sensational story. I wonder about the accuracy/veracity. 

But not by the American military but by American private training companies (one of which is led by a soldier from my old battalion in Okinawa).

A lot of photos at the link. I wonder how the ones in China were obtained? 

https://www.vermilionchina.com/p/the-chinese-soldier-trained-by-americans?publication_id=570930&utm

The Chinese Soldier Trained By Americans to Kill Americans

vermilionchina.com · by Vermilion China

Zhang training PAP SWAT in Chongqing, PRC. Image from 2021.

Executive Summary

• Based on evidence from US and Chinese social media, Vermilion has identified that a Chinese special forces soldier received training from former U.S. special forces on American soil.
• Pengxiang “Chris” Zhang, a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldier lived, studied, and trained in the United States from at least 2014 to 2020.
• Since returning to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 2020, Zhang has trained People’s Armed Police (PAP) and PLA units on tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) he learned from former U.S. special operators and service members.

Zhang (left) in Phoenix, AZ. Image from April 2017.

March 10, 2017. Senior year art award. Confirmation of alias and school in the U.S.

Zhang entered the United States in 2013/2014 to attend the Carmel Christian School in Matthews, NC. This was likely facilitated by the Carmel Christian School International Student Program, a college preparatory program serving students in Grades 9-12.

Zhang (right) in Fuzhou, People’s Republic of China (PRC), Nov 2022. Note both individuals’ QBZ-191/192, the PLA’s next generation service rifle and carbine, respectively. Zhang’s rifle features a modified upper receiver, something typically only permitted for PLA special operations forces and PAP units. The caption for this image was “与时俱进，枕戈待旦 #taiwan #2025.” This roughly translates to “keep on improving, prepare for battle #taiwan #2025”.

After graduating in 2017, Zhang then moved to New York City. While in New York, Zhang traveled throughout the United States to Virginia Beach, VA; Fort Collins, CO; Navato, CA; Los Angeles, CA; Waxahachie, TX; and Las Vegas, NV in order to attend tactical training classes run by Ronin Tactics, Core Vision Training, and Dynamis Alliance.

Zhang (right) at a Ronin Tactics course in Fort Collins, CO in Dec 2018. Tu Lam (left) is a former U.S. Army special operator.

Dom Raso (left), a former Navy SEAL with Zhang in Dec 2018. Note that Virginia Beach, VA is home to Naval Intelligence and Norfolk, VA is home to the U.S. Navy’s Fleet Forces Command. Since 2018, Dom Raso has engaged with Zhang on social media.

Zhang at a range in Las Vegas, NV, March 2019.

Zhang (second to the right) at Extreme Tactics and Training Solutions in Waxahachie, TX in May 2019.

Zhang (rear left) at a Core Vision Training class in Los Angeles County, CA in Oct 2019. The course subject matter included close quarters battle (CQB). Core Vision Training courses are taught by U.S. Army and USMC veterans.

Zhang (left of center) with Tu Lam (left) at a Ronin Tactics CQB course in Novato, CA in Nov 2019.

Zhang at Extreme Tactics and Training Solutions in Waxahachie, TX in March 2020.

Zhang’s patch states, “We must liberate Taiwan,” in the style of a Chinese Communist Party propaganda image from the 1940’s/50’s. This image was taken the same time as the previous image.

In May 2020, Zhang left the United States and returned to China. According to his social media accounts, Zhang returned to the PLA Central Theater Command Headquarters located in Shijiazhuang, Hebei and he refers to the Shijiazhuang Army Command College (石家庄陆军指挥学院) as home. This college is an intermediate command college within the People’s Liberation Army National Defense University that provides joint training for military, political, and technical personnel.

From June 2020 to August 2022, Zhang posted training photos and videos with the PLA’s next generation weapon systems, namely the QBZ-191, QCQ-171, and QBU-203. From August 2022 on, Zhang posted photos and videos on social media of himself training Chinese SWAT teams throughout China and conducting CQB with PLA soldiers (likely PLA special operations forces). Based on the speed at which Zhang transitioned from student in the US, to small team training, to training units himself, it is almost certain that Zhang was a PLA soldier prior to entering the United States.

Zhang (identifiable through right forearm tattoo and right bicep tattoo) with the PLA’s new submachine gun, the QCQ-171. Also note the EOTech optic that is subject to US export controls.

Zhang (right) with a compact close circuit rebreather and another PLA soldier (left) with high altitude jump equipment. This equipment is typically only issued to PLA special operations forces.

In the above two images, the China South Industries Group Corporation (CSGC) utilized Zhang in advertising materials at the Zhuhai Airshow in 2022. The materials were promoting a new training system (that could possibly have been based on what Zhang learned in the United States). CSGC is one of China’s largest state-owned weapons manufacturers. Additionally, Zhang served as a representative for Argus Night Vision, a well known Chinese night vision tube and housing manufacturer. Argus improves its designs by selling their products to the US and then receiving feedback from American citizens on their products.

Zhang with a QJY-201, the PLA’s next generation general purpose machine gun. Image from Dec 2022.

Zhang (center right) with what is almost certainly the Falcon Commandos (猎鹰突击队) or the Snow Leopard Commandos (雪豹突击队). Both are People’s Armed Police (PAP) special forces units tasked with “counter-terrorism.” Image from February 2023.

Zhang training a PAP SWAT unit in Chongqing, PRC. Note his Ronin Tactics hat and his desert Marine pattern (MARPAT) trousers. Image from June 2023, similar images from 2021.

Zhang (far right) with a PAP SWAT team. Image from August 2023.

Based on the images uploaded by Zhang, it is highly likely he is currently a non-commissioned officer in either the PLA Strategic Support Force (SSF) special operations forces or other PLA SOF. Image from Nov 2023.

Why Does This Matter?

Is it almost certain that a PLA special forces operator was living and training on US soil for at least 7 years. He was able to avoid US law enforcement and bring training derived from the most elite American special operations forces back to China. The military balance between the U.S. and the PRC is of the utmost importance to American national security. It is often said that American military units are of superior quality to the People’s Liberation Army. This will cease to be the case if highly trained Americans erode their own military’s fighting edge.

Recommendations

• Continue thoroughly vetting all Chinese international students in the United States for any military background and/or military associations.
• The American tactical industry/community must come together and police their own. Doing business with the PLA is self-defeating.

vermilionchina.com · by Vermilion China

20. SECNAV Del Toro Names Next-Generation Hospital Ship Bethesda

I do not see a date for when these ships will be operational.

Excerpts:

The Expeditionary Medical Ship is one way Navy Medicine’s focus is shifting to the Indo-Pacific region, where the ability to care for patients over vast distances is a primary need.

“The easiest way for me to put it for you is, is if I were to put a map up of the world, and I took the continental United States, I could lie in the continental United States up three times to get you from California all the way over to the eastern East China Sea or the South China Sea,” Via said.

Bethesda is one of three Expeditionary Medical Ships ordered by the Navy. One of the other two is named after Balboa Naval Hospital, while the third ship is not yet named.

The three ships are being built by Austal USA. The Navy awarded the Alabama-based shipbuilder a contract of about $867 million to build the ships.

The ships are also smaller than the two hospital ships currently in the Navy, USNS Comfort and USNS Mercy, Del Toro told USNI News. That allows these EMS to go to shallower ports. They can also go fast while continuing to provide care, which is helpful when it comes to the treatment of patients.

“That’s the beauty of the Expeditionary Medical Ship,” Del Toro said.

SECNAV Del Toro Names Next-Generation Hospital Ship Bethesda - USNI News

news.usni.org · by Heather Mongilio · January 9, 2024

Expeditionary Medical Ship. AUSTAL USA Image

BETHESDA, Md. – The Navy’s newest medical ship will be named after Bethesda, the Maryland home of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro officially announced Monday. The future USNS Bethesda (T-EMS-1) is the lead ship in the Bethesda-class Expeditionary Medical Ship class. The expeditionary medical ships are meant to be able to help stabilize and treat patients over vast distances, a key feature of Navy Medicine’s future in the Indo-Pacific region.

The Navy needs to “bring as much logistical support to the Pacific as we possibly can,” Del Toro told USNI News following the ceremony.

The ship is like an ambulance ship, Navy Surgeon General Rear Adm. Darin Via told USNI News in an interview following the naming ceremony.

“These ships are designed to provide again, that ongoing surgical stabilization in what I call force preservation, which is prevention of injury and illness, to take care of medical conditions, and then either be able to return them back to their ships or back to their duty to be able to put them on a land base location, or to be able to be moved to another ship. If that’s what they need to move out of theater,” Via said.

The Expeditionary Medical Ship is one way Navy Medicine’s focus is shifting to the Indo-Pacific region, where the ability to care for patients over vast distances is a primary need.

“The easiest way for me to put it for you is, is if I were to put a map up of the world, and I took the continental United States, I could lie in the continental United States up three times to get you from California all the way over to the eastern East China Sea or the South China Sea,” Via said.

Bethesda is one of three Expeditionary Medical Ships ordered by the Navy. One of the other two is named after Balboa Naval Hospital, while the third ship is not yet named.

