Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“The reward for all virtues is the virtue itself. The wage for a good deed is to have done it.”

– Seneca

"Devices are not dangerous for literature. People can be dangerous for literature. People, for example, who do not read."

– László Krasznahorkai

"History is a vast early warning system."

– Norman Cousins

1. Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Venezuelan Opposition Leader María Corina Machado

2. Israeli Government Approves Hostage Deal Setting a Cease-Fire in Gaza

3. How Trump’s Upside-Down Diplomacy Delivered a Major Foreign-Policy Victory

4. The Lessons of Trump’s Gaza Peace Deal

5. China’s Rare-Earth Escalation Threatens Trade Talks—and the Global Economy

6. Tariffs Are Way Up. Interest on Debt Tops $1 Trillion. And DOGE Didn’t Do Much.

7. China to Impose Special Port Fees on U.S. Vessels

8. ‘As Long as it Takes': What does it mean to commit to Ukraine’s security? Sir Lawrence Freedman

9. ‘War is a business’: the Colombian mercenaries at Sudan’s battlefront

10. US Army accepting roughly $1 million donation to bring senior leaders to DC conference as troops brace for missed paycheck

11. The Second Front, Part IIa: PRC Micro-Occupation in The Philippines

12. The Way Ahead is Down: The Case for Underground Defense

13. Israeli Military Says Cease-Fire Is in Effect in Gaza

14. Senate passes $925 billion defense bill, setting up House talks

15. Pope urges news agencies to stand as bulwark against lies, manipulation and post-truths

16. The Army’s Race to Catch Up in a World of Deadly Drones

17. ‘Farmageddon’ Can’t Be Solved With a Bailout Alone

18. Supply Chains Are Critical Infrastructure. It’s Time U.S. Policy Caught Up.

19. More than Modernization: Ukraine and the Army Transformation Initiative

20. WWII Museum podcast explores legacy of America’s first intel agency

21. Fighting China, Fast and Slow

22. The Gaza Deal Is Not Too Big to Fail

23. Reading Books Made a Man Out of Me

1. Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Venezuelan Opposition Leader María Corina Machado

Fighting for democracy and against dictatorship: .

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work promoting democracy and fighting dictatorship in the country.

To Ms. María Corina Machado:

Congratulations and De Oppresso Liber: to free the oppressed (or to help the oppressed free themselves).

Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Venezuelan Opposition Leader María Corina Machado

Prize is awarded for her work promoting democracy and fighting dictatorship in the country

By Gareth Vipers

Updated Oct. 10, 2025 5:16 am ET

María Corina Machado at a rally in Caracas, Venezuela. Jimmy Villalta/Zuma Press

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work promoting democracy and fighting dictatorship in the country.

Announcing the prize, Nobel Committee Chairman Jorgen Watne Frydnes described Machado as a “brave and committed champion of peace…who keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness.”

As the leader of the democracy movement opposing the regime of President Nicolás Maduro, Machado has been a key, unifying figure in a movement that was once divided—an opposition that found common ground in the demand for free elections and representative government.

Earlier this year, Machado was briefly detained by Maduro’s regime after she emerged from months in hiding to rally the opposition against his planned inauguration to a third six-year term.

—Updates to follow as news develops.

Write to Gareth Vipers at gareth.vipers@wsj.com

2. Israeli Government Approves Hostage Deal Setting a Cease-Fire in Gaza

I wonder what unit(s) is/are getting the call for the 200 US troops.

Excerpts:

U.S. Central Command will be leading an international stabilization force and set up a civil military coordination center that could include Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, a senior U.S. official said.

The troops will help monitor the implementation of the cease-fire and eventual transition to a civilian government, according to a U.S. official. They will also help facilitate the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff stopped by the cabinet meeting before ministers prepared to cast their votes.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has faced resistance to ending the war from far-right members of his coalition government, welcomed the deal to bring home hostages.

“This is a diplomatic success and a national and moral victory for the state of Israel,” he said early Thursday.

Trump said Thursday that the hostages would be released Monday or Tuesday, as “getting them is a complicated process.” He said he is working on making a trip to the region.

Israeli Government Approves Hostage Deal Setting a Cease-Fire in Gaza

U.S. is sending about 200 troops to Israel to support the cease-fire as part of an international team

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-hamas-gaza-hostage-ceasefire-deal-815d533f

A celebration in Tel Aviv following the announcement of a deal. Photo: jack guez/AFP/Getty Images

By Summer Said

Follow, Jared Malsin

Follow and Anat Peled

Updated Oct. 9, 2025 6:42 pm ET

Quick Summary

Israel’s government approved a Trump administration-brokered agreement to free remaining hostages held by Hamas and establish a cease-fire in Gaza.View more

SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt—Israel’s government approved an agreement brokered by the Trump administration to free the remaining hostages held by Hamas and establish a cease-fire in Gaza, sealing a diplomatic breakthrough after months of failed talks.

The hostage deal, which President Trump announced from the White House on Wednesday, promises to close a wound opened by the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel and give momentum to the effort to end a two-year war that has left tens of thousands of Gazans dead and the enclave in ruins.

The deal will bring the first significant pause in fighting since March, and the administration hopes it will be the first step toward a longer-term settlement that will involve talks over the disarmament of Hamas and the formation of an interim government to oversee Gaza.

U.S. troops began to arrive in Israel Thursday, the first of about 200 being sent to support the cease-fire in Gaza as part of an international team, according to U.S. officials. The cease-fire went into effect with the vote by the Israeli government.

How Trump’s Upside-Down Diplomacy Delivered a Major Foreign-Policy Victory

A strategy of declaring victory and letting others work out the details pays off for now

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/trump-diplomacy-strategy-foreign-policy-609871c1

By Jared Malsin

Follow, Vera Bergengruen

Follow and Anat Peled

Oct. 9, 2025 8:00 pm ET

President Trump at the White House on Thursday. Samuel Corum/Press Pool

Quick Summary

President Trump declared the Gaza war over, employing an unorthodox strategy of announcing victory before a deal was finalized.View more

President Trump’s announcement that he ended the two-year war in Gaza rested on an unorthodox strategy of declaring victory first and forcing others to fill in the details to make it a reality.

He turned upside-down the traditional playbook for solving international crises, in which diplomats work behind the scenes to iron out differences between warring parties, before world leaders swoop in and announce a deal.

As mediators pored over maps and prisoner lists in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh late into Wednesday night, Trump signaled that he would be flying to the region to mark a deal that was still unfinished.

His gambit is that no one, including hard-liners on both sides of the war, will say no to him, and that the professionals will sort it out.

“We ended the war in Gaza,” Trump said from the White House on Thursday, congratulating special envoy Steve Witkoff, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, for their roles.

Yet even as Trump took a victory lap, technical teams were still trying to resolve the details of many of the substantive issues that had derailed previous rounds of talks, with Hamas officials warning negotiators in Sharm El Sheikh that they could still walk away if key demands weren’t met. This includes the exact withdrawal lines for Israeli troops and a list of Palestinian prisoners to be freed in exchange for Israeli hostages, according to people familiar with the talks.

U.S. negotiators in Egypt concluded that the deal was “close enough” for Trump to announce it on Wednesday evening, a senior U.S. official said.

A day later, they were still focused on finalizing the details and patching up gaps in the agreement, the official said. “There’s still… just a lot of ways that this can go wrong.”

In Paris, European and Arab foreign ministers met to discuss the implementation of the plan and Gaza’s postwar future—without the participation of Rubio, who abruptly canceled his trip the day before.

Trump’s public pressure campaign created a sense of inevitability, said Daniel Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt. “Who wants to be the side that prevents him from announcing from the Knesset podium that he deserves a peace prize?” he said.

But while his gamble may have worked to secure the first phase of the deal, which calls for an initial cease-fire that will allow for the exchange of captives, diplomats say Trump will find it far more difficult to use the bully pulpit to push through the next phases. The longer-term plan calls for disarming Hamas and the introduction of a multinational peacekeeping force in Gaza.

Those issues proved so difficult that negotiators in Egypt chose not to touch them this week.

“It’s not first and goal anymore, it’s already a touchdown, even though the ball hasn’t crossed the line,” said Khaled Elgindy, a former adviser to the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah on past rounds of negotiations with Israel. “The idea of getting out ahead of the negotiators and forcing their hand, I think, has worked thus far.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Trump at the White House last month. Jim Lo Scalzo/Press Pool

Key to the deal was Trump’s direct pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was reluctant to end the war, people involved in the negotiations say. U.S. officials on Thursday alluded to some tougher tactics behind the scenes. “The president had some extraordinary phone calls and meetings that required a high degree of intensity and commitment and made this happen,” Rubio said.

“Trump is the only U.S. president, and I’ve worked for half a dozen administrations from Carter to Bush, who was able to force an Israeli prime minister to accept an American peace proposal,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator. “Trump has gone where no American president has gone before.”

Israel’s strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar last month sparked widespread Arab anger and a consensus that Netanyahu had gone too far. The Qataris and Emiratis turned to intense diplomacy with the White House to pressure Israel, said people familiar with the negotiations.

This time, Trump told Netanyahu he had to take the deal, while the Qataris, Egyptians and Turks pressed Hamas to do the same. “Netanyahu was locked in, and Hamas was locked in,” said Gershon Baskin, an Israeli hostage negotiator involved in past talks.

U.S. officials familiar with the negotiations credited the speed of the final push to Trump meeting with Arab officials on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly last month. Trump told them he was prepared to draw a line with Netanyahu, according to Arab officials, who said they walked out of the meeting feeling optimistic.

Days later, Trump said he wouldn’t allow Netanyahu to annex the West Bank. “It’s not going to happen,” Trump told reporters, shocking the Israeli right, which was pushing for annexation.

Trump, who has always preferred people he sees as dealmakers over technocrats, relied on Witkoff, a real-estate developer, and Kushner to bypass traditional diplomatic channels. Their approach broke from the drawn-out, detail-driven pattern of traditional Middle East negotiations, which often devolved into zero-sum battles, analysts say.

Instead, their style resembled a high-stakes business deal—putting an offer on the table, signaling a willingness to walk away and waiting for the other side “to shake in their pants and say yes,” Baskin said.

In late September, after negotiations between Israel and Hamas had stalled for months, Trump announced a broad 20-point plan that called for the release of hostages and a permanent end to the war in Gaza in a White House event alongside Netanyahu, who faces some resistance to any cease-fire from hard-line members of his own cabinet.

When Hamas responded to Trump’s plan with a “yes, but,” earlier this month, Trump surprised Netanyahu by accepting the Palestinian group’s response, leaving the Israeli prime minister little room to maneuver and setting up this week’s negotiations in Egypt.

Trump isn’t the first president to try to speak a deal into existence. Last year, President Joe Biden read out the details of a proposed cease-fire agreement in a televised address in an effort to force Netanyahu to accept it. The negotiations continued to falter for the next several months as the Israeli leader resisted prodding from the White House.

This time, Trump took that tactic several steps further, using the announcement itself as leverage.

“Had he waited for all the details to be negotiated, it could have taken weeks, months, and ended in nothing,” said Daniel Shek, a former Israeli ambassador to France and head of diplomacy at Hostages Families Forum, an advocacy group. Instead, Trump “announced the result and said ‘now it’s your turn to work out the details.’”

Write to Jared Malsin at jared.malsin@wsj.com, Vera Bergengruen at vera.bergengruen@wsj.com and Anat Peled at anat.peled@wsj.com

4. The Lessons of Trump’s Gaza Peace Deal

Perhaps the lesson is that conventional international relations theory and conventional negotiating practices should be relooked and re-evaluated.

Excerpts:

How did this peace arrive after two years? The dubious theory of Israel’s critics is that Mr. Trump finally squeezed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This wishcasting fails to explain Hamas’s concessions and gets the story backward: Mr. Trump’s consistent support for Israel achieved what all of Joe Biden’s pressure on and threats to Israel didn’t.

Mr. Trump was able to push past some of Mr. Netanyahu’s concerns about postwar Gaza governance because he had earned Israel’s trust. With Mr. Biden, the Prime Minister could presume Israel would be denied the freedom of action to keep Hamas down.

Mr. Netanyahu deserves credit for withstanding U.S. and domestic Israeli pressure to end the war earlier and in a weaker position: before Israel took Rafah, knocked Hezbollah out of the fight in Lebanon, and smashed the Iranian nuclear program. These victories left Israel in a position of military dominance and Hamas without Iran’s proxy allies.

The lessons of Mr. Trump’s method are also worth noting. First, sustained U.S. pressure was needed on Hamas, not Israel. The more Mr. Biden restrained Israel or blocked arms shipments, the less reason Hamas had to cut a deal. The terrorists expected Mr. Biden to force Israel to stop if they held out long enough.

...

Second, there was no substitute for Israeli military pressure. Even a few weeks ago, the conventional wisdom was that the war was no longer accomplishing much, least of all the recent Gaza City offensive. Fighting in this sensitive area was supposed to doom the hostages.

...

Third, Hamas’s allies had to feel the heat. Mr. Biden stressed de-escalation, opposing the offensive against Hezbollah and shielding Iran from stronger retaliation. He backed Egypt in blocking Gazan refugees and renewed the U.S. military base in Qatar for nothing in return.

...

Mr. Trump’s approach to the Middle East has been the opposite of Obama-Biden’s—and the opposite of his own in Ukraine. Do you pressure the ally, willing and able to fight, or the enemy? If Mr. Trump now reverses his strategy on Russia, next year even the Nobel committee might find it impossible to deny him the peace prize.

The Lessons of Trump’s Gaza Peace Deal

The President reversed the Biden method and put Israel’s security first.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/gaza-peace-deal-israel-hamas-hostages-donald-trump-benjamin-netanyahu-df74f918

By The Editorial Board

Oct. 9, 2025 5:52 pm ET

00:00

28:26

Donald Trump reversed the Biden policy of leaning on Israel to make concessions and instead backed the U.S. ally as it put military pressure on Hamas.

The Gaza peace deal accepted by Israel and Hamas late on Wednesday is a big new opportunity for the Middle East and a signature moment, if it holds, for President Trump’s foreign policy. It’s also a moment to consider the lessons of how it finally happened.

Unless Hamas reneges before Monday, this “first phase” deal will free all 20 living Israeli hostages still in Gaza—within 72 hours of a small Israeli withdrawal. The deal will stop the fighting and bring more aid for Gaza’s civilians.

Remarkably, Hamas is giving up its best leverage but Israel isn’t. Even after the hostages are ransomed, Israeli soldiers will remain in more than half of Gaza, including by the Egyptian border to stop weapons smuggling.

Israel isn’t emptying its prisons as Hamas had demanded, but it is releasing 250 terrorists serving life sentences and 1,700 Gazans detained during the war. Will this seed the next attack, as a 2011 hostage deal seeded Oct. 7, 2023, by freeing its mastermind?

The answer depends on Israel’s ability to enforce the latter phases of the deal. If the new Gulf Arab-led stabilization force to be deployed in Gaza fails to disarm Hamas and demilitarize the strip, Israeli troops will be in position to do so themselves with what Mr. Trump calls “full backing.” In accepting these terms, Hamas effectively acknowledges its defeat, even if it hopes to bide its time and live to fight another day.

***

How did this peace arrive after two years? The dubious theory of Israel’s critics is that Mr. Trump finally squeezed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This wishcasting fails to explain Hamas’s concessions and gets the story backward: Mr. Trump’s consistent support for Israel achieved what all of Joe Biden’s pressure on and threats to Israel didn’t.

Mr. Trump was able to push past some of Mr. Netanyahu’s concerns about postwar Gaza governance because he had earned Israel’s trust. With Mr. Biden, the Prime Minister could presume Israel would be denied the freedom of action to keep Hamas down.

Mr. Netanyahu deserves credit for withstanding U.S. and domestic Israeli pressure to end the war earlier and in a weaker position: before Israel took Rafah, knocked Hezbollah out of the fight in Lebanon, and smashed the Iranian nuclear program. These victories left Israel in a position of military dominance and Hamas without Iran’s proxy allies.

The lessons of Mr. Trump’s method are also worth noting. First, sustained U.S. pressure was needed on Hamas, not Israel. The more Mr. Biden restrained Israel or blocked arms shipments, the less reason Hamas had to cut a deal. The terrorists expected Mr. Biden to force Israel to stop if they held out long enough.

Mr. Trump reversed Hamas’s calculus. Neither protests nor Iranian escalation would cause him to rein in Israel. Instead his threats to Hamas garnered a January hostage deal, after which he encouraged Israel to conquer Gaza. That was nearing completion when Hamas took this new deal.

Second, there was no substitute for Israeli military pressure. Even a few weeks ago, the conventional wisdom was that the war was no longer accomplishing much, least of all the recent Gaza City offensive. Fighting in this sensitive area was supposed to doom the hostages.

Hamas saw it differently. Facing the demolition of its capital, it first agreed to a partial hostage deal that it had resisted for months. When Mr. Netanyahu said this wasn’t enough and demanded all hostages be freed at once, critics said this meant the Prime Minister wanted no deal. Wrong again. Hamas buckled and Israel is getting back all hostages.

Third, Hamas’s allies had to feel the heat. Mr. Biden stressed de-escalation, opposing the offensive against Hezbollah and shielding Iran from stronger retaliation. He backed Egypt in blocking Gazan refugees and renewed the U.S. military base in Qatar for nothing in return.

Mr. Trump backed and then joined Israel’s June campaign against Iran, leaving Hamas’s political strategy in shambles. Iranian escalation could no longer bail out Hamas. The President also leveraged Qatar, Turkey and Egypt to coerce Hamas into a deal. It turns out these U.S. partners had that power all along.

Qatar seems to have been influenced by Israel’s much-denounced Sept. 9 strike on Hamas leaders in Doha, which endangered the ruling al-Thani family’s lucrative double game. That threat, along with U.S. conciliations that followed, coaxed Qatar to demand its Hamas client sign on the dotted line. The deal now opens the prospect of expanding the Abraham Accords between Israel and the Arab states.

***

Mr. Trump’s approach to the Middle East has been the opposite of Obama-Biden’s—and the opposite of his own in Ukraine. Do you pressure the ally, willing and able to fight, or the enemy? If Mr. Trump now reverses his strategy on Russia, next year even the Nobel committee might find it impossible to deny him the peace prize.

Appeared in the October 10, 2025, print edition as 'Lessons of Trump’s Gaza Peace Deal'.

5. China’s Rare-Earth Escalation Threatens Trade Talks—and the Global Economy

Excerpts:

During the last round of negotiations with senior American officials in Madrid last month, China’s chief trade negotiator, Vice Premier He Lifeng, asked for the full removal of tariffs and export controls, The Wall Street Journal has reported. The latest rare-earth action, the people said, is a tactic aimed at achieving that goal.

The action, the people noted, is part of a pattern of China responding to what it perceives as feeble actions from Washington with disproportionately strong moves.

The new rules also cover goods that could be used for military purposes. They would expand on previous restrictions on rare-earth metals and related products that have already hit companies around the world.

China’s Rare-Earth Escalation Threatens Trade Talks—and the Global Economy

President Trump says Washington is weighing a response

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-trade-rare-earth-restrictions-ai-c2535244

By Amrith Ramkumar

Follow and Lingling Wei

Oct. 9, 2025 9:00 pm ET

China under leader Xi Jinping has used its dominance of the rare-earths market to seek an edge in trade talks. Qilai Shen/Bloomberg News

Quick Summary

China’s new rare-earth export restrictions require permission for goods with 0.1% or more rare-earth materials sourced from China by value.View more

China’s newest restrictions on rare-earth materials would mark a nearly unprecedented export control that stands to disrupt the global economy, giving Beijing more leverage in trade negotiations and ratcheting up pressure on the Trump administration to respond.

The rule, put out Thursday by China’s Commerce Ministry, is viewed as an escalation in the U.S.-China trade fight because it threatens the supply chain for semiconductors. Chips are the lifeblood of the economy, powering phones, computers and data centers needed to train artificial-intelligence models. The rule also would affect cars, solar panels and the equipment for making chips and other products, limiting the ability of other countries to support their own industries. China produces roughly 90% of the world’s rare-earth materials.

Global companies that sell goods with certain rare-earth materials sourced from China accounting for 0.1% or more of the product’s value would need permission from Beijing, under the new rule. Tech companies will probably find it extremely difficult to show that their chips, the equipment needed to make them and other components fall below the 0.1% threshold, industry experts said.

“These rare-earth minerals and the ability to refine them are just the basis of modern civilization,” said Dean Ball, who recently left his White House role as an AI policy adviser to become a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, a think tank. He added that the rules could cause a U.S. recession if implemented aggressively because of how important AI capital spending is to the economy.

The U.S. and other countries are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into data centers, making AI a key economic engine. China gaining control of the technology would potentially let it catch up in the AI race and upend the world order, experts said.

“It’s an economic equivalent of nuclear war—an intent to destroy the American AI industry,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder of the Silverado Policy Accelerator think tank. He called it a “blackmail tactic” ahead of a potential meeting between President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea in the coming weeks to continue trade talks and didn’t think China will follow through on fully implementing the rule.

A rare-earths production site in China, in 2010. China Stringer Network/Reuters

Trump said at a cabinet meeting that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick would figure out how to respond. “We import from China massive amounts and maybe we will have to stop doing that,” Trump said. The rules were announced without notice to the U.S., and appear to be an effort to control the world’s technology supply chains, a White House official said.

China has used rare earths to gain leverage in trade talks throughout the year. Restrictions in April sent shock waves through supply chains, helping lead to a trade truce announced in June.

Former administration officials and experts suggested the U.S. could respond by adding to its tariff regimen, cutting China off from Western semiconductor manufacturing equipment and accelerating efforts to build out domestic rare-earths capacity. Some analysts expect Trump to hit back hard.

The U.S. levies are now in the range of 30% to 50% on Chinese imports—higher than the levels negotiated with Vietnam, Japan and Indonesia. China’s average tariffs on U.S. exports are at around 33%.

While positioned as retaliation for recent U.S. export-control actions targeting Chinese tech companies, Beijing’s decision is a calculated power play, according to people familiar with the Chinese government’s decision-making process. China is trying to strengthen its leverage over Trump—whom it sees as eager to strike a deal—in a bid to extract concessions on tariffs and tech controls, the people said.

During the last round of negotiations with senior American officials in Madrid last month, China’s chief trade negotiator, Vice Premier He Lifeng, asked for the full removal of tariffs and export controls, The Wall Street Journal has reported. The latest rare-earth action, the people said, is a tactic aimed at achieving that goal.

The action, the people noted, is part of a pattern of China responding to what it perceives as feeble actions from Washington with disproportionately strong moves.

The new rules also cover goods that could be used for military purposes. They would expand on previous restrictions on rare-earth metals and related products that have already hit companies around the world.

Beijing sees President Trump, listening to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as keen for a trade deal with China. Francis Chung/Press Pool

The semiconductor supply chain is vulnerable to actions like China’s because large chip plants require big capital investments from an ecosystem of companies providing specialized equipment, intricate technical processes and final packaging. Companies in the U.S., Taiwan, Japan and the Netherlands all collaborate with one another.

The Trump and Biden administrations have offered subsidies and other policies to aid the process, but domestic capacity generally remains in its infancy.

Some analysts said the new rules will fuel new urgency for big tech companies to invest more in these areas.

