Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."

– Philip K Dick, author.

"Governments are based principally on force and deception. Democratic governments are based chiefly on deception, other governments on force. And democratic governments, if you get too uppity, give up on the deception and resort to brute force, as a lot of us found out in the sixties. Those who didn't find out in the sixties will find out in the near future because we're going to have a rerun."

– Robert Anton Wilson, (1932-2007)

“Some people insist that “mediocre” is better than “best.” They delight in clipping wings because they themselves cannot fly. They despise brains because they have none.”

– Robert Heinlein

1. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth Addresses General and Flag Officers at Quantico, Virginia

2. President Trump Address to Pentagon Leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico – Full Transcript

3. Secretary of War Announced Memorandums

4. Senior Enlisted Leader Assignment (USASOC to STRATCOM)

5. Trump and Hegseth’s backward-facing message to the generals

6. Trump Tells Generals the Military Will Be Used to Fight ‘Enemy Within’

7. Trump, Hegseth lecture military leaders in rare, politically charged summit

8. Judge suspends Trump administration's plan to eliminate hundreds of Voice of America jobs

9. Cognitive Warfare to Dominate and Redefine Adversary Realities: Implications for U.S. Special Operations Forces

10. Pete Hegseth and the Generals

11. They Celebrated Vigilante Justice on the Battlefield. Then They Brought It Home.

12. The Worst Way to Fight—Except All the Others

13. China and the postwar order: The futility of coexistence

14. China and Russia are winning the ‘hybrid’ war. Sadly, the West hasn’t noticed

15. Nine Bodies Turned Up at a Green Beret Outpost. What Really Happened?

16. A Green Beret’s Confession Outraged the Military. Then He Found an Ally in Trump.

17. Trump Gave the Military’s Brass a Rehashed Speech. Until Minute 44.

18. The Red Tumor: The Growth and Persistence of the Naxalite Insurgency and India’s Response

19. A Lost Friend Down Under

20. Iranian Subversion: A Systemic Strategy that has Extended to Australia

21. “Best Practices” in Crafting National Security Strategy— Reflections and a Case Study

22. Let Them Fly: To Generate Drone Combat Readiness, Army Installations Must Step Up

23. How America Outcompeted Japan

24. The Middle East That Israel Has Made

25. Explaining Trump’s Surprising Turn to Pakistan

26. Hegseth 'warrior ethos' mistakes military might for true security

27. Russia quietly arming China's paratroopers for Taiwan fight

28. Flood the Zone: III Marine Expeditionary Force’s Mobility Mandate

29. Typhon in Japan changes the game — and China knows it

30. The Termites in Article II: How the Unitary Executive Is Hollowing Out the Republic

31. The Man Behind Trump’s Push for an All-Powerful Presidency

1. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth Addresses General and Flag Officers at Quantico, Virginia

For those who wish to respond to this speech, pro or con, a reminder: Please attack ideas and not people (Justice Scalia). And though we may disagree on ideas, may we all agree that we will fight to the death to protect each other's right to express those ideas (Voltaire) which is embodied in the oath most of us swore to uphold.

The full video for the SECWAR and POTUS speeches are at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhGeNPJlIK4

Transcript

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth Addresses General and Flag Officers at Quantico, Virginia

https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4318689/secretary-of-war-pete-hegseth-addresses-general-and-flag-officers-at-quantico-v/

Sept. 30, 2025

SECRETARY OF WAR PETE HEGSETH: Mr. Chairman, the joint chiefs, generals, admirals, commanders, officers, senior enlisted, NCOs, enlisted and every member of our American military, good morning.

UNKNOWN: Morning.

SECRETARY OF WAR PETE HEGSETH: Good morning and welcome to the War Department because the era of the Department of Defense is over. You see, the motto of my first platoon was those who long for peace must prepare for war. This is, of course, not a new idea. This crowd knows that.

The origin dates to fourth century Rome and has been repeated ever since, including by our first commander in chief, George Washington, the first leader of the War Department. It captures a simple yet profound truth. To ensure peace, we must prepare for war.

From this moment forward, the only mission of the newly restored Department of War is this: warfighting, preparing for war and preparing to win, unrelenting and uncompromising in that pursuit not because we want war, no one here wants war, but it's because we love peace. We love peace for our fellow citizens. They deserve peace, and they rightfully expect us to deliver.

Our number one job, of course, is to be strong so that we can prevent war in the first place. The president talks about it all the time. It's called peace through strength. And as history teaches us, the only people who actually deserve peace are those who are willing to wage war to defend it.

That's why pacifism is so naive and dangerous. It ignores human nature and it ignores human history. Either you protect your people and your sovereignty or you will be subservient to something or someone. It's a truth as old as time.

And since waging war is so costly in blood and treasure, we owe our republic a military that will win any war we choose or any war that is thrust upon us. Should our enemies choose foolishly to challenge us, they will be crushed by the violence, precision and ferocity of the War Department. In other words, to our enemies, FAFO.

UNKNOWN: Fantastic.

SECRETARY OF WAR PETE HEGSETH: If necessary, our troops can translate that for you.

Another way to put it is peace through strength brought to you by the warrior ethos, and we are restoring both. As President Trump has said, and he's right, we have the strongest, most powerful, most lethal and most prepared military on the planet. That is true, full stop. Nobody can touch us. It's not even close.

This is true largely because of the historic investments that he made in his first term, and we will continue in this term. But it's also true because of the leaders in this room and the incredible troops that you all lead. But the world, and as the chairman mentioned, our enemies get a vote. You feel it. I feel it.

This is a moment of urgency, mounting urgency. Enemies gather. Threats grow. There is no time for games. We must be prepared. If we're going to prevent and avoid war, we must prepare now. We are the strength part of peace through strength, and either we're ready to win or we are not.

You see, this urgent moment of course requires more troops, more munitions, more drones, more Patriots, more submarines, more B-21 bombers. It requires more innovation, more AI in everything and ahead of the curve, more cyber effects, more counter UAS, more space, more speed.

America is the strongest, but we need to get stronger and quickly. The time is now and the cause is urgent. The moment requires restoring and refocusing our defense industrial base, our shipbuilding industry and onshoring all critical components. It requires, as President Trump has done, getting our allies and partners to step up and share the burden.

America cannot do everything. The free world requires allies with real hard power, real military leadership and real military capabilities. The War Department is tackling and prioritizing all of these things, and I'll be giving a speech next month that'll showcase the speed, innovation and generational acquisition reforms we are undertaking urgently. Likewise, the nature of the threats we face in our hemisphere and in deterring China is another speech for another day coming soon.

This speech today -- as I drink my coffee, this speech today is about people and it's about culture. The topic today is about the nature of ourselves, because no plan, no program, no reform, no formation will ultimately succeed unless we have the right people and the right culture at the War Department.

If I've learned one core lesson in my eight months in this job, it's that personnel is policy. Personnel is policy. The best way to take care of troops is to give them good leaders committed to the warfighting culture of the department, not perfect leaders, good leaders, competent, qualified, professional, agile, aggressive, innovative, risk-taking, apolitical, faithful to their oath and to the Constitution.

Eugene Sledge in his World War II memoir wrote, "War is brutish, inglorious, and a terrible waste. Combat leaves an indelible mark on those who are forced to endure it. The only redeeming factors are my comrades' incredible bravery and their devotion to each other."

In combat, there are thousands of variables, as I learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, and as so many of you did in so many more places. Leaders can only control about three of them. You control how well you're trained, mostly how well you're equipped, and the last variable is how well you lead. After that, you're on your own.

Our warfighters are entitled to be led by the best and most capable leaders. That is who we need you all to be. Even then, in combat, even if you do everything right, you may still lose people because the enemy always gets a vote. We have a sacred duty to ensure that our warriors are led by the most capable and qualified combat leaders. This is one thing you and I can control, and we owe it to the force to deliver.

For too long, we have simply not done that. The military has been forced by foolish and reckless politicians to focus on the wrong things. In many ways, this speech is about fixing decades of decay, some of it obvious, some of it hidden, or as the chairman has put it, we are clearing out the debris, removing the distractions, clearing the way for leaders to be leaders. You might say we're ending the war on warriors. I heard someone wrote a book about that.

For too long, we've promoted too many uniformed leaders for the wrong reasons, based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts. We've pretended that combat arms and non-combat arms are the same thing. We've weeded out so-called toxic leaders under the guise of double blind psychology assessments, promoting risk averse go along to get along conformists instead. You name it, the department did it.

Foolish and reckless political leaders set the wrong compass heading and we lost our way. We became the woke department. But not anymore. Right now, I'm looking out at a sea of Americans who made a choice when they were young men and young women to do something most Americans will not, to serve something greater than yourself, to fight for God and country, for freedom and the Constitution.

You made a choice to serve when others did not, and I commend you. You are truly the best of America. But this does not mean, and this goes for all of us, that our path to this auditorium on this day was a straight line, or that the conditions of the formations we lead are where we want them to be. You love your country and we love this uniform, which is why we must do better.

We just have to be honest. We have to say with our mouths what we see with our eyes, to just tell it like it is in plain English, to point out the obvious things right in front of us. That's what leaders must do. We cannot go another day without directly addressing the plank in our own eye, without addressing the problems in our own commands and in our own formations.

This administration has done a great deal from day one to remove the social justice, politically correct, and toxic ideological garbage that had infected our department, to rip out the politics. No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship. No more division, distraction or gender delusions. No more debris.

As I've said before and will say again, we are done with that shit. I've made it my mission to uproot the obvious distractions that made us less capable and less lethal. That said, the War Department requires the next step.

Underneath the woke garbage is a deeper problem and a more important problem that we are fixing and fixing fast. Common sense is back at the White House, so making the necessary changes is actually pretty straightforward. President Trump expects it. And the litmus test for these changes is pretty simple.

Would I want my eldest son, who is 15 years old, eventually joining the types of formations that we are currently wielding? If in any way the answer to that is no, or even yes but, then we're doing something wrong, because my son is no more important than any other American citizen who dons the cloth of our nation. He is no more important than your son, all precious souls made in the image and likeness of God.

Every parent deserves to know that their son or their daughter that joins our ranks is entering exactly the kind of unit that the secretary of war would want his son to join. Think of it as the Golden Rule test. Jesus said do unto others that which you would have done unto yourself. It's the ultimate simplifying test of truth.

The new War Department golden rule is this: do unto your unit as you would have done unto your own child's unit. Would you want him serving with fat or unfit or under trained troops or alongside people who can't meet basic standards, or in a unit where standards were lowered so certain types of troops could make it in, in a unit where leaders were promoted for reasons other than merit, performance and warfighting? The answer is not just no, it's hell no.

This means at the War Department first and foremost we must restore a ruthless, dispassionate and common sense application of standards. I don't want my son serving alongside troops who are out of shape or in combat unit with females who can't meet the same combat arms physical standards as men, or troops who are not fully proficient on their assigned weapons platform or task or under a leader who was the first but not the best. Standards must be uniform, gender neutral and high. If not, they're not standards. They're just suggestions, suggestions that get our sons and daughters killed.

When it comes to combat arms units, and there are many different stripes across our joint force, the era of politically correct, overly sensitive, don't hurt anyone's feelings leadership ends right now. At every level, either you can meet the standard, either you can do the job, either you are disciplined, fit and trained, or you are out.

And that's why today at my direction -- and this is the first of ten Department of War directives that are arriving at your commands as we speak and in your inbox. Today, at my direction, each service will ensure that every requirement for every combat MOS, for every designated combat arms position returns to the highest male standard only. Because this job is life or death. Standards must be met. And not just met. At every level, we should seek to exceed the standard, to push the envelope, to compete. It's common sense and core to who we are and what we do. It should be in our DNA.

Today, at my direction, we are also adding a combat field test for combat arms units that must be executable in any environment at any time and with combat equipment. These tests, they'll look familiar. They'll resemble the Army Expert Physical Fitness Assessment or the Marine Corps Combat Fitness Test. I'm also directing that warfighters in combat jobs execute their service fitness test at a gender-neutral age normed male standard scored above 70 percent.

It all starts with physical fitness and appearance. If the secretary of war can do regular hard PT, so can every member of our joint force. Frankly, it's tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops. Likewise, it's completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country and the world. It's a bad look. It is bad, and it's not who we are.

So, whether you're an airborne Ranger or a chairborne Ranger, a brand new private or a four star general, you need to meet the height and weight standards and pass your PT test. And as the chairman said, yes, there is no PT test. But today, at my direction, every member of the joint force at every rank is required to take a PT test twice a year, as well as meet height and weight requirements twice a year every year of service.

Also today, at my direction, every warrior across our joint force is required to do PT every duty day. It should be common sense, and most units do that already, but we're codifying it. And we're not talking, like, hot yoga and stretching, real hard PT and as -- either as a unit or as an individual.

At every level, from the Joint Chiefs to everyone in this room to the youngest private, leaders set the standard. And so many of you do this already, active, guard and reserve. This also means grooming standards. No more beards, long hair, superficial individual expression. We're going to cut our hair, shave our beards, and adhere to standards.

Because it's like the broken windows theory in policing. It's like you let the small stuff go, the big stuff eventually goes, so you have to address the small stuff. This is on duty, in the field and in the rear. If you want a beard, you can join Special Forces. If not, then shave.

We don't have a military full of Nordic pagans. But unfortunately, we have had leaders who either refuse to call BS and enforce standards, or leaders who felt like they were not allowed to enforce standards. Both are unacceptable. And that's why today, at my direction, the era of unprofessional appearance is over.

No more beardos. The era of rampant and ridiculous shaving profiles is done. Simply put, if you do not meet the male level physical standards for combat positions, cannot pass a PT test or don't want to shave and look professional, it's time for a new position or a new profession.

I sincerely appreciate the proactive efforts the secretaries have already taken in some of those areas -- service secretaries. And these directives are intended to simply accelerate those efforts. On the topic of standards, allow me a few words to talk about toxic leaders.

Upholding and demanding high standards is not toxic. Enforcing high standards, not toxic leadership. Leading warfighters toward the goals of high, gender-neutral and uncompromising standards in order to forge a cohesive, formidable and lethal Department of War is not toxic. It is our duty consistent with our constitutional oath.

Real toxic leadership is endangering subordinates with low standards. Real toxic leadership is promoting people based on immutable characteristics or quotas instead of based on merit. Real toxic leadership is promoting destructive ideologies that are an anathema to the Constitution and the laws of nature and nature's God, as Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence.

The definition of toxic has been turned upside down, and we're correcting that. That's why today, at my direction we're undertaking a full review of the department's definitions of so-called toxic leadership, bullying and hazing, to empower leaders to enforce standards without fear of retribution or second guessing.

Of course, you can't do, like, nasty bullying and hazing. We're talking about words like bullying and hazing and toxic. They've been weaponized and bastardized inside our formations, undercutting commanders and NCOs. No more. Setting, achieving and maintaining high standards is what you all do. And if that makes me toxic, then so be it.

Second, today, at our direction, we're ensuring that every service, every unit, every schoolhouse and every form of professional military education conduct an immediate review of their standards. Now, we've done this in many places already, but today it goes across the entire Department of War.

Any place where tried and true physical standards were altered, especially since 2015 when combat arms standards were changed to ensure females could qualify, must be returned to their original standard. Other standards have been manipulated to hit racial quotas as well, which is just as unacceptable. This too must end; merit only. The President talks about it all the time, merit-based.

Here are two basic frameworks I urge you to pursue in this process, standards I call -- my staff's heard all about them, the 1990 test and the E-6 test. The 1990 test is simple. What were the military standards in 1990? And if they have changed, tell me why. Was it a necessary change based on the evolving landscape of combat, or was the change due to a softening, weakening or gender-based pursuit of other priorities? 1990 seems to be as good a place to start as any.

And the E-6 test. Ask yourself does what you're doing make the leadership, accountability and lethality efforts of an E-6 or, frankly, an O-3, does it make it easier or more complicated? Does the change empower staff sergeants, petty officers and tech sergeants to get back to basics? The answer should be a resounding yes. The E-6 test or O-3 test clarifies a lot, and it clarifies quickly.

Because war does not care if you're a man or a woman. Neither does the enemy, nor does the weight of your rucksack, the size of an artillery round or the body weight of a casualty on the battlefield who must be carried. This -- and I want to be very clear about this. This is not about preventing women from serving. We very much value the impact of female troops. Our female officers and NCOs are the absolute best in the world.

But when it comes to any job that requires physical power to perform in combat, those physical standards must be high and gender-neutral. If women can make it, excellent. If not, it is what it is. If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it. That is not the intent, but it could be the result. So be it. It will also mean that weak men won't qualify because we're not playing games. This is combat. This is life or death.

As we all know, this is you versus an enemy hell bent on killing you. To be an effective lethal fighting force, you must trust that the warrior alongside you in battle is capable, truly physically capable of doing what is necessary under fire. You know this is the only standard you would want for your kids and for your grandkids. Apply the War Department Golden Rule, the 1990 test and the E-6 test, and it's really hard to go wrong.

Third, we are attacking and ending the walking on eggshells and zero defect command culture. A risk averse culture means officers execute not to lose instead of to win. A risk averse culture means NCOs are not empowered to enforce standards. Commanders and NCOs don't take necessary risks or make tough adjustments for fear of rocking the boat or making mistakes.

A blemish free record is what peacetime leaders covet the most, which is the worst of all incentives. You, we as senior leaders, need to end the poisonous culture of risk aversion and empower our NCOs at all levels to enforce standards. Truth be told, for the most part we don't need new standards. We just need to reestablish a culture where enforcing standards is possible.

And that's why today, at my direction, I'm issuing new policies that will overhaul the IG, EO and MEO processes. I call it the no more walking on eggshells policy. We are liberating commanders and NCOs. We are liberating you. We are overhauling an inspector general process, the IG, that has been weaponized, putting complainers, ideologues and poor performers in the driver's seat.

We're doing the same with the equal opportunity and military equal opportunity policies, the EO and MEO, at our department. No more frivolous complaints. No more anonymous complaints. No more repeat complainants. No more smearing reputations. No more endless waiting. No more legal limbo. No more sidetracking careers. No more walking on eggshells.

Of course, being a racist has been illegal in our formation since 1948. The same goes for sexual harassment. Both are wrong and illegal. Those kinds of infractions will be ruthlessly enforced. But telling someone to shave or get a haircut or to get in shape or to fix their uniform or to show up on time, to work hard, that's exactly the kind of discrimination we want.

We are not civilians. You are not civilians. You are set apart for a distinct purpose. So, we as a department need to stop acting and thinking like civilians and get back to basics and put the power back in the hands of commanders and NCOs, commanders and NCOs who make life and death decisions, commanders and NCOs who enforce standards and ensure readiness, commanders and NCOs who in this War Department have to look in the mirror and have to pass the Golden Rule test, my kids, your kids, America's sons and daughters.

So, I urge you all here today and those watching, take this guidance and run with it. The core of this speech is the ten directives we're announcing today. They were written for you, for Army leadership, for Navy leadership, for Marine Corps leadership, for Air Force leadership, Space Force leadership.

These directives are designed to take the monkey off your back and put you, the leadership, back in the driver's seat. Move out with urgency because we have your back. I have your back, and the commander in chief has your back.

And when we give you this guidance, we know mistakes will be made. It's the nature of leadership. But you should not pay for earnest mistakes for your entire career. And that's why today, at my direction, we're making changes to the retention of adverse information on personnel records that will allow leaders with forgivable earnest or minor infractions to not be encumbered by those infractions in perpetuity.

People make honest mistakes, and our mistakes should not define an entire career. Otherwise, we only try not to make mistakes, and that's not the business we're in. We need risk takers and aggressive leaders and a culture that supports you.

Fourth, at the War Department, promotions across the joint force will be based on one thing: merit; colorblind, gender-neutral, merit based. The entire promotion process, including evaluations of warfighting capabilities, is being thoroughly reexamined. We've already done a lot in this area, but more changes are coming soon.

We'll promote top performing officers and NCOs faster and get rid of poor performers more quickly. Evaluations, education and field exercises will become real evaluations, not box checks, for every one of us at every level. These same reforms happened before World War II as well. General George Marshall and Secretary of War Henry Stimson did the same thing, and we won a world war because of it.

As it happens, when he started the job, Chairman Caine gave me a frame and a photo to hang in my office. A matching frame and photo hangs in his. It's a photo of Marshall and Stimson preparing for World War II. Those two leaders famously kept the door open between their offices for the entirety of the war.

They worked together, civilian and uniform, every single day. Chairman Caine and I do the same. There is no daylight between us. Our doors are always open. Our job together is to ensure our military is led by the very best ready to answer the nation's call.

Fifth, as you have seen and the media has obsessed over, I have fired a number of senior officers since taking over, the previous chairman, other members of the Joint Chiefs, combatant commanders and other commanders. The rationale, for me, has been straightforward. It's nearly impossible to change a culture with the same people who helped create or even benefited from that culture, even if that culture was created by a previous president and previous secretary.

My approach has been simple. When in doubt, assess the situation, follow your gut and, if it's the best for the military, make a change. We all serve at the pleasure of the President every single day. But in many ways, it's not their fault. It's not your fault. As foolish and reckless as the woke department was, those officers were following elected political leadership.

An entire generation of generals and admirals were told that they must parrot the insane fallacy that "our diversity is our strength." Of course, we know our unity is our strength. They had to put out dizzying DEI and LGBTQI+ statements. They were told females and males are the same thing, or that males who think they're females is totally normal.

They were told that we need a green fleet and electric tanks. They were told to kick out Americans who refused an emergency vaccine. They followed civilian policies set by foolish and reckless political leaders. Our job, my job, has been to determine which leaders simply did what they must to answer the prerogatives of civilian leadership and which leaders are truly invested in the woke department and therefore incapable of embracing the War Department and executing new lawful orders.

That's it. It's that simple. So, for the past eight months, we've gotten a good look under the hood of our officer corps. We've done our best to thoroughly assess the human terrain. We've had to make trade-offs and some difficult decisions. It's more of an art than science. We have been and will continue to be judicious but also expeditious.

The new compass heading is clear. Out with the Chiarellis, the McKenzies and the Milleys, and in with the Stockdales, the Schwarzkopfs and the Pattons. More leadership changes will be made, of that I'm certain, not because we want to but because we must. Once again, this is life and death. The sooner we have the right people, the sooner we can advance the right policies. Personnel is policy.

But I look out at this group and I see great Americans, leaders who have given decades to our great republic at great sacrifice to yourselves and to your families. But if the words I'm speaking today are making your heart sink, then you should do the honorable thing and resign. We would thank you for your service.

But I suspect, I know, the overwhelming majority of you feel the opposite. These words make your hearts full. You love the War Department because you love what you do, the profession of arms. You are hereby liberated to be an apolitical, hard charging, no nonsense constitutional leader that you joined the military to be.

We need you locked in on the M, not the D, the E or the I, not the DEI or the DIE of DIME. By that I mean the M, military, of the instruments of national power. We have entire departments across the government dedicated to diplomatic, informational and economic lines of effort. We do the M. Nobody else does. And our GOFOs need to master it in every domain, in every scenario, no more distractions, no more political ideologies, no more debris.

Now, of course, we're going to disagree at times. We would not be Americans if we didn't. Being a leader in a large organization like ours means having frank conversations and differences of opinion. You will win some arguments and you will lose some arguments. But when civilian leaders issue lawful orders, we execute. We are professionals in the profession of arms. Our entire constitutional system is predicated upon this understanding.

Now, it seems like a small thing, but it's not. This includes as well the behavior of our troops online. To that end, I want to thank and recognize the services for their new proactive social media policies. Use them. Anonymous online or keyboard complaining is not worthy of a warrior. It's cowardice masquerading as conscience. Anonymous unit level social media pages that trash commanders, demoralize troops and undermine unit cohesion must not be tolerated. Again, 0-3s, E-6s.

Sixth, we must train and we must maintain. Any moment that we are not training on our mission or maintaining our equipment is a moment we are less prepared for preventing or winning the next war. That is why today, at my direction, we are drastically reducing the ridiculous amount of mandatory training that individuals and units must execute.

We've already ended the most egregious. Now we're giving you back real time; less PowerPoint briefings and fewer online courses, more time in the motor pool and more time on the range. Our job is to make sure you have the money, equipment, weapons and parts to train and maintain, and then you take it from there.

You all know this because it's common sense. The tougher and the higher the standards in our units, the higher the retention rates in those units. Warriors want to be challenged. Troops want to be tested. When you don't train and you don't maintain, you demoralize. And that's when our best people decide to take their talents to the civilian world.

The leaders who created the woke department have already driven out too many hard chargers. We reverse that trend right now. There is no world in which high intensity war exists without pain, agony and human tragedy. We are in a dangerous line of work. You are in a dangerous line of work. We may lose good people, but let no warrior cry out from the grave "if only I had been properly trained."

We will not lose warfighters because we failed to train or equip them or resource them. Shame on us if we do. Train like your warriors lives depend on it, because they do. To that point, basic training is being restored to what it should be, scary, tough and disciplined. We're empowering drill sergeants to instill healthy fear in new recruits, ensuring that future warfighters are forged.

Yes, they can shark attack, they can toss bunks, they can swear, and yes, they can put their hands on recruits. This does not mean they can be reckless or violate the law, but they can use tried and true methods to motivate new recruits, to make them the warriors they need to be. Back to basics at basic as well.

Of course, and you know this, basic training is not where mission readiness should end. The nature of the evolving threat environment demands that everyone in every job must be ready to join the fight if needed. A core credo of the Marine Corps is every Marine a rifleman.

It means that everyone, regardless of MOS, is proficient enough to engage an enemy threat at sea, in the air or in a so-called rear area. We need to ensure that every member of our uniformed military maintains baseline proficiency in basic combat skills, especially because the next war, like the last, will likely not have a rear area.

Finally, as President Trump rightly pointed out when he changed the department name, the United States has not won a major theater war since the name was changed to the Department of Defense in 1947. One conflict stands out in stark contrast, the Gulf War. Why? Well, there's a number of reasons, but it was a limited mission with overwhelming force and a clear end state.

But why did we execute and win the Gulf War the way we did in 1991? There's two overwhelming reasons. One was President Ronald Reagan's military buildup gave an overwhelming advantage, and two, military and Pentagon leadership had previous formative battlefield experiences. The men who led this department during the Gulf War were mostly combat veterans of the Vietnam War. They said never again to mission creep or nebulous end states.

The same holds true today. Our civilian and military leadership is chock full of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who say never again to nation building and nebulous end states. This clear eyed view all the way to the White House, combined with President Trump's military buildup, postures us for future victories if, and we will, and when we embrace the War Department.

And we must. We are preparing every day. We have to be prepared for war, not for defense. We're training warriors, not defenders. We fight wars to win, not to defend. Defense is something you do all the time. It's inherently reactionary and can lead to overuse, overreach and mission creep. War is something you do sparingly on our own terms and with clear aims. We fight to win. We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy.

We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.

That's all I ever wanted as a platoon leader. And it's all my E-6 squad leaders ever wanted, back to that E-6 rule. We let our leaders fight their formations and then we have their back. It's very simple yet incredibly powerful.

A few months ago, I was at the White House when President Trump announced his liberation day for America's trade policy. It was a landmark day. Well, today is another liberation day, the liberation of America's warriors, in name, in deed and in authorities. You kill people and break things for a living. You are not politically correct and don't necessarily belong always in polite society.

We are not an army of one. We are a joint force of millions of selfless Americans. We are warriors. We are purpose built not for fair weather, blue skies or calm seas. We were built to load up in the back of helicopters, five tons, or Zodiacs in the dead of night, in fair weather or foul to go to dangerous places to find those who would do our nation harm and deliver justice on behalf of the American people in close and brutal combat if necessary.

You are different. We fight not because we hate what's in front of us. We fight because we love what's behind us. You see, the Ivy League faculty lounges will never understand us. And that's okay, because they could never do what you do. The media will mischaracterize us. And that's okay, because deep down they know the reason they can do what they do is you. In this profession, you feel comfortable inside the violence so that our citizens can live peacefully. Lethality is our calling card and victory our only acceptable end state.

In closing, a few weeks ago at our monthly Pentagon Christian prayer service I recited a commander's prayer. It's a simple yet meaningful prayer for wisdom for commanders and leaders. I encourage you to look it up if you've never seen it. But the prayer, it ends like this. And most of all, Lord, please keep my soldiers safe, lead them, guide them, protect them, watch over them. And as you gave all of yourself for me, help me give all of myself for them. And amen.

I've prayed this prayer many times since I've had the privilege of being your Secretary, and I will continue to pray this prayer for each of you as you command and lead our nation's finest. Go forth and do good things, hard things. President Trump has your back and so do I, and you'll hear from him shortly. Move out and draw fire, because we are the War Department. Godspeed.

2. President Trump Address to Pentagon Leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico – Full Transcript

I have not found the transcript on the White House website. This is the best I could do.

The entire transcript for the entire 1 hour and 12 minute speech can be accessed at the link below.

The full video for the SECWAR and POTUS speeches are at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhGeNPJlIK4

President Trump Address to Pentagon Leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico – Full Transcript

https://www.sofx.com/president-trump-address-to-pentagon-leaders-at-marine-corps-base-quantico-full-transcript/

(0:00 – 0:19)

Ladies and gentlemen, the Secretary of War. Well, you’ve heard from me. So now it’s the main event, our Commander-in-Chief.

(0:19 – 0:35)

I have the privilege every single day of watching him put America first, of ensuring that our warfighters have everything they need. His compass is clear. He’s easy to follow because you know he has our back.

(0:35 – 1:03)

I was thinking backstage, the man who was the Commander-in-Chief when the War Department was created was George Washington. The man who was President when the War Department was reestablished was President Trump. And when he found out about this gathering of senior leaders, he said, I would be honored to come in order to address and thank the incredible Americans who defend our nation.

(1:03 – 1:25)

He has a heart full of gratitude and love for what you do, and we get a chance to see it every day. And I’m honored that this morning you all firsthand get to see it as well. So ladies and gentlemen, join me in welcoming the 45th and 47th President of the United States, our Commander-in-Chief, Donald J. Trump.

(1:47 – 1:51)

Thank you. Thank you very much, Pete. Great job you’re doing too.

(1:51 – 1:57)

Fantastic job. I’ve never walked into a room so silent before. This is very interesting.

(1:57 – 2:01)

Don’t laugh, don’t laugh. You’re not allowed to do that. You know what? Just have a good time.

(2:02 – 2:09)

And if you want to applaud, you applaud. And if you want to do anything you want, you can do anything you want. And if you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room.

Continued at the link: https://www.sofx.com/president-trump-address-to-pentagon-leaders-at-marine-corps-base-quantico-full-transcript/

3. Secretary of War Announced Memorandums

The 11 memos in 23 pages can be found here: https://media.defense.gov/2025/Sep/30/2003812317/-1/-1/1/SECRETARY-OF-WAR-ANNOUNCED-MEMORANDUMS.PDF

Secretary of War Announced Memorandums

Sept. 30, 2025 |

https://www.war.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/4318734/secretary-of-war-announced-memorandums/

The following eleven memos were referenced by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth during his speech at Marine Corps Base Quantico on Tuesday, September 30. These memos reflect the priorities and directives Secretary Hegseth outlined in his remarks.

The memorandums can be found here.

4. Senior Enlisted Leader Assignment (USASOC to STRATCOM)

CSM Naumann continues to excel and serve.

Release

Immediate Release

Senior Enlisted Leader Assignment

https://www.war.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/4315852/senior-enlisted-leader-assignment/

Sept. 26, 2025 |

The Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, David L. Isom, announced today the following assignment:

U.S. Army Command Sergeant Major JoAnn Naumann has been selected to replace U.S. Marine Corps Sergeant Major Howard Kreamer as the Command Senior Enlisted Leader, U.S. Strategic Command.

CSM Naumann currently serves as the Command Sergeant Major for the U.S. Army Special Operations Command and previously served as the Command Senior Enlisted Leader for Special Operations Command, Korea. CSM Naumann brings a wealth of joint and special operations experience to USSTRATCOM.

On behalf of the Joint Force, we are grateful for SgtMaj Kreamer's leadership by example, his lengthy career dedicated to serving our Nation and our military, and the unwavering commitment and sacrifice by him and his family. Semper Fidelis.

5. Trump and Hegseth’s backward-facing message to the generals

As of today, by policy, woke culture has been eradicated. Let's move forward.

Opinion

David Ignatius

Trump and Hegseth’s backward-facing message to the generals

A preoccupation with “woke” culture and “enemies” won’t prepare the military for the high-tech demands of 21st-century war.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/09/30/trump-hegseth-speeches-generals-backward/

September 30, 2025 at 6:38 p.m. EDTToday at 6:38 p.m. EDT

5 min

105

President Donald Trump speaks to senior military leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia on Tuesday. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Here’s the scariest part about Tuesday’s military pep rally: President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — in their focus on grooming, fitness standards and “the enemy within” — seem oblivious to the reality that 21st-century combat will be dominated by drones and artificial intelligence, plus commanders who understand these high-tech weapons.

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America’s generals and admirals sat stone-faced as they listened to Trump and Hegseth. They had been summoned to Washington at a moment when they’re struggling to adapt America’s military to dizzying changes in combat systems and doctrine. What they got was a lecture from Hegseth about the threat of facial hair, “fat generals” and lax training — along with a meandering speech from Trump bashing his political enemies.

Trump’s and Hegseth’s speeches were an exercise in military nostalgia. Trump talked about bringing back battleships, a Navy fighting platform that was already outmoded during World War II. Hegseth urged military leaders to apply “the 1990 test” — meaning any standard that had changed since then was suspect. He celebrated generals of the last century — George Patton and Norman Schwarzkopf — who shared his flair for showmanship.

Watching this political theater, the audience of senior military leaders was properly silent. They applauded, politely, at the end. But what must they have thought about the directives they received from a defense secretary whose views were shaped as a National Guard officer in Iraq 20 years ago and a commander in chief who avoided service because of a medical exemption?

Follow Trump’s second term

The implicit message of Tuesday’s “key leaders all-call,” as it was officially termed, was to get on board with Team Trump or get out. “If the words I’m speaking today are making your heart sink, then you should do the honorable thing and resign,” said Hegseth. Hopefully, those gathered at Marine Corps Base Quantico will ignore that guidance. It would be a national disaster to lose the battle-tested leaders who understand the military’s true challenges in the decades ahead.

For Trump and Hegseth, the issues facing the military seem more symbol than substance. Thus, their emphasis on rebranding the enterprise as the Department of War. And their endless rehashing of culture-war issues: “No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship. No more division, distraction or gender delusions,” said Hegseth.

Okay, got it. Clear away the modest elements of “woke” culture that developed in the Pentagon. But what are you building for the future?

Hegseth is so intent on creating a tough military that having a smart one appears secondary. He wants to restore the old-time, gung ho imagery. Basic training that’s “scary, tough and disciplined.” Drill sergeants who can “instill healthy fear” and “put their hands on recruits.” Hegseth seems convinced that how soldiers fight depends on how they look. “The era of unprofessional appearance is over,” he said. “No more beardos.” Maybe he doesn’t remember the unshaven “dogfaces” of Bill Mauldin’s cartoons during World War II.

Hegseth wants to overturn more than grooming standards. Among the 10 directives he issued Tuesday is a review of standards for bullying and hazing, so that leaders can “enforce high standards without fear of reprisal.” Yikes. That sounds like a blank check for behavior that could drive away, say, the math-and-science whiz who could design and operate future combat systems.

Another unpinned grenade is Hegseth’s directive to revise an inspector general process that he claimed has been “weaponized, putting complainers, ideologues and poor performers in the driver’s seat.” If a commander makes “honest mistakes,” those can be expunged from their record. For the military, Tuesday was “liberation day,” he said. “We are attacking and ending the walking on eggshells and zero-defect command culture.”

Hegseth’s vision of a hard-ass military might be compelling if you believed that future combat would be a reprise of landing on Omaha Beach or Iwo Jima. But the nature of military conflict is changing — on the drone-saturated battlefields of Ukraine and in the scenarios for deterring a tech-savvy China in the future. Beijing would be delighted if America focused on how many push-ups a soldier can do rather than how many computer tools he or she can use.

There was a broader conceptual failure in Tuesday’s presentations. Trump focused repeatedly on using the military to fight the “enemy from within,” by which he seemed to mean illegal immigrants, and perhaps also the “radical left lunatics” who might sympathize with their plight. Using the military for domestic law enforcement is illegal under the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act. But beyond that, it’s just dumb at a time when Russia and China pose a growing military threat to the United States.

The military commanders in Trump’s audience are obliged to obey a commander in chief’s orders — so long as they are legal. What did those senior officers think as Trump explained to them his rules of engagement for domestic protest — “They spit, we hit” — and his repeated claims that “we’re under invasion from within”? Hopefully, they’ll seek good legal advice about what constitutes a proper order for deployments on U.S. soil.

The U.S. military is a jewel. Trump and Hegseth are right about that. Its excellence is rooted in values that transcend politics. As the U.S. Military Academy at West Point motto puts it: “Duty. Honor. Country.” Each of the people who listened to Trump and Hegseth swore an oath to the Constitution — and they aren’t promise breakers, no matter who’s leaning on them.

105 Comments

By David Ignatius

David Ignatius writes a twice-a-week foreign affairs column for The Washington Post. His latest novel is “Phantom Orbit.” follow on X@ignatiuspost

6. Trump Tells Generals the Military Will Be Used to Fight ‘Enemy Within’

It worries me when we talk about the enemy within and that cities can be military training grounds.

However, as an aside, POTUS is not wrong about cities as training grounds. Special Operations Forces have for years conducted RUT - Realistic Urban Training in major cities across the US. However, the enemies were always simulated and never fellow Americans. And of course I do not think this is what he was talking about.

Trump Tells Generals the Military Will Be Used to Fight ‘Enemy Within’

President says some U.S. cities he considers dangerous should become training grounds for American troops

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/pete-hegseth-trump-quantico-military-speech-80ffabe5

By Michael R. Gordon

and Shelby Holliday

Updated Sept. 30, 2025 4:27 pm ET

00:08

01:54

Hundreds of commanders and senior officers from around the globe were summoned to Quantico, Va. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Reuters

President Trump hailed the use of military force to police American cities, telling generals and admirals during a Tuesday address that it was important to quell “the enemy within.”

“San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they’re very unsafe places and we’re gonna straighten them out one by one,” Trump told hundreds of senior U.S. military officers packed into a hall at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va.

“This is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war too. It’s a war from within,” Trump said.

Trump’s speech, which lasted well over an hour, followed an address by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who last week summoned generals and admirals from around the world to the meeting.

Much of Hegseth’s talk centered on his longstanding contention that U.S. military standards were relaxed during previous administrations in which diversity and inclusion were an important part of the Defense Department’s personnel policies.

“When it comes to any job that requires physical power to perform in combat, those physical standards must be high and gender-neutral,” said Hegseth. “If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it.”

Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Senior military leaders were called to the meeting at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va., as the Pentagon revises the National Defense Strategy. Photo: kevin lamarque/Reuters

Hegseth, who has rebranded himself with Trump’s backing as a secretary of war, received a polite but muted response from the military officers, who have long prided themselves on being apolitical and are uneasy about past firings and the looming cuts Hegseth has said he will make in the ranks of top officers.

Trump praised Hegseth’s talk and doubled down on the role that he sees for the National Guard and active-duty military in stopping what the president described as disorder at home, preventing illegal immigration and targeting suspected drug smugglers in Latin America.

WSJ Reporter Breaks Down Hegseth's Unusual Meeting with U.S. Military Leaders

Trump, Hegseth lecture military leaders in rare, politically charged summit

The unusual, hastily organized event became a forum for the president and his defense secretary to tout their partisan agenda.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/09/30/hegseth-military-meeting-trump-generals/

Updated

September 30, 2025 at 6:57 p.m. EDT48 minutes ago

9 min

Summary

5,491

Military leaders await the start of President Donald Trump's speech at Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Virginia, on Tuesday. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

By Dan Lamothe, Tara Copp and Alex Horton

Hundreds of the U.S. military’s top leaders listened in silence to highly partisan addresses from President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday, with each harshly criticizing their predecessors and hyping their political objectives during an extraordinary exhibition of both men’s grievances.

The event, organized by Hegseth’s team at the Pentagon, summoned generals and admirals from their command posts throughout the world to Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Virginia, about 30 miles south of Washington. Gen. Dan Caine, Trump’s hand-selected chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told attendees in his opening comments that the event was an “unprecedented opportunity and honor” for the assembled senior officers and their top enlisted advisers to hear directly from the military’s civilian leadership.

Trump, with an eager Cabinet official now in charge at the Pentagon, has repeatedly and unapologetically trampled on long-standing norms intended to keep the American military beyond the grasp of partisan politics. But Tuesday’s presentation stood apart as perhaps the most explicit demonstration to date of this administration’s wholesale disregard for such principles.

Trump, in meandering remarks stretching roughly 70 minutes, joked that if those in attendance did not like what he had to say, they could leave the room — but “there goes your rank, there goes your future,” he added, drawing uncomfortable laughter from some. Since Trump returned to power, he and Hegseth have fired numerous generals and admirals, often without cause, while focusing on a disproportionate number of women and others whom the president and the defense secretary alike have accused broadly of espousing a harmful “woke” ideology centered on enhancing the military’s diversity and inclusivity.

Hegseth and Trump push for tougher fitness standards

2:19

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Donald Trump addressed senior military leaders in Virginia on Sept. 30. (Video: The Washington Post)

The president defended his polarizing use of the armed forces to police American cities, decrying what he said was “the enemy within” while insisting that he should be allowed to use military force domestically. The Pentagon, he said, should be able to use those cities as “training grounds” — a sentiment certain to draw alarm from state and local officials as he orders deployments that already have prompted lawsuits.

Trump also extolled his decision to rebrand the Defense Department as the Department of War, lamented his inability to end the conflict in Ukraine and tacitly acknowledged the highly sensitive movements of U.S. submarines off the coast of Russia.

“I call it the ‘n-word,’” the president said of the submarines, appearing to allude to the vessels’ nuclear power. “There are two n-words, and you can’t use either of them.”

Follow Trump’s second term

The assembled military brass sat through the presentations mostly silent, in keeping with the military’s nonpartisan tradition. Peter Feaver, a political scientist at Duke University, said that they “managed well a very difficult walk along a high wire” by listening respectfully to both speeches without responding. Trump and Hegseth, he added, also deserve credit for appearing to show that they understand why the military leaders were remaining quiet.