The three ships are being built by Austal USA. The Navy awarded the Alabama-based shipbuilder a contract of about $867 million to build the ships.

The ships are also smaller than the two hospital ships currently in the Navy, USNS Comfort and USNS Mercy, Del Toro told USNI News. That allows these EMS to go to shallower ports. They can also go fast while continuing to provide care, which is helpful when it comes to the treatment of patients.

“That’s the beauty of the Expeditionary Medical Ship,” Del Toro said.

While the ships are first planned for the Pacific, Del Toro said he can also see the ships going to South America, similar to how Comfort goes to the region as part of the Navy’s medical partnerships.

“This ship—as well as all of the Bethesda-class expeditionary medical ships—is designed to provide hospital-level care in austere environments, and will serve not just our Sailors and Marines, but offer assistance and comfort to our allies and partners around the globe in times of need,” Del Toro said in his speech.

Related

news.usni.org · by Heather Mongilio · January 9, 2024

21. Wanted: Airmen and Guardians Urged to Apply to Grueling Army Ranger School

Do we have a lot of unfilled Ranger School slots? But I guess everyone wants to be able to get the best leadership training the Army has to offer.

But good advice here:

Reynolds encouraged Guardians and airmen to think long and hard on why they'd want to attend.

"A significant proportion of people who fail the course do so because they arrived without deciding that the experience was something that their life needed," Reynolds said in the release. "Take the time to decide for yourself what your reasons for Ranger School are, and how important joining the community is to you. When you're more cold, wet, tired and hungry than you've ever been in your life, those reasons will be what you will lean on to carry you through."

Wanted: Airmen and Guardians Urged to Apply to Grueling Army Ranger School

military.com · by Thomas Novelly · January 8, 2024

Airmen and Space Force Guardians are being encouraged to apply for prep classes to get ready for Army Ranger School, the incredibly difficult tactics course with a historically low graduation rate.

The Department of the Air Force, in a recent press release, said it is searching for members from both services to enroll in the grueling course and encouraged them to take the leap.

"It's been called 'a laboratory of human endurance,' testing the physical, mental and spiritual grit of the officer and enlisted leaders who undertake it," the Air Force said in the release. "It's the Army Ranger School, and the Department of the Air Force is looking for airmen and Guardians who are ready for the challenge."

The 62-day course is filled with difficult physical training and exercises designed to educate participants on elite squad and platoon tactics. During Ranger Assessment Phase week at Ranger School, candidates must complete 49 push-ups, 59 sit-ups, a five-mile run in 40 minutes, and six chin-ups, according to the Air Force. It ends with a 12-mile march with each candidate carrying roughly 35 pounds.

Each year, an estimated 4,000 candidates attempt the program. The Air Force first began sending airmen to Ranger School in 1955; since then, around 350 have graduated from the course, according to the service.

Roughly 40% of service members who attempt Ranger School graduate, the service said. To help prepare, the Air Force developed a type of Ranger Assessment Course in the mid-1980s in an attempt to send the best candidates who were most likely to succeed.

The next Air Force Ranger Assessment Course, or RAC, is set for early spring at Joint Base San Antonio-Camp Bullis, Texas, according to the service, and airmen and Guardians from any career field can attend the 19-day prep school.

"While the majority of Ranger School attendees come from combat arms career fields, individuals from other Air Force specialty codes can also attend if they meet the necessary prerequisites and requirements," Gabriel Rodriguez, readiness training and RAC program manager at the Air Force Security Forces Center, said in the release.

Last year, for the first time ever, a Space Force Guardian also graduated from the two-month course, clearing the requirements of the physical training and exercises.

Capt. Daniel Reynolds, with the 4th Test and Evaluation Squadron out of Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado, graduated from Ranger School at Fort Moore, Georgia, in October.

Reynolds graduating from Ranger School was not only a first for the Space Force, but bucked criticisms and stereotypes that Guardians aren't as active as members of the other military service branches.

Reynolds encouraged Guardians and airmen to think long and hard on why they'd want to attend.

"A significant proportion of people who fail the course do so because they arrived without deciding that the experience was something that their life needed," Reynolds said in the release. "Take the time to decide for yourself what your reasons for Ranger School are, and how important joining the community is to you. When you're more cold, wet, tired and hungry than you've ever been in your life, those reasons will be what you will lean on to carry you through."

military.com · by Thomas Novelly · January 8, 2024

22. Inside the daring plot to rescue an American soldier’s mother from Gaza

Quite a story and operation.

Inside the daring plot to rescue an American soldier’s mother from Gaza

The operation, executed deep within the war-ravaged enclave, required days of negotiation between the U.S. and Israel — and volunteers willing to risk it all

By Hope Hodge Seck and Dan Lamothe

January 8, 2024 at 5:00 a.m. EST

The Washington Post · by Hope Hodge Seck · January 8, 2024

Each night was the same. From his home in California, Fadi Sckak would dial his mother, Zahra, who was sheltered with her brother-in-law amid the rubble and tank fire in Gaza City’s besieged Sabra neighborhood. Often, he’d have to call more than 60 times before a connection was made and she was able to assure her son that, yes, she was still alive.

Fadi’s father, Abedella, had died on Nov. 26. Eight days earlier, the 56-year-old had been struck in the calf by what the family believes was a stray Israeli bullet as the couple fled what remained of their home for the past 15 years. Without medical care, Abedella’s condition steadily deteriorated. First his legs went numb. He stopped talking. And then, he was gone.

Late last month, in an act of desperation, Fadi Sckak, 25, contacted the news media to make a public plea for help. Aided by the Arab American Civil Rights League, Sckak, a business student at San José State University, was then connected with a group of American military veterans who specialize in coordinating humanitarian evacuations from war zones. They were moved by the story, particularly because one of his two brothers, Ragi, is an infantry soldier in the U.S. Army who was deployed in South Korea as their parents’ crisis unfolded.

What ensued was an extraordinary rescue operation, executed deep within the bombed-out Palestinian enclave after several days of intensive negotiations between the U.S. and Israeli governments. At the urging of White House officials and other key figures in Washington, senior Israeli officials approved Zahra Sckak’s extraction along with her brother-in-law Farid, a U.S. citizen, and supported their unimpeded passage to the border with Egypt, where they crossed to safety on Dec. 31.

The daring daytime mission was performed by a small team of volunteers who shuttled them south through the Gaza hellscape. It was conducted without incident, according to people familiar with the matter who declined to elaborate, citing concerns for the safety of those involved. No shots were fired.

In an interview, Zahra Sckak, 44, called the journey “terrifying.” She declined to identify her location, fearful that doing so would put her life in jeopardy once more, but said she is receiving medical care and gradually recovering. Sckak expressed gratitude to her son Fadi, who “told me not to worry,” and acknowledged that it has been difficult to reconcile all that had to transpire for her to leave Gaza.

“It’s like, something big happened,” she said, “but I didn’t know anything about it. It’s unbelievable.”

This account is based on interviews with 11 people familiar with the Sckak family’s ordeal, and efforts by the United States and Israel to facilitate last month’s secretive operation. Some spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the still-sensitive details about how the two governments, motivated by the plight of a deployed American soldier, intervened to save his loved ones.

The Associated Press previously reported that Zahra Sckak and her brother-in-law had safely made it out of Gaza.

The Israeli government did not respond to requests for comment. Senior U.S. officials have been guarded when discussing the operation, which occurred as hundreds of other American citizens are believed to be stranded in Gaza amid Israel’s punishing military campaign. Begun after Hamas militants staged a brazen cross-border attack on Oct. 7 that killed 1,200, the Israeli offensive — which is backed by Washington — has killed more than 22,800 people, most of them civilians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Spokespeople at the White House, Pentagon and State Department declined to address most questions about the rescue or make those directly involved available for interviews. But four U.S. officials said the matter was closely tracked by senior leaders in Washington and the Middle East.

“While there are many Americans still at risk, and our government is paying close attention to their situation and doing everything we can to get them back, this opportunity presented itself,” said one of the officials. “We did everything we could to get this soldier’s family back to safety. We’re lucky to have worked with all of the interagency and partners to have a successful outcome.”

Administration officials have emphasized that no U.S. troops were ever in Gaza during the rescue. At the White House on Thursday, John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, described the operation as “part and parcel of an ongoing effort that we have had working with Israeli counterparts and the Egyptians to allow for safe passage of Americans.”

A State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, told reporters that the U.S. government played “more of a liaison role.” The United States, he said, keeps in touch with Americans who want to leave, and has assisted 1,300 citizens, family members and lawful permanent residents since the war began.

Alicia Nieves, a legal advocate with the Arab American Civil Rights League who has assisted the Sckak family, said that soon after Israel began its military campaign in Gaza, Zahra and Abedella Sckak, who lived for a time in the United States, applied though the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem for authorization to cross into Egypt. By the time Zahra and Farid, her brother-in-law, were approved for departure in early December, Nieves said, Abedella Sckak was dead.