“This is a real vulnerability for U.S. AI companies,” said Joseph Hoefer, chief AI officer at lobbying firm Monument Advocacy, which represents tech companies.

Write to Amrith Ramkumar at amrith.ramkumar@wsj.com and Lingling Wei at Lingling.Wei@wsj.com

6. Tariffs Are Way Up. Interest on Debt Tops $1 Trillion. And DOGE Didn’t Do Much.

Charts and data at the link.

https://www.wsj.com/economy/federal-budget-fiscal-2025-e8d21595?st=egU5PY&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Tariffs Are Way Up. Interest on Debt Tops $1 Trillion. And DOGE Didn’t Do Much.

As the books closed on U.S. government’s fiscal 2025, here’s what has changed about federal budget—and what hasn’t

By Richard Rubin

Follow and Anthony DeBarros

Oct. 9, 2025 9:00 am ET

Control of the White House changed in fiscal year 2025, but the U.S. budget picture didn’t. It remains grim. Despite a historic rise in tariff revenue, the deficit was the same in the year ended Sept. 30, 2025, as the previous year. That is largely because the main drivers of spending kept rising: social programs, including Social Security and Medicare, and interest on the public debt, which topped $1 trillion by one measure for the first time.

Here are five things we learned about the U.S. government’s finances based on the year-end figures released Wednesday by the Congressional Budget Office:

1. Tariffs are bringing in real money.

The U.S. collected $195 billion in customs duties, more than double the prior year. That doesn’t capture the full jump because tariff rates only ramped up in April, halfway through the year.

President Trump seeks to shift the government’s reliance on income taxes toward taxes on imported goods. Still, tariffs contribute a relatively small 3.7% of overall federal revenue, compared with 51% for the individual income tax.

2. Interest costs keep climbing.

By one CBO metric, net interest on the public debt topped $1 trillion for the first time—more than the country spent on Medicare or defense. For every $5 the government collected in taxes, about $1 went to pay interest.

Net interest of $1.029 trillion was up roughly $80 billion, or 8%, from a year earlier. This measure isn’t directly comparable to how net interest is reported in some other CBO or White House accounts, but the differences are relatively small and the trend is consistent.

There is little the government can do in the short term about the rising interest bill. It is the inevitable result of the growing national debt and higher interest rates.

3. Spending didn’t move much under DOGE.

As the Trump administration started, Elon Musk claimed his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, could achieve $2 trillion in savings—equal to more than a quarter of total spending in fiscal 2024.

Not even close. DOGE did claw back some grants and fire some probationary employees. And some savings will show up later as federal workers who accepted deferred resignation drop off government payrolls in fiscal 2026.

But that hasn’t changed the big picture much so far. Total spending excluding interest rose $220 billion, or 4%, for the entire fiscal year. The increase would have been larger but in September 2025, the Trump administration recorded a $131 billion noncash spending reduction related to future savings from modifications to student-loan programs in Republicans’ tax-and-spending law. Excluding that, noninterest spending would have risen by $351 billion for the entire year and total spending would have risen by $55 billion in September compared with a year earlier.

Other than student loans, the only major categories in which CBO said spending actually declined were the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, because it spent less resolving bank failures, and the Small Business Administration, because disaster-related loan costs in 2024 didn’t recur in 2025.

4. Social-program spending continues to grow.

The main reason spending keeps rising is that the costs of the biggest programs, Social Security and Medicare, are driven by an aging population and rising health costs. Both are practically untouchable politically.

In 2025, Social Security spending rose 8%, partly because of Congress’s decision to expand benefits for certain public-sector employees, retroactive to January 2024. Medicare and Medicaid also each increased by 8%. Medicare enrollment is rising, CBO said. Because of eligibility restrictions in Republicans’ tax-and-spending legislation, Medicaid costs likely won’t grow as fast in the future.

5. Deficits and debt remain historically high.

Typically, the budget deficit increases during recessions and shrinks during economic expansions. This time is different. The deficit came in at $1.8 trillion for 2025, virtually unchanged from 2024, despite a still-expanding economy.

As a share of gross domestic product, the deficit did shrink slightly to about 6% in fiscal 2025 from 6.4% in 2024. Without the student-loan-program accounting adjustment, it would have been roughly unchanged. Publicly held debt is approaching 100% of GDP and will likely surpass the record of 106%, set in 1946, in coming years.

Trump’s policies are a mixed bag for deficits. He signed a law that extended expiring tax cuts and created new ones. And he promised not to touch Social Security and Medicare and wants to increase military spending. Tariffs and the new law’s spending cuts push in the opposite direction.

Write to Richard Rubin at richard.rubin@wsj.com and Anthony DeBarros at anthony.debarros@wsj.com

Appeared in the October 10, 2025, print edition as 'DOGE, Deficits and More Fiscal Takeaways'.

7. China to Impose Special Port Fees on U.S. Vessels

China to Impose Special Port Fees on U.S. Vessels

The fees will be collected on vessels owned by U.S. companies, organizations, or individuals

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-to-impose-special-port-fees-on-u-s-vessels-f8df8746

Oct. 10, 2025 3:54 am ET

Vessels with 25% or more of their equity owned by U.S. entities, as well as those flying the U.S. flag, will also be subject to the special port fee, China’s Ministry of Transportation said. tingshu wang/Reuters

China plans to impose a special port fee on U.S. vessels docking at Chinese ports, in retaliation for the Trump administration’s move to levy fees on Chinese ships.

China’s Ministry of Transportation said Friday the fees will be collected on vessels owned by U.S. companies, organizations, or individuals. Vessels with 25% or more of their equity owned by U.S. entities, as well as those flying the U.S. flag, will also be subject to the special port fee, it added.

These vessels docking at Chinese ports will be charged 400 yuan or $56 per net ton from October 14. The rate will rise to 640 yuan per net ton from April 17, 2026, 880 yuan from April 17, 2027, and 1,120 yuan from April 17, 2028, according to the ministry.

For vessels calling at multiple Chinese ports in the same voyage, the special port fee will only be collected at the first port of call, and each vessel will be subject to the special port fee for no more than five voyages per year.

The latest move by Beijing came in response to the Trump administration’s decision to impose similar fees, charging built, owned, or operated by Chinese entities $80 per net ton per voyage to the U.S. Non-Chinese operators of Chinese-built ships will face the higher of two rates, either $23 per net ton or $154 per 20-foot-equivalent unit of capacity.

China’s Ministry of Transportation said the U.S. move violates international trade principles and the China-U.S. maritime agreement, severely disrupting maritime trade between the two countries.

Write to Singapore Editors at singaporeeditors@dowjones.com

8. ‘As Long as it Takes': What does it mean to commit to Ukraine’s security? Sir Lawrence Freedman

Excerpts:

At the start of the war, when Ukraine’s own military capacity was limited then both its current fight and its future security appeared to depend totally on its partners. In key respects this is still the case. Economic, military, and intelligence assistance remains vital. Yet something has happened to Ukraine over this period. It has built up its industrial capacity to a remarkable extent. It now provides around 60 percent of its own kit and ammunition. It has become a major innovator and producer in drone warfare. Some 4.5 million drones will be produced this year. It has unmatched operational experience which it now shares with European countries.

Recall that one of Putin’s objectives in 2022 was to ‘demilitarise’ Ukraine. He has achieved the opposite. When Zelenskyy responded to the drones dropping into Poland by offering advice on anti-drone measures, he was not being cute. Ukraine is to the fore in these technologies, as well as innovating constantly. It is now a potential exporter.

Ukraine is becoming a de facto member of NATO. When the Ukrainians say that they are defending Europe’s borders they are correct. If they fail then the risks for NATO countries will become even greater, and they will be worrying about more than the occasional probes that reveal the leakiness of their air defences. Zelenskyy turns up to alliance meetings. His armed forces work closely with alliance partners and its arms industry is cooperating with Western manufacturers. Because of the threat from Russia’s missiles and drones, Ukrainians are locating their factories in other countries, most recently Denmark. More of that may be necessary, which may in turn add to the Russian pressure on Europe.

One suggestion arising from the Russian drone intrusions into Europe is that a defensive shield be established from inside Ukraine, and if Ukraine is going to be involved then should it not also protect Ukrainian territory? Perhaps the No-Fly Zone that appeared to be such an outlandish proposal in 2022 will start to appear reasonable in the face of Russian provocations. The issue has moved beyond security guarantees, and the concept of the ‘coalition of the willing’ needs to be untethered from that role.

A lot of things we never thought likely have now come to pass as a result of this terrible war. Russia has persisted with its aggression. Despite its extraordinary battlefield losses it continues to fail to make serious battlefield gains. Its energy infrastructure is attacked on a daily basis. It has been offered a ceasefire but has refused.

NATO countries will not be rushing to declare war on Russia on Ukraine’s behalf. Nor will Ukraine join NATO yet as a full member. But the new security situation has developed through incremental steps, each one large enough to make a difference but not so large as to trigger a major war. Because of this Ukraine is becoming integrated into European security structures. It may not be a member of NATO but it is becoming part of the coalition of the willing.

‘As Long as it Takes': What does it mean to commit to Ukraine’s security?

https://samf.substack.com/p/as-long-as-it-takes-what-does-it?r=7i07&utm

substack.com · Lawrence Freedman

This post was originally a lecture given in honour of Peter Hennessy at the Mile End Institute, Queen Mary University of London. This edited version is reproduced with their permission.

Any long war leads to innovations in military technology and tactics and shakes up the established political order. The war in Ukraine is no exception. There has been much commentary on what it means for the character of modern war, especially because of the saturation of the front-lines with cheap and expendable drones. But there has been less on its impact on the conceptual framework with which we think about questions of alliance and security guarantees.

In 2008 the door was opened to eventual NATO membership for Ukraine though without any mechanism to allow it to walk through the door. Yet the possibility that one day Ukraine might join the alliance was used by Moscow to justify the invasion and occupation of its neighbour, and some in the West believe it had a point. Because Moscow has put so much stress on this issue it is now taken for granted, including by Ukraine, that when and if a peace deal is agreed to end this war, NATO membership will be precluded.

This has left Kyiv and its supporters scrambling around to find an acceptable alternative that will guarantee Ukraine’s security should there be a deal. One problem is that the old model of NATO, the model Ukraine wanted to join, has been subverted if not quite done away with by Donald Trump. In this post I will assess the impact on both our thinking and practice of this combination of the US administration’s expectation that European countries will do more to look after not only their own security but also Ukraine’s, and the persistent challenge posed by Russian aggression.

Backing Ukraine

When Russia annexed Crimea and carved out enclaves in eastern Ukraine in 2014, NATO countries backed Ukraine, with sanctions against Russia and some arms supplies, though these were limited in both numbers and type. Western countries sought to show their displeasure with Rusia while limiting their own liabilities. That remained the case even after the full-scale invasion of February 2022. The sanctions became more severe and more weapons were delivered, but liabilities were kept limited. The weapons supplied were notionally defensive. Putin made sure, when he announced the ‘special military operation’ that any direct engagement by NATO troops would involve the highest risks:

‘No matter who tries to stand in our way or all the more so create threats for our country and our people, they must know that Russia will respond immediately, and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history.’

The influence of his warning was felt early in the war. Ukraine asked for a No-Fly Zone to protect civilians as Russia began to strike its cities. The proposal was dismissed quickly. The prospect of dogfights between NATO and Russia aircraft led to a collective shudder in NATO capitals.

The message was clear and well understood. Defeating Russian aggression might be a vital interest of NATO countries, but they would not be backing Ukraine with their own armed forces. It took a long time before they were prepared to transfer systems suitable for land offensives, then more time for rockets and missiles able to reach behind the enemy’s front lines, and even longer to add the permissions that allowed them actually to be used against Russian territory.

With every incremental step the Russians repeated their warnings about dire consequences but as each threshold was passed they discovered short of going to war against NATO there was little they could do. Yet while NATO imposed sanctions, provided money and advice, and gradually upped the quality and quantity of the weapons and munitions delivered, there was one threshold that was not to be crossed. Only Ukrainians would do the fighting. For only Ukrainian territory had been invaded and occupied; only Ukrainian cities battered and infrastructure targeted; only Ukrainian men, women, and children killed and injured.

Western states have big stakes in how the war is being fought and its eventual outcome - in energy markets, the risks of a wider war, refugee flows. Most importantly they depend on Russia being held in Ukraine and ideally being pushed back. If instead it pushes forward then the crisis will come with it, and bordering NATO countries will feel vulnerable and anxious. The West is not doing Ukraine a favour by helping it resist aggression; it is Ukraine doing the West a favour. Then there is a moral dimension. Russia is clearly the aggressor and Ukraine the aggrieved. Russia is an autocracy, Ukraine a democracy.

NATO’s semi-detached approach had the advantage of avoiding the risks and rows that would have accompanied a more direct engagement in the war. It made Western support most sustainable. The quality of Ukrainian resistance shown during the first months of the war also suggested that this might be sufficient on its own to help Ukraine win the war. But this always meant asking a lot of Ukraine against a much larger and more powerful neighbour.

As long as it takes

There has, therefore, been a disconnect between Ukraine’s survival as an independent, sovereign country being a vital Western interest, and what is being done to help Ukraine survive. We might even come to do less, if the desire for a quieter life and some semblance of normal relations with Russia leads to reduced support and at worse Ukraine being effectively abandoned. This has clearly been the Russian hope. Starting with the energy crunch in 2022 and continuing with all the current provocations and efforts at sabotage and manipulation, it has tried to show Europeans that they would be well advised to give up on Ukraine. This effort has failed. Despite all the early talk of ‘Ukraine fatigue’ levels of support have been maintained.

From the start, when were asked if they were ready to back Ukraine through the hardships and vicissitudes of war, the allies have insisted that they were. And for how long? Well, they answered, ‘for as long as it takes.’

In May 2022 when European Council President Charles Michel visited Odesa he spoke of how Ukraine was ‘not alone,’ adding: ‘We stand with you. We will not let you down. We will be with you for as long as it takes.’ The same phrase was used regularly by Joe Biden: ‘The American people are with you every step of the way,’ he told Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a press conference in the White House in December 2022, ‘And we will stay as long as it takes.’ Th2 term is still in use, for example in a recent article in the Financial Times by Chancellor Merz of Germany.

This is the reassuring formula used to show readiness to commit for the long haul, to reflect understanding that this is a war with perhaps years to run and that Russia must be given no hope that weariness with the struggle will result in vital assistance falling away.

As a statement of policy it has nonetheless been criticised from two different directions, both for offering too much and for offering too little.

Those who believe it offers too much may take this position because they are sympathetic to Russia and want it to win, or because they consider Ukraine to be undeserving because of its corruption, or because they think - ‘realistically’ - that Russia is bound to win in the end and so Ukraine is just a poor investment. Others who do not want to abandon Ukraine still worry about giving Kyiv a blank cheque and warn about excessive Ukrainian ambitions. Western support, they insist, cannot come with unlimited risks and unlimited resources. Ukraine must adjust its expectations and its methods to fit in with what its allies are prepared to do.

In practice, though never stated quite so starkly, this was the position of the Biden administration. In the most definitive statement on US policy in May 2022, Biden explained why ‘a democratic, independent, sovereign and prosperous Ukraine’ was a vital interest and promised that the US will ‘will stay the course.’ But he also explained that he did not seek a war with Russia, nor Putin’s ouster:

‘So long as the United States or our allies are not attacked, we will not be directly engaged in this conflict, either by sending American troops to fight in Ukraine or by attacking Russian forces. We are not encouraging or enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders. We do not want to prolong the war just to inflict pain on Russia.’

Hence the restraints put on Ukraine in its targeting of Russia. This fretting about whether the US would suffer the costs for Ukrainian audacity could be seen in the early stages of the current campaign against Russian oil infrastructure, although this is now one of the most effective elements in Ukrainian strategy.

This leads on to the criticism of the ‘as long as it takes’ formula from the other direction. It lacks ambition. We should not be satisfied just with keeping Ukraine in the fight or preparing for a long haul. The aim must be the defeat of Russia. The stakes are too high to settle for a second-best outcome. For as long as ‘it’ takes. Fine. But what is ‘it?’

That question became more difficult to answer once doubts developed about the ability of Ukraine to defeat Russia. For the ‘limited support’ crowd that showed the dangers of backing objectives beyond Ukraine’s reach. For the ‘unlimited support’ crowd, this was the inevitable result of the West being so shamefully hesitant and reticent. Ukraine would be a lot closer to victory now if only the allies had got their act together earlier and had boosted production of essential equipment and munitions when the need first arose. From this perspective, Ukraine should have been allowed the weapons and permissions needed to take the war to Russia. This critique has force although we also should recognise that it took time for the Ukrainians to adapt to the demands of an intensive war, and that they were hampered by their own capacity constraints, especially with manpower and training.

As a formula ‘as long as it takes’ lacks urgency. It is an option for the allies precisely because they are not doing the fighting. It is also what makes this situation different from the other long wars which the US and its allies struggled to justify as their populations wearied - notably Vietnam and Afghanistan. These were their fights because their people were dying - but without evident purpose. This helps explain the lack of urgency in this case. The commitment to Ukraine is significant but also quite manageable when spread across so many countries.

The question I now want to turn to is whether that commitment can last after the fighting has stopped. There will be support until a ceasefire, but then what? What is to be done to prevent another round of war? How best can Moscow be deterred for coming back for more, to finish the job it started but failed to complete? With security guarantees if there is a next time Ukraine should not be fighting alone. Other countries will be fighting side by side with Ukraine. But is that how it will work out?

The Role of NATO

This takes us to the question of Ukraine’s membership of NATO. Ukraine’s view is that it would not have been invaded if it had been a member of NATO and it will not be invaded in the future if it is allowed to become a member now.

When Moscow objects to this it is because it wants to keep Ukraine vulnerable. It argues, however, and some in the West are sympathetic to this view, that Ukraine joining NATO would be an offensive move, designed to undermine Russia’s security. This is an example of what is known in international relations theory as the ‘security dilemma’. Measures taken by one side for defensive purposes, appear as offensive in intent to the other side, and so they respond, leading to an arms race or even worse.

The role of NATO enlargement in Russia’s decision-making has been endlessly debated as an example of the security dilemma in action and I do not want to dwell on it for too long here.

NATO was aware from the start that additional members might alarm Moscow. The process began with the ‘partnership for peace’, a much looser arrangement which could accommodate a variety of forms of security cooperation with post-communist states. But this is not what the former members of the Soviet bloc wanted. They wanted to join NATO. This was in part just to get closer to the West. Because of the lengthy time horizon for joining the EU, membership of NATO was an attractive, quicker, option. But more importantly these countries wanted it for their security. They had their memories of betrayal – Munich in 1938, when they were abandoned to the Nazis, and Yalta in February 1945, when they were consigned to the Soviet sphere. Enlargement was demand and not supply led.

And who is to say they were wrong? The post-1991 members of NATO do not show much sign of buyer’s remorse, wishing that they had stayed out. By contrast substantial sections of their populations have at times regretted membership of the EU or at least considered it a mixed blessing. While non-NATO countries have been invaded by Russia NATO countries have not. Take the example of Estonia, a country with many Russian-speakers in its population, which joined NATO in 2004. In 2007 it had a major argument with Moscow. The result was a massive cyberattack, which helped turn Estonia into one of the most digitally aware nations. But it was not invaded.

We don’t know the counter-factual of what would have happened if NATO and the EU had not expanded but it is hard to believe that keeping so many states outside of established support structures would have been more stable and mutually beneficial.

Measures were taken to make the process more palatable to Moscow. In 1997 NATO and Russia signed what was described as the ‘Founding Act’ to govern their future relationships. This set up the ‘NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council’ to serve as a venue for consultations, cooperation and consensus building. The two sides insisted that they did not see each other as enemies and also promised to refrain

‘from the threat or use of force against each other as well as against any other state, its sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence.’

So there was no promise against enlargement but there was also a promise not to use force. The essential principle was that sovereign states could choose their own security arrangements and that this could include membership of NATO.

The most difficult part of the process was always going to be the potential accession of Ukraine and Georgia. This was NATO’s last frontier. Putin was concerned about Georgia and Ukraine joining, not so much because they posed an offensive threat. NATO could promise not to turn them into military base. It was because membership of NATO would consolidate their position as Western-leaning democracies and that is what he wanted to prevent.

With Ukraine there was an added and crucial reason. Putin has an absolute conviction, based on his own, tendentious historical research, that Ukraine has no right to be independent of Russia. In his notorious essay of July 2021 on ‘On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians’, NATO is barely mentioned. Putin’s purpose was to demonstrate that Ukraine was an artificial creation with an illegitimate government.

From the moment he returned to the Russian presidency in 2012, Putin was keen for Ukraine to be brought back into the Russian sphere. This explains why he put Victor Yanukovich - as pro-Russian a president in Ukraine as he was likely to get - under so much pressure in 2013 not to sign an association agreement with the EU – with the EU not NATO. Even more so it explains his reaction to the consequential ‘Revolution of Dignity’ with the annexation of Crimea and fomenting a rebellion in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine’s view is that this would not have happened had its membership been agreed when discussed by NATO at its 2008 Bucharest summit. Instead there was a sloppy compromise which did not rule out future membership without taking any steps to make it possible. Thereafter it was not seriously on the table. If there had been no war Ukraine would still not be a member, though because of the war NATO has enlarged more with Finland and Sweden.

In discussions with Moscow prior to the full-scale invasion, NATO proposed going back to the 1997 Founding Act, which since 2014 had fallen into disrepair. It also promised non-aggression and that no offensive weapons would get too close. We know from a comment by Putin last December that Biden offered to postpone Ukraine’s NATO accession by 10 to 15 years (so contradicting suggestions that Biden had made no effort to find a compromise prior to the full-scale invasion). For Putin such a delay ‘would only be a fleeting moment’ in history. He asked: ‘How, then, does the incoming administration differ from the outgoing one?’ NATO must be ruled out permanently.

It is now assumed that the first item on any negotiating agenda would be to prohibit Ukraine from joining NATO. This was accepted by Trump and in practice by Ukraine. This has led to a search for alternatives, forms of security guarantee that will compensate for being denied NATO’s precious Article V.

Alternatives to Article V

The term ‘security guarantees’ has been so long in use and its meaning is apparently so clear that it does not get subjected to much scrutiny. The basic idea, central to the concept of alliance, is that if attacked others will immediately come to assist. Nothing is ever truly guaranteed in international affairs. As with all guarantees, there is always small print that allows the guarantor some room for manoeuvre. It is one thing to rush to support a country that has been the victim of naked aggression but quite another to back one that has been acting irresponsibly or is in so much difficulty that no rescue Is possible.

‘The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.’

Should such an attack occur each Party agrees to assist those attacked

‘by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.’

So there is no automaticity. The get-out clause is that an ally will act as it ‘deems necessary.’ It may deem it necessary to do nothing at all. The unavoidable doubts surrounding whether Article V would be honoured in practice is not helped by the requirement that it must cover the most extreme contingency, that is nuclear war.

Yet it has held. Even allowing for recent provocations, Russia has stayed clear of posing an Article V test to NATO. Nato is the most powerful and durable alliance in history, led by a superpower, the United States. While nobody knows what would happen if a true test came, Moscow knows it would be taking a big risk if it tried to find out. Because alliance is preferable to standing alone, states are prepared to live with its inherent uncertainty. Despite its lack of automaticity this remains the gold standard for security guarantees.