“The speeches raised a lot of questions that the military will have to grapple with in the months ahead,” Feaver said. “But they won’t have to do so on live TV, and so a very tricky moment in American civil-military relations did not produce the disaster that some feared.”

A former Pentagon official and expert on civil-military affairs, Kori Schake, took a dimmer view.

“It was disgraceful to subject military leaders to so flagrantly partisan political theater and dangerous for the commander in chief to encourage them to violence against fellow Americans,” said Schake, a senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth greets Trump as he arrives to speak to senior military leaders on Tuesday. (Andrew Harnik/Reuters)

Trump was introduced by Hegseth, whose fiery warmup act for the president at times relied on profanity and crass, inflammatory language. “To our enemies: FAFO,” he said, using an abbreviation that means “f--- around, find out.”

The Pentagon chief had planned the event without expecting that the president would be involved, issuing a mysterious order last week summoning all senior military commanders and their enlisted aides to Virginia but providing them with no information about the itinerary. The order, first reported by The Washington Post on Thursday, alarmed some after the firing of so many generals and admirals this year.

During his remarks Tuesday, Hegseth, a former Fox News personality who served as an Army officer in the National Guard, lectured the men and women — each with decades more military experience — seated silently before him. He vowed to make the military “stronger, tougher, faster, fiercer and more powerful than it has ever been before,” repeating numerous talking points he has used throughout his tenure atop the Pentagon — including that the military brass needs to crack down on standards such as physical fitness, grooming and discipline.

The secretary blamed “foolish and reckless politicians” for allowing the military to stray from its primary focus — to fight and win wars — and pledged to fix what he called “decades of decay” in the force. He also declared that “politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement,” the guidelines that shape how U.S. troops use lethal force in combat, are gone.

He also forecast additional firings, saying “more leadership changes will be made, of that I am certain.” He name-checked three retired officers — Gens. Peter Chiarelli, Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie and Mark A. Milley — as the kinds of officers he wants “out.”

The decision to cite those three men seemed personal: Chiarelli, who retired as the Army’s No. 2 officer in 2012, reprimanded Hegseth’s former brigade commander in Iraq, Col. Michael Steele, following a war-crimes investigation that scrutinized soldiers in their unit. McKenzie and Milley had leadership roles during the chaotic U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan in 2021 and have become political targets for the Trump administration.

Milley declined to comment, and McKenzie could not be reached. Chiarelli, in an email, said he is “honored to be put in the same sentence” as Milley and McKenzie and called them “two of the finest leaders I have ever served with.”

1:37

Post's Pentagon reporter Tara Copp explains how Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth plans to change the military. (Video: HyoJung Kim, John Farrell, Tara Copp/The Washington Post)

Hegseth cited the Gulf War — in which U.S. troops and allies beat back an Iraqi invasion and annexation of neighboring Kuwait within months, from 1990 to 1991 — as an example of a conflict that he sees as a model for the United States. He characterized it as a “limited mission with overwhelming force and a clear end state.”

He also cited President Ronald Reagan’s buildup of the U.S. military in the 1980s as playing a significant role and noted that many military leaders then drew on combat experience from Vietnam.

“The same holds true today,” Hegseth said. “Our civilian and military leadership is chock full of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who say ‘never again’ to nation-building and nebulous end states. This clear-eyed view all the way in the White House, combined with President Trump’s military buildup, postures us for future victories.”

Hegseth said he will overhaul the channels troops and civilian employees have available to them to anonymously file whistleblower complaints, report toxic leadership or point out unequal treatment based on race, gender, sexuality or religion.

“No more frivolous complaints. No more anonymous complaints, no more repeat complaints, no more smearing reputations, no more endless waiting, no more legal limbo, no more sidetracking careers. No more walking on eggshells,” Hegseth pronounced. “Of course, being a racist has been illegal in our formations since 1948. The same goes for sexual harassment. Both are wrong and illegal.”

Upholding high standards, Hegseth declared, “is not toxic,” decrying what he said has been a “bastardization” of phrases like “toxic leader.” The Pentagon, he said, will undertake a review of such phrases, empowering military officials to “enforce standards without fear of retribution or second guessing.”

Hegseth also questioned how standards have been shifted to accommodate women, saying those associated with jobs in combat specialties, in particular, must remain high. “If women can make it, excellent. If not, it is what it is,” he said.

Marine Corps leaders listen as Hegseth addresses the military's top generals and admirals on Tuesday. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Hegseth condemned “fat troops,” including “fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon,” saying it’s a “bad look.” Everyone, he said, will be required to pass a physical fitness test, and meet height and weight requirements twice a year from now on. He cited his own “hard” fitness routine as something to emulate.

Hegseth said he was distributing 11 new directives in line with his vision, which defense officials later posted online. They include a review of what constitutes hazing or bullying, a requirement to present Purple Heart awards for those who receive them and a call for the department to find new ways to incentivize top civilian employees to stay while encouraging those who are “underperforming” to leave.

Hegseth also promoted his 2024 book, “The War on Warriors,” examining the ways he believes “woke” culture had weakened the military. As he arrived at Quantico, he posted the phrase on social media and mentioned it again during his remarks.

“You might say we’re ending the war on warriors,” he said, pausing briefly for effect before adding, “I heard someone wrote a book about that.”

That last-minute assembly has raised questions among critics about its cost — particularly for an address that could have been delivered via secure videoconferencing equipment. Flying, lodging and transporting the military leaders from as far away as Japan, the Middle East and Europe is likely to cost millions of dollars, according to two former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue and estimated based on past government travel experience.

The event also raised security concerns about having all the top leadership in one place, particularly given that Tuesday is the end of the fiscal year, with a government shutdown looming. Guidance issued by the Defense Department says that if a shutdown occurs, all travel should be “terminated,” but with exceptions granted by senior leaders.

Natalie Allison, Michael Birnbaum, Emily Davies, Patrick Svitek and Amy B Wang contributed to this report.

8. Judge suspends Trump administration's plan to eliminate hundreds of Voice of America jobs

But can we undo one of our nation's greatest strategic errors and restore VOA, et al.?

Judge suspends Trump administration's plan to eliminate hundreds of Voice of America jobs

AP · MICHAEL KUNZELMAN · September 30, 2025

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge agreed Monday to temporarily suspend the Trump administration’s plan to eliminate hundreds of jobs at the agency that oversees Voice of America, the government-funded broadcaster founded to counter Nazi propaganda during World War II.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington, D.C., ruled that the U.S. Agency for Global Media cannot implement a reduction in force eliminating 532 jobs for full-time government employees on Tuesday. Those employees represent the vast majority of its remaining staff.

Kari Lake, the agency’s acting CEO, announced in late August that the job cuts would take effect Tuesday. But the judge’s ruling preserves the status quo at the agency until he rules on a plaintiffs’ underlying motion to block the reduction in force.

Lamberth previously ruled that President Donald Trump’s Republican administration must restore VOA programming to levels commensurate with its statutory mandate to “serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news.” He also blocked Lake from removing Michael Abramowitz as VOA’s director.

Judge cites ‘concerning disrespect’ toward court from administration

Lamberth accused the administration of showing “concerning disrespect” toward the court in response to his earlier orders to produce information about its plans for Voice of America. He noted that the agency initiated the job cuts only hours after a hearing last month in which government lawyers said a reduction in force, or RIF, was merely a possibility.

“The defendants’ obfuscation of this Court’s request for information regarding whether their RIF plans comported with the preliminary injunction has wasted precious judicial time and resources and readily support contempt proceedings,” Lamberth wrote.

But he said he wouldn’t initiate contempt proceedings on his own because the plaintiffs haven’t sought it yet.

“However, (the court’s) deference to the plaintiffs with respect to further proceedings should not be mistaken for lenience toward the defendants’ egregious erstwhile conduct,” he added.

Employees who sued to block the dismantling of Voice of America claimed the planned cuts would hamper the judge’s ability to enforce the injunction he issued in April. “This Court should therefore preserve the status quo while the parties litigate compliance,” their attorneys wrote.

Government lawyers accused the plaintiffs of impermissibly trying to micromanage the agency’s operations. “Enjoining the reductions in force would be a wholly overbroad and improper remedy,” they wrote.

Lamberth, a senior judge, was nominated to the bench by Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1987.

Can media agency continue to fulfill its ‘statutory mission’?

The U.S. Agency for Global Media also houses Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Middle East Broadcasting Networks and Radio Marti, which beams Spanish-language news into Cuba. The networks, which together reach an estimated 427 million people, date to the Cold War and are part of a network of government-funded organizations trying to extend U.S. influence and combat authoritarianism.

Congress appropriated $875 million to the agency for fiscal year 2025 and required that $260 million of the funds must be spent by VOA.

In March, Trump signed an executive order called for the agency to reduce its “statutory functions and associated personnel to the minimum presence and function required by law.” A day later, VOA stopped broadcasting for the first time in 83 years. The agency placed almost all of its full-time employees on administrative leave.

In announcing the job cuts on social media last month, Lake said the agency “will continue to fulfill its statutory mission ... and will likely improve its ability to function.”

“I look forward to taking additional steps in the coming months to improve the functioning of a very broken agency and make sure America’s voice is heard abroad where it matters most,” she wrote.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Georgina Yeomans argued Monday that the cuts would cement the agency’s programming at deficient levels that don’t comply with the judge’s orders. Yeomans said it’s unclear who at the agency is making key decisions, such as which jobs to eliminate.

“We simply do not know,” she said.

AP · MICHAEL KUNZELMAN · September 30, 2025

9. Cognitive Warfare to Dominate and Redefine Adversary Realities: Implications for U.S. Special Operations Forces

Read the entire important essay at this link:

https://sway.cloud.microsoft/BQMHG0t40AsNavHh?ref=email

Cognitive Warfare to Dominate and Redefine Adversary Realities: Implications for U.S. Special Operations Forces

Authored by:

Jeremiah "Lumpy" Lumbaca, PhD

https://www.jsou.edu/Press/PublicationDashboard/292

Occasional Papers

Published on 9/30/2025

Digital Only

The battlefield of the future is the human mind, and the very concepts of reality and truth are the target. Cognitive warfare goes far beyond traditional psychological operations; this new form of conflict combines cyber tools, psychological sciences, and neurosciences to alter perceptions and influence decision-making. In this occasional paper, Dr. Jeremiah Lumbaca argues that the U.S. is not yet prepared to face its adversaries using cognitive warfare tactics and proposes a way SOF can evolve to win in this new domain of conflict.

Access as a web page by clicking here or on the image below.

Cognitive Warfare to Dominate and Redefine Adversary Realities: Implications for U.S. Special Operations ForcesBy Jeremiah “Lumpy” Lumbaca, PhD

10. Pete Hegseth and the Generals

From the WSJ Editorial Board.

Weapons cannot be produced overnight or even in 8 months.

Pete Hegseth and the Generals

The Defense Secretary’s talk of a ‘warrior ethos’ is welcome, but where are the weapons?

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/pete-hegseth-military-generals-quantico-pentagon-defense-373d9df3

By The Editorial Board

Sept. 30, 2025 5:46 pm ET

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., Tuesday. Photo: Evan Vucci/Associated Press

Pete Hegseth on Tuesday ended the mystery of why he called 800 or so general military officers based around the world to Quantico, Va. The Defense Secretary delivered an often-useful lecture on the “warrior ethos,” though it would have more credibility if he also gave them more and better weapons to fight with.

Mr. Hegseth told generals that U.S. military standards “must be uniform, gender neutral, and high.” What’s remarkable is that this message about military culture probably needed to be delivered. The Biden-era focus on identity politics spread inside the military as it did the broader society, often to the detriment of merit and high standards.

Elevating such concerns directly to the brass is a prerogative of civilian military control. And all Americans will welcome Mr. Hegseth’s aspiration to build an elite institution in which “lethality is our calling card and victory our only acceptable end state.”

The Defense Secretary also announced an overhaul of the process for reporting to the Pentagon inspector general that has too often left officers vulnerable to frivolous complaints. “No more smearing reputations,” Mr. Hegseth said, or long legal limbos that can derail military careers.

Another good move is changing personnel records so those who make an honest mistake can continue their careers. “We need risk takers,” Mr. Hegseth said, and he’s right. Ronald Reagan’s Navy Secretary John Lehman has warned that none of the fleet admirals who won World War II could make it past the rank of captain in today’s one-mistake U.S. Navy.

Human ingenuity and command creativity matter in warfare—see Russia’s battlefield floundering in Ukraine. Restoring the public’s trust in the U.S. military is especially crucial for fielding a force entirely of volunteers. Many families that have populated the military over generations soured on the Biden focus on identity.

Where Mr. Hegseth—and his boss in the White House—are less credible is giving these warriors what they need to win the next war. Mr. Hegseth’s line that he doesn’t want his son or anyone’s son serving in a unit that isn’t properly trained for a fight is a view shared by every American. But that includes not running out of long-range antiship missiles after mere days of fighting in the Taiwan Strait, or flying jets built in the Cold War.

That will happen if the U.S. doesn’t spend more on defense than Mr. Trump’s apparent target of 3% of GDP. Mr. Trump isn’t telling Americans the truth when he claims to have rebuilt the military. On current trajectory he risks sending warriors into battle without the ships, submarines, bombers, fighters, drones or logistics support they need to prevail.

That is, unless the U.S. surrenders its strategic interests before a war even starts. News reports and our sources say the Administration is drafting a new defense strategy that elevates the Western hemisphere over threats from China and Russia. The implication is that a shrinking U.S. military won’t be able to meet its Pacific or Atlantic commitments.

A large tension in Mr. Trump’s second term is his claim to Reagan’s peace-through-strength mantle even as he indulges isolationist advisers and podcasters. If the latter dominate Mr. Trump’s decisions, the U.S. military is courting defeat no matter how many times Mr. Hegseth talks about “lethality.”

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Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu announce a peace plan for Gaza, including proposals for Hamas disarmament, a transitional government, and an international security force. Will this work, and what if Hamas doesn't accept? Plus, Pete Hegseth calls hundreds of military generals and admirals to Washington to speak to them about his vision for the Department of War.

Appeared in the October 1, 2025, print edition as 'Pete Hegseth and the Generals'.

11. They Celebrated Vigilante Justice on the Battlefield. Then They Brought It Home.

A long painful read about our Regiment. Was this timed for today's speeches at Quantico? Seems like such an obvious attempt at a counterpoint/counter narrative.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/magazine/trump-hegseth-pardon-power-military-warrior.html?unlocked_article_code=1.p08.0NXg.dFbFdYGyNtz9&smid=url-share

America’s Vigilantes

They Celebrated Vigilante Justice on the Battlefield. Then They Brought It Home.

Pete Hegseth’s advocacy for service members accused of war crimes, and Trump’s pardons of them, have helped usher in an era of military aggression and disregard for the rule of law.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/magazine/trump-hegseth-pardon-power-military-warrior.html?unlocked_article_code=1.p08.0NXg.dFbFdYGyNtz9&smid=url-share

By Matthieu AikinsPhotographs by Victor J. Blue

Sept. 30, 2025
Updated 3:57 p.m. ET

In December 2018, after years in legal limbo, Mathew Golsteyn was recalled to active service at Fort Bragg. It had been two years since Golsteyn went public with the details of his case, in which he shot a man he had taken captive in southern Afghanistan. Convinced that he had killed a Taliban bombmaker and done the right thing for the sake of the mission and his men, Golsteyn had refused to quietly resign after his command gave him a reprimand and stripped him of his Special Forces qualification and Silver Star. He mounted a public campaign to pressure the military into reconsidering his punishment, including an interview on Fox News in which he admitted to killing the man and defended his actions.

Listen to this article, read by James Patrick Cronin

But this strategy backfired. After his on-air admission, the Army reopened his murder case and began aggressively investigating it. Now it was preparing to court-martial him for murder.

After years of pressure, Army investigators persuaded several of Golsteyn’s teammates to give evidence against him. They were trying to build a case that Rasoul, the man he killed, was not a Taliban bombmaker at all, but an innocent farmer who had been smeared by tribal rivals. Golsteyn was facing years in prison — even, in theory, the death penalty. He said the Army offered him a deal: Plead guilty to murder and serve two to three years in Fort Leavenworth. He refused. “I warned them,” Golsteyn told me. “I said: Last time I pulled a lot of punches. This time around, I’m gonna hurt you.”

His only hope, he thought, was to win in the court of public opinion. But he had a problem: His main advocate in Congress, Duncan Hunter, a Republican from California, was now facing federal charges of embezzling campaign funds. “I needed someone who could pick up that torch,” Golsteyn said. “I was thinking strategically: How can I undermine the Army’s position in that one place that it cares about: the public?”

By then he was divorced and had remarried a vivacious schoolteacher named Julie, who tirelessly defended her husband in interviews. On Dec. 16, shortly after Golsteyn was called back to face the court-martial, Julie went on Fox News for a segment with one of its rising stars, Pete Hegseth.

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Mathew Golsteyn in Virginia in August.

Square-jawed, well coifed and partial to stars-and-stripes-patterned ties and pocket squares, Hegseth was a leading exponent of the new attitude toward the military that was rising on the right: for the troops, but against the generals. As an infantry officer with the National Guard, he had deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Like many service members, he came away disillusioned not only by the failures of those wars but also by the realization that both military and political leaders had lied about them. Though he had ardently supported both invasions at the time, he would later describe himself as a “recovering neocon.”

In his civilian career, Hegseth had been active in the Republican Party and held jobs at two conservative veterans groups, where he was dogged by accusations of alcohol abuse and financial mismanagement. But by 2014, he had started appearing on Fox News, where he quickly found his stride speaking to a conservative audience that had lost trust in the military establishment, a historic shift that outsiders like Hegseth would leverage in their climb to power.

Within the Republican base, a new ecosystem had emerged of outspoken veterans, one that was fusing with the movement around President Trump. As podcasters and motivational coaches, tactical trainers and small-arms manufacturers, they served a civilian market fascinated with survivalism, paramilitary gear and special operations. An unapologetically muscular and masculine vision of American power was resurgent, and in this world the operator was the apex predator.

AMERICA’S VIGILANTES

A four-part investigation of the culture of impunity in the U.S. Special Forces.

Part I

A Green Beret’s Confession

Part II

Nine Bodies on a U.S. Base

Part III

A Culture of Secrecy

Part IV

Lawlessness Comes Home

Reading now

From his platform on Fox News and in his best-selling books, Hegseth linked his criticisms of the military to a broader culture war. A feckless elite had emasculated the military and made it “woke and weak,” as he put it in his book “The War on Warriors,” by forcing it to accommodate gender and racial diversity in the face of the grim necessities of warfare, which had always been won by “red-blooded American men.”

The same woke generals and politicians, he argued, had hamstrung American soldiers on the battlefield with excessive rules and overzealous lawyers from the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, or JAGs. Hegseth claimed to have seen it on his own deployments. “I was tasked with releasing Iraqi men who we knew had American blood on their hands,” he wrote. “The jagoff lawyers told us we had to do it.” Hegseth suggested that he had thought about vigilante killings: “Did we think about taking justice into our own hands? Sure we did.”

(“The position of the secretary, described in his book and to our troops today, reflects the importance of empowering our warriors and ensuring they never hesitate to close with and destroy the enemy,” the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, said in response to a request for comment for this article.)

An ardent evangelical Christian, Hegseth described war as a battle between good and evil. Defending Golsteyn, an operator accused of crossing a legal line in combat, was a natural cause for him. When Julie went on his show, he encouraged her to summarize the case and then asked how their family was holding up. “We have a brand-new baby,” she answered, as photos of the attractive couple played onscreen. Her husband, she said, “was lucky enough to survive war and has come home to be ripped apart by his own government.”

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the 82nd Airborne Division Review during All American Week at Fort Bragg in May.

Hegseth nodded in agreement. “The rules of war get twisted in certain ways,” he said. “War heroes are being prosecuted like criminals.” He asked her what she wanted to tell the Army’s leadership. “What’s your message to them?”

“We are waiting for someone to do the right thing,” Julie said.

Golsteyn was offscreen, watching the interview from the studio. Up to that point, he had seen Hegseth as just another talking head. He didn’t realize that the host was one of Trump’s favorites and that the president regularly watched his show. He had never seriously considered that he would receive a presidential pardon. “No president would have done that,” he told me. “The last one was Abraham Lincoln, and it was mostly over deserters.”

But as he and Julie were on their way home, their phones started buzzing. Three minutes after Hegseth’s show ended, Trump posted online that he would be reviewing Golsteyn’s case.

Now that Golsteyn had the president’s attention, people came knocking: “It’s all these New York guys,” he said. One was Bernard Kerik, the former city police commissioner. Golsteyn said that Kerik, who was convicted of corruption charges in 2009, tried to get him to hire his lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, who, unknown to Golsteyn, had also negotiated a confidential payment by Hegseth in 2014 to a woman who accused him of sexual assault.

Golsteyn brushed this off and stuck with his own longtime lawyer, Phillip Stackhouse. “I am fiercely loyal,” he said. But another Stackhouse client did make the switch to Parlatore: a member of the Navy SEALs, Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, who was charged that fall with killing a wounded prisoner in Iraq. (Parlatore told me he never solicited either man; Kerik died in May.)

In much of the news coverage that followed, Golsteyn’s and Gallagher’s names would be mentioned in the same breath, but the two men could not have been more different. Golsteyn was a West Point graduate who quoted Sun Tzu. Gallagher had signed up to be a sailor after a night on magic mushrooms. Golsteyn didn’t think he should vote because he believed that the military should be apolitical. Gallagher had gone to one of Trump’s early rallies to wave a SEAL flag.

Golsteyn’s teammates had lied to protect him; it was only under pressure and legal threats from the Army command that some of them had broken. Gallagher had been turned in by his own men, fellow SEALs who accused him of being an abusive, reckless leader with a history of wanton killing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gallagher countered that his teammates were cowards who were trying to discredit him to cover their own misconduct.

“They had this vendetta,” Parlatore told me. “What really happened was a guy was accused of a crime that he didn’t commit.”

How we reported this article:Over four years, Matthieu Aikins interviewed two dozen current and former members of Army Special Operations, including senior Third Special Forces Group officers. To corroborate their accounts, he cross-referenced them with public records and thousands of pages of unpublished military documents that were obtained through several lawsuits and dozens of Freedom of Information Act requests filed by The Times. He also traveled to rural stretches of Afghanistan to locate and interview scores of witnesses.

Gallagher did not respond to a request for comment, but on the podcast “The Line” after his trial was over in 2021, he admitted that his team had killed their prisoner. The man was badly wounded and expected to die anyway, so they had practiced medical techniques on him. “We killed that guy,” he said. “Our intention was to kill him.”

To Golsteyn, what Gallagher admitted was worlds away from his own case. Golsteyn had decided to kill his detainee to protect a key informant, rather than engage in the kind of gratuitous violence against a prisoner that Gallagher seemed to have admitted to. “There was no military necessity,” Golsteyn told me.

Gallagher saw war differently. While he said he followed the law, he wrote in his memoir, “The Man in the Arena,” that the enemies he fought in Iraq were some of “the most savage, evil beings I’d encountered in war zones across the world.” Eliminating them was an end in itself. “Killing those men rids the earth of evildoers. That was my mission and my job, and I felt it was a godly one.”

That was also how Hegseth and many in his audience saw both Golsteyn and Gallagher: good guys fighting bad guys. “You train someone to go fight and kill the enemy,” Hegseth said on Fox News, “then they go kill the enemy the way someone doesn’t like, and then we put them in jail.”

But as Trump publicly toyed with the idea of pardons, fierce opposition arose among the nation’s military and political elites. Writing as “head of a group of more than 170 retired admirals and generals who share a belief that fidelity to our nation’s most cherished ideals is the foundation of our security,” Gen. Charles Krulak, the former commandant of the Marine Corps, stated that pardons would “betray these ideals and undermine decades of precedent in American military justice that has contributed to making our country’s fighting forces the envy of the world.”

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Green Berets training support staff at Camp Mackall in North Carolina in May.

The debate over the pardons wasn’t a partisan one; the battle line ran right through the Republican Party. Earlier in their lobbying campaign, Julie said they had been rebuffed by Senator John McCain, himself a decorated Navy pilot and former prisoner of war. “McCain said no,” she told me, adding that he objected to the fact that Golsteyn and his teammates burned the victim’s body.

The vehemence of the pushback showed the role that war crimes played in official discourse, as a line that was supposed to separate the United States from rogue states and terrorists. If war, as Tolstoy wrote, is “the vilest thing in life,” there were essentially two ways to justify it in modern democracies: as lawful self-defense or a battle of good against evil. A war can be both, as it was in many Americans’ minds, after the attacks of Sept. 11. But as U.S. interventions overseas dragged on into chaos and disaster, the country’s leaders clung tighter to the kind of legal commitments at the heart of liberalism. “And even as we confront a vicious adversary that abides by no rules, I believe the United States of America must remain a standard-bearer in the conduct of war,” President Barack Obama said as he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. “That is what makes us different from those whom we fight. That is a source of our strength.”

In his speech, Obama had gestured at the irony — critics called it hypocrisy — of accepting the prize even as he was expanding a global campaign of drone warfare and raids by Special Operations. But the unspoken question was whether it was in fact possible to fight irregular conflicts lawfully — or whether, as the work of political scientists like Stathis Kalyvas attests, civil wars like those in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are battles for populations and not territory, have coercion and violence against civilians at the core of their logic.

Obama was articulating the elite consensus that America’s righteousness and lawfulness were inseparable. By contrast, Hegseth argued that our leaders were in denial about the kind of lawless conflicts the United States faced. “Should we follow the Geneva Conventions?” he wrote. “What if we treated the enemy the way they treated us? Would that not be an incentive for the other side to reconsider their barbarism?”

The debate about the war-crimes pardons became part of a larger struggle over legal restraints on the military, one whose implications were as important at home as they were abroad. Later in his first term, Trump would clash with Mark Esper, the defense secretary, and Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and would be thwarted when he sought to deploy active-duty troops to suppress protests in American streets. But Trump’s first real fight with the military leaders was over the pardons. As Esper would later write in his memoir, the issue wasn’t just leniency for war crimes; Trump was short-circuiting the military’s legal system before it had a chance to render a verdict. “General Milley and I urged the president on several occasions to stay out of it,” he wrote. “It was unfitting for the commander in chief to do what he did, and it caused a lot of ill feelings in the military.”

In the end, Trump waited out Gallagher’s trial, which was marred by the Navy’s mishandling of the case; he was acquitted of murder in July 2019 but convicted of posing for photos with a corpse. But in Golsteyn’s case, the president decided to move ahead before the trial. On Nov. 15, Trump announced he was restoring Gallagher’s rank and pardoning Golsteyn and another soldier, Clint Lorance.

At the end of our conversation at his house, I asked Golsteyn how it felt to prevail over the Army. After the president called to tell him he was pardoned, Golsteyn told me that he felt grateful but strangely empty. “I wasn’t relieved,” he said. “It felt hollow.”

For almost a decade, the struggle had consumed him. Throughout it, he was animated by the conviction that he had done the right thing. But he received absolution from a leader and a public that made no distinction between him and Gallagher. And his case had inflicted immense pain on his teammates and regiment.

“I’d been alienated from my tribe,” Golsteyn said. “No pardon could restore that.”

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Golsteyn with his pardon from President Trump, which was signed in 2019.

Even as the violence committed overseas by operators like Golsteyn was being celebrated by politicians in the United States, a wartime culture of lawlessness in Special Operations had come home to roost in another way: a wave of domestic crimes committed by soldiers with the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, many of them around Fort Bragg, home to the command’s headquarters and Golsteyn’s unit, the Third Special Forces Group.

Some of the former Green Berets I spoke to said that misconduct at home was a result of commanders tolerating rule-breaking by soldiers for the sake of the mission. “You can’t accept that type of behavior in one environment and then be shocked when it carries over in terms of how that individual behaves in another,” said Anthony Aguilar, a retired lieutenant colonel who served in Third Group.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, rule-breaking for the sake of the mission could slide into rule-breaking for personal gain. At the end of their deployments, several former operators told me, some Special Forces teams would divide up operation funds that were “left over” among themselves, handing out cash in envelopes. Others became involved in more serious crime. A federal task force investigating corruption in Afghanistan led to several criminal cases against Green Berets for fraud and theft. At the center of many of them was an Afghan contractor named Hikmatullah Shadman, who got his start as an interpreter with Third Group and who had been recommended for a U.S. visa by four Special Forces officers. He was charged in one of the largest civil forfeiture cases of the war, in which he eventually agreed to a $25 million settlement. Eight soldiers who served with the Special Forces and worked with Shadman, including two officers, were convicted of bribery-related crimes.

As the war went on, Special Forces leaders allowed an aggressive ethos to flourish on base that drew inspiration from outlaw biker culture. With their tattoos, beards and shaved heads, many Green Berets looked like extras from the popular biker TV show “Sons of Anarchy.” Soldiers spent their combat bonuses on the Harleys that filled the headquarters parking lots. Senior officers rode, including Maj. Gen. Edward Reeder, an influential leader who rose to command both the Special Forces and the Army’s special-warfare school. (Through a lawyer, Reeder declined to comment.) Reeder, as commander of Third Group’s Second Battalion, nicknamed the Bush Hogs, changed its logo to resemble Harley Davidson’s. Its motto was “We do bad things to bad people.”

Law enforcement had repeatedly warned the military that biker gangs were infiltrating the ranks, including Special Operations. One internal 2008 report by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives noted that it had “received vast intelligence concerning military and veteran motorcycle clubs affiliating themselves with documented” outlaw gangs.

A group of active-duty Green Berets founded what became the Special Forces Regiment Motorcycle Club, whose members attended events on base in their leather vests. One founder was Mark Schwartz, an officer who would go on to lead Third Group and retire as a lieutenant general. To start the club, they had to get permission from the head of the Hells Angels in Fayetteville, N.C., the rough-and-tumble city surrounding Fort Bragg, a retired Green Beret named Daniel Silcose. The Hells Angels rode and partied with the military clubs and recruited veterans, and several full-patched members worked at the base as civilian contractors.

“When you wanted to stand up a riding club or an M.C., if there’s existing clubs in the town, you have to get approval,” Schwartz told me. “There’s a bit of a culture of showing respect. The Hells Angels had a presence.”

Schwartz said that the purpose of the club was to raise money for charity and encourage camaraderie, and he denied any wrongdoing by it. “I was genuinely not aware of any illegal activity that took place while I was commander,” Schwartz said.

But some Special Forces officers considered the motorcycle clubs and their escapades to be an unacceptable threat to discipline. “They were always a problem,” said Paul Toolan, a former Third Group officer who retired as a lieutenant colonel. Part of the concern was that the clubs, where an officer might be junior to his men, were a parallel world that could subvert military hierarchy. “It could just be them, you know, getting drunk and doing something foolish,” Toolan said, “and now I kind of have that on you.”

The problem of misconduct in the ranks was compounded by the stress of the war, substance abuse and wounds, especially cognitive ones from repeated exposure to blasts during combat and training. “We accumulated an enormous amount of traumatic brain injury,” said Mike Perry, a retired Special Forces major who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. A result could be increasingly reckless and violent behavior. “I watched the community evolve from commonplace shit, like dudes cheating on travel vouchers, to homicide and human trafficking,” he said. “It does not go well when an organization that is largely left to police itself fails to do so again and again.”

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Members of the Special Forces Regiment Motorcycle Club gathering for a memorial ride in February.

To understand the scale of the problem and its connection with specific units, I collected news and police reports of incidents around Special Forces bases and obtained the personnel records of the soldiers involved, as well as vital records and court documents. The picture was one of serious crime at all levels, from young operators to senior leaders.

To give just a partial list: Two operators with Seventh Group in Florida were convicted of smuggling cocaine, and another was accused of shooting up a bowling alley, killing three people. A sex and blackmail scandal at group headquarters in Tampa, Fla., ensnared several senior leaders and led to the conviction of a major. In Washington State, the First Group commander, Col. Owen Ray, was sentenced to prison after assaulting his wife at gunpoint.

The highest-profile incident to date suggests the link between the war and blowback at home. In January, Master Sgt. Matthew Livelsberger, an active-duty Green Beret, blew up a truck packed with fireworks in front of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas while simultaneously shooting himself.

Livelsberger was a veteran operator who served for nearly 20 years. He had shown symptoms of brain injury and might have been experiencing a psychotic break, but he also wrote that he despaired of his involvement in airstrikes against village drug labs in Afghanistan, which the U.N. reported killed at least 30 civilians in 2019.

“The U.N. basically called these war crimes, but the administration made them disappear,” Livelsberger wrote. “I was part of that cover-up.”

At Fort Bragg, which has been awash in drugs and had the highest rate of fatal drug overdoses of any base from 2017 to 2021, a Special Operations medic who had been abusing steroids killed himself and his wife. A Delta operator died by suicide while facing charges for a drunken hit-and-run that left four teenagers hospitalized. Another Delta soldier, Master Sgt. William Lavigne, was found dead in the woods alongside a former supply-unit soldier, Timothy Dumas, who worked with the Special Forces — both were involved in a drug-trafficking ring on base, according to the journalist Seth Harp in his book “The Fort Bragg Cartel,” which was published in August.

Soldiers from Third Group were involved in three separate lethal shootings off base. Another pleaded guilty to paying minors for sex. During one four-year period, 11 of the 70 majors in the group were found to have committed misconduct. One of them was the subject of a revenge-porn lawsuit in North Carolina.

The problem of crime involving operators was notable enough to prompt questions in Congress. When Gen. Bryan Fenton, the head of the military’s overall Special Operations Command, appeared before the Senate in 2023, he was asked about the crime wave. “So, General Fenton, you know, there have been a series of concerning incidents — suicides, murders, overdoses, drug-trafficking arrests — surrounding the Special Operations community at Fort Bragg,” said Senator Ted Budd, a North Carolina Republican, who wanted to know what the military was doing about it.

“I want everybody to know that is not the type of behavior that is welcomed in this formation and is not indicative of an organization in whom the nation has placed a lot of trust,” said Fenton, who served as a Green Beret and in the elite Delta Force. “I think a key piece in that one is holding folks accountable.”

Fenton stressed that a vast majority of Special Operations soldiers served honorably and were not involved in crimes. This is true, and some Green Berets I spoke to said that the problem was about individual bad apples and that the news media had a tendency to overemphasize crimes by operators. The important question, as Fenton noted, is one of accountability. Military officers are taught a basic mantra: Commanders are responsible for everything their units do or fail to do.

“The people that have done these things have come and gone,” Anthony Aguilar said. “But the problems still remain. Lavigne and Dumas are dead. Well, the drug problem got worse. So-and-so went to jail. The murders continue. What is it? It’s U.S.A.S.O.C. and S.F. Command and Third Group.”

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Anthony Aguilar at home in February.

An analysis of command assignments show that Army Special Operations has promoted officers even as their units were involved in misconduct at home and abroad. “The way we pick senior leaders in the military is by a good-ol’-boy system,” said Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, whose last role was commanding Special Operations forces in Africa. “And the name of the game is: Cover each other’s ass.”

Rather than shake up the leadership, the head of Army Special Operations Command, Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga, has selected the last four Desert Eagles commanders from within Third Group’s ranks. Three of those officers then went on to command the entire group. Two of them — including Col. Jason Johnston, who commanded the battalion in Kunduz when it bombed a hospital — were then picked for key positions at headquarters. Braga also chose a Third Group commander as his deputy and the Desert Eagles’ operation officer during the Kunduz strike as his executive officer.

In September, Braga was nominated by Trump for promotion to head of the Joint Special Operations Command, a position that requires confirmation in the Senate. In response to detailed questions, a spokeswoman for Braga offered a defense of his command’s record. “We have fully investigated and adjudicated the cases you cover. In each case, where justified, we have held to account those responsible for any misconduct,” Lt. Col. Allie Scott wrote. “We are confident our actions stand up to the strictest scrutiny.”

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Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga, the head of Army Special Operations Command, at Fort Bragg in May.

The term “blowback” was originally used by the C.I.A. to describe the unintended consequences of covert actions, but it can also refer to the broad repercussions that wars overseas have on the homeland. From the Roman Republic to France after World War II, history contains many examples of democracies that were destabilized by lawless wars abroad.

The costs of America’s longest war have become apparent: broken bodies and families, the loss of civil liberties, the growth of the surveillance state, the acceleration of a paramilitary gun culture, crime and corruption in military ranks, popular disenchantment with the establishment and, most of all, the weakening of the laws and norms that restrain the armed forces.

These changes have taken place under both Democratic and Republican administrations, but they have created an opening for a vision of unrestrained violence put forward by leaders like Trump and Hegseth.

For many of Trump’s supporters, his felony conviction only strengthened their belief that he was fighting a corrupt system. They adopted a new slogan: “I’m voting for the outlaw.” Before last November’s election, some of the generals who served in Trump’s first administration warned that he would try to use the military in illegal and unconstitutional ways were he re-elected. Still, Trump regained the White House with the overwhelming support of veterans, and most likely of active-duty service members as well, for many of whom the brass has been discredited by the failures of what Trump called “stupid wars.”

He immediately shocked the establishment by nominating Hegseth as his secretary of defense, the second in the chain of command, whose confirmation passed the Senate by a single vote. As many of his critics predicted, Hegseth’s tenure has been plagued by infighting and blunders, like his divulging military strike plans in a group chat that included a journalist. Throughout it all, Trump has backed him as they work to transform the military under a newly christened Department of War. In a push to avoid the internal opposition from his first term, Trump and Hegseth have purged the military’s senior ranks, including its top lawyers. Hegseth swore in his and Gallagher’s lawyer, Parlatore, as a reserve commander and special adviser. These moves have sent a chill through the JAG Corps that Hegseth once derided as “jagoffs.”

(Parlatore, Hegseth’s lawyer, told me he believes that the military justice system was broken and needed an overhaul. “If they are the conscience of the military,” he said, referring to the JAG Corps, “maybe you need a new conscience.” He dismissed those concerned about the moves as “partisan agitators.”)

To replace the Army’s top lawyer, Hegseth chose Maj. Gen. Bobby Christine, a former Republican U.S. attorney and National Guard officer.

“We’re just slowly eroding the rule of law until it just doesn’t exist and everyone’s comfortable with it,” said Nate Bankson, a retired lieutenant colonel and former Special Operations lawyer. “It sets the conditions for the misuse of the armed forces.”

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National Guard members on duty outside Union Station in Washington this summer.

This may also include the way the armed forces are deployed at home. Over the summer, Trump succeeded in doing something that military leaders had blocked during his first term: deploying the active-duty U.S. military to American cities. In June, he sent Marines and National Guard members in response to protests in Los Angeles, a move that was later ruled illegal by a federal judge. (The administration appealed the ruling.) He has created a standing task force within the National Guard to deploy to American cities, put armed Guard members on the streets of Washington, D.C., in August and threatened to send them to Chicago.

On Sept. 30, more than 800 of the country’s brass were summoned to a base in Virginia to hear speeches in which Hegseth spoke against “stupid rules of engagement” and Trump defended his domestic troop deployments. “We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military,” the president said.

“President Trump inherited a Biden-era military that cared more about woke D.E.I. policies than readiness,” Anna Kelly, a spokeswoman for the White House, wrote in a statement for this article. “Now, under this President, our warfighters are prioritized, and our Commander in Chief is using our military for its intended purpose — to protect our homeland from narco-terrorists and other urgent threats. Likewise, he is using his authority to stop home-grown criminals from ravaging American communities and attacking law-abiding citizens.”

In his expansion of the military’s domestic role, Trump has mobilized the language and tactics of the war on terrorism. He has invoked the Alien Enemies Act and designated migrant gangs as terrorist organizations, rendering suspects to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center. The military has carried out deportation flights, incarcerated migrants at Guantánamo Bay and deployed troops to make arrests on the Southern border.

These public actions raise the question of what is being undertaken in secret by the nation’s special operators. Trump has ordered the military to use lethal force against drug traffickers designated as terrorists, a move that legal experts have said amounts to summary killings of noncombatants. In September, the administration announced three airstrikes on boats in international waters that they claimed were smuggling drugs to the United States on behalf of a Venezuelan gang. “We smoked a drug boat, and there’s 11 narco-terrorists at the bottom of the ocean — and when other people try to do that, they’re gonna meet the same fate,” Hegseth said on Fox News after the first strike.

This vision of unrestrained power has its roots in the 20 years of conflict waged in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Understanding the secret history of America’s longest war is about more than a reckoning with the past. Cases like Golsteyn’s and the Nerkh killings illuminate the connections between a brutal conflict overseas and a radical cultural and political shift at home that venerates the vigilante. In this way, shots fired in an Afghan village echo in our present.

Camille Baker and Victor J. Blue contributed reporting.

Matthieu Aikins is a contributing writer for the magazine and a fellow at Type Media Center.

Victor J. Blue is a photographer and a 2024 New America Future Security fellow.

Read by James Patrick CroninNarration produced by Tanya PérezEngineered by Brian St. Pierre

See more on: United States Army Special Forces (Green Berets), Donald Trump, Joe Biden, U.S. Politics, Barack Obama

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America’s Vigilantes

While leading the fight in Afghanistan, the Green Berets fostered a culture of lawlessness. Then they brought it home.

A Green Beret’s Confession: The president’s pardon of Mathew Golsteyn cut short an investigation into his killing of a man he believed to be a Taliban bombmaker. Was justice served?
Nine Bodies on a U.S. Base: When its leader was nearly killed, a Green Beret unit responded with ferocity. What happened next remained hidden — until now.
A Culture of Secrecy: As cases of lawless behavior and extrajudicial killings mounted, the Special Forces had to decide how to respond — and whom to protect.
Lawlessness Comes Home: Pete Hegseth’s advocacy for men accused of war crimes, and Trump’s pardons of them, have helped usher in an era of military aggression and disregard for the rule of law.

The Worst Way to Fight—Except All the Others

https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2025/september/worst-way-fight-except-all-others

By James R. Holmes

September 2025 Proceedings Vol. 151/9/1,471

Alliances are worthless. Don’t believe me? Then take it from General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who choreographed the Allied offensive against Nazi Germany more than 80 years ago and knew firsthand the frustrations and misadventures that come with leading polyglot armies, navies, and air forces. Opined the supreme commander in his memoir, Crusade in Europe:

History testifies to the ineptitude of coalitions in waging war. Allied failures have been so numerous and their inexcusable blunders so common that professional soldiers have long discounted the possibility of effective allied action. Even Napoleon’s reputation as a great military leader suffered when students in staff colleges came to realize that he always fought against coalitions—and therefore against divided counsels and diverse political, economic, and military interests.1

His critique rings true. An army cannot act in unison if its political masters cannot agree on political aims, strategy, or operational design. It loses cohesion under duress—and a fighting force without cohesion ceases to be a fighting force. It fractures. Coalition after coalition broke against Napoleonic armies—simplifying the military problem for France’s little emperor. Only after decades of war, when Napoleon made it obvious that France posed a deadly and lasting threat to all European states, did a final coalition band together and endure long enough to prevail.