“It’s almost like a black box, how it worked,” she added. “And there are still people, a handful that we know of, that still can’t get on the [departure] list as Americans.”

For Alex Plitsas, an Army veteran and member of the Special Operations Association of America (SOAA), the group that helped connect U.S. and Israeli officials who coordinated the extraction, the mission evoked the celebrated World War II film “Saving Private Ryan,” in which a team of American troops is dispatched to pull out a young soldier from the fighting in Normandy after his three brothers were killed in combat.

“I’m like, Oh God, this poor kid, his father’s dead, his mother’s all that’s left, she’s trapped — we’ve got to get her the hell out of there,” Plitsas said. “That’s what went through my brain.”

The volunteers who drove the Sckaks out of Gaza are associates of SOAA, he added.

Ragi Sckak, the soldier, said in an interview that he had approached his Army superiors in South Korea to ask for help evacuating his parents from Gaza but was directed to what he characterized as unhelpful immigration documents. As a junior soldier, he said, he didn’t feel empowered to escalate his request.

Everything changed once his brother’s story appeared in the national news in late December. He was called into the office of Lt. Col. Lloyd Wohlschlegel, his battalion commander, and put on a call with a more senior military official who said the White House was pursuing options for extracting his mother from Gaza.

“I was like: Finally,” Ragi Sckak recalled.

Plitsas, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, contacted an aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — a professional acquaintance, he said — to apprise the Israeli government of the Sckaks’ situation. Army Col. Steve Gabavics, who is based at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, made contact with Israel’s Defense Ministry.

Brett McGurk, a senior White House official with extensive connections in the Middle East, also got involved. McGurk, according to people familiar with his role in the negotiations, emphasized to the Israeli government that the Biden administration supported efforts to evacuate the Sckaks and urged his counterparts to prioritize the case.

Andrew P. Miller, the deputy assistant secretary of state for Israeli and Palestinian affairs, was actively involved, too. He emailed Fadi Sckak, the soldier’s brother, a few days before the rescue to inform him of a strategy that was coming together.

“The current plan is that your mother and uncle will be picked up … and taken to Rafah Border crossing for transit into Egypt,” said the email, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post. “This is all being coordinated with the IDF,” shorthand for the Israel Defense Forces, he said.

In his email, Miller noted that the U.S. Embassy in Cairo would interview Zahra Sckak for a nonimmigrant visa. An immigrant visa, he said, could be obtained through a separate process. “Please let us know what she is thinking,” Miller wrote.

On Dec. 24, Lt. Gen. Michael Fenzel, a senior American military official assigned to coordinate with Israeli and Palestinian officials, signed a letter for Israeli authorities verifying the Sckaks’ relationship to a U.S. service member. Other senior officials at Army headquarters, including departing Army Staff director Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt, and personnel in Army Secretary Christine Wormuth’s office, also took measures to ensure there were no administrative roadblocks.

In Gaza, Zahra Sckak’s physical condition was worsening. A preexisting knee injury limited her ability to walk, and she’d become dehydrated, exacerbating an infection she had developed while sheltering in a crowded apartment building. Ben Clay, a former Special Forces soldier working on the case with other military veterans, sent her instructions for how to distill and purify water from non-potable sources such as toilet tanks.

The family members’ eventual transit out of Gaza and through the border with Egypt required multiple attempts, those familiar with the operation said. The first was cut short because of a miscommunication about the approved window for their travel. The scarcity of fuel was another obstacle.

When the team of volunteers delivered Zahra Sckaks and her brother-in-law to Gaza’s border crossing at Rafah, the gate was closed, forcing them to stay the night nearby. When they returned the following day, Fadi Sckak said his mother had to “make a scene,” shouting in English at Palestinian officials who questioned how she and her brother-in-law had obtained permission to enter Egypt and what support was awaiting them on the other side.

Originally from Jordan and the Gaza Strip, Zahra and Abedella Sckak had moved to the United States to start their family. The children were born in Texas before they relocated to California.

In 2008, everyone moved back to Gaza, Abedella’s home, to be near extended family. Fadi Sckak returned to the United States at age 15 and his brother Ragi came back after high school. As a student working retail jobs and sending most of his earnings to his parents, Fadi Sckak said he never had the means to begin the costly U.S. immigration process for them.

Fadi Sckak said that his parents struggled to find work in Gaza, where even before the war employment was scarce. Instead, he said, they relied “solely on the money I sent them as their primary source of income.” While living in the United States years ago, he added, his father worked several jobs. He drove an ice cream truck for a time, cooked at Pizza Hut and KFC, and worked as a handyman to provide for the family.

His mother, he said, had memorably “made a scene” another time, when he attempted to obtain the paperwork needed to travel back to the United States as a teenager amid another period of war, in 2014. She held his U.S. passport high as she pushed her way through a clamoring crowd of Palestinian travelers trying to cross the border.

“My mother definitely has a lot of courage, and that’s what kind of made me who I am today,” he said. “She’ll do anything for me, so it’s like, why wouldn’t I do the same?”

Ragi Sckak was given permission to return home to Colorado two months early from his training rotation in Korea. He is beginning paperwork that will allow Zahra to become his military dependent, granting her benefits and helping facilitate efforts to secure her U.S. citizenship. He said he’s looking forward to reuniting with his mother, but feels constant pain and regret that he hadn’t known how to get the attention of military and government leaders soon enough to rescue his father.

Zahra Sckak said she looks forward to creating a new life with her sons in the United States. “That’s what I wish for,” she added. “This is my dream come true.”

Steve Hendrix in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

The Washington Post · by Hope Hodge Seck · January 8, 2024

​23. Opinion | So far, there’s no defense for Lloyd Austin’s hospital silence

Opinion | So far, there’s no defense for Lloyd Austin’s hospital silence

The Washington Post · by Editorial Board · January 8, 2024

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who remains hospitalized after concealing his condition from President Biden and White House officials for at least three days, owes the public more answers about his health. That includes the nature of the elective procedure he received on Dec. 22 and the complications that led to him being taken by ambulance to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center’s intensive care unit on New Year’s Day. The public timeline that the Pentagon has so far released is unsettlingly vague: The secretary was experiencing “severe pain,” it says, but someone doesn’t typically take an ambulance to an ICU for a minor issue, even if they’re a VIP.

We wish Mr. Austin a full and swift recovery regardless of his precise condition. We would also appreciate more information. So far, there has been no plausible explanation for the lack of transparency with which all of the above proceeded in real time. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff found out about Mr. Austin’s hospitalization on Jan. 2, but the White House — the ultimate civilian authority under the Constitution — was kept in the dark for an additional 48 hours, until the afternoon of Jan. 4. (That same day, the U.S. military conducted an airstrike against Islamist militants in Baghdad.) National security adviser Jake Sullivan alerted the president, but the Pentagon waited to announce the hospitalization until after 5 p.m. on Jan. 5 — a Friday-night news dump — in a statement that claimed the secretary had resumed his duties. Mr. Biden did not speak with his defense chief until the evening of Jan. 6.

Perhaps the most incomprehensible fact is that Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks did not find out her boss was hospitalized until Jan. 4, even though the Pentagon says Mr. Austin granted Ms. Hicks temporary duties on Jan. 2. She was not told why and remained in the Caribbean, where she was vacationing, until Jan. 6.

When a Pentagon spokesman first disclosed Mr. Austin’s hospitalization, he attributed the delayed notification to patient privacy. Uh, no. Senior Cabinet officials do not have the same expectation of privacy as a private citizen or even a military officer — and especially with regard to what they tell the president. Recent precedents support that: The Pentagon announced immediately that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had undergone rotator cuff surgery in 2006 and that his successor, Robert M. Gates, broke his arm after a fall in 2008.

The fact that no one in the White House appears to have noticed the secretary’s absence for several days amid heated conflicts in the Middle East and in Ukraine is another riddle — and unfortunately implies Mr. Austin, though an able man, is not as central to national security decision-making as his counterparts, especially Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Mr. Sullivan. Also unfortunately, Mr. Austin’s penchant for secrecy regarding his health is consistent with his attitude toward public engagement more broadly, particularly his reluctance to interact more than minimally with the Pentagon press corps.

A full accounting of what happened and why is the first step toward resolving this episode. Step 2 ought to be a full debate about the wisdom of having recently retired generals serve as defense secretary. To ensure civilian control of the military, and to prevent military habits of mind from unduly shaping civilian policymaking, federal law requires that a defense secretary cannot have served as a general for the preceding 10 years. For the first time since 1950, Congress voted to waive that rule so that Jim Mattis could become President Donald Trump’s defense chief in 2017. It did so again for Mr. Biden’s nominee, Mr. Austin, in 2021.

Mr. Trump soured on Mr. Mattis, in part, because he resisted the president’s wishes for how to use the military — just as many of those senators who backed him for the job had counted on him to do. Mr. Biden picked Mr. Austin for very different reasons: partly because he felt that Mr. Austin, with whom he had a preexisting connection through his late son, Beau, could do a good job and partly because he thought that, under him, the Defense Department would not be the independent power center it had sometimes been during the Obama administration.