But is not the treaty language that makes a security guarantee credible. It is not only the commitments behind it and whether the parties can be trusted to keep their word. It is also, in NATO’s case, the integrated military command, the interoperability of forces, the joint deployments and exercises. When reassurance is need because of particular threats - as with the Baltic states - then forces are moved to vulnerable areas to demonstrate that allies will be engaged from the start. It works because it is an active alliance, and not left dormant until an emergency arises.

Ukraine has had paper promises before. In 1994 Ukraine gave up the nuclear arsenal inherited from the old Soviet Union. In the Budapest Memorandum the US, UK, and Russia, and then later France and China, undertook ‘to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine’, which meant not threatening force or engaging in economic coercion, and to provide assistance ‘if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used.’

Not much ambiguity there yet when Crimea was annexed in 2014 by Russia, the others did little other than complain and impose limited economic sanctions. When Putin was asked about the violation of Ukrainian sovereignty he explained that the changed government in Kyiv meant that ‘a new state arises, but with this state and in respect to this state, we have not signed any obligatory documents.’

During negotiations on a peace deal in the weeks after the 2022 invasion Zelenskyy agreed not to join NATO but sought alternative form of security guarantees. At best they pointed to another version of the Budapest memorandum, with other states asked to pledge their support to Ukraine in the event of future aggression. One reason these talks ended in April 2022 was that Russia changed the draft treaty language so that any action would require that all would-be guarantors, including Russia, acted with unanimity.

As Trump moved to get a quick deal on ending the war at the start of his second term, and with his apparent view that Ukraine was responsible for its own misfortune, there was concern that Kyiv might be put under pressure to accept an unsatisfactory settlement that would leave it vulnerable - not only without NATO but without anything else in its place. Trump was persuaded that some arrangement was necessary though not that the US would need to be part of it. When the Europeans, led by Britain and France, came up with the idea of the ‘coalition of the willing’, a collection of countries that would commit to Ukraine’s long-term security outside of the NATO framework, he not only thought this was a good idea but one that would be acceptable to Moscow.

The Kremlin rushed to make clear that European troops on Ukrainian soil was unacceptable, although as is so often the case it is not clear that Trump noticed. At any rate when the Alaska summit gave a momentary push to a deal, leading European leaders to rush to the White House, along with Zelenskyy, the issue was revived and given a bit more backing, with a greater US military involvement in subsequent discussions. Once again Moscow made clear that it could not agree to the sort of arrangements under discussion, apparently contributing to Trump’s growing irritation with Putin.

The Coalition of the Willing

In all of this what may have been missed is that the plan now connected with a coalition of the willing is not a security guarantee. As I mentioned the credibility of NATO’s Article V depends not just on the formal commitment to treat an attack on one as an attack on all but measures if place to ensure that the alliance is present from the start should an adversary attack. This is what it is being planned.

The starting point is that the ‘deter and defend’ role will remain primarily for Ukraine, and that the role of the coalition is to make that more effective and credible.

As the concept has evolved it has acquired three elements. First, boosting the Ukrainians’ own forward defences. The best deterrent will be a super-fortified front line, manned by Ukrainian troops, but with external logistical and technical support, to ensure that it is able to blunt any future Russian offensive. There might be a few European brigades but only as a back-up. Second, air defences, including manned aircraft, organised from bases in Poland and Romania. Third, a black sea fleet, possibly led by Turkey, that would clear mines and keep open trade routes. The importance of both the air and sea components is that they support economic activity, which is essential to Ukraine’s recovery.

There is a potential element of ‘tripwire’ in all of this, in that is the Russians breached the front-lines there might be clashes involving Western troops, which could trigger a much deeper involvement. But as far as I am aware the sort of issues normally raised by security guarantees, including the nuclear aspect, have not yet been discussed. This was implied by European requests that the US provide a ‘backstop’ but while Trump never quite ruled this out he hardly seemed enthusiastic.

At the start of the war, when Ukraine’s own military capacity was limited then both its current fight and its future security appeared to depend totally on its partners. In key respects this is still the case. Economic, military, and intelligence assistance remains vital. Yet something has happened to Ukraine over this period. It has built up its industrial capacity to a remarkable extent. It now provides around 60 percent of its own kit and ammunition. It has become a major innovator and producer in drone warfare. Some 4.5 million drones will be produced this year. It has unmatched operational experience which it now shares with European countries.

Recall that one of Putin’s objectives in 2022 was to ‘demilitarise’ Ukraine. He has achieved the opposite. When Zelenskyy responded to the drones dropping into Poland by offering advice on anti-drone measures, he was not being cute. Ukraine is to the fore in these technologies, as well as innovating constantly. It is now a potential exporter.

Ukraine is becoming a de facto member of NATO. When the Ukrainians say that they are defending Europe’s borders they are correct. If they fail then the risks for NATO countries will become even greater, and they will be worrying about more than the occasional probes that reveal the leakiness of their air defences. Zelenskyy turns up to alliance meetings. His armed forces work closely with alliance partners and its arms industry is cooperating with Western manufacturers. Because of the threat from Russia’s missiles and drones, Ukrainians are locating their factories in other countries, most recently Denmark. More of that may be necessary, which may in turn add to the Russian pressure on Europe.

One suggestion arising from the Russian drone intrusions into Europe is that a defensive shield be established from inside Ukraine, and if Ukraine is going to be involved then should it not also protect Ukrainian territory? Perhaps the No-Fly Zone that appeared to be such an outlandish proposal in 2022 will start to appear reasonable in the face of Russian provocations. The issue has moved beyond security guarantees, and the concept of the ‘coalition of the willing’ needs to be untethered from that role.

A lot of things we never thought likely have now come to pass as a result of this terrible war. Russia has persisted with its aggression. Despite its extraordinary battlefield losses it continues to fail to make serious battlefield gains. Its energy infrastructure is attacked on a daily basis. It has been offered a ceasefire but has refused.

NATO countries will not be rushing to declare war on Russia on Ukraine’s behalf. Nor will Ukraine join NATO yet as a full member. But the new security situation has developed through incremental steps, each one large enough to make a difference but not so large as to trigger a major war. Because of this Ukraine is becoming integrated into European security structures. It may not be a member of NATO but it is becoming part of the coalition of the willing.

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9. ‘War is a business’: the Colombian mercenaries at Sudan’s battlefront

And as I read on social media, apparently Colombia is among the largest contributors of foreign fighters in Ukraine.

Excerpts:

The United Arab Emirates – long accused of arming and backing the RSF – has been blamed for hiring the mercenaries, via private security firms. The UAE has consistently denied these allegations.

Unlike some Colombian whistleblowers who claim they were told they would be guarding oil facilities in the UAE, Carlos knew he was bound for war, though only that it was in Africa.

His journey began with medical examinations in Bogotá, where he signed a $2,600-a-month contract. Afterwards he was flown via Europe to Ethiopia, and then to an Emirati military base in Bosaso, Somalia, he said. Later he was taken to Nyala in Sudan, a city now notorious as the hub for Colombian mercenaries.

Carlos, who requested anonymity to speak freely, admitted that his first task was training Sudanese recruits, most of whom were children.

“The camps had thousands of recruits, some adults, but mostly children – lots and lots of children,” he said. “These are children who have never held a weapon. We taught them how to handle assault rifles and machine guns, RPGs. After that, they were sent to the front. We were training them to go and get killed.”

He describes training the children as “awful and crazy” but said that “unfortunately that’s how war is”.

Carlos’s unit was eventually posted to the besieged El Fasher, the country’s worst battleground. RSF fighters have built a 20-mile wall around the city’s boundaries, and executed those trying to flee.

‘War is a business’: the Colombian mercenaries at Sudan’s battlefront

A soldier of fortune tells of lucrative contracts, the siege of El Fasher and training child fighters to ‘go and get killed’

The Guardian · Harriet Barber · October 8, 2025

For Colombian mercenaries hardened by decades of jungle warfare, Sudan’s conflict seemed slow at first.

“In Sudan, they spend the night sleeping – they don’t even have security because everyone goes to bed,” said Carlos, one of hundreds of Colombians hired to fight in the African country. “Colombians are different – we are used to a different kind of war.”

So when Carlos and his comrades reached the front, they pressed on through the darkness, driving deeper into enemy territory. “And then there began to be much more fighting – and many more deaths,” he said.

Carlos arrived in Sudan earlier this year, almost two years into the country’s brutal civil war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The conflict has plunged Sudan into one of the worst humanitarian nightmares in recent history according to UN officials: 150,000 people have been killed, women and girls have been abducted and raped and nearly 13 million have been forced to flee their homes, in the world’s worst displacement crisis.

About 260,000 people remain trapped in El Fasher, North Darfur’s capital and the army’s last major stronghold in the Darfur region, which has been under siege for more than 500 days. Aid has not entered the ravaged city for nearly 18 months and children have been reduced to eating locusts and animal feed.

Control map

It is there that the Colombians, fighting for the RSF, have now been dispatched. “War is a business,” said Carlos.

The mercenaries’ involvement first emerged last year, when an investigation by the Bogotá-based outlet La Silla Vacía found that more than 300 former soldiers had been contracted to fight – prompting an unprecedented apology by Colombia’s foreign ministry.

But the Colombians’ role has gone beyond the battlefield: fighters have admitted to training Sudanese child soldiers and have been pictured operating in Zamzam, the largest displacement camp in Sudan. In April, the RSF tore through Zamzam, killing between 300 and 1,500 people – the UN called it one of the worst massacres of the war.

Mohamed Khamis Douda, a spokesman for the camp in Darfur, recently told the Sudan Tribune: “We have witnessed with our own eyes a dual crime: the displacement of our people at the hands of the RSF militia, and now the occupation of the camp by foreign mercenaries.”

‘We will never, ever escape’: inside the ever-tightening siege of the Sudanese city of El Fasher

The United Arab Emirates – long accused of arming and backing the RSF – has been blamed for hiring the mercenaries, via private security firms. The UAE has consistently denied these allegations.

Unlike some Colombian whistleblowers who claim they were told they would be guarding oil facilities in the UAE, Carlos knew he was bound for war, though only that it was in Africa.

His journey began with medical examinations in Bogotá, where he signed a $2,600-a-month contract. Afterwards he was flown via Europe to Ethiopia, and then to an Emirati military base in Bosaso, Somalia, he said. Later he was taken to Nyala in Sudan, a city now notorious as the hub for Colombian mercenaries.

Carlos, who requested anonymity to speak freely, admitted that his first task was training Sudanese recruits, most of whom were children.

Sudanese boys and men at a training camp with Colombian mercenaries in Sudan. Photograph: Supplied

“The camps had thousands of recruits, some adults, but mostly children – lots and lots of children,” he said. “These are children who have never held a weapon. We taught them how to handle assault rifles and machine guns, RPGs. After that, they were sent to the front. We were training them to go and get killed.”

He describes training the children as “awful and crazy” but said that “unfortunately that’s how war is”.

Carlos’s unit was eventually posted to the besieged El Fasher, the country’s worst battleground. RSF fighters have built a 20-mile wall around the city’s boundaries, and executed those trying to flee.

Footage shared by Colombian mercenary shows mission in Sudan – video

Carlos shared photos and videos – some passed on by his comrades – with La Silla Vacía and the Guardian, showing Colombian mercenaries in Sudan. One picture shows trainees lying prone on the ground, some holding rifles. Two teenagers pose for the camera, making a victory sign with their fingers.

In one video, a man can be seen shooting a machine gun through a hole in the wall of a ruined apartment. In a clip shared by a different Colombian mercenary, a man loads and fires a mortar at a location geolocated in the outskirts of El Fasher.

In another video, filmed amid heavy gunfire,mercenaries with thick Colombian accents discuss a colleague who appears to have been wounded.

“I don’t know if he’s dead, because we couldn’t see him,” one says in Spanish. “Who else is going to help get him out?”

The mercenary points to a group of Sudanese fighters milling around nearby. “You, you, you. You can help us here, support these men. We’re going to retreat quietly, to get this guy out,” he says, before the group carry a wounded man past houses peppered with bullet holes.

Colombia’s own decades-long civil conflict has created a surplus of experienced fighters, many of whom received training from the US army, and the country is believed to be one of the largest exporters of mercenaries.

Screengrab from RSF (official X account for Rapid Support Forces) video, soldiers on their way to El Fasher, Darfur, Sudan. Photograph: X

“Colombia has more than a half-century of history of active conflict. Its soldiers have not only been trained very well, but have been in the field, in very difficult situations, and so are combat ready,” says Elizabeth Dickinson, senior analyst for Colombia at International Crisis Group.

Sean McFate, an expert on mercenaries, says the use of Colombian mercenaries escalated around the 2010s, when ex-combatants were paid to guard oil infrastructure in the UAE. Their role evolved during the war in Yemen. “The UAE sent a lot of Colombian mercenaries to go and kill the Houthi [rebels] and they were successful in that,” he says.

Since then, Colombian soldiers of fortune have appeared regularly in the headlines: in July 2021 18 Colombian gunmen were among the team who assassinated Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse.

Deaths, disappearances and forced recruitment: refugees recount horrors of relentless war in Sudan

Colombian ex-military personnel have also fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and now Ukraine. In November of last year, Colombia’s foreign minister said that approximately 500 of his countrymen had travelled to fight against Russian forces.

Carlos is one of those, having served two years with the Ukrainian troops. “Ukraine was becoming more complicated, there were more casualties, more enemy advances. So I left and took on this mercenary job in Africa instead,” he says. “I knew absolutely nothing about it – only that it was in Africa.”

McFate says mercenaries give countries “good plausible deniability”, in cases where they want to skirt international law or have a strategy of human rights violations. “When they get captured or killed, you disavow them,” he says.

The Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, has described mercenarism as a “trade in men turned into commodities to kill” and has pledged to ban the business. But former fighters often struggle to reintegrate into Colombian society, and the cash incentives they are offered mean the business is unlikely to end soon.

Both Dickinson and McFate argued that the problem also lay with Colombia’s military system: most professional soldiers are forced to retire around 40, with low pensions and few retraining options.

Footage shared by a Colombian mercenary operating in El Fasher, Sudan. Photograph: The Guardian

“If you enter at 18 and work 20 years, you’re not even 40 when you retire. You have 15, 20 years left of active duty time,” said Dickinson. “The support structure for the Colombian retired military is deficient, particularly compared to the offer that’s on the table from these organisations.”

But Dickinson also warns that the “ecosystem of private defence companies” is no longer limiting itself to retired soldiers. “Defence companies are increasingly recruiting those on active duty, from places where soldiers have a really hard time in difficult conditions,” said Dickinson. “They send WhatsApp pamphlets offering thousands of dollars a month.”

For the military, this is an “enormous loss”, she said. “The Colombian government trains them to a very high level – and then they are essentially stolen by the private defence industry.”

Carlos is one of those who left the armed forces after just over five years of service. He has also left Sudan, blaming issues with payment. He said 30 men quit alongside him, but “at the same time, flights with 30 more were arriving”.

Mercenaries almost disappeared from the world’s battlefields for most of the 20th century, but the business was growing fast again, said McFate. “It’s the world’s oldest profession,” he says. “We’re returning to something medieval, where the super-rich can become like superpowers.”

Carlos took a similarly dark view of his trade. “This isn’t an honest job; it’s not a legal job. But you go for money,” he said.

This article was written in collaboration with La Silla Vacía.

The Guardian · Harriet Barber · October 8, 2025

10. US Army accepting roughly $1 million donation to bring senior leaders to DC conference as troops brace for missed paycheck

US Army accepting roughly $1 million donation to bring senior leaders to DC conference as troops brace for missed paycheck | CNN Politics

CNN · Haley Britzky · October 10, 2025

A US Army patch on the uniform of an American soldier participating in the celebrations of Land Forces Day in Krakow, Poland, on September 13, 2025.

Artur Widak/NurPhoto/Getty Images/File

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The US Army is accepting a donation of roughly $1 million for the travel and lodging of senior leaders to a professional development conference in Washington, DC, next week, as active duty forces are bracing for a missed paycheck amid the government shutdown, multiple US officials told CNN.

Many of the Army leaders and their staffs who had already processed paperwork to attend the annual Association of the US Army conference in downtown DC next week will have their travel, hotels and meals covered by funds donated by Association of the United States Army. AUSA is a nonprofit professional development association that serves the Army.

A spokesperson for AUSA, Tom McCuin, declined to comment on the donation amount but said it was “enough to fund what the Army had planned to bring.”

The viability of the conference had been in question after the government shut down, which meant there were no funds to pay for travel or per diems. One of the US officials said it is standard for AUSA to donate money to the Army to bring in leaders for the conference, though they said it appears the recent $1 million donation was in addition to the typical amount due to funding challenges brought by the shutdown. McCuin also said AUSA provides a “proffer” to the Army ever year to cover some attendees, and has since 2013.

“I think the Secretary was keen to make sure that people had the opportunity to attend what is first and foremost a professional development event,” McCuin said. “Because of the shutdown, there’s no money in the budget in the travel, and we were able to help out with that.”

The annual AUSA conference is a sprawling gathering in downtown DC of Army leaders, their staffs, defense industry executives and foreign military representatives. Typically, senior leaders have held media roundtables and press conferences, while military officials have attended speaking engagements, workshops and received updates on the Army’s goals in the upcoming year.

A second US official said the intent for bringing the senior leaders in for the conference was to attend the Leader Solarium event, an invitation-only event for battalion commanders and sergeants major across the Army. The US official described it as a workshop where the invited leaders pitch solutions to a posed problem statement to the Army secretary, chief of staff, and sergeant major of the Army.

“I can’t tell you a single actionable initiative to come out of it,” the second official said. The first US official said who would come was being determined based on things like the presentations they were expected to give or participate in.

The conference comes as National Guard troops deployed in DC and various other cities around the country, including Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago, as well as active-duty forces around the globe, are not receiving their next paycheck. CNN reported last week that military families were bracing for a missed paycheck on October 15; some families have preemptively visited their local food pantries to stock up on groceries and supplies in case the shutdown drags on.

The first US official said it was “devastating” that troops were facing financial hardship because of the shutdown — particularly more junior service members who may not have a savings cushion to rely on.

“We need to engage with industry and tell them the things we need and want, and we need to tell the Army story to America and highlight the great things our soldiers are doing … I totally can see that it just doesn’t look great especially when our whole force is about to miss a pay period or two or three, or however long this thing goes,” the official said.

CNN · Haley Britzky · October 10, 2025

11. The Second Front, Part IIa: PRC Micro-Occupation in The Philippines

An important article with some very useful analysis and perspectives that I think few are exposed to unless they work closely with the Philippines today..

Excerpts:

Part IIa of this series summarized the PRC’s “salami-slicing” of features in the West Philippine Sea. It outlined a framework for planners to prioritize the development of deterrence capabilities and resilience networks, as well as to establish conditions for a robust Philippine resistance in areas where the AFP may not be able to defend during a significant conflict. Red zones, the contested features in the West Philippine Sea, represent areas under immediate threat from PRC gray zone operations and will require unconventional intervention strategies. Orange zones represent islands strategically crucial to the PRC’s seizure of Taiwan and during its occupation. These features are remote and challenging for the AFP to defend. Yellow zones describe terrain that the PRC may invade and occupy to deny its use to nations attempting to assist Taiwan. These areas will likely face both lethal and non-lethal fires. Gold zones indicate island features that are important for controlling the West Philippine Sea. These areas are strategically important but may be follow-on targets to prime objectives.

Part IIb will describe the green zones and likely PRC threats in these areas, regions unlikely to be occupied but likely to face non-lethal fires, such as misinformation, system disruption, and population resource control measures, which aim to support occupation in northern territories. The control of key Philippine territories could enable or prevent PRC power projection, determine the effectiveness of any blockade, and shape the strategic choices available to all parties.

The Second Front, Part IIa: PRC Micro-Occupation in The Philippines

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/10/10/micro-occupation-of-the-philippines/

by Chad Machiela, by Duc DuClos, by Anthony Bacus

10.10.2025 at 06:00am

Editor’s note: This article is the first half of a two-part feature on The Second Front. Part IIb is forthcoming. Catch up with Part I—Armed Forces of the Philippines: Community Home Defense Operations (CHDO) Development—here. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“If we carry out the cabbage strategy, you will not be able to send food and drinking water onto the islands. Without the supply for one or two weeks, the troopers stationed there will leave the islands on their own. Once they have left, they will never be able to come back.”

— Major General Zhang Zhaozhong, People’s Liberation Army, May 2013

“If sliced thinly enough, no one action will be dramatic enough to justify starting a war. How will a policymaker in Washington justify drawing a red line in front of a CNOOC oil rig anchoring inside Vietnam’s EEZ, or a Chinese frigate chasing off a Philippines survey ship over Reed Bank, or a Chinese infantry platoon appearing on a pile of rocks near the Spratly Islands?”

— Foreign Policy, “Salami Slicing in the South China Sea,” 2012

From Gray-Zone to Micro-Occupation

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. observed in August 2025 that the Philippines cannot avoid involvement in a Taiwan crisis because of its location. While Washington’s strategic planning focuses on the Taiwan Strait as the primary theater, the Philippines serves as a critical secondary front that could ultimately determine whether Beijing achieves its strategic objectives or if Taiwan maintains its freedom. The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) gray-zone activities in the West Philippine Sea are increasingly merging into the occupation of features in contested waters. This article proposes a framework for understanding and prioritizing vulnerabilities to the PRC’s efforts to alter the facts on the ground through infrastructure development and coercion, thereby creating a shared operational picture similar to Taiwan’s identification of its fourteen “red beaches” as priority invasion sites.

Micro-occupation, or the seizure and occupation of extraterritorial key terrain for purposes other than invasion of a state’s sovereign territory to effect regime change, represents a fundamental evolution in territorial aggression. The occupation of limited terrain is calibrated to remain below traditional thresholds of war while achieving strategic objectives. Unlike the comprehensive territorial conquests of the colonial era or World War II, modern actors exploit the constraints of nuclear deterrence, economic interdependence, and international law to secure limited but critical extraterritorial gains. For the Philippines (with its 7,641 islands totaling a land mass equivalent to Arizona but spread over 1,150 miles from north to south), this threat poses unique challenges that demand ruthless prioritization within the nation’s severe resource constraints. The archipelago’s geographic position makes the Philippines not merely a supporting player but potentially the decisive terrain in any nation’s strategy regarding Taiwan.

Micro-Occupation in the Philippine Context

Micro-occupation in the Philippines involves the calculated seizure of islands, maritime features within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zones, or critical infrastructure that advances PRC strategic objectives while avoiding casus belli. These operations employ what Chinese strategists call “combination punches:” synchronized military, paramilitary, economic, and information operations designed to present a fait accompli before effective responses can be mounted. This doctrine was applied during the PRC’s successful seizure of Mischief Reef in 1995 and Scarborough Shoal in 2012, where incremental actions below the threshold of war altered the facts on the ground to include PRC personnel and facilities on features not claimable under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. These episodes triggered a Philippine military response, but one that was so limited it failed to alter the outcome.