Deprecating Napoleon’s feats of arms was salty talk coming from Eisenhower, arguably the United States’ foremost soldier-diplomat—and alliance overseer—of the 20th century.

Two Types of Alliances

But. . . . Immediately after scourging alliance warfare as a futile if not self-defeating mode of war-making, the general pivoted to strike down the straw man he had set up. He maintained, in effect, that fighting alongside allies is the worst way to fight—except for all the others.

It is important to note that Ike was referring to a particular type of alliance management grounded in negotiation among peer allies.

Roughly speaking, there are two types of alliances.2 In “hegemonic” alliances, one dominant ally—the hegemon—contributes the bulk of the militarily relevant resources and thus commands the dominant say in councils of war. This is a variation of the Golden Rule: The ally that supplies the gold—and manpower, and war matériel—makes the rules.

Resources bestow negotiating leverage, simplifying dickering over policy, strategy, and operations. The hegemon has the option to walk away unless it gets its way. It conceivably could accomplish its goals alone. Dependent allies have no such option if they hope to accomplish the goals for which they signed on to the alliance. Accordingly, junior partners in such an accord tend to defer to the predominant partner. They can do little else.

While the Golden Rule of Alliances simplifies decision-making in unequal fellowships of nations, it tends to bog down negotiations in the second type of alliance: an alliance of equals. In such alliances, more than one ally contributes a hefty share of war-making resources. Thus, more than one wields bargaining leverage. Major allies cannot so readily strong-arm one another into agreement. In balanced alliances, coalitions, and partnerships, allied leaders have to formulate decisions through mutual give-and-take rather than unilateral fiat.

A Grand Alliance of Equals

Eisenhower classified World War II’s “Grand Alliance” as an alliance of equals between the United States and Great Britain, joined by an outer circle of lesser partners. (Sorry, Soviet Union.)

The Anglo-American habit of consensus-building unlocked the combined resources of great powers, enabling the Allies to outmuscle the Axis. “Primarily,” Eisenhower wrote, “the Allied task was to utilize the resources of two great nations with the decisiveness of single authority.” To make and execute combined strategy, “it was necessary to produce effective unity out of concessions voluntarily made. The true history of the war, and more especially the history of the Operations Torch and Overlord, . . . is the story of a unity produced on the basis of this voluntary cooperation.”

Concord seldom came easily, despite the common language, heritage, and worldview aligning the United States and Britain. “Differences there were,” conceded Eisenhower, “differences among strong men representing strong and proud peoples, but these paled into insignificance alongside the miracle of achievement represented in the shoulder-to-shoulder march of the Allies to complete victory in the West.” Consensus-building, however heated at times, kept internal tumult over fateful decisions, such as where and when to invade continental Europe from the sea, to manageable levels. Muting discord allowed the Allies to rally a cohesive war effort that brought their full resources to bear against the Axis. Ike boasted that Allied leaders—American and British in particular—had honed cooperation to “near perfection in allied conduct of war operations.”3

Admittedly, the Allies were fortunate in their foe. A domineering common enemy that poses mortal danger tends to cement an alliance. When survival is in jeopardy, allies incline to set aside their quarrels until the danger is past. Conversely, an antagonist that exercises a measure of self-restraint can degrade or break an alliance prone to internecine discord, blazing a route to victory.

As Eisenhower recalled, for a time, Napoleon mastered the art of dividing counter-French coalitions against themselves. But self-restraint was alien to Adolf Hitler. Hitler was too overbearing and murderous to be an effective alliance-breaker. Nazi Germany placed multiple opponents in extreme peril, reinforcing the community of interest among them. Where Napoleon applied diplomatic solvents to opposing coalitions, the Führer welded the Grand Alliance together through his lust for conquest. Hitler was an alliance uniter, not a divider.

So Eisenhower affirmed the worth of fighting alongside allies while supplying insider advice on to how to construct and manage alliances. Seeking consensus got buy-in from allies; dictating to them probably would have fueled dissension. U.S. military and political leaders were careful to treat fellow Allies as equals. They sought counsel even after the U.S. military-industrial complex was turning out mountains of war matériel, empowering the United States to comport itself more like a hegemon had it so chosen. But Britain did its utmost for the cause, even as its resources began to fail. It earned its place as an alliance leader. It is less clear that allies are doing their utmost today—or that they merit the same deference.

Why Alliances Still Matter to the United States

While he pulled a rhetorical switcheroo in Crusade in Europe, Ike was an outspoken proponent of alliances, provided all the allies did their part to attain common ends. Posterity should heed his wisdom. Now, as during World War II, the United States has no strategic position in the world beyond the northern reaches of the Western Hemisphere without allies, partners, and friends that occupy strategically situated real estate and can contribute substantial diplomatic, economic, and military resources to endeavors of common interest.

Let’s catalogue what the United States gets out of alliances. Access to faraway regions has to rank atop any list of U.S. interests. In particular, U.S. grand strategy depends on commercial, diplomatic, and military access to what geopolitics scholar Nicholas Spykman dubbed the “rimlands” of East Asia and Western Europe (today, he would doubtless add South Asia). The rimlands are intermediate zones lying between the oceans and seas and the “heartland,” the crucial deep interior of Eurasia. By commanding the “girdle of marginal seas” swathing the Eurasian periphery—the Baltic, Mediterranean, and South China Seas and so forth—an oceangoing naval power could shape events in these coastal zones and, in turn, radiate power and influence into the heartland.4

Access was of prime importance for Alfred Thayer Mahan. The sage of Newport deemed mercantile access to rimland seaports the linchpin of U.S. grand strategy. Commerce was king for him; diplomacy and military might were crucial but subordinate enablers.5 Access to important trading regions completed the “chain of sea power” connecting industrial production at home to purchasers of American wares across the sea.6 Industry produced goods for sale overseas, along with the merchant ships to haul them and a navy to protect merchantmen on their voyages to distant harbors. The U.S. government skimmed some of the proceeds from commercial transactions, reinvesting part of this revenue in the Navy. Trade funded the Navy, and the Navy guarded trade.

Now, as in the age of Mahan, commercial access to allies, partners, and other friendly nations sets in motion a virtuous cycle that helps the United States enrich itself—providing the wherewithal to fund worthwhile ventures in the world. Some of these ventures are geopolitical in nature. For instance, Spykman warned that allowing a single hostile power or alliance to dominate one or more of the rimlands would empower that antagonist to harness the economic and martial resources in those zones—posing a direct threat to the United States across the oceans. The United States would be forced into hemispheric defense—and, for Spykman, hemispheric defense was no defense at all.7

To forestall such a grave turn of events, Spykman beseeched Washington to balance against domineering opponents. It should join with allies, partners, and friends in the rimlands, helping them preserve their independence from nearby predators. In so doing, it would keep the rimlands fragmented and unable to manifest a transoceanic menace. Though his counsel was aimed at countering the Axis during World War II, it could have been ripped from today’s headlines. Hostile powers aligned with one another—China, Russia, Iran, North Korea—are openly trying to dislodge the United States from its strategic position in the rimlands and marginal waters. Some commentators have even taken to calling the new partnership the second coming of the Axis.8

In short, almost every foreign-policy goal U.S. leaders want to accomplish, from trade, to diplomacy, to expeditionary operations, to policing the sea for gunrunners or narcotraffickers, depends on allies. That basic insight must pervade how officials—today’s successors to Dwight D. Eisenhower—approach relations with friendly nations.

Why the United States Still Matters to Allies

All this being said, there are drawbacks to conducting alliance diplomacy in Eisenhower’s mold in relatively tranquil times, when threats appear remote and diffuse and security can be entrusted to others. Since the Cold War in particular, the United States has accepted the worst of both worlds as an alliance member. It has shouldered a lopsided share of the burden of common defense, accepting the role of a hegemon in resource terms. At the same time, it has refrained from throwing its weight around like a hegemon. It has remained largely deferential toward allies on pivotal decisions—such as how much each ally must commit to defense, whether measured by manpower levels, numbers of platforms and munitions, or percentage of GDP, to carry its rightful share of the load.9

By and large, the allies have underperformed, sometimes egregiously so. The problem is acute in Europe, where Ukraine has erected an unexpectedly stalwart buffer against Russian aggression that allows illusions about defense to persist. NATO allies recently agreed to boost defense spending to 5 percent of GDP, more than doubling current figures for the majority of allies, but their track record casts doubt on whether they can fulfill such an extravagant pledge.10 The outlook is less troublesome in Asia, where allies such as Japan and the Philippines know they lie under the shadow of a bellicose China and had better get ready in concert with their U.S. partner. For instance, Japan is doubling defense outlays at a meteoric pace, albeit from a small percentage of GDP owing to the island state’s militarist past.11

Beyond doubt, rebalancing alliances and coalitions for an era that resembles the Cold War or the world wars more than the false calm of the post–Cold War decades is a must, and it needs to happen in a major way in a hurry. It is true the United States has no strategic position outside the Western Hemisphere without allies, but it is equally true that U.S. allies hold only a precarious strategic position in the rimlands—in their own environs, where their own survival is at stake—without their U.S. partner. New and grave dangers have gestated in the rimlands, yet unhealthy dependence on the U.S. armed forces persists. Allied capitals must embrace the logic of self-preservation afresh and understand that a hegemon can exercise its prerogative to walk away if lesser allies refuse to uphold the mutual obligations that underwrite any fellowship of arms.

So Eisenhower was right. As a general rule, alliances built on consensus are the best way to deter or coerce in peacetime competition or fight in wartime. But there are limits. After all, consensus is a two-way street.

1. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe: A Personal Account of World War II (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1948), 6.

2. The international-relations literature on alliances, coalitions, and partnerships is vast. Among the best in the genre is Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987).

3. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, 6.

4. Nicholas J. Spykman, The Geography of the Peace, ed. Helen R. Nicholl, intro. Frederick Sherwood Dunn (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1944), 35–44.

5. Alfred Thayer Mahan, Retrospect & Prospect: Studies in International Relations, Naval and Political (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1902), 246.

6. Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1890), vii, 28.

7. Nicholas J. Spykman, America’s Strategy in World Politics: The United States and the Balance of Power (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company 1942), 446–72.

8. See for instance Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Richard Fontaine, “The Axis of Upheaval: How America’s Adversaries Are Uniting to Overturn the Global Order,” Foreign Affairs 103, no. 3 (May/June 2024). Of note, the red teams do not themselves claim the mantle of a latter-day Axis. No treaty unites them.

9. See, for instance, Anthony Reuben, “How Much Do NATO Members Spend on Defense?” BBC.com, 18 February 2025.

10. “Defense Expenditures and NATO’s 5% Commitment,” NATO.int, 27 June 2025.

11. Japan Ministry of Defense, “Defense Buildup Program,” Mod.go.jp, 16 December 2022.

13. China and the postwar order: The futility of coexistence

Excerpts:

These are not policy differences that need to be managed. They are contradictions of principle, and contradictions cannot be reconciled. To believe otherwise is to risk repeating Munich or the delusions of detente.

That is why nations across the Indo-Pacific — Japan, India, Australia, the Philippines — are rallying through the Quad, AUKUS and other alliances. They understand that coexistence with the CCP is a fantasy, and fantasies cannot defend freedom.

America has faced this before. In 1900, the McKinley administration’s Open Door Policy insisted that China’s markets be open and rules fair.

That principle was not only economic but also moral. It rejected monopoly and coercion.

President Trump’s insistence on “opening up China” was no break from tradition; it was the reaffirmation of America’s century-old refusal to accept exploitation as the price of engagement.

The time for illusions is over. China is not a partner waiting for persuasion. It is a closed society, a non-market economy, a communist dictatorship with global ambitions. Its system makes coexistence not difficult but impossible.

The choice is stark: China either accepts the principles of openness and reciprocity or remains outside the order it seeks to subvert.

History has already taught us this lesson. We cannot afford to relearn it the hard way.

China and the postwar order: The futility of coexistence

We will never have peace with the Chinese Communist Party

washingtontimes.com · Miles Yu

By - Monday, September 29, 2025

A version of this story appeared in the daily Threat Status newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive Threat Status delivered directly to your inbox each weekday.

OPINION:

The belief that arduous negotiations with Beijing, expecting China to follow the gospel of markets and respect for the rule of law would coax the communist nation into democratic capitalism was always an illusion.

Three decades of engagement have proved it false. China has not converged with the U.S.-led postwar order; it has collided with it. The collision is structural, ideological and irreconcilable. We must be clear: Peaceful coexistence with the Chinese Communist Party is not unlikely. It is impossible.

History shows why. In the 1930s, Western leaders believed negotiations and concessions would temper Adolf Hitler. Munich did not prevent war; it hastened it. In 1939, Josef Stalin joined Hitler in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, proving totalitarian regimes will cooperate against liberal systems whenever it suits them.

During the Cold War, detente was supposed to stabilize relations with Moscow, even as the Soviet Union repressed its people and expanded abroad even more. In each case, illusions of coexistence ended in confrontation.

China today is no exception.

The incompatibility begins with China’s closed society in a world order built on openness and reciprocity. Nearly 300,000 Chinese study in America each year, but fewer than 1,000 American students are in China.

For every American student in China, nearly 3,000 Chinese study in the U.S. This imbalance is deliberate. The CCP drains knowledge from abroad but blocks reciprocity through surveillance, censorship and regulation.

The digital divide is even sharper. Americans can download TikTok, a Chinese app whose data practices raise national security alarms. Yet the CCP makes all American social media platforms — including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Gmail, LinkedIn and Google — unavailable to the Chinese people.

Behind the Great Firewall, Chinese citizens live in a sealed world where propaganda dominates. Hundreds of millions believe COVID-19 began not in Wuhan but in a U.S. Army lab in Maryland. This is not a misunderstanding; it is indoctrination. A regime built on lies at home will not deal honestly abroad.

Commerce reveals the same futility. Chinese firms buy American assets freely, while U.S. firms can’t do the same and face endless barriers in China. Reciprocity, the bedrock of fair exchange, is absent. Beijing’s aim is not mutual prosperity but asymmetric gain. Hoping patience will change this is as naive as trusting Hitler’s pledges or Leonid Brezhnev’s promises.

China’s economy is equally irreconcilable with the liberal order. The CCP demands recognition as a market economy while practicing the opposite. It manipulates currency, channels subsidies to state-backed sectors and directs capital by political decree.

State-owned enterprises dominate, while non-state firms survive only at the party’s mercy. Jack Ma’s rise and fall proved that wealth in China is provisional, not protected.

Abroad, Chinese companies do not compete. They distort, undercut and weaponize commerce for Beijing’s strategic ends.

This is not capitalism. It is authoritarian mercantilism designed to hollow out competitors while insulating the regime. To pretend such a system can coexist with global markets is to indulge the same fantasy that underpinned detente: that authoritarian powers can be integrated into a liberal order without undermining it. They cannot.

At its core, China remains a communist dictatorship. The party is supreme; property rights do not exist; courts enforce communist authority, not law. Foreign companies are forced to hand over technology, endure surveillance and risk theft of intellectual property. Engagement under such conditions is not partnership; it is extortion, and extortion cannot sustain coexistence.

Nor are Beijing’s ambitions confined within its borders. The Belt and Road Initiative is not development but leverage. Loans create dependence; dependence breeds obedience. Ports, power plants and railways are not neutral assets but instruments of control.

Simultaneously, China militarizes the South China Sea, threatens Taiwan and bankrolls Russia’s war in Ukraine. These are not the behaviors of a state seeking stability. They are the actions of a power bent on rewriting the global order.

The clash is unavoidable. The West rests on openness, reciprocity and the rule of law. The CCP rests on secrecy, coercion and party supremacy.

These are not policy differences that need to be managed. They are contradictions of principle, and contradictions cannot be reconciled. To believe otherwise is to risk repeating Munich or the delusions of detente.

That is why nations across the Indo-Pacific — Japan, India, Australia, the Philippines — are rallying through the Quad, AUKUS and other alliances. They understand that coexistence with the CCP is a fantasy, and fantasies cannot defend freedom.

America has faced this before. In 1900, the McKinley administration’s Open Door Policy insisted that China’s markets be open and rules fair.

That principle was not only economic but also moral. It rejected monopoly and coercion.

President Trump’s insistence on “opening up China” was no break from tradition; it was the reaffirmation of America’s century-old refusal to accept exploitation as the price of engagement.

The time for illusions is over. China is not a partner waiting for persuasion. It is a closed society, a non-market economy, a communist dictatorship with global ambitions. Its system makes coexistence not difficult but impossible.

The choice is stark: China either accepts the principles of openness and reciprocity or remains outside the order it seeks to subvert.

History has already taught us this lesson. We cannot afford to relearn it the hard way.

• Miles Yu is the director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute. His “Red Horizon” column appears every other Tuesday in The Washington Times. He can be reached at mmilesyu@gmail.com.

washingtontimes.com · Miles Yu

14. China and Russia are winning the ‘hybrid’ war. Sadly, the West hasn’t noticed

Some thoughts:

The American Paradox: Strength and Vulnerability

•While the United States has maintained its relative conventional and nuclear superiority, it has adopted a largely defensive and reactive stance in the gray zone. This approach stems from the assumption that forces optimized for high-intensity conflict can easily "scale down" to address asymmetric threats. However, this perspective has left America vulnerable to adversaries who are actively and offensively competing in this ambiguous space.

•The "Dark Quad" of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea (CRInK) – collectively described as the axis of upheaval, chaos, or tyranny – have been creating dilemmas and attempting to disrupt and undermine U.S. national security strengths. In contrast, the U.S. has struggled to develop an agile, flexible, and offensive capability for operations in the gray zone.

•The U.S. must work to maintain its conventional and nuclear military superiority because this offers the best chance of avoiding war. By doing so it neutralizes these threats which then can allow the U.S. to make very modest investments in its national security apparatus to be able to offensively and proactively compete and win in the gray zone.

Views on Warfare

•What is the major difference in the views of conflict, strategy, and campaigning between China, Russia, Iran, nK, AQ, and ISIS and the US?

–The psychological takes precedence and may or may not be supported with the kinetic

–Politics is war by other means

–For the US kinetic is first and the psychological is second

–War is politics by other means

–Easier to get permission to put a hellfire on the forehead of terrorist than to get permission to put an idea between his ears

•Bonaparte: In war, the moral is to the physical as three is to one

•In the 21st Century the psychological is to the kinetic as ten is to one

•The US has to learn to put the psychological first

–Can a federal democratic republic “do strategy” this way

–Or is it only autocratic, totalitarian dictatorships that can “do strategy” this way?

•An American Way of Political Warfare: A Proposal https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE300/PE304/RAND_PE304.pdf

Chinese Three Warfares

•Psychological Warfare seeks to disrupt an opponent’s decision-making capacity; create doubts, foment anti-leadership sentiments, deceive and diminish the will to fight among opponents.

•Legal Warfare (“lawfare”) can involve enacting domestic law as the basis for making claims in international law and employing “bogus” maps to justify China’s actions.

•Media Warfare (or public opinion warfare) is the key to gaining dominance over the venue for implementing psychological and and legal warfare.

•Most Important: 1999 Unrestricted Warfare

•My assessment of PRC/CCP strategy:

–China seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions directly and/or indirectly through proxies, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, while displacing democratic institutions. It takes a long-term approach, employing unrestricted warfare and its three warfares to set conditions and achieve objectives.

Russian New Generation Warfare and the Future of War:

As a result, it follows that the main guidelines for developing Russian military capabilities by 2020 are:

i. From direct destruction to direct influence;

ii. from direct annihilation of the opponent to its inner decay;

iii. from a war with weapons and technology to a culture war;

iv. from a war with conventional forces to specially prepared forces and commercial irregular groupings;

v. from the traditional (3D) battleground to information/psychological warfare and war of perceptions;

vi. from direct clash to contactless war;

vii. from a superficial and compartmented war to a total war, including the enemy’s internal side and base;

viii. from war in the physical environment to a war in the human consciousness and in cyberspace;

ix. from symmetric to asymmetric warfare by a combination of political, economic, information, technological, and ecological campaigns;

x. From war in a defined period of time to a state of permanent war as the natural condition in national life.

http://www.naa.mil.lv/~/media/NAA/AZPC/Publikacijas/PP 02-2014.ashx

Thus, the Russian view of modern warfare is based on the idea that the main battlespace is the mind and, as a result, new-generation wars are to be dominated by information and psychological warfare, in order to achieve superiority in troops and weapons control, morally and psychologically depressing the enemy’s armed forces personnel and civil population. The main objective is to reduce the necessity for deploying hard military power to the minimum necessary, making the opponent’s military and civil population support the attacker to the detriment of their own government and country. It is interesting to note the notion of permanent war, since it denotes a permanent enemy. In the current geopolitical structure, the clear enemy is Western civilization, its values, culture, political system, and ideology.

China and Russia are winning the ‘hybrid’ war. Sadly, the West hasn’t noticed

The Sydney Morning Herald · Peter Hartcher · September 29, 2025

September 30, 2025 — 5.00am

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Lenin was supposed to have been speaking about clearing landmines when he said: “Probe with bayonets. If you encounter mush, proceed; if you encounter steel, withdraw.”

He might never have spoken those words, but no matter. It’s an excellent metaphor for the strategy that Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are applying to the democratic West.

Illustration by Dionne GainCredit:

Both Moscow and Beijing are probing with the bayonet of “hybrid” or unconventional war – using flexible combinations of military and non-military methods, overt and covert, to test, destabilise and weaken rivals.

It’s aggressive, but the individual actions usually fall beneath the conventional definition of armed combat. This allows democracies to pretend that it’s not war, so let’s not worry. That’s called the “mush” response, and that’s why it works so well.

“This has been something they’ve been engaging in against the West – including Australia – for two decades,” observes Mick Ryan, the prominent strategist and retired Australian Army major general. He includes North Korea and Iran as practitioners.

The current showcase is Europe. On the weekend, Denmark reported that unidentified drones had appeared in the air above its major military bases. It announced a ban on all drone use this week, fearing risks to the two major summits it’s due to host.

It was Denmark’s third drone alarm in a week, and it was one of only five European countries in a month to suffer incursions from either the Russian air force or drones strongly suspected of Russian origin. The headline in The Economist magazine on the weekend summed it up: “Russia is violating Europe’s skies with impunity”.

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping greet each other in Tianjin in August.Credit: AP

This is no coincidence. As a report by the Institute for International Strategic Studies reported last month, quite separately to the air incursions: “Russian sabotage operations in Europe have increased their range of targets and severity of attacks. The number of attacks almost quadrupled from 2023 to 2024.”

Putin started more than a decade ago. Remember his annexation of Crimea? Instead of deploying his army openly, he sent so-called “green men” – Russian troops dressed in unmarked uniforms. This is a hybrid tactic. The West’s response was so pathetic that he was encouraged to mount Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Since then, he has intensified his hybrid campaign against Europe. Tactics include assassinations, mass disinformation campaigns via social media, cyberattack, weaponised immigration movements, cutting of undersea fibre-optic cables in the Baltic Sea, and jamming or spoofing of European GPS systems, endangering civilian aircraft.

Sabotage targets have included energy systems, water facilities, banking networks, health systems. Lithuania this month charged 15 people with ties to Russian military intelligence with placing explosive parcels on cargo planes. The packages started ground fires in Germany, Poland and Britain last year.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk” This is “the closest we have been to open conflict since World War II.”Credit: AP

The leader with the greatest credibility in fighting Putin, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, said on the weekend that Putin was preparing to launch armed warfare against a European nation: “Putin will not wait to finish his war in Ukraine. He will open up some other direction. Nobody knows where. He wants that.”

What he did not say is that Putin has been emboldened since US President Donald Trump rolled out the red carpet for him, welcoming the indicted war criminal to America last month. Zelensky is too diplomatic to say so; Bloomberg News, however, has reported Kremlin insiders as saying just that.

Ukraine this month spotted 92 drones flying towards Poland in a “choreographed” way. It intercepted most. Nineteen crossed into Polish territory, where the Poles shot four down. Poland is one of the most alarmed and best-armed countries of Europe.

Polish prime minister Donald Tusk said that “this situation brings us the closest we have been to open conflict since World War II”. The Europeans haven’t been entirely passive. But they have yet to find the “steel” to stop Putin. A senior Danish official remarked to me a couple of months ago that Europeans were the proverbial frog in the pot. “The water is boiling but when will we jump?”

How can Europeans have been so slow and hesitant to confront Putin’s aggression? A new report from the Netherlands contains the answer in its title: “Blinded by Bias”.

Policymakers failed to foresee Moscow’s full invasion of Ukraine because they “found it extremely hard to envisage an event that ran counter to deeply ingrained assumptions which, it turned out, affected their perceptions and clouded their judgment,” says the report by The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies.

It quotes a former Dutch official as saying that “it was just beyond imagination”. Now the Europeans are having their imaginations and biases challenged once more by Putin’s intensified hybrid aggression.

China’s program of hybrid war has been running for longer and has been more successful. It has enfolded large areas of the world’s most valuable commercial waterway, the South China Sea, and built new military bases on reclaimed land while intimidating the US out of any forceful response. It has subdued half a dozen nations and counts Russia itself as one of its vassal states. All without a shot fired.

Mick Ryan says that China is probing Australia with the bayonet of its hybrid warfare, too. After a spirited start at confronting this in 2017 under the Turnbull government with laws on foreign interference and espionage and the banning of a Chinese billionaire, Australia has fallen into a “deep complacency”, says Ryan.

“The Australian people will continue to be kept in the dark by the Australian government because it allows the government to keep domestic spending high and defence spending low. All we talk about is ‘stabilising’ the relationship, and the Chinese love to hear that.

“We have the same blind spots and biases in the Pacific” as in Europe, he says. “Having plain conversations and talking about the ‘w’ word” – war – “is very important”.

A precept of the ancient Chinese clan whose collective wisdom is published under the name of Sun Tzu says: “If one party is at war with another, and the other party does not realise it is at war, the party who knows it’s at war almost always has the advantage and usually wins.”

Peter Hartcher is international editor.

Peter Hartcher is political editor and international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.

The Sydney Morning Herald · Peter Hartcher · September 29, 2025

15. Nine Bodies Turned Up at a Green Beret Outpost. What Really Happened?

This is so very painful. Another very long read.

Nine Bodies Turned Up at a Green Beret Outpost. What Really Happened?

In 2012, after a team member was nearly killed, a Special Forces unit went on a rampage that might have been one of the worst war crimes in recent U.S. history.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/magazine/2012-green-beret-killings-nerkh-war-crimes.html?unlocked_article_code=1.qE8.PeKd.Y8VbjFepeK3z&smid=url-share

NY Times · Matthieu Aikins · September 30, 2025

Naimatullah at the site in Afghanistan where the remains of his brothers were found.

America’s Vigilantes

In 2012, after a team member was nearly killed, a Special Forces unit went on a rampage that might have been one of the worst war crimes in recent U.S. history.

Naimatullah at the site in Afghanistan where the remains of his brothers were found.Credit...

Photographs by Victor J. Blue

Sept. 30, 2025

On Nov. 21, 2012, Zikria, an Afghan working for U.S. Special Forces in Nerkh, dragged a suspect out of the office of the local intelligence service. The suspect’s name was Sayid Mohammad, and the Afghan forces had detained him earlier in the evening after finding bombmaking components in his possession. Zikria had gotten word and went to take the suspect into custody.

Listen to this article, read by Malcolm Hillgartner

The team of Green Berets that Zikria was working for had been deployed for nearly three months in Nerkh, a farming district in Wardak Province that was a little over an hour’s drive from Kabul, the capital. They were from Bravo Company, of the Third Special Forces Group’s First Battalion, the same unit as Mathew Golsteyn, an acclaimed war hero who was then under investigation for the death of a prisoner.

Almost a month earlier, the team’s most experienced soldier had been seriously wounded in a firefight. Since then, the Green Berets had been aggressively rounding up local insurgents. They didn’t trust the Afghan authorities, who they feared would release their enemies. “There was no trust in the courts,” Zikria told me, “so we were doing everything in the mountains.”

According to Zikria and two other Afghans who worked for the Green Berets, he took Mohammad to the U.S. base across the road.

“I told him, ‘Look, you’re not in the N.D.S. office now,’” Zikria said, referring to the Afghan intelligence service. “‘This is a Special Forces camp.’”

Zikria said he took Mohammad to a tent, where he laid into him with his fists and boots. As Zikria recalled, two Americans at the base came to observe the interrogation of their latest captive, whom an informant had also identified as a Taliban operative. One was the Green Beret who had taken on his wounded teammate’s leadership role, Sgt. First Class Jaison Eggleston. Eggleston trusted Zikria, who also went by the nickname Jacob, but he was worried because Mohammad had already been in N.D.S. custody.

“He was like, ‘Jacob, release this guy,’” Zikria said. But Zikria argued that the man had American and Afghan blood on his hands. How could they hand him back to corrupt local officials? Finally, he said, Eggleston shrugged and left the tent.

According to Zikria, whose account is published here for the first time, Sgt. First Class David Kaiser, a newcomer to the team who had taken over intelligence duties from Eggleston, seemed eager to kill the man. “He was like, ‘Hey, Jacob, get done.’” (Eggleston and Kaiser did not respond to requests for comment.)

When he was finished with the interrogation, Zikria stepped back. He said he watched as Kaiser and several Afghans beat Mohammad to death with wooden clubs, leaving the floor spattered with blood. (He made a similar accusation to U.S. investigators.)

Zikria and the other Afghans zipped up the corpse in a black body bag, hauled it out into the darkness and buried it in a shallow trench not far from the base’s walls. It was not the first grave they dug near the base, and it would not be the last.

A site near the former Special Forces base in Nerkh where human remains were found.

Over the course of America’s longest war, special operators like the ones Zikria worked for in Nerkh came to redefine the nation’s military culture. Often stationed deep in hostile territory, these Green Berets were celebrated as heroes in their fight against the Taliban in a difficult and unconventional war. But they were also dogged by accusations of lawless behavior and extrajudicial killings.

The details of some of these incidents are well known. Golsteyn’s case would become infamous when the Army’s investigation of him became public and he was pardoned by President Trump. But the full extent of what happened in Nerkh has never been publicly revealed. Mohammad’s killing was just one in a series of disappearances and executions that Nerkh residents accused the Special Forces of committing. Some villagers were rounded up in large-scale sweeps and taken to the American base, never to be seen alive again; others were detained individually on missions. A group of the missing would come to be known as the Nerkh Nine, and according to witnesses, photo and video evidence and Afghan police and autopsy records, their remains were later found buried outside the former Special Forces base.

A poster of the Nerkh Nine, who went missing after being detained.

Yet the U.S. military was adamant that the Green Berets were innocent of wrongdoing. “All I can say is that we had absolutely nothing to do with that man’s death,” a U.S. military spokesman told The Times shortly after Mohammad’s body was unearthed inside a black body bag in May 2013. Three investigations by the Special Forces exonerated the team while it was still stationed in Nerkh. The files of these inquiries, which The Times obtained through a lawsuit, suggest that the Green Berets’ commanders overlooked evidence of misconduct. After they were cleared, members of the team and their superiors were decorated and promoted. A separate criminal inquiry lasted nine years before being closed by command without charges in 2022. In their statements to investigators, the team’s leaders denied any wrongdoing.

The accusations were dismissed as insurgent propaganda; the military insisted that the people of Nerkh were liars. But a wealth of previously unreported evidence suggests that they were the ones telling the truth.

After years of denied requests for the military’s investigations, The Times sued to obtain nearly 2,000 pages of documents, including interview transcripts, photos and detainee files. They reveal that locals were not the only ones who accused the Green Berets of crimes. Army criminal investigators also recorded accusations against members of the team by other U.S. service members.

In response to detailed queries about Nerkh, a spokeswoman for Army Special Operations Command confirmed that the soldiers involved were cleared of misconduct. “We have fully investigated and adjudicated the cases you cover,” Lt. Col. Allie Scott wrote. “We are confident our actions stand up to the strictest scrutiny."

I first reported on the Nerkh case in 2013 for Rolling Stone when I was living in Kabul as a freelance journalist, but the end of the U.S. war in Afghanistan brought a new opportunity to understand the truth. Over the past four years, I interviewed two dozen former members of Special Operations, including a retired Green Beret general who accused his leadership of covering for the team. Over several visits to Nerkh in 2022, I interviewed scores of witnesses in order to reconstruct a detailed account of how the disappearances and killings took place. I also spoke with several of the Special Forces’ translators, including Zikria, who provided evidence that they had been part of a secret proxy force that helped carry out the killings of the Nerkh Nine and others.

Taliban fighters in 2022 in the district center of Nerkh, which was destroyed in fighting the year before. The former Special Forces base was across the road.

What happened in Nerkh was most likely one of the largest known cases of unlawful killing by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, ranking behind only the 2005 massacre in Haditha, where Marines allegedly killed around two dozen civilians, and a rampage in Kandahar in 2012 by Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, an infantryman who sneaked out of a Special Forces base at night and murdered 16 people.

Unlike those episodes, the killings in Nerkh were not the work of young troops reacting wildly to a sudden enemy attack, nor of an individual who snapped while intoxicated. They were part of a methodical campaign carried out over months by an elite, experienced force, one that grew out of rule-breaking practices that were long tolerated by Special Forces commanders. What happened at Nerkh might have been exceptional, but it was not isolated. And like the massacre at My Lai during the Vietnam War, the critical lesson of Nerkh is that similar crimes of lesser magnitude could have been committed without the American public ever knowing.

Back in the United States, the nine-year criminal investigation would ultimately become entangled with Golsteyn’s murder case; the two cases form part of a much larger story about misconduct among elite units. Their starkly different treatments by commanders illustrate a culture of rule-breaking on the battlefield and impunity after the fact. Today, the implications of this vigilantism among special operators have reverberated in the United States.

The Family of Sayid Mohammad

Sayid Mohammad was killed and later found buried outside the Special Forces base in a black body bag.

Sher Mohammad, Mohammad’s father.

Saifullah, Mahmouda and Ehsanullah, the children of Mohammad.

In September 2012, Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha 3124 deployed to Nerkh, a strategic area for militant attacks on the provincial capital of Wardak and, beyond it, Kabul. They set up at Combat Outpost Nerkh, a compound of plywood cabins, metal sheds and shipping containers surrounded by concertina wire and earth-filled barriers. During the troop surge in 2009, Army engineers built the base, which commanded a view of the valley that stretched east to the provincial capital and west up into the narrow passes that remained insurgent country.

Bearded, burly and wearing a combination of uniforms and civilian clothes, the operators from O.D.A. 3124 were very different from the conventional troops who occupied the base for the previous three years. They favored speed and firepower; instead of lumbering, mine-resistant vehicles, they drove nimbler Humvees and four-wheelers fitted with machine guns and grenade launchers. Although they were new to Nerkh, they were from one of the most experienced and storied Green Beret units that fought in Afghanistan: Bravo Company, part of First Battalion, of the Third Special Forces Group.

AMERICA’S VIGILANTES

A four-part investigation of the culture of impunity in the U.S. Special Forces.

Part I

A Green Beret’s Confession

Reading now

Part II

Nine Bodies on a U.S. Base

Lawlessness Comes Home

Reading now

For most of the war’s first decade, Third Group had a lead role in the Special Forces mission in Afghanistan. Its decorated soldiers rose to positions of influence within Special Operations and the Army. First Battalion, known as the Desert Eagles, had been sent year after year to the Taliban’s stronghold in the south, where it faced fierce fighting. Its Bravo Company was assigned to the remote and mountainous Uruzgan Province, called the Wild West by the Green Berets.

In Uruzgan, the Special Forces deliberately placed some firebases deep in hostile territory; often a single team, usually composed of 12 operators specializing in roles like engineering, intelligence and communications, would live there, accompanied by mechanics, infantry members and cooks. Before the Nerkh mission, O.D.A. 3124 had regularly deployed to Firebase Cobra in Uruzgan, which could take two days to reach by road from the provincial capital through terrain controlled by the Taliban, meaning it could often be supplied only by helicopter.

What happened in Nerkh was an escalation of practices that the Special Forces developed in response to fighting a guerrilla war in remote terrain. Although they bent or even broke Army rules, they were often tacitly authorized to do so by their commanders, who understood that it was for the sake of the mission. “That’s the nature of who we are,” said Paul Toolan, a retired Third Group lieutenant colonel who served six deployments in Afghanistan. “We are the guys who figure out how to get the mission done.”

Shadi Khan, a farmworker, in 2023 in Gorgin, where an operation by American and Afghan forces in 2008 left six men dead.Credit...Victor J. Blue

The danger was that if not constrained by strong leadership, these practices could slide into outright lawlessness or corruption. “You’re always on that razor’s edge,” said Toolan, a decorated veteran who was not present in Nerkh or involved in any other case of alleged misconduct. “Any rule that I broke, I broke in such a way that I was like, I have righteousness on my side.”

According to many of the operators I spoke to, faced with increasingly restrictive rules around combat and detainees, some Green Beret units developed a variety of workarounds, like holding prisoners under the ostensible control of partner Afghan forces so they could be questioned. Some operators carried “drop guns” or “throwdowns,” Kalashnikov-type rifles they could plant on a body to avoid questions after a killing

No other big organization in the Army is as egalitarian or dominated by its enlisted ranks as the Special Forces. Authority within a team had to be earned through experience and force of personality. Every O.D.A. struck a balance between the senior enlisted team sergeant and the captain who was nominally in charge. In 3124, it was weighted far in favor of the “team daddy,” Jeff Batson, a widely respected veteran who had been with the unit since 2001 and was on his ninth deployment, according to his service records.

Some of what I learned about 3124’s internal dynamics came from Becca Hinds, who was a civil affairs staff sergeant and Special Operations medic with Bravo Company during its 2012 deployment (she later married and changed her last name to Erickson). “It was Jeff’s team,” she recalled. By contrast, the team’s newly arrived captain was Timothy Egan, a former military police officer in his late 20s, fresh out of Special Forces training and anxious, it seemed to Hinds, to get the approval of Batson and the team. (Neither Batson nor Egan responded to requests for comment; Egan denied wrongdoing to investigators, while Batson invoked his right to legal counsel in declining to speak to them, according to the case file.)

“Tim was brand-new,” Hinds recalled. “He was not yet in the trusted circle.” David Kaiser, an engineer who had also done some intelligence training, was also new. “The team,” Hinds said, “was very much divided between the guys who’d been there for those previous deployments and the guys who had not.”

Hinds, who had trained with 3124 in the United States, was in a romantic relationship with the second-most-experienced member of the team, Jaison Eggleston, a stocky, auburn-haired Green Beret who had taken over Batson’s old role as the intelligence sergeant, charged with tracking the enemy and questioning prisoners. Eggleston had been deploying with the Desert Eagles since 2004. During training, he and Hinds, who was 33 at the time, got into intense discussions about military intelligence: She planned to try out for an elite Army unit when she got back. A spark kindled between them. “I was young,” she said. “I thought this was love.”

Jaison Eggleston and Becca Hinds in Logar Province in 2012.

Hinds was impressed with Batson’s maturity and how he was able to unite the team, but during the training, she sensed that he was worried about their mission. “He knew his guys had been deployed too much,” she said. The years of combat had taken their toll; Hinds noticed that Eggleston would explode over minor incidents. “There was a lot of rage.”

Over the course of their mission, Hinds would be confronted with evidence of misconduct by the team and would later tell military investigators that she thought the accusations of killings could be true. But at the time, she trusted 3124. Many were veteran operators. And Batson and Eggleston seemed reassured by the fact that they would be joined again by a group of loyal Afghans who worked for them before. Hinds recalled them telling the team about it.

“They said: ‘Don’t worry about it. We’re getting those guys. They’re going to handle business.’”

Although working “by, with and through” foreign allies is a basic part of the Green Beret doctrine, proxies like the ones that worked for 3124 in Nerkh were not part of the Afghan government forces. Proxy forces were instead paid for by the U.S. government; within the U.S. military, the Special Forces engaged in the longest and most widespread use of them in Afghanistan.

The legal authority under which they fought was complicated. The Special Forces hired hundreds of Afghan security guards to defend outposts like Firebase Cobra. But I found in my reporting that, in violation of U.S. rules, they were often used to provide firepower on offensive missions. Translators like Zikria were also used the same way — the companies that supplied them even charged a higher rate for “combat interpreters” — and in contrast to conventional forces, the Special Forces allowed teams to arm their “terps” with assault rifles.

While these proxy forces had essential local knowledge and were more trusted than the Afghan Army or police force by the Green Berets, they could entangle the U.S. military in vendettas and corruption schemes. Because of the secrecy that shrouded their use, much of their involvement in offensive operations and intelligence collection has never been reported. I spoke to more than two dozen former guards and translators, including the two who led 3124’s proxy force at Nerkh: Zikria and another who, out of fear of retaliation, asked to be identified as Kazem, the name he was given in a book about the U.S. withdrawal in 2021 by Scott Mann, a retired Special Forces lieutenant colonel who served in Uruzgan. (Mann told me he was unaware of Kazem’s connection to the killings in Nerkh.)

The site of Firebase Cobra, a former Special Forces base, in Uruzgan in 2023.

I first met Zikria when I reported my article in 2013, and we have spoken repeatedly in the years since. Kazem got in touch through Facebook in 2017, and we first met in person in Kabul in 2021. They provided me with extensive information about the Green Berets’ use of proxies at Firebase Cobra and in Nerkh and how practices of workarounds and rule-breaking escalated into a spree of killings and other abuses. I corroborated their accounts through conversations with American and Afghan sources, with details from military investigations and with photos and videos given to me by Kazem.

Zikria, who has used the surnames Noorzai and Kandahari, is a tall, gaunt native of Kandahar, part of the city’s Shia minority. He was recruited as a teenager in 2004 at Camp Gecko, the base the Special Forces occupied alongside the C.I.A., and served as a driver and an interpreter. “Third Group made me Zikria Kandahari,” he said. “I was nothing. I was a kid.”

In 2009, he was sent to Firebase Cobra just as 3124 was arriving on its latest six-month rotation. He quickly bonded with Batson, whose son shared Zikria’s nickname, Jacob. Batson, Zikria told me, was like a father to him and cultivated his aptitude for working sources.