To senators skeptical of granting a waiver so he could become secretary, Mr. Austin swore he’d accept “meaningful oversight” from Congress and pledged: “We will be transparent with you.” Those promises are why his statement Saturday — admitting he “could have done a better job” communicating about his illness and committing “to doing better” — will not, and cannot, be the last words on this subject.

The Washington Post · by Editorial Board · January 8, 2024

24.  The climate costs of war and militaries can no longer be ignored

The climate costs of war and militaries can no longer be ignored | Doug Weir

More than 5% of global emissions are linked to conflict or militaries but countries continue to hide the true scale

Emissions from Israel’s war in Gaza have ‘immense’ effect on climate catastrophe

The Guardian · January 9, 2024

In early 2022, journalists began to ask us how Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was affecting the climate crisis. While we could point to landscape fires, burning oil refineries and the thirst of diesel-hungry military vehicles, the emissions data they sought just wasn’t available. When it came to the reverberating consequences of Russia’s manipulation of Europe’s fossil fuel insecurity, or to the weakening of the international cooperation necessary for coordinated global climate action, our guesses were no better than theirs.

Two decades of international analysis and debate over the relationship between climate change and security has focused on how our rapidly destabilising climate could undermine the security of states. But it has largely ignored how national security choices, such as military spending or warfighting, can have an impact on the climate, and so undermine our collective security.

With climate breakdown under way and accelerating, it is imperative that we are able to understand and minimise the emissions from all societal activities, whether in peacetime or at war. But when it comes to military or conflict emissions, this remains a distant goal.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has seen the first attempt to comprehensively document the emissions from any conflict, and researchers have had to develop their methodologies from scratch. Their latest estimate puts the total as equivalent to the annual emissions of a country like Belgium. Ukraine is not a one-off, with a similar clamour for emissions data around Israel’s war against Hamas. While the devastating ongoing conflicts in Sudan or Myanmar are yet to see attention on their emissions, the trend is clear: the carbon cost of conflict needs to be understood, just as the humanitarian, economic or wider environmental costs do.

Russia and Israel lead global surge in attacks on civilian water supplies

Read more

A proportion of those carbon costs come from military activities. For these, understanding is hampered by the longstanding culture of domestic environmental exceptionalism enjoyed by militaries, and how at the US’s insistence, this was translated into UN climate agreements. An exclusion to the 1997 Kyoto protocol became voluntary reporting under the 2015 Paris agreement. But when we began to collate and publish the emissions data that militaries report to the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), we found that only a handful of countries publish even the bare minimum required by UN reporting guidelines. Many countries with large militaries publish nothing at all.

The best estimate we have is that militaries are responsible for 5.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. If the global military were a country, this would place it fourth in terms of its emissions, between India and Russia. Militaries are highly fossil fuel dependent and, while net zero targets have opened up debates around military decarbonisation, effective decarbonisation is impossible without understanding the scale of emissions, and without the domestic and international policy frameworks to encourage it. At present, we have neither, while carbon-intensive global military spending has reached record levels.

Ultimately, the international policy framework means the UNFCCC. While some militaries have set vague emissions reduction goals, they are often short on scope and detail, and on accountability. For example, while Nato has drafted a methodology for counting emissions, it does not apply to its members, and it explicitly excludes emissions from Nato-led operations and missions, training and exercises.

Amplified by the ongoing destruction of Gaza, Cop28 saw unprecedented attention on the relationship between the climate crisis, peace and security. But while visible in side events and protests, military and conflict emissions were again absent from the formal agenda. Closing this military and conflict emissions gap will first require that governments acknowledge the outsize role that militaries play in global emissions, and the need for greater transparency. It will require that the climate movement build on the growing trend towards intersectionality in its advocacy, and not shy away from these subjects. And it will depend on expanding the community of researchers documenting military and conflict emissions, and on their data being used by organisations tracking and reporting on global emissions trends.

For decades military environmental exceptionalism and narrow interpretations of climate security have undermined our collective climate security, this has got to change.

Doug Weir is the director of the Conflict and Environment Observatory, a UK charity that studies the environmental dimensions of armed conflicts and military activities. Its Military Emissions Gap project is a collaboration between academic and NGO partners and aims to improve implementation of the Paris agreement through greater military emissions reporting.

The Guardian · January 9, 2024

25.  India can unite Global South with developed world

India can unite Global South with developed world

Delhi has closer Africa connection than Washington, is less vulnerable to ‘predatory lending’ charge than Beijing

asiatimes.com · by Akhil Ramesh, Cleo Paskal · January 5, 2024

Covid-19, the war in Ukraine and the resulting economic and political crises have led the resurgence of the “Global South” – developing countries seeking leverage through unity on the global stage. Increasingly, they have found themselves caught in the crossfire of larger nations, such as the United States and China.

James Marape, prime minister of Papua New Guinea (PNG), in his address at the Forum for India-Pacific Islands Cooperation in May 2023, called for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to offer a third voice in the face of the Global North. Hailing Modi as the leader of the Global South, Marape went on to suggest that the Pacific Island countries would rally behind his voice at global forums.

This came as US President Joe Biden had to cancel his scheduled participation at the meeting to attend more pressing (at the time) concerns over the debt-ceiling crisis. While Secretary of State Antony Blinken made the trip and signed a crucial defense agreement with PNG, he did not receive the same warmth and welcome as the Indian prime minister.

Modi and Marape shared solidarity and, as the PNG leader called it, “shared history of being colonized by colonial masters.”

India is not the only state capitalizing on the shared experiences of colonial rule or Western imperialism and the resulting solidarity to strengthen ties with nations of the Global South. China has consistently reminded former colonies in the Global South of the brutality of the Western world and sought to gain goodwill among leaders and civil society.

But while the wounds evoked may be the same, the remedy offered is markedly different. The stark contrast between the Indian approach to the Global South and the Chinese approach can be seen in how they talk about the Western world.

New Delhi does not remind nations of their past as a motivation for revenge but rather to spur cooperation with the West on more equal terms. Beijing (much like Moscow) calls for deliberate mechanisms and groupings in opposition to the West.

For example, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent sanctions on its economy, Moscow has sought the creation, expansion or hardening of groupings to stand against the Western world.

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The BRICS grouping, initially a talk shop, has expanded to address a plethora of issues impacting the larger Global South. Russia and China are trying to shape it into a platform for nations with disputes with the Western world to exacerbate the cleavage. In early 2023, 16 nations applied to become part of the BRICS. In the last major meeting of the group in Johannesburg in August, six nations were added.

Moscow and Beijing continue to use the group to test alternative mechanisms for the SWIFT banking network and other instruments to sanctions-proof themselves. The creation of entities such as the New Development Bank (NDB) has given the group more access to the developing world and tapped into the grievances surrounding the debts offered by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

New Delhi continues to engage with a range of groups to capitalize on the benefits they offer, while advocating for its own interests and having useful sideline meetings with others that, like India, may be looking for options. Its outreach to the Global South has largely been bilateral and it hasn’t used these platforms for broad anti-West coalition-building. Rather it has tried to build multilateral inclusivity that can lead to stronger bilateral ties.

Take India’s successful advocacy to include the African Union in the Group of Twenty. Modi had consistently called for including the AU in the group. At the G20 meeting in September, the African Union – represented by Azali Assoumani, president of Comoros – was made a permanent member.

This makes the G20 more inclusive and broader in scope, and dovetails with India’s own outreach to African countries. As one small example, Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar visited Tanzania in the summer to inaugurate a university and discuss increased cooperation on a variety of sectors.

Part of this has strategic implications. India’s conception of the Indo-Pacific region is not the same as that of the United States. While the US conceptualization roughly parallels the operational area of the US Indo-Pacific Command – from just west of Maldives to the coast of the Americas – India includes the whole Indian Ocean, including the eastern shore of Africa.

Also, over the last six months, India has increasingly shown willingness to be involved in the Pacific part of the Indo-Pacific, beyond ASEAN and including the Pacific Islands. There was a port call in Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea, and India opened a new embassy in Dili, Timor-Leste. There is eagerness in the Pacific Islands to see what follows the 12-point plan for engagement that Modi announced in his May visit to PNG.

India’s engagement with the Pacific Islands has traditionally been on non-conventional security issues such as public health and capacity-building, exactly the sort of engagement many Pacific Islands have said they want.

Furthermore, in an unusual turn of events, the former heads of the three branches of the Indian military visited Taiwan for a closed-door meeting with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Taiwan.

By engaging with the full Indo-Pacific region, from East African nations to Pacific Islands, and including sensitive points such as Taiwan, India is more than testing the waters as an expanding security provider – especially in human security, which is much in demand across the region.

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India does not have the same colonial legacy as the West’s previous “point country” in the Pacific Islands, Australia, nor has it been as disconnected from the African continent as has the United States. The last US president to visit the continent was Barack Obama in 2015, and that was not a state visit but a visit to his ancestral village in Kenya.

Over the same decade, China has made inroads into nations small and big. Beijing’s Belt and Road project runs along the length and breadth of the continent.