Figure 1. The South China Sea and the PRC’s Extraterritorial Claims

No state can effectively defend over seven thousand islands simultaneously, particularly when facing an adversary with the People’s Liberation Army’s growing power projection capabilities. The Armed Forces of the Philippines’ (AFP) limited air and sealift capacity prevents immediate response to threats in Batanes or Palawan. This geographic reality forces Philippine defense planners to make hard choices about which territories to defend, which must prepare for resistance after occupation, and which may need to be temporarily ceded to preserve forces for decisive battles.

The Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) sites strengthen deterrence as a representative of the US partnership. However, these sites are also high-value targets that the PRC might seek to neutralize preemptively in the event of a conflict over Taiwan. These locations, from Naval Base Camilo Osias in northern Cagayan to Balabac Island in southern Palawan, represent both strategic assets and potential vulnerabilities that shape PRC planning. These are not formal US bases but Philippine facilities with American access rights. PRC planners must assess whether targeting of these sites would trigger the US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty. Beijing likely calculates that limited, deniable actions against EDCA facilities — such as cyberattacks, sabotage, or temporary seizure — might fall into a gray area that delays or prevents an American military response.

Tier 1 Red Zones: Ongoing Crisis in the West Philippine Sea

The West Philippine Sea features are categorized as red zones in our framework and are the most vulnerable to PRC occupation (depicted in Figure 1). The PRC is encroaching on these maritime features through escalating gray-zone tactics and outright seizure. The PRC has constructed artificial islands by dredging sand from the sea floor, which are patrolled by persistent maritime militia, providing platforms to project power and escalate conflict rapidly.

Figure 2. The Philippine Islands depicting Red, Yellow, Gold, and Green Threatened Zones (image created by the authors using QGIS)

Second, the Thomas Shoal provides a precarious flashpoint. The rusting hull of BRP Sierra Madre, with its rotating Marine garrison, represents a Philippine claim to sovereignty that Beijing desperately seeks to eliminate. PRC Coast Guard vessels regularly interfere with resupply missions using water cannons, dangerous maneuvers resulting in injury to Philippine sailors, and physical barriers. The escalation from blockade to coercing the withdrawal of the Philippine Marines or forcible ejection requires only a political decision in Beijing, not additional military capability. The isolation of this feature makes it virtually indefensible against a determined PRC seizure.

The PRC occupation of Second Thomas Shoal would likely follow the playbook applied to nearby features. The PRC’s maritime militia will increase the frequency and violence of their interference with fisherfolk and civilian watercraft, escalating from water cannons to ramming, beating civilians, and injuring or killing Philippine personnel. They will declare an environmental zone around the shoal, limiting access by fisherfolk from other nations. The militia and Coast Guard would prevent access to the area under the guise of enforcing the safety zone. After denying Philippine presence, the PRC will dredge the sea floor to build the feature’s height and establish a facility with prefabricated structures to conduct environmental monitoring. This process would be completed before the Philippines or its allies could respond, leaving no recourse to reverse the seizure without military force. Conversely, successful defense of Second Thomas Shoal, through innovative resupply methods or international pressure, would demonstrate resolve and potentially deter further PRC aggression.

Figure 3. The Sierra Madre at Second Thomas Shoal

Scarborough Shoal presents a different but equally urgent challenge. Under de facto PRC control since 2012, this feature sits only 124 nautical miles from Luzon, within both the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and missile range to threaten AFP forces at Subic Bay and Clark Air Force Base. PLA militarization would create an anti-access bubble neutralizing Northern Luzon’s strategic value in a Taiwan contingency. PRC maritime militia vessels maintain a constant presence, preventing Filipino fishermen from accessing traditional grounds while avoiding actions triggering US treaty obligations.

As with the PRC’s transformation of the Spratly Islands from fishing grounds to military bases, the PRC will claim that initial construction will support environmental protection, followed by basic infrastructure that requires defensive weapons to protect civilian facilities. A dual-use installation would follow, protected by radar systems, surface-to-air missiles, and anti-ship cruise missiles. From Scarborough, PRC forces could effectively control air and sea approaches to Manila, monitor or jam communications across Northern Luzon, and threaten any US forces operating from Philippine bases. The strategic impact would be equivalent to placing a PRC military base just off California’s Catalina Island.

The persistent presence of PRC survey vessels indicates a detailed mapping of the shoal’s geology for construction planning purposes. The increasing size and capability of PRC ships around Scarborough, including the deployment of the 12,000-ton CCG 5901, the world’s largest coast guard vessel, demonstrate Beijing’s commitment to maintaining control of this feature. The construction of a “maritime rescue center” on nearby Woody Island serves as a template for dual-use facilities that evolve into military installations.

Sabina Shoal, 75 nautical miles from Palawan, has emerged as the newest arena for PRC expansionism. The increasing presence of the PRC Coast Guard and maritime militia signals Beijing’s intent to replicate its playbook in the Scarborough Shoal. Without a permanent Philippine presence, Sabina remains vulnerable to the “cabbage strategy,” which involves layers of fishing vessels, maritime militia, the Coast Guard, and eventually, naval forces, establishing new facts on the ground.

The use of militia swarms backed by military forces mirrors the PRC’s use of civilians with military forces while establishing “facts on the mountains” as it seeks to alter its border with India. The addition of civilians to patrols complicates response, as military action against ostensible civilians risks international opprobrium, and allows the PRC to claim that its response was defensive even when conflict occurs on the wrong side of a border.

Tier 2 Orange Zones: Batanes and the Taiwan Proximity Challenge

Batanes Province, designated here as an orange zone, represents the second priority for occupation. These islands’ proximity to Taiwan – only 190 kilometers from Basco to Kaohsiung – makes them invaluable for PRC air defense, intelligence gathering, and channel control in any cross-strait operation. Unlike features in the West Philippine Sea, Batanes is an inhabited archipelago where occupation would require managing civilian populations with their own history and culture.

Mavulis Island, the Philippines’ northernmost point at 141 kilometers from Taiwan’s southern coast, could be seized by PLA special operations forces within hours. Its strategic value for positioning radar systems, surface-to-air missiles, or anti-ship cruise missiles to control the Bashi Channel makes it a priority target. The island’s isolation and lack of permanent military presence mean occupation could be accomplished before Manila could mount a meaningful response.

Itbayat Island presents different challenges for the PRC because of its approximately 3,000 Filipino inhabitants. Occupation would require either population control or forced evacuation, generating international attention and domestic outrage. However, the island’s single airstrip and limited harbor facilities make it valuable for forward PLA deployment. A minimal military presence, consisting of occasional Coast Guard patrols without a permanent AFP garrison, leaves Itbayat vulnerable to a rapid heliborne or amphibious seizure.

Batan Island, which hosts the provincial capital of Basco with 8,000 residents, represents the most complex target in Batanes. With functioning civilian infrastructure and the best transportation links to Luzon, Batan would provide a ready-made forward operating base. The Basco weather station’s regional meteorological data, combined with the airport’s capability to handle military transport aircraft, makes this island particularly valuable. Yet occupation would require substantial forces for population control and defense against counterattacks. The psychological impact of occupying a provincial capital would likely resonate throughout the Philippines, potentially triggering either fierce resistance or a more accommodating response.

The human dimension of Batanes adds complexity to the occupation. The Ivatan people, with their distinct culture and strong community bonds, have historically shown remarkable resilience in the face of natural disasters. This social cohesion could translate into effective resistance networks or, conversely, render the population vulnerable to collective coercion. PRC information operations would likely emphasize “protecting” the Ivatan from becoming collateral damage in the US-PRC confrontation, exploiting the community’s isolation from mainstream Filipino society.

Should PRC military planners deem the occupation of the Batanes Islands as necessary to their forcible seizure of Taiwan, operations would likely include electronic warfare and cyber operations to isolate the islands from Manila, as information operations portray occupation as temporary and intended to protect civilians. The initial insertion force would likely comprise PLA special operations forces such as the Sea Dragons, arriving via civilian vessels or aircraft to maintain ambiguity, followed by regular marines once control is established. Historical precedent from Russia’s operation in Crimea suggests the effectiveness of “little green men,” unmarked special forces that provide a deniable presence until a fait accompli is achieved.

Tier 3 Yellow Zones: Northern Luzon’s EDCA Vulnerabilities

EDCA sites in Northern Luzon, classified here as a yellow zone, face an elevated risk of PRC interference, though complete occupation remains less likely than sabotage or temporary neutralization. The importance of these facilities for US force projection makes them inevitable targets, but their connection to American defense treaty obligations complicates PRC decision-making.

Naval Base Camilo Osias is the northernmost EDCA naval facility, positioned to support operations in the Luzon Strait. Its isolated location and limited ground defense make it vulnerable to special operations raids or standoff strikes. Rather than occupation, PRC forces may attempt cyberattacks on command systems, physical sabotage of fuel and ammunition storage, or precision strikes on critical infrastructure. The base’s dependence on a single access road makes it vulnerable to infiltration by special operations forces from the sea, a threat that requires maritime patrol capabilities and underwater sensors.

Lal-lo Airport presents a softer target as a civilian facility that is also designated for military use. With minimal security in a populated area, this airport could be neutralized through various means short of occupation. Information operations focused on stirring local opposition, cyberattacks on air traffic control, or covert runway sabotage could achieve PRC objectives without the need for troops on the ground. The dual civilian-military use creates unique challenges; PRC agents could efficiently conduct reconnaissance under civilian cover, mapping defenses and identifying vulnerabilities for future exploitation.

Camp Melchor Dela Cruz faces different vulnerabilities as a large Army training base. Its extensive perimeter challenges comprehensive defense, while its inland location reduces immediate operational value. Rather than an occupation, this facility would likely face information warfare and cyber operations against base systems. The large training areas provide concealment opportunities for infiltrators, necessitating persistent surveillance of remote sections and regular sweeps for cached equipment or weapons.

In addition to physical security, these facilities require protection against sophisticated influence operations targeting both military personnel and surrounding communities. The proximity of EDCA sites to local populations creates opportunities for PRC to mobilize opposition through economic inducements, environmental concerns, or anti-American nationalism. Protecting against these threats requires comprehensive counter-intelligence programs, financial security monitoring of personnel with access to sensitive information, and proactive community engagement to build resilience against PRC influence operations.

The PRC operations in yellow zones would emphasize deniable and reversible actions, achieving military objectives while avoiding explicit acts of war. Cyber operations, information warfare, economic coercion, and limited special operations can effectively neutralize facilities without requiring the resources and risks associated with occupation.

Tier 4 Gold Zones: Palawan and Strategic Depth

Palawan and its associated features, designated as gold zones, represent lower-probability but high-impact micro-occupation targets. The island’s 650-kilometer length creates multiple potential objectives, but its strategic importance ensures a stronger Philippine defense and increases the likelihood of US intervention.

Forces at Balabac Island, located at Palawan’s southern tip, could project power into the Balabac Strait between the Sulu Sea and the West Philippine Sea. Its sparse population and limited infrastructure make it vulnerable, but distance from Taiwan and limited immediate utility reduce its priority for PRC planners. Occupation here would support broader control of the West Philippine Sea, rather than supporting conflict with Taiwan, as control of these features would protect the flanks during the PRC’s consolidation of gains.

Antonio Bautista Air Base would face standoff strikes rather than occupation attempts. Its value for air operations makes it a likely target for ballistic and cruise missiles, but physical occupation would require substantial forces that could be better employed elsewhere. The base’s integration with Puerto Princesa and the significant presence of Philippine forces make occupation costly and complex.

The Kalayaan Island Group, particularly Pag-asa Island, already faces persistent pressure from the PRC through gray-zone activities. With existing civilian and military presence, these features represent extensions of current disputes rather than new micro-occupation scenarios. PRC control would likely result in the Spratly Islands’ domination, but it would likely occur through gradual escalation rather than a sudden seizure. The 200 Filipino civilians on Pag-asa will likely face gray zone operations, as militias surround the island with vessels, interfere with civilian watercraft, and constrain the Philippine’ freedom of movement until residents are coerced to leave.

The Sibutu Passage, Balabac Straight, and Mindoro Strait are critical maritime chokepoints beyond the major islands that gold zone operations would also target. Gold zone operations would also target critical maritime chokepoints beyond the major islands. These narrow waterways are vital for both commercial shipping and potential military operations. PRC special operations forces or maritime militia could establish a “temporary” presence on small, uninhabited islands, controlling these passages, and justify their actions as anti-piracy operations or maritime safety measures. Once established, these positions would be difficult to dislodge without appearing as an aggressor, particularly if the PRC maintains the fiction of civilian purpose. The pattern from the West Philippine Sea suggests that “temporary” structures have a way of becoming permanent realities, protected by successive layers of legal arguments, information warfare, and eventually military force.

Continuation

Part IIa of this series summarized the PRC’s “salami-slicing” of features in the West Philippine Sea. It outlined a framework for planners to prioritize the development of deterrence capabilities and resilience networks, as well as to establish conditions for a robust Philippine resistance in areas where the AFP may not be able to defend during a significant conflict. Red zones, the contested features in the West Philippine Sea, represent areas under immediate threat from PRC gray zone operations and will require unconventional intervention strategies. Orange zones represent islands strategically crucial to the PRC’s seizure of Taiwan and during its occupation. These features are remote and challenging for the AFP to defend. Yellow zones describe terrain that the PRC may invade and occupy to deny its use to nations attempting to assist Taiwan. These areas will likely face both lethal and non-lethal fires. Gold zones indicate island features that are important for controlling the West Philippine Sea. These areas are strategically important but may be follow-on targets to prime objectives.

Part IIb will describe the green zones and likely PRC threats in these areas, regions unlikely to be occupied but likely to face non-lethal fires, such as misinformation, system disruption, and population resource control measures, which aim to support occupation in northern territories. The control of key Philippine territories could enable or prevent PRC power projection, determine the effectiveness of any blockade, and shape the strategic choices available to all parties.

Tags: Gray-Zone Competition, irregular warfare, Micro-Occupation, Philippines, PLA Navy

About The Authors

Chad Machiela
CW5 Chad Machiela (USA Retired) is a faculty research associate at the Naval Postgraduate School. He retired from the Army as a Special Forces warrant officer with over 30 years of special operations experience working throughout the Indo-Pacific, Central, and European Commands.
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Duc DuClos
CW5 Maurice "Duc" DuClos currently serves as a Guest Lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, California. His professional background includes various positions at the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) Joint Special Operations University (JSOU), the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (USAJFKSWCS), 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) and 2/75th Ranger Battalion.
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Anthony Bacus
LTC Anthony Bacus is a member of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). He is a graduate of the U.S. National Defense University (NDU) at Ft Bragg, North Carolina. He is currently serving as the JC5 in JSOC at Camp Aquinaldo in Quezon City, Philippines.

12. The Way Ahead is Down: The Case for Underground Defense

Excerpts:

The US military must develop the ability to build and fight from underground facilities. These underground defenses must include more than solitary fighting positions. Like the defenses of Iwo Jima, they should be a defensive network of bunkers, communication tunnels, supply caches, hospitals, and headquarters. Sprawling underground defensive networks may sound expensive at first, but they could be scalable and iterative. Defensive networks could begin as simple fighting positions and then steadily evolve to include logistical and command capabilities. Currently, combat engineers lack any doctrine, training, or equipment to build even hasty underground shelters. If guerrilla fighters such as the Vietnamese communists and Hamas can build formidable subterranean defenses with little more than hand tools, then surely the US can.

In addition to construction capabilities, the US must train its soldiers and marines how to operate underground on the defensive. The tactics of tunnel defense vary greatly from maneuvering in the open. Current underground combat training is focused from an attacker’s perspective, with a heavy emphasis on breaching. Tunnel defenders must fight differently. They must be patient, acclimatized to their underground environment, and able to operate in much smaller teams. The Vietnamese tunnel defenders of Cu Chi were trained to utilize grenades, trap doors, and escape shafts to delay much larger American formations.

Tactical underground defensive capabilities are a simple but currently unavailable asymmetric advantage to US forces operating in the Pacific. As the age of American overmatch in the skies becomes less certain, senior military planners must learn the lessons from their historical adversaries, who recognized the inherent strength of subterranean defenses.

The Way Ahead is Down: The Case for Underground Defense

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/10/10/the-way-ahead-is-down-the-case-for-underground-defense/

by Mark Thomas

10.10.2025 at 06:00am

Introduction: A Role Reversal

To defeat China in armed conflict, the US military must embrace underground defenses. Military history repeatedly demonstrates that subterranean defenses are effective counters to superior firepower. The volcanic caves of Iwo Jima, the communist Vietnamese tunnels of Cu Chi, and the mountain hideouts in Afghanistan are all infamous in US military lore.

In each of these cases, American forces are always on the offense thanks to superior logistics, intelligence collection, and firepower. As such, current US military planners approach underground combat strictly from an attacker’s perspective, consistent with the American Way of War. There are specialized units, doctrine, and training to penetrate and clear underground facilities, but no reciprocal efforts dedicated to constructing and defending underground fortifications. There is an assumption that US forces will always be the side to force their adversaries underground. In the Pacific, this presumed position of strength is eroding daily as China expands its long-range strike capabilities. In response, the US military should invest in tactical underground defenses in the Pacific to harden allies, deter aggression, and hold key terrain in armed conflict.

The Limits of Dispersion

Any conflict with China in vicinity of the first island chain places the US at an extreme disadvantage. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) enjoys shorter supply lines supporting an increasingly more sophisticated anti-access, area denial battle system. The PLA A2/AD system includes outposts of artificial islands, hundreds of maritime militia vessels, long-range missiles, fifth-generation fighters, and a growing navy built around modern aircraft carriers. This impressive constellation of sensors and shooters was developed to prevent the US from concentrating combat power, as demonstrated in the Gulf War.

To survive inside the PLA’s weapon engagement zone (WEZ), the US military is counting on dispersion. The Marine Corps divested heavier equipment, such as tanks and military bridges, in support of their Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations concept, which favors lighter, more mobile forces. The Air Force Agile Combat Employment concept eschews large, permanent air bases for smaller, temporary bases. The Army is creating mobile combat teams, trading their heavy joint light tactical vehicles (JLTVs) for lighter infantry squad vehicles built on a pick-up truck frame. These concepts are rational tactical solutions, but present serious vulnerabilities.

Dispersion has its limits. Land, air, and sea forces will always be tied to fixed logistical nodes. Tenuous access, basing, and overflight (ABO) authorities may also limit which countries US forces can operate in. Even with ABO, many Pacific countries, most notably the Philippines lack widespread infrastructure to support military sustainment such as suitable bridges, deep water ports, and C-17 capable runways. In addition to these inconvenient realities is the underlying assumption that US forces can move faster than they can be targeted. China’s investments in space-based surveillance, drones, and precision fires greatly increase their ability to target even mobile forces. In Ukraine, the proliferation of loitering munitions and drones spotting for artillery has forced both sides to dig into WWI style trenches. On the future battlefield, dispersion may be necessary, but it is not sufficient.

The Case for Underground Defenses: Harden, Deter, and Defend

The solution to operating inside the PLA WEZ is simple yet historically un-American—go underground. Underground defenses will deter aggression, strengthen allies, and in conflict, retain key terrain.

Subterranean defenses are an affordable, accessible, and effective tool to strengthen allies and partners. Building tunnels and bunkers does not require expensive or exquisite capabilities. Relatively poor fighting forces such as Hamas and ISIS built tunnels with little more than hand tools. Thus, the US should be actively encouraging and involved with tunnel building efforts with its allies and partners. By being directly involved with tunnel construction, the US can ensure that their specifications will allow US personnel and equipment to operate in them. Host nation underground defenses could also aid existing concepts of resistance by providing secure lines of communication for hastily activated irregular forces. Tunnels protect defenders from surveillance as well as kinetic attacks, which allows them to better reposition units and weapons systems. While partner nations should take the lead in their underground defenses, the US should assist and subsidize tunnel construction as a tangible commitment to mutual defense.

Underground defenses are a significant deterrent. Strategic weapons are often protected in underground facilities to provide a second-strike capability. If an aggressor nation is unlikely to destroy their enemy’s nuclear silo in the first volley they are unwilling to accept the inevitable retaliation. The same logic applies to tactical forces. For example, the miles of North Korean tunnels are a serious deterrent to any pre-emptive attacks on the troublesome hermit kingdom. Underground defenses would also allow the US to better protect and forward stage critical equipment such as the Army’s Mid Range Capability and Long Range Hypersonic Weapons in the Multi Domain Task Forces.

In the event deterrence fails, underground defenses are the most proven way to retain key terrain until a relief force can be organized. As stated earlier, the US has learned time and again how effective robust underground defensive networks are at delaying attackers. In early 1945, the Battle of Iwo Jima proved the deadly efficacy of a subterranean defense to blunt a superior attacking force employing overwhelming firepower. The US bombarded the tiny volcanic island with over 20,000 tons of explosives for over nine months, and analysts were confident it could be taken in just 7 days. However, the fight dragged on for over five bloody weeks, resulting in over 26,000 American casualties. Two Japanese soldiers held out for four additional years, demonstrating just how robust the tunnels and their defenders were.

While the defenses of Iwo Jima significantly delayed US forces, it did not stop Imperial Japan’s eventual defeat. As explained by Clausewitz, defense may be the stronger form of warfare, but it has a negative aim. Any operational approach employing static defenses must have a credible mobile striking force. Even with their operational limitations, underground defenses can be a simple, effective component in frustrating PLA aggression in the Pacific.

The Way Ahead is Down

The US military must develop the ability to build and fight from underground facilities. These underground defenses must include more than solitary fighting positions. Like the defenses of Iwo Jima, they should be a defensive network of bunkers, communication tunnels, supply caches, hospitals, and headquarters. Sprawling underground defensive networks may sound expensive at first, but they could be scalable and iterative. Defensive networks could begin as simple fighting positions and then steadily evolve to include logistical and command capabilities. Currently, combat engineers lack any doctrine, training, or equipment to build even hasty underground shelters. If guerrilla fighters such as the Vietnamese communists and Hamas can build formidable subterranean defenses with little more than hand tools, then surely the US can.

In addition to construction capabilities, the US must train its soldiers and marines how to operate underground on the defensive. The tactics of tunnel defense vary greatly from maneuvering in the open. Current underground combat training is focused from an attacker’s perspective, with a heavy emphasis on breaching. Tunnel defenders must fight differently. They must be patient, acclimatized to their underground environment, and able to operate in much smaller teams. The Vietnamese tunnel defenders of Cu Chi were trained to utilize grenades, trap doors, and escape shafts to delay much larger American formations.

Tactical underground defensive capabilities are a simple but currently unavailable asymmetric advantage to US forces operating in the Pacific. As the age of American overmatch in the skies becomes less certain, senior military planners must learn the lessons from their historical adversaries, who recognized the inherent strength of subterranean defenses.

Tags: China, defense, long range fires, LSCO, PLA, Subterranean Warfare, tunnel warfare

About The Author

Mark Thomas
Major Mark Thomas is a special forces officer with multiple combat deployments to the Middle East, currently assigned as a planner at I Corps, Joint Base Lewis-McChord. He is a graduate of the USMC School of Advanced Warfighting and has been published in the Marine Corps Gazette and Joint Special Operations University Press.

13. Israeli Military Says Cease-Fire Is in Effect in Gaza

Israeli Military Says Cease-Fire Is in Effect in Gaza

The statement came after Israel approved a deal between Israel and Hamas to pave the way for the release of hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/world/middleeast/gaza-cease-fire-israel-hamas.html

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By Liam Stack

Reporting from Tel Aviv

Oct. 10, 2025,

5:46 a.m. ET

The Israeli military said on Friday that a cease-fire had come into effect at noon and that its soldiers were repositioning themselves within Gaza.