Kazem, a former Afghan Army officer, arrived the year after Zikria. He had also been working with the Americans in Kandahar, where he became part of a secretive proxy force the Special Forces were creating. “We were like mercenaries, going and smoking the bad guys,” Kazem said.

A photo of Zikria, one of the Afghans working with the Special Forces in Nerkh.

The proxy-force program force was called the Civil Mine Reduction Group, but its name obscured its dual nature: Locals were trained to defuse the improvised explosive devices that were the guerrillas’ most effective weapon, but they also served as a clandestine strike force and intelligence asset. The C.M.R.G.’s wages were paid through a classified military program now known as 127e, which provides for direct payments to foreign armed groups around the world, allowing for surreptitious U.S. command and control.

Ray Lake, a retired Green Beret who helped train the C.M.R.G. as a contractor, said that it often operated as a “nonattributable force.” Members used local clothes and “deniable” vehicles and learned to carry out pseudo-operations, a tactic in which counterinsurgents mimic guerrillas; they were also trained as intelligence operatives. “There were a lot of very smart C.M.R.G. operators who were more than capable of conducting the full myriad of intelligence missions, photography and targeting, you name it,” Lake said.

At Firebase Cobra, Kazem worked closely with its force of Afghan guards, and soon a subset of them were trained to form a C.M.R.G. Out on missions with the C.M.R.G., Kazem said, he routinely beat information out of suspects and had killed some he believed to be guilty. Firebase Cobra’s guard force was feared by many locals, and from time to time, vague allegations of abuses reached Kabul. During the war, few foreign journalists were able to access the remote areas where Special Forces had bases like Cobra.

But in more than a dozen interviews carried out by The Times in 2022 in the villages surrounding Firebase Cobra, witnesses and former government officials accused the Special Forces and their proxies of battlefield executions and the killing or disappearing of detainees, smaller in scale but similar to what happened in Nerkh — including a raid in a village called Gorgin on Nov. 14, 2008, in which, according to the results of an Afghan government investigation that I obtained, five captives were executed during an operation and a sixth later died in custody.

“Human rights people never came — the road wasn’t safe,” said Naeem Khan, who served as a local police chief. “The foreigners had guards who did their work for them, killing people.”

The Family of Mohammad Mansoor

Mohammad Mansoor was killed after being detained by the Special Forces in 2012.

Mohammad Usman, Mohammad Mansoor’s father, and Mohammad Jalal, Mansoor’s brother.

Ghairat and Mujtaba, Mansoor’s sons.

Before O.D.A. 3124 arrived in Nerkh in the fall of 2012, former interpreters were in touch through Facebook with a warrant officer named Michael Woods, another Firebase Cobra veteran who was the team’s deputy leader, a role focused on administration and logistics. Bravo Company was a small world. Golsteyn told me that Woods had been assigned to his team as a deputy when he arrived as a new Special Forces officer in 2008. Golsteyn said that he took issue with Woods’s performance and that Woods responded by trying to blackmail him, claiming that he would make his own complaint to Golsteyn’s boss. “I was a new captain, and he just thought he could run me,” Golsteyn said; instead, he fired him from his team. (Despite multiple attempts, Woods could not be reached for comment. A letter sent by courier to a house he owns was refused delivery.)

Because it was Woods’s first assignment as a warrant officer, a bad job evaluation might have ended his career. But Golsteyn said the Desert Eagles commander at the time, Lt. Col. Mark Miller, pressured him to change his decision. “S.F. doesn’t really get rid of its trash,” Golsteyn told me. “It just keeps flushing and recycling, moving around.” He said Woods was quietly shuffled to another job. “I said, ‘Sir, this decision is going to come back to haunt you.’” (Miller declined to comment.)

After being contacted by the team, Kazem and Zikria arrived in Nerkh in September. The Desert Eagles’ deployment in 2012 brought them into less isolated territory. With the U.S. troop surge winding down, the Green Berets had been assigned to assist the withdrawal by building local forces while fighting the enemy, and the Desert Eagles’ deployment in 2012 took them to less isolated territory. They were sent to the east of the country; their headquarters was at the main U.S. base at Bagram Air Field, while the battalion’s Bravo Company, responsible for provinces close to the capital, was headquartered in Logar Province and spread some of its teams across individual districts like Nerkh in neighboring Wardak Province.

Zikria told me that because 3124 hadn’t gotten authorization yet to form a C.M.R.G. force in its area, he and Batson hatched a plan: They would sell some of its fuel-tanker deliveries on the black market to fund their proxy force and its intelligence operations. “I was taking money from fuel for myself, for my boys, for my sources,” Zikria said.

While breaking the rules around operational funds for the sake of the mission had become common practice in Third Group during the war, the alleged plan to embezzle fuel to fund an off-the-books strike force showed just how far it had escalated. Zikria and Kazem claimed that both the team’s captain, Egan, and his deputy, Woods, were aware of the scheme. (To investigators, Egan and Woods denied improperly using funds and said that Zikria volunteered to work in exchange for food and shelter.) “They knew we were not selling the fuel to keep the money in our pockets,” Kazem told me.

The C.M.R.G. force in Nerkh grew to include around two dozen locals, recruited by Zikria and Kazem. Photos I obtained show them armed with a mix of local and American weapons, including M4 rifles. They seized motorcycles from locals they suspected to be insurgents. When 3124 rolled out on missions, the C.M.R.G. rode ahead of it, sweeping for mines and ambushes. The proxy force also conducted missions on its own, and members came and went from Combat Outpost Nerkh at all hours as they pleased, to the surprise of some of the conventional Army personnel assisting 3124, according to later interviews with investigators.

Although the start of the deployment in Nerkh was relatively quiet, fighting was fierce in the next valley over in Chak district. A Green Beret from Bravo Company was killed there at the end of September, and two more were killed a week later. In late October, the United States began Operation Triple Action, and some of 3124’s operators and their Afghan proxies were flown in to Chak to set up a blocking position. On Oct. 23, another Green Beret from their company was killed. The next day, when 3124’s position came under attack, Batson led a counterassault. Backed by helicopter gunships, Batson — who would be awarded the Silver Star for valor for his actions in Chak — led his force on four-wheelers and motorcycles into the valley’s dense forest, accompanied by Zikria, Kazem and a third C.M.R.G. fighter.

In the ensuing gunfight, Batson was shot in both legs, shattering his femur and puncturing an artery. Kazem got off his bike to help him, and soon the two were pinned down by enemy fire. Zikria charged to their position on foot, spraying gunfire to cover them. “I got both of them out from the Taliban and saved their lives,” Zikria told me.

A chopper flew Batson to a base in Logar Province, where Hinds and the medical staff were waiting. As Bravo Company’s senior medic, Hinds had dealt with casualty after casualty: By the end of the deployment, seven soldiers with Bravo Company would be dead and more wounded and maimed. “It was the nightmare trip from hell,” she said. The staff operated on Batson, and then he was flown to Bagram. After he was evacuated to a U.S. military hospital in Germany, Batson survived and returned to the United States, but 3124 had lost its center of gravity.

Rather than send in someone more senior from outside the team, its commanders tapped Eggleston as Batson’s successor. Hinds, who was based in Logar but kept in touch with her boyfriend over chats on Facebook and by phone, said he seemed eager to go after the enemy.

“You could tell he was angry,” Hinds recalled. “Like, ‘We’ve got to avenge Jeff.’”

The Family of Mehrab Khan

Mehrab Khan, a local driver, was killed after being detained by the Special Forces in 2012.

Spogmai, the widow of Khan.

Hekmatullah and Zahidullah, sons of Khan.

Ahmadullah, son of Khan.

Nagina and Asma, daughters of Khan.

According to military documents and interviews with members of 3124’s Special Operations task force, the team’s behavior changed after Batson was injured. They seemed more suspicious, even toward fellow Americans. “They were very insular and closed off,” said a Special Operations officer deployed in Wardak, who requested anonymity because he was still in the military. When he visited the base, he got the impression that Woods had taken charge rather than Egan, the inexperienced young captain.

As the acting team sergeant, Eggleston was now leading operations, and he clashed with a regular Army intelligence officer at Combat Outpost Nerkh who was advising Afghan forces. Eggleston had him kicked off the base, claiming that he had compromised their security, but the officer would later tell investigators that they had argued over 3124’s practice of detaining suspects without authorization. (The intelligence officer, who was not accused of wrongdoing, did not respond to requests for comment.)

O.D.A.s like 3124 were supposed to hold people for only a day or two, at which point they either had to hand them over to the Afghan government or transfer them to the U.S. base at Bagram. But according to former operators I spoke to, some Special Forces teams would circumvent this rule by having their partner forces hang on to the prisoners for them. Once again, a common rule-breaking workaround would escalate into much worse.

Although 3124 would claim that detainees were being held by a partner Afghan National Army company that occupied a corner of Combat Outpost Nerkh, according to Zikria, Kazem, former detainees and other witnesses, that was itself a smoke screen for unauthorized detention on the American side. There was plenty of space on the base, which had been built for a much larger infantry unit. The detainees were typically kept off the books in a plywood-walled room across from the tent where the unofficial C.M.R.G. force slept, and they were shuttled around the base in an S.U.V. with tinted windows.

Several former detainees I spoke to claimed that Americans took part in their questioning. Zikria and Kazem said the team’s leadership — Egan, Woods and Eggleston — all participated in interrogations, as did Kaiser. Kaiser had limited field experience with the Special Forces, and Zikria and Kazem said he seemed eager to prove how tough he was.

“Dave was beating up people; I was beating them up with him together,” Kazem said. “If you’re loyal to your team or country, sometimes you have to do something against the law.”

If the Afghan Army was really in control of the detainees, as 3124 later claimed, it would have been required to hand them over to the local authorities within 48 hours, and they would then have been transferred to the provincial capital. The fact that this did not happen suggests that the detainees were effectively in the custody of 3124 and perhaps indicates the reason: By that point in the war, many of the Green Berets and their proxies had lost faith in the Afghan judicial system, which was susceptible to threats and bribery.

Kazem argued that vigilante action was necessary to save his country and that the Taliban had committed worse crimes. “Mercy to the wolf is oppression to the sheep,” he said, citing an Afghan proverb. “The enemy doesn’t observe the law.”

Children outside a former government checkpoint in Nerkh in 2022.

It was true that insurgents who were sent to the courts were sometimes released, as shown by the case of Mohammad Qasim, the first of the Nerkh Nine to go missing. Qasim was stopped by a joint U.S. and Afghan Army patrol while leaving a wedding in Nerkh on Nov. 6, 2012, according to his family and a U.N. investigation I obtained. A former insurgent, he might have been identified by 3124 through a U.S. biometric database, which would have shown that he had previously been detained and sentenced to prison for a bombing against American forces. Qasim’s brother confirmed that he had been in the Taliban and told me that the family had paid a bribe for his release.

Zikria, who recognized a photo of Qasim and said he was held in detention on 3124’s side of the base, recalled Eggleston saying that the man had American blood on his hands and had been released by a corrupt court. “He got killed,” Zikria said. When I pressed him about Qasim and several other cases, Zikria was vague about who actually committed each of the murders; he insisted that it didn’t matter and that the Green Berets knew about everything that happened. “They got killed by the team,” Zikria said. “Not by a person.”

Zikria told me that he still felt loyal to members of the team and never accused anyone but Kaiser of actually killing someone, an allegation he also made to investigators. Kazem, too, professed his loyalty to 3124 and refused to specify who had committed each killing. Regardless of who was personally involved, according to the legal principle of command responsibility, military leaders are responsible for war crimes carried out by their subordinates, and a proxy force like the C.M.R.G. would have been under the Green Berets’ command and control. And if, as a wealth of evidence from witnesses and military documents suggest, the Nerkh Nine were taken into 3124’s custody and never released, then the team’s leadership would bear responsibility for their fate.

The Family of Mohammad Qasim

Mohammad Qasim, a Taliban fighter, was killed after being detained by the Special Forces in 2012.

Sulaiman, Qasim’s son.

Aqila, Qasim’s widow.

Bibi Zainab, Qasim’s daughter.

Ahmadshah next to the grave of his brother, Mohammad Qasim, a Taliban fighter who was killed after being detained by the Special Forces in 2012.

After those who were judged to be guilty at Combat Outpost Nerkh were killed, Zikria told me, he and the C.M.R.G. disposed of the bodies in a zone outside the camp walls that locals were forbidden to enter — an activity that would have been visible on the base’s high-powered cameras. He said they often used irrigation ditches and other features of the terrain. “The earth was too hard,” he said. “You could just dig a little bit and just bury and go.”

The team’s distrust in their Afghan allies also came from intercepted phone data, and they came to believe that many of Nerkh’s government officials were in league with the insurgents. As the weeks went on, the team’s sense of being surrounded by enemies grew.

In early November, around the same time that Qasim was killed, a white-bearded village malik, or headman, named Mohammad Qandi was arrested at his home. The Special Forces team told investigators that Qandi was detained and held by the Afghan Army. But according to Qandi, as well as Zikria and other witnesses, he was taken by Zikria and the C.M.R.G. and held on the U.S. side of the base by the O.D.A., which suspected that he was a weapons trafficker for the insurgents. Qandi was well connected in the area, and that night, several local security commanders, including the district police chief, arrived to ask for his release.

An excerpt from Qandi’s detainee file that claims that he was arrested and held by the Afghan Army, not U.S. forces.

Qandi, son of REDACTED CT5152822 was originally detained by the ANA on or about 10 NOV 12 on a unilateral operation because Quandi was a HIG leader and weapons facilitator...

The chief, Abdul Hadi Nangylai, told me that the meeting quickly went sour. The team accused the commanders of colluding with the enemy and said that insurgents had fired on them with ammunition that the United States had supplied to local government forces. The officials left without Qandi.

According to military records, Qandi would spend six weeks in detention before being transferred to Bagram, where he would make claims of being tortured. Zikria scoffed at that. “I beat him, but just normally,” Zikria said. “He was an old man. I didn’t want him to die.” Zikria said Qandi was held that long because he had promised to reveal some weapons caches in the area. But Zikria would come to regret not killing him when he had the chance. “Qandi made a lot of problems for us.”

Mohammad Qandi in Nerkh in 2022.

On Nov. 10, O.D.A. 3124 was asked to go to a meeting with officials in the provincial capital to discuss complaints made by residents of assaults and thefts. As the O.D.A. and C.M.R.G. convoy went around a bend in the road, someone detonated a command-wire I.E.D., wounding a translator and a Green Beret, who was hit in the face by a piece of shrapnel.

The team charged from their vehicles into the surrounding village, a cluster of mud houses called Deh Afghanan. They would later claim that they got into a firefight and killed an enemy combatant, but Zikria said the C.M.R.G. caught someone with the wire and executed him — a shopkeeper named Gul Rahim, who locals said was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and wasn’t involved in the bombing. “I told my guys, Kill anyone suspicious in the area,” Zikria said.

My interviews with locals, including members of the Taliban in Nerkh, showed how blurry the line between fighter and civilian in a civil war could be. At the time, insurgents in the lower valley had to operate underground — there was too much pressure from government forces and their American allies. To assist them in carrying out I.E.D. attacks and assassinations, their primary methods, experienced cadres might informally recruit friends and relatives. Teenage boys served as scouts and runners for their older brothers and cousins. As a result, Taliban membership was nebulous.

To track down the enemy, 3124 and its Afghan counterparts relied on paid informants, data from cellphones and biometric evidence. “Sometimes we found fingerprints on pressure plates” of the I.E.D.s, Kazem said. “We would round the villagers up and check them.”

Ten days after being hit by the I.E.D. in Deh Afghanan, 3124 returned to the area. Early that morning, several dozen villagers, including a man named Naimatullah and his three brothers, were loaded into Afghan Army vehicles and driven to the district center, where they were lined up in a yard. The O.D.A. later told investigators that it was merely assisting the Afghans and didn’t take any detainees into custody, but to Naimatullah and the villagers, it seemed obvious that the Americans were running things.

Outside the former Special Forces base in Nerkh in 2022.

According to military records, the O.D.A. was able to check the villagers’ phone records over a satellite link with the Desert Eagles’ headquarters at Bagram. Naimatullah’s neighbor, a young man named Sherzai, was also detained that morning. His father worked for the Afghan intelligence service, but Sherzai was sympathetic to the local insurgents, some of whom had been his classmates or part of his martial-arts club. The team later reported that he had 200 phone conversations with an insurgent commander it had been searching for.

Most of the villagers were released, including Naimatullah. But his three brothers — two middle brothers, Sadiqullah and Ismatullah, and his youngest brother, Hikmatullah — as well as Sherzai were among those taken to Combat Outpost Nerkh. According to several of the detainees I spoke to, they were loaded into the back of an Afghan Army pickup truck, driven through the serpentine concrete barricades that led to the base’s main gate and dropped off with the sentries at the Afghan entrance. Over the next two days and nights, they were shuttled between there and the American side of the base, where they encountered Qandi. Eventually, Hikmatullah and several others were let go. But Sherzai and Qandi told me that the two remaining brothers, Sadiqullah and Ismatullah, were taken back to the U.S. side.

To reconstruct what happened to people on the American side of the base, I interviewed almost a dozen former captives and cross-referenced their testimony with military documents, including maps of Combat Outpost Nerkh. Because Sherzai and Qandi were eventually transferred to Bagram, I was able to request copies of their detainee files, which includes their photographs and results of exams conducted by 3124’s team medic. Sherzai said that about six days after Naimatullah’s two brothers were detained, they were removed from their cell one at a time and never returned. Zikria told me that after the brothers confessed to being insurgents, they were executed and buried outside the base.

In their protests on behalf of the Nerkh Nine, relatives would claim that the men detained by 3124 were innocent; to admit otherwise would be to lose any chance of redress. But when I visited after the fall of the Afghan government, I found it was possible to have more frank conversations. Some, like Qasim’s brother, proudly admitted that their dead relatives had fought the Americans; for others, the local Taliban confirmed it. Often in such cases, the family members had come to accept the deaths as a tragic but understandable outcome of the war, in which the Taliban had also carried out widespread extrajudicial killings.

But relatives who maintained that their loved ones were not insurgents were still bitterly angry. “They unfairly called us Taliban and took my brothers from me,” Naimatullah said. “We were neither Taliban then nor are we now.”

Proving someone’s innocence was harder, but no one I spoke to in Nerkh believed that Naimatullah’s brothers had been insurgents. Given the sloppiness of 3124 and the C.M.R.G.’s tactics, their limited local knowledge and their reliance on paid informants, it seems plausible that some of the people who were killed had no significant involvement with the insurgency.

The Family of Sidiqullah and Ismatullah

Husna holding a portrait of Sidiqullah, her father, who was killed after being detained by the Special Forces in 2012.

Hikmatullah, the younger brother of Sidiqullah and Ismatullah.

Naimatullah, the elder brother of Sidiqullah and Ismatullah.

Husna, the daughter of Sidiqullah.

Shukrullah, the son of Sidiqullah.

By late November 2012, complaints from locals about 3124 had reached American military officials in both Special Operations and the regular Army. The Special Operations officer in Wardak told me that he had included them in his daily reports to the Desert Eagles’ headquarters: allegations of beatings, property damage and theft. He said that at the time he thought it was most likely an attempt by insurgents to “politically defeat” the Special Forces team. “We always get stuff like this that will come from the civilian route,” he told me. “It’s a very effective tactic.”

This commonly held view within the military — that Afghans would lie about abuses — was not entirely unfounded, but it was also self-serving and meant that genuine complaints often fell on deaf ears. Then came a report on Nov. 22 that 3124’s commanders couldn’t ignore. Provincial officials told American officers in Wardak that they had a video of Zikria beating up a detainee who they claimed was murdered: Sayid Mohammad, the man later found in the black body bag.

According to Afghan police reports, Mohammad had been detained a day earlier by local forces. Zikria had stormed into the office of the Afghan intelligence service and demanded to know where the detainee was. Mohammad, Zikria told me, was sitting there like a guest, having tea, and when he answered rudely, Zikria became enraged and started punching and kicking him as, unknown to him, one of the intelligence officers recorded a video, which would later be provided to military investigators.

Alerts of a potential war crime by the Special Forces went up the chain of command. At Bravo Company’s headquarters in neighboring Logar, Hinds told me that their commander, Maj. Reid Furman, had already been concerned about 3124’s conduct in Nerkh. She said there were questions about whether the team was getting proper approval for its missions. “He would say things like, ‘What the hell is going on out there?’” Hinds said. (Furman, who was not accused of misconduct, referred a request for comment to Army Special Operations Command.)

Now the team was accused of a serious crime. Yet rather than seek to initiate a criminal or command investigation, Furman and his senior noncommissioned officer, Sgt. Maj. Haldon Huber, flew to Nerkh in early December to meet with the team. According to a log of their Facebook chats, Eggleston told Hinds that his command wanted to bring in a higher-ranking soldier to replace him as team sergeant but that both Egan and Woods had fought against it. He was being left in place for now. The team was briefly put on operational hold, meaning it couldn’t conduct missions.

But the hold didn’t last. On Dec. 5, the team was driving to the provincial capital on a resupply mission when it was hit by an I.E.D., in almost the same spot where the Green Beret was wounded by the blast a month earlier. The following morning, the team raided the area along with the Afghan Army and police force and went house to house to round up locals, taking 67 male villagers to the district center, some aboard a commandeered dump truck.

Snow had fallen, and the men shivered on their haunches in the cold yard for hours, waiting for the Americans to scan their fingerprints and check their phones. Once again, while the team would later claim that it was just supporting an operation by Afghan forces, several witnesses told me the Americans were in charge. Ten men were selected for further scrutiny at the base. Sherzai said the new detainees were brought together briefly in the wooden room with him and Qandi on the American side before being separated again. Through the thin plywood, he said, he could hear harrowing noises: people yelling and what sounded like they were being beaten and dunked in water. He and other witnesses told me that four men from the missing Nerkh Nine were detained by O.D.A. 3124 on Dec. 6: Mohammad Mansoor, Mehrab Khan, Mohammad Atiq and Mohammad Hassan.

The Family of Mohammad Hassan

Mohammad Hassan was killed after being detained by the Special Forces in 2012.

Hazrat Bibi, the widow of Hassan.

Jihad Yar, the brother of Hassan.

Rana, the daughter of Hassan.

Brothers Mohammad Idris and Abdul Waris, the sons of Hassan.

Hina, the daughter of Hassan.

Three days after the raid on Dec. 6, Qandi and Sherzai were blindfolded, taken out of their rooms and driven a short distance inside a vehicle. Both wondered if they were about to be killed. Then they heard the sound of a helicopter approaching. The team was sending them to Bagram. Zikria told me they had become worried because provincial officials were asking about the men’s whereabouts. “Captain Egan came to me many times,” Zikria said. “He was like, ‘Jacob, I’m getting phone calls from the higher-ups.’”

During the detainees’ intake at Bagram, U.S. medical staff noticed lacerations on Qandi’s wrists and Sherzai’s head. When each claimed that he was abused by American soldiers in Nerkh, mandatory reports were sent up the chain of command all the way to the Pentagon. Only now did the Special Forces begin an official investigation. Shortly after the detainee-abuse reports were filed, Eggleston was pulled off the team by Bravo Company and sent to the Desert Eagles’ headquarters at Bagram. (Huber, Bravo’s senior enlisted soldier, told me it was because of Eggleston’s poor performance and had nothing to do with the allegations.) On Dec. 15, the Special Operations headquarters assigned a major to go to Nerkh to look into claims of detainee abuse.

Around the same time, Zikria left Combat Outpost Nerkh. The U.S. military had sent out the equivalent of a wanted poster for him. When Hinds asked Eggleston where Zikria was, he replied: “Doing exactly what he should do. I have it all under control.” When the investigating officer arrived on Dec. 16, Zikria was nowhere to be found.

In a Facebook chat, Becca Hinds asked her boyfriend at the time, Jaison Eggleston, about the military's wanted poster for Zikria.

Becca

yeah.. your facebook freinds with a guy on a bolo list... you find nothing wrong with that?

Jaison

No i do not! He has fought with me for years. He saved Jeffs life. He saved Randy's life. He helped me roll up cells of bad guys. all this plus a lot more ...all this just in the three months we were here

Becca

i dont even know what to say

The major’s investigation was one of three carried out by the Special Forces chain of command that December, all of which exonerated the team. The matter was important enough that 3124’s chain of command in Afghanistan, including two Special Operations commanders who would later rise to three- and four-star generals, Col. Antonio Fletcher and Maj. Gen. Tony Thomas, participated in a video conference with the team on Dec. 17, according to one report. (Thomas declined a request for comment; Fletcher could not be reached.)

According to the reports and former military personnel I interviewed, officers at the Desert Eagles’ headquarters had seen members of the armed proxy force operating with 3124 in Nerkh, heard reports of misused funds and knew that detainees were being held at the base for far longer than permitted. How could the allegations have been entirely dismissed as lies?

The files show that the investigators accepted explanations that seemed to defy common sense, including that Zikria wasn’t being paid for his work, with the implication that the U.S. military wasn’t responsible for his actions. The team claimed that it had been trying to hire him, either as an interpreter or on the C.M.R.G. that the team “was starting up.” Egan and Woods told the investigator that, in the meantime, Zikria had volunteered his services in exchange for food and shelter.

In their statements to investigators, 3124's leaders claimed that Zikria was not being paid by the United States.

...His only compensation for working with the ODA is the food and shelter that they provided for him. He repeatedly stated to the ODA that he had such a long history with USSF that he was just happy to work with them.

“No further investigation is required,” wrote the investigator, whose findings were approved by the Desert Eagles’ commander, Lt. Col. Christopher Fox. (Fox declined to comment.)

In response to the allegations of detainee abuse, the team claimed that Qandi and Sherzai were captured earlier in November by the Afghan Army and that 3124 had taken them into custody only on Dec. 7 and sent them to Bagram two days later. The major, however, wrote that the two men “were held in the custody of ANA forces until 26 November,” the day they received their first medical screenings from the team. That apparently meant that, in the military’s own account, they had spent almost two weeks with 3124, during which time they were interrogated by the team and Sherzai received a head wound. Yet the major dismissed the detainees’ claims of abuse as “an established enemy tactic.” The third investigation also assessed that the accusations by locals in Wardak Province were insurgent propaganda and recommended a “robust Information Operation” campaign in response.

After I obtained the files from these early investigations, I discussed their contents with Thomas’s deputy commander, Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc. He said that Thomas had excluded him from the investigations and that he had never read the documents. A former Desert Eagles commander who retired in 2017, Bolduc was shocked by how the team had apparently violated regulations by having armed volunteers and holding detainees for so long without being punished or further investigated. “I would have taken exception with those findings. I would have said, ‘Hey, listen, you can’t do that.’” Bolduc said. “Shame on us.”

But by the beginning of 2013, the Special Forces had cleared themselves of wrongdoing. For their “exceptionally meritorious service,” Egan, Woods, Eggleston, Kaiser and other members of the O.D.A. were recommended for Bronze Stars by Bravo Company, which were approved by their chain of command and awarded by Thomas in February, while the team was still in Nerkh.

The Family of Gul Rahim

Gul Rahim, a shopkeeper, was killed during a Special Forces operation in 2012.

Bibi Roqia, Rahim’s mother.

Mohammad, Shirullah and Sayed, Rahim’s sons.

Zardeen, a witness to Rahim’s killing.

In May 2022, I traveled to Nerkh. The roadside orchards were in full bloom, and uniformed schoolchildren walked past ruined outposts where the Afghan republic’s forces had fought their last stand the previous summer. Over several visits, I interviewed dozens of locals. Among them was Naimatullah, the eldest brother of Sadiqullah and Ismatullah, two of the Nerkh Nine. Naimatullah met me at the gate of his farmhouse that, in November 2012, had been raided by the Special Forces.

“My mother would often say she thought she heard the voices of her sons, thinking maybe they were coming home,” he said. “Whenever someone knocked on our door after dark, she would say: ‘Hurry, open the door. It might be them.’”

Far from being passive victims, the families of the missing in Nerkh ultimately forced the Special Forces to leave through their activism, which included demonstrations in early 2013 in Wardak and Kabul. At the time, President Hamid Karzai was involved in a bitter power struggle with the United States over the coming election. On Feb. 24, he demanded a halt to Special Forces operations in Wardak, and 3124 left Combat Outpost Nerkh in March.

Over the next two months, human remains were discovered in six sites around the base, some by feral dogs, others by villagers clearing out irrigation canals. The discoveries are well documented by photos and videos I obtained from the local authorities, as well as contemporaneous police reports and autopsies conducted in Kabul that were translated by U.S. military investigators. I also visited each of the sites with witnesses. Although all of the Nerkh Nine were accounted for among the remains, in some cases the identification was based only on bones and scraps of clothing. For others, like Sayid Mohammad, it was much clearer: His remains had been preserved nearly intact inside the black body bag.

Naimatullah and I drove to the site of the former Special Forces base, now crumbling and abandoned in the foothills overlooking the valley. The locals had stripped its earth-filled outer barriers of their metal housing, and now they were melting back to the ground. It was here that Naimatullah’s brothers were found in a shallow pit behind the base.

“We recognized them by their clothes,” he said, squatting by a shallow trench a stone’s throw from the walls. He picked up a handful of earth. “This was the place. Both of my brothers were buried together.”

Even as the bodies were unearthed around Combat Outpost Nerkh, the U.S. military continued to deny responsibility. In May 2013, Zikria was arrested by the Afghan government; he pinned the blame on the Green Berets. Zikria was taken to Kabul, where some of the villagers had been called to pick him out of a lineup. Finally, in July, Joseph Dunford, a four-star Marine general who had recently become the top commander in Afghanistan, called in Army criminal investigators.

On my visits to Nerkh in 2022, the family members of the victims, many of whom had been interviewed by the military, asked me if I had news of the investigation. They hadn’t been told anything. Naimatullah said that while it had been satisfying to see one of their former tormentors locked up, he felt it was the Americans who were really responsible. “They talk about human rights, but they didn’t observe any,” he said. “We want justice to be done.”

Attention to the allegations had faded, and the results of the investigation were never publicly announced. Far from being punished, many of the Green Berets in Nerkh and their superiors would be promoted and serve in combat again. Army Special Operations, meanwhile, would pursue another Bravo Company soldier accused of murder: Golsteyn, whose case would become a national controversy even as the vigilante ethos of the operators would be embraced by American leaders at home.

Jihad Yar, the brother of Mohammad Hassan, in Nerkh in 2022, near the site where his remains were found.

Victor J. Blue, Zabihullah Padshah and Camille Baker contributed reporting.

Matthieu Aikins is a contributing writer for the magazine and a fellow at Type Media Center.

Victor J. Blue is a photographer and a 2024 New America Future Security fellow.

Read by Malcolm Hillgartner

Narration produced by Tanya Pérez

Engineered by Zak Mouton

NY Times · Matthieu Aikins · September 30, 2025

16. A Green Beret’s Confession Outraged the Military. Then He Found an Ally in Trump.

The third of 3 articles from the NY TImes. I can't help but wonder about the timing of these articles - just coincidence I am sure because these three articles surely have taken a long time to research and investigate. Or perhaps they were held until the time when the NY Times felt they could be of greatest impact politically.

Regardless, these are three devastating articles for our Regiment.

These articles will surely be included in ethics training at Fort Bragg.

A Green Beret’s Confession Outraged the Military. Then He Found an Ally in Trump.

The president’s pardon of Mathew Golsteyn cut short an investigation into his killing of a man he believed to be a Taliban bombmaker. Was justice served?

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/magazine/trump-pardon-green-beret-taliban.html?unlocked_article_code=1.qE8.db_j.ToNg09_vssqw&smid=url-share

NY Times · Matthieu Aikins · September 30, 2025

Mathew Golsteyn, a former Special Forces officer.

America’s Vigilantes

The president’s pardon of Mathew Golsteyn cut short an investigation into his killing of a man he believed to be a Taliban bombmaker. Was justice served?

Mathew Golsteyn, a former Special Forces officer.Credit...

Photographs by Victor J. Blue

Sept. 30, 2025

As he waited for the man he came to kill, Capt. Mathew Golsteyn felt a rising sense of dread. He wasn’t supposed to be out here hiding by the road in insurgent-held terrain in Marja, in southern Afghanistan, with just a single teammate. He was putting his career as a Special Forces officer in jeopardy, along with their lives.

Listen to this article, read by James Patrick Cronin

A thin figure dressed in black came into view, walking toward him, unarmed: Rasoul. Until earlier that morning in February 2010, the man had been his prisoner. Golsteyn was convinced that he was a Taliban operative responsible for a bomb that killed two of his men. But in this guerrilla war, the enemy didn’t wear uniforms, and Rasoul had refused to talk.

In an interview this spring, Golsteyn recounted what happened next. He called in a crucial ally from a local tribe that opposed the Taliban, who confirmed his suspicions about Rasoul. But according to Golsteyn, the Green Berets made a terrible mistake. They had inadvertently allowed Rasoul to see the informant, who, terrified, told Golsteyn: “If he leaves here, me and my family are dead.”

Golsteyn said he faced a dilemma. By that point, American forces were under instructions to try to avoid holding prisoners and instead hand them off to their allied Afghan forces. But the Afghan partners who were with Golsteyn had no way to transfer Rasoul from the front lines to a detention center — and even if they did, Golsteyn knew, there was a good chance he would be released by the corrupt and ineffective Afghan judicial system. The support of the informant’s tribe was essential to the Green Berets’ safety and the success of their operation. “That was the mission,” Golsteyn said. “The whole mission.”

And so, he decided, Rasoul had to die. But he couldn’t just shoot him in handcuffs, he told me. Not only would it incriminate the others at their makeshift base — it also just felt wrong. Was setting him free just to ambush him while he was defenseless so different? Golsteyn reasoned that it was.

He told his men to release the detainee from the main gate; he and another Special Forces operator, meanwhile, slipped out and waited on Rasoul’s path down the road. Golsteyn watched him come closer; when his target was 15 yards away, he stepped out and raised his rifle. For a moment, the two men looked at each other. Then Golsteyn pulled the trigger.

A checkpoint run by the U.S. military in Marja, Afghanistan, in 2010.

Every war produces its own kind of hero. World War II had the everyman G.I.; Korea, its fighter-jet ace. The Persian Gulf war is remembered for best-and-brightest generals like Norman Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell. During the 20 years of warfare waged in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere around the world, the operator became the iconic American fighter.

In response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, teams of Special Forces and C.I.A. operatives rode through Afghanistan on horseback, rallying local militias and calling in airstrikes to swiftly topple the Taliban and scatter Al Qaeda. It was a moment of glory in the long cultural and political ascent of U.S. Special Operations. Although they constituted only 3 percent of the armed forces, the operators would shoulder a disproportionate share of the fighting over the course of America’s longest war, at one point accounting for half of all casualties. Their exploits, often classified yet at times heavily publicized by the military, would permeate the nation’s culture, inspiring Hollywood blockbusters like “American Sniper,” “Lone Survivor” and “Zero Dark Thirty.” The weapons and tactics they favored were picked up by law enforcement and used to market an industry of podcasts, fitness programs and paramilitary gear.

But there was a dark side to that heroism: the legal and moral lines the operators had to approach, or even cross, in their battle with the terrorists. “We do bad things to bad people,” went the motto of one Special Forces battalion. This vigilante streak is what most distinguishes the operators from previous generations of heroes and sets them at odds with the military’s traditional insistence on discipline and law.

AMERICA’S VIGILANTES

A four-part investigation of the culture of impunity in the U.S. Special Forces.

Part I

A Green Beret’s Confession

Reading now

Part II

Nine Bodies on a U.S. Base

Lawlessness Comes Home

Reading now

Golsteyn was one of the operators who was held up as an American icon; after his mission in Marja, he was decorated for valor and praised in a best-selling book. Then, in 2011, the Army learned of the killing and began an investigation that led to Golsteyn being reprimanded and kicked out of the Special Forces. Believing that his punishment was unjust, Golsteyn decided to go public. In 2016, he admitted to the killing in a TV interview and argued that it was justified. In response, the Army moved to court-martial him. His case, along with others like that of Edward Gallagher, a member of the Navy SEALs who was accused and acquitted of murdering a detainee, became the subject of national controversy. Eventually, they would be taken up as a cause célèbre by conservative activists, who viewed the men as heroes who eliminated terrorists only to be persecuted by self-serving generals and a broken legal system.

As Golsteyn’s case illustrates, this outlaw ethos emerged from the murky terrain of irregular warfare. Often fighting deep in enemy territory, at remote firebases far from the eye of headquarters or the public, many operators came to embrace the idea that rule-breaking could be justified by the higher good of getting the mission done.

During our conversation at his house in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, Golsteyn told me that he still viewed his decision to kill Rasoul as just. “You’ve got to be able to look in the mirror, right?” he said. “I believe I did the right thing.”

Many people agreed. Foremost among them was a Fox News host named Pete Hegseth, who rose to prominence at the network in part through his outspoken defense of service members like Golsteyn and Gallagher. “They’re not war criminals,” Hegseth told his co-hosts on “Fox & Friends.” “They’re warriors.” As the Army moved to court-martial Golsteyn in 2019, Hegseth urged President Trump to issue pardons. It wasn’t just the right thing to do, he said on his show; it was smart politics in a nation that had come to venerate the special operator. “To the people in Middle America who respect the troops and the tough calls they make,” Hegseth said, “they’re gonna love this.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who as a Fox News host argued for pardons for service members like Golsteyn and Edward Gallagher, at Fort Bragg in May.

For Trump, it was his first major clash with military leaders, who were adamant that Golsteyn should be held accountable. Lawful warfare was at the heart of American values, they argued. But to Trump, the operators fought not only the enemy but also a corrupt system. Over the generals’ objections, the president pardoned Golsteyn and several others.

“I stuck up for three great warriors against the deep state,” Trump said at a campaign rally that year.

In retrospect, these war-crimes pardons were the first steps in a bigger struggle over legal limits on the military. In Trump’s second term, with Hegseth as head of what the administration now calls the Department of War, he has aggressively tested those limits by purging the military’s top lawyers, deploying armed troops on the streets of American cities and ordering the killings of foreign drug-smuggling suspects designated as “narco-terrorists.” In contrast to the resistance Trump faced from the military leadership during his first term, Hegseth has been a vocal cheerleader for these efforts. “Maximum lethality, not tepid legality,” he said at an Oval Office ceremony in September celebrating his department’s new name. “Violent effect, not politically correct.”

“Our secretary of war is serious about having the backs of our war fighters and wants them to engage with clarity on the battlefield,” Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, said in response to a request for comment for this article.

Today the vigilante figure of the operator, whose battle against evil requires him to act outside the law, has become a model for unrestrained force both abroad and at home. Golsteyn’s case is essential to understand because it illuminates how the seeds of this cultural and political shift were sown during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, when a pattern of rule-breaking and outright criminality arose within America’s elite forces.

Golsteyn’s unit, the Third Special Forces Group, was one of the most heavily deployed and decorated of the war in Afghanistan. But its soldiers have also been implicated in unlawful killings, multimillion-dollar fraud and an airstrike that destroyed a hospital full of civilians. Those involved often escaped serious consequences as their leaders closed investigations without charges, reversed administrative punishments and protected careers. Such misconduct also spread to the United States: In recent years, there has been an alarming wave of crimes committed by members of Army Special Operations, including drug trafficking, murder and, in January, a bombing by a Green Beret in Las Vegas.

Although some of these incidents have been previously reported, their connection to systemic failures in military accountability has not. As infamous as Golsteyn’s story became, there is much about it that has never been made public — including the second part of the Army’s criminal investigation, which contains graphic evidence about the killing and shows that commanders made extensive efforts to turn his former teammates against him.

But even as Army Special Operations leaders fought to bring Golsteyn to trial, they quietly closed another war-crimes case involving the same Special Forces unit, when a team deployed to an Afghan district called Nerkh in 2012 was accused of abusing and killing nine captives. Both criminal investigations lasted for nearly a decade, and contrasting their previously unreported histories offers a window on how impunity functioned within the Army’s elite units.

In order to fit these pieces together, over the past four years I have interviewed two dozen current and former members of Army Special Operations, including senior Third Group officers. Some staunchly defended their organization; others would offer criticism only anonymously. Indeed, it is highly unusual for those who served in elite Army units to make accusations in the news media; those who violate what is seen as the Green Beret code of silence face being ostracized by the brotherhood. Yet a handful of former operators I spoke to were willing to go on the record about the crimes and cover-ups they claimed to have witnessed during their careers, in some cases after they had been disciplined for their own professional failings.

To corroborate these accounts, I cross-referenced them with public records and previously unpublished military documents. Under the Freedom of Information Act, The Times filed dozens of requests and three lawsuits that yielded thousands of pages of declassified personnel records, detainee files and military investigations. I also made multiple trips through rural stretches of Afghanistan to locate and interview scores of witnesses; in the United States, I combed through court and vital records and interviewed former law-enforcement officers and military lawyers.

What emerges from this reporting is that actions like Golsteyn’s, far from being aberrations, were a product of an irregular war full of moral and legal contradictions. Other militaries that deployed to Afghanistan have encountered systemic problems with war crimes. In recent years, government inquiries in Britain and Australia have shown how their special-operations forces, when faced with equivalent pressures in Afghanistan, engaged in tactics that escalated into outright murder — men shot in handcuffs or pushed off cliffs — and were covered up by commanders. In Britain, operators are facing criminal charges; in Australia, an entire squadron was disbanded.

No similar reckoning has happened in the United States, and without one, the true extent of such practices by Special Operations forces is most likely unknowable. Just this September, Trump nominated Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga, the Army Special Operations commander since 2021, for promotion to head of the Joint Special Operations Command, which undertakes the military’s highest-priority classified missions. In response to The Times’s detailed questions for this article, a spokeswoman for Braga defended Army Special Operations’ record. “We have fully investigated and adjudicated the cases you cover,” wrote the spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Allie Scott. “We are confident our actions stand up to the strictest scrutiny.”

To date, a public accounting of these cases has been stymied by the Army’s intense secrecy around its elite units. This project sheds light on a shadowy but central reality of the war and shows how its consequences continue in our present day — how impunity for such units continues to function, how our armed forces will approach future wars and how, under the leadership of Trump and Hegseth, they may be wielded in the United States.

Memorial Day at Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg.

Golsteyn had always carried himself with a polarizing self-assurance. To some, it signaled integrity; to others, arrogance. He was a precocious student, and in high school in Florida he came across a line in William Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury” that puzzled him: “Every man is the arbiter of his own virtues.” Why would you have to choose between them, he wondered. In that line, he sensed a world of moral ambiguity that lay outside the bounds of his sheltered childhood — one he was eager to explore.