To counter China’s predatory lending, New Delhi has advocated for expanding lending to poorer nations, including at the recently concluded G20. President Biden has supported India’s recommendation and called for increased funding for the World Bank. From the Pacific Islands to East Africa, India can knit the region together in a way that the West can’t and China doesn’t want to.

The G20 showcased the potential for India and the United States (and likeminded countries) to work together to develop solutions for the people of Global South, aiding in economic stability and ultimately for upholding a rules-based international order.

With Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin not attending the G20 Summit, Modi and Biden stole the spotlight and shone it on a potential future that many wanted to see. That said, press releases are one thing. It will be outcomes that matter.

Akhil Ramesh (akhil@pacforum.org) is director of the India Program and Economic Security Initiative at Pacific Forum in Honolulu.

Cleo Paskal (me@cleopaskal.com) is non-resident senior fellow of Washington’s Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Originally published by Pacific Forum, this article summarizes the authors’ chapter in the September 2022 issue of Comparative Connections, which can be read in its entirety here.

asiatimes.com · by Akhil Ramesh, Cleo Paskal · January 5, 2024

26. The U.S. Military Must Transform and Coordinate

The U.S. Military Must Transform and Coordinate

A shared understanding of how it intends to fight in the future would be useful.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-u-s-military-must-transform-and-coordinate-ships-army-navy-marines-acb1acdc?mc_cid=be19769fcf&mc_eid=70bf478f36

Jan. 8, 2024 3:36 pm ET

U.S. Marines take part in an amphibious landing operation in Situbondo, Indonesia, Sept. 10, 2023. PHOTO: TRISNADI/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Many significant issues exist for a transformed U.S. Marine Corps (“Marines’ Transformation Spurs Debate,” World News, Dec. 29).

First, the combat employment of the transformed Marines rests on the bold, strategic assumption of unimpeded access to the sovereign territory of cooperating nations. The U.S. cannot guarantee iron-clad entry into the archipelagic and maritime nations of the Indo-Pacific theater, with the exception of treaty allies such as Japan, in time of war.

Second, for the Marines to get to the fight, the Navy must procure 35 new, small amphibious ships. If the Navy’s shipbuilding budget isn’t increased, it must stop or reduce procurement of other high-priority ships such as its future ballistic-missile submarine, frigate and attack submarine. Given the Indo-Pacific theater’s vast distances, the Navy may need more tenders to rearm submarines, oilers to refuel task forces and logistics ships to sustain and repair the fighting fleet.

Third, the U.S. Army is fielding similar warfighting units to the Marines. Like the Marines, the Army also has a requirement for new, small amphibious ships to transport its warfighting units. The U.S. cannot afford potentially duplicative warfighting and amphibious capabilities from both the Army and the Marines. Unfortunately, there is an absence of a unifying and coherent joint force strategy and plan to resolve these issues. A shared understanding of how the U.S. military intends to fight in the future would be most useful.

Bruce B. Stubbs

Alexandria, Va.

Mr. Stubbs is a former director of strategy and strategic concepts in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations.

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

Appeared in the January 9, 2024, print edition as 'U.S. Military Must Transform and Coordinate

27. The Myth of an Apolitical Military: A Call to Action

Wow.

Yes there is an inherent fundamental political tension in America between those who believe that the government can and should solve all problems and those who believe the government cannot solve all problems and that there must be individual responsibility to solve our problems. Obviously our social contract means there should be some middle ground - people exercise personal responsibility while the government solves certain problems (national security and free flow of commerce and protection of individual liberty).

But I am not quite sure about this "grand strategy" (or conspiracy theory). Those who believe the government can and should solve problems can and do work within the Constitution, though each side has different constitutional interpretations.

But I think the authors offer a view that is fairly widespread in at least some political circles.

The Myth of an Apolitical Military: A Call to Action

By Phillip Keuhlen & Brent Ramsey

January 09, 2024

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/01/09/the_myth_of_an_apolitical_military_a_call_to_action_1003694.html?mc_cid=be19769fcf&mc_eid=70bf478f36

Over a century ago the Progressive leadership of the Democrats seceded philosophically from the Founding Principles of the American experiment.^[i] Rejecting the principles of natural law and unalienable individual rights, they adopted the statist relativism of Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarianism and that of his philosophical heirs. They embraced the State as the arbiter of a changeable ‘common good’ and government by the State as preeminent over individuals, regulating personal liberty bestowed by government so long as it supports the state-defined ‘common good.’ 

Founded upon Woodrow Wilson’s paradigm of a “living constitution” with law making by judicial fiat or Executive Order and day-to-day governance by an unelected, unaccountable, administrative state, the proponents of Progressivism have unceasingly advanced a vision and values directly opposed to, and profoundly irreconcilable with, those the country was founded upon. They have mounted a Second American Civil War by a long march through the institutions of governance, education, culture, commerce, and more recently science and the military, their Grand Strategy to incrementally subvert the Madisonian Constitution and the Founding Principles it was designed to protect. Their strategy is supported by tactics of lawfare, carefully calibrated civil violence, and institutional subversion.

Americans have a sense that things have gone wrong, but their perception is fragmentary, focused on one tactical issue or another. Their focus on individual issues inhibits understanding of how one relates to another and how all support the profound Progressive subversion of American constitutional governance. Shellenberger and Boghossian’s “WOKE RELIGION: A Taxonomy”^[ii] demonstrates the scope and interconnectedness of different fronts in this Civil War for the soul of the American republic. Readers are urged to view this link.

In the field of governance Progressives have mounted sustained legislative, judicial, and executive programs that have the aim of compromising essential elements of Madisonian constitutional governance, effectively replacing it with an antithetical political philosophy that seeks to divide and conquer. In much of public life and discourse that philosophy is represented by Critical Race Theory and allied movements, implemented via programs of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Now, this poisonous ideology has captured our military to the detriment of focus on readiness and lethality. The background and experience of our authors tends to focus on what is happening in and to the military and why it is a danger to our nation. However, it is important to not lose sight of this battle as part of a greater strategic effort to subvert the Madisonian Constitution and the Founding Values it was designed to protect.

By functionally choosing sides and thrusting the entire military establishment into a conflict pitting our founding values against progressive ones, the Civilian & Uniformed leadership of DoD have made a fiction of the principle of an apolitical military that has been the basis of civil-military relations throughout the second half of the 20^th Century.^[iii]  To the extreme detriment of readiness, lethality, retention, morale, and recruitment, the military has been transformed into a political organization with racial quotas; degraded ground combat unit readiness by lowering standards to allow assignment of women; gay pride celebrations; transgendered individuals recruited, placed in limited duty status degrading unit readiness, and provided transitional surgery while in service; promotion of abortion for service members and family members in contravention of long-standing US law; and the embrace of climate change as an existential crisis and top Department of Defense priority. 

This political fight for the soul of the military has not only devastated morale, but eroded the esteem in which the military has been held since our founding. Trust and confidence in the U.S. Military has dropped precipitously, from 70% in 2018 to 46% five years later (-24%), according to a recent Reagan Institute survey. Exacerbating this troubling situation, much of the youth of American no longer wish to serve, having been indoctrinated in false history by our nation’s public schools with such revisionist anti-American works as the 1619 Project and Kendi’s “How to be an Antiracist”. Even cadets and midshipmen at our service academies are exposed to these and similar works as recommended reading. To top it off, the progressive ideology now in vogue throughout the military has alienated the prime source for recruiting, young people brought up with traditional patriotic values who are now staying home in droves…thus creating a severe recruiting crisis that gets worse each year.

CALL TO ACTION:

The authors embrace the viewpoint of President Ronald Reagan,

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

Now is the time for all citizens of like mind to stand up, be counted, and fight for the soul of the nation, our liberties, and the preservation of our Constitutional Governance.

Armed Forces Officers must return to the promises made when they took the Oath of Office to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. There is nothing in that oath about diversity, equity, and inclusion. That oath stood us in good stead for over two hundred years.

Citizens, Officers, Retirees and Veterans must remind military leadership that "just following the civilian leadership's orders" has never been an adequate defense of the indefensible, whether it be DEI as a putative need or benefit with respect to military effectiveness[iv], or subversion of the Constitution and the fundamental American values it protects. EEO is still the law of the land, and it mandates equal treatment. Orders/indoctrination that are counter to that are not lawful orders^[v].

Serving Flag and General Officers must repudiate the politicization of the military, resigning if necessary.

Retired Flag and General Officers must acknowledge the active politicization of the armed forces that is underway in support of Constitutional subversion, stop hiding behind the myth of an "apolitical military," and speak out and LEAD in defense of the Madisonian Constitution and the founding American Values it protects.

Medical and Legal Professionals, particularly in the Armed Forces, must challenge DEI indoctrination as an unethical form of thought reform (i.e., brainwashing) …the application of psychological manipulation without informed consent.^[vi]

Like-Minded Citizens must resist Critical Race Theory and its associated DEI programs aimed at destroying American Constitutional Governance. Fight Back!^[vii]

• Understand CRT/DEI
• Challenge CRT/DEI under the law
• Build grassroots resistance movements
• Build broad coalitions
• Get the word out to peers, and especially to legislators
• Engage the Churches
• Confront woke institutions
• Stand up to Big Tech censorship
• Monitor Federal, State & Local agencies to oppose taxpayers do not subsidize organizations that are hostile to America and American Values
• Develop alternatives to DEI training.