In a statement, the military said that soldiers in the Southern Command would “continue to remove any immediate threat.”

The statement came after the Israeli government approved a deal early on Friday between Israel and Hamas. It includes the release of all hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, as well as an initial pullback by the Israeli military in Gaza.

It was not immediately clear what the situation on the ground in Gaza was on Friday.

According to the text of the deal released on Friday by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, the Israeli military would move to new deployment lines inside Gaza by early Saturday. Hamas would then have 72 hours to return all of the hostages, including the bodies of those who have died.

The text also said ⁠⁠Israel had authorized the release of 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences in Israel and 1,722 Gazans detained during the war who were not involved in the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, including 22 people who were under the age of 18.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Liam Stack is a Times reporter who covers the culture and politics of the New York City region.

14. Senate passes $925 billion defense bill, setting up House talks

Senate passes $925 billion defense bill, setting up House talks

Staff from both chambers must now negotiate final, compromise legislation ahead of a vote expected later this fall.

October 9, 2025 at 10:36 p.m. EDTYesterday at 10:36 p.m. EDT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/10/09/senate-ndaa-defense-bill/

Washington Post · Noah Robertson

The Senate on Thursday night approved its $925 billion version of the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual must-pass Pentagon policy blueprint, setting up what is expected to be a lengthy negotiation with the House to finalize the bill.

The legislation, deadlocked for weeks over various partisan disagreements, advanced by a margin of 77 to 20 following amendment votes earlier in the evening.

Senate and House staff will next reconcile their bills ahead of a final vote, expected later this fall.

The legislation focuses on reforming the Pentagon’s business practices to make it easier for America’s defense industry to build weapons, something lawmakers from both parties consider a growing national security risk amid competition with China. It also features slight bipartisan pushback on some of the Trump administration’s military moves, including a requirement for the Pentagon to brief lawmakers before withdrawing any U.S. troops from Europe or South Korea.

Like the House version, the bill includes a nearly 4 percent pay raise for members of the military.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois) had vowed to halt the bill’s passage over her objections to the administration’s National Guard deployments to cities such as Chicago, where around 500 troops are mobilizing even as local lawmakers challenge the move in court. She relented after Wicker agreed to hold a hearing on the issue.

Unlike the House, which passed its bill last month on a largely party-line vote, the Senate agreed to consider amendments proposed by Democrats, including measures to block the deployment of troops to American cities and to prevent the Defense Department from converting a luxury Qatari jet for use as Air Force One.

Both measures failed on mostly party-line votes.

Still, an amendment from Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) to end the authorizations for military force Congress granted in the run-up to the 1991 Gulf War and 2003 invasion of Iraq passed on a voice vote. The House bill also includes a similar measure, bringing Congress to the precipice of repealing the laws.

Kaine, a war powers hawk, helped lead a measure that would’ve blocked the Trump administration from striking alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean Sea, but the resolution failed on a 48-51 vote Wednesday.

The Senate bill largely remained more bipartisan than the House’s version, which in recent years has become a vehicle for Republican cultural policies, from denying access to reproductive health care to limiting gender transition care for military personnel and their families.

Washington Post · Noah Robertson

15. Pope urges news agencies to stand as bulwark against lies, manipulation and post-truths

A free press/4th Estate is a key to freedom.

Pope urges news agencies to stand as bulwark against lies, manipulation and post-truths

By NICOLE WINFIELD

Updated 4:24 AM EDT, October 9, 2025

Leer en español

AP · October 9, 2025

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV encouraged international news agencies on Thursday to stand firm as a bulwark against the “ancient art of lying” and manipulation, as he strongly backed a free, independent and objective press.

History’s first American pope called for imprisoned journalists to be released and said the work of journalists must never be considered a crime. Rather, journalism is a right and a pillar upholding “the edifice of our societies” that must be protected and defended, he said.

“If today we know what is happening in Gaza, Ukraine and every other land bloodied by bombs, we largely owe it to them,” Leo said of journalists. “These extraordinary eyewitness accounts are the culmination of the daily efforts of countless people who work to ensure that information is not manipulated for ends that are contrary to truth and human dignity. “

Leo’s comments came in a speech to executives of international news agencies belonging to MINDS International, a consortium of leading agencies including The Associated Press.

In his five months as pope, the Chicago-born Leo has spoken out strongly on the need to protect freedom of expression and the rights of journalists. In his first meeting with reporters right after his election, Leo called for the release of imprisoned journalists and affirmed the “precious gift of free speech and the press.”

More recently, he insisted that journalism was “not only an act of justice, but a duty of all those who long for a solid and participatory democracy.” In a letter to a crusading Peruvian journalist repeatedly sued for her work, Leo affirmed the freedom of the press was an “inalienable common good.”

On Thursday, he strongly encouraged news agencies amid a double crisis they are facing, with economic pressures threatening their survival and consumers increasingly unable to distinguish truth from lies.

“I urge you: Never sell out your authority!” Leo said.

He quoted Hannah Arendt’s “The Origins of Totalitarianism” in asserting that the world needs free and objective information. He cited her warning that “the ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.”

Leo said even with the challenges posed today by artificial intelligence, news agencies must stand firm.

“With your patient and rigorous work, you can act as a barrier against those who, through the ancient art of lying, seek to create divisions in order to rule by dividing,” he said. “You can also be a bulwark of civility against the quicksand of approximation and post-truth.”

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

AP · October 9, 2025

16. The Army’s Race to Catch Up in a World of Deadly Drones

Transformation in contact. This is hard work. It is important work. I do not mean to be hyperbolic, but it is the work of life, death, and victory.

From my perspective, as a now outsider now looking in, the Army is transforming faster and in greater depth (but obviously in different ways) than the transition to AirLand Battle in the 1980s which was arguably the greatest transformation since World War II mobilization.

The question is, per the last sentence of the excerpt: is the Army getting the same kind of support from Congress, the Defense Industrial Base, education and training institutions, and the Department of War that it was getting in the 1980s? We should remember that one of the great innovations in the 1980s was not just the "Big 5" weapons systems but also investment in education, e.g., the establishment of SAMS which arguably was responsible for implementing the doctrinal visions of the visionaries such As General Starry and his acolytes.

Excerpts:

In the months leading up to the training center battle, conducted this winter at a U.S. Army base in Germany, Colonel Glonek’s brigade received about 150 drones like those dominating the war in Ukraine. The Army also provided his unit with dozens of loitering munitions — essentially armed drones — capable of hovering over the battlefield for as long as 45 minutes before they swoop in for the kill.

The opposition force, which is based at the training center and knows the terrain, received 50 drones.

The new weapons gave Colonel Glonek a view of the 60-square-mile battlefield that, until recently, he had never thought possible. He also knew the enemy could see him and his troops.

It took his artillery battalion about 10 minutes to aim all of its cannons at the enemy vehicles hiding in the woods. A volley of about 144 simulated artillery rounds quickly followed, enough to destroy most of them. The dozen or so soldiers in Colonel Glonek’s headquarters let out a small cheer and began high-fiving each other.

When the fight was finished, Colonel Glonek’s brigade had killed three times as many enemy fighters as a typical unit, according to senior Army officials.

A few months later Gen. Randy George, the Army’s chief of staff, was touting the brigade’s success to Congress. The training exercise demonstrated that the Army’s formations were “capable of rapidly improving their lethality,” he told lawmakers.

This was one way of framing the story, but there was another, more troubling one that General George did not share.

It was the story of a new kind of warfare that was growing deadlier by the day.

Until recently, defense experts had expected that new unmanned technology would allow U.S. troops to detect and kill the enemy from a distance, shortening wars and making them less risky.

In places like Ukraine, the opposite was proving to be true.

One Ukrainian Army officer recently tried to explain to an American officer in Washington what it felt like to fight on a battlefield swarming with drones.

“Everything wants to destroy you,” Lt. Col. Volodymyr Dutko told his U.S. counterpart for a study published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

This was the future of war. The big question for Colonel Glonek and General George was whether the U.S. Army, burdened by peacetime rules, politics and bureaucracy, could keep up.

The Army’s Race to Catch Up in a World of Deadly Drones

NY Times · Greg Jaffe · October 9, 2025

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/us/army-drone-warfare.html?unlocked_article_code=1.sU8.OFC1.ftJnMh_J2YN4&smid=url-share

The rapid proliferation of drones in places like Ukraine has set off a growing sense of alarm inside the U.S. Army.

Credit...

Listen to this article · 14:11 min Learn more

Visuals by Meridith Kohut

Reporting from Fort Polk, La.

Oct. 9, 2025

The U.S. Army soldier steered the drone deep into enemy territory where it spotted about two dozen enemy vehicles hiding beneath a canopy of trees.

Col. Joshua Glonek recalled the jolt of excitement that ran through his staff at the drone’s discovery, followed by hushed chatter in the small, dark tent where his team was preparing for what came next.

His 3,500-soldier brigade was in the last hours of an 11-day training center battle against a similarly sized force. Such exercises — the closest thing the Army has these days to actual combat — happen many times a year.

But this one was different.

The rapid proliferation of deadly drones in places like Ukraine had set off a growing sense of alarm among the Army’s top leaders.

Senior Army officials were relying on Colonel Glonek and his troops to catch up to America’s adversaries. It was their job to figure out which drones the Army should buy and how it should fight with them.

A soldier launching a small drone during a training exercise in Fort Polk, La.

In the months leading up to the training center battle, conducted this winter at a U.S. Army base in Germany, Colonel Glonek’s brigade received about 150 drones like those dominating the war in Ukraine. The Army also provided his unit with dozens of loitering munitions — essentially armed drones — capable of hovering over the battlefield for as long as 45 minutes before they swoop in for the kill.

The opposition force, which is based at the training center and knows the terrain, received 50 drones.

The new weapons gave Colonel Glonek a view of the 60-square-mile battlefield that, until recently, he had never thought possible. He also knew the enemy could see him and his troops.

It took his artillery battalion about 10 minutes to aim all of its cannons at the enemy vehicles hiding in the woods. A volley of about 144 simulated artillery rounds quickly followed, enough to destroy most of them. The dozen or so soldiers in Colonel Glonek’s headquarters let out a small cheer and began high-fiving each other.

When the fight was finished, Colonel Glonek’s brigade had killed three times as many enemy fighters as a typical unit, according to senior Army officials.

A few months later Gen. Randy George, the Army’s chief of staff, was touting the brigade’s success to Congress. The training exercise demonstrated that the Army’s formations were “capable of rapidly improving their lethality,” he told lawmakers.

The Army is adapting to warfare in which drones can see much more than previous technologies.

This was one way of framing the story, but there was another, more troubling one that General George did not share.

It was the story of a new kind of warfare that was growing deadlier by the day.

Until recently, defense experts had expected that new unmanned technology would allow U.S. troops to detect and kill the enemy from a distance, shortening wars and making them less risky.

In places like Ukraine, the opposite was proving to be true.

One Ukrainian Army officer recently tried to explain to an American officer in Washington what it felt like to fight on a battlefield swarming with drones.

“Everything wants to destroy you,” Lt. Col. Volodymyr Dutko told his U.S. counterpart for a study published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Ukraine? , and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

This was the future of war. The big question for Colonel Glonek and General George was whether the U.S. Army, burdened by peacetime rules, politics and bureaucracy, could keep up.

Out With the Old

To pay for this new Army, General George needed to cut. That meant eliminating weapons that he and other senior leaders believed would not be able to survive drone attacks.

He cut the M-10 Booker, a light tank that was designed to fight through enemy machine-gun fire, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. The Army had spent more than $1 billion to develop it but decided this year that it could be too easily destroyed by a $500 or $1,000 kamikaze drone.

General George also cut short the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, a 7-ton armored troop carrier built to survive a blast from a buried roadside bomb, the biggest killer of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The vehicle made less sense in a war in which the primary threat was flying drones. The Army had planned to buy as many as 50,000 but is now stopping at 18,000.

The Army plans to spend some of the savings on new systems, like the Infantry Squad Vehicle, a dune-buggy-like troop carrier that consists of nine seats, an engine and some roll bars. Instead of armor, it relies on its speed and its ability to move off-road and under tree cover to evade attack.

Soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team in an Infantry Squad Vehicle.

The hardest thing for the Army to simulate was the psychological strain of being constantly hunted from the air.

Some former Army officials criticized General George’s plans, in interviews with The New York Times, as too reliant on unproven technology. Drones were important, they said, but also fallible. Bad weather or electronic warfare systems could ground them for hours or days at a time.

The speedy, light Infantry Squad Vehicle might perform well in training center battles, they maintained, but would be too vulnerable to old threats, like buried bombs, artillery and tanks. “We’re building formations that we know are fragile,” said Maj. Gen. Patrick Donahoe, who helped develop the Army’s modernization plans a decade ago and who is now retired. “That’s a really risky bet that gets paid in blood.”

Some in Congress warned that General George’s cuts were creating gaps that would weaken the Army. The Army’s 2026 budget proposed eliminating the Gray Eagle, a long-range drone that was fielded in the early 2010s and required a runway secured by more than 100 soldiers. Today’s drones could be flown by two soldiers, General George testified.

Lawmakers told General George that they wanted a long-term plan that conformed to the Pentagon’s normal acquisition process, built to deliver groundbreaking weapons systems over a period of five or 10 years.

“We need to see your homework,” Representative Mike D. Rogers, Republican of Alabama and the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, chided this summer.

General George didn’t have that kind of plan. Such an approach, he believed, was too rigid and slow. Today, drones are everywhere. Some of the most groundbreaking manufacturers are developing drones for business rather than war.

Many of the most innovative companies are not even American. In Ukraine, drone manufacturers and engineers are working alongside operators in the fight, tweaking software and hardware in response to the latest enemy countermeasures.

This is the model General George wanted to emulate.

Gen. Randy George, the Army’s chief of staff, said that the Army’s formations were “capable of rapidly improving their lethality.”Credit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

Last year he decided to start equipping three of the Army’s 32 brigades with the latest drones, loitering munitions and electronic warfare systems. His goal, he said in an interview, was to “short circuit” the Pentagon’s cumbersome bureaucracy and give a handful of “flexible, adaptive” commanders, like Colonel Glonek, the ability to figure out what their soldiers needed to win on the modern battlefield.

General George dubbed the new units “transformation in contact” brigades and pressed them to experiment even as they trained for war.

One of them, from the 101st Airborne Division, sent an officer to an artificial intelligence conference in San Francisco where he met the leaders of a small tech company that was using A.I. to visually identify objects.

The unit loaded the company’s software onto a drone and, before one of its combat training center battles, flew it over the opposition force’s vehicles in its motor pool. Later, during the fight, the A.I.-enabled drone was able to identify a camouflaged enemy vehicle after spotting just one corner of its exposed bumper.

“These aren’t futuristic capabilities,” said Maj. Gen. Brett Sylvia, who commanded the 101st Airborne Division. “These exist today.”

The new experimental units also searched for new ways to hide on a battlefield teeming with sensors.

Today every Army command post gives off an invisible electronic signature that enemies can target. One of the brigades bought 250 cheap computer boards and programmed them to give off signals resembling emitters in their headquarters.

The goal was to flood the zone with false signals and then disappear in the clutter.

“You constantly have to be hard to kill,” said Col. James Stultz, who commanded the first experimental brigade.

A Machine Devoted to Killing

Colonel Glonek’s brigade, from the 10th Mountain Division, was starting a nine-month deployment late last year along NATO’s eastern flank when it was selected by General George.

Senior Army leaders wanted to see if their model for transforming the Army could work when troops were deployed. They also wanted to see how the new equipment — especially the drones — performed in the cold, fog and snow of northern Europe.

Colonel Glonek had spoken with the soldiers from the 101st who had purchased the cheap computer boards and decided to take their ruse a step further. He contracted with a Czech company to make three inflatable artillery cannons, similar to those the Ukrainians were using in their war with Russia. Then he paired the decoys with electronic emitters.

Col. Joshua Glonek contracted with a Czech company to make inflatable artillery cannons, similar to those used in Ukraine as decoys.

During their training center battle in February, Colonel Glonek’s troops baited the opposition force into firing at the fakes, exposing their location. In each of the three instances, Colonel Glonek’s troops immediately fired back, destroying the enemy cannons.

His boldest innovation was building three new formations — dubbed “Strike” companies — that he armed with medium-ranged drones, loitering munitions and mortars.

The new 80-soldier companies quickly became Colonel Glonek’s most efficient killers. About 90 percent of the brigade’s fire missions began with a drone finding the enemy and then monitoring the kill.

“We had more targets than we had assets to shoot them, just because the drones were so much more capable,” Colonel Glonek said.

The new units’ most pressing problem was exhaustion. A handful of officers in the Strike companies were managing a torrent of information pouring in from the drones. A small number of sergeants, meanwhile, focused on the security of the two-person teams flying the aircraft, which were high-value targets.

And then there were the drones’ batteries, which struggled to hold a charge when temperatures plunged. The sergeants used the exhaust from their vehicles to warm the batteries.

“Priority one was to use the drones,” said Sgt. Benjamin Simma, 24. “Priority two was to recharge the batteries so we could keep using the drones.”

Staff Sgt. Dakota Ireland, 29, recalled going four days with almost no sleep. “I was actively hallucinating,” he said. He imagined that enemy fighters were attacking his vehicle, only to wake up and realize there was no one there.

About 90 percent of the brigade’s fire missions began with a drone finding the enemy and then monitoring the kill.

“I don’t think the reality of what drones mean on the battlefield has really sunk in for the U.S. Army,” said Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, a former commander in Afghanistan who is retired. “We certainly haven’t encountered the psychological impact of having a machine looking at you all the time that’s devoted to killing you.”

“It’s a game changer,” he added.

After 11 days in the cold, Colonel Glonek’s soldiers took control of a mock village that was their final objective. They then conducted a live-fire exercise with their loitering munitions. Their targets were mothballed tanks.

For many soldiers, it was their first time operating drones armed with real explosives. With a tap on a video screen, they could maneuver the kamikaze bomb to strike at the tank’s weakest point, where the turret meets the body.

“You see exactly what the missile is seeing,” recalled Lt. Marcus Sanger, 24.

He thought about what it would be like to watch the enemy die that way. “I could see it being traumatizing,” he said. And he tried not to imagine what it would feel like to have one those weapons hunting him.

‘You Ain’t Gonna Find Us’

On a hot August morning, a few dozen Strike company soldiers headed out to the range at Fort Polk, La., where they are based, to practice flying the Ghost-X drone.

A soldier carrying a Ghost-X drone, made by the defense technology company Anduril.

The aircraft looks like a dragonfly, and has a range of about seven miles. It lifted off from a patch of dirt and disappeared into the sky. The drone operators’ task was to find some reconnaissance scouts who were hiding in a pine forest.

In the cold of Germany, the drone’s thermal camera could easily spot warm human bodies, even when they were hiding under tree cover and camouflage. But on an August morning when the temperature was 95 degrees and rising, everything on the drone’s thermal camera glowed white hot.

The scouts, who had covered their hide sites in camouflage netting, began taunting the drone operators.

“Let me know if my snipers need to take a shot,” the scout platoon leader texted. “You guys are well within range.”

“You ain’t gonna find us all,” another scout texted First Lt. Lauren Little, the drone platoon’s leader.

Infantry soldiers practice flying cheap quad copter drones, which the Army plans to field to every 8-person infantry squad.

The soldiers flying the drones were all infantry troops, selected for the special duty. Lieutenant Little, 23, was chosen after a successful stint leading a regular infantry platoon.

She was kneeling next to a private first class who was learning to fly the drone. Sweat dripped from their faces onto a laptop keyboard. She and the platoon sergeant suggested different flight paths. They analyzed the dips in the terrain and directed the operators to areas of the woods where the scouts might be hiding.

The platoon had been flying for a little more than an hour when Lieutenant Little spotted a couple of white dots on the screen.

“Those little specks look like someone’s body parts sticking out,” she said.

First Lt. Lauren Little instructs one of her infantry soldiers who is flying the Ghost drone.

Eventually, her team found three of the four scout positions, though the hot weather had made the task far tougher than some in the platoon had expected. “I am surprised this has gone on so long,” said Staff Sgt. Steven Davidsmeyer, 35. “I’m a little disappointed.”

The company commander arrived to check on his troops.

“Three out four isn’t bad,” said Capt. Thomas Roberts, 29. “Obviously, I want four of four. But if they had found everyone, then I would wonder what my scouts were doing.”

On battlefields, like Ukraine, soldiers received instant feedback on which weapons and tactics were working the best. The results were measured in dead bodies and terrain taken or lost.

At Fort Polk, Colonel Glonek and his troops were still learning how to gauge success.

Greg Jaffe covers the Pentagon and the U.S. military for The Times.

See more on: Russia-Ukraine War, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Army

17. ‘Farmageddon’ Can’t Be Solved With a Bailout Alone

Our farms appear to be in huge trouble. What are the long term implications for us?

‘Farmageddon’ Can’t Be Solved With a Bailout Alone

October 9, 2025 at 7:30 AM EDT

By Patricia Lopez

Patricia Lopez is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. She is a former member of the editorial board at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where she also worked as a senior political editor and reporter.

Dinner’s ready.Photographer: Scott Olson/Getty Images

Takeaways by Bloomberg AI

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Farmers in the Midwest are bringing in bumper crops of soybeans, corn, and wheat, but their best customers are shopping elsewhere due to a global trade war.
China has locked out US farmers in favor of more stable partners in Brazil and Argentina, resulting in soybeans piling up across the Midwest and disastrous results for American growers.
The US government may provide a bailout to farmers, but this is seen as a temporary patch and does not address the long-term shifts in trade patterns caused by the trade war.

It’s harvest time in the Midwest and farmers are bringing in bumper crops of soybeans, corn and wheat. They should be elated.

But their best customers are shopping elsewhere as a result of a global trade war ignited by President Donald Trump. Punishing tariffs have created what some are calling “Farmaggedon.”

China, once a top destination for American soybeans, has signaled its displeasure with Trump’s tariffs by locking out US farmers in favor of more stable partners in Brazil and Argentina. Soybeans are this country’s largest agricultural export, valued at more than $24 billion in 2024, with about half usually going to China.

But China has made no purchases from this harvest, with disastrous results for American growers. Soybeans are piling up across the Midwest, spilling out of bins and grain elevators from North Dakota to Missouri.

A Soybean Boycott

China's US soy purchase commitments through mid-August

Source: US Department of Agriculture

And farmers are suffering a double whammy because the costs of the inputs needed to grow those soybeans — fertilizer, seeds, potash, equipment — are rising, also because of tariffs. Much of the potash used by Midwestern farmers comes from Canada. Parts for farm equipment often originate in China or other Asian countries.

“It’s a big concern that farmers are producing a crop that [is] going to cost more to make than it is the revenue that they’d receive,” Ohio Soybean Association Executive Director Kirk Merritt said recently.

One could argue that farmers should have seen this coming. Trump has long telegraphed his belief that tariffs are the Swiss Army knife of economic tools, creating new jobs, punishing enemies, rewarding allies, and useful as leverage for pushing whatever policy he favors. And, of course, generating billions in new government revenue. But that revenue, which Trump says he now may tap for a farmer bailout, is no windfall paid by foreign countries. Farmers know all too well it comes from US companies and consumers as a hidden, regressive tax that chips away at their margins. If the proposed bailout feels a little like he’s paying them back with their own money, it’s because he is.