His father, Jerry, had been an N.F.L. quarterback, and like him, Golsteyn had been a big kid, but he stopped growing in eighth grade, somewhat shy of 5-foot-9, something he’s quick to joke about. His passion was baseball, and he earned a sports scholarship to West Point. When he arrived at the Army academy in 1998, he told me, he was without any particular career ambitions and found the rituals and people at times pompous and silly. Soon, however, he was intrigued by the challenges promised in the infantry, especially its grueling Ranger School. “You want to test yourself,” he said. “I wanted to see it.” He was a senior when the Sept. 11 attacks occurred; his country was under attack, and he and his classmates were going to war. “I look at it like, My timing is impeccable,” he said.

He deployed to Iraq as a platoon leader with the 82nd Airborne Division in 2003, during the lull between the U.S. invasion and the outbreak of the civil war. There, he grew frustrated with what he saw as the Army’s blind adherence to rules and authority even at the expense of the mission or soldiers’ welfare. He seemed congenitally unable to keep from challenging his superiors when he thought they were wrong. Eventually, one of his more experienced sergeants advised him to try out for Special Operations.

After he returned from Iraq to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, where both the 82nd Airborne and the Army’s Special Operations Command are based, Golsteyn tried out and was selected for the Special Forces. “I had found my tribe,” he said.

While there are a variety of Special Operations units in the U.S. military, including the Navy SEALs, the term “Special Forces” refers specifically to the elite Army regiment whose soldiers, also known as Green Berets, train and fight alongside foreign allies. The Special Forces were established during the Cold War, when their units supported anti-Communist forces from Central America to Southeast Asia, whether guerrillas or governments that were trying to suppress them. It was this kind of grinding local counterinsurgency — rather than flashy helicopter raids like the one by SEALs that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011 — that made up the bulk of the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Green Berets specialize in what the military calls unconventional warfare, a type of fighting very different from the battles between uniformed armies in Europe from which the contemporary laws of war evolved. Until 1949, the Geneva Conventions excluded civil wars from their purview, and summarily executing captured guerrillas was a common practice. The massacres, hostage-taking and reprisals that have characterized irregular conflicts since the dawn of civilization is what has earned them the moniker “dirty wars”; political scientists like Stathis Kalyvas have argued that violence against civilians is in fact an intrinsic part of their logic, as rivals fight for control not only over terrain but also over the population itself. As a result, winning such wars can pose a profound challenge to liberal democratic values.

A key part of the Green Berets’ training is to prepare them for the dilemmas they will face at the bleeding edge of U.S. foreign policy. At the end of his Special Forces course, Golsteyn took part in the capstone exercise called Robin Sage, in which students infiltrate the fictional nation Pineland, spread across North Carolina, and link up with guerrillas battling a foreign occupation. Golsteyn’s main instructor was Maj. Jim Gant, an officer who was legendary for his exploits in Afghanistan, and he said Gant put his trainees in situations where they witnessed war crimes by their insurgent allies. (Gant would later be kicked out of the Special Forces for drug use and other misconduct while deployed; he did not respond to a request for comment.) Golsteyn was so unfazed by one execution, he told me, that the other instructors wanted to fail him, until he was cleared by a psychologist. To Golsteyn, it was simply an error to apply domestic values abroad. “I’m not in America. I’m not a cop. I’m not here to judge you,” he said. “I am an imperial stormtrooper. Let’s get it done.”

A Special Forces trainee participating in the capstone exercise, Robin Sage, in August.

After he graduated in 2008, Golsteyn was transferred to Gant’s former unit: Third Group, which is based at Fort Bragg. Each of the five active-duty Special Forces groups, which total about 21,000 personnel, is assigned to a different region of the world. Third Group deploys to Africa and the Caribbean and as a result, before 2001, was considered a backwater by many within the regiment. But after Third Group was called on to spearhead much of the first decade of the war in Afghanistan, the unit grew in stature and influence. Several of its leaders rose to senior positions in the Army, and its men racked up valor awards — but it also paid the price, with 64 dead and many more wounded.

The operators of Third Group deployed on a relentless cycle: Even though Army units were supposed to spend at least twice as much time resting and training as they did deployed, in practice Third Group soldiers were often spending a full half of each year overseas.

Within Third Group, its First Battalion, known as the Desert Eagles, was particularly renowned for the battles it fought in the Taliban’s stronghold of southern Afghanistan. Each battalion had three line companies of around 70 operators, and the Desert Eagles’ Bravo Company was seen as the most combat-hardened. Golsteyn had heard wild tales from the remote mountains of Uruzgan Province, where Bravo was deployed at isolated firebases with names like Anaconda and Cobra.

“That’s where the heroes were,” Golsteyn said. “It’s almost like Achilles and the Myrmidons.”

When he was assigned to Bravo, he was thrilled. He would soon find himself at the front line of the operators’ war.

Green Berets with the Third Special Forces Group on a training exercise near Fayetteville, N.C., in May.

As a new Special Forces captain, Golsteyn was assigned to lead one of Bravo Company’s six Operational Detachment Alphas, also known as O.D.A.s or A Teams. Composed of 12 operators specializing in roles like engineering, intelligence and communications, the O.D.A. was the basic building block of the Special Forces. Each team was its own little world, its members dependent on one another for survival and bound by a code of brotherhood and silence.

During Golsteyn’s first deployment with O.D.A. 3121 in 2009, the team advised commandos from the Afghan National Army as they went on raids around the country, often seeing heavy combat. The following year, Golsteyn and his men were assigned to mentor an entire Afghan battalion in Uruzgan and as a result would get drawn into a high-profile mission that would expose them to the war’s political contradictions.

Under the newly elected president, Barack Obama, the U.S. war in Afghanistan was undergoing a drastic change. Previously, it had been a secondary effort to the conflict in Iraq, one fought primarily by operators like the Green Berets. But the Taliban were growing stronger, and Obama, pressured by his generals, had ordered a surge in troops and money, leading to a spike in violence and casualties.

To justify an increasingly unpopular war, the president and much of the U.S. national-security establishment embraced two flawed beliefs. The first was that the counterinsurgency campaign they were waging in Afghanistan, far from being part of an inherently brutal civil war, was a benevolent exercise in winning hearts and minds, one in which violence against civilians was counterproductive. Yet even as the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, restricted airstrikes and constrained regular troops, he accelerated the same kind of classified manhunting operations that he presided over in Iraq — an onslaught of drones and special operators who killed in the shadows. At the same time, the United States backed allies like Gen. Abdul Raziq, whose men committed extensive abuses, including torture and disappearances.

The second article of faith was that Afghanistan’s army and police force would be able to take over the fight and stand on their own. As time went on, both beliefs became increasingly untenable, and yet the leadership in Washington and at the Pentagon held to them. The need to reconcile what was presented to the public with the reality on the ground in turn led to a pervasive culture of dishonesty in the military, one that weighed on frontline commanders like Golsteyn.

In early 2010, the centerpiece of McChrystal’s strategy was an assault aimed at the Taliban stronghold of Marja that was to be a joint effort of the Afghan government forces and the Marines in southern Afghanistan. Called Operation Moshtarak, which means “together,” it was, in reality, a mission run by the Marines, who struggled to find Afghan forces capable of joining them. The Marines asked for a battalion, and the Afghan Army leadership picked the unit that Golsteyn was mentoring, which was assigned the southernmost sector while the Marines assaulted to the north. Suddenly, Golsteyn and his team were thrust into a mission of national importance, a starring role that he relished.

Some of Golsteyn’s photographs from his deployments in Afghanistan.

Once the operation got underway, Golsteyn told me, the Green Berets had to navigate the contradictions between political constraints and the reality of what they needed to do to accomplish the mission. To get air support in the face of McChrystal’s restrictions, he said, he often had to be creative in how he described the situation. “How do I get the resources?” he said. “How do I get bombs to fall?”

The Afghan battalion he was working with had no functioning supply system, and so Golsteyn broke rules to use his own funds to provide them with food and other supplies. “My Afghans ate gravel,” he said. “Some days they ate lumber.” His superiors often understood what was really going on, he said, and he learned to play along with the wink-and-nod culture that permeated the mission. “I have an incredible discomfort with lying,” he said. “I had to get good at it.”

After fighting their way into their sector of Marja, Golsteyn and his joint force of Green Berets, Marines and the Afghan Army set up a makeshift base in a large compound they called the Thunderdome. As they pushed to clear the mine-infested fields and roads to their north, Golsteyn and his men waged gun battles against an entrenched enemy. “We fought sunup to sundown,” Golsteyn said. “We were alone.”

Far from higher command and isolated from friendly forces, the Green Berets now had a degree of autonomy that had become rare by that stage in the war. “The gloves were kind of taken off,” Kevin Kilgore, who was a Special Forces staff sergeant on Golsteyn’s team, told me. Out on missions, they assumed that any military-age men they encountered were likely to be hostile. Back at their outpost, the team brewed beer and drank black-market booze, despite alcohol being forbidden on deployment. “We were all running wild,” Kilgore said.

Kevin Kilgore, a former Special Forces staff sergeant on Golsteyn’s team, at home in Tennessee in September.

On Feb. 18, Kilgore was part of a force led by the team’s senior enlisted operator, Master Sgt. Grady DeWitt, that came under attack. DeWitt led a counterassault, overrunning the insurgents’ position. As they searched the area, the Green Berets had two local men open the shops in the bazaar. A booby trap exploded, killing the Afghans and two young Marines who had been assigned to Golsteyn’s force.

The death of two of his men was devastating for Golsteyn. That night, he gave a moving speech to the Green Berets and Marines under his command as he passed around a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. “The Marines all started telling stories about the guys who were killed,” Kilgore said. “That was a time when leadership was needed, and he did what was necessary.”

Golsteyn promised his men that he would find the insurgent who was responsible. Kilgore, who was handling intelligence and interrogation for the team, said that a few days later the Green Berets captured Rasoul. (Golsteyn said it was the same day as the bombing.) Kilgore — who was discharged from the Army years later after struggling with addiction — said he was skeptical of Golsteyn’s tribal informant and never saw evidence that Rasoul was the bombmaker. Golsteyn told me he was confident that the man was guilty.

Regardless, Kilgore said that he had gone along with the plan to release the man only to have Golsteyn ambush him down the road. “It wasn’t even questioned,” he said.

Golsteyn refused to discuss the roles of any of his fellow Green Berets in the killing, but I was able to cross-reference publicly available information with military service records and previously unreleased files from the criminal investigation. His teammates’ testimony reveals how several of them helped him. One was his team sergeant, DeWitt, who accompanied Golsteyn on the ambush. (DeWitt did not respond to a request for comment.) Working hastily, the two men buried Rasoul in a shallow grave in a nearby field and returned to base. Golsteyn told me he was worried about the body being discovered by the insurgents and used as propaganda. “What would have happened if the Taliban got a hold of it?” Golsteyn said. “They knew he was missing.”

Later that night, while Golsteyn remained at the base, DeWitt and three other teammates drove back to the grave in an armored vehicle. They unearthed the body and took it back to the base, where, according to the case file, they dismembered it and fed the pieces into a burn barrel.

Golsteyn with a map of Marja at his home in Virginia in May.

After finishing their mission in Marja and returning to the United States, Golsteyn and his team were praised as heroes. In a best-selling book called “The Wrong War,” the author Bing West, who embedded with U.S. forces in Marja, called Golsteyn a dedicated leader, describing him as “the Energizer bunny with a scruffy beard” and painting him as a man unafraid to break the rules — as when he toasted the two fallen Marines with a bottle of contraband whiskey.

By contrast, West, a former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, was harshly critical of the leadership’s rosy hearts-and-minds vision of counterinsurgency, a “metaphysical evasion” that he argued was at odds with how such wars had always been won: “When generals bemoaned killing, they were trying to make themselves seem morally and intellectually enlightened, while indicating their shallow understanding of what their own grunts were doing day after day.”

Despite all the attention, Golsteyn managed to keep the killing secret. He and his teammates were decorated for valor; he received the Silver Star and was approved for an upgrade to the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s second-highest award. He was promoted to major, and his mentor, Gant, who was working at the Pentagon, told him his name was everywhere in Washington’s military circles. His career in the Special Forces was on a fast track, but Golsteyn wanted to stay in the field, not ascend to headquarters.

Thanks to a reference from West, Golsteyn was recruited for a coveted job with the C.I.A.’s Ground Branch, which conducts covert paramilitary operations around the world. (A C.I.A. spokesperson declined to comment.) On Sept. 6, 2011, he arrived for an interview at the agency. There he would make an admission that would cost him his career and pitch him into a bitter fight with the Army.

For all his self-assurance, on some level Golsteyn sought vindication in the eyes of others. Something had bothered him about the killing from the very beginning, he told me. It wasn’t the act itself; as a soldier, he felt neither sadness nor joy in taking a man’s life when it was necessary. “It’s not good or bad,” he said. “It just is.”

Rather, it was that he had to lie about it. That felt like the culmination of a dishonesty that had pervaded the war from the start and had alienated him from his own command. Would he be viewed as a renegade, a vigilante, for what he did? “It was the sense that your tribe, the people you trust, may not back you, right?” he told me. “That makes it harder.”

Golsteyn holding his green beret at home in August.

Golsteyn should have been on his guard that day as he walked into the agency. “I was very naïve,” he said. “I thought we were still playing on the same team.”

He was wrong. To understand what happened, I obtained a previously unpublished partial transcript of Golsteyn’s interview and spoke to a military official who watched it on video. After an initial, flattering chat about his military service and psychological profile in which the interviewer established a rapport, Golsteyn was hooked to a polygraph machine. The interviewer kept acting as if the machine were detecting deception. What was going on? Was there something he should know? Gently, he coaxed Golsteyn into telling him what was on his mind, promising him that they would get through it together. Finally, with a sigh, Golsteyn told him about the killing.

The C.I.A. interviewer had him run through the details twice, reassuring him that the agency had heard much worse from successful candidates: “I’ve had people come in and talk to me about the field decisions they’ve made to — I don’t want to use the word ‘massacre,’ but there’s no other word — to commit nonjudicial kills of entire tribes in Africa.”

Although he refused to name them, Golsteyn admitted that teammates had helped by burning the body. He explained why he thought the killing was the right thing to do. “So by the letter of the law, I’m wrong,” he said. But he told the interviewer he saw the man as a combatant, because he would surely have rejoined the insurgency.

“What letter of the law do you feel you violated?” the interviewer asked.

“You can’t assassinate people,” Golsteyn replied.

At a certain point, Golsteyn told me, he had a sinking feeling: The interview had become an interrogation. He had made a terrible mistake. He knew he was in trouble, but he had no idea just how far it would go.

Camille Baker and Victor J. Blue contributed reporting.

Matthieu Aikins is a contributing writer for the magazine and a fellow at Type Media Center.

Victor J. Blue is a photographer and a 2024 New America Future Security fellow.

Read by James Patrick Cronin

Narration produced by Tanya Pérez

Engineered by Devin Murphy

NY Times · Matthieu Aikins · September 30, 2025

17. Trump Gave the Military’s Brass a Rehashed Speech. Until Minute 44.

I think a fair question from this is what is the direction of our country? Was this simply rhetoric and shooting from the rhetorical hip? Or does this reveal an actual intention for the use of our military?

Trump Gave the Military’s Brass a Rehashed Speech. Until Minute 44.

On an almost daily basis, thousands of words pour forth from the president’s mouth. Sometimes, he tucks in a wildly revealing insight about the direction he is taking the country.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/us/politics/trump-military-brass-speech.html?unlocked_article_code=1.qE8.ZmOC.cdqsWsqMfAZz&smid=url-share

NY Times · Shawn McCreesh · September 30, 2025

Top military commanders gathered in Quantico, Va., on Tuesday to hear from President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

News Analysis

On an almost daily basis, thousands of words pour forth from the president’s mouth. Sometimes, he tucks in a wildly revealing insight about the direction he is taking the country.

Top military commanders gathered in Quantico, Va., on Tuesday to hear from President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Listen to this article · 4:24 min Learn more

Reporting from Washington

Sept. 30, 2025

It was a speech unlike any other and just like every other.

The makings of it were strange and rare. Washington had raised a collective eyebrow last week when news began circulating that President Trump and his defense secretary had summoned the country’s military brass to a base in Virginia for an unexplained meeting. The timing was notable. This summons had come just as the president had started to act with a new aggressiveness to carry out his long-held and oft-stated desire to send the military into U.S. cities, ostensibly to reduce crime.

Several hundred military commanders turned up at Quantico on Tuesday morning. Some had flown in for it from places as faraway as Germany, Brussels, Japan and South Korea. They sat mostly in silence as Mr. Trump talked for 73 minutes about the same things he talks about almost every day, no matter where he is or to whom he is speaking.

He talked to the generals about Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the infamous autopen. He talked about the media. He talked about tariffs and the border. He talked about the time he went to a restaurant in Washington to eat dinner. He talked about not being awarded a Nobel Peace Prize he felt he had earned.

Mr. Trump repeated a litany of complaints during his 73-minute speech.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

These were pretty much the same things he talked about a day earlier while standing next to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in the State Dining Room at the White House, which were the same things he talked about at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service in Arizona, which were the same things he talked about at Windsor Castle and at Chequers in England.

But if the generals were paying attention during minute 44 of the president’s speech Tuesday, they would have heard the fleeting but unmistakable sound of something new. Something different.

It was at that moment that the president recounted a conversation with his defense secretary: “I told Pete, we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.”

We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, the president of the United States said.

On an almost daily basis, thousands of words pour forth from the president’s mouth. Sometimes, he tucks in a wild insight about the direction he is taking the country.

It can be hard to discern these moments for what they are. Partially that’s because we hear from Mr. Trump so often. He is on TV constantly. But it’s also because, in his second term more than ever, he has become so devoid of context. He seems unwilling or unable to modulate based on his audience, his setting or his circumstances.

High-ranking officers and NCOs flew in from commands all over the world for the meeting.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

If there had been any point to dragooning all those high-powered military commanders from around the country and the world to Virginia on Tuesday, it wasn’t exactly clear from Mr. Trump’s speech what that might have been. He would occasionally slip in observations or references that were more on topic, but these flights from his usual refrains seemed almost beside the point, if indeed there was one.

“I think we should maybe start thinking about battleships,” he said at one point. “By the way, the B-2 bombers were incredible,” he said at another point.

He mentioned that he used to love watching “Victory at Sea,” the old black-and-white television series about World War II.

There is also the matter of his delivery. It has become harder to perceive the occasionally revealing things the president says — like Tuesday’s admission that he saw American cities as “training grounds” for troops — because of the way he sometimes says them.

For a 79-year-old, he’s often shown a great deal of energy, but he seemed a bit sapped Tuesday. As his remarks went on and on, his voice took on a more monotonous quality. A day earlier, when he spoke at the White House while standing beside Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Trump sounded out of breath at times.

Toward the end of his speech to the largely stoic crowd, Mr. Trump’s voice became more monotonous.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Even though Tuesday’s speech was not so different from all the others, he still seemed intent on winning over his audience with it.

“I’ve never walked into a room so silent before,” he said as he began. He acknowledged that members of the military were not meant to act like partisans, but told the crowd not to be concerned with such customs. “Just have a good time,” he instructed. “And if you want to applaud, you applaud. And if you want to do anything you want, you can do anything you want.”

He told the brass, “You just feel nice and loose, OK?”

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

Shawn McCreesh is a White House reporter for The Times covering the Trump administration.

See more on: U.S. Politics, Benjamin Netanyahu, Joe Biden, Donald Trump

NY Times · Shawn McCreesh · September 30, 2025

18. The Red Tumor: The Growth and Persistence of the Naxalite Insurgency and India’s Response

Excertps:

The debate surrounding the COIN strategy and pathways for addressing insurgencies has been contentious over the past few decades, with many scholars and practitioners disagreeing on the most effective methodologies for managing insurgencies. India, like other Asian countries, is currently tackling various insurgencies within its borders. Regarding the adoption of adequate COIN strategies, India has neither outrightly rejected the Western COIN doctrine nor fully embraced it. India’s efforts to curb the Naxalite insurgency have demonstrated its adaptability to deal with a dynamic environment. Naxalites have been able to exploit the discontent of low-income and low-caste populations from villages in rural settings. By seizing the power vacuum left by the neglect of state authorities, the Naxalites have been able to wage a deadly insurgency against the Indian government, with the end goal of overthrowing the state itself.

Despite the root cause affecting vulnerable populations, the Naxalites have not managed to force India to be fully present at the negotiating table. Instead, that leverage diminished following the transition from a solely enemy-centric COIN doctrine to one incorporating a population-centric component. Since implementing various initiatives and projects aimed at breaking down the isolation barriers faced by neglected communities, the Naxalites have struggled to maintain a strong level of resistance. The current COIN approach in place by the Indian government is likely to remain. However, a much stronger emphasis should be placed on encouraging more localized projects to fill in the governance gap in the Naxalite-affected areas. Specifically, projects that promote education and employment opportunities for tribal communities would further contribute to the Indian government’s success.

The Red Tumor: The Growth and Persistence of the Naxalite Insurgency and India’s Response

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/10/01/naxalite-insurgency-india-coin-strategy/

by Dharma Bhatt

10.01.2025 at 06:00am

Photo: Duggempudi Ravinder Reddy / Wikimedia Commons

Introduction

Insurgencies have existed throughout history, shaping the dynamics of state governance and stability across various regions. According to the Central Intelligence Agency, an insurgency is a political-military activity involving the control of territory within a country through irregular forces, aimed at weakening a government’s authority while building its own. Common tactics employed by insurgent groups include guerrilla warfare, terrorism, and political mobilization. The success of insurgencies requires strong morale, effective leadership, supportive infrastructure, and access to a sanctuary. In India, multiple insurgencies are currently operating at varying degrees, with the most well-known being the Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) conflict since 1989.

The Naxalite insurgency, also known as the “Maoist” insurgency, has persisted longer than the J&K insurgency and still exists in central and eastern India. Specifically, the Naxals mainly operate in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, and Jharkhand, with some presence in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal; collectively called the “Red Corridor.” The Naxalites structure their activities and insurgent ideology around Maoism, a subset of communism characterized by an anti-capitalist stance and a focus on armed revolution. The presence of the Naxalites is driven not merely by a desire to seize land and territory, but to increase control and engage in efforts to disrupt state authority functions. This paper will review and evaluate the effectiveness of the methodologies and strategies employed by the Naxalites in waging the insurgency, as well as the role of the Indian government in its respective counterinsurgency (COIN) efforts.

India’s Relation to Naxalites

Like most Asian states during the 20th century, communism was a growing ideology often found in a post-colonial state. Many took a liking to the ideology based on anti-imperialist sentiment and to push back against the ruling class. In India specifically, the Communist Party of India (CPI), founded in 1925, created a medium to consolidate the communist ideology in India. Peasant rebellion is a familiar occurrence in India, given its history as a colony of the British Empire. The sentiment in support of communism had already existed and persisted even after India achieved independence in 1947. In 1964, following a series of miscalculations and a lack of support from foreign states, such as the Soviet Union, the CPI experienced a schism, with the Communist Party of India (Maoist) (CPI-M) emerging.

The Naxalite insurgency began with the 1967 Naxalbari uprising, in which peasants and lower-caste groups revolted against landowners in India. Led mainly by CPI-M leaders, the rebellion was suppressed, but class tensions persisted. CPI-M leaders utilized peasant grievances to promote armed resistance, which evolved into an insurgency. The failure of the uprising and disappointment over China’s support for Pakistan led to a party split, creating the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). While there are other communist-aligned insurgent groups, the Naxalites, predominantly supported by CPI-M, are a significant group with a larger presence and cooperate with the minor communist groups to achieve their objectives. The organizational structure of the Naxalites is a mixed system, comprising a centralized committee and a localized command structure that grants significant operational autonomy. Leadership typically comes from the educated middle and upper classes, while the majority at the bottom are mostly from lower-income and caste groups.

Naxalite Strategy

As with all insurgencies, there must be some level of strategy in place, either directly or indirectly, to serve as a framework for the insurgents to utilize and follow. For the Naxals, the primary foundation of their insurgency relied upon the discontent of the tribal and lower-class population in rural areas based on their living conditions. For those from the lowest social classes of society, the Naxals were an opportunity to receive better outcomes for their livelihoods. Inspired by the Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong, the Naxalites have incorporated his concept of “Protracted People’s War” into their doctrine, using it as a framework for their overall strategy. The Naxalites show no interest in democratic practices, preferring actions that undermine the Indian government and aim to overthrow the state to establish a Maoist regime.

Since the 1980s, Naxalite insurgents have attacked various targets, including local infrastructure, government personnel, and law enforcement. Civilians, such as landlords and villagers, are also casualties of the Naxalites under the guise of “class enemies.” The Naxalites have been able to acquire a wide range of weapons, from simple axes to automatic rifles. Other equipment used to support Naxalite operations would also include rocket launchers and homemade improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

It is crucial to recognize that the Naxalite insurgency is not merely carried out through acts of terror or guerrilla tactics against state authorities to maintain visibility. The Naxalites have garnered local support by undertaking development initiatives within the areas they control, thus filling power voids left by the state government’s lack of administrative presence. In such situations, the Naxalites have set up educational centers, community kitchens, medical clinics, and enforced labor laws in line with Mao’s principles. Given the existing burdens on the state judicial system, the Naxalites have also assumed the role of maintaining law and order through “people’s courts,” where cases are expedited with decisions made swiftly.

The Naxal insurgents have, since the onset, fixated a large majority of their operations in the rural areas of central and eastern India, while maintaining an extremely low level of presence in urban environments, primarily for recruitment efforts. The Naxalites have limited sanctuary but exploit the isolation of the surrounding forests to their advantage. There have been minor instances of Naxalites receiving support, both material and funding, from foreign state actors, and as such, they are primarily self-sustaining. Financing for the insurgency mainly stems from membership fees, extortion, the seizure of assets from perceived enemies, and taxes. Naxalites have also been involved in organized crime, such as illegal opium cultivation and distribution. Another aspect of their finances comes from tolls levied against goods and services passing through Naxalite-held roadways.

Insurgency recruitment thrives on the local populace’s discontent with the state. This discontent allows the Naxalites to recruit from rural villages to join their cadre, and it has been a problem for the Indian government since the 1980s. Chronic poverty, hunger, and economic exploitation by landlords have significantly fueled support for the Naxalites. Caste discrimination has resulted in individuals from rural areas becoming marginalized by mainstream society. This ongoing issue remains inadequately addressed by the Indian government and has played a significant role in the general recruitment and provided some legitimacy for the insurgency. Furthermore, the government’s mismanagement of implementing natural resource development projects utilizes land considered sacred by the various tribes.

Reports indicated that in some regions, the Naxalites have been increasingly recruiting tribal youth to join the insurgency, in which they provide training for combat and creating IEDs. Additionally, the instructors of these camps would emphasize ideological development to supplement their training in guerrilla warfare. These young recruits would also be used for intelligence gathering purposes, given that law enforcement entities do not suspect the youth as much for Naxalite activities. In some instances, villagers in Naxalite-controlled territory are pressured by the insurgents to hand over youths, with the threat of forceful removal from their land. However, the recruitment of youths has been limited as the present environment is favorable for the insurgents to implement their recruitment strategy on a grand scale.

Indian Government Response to the Naxalites

Elements of an effective COIN strategy are categorized into two key areas: shaping the environment and defeating the insurgents. Shaping the environment involves providing a pathway to change through peaceful means, all while committing sufficient resources and isolating the conflict area to prevent spillovers. Defeating the insurgents is challenging due to various components, including maintaining pressure on the insurgents, utilizing local intelligence resources, and cutting off insurgent supply lines. What also plays a role in decreasing the effectiveness of insurgents is offering amnesty to members of insurgent groups by providing an opportunity to surrender and reintegrating them into society without the harsh punishments associated with captured insurgents.

Generally, the Indian government’s approach to COIN has varied between parties in power. Still, the overall theme revolves around an alternative perspective of COIN in comparison to the Western COIN doctrine, which emphasizes “winning hearts and minds” among the population in affected areas. As demonstrated by the Indian government, the strategy of attrition involves the use of state-to-non-state actor coercion and prioritizing enemy-centric campaigns to saturate insurgent forces. With this, the Indian government may deploy the military under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). AFSPA permits military forces to make arrests preventively, search private property without warrants, and lower rules of engagement thresholds. It is a key part of India’s counterinsurgency, militarizing local law enforcement and enabling kinetic operations in insurgent areas.

Despite India’s distinctive approach to COIN in an effort to manage the Naxalite insurgency, they have still adopted several components of Western COIN doctrine, such as winning the local support for its mission. The combination of strategies has provided India the flexibility of dealing with the insurgents while also trying to address the disenfranchisement of tribal communities. By incorporating a more holistic approach through initiatives, the Indian government can secure stability and security for the local populace. Such initiatives entail ongoing investment in development projects to sway rural communities towards the government and divert support from the Naxalites. The 2013 Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana-IV (PMGSY4) roadway project is a notable example. The rural regions have posed challenges for the Indian government in transporting resources and personnel to areas under the influence of the Naxal movement. Additionally, local populations often struggle to access nearby resources. Consequently, the PMGSY4 initiative was designed by the government to enhance accessibility to regions affected by Naxalite activity, facilitating not only the movement of security forces but also enabling rural residents to use these roadways to reach essential services.

Professional training programs that address the shortage of employment opportunities and educational resources have provided youth from tribal backgrounds with a sense of social and economic mobility. Over the course of three years, the Roshni initiative focused on cultivating essential workplace skills for both men and women aged 18 to 35 from tribal communities in Naxalite-affected areas. To boost employment opportunities, the government established around 130 residential schools for tribal children, aiming to provide better access to quality education. Another initiative aimed at youth is the Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan, which emphasizes increasing outreach and involvement in community development for tribal youth in rural areas. All these programs enacted by the central government provide a means of limiting Naxalite recruitment among the tribal youth.

State governments have established specialized paramilitary units to support the central government’s efforts against Naxalite insurgents. By prioritizing specialized units for COIN missions, states gain a strategic advantage. Specific training programs have been introduced for these units to enhance their effectiveness in fighting insurgents. Inspired by the Rashtriya Rifles of Jammu and Kashmir, the Greyhounds were formed from the police departments of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana to conduct counterinsurgency operations. Other states formed COIN-specific units within their police departments. Odisha formed the Special Operations Group, and West Bengal created the Counter-Insurgency Force. As states incorporated COIN strategies into police efforts, the central government established a COIN unit within the Central Reserve Police Force called the Commando Battalion for Resolute Action, or CoBRA.

The Indian government, both at the central and state levels, has encouraged villagers in Naxalite-affected areas to create and join localized militias and political movements to assist COIN efforts by security forces. The government also provides financial awards for tips that lead to the arrest of insurgents. Typically, the militia is composed of former Naxalite members and individuals who harbor contempt for the insurgents, primarily due to the murders and other atrocities committed by the Naxalites. In addition to this, to reduce the number of Naxalite insurgents, the government has implemented a comprehensive strategy for offering amnesty to deserters. Typically, this involves full cooperation, providing information about Naxalite activities, providing a “way out” for insurgents, and diminishing the appeal of joining the insurgency.

Evaluation of India’s Naxalite COIN Strategy

Since the beginning of the Naxalite insurgency, the Indian central government, in collaboration with state governments, has achieved notable success. However, the overall outcomes of these efforts have yielded mixed results. The largely adversarial operations conducted by state and central authorities have resulted in significant tactical advancements, including a decline in Naxalite influence in affected regions and the elimination of key insurgent leaders. However, the limitations in coordination between state and central agencies, coupled with an emphasis on an enemy-centric approach for many years, have not provided adequate socio-economic support for rural communities. Some argue that this neglect has continued to fuel the root causes of the insurgency due to persistent local issues and grievances. After 2010, however, the central government’s commitment to implementing a holistic approach helped mitigate the worst aspects of fighting the insurgency.

Nonetheless, the number of Naxalite-affected districts has substantially reduced from 126 to about 18 between its peak in the 2000s. In 2024, the total number of affected districts further decreased to six. While the districts impacted by the insurgency have diminished, a few critical areas within Chhattisgarh remain. The Indian government has implemented additional measures to prevent the resurgence of insurgents in the cleared zones within the districts. States like Bihar, Jharkhand, and Odisha have seen a near-total elimination of Naxalite presence. Andhra and Telangana have also experienced a decrease in insurgent activity. In terms of total deaths, a 70% reduction was noted among both security personnel and civilians.

Civilian casualties have been a notable issue for the security forces, as the extrajudicial powers invested in paramilitary troops have come under intense scrutiny. AFSPA’s provision on the expanded powers has not come without controversy, as the legal framework revolving around AFSPA often protects government forces involved in civilian deaths. At times, accusations of “fake encounters” have devalued government efforts in COIN operations. Already with the grievances and difficulties the rural population faces, the abuse inflicted by government forces provides an opportunity for recruitment into the insurgency, which may hinder ongoing COIN efforts.

Decades of efforts have shown some success in government strategies, but collaboration still faces issues. The central government primarily leads COIN efforts covertly, providing resources such as manpower, funding, intelligence, and strategy to state governments. Although the decentralized approach gave states flexibility in COIN, the variability among states created challenges. For example, if state A took an extreme, hardline, enemy-centric approach, and state B, a neighboring state, did not take similar actions, the Naxalites would likely seek sanctuary in State B and continue operations from there. Although the differences between state approaches have been significantly reduced due to the measures implemented by the central government.

Conclusion

The debate surrounding the COIN strategy and pathways for addressing insurgencies has been contentious over the past few decades, with many scholars and practitioners disagreeing on the most effective methodologies for managing insurgencies. India, like other Asian countries, is currently tackling various insurgencies within its borders. Regarding the adoption of adequate COIN strategies, India has neither outrightly rejected the Western COIN doctrine nor fully embraced it. India’s efforts to curb the Naxalite insurgency have demonstrated its adaptability to deal with a dynamic environment. Naxalites have been able to exploit the discontent of low-income and low-caste populations from villages in rural settings. By seizing the power vacuum left by the neglect of state authorities, the Naxalites have been able to wage a deadly insurgency against the Indian government, with the end goal of overthrowing the state itself.

Despite the root cause affecting vulnerable populations, the Naxalites have not managed to force India to be fully present at the negotiating table. Instead, that leverage diminished following the transition from a solely enemy-centric COIN doctrine to one incorporating a population-centric component. Since implementing various initiatives and projects aimed at breaking down the isolation barriers faced by neglected communities, the Naxalites have struggled to maintain a strong level of resistance. The current COIN approach in place by the Indian government is likely to remain. However, a much stronger emphasis should be placed on encouraging more localized projects to fill in the governance gap in the Naxalite-affected areas. Specifically, projects that promote education and employment opportunities for tribal communities would further contribute to the Indian government’s success.

Tags: COIN, counter-insurgency (COIN), Naxalite insurgency

About The Author

Dharma Bhatt
Dharma Bhatt is a PhD student at the University of Central Florida - School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs. His primary research focus is on security matters in Europe and the Indo-Pacific. Along with this, he has also taken an interest in intelligence issues, counter-terrorism, and military strategy. He also maintains a personal blog site known as “isecthoughts,” where he shares his opinions on matters related to international relations.

19. A Lost Friend Down Under

Excertps:

Notwithstanding the fact that New Zealand has come out as a champion of the Nuclear Free South Pacific, it has done lasting damage to its relations with its most important non-South Pacific partner — the United States of America.

New Zealand, in its crusade against nuclear power, failed to calculate the strategic loss that had betided.

With pragmatism and deft diplomacy, ANZUS could have been saved. There was a need to cleft Nuclear Powered and Nuclear Armed Submarines — the former could have been allowed, and on the latter pliability must have been shown by both the parties.

Both sides escalated the issue to a point of no return. In 1986, the United States suspended its security obligations towards New Zealand. Only recent years have shown thaw on non-nuclear issues — a policy that should have continued despite the nuclear conundrum.

Although the United States has started to rely on other regional arrangements like AUKUS and QUAD to contain China, it has lost a friend down under — a key strategic ally.

A Lost Friend Down Under

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/10/01/a-lost-friend-down-under/

by Asad Yaseen

10.01.2025 at 06:00am

The nuclear conundrum in the South Pacific had estranged the relations between New Zealand and the United States, which were otherwise sailing smoothly since World War II.

World War II made it a desideratum for the Pacific to depend on the United States to check Japanese advances. After the failure of the Singapore strategy and the fall of Singapore, the United States helmed the stewardship of the defense of the Pacific.

The victories in the Battles of Coral Sea and Midway against Japan solidified the role of the United States in the Pacific. Furthermore, the coordinated efforts of the Labor duumvirate in Australia and New Zealand, John Curtin and Peter Fraser, made the Allies march to victory.

The Communist Threat and the Spirit of ANZUS

The successful communist revolution in China and the expansion of Soviet influence in Europe contributed to the rise of nationalist parties. Like Robert Menzies in Australia, Sidney Holland’s victory over the Labor Party was aided by anti-communist rhetoric.

After World War II, in a first, Australia and New Zealand committed troops in the Korean War (1950-53) to check the Communist invasion of South Korea. Subsequently, Australia and New Zealand joined the ANZUS and SEATO to commit to the Anti-Communist alliance. These developments made the Cold War trajectory of these two countries palpable.

Australia and New Zealand shouldered the United States even in the testing times of the Vietnam War. The Western Allies had offered little support or criticized the US endeavor in Vietnam. However, the two friends down under committed themselves to the war.

Nuclear Politics and the Chasm

Until the Premiership of Robert Muldoon, the US Nuclear Warships were welcomed in New Zealand. The visit of USS Texas to New Zealand drew criticism by anti-nuclear proponents.

Thereafter, David Lange succeeded Muldoon as the Prime Minister of New Zealand. The Labor Party took lead in implementing and legislating the Nuclear Free Policy. In an Oxford Union debate, Lange detested nuclear weapons. He also denied entry to USS Buchanan to the ports of New Zealand, which exacerbated the tensions.

Furthermore, New Zealand passed the landmark nuclear legislation in 1987—officially titled the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987—which declared itself a nuclear-free zone. This was a continuum of the Spirit of Rarotonga Treaty, which vowed to make the South Pacific a nuclear-free zone.

Reacting to the non-nuclear policy, the United States suspended its obligations under ANZUS to defend New Zealand.

These developments deteriorated the decades long cordial relations since World War II. Today, there is bipartisan support in New Zealand to maintain the Nuclear Free Policy.

Australia, on the other hand, keeps itself at ease by allowing the US ships. The United States adopts a policy of “Neither confirm, nor deny” that either the ships entering Australia are Nuclear Powered or Armed or not at all.

Thaw and Non-Nuclear Cooperation

During the Premiership of John Key, relations between the two countries started to thaw. Both the United States and New Zealand eschewed the issue of nuclear ships from negotiations and agreed on cooperation in nuclear non-proliferation and non-nuclear areas.

The Wellington and Washington declarations paved the way for USS Sampson, a non-nuclear ship, to visit New Zealand. After 33 years, a US Naval Ship visited New Zealand.

New Zealand is also contemplating on joining the Pillar II of AUKUS — which includes cooperation in areas such as Artificial Intelligence, Quantum technology, Undersea Capabilities, Hypersonic, and Counter Hypersonic capabilities.

This arrangement may serve as a harbinger of de novo relations between the two countries.

Conclusion

Notwithstanding the fact that New Zealand has come out as a champion of the Nuclear Free South Pacific, it has done lasting damage to its relations with its most important non-South Pacific partner — the United States of America.

New Zealand, in its crusade against nuclear power, failed to calculate the strategic loss that had betided.

With pragmatism and deft diplomacy, ANZUS could have been saved. There was a need to cleft Nuclear Powered and Nuclear Armed Submarines — the former could have been allowed, and on the latter pliability must have been shown by both the parties.

Both sides escalated the issue to a point of no return. In 1986, the United States suspended its security obligations towards New Zealand. Only recent years have shown thaw on non-nuclear issues — a policy that should have continued despite the nuclear conundrum.

Although the United States has started to rely on other regional arrangements like AUKUS and QUAD to contain China, it has lost a friend down under — a key strategic ally.

Tags: ANZUS, Cold War legacy, nuclear policy, US-New Zealand relations

About The Author

Asad Yaseen
Asad Yaseen is a columnist based in Lahore, Pakistan. He holds a Bachelor's in European History and International Relations and a Masters in History.

20. Iranian Subversion: A Systemic Strategy that has Extended to Australia

Excerpts:

The importance of IRGC’s actions in Australia is to awaken Australian security professionals to this subversive threat, following in the footsteps of its Defense’s recognition of the environment of strategic competition. Australia’s competitors must be expected to use a range of subversive tools to undermine its will to contest their narrative, impose costs (financial, time, materiel, etc.), and isolate it from alliances and partnerships.

Iranian Subversion: A Systemic Strategy that has Extended to Australia

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/09/30/iranian-subversion-australia/

by Andrew Maher

09.30.2025 at 06:00am

Introduction

On 26 August, the extraordinary step of expelling the Iranian Ambassador was undertaken by the Australian Government. The Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) uncovered ‘credible evidence’ linking the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to arson attacks against the Jewish community in Melbourne and Sydney. Further attacks are also suspected to have been orchestrated by Iran.

This event is important for several reasons, not least of which is the unprecedented expulsion of an ambassador to Australia in the post-World War II era. First, it will likely lead to an arm of the Iranian government being designated a terrorist organization by the Australian Government. Second, this designation shows that the character of terrorism is shifting with the environment of strategic competition. Third, strategic competition is not a bounded activity. The Israel-Iran confrontation initiated by the 7 October 2023 attacks, if not before, is now a global dynamic. This has implications for future crises, confrontations, and even conflict. Lastly, Australia is now experiencing a reality that has been faced by its partners in Europe and elsewhere for several years.

Iranian Mechanisms for Proxy Support

The IRGC has a long history of support to terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, Ansar Allah (the Houthis), and other proxies over the past forty years. Tehran organized these proxies into an ‘Axis of Resistance’ or the ‘Iranian Threat Network’. Iran provided support to these groups to impose costs upon Israel and to deter aggression against Iran itself.

When the Australian public thinks of terrorism, we generally think of groups like Islamic State or Al Qaeda. Australian security professionals generally do not think about the use of terrorism by a state to advance its strategic interests. Yet, this modus operandi has become part of Iranian policy since at least the US Marine Corps and French paratrooper barracks bombings in Lebanon in 1983. Iran used its proxy in the form of the nascent Hezbollah to punish France and the United States for their support to Saddam’s Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War.