Perhaps it is time to recall the passages that George Washington had read to the soldiers of the Continental Army at Valley Forge on the eve of their battles at Trenton and Princeton:

“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”

“I call not upon a few, but upon all: not on this state or that state, but on every state: up and help us; lay your shoulders to the wheel; better have too much force than too little, when so great an object is at stake. Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it.”

Thomas Paine, The American Crisis Number 1, December 19, 1776

This work is about Honor, Courage, and Commitment. We need to restore the concept of Honor to our Armed Forces. We need to show Courage and call out to the nation and its leaders that we are on the wrong course with the embrace of the false doctrine of DEI. We need a nation-wide Commitment to call upon senior military and political leaders to restore the Armed Forces to its traditional values and eliminate divisive identity politics that weakens us and makes us vulnerable to defeat at the hands of our enemies.

If citizens stay silent, our traditional values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment are undermined and the Progressive enemies of Constitutional governance win.

It is up to you… SILENCE IS CONSENT!

Phillip Keuhlen is a retired naval officer and nuclear industry senior manager. He was educated at the U.S. Naval Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School and had the privilege to command USS Sam Houston (SSN-609), a nuclear submarine. He writes on topics related to governance and national security. 

CAPT Brent Ramsey, (USN, Ret.) has written extensively on Defense matters. He is an officer with Calvert Group, Board of Advisors member for the Center for Military Readiness and STARRS, and member of the Military Advisory Group for Congressman Chuck Edwards (NC-11).

28. The Great Scramble – Analysis of the politically "homeless" in America

A long but interesting read. But if you cannot take the to read the entire essay this summary from today's Free Press newsletter provides a follow-up from the author on the key lesson learned from his essay. I associate myself with the smorgasbord of opinions and that for me both parties have failed us. I strongly believe in the notion of having to live alongside people who disagree with me and that I think is a blessing of democracy.

→ Unscrambled: Yesterday we published “The Great Scramble,” Free Press senior editor Peter Savodnik’s brilliant look at the growing group of Americans who feel politically homeless. I loved Peter’s piece; it put a face on one of the most important big-picture stories in American politics right now. 

From a lesbian trucker who voted Trump—and then Biden—to an Indian immigrant homeschooling her kids, who once felt like a Democrat but is now leaning toward Vivek Ramaswamy, Peter profiled voters who feel out of step with our two political parties. If you haven’t read it yet, please do. 

But I was curious: What did Peter think was the one big lesson from the people he profiled? His answer: 

These voters are not in any one camp. Nor are they moderates. They simply have a smorgasbord of opinions that don’t neatly fit into either side’s worldview. And they feel strongly about these commitments. But they all share a kind of live-and-let-live liberalism that was once the norm in American politics. Their stories illustrate the failure of both parties to reimagine themselves for America as it is today, not as they wish it to be. 

There’s something else about these people that was really compelling to me, and that is that all of them seem to me like good people. What I mean by that is they seem old-fashioned but in the best way—free of the ugly, uncharitable, illiberal impulse that has come to characterize so much of our politics.

None of these people are put off by the notion of having to live alongside people who disagree with them. They regard that as a blessing of living in a democracy. That is where so many Americans are, and what so many crave, even those who can’t bring themselves to admit it. Because deep down we know that we’re not always right.

Stay tuned for more reporting from The Free Press on the profound changes driving our politics. 

The Great Scramble

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-great-scramble

Democrats and Republicans have switched sides—and nearly half of voters now call themselves independent. Peter Savodnik meets the politically homeless.

By Peter Savodnik

January 8, 2024

The Great Scramble

Democrats and Republicans have switched sides—and nearly half of voters now call themselves independent. Peter Savodnik meets the politically homeless.

By Peter Savodnik

January 8, 2024

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In 2016, Shelle Lichti voted for Donald Trump. She got tons of blowback from other gay people who thought she’d betrayed them.

She was 45 at the time, and she’d been doing things her own way since she was 11, since she was adopted by the big Mennonite family in Missouri, and ran away, and came out, and became a trucker, hauling beef and pork across the American hinterland in a rainbow-painted eighteen-wheeler. 

It had been tough being a woman. And a lesbian.

But she’d forged a new life for herself. 

She had built a portable home in the back of her truck—with the kitchenette, the curtains, the warm little lights, the generator, and her bed on the lower bunk, and all her clothes, first-aid gear, and dry goods in the top bunk—and she’d traversed an array of politics and religions. (She was into Buddhism—the calm, the focus. “I choose to say I have faith, but I’m not religious,” Lichti said.) She liked to listen to audiobooks—she was into Nora Roberts, the romance novelist—and she loved to turn up Sia when she was “laying down some miles,” which meant going for hours and hours, not stopping, pushing on to wherever she was going.

“Everybody is on their own ride,” Lichti tells The Free Press. “We have to respect that.” (Jamie Kelter Davis for The Free Press)

What she had learned from riding around the country in her little home in her big rig was you never knew as much as you thought you did about other people. “Everybody is on their own ride,” she said. “We have to respect that.”

Over the years, she noticed the homophobia had waned, but it had gotten harder to make a living, mostly because of the influx of truckers, most of whom were from Somalia and the Middle East.

“I don’t have a problem with them—they’re out here making a living for their families,” Lichti said. But with the new truckers, it was harder to get a raise. “When I started”—in 1993—“I made 19 cents a mile. Now, I barely make double that.”

Shelle Lichti works on her truck, The Rainbow Rider, on December 10, 2023 in Joliet, IL. (Jamie Kelter Davis for The Free Press)

It wasn’t just Lichti who was struggling. It seemed to her like the country was falling apart. “A lot of roadside motels and hotels look like crack houses,” she said. “Not enough people coming through.” On top of that, she said, Main Streets everywhere had been devoured by Walmart, Costco, Amazon. “The billboards on Route 66”—the 2,500-mile highway connecting Chicago and Los Angeles—“are mostly gone.” 

Then, in June 2015, Trump announced his presidential bid, and the bluster, the fireworks, the who-gives-a-fuck about sticking to your talking points—that was refreshing in the face of all the decline.

A lot of her gay and lesbian friends thought she’d gone crazy. “I was like, ‘If you want to unfriend me because of my beliefs, then you’re no better than the people that hate on us,’ ” Lichti said.

But after Trump got into office, Lichti started to see the world differently yet again. Trump seemed too nasty in his rhetoric, like a “toddler,” she said. 

Then, she learned her son was transgender, and it seemed like a dangerous time to be trans or Muslim or Mexican. “My son’s own twin brother has blown him off,” she said.

Then came Covid, George Floyd, the riots. And Trump didn’t seem to make life any better for truckers, Lichti said. “It got even worse.” 

By Election Day 2020, she said, “I wanted anybody but Trump.” Lichti voted for Joe Biden.

More than three years later, she doesn’t know what to believe. She says she feels unmoored. She considers Biden a “seat-filler.” She doesn’t care for Democrats. She kind of cares about climate change, and she’s pro-choice, and she’s heartbroken about the people dying in Ukraine and Gaza, but she doesn’t think it’s America’s problem, and she can’t stand the kids in the LGBTQ+ movement with their “20 zillion acronyms.”

She said she isn’t a “conservative” or “progressive,” and definitely not a Democrat or Republican. 

“Our society has made it to where we’re supposed to fit in a certain mold,” she said. “A lot of us, you know, well, it’s like taking a plus-size girl and trying to squeeze me into a size 2. Just not gonna work.”

Lichti rejects labels like “Democrat,” “Republican,” “progressive,” and “conservative.” “Our society has made it to where we’re supposed to fit in a certain mold,” she said. “It’s like taking a plus-size girl and trying to squeeze me into a size 2. Just not gonna work.” (Jamie Kelter Davis for The Free Press)

Shelle Lichti is hardly alone. 

Nearly half of Americans now identify as independent—not necessarily because they’re centrists, or moderates, but because neither party reflects their views.

That’s because, over the past several decades, the parties have switched places, leaving tens of millions of voters unsure about what they stand for or where they belong, Yuval Levin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of A Time to Build, about reviving the American Dream, told me.

Levin described two axes in American political life—one right-left, and the other insider-outsider. Traditionally, the party of the right has been the party of the inside—the establishment—and the left has fought for those on the outside—the poor, the disenfranchised.

“But in the twenty-first century, they’ve switched sides,” he said. “Democrats are the elites, and Republicans feel like they’re fighting the establishment.”

One way to think about it, said Michael Lind, author of The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite, was geographic: “From Lincoln to Reagan, New England, the Upper Midwest and the Great Lakes, and the western states were the Republicans, and now they’re the Democrats—while the interior was all the Democrats, and now they’re the Republicans.” 