We’ve seen a version of this play out before. When farm profits started to nosedive in 2018, after Trump’s first round of tariffs, the president ordered $28 billion in bailouts to farmers over the course of his first term. When the pandemic hit, he sent yet more money to farmers, boosting agriculture payouts to unsustainable levels. Farmers responded by supporting Trump heavily in 2024, just as they had in previous elections.

Now reality is once again refusing to bend to Trump’s will, differing sharply with the enticing carnival pitch he rolled out to supporters. The answer for Trump is another bailout. He’s been discussing a possible $10 billion package for weeks, but no details have emerged.

There are two problems with that. One, bailouts are a temporary patch. Farmers want to sell their products, not depend on government handouts. Christopher Barrett, an economics and public policy professor at Cornell University, noted in that April government bailouts “rarely match up well with farmers’ actual losses,” and are an added burden on taxpayers.

And second, Trump’s 2018 tariffs altered trade patterns, setting in motion long-term shifts and eroding US market share. A decade ago, US soybean growers were the top exporters in the world and China was their top customer. Then came Trump’s election and his subsequent trade war. Soybean farmers got caught in the crossfire. Brazil seized a potential opening to expand its sales to China at competitive prices. A decade later, Brazil has displaced the US as the world’s top exporter of soybeans, thanks in large part to Chinese sales that previously had gone to American growers.

This time around, Trump has given a boost to another competitor, Argentina, where far-right President Javier Milei is floundering. Trump, who favors Milei, has pledged a $20 billion economic rescue package, even as American farmers wait for details of their own bailout.

Adding insult to injury, Argentina has suspended its export tax and was rewarded with Chinese orders last month for 20 shiploads of soybeans, deepening a market downturn for American growers.

“The frustration is overwhelming ,” American Soybean Association President Caleb Ragland said in a statement. “US soybean prices are falling, harvest is underway, and farmers read headlines not about securing a trade agreement with China, but that the US is extending $20 billion in economic support to Argentina.” Ragland then called on Trump to “prioritize securing an immediate deal on soybeans with China.”

Republican Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley asked in a recent social media post, “ Why would USA help bail out Argentina while they take American soybean producers’ biggest market???”

Why indeed.

And the damage goes beyond tariffs. Trump’s dismantling of USAID and cuts to SNAP, the nutritional program for the poor, have also hit two major outlets for American farmers’ goods.

Farmers have been among Trump’s most devoted supporters. In the last election, out of 444 farm-dominant counties, Trump won all but 11. He proclaims himself to be the “best friend” farmers have ever had. It’s getting harder and harder for farmers to see it.

Supply Chains Are Critical Infrastructure. It’s Time U.S. Policy Caught Up.

warontherocks.com · October 10, 2025

In 2017, the world’s largest shipping company, Maersk, went dark. A state-sponsored cyber attack known as NotPetya spread from Ukraine into global networks, paralyzing terminals from Los Angeles to New Jersey. Cargo piled up, factories waited on missing parts, and workers resorted to moving containers with Post-it notes and WhatsApp messages. The White House later attributed the attack to Russia’s military intelligence agency, calling it “the most destructive and costly cyber attack in history.” The disruption cost Maersk hundreds of millions of dollars and showed how a single supply chain shock can ripple across economies. Yet nearly a decade later, the United States still treats supply chains as a subset of other sectors rather than the critical infrastructure they plainly are.

In February 2025, the Senate Commerce Committee finally decided to act and warned that “one supply chain shock can disrupt the entire system, driving shortages and raising costs.” That warning was paired with action: the Promoting Resilient Supply Chains Act, which passed the Senate unanimously in June but now sits “held at the desk” in the House of Representatives.

That legislative stalling highlights a structural problem. Supply chains are not secondary concerns: they are the connective tissue that keeps every other sector humming. Yet current policy still treats them as small pieces inside existing industries. To correct that, supply chains should be recognized as their own critical infrastructure sector with clear leadership, resources, and accountability.

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Why Past Efforts Fell Short

When faced with crises, the United States has relied on familiar but limited tools. The Strategic National Stockpile was overwhelmed during the COVID-19 pandemic, even as hospitals and state governments competed desperately for masks, ventilators, and protective equipment.

The Defense Production Act has been invoked for ventilators, baby formula, and semiconductors. Yet it remains a surge mechanism, useful only after disruptions occur, not before.

The Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors and Science Act of 2022 poured tens of billions into domestic semiconductor manufacturing, a meaningful step but one that touches only a single chain.

Federal agencies have also issued guidance on managing supply chain risks. The National Institute of Standards and Technology, for example, published Special Publication 800-161, Revision 1, outlining cyber security practices for systems and organizations. The Department of Defense built on this foundation with its own Supply Chain Risk Management Guidebook.

Presidents have also tried to fill the gaps through executive orders. In 2021, President Biden issued Executive Order 14017, which required agencies to review supply chains for semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, critical minerals, and batteries. Those reviews revealed vulnerabilities but scattered responsibility across departments, with no clear steward. Later that year, Executive Order 14028 mandated new cyber security rules for software vendors, but only in the information technology space. In August 2025, the White House ordered creation of a Strategic Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients Reserve, a narrow initiative to cushion the drug supply but not a cross-sector reform.

These efforts share two flaws. First, they are vertical: Each one focuses on an individual sector or material, leaving interdependence untouched. Second, they are reactive: designed to respond after a crisis has begun rather than embedding resilience from the start.

What Makes This Bill Different

The Promoting Resilient Supply Chains Act takes a new approach. It directs the Department of Commerce to lead a government-wide working group, continuously map and model critical supply chains, and publish a national strategy. By doing so, it would in effect make Commerce the lead manager for supply chains, a role that does not exist today.

This bill is not about stockpiling or temporary intervention. Rather, it is about making resilience part of daily governance. But the way it is bogged down in the House shows how entrenched habits and bureaucratic boundaries continue to block reform.

The advantages are clear. A dedicated lead would replace today’s patchwork of overlapping authorities with a single steward responsible for mapping vulnerabilities, coordinating responses, and driving long-term planning. Continuous modeling could spot weak points before crises hit and a national strategy would give industry and government a shared framework for investment.

At the same time, the challenges are real. Concentrating authority in the Department of Commerce could trigger resistance from agencies that already oversee supply chains in their own sectors, from energy to health care. Industry groups may worry about added reporting burdens or perceived government overreach. And unless Congress provides resources and enforcement tools, the bill risks creating yet another coordinating body without the power to compel action.

Why It Is Stalled in the House

Although it sailed through the Senate, the bill is stalled in the House of Representatives. Its “held at the desk” status means that leadership has not chosen to bring it to the floor.

First, floor time is scarce. In a crowded calendar filled with appropriations bills, defense authorizations, and foreign aid packages, resilience legislation can look optional.

Second, and more importantly, institutional resistance is real. Agencies that already manage supply chains want to hold onto that authority. The Department of Energy has formed a supply chain task team focused on transformers and has publicly identified transformer availability as a major constraint. The Department of Health and Human Services has established both a supply chain “control tower” and a supply chain resilience and shortage coordinator to manage pharmaceutical and health supply lines. Perhaps the biggest opponent to reform is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — designated by the 2024 National Security Memorandum-22 as the national coordinator for critical infrastructure security and resilience — which is charged with coordinating across the existing 16 critical infrastructure sectors. That agency is protective of its jurisdiction. Its leaders argued to my office at the National Security Council before the bill was put to a vote that this law would make the Department of Commerce the de facto sector risk management agency for supply chains, undercutting all other agencies’ authority over the supply chains tied to their own industries.

Another hesitation is scope. Expanding Commerce’s role means greater federal oversight of markets that have largely run themselves. Advocates see this as necessary for security, while critics fear it could add costs and stifle competition.

Taken together, these dynamics give House leaders reason to delay. Jurisdictional battles are easier to tolerate if supply chains are seen as economic. They are harder to justify if supply chains are understood as matters of national security.

The National Security Stakes

America’s rivals already view supply chains as battlefields. One observer writing in these pages described “supply chain interdiction” — the deliberate delaying, diverting, or destroying of an adversary’s supply lines — as a way to win without firing a shot. Another analysis put it bluntly: “The Pentagon’s arsenal is built on materials that China can turn off like a light switch.”

The risks are real. In 2022, explosions ruptured the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea, showing how easily physical sabotage can sever lifelines. In 2017, the NotPetya cyber attack spread worldwide, paralyzing Maersk’s shipping systems, snarling port operations, and even halting vaccine production at Merck. In 2021, the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, enabled by a single compromised password, cut off 45 percent of the U.S. East Coast’s fuel supply and triggered panic buying.

These events show why supply chains are not an abstract economic problem. They are national security vulnerabilities. And they reveal the true measure of resilience: not whether failures can be prevented, but how quickly systems can absorb shocks, reroute, and recover.

What a Supply Chain Sector Would Enable

Designating supply chains as their own sector would embed resilience in national policy. It would institutionalize continuous mapping of bottlenecks, single-source suppliers, and fragile nodes, and it would mandate buffers such as alternate suppliers, rotating reserves, and fallback routes. This wades into a risky gray area: Government involvement in private supply chain relationships can improve security, but also risks distorting markets. Even federal agencies struggle to enforce their own supply chain rules, which raises doubts about how far such oversight can extend into the broader economy. The federal government could run stress tests, much like blackout drills for the electric grid, to simulate port shutdowns, rail stoppages, or cyber compromise of logistics software.

Designating supply chains as their own sector would scale reserve models across industries, including pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, rare earths, and specialty chemicals, treating reserves as flexible buffers instead of static warehouses. In effect, such a designation would likely broaden the Strategic National Stockpile. The key is to reserve only what is scarce, irreplaceable, and vital to defense or health. Otherwise, stockpiles risk becoming political wish lists. The new sector would integrate cyber security and operational risk, since supply chain disruptions today often begin in software systems that control logistics and production. And the sector would formalize cross-industry councils, giving ports, railroads, trucking firms, manufacturers, distributors, and software providers a platform to coordinate responses.

Most importantly, a supply chain sector would align civilian and defense planning. Vulnerabilities in commercial systems, such as rare earth processing, also endanger military readiness. A dedicated sector would bridge that gap.

Momentum and the Road Ahead

The Senate has already spoken. The Promoting Resilient Supply Chains Act has bipartisan support and strong industry backing. But the House has not moved, in part because of competing legislative priorities and in part because of resistance from existing agencies.

Even if the House passes the bill, a larger step remains to be taken — formal designation of supply chains as a critical infrastructure sector. The White House’s 2024 National Security Memorandum-22 updated priorities but declined to add new sectors, clinging to a structure created more than a decade ago. That decision reflected institutional inertia rather than strategic foresight.

The next step requires a shift in framing. Supply chains should be understood not as narrow economic issues but as essential to national security and resilience. Only then will policymakers overcome bureaucratic turf wars and act decisively.

From Recognition to Strength

The U.S. government has reorganized swiftly when threats have demanded it — after the 9/11 attacks to improve homeland security, and more recently to confront cyber operations. Those reforms were imperfect, often trading security gains for new concerns about surveillance and civil liberties, but they show Washington’s capacity to act decisively when stakes are high. Supply chains are the next test. Adversaries already treat them as pressure points, probing for vulnerabilities. Americans have lived through shocks to Maersk, Colonial Pipeline, and Nord Stream. Each case shows that prosperity, security, and even the ability to fight wars depend on lifelines that can be severed in an instant.

The Senate has taken the first step by passing the supply chain bill. The House should not wait. As soon as the current government shutdown ends, this legislation should be at the top of the agenda. And the White House should go further, elevating supply chains into the list of critical infrastructure sectors. Only then will resilience become a standing priority rather than a scramble after the fact.

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Jesse R. Humpal is an active duty U.S. Air Force officer whose work focuses on the policy implications of national security spending, with an emphasis on critical infrastructure resilience. He can be followed @jessehumpal on X. The views expressed are his own.

**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: Midjourney

warontherocks.com · October 10, 2025

19. More than Modernization: Ukraine and the Army Transformation Initiative

Excellent essay and conclusion here. But it should not be only lessons from Ukraine (which are very important) , it must also anticipate the future. We need to also anticipate what threats like China (as well as Iran, and north Korea) are learning from Ukraine, Israel's war in Gaza ,but also with Iran, and other conflicts that are taking place around the world and try to think about and anticipate the next move ahead. As Eliot Cohen and John Gooch wrote in Military Misfortune, all failures are a result of one or all of three things: failure to learn, failure to adapt, and failure to anticipate. An of the three, anticipating is obviously the most difficult. But as the late Michael Howard said, "The duty of military planners is not necessarily to get the future exactly right. Rather, it's just not to get it too terribly wrong,"

Excerpt:

The Army Transformation Initiative is more than a modernization effort; it is a strategic response to the evolving realities of warfare revealed in Ukraine. This conflict has exposed the excessive cost of outdated doctrines, vulnerable legacy systems, and rigid command structures. As the Army moves toward a force that is faster, more adaptable, and more technologically advanced, it must remain grounded in these hard-earned lessons. Ukraine’s ability to resist Russian aggression is extraordinary. But the dominant narrative, which draws lessons as if the United States would face similar disadvantages, misses a vital point. Without a clear understanding of the complex environments we are likely to face, we risk innovating in the wrong direction. The war’s early dynamics were shaped not by Russian superiority, but by Ukraine’s initial capability deficit. The right takeaway for military leaders is not how to emulate Ukraine’s reactive defense. Instead, it is how to ensure that the United States never enters a war in such a position. That means building, fielding, and integrating advanced capabilities before conflict starts, not after it has begun, and ensuring we remain integrated with future partners and frontline states. Decisive battles in future wars are likely to be shaped by the first seventy-two hours, not by what happens over the course of seventy-two weeks. The United States Army must be ready from the start.

More than Modernization: Ukraine and the Army Transformation Initiative - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · Jeremy Flake · October 10, 2025

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The ongoing war in Ukraine has underscored a brutal truth: Modern warfare demands speed, adaptability, and technological superiority. We must take lessons learned and quickly adapt. From the widespread use of drones and electronic warfare to the vulnerability of legacy armored platforms, the conflict has exposed the limitations of traditional military doctrine and equipment. In response, the Army Transformation Initiative represents a bold shift toward a more agile, lethal, and resilient US Army, capable of facing near-peer adversaries in fast-changing, multidomain battlefields. Grounded in the hard lessons of the war in Ukraine, where static command structures, outdated logistics, and insufficient drone defenses proved costly, this initiative looks not just to modernize, but to reimagine how the Army prepares for the wars of tomorrow. As it does so, we must ensure we are using the right lens to examine how we modernize. If we do not take the time to fully understand the complex environments within which we will be operating, we may fail to innovate in the correct space. This will cost us time, money, and American lives if we get it wrong.

The False Parity Assumption

As analysts and think tanks across NATO assess the war in Ukraine, a common framework has emerged—that Ukraine’s resistance offers a template for modern defense against large-scale aggression. The lessons often highlight resilience, asymmetric warfare, long-range fire support and the tactical value of drones and dispersed infantry. However, much of this analysis proceeds from a flawed assumption, namely that NATO forces would begin a future conflict with the same capability disadvantages that Ukraine faced in February 2022. This misreading by some distorts strategic insights. Ukraine entered the war without air superiority and with limited precision-strike systems, a degraded logistics base, and no access to integrated battlefield management systems at NATO standards. Russia, by contrast, launched its offensive with a full suite of conventional tools: massed artillery, airpower, armored formations, and electronic warfare assets. The key lesson is not how to replicate Ukraine’s success; instead, it is to be found in how the battlefield might have looked if Ukraine had NATO-level capabilities from the outset.

Unequal from the Start

When Russian forces crossed into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, they did so expecting a short, decisive campaign. That assumption reflected an assumed—and accurate—military strength disparity on the ground. Ukraine’s military was courageous and more prepared than in 2014, but it lacked critical enablers. The Ukrainian Air Force fielded aging MiG-29s and Su-27s, with no modern radar, no airborne early warning systems, and no beyond-visual-range weapons. Air defense relied on Soviet-era S-300 and Buk systems with diminishing inventories of stockpiled air defense missiles. Ukraine also had no long-range precision-strike capability. Artillery units relied on legacy 152-millimeter and 122-millimeter systems, most of which lacked digital fire control or guided munitions. Ukraine’s domestic command-and-control system was a promising innovation, but in early 2022, it lacked integration with satellite and signals intelligence, or real-time joint fires coordination. Logistically Ukraine’s defense industrial base was constrained. Stockpiles were thin and ammunition production and spare parts were insufficient for high-intensity, sustained combat.

In contrast, Russia deployed an invasion force estimated at over 190,000 troops. Artillery, air, and electronic warfare supremacy supported this combined arms army. Russian forces fired tens of thousands of shells per day in the early phases of the war, leveraging doctrinal focus on massed fires. Russia also committed hundreds of fixed- and rotary-wing assets to the campaign and employed jamming, GPS denial, and cyberattacks with concurrent rocket and missile strikes throughout the country. Large stockpiles of armored vehicles ensured Russia had the advantage in tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, prepositioned along multiple fronts. The initial result was predictable: rapid Russian gains in the south and east, deep penetrations toward Kyiv, and encirclements of key cities like Mariupol. Ukraine resisted effectively but did so from a structurally disadvantaged position.

The Slow Arrival of NATO Capabilities

Ukraine mounted a ferocious defense of its territory, halting the initial Russian advance towards the capital. Ukraine was outmatched in every conventional aspect of military operations and had to rely on asymmetric tactics, urban defense, and agility to slow Russian progress. Western support was instrumental in Ukraine’s sustained defense, but it arrived in waves and often too late to change the early dynamics of the war.

In the first months of the war, NATO support emphasized defensive systems. US-made Javelins and British-produced NLAWs enabled Ukrainian infantry to blunt Russian armor in forested and urban terrain. Stinger man-portable air defense systems helped degrade Russian rotary-wing operations at low altitude, while commercial drones and loitering munitions, such as the Bayraktar TB2 initially purchased in 2019, but resupplied following the invasion, offered limited but critical reconnaissance-strike ability. These systems helped slow the Russian advance but could not challenge artillery dominance or deny Russian airspace control.

By mid-2022, the delivery of high-mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS) changed the strategic calculus. With ranges exceeding seventy kilometers and GPS-guided munitions, Ukraine could now target Russian ammunition depots, command centers, and logistics nodes far behind the front lines. This new capability also allowed Ukraine the ability to degrade Russian forces’ artillery advantage by attacking storage sites and reducing their rate of fire. According to Ukrainian defense officials, HIMARS attacks on Russian depots caused a major disruption in Russian logistics operations.

In late 2022 and into 2023, NATO deliveries expanded. Howitzers, air defense systems, and armored vehicles began arriving from Western nations. Updated howitzer systems extended range and accuracy. Air defense systems like NASAMS and Patriot provided improved protection, though in limited numbers. Main battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, including Leopards, Abrams, and Bradleys, were pledged in 2023, but training and delivery delays meant few were operational by the end of the year. More advanced aviation assets have been promised by multiple NATO countries and are expected to arrive in limited numbers by late 2025.

A Different War: If Ukraine Had NATO Capabilities from Day One

Russia consolidated its positions during the window between its early advances and Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive. This delay allowed Russia to fortify its defensive lines with complex obstacles and engagement areas. Ukraine’s efforts to retake territory were hampered by a lack of air cover, mine-clearing assets, and heavy armor. These are elements that would have been available to any NATO force from the outset. The result was a transition to a war of attrition. Ukraine’s technological creativity could not fully compensate for the delayed arrival of NATO’s most decisive systems.

What would the battlefield have looked like if Ukraine had started the war with full NATO-level capabilities? With a squadron of modern F-16s or Eurofighters, Ukraine could have contested initial Russian air superiority in the occupied regions of the country, denying close air support and degrading bombing runs. They could use SEAD (suppression of enemy air defenses) tactics to neutralize Russian surface-to-air missile sites and protect Ukrainian air operations. With an integrated AWACS (airborne warning and control system) and real-time intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) picture, Ukrainian forces would be able to find and strike Russian formations before contact. Armed with HIMARS, Storm Shadow, and ATACMS from the outset, Ukraine could have disrupted Russian logistics before ground forces reached major cities, including the use of precision strikes to destroy pontoon bridges, railways, and fuel convoys. This action would have forced Russia into slower, less coherent advances. With massed deep fires Ukrainian forces could have halted or delayed the siege of Mariupol and the push toward Kyiv. If Ukraine had NATO-level command infrastructure, the battlefield awareness would be near real time, enabling coordinated strikes across domains. With ISR drones and satellite feeds Ukrainian intelligence units could provide persistent coverage of Russian maneuvers and, using a sophisticated electronic warfare network, could jam or spoof Russian communications, amplifying command chaos.

The strategic impact of capability gaps on this war cannot be understated. If Ukrainian forces were manned and equipped at a NATO standard from the start, Kyiv might not have faced encirclement. Additionally, Russia could have been deterred from launching the invasion altogether given a state with a robust and credible integrated deterrent is a harder target. Additionally, with higher levels of equipment Ukraine’s counteroffensive might have occurred months earlier, reducing the time available for Russia to build entrenched defensive belts across the entire southern front.

Preparing for the First Seventy-Two Hours, Not Seventy-Two Weeks

The Army Transformation Initiative is more than a modernization effort; it is a strategic response to the evolving realities of warfare revealed in Ukraine. This conflict has exposed the excessive cost of outdated doctrines, vulnerable legacy systems, and rigid command structures. As the Army moves toward a force that is faster, more adaptable, and more technologically advanced, it must remain grounded in these hard-earned lessons. Ukraine’s ability to resist Russian aggression is extraordinary. But the dominant narrative, which draws lessons as if the United States would face similar disadvantages, misses a vital point. Without a clear understanding of the complex environments we are likely to face, we risk innovating in the wrong direction. The war’s early dynamics were shaped not by Russian superiority, but by Ukraine’s initial capability deficit. The right takeaway for military leaders is not how to emulate Ukraine’s reactive defense. Instead, it is how to ensure that the United States never enters a war in such a position. That means building, fielding, and integrating advanced capabilities before conflict starts, not after it has begun, and ensuring we remain integrated with future partners and frontline states. Decisive battles in future wars are likely to be shaped by the first seventy-two hours, not by what happens over the course of seventy-two weeks. The United States Army must be ready from the start.

Lieutenant Colonel Jeremy Flake currently serves as the deputy fire support coordinator for the 1st Cavalry Division. His previous assignments include serving as the aide-de-camp to the commander of the III Armored Corps and Fort Hood as well as serving thirty-six months in multiple key developmental positions at the brigade and battalion level within the 1st Cavalry Division.

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: Sgt. Cecil Elliott II, US Army

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mwi.westpoint.edu · Jeremy Flake · October 10, 2025

20. WWII Museum podcast explores legacy of America’s first intel agency

(and special operations organization). :-)

WWII Museum podcast explores legacy of America’s first intel agency

militarytimes.com · Claire Barrett · October 9, 2025

From land, sea and air, the Second World War was truly one of the first “total wars” — spanning every continent except Antarctica and affecting nearly all parts of the globe.