Proxy dynamics have utility in strategic competition by limiting the risk of escalation into open conflict, generally being below the threshold of a conventional military response. Obfuscation of attribution using a range of proxies – mercenaries, non-state armed groups, political parties and civic organizations (fronts), and criminal actors – aids in limiting this risk. Further, proxy support relationships are generally quite cheap by comparison to other military options and can be affected at a global scale.

Proxy dynamics have utility in strategic competition by limiting the risk of escalation into open conflict, generally being below the threshold of a conventional military response.

There is a resultant incentive to compete in peripheries, where the sense of threat may not be as acute. Iran has been operating in the periphery of Europe, using the criminal proxies of the Swedish Foxtrot and Irish Kinahan network to assassinate opponents of the Iranian regime. Iran was also behind the Israeli embassy bombing in Buenos Aires in 1992, the Jewish community center bombing in Buenos Aires in 1994, and a bus bombing in Burgos, Romania in 2012.

Countering Proxy Support to Terrorist Organizations

The threat to Europe precipitated the United Kingdom to initiate a comprehensive review of terrorism legislation to determine if existing counter-terrorism legislation could account for state-sponsored proxy activities, such as those being undertaken by Iran. The Australian Minister for Home Affairs, Tony Burke, intimated a potentially similar amendment to Australia’s criminal code in his comments when the Australian Government’s response to Iranian subversion was announced. The UK has had a greater impetus to conduct a legislative review due to the threat of Russian-orchestrated terrorism, assassinations, and sabotage across Europe throughout the past few years.

As recognized by Ardavan M. Khoshnood, Iran has demonstrated a consistency over the past forty years in the employment of assassinations and proxy violence, leveraging criminal networks, as a tool of repression against dissident exiles. That much of this history of violence has occurred in Europe and the Americas undoubtedly has contributed to a certain oversight of such methods of competitive statecraft or gray-zone activities within Australian policy.

In the past five years, some 157 cases of Iranian foreign operations involving agents, criminal proxies, and terrorist proxies in Australia have been recorded.

Australia is thus catching up with the present threat that has been faced by its partners. Indeed, in the past five years, some 157 cases of Iranian foreign operations involving agents, criminal proxies, and terrorist proxies have been recorded by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Canada and the United States already designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization due to these activities and its longer history of proxy support to terrorist organizations. Simply put, until now, Australia hasn’t faced a similar level of threat that would warrant punitive actions against Iran.

Australia’s experience with Iranian subversive activities reinforces that strategic competition manifests in many ways. There is a utility in an adversary seeding a divisive ‘wedge’ in his opponent’s camp and undermining a unity of purpose. We have seemingly forgotten that subversion – the weakening of an opponent’s government or political system, often from within – has a strategic utility in competition. Indeed, subversion was liberally used by the Kremlin to fight the Cold War, using ‘active measures’ to weaken the West. Furthermore, today’s technologies are enhancing the ability to effect proxy dynamics: Russia’s GRU is currently using an ‘air-tasker’ model of remotely facilitated arson and vandalism as a component of its sabotage campaign in Europe.

Subversion does not abate in conflict. Indeed, in conflict, subversive measures take on a greater utility as a nation’s armed forces seek to respond to an external threat. Iran’s support to the Iraqi Kurds during the Iran-Iraq War is demonstrative of there being nothing new in such a consideration.

Conclusion

The importance of IRGC’s actions in Australia is to awaken Australian security professionals to this subversive threat, following in the footsteps of its Defense’s recognition of the environment of strategic competition. Australia’s competitors must be expected to use a range of subversive tools to undermine its will to contest their narrative, impose costs (financial, time, materiel, etc.), and isolate it from alliances and partnerships.

Tags: Australia, Australian Defence Force, competition, Foreign Policy, ideological subversion, International Competition, Iran, iranian proxies, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGC, Proxy Actors, proxy forces, proxy strategy, proxy warfare, subversion

About The Author

Andrew Maher
Dr. Andrew Maher is a Professor of Practice with Future Security Initiative at Arizona State University and a post-graduate lecturer at the University of New South Wales, Canberra, Australia. His expertise is in Irregular Warfare and Proxy Warfare.

21. “Best Practices” in Crafting National Security Strategy— Reflections and a Case Study

The 28 page report can be downloaded here: https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/research/docs/Libby_Best Practices in Crafting National Security Strategy_Web-250929pdf.pdf

“Best Practices” in Crafting National Security Strategy— Reflections and a Case Study

https://www.hoover.org/research/best-practices-crafting-national-security-strategy-reflections-and-case-study?utm

Rising threats are driving major democracies to reassess their national security strategies.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

Tuesday, September 30, 2025 1 min read

By: Lewis Libby

Research Team: Military History in Contemporary Conflict Working Group

“Best Practices” In Crafting National Security Strategy— Reflections And A Case Study

Rising threats are driving major democracies to reassess their national security strategies. Seeking to reverse-engineer “best practices” that might suit differing countries and organizations, the author analyzes key elements of crafting strategy and draws on one of the few prolonged efforts to recraft American strategy in modern times: the US effort to develop post–Cold War strategy in the wake of the 1989 Warsaw Pact collapse.

Key Takeaways

Institutional efforts at crafting long-term national security strategies may help democracies steer successfully through the swirl of contemporary events; but they require leadership at various levels, rigorous analysis of the real world, and insights to pierce an ever-uncertain future.
Democracies’ historic tendencies to focus on immediate issues and delay efforts at heading off future problems mean that successful long-term national security strategies are difficult to achieve. However, with proper leadership and resources, governments have the potential to tap and advance a nation’s best thinking.
Successful efforts analyze trends and test hypotheses about alternative futures, allowing for unpredictability. These can provide the basis for sound judgments about a range of futures and the best strategic course to pursue.
Having such a strategy in hand can, in turn, help steer policy through the buffeting of troubled times and unexpected developments.

22. Let Them Fly: To Generate Drone Combat Readiness, Army Installations Must Step Up

As an aside, everytime I drive on a US military base I notice a sign that says words to the effect that drones are not authorized on this installation by order of the garrison commander.

Excerpts:

Garrisons need to commit to the creation of dedicated drone training areas. Drone operators need the facilities and space to fly. Targets, courses, nets, and enclosed drone barns would improve the accessibility and effectiveness of sUAS pilot training. Garrisons could aggressively strive to build drone courses that replicate operational environments, such as the construction of standing trench lines. Which garrison will be the first to introduce moving targets dedicated to sUAS employment to provide soldiers a venue to practice terminal flight and strike piloting skills? Employment of live munitions from sUAS adds additional considerations, including updated environmental impact statements, demolition pads for live munitions, and the development of risk management and safety procedures like crash cone and surface danger zone planning. The Army must get to a place where armed one-way attack flights are akin to running a mortar or javelin range.

The future battlefield will be awash in drones—ours and the enemy’s. To win, we must train to see, strike, and survive better than our adversaries do. That requires installations built to normalize drone proficiency, not relegate it to the periphery. Let drone sorties be as routine as live-fire events, drone training areas as prevalent as maneuver live-fire ranges, and drone feeds as indispensable as radio channels. Empower every team leader, squad leader, platoon leader, and company commander to train the skills that future war will demand. Our adversaries aren’t waiting. The Army shouldn’t either. Let them fly.

Let Them Fly: To Generate Drone Combat Readiness, Army Installations Must Step Up - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · Charlie Phelps · October 1, 2025

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The ridgelines were jagged and unforgiving, carved by centuries of wind and water. On a narrow plateau above a coastal highway, Task Force Wolfhound had just completed hasty defensive preparations. The task force, built around a reinforced infantry battalion with attached fires, engineers, and expeditionary sustainment support, faced an adversary division equipped with armor, long-range artillery, and rotary-wing aviation in support, advancing south. Task Force Wolfhound had been deployed on a Pacific Pathways rotation in US Indo-Pacific Command’s area of responsibility, but was quickly caught in the middle of a cascade of geopolitical events. The venerated Wolfhounds of the 25th Infantry Division rapidly transitioned from executing operations in competition to doing so in crisis—and now found themselves on the cusp of armed conflict. By every conventional measure, Task Force Wolfhound was outnumbered and outgunned, but it possessed a decisive edge: small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) integrated at echelon from fire teams to the battalion headquarters. As a derivative of the Army Transformation Initiative, efforts within the Army’s Maneuver Capabilities Development and Integration Directorate, and Project Convergence, the Wolfhounds were determined to not relive the memory of Task Force Smith.

Upon receiving the directive to dig in and fight, the task force commander had ordered every company to seed engagement areas with hundreds of sUAS of varying size and purpose. Soldiers referred to it as “the swarm,” though in reality it was a carefully orchestrated ecosystem of sensors, decoys, and strike-capable platforms. Some drones were the size of a person’s hand, operating at treetop level and tasked with finding enemy scouts and screening elements. Others were Group 2 quadcopters, equipped with thermal cameras and loitering munitions. Still others carried electronic warfare payloads to jam adversary GPS signals or spoof targeting radars. Critically, these systems were operated at the company, platoon, and squad levels, allowing leaders to direct their employment to meet commander’s intent.

The Wolfhounds built their engagement areas not only on terrain, obstacles, and fires, but on data. By midafternoon, drone operators had mapped every approach route with high-resolution imagery, tagging choke points where engineers emplaced obstacles and mining systems. Real-time aerial feeds confirmed when enemy reconnaissance patrols attempted to breach these obstacles. A platoon leader from Borzoi Company received a drone alert showing adversary sappers clearing a lane through a minefield. Within minutes, he retasked a loitering munition to destroy their breaching vehicle, forcing the enemy main body to halt. This was the essence of Task Force Wolfhound’s defense: drones extending eyes, ears, and weapons far forward of the line of contact, disrupting tempo before the first artillery rounds landed.

The task force did not view sUAS as stand-alone assets, but as a bridge across domains. The fires cell coordinated with higher headquarters to align long-range precision fires on targets first identified by drones. The electronic warfare section, using drone-mounted jammers, disrupted the enemy’s tactical radio nets long enough for Wolfhound artillery to execute time-on-target missions. At sea, a joint task force destroyer adjusted its missile defense posture based on drone intelligence of adversary drone launch patterns. In the air, US Air Force strike aircraft followed drone cues to deliver standoff precision strikes. In this way, Wolfhound’s sUAS employment transformed a local fight into a truly joint, multidomain operation. The sUAS were not simply overhead cameras; they were extensions of the task force’s fires, information, and maneuver systems.

Another element of the swarm focused on deception. Hundreds of 3D printed, ultracheap drones, barely more than styrofoam wings and GPS chips, buzzed toward enemy formations broadcasting false signatures. Some carried heat packs to mimic vehicle infrared signatures; others transmitted spoofed radio traffic suggesting a US mechanized brigade was massing just beyond the ridgeline. The adversary’s radar operators reported swarms of contacts that cluttered their picture, forcing them to extend radar queuing and emission while expending expensive surface-to-air missiles on worthless targets.

On the ground, infantry squads carried small quadcopters as organic kit, no different from radios or night vision. When enemy forces launched an armored thrust along the highway, Coldsteel Company deployed a screen of drones to fix their movement. Drone operators identified gaps between enemy vehicles and relayed target grids directly to Javelin and 120-millimeter mortar teams. A flight of one-way attack drones harassed the lead tanks, forcing them to button up and slow down. Meanwhile, heavier Group 3 systems provided target-quality data to a regionally aligned multidomain task force with seamless integration. Instead of waiting for higher headquarters reconnaissance, platoon leaders had persistent, localized intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance at their fingertips, collapsing the kill chain from minutes to seconds and significantly expanding their combat power and the lethality of their engagement areas.

Even in the chaos of battle, Task Force Wolfhound employed disciplined risk management. Each company maintained a restricted operating zone overlay—ensuring drones avoided fratricide with friendly artillery trajectories—that were nested with their engagement area planning. Airspace coordination measures were constantly updated via digital broadcasts, enabling safe layering of sUAS with crewed aviation. The risk of midair collisions was real, but through disciplined planning and real-time airspace deconfliction, the swarm operated without grounding Army helicopters or Air Force jets.

From above, it looked like the battlefield itself had turned against the enemy as every gap was exploited and every vulnerability seized. When the smoke cleared, the larger enemy formation was in disarray, its advantage in numbers and equipment squandered. Task Force Wolfhound held the ridgeline. Following the battle, to the Wolfhounds it was clear: Drones had not just provided an asymmetric advantage; their employment represented the culmination of a doctrinal shift in maneuver warfare and the adoption of a facet of the revolution in military affairs by the US Army.

Task Force Wolfhound’s fictional battle underscores several truths. First, sUAS can extend the reach and lethality of conventional units, transforming small formations into multidomain effects generators. Second, effective employment of unmanned platforms requires more than the hardware. The Army must adapt and innovate doctrine, risk management, and synchronization of fires and maneuver planning to incorporate massed and widespread sUAS employment. Finally, installations and garrisons must pave the way for the adoption of unmanned platforms by brigade combat teams by providing training airspace, facilities, and air traffic management systems.

In the last two decades, the US Army has made remarkable progress in fielding unmanned systems, from large fixed-wing platforms like the MQ-1C Gray Eagle to hand-launched reconnaissance drones such as the RQ-11 Raven. Yet, despite their rapid growth and operational utility, unmanned systems still occupy a niche in Army training culture. They are too often treated as exotic add-ons, brought out for specific missions or rehearsed in controlled conditions, rather than as ubiquitous, everyday tools of combined arms warfare. Nowhere is this gap more apparent than with sUAS. Platforms such as quadcopters, small fixed-wings, or hybrid designs have more than demonstrated their utility in large-scale combat in Ukraine. sUAS have provided palpable advantages in surveillance, targeting, and battlefield coordination as they are cheap, adaptable, and, in the hands of well-trained soldiers, lethal. If the Army is serious about winning in large-scale combat operations against peer adversaries, it must build an institution-wide culture of sUAS competence. This cannot be achieved by sporadic contractor support, stovepiped training events, or leaving it to individual units to improvise. It requires systemic change: Army installations and garrisons must become the hubs of sUAS training. They must provide the airspace, the infrastructure, the facilities, and the regulatory frameworks that allow soldiers to fly drones frequently, in realistic conditions, at scale. In short, the Army must let them fly.

Modern large-scale combat operations will be characterized by speed, dispersion, and contested domains. Units will have to operate across wide frontages, under constant surveillance, and with degraded communications. In that environment, having eyes in the sky at the squad and platoon level will not be a luxury, but a necessity for survival. Small drones provide real-time reconnaissance, enabling squads to see over ridgelines, inside buildings, and across open terrain without exposing soldiers. In Ukraine, they cue indirect fires, relay communications, identify enemy ambushes, and even deliver lightweight munitions. Just as radios transformed maneuver warfare in the twentieth century, drones are transforming it in the twenty-first. A rifle squad without a drone in 2025 is as handicapped as a rifle squad without a radio in 1945.

Adversaries already understand this. Russian and Ukrainian units are flying thousands of drones daily. Many are commercial, off-the-shelf quadcopters, while others are military-grade systems integrated into fire support networks. The lesson is unambiguous: sUAS are no longer a boutique capability. They are mass-produced, rapidly lost, and rapidly replaced. Their power lies in their ubiquity. To keep pace, the US Army must normalize their use across all echelons. But normalization requires training. Soldiers must be comfortable assembling, flying, troubleshooting, and repairing drones under pressure. Leaders must integrate drone feeds into decision-making cycles and fire missions. Units must practice with dozens of drones in the air at once and not just one or two at a time. All of this demands places to fly, people to manage risk, and facilities to sustain operations. This is where Army garrisons come in.

Today, Army units receive limited sUAS training with certification often occurring in initial training events, after which operators fly only sporadically, constrained by airspace restrictions and limited facilities. Units rarely get the chance to practice mass employment of drones, test operations in electronic warfare environments, or integrate them into combined arms teams. Installations themselves are not configured for large-scale drone use. Airspace is tightly controlled with strict separation between manned aviation, artillery, and ground maneuver. Small drones fall through the cracks. Army posts are already the backbone of training culture; they manage ranges, maneuver corridors, airspace, and safety oversight for live-fire systems. With targeted investments and policy reforms, they can do the same for drones.

The first requirement for scaling sUAS training is access to land and airspace. Soldiers need to fly drones often and in varied conditions, but installations must enable this while safeguarding other aviation, protecting civilians, and managing risk. The key tools are NOTAMs (notices to airmen), restricted operating zones (ROZs), and robust risk assessment protocols. NOTAMs are the Federal Aviation Administration’s means of sending real-time alerts to pilots and flight crews regarding hazards or new flight activities. Issuing NOTAMs is routine for live-fire events or aviation training. The same logic should apply to sUAS. Installations should coordinate with the FAA to publish standing NOTAMs for training areas and ranges to support sUAS training. There is also potential to assist in airspace control and risk mitigation through operator programing and geofencing of sUAS systems. Additionally, disabling return-to-home functions and pilot flight protocols such as maximum flight ceilings will assist garrisons in ensuring safe training.

ROZs provide additional flexibility. By designating sections of training areas as permanent or on-demand zones for sUAS the Army can begin to generate sUAS capability for combat at the tactical, small-unit level. Garrisons can and should aggressively move to create safe bubbles where drones fly without interfering with helicopters, artillery, or civilian traffic. These ROZs should be scalable from company-level boxes to brigade-wide corridors, allowing dozens of drones to operate simultaneously, and designed to make sUAS flight as easy as possible for the lowest echelon. By institutionalizing NOTAMs, ROZs, and risk assessments, installations can transition from ad hoc drone flights to a predictable, worry-free training environment. Units, garrisons, and the Army as an institution should also not underestimate the value of flight simulator training. At relatively low cost, formations can acquire simulator programs, goggles, and controllers to give soldiers the opportunity to practice, rehearse, and gain skill in a risk-free environment.

Garrisons need to commit to the creation of dedicated drone training areas. Drone operators need the facilities and space to fly. Targets, courses, nets, and enclosed drone barns would improve the accessibility and effectiveness of sUAS pilot training. Garrisons could aggressively strive to build drone courses that replicate operational environments, such as the construction of standing trench lines. Which garrison will be the first to introduce moving targets dedicated to sUAS employment to provide soldiers a venue to practice terminal flight and strike piloting skills? Employment of live munitions from sUAS adds additional considerations, including updated environmental impact statements, demolition pads for live munitions, and the development of risk management and safety procedures like crash cone and surface danger zone planning. The Army must get to a place where armed one-way attack flights are akin to running a mortar or javelin range.

The future battlefield will be awash in drones—ours and the enemy’s. To win, we must train to see, strike, and survive better than our adversaries do. That requires installations built to normalize drone proficiency, not relegate it to the periphery. Let drone sorties be as routine as live-fire events, drone training areas as prevalent as maneuver live-fire ranges, and drone feeds as indispensable as radio channels. Empower every team leader, squad leader, platoon leader, and company commander to train the skills that future war will demand. Our adversaries aren’t waiting. The Army shouldn’t either. Let them fly.

Major Charlie Phelps is a Special Forces officer and currently serves as a company commander in 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne).

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

Image credit: Spc. Hector Blanco, US Army

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mwi.westpoint.edu · Charlie Phelps · October 1, 2025

23. How America Outcompeted Japan

Excerpts:

What changed wasn’t only doctrine but also incentives. After Buckley v. Valeo—the 1976 Supreme Court decision that equated limits on political expenditures to limits on speech—corporate money poured into politics. From 1980 to 2012, donations from senior executives rose 320-fold, with half coming from the top 0.01 percent of donors. Lobbying outlays have more than doubled since the late 1990s, driven largely by the biggest firms. Although the top four companies in a typical industry capture about 15 percent of revenues, they supply roughly 35 percent of campaign contributions and 45 percent of lobbying expenditures. This pressure has worked: the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice rarely enforce the antitrust laws already on the books.

Rebuilding a more competitive system will require lowering the cost of going public for new companies and sharpening scrutiny of incumbent takeovers so that more high-growth firms can scale independently. The immediate test is in AI. OpenAI, through its deep partnership with Microsoft, now accounts for roughly two-thirds of the market. Incumbents are also major financiers and partners in the AI ecosystem; Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft have taken stakes in or signed multiyear deals with leading AI startups. The question is whether leading labs go public and remain independent or whether exclusive partnerships and acquisition-led consolidation prevail.

Consolidation would be easier to defend if brute-force scaling alone drove AI progress, but it doesn’t. Ideas and rivalry, not sheer resource mobilization, move the frontier. In China, performance is strongest in sectors—such as AI, electric vehicles, and solar power systems—in which competition is fierce and in which oversupply has driven price collapses and even prompted Beijing to rein in “disorderly” low-price competition. By contrast, sectors dominated by old-guard monopolists and state-owned enterprises underperform.

China is not Japan. Its market is larger and its state support heavier. And for the United States, the security stakes of this competition are much higher. But the same rule holds: the United States should resist fortress economics. Treat Beijing as a serious competitor, not as a blueprint.

How America Outcompeted Japan

Foreign Affairs · More by Carl Benedikt Frey · October 1, 2025

And Why That Matters for the U.S. Rivalry With China

Carl Benedikt Frey

October 1, 2025

An exchange rate display screen in Tokyo, July 2024 Issei Kato / Reuters

CARL BENEDIKT FREY is Dieter Schwarz Associate Professor of AI & Work at the University of Oxford and the author of How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations.

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In Washington today, a familiar anxiety hangs in the air. American policymakers fear that China will leapfrog the United States in the technologies that matter most, including robotics and artificial intelligence. The United States has been here before, in the 1980s. Then, the specter wasn’t Beijing but Tokyo. Best-selling books such as Japan as Number One warned of Japanese dominance. The PBS series Frontline aired the documentary “Losing the War to Japan.” Silicon Valley looked spent after U.S. producers exited the market for memory chips such as DRAM. Detroit, humbled by the Japanese carmaker Toyota’s lean production, seemed a cautionary tale. Japan’s grip on automobiles and consumer electronics appeared unshakable.

But by 1995, when the information technology boom finally showed up in productivity statistics, the United States had pulled decisively ahead. Forecasts of relative American decline were wrong not because Japan stumbled but because the United States excelled when it mattered at the opening of the computer age. The United States didn’t beat Japan by building tariff walls or propping up national champions. U.S. leadership rested on open competition and the flexibility to rewire supply chains globally as technology shifted—in a word, dynamism.

Today, the Trump administration seems to have forgotten that lesson. Since returning to the presidency, Donald Trump has urged Intel’s chief to resign, demanded a 15 percent remittance to Washington on certain Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices chip sales to China, and carved out a government “golden share” in U.S. Steel as part of the Japanese company Nippon Steel’s takeover. Such arbitrary, deal-by-deal interventions break with the rules-based approach that kept the United States ahead of Japan.

How the United States outcompeted Japan is more than history: it’s a guide to the China challenge. Tokyo’s economic model looked unbeatable for a time, as Beijing’s does now. But the tools that make U.S. markets more innovative and, in the end, more competitive haven’t changed—and Washington should not discard policies that have worked.

ADAPT OR PERISH

Japan’s postwar “miracle”—real GDP per capita growth averaging roughly eight percent a year from 1950 until the 1973 oil shock—has deep roots. In the Meiji era (1868–1912), Japanese leaders built a state adept at absorbing Western know-how—drawing especially on the United Kingdom—by creating a national translation bureau, importing thousands of foreign instructors, and standardizing a technical vocabulary. A highly centralized state rolled out rail and telegraph networks, guaranteed returns to investors, and spun off pilot enterprises to family-run conglomerates, or zaibatsu, that coordinated closely with the bureaucracy.

After World War II, Tokyo extended the nineteenth-century formula: a tight state-business partnership importing, adapting, and scaling frontier technologies at speed. The 1951 San Francisco Treaty, which restored friendly relations between Japan and the Allied powers, brought access to U.S. technology and technical assistance. But the Ministry of International Trade and Industry—Japan’s powerful economic bureaucracy overseeing industrial policy, trade, and technology strategy—also played a significant role in channeling foreign knowledge that firms quickly absorbed and improved. By conditioning market access on compulsory patent licensing, most notably in negotiations with the U.S. technology companies IBM and Texas Instruments, MITI ensured that cutting-edge innovations flowed to corporate Japan. In IBM’s case, Shigeru Sahashi, then the head of MITI’s Enterprises Bureau, threatened to block the company’s business in Japan unless it licensed its technologies to local firms at a royalty capped at five percent. IBM agreed.

Meanwhile, Japanese manufacturing emphasized kaizen (continuous improvement), lean production, and just-in-time delivery. Corporate restructuring helped advance those principles as interconnected groups of companies, or keiretsu, replaced the zaibatsu. By the mid-1960s, six of these groups controlled about 30 percent of corporate Japan, coordinating on complex manufacturing and raising barriers to outsiders.

By 1980, this model had produced remarkable results. Japanese autoworkers were about 17 percent more productive than their U.S. counterparts, and the American car companies Ford and General Motors posted losses exceeding $1.3 billion. In the Japanese semiconductor industry, chipmakers worked closely with equipment suppliers to wring defects out of production. By 1989, Japan had become an exporter to the world, supplying a quarter of all U.S. imports and satisfying about half of all global demand. Meanwhile, the United States saw its share of the global market fall from 57 to 40 percent in a little over a decade.

Yet the very institutions that delivered that edge to Japan also held back radical change. The country excelled at absorbing and refining others’ inventions—color television, the Walkman, the video cassette recorder—and channeled a large share of R & D into process efficiency. That made sense for the age of mature hardware, but it left Japan ill positioned for the shift to software and e-commerce. The reason lies in industrial organization. The keiretsu made internal cooperation easy and outside entry hard. Cartel-like coordination was tolerated, and antitrust enforcement was weak. Compared with the United States’ tradition of competition, Japan’s system favored incumbents. By 1989, Japanese courts had initiated only six criminal prosecutions in the 42-year history of the country’s Antimonopoly Law, which was introduced by the U.S.-led Allied occupation authorities. Over the same period, the U.S. government filed 2,271 antitrust cases—interventions that boosted employment and business formation. U.S. antitrust laws discouraged scale and tight coordination—areas in which Japan excelled—but they kept markets competitive and encouraged entry. On that basis, the United States eventually pulled ahead.

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

Just as the institutional foundations of Japan’s postwar leap reach back to the nineteenth century, so, too, do the roots of American dynamism. The late-nineteenth-century rise of corporate giants and nationwide trusts stoked fears that concentrated power was choking competition and innovation. In response, Congress enacted the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, which outlawed monopolization and restraints on trade. A quarter century later, in 1914, Congress passed the Clayton Antitrust Act and the Federal Trade Commission Act, which tightened rules on anticompetitive mergers and exclusive dealing and created the FTC to police unfair competition.

The effects of these laws on technological development were lasting and concrete. Under pressure from the federal government, firms such as the chemical producer DuPont abandoned acquisition-led growth and expanded in-house R & D. Antitrust legislation also opened bottlenecks in computing. IBM used its market dominance to bundle software with hardware, raising barriers to outsiders. But in 1968, under antitrust pressure, it spun off its software business, creating a new market with space for startups, including Microsoft. Similarly, a decadelong antitrust case broke up AT&T in 1984, removing a single corporate chokepoint in telecommunications just as the Internet was emerging. A competitive, fragmented carrier market enabled a burst of experimentation—email, file transfer, collaborative tools—driven by users and new companies.

Decentralized markets did the rest. As big firms spun out and outsourced functions they once did in-house, they created room for new suppliers and product startups to enter. Crucially, those startups could scale through public markets rather than by selling themselves to incumbents. By the early years of this century, companies backed by venture capital made up roughly a third of total market capitalization. This wave—including Amazon, Apple, Cisco, Dell, Google, Microsoft, Netscape, and Nvidia—powered the computer revolution. U.S. productivity revived, and Japan’s stalled out.

Rather than try to replicate Japan’s scale at home, U.S. firms had modularized production, adopted open standards, specialized in design, and tapped global value chains to cut costs and boost flexibility. By the mid-1990s, China’s assembly hubs had become extensions of American innovation, and Taiwan hosted thousands of nimble component makers. U.S. firms’ deep integration with the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan eroded Japan’s cost advantage and sped the United States’ pivot to software, services, and platforms.

FORTRESS ECONOMICS

The key to China’s economic rise is different from that of both Japan and the United States. After Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping visited Japan in 1978, he tried to copy the Japanese playbook, but bureaucratic infighting got in the way, and centrally planned tech-import schemes misfired. A breakthrough arrived in 1979, with the creation of special economic zones, regions permitted to experiment with market economics, in Guangdong and, later, Fujian. With business-friendly regulations, these southern provinces were able to attract foreign capital and swiftly became the heart of China’s electronics and computing industries. China’s leading computer firms, Legend (now Lenovo) and Great Wall, were founded in Beijing but soon relocated significant production and research to the south, where they could plug into global supply chains.

By the first decade of this century, targeted industrial policy had largely receded. What ultimately fueled China’s rise were countless local experiments, backed by a central state able to scale up those that worked. Rural reforms in 1978–79, which permitted farmers to sell extra produce after they met their quotas, became the foundation of Deng’s dual-track approach, with plan quotas alongside market sales. Such changes did not transform China into a full-fledged market economy—the country still lacked secure property rights and the rule of law—but they created transitional institutions that mimicked the effects of one. Tens of thousands of local governments competed for investment and talent, behaving more like firms than governments because their leaders’ careers depended on delivering results.

The Chinese Communist Party, however, retained control over the most important lever: personnel. By appointing, rewarding, and disciplining local leaders, it introduced incentives that resembled those of a market economy while still preserving political authority at the top, resulting in a hybrid system that the economist Branko Milanovic has aptly described as “political capitalism.”

In China, business dynamism has ebbed and productivity has sagged.

Political capitalism is well suited for catch-up growth because clear targets (exports, investment, infrastructure) are easy to measure. Yet as China moves closer to the technological frontier, where success depends on unpredictable breakthrough innovations, top-down monitoring becomes more difficult, and the system grows more vulnerable to cronyism. Because innovation payoffs are uncertain and hard to quantify, performance targets invite gaming; officials can hit numerical goals, such as patent counts, without fostering genuinely new technologies.

A challenge that would normally call for more decentralization—stronger policies to enable competition and wider room for local trial and error—has instead been met with greater centralization. In 2008, the National People’s Congress passed an antimonopoly law, but authorities have applied it selectively to discipline foreign firms and powerful entrepreneurs while protecting state-owned firms.

Control over the private sector has tightened in other ways, as well. Beijing has taken shares of companies such as Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent, and politically connected citizens have seen their portfolios grow precipitously. Meanwhile, the state has tried to shape the direction of innovation through major initiatives such as a 2003 drive to build national champions, a 2006 effort to expand research and development in science and technology, and more recent projects including Made in China 2025 and Internet Plus, which have channeled trillions of yuan in subsidies, tax breaks, and state-guided venture capital into semiconductors, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and advanced robotics. As Beijing has oriented the economy around missions such as common prosperity and technological self-reliance, state-owned enterprises have expanded because they are easier to steer toward national goals that do not prioritize profit, while leading private firms, wary of interference, increasingly avoid investors with state ties.

As authority has concentrated in Beijing, local experimentation has waned, and accountability has shifted from performance to political loyalty. State-owned enterprises remain weak innovators and are largely absent from the most dynamic arenas, such as digital platforms, e-commerce, and AI. Private national champions cannot substitute for broad-based dynamism. And smaller private enterprises and foreign-invested firms—the usual sources of novelty—face rising barriers. Since the early years of this century, business dynamism has ebbed and productivity has sagged, turning negative after the global financial crisis of 2007–9 and slowing markedly through the 2010s. Some slowdown is natural as China’s economy catches up, but the trajectory points to a plateau at a far lower income level than in Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan.

THE RIGHT LESSONS

Washington must draw the right lessons from China’s rise—and from how the United States once outcompeted Japan. Like Japan in the 1980s, China is a manufacturing powerhouse moving up the value chain. Its advantage lies not in radical innovation but in scale, integration, and rapid iteration, backed by state coordination and heavy investment. Consider high‑speed rail. China assembled foreign technologies (from France’s Alstom, Canada’s Bombardier, Japan’s Kawasaki, and Germany’s Siemens) and then scaled at record speed, opening its first passenger‑dedicated line in 2008 and building the world’s largest network, spanning roughly 30,000 miles, by the end of last year.

China is following the same script across telecommunications, solar power equipment, and batteries. What Apple did for China’s smartphone ecosystem—training Chinese suppliers that later partnered with firms such as Huawei—Tesla is now doing for Chinese electric vehicle producers. As a latecomer, China has often leaped straight to modern systems—think Beijing Daxing International Airport, with its facial recognition entry systems, geothermal heat pumps, and radio frequency–based baggage tracking. Meanwhile, the United States struggles to upgrade legacy infrastructure. Because the U.S. system disperses power—among a separately elected president, a bicameral Congress, an independent judiciary, and federal, state, and local governments—many actors can block action. Veto points designed as safeguards often slow decisions and hinder the adoption of new technologies and reforms.

For the United States, the politically tempting response is protectionism that shelters incumbents and concedes the future. A better course is diversified interdependence. There are valid security reasons to reduce exposure to China at specific nodes, such as critical minerals, but self-sufficiency is a mirage. The way to blunt Beijing’s leverage is not to sever trade ties but to spur integration with allies such as Mexico and South Korea. Historically, the United States prospered by wiring itself into global networks and turning them to its advantage.

Keeping markets competitive matters just as much. The computer revolution was possible only because startups such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft went public and stayed independent. In the 1980s and 1990s, easier listings and deepening venture capital made initial public offerings the default. But beginning in the first decade of this century, more stringent investor protections—notably under the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which tightened oversight of public companies by creating an audit watchdog, making CEOs and CFOs personally certify their financial reports, and requiring yearly proof that antifraud controls actually work—raised the costs and risks of going public, especially for smaller issuers. At the same time, more permissive merger review processes and antitrust enforcement made it easier for dominant platforms to buy fast-growing entrants. Competition has cooled as a result.

Historically, the United States prospered by wiring itself into global networks.

What changed wasn’t only doctrine but also incentives. After Buckley v. Valeo—the 1976 Supreme Court decision that equated limits on political expenditures to limits on speech—corporate money poured into politics. From 1980 to 2012, donations from senior executives rose 320-fold, with half coming from the top 0.01 percent of donors. Lobbying outlays have more than doubled since the late 1990s, driven largely by the biggest firms. Although the top four companies in a typical industry capture about 15 percent of revenues, they supply roughly 35 percent of campaign contributions and 45 percent of lobbying expenditures. This pressure has worked: the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice rarely enforce the antitrust laws already on the books.

Rebuilding a more competitive system will require lowering the cost of going public for new companies and sharpening scrutiny of incumbent takeovers so that more high-growth firms can scale independently. The immediate test is in AI. OpenAI, through its deep partnership with Microsoft, now accounts for roughly two-thirds of the market. Incumbents are also major financiers and partners in the AI ecosystem; Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft have taken stakes in or signed multiyear deals with leading AI startups. The question is whether leading labs go public and remain independent or whether exclusive partnerships and acquisition-led consolidation prevail.

Consolidation would be easier to defend if brute-force scaling alone drove AI progress, but it doesn’t. Ideas and rivalry, not sheer resource mobilization, move the frontier. In China, performance is strongest in sectors—such as AI, electric vehicles, and solar power systems—in which competition is fierce and in which oversupply has driven price collapses and even prompted Beijing to rein in “disorderly” low-price competition. By contrast, sectors dominated by old-guard monopolists and state-owned enterprises underperform.

China is not Japan. Its market is larger and its state support heavier. And for the United States, the security stakes of this competition are much higher. But the same rule holds: the United States should resist fortress economics. Treat Beijing as a serious competitor, not as a blueprint.

Foreign Affairs · More by Carl Benedikt Frey · October 1, 2025

24. The Middle East That Israel Has Made

Excerpts:

For the United States, these dynamics demand a reevaluation of strategy. U.S. policymakers are missing the profound alarm caused by Israel’s actions, and they must reckon with the ensuing imperative in the region to diversify security partnerships. Continued unconditional support for Israel undermines American influence and reinforces perceptions that Washington sees the region solely through the prism of Israeli interests. Regional elites are already hedging by cultivating China, Europe, Russia, and other powers. This trend will only accelerate as long as the United States blithely backs Israel and ignores the attending collateral damage to its own relations with other regional countries. Without a course correction, the United States will be left behind in a region defined less by the challenge posed by Iran than by the revisionist and disruptive role of Israel. If it fails to adjust, Washington will end up being complicit in the demolition of the very strategic architecture it has sought for years to build in the Middle East.

With its considerable heft, the United States will no doubt remain an important actor in the region for the foreseeable future. But to preserve its credibility and influence, it must recalibrate its approach by directly addressing the concerns of Egypt, the Gulf states, and Turkey and working toward cooperative security frameworks that prioritize de-escalation, conflict prevention, and economic integration. That would be a sharp departure from its recent track record of encouraging the militarization of the region and bloc politics. Washington must further anchor U.S. policy in support of a just resolution of the Palestinian question. Ending Israel’s crushing campaign in Gaza, preventing the depopulation of the territory, stopping the manmade famine there, and halting the annexation of the West Bank should be the starting point. The United States cannot skirt the plight of the Palestinians and ignore Israeli revisionism if it wants to foster a functional and credible regional order.

The Middle East That Israel Has Made

Foreign Affairs · More by Galip Dalay · October 1, 2025

Why Washington Will Rue the Costs of Israeli Aggression

October 1, 2025

Fleeing an Israeli advance in northern Gaza, September 2025 Dawoud Abu Alkas / Reuters

GALIP DALAY is Senior Consulting Fellow at Chatham House and Coordinator of the Contemporary Turkey Program at Oxford University.

SANAM VAKIL is Director of Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Program.

More by Sanam Vakil

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The countries of the Middle East increasingly see Israel as their new shared threat. Israel’s war in Gaza, its expansionist military policies, and its revisionist posture are reshaping the region in ways that few anticipated. Its September strike on Hamas’s political leaders in Qatar—the seventh country hit by Israel since the October 7, 2023, attacks, in addition to the Palestinian territories—has shaken Gulf states and cast doubt on the credibility of the U.S. security umbrella. In the last two years, Israeli leaders have hailed their evisceration of Hezbollah’s leadership in Lebanon, their repeated strikes on targets in Yemen, and their battering of Iran. But rather than consolidate Israeli power or improve relations with Arab states that have long been wary of Iran and its proxies, these actions are backfiring. States that once regarded Israel as a potential partner, including the Gulf monarchies, now perceive it as a dangerous and unpredictable actor.

This week, U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a new 20-point “peace plan,” celebrating the framework as a major breakthrough and a way to return stability to the region. But its prospects are dim so long as Israel continues to behave aggressively and ignores the legitimate demands and concerns of Palestinians. Although a raft of leaders in the region have welcomed the announcement, the plan seems unlikely to reverse the damage of two years of war. Before the October 2023 attacks, Israel, with strong American backing, had hoped to remake the region to its advantage, casting itself as a partner for Arab governments while sidelining rivals, notably Iran. Now, Israel has only isolated itself, made Arab states reluctant to stomach the reputational and political costs of working with it, and turned former partners into wary adversaries.

Many countries in the region are responding to Israeli aggression by diversifying their security partnerships, investing in their own autonomy, and moving away from normalization with Israel. A welter of projects that sought to bind Israel closer to Arab countries—principally with the help of the United States, but also with Indian and European support—will likely fall by the wayside. That is bad news not just for Israel but also for the United States. Unstinting American support for Israel is undermining Washington’s standing in the region. Where once the threat of Iran could encourage states in the region to hew close to the U.S. line, the specter of a bristling Israel now pushes them away from the United States.

The United States must wake up to the shifts underway in the Middle East. On its own, the recently proposed framework will not repair the ruptured relations between Israel and the broader region. If Washington refuses to rein in Israel and does not search for a just political answer to the Palestinian question, it risks weakening ties with key regional partners and losing influence over the emerging regional order. Failing to address the issue of Palestine and allowing Israel to behave aggressively with impunity will also fuel a new wave of radicalism that will threaten U.S. interests, regional stability, and global security.

HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS

For more than two decades, Israel had been able to make common cause with a number of Arab countries. Egypt was the first Arab state to normalize relations with Israel as a result of the 1978 Camp David accords. The peace between the two countries has held for nearly four decades, even though significant connections and exchanges at a deeper societal level have failed to materialize. Until recently, Egypt viewed Turkey as its primary rival in the eastern Mediterranean. Relations between the two countries nosedived in 2013 after the overthrow of Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected Islamist president. Turkey strongly supported him and opposed the coup that brought Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to power. As a result, Egypt under Sisi cut bilateral deals with Israel and worked with Israel inside the East Mediterranean Gas Forum, a regional organization that coordinates energy development to encourage the joint exploration of offshore gas reserves. Those moves also had the implicit goal of countering Turkish claims in the Mediterranean. Beyond energy cooperation, Egypt has also deepened its security coordination with Israel in the Sinai desert, allowing Israeli strikes against militant groups there and helping to manage the Gaza border.

That all changed after the October 7, 2023, attacks. Israel’s campaigns have forced Cairo to take a different position. In September, Sisi labeled Israel an “enemy,” a significant rhetorical departure from decades of careful language from Egyptian statesmen. He also took the symbolic step of downgrading security cooperation with Israel. Egypt and its erstwhile rival Turkey undertook a joint naval drill in the eastern Mediterranean, aiming to deepen their defense cooperation.

Before the current war, certain Gulf states tentatively aligned with Israel because they regarded Iran as the paramount threat to their security. Iran’s disruptions in the region, including its cultivation of armed groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen and its nuclear ambitions, made cooperation between Gulf monarchies and Israel a convenient choice. The rise of political Islam and the 2011 Arab uprisings strengthened this alignment, as Gulf rulers and Israel alike feared that these movements could topple regimes, reshape the region, and constrain Israel’s regional role. The Abraham Accords, the normalization deals negotiated between Israel and a handful of Arab states in 2020 with help from the United States—emerged from this context, with the central imperative of containing Iran and insulating regimes from any prospective domestic and regional transformation.

Israel has turned former partners into wary adversaries.