This switch has “created a huge amount of confusion, because it’s happened without either party recognizing it,” Levin added. “Republicans have gotten pretty comfortable with it, while Democrats are very uncomfortable being the insider party.”

That’s because it’s “political suicide” to acknowledge you’re the party of the elite, Thomas Edsall, a New York Times columnist who has reported on national politics for a half-century, told me. 

“Democrats are elite, but they can’t say it,” Edsall said.

Consider that, in 2016, the median home price of a Hillary Clinton voter was $640,000, while that of a Trump voter was $474,000. In 2018, Democrats took control of the 10 wealthiest congressional districts in the country—all of them on the coasts, mostly in New York and California. Of the top 50, they held 41. 

And, increasingly, Democrats recruit their future leaders—their ideas—from a handful of universities that cater to the American elite.

From 2004 to 2016, 20 percent of all Democratic campaign staffers came from seven universities: Harvard, Stanford, New York University, Berkeley, Georgetown, Columbia, and Yale. By contrast, the University of Texas, Austin; Ohio State University; and University of Wisconsin–Madison provided the most Republican staffers.

The reasons for the Great Scramble are legion and stretch back decades, if not longer: the breakup of the Democrats’ New Deal coalition, the end of the Cold War, globalization, the internet, the decline of organized religion and the two-parent family, the forever wars, the opioid and fentanyl crises. 

“Things are definitely in flux,” Michael Lind said.

What I know for sure is that I first glimpsed it on Election Night 2022, at a “victory party” in Phoenix for Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.

Lake’s supporters seemed to fall outside the old left-right construct. Racially, economically, ideologically—they didn’t fit the preconceived categories. 

My surprise was obvious when I interviewed a Latina in her fifties in an Iron Maiden t-shirt. 

How was it, I asked, that she supported a candidate who had run against more Latinos coming to America? Had she not seen Lake’s campaign manager’s “racist tweet” a few weeks before? 

That’s when she started lecturing me about “gangbangers coming here” and then “Big Tech” and “Big Pharma,” but also her friend’s biracial daughter and Martin Luther King Jr., and why Washington should “pump trillions” into the rural parts of the country decimated by fentanyl and cheap overseas labor. 

Our conversation wasn’t that dissimilar to a conversation I had several months later with a Democratic bundler in Brentwood—he’s worth, I’m told, about $400 million—who was going on about how “the climate and AI are everything” (he thought the former was the end of us, and the latter was our salvation), and how he was “scared shitless about the gender stuff.” When I asked him whether he’d be supporting Biden in 2024, he said, “Of course,” but then he added, “As for the other fucktards”—he meant younger, more progressive, down-ballot Democrats—“no way, no can do.”

There were other weird signs: the Democratic poll, in November, showing that the base of the party—including blacks, Latinos, college women, and millennials—prefers Trump to Biden; GOP presidential hopeful Nikki Haley saying government shouldn’t bar minors from transitioning; Senator John Fetterman, once lionized by progressives, insisting “I’m not a progressive,” while touting his support for Israel and calling for tougher border controls—prompting Helen Qiu, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully for New York City Council, to call Fetterman a “Christmas Miracle.”

Compounding our confusions about the Great Scramble is the language we use to talk about politics—to describe the country we want to live in.

“Our language is impoverished, left over from the French Revolution, with us just saying ‘right’ and ‘left’ and what we think we mean by that,” Oklahoma City attorney Jason Reese, who has spent 25 years in GOP politics, told me. 

In the 1980s, when he was a kid, Reese was a Reagan Republican. He believed in capitalism, and thought the Soviet Union was evil, and the unions, like liberals and high taxes, were a relic. His mom called him “Alex P. Keaton,” after the Family Ties character.

But in 1992, just as conservatives were triumphing over everyone—with the USSR now dead, and China and India embracing market economics, and the Democrats, under Bill Clinton, morphing into moderate Republicans—the movement suffered its first shock. So did Reese.

“Ross Perot was the catalyst for this,” he said, referring to the third-party candidate blamed by many Republicans for President George H.W. Bush’s loss to Clinton. “He broke up that old Republican coalition.”

It was Perot who suggested there was a contradiction baked into Reagan’s GOP: while the party embraced free trade and free markets, he argued those policies threatened working-class voters who had recently flocked to it. 

Perot was especially upset about the North American Free Trade Agreement, which, he said, would lead to a “giant sucking sound going south”—as blue-collar jobs moved from the United States to Mexico.

That proved prophetic.

Reese saw the political shift happen in his own extended family, in Kentucky and Texas. In the early 1990s, he said, they cared a lot about abortion. By the 2010s, they were talking nonstop about jobs and immigration.

That colored his own thinking. Today, Reese said, he’s an “economic nationalist” who backs tariffs and a higher minimum wage, and a “foreign policy realist” (meaning, no more wars unless they must be fought), and he’s skeptical of capital punishment. 

This confusion also extends to the left, which includes “liberals” and “progressives” and people who believe in minimizing economic disparity and people who think talking about economic disparity is racist. 

Obama was the “perfect distillation of liberalism,” Tyler Harper, a comparative literature professor at Bates College who has written on politics and identity, and supported Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid, told me. 

“Progressives,” Harper said, are the people who think racial identity reigns supreme and have no serious objection to capitalism.

“I don’t think they’re left-wing in any substantive sense at all,” Harper said of progressives. He saw progressivism and “corporatism” as “natural allies.”

Exhibit A: the $8 billion U.S. companies spend yearly on DEI training. 

“We desperately need a new vocabulary,” he said.

Priyanka Wolan first realized she wasn’t on the left when she started homeschooling her daughters. (Jenna Schoenefeld for The Free Press)

That is how Priyanka Wolan feels—unsure of how to describe herself or what she believes. 

She had immigrated to the United States from India with her family when she was eight, and she had always leaned Democratic. 

It’s not that she doesn’t know what she believes. She is definitely pro-choice, but she also wants to curb “unauthorized immigration.” She thinks the new gender politics is insane, but she believes strongly in defending civil liberties. And she’s giving her four daughters a traditional homeschool education that includes Latin and classical music. 

The trouble is that all of these things do not fit together into one party or camp or label.

We were having dinner at the house in the hills of Los Angeles that she and her husband, Alan, share with their daughters. My 9-year-old and hers had become friends in an after-school math program.

“The present-day conservative movement doesn’t align with my life experience in the way I used to think the Democratic platform did, but the Democratic Party no longer aligns with that either,” Wolan said. 

“The first time I realized I wasn’t on the left was when I started homeschooling, and people were like, ‘This isn’t supporting public education, what’s wrong with public education?’ ” she said. “That’s when I started to see, ‘Oh, I’m not falling into line.’ ”

But then, in 2019, she started to feel the tug of identity politics, and it was like a whirlpool. She and Alan, who is Jewish and 18 years older, had always been “sparring partners.” Now, it felt more personal, as if she, a “brown woman,” were facing off against whiteness and the patriarchy.

During the summer of 2020, “it became really difficult for us to have a conversation,” she said. He thought defunding the police was idiotic, and worried about illegal immigration and crime. “I remember saying at one point,” she continued, “ ‘You know what, let’s not talk politics. You’re never going to understand me, because you’re white, a man, privileged’—all the jargon.”

Priyanka Wolan at her home in Los Angeles, CA. (Jenna Schoenefeld for The Free Press)

She added: “At one point, I remember my dad saying, ‘You’re not doing a service to yourself or your kids when you’re constantly thinking in terms of your identity. We didn’t come to America for you to think this way.’ ”

It was other moms who made her rethink things, albeit unwittingly. They didn’t approve of what she was teaching her girls: Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, the poetry of Robert Frost, Mozart sonatas.

“At the height of the decolonization narrative, people would say, ‘Why are you teaching them this? This is the Western canon,’ ” Wolan, 42, said. She was surprised. She wanted her daughters, as she said, to “have it all”—the most rigorous liberal-arts education that would not only get them into a top college but enable them to think critically.

It wasn’t that her views had changed. She mostly believed in the same things she always had. “I’m liberal in the old sense of the word—the not believing whatever you’re told to believe,” Wolan said. 

When I asked Wolan whether it was hard being politically homeless, whether it would be easier to join one of the available tribes, she half-smiled and said it wasn’t so tough fending off criticisms of homeschooling or deciding who to vote for. (She can’t vote for Biden again; she’d probably vote for Vivek Ramaswamy, if he wins the GOP nomination.) The hard thing was getting comfortable with people knowing her husband supported a candidate who everyone she knew thought was evil.

“I didn’t want people knowing he was for Trump,” Wolan said of Alan. “It took me a while to get to the point where I thought, ‘You know what, he’s allowed to have whatever opinions he wants.’ ”

Brian Lasher, a retired Navy commander and high-school history teacher in Erie, Pennsylvania, could not care less whether people know he plans to vote for Trump. Not that he’s excited about it. He thinks Trump’s “an asshole.” 