While covert operations like Operation Mincemeat have recently captured audiences’ attention, much of the covert ops of World War II have lived in the shadows. Until now.

Backed by a cornucopia of assets — namely the National World War II Museum’s vast oral history collection, season one of the five-part series podcast "Secret WWII: Spies & Special Ops" delves into wartime tales of espionage and intrigue, and the formation of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner to present-day CIA.

The museum’s senior historian and host, Bradley W. Hart, recently sat down with Military Times to discuss his latest project and how Pearl Harbor “changed the way that Americans s[aw] intelligence.” The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

The podcast is a five-part series on espionage, code-breaking and covert operations that shaped WWII. How has the oral history collection from the museum played a part in shaping the series?

The oral history collection is absolutely essential. It’s really, in some ways, the crown jewel of our collections. Here at the museum we have thousands of them that have been gathered over the decades, and so when I was conceiving this project, I went through a number of oral histories from that collection and really used them to shape the podcast from the experience of the people who were there.

A lot of people involved with the OSS go on to careers in the intelligence community, so there’s not really that many of them, but the ones that we have are really powerful, and listeners will hear them sort of scattered throughout the series.

The other part of it that I find interesting is the episode on Detachment 101, which is kind of a precursor to the Green Berets and Special Forces. There’s some really powerful oral histories in there about what these men saw in the jungles in places like Burma. The collections that we have here are really important to the mission of telling the World War II story holistically.

When one thinks of the OSS, one thinks of Bill Donovan. But what caught my attention was what came before — in World War I and the Secret Service being loaned out for such purposes. How did WWII precipitate the need for an intelligence arm of the military?

Up until World War II, there was this perception that intelligence was something that the U.S. only needed to do in wartime. This was a necessity, perhaps, of war, but it was seen as morally and politically undesirable.

Americans saw intelligence — even sometimes today — as something that nefarious other powers do. This was associated with European colonial powers, associated with non-democratic regimes. It’s something that a lot of Americans have a real visceral reaction to, certainly up until World War II.

Right after World War I, we kind of retreat from the world again, we retreat from intelligence gathering. After World War II, we don’t do that. There’s this necessity of the U.S. staying engaged with the world because of the emerging threat from the Soviet Union.

So intelligence, as the U.S. expands its role in the world post 1945, has to expand alongside it ... WWII fundamentally changes the American perception, and the American perception of the need for these types of things.

Something that really stuck out to me in the first episode is the mind-boggling bureaucratic strategy regarding diplomatic code-breaking — the odd-even day agreement — which saw the Army and Navy switching off days. What occurred after Pearl Harbor that helped to streamline the process of gathering intelligence?

I think we have to remember just how shocking Pearl Harbor is. The U.S. has never suffered a surprise attack like this. There’s very much the perception that the two gigantic oceans, the Atlantic and the Pacific, will just protect us from this. Pearl Harbor shows that’s not true.

After Pearl Harbor, there’s this perception that if you want to avoid this in the future you need to keep a permanent intelligence apparatus. You need to be constantly breaking the adversaries’ codes, trying to understand their intentions. And that becomes a key facet of the Cold War.

But in the interwar period — 1918 through 1941 — for the U.S., code-breaking falls to the side. To me, the Japanese are the obvious potential adversary, and because they’re a naval power, if they are going to attack, it’s going to be with the navy.

But what’s really interesting about Pearl Harbor is there’s this sort of message that is sent to the Japanese Embassy in D.C., cutting off diplomatic ties. This is decoded, but it’s not decoded in time. So there’s always been this allegation of, ‘Could the U.S. have known about Pearl Harbor ... had this been broken more quickly and been taken to the relevant decision makers?’

The problem is that the message doesn’t say anything about war, right? Doesn’t say anything about an attack. It just says, ‘We’re breaking up diplomatic ties.’ This is in the midst of some pretty tough negotiations already. So I think that the diplomatic codes are a useful window, but in terms of military preparedness, the diplomatic codes only get you so far.

Pearl Harbor changes the way that Americans see intelligence as something that not only can be used offensively or used on the battlefield, but something that’s an essential piece of protecting the United States itself.

Code-breaking at Midway is a story in itself, but is there something new about breaking and also trusting the intelligence regarding Midway? Having the ability to turn around and use intelligence within minutes, and the advantage to exploit this tactically.

This is the breaking of the JN-25 naval code, and this really gives the U.S. a decisive advantage. It’s not just breaking the codes; it’s being able to break them quickly enough to actually use this intelligence in a relevant way. It’s not an academic exercise anymore, or in the case of Midway, to even know the enemy’s intentions.

The Japanese are never really are able to overcome the fact that the U.S. is reading these naval codes, and throughout the course of the war, as you say, we never really see the Japanese launching an offensive of that scale, partially because the losses that they take in the Midway, but also they lose the strategic imperative after this. This is a decisive blow at sea. The fact that war goes on so long is remarkable in that sense. I mean, the Japanese are essentially on the defensive after 1942 — code-breaking is a key part.

Was it deemed as risky for Nimitz to trust this intelligence and basically say, ‘No, we’re going to Midway,’? Was it seen as a break with traditional fighting at that time?

It’s new technology. It’s something that no one’s ever really done before. And within intelligence, there’s always dissenting voices. There’s always this idea of, ‘Is this being planted for us? Do the Japanese know that we’ve broken this code and are they giving us disinformation?’ So absolutely, there’s a risk in it.

We will talk about this throughout the remaining episodes of the podcast, but anytime you’re relying on intelligence, there’s implicit risk there. I think Nimitz deserves a lot of credit for acting on and for trusting intelligence and convincing Washington that this is the course of action to take.

Did the British SOE influence the OSS in anyway? Winston Churchill was very much in the muck and mud of planning and intelligence. How influential was President Franklin D. Roosevelt in regards to intelligence?

The OSS organizational chart, which actually does exist, is sort of a jumbled mess that kind of defies anyone — it’s like a plane they’re building when it’s already in flight. The OSS is only formally created after we’ve been at war. So they don’t have time to sit down and plan this thing out, and Bill Donovan is not exactly the planning type. He’s a man of action. He’s going to leave things like how the org chart is structured to others … And they just never get around to it during the war.

But there are a couple new divisions. You’ve got the RNA division, which is research and analysis, which is exactly what it sounds like. Then you’ve got the special operations side of it. You’ve got the detachments that are largely out in Asia — not in MacArthur’s sphere of Asia — but they are allowed to operate in places like China and Burma, places seen as secondary theaters.

And then you have the sort of research and development division, the James Bond-types who are building poison pills, explosives and those sorts of things. This is really what makes OSS somewhat unique, right? Is that you’ve got intelligence-gathering, and you’ve got covert action all under one umbrella.

The British have MI-6, which is more or less the equivalent to the research and analysis section. The SOE is more of the assassinating officers and blowing up trains kind of thing.

This feeds into discussions post-war about what the U.S. intelligence community should look like. There’s a report at the end of the war that helps condemn the OSS — although it probably would have happened anyway because of President Harry Truman’s personal animosity towards Donovan — but it concludes that the research analysis division is the part of the OSS that you should keep. You should dump the covert action side of it. That influences the early CIA.

Can you give a little preview for what’s to come in the fourth and fifth episodes?

In episodes four and five, we are going to start talking about the lead-up to D-Day and the role of the Jedburghs, which was another form of direct action. These were three-man teams dropped into occupied Europe prior to D-Day, and in some cases, afterwards.

And then in season two, we’re going to try to tell the longer-term story of the OSS — hopefully about agents in occupied Europe.

We’re going to try to talk about agents in places like China, places we don’t often think about as being areas of World War II for a lot of Americans. And we’re going to talk about the legacy of OSS in 1945. So, we have a lot of great material to cover and a super exciting story to share.

About Claire Barrett

Claire Barrett is the Strategic Operations Editor for Sightline Media and a World War II researcher with an unparalleled affinity for Sir Winston Churchill and Michigan football.

21. Fighting China, Fast and Slow

Professionals talk....

Conclusion:

Deterrence depends on not just the number of bombers, submarines, and destroyers but also the ability to keep forces supplied—even when conventional logistics breaks down. As on the beaches of Normandy in 1944, logistics itself can be a decisive weapon in battle. Failing to invest in these capabilities signals unpreparedness or dangerous overconfidence that there will be time to adapt once war begins. Reliable and effective logistics is crucial in any war—and especially so when that war is half a world away.

Fighting China, Fast and Slow

Maximilian K. Bremer and Kelly A. Grieco

October 10, 2025

Foreign Affairs · More by Maximilian K. Bremer · October 10, 2025

The Real Logistics Challenge in the Taiwan Strait

October 10, 2025

U.S. Navy officers on a ship in the Taiwan Strait, August 2019 Markus Castaneda / U.S. Navy / Reuters

Maximilian K. Bremer is a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel, a Nonresident Fellow with the Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center, and Head of Mission Engineering and Strategy at Atropos Group.

Kelly A. Grieco is a Senior Fellow in the Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center and Adjunct Professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University.

More by Kelly A. Grieco

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More than 80 years after Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, D-Day is frequently referred to in discussions of potential conflict in the Taiwan Strait. Western observers often cite that historic event to highlight the formidable challenge that China’s military would face in launching an amphibious assault on Taiwan. Chinese analysts and military planners also study the Normandy landing campaign closely, looking for insights into logistics for their air and sea forces.

But the United States should learn another lesson from D-Day: how to keep U.S. forces supplied under fire without relying on fixed infrastructure. In June 1944, Allied forces landed hundreds of thousands of troops and vehicles and tons of materiel on fortified beaches, secured a defensible position, and pushed inland—all without access to a single major port. What made this feat possible were cheap gliders that delivered troops and cargo too heavy for parachutes, and artificial harbors that kept the beachhead supplied. Those disposable logistics tools provided the speed and flexibility needed when permanent infrastructure and traditional supply methods such as large transport convoys became liabilities, and when delay could have proved fatal.

Today, in the event of war in East Asia, China could cut off supply lines across the vast Pacific, potentially isolating U.S. forces. The solution, as in Normandy in 1944, is innovative, temporary logistics. The United States should invest in expendable and autonomous systems, such as disposable cargo drones and one-way gliders, which use programmed routes and onboard sensors to keep forces stocked with ammunition, fuel, food, and other supplies during the critical early stage of a conflict. As China depleted its missile arsenal attacking disposable logistics tools, U.S. and allied forces could turn to more permanent infrastructure to deliver supplies by air and sea.

Temporary logistics might seem wasteful, but the alternative—attempting to maintain peacetime standards of logistical efficiency in the opening phase of a conflict—risks the type of supply failures that have decided countless wars throughout history. Beijing understands this well: authoritative texts about military strategy published by the People’s Liberation Army identify logistics as a vulnerability that China can exploit to paralyze an adversary’s forces. Strengthening U.S. deterrence in the Indo-Pacific therefore requires the ability to deploy fast, flexible, and cheap logistical resources at the outset of a conflict, which can complement traditional, centralized logistics systems required for protracted operations. This approach combines speed and staying power, ensuring that the United States can repel initial Chinese aggression and prevail in a longer war.

Lessons from Normandy

The D-Day invasion succeeded because Allied planners reimagined logistics at scale while under fire. In the predawn hours of the invasion, hundreds of gliders delivered paratroopers and equipment behind enemy lines. Constructed from wood and canvas, these gliders were cheap, required no fuel, and needed neither runways nor return flights, making them ideal for delivering heavy weapons and supplies that parachutes alone could not handle. When German antiaircraft fire intensified, the Allies simply sent more gliders and airborne troops. They accepted the attrition of intentionally disposable gliders—as well as the risk to airborne personnel and their equipment—as necessary to achieve the operation’s objectives.

While gliders deposited troops and materiel behind enemy lines during the invasion’s opening hours, temporary, mobile harbors—known as Mulberries—addressed the urgent need to rapidly fortify forces to repel the inevitable German counterattack. Prefabricated in England and assembled under fire off the beaches of Normandy, each Mulberry was engineered to handle 5,000 tons of cargo and 1,400 vehicles daily. The installation at Arromanches, for example, moved tens of thousands of tons of food, ammunition, vehicles, and other supplies daily, sustaining Allied forces during their most vulnerable period in the landing.

These logistical innovations proved decisive. Within two weeks of D-Day, more than one million Allied troops were ashore in France. Once the beachhead was secure, the Allies began to repair ports, build pipelines, and extend railways. But were it not for gliders and Mulberries, the Allies would never have gotten ashore. As U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme Allied commander during the operation, said of these temporary logistical measures, “Without them our armies could not have been adequately maintained in the field.” It was a phased approach—fast and improvisational at first; steady and deliberate later.

Logistics Under Fire

Deterring potential Chinese action in the Taiwan Strait poses logistical challenges even more daunting than those the Allies faced in Normandy. The People’s Liberation Army has spent two decades developing anti-access/area-denial capabilities, known as A2/AD—including long-range missiles, maritime militias, and cyberweapons—that the Pentagon says are specifically designed to disrupt and destroy American and allied supply lines. China’s long-range missiles can strike airfields, ports, and supply depots across the Pacific, and PLA cyberattacks threaten the communications networks and digital systems that undergird U.S. and allied military logistics. A recent Stimson Center analysis found that, in the opening phase of a potential conflict, Chinese missiles could render U.S. bases and airfields in Japan and Guam inoperable for days or weeks, grounding cargo aircraft essential for resupply. Logistical delays can break an operation by denying the one resource that can never be recovered: time. And time is exactly what China needs to take control of Taiwan. Effective logistics, therefore, underwrites credible U.S. deterrence.

The U.S. military has responded to this challenge by shifting away from maintaining large regional bases and toward stationing forces across numerous smaller, often remote locations. This approach, which is called distributed operations, maximizes U.S. forces’ ability to withstand precision strikes. But it also significantly increases the complexity of logistical coordination, creating new possibilities for failure. Consider the Marine Corps’ new stand-in force concept, which involves deploying small, mobile units that carry minimal supplies and require frequent resupply. As General David Berger, then commandant of the Marine Corps, acknowledged in May 2022, sustaining stand-in forces requires “logistics capabilities designed for distributed operations over long distances in a contested environment”—that is, more aircraft, more ships, more support personnel, and better planning to maintain vulnerable supply lines.

Today, conventional methods are insufficient to protect the United States against Chinese weapons. Large cargo aircraft and container ships—the backbone of traditional military logistics—become prime targets in contested environments. A 2022 wargame highlighted this dilemma, noting that it was unclear how the military would execute joint logistics across widely dispersed U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific theater.

FLEET-FOOTED

Modern technology offers a path forward, allowing the United States to reimagine D-Day’s legacy of disposable logistics for the Indo-Pacific. Like the gliders and Mulberry harbors that initially sustained Allied forces in Normandy, today’s autonomous logistics systems can bridge initial operations and protracted conflict. These systems would need to be cheap enough to be expendable, small enough to minimize their value as targets, and numerous enough to ensure success despite individual losses.

Emerging technologies are well suited to the task. Reinvented gliders, now built from stronger materials such as carbon fiber reinforced polymers, incorporate autonomous navigation systems that can avoid obstacles, select landing zones, and deliver supplies to remote or contested locations. The U.S. Air Force has tested lightweight cargo gliders capable of delivering 1,000 pounds of supplies up to 40 miles. At roughly $40,000 each, these are inexpensive enough to be disposable. By comparison, a single C-130J, a traditional cargo aircraft used by the air force, costs about $110 million.

In an Indo-Pacific conflict, modern gliders could deliver supplies nightly to marines in remote locations, much as wooden gliders sustained Allied paratroopers in Normandy. But today’s aircraft can do so with a level of precision and reliability that was not possible in 1944.

Conventional methods are insufficient to protect the United States against Chinese weapons.

Autonomous cargo aircraft and ships can also reshape temporary logistics. Last year, for example, the air force successfully tested modified Cessna 208B Caravans, common single-engine turboprop planes, which used automated takeoff and landing systems to deliver supplies to eight remote locations spread across 1,150 miles. Rather than relying on large transport planes, the air force could use numerous smaller aircraft able to land on shorter and narrower runways to deliver supplies to dispersed units. The same idea applies to larger, autonomous drones capable of moving oversize loads long distances. These aircraft could play the role that Mulberries did in Normandy, facilitating temporary supply lines where none previously existed.

Similarly, autonomous surface vessels, such as uncrewed boats, could deliver one or two standard shipping containers of fuel, food, and ammunition to scattered forces with no need for a large port. Across the many islands of the Indo-Pacific, a large fleet of these autonomous vessels could provide near-continuous resupply while larger cargo vessels remained at a safe distance from Chinese attacks. Traditional military cargo ships, in contrast, are unsuited for these missions because they are too few in number, vulnerable to attack, and dependent on ports.

The most revolutionary approach would employ swarming logistics, in which the U.S. military launches dozens or hundreds of small, cheap drones persistently, or in waves, to overwhelm China’s ability to selectively target the most valuable cargo. Because of their sheer quantity, these drones create uncertainty about the value of any single target, especially when the cost of intercepting them exceeds the value of what might be onboard. If China attempts to intercept them, the United States benefits by accelerating the depletion of China’s costly and limited antiaircraft missiles. If China opts not to engage, the resupply mission succeeds. As with flying waves of gliders through intense antiaircraft fire, adopting these tactics requires accepting that there will be attrition as China shoots down some drones. But these losses are necessary to impose costs on Chinese defenses.

THE LONG HAUL

None of these expendable logistics systems could or should permanently replace traditional supply methods. In the case of a drawn-out war over Taiwan, the battle for control of the air and sea is likely to eventually shift in favor of more powerful U.S. and allied forces. China’s cruise and ballistic missile arsenal is extensive, but it is not unlimited. As those weapons are exhausted, the conflict will return to the type of warfare that can use traditional logistics methods, including large cargo ships, aircraft, and fixed infrastructure. But to reach that point, the United States will first need disposable logistics as a stopgap, buying time in the initial stages when conventional networks are under attack and secure supply lines have yet to be established. Like Mulberry harbors and D-Day gliders, these systems prioritize immediate effectiveness over long-term efficiency.

Meeting this challenge demands fundamental changes in how the Pentagon thinks about conflict in the Indo-Pacific. The United States should ensure that expendable systems are readily available in meaningful quantities. At present, the United States and its allies severely underinvest in both traditional logistical capabilities, such as airlift and sealift cargo platforms, and in disposable systems. For example, most of the Ready Reserve Force’s so-called roll-on, roll-off vessels, which can transport wheeled vehicles and are essential to large-scale military deployments, were primarily built in the 1970s, with some dating to the early 1960s. To ensure the viability of its aging logistics fleet in the Indo-Pacific, Washington should pursue development and production of scalable, expendable capabilities in partnership with key regional allies such as Australia and Japan. Disposable logistics based close to the theater of operations would reduce production delays and ease the strain on already limited logistics capacity.

The United States should also support, and the U.S. military should embrace, the emerging commercial market for lower-cost, autonomous cargo aircraft and ships. Neither the United States nor its allies can afford to stockpile large quantities of expendable systems that sit idle in peacetime, especially since the technology for autonomy, swarming, and propulsion evolves rapidly. What is state of the art today is often obsolete tomorrow. Instead, Washington should partner with private industry to prepare for the swift adoption of autonomous logistics systems for military use. Several U.S. firms are already developing small cargo drones designed to conduct resupply missions across the Indo-Pacific, which could be used in the initial fight.

Investing in deliberately temporary systems is essential, not wasteful.

The United States needs to clear regulatory and policy obstacles that hinder commercial adoption of these systems in the air and at sea. Although the Federal Aviation Administration has proposed a rule that would allow drones to deliver small packages in the United States, implementation remains uncertain, and the proposed rules severely restrict the size of drones and cargo. China, by contrast, has already normalized drone delivery and established dedicated corridors for commercial operations, including for large cargo drones capable of delivering at scale. The United States has fallen behind China in commercial shipbuilding and is unlikely to regain its dominance in that market, but it has an opportunity to lead in autonomous logistics. The more the United States invests now, the greater its capability to deter and, if necessary, fight a protracted conflict with China.

U.S. policymakers must accept that investing in deliberately temporary systems is essential, not wasteful. During the critical first weeks of any major Pacific conflict, container ships will not be able to dock at ports within range of China’s weapons, and large aircraft will not be able to land at contested bases. Instead, the U.S. military will need to deploy autonomous drones and expendable systems. The war in Ukraine, in which units on both sides have used drones to deliver ammunition to frontline units, demonstrates the value of such approaches.

Expendable and autonomous logistics systems would strengthen U.S. deterrence by overcoming what we call the “four tyrannies”—time, distance, water, and scale—that threaten American power projection in the Indo-Pacific. Beijing’s strategy depends on exploiting these tyrannies to seize Taiwan before the United States can bring sufficient military force to bear. By targeting the few islands suitable for large-scale logistics operations, China can slow any U.S. response. But by demonstrating the ability to sustain dispersed forces under missile attack with expendable gliders, cargo drones, and swarming logistics, the United States can undermine China’s confidence in its A2/AD capabilities.

Deterrence depends on not just the number of bombers, submarines, and destroyers but also the ability to keep forces supplied—even when conventional logistics breaks down. As on the beaches of Normandy in 1944, logistics itself can be a decisive weapon in battle. Failing to invest in these capabilities signals unpreparedness or dangerous overconfidence that there will be time to adapt once war begins. Reliable and effective logistics is crucial in any war—and especially so when that war is half a world away.

Foreign Affairs · More by Maximilian K. Bremer · October 10, 2025

22. The Gaza Deal Is Not Too Big to Fail

Excerpts:

After two years of extraordinary bloodshed, much of the world sees Israel as a rogue state that is smashing long-held norms with impunity, with U.S. complicity. A number of high-level American military commanders have told us that until Washington compels Israel to seriously engage with creating some kind of viable Palestinian future, the Israeli approach of pursuing military hegemony will mean indefinite wars and more regional instability. If the U.S.-led world order is a geopolitical game of Jenga, it could well be Israel that ends up pulling the final piece.

Given the contentious domestic dynamics around U.S.-Israeli relations, it will take political courage for any U.S. administration to pressure Israel to curb its expanding militarism and pursue lasting peace, first by repairing its partnerships with Arab states. Not too long ago, though, one would say it took audacity for Israel to move against the interests of its superpower patron—not the other way around. President Dwight Eisenhower and President Gerald Ford threatened to reevaluate the relationship because of Israeli intransigence. President Ronald Reagan and President George H.W. Bush delayed arms shipments and loan guarantees to express their displeasure with certain Israeli military operations and settlement expansion. Using leverage to enforce U.S. interests is hardly a new approach. Nor should it be controversial. At a time of extraordinary challenges to U.S. power around the world, it would be far stranger yet for the United States to cede its larger security agenda to the whims of a heavily armed client.

Trump has made the first step in reversing course on this trend, and has considerable, perhaps unique, political protection to undertake such steps. But it will take consistent pressure and courage to get to the “strong, durable and everlasting peace” that the president says he wants. For the hostage families and tens of thousands who lost their lives, family members, and homes forever, it is tragic that the United States has refrained from using its power to end the war for so long. With myriad global security threats around the world, the United States cannot afford to fail yet again.