Today, however, the logic of normalization is unraveling. Israel’s new forward defense doctrine, which has it breaching the sovereignty of other states at will, is making almost all the states in the region feel insecure. The devastating war in Gaza, the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank (often justified with religious rhetoric), Israel’s uncompromising approach in Lebanon, and its repeated strikes in Syria and encroachment into Syrian territory, have turned the maintenance of formal ties with Israel into a political and strategic liability for Arab governments. Indeed, Israeli actions have provoked such outrage across the Arab world that any form of visible alignment with Israel has become a direct threat to the legitimacy and security of regimes. According to an analysis of recent surveys by the research group Arab Barometer, public backing for normalization with Israel remains extremely low across the region, with no country exceeding 13 percent support and Morocco dropping from 31 percent in 2022 to just 13 percent in 2023 after the October 7 attacks.

Saudi Arabia, once under intense American pressure to normalize relations with Israel, now hesitates not only because of domestic risks but also because of doubts over Israel’s reliability as a strategic partner, given the range of aggressive Israeli actions in recent years. The United Arab Emirates, once Israel’s closest ally in the Gulf, has paid reputational costs among the publics of Arab and Muslim countries for defending the Abraham Accords even as Israeli leaders openly discuss the depopulation of Gaza and the potential annexation of the West Bank. After Israel’s strike on Hamas negotiators in Doha, Qatar has positioned itself as the principal Arab critic of Israeli policy in Gaza. Kuwait and Oman remain aloof and wary of being drawn into any association with Israel that could undermine the domestic legitimacy of their governments, antagonize their publics, or complicate their careful regional balancing strategies. Israel, once imagined by some Gulf and U.S. policymakers as a potential pillar of Gulf security, is now seen as a liability and a destabilizing threat.

Turkey’s reversal is equally striking. For years, Ankara condemned Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians but did not treat it as a direct security rival. Israel, for its part, did not overtly seek to antagonize Turkey in geopolitical and security matters. During a 2020 standoff between Greece and Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean, Israel took a far less confrontational stance toward Turkey than did Egypt and a slew of European countries. During the 2023 war between Azerbaijan and Armenia, both Israel and Turkey supported Azerbaijan and provided its military with equipment. Israeli President Isaac Herzog paid an official visit to Ankara in 2022, and only weeks before October 7, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, exploring potential energy cooperation in the eastern Mediterranean.

The war in Gaza has pushed the two countries further apart. Turkey has suspended trade with and closed its airspace to Israel as punishment for the campaign in Gaza. Israeli actions in Syria have also deeply alarmed Turkey: its longest land border is with Syria, and millions of refugees have crossed into Turkey since the eruption of the Syrian civil war over a decade ago. Ankara wants a stable neighbor and a centralized Damascus. Israel, by contrast, has been supporting minority groups in southern Syria, as well as advancing into Syrian territory, undermining the country’s new government and promoting division and instability. As Syria becomes a key zone of geopolitical contestation, Turkey now perceives Israel as a major threat.

LOOKING ELSEWHERE

Israel’s revisionism and aggression are also accelerating militarization and a diversification in defense strategies across the region. States are drawing lessons from these two years of conflict, including the poor performance of Russian weaponry in the conflict between Iran and Israel and the political and security constraints that come with reliance on American weapons systems. Governments are hedging by investing in indigenous capabilities and diversifying their suppliers. Saudi Arabia has expanded cooperation with China on missiles and drones, sought to further localize defense production. and recently signed a defense cooperation pact with Pakistan signaling its desire for alternative security partnerships and intent to build ties with a fellow Muslim power outside the U.S.-led security architecture. The United Arab Emirates has purchased French fighter jets and partnered with South Korea on missile defense and nuclear energy, strengthening its technological capacities while reducing its dependence on the United States. Qatar and Kuwait have respectively acquired Eurofighter Typhoons from the United Kingdom and Italy, embedding themselves further in European security networks. Gulf countries are all buying cost-effective Turkish drones. For its part, Turkey unveiled its Steel Dome integrated air defense system in August, comparable to Israel’s Iron Dome system of antimissile defense—suggesting a doctrinal shift in which Turkish planners now feel obliged to measure their capacities against Israel’s.

This widening network of partnerships leaves shrinking space for Israel. Regional initiatives such as the Abraham Accords; the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, a U.S.-backed trade and connectivity project linking India, the Middle East, and Europe; the Negev Summit, a regional security forum that brought Israel together with Arab and Western partners; and I2U2, grouping India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States for technological and economic cooperation, were designed to build a new order rooted in Arab-Israeli cooperation under American supervision. The goal was to bind Arab states to Israel, exclude Turkey, and contain Iran. American and Israeli officials assumed that normalization and greater acceptance of Israel in the region were inevitable. That vision is collapsing. Israeli policy has made the very subject toxic, turning normalization into a domestic and strategic risk for Arab leaders and their governments.

The logic behind normalizing relations with Israel is unraveling.

The Israeli attack in Doha underscored these dynamics. Qatar is a mediator between Israel and Hamas, as well as a close American ally hosting the largest U.S. base in the region. The attack undermined not only Qatar but also American prestige and credibility: from that episode, Gulf rulers have taken the lesson that Israel is unpredictable and aggressive—and American security guarantees are unreliable. As a result, they will seek diversified relations with other powers and expanded investment in homegrown defense industries.

These developments will create new alignments that could reshape the region. Turkey and Saudi Arabia, two of the most significant regional powers, will likely cooperate more closely. Although they were previously rivals in many regional hot spots, including in Libya, the two now share concerns about regional instability and Israel’s disruptive role. They could work together to try to stabilize Syria and coordinate joint efforts in multilateral forums to push for ending the war in Gaza and restraining Israeli aggression. Indeed, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has called for the establishment of a joint security platform with regional states, notably Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Both Erdogan and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia must manage domestic political costs from the Gazan war. Erdogan faced mounting public anger over continued trade with Israel, which Ankara has since suspended, and pressure from Islamist and conservative constituencies to take a harder line; Mohammed faces criticism within his kingdom and in the wider Arab world for having even considered normalization with Israel. Both must also contend with the prospect of further conflict between Israel and Iran.

To be sure, Iran has not disappeared as a concern, and its regional network of proxies is weakened but not eliminated. Saudi Arabia and Turkey will have to tread carefully. For Saudi Arabia, that means continuing the cautious détente with Iran that was launched with Chinese mediation in 2023, reducing escalation risks in Yemen and the Gulf. For Turkey, it means balancing cooperation and competition in Iraq, Syria, and the South Caucasus. Both Saudi Arabia and Turkey are seeking to ensure that they can counter Iran without making it feel cornered, since a cornered Iran could double down on asymmetric tactics and create new crises.

A CREDIBLE ORDER

For the United States, these dynamics demand a reevaluation of strategy. U.S. policymakers are missing the profound alarm caused by Israel’s actions, and they must reckon with the ensuing imperative in the region to diversify security partnerships. Continued unconditional support for Israel undermines American influence and reinforces perceptions that Washington sees the region solely through the prism of Israeli interests. Regional elites are already hedging by cultivating China, Europe, Russia, and other powers. This trend will only accelerate as long as the United States blithely backs Israel and ignores the attending collateral damage to its own relations with other regional countries. Without a course correction, the United States will be left behind in a region defined less by the challenge posed by Iran than by the revisionist and disruptive role of Israel. If it fails to adjust, Washington will end up being complicit in the demolition of the very strategic architecture it has sought for years to build in the Middle East.

With its considerable heft, the United States will no doubt remain an important actor in the region for the foreseeable future. But to preserve its credibility and influence, it must recalibrate its approach by directly addressing the concerns of Egypt, the Gulf states, and Turkey and working toward cooperative security frameworks that prioritize de-escalation, conflict prevention, and economic integration. That would be a sharp departure from its recent track record of encouraging the militarization of the region and bloc politics. Washington must further anchor U.S. policy in support of a just resolution of the Palestinian question. Ending Israel’s crushing campaign in Gaza, preventing the depopulation of the territory, stopping the manmade famine there, and halting the annexation of the West Bank should be the starting point. The United States cannot skirt the plight of the Palestinians and ignore Israeli revisionism if it wants to foster a functional and credible regional order.

Foreign Affairs · More by Galip Dalay · October 1, 2025

25.

Conclusion:

This article is not theory. It’s an operational after-action report from marines who have planned with spreadsheets open, maps on the table, and weather delays testing force closure timelines. There’s no glamour in arguing for surface vessels and a lot of the figures will be further refined as this work is published. But there are real consequences for not resourcing what III Marine Expeditionary Force needs. The truth is: Mobility is the predicate to everything else fires, command and control, sustainment, partnership, and presence.

Flood the Zone: III Marine Expeditionary Force’s Mobility Mandate

Brandan R. Schofield and Andrew C. Edwards

warontherocks.com · October 1, 2025

“To comprehend something, you must observe it at the extremes.” Col. John Boyd understood that clarity comes when forces are stretched to their limits. In the Western Pacific, where strategic competition is rapidly tilting toward confrontation, the first unit to show up may decide who stays. III Marine Expeditionary Force, the Marine Corps’ only permanently forward-deployed Marine Expeditionary Force, lives daily at that extreme. Headquartered on Okinawa with forces scattered from Guam to Japan to Hawaii, III Marine Expeditionary Force is not only the Marine Corps’ most combat-credible formation in the Indo-Pacific — it is arguably the Joint Force’s best-positioned instrument of deterrence. It is also an organization operating without the mobility resources it needs to meet the demands of modern deterrence.

Without present, positioned, and ready U.S. forces, America cannot deter without fighting. Mobility is the prerequisite. While headlines often celebrate submarines, stealth aircraft, and long-range missiles, presence remains the bedrock of deterrence. Presence implies access, and access demands mobility. III Marine Expeditionary Force’s ability to move tactically and operationally, especially by surface, is not merely a Marine Corps problem — it is a joint challenge with strategic consequences.

III Marine Expeditionary Force operates on the ragged edge. Geography sharpens that edge: thousands of islands, shallow-gradient beaches, and distances that defy the assumption that airpower alone can sustain maneuver.

The strategic window is shrinking. Adversaries are modernizing. Exercises such as Balikatan, the Korea Marine Exercise Program, Iron Fist, and Resolute Dragon expose mobility gaps that risk turning credible deterrent efforts into PowerPoint promises. Fortunately, solutions exist today, and they do not require waiting for moon-shot technology. They require modest investment, decisive choices, and a willingness to embrace the imperfect.

In the Indo-Pacific, the first to arrive may not just win — their very arrival may prevent the fight. Without reliable mobility, III Marine Expeditionary Force risks becoming the most forward-postured but strategically stranded force in the joint arsenal. The task ahead is clear: fund the platforms, train the crews, and flood the zone before deterrence fails.

BECOME A MEMBER

What We Have (and Why It’s Not Enough)

III Marine Expeditionary Force’s mobility toolkit is a study in improvisation. It relies on two primary platforms of record and a fragile set of interim surface assets. These systems, while often overlooked in favor of more headline-grabbing capabilities, form the logistical lifeblood of deterrence. Without them, III Marine Expeditionary Force is a world-class fighting force without the ability to move.

The first pillar of this toolkit is the C-130J Hercules, the theater’s unsung airlift workhorse. With a range of roughly 2,000 nautical miles and the ability to land on unimproved runways, it serves as the linchpin for moving marines, equipment, and supplies. It lifts a sizeable payload but its dependence on runways makes it vulnerable in an archipelago where many austere outposts lack airfields. With only a handful of aircraft in theater, commanders have to constantly prioritize missions. Reliable though it is, the C-130J alone cannot keep pace with mobility demands.

The second pillar is the USNS Guam, a high-speed transit aluminum catamaran originally built as a 370-foot Hawaii Superferry Huakai and repurposed as a civilian-crewed Marine Expeditionary Force go-to surface platform. It enables lift for exercises across Korea, the Philippines, and the Japanese archipelago. During Korea Marine Exercise Program 25-1, the USNS Guam executed multiple runs between Okinawa and Korea, overcoming weather delays and proving its tactical utility. For marines on the ground, it demonstrated the rare convergence of planning, platform, and presence, even if force closure took weeks.

With roll-on/roll-off capability, seating for over 800 personnel, and speeds of more than 30 knots, the USNS Guam bridges strategic mobility with tactical relevance. But it is finite — only one exists in theater. Its performance in rough seas is limited, earning it the nickname “Vomit Comet.” Moving a full formation requires multiple trips over several weeks. Still, its ability to close force packages across the theater makes it indispensable to daily deterrence.

The third leg of the mobility triad is less stable: a patchwork of commercial charters, leased prototypes, and repurposed vessels grouped under the Littoral Maneuver Bridging Strategy. These platforms are meant to serve as a stopgap until the Landing Ship Medium enters service, but each carries unique limitations and looming expiration dates.

One of the more instructive efforts has been the Stern Landing Vessel operated by Hornbeck Offshore Services. Its shallow draft and beaching capability on gradients up to 1:25 have allowed marines to experiment with how commercial conversions might support ambiguous operations. The vessel is not perfect, but it has provided valuable lessons on integration, maneuverability, and sustainment in littoral environments. Its charter, however, expires in 2025 without $17 million in contract renewal. A second Stern Landing Vessel operated by Sea Transport Solutions is optimized for even shallower gradients of 1:40, offering greater potential beach access. It too faces a funding cliff, with no sustainment plan identified beyond 2028 without approximately $30 million annually in program office or operating force coffers.

Legacy platforms have also been pulled into the mix. The Navy’s Landing Craft Utility 1610 remains a proven craft, but availability is constrained by manning and maintenance shortfalls across the Naval Beach Groups. The Army’s Landing Craft Utility 2000, now commercially available, offers another option but comes at an additional commitment to bring into Marine Corps use.

Smaller experimental vessels, known as Ancillary Surface Craft, will also be delivered to marines on Okinawa in the coming years. Each measures 150 feet in length with approximately 1,300 square feet of deck space and a shallow bow draft designed for gradients beyond current landing craft. They are intended to be marine-crewed, but no training pipeline or dedicated sustainment funding has yet been established. Without a programmatic investment of roughly $3 million per vessel beginning in Fiscal Year 2027, they risk becoming one-off experiments rather than dependable workhorses.

Finally, to bridge near-term lift shortfalls, the Marine Corps via Military Sealift Command has turned to commercial spot charters for pier-to-pier movement in the Western Pacific. In the spring of 2025, Military Sealift Command awarded a contract for surface lift for rolling-stock/general-cargo and berthing for a squad of marines. These charters are, by design, temporary and lapse at the end of the period of performance unless follow-on funds are programmed.

Taken together, the Littoral Maneuver Bridging Strategy provides a set of imperfect but essential mobility options. Some can land directly on beaches while others are limited to established piers. Some exist today while others remain years away. All come with caveats: funding deadlines, technical and performance risks, training gaps, or crewing shortages. Without near-term support, many will vanish from III Marine Expeditionary Force’s playbook.

A Deterrence Platform, Not Just a Logistics Fix

The key insight is this: These platforms don’t just move capabilities. They enable presence, and presence is deterrence. The ability to reposition forces quickly, even in competition short of conflict, gives III Marine Expeditionary Force the credibility to support allies, shape the battlespace, and signal commitment. Without reliable lift, especially surface lift, III Marine Expeditionary Force cannot do what the nation expects of it. And yet, most of these systems are not program-of-record platforms. They operate on annual renewals, supplemental funding, or borrowed readiness. With the president’s Executive Orders and the millions of dollars in ship leasing available as part of the sealift investments, the Marine Corps has an opportunity to supercharge its forward-deployed force with what it needs to move and be present in the places that matter.

Mobility Decisions Through 2028

If strategy is about aligning ends, ways, and means, then III Marine Expeditionary Force’s mobility posture is at risk of becoming the strategy’s Achilles’ heel. The commandant’s guidance, the Joint Warfighting Concept, and Indo-Pacific Command campaign design all points toward a marine force that is distributed, persistently forward, and rapidly maneuverable across the First Island Chain. The ends are clear. The ways are known. The means, however, are under threat.

Several surface lift decisions cannot wait until the end of the decade. They require action in the next budget cycle if III Marine Expeditionary Force is to retain even the limited lift it has today. The most immediate choice involves renewing the spot charter that provides tens of thousands of square feet of pier-to-pier surge lift. For tens of millions of dollars, the Marine Corps can preserve a theater surge lift.

Another urgent decision is whether to charter six commercially available Landing Craft Utility 2000s. These shallow-draft vessels are among the most reliable beach-capable platforms with a long track record of operational relevance. At an annual cost of approximately $39 million ($6.5 million per vessel), they would provide immediate utility to meet the movement needs. Without a programming commitment in 2026, however, they will remain in commercial hands.

The Stern Landing Vessel chartered from Hornbeck Offshore Services also faces a near-term deadline. As one of the few turn-key platforms in the region able to move expeditionary advanced base capabilities, it represents a critical afloat option for the force. Yet in 2025, it will leave the theater unless funding is committed.

Together, these decisions represent the difference between a force with limited but real mobility options and a force effectively stranded bound to the lift capacity of the C-130J and the USNS Guam. Each carries a relatively modest price tag compared to larger Navy programs, but their combined impact on deterrence in the Indo-Pacific is disproportionate.

Beyond these immediate deadlines, the Marine Corps faces a series of decisions in the next five years that will determine whether today’s experiments mature into lasting capabilities.

One of the most pressing is the future of the Stern Landing Vessel operated by Sea Transport Solutions. This ship, a shallower-draft companion to the Hornbeck vessel, is designed for more austere landings at shallower gradients. It is projected to be in operation by the end of 2025, but without follow-on resourcing it will have no future beyond 2028. Sustaining it in the 2028–32 would require tens of millions of dollars per year, a relatively modest investment compared to the capability it provides.

Another pivotal decision involves the Landing Ship Medium, the first purpose-built amphibious lift vessel designed specifically for the Marine Corps in decades. The opening block of this program should be resourced in the 2026 to 2027 budget cycle. Without that commitment, the Marine Corps will continue to rely on leased commercial conversions instead of building toward a sustainable fleet. A refined “Block Next” version with a lower draft and shallower beach gradient is also under consideration and represents an opportunity to reinforce legacy amphibious ships, tailoring Landing Ship Mediums for Indo-Pacific operating conditions.

The Marine Corps should also plan for the arrival of the Ancillary Surface Craft. These vessels are scheduled for delivery in 2027, but without a military occupational specialty-like manning plan, and funding for training and sustainment, they will remain unused. Absent a Manpower Affairs-led military occupational specialty-like crew program (aptitude standards, accessions, permanent change of station rotations), the craft’s manning remains in jeopardy. In terms of funding, approximately $3 million per vessel in operations and maintenance, combined with additional resourcing to create a training pipeline for marine crews, would ensure they arrive with the capability to operate immediately.

Individually these choices may seem incremental, but collectively they represent the foundation of an affordable, Indo-Pacific-ready mobility fleet. Taken together, the cost of sustaining these programs is less than the refit of a single Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. The real question is not whether the Marine Corps can afford them, but whether they can afford to lose them.

III Marine Expeditionary Force’s current and only operational beach-capable logistics platforms are living on borrowed time and borrowed money. Their budgets are not guaranteed. Most of what is outlined is not in the acquisition pipeline. They are not sustainable without deliberate, near-term investment.

This isn’t about making perfect decisions. It’s about not making fatal ones. The choice isn’t between luxury and austerity — it’s between presence and absence. The Marine Corps isn’t requesting gold-plated platforms. It’s asking for steel-decked ones, ready to move marines, missiles, and materiel wherever the nation needs them.

Beyond 2028

Waiting for a renaissance in large amphibious shipbuilding, or banking on a handful of exquisite platforms that arrive too slowly and in too few a number, risks leaving III Marine Expeditionary Force without the lift it needs. Americans want a Marine Corps that can move and fight across the Indo-Pacific. That requires an affordable fleet tailored for the maneuver and movement: shallow draft, beach-capable, and built at a tempo the industrial base can sustain.

One pathway is converting existing offshore service vessels into beaching variants. The Hornbeck Stern Landing Vessel already on charter has demonstrated operational utility during exercises, offering a model for small design modifications and commercial conversions. Conversions could yield voluminous ships capable of moving troops and equipment directly onto contested shorelines. By 2030, a fleet of six converted vessels could be operating, each maintained at standard charter-hire resourcing annually.

Another approach is to continue to build the Sea Transport Solutions design in commercial or allied shipyards. With its shallower draft optimized for austere landings, the class holds potential as a scalable solution. Constructed at potentially a fraction of the cost of other amphibious platforms and produced at a rate of two every 18 months, a dozen ships could be delivered by 2034. Building them in U.S. partner yards — such as in South Korea, Japan, and Australia — could be more economical than building in the United States while strengthening allied industrial capacity and regional interoperability.

The Marine Corps could also expand the Ancillary Surface Craft program. These craft are designed to be pier-agnostic, logistically simple, and suited for persistent tactical lift. Built for about $20 million per hull, with $3 million in annual operations and maintenance, the program could grow to a fleet of 18 vessels by FY2034. Unlike contracted platforms, they would be Marine Corps-owned and operated, providing an organic capability to maneuver day-to-day across the First Island Chain.

Taken together, these options represent a balanced portfolio: six converted offshore vessels, a dozen newly built shallow-draft stern landers, and 18 marine-crewed ancillary craft. By the early 2030s, such a force would provide redundancy, distributed logistics, and shore-to-shore maneuver at a scale appropriate to Indo-Pacific operations during competition, crisis, and conflict. The cost of this combined fleet would still fall below that of a single Columbia-class submarine, underscoring that the challenge is not financial but institutional.

This is not a call for a brand-new industrial base, but it does prime the pump for a more robust U.S. and partner nation industrial shift. It is a call to scale what works now and build what lasts, using a mix of conversions, small-yard builds, and marine-operated vessels. It is achievable, it could be cost-efficient, and it is how the Marine Corps can field a force that gets where it needs to be when it matters most.

Anticipating the Critics

Every proposal for mobility that does not involve a traditional amphibious ship, or a major new acquisition program invites skepticism. The familiar critiques are that the Indo-Pacific lacks sufficient pier space, that commercial charters suffice in peacetime, or that it is better to wait until prototypes prove themselves. Others argue that mobility within the theater should remain a Navy problem, not a Marine Corps concern.

Each of these objections falters under operational scrutiny. Pier space is precisely why beach-capable and pier-agnostic vessels matter. Commercial charters may work in peacetime, but in competition or conflict their availability and reliability are questionable. Prototypes cannot be left unfunded while marines are already employing them in real exercises, gaining lessons that vanish if the platforms do. And while the Navy retains Title 10 responsibility for strategic sealift, it is the Marine Corps that can occupy and seize land masses, which requires organic movement across water space.

What all these critiques assume is that time is on our side. It is not. Every delay in resourcing erodes deterrence, drains hard-won experience, and leaves marines with fewer options in the very theater where presence matters most.

Flood the Zone

If III Marine Expeditionary Force is the Marine Corps at its extreme operating forward, under-resourced, across an archipelago of contested terrain then its mobility posture is a diagnostic readout of the Joint Force’s ability to deter in the Indo-Pacific. And right now, that posture reads: insufficient.

This isn’t a crisis of imagination. It’s a crisis of prioritization. The platforms exist. The industrial pathways exist. Even the funding lines, modest by Defense Department standards, exist. What’s missing is a shift in mindset: from building exquisite ships for future war, to building practical lift for everyday deterrence. The danger is not overreach but underinvestment, losing practical lift options while chasing perfection. At its core, this is not just about moving marines. It’s about enabling presence, and presence is what separates deterrence from delay, strategy from slogans, and assurance from absence. If we want to compete forward, we ought to move forward with steel in the water, marines at the rail, and options in the playbook.

The Myth of the Pile of Money

In defense planning, it’s tempting to assume resourcing is a binary problem: either you’re broke or you’re rich. But when it comes to mobility, the question isn’t whether the United States has a pile of money. It’s whether it’s spending even a fraction of it on the right things.

All the critical near-term decisions identified earlier — charters, sustainment, prototype extension — combined cost less than the refit of a single destroyer. A dozen Stern Landing Vessels, a fleet of marine-crewed Ancillary Surface Crafts, and a scalable amphibious “bridge” all fall below the budget lines of a single exquisite program that might never dock in the littorals.

We are not asking to rewrite the Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan. We’re asking to spend smart now to avoid strategic regret later.

Practical Over Perfect

The Marine Corps isn’t waiting for perfect platforms. It’s fielding what works. But the service can’t do it alone. The broader defense establishment, Congress, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Navy, and the Joint Staff should recognize that the mobility gap is not conceptual, it’s physical. The platforms are not hypothetical, they’re real. The need is not tomorrow, it’s today. We don’t have to build for 2050 to succeed in 2025. America should buy time, capacity, and deterrent credibility now.

One Last Note from the Arena

This article is not theory. It’s an operational after-action report from marines who have planned with spreadsheets open, maps on the table, and weather delays testing force closure timelines. There’s no glamour in arguing for surface vessels and a lot of the figures will be further refined as this work is published. But there are real consequences for not resourcing what III Marine Expeditionary Force needs. The truth is: Mobility is the predicate to everything else fires, command and control, sustainment, partnership, and presence.

BECOME A MEMBER

Brandan R. Schofield is a Marine acquisition officer serving as the team lead on expeditionary fuel and water systems at Marine Corps Systems Command. He recently completed a tour as an Exercise Planner for the 3rd Marine Logistics Group, and the logistics officer for the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit. He holds a Master of Science in Information Technology Management and a Master of Business Administration. He is published by the Naval Postgraduate School and the Marine Corps Gazette.

Andrew C. Edwards is a Marine logistics officer currently serving as the training team officer for the 12th Marine Corps Recruiting District. He was previously a logistics officer for the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit. He recently served as the lead capabilities integration officer for III Marine Expeditionary Force G‑9, directing integration of new logistics capabilities and surface vessel prototypes.

The views expressed here are those of the authors. They do not represent the views, policies, or positions of the U.S. Marine Corps, the U.S. Department of the Navy, the U.S. Department of Defense, or any part of the U.S. government.

**Please note, as a matter of house style War on the Rocks will not use a different name for the U.S. Department of Defense until and unless the name is changed by statute by the U.S. Congress.

Image: Gunnery Sgt. Jonathan Wright via DVIDS

warontherocks.com · October 1, 2025

26. Explaining Trump’s Surprising Turn to Pakistan

Excerpts:

Washington should limit and condition its engagement with Pakistan’s security establishment. The minerals bet is worth trying — but only with enforceable standards and civilian visibility. Counter-terrorism cooperation should stay mission-bound. Target groups that attack civilians and critical infrastructure, share intelligence for interdictions, and build forensic capacity — but resist the slide into open-ended security assistance that blurs the line between domestic repression and counter-terrorism. On governance, the United States should condition security sector assistance on measurable transparency, including third-party audits for military-run enterprises engaged in U.S.-linked projects.

Broaden — don’t just balance — South Asia. Don’t let an Indian-Pakistani framework eclipse the rest of the region. Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal serve as the connective tissue for supply chains, maritime awareness, and resilience in response to China’s economic pressure. Offer them more tangible benefits, including concessional finance for digital and critical infrastructure, maritime domain awareness packages that integrate with U.S. and Quad data pipelines, as well as debt management and infrastructure governance advice that protects them against predatory concessions. A denser web of middle-power partnerships gives Washington options when New Delhi hesitates and adds weight when Islamabad wobbles.

Keep the crisis ladder short. The U.S.-Pakistani military channel is useful for de-escalation — but pair it with predictable public lines during Indian-Pakistani flare-ups. Condemn terror attacks unambiguously, defend both countries’ right to self-defense within international law, and reinforce red lines against nuclear escalation. That stance denies spoilers the perception of U.S. ambivalence while preserving the private space to lean on both sides.

Trump’s courtship of Pakistan is a tactical play that can result in broader ripple effects. On the upside, it opens a mineral corridor for U.S. and allied supply chains, revives a counter-terrorism channel that still serves mutual interests, and reminds India that Washington has options. On the downside, it risks deepening Pakistan’s military-dominated political economy, igniting new conflicts in Balochistan if benefit-sharing fails, and squandering hard-won trust in New Delhi at a time when the United States needs a robust defense tech partnership to compete with China. The move can still yield a positive outcome — for Washington and regional stability — if the administration treats Pakistan as a limited partner and continues to keep options open for Delhi to get back on track. Otherwise, today’s tactical romance may become tomorrow’s strategic hangover.

Explaining Trump’s Surprising Turn to Pakistan

Muhib Rahman

October 1, 2025

warontherocks.com · October 1, 2025

Recent months have brought a startling shift in U.S.-Pakistani relations. On Sept. 25, President Donald Trump hosted Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, at the White House, marking the latest sign of improving relations. The warming up began with Trump inviting Munir to lunch at the White House earlier in June — the first time a U.S. president had hosted a Pakistani military chief unaccompanied by civilian leaders. Munir was back within two months, sitting in the front row at U.S. Central Command’s change of command ceremony in Florida. Concrete policy moves accompanied this burst of protocol. Islamabad secured the lowest tariff rate it enjoys in any major market. The Balochistan Liberation Army was elevated to full Foreign Terrorist Organization status by the U.S. Department of State. A long-dormant joint counter-terrorism dialogue was reconvened in Islamabad. Washington also signaled new cooperation on critical minerals and hydrocarbons. For a relationship long defined by suspicion and drift, these developments suggest a significant recalibration in U.S. South Asia policy.

However, this pivot does not amount to a long-term shift in U.S. strategy. This is tactical statecraft with narrow objectives: to build supply chain resilience for U.S. industry and defense, clawing back some leverage against China, and to remind India that Washington retains options. It is hard-edged and can even be made useful, but it also carries risks.

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Washington’s Tactical Math

Beneath the diplomatic fanfare sits a clear transactional logic. A key priority seems to be securing access to critical minerals — from copper and rare earths to materials used in batteries and missiles. China dominates key mineral supply chains. It once restricted rare earth exports, forcing the United States to make significant concessions. Washington seeks diversified access — without relying on Chinese chokepoints. Pakistan sits atop an enormous and largely untapped $6 trillion worth of deposits in Balochistan. Early moves — U.S. commercial delegations, memorandums, and agreements — all signal intent: friendly supply chains on U.S. terms. In this sense, the U.S. outreach aligns with its broader strategy of reconfiguring Indo-Pacific supply networks.

The realignment also involves counter-terrorism cooperation. The August foreign terrorist organization designation of the Balochistan Liberation Army — along with a renewed counter-terrorism dialogue in Islamabad — syncs American legal tools and Pakistani security priorities, after years of friction over Afghanistan. That cooperation offers near-term gains against violent groups that can target both Pakistani authorities and foreign projects, including potential U.S. investments in critical minerals in this region.

Another motivation is nudging an increasingly aloof India back toward a reliable alignment by reminding it that it is not indispensable to U.S. strategy. After years of a New Delhi-centric strategy, the White House is signaling to India that Pakistan can also be leveraged when convenient. The timing is telling. Trump’s aggressive tariff campaign against India in August sharply escalated tensions. India now faces a 50 percent U.S. tariff wall, even as Pakistan faces a comparatively lower 19 percent rate — an asymmetry that upsets India and sweetens the pot for Pakistan. Against this backdrop, showcasing access for Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership at the White House is as much a message to India as it is a bet on Pakistan.

What Pakistan Gains and Risks

From Islamabad’s perspective, the payoffs are immediate. Diplomatically and economically, it has regained relevance — a windfall for a country that has long been frustrated by the U.S. focus on India. Sharif’s Washington visit, after a long hiatus by Pakistan’s civilian leaders, gave Pakistan a seat at the table. Economically, U.S. attention is shifting capital toward mining and hydrocarbons — sectors that Pakistani elites consider the country’s escape route from financial stress. The minerals agreement is an opening bid, adding to momentum around Reko Diq and other big-ticket extractives that multilateral lenders view as strategically significant in the global energy transition.

Yet the path is narrow. Heavy U.S. investment and military engagement will inevitably bolster Pakistan’s security establishment, which already dominates the country’s politics. The new deals are largely being brokered and implemented by entities with military connections. For example, the key mining agreement was signed between the Frontier Works Organization — a military-owned conglomerate run by a general — and a Missouri mining firm. The military will capture the benefits while democratic oversight remains weak. Moreover, development in resource-rich Balochistan may ignite insurgent reprisals. The Balochistan Liberation Army has made clear that it opposes Islamabad-backed extractive projects that do not benefit local Baloch communities. American-backed mines or oilfields in Balochistan could thus become flashpoints for terrorism, undermining both U.S. corporate interests and Pakistani stability.

The India Factor

In New Delhi, Trump’s outreach to Islamabad has been met with alarm and dismay. The Modi administration sees these developments as a double blow. After years of bipartisan U.S.-Indian cooperation, Delhi’s policy elite now questions Washington’s reliability. They have expressed resentment at perceived parity with Pakistan. The trust deficit runs deep as a result. High-tech and defense cooperation — once cornerstones of the relationship — are now viewed with skepticism. For example, India’s flagship 10-year Major Defense Partnership framework remains unsigned and uncertain. U.S.-led initiatives on technology co-development are faltering. Several arms sales in the pipeline have stalled amid the diplomatic chill.

The net effect is that India’s enthusiasm for its partnership with the United States is cooling. Polite reassurances by U.S. officials sound hollow against the backdrop of crushing trade penalties and sharp geopolitical turns. The near-term risk is not a rupture but a slowing of the U.S.-Indian agenda in defense co-production and advanced tech — areas where momentum and bureaucratic staffing matter.

Trump’s Pakistan pivot seems to be calibrated against New Delhi’s strategic hedge with Moscow and Beijing. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, India has become the biggest buyer of Russian crude oil. Washington’s punitive tariffs, which took effect in late August, have not deterred New Delhi, which continues to buy near-peak volumes as an assertion of strategic autonomy vis-à-vis the United States. There is also an apparent rapprochement with China. Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited China for the first time since 2018 to participate in the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tianjin. Modi and Chinese leader Xi Jinping agreed on a number of key initiatives, including peacefully resolving their border disputes and supporting a Shanghai Cooperation Organization Development Bank that would lend outside the U.S.-dollar system — steps Modi framed as advancing India’s multipolar vision. However, structural frictions rooted in the unresolved border dispute, China’s coercive economic tools, and its tilt towards Pakistan keep the relationship stuck in a cycle of managed crises rather than reconciliation, leaving room for the U.S. to reverse the bad days in its relations with India.

Washington’s “Pakistan option” can be real leverage with India only if it is bounded and paired with affirmative inducements for New Delhi. Otherwise, it appears to be a blunt instrument that yields some gains in Islamabad while pushing India toward hedging — harder bargains on defense-industrial deals, increased diversification in tech ecosystems, and a tighter grip on strategic autonomy with Russia. If the aim is to build a broader anti-China coalition in the Indo-Pacific, eroding trust with its largest pillar is expensive.

Ego, the Afghan Frontier, and the Gulf Triangle

Beyond critical mineral access and India-centric objectives, America’s tilt toward Pakistan can be explained by diplomatic maneuvering by practical needs. Trump tends to respond to overt personal validation, and Pakistan’s leaders have taken advantage of that. Senior Pakistani leaders publicly lauded Trump’s “peacemaker” role and even floated a Nobel Peace Prize nomination — praise that tracked with Islamabad’s broader courtship, from minerals to market access. By contrast, New Delhi has made it clear that it will not play along. Modi and Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar have repeatedly denied that Washington mediated the May ceasefire with Pakistan, issuing formal statements at the United Nations and on the floor of the Indian Parliament. Those rebuffs help explain why flattery from Islamabad lands while Indian counterparts fall behind.

The United States still needs Pakistan for broader counter-terrorism support to watch jihadist groups in Afghanistan and along its frontier. Pakistan has also been facing rising threats from Afghanistan-linked groups. This is the practical backdrop for the formal U.S.-Pakistan Counterterrorism Dialogue, which reconvened in Islamabad in August to tighten watchlists, financial tracking, and casework far beyond Balochistan. The United States also has a straightforward interest in keeping a modest U.S. foothold in Pakistan’s defense market. Limited support for existing U.S. gear, such as F-16s, keeps American firms involved, preserves leverage with Islamabad, and can be framed at home as “supporting U.S. jobs” without altering the military balance in South Asia.

Then there is the Gulf triangle. Pakistan’s army has unusually deep ties with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar — built over decades of training, advisory billets, and periodic troop rotations. In mid-September 2025, Riyadh and Islamabad signed a mutual defense pact that formalizes their relationship. For Washington, maintaining a steadier line to Islamabad may make three conversations more streamlined: deterring Iran and managing risks from Yemen with Gulf partners, coordinating through oil market shocks, and securing airspace for any future over-the-horizon counter-terrorism missions.

The Path Forward

The United States needs to pair the stick with a serious carrot for India. If tariffs are leverage, trade them for tangible Indian concessions in areas Washington actually cares about. In parallel, accelerate the 10-year defense framework and revive staffing and budgets so ongoing programs don’t wither while negotiators bargain. Offer some deliverables that matter in India: approvals on sensitive tech transfers, timelines for co-production milestones, and a visible queue of joint tests and exercises that make the defense-industrial roadmap look real, not rhetorical.

Washington should limit and condition its engagement with Pakistan’s security establishment. The minerals bet is worth trying — but only with enforceable standards and civilian visibility. Counter-terrorism cooperation should stay mission-bound. Target groups that attack civilians and critical infrastructure, share intelligence for interdictions, and build forensic capacity — but resist the slide into open-ended security assistance that blurs the line between domestic repression and counter-terrorism. On governance, the United States should condition security sector assistance on measurable transparency, including third-party audits for military-run enterprises engaged in U.S.-linked projects.

Broaden — don’t just balance — South Asia. Don’t let an Indian-Pakistani framework eclipse the rest of the region. Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal serve as the connective tissue for supply chains, maritime awareness, and resilience in response to China’s economic pressure. Offer them more tangible benefits, including concessional finance for digital and critical infrastructure, maritime domain awareness packages that integrate with U.S. and Quad data pipelines, as well as debt management and infrastructure governance advice that protects them against predatory concessions. A denser web of middle-power partnerships gives Washington options when New Delhi hesitates and adds weight when Islamabad wobbles.

Keep the crisis ladder short. The U.S.-Pakistani military channel is useful for de-escalation — but pair it with predictable public lines during Indian-Pakistani flare-ups. Condemn terror attacks unambiguously, defend both countries’ right to self-defense within international law, and reinforce red lines against nuclear escalation. That stance denies spoilers the perception of U.S. ambivalence while preserving the private space to lean on both sides.

Trump’s courtship of Pakistan is a tactical play that can result in broader ripple effects. On the upside, it opens a mineral corridor for U.S. and allied supply chains, revives a counter-terrorism channel that still serves mutual interests, and reminds India that Washington has options. On the downside, it risks deepening Pakistan’s military-dominated political economy, igniting new conflicts in Balochistan if benefit-sharing fails, and squandering hard-won trust in New Delhi at a time when the United States needs a robust defense tech partnership to compete with China. The move can still yield a positive outcome — for Washington and regional stability — if the administration treats Pakistan as a limited partner and continues to keep options open for Delhi to get back on track. Otherwise, today’s tactical romance may become tomorrow’s strategic hangover.

BECOME A MEMBER

Muhib Rahman, Ph.D., is a Perry World House postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. A former research fellow at the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (under the Bangladeshi Ministry of Foreign Affairs), his research focuses on interstate conflict, border security, defense cooperation, and civil-military relations, with a particular emphasis on South Asia and U.S. policy toward the region.

Image: Midjourney

warontherocks.com · October 1, 2025

26. Hegseth 'warrior ethos' mistakes military might for true security

Excerpts:

Trump’s rebranding of the Department of Defense into the Department of War signals a shift toward framing US power primarily in terms of military force. Such a framing emphasizes the use of violence as the principal means of solving problems and equates hostility and aggression with leadership.

Yet historical experience shows that military dominance alone has not translated into strategic success. That’s the mindset that lost the US endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and failed in interventions in Libya and Syria – conflicts that altogether cost trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives while leaving the country less secure and eroding its international legitimacy.

“Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry,” Eisenhower said, can compel the proper balance between military power and peaceful goals.

The very title of my and my co-author’s book comes from the Gospel of Matthew – Chapter 26, verse 52 – that “to live by the sword is to die by the sword.” Throughout modern history, true security has come from diplomacy, international law, economic development and investments in health care and education. Not from an imaginary “warrior ethos.”

America, I would argue, doesn’t need a Department of War. It needs leaders who understand, as Eisenhower did, that living by the sword will doom us all in the end. Real security comes from the quiet power that builds legitimacy and lasting peace. The US can choose again to embody those strengths, to lead not by fear but by example.

Hegseth 'warrior ethos' mistakes military might for true security - Asia Times

Trump administration embraces a militaristic mindset that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against in his 1961 farewell address

asiatimes.com · Monica Duffy Toft · September 30, 2025

Hundreds of generals and admirals are to converge on Quantico, Virginia, today, September 30, 2025, after being summoned from across the globe by their boss, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth. While Hegseth has not formally announced the purpose of the meeting, The New York Times reports that it will cover “aspects of what he calls a shift toward a ‘warrior ethos’ at the Pentagon.”

The meeting comes soon after President Donald Trump’s September 5 executive order renaming the Department of Defense the “Department of War.” With that change, Trump sought to revert the department to a name not used since the 1940s.

The change represents far more than rebranding – it signals an escalation in the administration’s embrace of a militaristic mindset that, as long ago as 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against in his farewell address, and that the nation’s founders deliberately aimed to constrain.

The timing of this name change feels particularly notable when considered alongside recent reporting revealing secret US military operations. In 2019, a detachment of US Navy SEALs crept ashore in North Korea on a mission to plant a listening device during high-stakes nuclear talks. The risks were enormous: Discovery could have sparked a hostage crisis or even war with a nuclear-armed foe.

That such an operation was approved by Trump in his first term exemplifies an increasingly reckless militarism that has defined American foreign policy for decades. That militarism is the very subject of my book, “Dying by the Sword.”

Further, the name change was announced just days after Trump authorized a US military strike on a Venezuelan boat that the administration claimed was carrying drug-laden cargo and linked to the Tren de Aragua cartel. The strike killed 11 people. The administration justified the killings by labeling them “narcoterrorists.”

Abandoning restraint – deliberately

The Department of War existed from 1789 until 1947, when Congress passed the National Security Act reorganizing the armed services into the National Military Establishment. Just two years later, lawmakers amended the act, renaming the institution the Department of Defense.

Officials disliked the “NME” acronym – which sounded uncomfortably like “enemy” – but the change was not only about appearances.

In the aftermath of World War II, US leaders wanted to emphasize a defensive rather than aggressive military posture as they entered the Cold War, a decades-long standoff between the United States and Soviet Union defined by a nuclear arms race, ideological rivalry and proxy wars short of direct great-power conflict.