But he has to vote—he hasn’t missed an election since he first voted, in 1980—and he doesn’t believe in voting for protest candidates. He wants his vote to count. (In 1992, he voted for Ross Perot. “That’s a vote I regret,” Lasher said. “Clinton is the best Democratic president of my lifetime.”)

His father came from a family of Calvin Coolidge Republicans—“He refused to have an FDR dime in his pocket”—and his mother was religious and liberal. 

He was raised Lutheran, and he is pro-life, but he thinks there need to be exceptions, and he is worried about inflation, and he thinks we have to stop illegal immigration—“human trafficking is grotesque”—but he supports legal immigration—“some of the best students I’ve had were immigrants”—and it is obvious the poles are warming, but it is also obvious we shouldn’t do away with oil and gas. “That’s just suicidal,” Lasher, 62, told me. 

During the lockdowns, he’d watched his students disappear into their screens. The school couldn’t make them turn on their cameras, so almost all turned them off. Usually, he had no idea whether they were even there.

Anyway, the “institutional rot” was everywhere, he said, and everything that came out of D.C. reflected as much—not only the Covid protocols and deficit spending, but Russiagate, which he called “bullshit,” and the corruption. He meant the Clinton emails, the Hunter Biden pay-to-play thing, all of it.

If it looks like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now running for the White House as an independent, might win Pennsylvania, he’ll vote for him.

But generally he’s pessimistic about things. “We’re seeing extremes in both parties drive America toward an abyss,” Lasher said. 

He recalled Christmas 2007. He was in Baghdad with the Navy, and he was at dinner in the mess hall at Saddam Hussein’s old Republican Guard Palace, and General David Petraeus’s chief chaplain was talking about the new “religious reconciliation initiative.”

Lasher was asked to be the chaplain’s note-taker, and the two of them spent the next six months hopscotching around Baghdad meeting Shiite and Sunni religious leaders talking about why they hated each other, and what could be done to stem the violence. 

“We were at the house of a sheik, he was a Shiite, and he was explaining the differences between the Iranian Shiites and the Iraqi Shiites.” The sheik said he was going to Iran in three weeks, and he asked, “Is there some message you want me to deliver to the Iranians?” 

After a moment, Lasher recalls saying, “I told him to tell the Iranians that our symbol is the American eagle. In its talon are either arrows or the olive branch. The choice is theirs. ‘Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.’ He responded, ‘Yes! Yes! This is what I have been preaching all my life. I will tell them this.’ ”

Later, after Iraq, after he came home, after the polarization and anger in America seemed to billow out of control, he would often remember that night in Baghdad, the competing forces. 

“We have far more that brings us together than separates us,” he said. 

Sometimes that’s hard to remember. He wants to be hopeful. He’s a big fan of Catherine Bowen’s Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention. George Washington’s “Farewell Address” is his favorite speech.

But those stories, those pieces of the sacred American past, feel far away. People no longer listen to each other, he said. “We’ve tuned each other out.” It’s like everyone is shouting into a Tower of Babel, unaware of who they’re shouting at, or what they’re angry about. 

“A lot of that, I fault the media for,” he said. “They’re not being honest about the people they report on.”

Rory Fleming, 23, is majoring in history at Yale University. He said college and Covid have pushed him politically to the right. (Christopher Capozziello for The Free Press)

Rory Fleming, a 23-year-old senior at Yale, agreed that no one really knows who they’re screaming at.

“Ever since 2016, it’s been like whiplash,” he told me. 

In 2016, he was in high school, and he knew a lot of kids from Guatemala and Venezuela and Paraguay, and he understood why they felt targeted. He found Trump noxious.

But then he got to Yale, which “has been the opposite experience,” Fleming said. “It’s pushed me to the right.”

The big thing was Covid, the lockdowns, how the university went all in with masking and shutting down campus life. 

For Fleming, just like Shelle Lichti, everything came into focus in the summer of 2020. That was when the upside-downness revealed itself.

“I really felt that for the first time in July 2020, when my friend and I took this 45-day, cross-country road trip,” he said. “New York was shut down, and I remember getting to North Dakota, where there were ‘no mask’ signs everywhere. They were reacting against what they felt was authoritarianism, and they weren’t wrong. There was something about the Democratic reaction that was authoritarian.”

Rory Fleming thinks the United States needs to be strong, and he respected that Trump “carried a big stick.” (Christopher Capozziello for The Free Press)

Post-whiplash, it was hard to know where he belonged. 

Fleming believes the government should be spearheading the “green revolution”—starting with renewable projects in places like West Virginia—and he is pro-choice, and pro-civil liberties, and he thinks the United States needs to be strong. “That was something I did respect about Trump’s presidency,” Fleming said. “He carried a big stick. We shouldn’t have Houthi rebels with drones firing missiles in the Red Sea. Terrorists should fear the United States, and I don’t think they are right now.” 

He recalled his semester abroad, in Dublin, and being at a pub with friends, all foreigners, and someone making fun of the United States. “I remember saying, ‘You don’t know how lucky you are that it’s us, and not China or Russia running the world,” he said. 

No one argued with that.

What’s confusing, Fleming said, is that so many Americans don’t get this. 

Lichti agrees.

“Politics is so confusing right now,” she said. “The people that stay in their camps, that pretend or don’t know it’s not confusing—they’re the ones who are really confused. For me, saying you’re confused is being honest.”

Peter Savodnik is a writer and editor for The Free Press. Read his last article, “I Was Wrong About John Fetterman,” and ​​follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @petersavodnik. Kiran Sampath contributed reporting to this article.

And if you want to support more deep political reporting from The Free Press this election year, become a subscriber today:

29. Jason Statham’s ‘Beekeeper’ Clip Unleashes Fury with Everyday Tools

This popped up in my unconventional warfare feed and I am only forwarding it for one reason:

A Fight Scene to Remember: Office Chaos and Unconventional Warfare

Since no will reprise the Office of Strategic Services, I recommend we establish the Office of Chaos and Unconventional Warfare. It may be more fitting for the 21st Century national security environment. (note attempt at humor)

Jason Statham’s ‘Beekeeper’ Clip Unleashes Fury with Everyday Tools

By Akash hiptoro.com2 min

January 8, 2024

View Original

The Evolution of Jason Statham: From Cult Action Hero to “The Beekeeper”

Jason Statham, a name synonymous with high-octane action and pulse-pounding fight sequences, is back with a vengeance in his latest film, “The Beekeeper.” For over two decades, Statham has dominated the action movie scene, known for his gritty performances and daredevil stunts. His journey has taken him from the underground racing circuits of “The Transporter” to the adrenaline-pumping antics of “Crank” and “The Mechanic.” Now, he’s bringing his unique brand of action to an intriguing new role as Mr. Clay, a formidable operative from a clandestine organization known only as The Beekeepers.

“The Beekeeper”: A Tale of Revenge and Cyber Scams

In “The Beekeeper,” Statham’s character, Mr. Clay, finds himself on a mission fueled by personal loss and righteous anger. When Clay’s friend, played by the talented Phylicia Rashad, commits suicide following a devastating phishing scam, he vows to dismantle the nefarious company responsible. This quest for vengeance is more than just a personal crusade; it’s a war against the faceless enemies of the digital age. The film delves into the darker side of technology and its impact on individuals, making it a timely and compelling narrative.

“For over 20 years Jason Statham has made out-of-the-box action movies with iconic fight scenes and eventually became an action movie icon in his own right.”

A Fight Scene to Remember: Office Chaos and Unconventional Warfare

One of the highlights of “The Beekeeper” is an extraordinary fight scene set in an office, showcasing Statham’s character’s resourcefulness and sheer brute force. Even unarmed, Mr. Clay is a force to be reckoned with, using office chairs and a phone as weapons against his adversaries. This scene promises to be a thrilling display of Statham’s combat skills and creativity, adding a unique twist to the typical action sequence.

“I’m a beekeeper,” Statham’s character declares, “I protect the hive. Sometimes I use fire to smoke out hornets.”

Star-Studded Cast and Crew: Bringing “The Beekeeper” to Life

“The Beekeeper” boasts an impressive lineup, with Statham not only leading the cast but also serving as a producer. Alongside him are Emmy Raver-Lampman, Josh Hutcherson, Bobby Naderi, Minnie Driver, and Jeremy Irons, each bringing their unique talents to this action-packed film. The script is penned by action movie veteran writer Kurt Wimmer, known for his work on “Equilibrium,” “Expendables 4,” and “Ultraviolet.” With such a formidable team both in front of and behind the camera, “The Beekeeper” is poised to deliver an unforgettable cinematic experience.

“The Beekeeper” Hits Theaters: A New Chapter in Action Cinema

As “The Beekeeper” prepares to make its theatrical debut on January 12, fans of Statham and action aficionados alike are buzzing with anticipation. This film represents not just another entry in Statham’s illustrious career but a bold new direction, blending traditional action elements with a contemporary narrative. It’s a testament to Statham’s enduring appeal and his ability to continually redefine the action genre. As the release date approaches, one thing is certain: “The Beekeeper” is set to deliver the stings and swings that audiences have come to expect from a Jason Statham spectacle.

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