The Gaza Deal Is Not Too Big to Fail

Joost R. Hiltermann and Natasha Hall

October 9, 2025

Foreign Affairs · More by Joost R. Hiltermann · October 9, 2025

How Israel’s Military Dominance Could Undermine America’s Quest for Regional Peace

October 9, 2025

Celebrating the impending first phase of a Gaza cease-fire, Tel Aviv, October 2025 Shir Torem / Reuters

JOOST R. HILTERMANN is Special Adviser for Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group.

NATASHA HALL is a Nonresident Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

More by Natasha Hall

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With the announcement that both Hamas and Israel have signed on to the first phase of U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza, a rare opportunity has emerged to end two years of terrible violence. Under the U.S.-brokered agreement, Hamas has promised to return all of the remaining hostages it seized in 2023 in exchange for Israel’s release of nearly 2,000 Palestinian detainees and pledge of a partial withdrawal of its forces from the territory. In addition to life-saving relief to Palestinians in Gaza and the families of hostages, many hope the deal could bring renewed stability to the region.

If history is any indication, however, expectations of a durable peace or even sustainable relief for Palestinians may well be disappointed. Trump returned to the White House in January intent on replacing his predecessor’s failing Middle East policy, and he did so in ways that departed from the policies of his own first administration. His second term got off to an impressive start, helping secure—even before his term actually started—a Gaza cease-fire. In his first few months in office, more bold moves followed, including opening a precedent-breaking direct channel from the United States to Hamas, restarting nuclear negotiations with Iran, reaching a truce with the Houthis in Yemen, and waiving U.S. sanctions on a post-Assad Syria. Officials in Washington also expressed hope that they could extend the Abraham Accords, the agreements normalizing relations between Israel and several Arab states, to Saudi Arabia and even Syria. Doing so would advance the long-term goal of managing the region’s tensions through a U.S.-directed set of relationships that would allow the United States to shift its military resources to other parts of the world.

Yet the administration found its policies continually upended by Israeli actions. In March, Israel broke the Washington-mediated Gaza cease-fire, then drew the Trump administration into so-called humanitarian operations that bypassed the long-established UN framework. By late spring, deepening famine had driven more of the Palestinian population in Gaza toward the Egyptian border, creating tension in Israel’s long-standing peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan. Then in June, Israel undermined U.S. negotiations with Tehran not only by bombing Iran but also by persuading the Trump administration to join it by targeting Iran’s main nuclear facilities with bunker-busting bombs. In Syria, Israel increased military pressure on the new government of President Ahmed al-Shara even as Washington was throwing it a vital economic and diplomatic lifeline. And in September, Israel attacked Qatar, a vital U.S. ally that hosts the U.S. Central Command’s main forward headquarters, Al Udeid Air Base, and has been a key mediator in negotiations between Israel and Hamas and in a host of other conflicts. This reckless action, which blindsided the U.S. administration, was one of the main catalysts for Trump’s forceful push to end the war in Gaza.

Now, with the U.S.-led pact between Israel and Hamas, it may appear that this pattern has been broken. By making strong demands on Israel as well as Hamas, Trump was able to get both sides quickly to the table and to agree on the initial phase of a plan. Despite the Israeli government’s apparent preference for continuing the war, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had little choice but to sign on after Trump made clear that he had had enough and had therefore initiated a “strong” conversation with the Israeli leader. But even this agreement could soon succumb to Israel’s divergent aims. To appease his right flank and ensure his own political survival, Netanyahu might be tempted to resume the war on Hamas once the hostages are freed and obstruct meaningful humanitarian aid once again. He could attack Iran again to divert attention from what he would consider finishing the job in Gaza.

The Israeli government’s preference for using military force to keep adversaries off balance could undermine U.S objectives, as witnessed with previous Trump administration efforts in the region. This stark trajectory, with Israel as chaos agent and the United States reluctantly following, carries enormous risks. Should Netanyahu decide to break the October 9 agreement with Hamas once its initial objectives are carried out, or negotiations over the second phase of the deal break down, Israel could drag the United States back into a war that Washington doesn’t want.

It need not be like this. As it showed in its initial months in office and over the last few weeks, the Trump administration is capable of charting its own course—and even, on occasion, using the considerable leverage that the White House commands. The current accord shows that this kind of pressure can bring at least initial positive results. But for these efforts to succeed in the longer term, the United States will need to recognize the extent to which its long-term interests diverge from Israel’s and how often U.S. policy in the Middle East has been undermined by its closest ally in the region. To truly break this dynamic, the United States will need to apply continuous pressure on Israel to adhere to a course that promotes regional stability rather than undermines it. Otherwise, this latest deal could turn into yet another failed U.S.-led peace initiative.

OUT OF ALIGNMENT

The notion that Israel and the United States have different goals within a shared strategic paradigm is neither novel nor controversial, but over the past two years, it has been exposed as never before. For decades, U.S. strategy on the Middle East has rested on the twin pillars of supporting Israel and preserving the free flow of oil. Alongside these aims, successive administrations have defined a series of correlated objectives: preventing enemies from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, maintaining a sufficient American military presence to stave off other threats to U.S. interests, andsustaining effective counterterrorism. Overall, however, since the wars of the early years of the post-9/11 era, Washington has favored a relatively stable Middle East in which U.S. allies accommodate one another even if they do not maintain official relations.

Israel’s strategic interests, in turn, have revolved around its own national security and its close alliance with the United States. Successive U.S. administrations viewed Israel’s wars as defensive and supplied it with advanced weapons and military support while embracing the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Many in Washington assumed that peace agreements, from the Camp David accords of 1978 to the Oslo process in the 1990s, were guiding Israel into general alignment with the United States. But throughout these years, Washington failed to seriously challenge Israel’s continual expansion of Jewish settlements in occupied territory, which gradually precluded the possibility of a viable Palestinian state. The “peace process” masked a growing divergence between Israeli and American administrations.

In fact, as a right-wing vanguard steadily gained power in Israel, the country’s definition of its interests began to look far different from what was outlined in official U.S. rhetoric. The center-left parties supporting a two-state solution all but disappeared, and national security gradually became equated with annexation of at least the West Bank—a move that would preclude a sovereign Palestinian state. When Netanyahu formed a government with far-right parties in 2022, the settlement drive was supercharged, and ministerial oversight of the occupation is now spearheaded by Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, extremist leaders for whom any notion of Palestinian rule or even a long-term Palestinian presence in any part of the former British mandate territory of Palestine is anathema.

Nonetheless, as recently as September 2023, the Biden administration thought it was on the same page as Israel, believing that an Israeli-Saudi agreement could usher in an era of long-sought stability in the absence of a just settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After October 7, however, the Netanyahu government saw a golden opportunity to bury the cause of Palestinian statehood. Since 2024, it has also sought to continually expand Israel’s military footprint in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and even Qatar. Although this adventurism has often flown in the face of stated U.S. policy goals, Israel faced no real resistance from the Biden or Trump administrations until now.

FLOUTED AUTHORITY

The events after October 7 exposed a policy divergence between Israel and the United States that had been years in the making. After Hamas’s attack and Israel’s blistering response, the Biden administration wanted a quick end to the war so Saudi Arabia and Israel could move ahead in normalizing relations; it even proposed that such a step could attract regional buy-in. Despite Israel’s escalation of the war in Gaza, President Joe Biden’s administration continued to press for a Saudi-Israeli agreement before the end of his term in January 2025. But in terms of opinion in the Middle East and around the world, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman more accurately read the room. As Israeli war crimes mounted, he understood that it was not the time to “make peace” with Israel.

But nor did the idea of a settlement find a buyer in Netanyahu, who needed the war to continue so he could appease his far-right coalition partners and delay any judicial reckoning over the corruption charges he faced. Indeed, the Abraham Accords themselves seemed to be of diminishing value to Netanyahu, as Israel has flexed its military muscle across the region in the administration’s final year and it was saved over and over by the United States and friendly Arab countries (who helped shield it from Iranian missile attacks). In the meantime, apart from imposing sanctions on a few particularly violent settlers, the Biden administration failed to impose serious costs on the Israeli government for allowing and even encouraging a widening campaign of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. In this political vacuum, Israel appropriated more West Bank land in 2024 than in the previous 20 years combined.

Despite its bold opening moves, for much of its first eight months in office the second Trump administration proved equally ineffective at furthering U.S. goals of long-term peace and stability. Although Trump achieved a cease-fire in Gaza on day one, he stood back when Israel broke it six weeks later and then handed the Israeli far right a gift by floating the idea of turning the territory into the “Riviera on the Mediterranean”—supposedly after the Palestinian population left. And when Israel stepped up its campaign in Gaza and imposed a total ban on aid to the territory, the United States did not apply pressure to prevent a famine from spreading there. Instead, U.S. business interests and the Israeli military worked together to form the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and shut down hundreds of aid distribution points across the Gaza Strip. By August, nearly 900 people seeking food had been killed in the vicinity of GHF sites, according to the UN.

Trump administration policies have been continually upended by Israeli actions.

Israel’s biggest achievement was showing the world that the United States would acquiesce not only to its ongoing assault on Gaza but also its expanding regional war—no matter how much these actions diverged from long-term U.S. interests. Take the Islamic Republic of Iran. In the spring, while engaged in talks over the fate of Iran’s nuclear program, and Trump indicated that he wanted a deal. Moreover, a significant proportion of the U.S. president’s political base, including the influential right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson, was averse to a new war with Tehran. Nonetheless, by launching an Israeli military campaign against Iran, Netanyahu convinced Trump to engage U.S. forces in offensive operations. In June, the United States sent rock-penetrating bombs deep into air shafts of Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities at Fordow and Natanz. Although the full extent of the damage remains a matter of dispute, the attacks showed the extent to which Israel could goad the United States into taking on major military operations that served especially Israel’s interests.

U.S. and Israeli objectives in Lebanon and Syria are increasingly in conflict as well. The Trump administration says it wants to stabilize Lebanon and bring the country more closely under its stewardship, now that Hezbollah, the main Islamist group that Iran backs there, has been significantly weakened. Notably, the United States supported the election of a new Lebanese president and prime minister in January, bolstered the Lebanese army’s ability to replace Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and participated in a U.S.-chaired committee established in November 2024 to monitor a negotiated cease-fire with Israel there. By contrast, the Israeli government has continued military operations that have hindered Lebanon’s attempts at restabilization. Israeli forces continue to occupy several points in the south in violation of the U.S.-mediated agreement; Israeli fighter jets regularly carry out strikes on suspected Hezbollah targets throughout the country, killing civilians in the process; and Israel has largely ignored the monitoring committee, of which it is a part.

On the plus side, Israel’s war in Lebanon and attacks on Iran in the fall of 2024 helped precipitate the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, an unambiguous win for the United States and the entire region, especially the Syrian people. At first, the Syrian regime’s overthrow by an Islamist rebel group with roots in the terrorist groups ISIS and al-Qaeda alarmed the Biden administration. But Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Shara, won Trump’s admiration. In May, after an unexpected meeting with him, Trump announced that the United States would lift the sanctions that had long punished Syria, giving it a real chance for an economic revival. For the United States, building a secure and stable new Syria is a priority aimed at avoiding the collapse of the state, the reemergence of groups like ISIS, and wider regional instability that could be exploited by Iran and other adversaries.

Yet even after pledging strong support for the fledging government in Damascus, the Trump administration has not impeded Israel’s continual military interventions in Syria. Since the collapse of the Assad regime, Israel has destroyed most of the country’s military capabilities through hundreds of air strikes. It has also seized Syrian territory beyond the Golan Heights that it has occupied since 1967 and demanded the “demilitarization” of southern Syria, purportedly to protect Syria’s Druze minority. Such moves have undermined the country’s fragile recovery and increased friction with Turkey, a U.S. NATO ally, and that may very well be the aim. The Trump administration worked hard to bring the Syrian government and Druze factions together to negotiate a cease-fire after the latest flareup in the south, but it has done little to reverse Israel’s military gains: those advances have kept Syria internally divided and weak, an objective that Israel has communicated to Washington.

Then there is the question of Gaza itself. The Hamas-Israeli deal offers a long-overdue reprieve from violence and, hopefully, hunger. The families of the hostages will finally be able to see their loved ones or bury their dead. With the resumption of large-scale aid deliveries, Gaza’s population may be able to return from the brink of starvation. But the details on Israel’s side of the bargain are vague enough to allow Netanyahu to sabotage the next steps. Israel could, for example, continue to obstruct aid and medical personal and humanitarian workers, carry out intermittent deadly attacks through the Israel Defense Forces or the gangs it supports, and fail to withdraw, continuing a quasi-military occupation of Gaza. Much remains unclear about an international “stabilization force” that the plan calls for. Most challenging is the unaddressed issue of a Palestinian state, which the Netanyahu government has openly rejected. It is uncertain whether Palestinians will consider the plan's envisioned apolitical technocratic body as a legitimate form of Palestinian governance for Gaza, since they were not a party to the negotiations.

LEVERAGE, IF YOU USE IT

As with his predecessors, Trump came into office saying he wanted to lessen the U.S. footprint in the Middle East. Yet again and again, the United States has been drawn back in, militarily as well as diplomatically, because of Israel’s expanding offensive operations across the region. Perhaps this time will be different, but so far, Trump has been inclined to support Netanyahu’s tactical successes even when those work against longer-term U.S. strategic interests—or even when they upend ongoing U.S. policy efforts. Israel’s increasing reliance on the force of arms—spurning negotiated solutions to conflicts in favor of keeping all enemies and potential enemies off balance through military force—carries enormous risks for Washington. Israel has already succeeded once in drawing the United States into the fight and could well try to do so again—whether in Iran, Yemen, or even Gaza, where any move to drive the Palestinian population into the Sinai would ignite a conflict with Egypt.

Although such concerns may seem hypothetical, the Israeli strike on Qatar last month has demonstrated just how confident Israel has become. In targeting Hamas’s negotiators in Doha, the Qatari capital, Israel aimed to blow up even the illusion of seeking a diplomatic end to the war in Gaza. Despite the attack’s failure, Israel succeeded, once again, in showing that it could set the terms. This has left Gulf countries wondering if they too could be dragged into reckless wars if they form the partnerships with Israel that the United States seeks.

Israel’s increasing reliance on the force of arms carries enormous risks for Washington.

After two years of extraordinary bloodshed, much of the world sees Israel as a rogue state that is smashing long-held norms with impunity, with U.S. complicity. A number of high-level American military commanders have told us that until Washington compels Israel to seriously engage with creating some kind of viable Palestinian future, the Israeli approach of pursuing military hegemony will mean indefinite wars and more regional instability. If the U.S.-led world order is a geopolitical game of Jenga, it could well be Israel that ends up pulling the final piece.

Given the contentious domestic dynamics around U.S.-Israeli relations, it will take political courage for any U.S. administration to pressure Israel to curb its expanding militarism and pursue lasting peace, first by repairing its partnerships with Arab states. Not too long ago, though, one would say it took audacity for Israel to move against the interests of its superpower patron—not the other way around. President Dwight Eisenhower and President Gerald Ford threatened to reevaluate the relationship because of Israeli intransigence. President Ronald Reagan and President George H.W. Bush delayed arms shipments and loan guarantees to express their displeasure with certain Israeli military operations and settlement expansion. Using leverage to enforce U.S. interests is hardly a new approach. Nor should it be controversial. At a time of extraordinary challenges to U.S. power around the world, it would be far stranger yet for the United States to cede its larger security agenda to the whims of a heavily armed client.

Trump has made the first step in reversing course on this trend, and has considerable, perhaps unique, political protection to undertake such steps. But it will take consistent pressure and courage to get to the “strong, durable and everlasting peace” that the president says he wants. For the hostage families and tens of thousands who lost their lives, family members, and homes forever, it is tragic that the United States has refrained from using its power to end the war for so long. With myriad global security threats around the world, the United States cannot afford to fail yet again.

Foreign Affairs · More by Joost R. Hiltermann · October 9, 2025

23. Reading Books Made a Man Out of Me

I will be checking out this podcast.

Reading Books Made a Man Out of Me

And why I’m launching ‘Old School,’ a new podcast about great books and how they can make us better men.

By Shilo Brooks

10.09.25 —

Culture and Ideas

https://www.thefp.com/p/reading-saved-me-from-the-sins-of-my-fathers-culture-podcast-old-school

thefp.com

Last year, our reporter Frannie Block told me about a lecturer at Princeton who was teaching a class on “greatness,” firmly rooted in the classic books of the Western canon. He would open his course by telling students that if “the greatest thing, the best thing, the noblest thing about you on your deathbed is that you got into Princeton, you didn’t do it right.”

Apparently, this course on greatness was one of the most popular on campus.

We’ve published a lot of stories in The Free Press about how education is broken, and how young people are struggling to find meaning—but Frannie’s profile of this teacher gave me hope.

His name is Shilo Brooks, and when I got to meet him myself, we spoke for hours about the problem of America’s lost boys, the dramatic decline in book-reading, and how those two things are connected.

I knew we had to get him involved with what we’re doing here at The Free Press.

So I am thrilled to announce today that we are launching his brand-new podcast Old School, which is about books and how reading them can make us better. We’re releasing two episodes today. In the first, Shilo discusses Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea with Admiral James Stavridis; and in the second, he speaks to MeatEater’s Steven Rinella about Jim Harrison’s novel Wolf. You can listen below or wherever you get your podcasts.

To introduce himself, Shilo has also written a gorgeous essay about how reading changed his life, which we’re publishing today. Enjoy! —Bari Weiss

It was my second stepfather who taught me that real men read.

I am from the part of Texas where the names of the towns—Brownfield, Plainview, Levelland—reflect the barrenness of the scenery. My first father, the biological one, divorced my mother when I was an infant and later died of too much alcohol on too many weeknights.

My second father, whom I barely knew before he bolted with my mother’s meager retirement savings, left us with nothing but a broken-down car.

It was my third father, a Vietnam veteran with a high school education, who showed me what it means to be a man of depth and substance.

He was a blue-collar, red-blooded, rockabilly son of the ’60s when my mother married him. I was 7 years old. In backyard ball games, he threw a football like a bullet while wearing steel-toe work boots, faded Levi’s, and a trucker hat. He grilled meat over a fire built from wood he split with an axe, and he could hunt—and fish—with a bow and arrow.

My third father’s example presented a choice: I could succumb to the classic masculine temptations of my first two fathers, or I could follow his quiet example and shape my future by seeking wisdom in the pages of the past.

He also loved books. He lined the shelves in the small living room of our two-bedroom home with them. Books like Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Charles Lindbergh’s We, and Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, the grandest work of fiction ever written about the American West.

It is powerful for a boy to see a grown man read. The lesson is best taught passively. My stepfather didn’t so much talk to me about books as demonstrate what it meant to have a relationship with them. Most evenings, after dinner, he would sit in his favorite leather recliner and open a book—quietly, faithfully, as if keeping a promise to himself. He showed me that living the life of a responsible man means living the life of the mind.

His example presented a choice: I could succumb to the classic masculine temptations of my first two fathers, or I could follow his quiet example and shape my future by seeking wisdom in the pages of the past.

Neither of us could have predicted that this would one day put me in the company of Ivy League professors and American presidents.

You do not have to be book smart to be a book reader.

I was not a standout student in my public high school. In 10th grade, I had a male English literature teacher (now an endangered species) who assigned American classics like Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, and Jack London’s I read the covers off them. But I didn’t do much else when it came to schoolwork. Most of my time outside school was spent working retail at the local shopping mall for money to buy books. I was not the prom king; I did not participate in organized athletics; I was not the student body president; I did not go to summer camps; I never traveled abroad; and I did not score well on standardized tests. (I did date a cheerleader, which I considered my greatest accomplishment.)

As an 18-year-old, I would not have been admitted to any of the elite universities at which I have now taught. When the valedictorian of my high school told me she got into Yale, I assumed it was somewhere in England.

But that year, a book changed my life.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise was published when he was only 23. It tells the story of Amory Blaine, a self-obsessed teenager in search of love and truth. Like Fitzgerald, Blaine goes to Princeton from a small town in the Midwest. Beneath the spires and gargoyles he finds lyric poetry and erudite friends. The novel instilled in me a romantic but earnest longing to get an old-school education. I wanted to read books and discuss them late into the night.

I would not have attended college at all if a man from my hometown had not paid my way in exchange for a promise to use my education to help others. In 2002, I started my freshman year at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Tens of thousands of pages and 22 years later, I found myself onstage in front of 250 undergraduates at Princeton, teaching my signature course on ambition. Tucked into my jacket pocket for my first lecture was a paperback of This Side of Paradise, strategically placed to conceal the nervous beats of my heart.

Young people today, and especially young men, do not understand how reading books can alter the trajectory of a life. Reading for pleasure among American adults has dropped 40 percent in the past 20 years. In 2022, only 28 percent of men read a work of fiction, compared to 47 percent of women—a 19-point gap. A National Endowment for the Arts study found that just 40 percent of men read any book at all that year.

This dramatic decrease in reading is happening at the same time as a deepening existential crisis among young men. Record numbers of them are not getting married, not dating, not enrolling in school or working, and struggling with serious mental health issues. A quiet malaise hangs over them. Today’s young men, who fill my classroom by the hundreds, ardently long for a more meaningful existence than the one offered to them by digital narcotics.

Reading can save them. Books invite us to feel unfamiliar feelings and think alien thoughts. They train us in empathy and make us feel less lonely. They help us to discover what we believe, what we value, and what we never imagined.

Great works of literature are entertaining, but they are not mere entertainment. A great book induces self-examination and spiritual expansion. When a man is starved for love, work, purpose, money, or vitality, a novel wrestling with these themes can be metabolized as energy for the heart. When a man suffers from addiction, divorce, self-loathing, or vanity, his local bookstore can become his pharmacy.

It’s not just the books we enjoy that make us better. Those that require effort to understand because they are difficult, or whose arguments, writing styles, or ideas rub us the wrong way, are perhaps even more edifying. Overcoming intellectual hardship strengthens the mind as much as overcoming physical hardship strengthens the body. Not liking a book provides an opportunity to articulate why you didn’t like it once you’ve finished it. This can clarify your thinking, cultivate compassion, and provide self-knowledge through examination of the negative.

Rather than engaging in a search for wisdom that rewards patient reflection, we are tempted by the frictionless immediacy of a digital life that degrades our humanity and turns us into twitching addicts. Some might save themselves by finding God. For others, there are the books God gave man.

That’s how it was for me. Baptized in James Joyce’s stream of consciousness and purified by Ray Bradbury’s literary fire, books saved me from the sins of my fathers and the colorless agony of a purposeless life. They took me from the cotton fields of West Texas to the lecture halls of the Ivy League, transforming me from a victim of circumstance into a CEO working with a former American president to lead a presidential center.

When I promised the man who paid my college tuition that I’d use my education to help other people, I didn’t yet know how. Now I do. In addition to teaching college students, I want to speak to men everywhere about great books. Why men? Because too many of us have stopped reading. Publishers Weekly reported in 2019 that 88 percent of private book clubs include only women.

That’s why I’m launching Old School, a literary fellowship for men. It’s called Old School because that’s the kind of education I always wanted: one where people read books and discuss them late into the night. Each week, fascinating men—from fitness gurus to philosophers—will sit down with me to talk about the books that changed their lives. We will form old-school bonds of friendship as we wrestle with timeless questions and dig into timeless classics. And we’ll become better men by becoming better readers. I hope you’ll kick off your boots and join us.

The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article.

thefp.com

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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