The new emphasis also dovetailed with the new US grand strategy in foreign affairs – diplomat George F. Kennan’s containment strategy, which aimed to prevent the expansion of Soviet power and communist ideology around the world.

Kennan’s approach narrowly survived a push to a more aggressive “rollback” strategy of the Soviet Union from its occupation and oppression of central and eastern Europe. It evolved instead into a long game: a team effort to keep the adversary from expanding to enslave other peoples, leading to the adversary’s collapse and disintegration without risking World War III.

On the ground, this meant fewer preparations for war and more emphasis on allies and intelligence, and foreign aid and trade, along with the projection of defensive strength. The hope was that shaping the environment rather than launching attacks would cause Moscow’s influence to wither. To make this strategy viable, the US military itself had to be reorganized.

In a 1949 address before Congress, President Harry S Truman described the reorganization sparked by the 1947 legislation as a “unification” of the armed forces that would bring efficiency and coordination.

But a deeper purpose was philosophical: to project America’s military power as defensive and protective and, for Truman, to strengthen civilian oversight.

The wisdom of this restraint is clearest in Eisenhower’s farewell address of January 1961.

In under 10 minutes, the former five-star general who had commanded Allied forces to victory in World War II cautioned Americans against the rise of a “military-industrial complex.” He acknowledged that the nation’s “arms must be mighty, ready for instant action,” but warned that “the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Creating new enemies, destabilizing regions

The risky North Korean team mission by the Navy SEALs illustrates how America’s militaristic approach often produces the very dangers it aspires to deter.

Rather than enhancing diplomacy, the operation risked derailing talks and escalating conflict. This is the central argument of my book: America’s now-reflexive reliance on armed force doesn’t make America great again or more secure. It makes the country less secure, by creating new enemies, destabilizing regions and diverting resources from the true foundations of security.

It also makes the US less admired and respected. The State Department budget continues to be dwarfed by the Pentagon’s budget, with the former never reaching more than 5.5% of the latter. And the US Agency for International Development, or USAID, once the leading arm of U.S. soft power as quiet purveyor development aid around the world, is now shuttered.

Today’s Pentagon budget exceeds anything Eisenhower could have imagined.

Trump’s rebranding of the Department of Defense into the Department of War signals a shift toward framing US power primarily in terms of military force. Such a framing emphasizes the use of violence as the principal means of solving problems and equates hostility and aggression with leadership.

Yet historical experience shows that military dominance alone has not translated into strategic success. That’s the mindset that lost the US endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and failed in interventions in Libya and Syria – conflicts that altogether cost trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives while leaving the country less secure and eroding its international legitimacy.

“Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry,” Eisenhower said, can compel the proper balance between military power and peaceful goals.

The very title of my and my co-author’s book comes from the Gospel of Matthew – Chapter 26, verse 52 – that “to live by the sword is to die by the sword.” Throughout modern history, true security has come from diplomacy, international law, economic development and investments in health care and education. Not from an imaginary “warrior ethos.”

America, I would argue, doesn’t need a Department of War. It needs leaders who understand, as Eisenhower did, that living by the sword will doom us all in the end. Real security comes from the quiet power that builds legitimacy and lasting peace. The US can choose again to embody those strengths, to lead not by fear but by example.

Monica Duffy Toft is a professor of international politics and rhw sirector of the Center for Strategic Studies, The Fletcher School, Tufts University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

asiatimes.com · Monica Duffy Toft · September 30, 2025

27. Russia quietly arming China's paratroopers for Taiwan fight

Russia quietly arming China's paratroopers for Taiwan fight - Asia Times

Documents show Russia training China’s airborne forces for Taiwan invasion, but it’s not clear Moscow really wants the war

asiatimes.com · Gabriel Honrada · October 1, 2025

Russia’s quiet arming and training of China’s paratroopers sharpens Beijing’s airborne edge for a Taiwan strike—but significant capability gaps and formidable defenses still cloud the odds of success.

Last month, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) reported that Russia has agreed to supply China with airborne military equipment and training to support the latter’s preparations for a potential invasion of Taiwan by 2027, according to documents obtained by the Black Moon hacktivist group and verified by independent sources.

The deal, signed in 2023, includes 37 BMD-4M amphibious assault vehicles, 11 Sprut-SDM1 anti-tank guns and several command platforms, all modified to integrate Chinese communications systems.

Russian instructors are training a battalion of Chinese paratroopers in equipment operation and airborne tactics, with collective exercises scheduled on Chinese territory.

The agreement also transfers technologies that enable China to localize and scale the production of similar systems. Rosoboronexport and multiple Russian defense firms manage the collaboration, while China’s Central Military Council oversees implementation.

The strategic aim is to enhance China’s air maneuver capabilities, allowing armored units to be airdropped near Taiwan’s ports and airfields, bypassing the risks of amphibious landings.

This capability could enable the rapid seizure of critical infrastructure before Taiwanese forces mobilize. RUSI analysts Oleksandr Danylyuk and Jack Watling suggest that the training and command procedures are the deal’s core value, given Russia’s combat experience.

China’s acquisition of Russian training and equipment feeds directly into its ongoing airborne modernization, yet its forces remain constrained by critical capability gaps in a Taiwan invasion scenario.

Cristina Garafola mentions in a March 2022 China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) report that the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) Airborne Corps has modernized into combined-arms brigades, fielding armored fighting vehicles, artillery, drones and benefiting from growing strategic airlift, enabling paradrops, heavy drops and mechanized maneuver for a joint island-landing campaign.

Furthermore, Daniel Fu mentions in a June 2023 Jamestown Foundation article that recent reforms in the PLAAF Airborne Corps have streamlined command structures and introduced combined arms brigades, while elite paratrooper units conduct frequent joint exercises simulating island assaults.

He adds that PLAAF Airborne Corps doctrine emphasizes surprise, electronic warfare, and rapid deployment to seize strategic infrastructure.

Delving into the possible roles of China’s airborne forces in a Taiwan invasion, Roderick Lee notes in the 2022 book “Crossing the Strait: China Prepares for War With Taiwan” that China’s airborne forces will be an essential part of a joint island landing campaign (JIIC), working in tandem with amphibious forces to increase the odds of a successful landing.

Despite modernization efforts, the PLAAF Airborne Corps may still face significant capability gaps. Garafola notes it has limited heavy airlift, unclear integration with PLA Ground Force and Marine Corps air assault units, no large-scale combat experience and vulnerable transports and paratroopers in contested airspace.

Questions also remain about its ability to operate in degraded electromagnetic environments and sustain combat power ashore. Lee adds that China has a limited number of air transport hubs capable of supporting large-scale air transport operations.

He mentions Wuhan, Kaifeng/Zhengzhou, Beijing and Chengdu as likely hubs for airborne operations against Taiwan. However, Lee says that while Wuhan and Kaifeng/Zhengzhou are close to PLAAF Airborne Corps garrisons, they have insufficient space to land and load the entire PLAAF’s transport fleet.

As for Beijing and Chengdu, he notes their bigger capacity than the former two hubs, but they are far away from PLAAF Airborne Corps garrisons, with distance adding a day of rail transit time.

In terms of combat power, Mark Cancian and others mention in a January 2023 report for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) that while China could use airborne forces to seize Taiwanese airfields, their effectiveness may be found wanting.

Citing past operations such as the Invasion of Crete in 1941 and, more recently, the Battle of Hostomel in 2022, they say airborne forces could not reliably capture and hold airfields.

Airborne units are lightly armed and dependent on vulnerable airlift logistics, while airfields provide little cover, leaving troops largely exposed. Without an immediate link-up with heavier ground forces, they risk encirclement.

As a result of those limitations, Cancian and others point out that in their simulations of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, seizing airfields remained a critical but largely unattained objective.

Taiwan also has a formidable arsenal that poses a serious challenge to airborne operations, with Tianran Xu noting in an April 2025 Open Nuclear Network article that the self-governing island has 200 Patriot PAC-2 Guidance Enhanced Missiles (GEM), with around 400 Tien Kung-2 and approximately the same number of Tien Kung-3 interceptors.

Beyond those medium-range systems, Taiwan has a significant stockpile of Stinger man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) and anti-aircraft guns, posing a serious risk to low-flying aircraft.

Taiwan could also deploy ad-hoc obstacles (e.g., Rommel’s Asparagus) on open terrain to stop helicopter landings, pre-emptively crater runways, and rapidly mobilize regular and reserve units to surround airborne forces.

But despite those shortcomings, Cancian and others note that airborne forces are more effective in isolating battle areas than seizing airfields, assisting amphibious units in establishing a beachhead.

If so, China may use airborne forces in vertical envelopment maneuvers, dropping off troops at the rear or flanks of opposing forces resisting an amphibious assault on Taiwan’s 20 “red beaches” – possible landing sites for Chinese forces – thereby cutting them off from retreat, resupply, and reinforcement.

Yet even if China closes its airborne gaps, larger geopolitical realities shape how far Russia will go in backing any Taiwan campaign.

While China has offered substantial but carefully calibrated assistance to Russia’s war effort in Ukraine, with NATO leaders calling the former the latter’s key enabler, the two authoritarian powers may not meet eye-to-eye over Taiwan.

Eugene Rumer states in a September 2024 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) report that Russia does not see a Chinese military campaign to seize Taiwan as in its interest.

Rumer points out that while Russia views Taiwan as an “inalienable” part of China, it sees war over the self-governing island as fraught with risk, noting the possible global catastrophe from US-China nuclear escalation, threats to its strategic Pacific assets (i.e., Vladivostok naval base, Viliuchinsk submarine base and energy projects in Sakhalin), and massive economic disruption.

Citing Russian experts, Rumer says in such a contingency, Russia may offer China limited assistance such as energy, military technology, intelligence and cyber assistance – mirroring the latter’s measured assistance to the former.

He notes that ultimately, Russia benefits more from Taiwan tensions that distract US resources from Europe into the Pacific rather than an actual war that would impose severe risks and costs.

Russia’s aid could enhance China’s airborne capability, but gaps in airlift, survivability and sustainment cast doubt on a potential victory. In a Taiwan clash, it’s uncertain if China’s paratroopers will cause havoc or be cut down before gaining a foothold.

asiatimes.com · Gabriel Honrada · October 1, 2025

28. Flood the Zone: III Marine Expeditionary Force’s Mobility Mandate

Conclusion:

This article is not theory. It’s an operational after-action report from marines who have planned with spreadsheets open, maps on the table, and weather delays testing force closure timelines. There’s no glamour in arguing for surface vessels and a lot of the figures will be further refined as this work is published. But there are real consequences for not resourcing what III Marine Expeditionary Force needs. The truth is: Mobility is the predicate to everything else fires, command and control, sustainment, partnership, and presence.

Flood the Zone: III Marine Expeditionary Force’s Mobility Mandate

Brandan R. Schofield and Andrew C. Edwards

warontherocks.com · October 1, 2025

BECOME A MEMBER

What We Have (and Why It’s Not Enough)

A Deterrence Platform, Not Just a Logistics Fix

Mobility Decisions Through 2028

Beyond these immediate deadlines, the Marine Corps faces a series of decisions in the next five years that will determine whether today’s experiments mature into lasting capabilities.

Beyond 2028

Anticipating the Critics

Flood the Zone

The Myth of the Pile of Money

We are not asking to rewrite the Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan. We’re asking to spend smart now to avoid strategic regret later.

Practical Over Perfect

One Last Note from the Arena

BECOME A MEMBER

**Please note, as a matter of house style War on the Rocks will not use a different name for the U.S. Department of Defense until and unless the name is changed by statute by the U.S. Congress.

Image: Gunnery Sgt. Jonathan Wright via DVIDS

warontherocks.com · October 1, 2025

29. Typhon in Japan changes the game — and China knows it

Excerpts:

The Typhon has the capability to strike moving targets, such as mobile rocket forces and naval ships, both of which are core functions of the Chinese military.

Currently, the Typhon system can hit coastal Chinese military bases from Japan, which gives the USFJ and JSDF command options to strike and hinder PLA logistics if a war were to occur.

Simultaneously, boiling tensions in the South China Sea are a major concern for American, Japanese and Filipino forces. Alongside the US-Philippines alliance, a crucial amount of Japan’s trade runs through the Luzon Strait in the South China Sea, which the PLAN could hinder or sever if armed conflict tilted in Beijing’s favor.

Furthermore, Japan recently ratified its own defense agreement with the Philippines, and with both potentially being the Typhon’s first customers, both Indo-Pacific countries have growing arsenals to deter and combat the PLAN if turbulence in US politics leads to a slow American response time in the event of a regional crisis.

Typhon in Japan changes the game — and China knows it - Asia Times

US mid-range missile system can hit mobile land and sea targets and brings China’s coastal military bases into range

asiatimes.com · Julian McBride · October 1, 2025

Amid escalating tensions in the Indo-Pacific, Japan is remilitarizing its Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) in a manner not seen since the end of World War II. To maintain a threshold of deterrence, Japan and the United States are growing their mutual defense capabilities to new heights.

The United States military has deployed the Typhon missile system to Japan as a major set of deterrence capabilities against a rapidly militarizing China. With major areas of responsibility to cover in its Northern territories and East and South China Sea, the Typhon can help the JSDF and US Forces Japan (USJF) enhance their rocket force if tensions continue to rise.

The Typhon is a mid-range capability missile launcher (MRC) for the SM-6 and Tomahawk cruise missiles. Designed by Lockheed Martin, the Typhon, also known as the Strategic Mid-range Fires System (SMRF), officially entered US Army use in 2023.

Utilizing the SMRF, US Army personnel can fill gaps in the military’s precision rocket fire inventory. According to Defense News, the decision to create the concept of the Typhon came from a strategic fires study by the US Army’s Futures Command Research and Analysis Center in mid-2020.

The Typhon can hit mobile targets up to 499 kilometers away with ground-launched hypersonic missiles. Included in the system are the Battery Operations Center (command), four vertical launchers (each with 16 missiles) and mobile trailers.

Depending on the type of missile, the mid-range capabilities of the Typhon allow US forces in the Indo-Pacific flexibility to counter targets on land and sea, such as enemy ships.

With the US shifting back to its amphibious roots, particularly with Force Design 2030, the Typhon MRC helps supplement various branches in the Asia-Pacific.

Although the system has been deployed in the Philippines since the Spring of 2024, the Typhon system was first used during Exercise Talisman Sabre 25 this past July at the Bradshaw training site near Darwin, Australia. The US Army’s 3rd Multi-Domain Task Force implemented the system, firing an SM-6 missile at a designated training target.

Following the successful exercise, the Pentagon announced that it had deployed the Typhon to Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Japan. The system was unveiled during Exercise Resolute Dragon 25, in which the USFJ and the JSDF conducted joint training in maritime defense, littoral maneuvers and crisis response.

The Typhon system is now reportedly being eyed by various American allies. Germany, Japan and the Philippines have all expressed interest in purchasing the missile system.

As part of the country’s ongoing remilitarization, Germany’s Bundeswehr is eyeing the Typhon as part of the military’s strike capabilities. With growing threats from Russia, the Typhon is capable of striking Russian military bases in Kaliningrad, which is in proximity to Germany’s borders.

A Typhon for Japan would enhance the JSDF’s capabilities, as Tokyo’s adversaries, including China, North Korea and Russia, are also increasing their medium- and long-range missile stockpiles.

In late 2024, the Philippines announced plans to acquire the Typhon after being impressed with the system’s capabilities during exercises. Faced with Chinese naval (PLAN) threats across its vast maritime space, the Typhon gives Manila greater flexibility to react if armed provocations were to ensue.

Japan’s national defense and joint allied capabilities with the United States will be enhanced with the Typhon system under the littoral doctrine.

Currently, Japan faces significant maritime flashpoints that necessitate a growing American presence as part of the First Island Chain strategy to maintain freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.

Increasing PLAN incursions in Japan’s Economic Exclusion Zone (EEZ) in the East China Sea have nearly led to armed conflict. Now, with the US positioning the Typhon in the country, Beijing may think twice before engaging in further provocations.

The Typhon has the capability to strike moving targets, such as mobile rocket forces and naval ships, both of which are core functions of the Chinese military.

Currently, the Typhon system can hit coastal Chinese military bases from Japan, which gives the USFJ and JSDF command options to strike and hinder PLA logistics if a war were to occur.

Simultaneously, boiling tensions in the South China Sea are a major concern for American, Japanese and Filipino forces. Alongside the US-Philippines alliance, a crucial amount of Japan’s trade runs through the Luzon Strait in the South China Sea, which the PLAN could hinder or sever if armed conflict tilted in Beijing’s favor.

Furthermore, Japan recently ratified its own defense agreement with the Philippines, and with both potentially being the Typhon’s first customers, both Indo-Pacific countries have growing arsenals to deter and combat the PLAN if turbulence in US politics leads to a slow American response time in the event of a regional crisis.

Lastly, with provocations of stray intercontinental ballistic missile tests by North Korea that sometimes fall near the Sea of Japan, USFJ has additional options to counter the Kim Jong Un regime if a non-nuclear-tipped missile were to strike Japanese territory or American military bases directly.

The Typhon missile system is a crucial mid-range capability missile launcher needed to upgrade the US Army’s rocket and artillery capabilities amidst brewing conflicts in the Indo-Pacific.

With Japan increasingly becoming a flashpoint of aggression from China, North Korea, and Russia, stationing the Typhon to supplement the JSDF and US Forces Japan is timely and much needed for deterrence.

Julian McBride is a defense analyst and contributing editor at 19FortyFive.

asiatimes.com · Julian McBride · October 1, 2025

30. The Termites in Article II: How the Unitary Executive Is Hollowing Out the Republic

Ideas here that are challenging and discussing critically important ideas about our great American experiment. The question is how do we want that experiment to turn out?

Perhaps we should all review the Federalist Papers.

Excerpts:

The Federalist Papers—85 essays by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay—were not abstract philosophy. They were a sales pitch for the Constitution, meant to persuade a skeptical public that a stronger central government could be built without crushing liberty. Their message boiled down to this: energy in government is necessary, but so is restraint. Hamilton argued for an executive strong enough to enforce the laws and protect the nation. Madison insisted that ambition must counteract ambition. Jay emphasized unity against foreign threats. Again and again, they stressed that a republic would endure only if power was balanced and checked. The essays envisioned a strong president, but never a solitary ruler.

The office was designed to serve the republic, not to dominate it.

As Madison cautioned in Federalist No. 10: “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” And in Federalist No. 47: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands… may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” My concern is not Trump the man, but the precedents his actions create, the intent behind this steady push to collapse oversight, and the long-term consequences for the Republic. Every power claimed today will be available to tomorrow’s president, and one day it may be wielded by someone far more disciplined, ruthless, and capable.

Hamilton himself drew the contrast clearly:

“The President of the United States would be an officer elected by the people for four years; the King of Great Britain is a perpetual and hereditary prince. The one would be amenable to personal punishment and disgrace; the person of the other is sacred and inviolable.”

—Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 69

If we allow precedent to erase that difference, if we trade balance for expedience, we may discover too late that the Constitution’s architecture has been handed over to the ambitions of a single office—and that the republic the framers entrusted to us has been hollowed out from within.

The Termites in Article II

How the Unitary Executive Is Hollowing Out the Republic

https://vaberet.substack.com/p/the-termites-in-article-ii?r=7i07&utm

The Old and Bold

Sep 30, 2025

substack.com · The Old and Bold

Knowing I will likely lose some of my “military stuff” readers…

Once again, I find myself wading into political waters when I probably ought to keep my focus on military questions like reforming the Special Forces Regiment. But a recent conversation with friends—and an essay by Judge Kenton Skarin in the Wall Street Journal titled History’s Case for a Strong Presidency—got me thinking. And thinking, as some of you know, is usually what gets me in trouble.

What follows is not an academic exercise, but another attempt at catharsis—my way of trying to make sense of a country I’m finding harder and harder to recognize. Having spent more than a few years in places very different from the United States, I’ve seen firsthand how fragile institutions can be, and how quickly “temporary” powers morph into permanent tools of control. During the Global War on Terror, I also saw how even our own system, under stress, could justify bending norms in the name of emergency, exigency, or fear.

History teaches us that presidents have always tested the limits of their office. Adams jailed critics, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, Wilson prosecuted dissenters, Roosevelt bent agencies, Nixon kept an enemies list. Yet in each case, the system corrected itself—through elections, Congress, or the courts. Jefferson swept away the Sedition Acts, Congress endorsed Lincoln’s actions, Wilson’s prosecutions were overturned, Watergate reforms curbed abuses, and the Church Committee forced changes on the FBI. For most of our history, the pendulum swung back.

What feels different today is intention. We are not watching episodic overreach corrected after the fact but a systematic campaign to expand the presidency itself—by weakening oversight, diminishing Congress, and treating institutional independence as a flaw rather than a feature. This is the deliberate implementation of the Unitary Executive Theory: a reading of Article II that interprets “the executive power” to mean all authority within the executive branch flows directly and exclusively from the president. On the surface, the logic seems tidy—if power is vested in one office, then that officer must be able to direct and dismiss anyone beneath him. But that collapses the tension the framers deliberately built into the system.

Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist No. 70, did argue for “energy in the executive,” making the case that unity in the office would promote decisiveness and accountability—so the public would know whom to praise or blame. But unity was never meant to create unbounded discretion. Energy in the executive was meant to serve the republic, not to insulate the president from law. James Madison, in Federalist No. 51, was clear: separation of powers was designed so that “ambition [would] counteract ambition.” George Washington, the model for Article II in practice, embodied restraint—declining a third term, respecting congressional prerogatives, and refusing to conflate personal will with constitutional authority. And Thomas Jefferson, in his Notes on the State of Virginia, issued the bluntest warning: “An elective despotism was not the government we fought for.”

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The framers built their design on tension—Hamilton’s energy and Madison’s counter-ambition—so vigor would be balanced by restraint. The Unitary Executive Theory collapses that balance by reducing the system to one person’s will. It recasts Article II not as stewardship within a system of shared authority, but as license for centralized control. And this isn’t academic anymore—it’s being operationalized through executive orders, backed by sympathetic legal networks, and now cemented by a Supreme Court interpretation that effectively grants near-total presidential immunity.

Judge Skarin’s appeal to colonial governors misses this point. The Constitution was not written to replicate colonial practice but to correct its abuses. Humphrey’s Executor (1935) followed that principle. Recognizing that modern agencies perform quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial duties, the Court insulated them from direct presidential command to preserve balance. Independent agencies may not have existed in 1787, but the principle behind them—insulating certain powers from partisan control—was consistent with the framers’ effort to prevent accumulation of power.

With the Court now reconsidering Humphrey’s Executor, the risk is not housekeeping but consolidation. Allowing presidents to remove commissioners at will would collapse agency independence, eliminate oversight, and concentrate authority in ways the framers worked to prevent. And unlike past excesses, this is deliberate. Independent agencies are being reframed not as safeguards but as obstacles to be dismantled. Their very insulation from presidential command, once understood as necessary, is now cast as a defect.

Seen in that light, the move to overturn Humphrey’s Executor is not a neutral adjustment but part of a strategy to expand Article II at the expense of every other branch. Combined with a weakened Congress, a deferential Court, a fragmented press, oligarchs pulling strings from the backbench, and an emboldened president at the helm, it looks less like reform and more like slow-motion collapse.

We are also becoming numb to extraordinary measures that once would have shocked us. The deployment of troops on American streets—once seen as crossing a Rubicon—has slipped into routine. In the past, such actions came only in crisis: the civil rights era, riots, Katrina, 9/11. Now they are presented as tools of ordinary governance—troops at the border, Guard units federalized for city law enforcement, Marines in Los Angeles during unrest. What was once the hallmark of martial law is now cloaked in the language of public safety.

And the language keeps shifting. On September 30, 2025, the President told assembled military leaders that the Secretary of Defense should consider using American cities as “training grounds” to fight what he called a “war from within.” This was no stray remark—it was said openly, as if deploying soldiers domestically were simply another instrument of national defense.

The pattern is clear. In 2020, Washington, D.C. was flooded with federal forces, the Insurrection Act was threatened, and Lafayette Square was cleared for a photo op with a Bible. In his second term, the conversation has moved further: federalizing Guard units for Chicago or Portland is treated as a live option, and domestic deployments are now justified as “training.” Even when troops don’t move, the fact that such proposals are treated as plausible—and defended as preparation for war—shows how far the line has shifted.

What was once exceptional has become routine, and routine is being reframed as strategic necessity. Each time we accept such acts, the baseline of presidential authority shifts. The public, worn down by constant crisis, grows silent. Congress, long resigned on war powers, rarely objects. Governors hesitate to resist. Courts defer to “emergencies.”

This is how norms die—not through one dramatic decree but through steady erosion, and in this case, with deliberate intent. The “war from within” framing is not just rhetoric; it folds domestic control into the Article II logic of the Unitary Executive Theory. If all “executive power” resides in the president, then policing American streets becomes indistinguishable from defending the nation. Soldiers today, surveillance tomorrow, liberties eroded the day after. Each step is justified as temporary, limited, necessary—but together they redefine the relationship between citizen and state, liberty and power. And these so-called “norms” are not courtesies; they are the connective tissue that makes the Constitution work. Strip them away, and the structure collapses into façade.

That’s the slippery slope. And I fear we’ve already passed the inflection point.

Some will dismiss all of this as “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” but my personal disdain for the President is less important than the precedents he is setting. Trump himself may be too impulsive, too undisciplined, to wield these powers to their full effect. The deeper worry is what happens when someone more capable comes along. History warns us that once powers exist, someone will use them—imagine a president with Putin’s patience, Erdogan’s ruthlessness, or Maduro’s shamelessness. Or, as one friend put it, what happens when we elect a future “Mamdami”—a demagogue with charisma, focus, and no scruples—and hand him the tools of an unchecked presidency? That’s not speculation. That’s the trajectory we’re on.

And if the slope feels familiar, it should. Ece Temelkuran, writing about Turkey’s slide in her book, How to Lose a Country: the 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship, showed how democracies unravel step by step: by dividing citizens into “real people” and everyone else; by capturing institutions and bending them to partisan command; by eroding accountability and weakening oversight; by controlling the narrative and discrediting dissent; by reshaping what it means to be a loyal citizen; and by normalizing the extraordinary until it feels routine. Look at our own politics: “real Americans” versus “elites,” agencies pulled under presidential control, a Court granting immunity, a Congress too polarized to act, a press dismissed as “fake news,” troops in cities once unthinkable now treated as policy options. Each step may feel manageable in isolation, but together they map a familiar path toward something darker.

The Federalist Papers—85 essays by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay—were not abstract philosophy. They were a sales pitch for the Constitution, meant to persuade a skeptical public that a stronger central government could be built without crushing liberty. Their message boiled down to this: energy in government is necessary, but so is restraint. Hamilton argued for an executive strong enough to enforce the laws and protect the nation. Madison insisted that ambition must counteract ambition. Jay emphasized unity against foreign threats. Again and again, they stressed that a republic would endure only if power was balanced and checked. The essays envisioned a strong president, but never a solitary ruler.

The office was designed to serve the republic, not to dominate it.

As Madison cautioned in Federalist No. 10: “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” And in Federalist No. 47: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands… may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” My concern is not Trump the man, but the precedents his actions create, the intent behind this steady push to collapse oversight, and the long-term consequences for the Republic. Every power claimed today will be available to tomorrow’s president, and one day it may be wielded by someone far more disciplined, ruthless, and capable.

Hamilton himself drew the contrast clearly:

“The President of the United States would be an officer elected by the people for four years; the King of Great Britain is a perpetual and hereditary prince. The one would be amenable to personal punishment and disgrace; the person of the other is sacred and inviolable.”

—Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 69

If we allow precedent to erase that difference, if we trade balance for expedience, we may discover too late that the Constitution’s architecture has been handed over to the ambitions of a single office—and that the republic the framers entrusted to us has been hollowed out from within.

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

substack.com · The Old and Bold

31. The Man Behind Trump’s Push for an All-Powerful Presidency

In my limited knowledge of the Constitution, the unitary theory of government does not seem to be aligned with what our founding fathers intended nor with what defines a republic that fundamentally rests on separation of powers and checks and balances.

The Man Behind Trump’s Push for an All-Powerful Presidency

Russell T. Vought spent years drawing up plans to expand presidential power and shrink federal bureaucracy. Now he is moving closer to making that vision a reality, threatening to erode checks and balances.

NY Times · Coral Davenport · September 29, 2025

Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director, has exerted his influence over nearly every corner of President Trump’s Washington with his command of the levers of the federal budget.Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

Listen to this article · 16:38 min Learn more

Reporting from Washington

Sept. 29, 2025

Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director, was preparing the Trump administration’s 2026 budget proposal this spring when his staff got some surprising news: Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team was unilaterally axing items that Mr. Vought had intended to keep.

Mr. Vought, a numbers wonk who rarely raises his voice, could barely contain his frustration, telling colleagues that he felt sidelined and undermined by the haphazard chaos of the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, according to six people with knowledge of his comments who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

“We’re going to let DOGE break things, and we’ll pick up the pieces later,” Mr. Vought told his staff during one flash of irritation, according to three of those people. Mr. Vought’s spokeswoman, Rachel Cauley, denied that he made those comments, and that he felt frustrated by Mr. Musk.

This had not been Mr. Vought’s plan.

Mr. Vought, who also directed the White House Office of Management and Budget in President Trump’s first term, had spent four years in exile from power. He worked through Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s presidency from an old rowhouse near the Capitol, where he complained of pigeons infesting his ceiling and coordinated with other Trump loyalists to draw up sweeping, detailed plans for a comeback.

He had carefully analyzed mistakes from the first term. And he had laid out steps to achieve the long-sought conservative goal of a president with dramatically expanded authority over the executive branch, including the power to cut off spending, fire employees, control independent agencies and deregulate the economy.

Mr. Musk, who spent more than $250 million to help elect Mr. Trump, had celebrity, access to the president and political capital that the budget director could never hope for.

But Mr. Vought (pronounced “vote”) had something Mr. Musk did not: He had done his homework.

In the months since Mr. Musk fell out with the president, Mr. Vought has at last begun to put his plans into action — remaking the presidency, block by block, by restoring powers weakened after the Nixon administration. His efforts are helping Mr. Trump exert authority more aggressively than any modern president, and are threatening an erosion of the longstanding checks and balances in America’s constitutional system.

Now, as the government heads toward a shutdown when federal funding lapses on Tuesday, Mr. Vought, 49, is leveraging the moment to further advance his goals of slashing agencies and purging employees, with his office telling agencies to prepare for mass firings unless Congress can strike a deal to keep the government open.

The ultimatum follows a string of achievements for Mr. Vought.

This summer, he pressured lawmakers to enact his plan to cancel $9 billion for foreign aid and public broadcasting that they had previously approved — an unusual bow by Congress to the White House. The new law claimed another prize for conservatives: the death of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. And a deal Mr. Vought cut with House Republicans helped secure passage of Mr. Trump’s domestic policy law that slashed spending on Medicaid and food stamps.

Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, left, and Representative Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, right, conferring during a House committee meeting to advance a bill to claw back $9 billion for foreign aid and public broadcasting.Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

He has spearheaded a push to erase hundreds of regulations on the environment, health, transportation and food and worker safety, telling Mr. Trump at an August cabinet meeting that his efforts had led to 245 deregulatory initiatives this year. He has asserted White House power over independent agencies like the Federal Reserve, championing an executive order that forced them to submit their regulatory actions to his office for approval.

As the acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency charged with enforcing rules to protect people from predatory financial practices, he halted nearly all of the agency’s work, and sought to fire 90 percent of its staff.

At the heart of Mr. Vought’s plan, associates say, is the intentional engineering of a legal battle over Congress’s power to decide how government money is spent, potentially creating a new legal precedent for the president to block spending on any programs and policies he dislikes.

The next step in the fight is a legally untested maneuver in which the Trump administration would cancel another $4.9 billion in foreign aid spending — this time without congressional approval. The gambit, known as a “pocket rescission,” involves the White House eliminating the spending unless Congress votes to stop it by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.

The threat has enraged many lawmakers, including some Republicans: Senator Susan Collins, the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, called it illegal. But as the deadline has neared, they have done nothing to stop it. Mr. Vought is confident that the White House would win a Supreme Court battle over the moves to stop spending, according to his associates.

“He is lining up the billiards shots, getting each ball in place, one by one, for each consecutive move,” said Grover Norquist, the anti-tax activist.

Mr. Vought has laid out how the White House budget director could use the levers of spending to preserve for a conservative president the “boldness to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will.”Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times

For the leaders of Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement, Mr. Vought is seen as the disciplined architect who channeled the passion of MAGA into an actionable policy blueprint. The slain activist Charlie Kirk, whose podcast was one of many where Mr. Vought regularly shared his views with the Republican base, called Mr. Vought “an absolute rock star.”

To many legal experts, Mr. Vought’s work is a threat to the foundations of democracy.

“One of the main sources of power that Congress has over the executive branch is the budget,” said Eloise Pasachoff, a law professor at Georgetown University. “If the executive branch isn’t controlled by the power of the purse, then there is very little that will control the President.”

She added: “It’s a fundamental challenge to liberty for every single person in America.”

Mr. Vought, who declined through his spokeswoman to be interviewed, sees it differently. He said in a speech earlier this month that his mission was to bring to heel an unelected federal bureaucracy he likened to a “cartel working behind closed doors.”

“We have now been embarked on deconstructing this administrative state,” he said. “Step after step, it’s to move quickly, trying to think through what the founders would have done in the circumstances, and be aggressive.”

Over the years, Mr. Vought has made clear how he views his targets. He has said the Education Department promotes “woke-rot” propaganda like “grooming minors for so-called gender transition.” That the Federal Reserve has “been wrong for decades.” That the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development “actively embarrass the United States.” That the Internal Revenue Service targets “struggling families in a craven effort to sustain the broader bureaucracy’s radical progressive agenda.” And, in a remark captured on video unearthed by ProPublica that stung many in Washington, he said he wanted federal employees to be “in trauma.”

Once the budget director has the power to starve those government agencies, Mr. Vought has said, they can whither away. “We want to make sure that the bureaucracy can’t reconstitute itself later in future administrations,” he said on Mr. Kirk’s podcast.

MAGA’s ‘Bulldog’

Mr. Vought near the Capitol in 2008.Credit...Jay Westcott

Mr. Vought started envisioning a blueprint to slash the federal government long before Mr. Trump was a Republican.

He grew up the youngest of seven children in a religious blue-collar family in Trumbull, Conn. His father, a Marine Corps veteran, was a union electrician, and his mother was a public school teacher.

In Mr. Vought’s telling, he grew up watching his parents dragged down by big government.

“My parents worked really long hours to put me through school,” he said at his first Senate confirmation hearing. “But they also worked long hours to pay for the government in their lives, and I have often wondered what they would have been free to build and give without such a high burden.”

After graduating from Wheaton College, an evangelical Christian school in Illinois, Mr. Vought went to Washington to work for Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, a Republican champion of fiscal austerity.

Mr. Gramm recalled his young staff member as prodigiously hardworking, attending law school by night while working by day to help his boss shrink the government.

“Russ worked for me as a child, and I’m proud of what he’s doing now,” said Mr. Gramm, who retired from the Senate in 2002.

Mr. Vought went on to direct budget policy for House Republicans during the rise of the Tea Party movement, when populist demand for smaller government propelled a wave of hard-line conservatives into Washington.

Over the years, Mr. Vought formed potent friendships with some of the most prominent House Republicans, including Mick Mulvaney, who also served as the White House chief of staff under Mr. Trump.Credit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times

It was not a given that he would join the first Trump administration. Mr. Vought, who friends say is deeply driven by his faith and often leads adult Bible study classes at his Baptist church, considered opting out of Washington to attend seminary and become a pastor. In 2017, he heeded the call of the White House.

During Mr. Trump’s first term, Mr. Vought argued that the president had the power to block federal spending Congress had approved. He was part of a group of White House officials who froze military spending for Ukraine in defiance of Congress, paving a path to the president’s impeachment.

He also helped come up with the idea of using emergency powers to build a border wall without Congressional approval, and pushed an executive order that could have enabled the president to easily fire tens of thousands of career civil servants.

The budget office was eventually forced to restore the Ukraine money, and the other moves were reversed by the Biden administration.

Lawmakers voted to impeach Mr. Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in December 2019.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

After the 2020 election, Mr. Vought started the Center for Renewing America, a think tank devoted to sustaining Mr. Trump’s policies.

The clawing of either rats or pigeons in his office walls was so loud that it distracted visitors, according to a recent book, “Mad House." But Mr. Vought remained focused on his mission.

In 2022, he released a 104-page “shadow budget,” a prescription to remove “the scourge of woke and weaponized bureaucracy aimed at the American people”: deep cuts to Medicaid, foreign aid, scientific research and other programs.

Outraged when Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House speaker, cut a deal with Mr. Biden to raise the debt ceiling, Mr. Vought pushed House Republicans to take the extraordinary step of ousting their leader.

Mr. Vought was a constant presence in the group text thread of the House Freedom Caucus, the hard-line conservatives who toppled Mr. McCarthy — bucking them up and pushing them to take what felt like an enormous political risk, said former Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, who led the effort.

“When people got scared or concerned about political impact, committee assignments, he was always there, strongly encouraging them,” Mr. Gaetz said. “He was instilling backbone in people.”

Matt Gaetz, former congressman of Florida, credits Mr. Vought’s relationships with members of the House Freedom Caucus as being instrumental to the effort to remove Kevin McCarthy as House speaker.Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

Mr. Vought’s public comments began to take on a more hard-line tilt. His think tank published papers establishing a rationale for why it would be lawful to deploy troops on U.S. soil, and advocating the elimination of the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence.

Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump adviser whose “War Room” podcast is popular with the base, declared him “MAGA’s Bulldog.”

Back to the White House

Mr. Vought during his Senate confirmation hearing in January.Credit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times

After Mr. Trump won a second term, Mr. Vought devoted himself to preparing for a do-over — one that was bigger, bolder and, crucially, lasting.

Eyeing his next role, Mr. Vought described how the White House budget director would be critical in transforming the federal government. “Presidents use the O.M.B. to tame the bureaucracy, the administrative state,” he told conservative commentator Tucker Carlson days after the 2024 election.

Mr. Vought’s research was featured in Project 2025, the policy blueprint prepared by the conservative Heritage Foundation for Mr. Trump’s return to office. Mr. Vought also drafted potential executive orders.

But tensions emerged soon after Mr. Musk parachuted into Washington with a mandate to upend the federal bureaucracy.

Mr. Vought was outraged when DOGE sowed chaos by sending out an email requiring federal workers to detail five accomplishments each week or lose their jobs, said three people with knowledge of the matter. Mr. Vought supported purging federal workers, but complained that the email had skirted the legal process for personnel matters, creating what he saw as needless liability.

In the months since Elon Musk left Washington after falling out with Mr. Trump, Mr. Vought has begun to realize the vision he meticulously mapped out.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

While Mr. Vought has called for the abolition of the Education Department, he was annoyed when DOGE moved to dismantle the agency’s data office, which tracks student academic performance, according to two people familiar with the events. The administration needed the data to inform efforts to discourage race-based college admissions, cut certain programs for poor and disabled students, and promote charter schools, these people said.

Mr. Vought’s spokeswoman, Ms. Cauley, called the accounts of those episodes “false.” Mr. Musk and his representatives did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Vought later restored portions of the office, but with limited staffing. The Education Department has posted job openings to refill some of the positions.

“DOGE would have been far more effective from day one had they bothered to ask Russ and team how to achieve their goals,” said Joe Grogan, a friend of Mr. Vought’s who led the White House Domestic Policy Council in the first Trump administration.

Now, in the post-Musk era, Mr. Vought appears to be relishing his moment.

He works long hours and weekends in his suite in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House, where he oversees a staff of more than 500.

On the wall is a photo of his favorite president, Calvin Coolidge, the farm boy and small-town mayor historians say most purely embodied the conservative principles of small government and fiscal austerity.

Around his home in a Virginia suburb, his neighbors — including former federal workers who lost their jobs under the Trump administration — have planted lawn signs that read “We Support Our Federal Employees.”

Mr. Vought’s neighbors have employed lawn signs and sidewalk chalk as public signs of pushback to his policies in the Virginia suburb where he lives.Credit...Photographs by The New York Times

In the White House, Mr. Vought is not seen as a part of Mr. Trump’s inner circle, according to four people with knowledge of the dynamics. He regularly quotes the Bible and never curses — a sharp contrast with a president who sometimes refers to Christians in the third person. But people familiar with the relationship between the two men say that the president recognizes in Mr. Vought something that he highly values: a seasoned loyalist who knows how to use the federal budget to deliver what Mr. Trump wants.

“Russ knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end weaponized government,” Mr. Trump wrote in a statement when nominating Mr. Vought.

Now Mr. Vought is building the case to achieve one of his primary objectives: securing the president’s authority to block congressionally approved spending on programs he dislikes.

To that end, Mr. Vought is laying the groundwork for a legal battle over the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, enacted by Congress in the wake of President Richard Nixon’s moves to block agency spending he opposed.

Mr. Vought, who says the law is unconstitutional, would like to see it overturned.

That goal has driven him to his current “pocket rescissions” package.

Protesters interrupted a hearing as Mr. Vought addressed the Senate Appropriations Committee in June.Credit...Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times

Mr. Vought’s friends say that his actions are designed to provoke a lawsuit from the Government Accountability Office, the congressional watchdog, which has said the pocket rescission is illegal and “would cede Congress’s power of the purse.”

“Russ absolutely believes he is on sound legal footing and that he will be vindicated at the Supreme Court,” Mr. Grogan said.

Edda Emmanuelli Perez, the general counsel of the Government Accountability Office, disagreed, saying in an interview: “In order to not spend the money, the laws would have to be changed. And the president does not have the unilateral power to change the laws.”

Rob Fairweather, who spent 42 years at the Office of Management and Budget and wrote a book about how it operates, said there is reason for Mr. Vought to have confidence in a legal victory.

“What he’s doing is radical, but it’s well thought out,” Mr. Fairweather said. “He’s had all these years to plan. He’s looked clearly at the authorities and boundaries that are there, and is pushing past them on the assumption that at least some of it will hold up in the courts.”

Mr. Vought is already looking forward to that outcome, declaring on Glenn Beck’s show this spring: “We will have a much smaller bureaucracy as a result of it.”

Mr. Vought, second from right, in the Oval Office with President Trump, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Stacy Cowley and Charlie Savage contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.

Coral Davenport covers energy and environment policy, with a focus on climate change, for The Times.

NY Times · Coral Davenport · September 29, 2025

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

Access NSS HERE

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